Everyone knew, the doctor said, and it seemed she told only the truth. Everyone knew there was plague. Everyone knew there might be Moldies already on Grass. Everyone knew there was a trail half a mile wide out there in the grasses, ending next to the swamp forest, which all at once seemed a fragile and penetrable curtain rather than the impassable barrier they had always relied upon. Hysteria mounted as the talk gathered both volume and speculative intensity, here and there, about the town.
Among other topics was much discussion of whether Grass’s seeming immunity to plague meant anything. Foremost among those who thought it did was Dr. Bergrem She had seen one or two people arrive on ships with filthy gray lesions. After a week or two on Grass, they had departed cured. Once there had even been a man in a quarantine pod…
Roald Few challenged the doctor to explain herself. “You mean more than that the disease isn’t here, doctor. You mean it can’t come here. Something here prevents it?”
To which she nodded and said she thought so, in her experience, from what she’d seen, turning to Tony and Rillibee for their opinion.
“No, that isn’t it,” Tony told them wearily. “It isn’t that it can’t come here. It isn’t that no one gets it here. The disease started from here. Somehow. The foxen think.”
This was a statement requiring more than a little explanation. Since when had the foxen been talking to people? And where were these foxen? Tony and Rillibee told what they knew to Roald and Mayor Alverd Bee while dozens of other people came and went. They tried to describe foxen, unconvincingly, and were greeted with skepticism, if not outright disbelief.
Ducky Johns and Saint Teresa were there with an outlandish scenario of their own: Diamante bon Damfels, sneaking around naked in the port. Diamante bon Damfels now occupying a room in the hospital next to ones already taken by her sister, Emeraude, who had been beaten, and by Amy and Rowena, who refused to return to Klive. Sylvan, hearing this, went off to see his mother and sisters. Commoners looked after him, pityingly. A bon, here in Commons. Useless as a third leg on a goose.
“How did Diamante get here?” Tony demanded of the assembled group. “We’ve just come through the swamp forest, and if it’s the same everywhere as the parts we saw, there is literally no way through! There are some islands near the far edge, and some near this edge, too, but in the middle it’s deep water and tangles of low branches and vines everywhere you look, like an overgrown maze. If she wasn’t a climber, like Rillibee here, or if the foxen didn’t bring her, then how did she get here?”
“We’ve been asking ourselves that, sweet boy,” said Ducky Johns. “Over and over. Haven’t we, Teresa? And the only answer is there has to be another way in. One we haven’t known about until now.” Ducky’s usual girlish flirtatiousness was held in abeyance by her anxiety.
“One we still don’t know about,” Teresa amended.
“Oh, yes we do, dear,” Ducky contradicted. “We know it’s there. We just don’t know exactly where. Unless these strange foxen creatures did bring her, which they may have done, for all we know!”
Rillibee heard all this through a curtain of exhaustion. He said, “I don’t think the foxen brought her. Brother Mainoa would have known.”
“Do I know this Brother Mainoa you keep speaking of?” asked Alverd Bee.
Rillibee reminded him who Brother Mainoa was.
Sylvan joined them again, his face white and drawn. Dimity was conscious, but did not know him. Emmy was unconscious, though she was getting better. Rowena was sleeping. Amy had talked with him. She had told him his father was dead, and he was wondering why he felt nothing.
Rillibee was telling the mayor about Mainoa’s attempts to translate the Arbai documents.
“And you say they’ve translated something already?” Roald cried. He didn’t sound astonished, merely wild with a kind of quavery excitement. His gray hair tufted around his ears like a spiky aureole; he cracked his knuckles between jabs at the tell-me link, clickety crack. The sound was like someone walking on nutshells. “I want to see that, just as soon as I can. Let me get on to Semling.”
“Are you a linguist?” Sylvan asked him curiously, wondering why there would be any such thing on Grass.
“Oh, no, my boy,” Roald said. “My living comes from the family supply business. At languages, I’m only an amateur.” He said it without even looking at Sylvan, then asked Rillibee, “Who was Mainoa’s contact on Semling?”
Thus dismissed, Sylvan sat down at a table nearby, resting his head on his arms as he considered the continuing bustle around him. Things were busier in Commons than he had assumed they would be. People were more intelligent and far more affluent than he would have thought. They had things even the estancias didn’t have. Foods. Machines. More comfortable living arrangements. It made him feel insecure and foolish. Despite all his fury at Stavenger and the other members of the Obermun class, still he had accepted that the bons were superior to the commoners. Now he wondered if they really were — or if the bons were even equal to the commoners? Why had he thought Marjorie would welcome his attentions? What had he to offer her?
The thought struck him with sick embarrassment. He sought words he had read but seldom if ever used. “Parochial.” “Provincial.” “Narrow.” True words. What was a bon among these people? None of the commoners were deferring to him. None of them were asking for his opinion. Once Rillibee and Tony had told everyone that Sylvan was deaf to the foxen, Commons had disdained him as though he were deaf — and mute — to them as well. He could have accepted their disdain more easily if they had been professionals, like the doctor, but they were only amateurs, like this old man talking translation with Rillibee. Mere hobbyists. People who had studied things that had nothing to do with their daily lives. And every one of them knew more than he did! He wanted desperately to be part of them, part of something…
He heaved himself up and went to find something to drink. Rillibee rose from his chair beside Roald. “You know everything I do, Elder Few. I must get back to the others. I can’t stay here.” He yawned again, thinking briefly of asking Tony to come back with him. No. Tony would want to stay until they knew something more about Stella. As for Sylvan — better that Sylvan stayed here. Marjorie hadn’t wanted him back.
He went out of the place, still yawning, breaking into a staggering jog that carried him down the slope to the place the foxen waited. Something dragged at him. insisting upon his return. Perhaps the trees. Perhaps something more. Some need or purpose awaited him among the trees. If nothing else, then he would carry the news of the bon Damfels girl and of Rigo’s injuries and of all that both those events implied.
In the room he left behind, the doctor and the two madams were trying to figure out why a naked, mindless girl should have been trying to get into a freighter. “Why was she carrying a dried bat? What does that mean?” Dr. Bergrem demanded of the group at large.
“Hippae,” said Sylvan as he wandered by. “Hippae kick dried bats at each other. There are dried bats in Hippae caverns.”
Now they were looking at him. Now, suddenly, he wasn’t mute anymore. He explained, “It’s a gesture of contempt, that’s all. That’s how the Hippae express contempt for one another, part of the challenge. Or at the end of a bout, to reinforce defeat, they kick dead bats at each other. A way of saying, ‘You’re vermin.’ ”
Lees Bergrem nodded. “I’ve heard that. Heard that the Hippae have a lot of symbolic behaviors.…”
Feeling foolishly grateful for their attention, Sylvan told them what little more he had learned about the Hippae when he was a child, wishing Mainoa were there to tell them more.
Midmorning found Mainoa with Marjorie and Father James on the spacious open platform of the Tree City. Brother Mainoa had been studying the material recorded in his tell-me link while Marjorie had explored and Father James had tried to talk to foxen, thanking God that he was present rather than Father Sandoval. Father Sandoval had no patience with the idea that there might be other intelligent races. Father James wondered what the Pope in Exile would think of the whole idea.
Marjorie hadn’t tried to speak to the foxen. From time to time He had reached out and said something to her. She had accepted these bits of information, trying to keep her face from showing what happened to her each time He spoke, a fire along her nerves, an ecstatic surge, taste, smell, something. Now the three humans sat face to face, trying to put bits and pieces of knowledge and hypothesis together.
