Loren knew he should go after them. Anything could happen to them. But he only stood and watched them struggle with the sleds, get them aligned and started. Sten gave Mika a quiet command and put his snow glasses on again. He looked back once to Loren, masked, his hands on the sticks of the sled. Then the sleds moved away with a high whisper, dark and purposeful against the snow.
“Yes,” Reynard said. “It was I who told Sten where the leos were. It was very clever of him to have worked it out.”
“And you had brought out the film, too, that we saw?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get to them, find them, without being stopped? And back again?”
Reynard said nothing, only sat opposite Loren at the water-ringed table.
“You made Sten a criminal, Why?”
“I couldn’t let the leos die,” Reynard said, “You can understand my feelings.”
Actually that was impossible. His thin, inexpressive voice could mean what it said, or the opposite, or nothing at all. His feelings were undiscoverable. Loren watched him scratch his whiskery chops with delicate dark fingers; it made a dry-grass sound. Reynard took a black cigarette from a case and lit it. Loren watched, trying to discover, in this peculiarly human gesture of lighting tobacco, inhaling smoke, and expelling it, what in Reynard was human, what not. It couldn’t be done. Nothing about the way Reynard used his cigarette was human, yet it was as practiced, casual, natural — as appropriate — as it would be in a man.
“He saved them,” Reynard said, “from death. Not only the leos, but two humans as well. Don’t you think it was brave of him? The rest of the world does.”
From his papers, reaching him usually a week late, Loren had learned of Sten’s growing fame; it was apparent even here, far north of the Autonomy. “It was very foolhardy,” was all he said.
“He took risks. There was danger. Unnecessary, maybe. Maybe if you’d been there, to help… Anyway, he brought it off.”
Loren drank. The whiskey seemed to burn his insides, as though they had already been flayed open by his feelings. He couldn’t tell the fox that he hated him because the fox had taken Sten from him. It wasn’t admissible. It wasnt even true. Sten had gone on his own to do a difficult thing, and had done it. Mika, who loved him, had gone with him. Loren had been afraid, and so he had lost Sten. Was that so, was that the account he must come to believe?
“He had you, didn’t he?” Loren said.
“Well. I’m not much good now. I was never — strong, really, and you see I’m lamed now.”
“You seem to get around.”
“I’m also,” Reynard said as though not hearing this, “getting very old. I’m nearly thirty. I never expected a life-span that long. I feel ancient.” Smoke curled from his nostrils. “There is a hunt on for me, Mr. Casauhon. There has been for a long time. I’ve thrown off the scent more than once, but it’s growing late for me. I’m going to earth.” He smiled — perhaps it was a smile — at this, and the ignored ash of his cigarette fell onto the table. “Sten will need you.”
“What is it you wanted from Sten?” Loren asked coldly. He tried to fix Reynard’s eyes, but like an animal’s they wouldn’t hold a stare. “Why did you choose him? What for?”
Reynard put out the cigarette with delicate thoroughness, not appearing to feel challenged. “Did you know,” Reynard said, “how much Sten means in the Northern Autonomy? And outside it too?” He moved slowly in his chair; he seemed to be in some pain. “There is a movement — one of the kind that men seem so easily to work up — to make Sten a kind of king.”
“King?”
“He’d make a good one, don’t you think?” His long face split again in a smile, and closed again. “That he’s an outlaw now, and hunted by the Federal, is only appropriate for a young king — a pretender. The Federal has mismanaged their chance in the Autonomy, as it had to. Sten seems to people everywhere to be — an alternative. Somehow. Some kingly how. Strong, and young, and brave — well. If there are kings — kings born — he’s one, Don’t you agree?”
From the time Loren had opened the North Star magazine he had been a subject of Sten’s, he knew that. That Sten must one day pick up a heritage that lay all around him he had always known too, though he had tried to ignore it. He felt, momentarily, like Merlin, who had trained up the boy Arthur in secrecy; saw that what he had trained Sten to be was, in fact, king. There wasn’t any other job he was suited for.
“It’s a fact about kings,” Reynard said, “That they must have around them a certain kind of person. Persons who love the king in the king, but know the man in the king. Persons for whom the king will always be king. Always. No matter what. I don’t mean toadies, or courtiers. I mean — subjects. True subjects. Without them there are no kings. Of course,”
“And you? Are you a king’s man?”
“I’m not a man.”
Already the northern afternoon was gathering in the light. Loren tried to count out the feelings contending in him, but gave it up. “Where is he now?”
“Between places. Nowhere long.” He leaned forward. His voice had grown small and exhausted, “This is a difficulty. He needs a place, a place absolutely secret, a base. Somewhere his adherents could collect. Somewhere to hide — but not a rathole.” Again, the long, yellow-toothed smile. “After all, it will be part of a legend someday.”
Loren felt poised on the edge of a high place, knowing that swarming up within him were emotions that would eventually make him step over. He drank quickly and slid the empty glass away from him on a spill of liquor. “I know a place,” he said, “I think I know a place.”
Reynard regarded him, unblinking, without much interest, it seemed, as Loren described the shot tower, where it was, how it could be gotten to; he supposed the food, the cans anyway, and the cell heater would still be there.
“When can you be there?” Reynard said when he had finished.
“Me?” Reynard waited for an answer. “Listen. I’ll help Sten, because he’s Sten, because… I owe it to him. I’ll hide him if I can, keep him from harm. But this other stuff.” He looked away from Reynard’s eyes. “I’m a scientist. I’ve got a project in hand here.” He drew in spilled liquor on the table — no, not that name, he rubbed it away. “I’m not political.”
“No.” Reynard, unexpectedly, yawned. It was a quick, wide motion like a silent bark; a string of saliva ran from dark palate to long, deepcloven tongue. “No. No one is, really.” He rose, leaning on his stick, and walked up and down the small, smelly barroom — deserted at this hour — as though taking exercise. “Geese, isn’t it? Your project.” He stopped, leaning heavily on the stick, holding his damaged foot off the ground and turning it tentatively. “Isn’t there a game, fox and geese?”
“Yes.”
“A grid, or paths…”
“The geese try to run past the fox. He catches them where paths join.
Each goose he catches has to help him catch others.”
“Ah. I’m a — collector of that kind of lore. Naturally.”
“My geese,” Loren said, “are prey for foxes.”
“Yes?”
“And they know it. They teach it — the old ones teach the young. It doesn’t seem to be imprinted — untaught goslings wouldn’t run from a fox instinctively. The older ones teach them what a fox looks like, by attacking foxes, in a body, and driving them off. The young ones learn to join in. I’ve seen my flock follow a fox for nearly a mile, honking, threatening. The fox looked very uncomfortable,”
“I’ll leave you now,” Reynard said. If he had heard Loren’s story he didn’t express it. “The plane will be going. There are still a few things I have to do.” He went to the door.