CANNES, FRANCE
I
Eighteen years later and Brunor found himself in a foreign land, far from home and, so far as he was able to tell, in a minority of one. Much had changed since the “revolution” (an event which he could not consider even now without the use of careful, sceptical inverted commas) but he still felt nervous when surrounded by humans in great number. This was in spite of their slow and grudging acceptance of the Beast Folk and, he noted with a touch of bitterness, in spite of their happy acceptance of every startling technological development which the City had been able to produce.
In the bear-man’s estimation, there could be no reasonable doubt that it was this which had kept the City both viable and inviolate as a tiny nation, quite separate from Great Britain and unaffiliated with any other state. Why, only this morning he had read in Le Figaro a long article in praise of that happy stream of inventions and innovations which had been of material benefit to a great portion of the globe, written in a tone of open-minded liberalism but which was underscored by a substratum of prejudice. That the source of these same advances still remained unknown to him, he tried hard not to trouble him as much as it properly should.
Here, on the Riviera, for example, City-tech was everywhere, in the strange new garments that people wore, in the glossy books and magazines which they swapped and flourished and, above all, in the small dark wirelesses which were carried with them almost everywhere, each one playing music or speech from a plethora of available stations. It was a phenomenon which, whilst still remarkable, had now become commonplace. The earliest models had appeared a decade earlier; today they were everywhere.
Although he attracted many curious glances and outright stares, Brunor did his best to enjoy the sunshine on his back as he walked through the pleasant streets of the town. In the distance, the sea glimmered invitingly but the bear-man had no wish today to go into the water. Besides, beaches of any kind still brought back memories of the cell by the shore of Eddowes Bay where he had once spent a deal of time.
Now in the last decade and a half of its existence, Cannes was still a pretty place, a town of leisure and money. Brunor breathed in the air and felt himself moderately tempted to stop at one of the numerous bars and cafés which lined the streets (always assuming, of course, that he could find one which would serve a beast-person). His nose twitched at the smells of wine and warm bread, spices and sizzling food: mussels and bouillabaisse, pissaladière and socca. He entertained the notion of settling his great bulk into a chair by one of the bistros, ordering a Calvados, lighting up a Gauloise and reclining happily in smoke and liquor. In the end, he pushed these thoughts aside and pressed on. His purpose here was not, after all, one of tourism but one of an altogether more melancholy sort. It was a mission which brought him no pleasure and which seemed, even then, to feel somewhat ominous in its precedent.
“Mummy!”
The bear-man’s rumination was disrupted by the sound of a little boy. He cannot have been more than three or four, dressed in a sailor suit and tugging hard on the right hand of his beleaguered-looking mother, a small, round-faced woman wearing clothes that were almost, but not quite fashionable, suggestive of a time before the innovations from the City had altered the processes of manufacture.
“Mummy! Look, Mummy. It’s a bear-man!” He was speaking, Brunor realised, in English.
“Don’t be rude,” said his mother, but the boy was tugging forward, guileless and giddy in his excitement at glimpsing Brunor amongst the herd of comparatively hairless bipeds. As the child approached, the mother looked up at the creature from the City, her face flushed. “I really am so very sorry.”
“I can’t think of any reason why you should be,” said Brunor. He dropped down, laboriously, to one knee and watched as the boy tottered closer.
“Hello,” said the child.
“Hello,” said the bear-man.
“Aren’t you hot? I would be like that. All covered over with fur.”
Brunor smiled, close-lipped so as not to alarm the child with the sight of his teeth. “Maybe I like to be warm.”
The boy nodded with absolute seriousness, as though the explanation made perfect sense. “Who made you?” he asked.
Behind him, his mother apologised again, more effusively this time, and tried to pull her child away. Brunor held up a paw.
“I used to think that God did,” he said. “Or a god, at any rate. But now… Well, now, I prefer to think that it was all just a happy accident. Now that’s not so bad, is it?”
The boy shook his head. “Not so bad.” He grinned. “Good luck, Mr Bear!” This done, he turned away and went back to his mother who was already chiding him for boldness and impertinence.
Brunor smiled and watched them go, with an affection of which his younger self would most certainly not have been capable. Was he simply softening, he wondered, in his old age? Or was there something more to be gleaned from the light in the boy’s eyes? Something indicative of a different understanding to be nurtured by a new generation? Something like hope?
He shook his shaggy head, cursed himself for an optimistic fool. He paused for a moment to think of his own cubs when they were young and of the old dead man in the cell by the sea. Then he walked on.
II
His destination came into view soon after: a wide, sun-dappled courtyard in the middle of the town. Several small restaurants had set up shop here and it was to the most distant of them that Brunor now walked; an establishment much beloved by both locals and sightseers: Café Renardeau. There were tables set up outside under striped sun canopies. All were full with humans dressed for summer in pale, loose-fitting clothes. At Brunor’s approach, a plump, toupeed maître d’ waddled out to greet him, a thick menu clasped beneath his arm.
