In the Tree City of the Arbai two religious gentlemen sat in the mild breezes of evening, eating fruit which had been brought from the surrounding trees by foxen, one of whom had remained to join the feast.
“Like plums,” said Father James. He had arrived at the city by foxen back in midmorning. Father Sandoval had refused to come. Brother Mainoa had come to the city earlier, an exhausting trip from which he had not yet recovered. Now the Brother reclined against the breast of a foxen, like a child in a shadowy chair, while Father James tried to convince himself yet again that the foxen were real — not dreams, not amorphous visions, not abstractions or delusions. Conviction was difficult when he couldn’t really see them. He caught a glimpse of paw, or hand, a glimpse of eye, a shadowed fragment of leg or back. Trying to see the being entire was giving him eye strain and a headache. He turned aside, resolving not to bother. Soon everything would resolve itself, one way or another.
“Chameleons,” Brother Mainoa whispered. “Psychic chameleons. The Hippae can do it too, though not as well.”
Father James’ lips trembled. “Don’t you think the fruit is like plums?” he repeated, longing for something familiar. “Though perhaps the texture is more like a pear. Small, though.”
“Ripening this early, they’d likely be small,” Brother Mainoa offered in a breathy whisper. “The fruits of summer and fall are larger, even from these same trees.” He sounded contented, though very weak.
“They fruit more than once during the season, then?”
“Oh, yes,” Mainoa murmured. “They fruit continually until late fall.”
Along a bridge leading from the plaza Janetta bon Maukerden was dancing, humming to herself. Dimity bon Damfels watched from the plaza, mouth open around a thumb, eyes remotely curious. Stella was with Rillibee in a room facing the plaza. The older men could hear his voice.
“Take the fruit in your hand, Stella. That’s it. Now, have a bite. Good girl. Wipe your chin. Good girl. Have another bite…”
“He’s very patient,” whispered Brother Mainoa.
’’He would have to be,” murmured Father James. “Three of them!”
“Poor unfortunates,” Father James said. “We’ll help him with them while we’re here. It’s the least we can do.” He thought a moment, then added, “If we’re here long enough.”
A group of shadow Arbai came toward them, checkered them with arms and legs and shoulders, battered them with sibilant conversation, then moved on past. A swoop of scarlet and brilliant blue swept below them, from one tree to another, a colorful almost-bird, quite different from the Terran species, yet enough resembling them that one would think “parrot” on seeing them. Out on the bridge where Janetta danced, one of the shadow figures grasped a railing with shadow hands and squatted over the edge. The Arbai had been casual about elimination.
“It will be your choice,” Brother Mainoa said in a weak whisper. “Your choice, Father. Whether to stay or go.”
The priest protested “We’re not even sure we can live here! Food, for example. We’re not sure these fruits will sustain our lives.”
Brother Mainoa assured him, “The fruit plus grass seeds will be more than enough. Brother Laeroa has spent years determining the nutrient value of various grass seed combinations. After all, Father, on Terra many men lived on little else than wheat or rice or corn. They, too, are seeds of grass.”
“Harvesting grass seed would mean going out into the prairies,” Father James objected. “The Hippae wouldn’t allow that.”
“You could do it,” said the Brother. “You’d have protection…” He shut his eyes and seemed to drift off as he had been doing ever since they arrived.
“Though, come to think of it,” said Father James, suddenly remembering farms he had visited as a child, “here in the swamp one could have ducks, and geese.” He tried to summon a hearty chuckle, but what came out instead was a tremulous half sigh. The young priest had just remembered that the few humans on Grass might be all the humans there were. Whether one could have ducks or not, there might be nowhere else to go.
“Wipe your chin again,” said Rillibee Chime. “Oh, Stella, that’s such a good smart girl.”
Janetta spun and hummed, then stopped momentarily and said, quite clearly, “Potty!” She hitched up her smock, grasped the railing, and squatted where she was on the bridge, her bottom over the edge in the same pose the shadow Arbai had adopted moments before.
“She can talk,” said Father James unnecessarily, his face pink as he turned it away from Janetta’s bare buttocks,
“She can learn,” Brother Mainoa agreed, suddenly awake once more.
Father James sighed, his face turned resolutely away. “Let’s hope she can learn to be a bit more modest.”
Brother Mainoa smiled. “Or that we can learn to be — as, evidently, the Arbai were — less concerned with the flesh.”
Father James felt a wave of sadness, a wash of emotion so intensely painful that it seemed physical. He suddenly saw Brother Mainoa through some other being’s senses: a fragile friend, an evanescent kinsman who would not be concerned with the flesh at all for very much longer.
Someone was watching him. He looked up to see a pair of glowing, inhuman eyes, clearly fixed on his own. They were brimming with enormous, very human tears.
Shortly following the detention of the Yrariers, the Seraph in command of the Hierarch’s troops took a few of his “saints” in battle dress — more to impress the populace than for any tactical reason — and made a sweep through the town and surrounding farms, searching, so the Seraph said, for someone named Brother Mainoa. Everyone had seen him at one unhelpful time or another. Several people knew where he slept. Others knew where he had been having supper hours before. No one knew where he was at that moment.
“He was depressed,” an informer by the name of Persun Pollut told them with transparent honesty. “About all the Brothers getting burned up out at the Friary. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d gone down into the swamp forest. There’ve been several people done that recently.” All of which was true. Though he pulled a mournful face and sighed at the Seraph, Persun couldn’t wait to see the Tree City for himself.
The troop made a cursory search along the edge of the trees, sending a patrol some little way into the forest. Troopers returned soaked to the thighs saying they couldn’t quite remember seeing anything. Spy eyes sent into the dim aisles of cloaking vines saw nothing either. Or, those who followed the spy eyes on helmet screens were sure they saw nothing, which amounted to the same thing. It was conceded among those who had inspected the swamp forest close up that if this Brother what’s-his-name had gone in there, he was probably drowned and long gone.
