And I said, “What shall I cry?’

All flesh is grass....

Isaiah 40-6

1

Grass!

Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grasses—some high, some low, some feathered, some straight—making their own geography as they grow. There are grass hills where the great plumes tower in masses the height of ten tall men; grass valleys where the turf is like moss, soft under the feet, where maidens pillow their heads thinking of their lovers, where husbands lie down and think of their mistresses; grass groves where old men and women sit quiet at the end of the day, dreaming of things that might have been, perhaps once were. Commoners all, of course. No aristocrat would sit in the wild grass to dream. Aristocrats have gardens for that, if they dream at all.

Grass. Ruby ridges, blood-colored highlands, wine-shaded glades. Sapphire seas of grass with dark islands of grass bearing great plumy green trees which are grass again. Interminable meadows of silver hay where the great grazing beasts move in slanted lines like mowing machines, leaving the stubble behind them to spring up again in trackless wildernesses of rippling argent.

Orange highlands burning against the sunsets. Apricot ranges glowing in the dawns. Seed plumes sparkling like sequin stars. Blossom heads like the fragile lace old women take out of trunks to show their granddaughters.

“Lace made by nuns in the long-ago time.”

“What are nuns, Grandma?”

Here, there, wide-scattered across the limitless veldts, are the villages, walled about to keep the grass at bay, with small, thick-walled houses, each with its stout doors and heavy shutters. The minuscule fields and tiny orchards are full of homely crops and familiar fruits, while outside the walls the grass hovers like some enormous planet-wide bird, ready to stoop across the wall and eat it all, every apple and every turnip and every old woman at the well, too, along with her grandchildren.

“This is a parsnip, child. From long ago.”

“When was long ago, Grandma?”

Here, there, as wide-scattered as the villages, the estancias of the aristocrats: bon Damfels’ place, bon Maukerden’s place, all the places of the other bons, tall thatched houses set in gardens of grass among grass fountains and grass courtyards, with their own high walls— these pierced with gates for the hunters to go out of and for the hunters to return through again. Those who return.

And here, there, nosing among the grass roots, will come the hounds, muzzles wrinkling, ears dangling, one foot before another in a slow pace to find it, the inevitable it, the nighttime horror, the eater of young. And look, there behind them on the tall mounts, there will come the riders in their red coats, silent as shadows they will come riding, riding over the grass: the Huntsman with his horn; the whippers-in with their whips; the field, some with red coats and some with black, their round hats pressed hard upon their heads, eyes fixed forward toward the hounds—riding, riding.

Among them today will be Diamante bon Damfels—young daughter Dimity—eyes tight shut to keep out the sight of the hounds, hands clenched pale upon the reins, neck as fragile as a flower stem in the high, white cylinder of the hunting tie, black boots glistening with polish, black coat well brushed, black hat tight on the little head, riding, riding, for the first time ever, riding to the hounds.

And there, somewhere, in the direction they are going, high in a tree perhaps, for there are copses of trees here and there upon the vast prairies, will be the fox. The mighty fox. The implacable fox. The fox who knows they are coming.

2

It was said among the bon Damfels that whenever the Hunt was hosted by the bon Damfels estancia the weather was perfect. The family took credit for this personally, though it could as properly have been ascribed to the Hunt rotation, which brought the Hunt to the bon Damfels early in the fall. The weather was usually perfect at that time of the year. And early in the spring, of course, when the rotation brought the Hunt back again.

Stavenger, Obermun bon Damfels, had once been informed by a dignitary from Semling—one who fancied himself an authority on a wide variety of irrelevant topics—that historically speaking, riding to the hounds was a winter sport.

Stavenger’s reply was completely typical of himself and of the Grassian aristocracy in general. “Here on Grass,” he had said, “we do it properly. In spring and fall.”

The visitor had had better sense than to comment further upon the sport as practiced on Grass. He had taken copious notes, however, and after returning to Semling he had written a scholarly monograph contrasting Grassian and historic customs regarding blood sports. Of the dozen copies printed, only one survived, buried in the files of the Department of Comparative Anthropology, University of Semling at Semling Prime.

That had been half a long lifetime ago. By now the author had almost forgotten about the subject, and Stavenger bon Damfels had never thought of it again. What foreigners did or said was both incomprehensible and contemptible so far as Stavenger was concerned, and no one should have allowed the fellow to observe the Hunt in the first place. This was the bon Damfels’ entire opinion on the matter.

The bon Damfels estancia was called Klive after a revered ancestor on the maternal side. It was said among the bon Damfels that the gardens had been written of as one of the seventy wonders of the allwhere. Snipopean—thegreatSnipopean—had written so, and his book was in the library of the estancia, that vast and towering hall smelling of leather and paper and the chemicals the librarians used to prevent the one from parting company with the other. No one among the current bon Damfels had read the account or could have found the book among all those volumes, most of them unopened since they had been delivered. Why should they read of the grass gardens of Klive when those gardens were all around them?

It was in that part of all grass gardens known as the first surface that the Hunt always assembled. As host, Stavenger bon Damfels was Master of the Hunt. Before this first Hunt of the fall season—as before the first Hunt of each spring and fall—he had picked three members of the vast and ramified family as Huntsman and first and second whippers-in. To the Huntsman he had entrusted the bon Damfels horn, an elaborately curled and engraved instrument capable only of muted though silvery sounds. To the whippers-in he had given the whips—tiny, fragile things one had to take care not to break, ornaments really, like medals for valor, having no utilitarian purpose whatsoever. No one would have dared to use a whip on a hound ora mount; and as for sounding a horn near a mount’s ear or even within hearing except for the ritual summons and when the Hunt had ended, no one would have thought of it. No one asked how it had been done elsewhere all that time ago or even currently. Quite frankly, no one of the bons cared in the least how it was done elsewhere. Elsewhere, so far as the bons were concerned, had stopped existing when their ancestors had left it.

On this first day of the fall hunt, Diamante bon Damfels, Stavenger’s youngest daughter, stood among those slowly gathering on the first surface, all murmurous and sleepy-eyed, as though they had lain wakeful in the night listening for a sound that had not come. Among the still figures of the hunters, servant women from the nearby village skimmed, seemingly legless under the long white bells of their skirts, hair hidden beneath the complicated folds of their brightly embroidered headdresses, bearing bright trays covered with glasses no larger than thimbles.

Close between Emeraude and Amethyste (called Emmy and Amy by the family and “the Mistresses bon Damfels” by everyone else), Dimity was polished and brushed to a fare-thee-well, immaculately turned out in her hunting garb, and with a headache already from hair drawn back severely to fit beneath the round black cap. The older girls had red lapels on their coats, showing they had ridden long enough to become members of the Hunt. Dimity’s collar was black, as black as the shadows lying at the back of her eyes, shadows her sisters saw well enough but pretended not to notice. One couldn’t indulge oneself. One couldn’t allow malingering or cowardice in oneself or in members of the family.

“Don’t worry,” drawled Emeraude, the best advice she could offer. “You’ll get your Hunt colors very soon. Just remember what the riding master told you.” At the comer of her jaw a little muscle leapt and leapt again, like a shackled frog.

Dimity shivered, the shadows writhing, not wanting to say and yet unable to keep from saying, “Emmy, Mummy said I didn’t have to...”

Amethyste laughed, a tiny shiver of unamusement, emotionless as glass. “Well of course you don’t have to, silly. None of ushadto. Even Sylvan and Shevlok didn’t haveto.”

Sylvan bon Damfels, hearing his name, turned to look across the first surface at his sisters, his face darkening perceptibly as he saw that Dimity was with the older girls. With a word of excuse to his companions, he turned to come swiftly over the circle of pale gray turf, skirting the scarlet and amber fountain grasses at its center. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, glaring at the girl. “The riding master told Mummy . ..”

“You’re not nearly ready. Not nearly!” This was Sylvan, who spoke his mind even when it was unpopular—some saidbecauseit was unpopular—somewhat enjoying the attention this attracted, though if challenged he would have denied it. To Sylvan truth was truth and all else was black heresy, though on occasion he had the very human difficulty of deciding which was which.

“Oh, Sylvan,” Amethyste said, pouting prettily and pursing lips she had been told were fruitlike in their ripeness. “Don’t be so harsh. If it were up to you. nobody but you would ever ride.”

He snarled at her. “Amy, if it were up to me, nobody would ride, including me. What is Mother thinking of?”

“It was Daddy,” Dimity offered. “He thought it would be nice if I got my colors soon. I’m already older than Amy and Emmy were.” She glanced across the first surface to the place where Stavenger stood watching her broodingly from among the elder Huntsmen, his lean and bony figure motionless, the great hook of his nose hanging over his lipless mouth.

Sylvan laid his hand on her shoulder. “For heaven’s sake, Dim, why didn’t you just tell him you aren’t ready?”

“I couldn’t do that, Syl. Daddy asked the riding master, and the riding master told him I’m as ready as I ever will be.”

“He didn’t mean—“

“I know what he meant, for heaven’s sake. I’m not stupid. He meant I’m not very good and that I’m not going to get any better.”

“You’re not that bad,” Emeraude soothed. “I was lots worse.”

“You were lots worse when you were a child.” Sylvan agreed. “But by the time you were Dim’s age, you were lots better. So were the rest of us. But that doesn’t mean Dim has to—“

“Will everybody just quit telling me I don’t have to?” Dimity cried now, the tears spilling down her cheeks. “Half my family says I don’t have to and the other half says I’m ready now.”

Sylvan was stopped in mid-bellow, stopped and stilled and turned suddenly soft. He loved her, this littlest one. It was he who had first called her Dimity, he who had held her when she had had the colic, who had carried her against his shoulder and patted her while he strode up and down the corridors of Klive, the thirteen-year-old boy cuddling the infant and yearning over her, Now the twenty-eight-year-old yearned no less over the fifteen-year-old girl, seeing the infant still. “What do you want to do?” he asked tenderly, reaching out to touch the moist little forehead under the brim of the black cap. With her hair scraped back and tightly bound she looked like a scared little boy. “What do you want to do, Dim?”

“I’m hungry and I’m thirsty and I’m tired. I want to go back in the house and have breakfast and study my language lesson for this week,” she cried through gritted teeth. “I want to go to a summer ball and flirt with Jason bon Haunser. I want to take a nice hot bath and then sit in the rosegrass-court and watch the flick birds.”

“Well then,” he started to say, his words cut off by the sound of the Huntsman’s horn from beside the Kennel Gate. Ta-wa,ta-wa.softly-so-softly, to alert the riders without offending the hounds. “The hounds,” he whispered, turning away. “God, Dim, you’ve left it too late.”

He stumbled away from them, suddenly quiet. All around them conversations ceased, silence fell. Faces became blank and empty. Eyes became fixed. Dimity looked around her at all the others ready to ride to the hounds, and shivered. Her father’s eyes slid across her like a cold wind, not seeing her at all. Even Emmy and Amy had become remote and untouchable. Only Sylvan, staring at her from his place among his companions, seemed to see her, see her and grieve over her as he had so many times.

Now the riders arranged themselves on the first surface in a subtle order, longtime riders at the west side of the circle, younger riders at the east. The servants had skimmed away at the sound of the horn, so many white blossoms blowing across the gray grass. Dimity was left standing almost by herself at the east edge of the turf, looking across it to the path where the wall of the estancia was pierced by a massive gate. “Watch the Kennel Gate,” she admonished herself unnecessarily. “Watch the Kennel Gate.”

Everyone watched the Kennel Gate as it opened slowly and the hounds came through, couple on couple of them, ears dangling, tongues lolling between strong ivory teeth, tails straight behind them. They moved down the Hounds’ Way, a broad path of low, patterned velvetgrass which circled the first surface and ran westward through the Hunt Gate in the opposite wall and out into the wider gardens. As each pair of hounds approached the first surface, one hound went left, the other right, two files of them circling the hunters, watching the hunters, examining them with red, steaming hot-coal eyes before the files met one another to stalk on toward the Hunt Gate, paired as before.

Dimity felt the heat of their eyes like a blow. She looked down at her hands, gripping one another, white at the knuckles, and tried to think of nothing at all.

As the last couple joined one another and the hunters moved to follow, Sylvan left his place and ran to whisper in her ear, “You can just stay here, Dim. No one will even look back. No one will know until later. Just stay here.”

Dimity shook her head. Her face was very white, her eyes huge and dark and full of a fear she was only for the first time admitting to herself, but she would not let herself stay. Shaking his head, Sylvan ran to regain his place. Slowly, reluctantly, her feet took her after him as the hunters followed the hounds through the Hunt Gate. From beyond the wall came the sound of hooves upon the sod. The mounts were waiting.

From the balcony outside her bedroom window, Rowena, the Obermum bon Damfels, let her troubled gaze settle on the back of her youngest daughter’s head. Above the high, white circle of her hunting tie, Dimity’s neck looked thin and defenseless. She’s a little budling, Rowena thought, remembering pictures of nodding blossoms in the fairy books she had read as a child. “Snowdrops,” she recited to herself. “Fringed tulips. Bluebells. And peonies.” She had once had a whole book about the glamorous and terrible fairies who lived in flowers. She wondered where the book was now. Gone, probably. One of those “foreign” things Stavenger was forever inveighing against As though a few fairy tales could hurt anything.

“Dimity looks so tiny,” said the maidservant, Salla. “So tiny. So young. Trailing along there behind them all....” Salla had cared for all the children when they were babies. Dimity, being youngest, had stayed a baby longer than the others.

“She’s as old as Amethyste was when she rode for the first time. She’s older than Emmy was.” Try though she might, Rowena could not keep her voice from sounding defensive “She’s not that young.”

“But her eyes, mistress,” Salla murmured. “Like a little girl. She doesn’t understand about this Hunt business. None of it. None of it at all.”

“Of course she understands.” Rowena had to assert this, had to believe it- That’s what all the training was for; to be sure that the young riders understood- It was all perfectly manageable, provided one had proper training first. “She understands,” Rowena repeated stubbornly, placing herself before the mirror, fiddling with the arrangement of her thick, dark hair. Her own gray eyes stared back at her accusingly, and she pinched her lips into an unlovely line.

“Doesn’t,” said Salla as stubbornly, quickly turning away to avoid the slap Rowena might have given her if she could have done it without moving. “She’s like you, mistress. Not made for it.”

Rowena tired of looking at herself and chose to change her ground. “Her father says she must!”

Salla did not contradict this. There would have been no point. “She’s not made for it. No more than you were. And he doesn’t make you.”

Oh, but he did, Rowena thought, remembering pain. Made me do so many things I didn’t want to. Let me quit riding, yes, but only when I was pregnant with the seven children he made me have when I only wanted one or two. Made me ride right up until the time I got old, with lines around my eyes. Made me bring the children up to the Hunt, when I didn’t want to. Made them all like him, all the way he is—except Sylvan. No matter what Stavenger does, Sylvan stays Sylvan. Not that Syl lets on what he really thinks. Sylvan just roars about everything. Clever Syl, to hide his true beliefs among all that bluster. And Dimity stays Dimity as well, of course—but poor Dim —Dim couldn’t hide anything. Would she be able to hide her feelings this morning?

Rowena went back to the balcony and craned her neck to look over the top of the wall. She could see the movements of the waiting mounts, tossing heads, switching tails. She could hear the clicking of hooves, thehruffingsound of a breath suddenly expelled. It was too quiet. Always too quiet when the riders mounted. She had always felt there should be talk, people calling to one another, greeting one another. There should be ... something. Something besides this silence.

Outside the Hunt Gate the hounds circled and the mounts waited, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, tails lashing, necks arching as they pawed the ground, all quietly as in a dream where things move but make no sound. The air was warm with their steamy breath, full of the haylike smell of them, the sweaty stench. Stavenger’s mount came forward first, as was proper, and then others, one by one, coming for the Huntsman and for the whippers-in, and then for the riders of the field, the oldest riders first. Dimity stood behind Emeraude and Amethyste, shivering slightly as first one, then the other vaulted up onto the backs of waiting mounts. Soon she was the only one left unmounted. Then, just as she decided that there was no mount for her, that she could slip back through the gate, the mount was there before her, within reach of her hand.

