Sheri Tepper - Grass

by Grass(Lit)

  "So? What are you saying, Ducky?"

  "I'm saying if everybody dies out there, there'll be no custom here, old crane, old stork. That's what I'm saying. Then how will we live, you and me? To say nothing of it being damned lonely, us here with all the rest of the human population gone and those Hippae out there, being rampageous."

  "They can't get in through the forest."

  "So we're told. So we're told. And even if that's true, think of all humanity closed in in a space no bigger than Commons. It makes me claustrophobic, Teresa, indeed it does."

  They had reached the end of Portside Road, where it ran off into ruts southward across the grazing land, and they turned as if by mutual consent to retrace their steps-more slowly on the return, for Ducky seldom walked such a distance.

  Blue lamps cast runnels of luminescence on the ash-glass surface of the port. There were only two ships in, a sleek yacht in the dark shadow of a bulky warehouse and the Star-Lily, a fat Semling freighter squatting in a puddle of sapphire lume, its cargo bay gaping like a snoring mouth. In the puddle of light something moved, and Ducky put her hand on her companion's arm. "There," she said. "Teresa, did you see that?"

  He had seen that. "No one working there this time of night."

  "See to it, Teresa. Do. I can't move fast enough."

  She spoke unnecessarily, for the heronlike legs of Saint Teresa had already taken him off in long, ground-eating strides across the cinereous surface of the port, moving like some tall hunting bird toward that flicker of movement. Ducky struggled after him, panting, her flesh bobbling and jiggling as though a thousand small springs inside were heterodyning against one another. Her companion had moved into shadow. She didn't see him, and then she did, one hand striking, head moving like a spearlike beak, the hand coming back with something pale and fishy wriggling in it. He turned and carried the thing toward her.

  When he came close enough for her to see, she cried out in surprise. There it was, just like the last one. Another naked girl with no expression in her face, wriggling like a fish on a spear, not saying anything at all.

  "Well," he said. "What do you think of that?"

  "What's that in her hand?" Ducky asked. "What's she carrying, and what was she doing there?"

  "Trying to get aboard," Saint Teresa said, holding the girl tight under one arm as he pried the thing from her tight fingers. He held it out, and Ducky leaned forward to look at it.

  "It's a dead bat," she said. "All dried up. What was she carrying that for?"

  They looked at the girl, at one another, full of questions and surmise. "You know who it is," Ducky said. "It's Diamante bon Damfels is who it is. The one they called Dimity. The one that vanished first thing this spring. It has to be."

  He didn't contradict her. "Now what?" he asked at last.

  "Now we'll take her to Roald Few," Ducky said. "As I should have taken the last one. Take her, and it, and ask Jelly to come along, and Jandra, and anybody else with any sense in their heads. I don't know what's happening here, old crane, but I don't like it, whatever it is."

  In the Tree City of the Arbai night had come like a polite visitor, announcing itself with diffidence, moving slowly among the bridges and trellises, softly among the wraithlike inhabitants, quietly into each room to carpet every floor with shadow. Night had come gently; darkness had not come at all. Effulgent spheres lined each walkway and hung from each ceiling. They cast an opalescent glow, not enough light to work by and yet enough to see walls and floors and ramps, to know where one went, to see the faces of one's friends, to see the ghosts as they walked in and out.

  Among the houses fronting upon the high platform, several were less frequented by phantoms. In one of these Tony and Marjorie had spread their beds and arranged their belongings. The two Brothers, the priest, and Sylvan had selected another. Once that was done, they had assembled on the open platform to eat together, sharing their own rations and the strange fruits Rillibee had garnered from the nearby trees. Several of the foxen had been close by for a brief time. The humans had seen shadows, heard voices reminiscent of the great cry, felt questions in their most intimate minds, tried to answer. Eventually the presences had gone. Now the humans knew they were alone.

  "There is a lot I don't understand," Tony said, conveying what they all felt. There had been an interchange, but most of it had been more enigmatic and tantalizing than informative.

  "There is much I have never understood," Brother Mainoa said. He looked very weary tonight, very old.

  "These foxen are the children of the Hippae?" Father James asked. "They talked much of that."

  "Not children," Brother Mainoa said. "No. No more than the butterfly is the child of the caterpillar."

  "Another metamorphosis," Marjorie told them. "Hippae metamorphose into foxen."

  "Some do," he assented. "Not all do."

  "All once did," she insisted, sure of it. It was clear to her, though the means by which the knowledge had come was hard to define. She simply knew. "All the Hippae used to become foxen, long ago."

  "All once did," he agreed. "And at that time, it was the foxen who laid the eggs."

  Marjorie rubbed her head, trying to remember things she had learned long ago in school. "It must have been a mutation," she said. "Some of the Hippae must have mutated and began to reproduce precociously, while they were still in the Hippae stage. There are animals that do that even on Terra. Reproduce in their larval stage, I mean. But in order for that mutation to have survived, there must have been some reproductive advantage...."