“The Arbai had machines that transported them,” Marjorie said. She had finally understood that. “That thing on the dais in the center of town? That was really a transport machine. Machines like that moved the Arbai from one place to another.”
Brother Mainoa sighed and rubbed his head. “I think you’re right, Marjorie. Let’s see, what have I picked up in the last few hours? There’s been another message from Semling.” He took out the tell-me and put it at the center of their space, tapping it with one hand.
“On the theory that things written immediately before the tragedy might be of most use to us, Semling put a high priority on translating a handwritten book I found in one of the houses some time ago. They’ve translated about eighty percent of it. It seems to be a diary. It gives an account of the author trying to teach a Hippae to write. The Hippae became frustrated and furious and killed two Arbai who were nearby. When the Hippae calmed down, the author remonstrated with it. He or she explained that killing intelligent beings was wrong, that the dead Arbai were mourned by their friends, and that the Hippae must never do it again.”
Marjorie breathed. “Poor, naive, well-meaning fool.”
“Do you mean that this Arbai person, this diarist, simply told the Hippae not to do it again?” Father James was incredulous. “Did he think the Hippae would care?”
Mainoa nodded sadly, rubbing at his shoulder and arm as though they hurt him.
Marjorie said, “When He… when the foxen think of the Arbai, they always put light around them, as we might picture angels.”
Brother Mainoa wondered how the golden angels high on Sanctity’s towers would look with Arbai fangs and scales. “Not as though they were holy, though, do you think, Marjorie? More as though they were untouchable.”
Marjorie nodded. Yes. The vision had that feeling to it. Untouchable Arbai. Set upon pedestals. Unreachable.
“The Arbai could believe no evil of the Hippae?” Father James could not believe what he was hearing.
Mainoa nodded. “It wasn’t that they couldn’t believe evil of the Hippae. They couldn’t believe in it, period. They seem to have had no concept of evil. There is no word for evil in the material I’ve received from Semling. There are words for mistakes, or things done inadvertently. There are words for accidents and pain and death, but no word for evil. The Arbai word for intelligent creatures has a root curve which means, according to the computers, ‘avoiding error.’ Since the Arbai considered the Hippae to be intelligent — after all, they’d taught them to write — they thought all they had to do was point out the error and the Hippae would avoid it.”
“Of course it wasn’t an error,” Marjorie said. “The Hippae enjoyed the killing.”
Father James demurred. “I have a hard time believing in that kind of mind…”
Brother Mainoa sighed. “She’s right, Father. They’ve translated the word the Hippae trampled into the cavern. It’s an Arbai word, or rather a combination of three or more Arbai words. One of them means death, and one means outsiders or strangers, and one means joy. Semling gives a high probability to translating it as joy-to-kill-strangers.”
“They think they have a right to kill everything but themselves?”
Father James shook his head.
Marjorie laughed bitterly. “Oh, Father, is that so unusual? Look at our own poor homeworld. Didn’t man think he had a right to kill everything but himself? Didn’t he have fun doing it? Where are the great whales? Where are the elephants? Where are the bright birds who once lived in our own swamp-forests?”
Brother Mainoa said, “Well, they couldn’t kill the ones who lived here in the tree city. The Hippae can’t swim, they can’t climb, so they couldn’t kill the Arbai who were here.”
“It must have been too late for the ones who lived here, nonetheless,” Marjorie said, looking at the shadow lovers who had just returned to the bridge and leaned there in the sun, whispering to one another. Shadow lovers, perilously intent upon one another. Not seeing what was to come. “Perhaps they died when winter came. It was too late for all the others, out there on other worlds.”
“The ones here in the city must have been immune to the disease,” Father James said. “They could have gone underground. Why didn’t they? We must be immune, too. All the people on Grass must be immune.”
“Oh, yes,” Marjorie said. “I’m sure we’re immune, so long as we stay on Grass. It stands to reason the Arbai on Grass were immune, also. That’s why the Hippae killed them as they did. But it doesn’t help to know that! Nothing we’ve found out helps! Nothing tells us how it started. Nothing tells us how to cure it once it’s started. I keep thinking of home. I have a sister back home. Rigo has a mother, a brother, we have nieces and nephews. I have friends!”
“Shhh,” he said. “We know one way to cure it, Marjorie. Anyone who comes here—”
“We don’t even know that,” she contradicted. “Even if we could bring every living human from every populated world to Grass, we don’t know whether they’d catch it again after they left. We don’t know whether we will get it if we leave. We don’t know how it is spread. The foxen know something that will help us, but they won’t tell us! It’s almost as though they’re waiting for something. But what?” She looked up to confront a shadowed mass across the railing. There were eyes, for a moment. Something brushing through her mind. She shook her head angrily. “I have this dreadful feeling of hopelessness. As though it’s already too late for all this. As though things have gone past the point of no return.” Something had changed irrevocably. Some point had been passed. She was sure of that.
A foxen touched her mind with incorporeal hands. She heard a comforting voice saying, “Hush, dear, hush.” She leaned her forehead on a vast shoulder which was nowhere near. The foxen danced in her mind, and she with them.
Abruptly the shoulder was withdrawn. She looked up. The foxen had gone.
In a moment she understood why. She heard human voices ringing over the susurrus of Arbai speech. It was too soon for Tony to be back. They were not voices she recognized.
“Listen,” she said, turning to locate the sound. Not far off in the trees someone saw her and young voices yodeled a paean of anticipation.
There was something threatening in that shout. Marjorie and the two old men retreated across the plaza, watching apprehensively as the three forms flung themselves through the trees, dropping upon the platform like apes.
“Brother Flumzee,” said Brother Mainoa in a calm, weary voice. “I hadn’t expected to see you here.”
Brother Flumzee posed on the railing, one knee up, his arms folded loosely about it. “Call me Highbones,” he chirruped. “Meet my friends. Steeplehands. Long Bridge. There were two more of us, but Little Bridge and Ropeknots got eaten by Hippae out there.” He waved, indicating somewhere else. “Along with Elder Brother Fuasoi and his little friend Shoethai. Not that we’re sure of that. We heard a lot of howling, but maybe they escaped.”
“Why were you out there at all?” Brother Mainoa asked.
“They sent me for you, Brother.” Highbones smiled. “They said you are no longer one of us. You are to be dispensed with.”
“But you said Fuasoi was with you! And Shoethai!”
“We didn’t expect them to come along. They were kind of, what would you say, last-minute additions. They were going to drop us off and then go somewhere else.”
A shadow figure moved among the three climbers. Highbones beat at it, as though it were a swarm of gnats. “What the hell are these things?”
“Only pictures,” said Marjorie. “Pictures of the people who once lived here.”
Highbones turned his head, surveying the city. “Nice,” he said. “A climber’s place. Is there enough to eat so somebody could live here?”
“In summer,” said Brother Mainoa. “Probably. Fruit. And nuts. There may be edible animals, too.”
“Not in winter, hmm? Well, in winter we could go into town, couldn’t we. Probably want to go there anyhow. Pick up some women. Bring them back here.”
“You mean stay here?” Long Bridge asked. “After we do the thing, you mean stay here?”
“Why not?” Highbones asked. “You think of any better place for climbers than this?”
“I don’t like these things.” Long Bridge batted at the shadow forms moving before him. “I don’t like these monsters all over me.”
The two men had been listening and watching, noticing the tense muscles in the climbers’ arms and legs, the strained lines of their necks and jaws. Brother Mainoa thought that all this talk meant nothing. The talk was only to make a space of time, to allow them to size up their opposition. And what was their opposition? An old man, a soft man, and a woman.
Brother Mainoa reached out toward the foxen. Nothing. No pictures. No words.
