“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Marjorie was kneeling in the confessional at the side of the chapel, the evening light falling upon her face The chapel was dusk dim, the light near the altar making a watchful eye in the shadow. “I have resented my daughter. And my husband.
She was alone in the chapel except for Father James. Rigo was closeted in the winter quarters with Hector Paine. Stella and Tony and Father Sandoval had ridden the mares down to the village to visit Sebastian Mechanic and his wife, Dulia, who was, said Sebastian, the best cook on any six planets. Since the reception, Eugenie had scarcely put her nose outside her house and was there now. As Marjorie had come through the gardens to the chapel she had heard Eugenie singing, a slightly drunken lament with no particular burden of woe. The blues, Marjorie recalled having read somewhere, needed no proximate motivation. Any common grief would do. The ancient song, though not particularly melodic, had entered Marjorie’s ear and now turned there, playing itself over persistently, hating to see the evening sun go down.
“I have lost patience with Stella,” she said. Father James needed no explanation for this. He knew them all far too well to need explanation. “I have had angry words with Rigo…” Words about the Hunt, words about his risking his neck and more than his neck. “I have doubted God…”
Father James woke up at this. “How have you doubted?”
If God were good, Rigo and I would be in love, and Rigo would not treat me as he does, she thought. If God were good, Father Sandoval would not treat me as a mere adjunct to my husband, sentencing me to obedience every time I am unhappy. I haven’t done anything wrong, but I’m the one who is being punished and it isn’t fair. She longed for justice. She bit her lip and said none of this, but instead dragged false scent across the trial. “If God is truly powerful, he would not let this plague go on.”
There was silence in the confessional, silence lasting long enough for Marjorie to wonder whether Father James might not really have fallen asleep. Not that she blamed him. Their sins were all boring enough, repetitive enough. They had enough capital sins roiling around to condemn them all. Pride, that was Rigo’s bent. Sloth, Eugenie’s trademark. Envy, that was for Stella. And she, Marjorie, boiling with uncharitable anger toward them all. Herself, who had always tried so hard not to be guilty of anything!
“Marjorie.” Father James recalled her to herself. “I cut my hand upon a grass blade a few days ago, a bad cut. It hurt a great deal. Grass cuts do not seem to heal easily, either.”
“That’s true,” she murmured, familiar with the experience but wondering what he was getting at.
“It came to me suddenly as I was standing there bleeding all over the ground that I could see the cut there between my fingers but I could not heal it. I could observe it, but I couldn’t do anything about it even though I greatly desired to do so. I could not command the cells at the edges of the wound to close. I was not, am not privy to their operations I am too gross to enter my own cells and observe their function. Nor can you do so, nor any of us.
“But suppose, just suppose, that you could create… oh, a virus that sees and reproduces and thinks! Suppose you could send it into your body, commanding it to multiply and find whatever disease or evil there may be and destroy it. Suppose you could send these creatures to the site of the wound with an order to stitch it up and repair it. You would not be able to see them with your naked eye. You would be unable to know how many of them there were in the fight. You would not know where each one of them was or what it was doing, what agonies of effort each was expending or whether some gave up the battle out of fatigue or despair. All you would know is that you had created a tribe of warriors and sent it into battle. Until you healed or died, you would not know whether that battle was won.”
“I don’t understand, Father.”
“I wonder sometimes if this is what God has done with us.”
Marjorie groped for his meaning. “Wouldn’t that limit God’s omnipotence?”
“Perhaps not. It might be an expression of that omnipotence. In the microcosm, perhaps He needs — or chooses — to create help. Perhaps He has created help. Perhaps he creates in us the biological equivalent of microscopes and antibiotics.”
“You are saying God cannot intervene in this plague?” The invisible person beyond the grating sighed. “I am saying that perhaps God has already done his intervening by creating us. Perhaps He intends us to do what we keep praying He will do. Having designed us for a particular task, he has sent us into battle. We do not particularly enjoy the battle, so we keep begging him to let us off. He pays no attention because He does not keep track of us individually. He does not know where in the body we are or how many of us there are. He does not check to see whether we despair or persevere. Only if the body of the universe is healed will he know whether we have done what we were sent to do!” The young priest coughed. After a moment, Marjorie realized he was laughing. Was it at her, or at himself? “Do you know of the uncertainty principle, Marjorie?”
“I am educated,” she snorted, very much annoyed with him.
“Then you know that with very small things, we cannot both know where they are and what they are doing. The act of observing them always changes what they are doing. Perhaps God does not look at us individually because to do so would interrupt our work, interfere with our free will…”
“Is this doctrine, Father?” she asked doubtfully, annoyed, wondering what had come over him.
Another sigh. “No, Marjorie. It is the maundering of a homesick priest. Of course it isn’t doctrine You know your way around the catechism better than that.” He rubbed his head, thankful for the seal of the confessional. Even though Marjorie needed to take herself far less seriously, Father Sandoval would not appreciate what he had just said…
“If the plague kills us all, it will be because of our sins,” she said stubbornly. “Not because we didn’t fight it well enough. And our souls are immortal.”
“So Sanctity says. So the Moldies say,” he murmured. “They say we must all be killed off so our souls can live, in the New Creation.”
“I don’t mean we’re excused from fighting the plague,” she objected. “But it’s our sins that brought it on us.”
“Our sins? Yours and mine, Marjorie?
“Original sin,” she muttered. “Because of the sin of our first parents.” First parents very much like Rigo and Stella, passionately acting out whatever moved them, without thought. Even laughing, perhaps, as they tore the world apart. Never sober and reverent as they ought to be. Never peaceful. She sighed.
“Original sin?” the young priest asked, curious. At one time he had believed it without question, but he wasn’t sure anymore. There were some other catechetical things he wasn’t sure of, either. His doubt about doctrine should signal some crisis of faith, he thought, but his faith was as strong as it had ever been, even though his acceptance of details was wavering. “So you believe in original sin?”
“Father! It’s doctrine!”
“How about collective guilt? Do you believe in that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are the bons guilty, collectively, for what happened to Janetta bon Maukerden?”
“Is that a doctrinal question?” she asked doubtfully.
“How about the Sanctified?” he asked. “Are they collectively guilty of condemning their boy children to prison? Young Rillibee, for example. Was he sent into servitude because of collective guilt, or because of original sin?”
“I’m an Old Catholic. I don’t have to decide where Sanctity went wrong, so long as I know it did!”
He kept himself from laughing. Oh, if only Marjorie had more humor. If Rigo had more patience. If Stella had more perception. If Tony had more confidence-And if Eugenie had more intelligence. Never mind their sins, just give them more of what they needed.
He sighed, rubbing the sides of his forehead to make the sullen ache go away, then gave her both absolution and a reasonable penance. She was to accept that Rigo would ride to hounds and she was to try not to judge him harshly. Father Sandoval had been sentencing Marjorie to affectionate support for years. Father James thought affectionate support was probably a bit much Marjorie, repentant but weary, ready to grit her teeth over yet another session of affectionate support, was surprised enough by the penance to accept it. She wouldn’t judge Rigo, but she needn’t support him, either. It was not until later, as evening drew on, that she remembered what Father James had said about thinking viruses and guilt and sin. Once she began considering the questions he had asked, she could not get them out of her mind.
In the chapel, meantime, Father James knelt to beg forgiveness for himself. It had been wicked of him to challenge Marjorie’s faith when what he was really wanting was to shore up his own. He was not at all sure that being nonjudgmental about Rigo was a good thing for Marjorie to do. If what the bons were doing was sinful, then Rigo had no business doing it at all. Rigo had convinced himself he was joining the bons in their obsession out of a sense of duty. Father James thought ego was the more likely reason, and Father Sandoval was too set in his ways to offer anything but cliches. Father James wished for Brother Mainoa to talk with. Or the younger one, Lourai. He had a feeling they shared a good many things besides their age.