It stared at her as it extended a front leg and crouched slightly so that she could put one foot on the brindled leg, grasp the reins, and leap upward, all as she had done time after time on the simulator, no different except for the smell and the heaving breath which spread the vast ribs between her legs, wider than the machine had ever done. Her toes hunted desperately for the notches between the third and fourth rib that should be there, finding them at last far forward of where she thought they should be. She slipped the pointed toes of her boots in, locking herself on. Then it was only a matter of hanging onto the reins and keeping her spurs dug in and her legs tight while the great creature beneath her turned high on its rear legs to follow the others away, west. She had worn her padded breeches for hours on the simulator, so they were properly broken in. She had had nothing to drink since early the previous evening and nothing to eat since noon yesterday. She wished fleetingly that Sylvan could ride beside her, but he was far ahead. Emeraude and Amethyste were lost in the welter. She could see Stavenger’s red coat, the line of his back as straight as a stem of polegrass. There was no turning back now. It was almost a relief to know that she couldn’t do anything but what she was doing. Nothing else at all, not until the Hunt returned. At last there was sound, a drumming of feet which filled all the space there was to hold it, a resonant thunder coming up from the ground beneath them.

From her balcony above them, Rowena heard the sound and put her hands over her ears until it faded into silence. Gradually the small sounds of insect and bird and grass peeper, which had ceased when the hounds arrived, began once more.

“Too young,” brooded Salla. “Oh, mistress.”

Rowena did not slap her maidservant but turned to her with tears in her eyes instead. “I know,” she said. She turned to see the end of the line of riders as it fled away down the garden trail toward the west.

Riding out. she said to herself. Riding out And they’ll ride back again.

Back again. Saying it over and over like a litany. Back again.

“She’ll be back,” said Salla. “She’ll be back, wanting a nice hot bath.” Then both of them stood staring into the west, not seeing anything there except the grass.

Down the wide hallway from Rowena’s suite of rooms, in the mostly unused library of Klive, certain nonhunting members of the aristocracy had assembled to consider a matter of continuing irritation to them all. Second leader at Klive was Stavenger’s younger brother, Figor. Some years ago, following one of the many hunting accidents which occurred every season, Figor had stopped riding to the hounds. This left him free during hunting seasons to take upon himself many of the responsibilities of the estancia while Stavenger was otherwise engaged. Today Figor met with Eric bon Haunser, Gerold bon Laupmon, and Gustave bon Smaerlok. Gustave was the Obermun bon Smaerlok, head of the Smaerlok family still, despite his disability; but both Eric bon Haunser and Gerold bon Laupmon were younger siblings of the family leaders, men who were also hunting today.

The quartet assembled around a large square table in one corner of the dimly lit room, passing among themselves the document which had occasioned their meeting. It was a brief document, headed with the cursive arabesques which spelled out the names and attributes of Sanctity, laden with seals and ribbons and signed by the Hierarch himself. This same group of aristocrats had responded to similar documents in both the remote and recent past, and Gustave bon Smaerlok betrayed considerable impatience at having to do so yet again.

“This office of Sanctity is becoming importunate,” the Obermun said now from the wheeled half-person he had occupied for the last twenty years. “Dimoth bon Maukerden says so. I asked him and he went into a rage over this business. And Yalph bon Bindersen. I asked him, too. Haven’t had a chance to get over to bon Tanlig’s place yet, but Dimoth and Yalph and I are agreed that whatever this Sanctity wants, it has nothing to do with us, and we won’t have their damnedfragrashere. Our people came to Grass to get away from Sanctity— now let Sanctity stay away from us. It’s enough we let them stay on digging up the Arbai city, enough that those Green Brothers make mud pies with their little shovels up there in the north. Let elsewherestay elsewhereand Grass stay Grass. So we all agree. Let’s tell them so, once and for all. It’s Hunt season, for heaven’s sake. We haven’t time for all this nonsense.” Though Gustave no longer rode, he was an avid follower of the Hunt, watching the pursuit from a silent, propeller-driven balloon-car whenever the weather would allow.

“Easy, Gustave,” murmured Figor, the fingers of his right hand massaging his left arm at the point where the flesh and the prosthesis joined, feeling the pain pulse beneath his fingers, a constant accompaniment to existence, even after two years. It made him irritable, and he guarded against expressing the irritation, knowing it arose from the body rather than the mind. “We don’t need to make an open revolt out of it. No need to rub Sanctity’s fur the wrong way.”

“Revolt!” the older man bellowed. “Since when does thisfragrasSanctity rule on Grass?” Though the word fragrasmeant simply “foreign,” he used it as it was usually used on Grass, as the ultimate insult.

“Shhh.” Figor made allowances for Gustave. Gustave was in pain also and was undoubtedly made irritable thereby. “I didn’t mean that kind of revolt, and you know it. Even though we have no religious allegiance to Sanctity, we pay it lip service for other things. Sanctity is headquartered upon Terra. We acknowledge Terra as the center of diplomatic intercourse. Maintainer of our cultural heritage. Eternal cradle of mankind. Blah and blah.” He sighed, massaging again. Gustave snorted but did not interrupt as Figor went on. “Many take our history seriously, Gustave. Even we don’t entirely ignore it. We use the old language during conferences; we teach Terran to our children. We don’t all use the same language in our estancias, but we consider speaking Terran among ourselves the mark of cultured men, no? We calculate our age in Sanctity years, still. Most of our food crops are Terran crops from our ancestors’ time. Why run afoul of Sanctity—and all those who might come roaring to her defense—when we don’t need to?”

“You want their damn what-are-they here? Prodding and poking. You want their nasty little researchers upsetting things?”

There was a moment’s silence while they considered things that might be upset. At this time of the year only the Hunt could be upset, for it was the only important thing going on. During the winter, of course, no one went anywhere, and during the summer months it was too hot to travel except at night, when the summer balls were held. Still, “research” had an awkward sound to it. People asking questions. People demanding answers to things

“We don’t have to let them upset anything,” Figor said doubtfully.

“They’ve told us why they want to come. There’s some plague or other and Sanctity’s setting up missions here and there, looking for a cure.” He rubbed his arm again, scowling.

“But why here?” blurted Gerold bon Laupmon.

“Why not here as well as anywhere? Sanctity knows little or nothing about Grass and it’s grasping at straws.”

They considered this for a time. It was true that Sanctity knew little or nothing about Grass except what it could learn from the Green Brothers. Foreigners came and went in Commoner Town, allowed to stay there only so long as it took to get the next ship out and not allowed to come into the grass country at all. Semling had tried to maintain an embassy on Grass, unsuccessfully. Now there was no diplomatic contact with “elsewhere.” Though the word was often used to mean Sanctity or Terra, it was also used in a more general sense: Grass was Grass; what was not Grass was elsewhere.

Eric broke the silence. “Last time Sanctity said something about someone having come here with the disease and departed without it.” He rose awkwardly on his artificial legs, wishing he could so easily depart, without his disability.

“Foolishness,” Gustave barked. “They couldn’t even tell us who it was, or when. Some crewman, they said. Off a ship. What ship, they didn’t know. It was only a rumor. Maybe this plague doesn’t even exist,” he growled. “Maybe it’s all an excuse to start proselytizing us, snipping at us with their little punches, taking tissue samples for their damned banks.” Even though the bon Smaerloks had come to Grass long ago, the family history was replete with accounts of the religious tyranny they had fled from.

“No.” said Figor. “I believe the plague exists. We’ve heard of it from other sources. And they’re upset about it, which is understandable. They’re running about doing this and that, not to much purpose. Well, they will find a cure for their plague. Give them time. One thing you can say for Sanctity, it does find answers eventually. So why not give them time to find the answer somewhere else, without saying no and without upsetting ourselves? We’ll tell this Hierarch we don’t take kindly to being studied, blah and blah, right of cultural privacy—he’ll have to accept that, since it’s one of the covenants Sanctity agreed to at the time of dispersion—but we’ll say we’re sensible people, willing to talk about it, so why not send us an ambassador to discuss the matter.” Figor made an expansive gesture. “Then we can discuss and discuss for a few years until the question becomes moot.”

“Until they all die?” Gerold bon Laupmon asked—meaning, Figor supposed, everyone of human origin not upon Grass

Figor sighed. One was never certain with Gerold that he quite understood what was going on. “No. Until they find a cure. Which they will.”

Gustave snorted. “I’ll give that to the Sanctified, Gerold. They’re clever.” He said it in the tone of one who did not think much of cleverness.

There was a pause while they considered it Eric bon Haunser urged at last, “It has the advantage of making us look perfectly reasonable.”

Gustave snorted again. “To who? Who is it looking at us? Who has the right?” He pounded on the arm of his chair, scowling, turning red in the face. Ever since the accident which had cut short Gustave’s riding career, he had been irascible and difficult, and Figor moved to calm him.

“Anyone can, Gustave, whether they have the right or not. Anyone can look. Anyone can have an opinion, whether we want them to or not. And if we should ever want something from Sanctity, we’d be in a good position to ask that the favor be returned.”

Eric nodded, seeing that Gustave was about to object. “Maybe we’ll never want anything, Gustave. Probably we won’t. But if we did, by chance, we’d be in a good position. Aren’t you the one who always tells us not to give up an advantage until we have to?”

The older man simmered. “Then we have to be polite to whoever they send—bow, scrape, pretend he’s our equal, some fool, some off-planeter, some foreigner”

“Well, yes. Since the ambassador will be from Sanctity, he’ll probably be Terran, Gustave. Surely we could suffer that for a time. As I mentioned, most of us speak diplomatic.”

“And thisfragraswill have a silly wife and a dozen bratlings, probably. And servants. And secretaries and aides. All asking questions.”

“Put them someplace remote, where they can’t ask many. Put them at Opal Hill.” Eric named the site of the former Semling embassy with some relish, repeating it. “Opal Hill.”

“Opal Hill, hah! Farther than nowhere! All the way across the swamp-forest to the southwest. That’s why the people from Semling left. It gets lonely at Opal Hill.”

“So, the man from Sanctity will get lonely and leave as well. But that will be his fault, not ours. Agreed? Yes?”

Evidently they were agreed. Figor waited for a time to see if anyone had any second thoughts or if Gustave was going to explode again, then rang for wine before leading his guests down into the grass gardens. Now, in early fall, the gardens were at their best, the feathery seed heads moving like dancers to the beat of the southern wind. Even Gustave would mellow after an hour in the gardens. Come to think of it, Opal Hill had very nice gardens as well, young but well designed. The Sanctified penitents expiating their sins here on Grass by digging up ruins and designing gardens—the ones who called themselves the Green Brothers—had spent considerable care upon the Opal Hill gardens. Nothing had disturbed the gardens since the people from Semling had left. Perhaps this ambassador person could be interested in gardening. Or his wife, if he had a wife. Or the dozen bratlings.

Afar from Klive, deep among the grasses, Dimity bon Damfels tried to exorcise the pain in her legs and back. Even after all those hours on the simulator, all the pain she had experienced there, this was different. This was intrusive, hateful, intimate.

“When you think the pain is unbearable,” the riding instructor had said, “you can review the track of the Hunt in your mind. Distract yourself. Above all, do not think of the pain itself.”

So she distracted herself, reviewing how they had come. They had ridden out along the Trail of Greens and Blues where the patterned turf along the path went from deepest indigo through all shades of turquoise and sapphire to dark forest green and bright emerald, upward to the ridge where tall plumes of aquamarine watergrass undulated in ceaseless waves. Beyond the ridge the watergrass filled a shallow basin dotted with islands of sandgrass, the whole making such a marvelously lifelike seascape that it was called the Ocean Garden. Dimity had once seen a picture of a real ocean when she went with Rowena to Commoner Town to pick up some imported fabric. It had been hanging on the fabric merchant’s wall, a picture of a sea on Sanctity. She remembered saying at the time how much the imaged expanse of water looked like grass. Someone had laughed at this, saying it was the grass that looked like water. How would one know which looked like which? In fact, they looked like one another, were like one another, except that one could drown in water.

Musing on this, Dimity surprised herself with the thought that one might almost drown in grass as well. One might wish to drown. Her left knee was in agony. Little trails of fire crept from the knee upward toward her groin. Distract yourself, she repeated mentally. Distract yourself.

At the end of the Trail of Greens and Blues, the hounds had run silently into Thirty-shadows Forest, where giant black stems, thick as her body, grew tall, clucking hollowly far above as they collided in the small wind. Here velvet turfs were planted in mosslike clusters around hillocks of stonegrass, and here the mounts had followed as the trail led upward toward the Ruby Highlands.

On the Highlands the vistas were of amber and peach, apricot and rose, with veins of deepest red threaded through the paler colors to climax in bursts of skyrocketing bloodgrass, and here the trail turned aside from the gardens to run off into the untended gramineae of the surrounding veldt. It was tallgrass veldt, with nothing to see but the stems rushing by as her mount forced his way through, nothing to hear but the rustle of the plumy seed heads, nothing to think of but steeling herself against the blows of the blades, keeping her head down so those blows fell on the padded cap and not on her face.

Still, she could tell from the sun that they were running north, and Dimity concentrated upon this. The seven remaining estancias were separated from one another by at least an hour’s air travel, and yet they occupied only a small part of the surface of Grass. What did she know about the land north of the Damfels estancia? There wasn’t another estancia there. The nearest estancia was that of the bon Laupmons, but it was a great distance to the southeast. Directly east were the bon Haunsers. The Friary of the Green Brothers was north, but some ways east of the bon Damfels estancia. There were no other estancias to the north, no villages, nothing except more prairie and a long, shallow valley where there were many copses. “Many copses means many foxes,” she quoted silently to herself. Undoubtedly they were riding toward the valley.

The pain was suddenly there again, moving in her other leg “Better than distraction,” the riding master had said, “is to let yourself fall into the rhythm of the ride and think of nothing.” She tried not fighting the pain, not distracting herself, just going with it. “Above all, do not disturb the mount or attract the attention of the hounds.” She would not attract their attention. She would just let it go, let it go, not thinking about anything.

On the simulator Dimity had never managed to think of nothing, and she was surprised to find how much easier it was here. Almost as though something was working inside her mind to wipe it clean. An eraser. Rub, rub, rub. She started to shake her head in annoyance, not liking the feel of it, remembering only just in time that one must not move, really must not move. The intrusion in her mind scraped at her. Deliberately, she went back to distraction, thinking of her newest ball gown, reviewing every flounce, each embroidered leaf and blossom, and after a time the hurtful feeling inside her head departed. “Ride,” she said silently to herself. “Ride, ride, ride.” The repetition took the place of the emptiness, driving out the ball gown, and she simply held on, moving as the mount moved, shutting her eyes, not seeing anything else. Her backbone was a fused column of agony. Her throat was dry. She wanted desperately to scream, and fighting down the scream took all her strength.

Until suddenly they crested a long ridge and stopped. Her eyes popped open, almost against her will, and she looked down into the valley before them. It was not unlike the Ocean Garden, except that these waves were of tall grass in shades of amber and dun while the islands were actual trees, copses of trees, the only kinds of trees that existed on Grass. Swamp trees, growing wherever springs of water came to the surface. Fox trees. Haven for the toothed devils. Where they lived. Where they hid, when they weren’t slinking among the grasses, killing the foals.

“Never say ‘foals’ where the mounts can hear you,” the riding master had said. “That is our word. We merely assume there are foals, though we have never seen any, so don’t say it. In fact, never say anything where the mounts can hear you.”

So she was silent now, as all the riders were, their speculations kept entirely to themselves. Dimity saw the faces of the other riders, pale with concentration, unselfconsciously quiet. Dimity would not have believed Emeraude could be this quiet if she had not seen it. Mummy probably couldn’t believe it at all. And Shevlok! How often did one see Shevlok without an imported cigar in his mouth—only the best Shame tobacco would do for Shevlok—or his mouth open telling someone something. Except when Father was around, of course. When Stavenger was around, Shevlok was notable for sitting in corners and not attracting attention to himself, notable, one might say, for self-effacement.

As this Hunt was notable for quiet. Silent as the earth-closets in midwinter, when no one else was there and the frost lay deep. Dimity concentrated on breathing quietly. The eraser feeling was in her head again, and she fought it off, thinking about what she would have for dinner when the Hunt was over. Grass-hen fried in oil with imported spices on it. A fruit salad. No. Too early for fresh fruit. A dried fruit pie. And then they were off, down into the valley toward one of the dark copses, Dimity reminding herself what the riding master had had to say about that. “The trees are extraordinary,” he had said. “It will be difficult not to gasp or exclaim. You will do neither, of course. You will keep your mouth shut—You will not crane your neck or stare about or shift your weight.” Besides, she had seen them on the simulator screens, a thousand hours’ worth of them.