“Are you hungry?” Marjorie asked. “We have some food we can share with you.”
“Oh, yes, we’re hungry,” leered Highbones. “Not for food, though. We brought enough food of our own.” He ran his tongue along his lips, staring at her, letting his eyes dwell lasciviously on her. She shivered. “You look young and healthy,” Highbones went on. “There was talk back there at the Friary about plague. You don’t have plague, do you, pretty thing?”
“I could have,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “I suppose. There was plague on Terra when we left.”
The two followers turned to Highbones, questions on their lips, but he silenced them with a gesture. “It’s naughty to tell lies. If you got it there, you’d be dead by now. That’s what everybody says.”
“Sometimes it takes years to manifest itself,” said Father James, “but the person still has it.”
“What’re you?” Highbones said with a laugh. “Dressed up like that? Some kind of servant? Mind your manners, servant. Nobody was talking to you.”
“If Fuasoi sent you after me,” Mainoa said thoughtfully, “he could have had only one reason. If he didn’t want knowledge about the cause of the plague disseminated, then he must have been a Moldy.”
Marjorie caught her breath. A Moldy here? Already? Had they been too late!
Highbones ignored the interchange. He put both feet onto the deck, stood up easily, stretching. “You boys ready?” he asked. “Each of you take one of the geezers. I get the woman first—”
“Highbones.” The voice called from above them, from the sun spangle among the high branches. “Highbones the coward. High-bones the liar. Will he climb?”
Marjorie felt the breath go out of her. Rillibee. But only Rillibee. No other voices.
Highbones had turned, neck craning as he searched the high dazzle. “Lourai!” he shouted. “Where are you, you peeper!”
“Here,” the voice called from above. “Where Highbones can’t climb. Where Highbones can’t reach.”
“Keep them quiet,” Highbones snarled, gesturing toward Marjorie and the old men. “Until I get back.” He leapt upon the railing and outward, into the trees “Wait for me, peeper. I’m coming to get you.”
Marjorie’s pack was just inside the door There was a knife in it. She turned, moving toward it. Steeplehands dashed forward, intercepted her, and knocked her away from the door. She stumbled, reaching out a hand to catch herself. The low railing caught her at the back of her knees, and she went over, falling, seeing the sun-spangled foliage spin around her and hearing her own voice soaring until she suddenly didn’t hear anything anymore.
“A very small being to see you, O God,” the angelic servitor announced. The servitor looked very much like Father Sandoval except that he had wings. Marjorie paused in the vaulted and gauzy doorway to inspect them. They were not swans wings, which she had expected, but translucent insect wings, like those of a giant dragonfly. Anatomically, they made more sense than bird wings, since they were in addition to, rather than in place of, the upper appendages. The angel glared at her.
“Yes, yes,” said God patiently. “Come in.”
God stood before a tall window draped in cloud. Outside were the gardens of Opal Hill, stretching away in vista upon vista. After a moment, Marjorie realized the garden was made of stars.
“How do you do,” Marjorie heard herself saying. He looked like someone she knew. Smaller than she had thought He would be. Very bony about the face, with huge eyes, though the person she knew, whoever he was, had never worn his hair as long as God wore His, a dark curling about his shoulders, a white mane at his temples. “Welcome, very small being,” He said, smiling. Light filled the universe. “Was something bothering you?”
“I can learn to accept that you do not know my name,” Marjorie said. “Though it came as a shock—”
“Wait,” He said. “I know the true names of everything. What do you mean I do not know your name?”
“I mean you don’t know I’m Mariorie.”
“Marjorie,” he mouthed, as though He found the sound unfamiliar. “True, I did not know you were called Marjorie.”
“It seems very harsh. Very cruel. To be a virus.”
“I would not have said virus, but you believe it’s cruel to be something that will spread?” he asked. “Even if that’s what’s needed?” She nodded, ashamed.
“You must be having a difficult time. Very small beings do have difficult times. That’s what I create them for. If there weren’t difficult concepts to pull out of nothing and build into creation. One wouldn’t need very small beings. The large parts almost make themselves.” He gestured at the universe spinning beneath them. “Elementary chemistry, a little exceptional mathematics, and there it is, working away like a furnace. It’s the details that take time to grow, to evolve, to become. The oil in the bearings, so to speak. What are you working on now?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
The angel in the doorway spoke impatiently. “The very small being is working on mercy, Sir. And justice. And guilt.”
“Mercy? And justice? Interesting concepts. Almost worthy of direct creation rather than letting them evolve. I wouldn’t waste my time on guilt. Still, I have confidence you’ll all work your way through the permutations to the proper ends…”
“I don’t have much confidence,” she said. “A lot of what I’ve been taught isn’t making sense.”
“That’s the nature of teaching. Something happens, and intelligence first apprehends it, then makes up a rule about it, then tries to pass the rule along. Very small beings invariably operate in that way. However, by the time the information is passed on, new things are happening that the old rule doesn’t fit. Eventually intelligence learns to stop making rules and understand the flow.”
“I was told that the eternal verities—”
“Like what?” God laughed. “If there were any, I should know! I have created a universe based on change, and a very small being speaks to me of eternal verities!”
“I didn’t mean to offend. It’s just, if there are no verities, how do we know what’s true?”
“You don’t offend. I don’t create things that are offensive to me. As for truth, what’s true is what’s written. Every created thing bears my intention written in it. Rocks. Stars. Very small beings. Everything only runs one way naturally, the way I meant it to. The trouble is that very small beings write books that contradict the rocks, then say I wrote the books and the rocks are lies.” He laughed. The universe trembled. “They invent rules of behavior that even angels can’t obey, and they say I thought them up. Pride of authorship.” He chuckled.
“They say, ‘Oh, these words are eternal, so God must have written them.’ ”
“Your Awesomeness,” said the angel from the door. “Your meeting to review the Arbai failure—”
“Ah, tsk,” said God. “Now there’s an example. I failed completely with that one. Tried something new, but they were too good to do any good, you know?”
“I’ve been told that’s what you want,” she said. “For us to be good!”
He patted her on the shoulder. “Too good is good for nothing. A chisel has to have an edge, my dear. Otherwise it simply stirs things around without ever cutting through to causes and realities…”
“Your Awesomeness,” the angel said again, testily. “Very small being, you’re keeping God from his work.”
“Remember,” said God, “While it is true I did not know that you believe your name is Marjorie, I do know who you really are…”
“Marjorie,” the angel said.
“My God, Marjorie!” The hand on her shoulder shook her even more impatiently.
“Father James,” she moaned, unsurprised. She was lying on her back, staring up at the sun-smeared foliage above her.
“I thought he’d killed you.”
“He talked to me. He told me—”
“I thought that damned climber had killed you!”
She sat up. Her head hurt. She felt a sense of wrongness, of removal.
“You must have hit your head.”
She remembered the confrontation on the platform, the railing. “Did that young man hit me?”
“He knocked you over the railing. You fell.”
“Where is he? Where are they?”
“One of the foxen has them backed into an Arbai house. He came down out of the trees just as you fell, snarling like a thunderstorm. He’s right out there in the open, but I still can’t see him. Two of the others came with him. They carried me down to you.”
She struggled to her feet, using a bulky root to pull herself up, staring in disbelief at the platform high above. “Falling all that way should have killed me.”
“You dropped onto a springy branch. Then you slipped off that onto another one, lower down, and then finally fell into that pile of grass and brush,” he said, pointing it out. “Like failing on a great mattress. Your guardian angel was watching out for you.”
“How do we get back up?” she asked, not at all believing in guardian angels.
He pointed again. Two of the foxen waited beside the tree. Vague forms without edges; corporate intentions and foci, patterns in her mind.
