Postcoital depression? Part of her mind giggled hysterically and was admonished by some other part. No. Real sadness.
It wasn’t your fault,she said. Not your fault.
She felt cold from the images. So much death. So much pain. Why would she say that?
Because it’s true,she thought. Damned sure. Not your fault.
But suppose some of us did it. When we were Hippae. Some of us.
Not your fault,she insisted. When you were Hippae, you didn’t know. Hippae have no morals. Hippae have no sense of sin. Like a child, playing with matches, burning down the house.
More pictures. Time past. Hippae were better behaved long ago. Past memory. Before the mutation. Didn’t kill things then. Not when foxen laid the eggs. A picture of a foxen bowed down with grief, head bent between the front paws, back arched in woe. Penitence.
Her fingers were busy with her hair, trying to braid it up. She thought,Then you must go back. Make things the way they used to be. Some of you can still reproduce,
So few. So very few.
Never mind how few. Don’t waste your time on penitence or guilt. Solving the problem is better!It was true. She knew it was true. She should have known it was true years ago, back in Breedertown. Lack of understanding.
She thought the kneeling figure, the foxen crouched in woe while Hippae pranced and bellowed. She crossed it out, negated it. She thought a standing figure, claws like sabers, a foxen rampant, laying eggs.Better. Much better.
This militancy fell as though into an umplumbable well, a vacancy. They had gone beyond that. They had decided they should no longer care about things of the world. They felt responsible without wanting to be responsive.
She cried, not knowing whether He had not heard her or whether she had merely been ignored as of no consequence. Changed as she was, she knew she should make Him hear, but there were others around and His thoughts were diluted and disarranged.
The night had gone on without their notice. Ahead and above hung glowing globes of Arbai light which they climbed toward. She heard the contented whicker of horses, grazing on their island below. She was very tired, so tired she could scarcely hold on. He knelt and rolled her off and went away.
“Marjorie?” She was looking up at Father James’ concerned face. “Is Stella—“
“Alive,” she said, licking her lips. Saying words felt strange, as though she were using certain organs for inappropriate ends. “She knows her name. I think she recognized us. I sent the others to take her to Commons.”
“The foxen took them?”
She nodded. “Some of them. Then the others went away, all but … all but Him.”
“First?”
She couldn’t call Him that. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have committed adultery. Bestiality? No. Not a man, not a beast. What? I am in love with—Am I in love with … ?
He said, “You’ve been a very long time. The night’s half gone.”
She blurted desperately, trying not to talk about what most concerned her, “I thought all that business about sin was just Brother Mainoa being a little contentious. It wasn’t. The foxen are obsessed with it. They either have considered or are considering racial suicide out of penitence.” Though it was not suicide merely to stand still, doing nothing. Or was it?
He nodded, helping her up and guiding her into the house she had selected, where she half sat, half fell onto her bedding. “You’ve picked that up, have you? Mainoa says so, too. There’s no doubt the Hippae killed the Arbai. There’s little doubt the Hippae are killing mankind. I don’t know how. The foxen don’t tell us how. It’s something they’re withholding. As though they’re not sure whether we’re worthy. …
“It’s like playing charades. Or decoding a rebus. They show us pictures. They feel emotions. Once in a while, they actually show us a word. And difficult though it is with us, seemingly they communicate with us better than they do with the Hippae. They and the Hippae transmit or receive on different wavelengths or something “
It was no longer charades or rebuses to Marjorie. It was almost language. It could have been language if only she had gone on, entered in, if she had not drawn back there, at the final instant. How could she tell Father that? She could tell Mainoa, maybe. No one else. Tomorrow, maybe. “I think you’re right, Father. Since the mutation they have not communicated with the Hippae, though I get a sense that in former ages, when the foxen laid the eggs, they exercised a lot of guidance toward their young,”