by Grass(Lit)
"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 agains
t 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 thre
w 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...."