Even so, if she could get the horses out onto the slope, some of them would make it. She could get them moving in the right direction, at least. Once they reached the forest, First would take them, protect them. Gallant horses. They deserved better than this fangy death. They deserved meadows and foals and long days of grazing under the sun.
Her feet echoed on the stone. Dim lights picked out the junctures of one tunnel with another. When the trip recorder said she had come far enough in the proper direction, she began looking for a way up. The horses would be above her somewhere. Pray the barn had not yet attracted Hippae attention. Pray the horses were not injured, or dead.
No,said someone.The horses are safe.
She stopped, stunned into frozen immobility. That voice belonged to the wilderness, to the trees, not to these dry, dark corridors. When the shock passed, she turned toward the voice as a compass needle turns toward the north, quivering.
Here,it said. Here.
She crept toward the summons, upward along slanting corridors, up twisting flights of stairs, pulled like a fish on a line.
He was in the barn with the horses, lying across the door. She saw the troubled air, the miragelike wavering, the glint of tooth or eye. The horses chewed quietly, undisturbed. When she came in, Quixote whickered at her and she leaned against the wall, trembling. So. Was He the only one to get involved, or were there other foxen as well?
Whyare you here?she asked.
I knew you would come here,He replied, in words, human words, clear as air.
She shook with the implications of that.I could not abandon my friends.she said.
I know,He said. I knew before, but my people didn’t believe in you.
She asked,Have they changed their minds’?
Yes. Because of these,He said. Because of the horses.
She saw herself on Quixote’s back, menaced from front and rear, the aircar above her offering escape, saw herself refusing to go. The picture in her mind was larger than life, freighted with enormous import. She would not leave the horses. Silly, she thought. Ithought so at the time.
Silly,He agreed, using words again.Important Important to know one would risk herself for another not like herself. Important to know humans feel loyalty. Important to know friendship can extend from race to race.
Were the Arbai your friends?
A negation. She saw Arbai involved with Hippae, working with Hippae while foxen prowled nearby and the Arbai studiously avoided seeing them. To the foxen, it seemed the Arbai preferred to teach at arm’s length rather than communicate as the foxen did; she felt the fastidious withdrawal of the Arbai, their punctilious modesty of mind, similar to her own feelings, but carried so much further! They could not see evil, but they could perceive an invasion of privacy, and they rejected it. How familiar! How horrible!
He agreed. Nonetheless, He felt pity and guilt that they had died.
They died,she said ,Now we are dying. TheHippae are up there. They’ll get into Commons and kill us.
Already in Commons. But not many are dying. Not this time.
You’re protecting us?
This time we know what is happening.
You didn’t know what was happening before?she asked. You didn’t know what was happening to the Arbai?It seemed impossible, and yet, would the foxen necessarily have known? The slaughter had been out on the prairie, away from the forest…
He said,Some hated humans because you hunted us- Some felt it was not our affair, not our concern, because you would not be our friends, no more than the Arbai. I told them Mainoa was friend. ‘They said he was only one, a freak, unlike any other. I said no, there would be others. Then there was you. They say you, too, are freak, and I say there will be others yet.We have argued over it. Finally, we have compromised.Humor Almost laughter, yet with something sad and tentative in it. We agree if you are truly my friend, I can tell you.
Me?
If you will give your word. To be friend as Mainoa was friend. To be where I am.
She heard only the condition and assented to it at once. She had already decided to stay here She would not take Stella away from here. At least the people here understood what had happened to her.