Meantime, the troopers remaining in town were offered cakes and roast goose and flagons of beer and were treated to a good deal of garrulity which had nothing to do with what they were looking for. The search continued with increasing laxness and joviality while the day wandered inconclusively toward evening.
The Seraph was an old hand at appearing Sanctified, one who could and did spew catechetical references at every opportunity. In Commoner Town he found his views listened to with such flattering attention that he actually began to enjoy himself, though — as he told anyone who would listen — he would have felt more secure with a few hundred saints deployed, rather than a scant two score. According to these good people, there were hostiles on the planet, hostiles that had already built themselves one route under the forest.
“Haven’t you any devices to detect digging?” he asked. “Any mechanisms that listen for tremors? That kind of thing?”
’’Grass doesn’t have tremors, not like that.” Roald Few told him. “About the worst shaking we get is when the Hippae go dancing.”
The Seraph shook his head, feeling expansive “I’ll bring some detectors down from the ship. Standard issue. We use them to locate sappers coming in under fortifications. They’ll do the job for you here.’
“Where do we put them?” Mayor Bee asked. “Here in the town?”
The Seraph drew a map on the tablecloth with his fingertip, thinking. “Out there, north of town, I’d say two-thirds of the way to the forest. About a dozen, in a semicircle. You can set the receiver up anywhere here in town. The order station’d be a good place. Then if anything starts to dig in, you’ll know it!” He smiled beatifically, proud of himself for being helpful.
Alverd looked at Roald, receiving a look in return. So, they would know. Well and good. What in the hell would they do about it once they knew?
In the Israfel, high above all this confusion, the aged Hierarch fretted himself into a passion. The first time he had questioned the Yrariers he had been convinced the ambassador was misleading him, though the analyzers had said only maybe. The second time, however, the machines had declared Rigo and Marjorie to be truthful. Compared to Highbones and the Maukerden man — both liars (said the machines} from the moment of conception — the Yrariers had been certified honest and doing their best to be helpful. However, they weren’t Sanctity people, and in the Hierarch’s opinion they weren’t terribly bright. This business about the Moldies. That couldn’t be true. Sanctity had been too careful for it to be true. They had kept the plague so very quiet, so very hidden. The Yrariers must have misunderstood whatever this Brother Mainoa had said about Moldies.
The Hierarch considered this. The pair had been chosen by the former Hierarch because they were kin, because they were athletes. Not known for brains, athletes. That’s where old Carlos had gone wrong. He should have sent someone cleverer. Someone slyer. And he should have done it long before instead of waiting until the last possible moment. There was no point in keeping the Yrariers locked up. And he, the Hierarch, would be safe enough in the specially modified isolation shuttle his people had built for him. Once he himself was on the ground, things would happen! Discoveries would occur! He knew it!
As he was about to depart, however, a bulletin arrived from the surface. Danger, the Seraph said. Not only the possibility of plague, but the presence of large, fierce beasts would make it dangerous for the Hierarch to descend. Hostile creatures might be planning to overrun the port.
The additional frustration was enough to send the Hierarch into one of his infrequent fits of screaming temper. Servitors who had barely survived previous such fits were moved to panicky action. After emergency ministrations by the Hierarch’s personal physician, the Hierarch slept and everyone sighed in relief. He went on sleeping for days, and no one noticed or cared that no orders had been given for the Yrariers’ release.
Persun Pollut, Sebastian Mechanic, and Roald Few took the Seraph’s listening devices out into the meadows north of town to set them up. They were simple enough to install: slender tubes to be driven into the ground with a mechanical driver, long, whiskery devices to be dropped into the tubes, and transmitters to be screwed onto the tops.
“Foolproof,” the Seraph had told them “As they must be if inexperienced troopers are to use them. A-B-C. Pound it in, drop it in, screw it on.”
Foolproof they might be. In the aggregate, heavy they also were. The men used an aircar to transport the dozen sets and the bulky driver that went with them. They started at the western end of the proposed arc, setting each device and then moving northward, parallel to the curve of the forest. Most of the day had passed by the time seven of the gadgets were in place, and they were bending the arc toward the east when Persun shaded his eyes with his arm and said, “Somebody in trouble up there.”
When they stopped working, they could all hear it: the stutter of an engine, start and stop, the pauses like those in the breath of someone dying — so long between sounds one was sure no other sound would come — only to catch again into life.
Then they saw it, an aircar coming toward them, scarcely above the forest. It jerked and wobbled, approaching by fits and starts. When it had barely cleared the trees it fell, caught itself, then dropped, coming down hard midway between them and the swamp, not a hundred yards away.
Persun set out toward it at a run, with Sebastian close behind. Roald followed them more slowly. At first there was no sign of life in the fallen car, but then the door opened with a scream of tortured metal and a Green Brother emerged dazedly, holding his head. Others followed: six, eight, a dozen of them. They sank to the ground by the car, obviously exhausted.
Persun was the first to reach them. “My name’s Pollut,” he said. “We can get some cars out here to pick you up, since yours seems to be disabled.”
The oldest among them struggled to his feet and held out an age-spotted hand. “I’m Elder Brother Laeroa. We stayed out near the Friary thinking we could pick up survivors. Obviously, we stayed too long. Our fuel was barely enough.”
“I’m surprised to see any of you,” Sebastian said. “The place was pretty well wiped out.”
Laeroa wiped his face with trembling fingers. “When we heard of the attack on Opal Hill and the estancias, we suggested to Elder Brother Jhamlees Zoe that he evacuate the Friary. He said the Hippae had no quarrel with the Brothers. I tried to tell him the Hippae needed no excuse to kill.” He tottered on his feet, and one of his fellows came forward to offer an arm. After a moment he went on in his precise voice, as though he spoke from a pulpit. “Zoe was always impatient with argument and impervious to reason. So these Brothers and I started sleeping in the aircar.”
“You were in the car when the Hippae struck?”