In the night, a rhythmic thunder.
Marjorie woke and went walking through the halls of the residence, encountering Persun Pollut, himself stalking nervously from place to place, pulling his long ears, twisting his beard into tails.
“What is it?” she whispered. “I’ve heard it before, but never so close as this.”
“The Hippae, they say,” he murmured in return. “In the village, that’s what they say. Often in the spring they hear this sound, many times during the lapse. It woke me, so I came up here to the big house see that all of you were all right.”
She laid a hand on his arm, feeling the shivering of his skin beneath the fabric. “We’re fine. What are they doing, the Hippae?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think anyone knows. Dancing, they say. Sebastian says he knows where. Someone told him where, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Ah.” They stood together, looking out the tall windows across the terrace, feeling the beat of the thunder through the soles of their feet. A mystery. As all of Grass was a mystery. And she, Marjorie, was doing nothing about it.
She was still thinking of viruses, considering what a thinking virus might do, one whom God did not observe or command but merely allowed to do what it was created for.
“Ask Sebastian to come see me, will you, Persun?”
’"Tomorrow,” he promised, “When it gets light.”
Far across the grasses, beyond the port and Commons, beyond the swamp forest, the same sound beat upon the ears of all those at Klive. The bon Damfels family was wakeful, listening. Some were more than merely wakeful.
In a long, dilapidated hallway in the far reaches of the vast structure, Stavenger bon Damfels dragged his struggling Obermum down a long, dusty hallway. One of his hands was twisted into Rowena’s hair, the other held her by the collar of her gown, half throttling her. Blood from her forehead dripped onto the floor.
“Stavenger.” She choked, clinging to his legs. “Listen to me, Stavenger.”
He seemed not to hear her, not to care whether she spoke. His eyes were red and his mouth was drawn into a lipless line. He moved like an automaton, one leg lurched forward, then the other drawn up to it, heaving at her with both hands as though he lifted a heavy sack.
“Stavenger! Oh, by all that’s holy, Stavenger! I did it for Dimity!”
Behind the struggling pair, hiding themselves around corners and behind half-open doors. Amethyste and Emeraude followed and cowered. Since they had seen Stavenger strike Rowena down in the gardens — he either not noticing his daughters behind a screening fountain of grass or not caring if they saw — they had followed him and their mother. The corridor they had come to was ancient, littered, untended and untenanted. The five-story wing that held it had not been used for at least a generation. Above them, the ceiling sagged in wide, shallow bubbles, stained with water which had leaked through the rotted thatch and permeated the three floors above. The portraits on the walls were corrupted with mold, and the stairs they had climbed were punky with rot.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Amy whispered, tears running down her face and into the corners of her mouth. She licked them away and said again, “He’s gone crazy. He doesn’t know!”
“He does,” Emmy contradicted, pointing to the light she carried. “There haven’t been any lights in this old place since before we were born, but there’s everlights all along the hall. He got them out of the garage, just like I got this one. He put them here before. He planned it.”
Amy, looking at the dim lanterns set here and there on rickety tables or hung on doorknobs, nodded unwillingly. “Why! Why is he doing this to her?”
“Shhh,” her sister cautioned, pulling them both back into the shadow. Stavenger had stopped at the end of the corridor to thrust Rowena through an open door, pulling it closed behind her and locking it. The key ground in the lock with a rusty finality. He thrust it into his pocket and then stood there, as though listening. “Rowena.” A voice like metal — harsh and hideous. No sound from beyond the door.
“You’ll never go there again! Never to Opal Hill again! Never consort with fragras again! Never betray me again!” Silence.
He turned and took up the nearest lamp, then came down the corridor toward them, gathering up the everlights as he came. Slowly he plodded, his face expressionless, passing the door behind which his daughters trembled, leaving the place in darkness, going away as though forever.
They waited, listening for the sound that came at last, the heavy thunder of the door closing, two stories below.
Behind the locked door at the end of the corridor rose the sound of a woman’s howling, an interminable, grief-driven wail of pain and betrayal.
With trembling fingers, Emeraude turned on the everlight she carried and the two of them ran to the door, stumbling over warped floorboards, kicking up small, choking clouds of dust.
The door was heavy and thick, made of wood from a swamp-forest tree and hung by great metal hinges in a solid frame. Only a few doors at the estancia were this heavy, this immovable. The main door of the house. The door of Stavenger’s private office. The treasury door. What had this room once been, to have needed all this weight of wood?
They knocked, called, knocked again. The howl went on and on.
“Find Sylvan!” Emeraude urged her sister in a frantic whisper “He’s the only one who can help, Amy.”
Amethyste turned haunted eyes on her sister, babbling, “I thought I’d ask Shevlok—”
Emmy shook her, demanding her attention. “Shevlok’s useless. He’s done nothing but drink since Janetta showed up at that party. He isn’t even conscious most of the time.”
“If the lapse would get over—”
“If the lapse would get over, he’d go hunting all day and be drunk all night. Find Sylvan!”
“Emmy…”
“I know! You’re scared to death of Papa. Well, so am I. He’s like… he’s like one of the Hippae, all shining eyes and sharp blades so you can’t come near him. I keep thinking he will knock me down and trample me to death if I open my mouth. But I’m not going to leave Mama bleeding in there, penned up like that with no food and no water. I won’t let her die like that, but you know Papa will if we let him.”
“Why did Papa—”
“You know perfectly well why. Mama went to Opal Hill, she talked to the people who found Janetta. She’s got the idea that… that…” Emeraude struggled for words, choking on them, eyes bulging as she tried to say what she was not permitted to say.
“Never mind,” her sister said, shaking her. “I know. I’ll find Sylvan. You stay here and tell him what happened, in case I don’t have a chance to explain.”
“Take the light. I’ll wait here.”
Amy sped down the stairs, shuddering away from the banister, which creaked and sagged outward beneath her hand. This ruin was connected to the main house by the old servants’ quarters and the aircar garage. The connecting door was locked, had been locked by their father when they had followed him here, he with that wild, mad look in his eyes, dragging Rowena as though she had been a sack of grain. He had locked the door again when he went out, but there was a broken window nearby which gave onto a long drying yard and the summer kitchens. The girls had come through that. It was almost midnight. The servants would long ago have gone to bed. Even if one or two of them lingered in the kitchens, their sympathies would be with Rowena more than with Stavenger.
A Stavenger who was at this moment in the main hallway screaming unintelligibly at Figor, ranting and threatening so that the whole household had wakened to hear him. Figor, wisely, was saying nothing while allowing the storm to pass. Other family members, wakened by the uproar, stayed out of the way. The great building hummed with murmuring voices, clattered with doors opening and closing, and was yet quiet, silent except for the bellowing voice.
Amy ignored the noise. At this hour, Sylvan would be in his room, or in the library, or in the gymnasium, two floors below. The library was closest, and she found him there in a secluded corner, eyes fixed on a book, fingers in his ears. She knelt beside him and pulled the fingers away.
“Sylvan, Papa has beaten Mama and locked her in the old wing. Emmy’s waiting there. Mama’s got no food, no water, Sylvan. Emmy and I think he means to leave her there…”
She was talking to the chair. Sylvan was up and gone.
