“We could use sleds,” she said at last.
That week the telephone lines into the house were cut — perhaps by the snow, perhaps deliberately, they were given no explanation — and Loren began making weekly trips to the nearest town, nearly five miles off, to call their suppliers and to buy newspapers, to see if he could perceive some change in their status, guess what was to become of them. There was no one he trusted whom he could call, no old government official or family lawyer. He knew it was madness to try to hide this way; it couldn’t last. But when he contemplated bringing Sten to official attention, to try to get some judgment made, he shrank from it. Whatever came of it, he was certain they would somehow take him away, somehow part them. He couldn’t imagine any other conclusion.
Returning from town, he pushed his way through the small knot of people at the front gate and let himself in at the wicket. When questions were asked he only smiled and shrugged as though he were idiotic, and concentrated on passing quickly through the wicket and getting it locked again, so as not to tempt anyone to follow, and went quickly up the snow-choked road, away from their voices.
He stopped at the farmhouse and went in. A small cell heater had been brought down from the house and was kept going here always, though it barely took the chill from the stone rooms. That was all Hawk needed.
Hawk was deep in molt. He stood on his screen perch, looking scruffy and unhappy. Two primaries had fallen since Loren had last looked in on him — they fell always in pairs, one from each side, so that Hawk wouldn’t be unbalanced in flight — and Loren picked them up and put them with the others. They could be used to make repairs, if ever Hawk broke a feather; but chiefly they were saved as a baby’s outgrown shoes are saved.
The day was calm and bright, the sun almost hot. He’d take Hawk up to the perch on the lawn.
Speaking softly to him, with a single practiced motion he slipped the hood over Hawk’s face and pulled it tight — it was too stiff, it needed oiling, there was no end to this falconer’s job — and then pulled on his glove. He placed the gloved hand beneath Hawk’s train and brushed the back of his legs gently. Hawk, sensing the higher perch behind him, instinctively stepped backward, up onto the glove. He bated slightly as Loren moved his hand to take the leash, and only when Hawk was firmly settled on his wrist did Loren untie the leash that held him to the perch. As between thieves, there was honor between falconer and bird only when everything was checked and no possibility for betrayal — escape — was allowed.
He walked him in the house for a time, stroking up the feathers on his throat with his right forefinger till Hawk seemed content, and then went out into the day, blinking against the glare from the snow, and up to the perch on the wide lawn. From behind the house, he thought he heard the faint whistle of the new motorsleds being started. He tied Hawk’s leash firmly to the perch with a falconer’s one-handed knot, and brushed the perch against the back of his legs so that Hawk would step from his hand up to the perch. He unhooded him. Hawk roused and opened his beak; the inner membranes slid across his dazzled eyes. He looked with a quick motion across the lawn to where three motorsleds in quiet procession were moving beyond a naked hedge.
“What’s up?” Loren shouted, pulling off his glove and hurrying toward them. Mika, and Sten, to whose sled the third, piled up with gear wrapped in plastic, was attached, didn’t turn or stop. Loren felt a sudden, heart-sickening fear, “Wait!” Damn them, they must hear… He broke through the hedge just as the sleds turned into the snowy fields that stretched north for miles beyond the house. Loren, plowing through the beaten snow, caught Sten’s sled before Sten could maneuver his trailer into position to gather speed. He took Sten’s arm.
“Where are you going?”
“Leave me alone. We’re just going.”
Mika had stopped her sled, and looked back now, reserved, proud.
“I said where? And what’s all this stuff?”
“Food.”
“There’s enough here for weeks! What the hell…”
“It’s not for us.”
“Who, then?”
“The leos.” Sten looked away. He wore snow glasses with only a slit to look through; it made him look alien and cruel. “We’re bringing it to the leos. We didn’t tell you because you’d only have said no.”
“Damn right I would! Are you crazy? You don’t even know where they are!”
“I do.”
“How?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“And when will you come back?”
“We won’t.”
“Get out of that sled, Sten.” They had meant to sneak away, without speaking to him, without asking for help. “I said get out.”
Sten pulled away from him and began to pull at the sled’s stalled engine. Loren, maddened by this betrayal, pulled him bodily out of the sled and threw him away from it so that he stumbled in the snow, “Now listen to me. You’re not going anywhere. You’ll get this food back where it belongs — he came up behind Sten and pushed him again — “and get those sleds out of sight before… before…”
Sten staggered upright in the snow. His glasses had fallen off, but his face was still masked, with something cold and hateful Loren had never seen in it before. It silenced him.
Mika had left her sled and came toward them where they stood facing each other. She looked at Loren, at Sten. Then she came and took Sten’s arm,
“All right,” Loren said, “All right. Listen. Even if you know where you’re going. It’s against the law.” They made no response. “They’re hunted criminals. You will be too.”
“I am already,” Sten said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You wouldn’t have helped, would you?” Mika said. Even if we’d told you.”
“I would have told you what I thought.”
“You wouldn’t have helped,” she said with quiet, bitter contempt.
“No.” Even as he said it, Loren knew he had indicted himself before them, hopelessly, completely. “You just don’t throw everything up like this.
What about the animals? What about Hawk?” Fle pointed to the bird on his perch, who glanced at them when they moved, then away again.
“You take care of him,” Sten said.
“He’s not my hawk. You don’t leave your hawk to someone else. I’ve told you that.”
“All right.” Sten turned and strode through the snow to the perch.
Before Loren could see what he was doing, he had drawn a pocketknife and opened it; it glinted in the snowlight.
“No!”
Sten cut Hawk’s jesses at the leash. Loren ran toward them, stumbling in the snow,
“You little shit!”
Hawk for a moment didn’t notice any change, but he disliked all this sudden motion and shouting. He was in a mood to bate — to fly off his perch — though he had learned in a thousand bates that he would only fall, flapping helplessly head downward. Sten had taken off his jacket, and with a sudden shout waved it in Hawk’s face, Hawk, with an angry scream, flew upward, stalled, and found himself free; for a moment he thought to return to the perch, but Sten shouted and waved the jacket again, and Hawk rose up in anger and disgust. It felt odd to be free, but it was a good day to fly. He flew.
“Now,” Sten said when Loren reached him, “now he’s nobody’s hawk.”
With an immense effort, Loren stemmed a tide of awful despair that was rising in him. “Now,” he said, calmly, though his voice shook, “go down to the farm and get the long pole and the net. With the sleds, we might be able to get him after dark, He’s gone east to those trees. Sten.”
Sten pulled on his jacket and walked past Loren back to the sleds.
“Mika,” Loren said.
She stood a moment between them, hugging herself. Then, without looking back to Loren, she went to her sled too.