“We were in the car when the fires started,” said one of the younger Brothers. “We took off and went out into the grass a ways, thinking we’d pick up survivors later. I don’t know how many days we’ve been out there, but we only found one man.”
“We picked up a couple dozen of your people,” Sebastian Mechanic said to them. “Young fellahs, most of ’em. They were wandering around pretty far out in the grass. There may be more. We been going out there every day to look. The Hippae aren’t around there anymore. They’re all around the swamp forest now.”
“They can’t get through, can they?” asked one of the men, obviously the one man the Brothers had rescued. His face was very pale and he carried what was left of one arm in a sling.
“Not so far as we know,” said Sebastian, wanting to be comforting. “And if they did, we’ve got heavy doors down in the winter quarters and people down there already making weapons for us to use.”
“Weapons,” breathed one of the Brothers. “I had hoped—”
“You’d hoped we could talk to them?” asked Elder Brother Laeroa bitterly. “Forget it Brother. I know you worked for the office of Doctrine, but forget it. I’m sure Jhamlees Zoe still retained his hope of converting the Hippae up to the moment they killed him He’s hoped for that ever since he came to Grass, no matter how many times we told him it would be like trying to convert tigers to vegetarianism.” Sebastian nodded agreement as he said, “lust be thankful the Hippae don’t have claws like Terran tigers do. Otherwise, they’d be able to climb and we couldn’t get away from ’em. Now, you start on up the slope there. I’ll get on the tell-me and have somebody come pick you up.”
The Brothers got wearily to their feet and started up the long meadow in a shuffling line. When Sebastian and Persun had seen that all of them could walk, they went to listen outside the car while Roald messaged for help.
“On their way,” Roald said at last.
“Good,” Sebastian murmured. “Some of ’em look like they couldn’t walk more than a hundred yards or so.”
“Thirty some-odd brothers left out of a thousand,” Persun commented, as he went to install the next device.
“One thing we can be grateful for,” the other replied. “There’s nothin’ left of the other nine hundred and some-odd to bury.” He paused beside the mechanical driver. “Have you noticed how quiet it is?”
The two men stood looking around them. “The noise of the tube driver,” Persun said. “It’s frightened everything.”
“The driver isn’t that noisy. And we haven’t been using it for the past little while.”
“The noise of that aircar, then.”
The silence persisted. The swamp forest, usually full of small croak-ings and rattles, the call of flick birds, the cry of leaf dwellers, was silent.
“Eerie,” whispered Persun. “Something wrong. I can feel it.” He started back toward the aircar, feeling in his pocket for his knife. Behind him Sebastian moaned.
A head peered sightlessly at them from the edge of the trees. Blank eyes glared in their direction. Above the eyes, flesh was torn to expose the bone, which gleamed moistly white. The head wobbled on its neck, rising into view, shoulders, arms, then the hideous Hippae maw below. A rider on a mount! A rider dead or so nearly dead as made no difference. The corpselike mouth opened to emit a screaming rattle, and with that sound the edge of the forest erupted into life. They burst into the open across a wide front, both riders and mounts screaming hate, defiance, death, and dismemberment. Persun turned back to grab Sebastian, who stood as one hypnotized.
Sebastian’s only thought, before his body was ripped apart, was that their morning’s labor had been too late.
Persun backed toward the aircar and swung the knife, a scream choked back, there had been another tunnel to the north. Teeth like razors raked his knife arm. His weapon clattered onto a rock. He clenched his jaw, readying himself for the final pain, his eyes staring into the blind dead eyes of the rider above him.
Something forced its way between him and the Hippae teeth. The aircar was hovering low beside him; Roald was shrieking at him. Hippae teeth darted toward him, then away. He threw himself backward into the open car, seeing, as he did so, that other cars hovered beside the pathetic line of green-robed Brothers, some staggering as they fled, some cut down and dead, some making it to the refuge of the cars, while all around them the Hippae howled and rampaged, their riders jerking and twitching as though they had been tied in position.
Persun tried not to look at what was left of Sebastian as they rose higher. Blood was dripping from his motionless fingers. His head was half out the aircar door. Packs of Hippae and hounds were already moving toward the town. Roald was screaming into the tell-me. Persun saw a Brother snapped in half. Others were shouting. All he could think of was that his fingers did not move. His carving fingers did not move. Beside him Roald cried out at something he saw, but Persun did not turn. His fingers did not move, and he thought it might have been better to have died.
While the Hippae in their hundreds overran the town from the north, battalions of migerers cut through the final few yards of a second tunnel on the south, one both taller and wider than the previous hole, an access route large enough to allow hosts of Hippae to move through it at a run. They came in waves, as they had come over the Arbai city long before; up from the forest toward the port, howling, ready to kill. There was no substantial opposition south of the wall. The handful of troopers at the port were inexperienced. They were taken by surprise and immediately overrun.
Even so, three or four of the quicker among them had time to arm themselves and get to upper levels of a ship maintenance gantry where the Hippae could not follow. Hippae died by the dozens in screaming disbelief, learning thereby to avoid the guns.
North of the wall the horn had been set off in response to Roald’s alarm, and all Commons had fled to the winter quarters, sheltering behind doors already reinforced against attack, though not, most people feared, sufficiently so to stand against repeated battering by Hippae. At the sound of the alarm, James Jellico locked the tall gates. He also had the presence of mind to send runners to find the troopers who had been dallying among the friendly kitchens of town. Though Jelly didn’t yet know where the threat was coming from, the dozen men with the Seraph at least had proper weapons. Possibly the Seraph could bring additional men and weapons from that ship above.
The hastily summoned Seraph chose the order station as his base and sensibly set about keeping danger at bay.
“Two men at every opening,” he ordered, sweating at the sight of Hippae rampaging among the motionless bodies at the port. “Ninety-five degrees auto-fire coverage. Helmet lights on full fan. Night goggles. Auto on anything that moves.”