In the first light of morning Sebastian Mechanic came to the estancia, where he found Marjorie having a very early breakfast. In answer to her request, he pointed a direction, though unwillingly, suggesting to her that going out into the grasses alone was not a good idea. He did not like the look of her. Her eyes were haunted and she was too thin. Some deep tiredness seemed to oppress her. Despite her appearance of weariness, perhaps illness, she was sensible enough to agree with him that it would be foolish to go into the grasses. She told him she had simply been curious, then asked after his wife and family and made small talk with disarming patience and charm.
When he, assured that she had been merely inquisitive, had gone back to his work, Marjorie went out to the stables and saddled Don Quixote. It was not part of her intention to tell anyone where she was going, though she did leave a message with one of the grooms.
“If I’m not back by dark,” she said, “but not before then, tell my husband or son I’d like him to come look for me in the aircar. I’m carrying a beacon, so I should be easy to find.” The personal beacon was strapped to her leg under her trousers. Any sharp blow would set it off. If she were thrown from a horse, for example. Or if she struck it sharply with her fist. She was carrying a trip recorder of the type used by cartographers, which would serve as a direction finder. She had a laser knife with her as well, to clear her way through tall grass if that became necessary. She showed both of these to the stableman, telling him what they were for. She wanted everything about her journey to speak of purpose. She wanted no one to suppose that she had planned not to come back. It was a risk, that’s all. Still, if something happened to her, it would solve Rigo’s problem. And Stella’s. And her own. Resolutely, she did not think of Tony.
Quixote pawed the soil, flickers of movement running up his twitching hide from fetlocks to withers and down again. Not nerves, not precisely. Something more than that. It was a kind of agitation Marjorie was unfamiliar with, and she stood for a long time stroking his legs, talking to him, trying to imagine what had brought him to this state. He leaned into her, as though for support, yet when she mounted him he trotted out into the grasses as though for a ride on any ordinary day. He meant by this that he trusted her. Though he might die of it, he trusted her. He could not quite keep the nervous quiver from his skin, however, and the message eventually reached her after they had traversed some little distance. She flushed, ashamed to be using him in this fashion when his own nature spoke so strongly against it. She stroked him. expressing her own trust. “Father James says God has made viruses of us, Quixote, but I suppose one virus may still love another, or have another kind of virus as a friend. I won’t put you into a trap, my friend. I won’t let you get close enough for that.” And myself? she thought. Shall I put myself in danger?
Suicide was forbidden, but much glory was given to martyrs. If she killed herself, would God even notice? According to what Father James had said, God probably did not know which of His viruses were involved in doing His work. To God, she had no name. No individuality. If she killed herself, would He even know? Did it matter if He knew? When He had created her, had He also created a mechanism for saving her soul? Did viruses even have them?
Still, there had been all those years of being taught it was wrong to take one’s own life. She would not feel right about getting herself purposely killed off. She could take a calculated risk, however. If she died, it would be accidentally, and Don Quixote would survive. Fleet as the wind, Quixote. Without her on his back he could outrun the devil himself. So she told herself before she stopped thinking about it. devoting most of her energy to not thinking of it. She could not help wondering about Rigo’s reaction if she didn’t return. “That silly fool.” he would say. “That silly woman who never loved me as she ought.”
She did love him. Or. she wanted to love him. Wanted to love him and wanted to love Stella with a desire that poured out hurtfully until she was exhausted from the flow of it. At home, she had known about Eugenie, and the one before Eugenie, but they had not been nearby. At home, Stella had had distractions and friends. Here, both Stella and Eugenie beat at her like huge trapped birds, pecking at her. Their frustrations hammered at her. She had not expected to feel weak, to be sleepless, to feel the threat of death always at her back. Each day on Grass had taken a little more of her strength, a little more of her purpose. Lately she had felt no hope, she who had always lived from disappointment to disappointment on a childlike, hopeful optimism which she could now barely remember.
She rode past the little arena where the horses were exercised, a place that lay just outside the grass gardens of Opal Hill, though it seemed remote because of the topography. Now, for the first time, Marjorie was leaving the close confines of that area which those who defined such things considered to be the estancia. The gardens were behind her. The prospects that the gardens overlooked were behind her. She was entering upon the wild grasses, the surface of the planet, the part into which men and their works and their creatures were not allowed to intrude. She rode, eyes forward, not thinking about anything very much except that she was unhappy enough that if the Hippae were to be found, out here in the grass, perhaps she would learn something useful about them or they would kill her, and she did not at that moment much care which.
The howl, when it came, made Don Quixote tremble, ears up, stopping dead still. Marjorie sat, scarcely breathing, aware that the howl had come from behind her. In that instant she remembered Janetta bon Maukerden and realized that the Hippae, if they found her, might do less — or more — than kill her. She had considered that they might kill her and had accepted that. She had not considered the range of alternatives which might result from her behavior, and she was abruptly both shamed and terrified.
They had been following a kind of trail, a winding path of short grasses among the taller ones. She urged Don Quixote off this easy way and into the taller grass, dismounting to tug stems into line to hide the way she had come.
“They’ll smell you,” she told herself, trying to quell her alarm by moving slowly and deliberately. The wind was blowing toward her from the direction the howl had come. That one would not smell her. Some other one might. It would be wise to return. Overwhelmed with the stupidity of what she had been doing, she told herself that returning would be the best possible thing to do.
She opened the trip recorder, watching it as she guided the stallion in a shallow turn which ended with him headed back toward the embassy, still hidden in tall grass, now traveling toward whatever it was she had heard. He went only a little way, then stopped. Something howled again, quite close, between them and the embassy.
The horse turned and walked quietly on his own trail. When Marjorie attempted to guide him, he ignored her. After one brief spasm of panic, she sat quietly, letting him alone. So. So, he knew something she didn’t. Smelled something she couldn’t. Felt something she couldn’t. She sat still, not bothering him, trying to say an act of contrition, unable to remember phrases she had known since childhood. The words didn’t fit, anyhow. How could she be heartily sorry for having offended God when, for all she knew, she was doing exactly what God intended!
The stallion moved up and down hills, along the sides of ridges, always walking, not hurrying, ears alert, as though someone were whispering his name. When he slowed at last, it seemed to be in response to other sounds, ahead of them. When he stopped, he went down on his side all at once, without the signal. She drew her leg from beneath his upcurved body and stood up, staring at him. He flattened himself, ears still alert, watching her.
“All right,” she whispered. “So now what?”
He made no sound, but his skin quivered, flicked, as though stung by flies. Danger. All around them.
Marjorie felt it, could see it on the horse’s skin, could smell it. The trip recorder said that they had come in the general direction Sebastian had indicated. A repetitive sound, not loud but persistent, made Don Quixote move his head about, seeking its source. It was not the violent thunder of the previous night, but rather an organized series of moans and cries, rhythmic both in occurrence and volume. Quixote’s nostrils dilated, his skin jerked as though from a terrible itch. The wind had gusted toward them, bringing the sound clearly and a smell… a smell of something totally strange. Not a stink. Not a perfume. Neither attractive nor repellent. Marjorie got out her laser knife and cut armfuls of grass, laying these across Don Quixote’s body, hiding him, perhaps hiding his smell. Then she fell to her belly and crawled through the taller grasses toward the sounds the wind brought, down from a low ridge to the south. As she crested the ridge, she lay quiet, peering through the grass stems.
Toward the smell the wind brought. She breathed it in, lungs full. The sky dilated and she fell simultaneously upward toward it and downward, crushing herself.
Under her chin her arm flattened, becoming no thicker than a sheet of paper.
Something stepped painlessly on her head, smashing it.
Her body vanished. She tried to move a finger and could not.