So she kept her mouth shut and her face front as the black towers loomed around her, their leafy burden shutting out the sky, the world suddenly full of the sound of water and of hooves moving in water, the squish and slide of it, the smell of it filling her nostrils in a way quite different from the smell of rain. This was not merely damp but sodden, a dank, fecund smell. Dimity opened her mouth very quietly and breathed through it, getting herself accustomed to the smell which made her want to sneeze or cough or gasp—She felt the signal for the hounds, felt it without understanding it until the hounds lunged away, scattering outward in all directions, noses to earth. The sound of their scuffling scramble faded. There were historic words to go with this, the riding master had said. “Into covert”, her mind said. “Into covert, my lads.” As though anyone would really dare say “my lads,” to hounds!

Somewhere a grass peeper shrilled and shrilled again, an arrhythmic pulse within the grove, repeating until it was almost but not quite a pattern, then silencing until she thought it had stopped, only to return once more. She caught a glimpse of a peeper out of the corner of her eye, white and wriggly, squirming among the grass roots.

A hound bayed, a deep, bellowingaroowhich made her heart falter as it went on and on. Then another joined, half a tone above, the sound of the two like a knife in her ears. Then all the pack, the tones of the voices lost in a vast cacophony, arooand aroo,unmelodious and dissonant. The mounts screamed in answer and lunged deeper into the wood. They had found the fox, started the fox, would pursue the fox. Dimity shut her eyes and held on once more, biting her tongue, biting her cheeks, anything to stay conscious and upright, anything at all. A thought came to her.

This is Darenfeld’s Coppice, her mind told her. Darenfeld’s Coppice which lay, once upon a time, within the bounds of Darenfeld’s estancia. You are riding to hounds in Darenfeld’s Coppice, where your friend Janetta bon Maukerden died. Dimity’s mouth opened to shout, and her mind told her mouth to close itself once more. You will be still about it, she told herself. No one really said Janetta died here. No one said that. No one said anything except her name and then whispering, “Darenfeld’s Coppice.” And when Dimity asked, they said shush, shush, don’t say, don’t ask.

They know more than you do, she told herself. You can’t tell them anything they don’t know already.

The hounds were baying as they raced away, and the mount beneath her was dashing after them. She stayed on, eyes shut once more. It was all she could do to hold on. To stay where she was. Not to fall off. To be silent. To bear the pain. To go on with the Hunt.

The Hunt does go on. Time passes. The fox runs for hours. The riders pursue it for hours. Dimity forgets who she is or where she is. There is no yesterday, nor any tomorrow. There is only an everlasting now, full of the pound of feet on the turf, the rustle of grasses as they push their way through, the scream of the fox far ahead, the bay of the hounds. Hours gone. Days, perhaps. Perhaps they have ridden for days. She would not know.

There is nothing to mark the passage of time. Thirst, yes. Hunger, yes. Weariness, yes. Pain, yes. All of these have been there since early in the morning: burning thirst, gnawing hunger, aching bones, deep-set as a disease. Her mouth cannot be drier than it is, her stomach emptier. She cannot hurt more than she hurts. And now, at last, she gives up fighting against it. It will last forever. The thing in her head wipes out any concern about that. Nothing measures time. No before. No after. Nothing, nothing. Until the mount beneath her slows and stops and she unwillingly leaves the agonized daze she has fallen into and opens her eyes.

They are standing at the edge of another copse, moving slowly into it, into a grove, into the dusky cathedral shade of the trees. High above them the foliage opens to allow the sun to pierce the gloom in long radiant spears. One of them lights Stavenger where he stands upon his mount with the harpoon in his hands, ready to throw. From the tree branches above comes a scream of rage, then Stavenger’s arm whips out and the line streaks behind the harpoon like a thread of purest gold. A horrible scream again, this time of agony.

A hound leaps high to seize the line in his teeth. Other hounds as well. They have it. They are pulling the fox out of the tree, still howling, still screaming, never silent for an instant. Something huge and dark with glistening eyes and mighty fangs falls among them, and then there is only the sound of screaming mixed with the sound of teeth.

Dimity closes her eyes again, too late not to see the dark blood fountaining among the struggling bodies, and feels ... feels a welling of pleasure so deeply intimate it makes her flush and draw her breath in, makes her legs quiver where they bestride the body beneath her, makes her whole body rock in a spasm of ecstatic sensation.

All around her other eyes are closed, other bodies quiver. Except for Sylvan. Sylvan sits erect, eyes fixed on the bloody tumult before him, teeth bared in a silent rage of defiance, his face quite blank. He can see Dimity from where he is, see her body thrashing, her eyes closed. In order not to see it, he turns his face away.

Dimity did not open her eyes again until they had come all the way back to Klive and had left the Dark Forest to enter upon the Trail of Greens and Blues, There the pain became too much to bear silently and she moaned without thinking, only a tiny sound. One of the hounds looked back at her, a great, violet-mottled hound, its eyes like flames. There was blood on it, blood all over it, its own blood or the blood of the fox. She was conscious in that moment that those same eyes had looked at her again and again during the hunt, that those same eyes had looked at her even when the fox fell from the tree into the middle of the pack, when she felt ... that.

She looked down at her hands clenched upon the reins and did not raise her head again.

When they arrived at the Hunt Gate, she could not dismount by herself. Sylvan had to help her. He was at her side so quickly that she thought no one noticed how weak she was. No one but that same hound, his red eyes gleaming in the gathering dusk. Then he went away, all the hounds went away, the mounts went away, and the Huntsman sounded his horn softly at the gate, crying, “The Hunt is over. We have returned. Let us come in.”

From the balcony, Rowena heard the muted horn call. It meant the creatures were gone and humans waited to be attended to. She leaned across the balustrade, hands clutching one another, mouth open, as a servant opened the Kennel Gate from inside and the weary hunters straggled through: the Master and the members of the Hunt in their red coats, the women in their black, their padded breeches making them look wide and froglike in the gloom. White breeches were sweat-stained now, and the pristine purity of the hunt ties had been sullied by dust and by chaff from the tall grasses. Male servants waited with goblets of water and bits of grilled meat on skewers. Baths were waiting, had been waiting for some hours, steaming from the heat of their own little furnaces, and the hunters, hands full of meat and drink, scattered toward their various rooms. Gasping, ready to cry out at last from the fear she had fought during the long day, Rowena sought among the riders until she found the slight figure of Diamante leaning on Sylvan’s arm. Then the tears spilled over and she sought a voice she had almost lost in the conviction that Dimity had not returned.

“Dimity.” Rowena leaned across the rail, not wishing to be overheard by Stavenger or one of the other aristocratic old guard. When the girl looked up, Rowena beckoned, and Sylvan nodded toward a side door. Within a few minutes Dimity was in her mother’s room and Salla was greeting her with an exclamation of disgust.

“Dirty! Oh, you’re filthy, girl—i Filthy. Like a migerer mole creature. Covered all over. Take that coat off, and that tie. I’ll get your robe and you can take off the rest of this filthy stuff.”

“I’m dirty but I’m all right, Salla,” said the girl, moon-pale, pushing weakly at Salla’s busy hands.

“Dimity?”

“Mother.”

“Give Salla your clothes, dear. Here, I’ll help you with your boots.” There was a brief, grunting interlude as the high black boots were tugged off. “You can have your bath in here while you tell me about the Hunt.” She moved through the luxurious bedroom, beckoning, opening the door into the mosaic-tiled bath, where water had been already drawn and kept steaming by its own fires. “You can use my bath oil. You always liked that when you were tiny. Are you sore?”

Dimity tried to smile in response, failed. It was all she could do to keep her hands from shaking as she stripped her underclothes away, letting them fall in a pile on the bathroom floor. Only after she was neck deep in steaming water did Rowena say again, “Tell me about it.”

The girl murmured, “I don’t know. Nothing happened.” The water was soaking away the pain. It hurt to move, and yet in the warm soothe of the water it had become almost pleasure to feel that ache, that deep, abiding agony of the bones. “Nothing happened.”

Rowena stamped her foot, very softly, eyes bright with tears. “Did you have any trouble mounting?”

“No. Not really.”

“Had you ... had you seen the mount before?”

Dimity opened her eyes, suddenly aware, looking at her mother directly. “The mount? I think it’s one I’ve seen before, grazing maybe, out near the shortgrass field where Syl and I used to play.” Perhaps this meant something. She searched her mother’s face, but Rowena only nodded. When Rowena had first ridden, her mount, too, had been one she had seen watching her when she was a child. “Where did you go?”

“I think we drew a copse in Darenfeld’s ... in the valley.” Rowena nodded again, remembering dark trees towering, shutting out the sky, the ground covered with small flowering mosses, a noise of running water under the mosses, under the roots. Remembering Dimity’s friend, Shevlok’s lover, Janetta.... “Did you start a fox?”

“Yes.” She shut her eyes, unwilling to say more. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to forget it. Next time she would give in to the pain right away. Next time she wouldn’t fight it Through slitted lids she saw Rowena’s face, still questioning, still demanding, wanting more. Sighing, Dimity said, “The hounds went in. Pretty soon they were all baying, and we went racing off. I seem to remember the hounds lost him three or four times, but they got him each time again. Maybe I only made that up. He just ran and ran forever, that’s all. And then the hounds treed him away north somewhere.”

“Did you kill?”

“Stavenger did. Daddy. I mean, the Master did. He only had to throw once. I couldn’t see where the harpoon stuck, but they pulled the fox out of the tree and the hounds got him.” She flushed then, deeply, the blood rising into her face in an unmistakable tide as she remembered what had followed.

Rowena saw the flush, interpreted it correctly, and turned aside in order not to confront what she saw there. Shame. Embarrassment. Mortified pudicity. Rowena sought for something, anything to say other than ... other than this. It had happened to her, too. It had always happened. She had never mentioned it to another soul. She had not known until now whether it was her guilty secret or a secret shared. “You didn’t really see the fox, then.”

“I couldn’t see anything except a blob in the tree. Then eyes, and teeth, and then it was all over.”

“Ah.” Rowena sighed, the tears now streaming, laughing at herself and her fears, shamed for Dimity’s shame but relieved just the same. “Mother! I’m all right. It’s all right.”

Rowena nodded, dabbing at her eyes. Of all the things that might have gone wrong, none had. Dimity had mounted, had ridden, hadn’t fallen off, hadn’t been attacked by the fox, hadn’t done anything to upset the hounds.

“Mother.” Softly, moved by the tears, offering something.

“Yes, Dimity-“

“There was this one hound that kept watching me, all the time we were coming back. A kind of purplish mottled one. He just kept looking at me and looking at me. Every time I looked down, there he was.”

“You didn’t stare!”

“Of course not. I know better. I didn’t even seem to notice, not that the hound could see. I just thought it was funny, that’s all.”

Rowena argued with herself. Say too little? Say too much? Say nothing? “Hounds are peculiar that way. Sometimes they watch us. Sometimes they don’t look at us. Sometimes they seem to be amused by us. You know.”

“I don’t, really.”

“Well, they need us, Dimity. They can’t climb, so they can’t kill the fox unless we bring him down.”

“They only need one man for that, somebody with a strong arm to throw the harpoon.”

“Oh, I think there’s more to it than that. The hounds seem to enjoy the Hunt. The ritual of it.”

“When we were riding back, I kept wondering how it ever got started. I know they ride to the hounds on Terra, back before Sanctity, before we left. That was in my history book, with pictures of the horses and dogs and the little furry thing—nothing like our fox at all. I couldn’t figure out why they should have wanted to kill it, even. With our foxen, killing it is the only thing to do. But why do it this way?”

“One of the first settlers made friends with a young mount and learned to ride him, that’s all there is to it,” Rowena answered. “The settler taught some friends, and the young mount brought along some more of its kind, and gradually we had a Hunt again.”

“And the hounds?”

“I don’t know. My grandfather told me once that they were simply there one day, that’s all. As though they knew we needed them to have a proper Hunt. They always show up on the proper day at the proper place, just like the mounts do....”

“If we call them hounds when they aren’t really hounds, how come we don’t call the mounts horses?” Dimity asked, lying back until her head was half submerged, contented now to say nothing much, to talk, perhaps to have her mother wash her back.

Rowena was startled. “Oh, I don’t think the Hippae would like that, not at all.”

“But they don’t mind being called mounts?”

“But my dear, we never call them even that where they can hear us. You know that. We never call them anything at all where they can hear us.”

“It makes your head feel funny,” said Dimity. “Doesn’t it?”

“What?” asked Rowena, suddenly on her feet. “What does?”

“Hunting. Doesn’t it make your head feel funny?”

Rowena said in a preoccupied tone, “It has a kind of hypnotic effect. It would really be rather boring otherwise.” She put a folded towel within Dimity’s reach, then left the room, closing the door behind her to keep the steamy warmth within.

One of the hounds watching Dimity? She bit her lip, frowned, acquired a suddenly haunted expression. She would have to speak to Sylvan about that. Right now he would be closeted with Figor about that Sanctity business, but perhaps he had noticed something. No one else would have noticed anything, but perhaps Sylvan had. Or perhaps it had all been in Dimity’s mind. Weariness and hours of pain could do that.

Still it would be an odd thing to imagine. The hounds had killed, so they should have been in a good mood. There was no reason for one of them to have watched Dimity. There was no reason for Dimity even to have imagined it. Surely no one had ever said anything to her, about Janetta ... about that side of things

She would speak to Sylvan about it. As soon as she could. As soon as this silly matter of the scientific mission was decided and everyone could think about something else.

Grass.

Millions of square miles of prairie, with villages and estancias, with hunters and the hunted, where the wind walks and the stars shine on stalk and seed plume and where the sluglike peepers cry from the roots all day and all night, except when certain things call deep in the star-specked dark to make a stunning, eerie silence fall.

North, almost at the place where the shortgrass country begins, are the ruins of a city of the Arbai, not unlike the many other cities of the Arbai found among the settled worlds, except that here on Grass the inhabitants died of violence. Among the ruins the Green Brothers are intermittently occupied, digging trenches, listing artifacts, making copies of the volumes in the Arbai library. The Brothers are penitents, it is said, though no one else on Grass knows or cares what they are penitent about.

A little north of the dig, in the sprawling, vaulted Friary, other Green Brothers keep busy in their gardens, busy with their pigs and chickens, busy sky-crawling, busy walking out into grasses to preach to the Hippae perhaps, or to the foxen, who knows? All of them, too, are penitents, cast out of Sanctity to this far, lonely place. They were here, unwillingly, when the aristocrats arrived. Some of them lament that they will still be here, as unwillingly, when the aristocrats have gone.

And finally there is the port, and Commoner Town, both of them set down in the one place on Grass where little grass grows, a high, stone-based ridge surrounded by swamp forest—a long, slender ellipse, a hundred square miles or so given over to shipping and warehouses and hydroponic farms, to quarries and meadows and mines and all the other clutter and cacophony of human life and human business. Commoner Town, where strangers can come and go without bothering anyone, where foreigners can do their incomprehensible and, as the bon Damfels do say, contemptible business.

And there is the port, where fat ships fall, squatting on their fiery tails as they arrive from Shame and Semling and the planet most call Sanctity until they are reminded that it is really named Terra, the first home of man. Men and women are on Grass in many guises: transients and merchants and craftsmen and ships’ crews and preachers needing hotels and warehouses, shops and brothels and churches. Children, too, with their playing fields, and teachers with their schools. Occasionally a small group of adventurous children or bored transients will leave the port or town behind them and walk the mile or two down the long slope to the place where the ground flattens out in marshy meadow. There is a kind of springiness in the mossy growth there, a resilient dampness at first, which, if they go on, rapidly turns to the kind of sogginess one might expect after days of rain. Walkers can get a bit farther on that ground, feeling their feet squelch deeply into it, though most draw back in fear that it will quake and give way, as indeed it does in a little space, becoming so boggy that stubborn explorers have to leap from tussock to tussock over braided streams gleaming in oily lights. There are huge blue-leafed clume trees in this bog, and flowers blooming like pale candles, and powder-winged moths the size and color of parrots and smelling of incense, and there are huge homely frogs whose forebears came with the first settlers long ago.