“There’s a dozen saints at the port,” one of the troopers objected from a dry mouth. “They may try for the gate.”
“There’s fire from the upper levels of that structure, Cherub,” the Seraph replied bleakly, pointing it out as though the trooper were blind. “If the men there have any intelligence at all, they’ll stay where they are. They’re safer there than we are here. If you see anything moving toward the gate, kill it. Communication silence except to report those things breaking in here. I’ve got to get reinforcements down.” He knew it would take hours, even days. The Israfel had not been equipped with assault craft. Who could have thought they would be needed? They had only small shuttles, which would have to come down bringing ten men at a time, setting up a fire perimeter as they did so.
“Sir,” said the Cherub again, “what about those people out in that hotel?”
“What people?” demanded James Jellico in surprise.
“The scientists that the Hierarch sent down,” the Cherub replied. “And that ambassador. Him and his wife.”
In the suite at the Port Hotel. Marjorie wakened at the first howls of the invading Hippae. Her windows faced the wrong way. She went through the room where Rigo lay in exhausted slumber to the window in the outside room. There were darting, wildly moving lights at the port. She saw Hippae lunging in and out of shadow. Without waking Rigo, she went to the door of the suite and opened it. The daytime guard had been replaced by another man.
“Trooper,” she said. “Take a quick look out the window. Some very dangerous creatures are rampaging around out there.”
He gestured her back, as though she were the dangerous one, she standing there in her crumpled clothing with no weapon at all, her hair falling untidily around her face. When he had seen, however, he looked confused, as though teetering among several desires.
“If we’re going to stay here,” she said, “we need to make ourselves as safe from those beasts as we can. We have to assume they’ll come here eventually.”
“How?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“They can’t climb ladders,” she said. “But they aren’t stupid. They may know or be able to figure out what lifts are. We need to turn off the power to the chutes. We’re on the fourth level here. Without lifts, they probably can’t get up here.”
“Power controls are probably all the way down,” he said.
“Then we’ll have to go all the way down.”
He hesitated, starting toward the lift, then back,
“Come on, boy,” she snapped. “I’m old enough to be your mother, so I can yell at you. Decide what you’re going to do!”
He started to put his weapon down.
“Take it,” she commanded. “They could get into the hotel while we’re down below.”
They fell into the down chute together, Marjorie complaining bitterly under her breath at the slowness of the thing. Luxury seemed to be equated with slow chutes. The Port Hotel held itself out as luxurious. They floated past the doors like dust motes, ending up five levels below the ground with a further five levels still beneath them indicated upon the board.
“Winter quarters down there,” said Marjorie. “I’d forgotten there would be winter quarters.
“It must get really cold here, huh?” the guardsman wanted to know as he looked vaguely around himself.
“I have a feeling cold is only part of it,” Marjorie answered. “Now where?”
He pointed. The power room was opposite the chute, a heavy metal door opening into a room full of consoles and bubble meters.
“We should probably shut it all down,” said Marjorie. “All? You won’t have any water up there or anything. Besides, how’ll we get back?”
“Climb the chute,” she said succinctly. She moved down the console, reading labels. Main power control Main pump. The main pump seemed to be on a separate circuit from the power control. It might be possible to leave them with water. She folded back the barrier and thrust the power control sharply across. The room went black. “Damn,” she snarled.
A blazing light came on in her eyes. “I should’ve had it on already,” the trooper confessed, adjusting his helmet lamps. “Where do we climb back?”
“Up the chute,” she said. “Up the emergency ladder.” They went back to the chute, leaning out over a well of chill dark to seize a cold metal rung. They climbed, Marjorie first, their ascent lighted by the trooper’s lamp.
“That’s a handy gadget,” she commented between puffs as they neared the fourth level once more. “Your helmet, I mean. Does it see in the infrared?”
“Infrared,” he agreed. “Plus about six other filter combinations. It can tell living stuff from dead stuff. And it’s got a motion detector. And if you tie it to the armor arm controls, it’s got automatic fire potential.” He sounded proud of it, and Marjorie approved of his pride and confidence. He might need it. Their safety could depend on it.
“Now,” she said when they had reached the fourth level, “you might as well come inside the suite. We’ll close and lock the door behind us just in case something — anything — gets up here.” Rigo still slept. He looked drawn and worn. “He’ll be hungry when he wakes,” she said. “We don’t have any food here.”
“Emergency rations,” the boy said from behind her, tapping a long compartment down one armored thigh. “Enough for one man, ten days. Enough for the three of us for a while, at least. They don’t taste like much, but the Cherubim tell us they’re sustaining.” He gestured at the sleeping man. “Has he been sick?”
She nodded. Yes. Rigo had been sick. All the riders had been sick. “What’s your name?” she asked him. “Are you Sanctified?” He grinned proudly. “Favel Cobham, ma’am. And yes, I’m Sanctified, ma’am. The whole family. I got registered when I was born. I’m saved for eternity.”
“Lucky you,” she said, turning again to Rigo’s bed. Here in the Port Hotel she and Rigo weren’t saved for even this life if the Hippae got in. Tony was, maybe, if someone found a cure soon. And Stella. Remembering how Rillibee had looked at her, perhaps Stella was saved. If not for eternity, at least for a very small being’s lifetime, which was all one could expect.
She went back to the window, looking across the battle to the huge barns against the wall. The horses! She could see the barn where they were stabled. It was stout, true, but not impenetrable. It was connected to the building they were in by the tunnel network. Everything was connected to everything else. Could she find her way there? She fumbled in her jacket pocket, finding the trip recorder that Brother Mainoa had returned to her.
“The Seraph, he had a few men in town,” the trooper said.
“What will they do?” she wondered.
He shook his head. “The Seraph, he’s what you’d call conservative, ma’am, I’ve heard the Cherubim say that, a few times. He’ll wait until morning, then he’ll prob’ly make a sweep from the wall with all the men moving on automatic fire. By that time, he’ll have more men down from the ship.”