Hounds. A shallow, grassy bowl of hounds, seated hounds, crouched hounds, gray and algae green and muddy violet, heads back and lips drawn to reveal lengthy fangs and a double row of teeth down each side of the massive jaws from which the grunting, rhythmic chorus came. Their hides danced, plunged, were jabbed at erratically from within, as though they had swallowed living things which fought to gain release. Blank, white orbs of eyes stared at the sky. The open, falling sky.
The smell. The shallow bowl of earth was full of the smell. She lay at the edge of that bowl. Her tongue lolled on her lower teeth, dripping.
There, across the bowl, an abrupt, vertical wall, the wall pierced with tall, evenly spaced openings through which the morning light intruded to reveal a cavern beyond. Hippae moved there, one or two, in a pattern, weaving, prancing, feet high, heads back, barbs clashing.
Among the crouching hounds, heaps of pearly spheres the size of her head. Migerers there, moving the spheres, shifting them so that all lay in the sun evenly, turning them over, holding them up in horny forepaws and listening to them. What were they then? Eggs?
There, also, in the bowl outside the cavern, some dozens of the sluglike peepers, only the rippling movement of their hides betraying that they were living things.
The smell seemed to press her down. She was two-dimensional, a limp cloth lying flat behind the grasses, a cloth with eyes.
The hounds were large, very large. As large as draft horses, though not so long in the leg. The peepers were huge ones, twice the usual size. Within the cavern, a myriad of tattered shapes danced on the air, dark batlike creatures with a fringe of fangs. One of them landed on the back of a hound’s neck, fastening itself there. After a time it detached and began its jerking, erratic flight once more.
One of the hounds began to pant, then to howl. The howling faded into a whining cry, then the panting began once more. On the sunlit soil, the peepers drew themselves into spherical masses, all wrinkles smoothed away. So familiar. She had seen it before. Somewhere. Somewhen.
Gradually, all sound ended. The creatures seemed frozen in their immobility. The violent motion inside the hides of the hounds ceased. There was quiet, long quiet.
A Hippae emerged from the cavern, pacing slowly, feet raised high at every step, nostrils flared, lips opening to emit breathy barks, warning sounds. After a time, the other Hippae came out to confront the first, neck swollen, jaw pulled back against the arching neck, eyes roiling wildly as it joined in the brusque, hostile sounds.
They backed away from one another, turning their heads, bowing their necks, the wicked neck barbs bristling to one side like a fan of sabers as they moved back, back, the distance widening between them. Then they charged one another, each array of barbs passing through the other, to gouge long wounds along the other’s ribs and flanks. Long streaks of blood appeared on their sides, and they pawed the ground with razorlike hooves, hammering at it before they turned to charge again. Again the flashing barbs and the streaks of blood. Marjorie cowered, mentally, as they thrust at one another, rearing high, hooves flashing.
Until, at last, one of the Hippae fell to his knees and was slow to rise to all four feet again.
The other animal backed away to the front of the cave and rummaged there. It turned its back on its enemy, kicked backward, sending black missiles flying. What was it kicking at its defeated opponent? Black things. Powdery black things that broke when they landed. Like puffballs, bursting into clouds of black dust when they struck. Kicking dead bats at one another. The thing Sylvan had said…
Silent. A game. The game. In silence.
The victorious Hippae tossed its head, sought with its teeth for new missiles from around the entrances to the cavern, laid them out in the open, then turned to kick back once more. One of the missiles struck the head of the kneeling beast, covering it in black dust. The defeated one bowed low, struggled to its feet, and departed, walking up the bank of the hollow and away.
It had had the pace and finish of ritual. A ritual battle. Now over.
And then sound. The wind was blowing from behind her. One of the swollen peepers ripped open. Protruding from the torn skin of the peeper was the triangular, fanged head of a hound. The peeper skin ripped further. Two hound forelegs emerged, and then, very gradually, the entire beast.
It looked small and ridiculously fragile as it staggered to its feet and stumbled through one of the vertical openings into the cavern, carefully avoiding the heaped eggs. Marjorie heard the sound of lapping from within. After a long pause, the creature emerged once more with dripping jaws, already more sure upon its feet, already sleek, its body distended with moisture. The Hippae stood upon the edge of the hollow, whistling. The young hound climbed to meet it, nibbling, as it went, at the low, blue grasses which grew there. Even as Marjorie watched, the beast seemed to enlarge in size, gaining both stature and bulk. After a time it went away, slowly though purposefully. The wind was blowing harder.
Another ripping sound drew her eyes across the hollow. As a hound had emerged from the torn skin of a peeper, so now a Hippae was emerging from the torn skin of a hound. Metamorphosis. Through the sundered skin of one of the huge hounds a row of barbs protruded, tiny blades which slit the skin, allowing the Hippae head to emerge. The process stopped when the head was out, its eyes closed and unseeing. All was silent.
What was she doing? The wind was strong now, blowing the smell away. What was she doing? Lying there? Flat? Only her eyes had dimension. Only her eyes.
They hurt. She blinked, noticing that they were dry, aching. She hadn’t blinked, Not for a long, long time. The skin on the back of her neck itched, as though something were watching her. She turned, trying to see through the curtaining grasses. Something was out there. She couldn’t see it or hear it, but she knew it was there. She wriggled back down the slope, stumbled through the grasses to find Quixote where he lay as she had left him but with his head up, ears erect and swiveling, nostrils twitching. The sun was falling toward the horizon. Tall grasses feathered the hollows with long, ominous shadows. She urged him up and mounted, letting him have his head, trusting in his ability to bring them both home if they were ever to come there again.
The stallion moved by a route more direct than the one they had taken in the morning, though still moving as though someone called his name. He was as aware as she that darkness was not far off, more aware than she of the threat abroad in the grasses. Quixote could smell what she could not, Hippae, many of them, not far away but upwind from them. They had been coming closer for the past hour, moving this way and that, as though searching. Quixote leaned into his stride, eating the prairie with his feet, returning to Opal Hill in a long curve which took him as far from the approaching Hippae as he could get, gradually lengthening the distance between them. Out there, somewhere, something approved of him. Something told him he was a good horse.
They arrived at the stables just at dusk. The stableman she had entrusted with her message was waiting for her, his eyes on the horizon as though to judge whether she had returned by sundown or not. “Message, Lady,” he told her eagerly. “Your son’s been looking for you. A message came for you, private. From bon Damfels’ place, he thinks.”
She stood beside the horse, trembling, unable to speak. “Lady? Are you all right?”
“Just… just tired,” she mumbled. She felt dizzy, unfocused, unsure what had happened to her. It was like a dream. Had she really gone out alone? Into the grasses alone? She looked into the horse’s eyes, finding there an unhorselike awareness which for some unaccountable reason did not surprise her. “Good Quixote,” she said, running her hands down his neck. “Good horse.”
She left him with a final pat and went up the path as quickly as she could, still stumbling. Tony was watching for her from the terrace. “Where’ve you been? You tell me not to go out there alone and then you go off for a whole day. Honestly, mother! You look awful!”
Carefully, she decided not to respond to this. No matter how she looked, she felt… better. More purposeful. For the first time since her arrival in this place, purposeful. “The stableman said something about a message?”
“From Sylvan, I think. He’s the only one who calls you ‘The honorable lady, Marjorie Westriding.’ It’s keyed for you. I couldn’t read the thing.”
“What on earth?”
“What on Grass, more likely. Come on.”
“Where’s your father?”
“Still on that damned machine.” There was a catch in his voice, as though either grief or anger lurked just below the surface.
“Tony. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I keep feeling I ought to—”
“Nonsense. He ought to stop this nonsense. If you took part in it, too, everything would be worse than it already is.”