“Did they help with the men?” she asked.
He shook his head. “The one up there didn’t need help.”
She stood looking at the two for a long moment, thinking it out. Dizziness overwhelmed her and she sagged against the tree, muttering “Rocks. Stars. Very small beings.”
“You don’t sound like yourself,” he said.
“I’m not,” she replied, managing to smile, her recent vision replaying itself in her mind. “Have you ever seen God, Father?”
The question distressed him. Her eyes were wide, staring, glassy. “I think you had a bit of concussion. You may even have a fracture, Marjorie…”
“Maybe I’ve had a religious experience. An insight. People have them.”
He could not argue with that, though he knew Father Sandoval would have. In Father Sandoval’s opinion, religious experiences were something Old Catholics should eschew in the interest of balance and moderation. Once matters of faith had been firmly decided, religious experiences just confused people. Father James was less certain. He let Marjorie lean upon him as they staggered a few steps to the waiting foxen. One of them picked her up and carried her upward along slanting branches and scarcely visible vines to the plaza high above. She could feel foxen all about her, a weight of them in her mind, a thunder of thought, a tidal susurrus, like vast dragon-breathing in darkness.
“Good Lord,” she whispered. “Where did they all come from?”
“They were already here,” said Mainoa. “Watching us from the trees. They just came closer. Marjorie, are you all right?”
“She’s not all right,” fretted Father James. “She’s talking strangely. Her eyes don’t look right…”
“I’m fine,” she said absently, trying to stare at the assembled multitude, knowing it for multitude, but unable to distinguish the parts. “Why are they here?”
Brother Mainoa looked up at her, frowning in concentration. “They’re trying to find something out. I don’t know what it is.”
A foxen bulk completely blocked the door. Marjorie received a clear picture of two human figures being dropped from a high branch. She drew a line across it. In the crowd behind her there was approval and disapproval. The picture changed to one of the two men being released. She drew a line across that as well. More approval and disapproval. Argument, obviously. The foxen did not agree on what ought to be done.
Her legs wobbled under her and she staggered. “Rillibee hasn’t come back?
Brother Mainoa shook his head. “No. His voice went off that way.” He pointed.
She approached the door of the house. The two climbers, their hands and feet tightly tied, glared back at her.
“Who sent you to kill Brother Mainoa?” she asked.
The two looked at one another. One shook his head. The other, Steeplehands, said sulkily, “Shoethai, actually. But the orders came from Elder Brother Fuasoi. He said Mainoa was a backslider.”
She rubbed at the pain in her forehead. “Why did he think so?”
“Shoethai said it was some book of Mainoa’s. Some book from the Arbai city.”
“My journal,” said Brother Mainoa. “I’m afraid I was careless. I must have left the new one where it could be found. We were in such a hurry to leave—”
“What were you writing about, Brother?” Marjorie asked.
“About the plague, and the Arbai, and the whole riddle.”
“Ah,” she said, turning back to the prisoners. “You, ah… Long Bridge. You intended to rape me, you and the others, didn’t you?”
Long Bridge stared at his feet, one nostril lifting. “We was going to have a try, sure. Why not? We didn’t see those whatever-they-are hanging around, so why not.”
“Did you think that was a…” she struggled to find a word he might understand, “a smart thing to do? A good thing to do? What?”
“What are you?” he sneered. “You work for Doctrine? It was something we wanted to do, that’s all.”
“Did you care how I felt about it?”
“Women like it, no matter what they say. Everybody knows that.”
She shuddered. “Were you going to kill me, then?”
“If we’d of felt like it, sure.”
“Do women like that, too?”
He looked momentarily confused, licking his lips.
“Wouldn’t it have bothered you? Killing me?”
Long Bridge did not answer. Steeplehands did. “We’d of been sorry, later, if we’d wanted you around and you was already dead,” he mumbled.
“I see,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have been sorry for me?”
“Why?” Long Bridge asked angrily. “Why should we be sorry for you? Where was you when we got packed up and sent out here? Where was you when they took us away from our folks?”
Marjorie received a new picture of the two prisoners being dropped from a high tree. She drew a line across it in her mind, though more slowly than before “What do all these foxen want, Brother Mainoa? What are they here for?”
“I think they want to see what you’ll do,” he answered.
Father James asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to figure something out,” she said. “I’m trying to decide whether we can afford to be merciful. The Arbai were merciful, but when confronted with evil, mercy becomes an evil. It got the Arbai killed, and it could get us killed because these two might simply come back and murder us. The question is, are they evil? If they are, it doesn’t matter how they got that way. Evil can be made, but not unmade…”
“Forgiveness is a virtue,” Father James said, realizing as he did so that the suggestion came from habit.
“No. That’s too easy. If we forgive these two, we may actually cause another killing.” She put her head between her hands, thinking. “Do we have the right to be fools if we want to? No. Not at someone else’s expense.”
He stared at her with a good deal of interest. “You’ve never spoken this way, Marjorie. Mercy is a tenet of our faith.”
“Only because you don’t think this life really matters. Father. God says it does.”
“Marjorie!” he cried. “That’s not true.”
“All right,” she cried in return. The sullen ache in her head was now a brooding violence inside her skull. “I don’t mean you, Father James, I mean you, what you priests usually say. I say this life matters, and that means mercy is doing the best for them I can without allowing anyone else to suffer, including me! I won’t make the Arbai mistake.”
“Marjorie,” he cried again, dismayed. He had had his own doubts and troubles, but to hear her talking wildly like this disturbed him deeply. She was almost violent, something she had never been, full of words that spilled from her mouth like grain from a ripped sack.
She turned to the imprisoned men. “I’m sorry. The only way I can see that we can be safe from you seems to be to allow the foxen to kill you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Lady,” cried Steeplehands in dismay. “Take us into Commons and turn us over to the order officers there. We can’t do nothing tied up like this.”
She held her head, knowing it was a bad idea, but not knowing why. It was a very bad idea. She was sure of it. Inside her mind was an enormous question, waiting to be answered.
Father James was shaking his head anxiously, pleading with her. “Mainoa did tie them up very tightly. And we have to go to Commons eventually anyhow. We can turn them over to the order officers. They’re probably no worse than half the port-rabble the order officers keep in check.”
Marjorie nodded, though she wasn’t convinced. This wasn’t a good idea at all. This wasn’t what a very small being should do. A very small being should scream danger and drop them from the highest tree…,.
The foxen nearest them twitched, brooding shadow, hatching visions. Light and shadow spun across their minds, stripes of evanescent color, jittering.
“He’s dissatisfied,” Brother Mainoa offered.
“So am I,” Marjorie said, her eyes wild with pain. “Listen to them. All of them. And only a few of them came forward to help us. Maybe they’re like I’ve always been. Full of intellectual guilts and doubts, letting things happen, paying no attention to how I feel.”
Her head was in agony. She received a picture of foxen traveling through the trees, going away. She drew a shiny circle around it in her mind. Yes. Why not? They might as well go away. “They’re going away. We must wait here for Rillibee,” she announced.
A cannon went off in her brain. She crawled to her bedding and lay down to let the quiet come up around her. Gradually the pain diminished. Outside in the trees, the foxen moved away. Pictures fled through her mind: their thoughts, their conversation. She let the symbols and sounds wash through her like waves, lulling her into a drowsy half-consciousness.
The sun had moved to midafternoon before they heard a “Halloo,” off in the shadows, low among the trees.
A foxen breathed among the trees, close, threatening.
“Halloo,” came the voice again, closer. The threat in the trees diminished.
Marjorie struggled to her feet and went out onto the platform. “Rillibee,” she called.