“There’s at least one tunnel where the Hippae came in,” Marjorie said. “It’ll have to be blown up, or flooded, or something.”
“Do the people in the town know that?” he asked. When she nodded, he said, “Then they’ll tell the Seraph and he’ll take care of it. Maybe even tonight if he can get an assault hopper down. Seraph has an assault group moves with him, wherever he goes. Assault group’s got all kinds of demolition stuff.”
“Would he have taken a group like that into town?” she asked incredulously.
“Everywhere,” he said soberly. “Everywhere he goes, even to the toilet. In case something happens while he’s gone and he has trouble getting back to his command. Like a mutiny or something.”
She shook her head, amazed. How insecure a Hierarch must feel to make a routine provision for mutiny.
“Mutiny?” asked an angry voice from the door. Rigo, stripped to his trousers, feet bare. “What’s going on?”
Marjorie stood aside from the window to let him see.
“They’ve come through,” she said. “This young man and I have turned off the power to the hotel,” she said. “They won’t be able to get up here unless there are some stairs I’m unaware of. By the same token, however, I’m afraid we’re trapped. For the time being.” She believed they might not outlive their entrapment, though she did not say so.
Rigo looked expressionlessly out the window. “Hippae,” he said unnecessarily. “How many?”
“Enough to do a great deal of damage,” Marjorie replied. “I quit counting at eighty some-odd, and there were still more arriving.”
“If you’ll wait outside,” Rigo said to the trooper, “I’d like to talk to my wife.”
“No.” she said. “He can wait here. I don’t want him out in the hall, where they might smell him or hear him. There might be another way up, and I don’t want to attract them. If you want to talk, we’ll talk in your room.” She went before him, rumpled, uncombed, and yet stately. In the room where Rigo had slept, she sat in a chair and waited while he stalked about, three paces, three paces back.
“While you were away,” he said, “I had an opportunity to discuss our situation with Father Sandoval. I think we need to talk about our future.”
She felt sorrow mixed with a faint annoyance. It was so like him to pick a time when there might not be any future to discuss their future together. He had always picked times when there was no love to talk about love; times when there was no trust to talk about trust. As though love and trust were not feelings but only symbols or tools which could be manipulated to achieve a desired result. As though the words themselves were keys to open some mechanical lock. Twist love, love happens. Twist trust, trust occurs. Twist future…
“What about our future?” she asked expressionlessly.
“Father Sandoval agrees with me that there will be a cure,” he announced in his laying-down-the-law voice, as though his saying it made it fact. Well, Rigo’s use of that voice had almost always produced the desired result. So he had spoken to his mother, his sisters, to Eugenie and the children, to Marjorie herself. If his voice hadn’t worked, Father Sandoval’s had, setting penances, invoking the power of the church. Now Rigo was going on, telling her what would happen.
“Someone will find it. Now that we know the answer lies here, someone will find it, and it won’t take long. The cure will be disseminated. We will stay here only until then. Then we must get back to our real lives, all four of us.”
“We must what?” she asked, thinking of the monsters in the town, in the port. How could he simply ignore them? But then, how could he have ignored the fact that they were monsters before? “What must we do?”
“All four of us.” he repeated. “Including Stella.” His eyes were angry. Evidently Stella’s going to the forest had rankled. “She’ll take a lot of attention, but you needn’t give up your charities or your riding. We can hire people to care for her.”
“To care for her.”
He made a grim line with his lips. “I know she’ll require a lot of attention, Marjorie. The point I wanted to make is that it needn’t be a burden on you. I know how much your work means to you, how important you think it is. Father Sandoval has pointed out that I shouldn’t have argued with you about that in the past. It was wrong of me. You’re entitled to have your own interests…”
She shook her head at him, slowly, disbelievingly. What was he saying? Did he think they could go back as they were before, as though nothing had happened? Would he find someone to replace Eugenie and then go on, as they had before? Would she go down to Breedertown, taking food, arranging transport? As it had been?
“Have you and Father Sandoval discussed how you will introduce Stella to your friends?” she asked. “Will you say, This is Stella, my idiot daughter. I allowed her to be mentally and sexually crippled on Grass in order to show off my manliness to people who meant nothing to me.’ Something like that?”
His face turned dark with fury. “You have no right—”
She put up a hand, forbidingly. “I have every right, Rigo. I’m her parent too. She’s not yours alone to dispose of. She belongs to me, as well, and to herself. If you want to take Stella back to Terra, I suppose you can try. Somehow, I don’t think you will easily remove her from where she is now. You would have great difficulty removing me. If you want to go back to the way things were, I can’t stop you. I won’t try. But you must not expect Stella or me to come along like dogs at your heels!”
“You’re not thinking of staying here! What would you do here? Your work is at home. Our lives are at home.”
“I would have agreed with you once. It’s not true now.”
“All those arguments you used to give me about your work at Breedertown? You’re saying that was so much fluff? Lies?”
“I thought it was important then.” Or made myself think so, she said to herself.
“And now you don’t?”
“What difference does it make what I think? I’m not even sure what I think! And despite your assumption that the plague will be ended, we may die of it yet! Or the Hippae may kill us. This is no time to discuss what we will do if, what we will do when. We have no choices right now except to try to stay alive as best we can.” She got up and went past him, laying a hand on his shoulder as she went, wanting to comfort him or herself. Now was not the time to have argued with him. If their lives were to end here, she would rather not have them end in rancor. What did it matter what he said now?
He went after her, finding her at the window with the trooper. Rigo, looking over her shoulder at scenes of fire and destruction, wondered why anyone would consider staying on Grass. The Hippae had found the scientists in the attached hospital and had dragged them out onto the weedy slope. Even when they were all dead, the Hippae rampaged among the bodies like bulls, trampling and bellowing.
Marjorie cursed in a quiet voice, tears running down her face. She had not known or remembered that there were other people in the port building. When she and the trooper had shut off the power, they could have-brought the others up to safety. The sight of the rampaging creatures made her think again of the horses. She would not leave them to face this horror alone.