  "It is in the Hippae stage that they use caverns. Perhaps the Hippae guarded their own eggs more assiduously," Father James offered. "Perhaps more of the Hippae eggs survived than did those of the foxen."

  "And in time, Hippae did most of the reproduction. And not all of them metamorphosed into these creatures, these foxen, anymore. How many foxen are there?"

  "Planet-wide?" Brother Mainoa shook his head "Who knows? Every time the great cry is heard, these elder foxen know that a new one has been changed. They go out, tens and dozens of them, and try to find the new one-find it, welcome it, bring it into the forest where it will be safe. But if the Hippae find it first, they kill it while it is still weak and uncertain, or if it takes refuge in a copse, they get men on their backs and hunt it down."

  "Don't the Hippae know that they themselves..." Father James shook his head.

  Brother Mainoa laughed bitterly. "They don't believe it. They don't believe that they change into foxen. They refuse to believe it. They think they remain always as they are until they die. Many of them do die. Don't you remember when you were a boy, Father? Did you ever think, then, that you would grow older?"

  Sylvan moved restlessly along the braided railing, looking out into the night of the forest. "They must hate us," he said. "All the time they were talking to you, I kept thinking how they must hate us bons." "Because you hunt them?" Tony asked.

  "Yes. Because we bons hunt them. Because we help the Hippae hunt them."

  "I don't think they blame you," Brother Mainoa said. "They blame themselves." He thought about this for a moment, then amended it. "At least, that's how the one I've been talking to feels. The others may feel differently."

  "What do you call him?" Marjorie asked. "I can't come up with a label for him. Them."

  "First," Brother Mainoa replied. "I call him First. Or Him, capitalized, as though He were God." He laughed weakly.

  "It was they you were talking about when we had lunch together at Opal Hill," Father James said. "The foxen! It is they who were concerned with original sin."

  Brother Mainoa sighed. "Yes. Though the reason I gave for their concern was not the real one. They have no pangs of conscience over eating the peepers. They have always done so. There are far more peepers than the world could hold if they all matured, and the foxen know that. They eat them as big fish eat little fish, with no concern for the relationship. No, what weighed upon them was the genocide of the Arbai. Some of them have acquired i
deas of sin and guilt from our minds, and they do not know what to do with these concepts. It distresses them. Those that think about it. Not all of them do. Like us, they are variable. Like us, they argue, sometimes bitterly."

  Father James turned toward him, curious. "They feel guilty because of the slaughter in the Arbai city?"

  "No. Not merely that slaughter. I mean the genocide of the Arbai," Mainoa repeated. "All the Arbai. Everywhere. I don't know how it was done, but the Hippae killed them all."

  "Everywhere?" Marjorie was incredulous. "On other worlds? Everywhere?"

  "As the plague is killing us everywhere now," said Father James in sudden comprehension. "I think that's why Brother Mainoa brought us here."

  "That's why," Brother Mainoa sighed again. "Because the foxen, at least some of the foxen, did not want it to happen again. They thought they had prevented its happening again. Don't ask me how, I don't know. Somehow, they were not careful enough, not attentive enough, and though there are things they have not or will not tell me, they have said it may already be too late."

  "No," Marjorie said. "No. It cannot be too late. I will not accept that."

  Brother Mainoa shrugged, his tired face crumpling. Father James reached out a hand.

  "No," she said again with absolute certainty, thinking of Stella, out there somewhere, of Tony, of all those she had known and cared about all her life. Very small being or not, nameless or not. she would not tolerate this. "Whatever else we may believe, we may not believe it is too late."

  15

  At the Friary, while an aircar was readied and certain accoutrements were assembled (assassins, for the use of, Elder Brother Fuasoi thought to himself, grimacing at his own private joke) Fuasoi stewed and steamed in his lonely office, thinking of a thousand ways the plans of the Moldies might already have been forestalled. Or, if not already, then imminently. Perhaps Sanctity had found out about him and had sent people. Perhaps the Health Authority on Semling had become aware of Moldy plots. Perhaps Mainoa had talked to others; perhaps the ambassador knew. He opened his desk drawer for the tenth time, searching for the book that wasn't there, Mainoa's book. Who had taken it? Had Jhamlees taken it? That totally Sanctified idiot? Had he? If he had, Jhamlees would be messaging Sanctity about it. Messaging, getting messages back. Like a message from the Hierarch saying, open the secret armory and take the planet for Sanctity. A message like that.

  Not that he knew there was a secret armory here in the Friary. Everyone said so; but then, everyone could be wrong. Suppose the Green Brothers did take the planet, wipe out the bons and the mounts and the hounds; so then what would they do with it?

  They'd find a cure, that's what they'd do with it. Mainoa had seemed to think there was a cure here. They'd find it. Give them a little time...