He came into sight below them, moving wearily among the vines. “You look tired out!” His bony face was pale. His eyes were circled with shadow, making them look enormous, like a night-dwelling creature.
“Long climb,” he mumbled. “Long, long climb.” He pulled himself upward, slowly upward, sliding over the railing at last in an exhausted heap. “Oh, I’m thankful for all that climbing at the Friary. All those spidery ladders, all those bridges…”
“What happened?” Brother Mainoa asked.
“Highbones tried to catch me. He couldn’t. I led him off into the forest, a long, long way. Then I hid from him, let him pass me, and came back. I’d have killed him if I could have figured out an easy way to do it. Bastard.”
Marjorie touched his cheek. “We can go now. Back to Commons.”
Rillibee shook his head. “No. Not yet. We need… we need the foxen. I’m sorry to have wasted so much time on Highbones, but I didn’t know what else to do except get them away from here. I thought they’d all come. Highbones usually likes to outnumber his opponents. But you managed to deal with the others.”
“One of the foxen did.”
“Ah.” He sagged wearily. “I have to tell you things, Marjorie. Opal Hill has been burned by the Hippae. There’s a Hippae-hound trail half a mile wide leading toward the swamp-forest. The ambassador, your husband, is at the hospital. He’s going to be all right, but it was a close thing. Stavenger bon Damfels is dead, him and a dozen or so bons. They’ve found the bon Damfels girl in there, at the port. Dimity. The one who vanished this spring, just like they found Janetta…
“Both of them were taken by Hippae,” Marjorie said in wonderment. “And both of them ended up at the port!”
Rillibee nodded. “Naked. Mindless. Everyone at Commons is frantic over it. Janetta and Dimity got in there somehow. They couldn’t come through the trees unless the foxen carried them. If the foxen didn’t carry them, then there’s some other way in. Has to be. And if girls can get in, maybe Hippae can get in. We have to find how they got there—”
A troubled sound from the trees.
“Now they’re upset,” said Brother Mainoa, rubbing his head. “They’re angry. The foxen have never carried anyone anywhere until they carried you and your companions. Rillibee. The foxen thought the town was safe. They had encouraged men to build the port there, where the Hippae couldn’t get at it.”
“Encouraged?” asked Marjorie.
“You know.” Brother Mainoa sighed. “Encouraged. Influenced. As they do.”
She felt the foxen retreating. “Where are they going?”
“They’ve gone to look for the way Rillibee says must be there. As they went they were thinking of migerers.”
“Diggers? They suspect a tunnel, then.”
“Something like that.” Mainoa gave a weary shudder, putting his head into his hands. “Marjorie, at this moment, I’m a tired old man. I’m incapable of helping to look for tunnels.”
Rillibee put his arms around the old man. “I’m a very tired young one, Brother. If the foxen are searching, let’s let them do it. I need a little rest. Unless you think they need our help…”
“They’ll do it,” Brother Mainoa said. Whether they would or not, he could do no more. Marjorie crept back to her bed, feeling the pain ebb once more as she fell into sleep, empty this time of all foxen dreams. Rillibee lay sprawled like a child. Mainoa huddled into himself, snoring slightly. Father James sat by the railing, wondering what had really happened to Marjorie, what she had really seen or dreamed. Long Bridge and Steeplehands sulked and muttered to one another, chafing at their bonds.
Even before First returned late in the afternoon, they knew the way into Commons had been found. When He was yet some distance off, horses and riders swam into their minds, and they knew what He intended. Mounted once more, they were led in a circuitous route as they crossed quiet pools, forded dark streams, and rode down long, splashing alleys. Without a guide, it would have been impossible to find their way. Some pools were shallow water over sucking sands. Some were full of deadly sharp root knees. They knew, because the foxen showed them.
They came out onto the grass near the pool where they had found Stella. Near where she had lain, great sheaves of grass had been torn up, turf had been ripped away to expose a gaping tunnel mouth, wide and dug deep and mortared up as the Hippae caverns were. The grass had hidden it. When they had found Stella, all of them had been within yards of it without seeing it.
“Migerer work,” said Brother Mainoa.
Somewhere a foxen cried out, a great, world-freezing cry.
“Devil’s work,” Mainoa amended. “So say our guides. This tunnel goes deep beneath the swamp. One of the foxen has been through it, all the way to the port.”
It was not necessary to ask who had used it before The tripartite hoofprints of the Hippae were everywhere inside it, everywhere except where the trickle of water had washed them away. “In,” they were urged “Through! Quickly!”
Marjorie, leading Don Quixote, went into the opening and was immediately soaked by the drip of murky water seeping through the soft stone above. The others trailed behind her, swearing softly at the dank air, the stench of droppings, the sog of the surface beneath their feet. The prisoners cursed and dragged at the ropes that held them. The tunnel top was not high enough for any of them to ride sitting up. It was barely high enough for Irish Lass to walk with her head down, her ears brushing the end of muddy roots which straggled through from above. The lights they carried lit their way, though inadequately. Horse and human feet splashed and sucked at the half-muck, half-rock beneath them.
“Foxen coming behind us,” called Rillibee from his position at the rear. “I think. I feel them there. This tunnel isn’t even tall enough for Hippae.”
“High enough if they stalk,” said Brother Mainoa. “Like great lions. One at a time. Slowly. But it was not made for them.”
Within yards of the entrance the tunnel began to slope steeply down. The trickle of water, which had been running outward, reversed itself and began to flow in the direction of their travel The horses sat back upon their haunches as the steep slope continued, whickering in protest. Something told them to go on, trilling at them, a summoning noise. The floor leveled and the water became deeper. They went on into darkness, water falling, water splashing, the darkness above them seeming to enfold them.
Marjorie flicked her light along the tunnel walls, finding numerous small holes where the walls met the water. “What are those?” she asked.
“I should think drain holes,” replied Father James. “All this water has to go somewhere.”
“Where? It can’t run uphill!”
“We’re actually in a hill,” Brother Mainoa said, coughing. “All of Commons, including the swamp forest, lies in a rocky basin higher than the surrounding prairie. It’s like a bowl on a table. If one drills holes in the bowl, the water will drain away.”
“Do you think migerers dug all this?” she asked.
grass • 343
He coughed again, wrackingly. “I think so, yes. I think the Hippae told them to do it”
“Through rock?”
“Partly through rock. This looks like a fairly soft stratum. They can dig in soft stone. I’ve seen them.”
“How much farther?” she wondered aloud.
After a time Brother Mainoa responded. “There’s something just ahead.”
What was just ahead was a side chamber of the tunnel, one made tight and dry and furnished with a pile of grasses. Marjorie used her light to examine the chamber. The floor was littered with scraps of underclothing, with two left boots, with a much-tattered Hunt jacket. “She was here,” Marjorie said, “Janetta.”
“And someone else.” Brother Mainoa sighed, pointing at the boots. “Two left feet worth of someone. Janetta and Dimity bon Damfels, perhaps.”
The tunnel was full of sound, trills and snarls and demands.
“He wants us to go on,” said Brother Mainoa. “There is danger behind us.”
They resumed to their splashing journey, fear lending speed to all of them. Marjorie looked at Don Quixote and wondered if he might not understand the foxen far better than she herself did. He moved alertly, as though summoned. Al! the horses did.
Far back in the tunnel, something screamed. The echoes went by them — ee-yah, ee~yah, ee-yah — ricocheting along the walls, fading into quiet.
“Hurry,” something said in their minds. The Terran word pulsated at them, black letters on orange, large, plain capital letters, underlined, with an exclamation point. “HURRY!”
