At the Friary, while an aircar was readied and certain accoutrements were assembled (assassins, for the use of, Elder Brother Fuasoi thought to himself, grimacing at his own private joke) Fuasoi stewed and steamed in his lonely office, thinking of a thousand ways the plans of the Moldies might already have been forestalled. Or, if not already, then imminently. Perhaps Sanctity had found out about him and had sent people. Perhaps the Health Authority on Semling had become aware of Moldy plots. Perhaps Mainoa had talked to others; perhaps the ambassador knew. He opened his desk drawer for the tenth time, searching for the book that wasn’t there, Mainoa’s book. Who had taken it? Had Jhamlees taken it? That totally Sanctified idiot? Had he? If he had, Jhamlees would be messaging Sanctity about it. Messaging, getting messages back. Like a message from the Hierarch saying, open the secret armory and take the planet for Sanctity. A message like that.
Not that he knew there was a secret armory here in the Friary. Everyone said so; but then, everyone could be wrong. Suppose the Green Brothers did take the planet, wipe out the bons and the mounts and the hounds; so then what would they do with it?
They’d find a cure, that’s what they’d do with it. Mainoa had seemed to think there was a cure here. They’d find it. Give them a little time…
Fuasoi had assumed there was plenty of time to spread the virus. He had not hurried. Now Jhamlees might be onto him, and urgency overwhelmed him. Yes, Brothers Flumzee and Niayop and Sushlee and Thissayim and Lillamool should find that damned Mainoa and kill him — kill Mainoa and Lourai and anyone else who was with them. Yes, that should be done. At once. But there was one other thing that needed to happen at once: the distribution of the virus. In Commons. That’s where it would do the most good. That’s where people were packed most closely together. He had delayed unconscionably. He had diddled. Uncle Shales would not have been proud of him.
He took a small carrying bag from his cupboard, placed the packet of virus inside on top of a change of clothing, covered it with an additional robe which was all Shoethai would need, left his office, and went down hay-smelling corridors to the gravel court where he found Shoethai himself, just closing an engine housing.
“Is it ready?” the Elder Brother asked. He stood back and regarded the aircar with disfavor. It was one of the bigger ones, with two cabins, a large one up front and a private one behind, each opening to the outside. One of the smaller cars would have done as well and would have moved faster. Still, if it had been serviced. “Is it?” he repeated.
Shoethai grimaced, giggled, said it was. There was something almost gleeful in his manner, and the Elder Brother assumed that the thought of Mainoa’s destruction pleased Shoethai. Well, and it should. The thought of anyone’s destruction pleased Moldies. The more gone, the fewer left to go, so Moldies said.
“Where’s Flumzee?”
Shoethai gestured to an alleyway from which Highbones was at that moment emerging, closely followed by four of his henchmen. When they saw the Elder Brother they stopped in confusion, tardily remembering to bow.
“I’m going with you,” the Elder Brother announced. Shoethai howled — only briefly, only a moment’s howl, but enough to bring six pairs of eyes toward him. He groveled, curling his misshapen shoulders, so that his voice came from between his knees like bubbles rising in hot mud. “Elder Brother, you should not risk yourself. You have important work—”
“Which I’m about to do,” Fuasoi said firmly. “After Flumzee and the others have found their quarry, you and I will take care of other urgent business.”
“Me!” Shoethai squeaked. “Me!”
“You. You won’t need anything. I’ve brought you an extra robe. Get in.” He turned to Brother Flumzee. “You can drive this thing, I hope.”
Highbones managed to bite down his glee and keep a serious expression on his face. “Certainly, Elder Brother. I am an excellent driver.”
“You know where to go?”
“Shoethai said a place called Darenfeld’s Coppice, northeast of Klive. I have a map. We’re to look for a side trail there.”
Fuasoi grunted assent. “Shoethai and I will take the back cabin.” Shoethai seemed to be having one of his spasms, so Fuasoi took hold of him and thrust him up into the car, following him in and slamming the compartment door behind him.
The others cast quick, eager looks at one another as they assembled themselves in the front cabin, where Highbones sat at the controls with the ease of long imagination, if not actual practice. He had driven aircars now and then since coming to Grass. He had driven them often in his youth. Within moments they had risen high above the towers of the Friary and were on their way south.
“Can they hear us from back there?” Brother Niayop, Steeplehands, asked quietly.
Highbones laughed. “Not over the sound of the engines, Brother. “Isn’t there a speaker?”
Highbones pointed wordlessly. The dial on the console before him was in the off position. Highbones was trying to keep from showing excitement. His cohorts were starting to make enthusiastic noises, but he felt it behooved a leader to behave in a more dignified fashion, at least until it got time for the killing. Then there could be whooping and yelling and incitements of various kinds that they were used to. They’d never killed anybody old before. They’d never killed anybody directly before, not with their hands. Knocking someone off a tower or kicking them off — that didn’t seem like murder. It seemed more like a game He wasn’t quite sure how they would manage killing women, though he knew he couldn’t get the others — or himself — to do it right away. Elder Brother Fuasoi had told Shoethai there might be women. Shoethai had told Highbones, and Highbones and his friends had talked about that most of the night.
Highbones sat very still as he thought of women, not to disturb the hot throbbing that filled all the space in his groin and spilled over into his legs and up across the skin of his belly. He had had a woman before he had been sent to Sanctity. When he was fifteen, before they sent him. None since, but he remembered.
Her name had been Lisian. Lisian Fentrees. Her body had been white. Her hair had curled around her face, like clustered golden leaves. Her breasts had been soft and crowned with pink, with little slits at the tip that turned into nipples if he sucked on them.