  Fuasoi had assumed there was plenty of time to spread the virus. He had not hurried. Now Jhamlees might be onto him, and urgency overwhelmed him. Yes, Brothers Flumzee and Niayop and Sushlee and Thissayim and Lillamool should find that damned Mainoa and kill him-kill Mainoa and Lourai and anyone else who was with them. Yes, that should be done. At once. But there was one other thing that needed to happen at once: the distribution of the virus. In Commons. That's where it would do the most good. That's where people were packed most closely together. He had delayed unconscionably. He had diddled. Uncle Shales would not have been proud of him.

  He took a small carrying bag from his cupboard, placed the packet of virus inside on top of a change of clothing, covered it with an additional robe which was all Shoethai would need, left his office, and went down hay-smelling corridors to the gravel court where he found Shoethai himself, just closing an engine housing.

  "Is it ready?" the Elder Brother asked. He stood back and regarded the aircar with disfavor. It was one of the bigger ones, with two cabins, a large one up front and a private one behind, each opening to the outside. One of the smaller cars would have done as well and would have moved faster. Still, if it had been serviced. "Is it?" he repeated.

  Shoethai grimaced, giggled, said it was. There was something almost gleeful in his manner, and the Elder Brother assumed that the thought of Mainoa's destruction pleased Shoethai. Well, and it should. The thought of anyone's destruction pleased Moldies. The more gone, the fewer left to go, so Moldies said.

  "Where's Flumzee?"

  Shoethai gestured to an alleyway from which Highbones was at that moment emerging, closely followed by four of his henchmen. When they saw the Elder Brother they stopped in confusion, tardily remembering to bow.

  "I'm going with you," the Elder Brother announced. Shoethai howled-only briefly, only a moment's howl, but enough to bring six pairs of eyes toward him. He groveled, curling his misshapen shoulders, so that his voice came from between his knees like bubbles rising in hot mud. "Elder Brother, you should not risk yourself. You have important work-"

  "Which I'm about to do," Fuasoi said firmly. "After Flumzee and the others have found their quarry, you and I will take care of other urgent business."

  "Me!" Shoethai squeaked. "Me!"

  "You. You won't need anything. I've brought you an extra robe. Get in." He turned to Brother Flumzee. "You can drive this thing, I hope."

  Highbones managed to bite down his glee and keep a serious expression on his face. "Certainly, Elder Brother. I am an excellent driver."

  "You know where to go?"

  "Shoethai said a place called Darenfeld's Coppice, northeast of Klive. I have a map. We're to look for a side trail there."

  Fuasoi grunted assent. "Shoethai and I will take the back cabin." Shoethai seemed to be having one of his spasms, so Fuasoi took hold of him and thrust him up into the car, following him in and slamming the compartment door behind him.

  The others cast quick, eager looks at one another as they assembled themselves in the front cabin, where Highbones sat at the controls with the ease of long imagination, if not actual practice. He had driven aircars now and then since coming to Grass. He had driven them often in his youth. Within moments they had risen high above the towers of the Friary and were on their way south.

  "Can they hear us from back there?" Brother Niayop, Steeplehands, asked quietly.

  Highbones laughed. "Not over the sound of the engines, Brother. "Isn't there a speaker?"

  Highbones pointed wordlessly. The dial on the console before him was in the OFF position. Highbones was trying to keep from showing excitement. His cohorts were starting to make enthusiastic noises, but he felt it behooved a leader to behave in a more dignified fashion, at least until it got time for the killing. Then there could be whooping and yelling and incitements of various kinds that they were used to. They'd never killed anybody old before. They'd never killed anybody directly before, not with their hands. Knocking someone off a tower or kicking them off-that didn't seem like murder. It seemed more like a game He wasn't quite sure how they would manage killing women, though he knew he couldn't get the others-or himself-to do it right away. Elder Brother Fuasoi had told Shoethai there might be women. Shoethai had told Highbones, and Highbones and his friends had talked about that most of the night.

  Highbones sat very still as he thought of women, not to disturb the hot throbbing that filled all the space in his groin and spilled over into his legs and up across the skin of his belly. He had had a woman before he had been sent to Sanctity. When he was fifteen, before they sent him. None since, but he remembered.

  Her name had been Lisian. Lisian Fentrees. Her body had been white. Her hair had curled around her face, like clustered golden leaves. Her breasts had been soft and crowned with pink, with little slits at the tip that turned into nipples if he sucked on them.

  They had spent all the time together that they could, all the time away from school or parents or religion.

  She had said she loved him. He couldn't remember what he had said, but sometimes he thought he must have told her he loved her, too. Why would she have said it or gone on saying it, otherwise?

  One morning he had wakened to
a hand on his shoulder, had looked through half-opened eyes at a sun-blurred someone and had thought for a moment it was Lisian. It had the same whiteness, goldness, the same curve of face. The smell was wrong. It wasn't Lisian, it was his mother. "Get up, boy," she'd said. "You're going on a trip today." Nothing in her voice at all. no tears. As though it didn't matter.

  They said ten years. The next ten years of his life pledged to Sanctity and no one had ever told him a word about it. Not until that day. Didn't want us worrying about it. Didn't want us thinking about it. Didn't want Dad upset.