The two men were frozen at the window. She turned quietly and went out without their noticing. It would be a long climb down to the winter quarters and the tunnels which connected everything, as Persun Pollut had said, like the holes in a sponge.
Most of Commons managed to get behind the stout doors of winter quarters before the Hippae arrived. Most, not all. Those who were left above ground fought their way to such safety as they could find. Though most buildings in town were low, there were upper floors for refuge, stairways that could be held at least for a time. They had no weapons to oppose the Hippae and the hounds. While a knife could cut a leg or a jaw, a hound could come up from behind and take the arm that held the knife before the man knew the beast was there. Hounds could come up stairs like great cats. Bodies and parts of bodies began to accumulate in Commons streets. In the order station the Seraph sweated and swore, wishing he had ways of communicating with the defenders of the town.
“An aircar,” James Jellico suggested. “You can fly overhead. Aircars have speakers.”
“You do it,” snapped the Seraph. “Tell them to get out of the streets onto roofs where we can pick them up. Tell them to stop dying uselessly until I can get my men down!”
So Jelly flew, and Asmir, and Alverd, and even old Roald, skimming the tops of the buildings as they bellowed at those below to get onto the rooftops.
“Climb,” they shouted. “We’ll pick you up.”
Those who heard them swore and screamed and tried to get onto roofs while beasts darted at them from every doorway, lunged up at them from seemingly empty streets, materialized out of nothing in corners of walls. Always before, the Hippae had chosen to be seen. Now, in battle, they chose not to be seen until their teeth were fastened in their prey. Like chameleons, they faded against their backgrounds, their skins mottled the colors of brick or cobbles or plaster, only their teeth and the gleam of eyes betraying them, too often too late.
Those with the arrogance to be ridden could not disguise their eldritch riders, however. The sight of a shuddering corpselike figure coming head high along a wall was enough to warn that there was a beast beneath it. Roald, peering down from the aircar at this display, wondered what arcane motives led the Hippae to this horrid mockery of a Hunt? Why did they burden themselves with these useless excrescences? When the Hippae died, their riders rolled off, some of them alive, some barely alive, some already truly dead. Roald had picked up a few that looked like they might make it. Even the most alive among them did not know why they were there. Why were they there?
“I see more dead ones,” Roald muttered to Alverd as they flew from rooftop to rooftop. “More dead Hippae.”
“I know,” Alverd marveled. “Who’s killing them? Not the troopers. They’re all tied up over at the order station.”
“Us, I guess.”
Alverd snorted. “Not likely, father-in-law. There’s another dead one, at the corner down there. All torn apart.”
“What’s killing them, if we’re not?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something. Something we can’t see. Something with teeth.”
From the lowest floor of the Port Hotel winter quarters, Marjorie worked her way through the network of tunnels toward the barn, which stood almost at the wall of Com. The trip recorder could not guide her but it would keep her from becoming irretrievably lost. The barn was not far from the place where Hippae rampaged and killed. It would be difficult to get the horses out without being seen. However, if they could reach the swamp forest they might be safe. If they were seen, she would undoubtedly be slaughtered. She felt the anger of the Hippae, against her, personally. She was the one they hated. She had spied on them, gone into their cavern, ridden against them. They would not miss the chance to bring her down.
Even so, if she could get the horses out onto the slope, some of them would make it. She could get them moving in the right direction, at least. Once they reached the forest, First would take them, protect them. Gallant horses. They deserved better than this fangy death. They deserved meadows and foals and long days of grazing under the sun.
Her feet echoed on the stone. Dim lights picked out the junctures of one tunnel with another. When the trip recorder said she had come far enough in the proper direction, she began looking for a way up. The horses would be above her somewhere. Pray the barn had not yet attracted Hippae attention. Pray the horses were not injured, or dead.
No, said someone. The horses are safe.
She stopped, stunned into frozen immobility. That voice belonged to the wilderness, to the trees, not to these dry, dark corridors. When the shock passed, she turned toward the voice as a compass needle turns toward the north, quivering.
Here, it said. Here.
She crept toward the summons, upward along slanting corridors, up twisting flights of stairs, pulled like a fish on a line.
He was in the barn with the horses, lying across the door. She saw the troubled air, the miragelike wavering, the glint of tooth or eye. The horses chewed quietly, undisturbed. When she came in, Quixote whickered at her and she leaned against the wall, trembling. So. Was He the only one to get involved, or were there other foxen as well?
Why are you here? she asked.
I knew you would come here, He replied, in words, human words, clear as air.
She shook with the implications of that. I could not abandon my friends. she said.
I know, He said. I knew before, but my people didn’t believe in you.
She asked, Have they changed their minds’?
Yes. Because of these, He said. Because of the horses.
She saw herself on Quixote’s back, menaced from front and rear, the aircar above her offering escape, saw herself refusing to go. The picture in her mind was larger than life, freighted with enormous import. She would not leave the horses. Silly, she thought. I thought so at the time.
Silly, He agreed, using words again. Important Important to know one would risk herself for another not like herself. Important to know humans feel loyalty. Important to know friendship can extend from race to race.
Were the Arbai your friends?
A negation. She saw Arbai involved with Hippae, working with Hippae while foxen prowled nearby and the Arbai studiously avoided seeing them. To the foxen, it seemed the Arbai preferred to teach at arm’s length rather than communicate as the foxen did; she felt the fastidious withdrawal of the Arbai, their punctilious modesty of mind, similar to her own feelings, but carried so much further! They could not see evil, but they could perceive an invasion of privacy, and they rejected it. How familiar! How horrible!
He agreed. Nonetheless, He felt pity and guilt that they had died.
They died, she said, Now we are dying. The Hippae are up there. They’ll get into Commons and kill us.
Already in Commons. But not many are dying. Not this time.
You’re protecting us?
This time we know what is happening.