They had spent all the time together that they could, all the time away from school or parents or religion.
She had said she loved him. He couldn’t remember what he had said, but sometimes he thought he must have told her he loved her, too. Why would she have said it or gone on saying it, otherwise?
One morning he had wakened to a hand on his shoulder, had looked through half-opened eyes at a sun-blurred someone and had thought for a moment it was Lisian. It had the same whiteness, goldness, the same curve of face. The smell was wrong. It wasn’t Lisian, it was his mother. “Get up, boy,” she’d said. “You’re going on a trip today.” Nothing in her voice at all. no tears. As though it didn’t matter.
They said ten years. The next ten years of his life pledged to Sanctity and no one had ever told him a word about it. Not until that day. Didn’t want us worrying about it. Didn’t want us thinking about it. Didn’t want Dad upset.
And not even a chance to say goodbye to Lisian. Lisian of the soft, warm, ahhhh…
Memory was as strong in him as reality. The throbbing spilled over into a spasm he couldn’t control, and the car dipped and shimmied while the others howled and yelled at him. “Whooee, Highbones must be dankin’ himself, look at that. Dank, dank, Highbones. Do it again, we wanta watch.”
He snarled at them, striking out with one arm to knock Little Bridge off his seat, struggling against tears. “Shut up. I wasn’t dankin’. I was… I was thinking what old Fuasoi said, about women.”
Silence. Highbones had said he had a girl once, even though he wouldn’t talk about her. Steeplehands had had women, so he said. None of the others had. Both the Bridges had been too young when they came to Sanctity, ten or eleven. And Ropeknots liked boys. Well, hell, they all liked boys. When that’s what you had, that’s what you did.
“Tell us about women,” Long Bridge said. “Come on, Bones. Tell us about your girlfriend.”
“Let Steep tell you,” he snarled again, surreptitiously wiping at his face. “I’m busy.” Darenfeld’s Coppice was below them and he had found the side trail. The trail wasn’t easy to follow, though. Long shadows crossed it and hid it from sight, even from above. When he could see it, it wound among grass hillocks and through copses, leading generally westward. Far ahead, a dark line on the horizon, the swamp-forest stretched away to the north and south. The trail led toward it.
Behind him, Steeplehands was describing women in urgent, prurient detail, dwelling upon orifices and the feel and lubrication thereof. Highbones tried not to listen. That wasn’t it. What Steep was saying wasn’t it. It was something else about women. Something he’d lost but wanted to remember.
The swamp forest was not far ahead of them now. Highbones scarcely saw it in his effort to recall what it was he’d lost, among old images, half-forgotten names. Something. He could almost put his mind on it!
The drive sputtered. Highbones frowned, came to himself with a start of panic, eyes darting across the dials in front of him. The car had been serviced just before they left. That monster Shoethai had seen to it. Fuasoi had seen to it.
It sputtered again, then whined. “Grab something,” Highbones shouted. “We’ve got a problem.”
He headed downward, faster than he knew to be safe, but if the thing zizzed out he wanted to be on the ground, near the trail. It sputtered, hissed, whined, then sputtered again. They dropped a hundred feet and Long howled in pain. “I bit my tongue—”
“You’ll bite more than that if you don’t hold on.”
They slipped sideways, then recovered just long enough for Bones to set it down in a long, sliding skid through lashing grasses which ended with all of them thrown against the door, which broke open and spilled them out onto the bruised stems.
“Oh, God,” whined Steep. “Oh, God.”
“Shut up,” commanded Highbones. “If the Hippae don’t know we’re here, don’t go telling them we are.” He stood up, feeling himself to make sure he was all there, not broken anywhere, not bleeding. Aside from a graze along his jaw, he was whole. “Rope, you all right? Long? Little?”
“All right, I guess.”
“Fucking thing hit me right across my nose…”
“Think I broke something.”
Highbones slapped and snarled. “You didn’t break anything. Lie down and your nose’ll stop bleeding.” When he was sure they were all accounted for, he turned back to the car and tried the door to the rear compartment. It was jammed, or locked from inside. He hammered on it, trying to make enough noise to rouse those inside yet not enough to rouse something else out in the grass. “Elder Brother!”
Nothing. No response.
He turned to the forward cabin and dug out the packs they had brought with them.
“Listen,” said Little Bridge with a frightened look at the sun. low in the western sky. “If we’re going to be here after dark, we oughta stay in the car. If some Hippae find us, there’d be some protection being in there.”
“Swamp forest just ahead,” said Highbones. “We’re going there.”
“Swamp forest! Are you crazy?”
“I said, we’re going there. Anybody wants to stay here can stay. Anybody feels like trying to fix the car, that’s up to you. I’m going to the forest. Hippae don’t go in the forest.”
“Neither do people,” muttered Steeplehands. “Or they come out dead.” He was careful not to say it loudly.
Highbones didn’t answer. He was already halfway back to the trail they had been following when the car zizzed out. When he reached it, he turned to his right and started down it. Those who has passed this way had broken enough of the tall and tough grasses that it wasn’t difficult to walk in the stubble. Though he didn’t look back, within moments he heard the others blundering along behind him. He hoped they’d picked up their own packs; he didn’t intend going back for them.
Inside the rear cabin, Shoethai came to himself slowly. Both he and the Elder Brother had been thrown against the door, or rather, thrown against the latch bar which held it closed. He looked upward through the viewport. Sky. Darkening sky.
“Elder Brother!”
Fuasoi put his hands under himself and pushed himself into an upright position. “What happened?”
“We… it… it came down/’
“You serviced it!”
“We… I… I didn’t know we’d be on it!”