“Well, there’s no way to interrupt him, and he’s got another hour or two.”
She sat down at the tell-me, letting the identity beam flick across her eyes. The message began on the screen: private. for the intended recipient only.
“Tony, turn your back.”
“Mother!”
“Turn. If he’s said something embarrassingly personal, I don’t want you seeing it.” she said, wondering as she said it why she should think Sylvan would be that personal.
She pressed the release and saw the message in its entirety.
please HELP. NEED TRANSPORT FOR SELF, MOTHER, TWO OTHER WOMEN TO COMMONER TOWN. CAN YOU BRING AIRCAR QUIETLY TO BON DAMFELS VILLAGE? SIGNAL PRIVATE.
“Turn around. Tony. It’s all right.”
The boy read, stared, read once more. “What’s going on?”
“Evidently Sylvan needs to get Rowena away from Klive but can’t do it on his own. He has to do it secretly. The implication of that is that he has to keep it from someone, probably Stavenger”
“Do you think Stavenger bon Damfels found out that Rowena came here to ask about Janetta?”
“Possibly. Or maybe she’s had a fight with Stavenger and is afraid. Or you make up some other story. Your plot is as likely to be true as mine is.”
“I’m pretty good with the aircar by now.”
“So’s Persun Pollut. I need you to stay here and explain to your father if he asks where I am, which he probably won’t.” The bitterness in her voice was clear to the boy.
He flushed, wanting to help her but not knowing how. “Why don’t you let me take them. Or send Persun alone.”
“I’ve got to talk to Sylvan. I saw something today…” She described the cavern and its occupants in a rapid, excited whisper while he stared, asking no questions. “Metamorphosis, Tony! Like butterfly from caterpillar. The eggs must be Hippae eggs. They hatch into peepers. I didn’t see that, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. The peepers metamorphose into hounds, and the hounds into Hippae. A three-stage metamorphosis. I don’t think the Grassians even know,” she concluded. “No one’s said a word about the peepers metamorphosing into hounds and the hounds into mounts. Not even Persun.”
“How could they live here for generations and not know?”
She started to tell him the truth, started to say, “Because the Hippae kill anybody who spies on them.” She knew it for truth, knew she had escaped only by chance. Or, remembering the way Don Quixote had moved, as though guided, for some other reason. She did not want to admit her own fool hardiness. “The taboos would prevent their finding out, Tony. They’ve got taboos against scarring the grasses by driving vehicles. They have no friendly mounts, like horses, so if they wanted to explore, they’d be limited to walking. There may be a taboo against that, as well. Something deep, psychological. Not merely custom. They may think it is only custom, but it’s more than that. They may think they are free to do what they like, but they aren’t.”
“You mean they think they decided not to scar the grasses, but really—”
“Really, they had no choice. That’s what I mean, yes. I think the Hippae have been directing them for… for God knows how long. I have a hunch that anyone who goes out on foot into the grasses to explore ends up dead. I had feelings when I was out there today… Don Quixote had feelings. He was terribly frightened, moving as though he were walking on eggshells. Besides, Asmir gave us quite a list of disappearances.”
“And you were out there alone!” He shook his head. “Mother, damn it. What were you thinking of?” Then, looking into her shamed face, “For the love of God, Mother!”
“Tony, I made a mistake. You’re not to say anything to your father that you know anything about the plague or that I was out riding today. In his present state of mind, he might blow up and start bellowing. I can’t take much more of that. And then, too, Stella would be sure to find out.”
“I know.”
“If he wants to know where I am, tell him I’ve helped take Rowena to Commons. Don’t mention Sylvan unless it comes up. Rigo’s become very strange about Sylvan. I don’t know why.”
Tony saw that his mother did not, in fact, know why, though Tony himself had a very good idea what was disturbing Rigo Yrarier. While Marjorie had been dancing with Sylvan at the reception, Tony had been up on the balcony near his father and had seen his father’s face.
It was full dark when Persun Pollut dropped the Opal Hill aircar at the edge of the bon Damfels village as silently as a fallen leaf.
Sylvan was waiting with Rowena and two commoner women. Rowena’s face was bandaged, one arm was bound up. The two women half-carried her aboard. Marjorie wasted no time with questions or comments but told Persun to ascend immediately and get them to town as quickly as possible. Rowena bon Damfels obviously needed medical care.
“I cannot thank you enough, Lady Westriding,” Sylvan said in an oddly formal tone much at variance with his disheveled look. “There was no way I could get one of our aircars away from the estancia without causing great difficulty. I apologize for my appearance. It was necessary to break down a few doors this evening, and I haven’t had a chance to change since.”
“Your father locked her up?”
“Among other barbarities, yes. I doubt that he even remembers he did so. The Hunt is set very deep into my father, with all its little ways.”
“Where are you taking her, Sylvan?”
“I don’t think father will suspect she’s left the place. If he misses her and remembers what he did, he’ll probably think she escaped and went out into the grasses. He may look for her, but I doubt it. Meantime, these women have relatives in Commoner Town who will keep her hidden, keep her safe.”
“Are your sisters safe?”
“For the moment. Since both have lovers, I have urged them both to get pregnant as quickly as possible. Pregnant women are not expected to ride.” His voice was flat, without feeling. “If there were any way to manage it, I would take them to Commoner Town as well. They would not be content to stay in hiding, however, and I’m afraid hiding is the only way they could avoid being brought back.”
“They are welcome at Opal Hill, Sylvan.”
“That would mean the end of Opal Hill, Marjorie.” He reached out to her, touched her arm, for the moment moved from his own troubles by her concern. “You were only allowed there as a feint, a distraction, to keep Sanctity from doing something intrusive. Our… our masters do not want you on Grass. They do not want any outsiders on Grass.”
“They allow Commons! They allow the port!”
“They can’t get at Commons or the port. That may be all that has kept the town safe thus far. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. All of us bons are so… so hypnotized. A few of the younger ones, like me, a few who haven’t hunted for a few years, we can talk about things; but even with us, when we start to get close to—” He choked. When he was able to. he said, “It’s better in Commoner Town. Whenever I’ve been there, I’ve been struck with how clear everything is. I can think anything I please and nothing binds on me. I can talk about anything there.”
“Are you going to stay in town?”
“I can’t. Father might suspect about mother if I did. He might come after her. He might start something between the estancias and the town. That could only mean… well, loss of life. Tragedy.” He fell broodingly silent, his eyes on his mother’s bandaged face. “Why did you and your family really come here?”
“I think Sanctity told you about the… the disease.”
“Your plague, yes,” he said impatiently. “We know about that.” His face betrayed that he did not think it terribly important. Marjorie stared at him, wondering what he had been told, what he was being allowed to believe.
“It isn’t ‘our’ plague, Sylvan, any more than it is your plague. It is a human plague. If it goes on for a few more decades, there will be no more human life.”
He stared at her, unable to believe what she was telling him. “You’re exaggerating.”
She shook her head. “I’m not. Only another lifetime, Sylvan, and you here on Grass may be all the human life left in the universe. We’ll be like the Arbai. Gone.”
“But we here… we haven’t heard…”
“There doesn’t seem to be any plague here. Or there’s something that stops it. You wouldn’t let us send in any scientists or researchers, but you did say you’d allow an embassy. Those idiots at Sanctity thought you would accept us because of the horses, so we came, Rigo and I, to find out what we could and to talk sense to you, if you’d allow it.”
“We wouldn’t allow it. I should have known. That’s why the Hunt masters picked those who came to your reception so carefully. No one among them who could be swayed. All old riders. Except me. And they don’t know about me.”