“What?” Marjorie whoofed. “What was that?”
“He does that sometimes,” Mainoa breathed. “He’s not much interested in written words, but sometimes he picks one up from me and broadcasts it.”
Another picture, this one of all of them mounted and running. It had scarcely faded before they were all on horseback, lying flat while the horses trotted rapidly through the water, blindly moving into darkness as though moving in accordance with some guidance system known only to themselves. The prisoners, hastily thrown across Irish Lass, snarled and complained.
“Shut up, or we’ll leave you for the Hippae,” Rillibee commanded. The climbers fell silent.
Then there was rosy light, slightly above them and far ahead. The way sloped upward. The horses dug in with their rear legs, pushing. A foxen was silhouetted against the light, then gone. Then they too were out in the world once more. The tunnel emerged on a tiny island. Pools of water surrounded them. Ahead, the trees stopped and the land sloped up toward a red-flushed sunset. Illusory shapes prowled out of the tunnel behind them and took to the trees. “Go,” the word said, red on white, imperative. “Go!” They went. The horses walked-swam to the edge of the trees and lunged up onto the long slope. The riders stared back, expecting horror to erupt behind them. Nothing. No sound. Perhaps the foxen had bought them time.
“I’ll take these two to the order station,” said Rillibee, tugging on the rope that bound the captives. He pointed up the hill. “That’s the hospital. Where Stella and your husband are, next to the Port Hotel.” Marjorie urged Don Quixote up the slope, covering half of it before she realized that she was actually going to a place where Rigo was. Rigo. She said the word to herself. Nothing resonated. He was someone she knew, that was all. Normally the thought of him brought feelings: guilt and anxiety and frustration. Now she felt only curiosity, perhaps a slight sorrow, wondering how it would feel to see him after all that had happened.
The Port Hotel was packed with people, anonymous groups going here and there, anonymous faces turning to stare curiously at Marjorie and the others. Someone shouted. Someone else pointed. Then Sebastian Mechanic separated himself from the mass and came running toward them.
“Lady Marjorie,” he cried. “Your son’s here, and your daughter and husband.”
She dismounted stiffly, wiping at her muddy face. “Rillibee told me,” she said. “I need to see them. I need somewhere to wash.” Then Persun Pollut was beside her, leading her in one direction while Sebastian and Asmir led the horses in another.
“Lady Westriding, I’m glad you’re here.” His heart lay in his eyes, but she did not see it there. “They’ll take the horses to the barn. How can i help you?”
“Do you known where Rigo is?”
“In there.” He pointed through a door to a crowd of people, seemingly all talking at once. “The doctor let him get up a few hours ago.
They’re talking about the plague and whether the Hippae are going to get in and eat us all!”
“The plague!” She could see Rigo’s lean form at the center of the mob. He sat in a chair, pale and haggard, but he seemed to be functioning. Still, to be talking about the plague!
“Everyone knows, ma’am. Your husband is there, trying to bring some order out of it all…”
“I’ll join them,” Brother Mainoa said from behind them. “I have to tell them about that tunnel… something has to be done about it.”
“And Stella?” Marjorie asked Persun.
“Through there,” Persun pointed toward a hallway.
“I’ll go with you,” said Rillibee, as Brother Mainoa, leaning heavily on Father James’s arm, went in to join the crowd.
Persun guided Marjorie and Rillibee along the building, into it through a small side door and down a corridor to a corner room which was almost filled by a humming box, a Heal-all.
“In there,” Persun said.
She peered down through the transparent lid to see Stella lying below, slender wires and tubes connecting her to the box.
“Are you her mother?” The doctor had come in behind them.
Marjorie turned. “Yes. Is she? I mean, what do you…”
The doctor gestured toward a chair. “I’m Doctor Lees Bergrem. I’m not entirely sure yet what the prognosis is. She’s been here only a little more than a day. There was no… well, no lasting physical damage.”
“They had done something to her… to her body?”
“Something. Something in the pleasure centers of the brain and nervous system, in the sexual connections to it. I’m not yet sure exactly what was done. Something perverse. Sexual pleasure seems to result from obeying commands. I think I can fix that part.”
Marjorie didn’t say anything. She waited.
“She may not remember everything. She may not be just the way she was. She may be more as she was as a child…” The doctor shook her head. “You know about Janetta bon Maukerden? Had you heard that another one has been found? Diamante bon Damfels. It’s as though they were wiped clean, except for that one circuit.” She shook her head again. “Your daughter is more fortunate. She hadn’t been disconnected yet. Even if she loses something, she’ll have time to rebuild, relearn.”
Marjorie didn’t reply. What was there to say? She felt Rillibee’s hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be all right.” he said. “I have a feeling.”
She wondered if she should cry. What she felt was anger. Anger at Rigo. Anger even at Stella herself. Rigo and Stella had done this with their foolishness. And the bons had done this. Forget the Hippae, malevolent though they were. It was human foolishness that had laid Stella in that box.
Mercy, a voice in her mind said softly. Justice. I wouldn’t waste my time on guilt.
The doctor interrupted her thoughts. “You don’t look at all well yourself. There’s a knot on your head as big as an egg. Look here.” And she began shining lights in Marjorie’s eyes and hooking her up to machines. “Concussion,” she said. “Let’s set you right while you’re here, before you try to do something about this mess and collapse. I’ll send someone in to clean you up, as well. Do you have a change of clothes?”
Attendants came and went. There were basins of water and soft towels. Someone loaned her a shirt. Then Marjorie sat beside Stella’s box, hooked-through tubes and wires to a box of her own. Gradually the vision she had had in the swamp-forest began to fade. She remembered it, but it lacked the clarity of immediate seeing. The words faded. What God had said to her faded. The doctor came back and sat beside her, talking quietly of her medical education on Semling, of her further education on Repentance, of the young people from Commons who had been recently trained as scientists and were working now on a puzzle Lees Bergrem herself was interested in. “I know,” said Marjorie. “I ordered your books.” The doctor flushed. “They really weren’t written for the layman.”
“I could tell. But I understood parts of some of them, anyhow.”
The doctor asked about the swamp-forest, the foxen, and Marjorie answered, omitting her vision but telling about the assailants, telling more than she knew…
“Oh, I would have forgiven them before,” she admitted. “Oh, yes. I’d have let them go. I’d have been afraid not to. For fear society or God would have judged me harshly. I’d have said pain in this life isn’t that important. A few more murders. A few more rapes. In heaven they won’t matter. That’s what we’ve always said, isn’t it, doctor. But God didn’t say anything about that. He just said we should get on with our work…”
The doctor gave her a strange look and peered into her eyes. Marjorie nodded. “They’re always telling us what God has said in books. All my life I’ve had God’s word in my pocket, and here He wrote it all somewhere else…”
“Shhh,” said Dr. Bergrem, patting her on the arm. Marjorie relaxed and let it go. After a time the doctor went away, and there was nothing to listen to but her own breathing and the machines’ humming. She thought of Dr. Bergrem’s book. She thought about intelligence. She thought about Stella. Faintly she remembered the face of God, and almost as though she had read it in a fairy tale long ago, how Father Sandoval looked with dragonfly wings.
In the crowded room where Rigo sat, Brother Mainoa was being wearily firm, drawing on the last of his strength to insist upon action. “The tunnel has to be closed,” he said. “At once. It’s available as a way for the Hippae to invade Commons. We heard them behind us when we came in, no great numbers because the tunnel is too small for them to come through except one at a time, but still a few of them are enough to do great damage.”
“Some of them came in behind you,” said Alverd Bee, the mayor. “The minute you arrived and told us there was a way through, I sent two men to keep watch, and they report a handful of the beasts at the tunnel entrance.”