The proprietor could not entirely hide his shock on realising just what Brunor must be and where he was from but, to his credit, he disguised it almost immediately. “We have a few tables only, monsieur, and all indoors. Would you be willing to sit away from the sun?” He paused, his eyes flicking doubtfully up and down the bear-man. “Might it even be more comfortable for monsieur?”
“I’m here to see someone,” said Brunor. “An Englishwoman. I think she eats here all the time. Her first name is Coral.”
At this the proprietor turned a little ashen. “I’m not sure, monsieur… that I know anyone of that name at all.”
Brunor folded his arms and settled his considerable weight upon his heels. “Oh but I think you do. My intelligence would suggest quite the opposite.”
Before any more could be said, a woman appeared, out of the door to the side of the restaurateur. There was another lady behind her, in shadow, one who squeezed the first woman’s shoulder then melted away into some back room. The first stepped forward.
“It’s fine, Jules,” said Coral Mayfield. “He’s come here looking for me. Haven’t you, Brunor?”
III
They walked together, through the town, heading vaguely in the direction of the beach.
“It’s very sweet of you to come all this way to find me, Brunor, but there really was no need. I said I needed time away from the City. I didn’t say I wouldn’t return.”
“Your son is concerned, ma’am.”
They were drawing attention, the two of them, a woman and a beast-person chatting like old friends. Brunor ignored the looks of the amblers and pedestrians and listened to Coral Mayfield. Almost all of the passers-by clutched their small black wirelesses.
“Oh, he doesn’t need me. Not any more. According to the terms of your people, he’s practically middle-aged by now. And he’s made all of the right decisions. Smart. Canny. The City’s in a stronger state that we could have dreamed of, all those years ago.”
Brunor looked down at the human by his side. Her face seemed to him to be indicative of happiness. “He wants you to come home.”
Coral grimaced. “But it’s not home to me, is it? If anything, I’ve come to rather hate the place.”
“How so, madam?”
“I feel you’ve all been penned in there, isolated by my species. It… infuriates me.” Her face was set into an expression of outraged pugnacity, like the stubborn little girl she must once have been.
“I have some sympathy,” said the bear-man, “with that argument.”
Coral smiled. “Dear Brunor. Always choosing your words with such care. He trusts you. My son. More than that, he respects you. Can’t you speak with him? Tell him I’m happy here for awhile. Tell him that I’ll come back when I can.”
Brunor sighed. “He’s quite adamant.”
“I’m not yet forty, you know. There’s quite a bit of living I’d like to do yet. And I gave up so much of my life to the City. You’ll speak to him, won’t you? He’ll understand.” A pause. “Brunor? I said – would you speak to him?”
But Brunor could no longer hear her. The wirelesses, clutched by all the people of the town, were doing something strange. In a thing which he had never witnessed before, every one of them seemed to be receiving the same broadcast.
With a bear’s sense of danger, he held out a paw. “Wait, ma’am. Listen.”
The pedestrians themselves were looking with surprise at their devices. There were uneasy glances between them and murmurs of unease. Brunor caught a subtle shift in the scent of the human pack, the first glints of fear. It was more, then, than mere coincidence. The same broadcast was appearing on every station. A young couple, arm in arm in the manner of honeymooners, had stopped right by them. The male of the pair, plump-faced and bearded, was gazing openly at the bear-man. His wireless was clutched in his right hand. Brunor caught something of the words that were being delivered by the reporter. His French was good enough that he could get a clear sense of it. Certain key phrases stood out.
“Assassination in the City… Commander Anta’Nar killed in the explosion… terrorist human group claiming responsibility…” There was more – much more – in this vein but Brunor had already heard enough.
He turned to Coral Mayfield and she seemed like a person transformed. Just a minute or so ago and she had been almost relaxed, a woman whose work was done, a woman who wished only to find her own pleasures and delights.
Now she had changed utterly. Tears streaked either cheek, her eyes were wide with horror, her mouth formed in a soundless o as if she meant to scream. The truth was worse, Brunor thought; it was an expression not of frantic grief but of purpose.
Much later, when he went home to find the City in a state of skittish mourning, darker and more paranoid than before, he would say to his wife that Coral had seemed to him in that single moment to be changed “into something like a spirit of vengeance”. He would name one of the gods of the old island and his wife would well understand. Later still, upon hearing Coral speak to the ruling body to hint at her plans for retribution, he would at once tend his resignation, and his wife would say that she well understood this too (indeed, that she was gladdened by the decision).
Yet for now, in Cannes, the human woman beckoned the bear-man over to her. “My boy…” she said and, without thinking, Brunor took her in his arms and held her tight.
“I weep,” he said. “For him. For you. All of us.”
Even then as he held her he heard the steel in her voice. “I tried to get away. But it’s no good. No, no.”
“Madam, please.”
“This is… too much. We have to do something. We have to make them see sense. Good God, Brunor, we have to make them understand.”