You didn’t know what was happening before? she asked. You didn’t know what was happening to the Arbai? It seemed impossible, and yet, would the foxen necessarily have known? The slaughter had been out on the prairie, away from the forest…
He said, Some hated humans because you hunted us. Some felt it was not our affair, not our concern, because you would not be our friends, no more than the Arbai. I told them Mainoa was friend. They said he was only one, a freak, unlike any other. I said no, there would be others. Then there was you. They say you, too, are freak, and I say there will be others yet. We have argued over it. Finally, we have compromised. Humor Almost laughter, yet with something sad and tentative in it. We agree if you are truly my friend, I can tell you.
Me?
If you will give your word. To be friend as Mainoa was friend. To be where I am.
She heard only the condition and assented to it at once. She had already decided to stay here She would not take Stella away from here. At least the people here understood what had happened to her.
I will give my word, she said.
To be where I am?
Yes.
Even if that is not here?
Not here? Where would He be, if not here? She waited for explanation and got none. Something told her she would receive none. If she could only see His face. See His expression… We see one another, He told her. We foxen.
She flushed. Of course they saw one another, in their intimacy. As she could have seen them if she had let go of herself and joined them. As humans stripped away their day-to-day habiliments to come to their lovers naked, so foxen stripped away concealing illusion to perceive the reality…
But she could not see Him now. If she accepted this condition, it would have to be blindly, like a ritual, like a marriage ceremony, swearing to forsake all others for this one, this enigma, with no more certainty than there had been before. Swearing to give up her central self for something else. She shivered. Oh, perilous. Take it or leave it.
How could she? This is what Rigo had wanted, too, and she had tried, over and over, but could not. Because she had not known him, had not trusted him… Did she trust this one?
He had known where to find her. He had committed Himself and His people to saving her and her people. What else could He have done to be trustworthy? What else would she have him do?
She sighed, choking on the words, committing herself forever. “Yes. I promise.”
He showed her then why and how the Arbai had died. Why men were dying.
When she understood, she leaned against Him, her mind whirling in a disorderly ferment of ideas, things she had heard, connections she had made. He did not interrupt her. At last things began to fall into place. She only partially understood, and yet the answer was there, close, like a treasure sparkling in a flowing stream, disclosing itself.
There is something you must get for me, she said. Then I must go through these tunnels into town…
Marjorie came into the cavern where Lees Bergrem was huddled over a desk. For a time she stood in the corner, unseen, putting her thoughts together. Lees looked up, aware of being observed.
“Marjorie?” she asked. “I thought you were at the Port Hotel! I thought the Hippae had you trapped!”
“There’s at least one tunnel under the wall. I came back through it,” she said. “I had to talk to you ”
“No time,” the other said, turning back to her work. “No time to talk about anything.”
“A cure,” she said. “I think I know.”
The doctor turned burning eyes. “Know? Just like that, you know?”
“Know something important,” she said. “Two important things, really. Yes. Just like that.”
“Tell me.”
“First important thing: The Hippae killed the Arbai by kicking dead bats through their transporters. We don’t have transporters, so the Hippae have been killing us by putting dead bats on our ships.”
“Dead bats!” She pursed her lips, concentrating. “The bon Damfels man said that was symbolic behavior!”
“Oh, yes. It is symbolic. The problem is that we thought of it as purely symbolic. We should have remembered that symbols are often distillations of reality — that flags were once banners flown during battle. That a crucifix was once a real device for execution. Both are symbols of something that is or was once real.”
“Real what?” Lees sat down, glaring at Marjorie. “Bats are real what?”
Marjorie rubbed her head, ruefully. “Real pains in the neck, originally. Real vermin. The Hippae kick dead ones at one another. I’ve seen them do it.”
“We know that! Sylvan bon Damfels said it meant ‘You’re nothing but vermin.’ ”
“Yes. Originally, it would have meant ‘You’re nothing but vermin.’ That’s what it meant when the Hippae kicked dead bats at the Arbai, too. On Terra there were once animals that threw feces at strangers. The Hippae despise strangers. They think of all other creatures either as useful tools, like the migerers or the Huntsmen, or as things to be despised and, if possible, killed. The Arbai fell into that category, so the Hippae kicked dead bats at them, and at their houses, and at their transporter. It was pure chance that a bat happened to go through the transporter to somewhere else. At this end, it was only symbolic. At the other end, it meant plague. Death.”
“The vector of infection…”
“Yes. It happened. Somewhere, wherever the transporter was set for, Arbai died. And then the foolish Arbai here on Grass told the Hippae what had happened. From that moment on, the gesture no longer meant ‘You’re vermin’ It meant ‘You’re dead.’ Once the Hippae knew they could kill by putting bats through the transporter, they kept on repeating the act. It was not symbolic, it was real.”
“Kept on—”
“Kicking dead bats through the transporter until all the Arbai were infected. It may not have taken long. Maybe only a day or a week. Whenever they weren’t observed. The Arbai were so… so set in their thinking that they never thought to set a guard. I’m assuming the transporter must have worked like a voice-activated corn-link. Whenever the network was in use, certain sets of terminals must have come on so that a bat kicked in at one terminal would have ended up far away. On Repentance? On Shame? There are Arbai ruins both places. On a hundred worlds we’ve never seen? Wherever, however many, it worked. The Arbai died, everywhere. Hippae memorialized the event in their dances. A great victory. ‘Fun to kill strangers.’ They remembered it.