“A dozen now could be a hundred by nightfall,” Rigo said. “Brother Mainoa is right. That tunnel has to be destroyed.”
“I wish I had some idea how to go about that,” the mayor said, turning to his father-in-law. “Roald? Do you have any ideas?”
Roald fidgeted. “Alive, what the hell can you try? Blow it up with something. Flood it somehow. Get some kind of gate across it.” He rubbed his head. “Hime Pollut is good at this kind of thing. Ask him.”
Alverd went to find Hime Pollut. In a few moments he returned “Hime thinks we ought to blow it up. He just doesn’t know what we’ve got that’ll do the job.”
Rigo said, “Don’t you have construction explosives, things you use to loosen up the rock when you have to expand the winter quarters? Or in mines? You have mines. Use that!”
“We’ve thought of that, Ambassador, but there are Hippae massed at this end of the tunnel. There’s no way we can get in there close to blow it up without getting eaten first.” Alverd chewed his lips, thinking.
“The other end—”
“The same, Ambassador. Hippae. at both ends. As soon as I heard about the ones at this end, I sent an aircar to see what was happening at the other end. The driver counted about a hundred of the beasts out in the grasses, with about a score or so guarding the tunnel entrance. Assuming they stay that way, still we’ve no way to get to the tunnel.”
grass — 348
“Drop something from above?”
“What? We have a few explosives but no bombs. No — what do you call them — detonators. There are people here who could build bombs, if we had the materials, or make the materials, possibly, if we had the time. You and your friend here say there may not be time. If we could get into the swamp forest far enough, if we could locate the tunnel from above, and if we had days or weeks to work, we could drill into it and flood it. We don’t have days or weeks. We have hours. Maybe. They’ve laid their plans. Your wife found their declaration of war trampled into that cavern. We’ve seen it. Brother Mainoa here has told us what it means. That word says they plan to come in here and slaughter us all, just as the Arbai were slaughtered. Fun and games for the Hippae, they say.”
“Where does the tunnel come to the surface?” Rigo asked.
Brother Mainoa said, “On a little island among the trees at the bottom of this slope. The forest is narrowest here, on the east side of the port. Two or three Terran miles through, perhaps. Elsewhere it’s wider, but on this side the land slopes up on either side of the swamp and narrows it to a neck. There’s where the damned migerers dug. That’s where they must have been digging for years. The tunnel has to go deep enough to have a good rock layer above or it’d be full of water. Who knows how long it’s taken them!”
“Can you reach the entrance to the tunnel? Can you physically get to it?” Rigo asked Alverd Bee.
“We could if the Hippae weren’t there, yes. But not with them there. Not with them rampaging around, coming after us,” Alverd ran his fingers through his hair, pulled his lips back to reveal his teeth, furrowed his brow. “We don’t have any armor, any kind of combat vehicle. The little runners we use around town, they’re like pea pods. We could use aircars to drive them back inside the tunnel, just inside, but then they’d come out again when any one of us tried to lay explosives.”
“If we enticed them away, you could go in close and blow up the entrance, block it.”
“Entice them away how?” Alverd turned to regard Rigo with an expression of half hope, half suspicion.
“I don’t know yet. Could you do it?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Then get ready to do it.”
“God, it seems pretty hopeless.” Alverd shook his head.
Rigo glared up at him. “Those of us here on Grass may end up being the last of humanity, Mayor Bee. Assume that we are. How would you prefer to die? Waiting or fighting?”
Alverd showed his teeth again and went away. Rigo turned to Roald Few. “If we entice the creatures out, some of them may go around us. Can you get everyone down into the winter quarters and barricade the entrances? Can you arm people? If you have nothing else, arm them with laser knives, the kind Persun gave me.”
“People can be armed, yes. But I think we have a line of defense to use before we’re forced into winter quarters, Ambassador. We have the barrier at Gom. Let’s put weapons there, first. Weapons and some courageous people.”
“That could work. Get everyone behind that line. Evacuate the Commercial District and Portside. Get everyone into the winter quarters except those who are going to fight. Be sure the ships in port are shut up tight. If we get out of this, we may need them later. Where’s your power station?”
“Below the town, in winter quarters. They’ll have to get us first before they can get the power station,”
And likely to do so, Rigo thought. Likely to do so. After a few moments of silence passed, Roald left him to his thoughts, which were all of death and destruction. It was easy to speak of enticement. Less easy to think of a way to do it. He went to the window and leaned in it, not seeing the bustle and confusion outside, not seeing anything but his own bloody images. “Ambassador?”
“Yes, Sebastian.”
“There’s a Green Brother here to see you. The high mucky-muck. Head of that whole bunch.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jhamlees Zoe. Says he has to talk with you.”
“I can spare him about three minutes.”
“I told him you were all busy. Told him what about, too. There’s a room over there with nobody in it. I’ll bring him there.”
The Elder Brother was peremptory. “Ambassador, I need to know what you know about the plague.” Though the room was chilly, sweat stood at the roots of his hair and ran down behind his ears.
“Indeed,” said Rigo. “On what authority?” He stared at the odd face before him.
“Sanctity’s authority. They sent you. They told me to keep in touch.”
“I wasn’t given that information. I was told no one on Grass was to know anything about my mission here ” Rigo watched a drop of sweat roll down the man’s tiny nose and hang at the tip.
“I received word from the new Hierarch, Cory Strange. His message came on the same ship that brought you.”
Rigo smiled mirthlessly. “So there’s a new Hierarch. I wish he had taken office earlier. Brother Zoe. If he had, I wouldn’t be involved in this mess. Well, your authority doesn’t matter! Even if you have none at all, it doesn’t matter. I could refuse to tell you, but you could find it out from anyone out there in the hotel in ten minutes. There is no plague on Grass. Which means, at least by implication, there is a cure here, but we don’t know where. Or what Or how. We don’t know if people coming here are cured, and if so, permanently or only for a time. The answer is probably here on Grass. That’s all we know.”
The Elder Brother pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe and wiped his face with it. “I… I… that is, I appreciate your giving me this information, Ambassador.” He turned and left the room, almost running.
Rigo started after him, then stopped as he saw a folded piece of paper lying on the floor. It had fallen from the Brother’s pocket when he pulled out his handkerchief. Rigo picked it up, smoothed it to see if it was important enough to send after the man.
“My dear old friend Nods,” it began in a clear, quirky handwriting, narrow and clear as print.
Rigo read it all the way through in mounting disbelief, then read it again. “There is plague here, as there is everywhere else… It is not our desire that information about the cure be widely disseminated… wiping out the heathen to leave worlds for Sanctity alone to populate…”
“Rigo.”
He turned to find her at his side. “Marjorie! They said you were with Stella.” She looked very pale. Very tired.
“I stopped in her room. I couldn’t really see her. She’s boxed up in a huge Heal-all. Rillibee stayed there with her.”
“How is she?”
“The doctor says she hopes for recovery. She was careful not to say full recovery. I gather some things were destroyed.” Marjorie rubbed at her eyes.
He stood stiffly away from her, aware she had not reproached him and yet feeling reproached. He did not want to talk about their daughter, not yet. The paper cracked in his hand, reminding him. “You must look at this. The head of the Friary came to see me to ask about the plague. This thing fell out of his pocket.” He thrust the letter at her.
She read, read again, turning a white face toward him at last. “Sanctity won’t spread the cure even if we find one?”
“You read what I read. The man who signed that letter is the new Hierarch. Uncle Carlos may have been an apostate, but he wouldn’t have been capable of this!”
“What are we going to do?”