“You did this?”
Shoethai was silent, crouched in a faceless huddle. The irony of it didn’t escape Fuasoi. He laughed, one short bark of laughter. “Hated them, did you?” he asked, not expecting a response. “Thought you’d kill two birds with one stone — or more than that?” He received only a snivel in reply. “Let’s get out of here. You know you may have just lost your chance in the next world, Shoethai. I’m not sure the Creator is going to look kindly on you.”
Shoethai screamed in rage and threw himself at Fuasoi. The latch on the door jarred loose and spilled them out, Shoethai still screaming.
Fuasoi knocked his assailant aside and got to his feet. Shoethai cowered among the grasses, alternately sobbing and yelling. The carrying bag had fallen out with them. Fuasoi unfastened it and took out the package it contained. The virus. Well. He had intended to spread it about in Commons, but perhaps it would have to be trusted to the winds. He reached for his knife and slit the package.
And stopped. Coming through the grasses was a hound. A huge hound. Grinning at him.
Reflex action took over. He threw the package with all his strength and then tried to scramble back into the car. The package burst, spreading its dark, powdery contents over the approaching beast. Shoethai had time for one more howl.
From the crest of a long ridge, Highbones and the others heard howling behind them at the same moment they could look down on the stretching barricade of trees. The sound behind them was almost gleeful For a time it stayed where it was, yammering. Highbones and the others did not remain where they were. As they ran, however, the sound grew nearer, coming on their trail. Highbones ran faster than he had known he could, hearing the thump and pant of Steeplehands and Long Bridge close behind him. The other two had fallen back. They had shorter legs. Little Bridge was still a kid.
“Wait,” yelled Ropeknots “Wait for us.”
“Wait, hell,” breathed Steeplehands, drawing slightly ahead.
Their feet hammered on the ground as the howling neared. Behind the leaders came one scream, then another. Whatever was chasing them stopped for a moment. Highbones and the two close behind him did not stop to see what it was.
In a moment the howling started again Though it came very swiftly, it had not caught them by the time they splashed through the shallow mire at the edges of the forest. They stopped only when they came to the first deep pools gleaming with oily reflections in the dying of the daylight.
“Now what?” Long Bridge demanded. “You want to go wading in there?”
“Not likely,” said Highbones. His eyes were fixed on vine-draped trees towering from liquid depths. “Not likely.” He laid a hand on the nearest vine and asked, “Will he climb?” as he swung himself up, feet pushing him along a spiraled vine-trunk and onto the first branch above their heads. “Will he?”
They stopped halfway up to look back the way they had come. The grass moved ominously, but there was nothing there to see. Of Little Bridge and Ropeknots, no sign. They waited, then Steeplehands said, “They’re deaders, Bones, lust like on the towers. No different than that.”
The three exchanged glances, then lofted themselves with the ease of long practice, moving effortlessly into the heights.
In his private quarters at the Friary, Administrator Jhamlees Zoe sought among a miscellany of papers for the packet which had come from Sanctity, from his old friend Cory Strange. He had sealed it up and hidden it to keep it safe from prying eyes. Now that he had seen Mainoa’s book, he needed to read the letter again.
The packet had a security wrap on it, and Jhamlees had to stop several times to remember the proper sequences to prevent the thing from going off in his hands and taking his face with it. All this nonsense. Well, what was the office of Security and Acceptable Doctrine to do with itself, back there on Terra, if it did not engage in these senseless exercises. Coded cover letters. Explosive wraps.
Once he had burrowed his way into the packet, Jhamlees skimmed the pages, reminding himself that he was expected to inform his old friend if anything at all were discovered on Grass, Jhamlees referred to the enclosed itinerary with a pout of frustration. Much though he would have liked to seal his former friendship with the Hierarch, there was no point in attempting to send word about this Mainoa matter. The Hierarch was already on the last leg of his journey to Grass.
Jhamlees folded the letter and thrust it into his pocket. No more need to keep it. He’d dispose of it later. The rest of the packet — twelve pages of sanctimonious hash and the publicly announced itinerary of the Hierarch — could be left out where anyone could see it.
Advance word or no advance word, when the Hierarch arrived he would expect his friend Nods to know anything there was to be known. Mainoa had written as though those at Opal Hill knew something, or as though he, Mainoa, knew something. Question: Was there a cure? That’s what the Hierarch would want to know! Brother Mainoa had gone off somewhere, so he couldn’t be asked until and unless he was found. That left the only other one who might know. Roderigo Yrarier. Not even one of the Sanctified! A heretical Old Catholic, no better than a pagan!
Elder Brother Jhamlees summoned Yavi Foosh. “Find out where Ambassador Roderigo Yrarier is now. Arrange for me to visit him.” Yavi shuffled his feet, staring at the floor. “Well?”
“Well, Elder Brother, I think he could be dead.”
“Dead!”
“There was a great set-to at the bon Laupmons’ place. Hippae and riders and all. Lots of them got killed. Hippae, too. This ambassador was in the middle of it. Way I hear it, his servants took him away to the hospital at the port, but he may be dead.”
“Dead.” Elder Brother Jhamlees sat down and frowned at the desktop with a sick, panicky feeling. Cory would not like that. “Well, if he isn’t dead, I need to see him. Find out.”
Yavi scuttled off to find out while Jhamlees thought bleakly how the new Hierarch would react to a message saying, “Dear Brother in Sanctity. The only two people who might know anything at all about this are probably dead.” In his anything but amused contemplation of this possibility, Jhamlees forgot his intention to burn the Hierarch’s letter.