So much one can see on a casual walk from Commoner Town— so much, but no more, because just beyond the clume trees the bog deepens and the tussocks become jungly islets separated by twined rivers of dark water full of twisted roots and things that go squirming into the slime with ominous plopping sounds. There the trees have bluer leaves, and they grow taller the farther one goes, shutting out the light. To go on into the forest one would need a boat, a shallow skiff or punt with a long pole to push against the murky depths below, or maybe a paddle to dip silently into that smooth dark water, propelling one along the labyrinthine leafy halls.

Not that it hasn’t been done. Some few heedless men have built themselves vessels of greater or lesser water-worthiness to carry them exploring; some few foolhardy commoner boys and maybe a girl or two have made themselves boats to slip between the great buttressed trunks of the trees and the reaching tentacles of vine and take themselves farther into the glimmering shadows of the swamp forest. Not many. There might have been more, except that of those who went in, a good many never came out. Grown men from off-planet have tried it, too, doughty men and strong, but they have been lost just as the boys and girls were lost.

And those who did come out again? What could they say about it except that it was wet and dark and full of things slithering and that it got wetter and darker and more slithery yet the farther one went? In fact, they have said very little. It is almost as though they could not remember what they might have seen, there in the dank depths of the swamp forest. As though they had gone in and come out again by accident, while sleeping, having seen or heard nothing at all.

And, after all, who cares? Who has any need to go in there? Nothing comes out of the mire and the viny trees to do anyone harm, and nothing has been seen in the swamp that anyone wants. From above, the great trees look like the restless billows of a miles-wide gray-green sea. From afar, they are a wall shutting Commoner Town inside and keeping the restless energies of its tradesmen and craftsmen from erupting. From inside, they are a wall against the inexorable grasses, keeping them at bay. North, south, east, and west, all sides of the town are closed off by the swamp forest. No road in, no road out, and the depths of the forest inviolable, the depths of its trees and waters unknown and unseen, though so wide and ramified that —even though no one has ever seen anything of the kind—everyone in Commoner Town believes there is a something there that will emerge, someday, to the astonishment of them all.

3

The streets of St. Magdalen’s were, as usual, deep in mud. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier had to leave her hover at the hamlet gate, next to the population post, and go slogging through mire which came almost to her ankles as she went past the chapel and the soup kitchen to the hovel that had been assigned to Bellalou Benice and her children. One child now: Lily Anne. The two legal children had publicly repudiated their mother a month ago, so they were well out of it. The phrase set up an ugly resonance, and Marjorie flushed, angry at herself for being angry at the two almost adult Benices. “Well out of it” was accurate, and Bellalou herself had probably encouraged her offspring to execute the demeaning ceremony as soon as both were old enough. On Terra, both the planetary and most of the provincial governments claimed a Judeo-Christian heritage, but “honor thy father and thy mother” had no meaning for illegals or for their parents.

At the hovel Marjorie set her pack on the stoop while she scraped her boots on the step edge, kicking the gluey clods off into the morass. There was no excuse for this. It would take less money to pave the streets than it took to lay temporary sidewalks during the quarterly visitations by the board, but Marjorie was a minority voice on the Board of Governors, which had a “no frills” policy vis-a-vis its charitable endeavor. Most of the board members made their decisions about Breedertown without ever seeing the place or any of the people in it. Not that they didn’t coo and flutter around Marjorie for being so “dedicated,” so “brave.” She had taken considerable satisfaction in that, once. Some time ago. Before she knew as much as she knew now.

The hovel door opened a crack, disclosing Bellalou’s swollen face. Someone had hit her again. Not her putative husband. He’d been shot last year for illegal procreation.

“Ma’am,” said Bellalou.

“Good morning. Bellalou.” Marjorie smiled her visitation smile, carefully not patronizing. “How’s Lily?”

“Fine,” the woman said. “She’s fine.”

Lily Anne was not fine, of course. When Marjorie came into the slovenly room, the illegal glared at her out of a sullen face as bruised as her mother’s. “You checkin’ up on me agin.”

“Trying to keep you alive until the ship goes, Lily.”

“Maybe I’d rather be dead, you ever think of that?”

Marjorie nodded soberly. Oh, indeed. She had thought of that. Maybe Lily would rather be dead. Maybe most illegal people would rather be dead than shipped away to Repentance, where two thirds of them would die before they were thirty anyhow. Though Marjorie had undertaken this work out of the religious conviction that life at any price was worth living, that was before she had seen certain documentaries, read certain exposes. Even she was no longer sure Repentance was preferable to simple death.

“You don’ mean that, Lily,” Bellalou remonstrated.

“Fuck I don’t.”

Marjorie intervened, trying to convince herself as much as the girl. “Look at it this way, Lily. You can have all the babies you want on Repentance.” That, at least, was true. Population was as much needed on Repentance as it was now rigidly controlled here on Terra. Babies born on Repentance would be citizens of that planet.

“Don’t want babies there. Want my baby you took.” It was the most recent plaint, since the abortion Marjorie had arranged, risking her own freedom and possibly her marriage in the process. Neither Rigo nor the local law would have looked kindly on that particular act of charity. Marjorie’s confessor, Father Sandoval, wouldn’t have been precisely cheery about it, either, had he known. Taking another step down a path she had prayed was not irreversible, Marjorie hadn’t told him.

“Lady Wesriding din take your baby, Lily. If you din have that abortion you’duh been shot by the pop’lation as soon as you showed, you know that.” Bellalou looked pleadingly at her daughter. “Illegals can’t do that.” Only third and subsequent living children were actually illegal. Though Bellalou herself was not an illegal, her status made little difference. As the parent of one she had been stripped of her civil rights. She went on, as though to claim a future joy for her daughter, “It’ll be better on Repentance.”

“Don’t want Repentance. Rather be shot,” the girl cried.

Neither Marjorie nor Bellalou contradicted her. Marjorie found herself wondering why she simply hadn’t let it happen. Poor little beast. Ignorant as a chicken. Half her teeth were falling out already and she couldn’t read or write. No one was allowed to teach illegals anything or give them medical care. On her sixteenth birthday, Lily would be taken to the port to join a mob of other young illegals destined to live and die on the colony planet, and if it hadn’t been for the recent abortion and the implant of a very illicit five-year contraceptive device, the poor little cow wouldn’t have lasted until deportation. Planetary law said any illegal who came up pregnant got shot, along with whatever male illegal or de-righted person she claimed was responsible—if she cared to claim, which a surprising number of them did. Such claims made against certain respectable men, however, had caused some changes in the law. Now, only women served as guards in Breedertown. Only women were on the visitation committee.

“You get to have kids,” Lily whined. “You rich people!”

“Two children,” Marjorie said. “Only two, Lily. If I had a third child, it would be illegal, just like you. They’d take away my rights, just like they did your mother’s. They’d make my older children repudiate me, just like your brother and sister did to Bellalou.” She said it all wearily, not believing it. Rich people didn’t get in that kind of mess. They never had. Only the poor got trapped: by ignorance, by religion, by self-righteous laws passed by people who broke them with impunity. Marjorie herself had an implant, imported from the Humanist Enclave on the coast. Another thing she hadn’t told Father Sandoval. She hadn’t told Rigo, either, but surely he suspected. Probably his mistress had one as well.

She brushed the wrinkles out of her trousers as she rose. “I brought some clothes for you to wear on the ship,” she told the girl. “And some things you’ll need on Repentance.” She handed the package to Bellalou. “Lily will need these things, Bellalou. Don’t let her trade them for euphies, please.” Despite all efforts to keep them out, dealers in euphoriacs managed to do a good business in St. Magdalen’s.

“Gimme,” whined Lily, snatching at the package.

“Later,” said her mother. “Later on, honey. I’ll give it to you later on.”

Her business with Bellalou finished, Marjorie returned to the clammy air and the mud, glad that one visit was over, not eager to go on to the half dozen other hovels she had scheduled for today. There was so little she could do. Food for hungry children. A few antiseptics and painkillers that weren’t considered really “medical.” The local province was populated largely by the Sanctified, which meant there were provincial laws against both contraception and abortion. Stack that up against the planetary population laws against more than two living children per mother and what did you get? St. Magdalen’s Town. Breedertown. A charitable foundation set up by rich Old Catholics to shelter the unfortunate and unwise who followed either their inclination or their religion. As head of the Visitation Committee, Marjorie saw more of the place than most. Hands smoothing her disordered hair, she corrected herself: She saw more of it than any of them. They had been quick to admire her for her dedication but damned slow to emulate it.

All of which merely increased her doubts The chairmen before her had been chairmen in name only, or they had been women no wealthier than Marjorie who hired others to do the visitations for them. Why did she insist on doing this herself?

“You’ve got visions of yourself as a saint,” Rigo had sneered. “Being an Olympic gold medalist wasn’t enough for you? Being my wife isn’t enough? You also have to be Saint Marjorie, sacrificing herself for the poor?”

That had stung, though it hadn’t been true, not really. The gold medal had been long ago before they were married. Young Marjorie Westriding had been a medalist. yes, but a lot of subjective opinion on the part of judges and officials went into deciding who got medal: One might take a great deal of pride without being at all certain of one’s personal merit, at least so Marjorie had tried to explain to an unsympathetic Rigo, who barked laughter, pretended to disbelieve her even as he seized her in a passionate embrace. The truthful answer to his question would have been, no; the gold medal wasn’t enough. Besides, it was a long time ago. She needed something comparable now, something uniquely her own, some perfect achievement. At one time she had thought it might be her family, her children, but seemingly that wasn’t how it worked out...

So she had tried this, and this wasn’t working either. Gritting her teeth, she stepped down into the mud and started for the next hovel. When she returned to the hover some hours later she was tired and filthy and sunk deep in depression. One of “her” girls had been executed that week by a population patrol. Two children in one family seemed to be dying, probably from something contagious which could have been prevented if immunizations were allowed for illegals, which they weren’t. A thousand years ago the population of Breedertown could have been shipped off to Australia. A few hundred years ago, they might have been allowed to emigrate to wild colony planets. But with Sanctity meddling and threatening whenever people tried to spread out, there was no real colonization anymore. There wasn’t anyplace to send excess people except Repentance, if they stayed alive long enough to get there.

But Repentance really could be worse than the alternative. Now that Marjorie had decided that was true, it seemed rather pointless to go on. So long as Sanctity ruled, there was no legal way to do anything significant. Every week there would be a new girl pregnant or about to be, on and on, forever. If Marjorie spent everything she had, money and blood, it would do no lasting good. Did it matter whether any of them individually escaped from Terra? Lily? Bets, from last month? Dephine, from the month before that? If one didn’t get there, someone else would. What kind of life would they have, the ones who got there? Mired in ignorance and resentment, probably dying young...

Marjorie gritted her teeth, forbidding herself to cry. She could quit, of course. There were dozens of excuses she could give the board, all of them acceptable. But she had taken on this duty, and it would be sinful, surely, just to lay it down...

She shook her head violently, sending the hover into a sickening lurch. The blare of a warning siren from the console brought her back to herself. It would be better to think of something else. Of the children: Tony’s aspirations. Stella’s tantrums. She would think of anything else, even of Rigo and his mistress. Mistresses. Plural. Sequential.

The car slid across the boundary of the estate from the hoverway, and she lifted a hand to the head groom as she passed the stables, praying that Rigo wasn’t home to fight with her about where she had been, what she had been doing. She was too tired and depressed to argue. She’d wanted to do something significant, an achievement, some fine gesture, and she’d failed, that’s all. It hadn’t been an unworthy desire, not one Rigo should challenge her about, insisting that she explain why, why, why. Especially now that she wasn’t sure any longer.

Perhaps Rigo had been right in the first place. Perhaps she really had wanted to be a saint. And if that were true?

Wry laughter seized her; tears squeezed from her eyes as she parked the hover and sagged against the seat, wondering how one went about being a saint these days. She started to wipe her face and compose herself, remembering all at once that she didn’t need to pretend composure, didn’t need to pretend certainty, didn’t need to pretend anything. This time, at least, she would not have to explain herself to Rigo. He would not be home until evening. This was the day Roderigo Yrarier, faithful Old Catholic and staunch son of the Church, had done the unthinkable. He had answered a summons to Sanctity.

One hundred golden angels stand on the tower spires of Sanctity, wings wide, trumpets lifted, lit by internal fires which make them shine like a century of suns. Sanctity’s crystal towers mass against one another in a lofty and breathtaking bonfire of glittering surfaces against the dark of an empty sky. Both day and night they are a lighthouse, a guide—so Sanctity says—to the great diaspora of humanity clustered on the nearest possible worlds out there in the darkling seas of space.

They are also a beacon for tourships which hang in swarms the requisite fifty kilometers away, viewports clustered with spectators. The ships are allowed no closer for fear of some unspecified disaster.

They may come only near enough for the tourists to make out the huge angels on the summits of the towers and read the linked words picked out in mirrors and lights upon the highest walls.

Sanctity. Unity. Immortality.

Though it is impossible to see anything in detail from that distance with the naked eye, Sanctity is never observed at closer range. To all the worlds Sanctity stands forever upon the Terran horizon, perceivable yet remote, holy and unapproachable, fully accessible only to its chosen ones: the Hierophants, the servitors, the acolytes. If there is reason for a male outsider to come inside (women may not come at all), he must first obtain the proper papers. Then he must use those papers, after proving he is indeed male, to gain access to the well-guarded terminus far out in the surrounding countryside, if satisfied, the guards will allow him to enter a conveyance which will take him through silent tunnels to a reception area a respectful distance from Sanctity’s protected heart.

That heart would be the subterranean quarters of the Hierarch himself, far below the angel-spiked towers and protected by half a mile of earth and stone from all possible harm. The Hierophants of exalted degrees occupy apartments nearby. The machines are above that, and then the chapels, and only then the terminus and reception area. In the lowest rooms of the towers are the suites of the servitors and clergy of moderate status. The farther up one is assigned to live, the lower down the organizational ladder one finds himself, or such is the conventional wisdom. The higher up, the longer it takes one to get down to the chapels and the tunnels where the ritual work of Sanctity is conducted. The higher up one lives, the less valued one is. At the top, communing with the clouds, are the eager converts with too little intellect to be good for anything much; the old, their anonymity fading into forgetfulness; the pledged acolytes, serving out their unwilling terms.

And it is there, in the highest floor of the highest tower, that Rillibee Chime spends his undutied hours, squatting in purported meditation in cloud-surrounded silence, sprawling through papery, celibate nights on his narrow bed, untinted by happy dream. It is here he rises in the morning and washes himself, here he dons his soft slippers, here he puts on a clean, colorless suit with its tight, anonymous hood and touches his face with powder to remove any unseemly color. As he does this, he watches birds going by in long, purposeful V-shaped lines, headed southward toward the warm lands, toward Rillibee’s home. Sanctity is set upon the edge of the waste, both to separate itself from the humdrum daily affairs of the world and to avoid taking up room which nature needs for other things. Behind the glittering towers lie the arctic tundra and the ice and a cold uninterrupted for many centuries.

Though cold has no meaning in Sanctity. Within the towers the temperature never changes. Rain does not fall, nor snow intrude upon these quiet corridors. Nothing grows. Nothing is acknowledged to die. If Rillibee were to fall seriously ill, he would be spirited away and another acolyte would occupy his room, do his work, attend to his services. No one would care that one had gone and another had come. A message might be sent to his parents or guardians, if he had any such, but that is the only notice that would be taken. Though doctrine teaches that the immortality of the person is the sole reason for Sanctity’s edificial existence, there is no personality allowed in its service—at least not at Rillibee’s level. There are few names known in Sanctity: the Hierarch, Carlos Yrarier; the division chief for Missions, Sender O’Neil; the name of the Hierarch Elect. Rillibee’s name will never be among them.

Sometimes he says his name to himself, over and over, silently, reminding himself who he is, clinging to himself, the self he had known, the self with memories and a past and people he loved once. Sometimes he stares out at a neighboring tower, trying to see through the sparkling surface to any person there, to someone else, someone with another name, fighting down the cries that threaten to break loose in his rigid throat.

“I am Rillibee Chime,” he whispers to himself. “Born among the cactus of the deserts. Companion of birds and lizards.” He summons up the memory of birds, lizards, of the lines of ducks overhead, of flat corncakes cooked on a hot griddle, the taste of savory beans, the memory of Miriam, Joshua, Songbird as they were, once, long ago. “Two more years,” he whispers to himself. “Two more years.”

