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.”
“How long ago?” he wondered.
“Long. Before the Arbai. How long was that? Centuries. Millennia?”
“Too long for them to be able to remember, and yet they do.”
“What would you call it, Father? Empathetic memory? Racial memory? Telepathic memory?” She ran her fingers over her hair, pulling the braid into looseness. “God, I’m so tired.”
“Sleep. Are the others coming back?”
“When they can. Tomorrow, perhaps. There are answers here, if only we can lay our hands upon them. Tomorrow— tomorrow we have to make sense of all this.”
He nodded, as weary as she. “Tomorrow we will, Marjorie. We will.”
He had no idea what she had to make sense of. He had no conception of what she had almost done. Or actually had done. How much was enough to have done whatever it was? Was she still chaste? Or was she something else that she had no word for?
She could not tell anyone tomorrow, she knew. Maybe not ever.
Very early in the morning, while the sun hung barely below the horizon, Tony and his fellow travelers were deposited just below the port at the edge of the swamp forest. The foxen vanished into the trees, leaving their riders trying to remember what they had looked like, felt like. “Will you wait for us?” Tony called, trying to make a picture of the foxen waiting, high in a tree, dozing perhaps.
He bent in sudden pain. The picture was of foxen standing where they stood now while the sun moved slowly overhead. Rillibee was holding his head with one hand, eyes tight shut, as he clung to Stella with the other arm.
“You’ll wait here for us,” Tony gasped toward the forest, receiving a mental nod in reply.
“Tony, what is it?” Sylvan asked.
“If you could hear them, you wouldn’t ask,” said Rillibee. “They think we’re deaf. They shout.”
“I wish they could shout loud enough for me to hear them,” Sylvan said.
“Then the rest of us would have our brains fried,” Tony said irritably. While he had immediately warmed up to Rillibee, Tony wasn’t at all sure he liked Sylvan, who had a habit of commanding courses of action. “We’ll go over there.” “We’ll stop for a while.”
Now Sylvan said, “Someone in the port will give us transport to Grass Mountain Road. We’ll speak to the order officer there.” He moved toward the port.
Though Tony felt arguing wasn’t worth the energy it would take, he wanted to get Stella to a physician quickly. “The doctors are at the other end of town?” he asked.
Sylvan stopped, then flushed. “No. No, as a matter of fact, the hospital is just up this slope, near the Port Hotel.”
Rillibee said, “Then we’ll go there,” admitting no argument. He picked Stella up and staggered up the slope toward the hospital.
“Can I help you carry her?” Tony asked.
Stella had slipped into