Rigo came to himself among a whisper of machines. He tried to move and found he could not. His arms had been thrust inside two bulky mechanisms, one at either side of the narrow, barely padded bed he lay upon. Heal-alls, he told himself as he fought down panic. Another Heal-all had swallowed his legs. He tried to speak and could not. A mask was fastened over his nose and mouth.
Someone came, however, and peered at his eyes with an expression of gratification. After a moment the same someone took the mask away and demanded, “Do you know where you are?”
“Not sure,” Rigo said in a slushy, bubbling voice. “Hospital, I suppose. At the port. I think I got trampled.”
“Good, good.” The figure turned away and gloated over the dials and flashing lights on the machines. A woman. Not much to look at, but definitely a woman. “Good,” the woman said.
“Who?” Rigo asked. “Who brought me here?”
“Your man,” the woman answered. “Or men. One or several.”
“Is he here?”
“No. Good heavens, no. Had to go back and evacuate your house. Get the people out. He said something about the Hippae retaliating.”
“Marjorie!” Rigo tried to sit upright.
“Now, now.” Rigo was pushed into a recumbent position once more. “You aren’t to worry. They’ll get everyone out.”
They couldn’t get Marjorie out. She hadn’t been there. Not Marjorie, nor Tony, nor Father Sandoval. Nor the two Brothers from the Arbai city, according to Tony’s note; they hadn’t been there either. All of them had gone away together. With Sylvan. At least according to the challenge delivered by bon Haunser for the Hippae, they had gone away with Sylvan.
Rigo groaned, trying to recall what had happened. The last clear memory was of that damned bon Haunser saying something about Marjorie and Sylvan. Sylvan who had gone away with her.
And with Tony, he reminded himself, and with a priest and two Brothers. Hardly a tete-a-tete. No, Marjorie had never had tete-a-tetes. Marjorie had never been unfaithful. Marjorie had never been guilty of any of the things he had accused her of. She had never refused him. Always let him come into her room, into her bed, whenever he’d wanted to. And now Marjorie was — Well, where was she?
“Is there any news of my wife?” he asked as the moment of clarity passed into a morass of threatened pain, great pain somewhere, being held back by a slender dike, a thin wall, a tissue which was fragile and beginning to leak.
“Hush,” said the woman. “You can talk later.” She fiddled with a dial, looking narrowly at Rigo’s face as Rigo felt himself being irresistibly sent into sleep once more, to dream of Marjorie alone with Sylvan.
Marjorie was alone with Sylvan.
Brother Mainoa and Rillibee Chime were asleep. Rillibee had climbed to the top of a tall tree and had then come down again to tell them there was no way through the swamp forest to Commons. Not on the ground. Through the trees the way would be a little slow, but he could get there, he said, if there was any reason to go. Then he had lain down beside Brother Mainoa and fallen into recurrent dreams. From time to time Marjorie could hear his voice, raised in wordless ejaculations, wonder or complaint, perhaps both.
There were no foxen nearby. For a time, earlier, all of the humans had crouched in a house, arms folded protectively around their heads while the foxen disputed something among themselves. The dispute washed over them like waves of fire. After a time, they felt noticed by the foxen, and then there was a sense of departure. Almost as though one of them had said to another, “Oh, we’re killing the little human creatures. We’d better go farther away.” Brother Mainoa had seemed wearier than ever after they left, weighed down by some great burden of care.
’They won’t tell me,” he cried. “They know, but they won’t tell me.”
Marjorie could guess what it was they wouldn’t tell. The foxen knew all about the plague, she was sure of it. They knew, but they wouldn’t tell. And poor old Mainoa was so tired and distraught, she could not suggest that he try to talk to them more.
Tony and Father James had gone to explore the Tree City. Marjorie had thought Sylvan was going with them. She found he hadn’t only when the others were well gone, too long gone for her to join them.
Sylvan had planned to remain behind. Now that Marjorie was away from her family, away from this husband she spoke of as though he were a barrier — now that she was away from that, he wanted to talk of love again. She would probably tell him to go away. He would tell her he had nowhere to go, and he would be charming. So he told himself. So he had been telling himself for some time.
Surprisingly, she didn’t tell him to go away. Instead, she looked at him with a detachment he found almost chilling. “I find you very attractive. Sylvan. I found Rigo attractive, too, before we were married. It was only afterward that I found out we didn’t fit together at all. I wonder if it would be like that with you.”
What was there to say to that? “I don’t know,” he said haltingly. “I really don’t know.”
“He has never once allowed me inside his masculine skin,” she said with a rueful smile. “He doesn’t notice what I am, but only what I am not, which is whatever he may be wanting at any particular time. Eugenie does far better than I. He expects very little from her, and that helps. Then too, she is soft for him, like clay. She takes his impress and accepts it, like a reverse image, suiting herself to him.” She frowned, thinking. “I tried that, at first. It didn’t work at all. I cannot be that to him. I could have been something else, a friend perhaps, but that didn’t fit his notion of what a wife should be, so we are not very good friends, Rigo and I.” She turned to Sylvan, fixing him with a resolute glare. “I will never love anyone who is not first my friend, Sylvan. I wonder if you could be my friend.”
“I would!”
“Well then, let us set about it!” She smiled at him, a humorless bowing of the lips. “First I must find my child. I have no choice but to do that, or kill myself trying. You can help me. If we accomplish that, then there is another task awaiting us. People are dying everywhere. We must try to find a solution. So, if you love me, let us talk with one another of what we have to do, but not of ourselves. We will be careful not to touch one another. Gradually, if we are successful and do not die, our natures will emerge and we may understand one another. Perhaps we could become friends.”