Two more years of his term of service. Not that he had been pledged by his parents as the sons of the Sanctified were pledged. Not that he had been promised in order for his mother to receive permission to bear a son. It was only among the Sanctified that women had to pledge their boy children to years of service in Sanctity itself, and Rillibee’s people had not been Sanctified. No, Rillibee had been taken, taken in, adopted, assigned to service because there had been no one left to keep the grasping minions of Sanctity at bay.

Two more years, Rillibee says to himself, if he can last that long. And if he cannot? Sometimes he asks himself that question, fearing what the answer is. What happens to those who cannot last out their terms? What happens to those who cannot choke the screams down, who gibber or shout or curse, as he wants to curse ... ?

“Damn,” the parrot had said, long ago, making Miriam laugh. “Damn. Shit.”

“Damn,” Rillibee whispers now.

“Let me die,” the parrot had said. No one had laughed then.

“Let me die,” Rillibee agrees, hands outstretched to the glowing six-winged seraphim on the towers.

Nothing happens. The angels, though constantly solicited, do not strike him down.

Each day he goes out of his cubicle to the drop chute and stands looking at it for a moment, wondering if he has the courage to leap into it. When he first came to Sanctity he was pushed into it, pushed into it time after time, feeling himself falling forever while his skin crawled and his stomach fought to get out through his nose. Ten years now, and he still screams mentally each time he thinks of dropping into the chute. He has found an acceptable alternative. Inside the bottomless well of the chutes are fat metal staple-shaped rungs, set there for men to climb upon when the chutes must be cleaned or repaired. A thousand feet down. A thousand feet up. Rillibee climbs them twice each day, rising early to be sure he has time.

After the climb, mess hall. He has come to mess hall for ten years now, every day since he was twelve, but he still fights down the urge to cough at the smell of breakfast. Mess hall. Full of the forever stink of nasty-tasting stuff. He does not stay to eat.

He goes climbing, down once more to duty hall, searching out his number from among a thousand others on the lighted board. RC-15-18809. Clerical duties for the Hierarch. Cleric-all required. Guide duty. Level three minus, Room 409, 1000 hours.

The Hierarch. Strange that they should appoint someone so young and uncommitted as Rillibee to attend the Hierarch. Or, perhaps, not strange. So far as Sanctity is concerned, he is merely a part, interchangeable with any other part. It takes no commitment to guide a visitor or operate a cleric-all.

His body will not be required for two hours. Time to do something. Time to go to Supply and check out a cleric-all. Time to go up to commissary level and buy something to eat that tastes like real food. Time to go to the library and pick out something for recreation. He is afraid to go where people are. Cries of loneliness and frustration are too close to the roots of his tongue He swallows, trying to drive them down, but they stay there, rough greasy lumps of unswallowed and habitual grief.

Better to go where almost no one goes. One more climb down to chapel level and a slow walk along the corridor, passing chapel after chapel, hearing the mosquito whine of the speakers over each altar. Picking a chapel at random, Rillibee goes in and sits down, putting on the earphones which slow the mosquito whine to an understandable speed. A ponderous bass voice is chanting. “Artemus Jones. Favorella Biskop. Janice Pittorney.” Rillibee slips the earphones off and watches the altar instead.

Each day an elder sits behind the altar, waiting for the anonymous acolyte to present a list of new enrollees. The elder nods his head and the acolyte begins, “On the world of Semling, a womanchild born to Martha and Henry Spike who has been named Alevia Spike. On Victory, a boychild born to Brown Brittle and Hard Lost Blue who has been named Broken Sound. On Repentance, a boychild to Domal and Susan Crasmere who has been named Domal Vincente II.”

To each such intelligence the elder bows low, intoning words made nonsensical by overuse, words none of them in the towers hear any longer. “Sanctity. Unity. Immortality.” Meaning doesn’t matter. The mere utterance of these words opens the holy door. The mere syllabic mutter enters the name into the rolls of humanity. When the words have been intoned, the robed acolyte holds his forms and tissue samples for a moment in the sacred smoke before thrusting them into slots where they plunge down slanted surfaces of polished stone into a place this acolyte, like most short-term acolytes, will never see. There the name is put into the files and the cell sample is put into the tissue banks, both making an immortal place in the holy history for little red-wrinkled Alevia, for screaming infant Broke, for drowsy Dom.

Rillibee has been down in the clucking depths once or twice on records duty. The genealogy machines are down there, muttering to themselves as they assign numbers and make note of the genetic information in the cell samples, information which will serve, should the occasion arise, to resurrect the body of Alevia or Broke or Dom or this one or that one or anyone who has ever lived, uniquely himself or herself, distinguishable from all their human brethren alive or dead, emerging newborn from the clone machines. In body only, of course. No one has found a way yet to record memory or personality. Still, better body than nothing, so the Sanctified say as they drop their samples down. If the body lives, it will accumulate memory, and in time there will be a new creation not unlike the old. Who is to say the new Alevia will not, on strange occasions and with a sense of deja vu, relive her former life? Who is to say that Dom will not look into the mirror and see there the ghost of a former self?

In the depths of Sanctity is the name of every man and woman who has ever lived in all of human history. Those for whom no written history could be found have been extrapolated by the humming machines back to the edge of the time when there was no mankind. There are men and women in the machines with names no historic person ever knew, names in languages that were spoken at the dawn of time. Never mind that no one alive can speak the language of Homo habilis; the machines know what it was and the names of those who spoke it. Adam, just down from the trees, is on the list, and Eve, scratching her butt with a splay-thumbed hand. Their genotypes are there as well, designed by the machines and assigned appropriate DNA sequences. Every person ever alive is there, in Sanctity/Unity/Immortality.

And all of it, every machine, every entry, every sample, all of it is guarded. There are guards everywhere, watching, noticing, reporting. Watching for those who may not conform to the ideal of S/U/I. Watching for acolytes who fall apart into gibbering madness. Watching for Moldies, members of that sect that has wearied of troublesome life and desires only the end, the ultimate destruction of Sanctity, of Terra, of a hundred worlds, of life itself—the end of all those men and women on the eternal list.

Every day, in each of a thousand chapels, parts of the list are read by the machines, read aloud, dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn. When the list has been read in its entirety, the machines start over. The mosquito whine of the reading has no end as it rehearses all of humanity from father Adam to little Dom, over and over again.

As it goes on Rillibee sits staring at the elder, half listening to the names put forward by the acolyte, lifting the mechanism back to his ear as the machine recitation goes on. “Violet Wilberforce. Nick En Ching. Herbard Guston.” Everyone else who has ever lived, but not Rillibee Chime. He has never heard his name in that mechanical voice. Perhaps he will not be enrolled until he has completed his twelve years and gone. The earpieces are thick with dust. It has been a long time since anyone has come there to listen, a long time since anyone has cared about the litany.

In a little while he will pick up the cleric-all and report for duty to Room 409, level three minus. In a moment. For now, he will sit here very quietly, choking down his loneliness as he saysRillibee Chimeto himself, carefully listening to the sound of it, words spoken aloud in a human voice in this empty hell where no one speaks his name.

As Rigo Yrarier stepped out of the conveyance pod in the reception area deep underground, he was not entirely surprised to find his skin crawling with superstitious revulsion. He hadn’t wanted to come here. Uncle Carlos had sent a message begging him to come. Uncle Carlos, the family scandal. Carlos, a skeleton in the confessional, as it were. Apostate Uncle Carlos, long ago lapsed from the Old Catholic religion of his birth and now Hierarch of all this ...this.Rigo looked around himself trying to define this.This hive. This unholy ant’s nest. Outside the glass room in which he stood, identically suited and powdered figures scurried like so many anonymous insects.

Rigo had not wanted to come, not even on a mission of mercy, which is what Uncle Carlos had called it in his message. Missions of mercy were Marjorie’s business, not Rigo’s, and he was not even sympathetic with hers. Useless, all of it. One could not save people who were too stupid to save themselves, and the same thing applied to Sanctity, so far as Rigo was concerned. Then, surprisingly, Father Sandoval had urged Rigo to answer the plea. No doubt Father had reasons of his own. He would probably want a report; he would want to know all about Sanctity, what it looked like, what went on there. Old Catholic clergy were allowed to take tours of Sanctity about as often as Old Catholic clergy allowed the devil to assist at mass.

The superstitious revulsion Rigo felt was only part of his reluctance. There was a good deal of anger and hostility in him as well, which he recognized and tried to guard against showing as he looked about for someone who would tell him where to go next. The ghostly aspect of the suited and powdered nonentity who came through the hissing door and bowed in greeting did nothing to alleviate Rigo’s sense that something was crawling on him. Neither did the long walk as he followed his guide down ramified corridors, past chapel after chapel, all of them empty, all of them buzzing with the shrill telling of names, endless lists of names.

It would be better, he thought, if they invented machines to listen as well as machines to speak, or simply let one machine rehearse the names quietly and eternally to itself. As much would be achieved, certainly, without this mosquito howl which made his skin itch and his head hurt. His own name was undoubtedly in that noise somewhere. His own and Marjorie’s and the children’s. There was no escaping it, even though their families had filed the exemption forms saying they were of another faith, did not wish to be listed in Sanctity, did not wish their children to be listed, did not believe in the mechanical immortality and the hope of physical resurrection which was the best Sanctity could offer. Despite his father’s passionate outbursts against Sanctity’s arrogance and its pretensions, despite his mother’s hysteria and Father Sandoval’s gentle resentment, Sanctity would have done as it pleased. Everyone knew the exemption forms were a travesty. Filing them was merely a signal for one of the Sanctified missionaries to track the exempted ones down, to haunt them until the missionary could obtain a few living cells. Any crowded street or walkway would do. A quick punch was all it took. Like a pinch, a nip, a needle touch. They were like rats, those missionaries, a secret multitude, sneaking and prodding, bringing names and tissue samples here to become part of this … this.

This. Sanctity/Unity/lmmortality. The words were on all sides of him, engraved in the floors, set into the walls, cast into the surfaces of doorknobs. Where there was not room for the words, the initial letters pocked every surface, S/U/I, S/U/1, S/U/l.

“Blasphemous fiction,” Rigo muttered to himself, quoting Father Sandoval. He tried to take shorter steps so that he would not tread on the heels of his guide, wishing with every step that he hadn’t come. Not for Uncle Carlos. Carlos the traitor. Bad enough he had been a heretic without having become Hierarch, a source of embarrassment for all Old Catholics everywhere.

The hooded escort stopped, gave Rigo a quick look as though to see if he was properly dressed, then knocked at a deeply recessed door before opening it and gesturing for Rigo to enter. It was a small, featureless room furnished with three chairs. The hooded acolyte came in to perch on one of them, anonymous as a new nail, fingers poised over a cleric-all. In another chair, one set apart near a slightly open door, an old man huddled, a waking corpse with dull, deep-sunk eyes. His bandaged hands shook and his voice quavered.

“Rigo?”

“Uncle?” Rigo asked, not sure. He had not seen the old man for decades. “Uncle Carlos?” There was a stench in the room, like a closed attic where something had died.

The shaking moved from arms to head, and Rigo interpreted this as a nod. The hand motioned slightly toward the empty chair, and Rigo sat down. He saw death before him, death too long delayed.

Despite himself, he felt pity. The acolyte on the other chair was preparing to take notes, already keying his cleric-all to record and transcribe.

“My boy,” came the whisper. “We’re asking you to do something. To go on a journey. For a time. It is important. It is a family matter, Rigo.” He leaned back in the chair, coughing weakly.

“Uncle!” Damned if he would call himHierarch.”You know we are not among the Sanctified....”

“I am not asking that you do it for Sanctity, Rigo. I am asking for family. For your family. All families. I am dying. I am not important. We are all dying—“ He was shaken by a paroxysm.

The door opened and two robed attendants boiled in, offering a cup, half snarling at one another in their eagerness to help.

Rigo reached out a hand. “Uncle!”

He received glares from fanatical faces, his hand was slapped away.

The aged man beat at them weakly. “Leave me, leave me, fools. Leave me,” until they bubbled away from him and departed, reluctantly. “No strength to explain,” he murmured, eyes almost closed, “O’Neil will explain. Ass. Not you. O’Neil. Ass. Don’t write that down,” this to the acolyte. “Take him to O’Neil.” He turned to his nephew once again. “Please, Rigo.”

“Uncle!”

The man drew himself together and fixed Rigo with a death’s-head glare. “I know you don’t believe in Sanctity. But you believe in God, Rigo. Please, Rigo. You must go. You and your wife and your children. All of you, Rigo. For mankind. Because of the horses.” He began to cough once more.

This time the weak coughing did not stop, and the servitors came back with officious strength to bear the old man away. Rigo was left sitting there, staring at the powdered, anonymous figure across from him. After a moment, the acolyte put the strap of the cleric-all over his shoulder and beckoned for Rigo to follow him out. He led the way down a twisting hall to a wider corridor.

“What’s your name?” Rigo had asked.

The acolyte’s voice was hollow, inattentive. “We don’t have—“

“I don’t care about that. What’s your name?”

“Rillibee Chime.” The words fell softly into quiet, like rainwater into a pool.

“Is he dying?”

A moment’s pause. Then, softly, as though to answer was difficult or forbidden. “The whispers say he is.”

“What is it?”

“Everyone says … plague.” The last word came as bile comes, choking. The anonymous face turned away. The anonymous person panted. It had been a hard word to say. It meant an end to time. It meant two years might not be long enough for him to get out of this place.

It was also a hard word to hear.

“Plague!” It came out of Rigo’s belly like a grunt.

These days the word meant only one thing. A slow virus of the most insidious type and hideous aspect. A slow virus which emerged at last to make the body devour itself as in a spasm of biological self-hatred. Father Sandoval had insisted on showing Rigo a banned documentary made by a fellow priest, now dead, at an aid station where plague victims were treated and given whatever rites would comfort them. There had been bodies on all the cots, some of them still living. Rigo’s eyes had slid across the picture, observing it without wanting to see it. The cube had made him see it. It had included sound and smell, and he had recoiled from the stench as he tried to shut out the guttural, agonized coughs, the mutilated bodies, the eyes sunk so deep they made the faces seem skull-like.

“Plague,” he muttered again. The rumor was that it had moved from planet to planet, lying dormant for decades, only to emerge at last in place after place, giving no hint of its origin, subverting every attempt to stay it. The rumor was that science had proved helpless, able to isolate the monster but utterly incapable of stopping it once it had invaded a human host. The rumor had been circulating for over twenty years. If there really was plague, by now the victims must be numbered in the billions. So said rumor and rumor only, for Sanctity denied that there was plague, and what Sanctity denied, the human worlds denied—by and large.

“You mean my uncle?” Roderigo demanded.

“I didn’t know he was your uncle until today. The Hierarch.” The acolyte turned to stare at him with suddenly human eyes. “I’m not supposed to say anything to you, sir. Please, don’t tell them I did. Here are the rooms of the division chief for Missions, sir. If you have questions, you must ask the division chief. You must ask Sender O’Neil.”

The acolyte turned away, losing himself in the stream of anonymous acolytes, only at the turn of the corridor turning back to stare at Roderigo Yrarier, who still stood there before the door, his eyes down, an expression of loathing on his face.

“That acolyte should be disciplined,” said a watcher. “Look at him, standing there, staring.” The watcher himself was staring nearsightedly through the crack of a very slightly opened door, his age-spotted hand trembling on the wall beside it.

“He’s only curious,” said his companion from over his shoulder. “How often do you think he gets to see anyone except the Sanctified. Shut the door. Did you understand what the old man said, Mailers?”

“The Hierarch? He said his nephew had a chance of finding what we need because of the horses.”

“And do you think Yrarier will succeed?”

“Well, Cory, he has a fine dramatic look to him, doesn’t he? All that black hair and white skin and red, red lips. I suppose he has as good a chance as anyone.”

The man addressed as Cory made a face. He, himself, had never been dramatic-looking, and he often regretted that fact. Now he looked simply old, with wispy hair frilling his ears and spiderwebs of wrinkles around his eyes. “He looks more dramatic than clever, but I hope he succeeds. We need him to succeed, Hallers. We need it.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, Cory. If we don’t get a cure soon, we’re dead. Everyone.”