“All I’ve done so far is wish I hadn’t told the man anything. I don’t know what to do next!”
She touched him gently on the shoulder. “One thing at a time, Rigo. That’s all any of us can do.”
“Very well. One thing at a time. There’s an immediate threat from the Hippae at the tunnel. We’ll probably end up having to kill all those damned Hippae…”
“No!” she folded the letter and put it carefully in a flapped pocket of her jacket. “No! We can’t kill them all. Not even most. They become other creatures. Important creatures. The foxen, Rigo. They’re an intelligent race. Even the Hippae themselves are intelligent, in a way.”
“We’re going to have to kill some,” he objected, thinking that Marjorie did not sound like herself. “No matter what they become. If we don’t, we die ourselves. We have to make Commons secure from them, or everyone here will die, just as the Arbai did.”
“Kill some,” she agreed. “Yes. It will be necessary. But the fewest possible That’s what I came to tell you. I heard what you said about enticing them away. We must use the horses.”
At first he wanted to laugh. When he had heard what she had to say, he wanted to cry. He objected, and she looked at him in firm decision, unlike herself. He could offer nothing better. Moved from mockery to despair, he stumbled out of the Port Hotel to make the preparations she had convinced him were necessary. Aircars could not get into the forest where the tunnel ended. At any threat from above, the Hippae would merely retreat into the swamp or the tunnel or both, as they had retreated from the aircar when Rigo had been wounded. If men were to destroy the tunnel, the Hippae would have to be enticed away. The Hippae hated the horses. They would use the horses.
“At least…” he said to himself, trying to laugh, “at least I’ll never have to wear those damned bon boots or those fat-bottomed pants again!”
Not long after dawn they assembled in the great hay barn where the horses were stalled. They met without many words. What words had been necessary had already been carried from each to each, and they were all tired of words. Tired of words, afraid of action, yet determined nonetheless.
Rigo, pale but resolute, was saddling El Dia Octavo. Marjorie had chosen Don Quixote. Tony took Blue Star, and Sylvan, Her Majesty. Irish Lass, they had regretfully decided, was not quick enough. That left only Millefiori.
“I wish we had someone,” Sylvan said, looking at the mare.
“We do,” said Marjorie. She was very calm. Father Sandoval had suggested he hear her confession and give her absolution. She had told him there wasn’t time. She wasn’t sure she wanted to confess anything. She wasn’t sure anything needed confession. Even if it did, she didn’t think she would, or could, share it, because she hadn’t figured it out yet. “Tony, we do have someone.”
“Who?” he asked in surprise.
“Me,” said a voice from the door. She stood there in the light from outside, very pale, dressed in her bon riding coat and a hastily remodeled set of trousers. Rowena.
Sylvan gasped. “Mother!”
“I’m glad I have a child left to call me mother,” she said coldly. “Have you seen Dimity, Sylvan?”
He bowed his head, for a moment unable to reply. “I’ve seen her, yes. I know what condition she’s in. But it won’t help her for you to do this,” he murmured. “You’re not well, not healed…”
“I promised Marjorie my help if ever she should need it. She needs it. And who else will do it? A few hours ago Marjorie took me out and taught me how. It’s nothing. Nothing compared to what I did all my girlhood, most of my Obermum life, even after you were born, Sylvan. Oh, I’ve enough experience riding to get through this, I think. Have you seen Emmy, Sylvan? She looks almost like Dimity. Though the doctors say she will heal, in time.”
“Father did that,” he said expressionlessly.
“I don’t blame Stavenger,” she said. “Why blame a dead man? I blame the Hippae. I blame who’s responsible, and that has always been the Hippae.”
“The bons and the foxen both deserve a share of blame,” Marjorie said hotly. “The foxen let it happen. They allowed themselves a comfortable retirement. They let happen what would. Then, when it all went wrong, they chose to discuss it philosophically. When men came here, they learned new ideas of guilt and redemption and talked about that. They engaged in great theological arguments. They sent Brother Mainoa to find out if they could be forgiven. They talked of original sin, collective guilt. They’re still doing it. They haven’t learned that being penitent sometimes does no good at all.” She pulled on a girth so furiously that Don Quixote whuffed in complaint.
“Mother,” Tony said. “Don’t.”
“Damn it, Tony, they could help. They’re great, powerful beasts, evolved to be so to protect themselves from something even more terrible that was long ago extinct. But they no longer do anything. They think. They discuss. They don’t decide.”
“I thought when they helped you, they had decided,” Rigo said. She had told him about the climbers.
“Aaah,” she growled, “Aaah. One of them helped me. By himself. I don’t think even he would be much help against a dozen of the Hippae. Not alone. The rest of them are all sitting up there in the trees, thinking about it. Wondering what they might do if they ever decide to do anything. I made a mistake back there in the Tree City when I didn’t kill those two climbers. I set a good example. They’re all too ready to take a good example if it means they won’t have to do anything and then take responsibility for it.”
For the tenth time she checked her lance, a strong spear of light metal alloy with a trigger mounted on it which would turn on a big laser knife, one of the kind they had given their workmen for harvesting grasses. The knife was mounted at the tip of the lance and was counterbalanced by a weight in the butt end. Roalds’ workmen had built the lances as well as the bucklers each of them wore, a kind of light breastplate with a hook under the left arm to hold the end of the lance down. The breasts and flanks of the horses were armored in similar fashion, with light plates strung on tough fabric, to keep the weight down. Rigo had remembered the breastplates from armor he had seen, armor dating from a time when lances had been monstrously heavy and had had to be carried dead level.
It didn’t matter how level these were carried. Actually they would do more damage if they wobbled and swung. If they moved about a good deal, it would do maximum damage at the greatest distance. Still, the hook would help to control them and keep the tips from dipping or catching on the ground — for at least one charge. Marjorie hadn’t really intended a charge. She had suggested a quick sally to bring the Hippae away from the tunnel mouth in pursuit, and then a long flight which would keep the Hippae away long enough for Alverd’s men to blow up the tunnel. Rigo, having seen what knives would do to Hippae flesh, had suggested improving their chances with weapons. So each of them had a lance plus a knife in a pocket. Armed or not, after one charge horses and riders would probably be fleeing for their lives. If they survived that long.
There had been time for only a brief mounted practice with the lances. “Remember, horses are faster on the flat,” Rigo had reminded them. “The Hippae will be faster running uphill. It’s the way they’re made. More like big cats than like horses. Their legs can give more thrusting power going up than going forward. We’ll run on the flat, along the hill, slightly upward, not straight up. If we can make it to the gate at the order station, they’ll let us through.”
The gate seemed an impossible goal as they left the great hay barn and rode across the paved area that separated it from the Port Hotel, around the empty hotel and hospital, to the slope leading down to the marsh. Each of them studied it, finding the route they would take when the Hippae came after them. If they went north they would shortly be trapped against the implacable ridge of Com. Besides, that’s where Alverd’s men were, waiting to move down to the tunnel as soon as the Hippae were decoyed away. So they would go south where they could run for miles in a wide arc, all the way around the grazing land to the ruts south of Portside Road and along Portside Road to Grass Mountain Road and the gate. The ground was the same wherever they would run. A grassy, weedy slope, uncultivated, scattered with rock and the break-leg holes of small migerish creatures. The sun was in their eyes. The marsh lay in shadow at the bottom of the slope, just outside the first fringe of trees. The Hippae were hidden. From time to time, the sound of their howling came up the hill. No one knew what they were waiting for.
“Ready?” asked Rigo.
Silence. He looked to either side to see them nodding, ready, unwilling to break the quiet with words. He kneed El Dia Octavo into a steady walk down the slope.