“But… but—”
She shook her head at him warningly. “If you’re unwilling to do that, then you could show the love you claim to have by leaving me alone. I apologize for dragging you along with us, but I needed you to guide us. The apology is all I can offer. Until we find Stella, I can’t spare the time for anything more, not even for argument.”
She leaned on the railing, her hair falling forward around her face, a golden veil, masking her from him. Sometimes for a few moments she forgot Stella, only to remember her again with a spasm of intimate agony. Like backward childbirth. As though she were trying to take the child back, encompass it once again. Keep it safe. Suck it up into her womb once more. As obscene as it was impossible, despite the pain she felt. Still, it would do no more good to scream or cry or thrash about now than it would have done when she bore the child. It would do no good to grieve. It would do no good to try to distract herself with Sylvan either, though the thought had crossed her mind. She had wondered whether it would be the same with him as with Rigo. Whether it would be the same with all men as with Rigo. Awful, to live out one’s life and never know! But no. As she had begun, so let her go on. At least she would not have to reproach herself later for that! “Stella,” she said aloud, reminding herself.
Sylvan was abruptly angry at himself. If Stella had died, he wouldn’t have expected Marjorie to be interested in lovemaking. Why had he thought she could be interested with Stella gone?
Lost in their separate worlds, neither was given the opportunity to reconcile them. Tony’s voice called from among the glowing alleys. When he came closer they sensed that he and Father James were accompanied by First, by Him. In Marjorie’s mind, the name announced itself. For Sylvan’s benefit she said, “It’s Brother Mainoa’s friend.
“I see,” he said, annoyed. He could barely detect the creatures. He could not hear them. He could not have an hour alone with Marjorie. He could not, seemingly, accomplish anything he desired.
“I think he’s trying to tell me he’s found Stella.” Tony cried. “I can’t be sure. Where’s Brother Mainoa?”
“Here.” The old man leaned from the door of a neighboring house. “Here, Tony. Ah…” He fell silent, one hand stretched toward the foxen like an antenna, feeling for meaning. “Yes,” he said. “Your daughter. They’ve found her.”
“Oh, God,” she cried. It was a prayer. “Is she — ?”
“Alive,” he confirmed. “Alive but either asleep or unconscious. They haven’t disturbed her.”
“Shall we get the horses?”
“They suggest, if you have no objection, that they will take you.” Even in this extremity she remained concerned about the horses. “Will we be coming back here?”
Quiet, then Brother Mainoa gesturing. “Yes.” He clutched at some passing pain in his side, shaking his head. “In fact, I think I’ll stay here now, if you don’t mind. You don’t need me for this.”
Father James, with a troubled look at Mainoa, chose to stay with him. The others crept apprehensively upon foxen backs and were carried away through the trees, along walkways and branches, moving away from the tree city into darkness, over moving water, under stars, coming at last to the edge of the forest. Foxen backs were wider than horse’s backs — wider, muscled differently. There seemed to be no limit, no edges to those backs. It was not so much a matter of riding as of being carried, like children sitting upon a slowly rocking table. The message was clear “We won’t let you fall.” After a time, they relaxed and let themselves be transported.
They sensed other foxen meeting them at the edge of the trees and escorting them along the swamp, not far but slow going as they detoured patches of bog and arms of the forest itself. Finally they came to a declivity where water ran, the first stream any of them had seen on Grass. It didn’t run far, only into a wide pool from which it seeped invisibly away. Beside the water Stella lay in a nest of grass, curled up, barefooted, half unclothed, with her thumb in her mouth.
When Marjorie knelt beside Stella and touched her, the girl woke screaming, fighting, saying her own name over and over, “Stella, I’m Stella, Stella,” writhing with such violence that Marjorie was thrust away. Rillibee grabbed the girl, hugged her, held her quiet. After a time the screaming stopped. Rillibee spoke to her softly, calmly. Tony touched her. She twitched, opening her mouth to scream once more. Tony drew back and she quivered but did not scream. She would not tolerate even Sylvan’s touch, and each time Marjorie came near her, she went into frenzied spasms of screaming and weeping, her face contorted with guilt and pain and shame.
Though Rillibee, who was a stranger, could hold her, evidently she could not bear to be near anyone she knew, Marjorie turned away, pained at being rejected, ecstatic to have found her. At least Stella reacted. At least she knew her name. At least she could distinguish between those she knew and those she didn’t. At least she wasn’t like Janetta.
Sylvan laid a caressing hand on her shoulder. “Marjorie.”
She drew herself up, made herself nod, made herself think and speak There was no time for grieving or for pointless agitation. “If the foxen will carry you, I want you to carry her through the forest to Commons. She needs medical care, and the quickest way will be if the foxen can get her there through the trees. You go, Rillibee, because she seems to trust you. Tony, you go to arrange things. I’ll go back to Brother Mainoa and Father James.”
Sylvan said hopefully, “I’ll come back with you.”
“No,” she said, looking him in the eyes, her mouth stern. “I want you to go with them, Sylvan. I said this to you before. I came to Grass for a reason, an important reason. The more I find out, the more important that reason becomes, but I keep getting sidetracked — by you, by Rigo, by Stella, by disappearances and alarms, cluttering up everything. All you do is distract me and bother me.”
“Mother.” said Tony. “Leaving you here—”
“Go, Tony. Stella is alive. I’m joyful about that, but we mustn’t forget all the others. There is plague out there, and people dying of it. The foxen know things. Someone must find out what they know.
Brother Mainoa is old and tired, and Father James may need my help. I’ll stay and find out what I can.”
“After Stella’s cared for, I’ll come back,” Tony said. “Yes. Do. Either you or Rillibee. And let your father know what’s happened if you can.”