There was a pause. Hallers turned to see his lifelong companion staring at the floor, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Even if we get it very soon, I think it will be better if we let the dying go on, some places.”

Hallers moved uncertainly toward his companion, his expression confused. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Well, Hallers, suppose we get the cure tomorrow. Why should we save everyone? Our own best people, of course, but why bother with everyone else? Why bother with some of the worlds, for example?”

Silence in the room while Hallers stared and Cory Strange watched for his reaction. Shock at first. Well, when Cory had first had the idea, he had been shocked at it too But then Cory had realized what it could do for Sanctity....

“You’d let them die? Whole worlds of men?”

The other shrugged elaborately, wincing as the shrug started a sudden pain in one arthritic shoulder. “In the long run, I think it would be best for Sanctity, don’t you? Mankind is too widespread already. Sanctity has done what it can to stop exploration, but it does go on. A group here, a group there, sneaking out. Little frontier worlds, here and there. And what happens? A place like Shame, for example, where we can’t even get a decent foothold! No, men are spread far too widely for us to control well.”

“That’s certainly the current view of the Council of Elders, I agree, but—“

“In any case,” the other interrupted, “we need to keep an eye on Yrarier so we know what he’s up to. Didn’t you tell me that Nods had been assigned to Grass? Head of Acceptable Doctrine with the penitents there, didn’t you say? Or did someone else tell me?”

“It must have been someone else. You mean our old friend Noddingale?”

“Him, yes. Though he’s adopted one of those strange Green Brother names. Jhamlees. Jhamlees Zoe.”

“Jhamlees Zoe?” The other laughed breathlessly. “Don’t laugh. The Brothers are quite serious about their religious names. Stay a moment while I write a note. Have one of your youngsters pack it into something innocent-looking, cover it with a code note and a destruct-wrap, and send it on the ship that takes Yrarier.” He sat at his desk and began to write, “My dear old friend Nods ...” his hand forming the letters with some difficulty.

His equally ancient friend, leaning over his shoulder, interrupted him by venturing curiously, “The old Hierarch will be dead within hours everyone says. Will the new Hierarch feel the same way about this business, Cory? About consolidating and letting some of the worlds just ... well, just go?”

“The new Hierarch?” Cory laughed again, this time with real amusement as he turned his wide, fanatical eyes on his companion. “You mean you didn’t know? That’s right! You’ve been outside for a while. The Council of Elders met a week ago. The new Hierarch will be me.”

4

It looks as though it has been winter forever,” Marjorie Westriding Yrarier remarked, careful to keep her voice level and without complaint. Complaint would not have been diplomatic, but her host and escort, Obermun Jerril bon Haunser, would not allow himself to take offense at a mere expression of opinion. Taking offense would be even more undiplomatic than giving it—certainly by someone who did not know her but whose business it undoubtedly was to get to know her as soon as possible. Looking at the angular planes of his long, powerful face, she wondered if he ever would. He had not the look of a man who cared much who others were or what they thought.

However, he set himself to attempt charm with an unaccustomed smile. “When summer comes,” he said in the heavily accented Terran he used as diplomatic speech, “you will believe it has lasted forever also. All the seasons on Grass are eternal. Summer never ends, nor fall. And though you do not see it at this moment, spring is upon us.”

“How would I know?” she asked, genuinely curious. From the window of the main house, which was set upon a slight rise, the landscape below her seemed an unending ocean of grayed pastels and palest gold, dried grasses moving like the waves of a shoreless sea, a surface broken only by scattered islands of broad and contorted trees, their tops so thickly twigged they appeared as solid masses inked blackly against the turbid sky. It was not like spring at home. It was not like any season at home, where she now desperately longed to be, despite the enthusiasm she had at first whipped up for this mission.

“How do you know it is spring?” she demanded, turning away from the window toward him.

They stood amid high, echoing walls in an arctic and empty chamber of what was to be the embassy. The distant ceiling curved in ivory traceries of plaster groins; tall glass doors opened through gelid arches onto a balustraded terrace; pale glowing floors reflected their movements as though from polished ice through a thin, cold film of dust. Though it was one of the main reception rooms of the estancia, it did not seem to require furnishings or curtains across the frigid glass. It seemed content with its numbing vacancy, as did the dozen other rooms they had visited, each as tall, wintery, and self-contained as this one.

The estancia, though conscientiously maintained, had been untenanted for some time, and Marjorie, Lady Westriding, had the feeling that the house preferred it that way. Furniture would be an intrusion in these rooms. They had accommodated themselves to doing without. Rejecting carpets and curtains in favor of this chill simplicity, they were content.

Unaware of her brief fantasy the Obermun suggested, “Look at the grasses along the stairs to the terrace. What do you see?”

She stared, convincing herself at last that the amethyst shadow she saw there was not merely an effect of the often very tricky light. “Purple?” she asked. “Purple grass?”

“We call that particular variety Cloak of Kings,” he said. “There are hundreds of grasses on this world, of many shapes and sizes and of an unbelievable array of colors. We have no flowers in the sense someone from Sanctity would understand, but we do not lack for bloom.” He used the word “Sanctity,” as did most of those they had encountered upon Grass, as a virtual synonym for Terra. As before, she longed to correct him but did not. The time when Sanctity had been contained on Terra was many generations past, but there was no denying its ubiquity and virtual omnipotence on man’s birthplace.

“I have read Snipopean’s account of the Grass Gardens of Klive,” she murmured, not mentioning it was almost the only thing she had been able to read about Grass. Sanctity knew nothing. Terra knew nothing. There was no diplomatic contact and no information could be transmitted and returned much more quickly than the Yrariers themselves could arrive—months after Sanctity had begged permission, months after permission for an ambassador had been given, months after Roderigo’s old uncle—now long since dead—had begged them to come. All had happened as swiftly as possible, and yet almost two Terran years had passed since these aristocrats had said they would allow an embassy. Now the Yrariers must make up for lost time. She went on calmly, “The Grass Gardens of Klive are at the estancia of the Damfels, I believe?”

He acknowledged her slight interrogative tone with a nod. “Btw Damfels,” he said, emphasizing the honorific “Stavenger and Rowena bon Damfels would have been pleased to welcome you, but they are in mourning just now.”

“Ah?” she said in a questioning tone.

“They recently lost a daughter,” he said, an expression of distaste and embarrassment upon his face. “At the first spring Hunt. A hunting accident.”

“I sympathize with their sorrow.” She paused for a moment, allowing her own face to reflect an appropriately assessed measure of compassion. What could she say? Would too much sympathy be effusive? Would curiosity be misplaced? A hunting accident? The expression on the man’s face indicated it would be safer to let more information be given rather than ask for it. She waited long enough for the Obermun to continue, and when he did not she returned to the safety of the former subject. “What does it mean when the Cloak of Kings shows purple along its bottom?”

“The color will be halfway up the stems in a matter of days, and you will begin to see the flush of the gardens—rose and amber, turquoise, and emerald. This estancia was named Opal Hill because of the play of color each spring evokes. These gardens are young, but well laid out. The flat place there at the bottom of the stairs is what we call a first surface. All grass gardens have such an enclosed, flat area of low turf It is the place from which all garden walks begin. From that place, trails lead from prospect to prospect. In a week, the winds will soften. We have entered upon the spring collect. By the end of the period—“

“A period being?”

“Sixty days. An arbitrary choice made by the earliest settlers. When a year extends over two thousand days, it is hard to make shorter lengths of time mean much. A period is sixty days, ten periods make a collect, four collects—one corresponding to each season—make a year. We reflect our Terran ancestry by dividing each period into four fifteen-day weeks, but there is no religious significance attached.”

She nodded her understanding, risked saying, “No Sabbath.”

“No planetary religious holidays of any kind. Which is not to say there is no religion, simply that matters of faith have been irrevocably removed from any civil support or recognition. Our ancestors, while all benefiting from noble blood, came from a variety of cultures. They wished to avoid conflict in such matters.”

“We have much to learn,” she said, fingering the limp leather of the little testament in her pocket. Before they left Terra, Father Sandoval had sent it to the Church in Exile to be blessed by the Pope. Father Sandoval, claiming to know her better than she knew herself, had said it would help reconcile her to the experience after her first enthusiasm wore off. So far she had noticed little reconciliation. “The authorities at Sanctity told us almost nothing about Grass.”

“If you will forgive my saying so, Terrans know almost nothing about Grass. They have not, in the past, been particularly interested.”

Again that confusion between Terra, the planet, and Sanctity, the religious empire. She nodded, accepting his not ungentle chiding. Either way, it was probably true enough. Terrans had not cared about Grass. Not about Semling, or The Pearly Gates, or Shame, or Repentance, or any of the hundred human-settled planets far and adrift in the sea of space. What was left of human society on Terra had been too busy forcing its own population down and restoring an ecology virtually destroyed by the demands of an insatiable humanity to concern itself with those emigrations that had made its own salvation possible. Sanctity squatted on the doorstep of the north, regulating the behavior of its adherents wherever it could, while everyone else on Terra got on with trying to survive. Once each Terran year Sanctity celebrated with flags and speeches and off-planet visitors. The rest of the time Sanctity might as well have been somewhere else.

Sanctity was not Terra. Terra was home, and this was not. Though Marjorie wanted to say this loudly, with emotion, she restrained herself.

“Will you show me the stables?” she inquired. “I assume our horses have been revived and delivered?”

Until this moment she had seen nothing approaching real discomfort on the aristocrat’s face. He had met them in the reception area of the revivatory at the port, seen to the collection of their belongings, provided them with two aircars to bring them to the estancia which they were to occupy—aircars they were to retain during their “visit,” he had said. He had remained to guide her through the summer domestic quarters while her husband, Roderigo Yrarier, toured the winter quarters and the offices of the new embassy with Eric bon Haunser, a younger but no less dutiful member of the Grassian aristocracy. Throughout this not inconsiderable itinerary, Obermun bon Haunser had been smooth and proper to a fault, but the question of the horses made him uncomfortable. If he did not precisely lose countenance, something at the corners of his mouth let composure slip, though subtly and only momentarily.

Marjorie, whose Olympic gold medals had been in dressage, puissance jumping, and endurance events, was accustomed to reading such twitches of the skin. Horses communicated in this way. “Is something wrong?” she inquired gently, keeping herself strictly under control.

“We had not been ...” He paused, searching for a way to say it. “We had not been advised in advance about the animals.”

Animals? Since when were horses “animals”?

“Does it create a problem? Someone from Semling said the estancia has stables.”

“No, not stables,” he said. ‘There are some shelters nearby which were used by Hippae. Before this place was built, needless to say.”

Why needless to say? And Hippae? That would be the horselike animal native to this planet. “Are they so different that our mounts can’t occupy their stalls?”

“Hippae would not occupy stalls,” he replied, seeming less than candid as he did so. He lost composure sufficiently to gnaw a thumbnail before continuing. “The shelter near Opal Hill is not being used by Hippae now. and it might serve to house your horses well enough, I suppose. However, at the time of your arrival we did not have available to us any suitable conveyance for large animals.” Again, he attempted a smile. “Please excuse us, Lady Marjorie. We were set at a small contretemps that confused us for the moment. I am sure we will have solved the problem within a day or two.”

“The horses have not been revived, then.” Her voice was sharper than she had intended, edgy with outrage. Poor things! Left lying about in that cold, nightmarish nothingness.

“Not yet. Within the next few days.”

She took control of herself once more. It would not do to lose her temper and appear at a disadvantage. “Would you like me to come to the port? Or to send one of the children? If you have no one accustomed to handling horses, Stella would be glad to go, or Anthony.” Or I, she thought. Or Rigo. Any of us, man. For the love of heaven ...

“Your son?”

He sounded so immediately relieved that she knew this had been part of the problem. Some diplomatic nicety, no doubt. It was possibly thought inappropriate for the ambassador or his wife to have to attend to such matters, and yet who else could? Well, let it pass. Show no anxiety. Don’t risk eventual acceptance of the embassy over the matter of a day or two—this embassy that might almost have been an answer to her prayers, this opportunity to do something of significance. Don Quixote and El Dia Octavo could sleep that much longer, along with Her Majesty. Irish Lass, Millefiori, and Blue Star. “We are looking forward to riding to our first Hunt,” she said; then, seeing his dismay, “Only as followers, of course.”

Seemingly, even this was not appropriate. An expression of outright panic showed on the man’s face. Good Lord, what had she said now?

“We have made arrangements,” he said. “A balloon-car. Perhaps this first time, until you are more familiar.”

“Whatever you think best,” she said firmly, disabusing him of any notion he might have that she would make difficulties. “We are completely in your hands.”

His face cleared. “Your cooperation is much appreciated, Lady Marjorie.”

She forced herself to smile over the screaming impatience inside her. She had been testy ever since they had arrived. Testy and hungry. No matter how much she ate, it did not seem to quell the sick emptiness inside her. “Let us take up the matter of titles, Obermun bon Haunser.”

He frowned. “I don’t understand.”

She decided to make the point she had been wanting to make about the difference between Sanctity and Terra. “At home, on planet Terra, among those who once called themselves Saints and now identify themselves as the Sanctified, I would be addressed simply as Matron Yrarier. Men are either Boy or Husband. Women are either Girl, or (briefly) Bride, or Matron. Both sexes are at some pains to marry early and lose the titles of childhood. We—that is, our family—are not among the Sanctified. I do not regard any of Sanctity’s female titles as pertaining to myself.

“I am, however, Terran. In my childhood home, the area called Lesser Britain, I am Marjorie, Lady Westriding, my widower father’s eldest child. ‘Lady Marjorie’ would only be correct if I were a younger daughter. Also, I have the honor of being the Master of the Westriding Hunt. The position was offered me, I believe, because of my good fortune at the Olympics”

He looked interested but without comprehension. “Olympics?”

“A Terran contest of various athletic skills, including horsemanship,” she said gently. If there was much the Yrariers did not know about Grass, there were many things the Grassians did not know about the Yrariers, as well. “I rode in what is called puissance jumping, in which the horse cannot see what is beyond the barrier, and that barrier is well over his head.” He showed no comprehension. “You do not have that here, I see. Well, I did that, and dressage riding, which is a very gentle sport, and endurance riding, which is not. I was what is called a gold medalist. Roderigo was a medalist also. It is how we met.” She smiled, making a deprecatory gesture. Obviously the poor man knew nothing about all this. “So, I might be called Lady Westriding or Madam Yrarier or Master, though the latter is appropriate only on the hunting field. Perhaps there is some title given to ambassadors or their wives here on Grass? It would be convenient for me to know what title would be considered acceptable.”

Despite his initial ignorance, he had followed all of this closely. “Not, I think, Madam Yrarier,” he mused. “Marital titles are not customary except between family leaders, that is in ‘bon’ families. Each family has one Obermun and one Obermum, almost always husband and wife, though it might be mother and son. There are seven aristocratic families currently, quite large families by now: Haunser, Damfels, Maukerden, Laupmon, Smaerlok, Bindersen, and Tanlig; and these families use the prefatory ‘bon,’ before their names. When a child results from a liaison between members of these families, it is given a surname by either the father or the mother, depending upon what family the child will be part of, and thereafter continues in that name whether later married or not.”

“Ah,” she mused  “So, in meeting a woman or child, I will not know—“

“You will not know the relationship. Not by the name, Lady Westriding. We are a country people, sparsely scattered upon a small part of our world. Long ago we fled the oppression of Sanctity and the crowding of Terra”—his raised brows told her he had taken her point—“and have had no wish to allow either upon Grass. Though some estancias have been lost, we have never added another estancia to the initial number—except for Opal Hill, of course, but we did not build that. We know one another and one another’s grandfathers and grandmothers back to the time of settlement. We know who liaised with whom, and what child is the child of whom. It seems to me appropriate you should be called Marjorie Westriding or Lady Westriding. This places you upon the proper level in your own right. As for learning who everyone else is ... you will need someone who knows. Perhaps I could recommend someone to you as secretary, some lateral family member, perhaps.,..”

“Lateral?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, shivering a little at the chill in the room.

He was instantly solicitous. “You are cold. Shall we return to the winter quarters? Though spring is imminent, it will still be more comfortable below for the next few weeks.”

They left the high, cold room and the long, chill corridors to go down a long flight of stairs into the winter house, the cold weather house, into other rooms where the walls were warm with grass-cloth, cozy with firelight and lamps and soft, bright couches. Marjorie sank into one of these with a sigh of relief. “You were speaking of my hiring as secretary a ‘lateral family member’?”