“When humans came to Grass, the Hippae would have repeated the act again, but we didn’t have transporters, we had ships. Dead bats had worked with the Arbai, so the Hippae decided to put dead bats on our ships. Our ships, however, were inside the forest where the foxen had influenced us to put our port. The foxen had believed that if the port was inside the swamp forest, it would be safe. The foxen had enjoyed having the Arbai around. Though they would have liked direct contact, being telepathic they hadn’t needed to have it. They had sought a kind of intellectual intimacy with the Arbai and been rebuffed, so they didn’t try it with us. Instead, they regarded us as we might regard some intelligent, interesting, but unaffectionate pet, and they thought we would be safe enough…
“They underestimated the Hippae. Perhaps they thought the Hippae wouldn’t remember after all those centuries, but they did remember. They had codified their memory into dancing, into patterns. When men first arrived, the Hippae set the migerers to digging a tunnel, at first only a small one, one large enough to admit one human messenger at a time. Human messengers the Hippae had wiped clean except for a certain impetus, a certain programmed activity—”
“That’s unbelievable!”
“It’s quite believable because it was only a slight variation of their natural habit. Peepers have no such ability. Hounds have almost none. The Hippae have enough to affect the minds of those around them and bend those minds to their purposes. Think of what they do to the migerers and to the Huntsmen! When the Hippae change into foxen, the ability is multiplied a hundredfold. Hippae may not be truly intelligent. Evil and sly. yes, able to learn but incapable of true subtlety. They learned to kill by accident, but once having learned, they went on, and on. Everything they have done was merely a repetition of a pattern they already knew…”
The doctor was very still, thinking. “You said you knew two important things.”
“The other thing was about your books. I tried to read them. I’m not scientific. All I can remember is that one of them was about this nutrient, this protein building block. You said it was something we all needed. Most living cells. And you said it existed in two forms here on Grass, and only here. I got to wondering why. Why two forms here? And then I wondered, what if something here turned it around? What if something here on Grass turned around an essential nutrient? Something all our cells need and use. Something we couldn’t use in a reversed form…”
There was a long silence.
“I need a dead bat,” said Lees Bergrem.
“I brought one,” Marjorie said, reaching into her deep pocket. First had left the barn, had gone out onto the sloping lands to get it for her. She put the dried crumbling thing on Lees Bergrem’s table. Then she sat down and put her head between her trembling knees and tried to think of nothing at all.
The two women stayed in the makeshift laboratory for two days. Above them in the town, battles were fought street by street, building by building. People died, though not so many as had at first been feared. There were allies no one could see. There were fighters no one could look at. Hippae were found dead, and no one remembered killing them. Then, too, since the Hierarch was not awake to countermand the Seraph’s orders, troopers came down on the shuttle, a few at a time, to take over segments of Commons and man a slowly expanding perimeter. Demolition teams found the tunnels beneath the swamp forest and collapsed them into sodden ruin. No more Hippae came through. Those already inside hid, chameleonlike, to come screaming out of alleys, shrieking along walls. Sharing this much of the foxen invisibility, they found their way into houses and shops. Death came to Commons, death and blood and pain, but slow victory came also.
Roald Few missed death by inches, saved by something he could not describe. One of his sons died. Many of his friends were dead, or missing. A morgue was set up in the winter quarters. The first body there was Sylvan bon Damfels’ His was joined by a hundred others. In death he became what he could not manage in life, one with the Commons.
One by one the remaining Hippae were found and killed. Many were still hiding in the edges of the forest. Troopers ringed that perimeter, their heat-seeking weapons set on automatic fire. Within the trees, other beings found the Hippae, and none came out onto Commons ground again.
Toward the end of the battle, Favel Cobham climbed back down the chutes and restored power to the Port Hotel before going out to join his fellows. He had not been ordered to stop guarding the Yrariers, but neither had he been told to continue,
Rigo came out of the hotel later, when he saw the last of the troopers straggling back toward the port, and made his way toward the gate. In the port area, the men were already burying their dead and readying for departure.
“Going already?” Rigo asked a gray-haired Cherub with a wrinkled, cynical face.
“Lord and Master woke up and found out what happened to his tame scientists,” the Cherub replied. “Found out what happened to the town, too. I guess he figures he might get gobbled up by something if we stay.”
Rigo went on into Commons to ask if anyone had seen his wife. He was told to look where everyone was looking for missing kinsmen, in the morgue. He found her there, standing by Sylvan’s body.
“Rowena asked me to come and arrange burial,” she said. “She wants him to be buried out there, where Klive used to be.”
“Wouldn’t you have come anyhow?” he asked. “Didn’t you care for him? Weren’t you in love with him?” It was not what he had planned to say. He and Father Sandoval had agreed that recriminations were not appropriate. He had expected to find Marjorie’s body and grieve over it. Thwarted of grief, thwarted of good intentions, this other emotion had happened.
She chose not to answer his question. Instead, she said. “Sebastian is dead too, Rigo. Kinny lost one of her children. Persun Pollut was almost killed. His arm is terribly hurt. He may never carve again.” He was shamed into silence, and angered for being shamed. She walked toward the door, he following. “I’ve been working with Lees Bergrem,” she said, looking around to be sure she was not overheard “She thinks we’ve found a cure. She already had some of the pieces. It can’t be tested here on Grass. She’s sent word to Semling. They can manufacture the cure, get some victims together, and test it.”
“Manufacture?” he asked her, disbelieving. “Some kind of vaccine?” She nodded, coming close to him, actually hugging him, an awkward, one-armed embrace, tears on her face. “Not a vaccine at all. Oh, Rigo, I really think we’ve found the answer”
He reached for her, but she had already turned away. She would not say anything more until the people in Semling had received everything Lees Bergrem could send them. “Wait,” she said to Rigo and Roald and Kinny. “Don’t say anything to anyone until the word comes back. Don’t get people’s hopes up until we know for sure.”
Marjorie and Lees Bergrem spent the third day since their discovery fretting together, stalking back and forth through the echoing room where they had worked. On this day the Semling victims would either improve or go on dying. At noon on the fourth day the word came from Semling. Within hours of being treated, all the victims had started to mend.
“Now.” Marjorie was crying, tears flowing into the corners of her joyously curved mouth. “Now we can let everyone know.” She went to the tell-me to call Brother Mainoa. Only then did she learn he had died in the lap of a foxen, days before. Only then did she understand a part of what First had tried to tell her.