She turned and reached out in the direction of the foxen, thinking of Commons, across the forest. She pictured Tony going there, Tony and Stella and Sylvan and Rillibee. The picture solidified in her mind, became real, as clear as though she were seeing it, and she had a sudden headache. A purring sound came from the grasses. Foxen drew near. People were drawn upon broad backs once more, fished up like wreckage from the deep, Rillibee dragging Stella’s limp body up with him while she whimpered like some small, hurt animal.
An uncertain number of foxen moved into the forest and disappeared. Marjorie felt herself summoned, and she climbed upon His back once again with a strange mixture of feelings: relief, grief, anger all mushed up together like an emotional goulash. Into her mind came both the picture and the feel of stroking hands. She leaned forward upon the endless expanse of hide and cried while the stroking went on. After a time the stroking changed into a firm patting, the feeling was of someone telling her to straighten up, behave herself. Marjorie felt herself saying, “Yes, Mother,” in her mind. Laughter. At least amusement.
“Yes, Father,” she amended, slightly amused despite herself. Beneath her His shoulders moved gently. Male. Indisputably male. Prancing, prowling. The gait, male. Head moving, so, so. Male. Claws sliding in their sheaths, fingers touching, delicate as needles. Male. She saw multitudes of shapes, not quite clearly, most of them male. The males were violet and plum and mauve and deep wine red. The females were smaller, more softly blue, though she could not see them, either. Male, he told her. I. “First.” Male.
Yes, she assented. He was male. He had thought “First” at her with quotation marks around it. Not his name, then. Merely something Mainoa called him. In his own mind the symbol of his name had movement and color — a purple wildness, full of scarlet lightning, veiled with gray-blue cloud. Himself.
Pictures moved in her mind. She saw Mainoa, stout and green-clad, walking soberly among the foxen shapes. Around him an aura bloomed, a shadow gathered, pale light on a dark ground, the light growing dimmer. Still he walked, indomitable, his feet a counterpoint to the movement beneath her.
Mainoa, she thought. I like him, too.
A new vision. Marjorie among the multitude of foxen. Not herself, precisely, but an idealized Marjorie who danced on low turf amid a gathering of foxen, creatures without shape or limitation and yet indisputably themselves. They were dancing with their shadows as the sun either rose or set, the long shadows seeming to stretch almost to the horizon. Sinuous shadows. Sensuous shadows. She, Marjorie, among sinuous, sensuous shadows, dancing with the foxen.
They danced in pairs, male and female, weaving their shadows together, letting their shadows touch. Shadows, and minds, touching. The others danced in pairs. Marjorie danced with First, the sleeves of her shirt growing wide, like wings, flowing like a tail, her hair loose in a silky mane. A female. Dancing. She still could not see His vision of Himself, but she could see His vision of her.
You. Marjorie. Female. Gait. Motion. Color. Smell.
Perilous, she whispered inside herself. Dangerous.
Beneath her the muscles of his shoulders moved like fingers, touching her. Perilous. Yes. Dangerous. Yes. Mysterious. Wonderful. Awful. Mighty. His skin spoke to her as horses’ skin had always spoken to her, conveying emotion, conveying intention. She lay upon his back as she had lain upon Quixote’s, trusting — For one blinding instant she saw clearly, and the glory of sight stunned her into shocked withdrawal. She felt herself draw shudderingly away, refusing. Denying.
He sensed her denial. In the dance he stood on his hind legs and changed, becoming manlike, maned and tailed, not a man but manlike, mane and tail flowing, mixing with her hair as he drew her into a closer dance. The other foxen were paired, moving, part of it all, unintrusively part.
Joy. Movement in joy. One pair touching another pair. Like the pendants of a wind chime, striking one another, each moving, each striking, each sounding, but gently, barely touching, the minds striking, soft blows as from gigantic paws, gentle as leaves, sounds like bells, like soft horns blowing.
No words. Purring, roaring, growling from wide gullets where ivory fangs hung like stalactites of feeling into her, penetrating deep. Wide jaws closing, holding, gentle as a caress. She would not join the dance of her own will. She would be joined in it by His. She would not see Him. He would see her.
No thought at all. Sensation only. Floating on it as it billowed up beneath her like a great sail. No commitment. Merely sensation. Now. Only now.
Dangerous, he reminded her with laughter. Perilous. A presence, hovering, ready to pounce, able to pounce. Herself the prey. Floating, as though on blood, warm, liquid, permeating, becoming air to breathe Aware of him. The sensuous extrusion of claws. Ripple of muscle in a leg. Mass of shoulder, heave of gut, thunder of heart. Lightning trickling along nerves like golden wire.
Claws touched her, gently, drawing down her naked flesh like fingernails, sensation running behind them, shivering. Perilous. Perilous.
The edge of his tongue touched her naked thigh, sliding like a narrow, flaming serpent into her crotch.
A flaming symbol with two parts which moved together to fuse with aching slowness into one. She could almost see them. My name, He said. Your name. We.
The serpent raised her up and took her far away. She came to a door made of flame and He invited her in, but she was afraid and would not go…
When she returned, she was lying on the short grass against his chest, between his forelegs, cushioned in the softness of his belly fur. His breath made wind sounds in her ear. Her face was wet, but she could not remember crying. Her hair was loose, spread around her like spilled silk.
He stood up and went away, leaving her there. She rose in the dark, glad it was dark so He could not see her face, hot with embarrassment as she realized He did not need to see her face. She fumbled with her clothes, thinking she needed to dress herself, realizing only then that she was dressed, that the nakedness lay within. Her mind. Changed. Something that had covered it stripped away.