“Someone parented by abon,but on one side only. Perhaps with the name, but without the bon.”

“Ah. Does this represent a great handicap? This lack of abon?”She smiled to show she meant it teasingly. Still, when he answered, it was with such a stiffness as to tell her it was no laughing matter.

“It means one has a commoner parent. Such a person would not live on an estancia except in a service capacity and would not attend the summer balls. One without thebonwould not Hunt.”

“Aha,” she said to herself, wondering whether the Honorable Lord Roderigo Yrarier and his wife would be considered sufficientlybonto hunt or attend the summer balls. Perhaps this had been the reason for that business about the Hunt and the delay with the horses. Perhaps the status of the whole mission was somewhat in question.

Poor horses, lying there all cold and dead, no warm stable, no oats, dreaming, if horses dreamed, of a fence too high to jump and green grass always out of reach, unable even to twitch.

Aloud she said, “Obermun bon Haunser, I am extremely grateful for all your kindness. I shall send Anthony down to the port tomorrow in one of the fliers you have so thoughtfully provided. Perhaps you will have someone meet him there to assist him with the horses. Perhaps some kind of trailer or provisions truck can be obtained?”

“This was our dilemma, Lady Westriding. Our culture does not allow vehicle tracks across the grasses. Your animals must be airlifted here. One does not drive here and there on Grass. One flies. As quietly as possible. Except in the port area and Commoner Town, of course. Surrounded as it is by forest, roads are quite appropriate there.”

“How interesting,” she murmured. “However it is done, I am sure you will attend to it impeccably. Then, if you will be so gracious as to recommend one or two people who know the way things are done on Grass, perhaps I can begin furnishing the residence and making the acquaintance of some of our neighbors.”

He bowed. “Certainly, Lady Westriding, certainly. We will requisition a cargo vehicle from the commoners. And in one week’s time we have arranged for you to observe the Hunt at the bon Damfels estancia. It will give you the opportunity to meet many of your hosts.” He bowed again, taking himself away, out the door and up the stairs to exit through that empty house. She heard his voice echoing there as he greeted the other bon and departed with him. “Hosts,” he had said. Not neighbors. She, wondering if he had meant what the distinction implied, was very much aware of the difference.

“What was all that?” His voice came from behind her, from the corridor leading to the offices. Rigo.

“That was Obermun bon Haunser explaining that the horses have not yet been revived,” she said, turning to confront her husband. He, lean and no less aristocratic than the man who had just left, was clad all in black except for the high red-and-purple-striped collar which identified him as an ambassador, sacrosanct, a person whose body and belongings were immune to seizure or prosecution, on penalty of retaliation from Sanctity—an organization both too far away and too distracted by recent internal events and current horror to do any retaliating at all. His face was set in what she called— though only to herself—his ugly mode, sullen at the mouth, the wide lips unenlivened by amusement, the black eyes overshadowed by heavy brows and wearied by too little sleep. When he was like this, darkness seemed to follow him, half hiding him from her. He, too, had confessed to feeling testy, and he looked irritated now. She sought something to interest him, something to blow the shadows away—“Do you know, Rigo, I’d be interested in finding out whether the children and I have diplomatic immunity on this planet.”

“Why would you not?” His eyes blazed with anger at the idea. Roderigo had a great capacity for anger.

“Women do not take their husband’s names here, and from something the Obermun said, I question whether they take status, either.” Not that Roderigo’s status was higher than her own. If it came to bloodlines, perhaps—her own pedigree was a little better, not that she would ever mention it. “I’m not sure a diplomat’s wife is anybody.” Not that she had ever planned or wanted to be a diplomat’s wife. Not that Rigo had ever been a diplomat before! So many things were not, she reflected—Not the way she would have had them, if she’d had the choice, though there was still the chance this whole business might turn out to be significant and worthwhile.

He smiled humorlessly. “Mark down one more thing we weren’t informed of.”

“I’m not sure I’m right.”

“Your impressions are often the equal of others’ certainties, Marjorie,” he said in his gallant voice, the one he most often used with women, her no less than any other. “I’ll put Asmir Tanlig to checking it.”

“Asmir?”

“One of my Grassian men. I hired two this morning after I managed to shake off the Haunser.” He scraped an extended finger down his palm, flicking it, ridding himself of something sticky, in mime.

“Is the Tanlig man you hired abon?”

“Lord no. I shouldn’t think so. A bastard son of a bon two generations back, perhaps.”

“Lateral,” she exclaimed, pleased with herself for knowing. “The Tanlig must be what they call a lateral.”

“I hired a Mechanic, also.”

This puzzled her. “You hired a mechanic?”

“His name is Mechanic—Philological successor to the ancient Smiths or Wrights. His name is Sebastian Mechanic, and he holds no blood with the aristos, as he was at some pains to tell me.” He sank into a chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Coldsleep makes me feel as though I’d been ill for weeks.”

“It makes me feel dreamy and remote.”

“My dear—“ he began in the gallant voice, with only an undertone of hostility.

“I know. You think I’m always remote.” She tried to laugh, tried not to show how that hurt. If Roderigo hadn’t thought his wife remote, he wouldn’t have needed Eugenie Le Fevre. If he hadn’t had Eugenie, Marjorie might not be remote. Circle, and around once more, like a horse quadrille, change reins, pirouette, and on to the next figure.

Rigo, point made, changed the subject. “Make note, my dear. Asmir Tanlig. Sebastian Mechanic.”

“What are they to be to you?” She inquired. “Representatives of the middle classes?”

“Little enough of that, except perhaps at Commoner Town. No, representatives of the peasantry, I’d say, who will circulate among the villagers and find out if anything is known. I may need others to find out about Commoner Town, though Tanlig would fit in well enough there, if he cared to. Mechanic, now, he’s peasant through and through, and resentfully prideful about it.”

“Hardly the type of servant to improve our reputation among thebon.”

“Thebonsaren’t to know anything about it. If we are to complete our mission here, we’ll need access to all levels of society. Sebastian is my link to the people of the soil. He knows enough not to call himself to the aristocrats’ attention. And if you want to know how I got on to the men without bon Haunser knowing, the Sanctity charge from Semling told me about them. I’ve already asked them the question.”

“Ah.” She waited, holding her breath.

“They say no.”

“Ah,” she said again, breathing. So there was hope. “No plague here.”

“There is no unexplained illness that they know of. As we agreed. I told them we’re making a survey.”

“They might not have heard....”

“Both of them have kin in Commoner Town. I think they would have heard of any strange sickness. But, it’s early days. The aristocrats have putative control of ninety-nine percent of the planet’s surface-There could be things going on here the commoners simply don’t know of.”

“It pounds as though you have things well in hand.” She sighed, her weariness and hunger suddenly heavier than she could gracefully bear. “Would you have any idea where Anthony might be?”

“If he’s where I told him to be, he’s with Stella up in the summer quarters, making a rough floor plan of the place for me. We’ll have to furnish it rather quickly, I’m afraid. Asmir tells me there’s a craftsmen’s area in Commoner Town. A place called, unimaginatively enough, Newroad. Lord knows where the old road was.”

“Terra, maybe.”

“Or any of half a hundred other places. Well, it doesn’t matter where it was, so long as we know where this one is. According to Asmir, we can get very acceptable stuff built there within two or three weeks—long Grassian weeks—and he’s already sent word on what he calls the tell-me for some kind of craftsmen’s delegation to come call on us.”

“By acceptable, does he mean to the bons, Rigo? I have a feeling everything we do will be measured and weighed by the bons. I think our poor horses were not revived because the bons did not know whether they would accept them or not, here on Grass. They have creatures of their own.”

“Hippae.”

“Exactly. Who are never kept in stalls, so the Obermun told me.”

“Where in the devil are they kept, then?”

“I have serious question as to whether they are ‘kept’ at all. Rigo, though they live in something not called stables. Why don’t we collect Anthony and Stella and go explore them together?”

The places not called stables were cavernous halls dug into the side of a hill, lined and pillared with stone. A rock-lined, spring-filled tank at the back cast a wavery luminescence across the low-arched ceiling. Half a dozen tall slits in the hillside were the only entrances.

“We could put the stallions and the mares in here and all their foals for the next hundred years,” Stella observed with brooding annoyance, taking a large bite from the apple she had brought with her. “And it would still be blasted inconvenient.” Stella, with her black hair and eyes and passionate disposition, resembled her father. Like him, she moved as a whip cracks, always seeming to arrive wherever she was going with considerable noise but without having bothered to travel the intervening distance. She shouted now, listening to the echo of her own voice as it rattled back into blackness among stout pillars. “Hallooooo,” a hunting halloo, as one sighting a fox might cry “Grass stinks!” she cried, with the echo coming back,”ing, ing, ing, ing”

Anthony made no comment but merely looked around himself with dismay, trying not to let it show through the calm demeanor he had determined upon as appropriate for the son of an ambassador. He had carefully thought out what his role should be, and prayed hourly for the fortitude to continue in it. He was the one who resembled Marjorie. He had her wheat-colored hair and hazel eyes, her cool, white skin, her sapling-slender body, her placid appearance and equable temperament. Like her, he was prey to a thousand inner doubts and horrors he never let show on the surface. Like her, he was thought beautiful, was passionately admired even by unlikely people. At nineteen he was almost of his father’s height, though not yet of a man’s bulk.

A stripling, his mother thought, admiring him. A mere boy, his father thought to himself, wishing Tony were older so that he could be told why they had come, older so he could be of more help.

“A social problem of some dimension,” Obermun bon Haunser was at that moment remarking to some of his fellow bons. “And so is the daughter, Stella. We’ll have to warn off our own young ones,” he said. Sooner or later the Yrariers would learn of this opinion, and he wondered what he would say then. He did not like the idea of being looked at angrily by Lady Westriding. Her look had a quality of knives about it. Knives which cut deeply.

Currently, however, Marjorie was cutting only into the structure of the stables, carving one part mentally from the whole. “We can partition this part of the cavern off,” she offered. “Make half a dozen nice box stalls along this side with an opening from outside into each one and build a little paddock out there. Later, when winter comes ...” She stopped in dismay, remembering what winters here were said to be like, wondering what they would do with the horses when winter came.

“We won’t still be here, surely?” Anthony said, his own apprehension coming through. He heard it and amended himself more calmly. “Will the mission last that long?”

His father shook his head. “We don’t know, Tony.”

“What kind of horses can these Hippae be?” Marjorie mused, turning to look into the shadowy corners of the vast, low space. “This looks like some great burrow Like the meeting hall of a badger’s set.”

“The meeting hall of a badger’s set?” her daughter mocked. “Mother, you amaze me.” She shook her hair over her shoulders, the depthless black silk of it flowing down over her back like lightless water. Her seventeen-year-old body was still slight, and the beauty which would be ravishing was only beginning to emerge. Now she smiled a siren’s smile and sulked at her parents out of deeply fringed eyes. “When were you last in a badger’s set?” It was not said lovingly. Stella had not wanted to come to Grass. They had insisted that she come, but they had been unable to tell her why. To Stella, the journey had been a violation of her person. With maximum drama, she likened it to rape and let them know it as often as possible. “In some other life?” she mocked now. “In some other time?”

“When I was a changeling,” her mother answered firmly. “Long and long ago, when I was unconscious of my dignity. As I am about to be again. I am going to change into some nice old robe and become sedentary. I need food, a lot of food, and then some familiar book and sleep. There is too much that is strange here. Even the colors of things aren’t right.”

And they weren’t. Her words brought it to all their attention as they left the caverns to walk through a bleached alley of imported trees toward the residence. The colors weren’t right. The sky should be blue and was not. The prairie should be the color of dried grass, but their eyes insisted upon making it pale mauve and paler sapphire, as though under a stage-light moon.

“It’s only that it’s foreign to us,” Tony said, trying to comfort her, wanting to be comforted himself. He had left things behind, too. A girl who mattered to him. Friends he cared about. Plans for education and life. He wanted the sacrifice to have been for something, for some reason, not merely to exist for a time in this chill discomfort amid strange colors. Tony had not been told why, either, but he trusted Marjorie when she told him it was important. It was Tony’s nature to trust, as it had been Marjorie’s at his age, when she married.

“We will ride to the Hunt,” Rigo said firmly. “The horses will be recovered by then.”

“No,” Marjorie said, shaking her head. “Apparently we mustn’t.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He said it, as he often did, without thinking, and was immediately annoyed as he saw the pain in her face.

“Rigo, my dear, surely you don’t think it’s my idea not to ride.” She laughed, a light little laugh which said in the only way she could that he was being obtuse and unpleasant. “Obermun bon Haunser almost came apart at his impeccable seams when I suggested we would merely join the field on horseback. Apparently arrangements have been made otherwise.”

“Damn it, Marjorie. Why was I sent here? Why were you? Except for the horses?”

She didn’t try to answer him. It was not a question which could be answered. He glared at her. Stella stared, giggling a little, enjoying this discord. Tony made uncomfortable littlehrnchingsounds in his throat as he did when caught in some seeming conflict between them. “Surely,” he said softly, “surely ...”

“I thought it was something important we were here for?” sneered Stella, unwittingly derailing her father’s hostility toward Marjorie and bringing it upon herself.

“We would scarcely have come otherwise,” he snapped angrily. “Our lives have been disrupted, too, and we are no fonder of Grass than you are. We, like you, would prefer to be at home, getting on with our lives.” He lashed at an offending seed head with his whip. “What’s this about not riding?”

Marjorie answered softly, trying to keep them all calm. “I don’t know why we mustn’t ride to the Hunt, but it is clear that we must not. My counsel, Ambassador, for what it is worth, is that we do what that stiff, awkward Haunser man has arranged for us until we find out what is going on here. We are notbons,after all, and Obermun bon Haunser took some pains to point out to me that neither Sanctity nor Terra know anything at all about Grass.”

Rigo might have said something more, except that a sound interrupted him. Such a sound as a tormented soul might make, if such a one had the voice of the thunder and the cataract. It was a wholly natural sound, as a small world might make, being rent apart, and yet they did not doubt that it issued from a throat and lungs and a body of some indescribable sort. Something that a name could be put to if one only knew what it was. A cry of desperate loneliness.

“What?” breathed Rigo, unmoving, alert. “What was that?” They waited, poised, perhaps to run. Nothing. In the time ahead they were to hear the cry several times. Though they asked about it, no one knew what made it.

El Dia Octavo woke from evil dream to uncomfortable reality. His feet were not on the ground and he thrashed, though weakly. A voice came incomprehensibly through a veil of pained dryness. “Lower that sling, you fool, and put him down.”

Hooves touched solid surface and the stallion stood trembling, head lowered. He could smell the others. They were somewhere near, but it was impossible to lift his head and look. He flared his nostrils instead, trying the odor for that complexity which would include them all. A hand ran along his side, his neck. Notherhand. A good hand, but not her hand. Not hishand, either. This was the male-one most like her,not the female-one most like him.

“Shhh, shhh,” said Tony. “That’s a good boy. Just stand there a little while. It’ll come back to you. Shhh, shhh.”

What came was the dream. Galloping with something after him. Something huge. Huge and fast. A threat from behind. A fleeing. He whickered, begging for reassurance, and the hand was there.

“Shhh, shhh.”

He slept standing, the dream fading.

He woke enough to walk up a ramp into something that moved, then he slept again. When the thing stopped moving, he woke enough to walk down the ramp again andshewas there.

“She,”neighed Millefiori. “All right. She.”

He nodded, making a sound in his throat, dragging his feet as he tried to followher.Nothing smelled quite right. There were familiar sounds, but the smells were wrong. When he was inside the stall, lying on the grass there, it didn’t smell right either.

There was noise outside The other stallion screaming, making a fuss.

El Dia Octavo nickered at him, and so did the mares. In a moment Don Quixote quieted, making a sound of misery.

Thenshecame, patting, stroking, talking to them, saying, as Tony had, “Shhh, shhh,” giving him water.

He drank, letting the water flow into that place of dry fear. After a time he slept again, dreamlessly, the dream gradually losing itself in the smell of the strange hay.

“Odd,” murmured Marjorie, staring down at him.

“They seemed frightened,” said Tony. “The whole time, they seemed scared to death but so lethargic they couldn’t do anything about it.”

“I had bad dreams when I first got here. And I woke up frightened all the time.”