“Swamp forest coming up below,” called Persun. “Where do you want me to land?”
Marjorie looked at Sylvan, and he at the two women. They conferred quietly, then asked that the car set down at the port.
Sylvan agreed. “The hospital is at the Port Hotel. Besides, we’re less likely to be noticed there at this time of night.”
They dropped quietly, allowed the women to depart, then took off again for Klive.
As they approached the estancia, Marjorie leaned forward to put her hand on Sylvan’s arm. “Sylvan. Before you go, I have to tell you something. I came just to tell you.”
She poured the story of her day’s discovery at him, watching him twitch with discomfort and run his finger around his collar. She wondered whether this was something he was allowed to believe or whether counterbeliefs had been given him.
“Peeper to hound,” he choked at last. “Hound to mount. That’s interesting. It could explain why they hate the foxen so much. Foxen eat peepers.”
“How do you know?”
“When I was a rebellious child, I found out I could stay away from the Hippae if I made my mind a blank. A little talent I have, or had then, that no one else seems to have. I used to sneak off into the grasses sometimes for hours at a time. Not very far, you understand, just farther than anyone else dared to go. If I was near a copse, I’d find a tree and climb it, then lie there with a glass and spy on all that went on. I’ve seen the foxen eat peepers. Peepers are easy to catch. They’re nothing but a gut with some flesh around it and rudimentary legs along the sides. I’d like to see how they change.”
“If you can get to Opal Hill before the lapse is over, I can show you where the cavern is.”
“Getting to Opal Hill,” he said, choking on his words, “would be the least of it, Marjorie. Going out into the grass would be worse. Much worse. I’m not a child anymore. I’m not as good at it as I once was. If there were any Hippae within miles of me, I’m not sure I’d be allowed to return.”
The aircar dropped once more. Sylvan took her hand and pressed it, then thanked Persun Pollut as he left, disappearing into the dark. The car returned to Opal Hill and landed in the gravel court, where Marjorie bid Persun good night and set out for the side door which was closest to her own quarters. As she approached, she heard the thunder begin once more, off in the grasses, a sound the more ominous for having no cause, no reason attributable to it. It threatened without leaving any possibility of reply.
Rigo’s voice, coming demandingly from behind her, startled her into a tiny scream, abruptly choked off. “May I ask where you have been?”
“I went with Persun Pollut to take Rowena bon Damfels to Commons, Rigo, where she could get medical care. Her son and two serving women were with her. We dropped him back at the bon Damfels village and came straight home.”
Looking into her wide eyes, innocent of any attempt to deceive him, he tried to sneer, tried to say something cutting, but could not quite. “Rowena?”
“Stavenger had beaten her — badly, I’m afraid.”
“For what?” he asked in astonishment. To beat a woman had always been, in Rigo’s philosophy, to abandon honor.
“For coming here to ask about Janetta,” she said. “Rowena and Sylvan came here to ask about Janetta. They hoped… hope that Dimity may turn up alive. Dimity. Rowena’s youngest daughter. Sylvan’s sister. The girl who disappeared. That’s why they were here.”
“I didn’t see Rowena here,” he said, his emphasis reminding her that he had seen Sylvan.
“When they were here, Rowena started sobbing. She left the room for a few moments, Tony took her to my room.”
“Leaving you with her son. And what did you two talk about?” He felt his habitual anger surging just below the surface. What had they talked about, Sylvan and Marjorie? What had she shared with him that she would not share with her husband!
She sighed, wearily rubbing at her eyes, which infuriated him further. “I tried to tell you before, Rigo, but you don’t want to hear about the Hippae. You didn’t want to listen.”
He stared at her for a long, cold moment, trying not to say what, eventually, he could not keep himself from saying. “No. I do not want to hear any of Sylvan’s fairy tales about the Hippae.”
She swallowed painfully, trying not to let the frustration show on her face. “Are you interested in hearing what Brother Mainoa of the Green Brothers may have to tell you about the same subject?”
He wanted more than anything else to hurt her enough that she would cry. He had seldom seen her cry.
“Brother Mainoa?” he sneered. “Are you having an affair with him, too?”
She stared at him in disbelief, noting his heightened color, his fiery eyes, like Stella’s eyes. He was saying the kinds of things Stella liked to say, wanting to hurt, not minding that he knew they were not true.
Before he had spoken, she had almost cried, out of weariness if for no other reason, but his words burned all that away. Flames came up around her, red and hot and crackling. It was an unfamiliar feeling, an anger so intense that there was no guilt in it at all. The words came out of her like projectiles, fired without thought, without needing to think.
“Brother Mainoa is about the age of my father,” she said in a clear, cold voice which she could scarcely hear over the flame noises in her head. “An old man, rather unsteady on his feet. He has been here for many, many years. He may have some clue which would be valuable to us in the task we were sent here to do. But do not trouble yourself about Brother Mainoa…”
“Perhaps when you have ridden to the Hunt and proven your manhood as you so constantly need to do — and if you return — perhaps then we can discuss what we are here for.”
He tried to interrupt her, but she held up her hand, forbidding him, her face like fiery ice. “In the meantime you may be assured that I have never had an ‘affair’ with anyone. Until now, Rigo, I had left the breaking of our vows to you,”
He had never heard her speak in that way. He had never known she could. Tonight he had wanted only to crush her self-control, believing it stood as a barrier between them. He had wanted their growing coldness to be burned away by anger so she would come to him, as she always did, apologizing, asking his forgiveness…
Instead he had provoked an anger he could neither calm nor encompass. She turned and went away from him and he saw her go as though she were leaving him forever.
It was not only at Opal Hill and at Klive that matters boiled and suppurated on that night of the lapse. Far from either place, in the kitchen court of Stane, the estancia of the bon Maukerden’s, a door opened upon the night to spill slanted light onto the court, throwing a sharp wedge of brilliance into which the Obermum Geraldria stepped to make a stump of shadow. She was a stocky pillar of a woman, her hair tumbled around her heaving shoulders as she wept hopelessly into the towel she held to her face. After a time she lifted reddened eyes to stand peering into the night, unable to see anything both because of the darkness and of the tears that filled her eyes and dripped unregarded from her heavy jaws. At the far end of the kitchen court was a gate opening on the path to Maukerden village. She walked heavily to the gate, opened it, then beckoned toward the open door.
Two figures emerged, so slowly as to seem reluctant. One was Geraldria’s serving maid, Clima. The other was the Goosegirl, Janetta bon Maukerden, swaying beneath a voluminous cloak as though to the sound of music she alone could hear, her face utterly tranquil in the yellow light. Clima wept, Geraldria wept, but the Goosegirl showed no sign that she saw or cared that either of the women grieved.
The Obermum held the gate open as Clima approached. “Take her to the village, Clima. As soon as you can, take her to Commoner Town. See if Doctor Bergrem… see if Lees Bergrem can help her. I should have let her go before. I thought she’d learn to recognize us.” Geraldria pressed the sodden towel to her face once more, muffling the sounds she could not seem to keep from making. When the spasm had passed, she fished in a pocket for the credit voucher she had put there earlier. “This will get you whatever you need. If you need more than this one, let me know. Tell Doctor Bergrem… tell the doctor to send her away from Grass if that will help.”
Clima pocketed the card. “The doctor could maybe come here, mistress. Maybe they’d come here.” She caught at the Goosegirl’s arm to keep her from dancing away, tugging her through the gate and onto the path.
“The doctor said she needed her machines, the things she has at the hospital. Besides, the Obermun won’t. Won’t have it. Won’t have her.”