After a few moments, He came back, offering His shoulders again. She mounted and He carried her, discreetly, neatly, an egg in a basket, while the dance faded into memory. Something marvelous and awful. Something not quite completed.
Maenads, she thought. Dancing with the god.
He was talking to her. Explaining. He said names, but she saw only a few females, obviously not as many as the males. Only a few of them capable of reproduction. Many of them deciding not to bother. Grieving over that. Now only melancholy. Dark brown-gray distress.
Hopelessness. The future opening like a sterile flower, its center empty. No seed.
How did the foxen know flowers? There were no flowers here on Grass. Yours, He said. Your mind. Everything there. I took it all… A time of wonder. So he knew her. Really knew her. We are guilty, He said. All should die, perhaps, He suggested. Expiation. Sin. Not original sin, maybe, but sin, nonetheless. The sound of the word in her ears. The sound of the word wickedness. Collective guilt. (A picture came into her mind of Father Sandoval, talking. Evidently Father Sandoval had thought of that diagnosis.) The foxen had let it happen. Not they, but others like them, long ago. She saw the pictures, foxen elsewhere while Hippae slaughtered the Arbai. Screams, blood; then, elsewhere, disbelief. Clearly. As though it had been yesterday. They were guilty, all the foxen.
Postcoital depression? Part of her mind giggled hysterically and was admonished by some other part. No. Real sadness.
It wasn’t your fault, she said. Not your fault.
She felt cold from the images. So much death. So much pain. Why would she say that?
Because it’s true, she thought. Damned sure. Not your fault.
But suppose some of us did it. When we were Hippae. Some of us.
Not your fault, she insisted. When you were Hippae, you didn’t know. Hippae have no morals. Hippae have no sense of sin. Like a child, playing with matches, burning down the house.
More pictures. Time past. Hippae were better behaved long ago. Past memory. Before the mutation. Didn’t kill things then. Not when foxen laid the eggs. A picture of a foxen bowed down with grief, head bent between the front paws, back arched in woe. Penitence.
Her fingers were busy with her hair, trying to braid it up. She thought, Then you must go back. Make things the way they used to be. Some of you can still reproduce,
So few. So very few.
Never mind how few. Don’t waste your time on penitence or guilt. Solving the problem is better! It was true. She knew it was true. She should have known it was true years ago, back in Breedertown. Lack of understanding.
She thought the kneeling figure, the foxen crouched in woe while Hippae pranced and bellowed. She crossed it out, negated it. She thought a standing figure, claws like sabers, a foxen rampant, laying eggs. Better. Much better.
This militancy fell as though into an umplumbable well, a vacancy. They had gone beyond that. They had decided they should no longer care about things of the world. They felt responsible without wanting to be responsive.
She cried, not knowing whether He had not heard her or whether she had merely been ignored as of no consequence. Changed as she was, she knew she should make Him hear, but there were others around and His thoughts were diluted and disarranged.
The night had gone on without their notice. Ahead and above hung glowing globes of Arbai light which they climbed toward. She heard the contented whicker of horses, grazing on their island below. She was very tired, so tired she could scarcely hold on. He knelt and rolled her off and went away.
“Marjorie?” She was looking up at Father James’ concerned face. “Is Stella—”
“Alive,” she said, licking her lips. Saying words felt strange, as though she were using certain organs for inappropriate ends. “She knows her name. I think she recognized us. I sent the others to take her to Commons.”
“The foxen took them?”
She nodded. “Some of them. Then the others went away, all but… all but Him.”
“First?”
She couldn’t call Him that. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have committed adultery. Bestiality? No. Not a man, not a beast. What? I am in love with — Am I in love with… ?
He said, “You’ve been a very long time. The night’s half gone.”
She blurted desperately, trying not to talk about what most concerned her, “I thought all that business about sin was just Brother Mainoa being a little contentious. It wasn’t. The foxen are obsessed with it. They either have considered or are considering racial suicide out of penitence.” Though it was not suicide merely to stand still, doing nothing. Or was it?
He nodded, helping her up and guiding her into the house she had selected, where she half sat, half fell onto her bedding. “You’ve picked that up, have you? Mainoa says so, too. There’s no doubt the Hippae killed the Arbai. There’s little doubt the Hippae are killing mankind. I don’t know how. The foxen don’t tell us how. It’s something they’re withholding. As though they’re not sure whether we’re worthy.…
“It’s like playing charades. Or decoding a rebus. They show us pictures. They feel emotions. Once in a while, they actually show us a word. And difficult though it is with us, seemingly they communicate with us better than they do with the Hippae. They and the Hippae transmit or receive on different wavelengths or something ”
It was no longer charades or rebuses to Marjorie. It was almost language. It could have been language if only she had gone on, entered in, if she had not drawn back there, at the final instant. How could she tell Father that? She could tell Mainoa, maybe. No one else. Tomorrow, maybe. “I think you’re right, Father. Since the mutation they have not communicated with the Hippae, though I get a sense that in former ages, when the foxen laid the eggs, they exercised a lot of guidance toward their young,”
“How long ago?” he wondered.
“Long. Before the Arbai. How long was that? Centuries. Millennia?”
“Too long for them to be able to remember, and yet they do.”
“What would you call it, Father? Empathetic memory? Racial memory? Telepathic memory?” She ran her fingers over her hair, pulling the braid into looseness. “God, I’m so tired.”
“Sleep. Are the others coming back?”
“When they can. Tomorrow, perhaps. There are answers here, if only we can lay our hands upon them. Tomorrow — tomorrow we have to make sense of all this.”
He nodded, as weary as she. “Tomorrow we will, Marjorie. We will.”
He had no idea what she had to make sense of. He had no conception of what she had almost done. Or actually had done. How much was enough to have done whatever it was? Was she still chaste? Or was she something else that she had no word for?
She could not tell anyone tomorrow, she knew. Maybe not ever.
Very early in the morning, while the sun hung barely below the horizon, Tony and his fellow travelers were deposited just below the port at the edge of the swamp forest. The foxen vanished into the trees, leaving their riders trying to remember what they had looked like, felt like. “Will you wait for us?” Tony called, trying to make a picture of the foxen waiting, high in a tree, dozing perhaps.
He bent in sudden pain. The picture was of foxen standing where they stood now while the sun moved slowly overhead. Rillibee was holding his head with one hand, eyes tight shut, as he clung to Stella with the other arm.
“You’ll wait here for us,” Tony gasped toward the forest, receiving a mental nod in reply.
“Tony, what is it?” Sylvan asked.
“If you could hear them, you wouldn’t ask,” said Rillibee. “They think we’re deaf. They shout.”
“I wish they could shout loud enough for me to hear them,” Sylvan said.
“Then the rest of us would have our brains fried,” Tony said irritably. While he had immediately warmed up to Rillibee, Tony wasn’t at all sure he liked Sylvan, who had a habit of commanding courses of action. “We’ll go over there.”
“We’ll stop for a while.”
Now Sylvan said, “Someone in the port will give us transport to Grass Mountain Road. We’ll speak to the order officer there.” He moved toward the port.
Though Tony felt arguing wasn’t worth the energy it would take, he wanted to get Stella to a physician quickly. “The doctors are at the other end of town?” he asked.
Sylvan stopped, then flushed. “No. No, as a matter of fact, the hospital is just up this slope, near the Port Hotel.”
Rillibee said, “Then we’ll go there,” admitting no argument. He picked Stella up and staggered up the slope toward the hospital. “Can I help you carry her?” Tony asked.
Stella had slipped into a deep sleep, and Rillibee wondered if she would even know who held her. Still, he shook his head. He was unwilling to give up the burden to anyone else, though he had become exhausted by carrying it. Though he thought of her as a child, she was not a small girl. He had been holding her on the foxen for hours. She was his heart’s desire, so he thought, without trying to figure out why.
“I’ll manage,” he said. “It’s not much farther.” It was at the top of a considerable slope, a long climb for men already weary. They came at the place from the back, where blank walls confronted them on either side of a wide door. A white-jacketed person stuck his head out, saw them, and withdrew. Others came out, with a power-litter. Rillibee handed over his burden with the last of his strength, then leaned on one of the attendants to get himself inside.
“Who is she?” someone asked.
“Stella Yrarier,” Tony said. “My sister.”
“Ah!” Surprise. “Your father’s here as well.”
“Father! What happened?”
“Speak to the doctor. Doctor Bergrem. In that office. She’s there now.”
Minutes later Tony was staring down at his father’s sleeping face.
“What’s wrong with him?” He asked the doctor.
“Nothing too serious, luckily. We wouldn’t be able to do systems cloning and replacement here the way they do elsewhere. We have no SCR equipment.”
Cloning! Systems replacement! The mortality rate for systems replacement was high. Besides, Old Catholics were prohibited from using cloned systems, though there were always backsliders who had a system cloned and confessed it later.
The doctor frowned at him. “Don’t get into a state, boy. I said not too serious. Some cuts and a bit of bruising on the brain. All that’s taken care of. Some nerve injury, his legs. That’s healing. All he needs to do is stay here and simmer quietly for a day or two more.” The slight, snub-nosed woman hovered over dials, twitching at them. Her plentiful dark hair was drawn back in a tight bun and her body appeared almost sexless in the flapping coat.
“You’ve got him sedated,” Tony commented.
“Machine sleep. He’s too nervous a type to leave conscious for long. He frets.”
That was one way of saying it, Tony thought with an ironic twist to his lips. Roderigo Yrarier frets. Or fumes. Or roars.
The doctor went on, “Your sister, now, that’s something else. Mind reconstruction, I wouldn’t doubt The Hippae have been at her.”
“You know about that!”
“Seen a bit of it when the bons come in with broken bones or bitten-off appendages. They don’t respond normally, so I tell them I’m testing their reflexes when I’m actually looking at their heads. Strangeness there, usually, though I’m not allowed to do anything about it. Not with the bons. They choose to keep their warps and twists, however strange it makes them.”
“We don’t want Stella twisted!”
“Didn’t think you did. Didn’t think so for a moment. May not be able to straighten her totally, though. There’s limits to what we can do.”
“Should we ship her out?”
“Well, young man, at the moment I’d say she’s safer here, warped or not, than she may be out there. You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” He stared, unwilling to understand.
“Plague,” she said. “We’re getting a pretty good idea of what’s going on out there.”
“Do you know anything about it? What causes it? Do you know if there’s any here?”
“None here. That I can be almost sure of. Why didn’t you ask us medical people? Didn’t you think we’d be capable of doing anything? Me, for instance. I’ve got degrees in molecu-bio and virology from the University at Semling Prime. I studied immunology on Repentance. I could have been working on this.” She turned an open, curious face toward him. “The word is you’ve been trying to find out in secret.”
“It was secret,” he whispered. “To keep the Moldies from knowing. If they knew…”
She considered this, her face turning slowly white as she realized what he meant. “They’d bring it here? Purposely?”
“If they found out, yes. If they once knew.”
“My God, boy!” She laughed bitterly. “Everybody knows.”