“Not her fault…” Words muffled by tears.
Geraldria cried, “Dimoth says yes. He says it was Janetta’s fault. He says it wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Vince agrees with him.”
Clima spoke indignantly. “That’s not true! Not my Janetta.”
“Shhh. Take her.” Darkness fell onto the path as she shut the gate, peering over it at the two of them outside. “Take her away, Clima. I cannot bear it any longer. Not with the Obermun saying the things he says.” She fled toward the house, shutting the door behind her.
Clima took the girl by the hand and urged her down the path, the light of the torch making a puddle before them on a route as well known to Clima as the rooms in her own house. She had gone only far enough to be hidden from the house by the grasses when someone stepped out of them behind her and pulled a sack over her head and down her body, knocking her down in the process and leaving her to writhe helplessly for the moment, her hands frantically seeking the rope her assailant had knotted at her ankles. She had been too surprised to shout.
She wriggled herself upright and fumbled at the rope, wrenching at the knot with hasty fingers. She heard the sound of an aircar taking off from the grasses to one side of the path, where no aircar was supposed to be. The knot came loose at last and she stripped the sack off, turning her torch around her in bright searching spokes.
She called, went scrambling among the grasses, even brought back several men from the village to help her look, but the girl was gone.
Suddenly, the lapse was over. The Hunt began again. For Rigo, riding the simulacrum took every moment of his waking time. For Stella, though they did not know it, it continued to take every hour that the rest of them slept. Superbly conditioned by their previous horsemanship, both Rigo and Stella took less time than the bons might have expected. The day soon came that Rigo announced he would attend the Hunt at the bon Damfels estancia, two days hence.
“I expect you all to be there.” he said grimly to his family. “You, Marjorie. Tony. Stella.”
Marjorie did not reply. Tony nodded. Only Stella burbled with excitement. “Of course, Daddy. We wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“I’ve ordered a balloon-car so that you can follow the Hunt.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Marjorie. “I’m sure we will all enjoy that very much.”
Stella cast a sidelong look, disturbed by her mother’s voice. The words, the phrasing — all had been as usual, and yet there had been something chill and uncaring in that voice. She shivered and looked away, deciding it would not be a good time to twit her mother about the Hunt. Besides, there was too much to do. Stella was determined to ride when her father rode, but obtaining the proper garb had not been easy. She had forged orders over the name of Hector Paine and sent them to Commons, intercepting the deliveries when they arrived. She now had everything she needed, the padded trousers, the special boots, narrowed at the toe to catch between the ribs of the mount. Her own coat and hunt tie would serve, her own gloves and hat. All of them were ready to be hidden in the aircar and transported to the bon Damfels estancia. This would be one of the last Hunts at Klive. Within a few days, the Hunt would move to the bon Laupmons’.
Since the lapse was over, Marjorie judged that the cavern of the Hippae would no longer be guarded. Very early the following morning, while all the family still slept, she took the trip recorder from the previous journey and rode Quixote across the long loops they had made on the previous trip. She found the ridge, the shallow declivity, and the cavern. There was no smell except the smell of the grasses-There was no sound. Perhaps the thunder had been their mating frenzy, if Hippae had mates. Or, perhaps the frenzy was merely reproductive frenzy, like the mindless thrashing of fish. In the shallow hollow, nothing remained except pieces of dry and brittle shell. The eggs had hatched. The cavern was empty except for piles of powdery clots near the entrance. She looked at these, recognizing them at last as dead bats, those same flitterers she had seen before in the cavern. These were what the conquering Hippae had kicked at the defeated one. She stepped over the dusty bodies as she walked into the cavern, noting its similarity to the one at Opal Hill. Both had the same rubble pillars, the same tall openings, the same spring at one side.
There was one notable difference. The earthen floor of this cavern was incised with a pattern, a pattern cut by the hooves of the mounts, an interlaced pattern as complex as those she remembered seeing as a child, carved on prehistoric Celtic monuments. Moved by an inexplicable impulse, Marjorie drew out the trip recorder and walked the design from one end to the other, every curl and weave of it, seeing the pattern emerge on the tiny screen in its entirety. It would do no good to ask Rigo what he thought it might mean. Perhaps, however, she could ask Brother Mainoa when she saw him again. When she had looked at everything, recorded everything, she returned to Opal Hill without incident, feeling, so she told herself, a certain viral satisfaction.
The day of Rigo’s first Hunt arrived inevitably, and Marjorie steeled herself to observe the Hunt. She wore one of her Grassian outfits, a flowing, many-layered gown, the skirts of each loose dress slightly shorter than the one beneath to reveal the silky layers of the gowns below, the outer coat a stiff brocade ending at the knees and elbows so that the extravagantly ruffled hems and sleeves of the undergown could show. It was similar to the dresses she had seen on pregnant women or on matrons who no longer rode. She let her hair fall into a silken bundle down her back rather than drawing it up in its customary high, golden crown. At her dressing table, she used a good deal of unaccustomed makeup, particularly about the eyes. She die not try to explain to herself why she did this, but when she went down the hall toward the graveled court where Rigo waited, she looked like a woman going to meet a lover — or to meet other women who might wonder if her husband loved her. Rigo saw her and quivered. She did not look like Marjorie. She was a stranger. He chewed his lips, shifting from foot to foot, caught between a desire to reach out to her and a determination to take no notice.
Persun brought the aircar around, Tony came breathlessly from the house, adjusting his clothing, then Stella ran out in a gown similar to her mother’s, though not as complexly layered. She had seen what Marjorie planned to wear and had dressed herself accordingly. The individual layers were loose and easy to remove. It suited her to have something that would come off quickly. She would not have a lot of time in which to change.
There was mercifully little conversation as they went. Marjorie sat next to Persun as he drove, and the two of them conducted a stilted practice conversation in Grassan. “Where is the Master of the Hunt?”
“The Master of the Hunt is riding down the path.”
“Have the hunters killed a fox?”
“Yes, the hunters have killed a fox today.”
“It sounds like toads gulping,” said Stella, with a sniff. “Why would anyone invent such an ugly language?”
Marjorie did not answer. In her mind she was so far from the present location that she did not even hear. There was a fog around her, penetrable only by an act of will. She had separated herself from them. “What is the Obermum serving for lunch?” she asked in a schoolgirl voice.
“The Obermum is serving roast goose,” came the reply.
Someone’s goose, Persun thought to himself, seeing the expression on all their faces. Oh, yes, we are serving someone’s goose.
At Klive, Amethyste and Emeraude were playing hostess, both blank-faced and quiet, both dressed very much as Marjorie was. “The Obermum sends her regrets that she cannot greet you. Obermum asks to be remembered to you. Won’t you join us in the hall?”
Somehow Marjorie and Tony went in one direction while Rigo and Stella went in another. Marjorie did not miss Stella immediately. She found herself drinking something hot and fragrant and smiling politely at one bon and another, all of them shifting to get a view of the first surface. There the riders were assembling, faces bland and blind in the expression Marjorie had grown to expect among hunters. Sylvan came into the room, not dressed for the hunt.
“Not hunting today, sir?” asked Tony in his most innocent voice, busy putting two and two together but not sure how he felt about the resultant sum.
“A bit of indigestion,” Sylvan responded. “Shevlok and Father will have to carry the burden today.”
“Your sisters aren’t hunting either,” murmured Marjorie.
“They have told father they are pregnant,” he murmured in return, almost in a whisper. “I think in Emeraude’s case it may be true. One does not expect women of their age to be able to Hunt as often as the men. Father realizes that.”
“Has he—”
“No. No, he does not seem to miss… he does not seem to miss the Obermum. He does not seem to know she is gone.”
“Have you heard from her?”
“She is recovering.” He turned and stared out the arched opening to the velvet turf, jaw dropping, eyes wide in shock-"By all the hounds, Marjorie. Is that Rigo?”
“Rigo. Yes. He feels he must,” she said.
“I warned you all!” His voice rasped in his throat-"God. I warned him.”
Marjorie nodded, fighting to maintain her mood of cool withdrawal. “Rigo does not listen to warnings. I do not know what Rigo listens to.” She took a cup of steaming tea from the tray offered by one of the servants and attempted to change the subject. “Have you seen Stella?”
Sylvan looked around the room, shaking his head. The room was crowded, and he walked away from Marjorie, searching the corners.
“If you’re looking for the girl,” muttered Emeraude, “she went back out to the car.”
Sylvan conveyed this to Marjorie, who assumed that Stella had forgotten something and had gone to retrieve it. The bell rang. The servants in their hooped skirts skimmed into the house. The gate of the hounds opened. The hounds came through, two on two, gazing at the riders with their red eyes.
Marjorie took a deep breath. Rigo was standing at the extreme left of the group. When the riders turned to follow the hounds out the Hunt Gate, he was behind them all.
Except for one final rider, late, who came running from around the corner of the house onto the first surface, head tilted away from the observers, following Rigo out through the Hunt Gate at the tail end of the procession.
A girl, Marjorie thought, wondering why Stella had not returned.
A girl.
Something in the walk, the stance. A certain familiarity about the clothing, the cut of the coat…
Surely, oh, surely not.
“Wasn’t that your daughter?” asked Emeraude with a strange, wild look at Marjorie. “Wasn’t that your daughter?”
They heard the thunder of departing feet from outside the gate.
When Sylvan got to the gate at a dead run, there was no one left. All the riders had mounted and gone.
Stella had assumed that Sylvan would be among the riders. Despite what she had been told of the Hunt and had seen for herself, she had also assumed that she would find a way to bring her own mount near his. All such assumptions were forgotten the moment she vaulted onto the back of the mount that came forward for her. Before arriving at the bon Damfels’, she had worried that a mount might not be available, might not, as it were, be expecting her. Everything she had been told during her observation of the Hunt, however, indicated that there were always exactly as many mounts as needed for the hunters who assembled. If someone decided at the last minute not to ride, no mount showed up outside the gate. Since it was part of her plan to come into the garden late, after the hounds had gone through, there was no opportunity for anyone to intercept her. She came to the gate as her father was mounting, and then felt, rather than saw, a mount appear before her, extending its massive leg. She went through the movements she had rehearsed so many times on the machine that they had become automatic.
Until that moment everything had happened too quickly to think about, to consider, to change her mind. Then all at once the barbs were there, only inches from her breast, gleaming like razors. As she stared at them, half hypnotized and beginning to feel fear for the first time, the mount turned its head and drew back its lips in a kind of smile, a smile like enough to human for her to know that it held something like amusement, something like contempt, something, peculiarly, like encouragement. Then it lunged off after the others and she gasped, putting all her concentration into keeping herself braced away from the bony blades.
They had gone some distance before she thought to look for Sylvan. From behind, all the riders looked alike. She could not tell if he was there or not. The rider directly ahead of her was her father. She knew his coat, cut unlike the coats of the other hunters.
After a time she thought to look for Sylvan. All the riders looked alike. Except for her father. His coat was different from the others…
After a time she looked for Sylvan. Her father was riding ahead of her…
Her father was riding just ahead… ahead…
It was a good day for the Hunt. Though summer was over, the pastures were still green from recent rains. The farmers had taken down some of the worst of the wire fences, and those that were left were clearly visible. Ahead, crossing the silver-beige stubble of an oat field, she could see the foxhounds, running hard, before the pack lost itself behind the slope to her left. The light wind brought the yelp and clamor of the dogs and the sound of the Huntsman’s horn. Dark figures fringed the top of the hill, followers, hands shielding their eyes from the sun. One among them waved his hat and pointed the way the fox had gone. She reined her horse to the left, down along a spinney and around once more, up and over the crest of the hill, the short way around. From the top of the hill she could see the fox fleeing across the pasture below, nose low, bushy tail straight behind as it darted under a fence, then atop a long log and into Fuller’s Copse. She urged her mount over the fence toward the copse, taking the jump cleanly, joining some hunters already there, hearing the thud of hooves as others arrived. The Master gestured for them to circle the copse, and she turned to one side, positioning herself near a ditch where the fox might flee.
She could hear the hounds in the copse. The Huntsman was in there with them; his voice rose, calling individual hounds by name, urging them on. “Bounder, get out of there. Dapple, up, up girl…”
Then there was a shout and they were away again, the horn, and the hounds giving voice…
Sylvan.
Someone was supposed to be riding with them today. A guest? Someone not a member of this Hunt.
Sylvan. Here he was. Beside her, turning in the saddle to look adoringly at her. She felt her face flame and drew herself up proudly.
Some of the riders had fallen back. They had been at it all the morning, and it was noon now, with the sun overhead and hot on her hat. The fox had taken refuge in Brent’s Wood, and the Huntsman and whippers-in were among the trees. The Master, too, which was strange. Standing on his horse like some circus acrobat, standing and throwing things.
And then… a surge of feeling. A jolt of pure pleasure that streaked up from her groin. An orgasm of sheer delight which seemed to go on and on and on.
Sylvan felt it, too. They all felt it. Every face showed it. Every body lashed with it, heads jerking, jaws lax.
Then at last the Huntsman was sounding the kill. There was the Huntsman with the fox’s mask, and the horses turning for home. Now the sun was behind her. A long ride home. Even if they went the short way, along Magna Spinney and onto the gravel road past the Old Farm, it was still a long way home.
She was desperately tired when they returned. Her father came over to her and took her arm, roughly, too roughly, and they walked through the gate with the others.
“What in God’s name were you doing here?” he demanded, his mouth almost at her ear. “Stella, you little fool!”
She gaped at him. “Riding,” she said, wondering why he asked. “Why, Daddy, I was riding.”
She followed her father’s gaze, up to the terrace. Mother stood there, a glass in her hand, very pale, very beautiful. Sylvan was beside her. He had his arm around Marjorie, pointing down at them. How could he be there, not even in Hunt dress, when he had been riding just moments ago?
Stella felt her face growing red. Sylvan hadn’t really been on the Hunt. He couldn’t have been. Her father walked away from her, up the flight of shallow stairs. Mother was clutching the balustrade with both hands, tightly, her knuckles white. Sylvan was holding her up, snapping his fingers at a nearby servant. Then Father was there, shouldering him aside.
“Marjorie!”
His wife looked blindly at him, as though she did not know who he was. “Stella,” she said, pointing. “Her face…”
Rigo turned to look back at his daughter where she stood at the foot of the stairs, turned just too late to see what Marjorie had seen, the same chill, senseless gaze that the Goosegirl had worn when she had appeared among them at Opal Hill.
As for Stella, she tottered upon her feet, trembling between fury and shock with the realization that Sylvan hadn’t really been there to see her riding and that she could remember almost nothing about the day at all. She remembered horses and hounds and a fox, but they were real horses, real dogs from some other time, years ago. She remembered that jet of feeling which had filled her and the memory made her flush, but she did not know why she had felt it. Staring up at Sylvan’s concerned face, at her father’s furious one, at her mother’s anxious one, she had the fleeting realization that there were things happening all around her, hideous, important things, and that she had not paid attention to what was going on.