“So did I.” Tony shuddered. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had real nightmares “

“An effect of coldsleep?” Marjorie wondered.

“I asked around at the port. Nobody seems to think that’s a usual thing after coldsleep.”

“Odd,” said Marjorie again. “Well, at least the stalls were finished on time.”

“They did a good job. People from the village?”

“People from the village. It seems to be a reciprocal kind of arrangement. We give them employment and buy their produce, and they provide whatever help we need. They’ve been here for years, maintaining the place. I’ve picked a few of them to work with the horses. Perhaps we can find two or three grooms among them.”

They left the stables and went back to the house, turning once or twice to look back as though to assure themselves the horses were all right, both of them thinking it strange that the animals gave every sign of sharing their own bad dreams. Marjorie swore to herself she would spend time with them over the next few days, until the trauma had passed.

Other matters intervened, however. Among them was the arrival of the craftsmen’s committee for Newroad. who went through the summer rooms of Opal Hill making lists.

“You want it done in the local manner, don’t you?” the spokesman of this delegation asked in trade lingua. He was a stocky, bald-headed man with froggy bags around his eyes and an engaging grin. His name was Roald Few. “You don’t want anything that will make the bons’ tongues clack, right?”

“Right,” she had agreed, amazed, and amused at herself for being so. What had she expected? Poor ignorant fools like those in Breedertown? “You’re very quick, Mr. Few. I thought we were the first embassy Grass has had.”

“The only one now,” he replied. “There’ve been a few. They can’t winter it, you know. Can’t stay. Too lonely. Semling had a man here for a while. Here, I mean. At Opal Hill. Semling built the estancia, you know.”

“Why weren’t the summer quarters furnished?” “Because it was coming autumn by the time it was built, and by the time autumn was half gone, you know, so was the man from Semling. He never got to the good part of the year. So, what have you to tell me about colors and all that?”

“Can I depend upon you to make us look acceptable?” she asked. “If I can, there’s a bonus in it for you. My husband likes warm colors, reds and ambers. I prefer the cooler ones. Blue. Soft gray. Sea green. Hah,” she paused. “There is no sea on Grass, but you apprehend.” He nodded. “Perhaps, if it is in keeping with local usage, you could give us a little variation?”

“Variety and make you look good,” he said, pursing his lips as he noted it down “Do my best, madam, and may I say you show good sense in leaving it to us. Us on the Newroad work well together, and we’ll do you well who trusts us.” He gave her a sharp look, meeting her open gaze with a frank nod of his own “I’ll tell you something, just me to you. You and the family come over the forest into commoner territory every now and then. Commoner Town, the aristos say, but we say Commons, meaning it’s for all of us. We’ve got food there you’ll never get but here, things we ship in for ourselves. It gets damned lonely out here if you’re not all turned inside out like these bons. You might even decide you’d like to live in Commons during wintertime, if you’re here that long. You’ve got animals, too, and they’ll do better in Commons than they will out here. We’re set up to winter animals there. There are hay barns we fill every summer, and cow barns down along our own quarters. All the villages close up, wintertime, and move into town. Among the aristos nobody’d know, did you or not. Anybody calls you on the tell-me. splice you through to Commons and who’ll know you’re not out here, sufferin’ winter. Do you speak Grassan, by any chance.”

“I thought Grassians spoke Terran or trade lingua,” she replied, dismayed. “Obermun bon Haunser spoke diplomatic Terran to me.”

“Oh, they’ll do that if they like,” he said with a nasty grin. “They’ll speak diplo and some of them will even lower themselves to speak trade lingua, and then the next time they’ll turn their backs to you and pretend they don’t understand you at all. You’ll get further with ‘em if you know Grassan. Way I understand it, it’s a mishmash of languages they all spoke when they came here, and then it’s changed since. Each family speaks its own variety of it, kind of a family dialect, a game they have, but mostly that’s a matter of family words and you can understand the sense if you know the language. You’ll get further yet if they don’t know you speak it until you speak it pretty good. I can send you a teacher.”

“Do,” she agreed, all at once trusting and liking him. “Send me a teacher and be very close-mouthed about it if you will, Mr. Few.”

“Oh, I will.” He snorted “I’ll send you a man in two days. And you call me Roald, like all the Commons do. Damn bons.” The animosity seemed habitual rather than acute, and Marjorie did not inquire into it, merely making a note that Rigo should hear of it if he had not already learned of it for himself.

In addition to the commodious guest and servants’ quarters in the main house, there were three small detached residences at Opal Hill available to members of the embassy staff. Given first choice, Rigo’s faithful assistant Andrea Chapelside had picked the small house closest by, to be most readily available in case of need. Her sister Charlotte would live there with her. Father Sandoval and his companion priest, Father James, took the largest of the detached residences, intending to use part of it as a library and school for Stella and Tony and the largest room as a chapel for themselves and the embassy. This left the smallest house for Eugenie Le Fevre. It had a summer kitchen, living room, and bedroom above the ground and several cozy winter rooms below. Each of the houses was connected by a tunnel which led to the big house. Each opened upon a separate vista of the gardens.

When Roald Few finished his business with Marjorie, he called on each of the other residents of Opal Hill, getting their instructions for the furnishing of summer bedrooms and sitting rooms. The middle-aged women in the first house had pictures of what they wanted, things that looked like home. The men in the larger house wanted everything as plain as it could be, and one room they wanted untouched except for the provision of some little seats with kneeling stools in front of them and an altar kind of arrangement. The delicate-looking younger man had drawn a picture which the older stocky man nodded approval over. Both of them religious, Roald thought. Not dressed like Sanctified, though. These had funny little collars. Something different from the usual run.

“I hope this will not cause you too much trouble,” the older of the two said in a steely voice which only seemed apologetic.

“No trouble at all, except one,” said Roald with an engaging smile. “And that’s knowing what the proper title is for you and the other gentleman. I know you’re some sort of religious folk, and I wouldn’t want to go astray with the lingo.”

The delicate gentleman nodded. “We are Old Catholics. I’m Father Sandoval, and my companion is Father James. Father James’ mother is sister to His Excellency, Roderigo Yrarier. We are usually called Father, if that wouldn’t offend you.” And if it would, his voice said, say it anyhow.

“I don’t stay in business being easily offended,” Roald assuredcthem. “If you wanted me to call you uncle. I’d do that, too. I might balk at aunt, but uncle I could manage “

This brought a chuckle from the younger priest, and Roald nodded at him cheerfully as he left

The smallest house was the most remote and the last on his list. It was there, in the empty summer quarter, that he met with Eugenie. He had not been with her for long before he knew everything about her. Everything, he thought to himself, that he needed to know.

“Pink,” she said. “Soft pink. And rose shades, all warm, like the inside of a flower. I miss flowers. Curtains to shut out the night and the sight of that awful grass. Soft curtains that drape and blow in the wind. Wide couches with pillows.” She moved her hands and her lips, sketching what she wanted on the compliant air, and he saw what she saw, a nest feathered in ivory and rose, sweet-scented as—so fable had it—a Terran morning. She was wearing a silky gown that flowed behind her on the air, fluttering with her movement as though she were accompanied by soft winds. Her hair was light brown, the great wealth of it piled high on her head with tiny curls escaping at her brow and the nape of her neck. Her eyes were an ageless blue, innocent of anything but pleasure and untroubled by thought.

Roald Few sighed, silently, knowing all about it. This lady looked like the little porcelain woman his wife kept on the table at home. Poor Lady Westriding. She had interested him enormously, and now he pitied her as well. What was it had gone wrong there? he wondered. So many things could happen. He would tell Kinny, his wife, all about it, how they looked, what they said, and Kinny would know. She would tell him the story over supper, how this Roderigo and this Lady Westriding had almost been true lovers, almost a natural pair, but this something else had happened, and now there was this pink lady for the Lord’s bed while the cool blond woman was left all alone. Though perhaps he didn’t leave her alone. There was that possibility, too.

“Rose pink,” he said to Eugenie as he noted it down. “And lots of soft cushions.”

When Roald returned home, his wife, Kinny, was waiting with supper ready to go on the table. Since Marthamay had married Alverd Bee and moved over to the other end of town, Roald and Kinny had been alone sporadically—that is, when none of the children had needed a baby-tender or a home-from-their-own following an argument with a spouse. Arguments with spouses, Roald had taken care to point out to each of his children, were as inevitable as winter but were not life-threatening provided one took a little care in advance. Such as making a habit of going on home to cool off for a day or so when needed, and no insult meant and none taken by either party, just as spring followed winter, so better understanding followed a little cooling off.

Currently none of the children were fighting with their wives or husbands and none of the grandkids were in residence, so he and Kinny had the place to themselves, which pleased him considerably when it happened.

“I made goose with cabbage.” Kinny told him. “Jandra Jellico slaughtered a few geese, and she got on the tell-me to let me know. I hurried right over to get a fat one.”

Roald licked his lips. Spring goose with cabbage was one of his favorite dishes, and Kinny could make it like no one else. It was goose with cabbage had made him look at her in the first place, her with her round little arms and round little face, and it was goose with cabbage had happily punctuated all their seasons together since. Goose with cabbage generally meant a celebration of some kind.

“So, what good thing is going on?” he asked her.

“Marthamay’s pregnant.”

“Well, isn’t that wonderful! There for a bit she was worried.”

“She wasn’t really. It was just her sisters teasing her when the time went by after she and Alverd married and nothing happened.”

“Alverd getting ready to do a little digging, is he?”

“She says yes.” Kinny smiled as she forked a mouthful of cabbage into her rosy mouth, thinking of tall, eager Alverd Bee slaving away down in the winter quarters, digging a new room as every new daddy did. Alverd was likely to be elected mayor of Commons in a week or two, and mayors had little time for such doings. Well and all, the brothers would help him, just as he’d helped them. “So, tell me all about the new people.”

He told her, about the ambassador and about Marjorie and the other lady in her soon-to-be-pink nest.

“Ah,” said Kinny, wrinkling her nose. “That’s sad.”

“So I thought,” he agreed. “His wife’s a lovely lady, but cool. Take a little wooing, that one.”

“And him, I suppose he’s too hot and impatient for that.”

Roald chewed as he thought. Yes. As usual, Kinny had hit it right on the head. Too hot and impatient by far, Roderigo Yrarier. Hot and impatient enough to get himself into a mess of trouble, before he was through.

Not liking that idea, Roald changed the subject. “What does Marthamay think they’ll name the baby?”

Marjorie’s language instructor arrived two days later. He introduced himself as Persun Pollut. He sat beside her in what would become Marjorie’s study, just inside a large window warmed by an orange sun, while craftsmen came and went with crates and cartons, tools and ladders in the hall just outside. Watching the workers, Marjorie spoke of the strangeness of needing both winter quarters and summer quarters separate from one another.

“Winter is long,” he admitted, drooping his eyebrows at her. “It is so long we grow tired of looking at one another,” Persun had exceptionally long and sinuous eyebrows. He was young, though not callow; supple, though not yielding; determined, though not rigid. Marjorie felt Roald Few had selected well, particularly as Persun had shown good sense in not advertising the purpose of his presence. He had taken a room in the nearby village and announced that he was there to carve some panels for “Her Ladyship’s private study.” Now, seated at his ease in that study, he continued his explanation.

“Winter is so long that one tires of thinking of it,” he said. “We grow tired of breathing the air which is not only cold but hostile to us. We go under the ground, like the Hippae, and wait for spring. Sometimes we wish we could sleep like them.”

“What on earth do you all do with yourselves?” Marjorie asked, thinking once more of what they would do with the horses during wintertime. If they were still on Grass. Anthony kept saying the Yrariers would be on their way home by then, but Anthony didn’t know why they had come.

“In Commons we visit and have games and do our work, and have winter festivals of drama and poetry writing and things of that sort. We go visit the animals in the barns. We have an orchestra. People sing and dance and train animals to do tricks. We have a winter university where most of us learn things we would never learn if it weren’t for winter. Sometimes we bring professors in from Semling for the cold season. We’re better educated than the bons, you’ll find, though we don’t let them know that. There are so many tunnels and storage rooms and meeting rooms under Commons it is like living over a sponge. We come and go, here to there, without ever looking at the outside where the wind cuts to the bone and the cold mist hangs over everything, hiding the ice ghosts.”

“But the bons stay on their estancias?”

“Out on the estancias they don’t have our resources, so they pass the time less profitably. In the town we have some thousands of people to draw upon, more in the winter than are living there now. When winter comes, the villages empty themselves into Commons. The port remains open year round so there’s visitors even during the cold time. The hotel has winter quarters, too, with tunnels to the port. On an estancia there may be only a hundred people, a hundred and a half maybe. On an estancia everyone grows very tired of everyone else.”

There was silence for a moment, then she said tentatively, “Have you any charities on Grass?”

“Charities, ma’am?”

“Good works. Helping people.” She shrugged, using the phrase Rigo often used. “Widows and orphans?”

He shook his head at her. “Well there’s widows, right enough, and occasional an orphan, I suppose, though why they should need charity is beyond me. We commoners take care of our own, but that’s not charity, it’s just good sense. Is it something you did a lot of, back where you came from?”

She nodded soberly. Oh, yes, she had done a lot of it. But no one had thought it important enough to take her place. “I think there’ll be a lot of empty time,” she said in explanation. “The winters sound very long.”

“Oh, they are long. The aristos have a saying in Grassan:Prin g’los dem aujnet haudermach.That is, ‘Winter closeness is separated in spring.’ Let’s see, maybe you’d say it, ‘Winter liaisons sunder in spring.’ “ He thought this over, wobbling his eyebrows. “No, perhaps a Terran would more likely say ‘marriages’: ‘Spring loosens winter marriages.’ “

“Yes, we would probably say marriages,” she agreed somberly. “How did you learn to speak diplomatic?”

“We all speak it. Everyone in Commons does. The port’s very busy. Shipments in, shipments out. We’ve got more brokers in Commons than you’d suspect. We order things from off-planet. We sell things. We need to send messages. We speak diplomatic and trade lingua and Sembla and half a dozen other languages, too. Grassan is very ponderous and uncertain. It’s a language invented by the aristocrats. Like a private code, I will teach it to you, but don’t expect it to make sense”

“I promise I won’t. Do you make your living teaching Grassan?” “Oh, by the marvelous migerers of the Hippae. no, Lady. Who would there be to teach it to? Everyone here knows it and who else cares? Hime Pollut the woodcarver is a friend to craftsmaster Roald Few, and I am Pollut the woodcarver’s son, and he is making use of me during a slack season, that’s all.”

She could not hold back her laugh. “Youarea woodcarver, then?”

His eyes went soft and dreamy. “Well, more that than anything else, since I haven’t made my fortune yet.” He paused, then sat up, bringing himself to attention. “Though I will. There’s money to be made in Semling silks, take my word on it. But I will make some panels for your study, Lady, since we must have some reason for my being here if the Grassians are not to know that you are learning their language.” Besides, since he had seen her, he had wanted to do something for her. Something quite surpassing.

“What shall I do when Obermun bon Haunser recommends a secretary for me?”

Persun nodded in thought. “Tell him you will consider it. Outside of Commons no one moves very quickly on Grass. So I have heard from a few people coming from off-planet who have to deal with the aristos. They get very impatient. So, let the Obermun wait. He will not be annoyed.”

She reported all this to Rigo and sent the suggested reply in response to the Obermun’s recommendation of a certain Admit Maukerden when, eventually, that recommendation arrived.

With one thing and another, several days passed before Marjorie had time to ride. Anthony and Rigo had gone out several times, and even Stella had been unwillingly forced into exercise duty. The day after the craftsmen departed, Marjorie went out with the men of the family. The morning was bright, clear, and warm, and she found herself wishing Stella would join them, though the girl had refused their invitation with a certain hauteur. Stella rode brilliantly, but she had made it clear that she would not enjoy riding on Grass, that she would not enjoy anything on Grass. Stella had left friends behind, one friend in particular. Marjorie had not been sorry. Perhaps Stella’s ostentatious lack of enjoyment was to punish Marjorie for not caring, but Marjorie could not, knowing what she knew and Stella did not. The best she could do was wish that Stella were with them as they walked down the winding path to the newly built stables.

The stable hands had done what they had been told to do: They had cut grass of certain types and filled mangers with it, mucked out the newly built stalls, and provided locally grown grain of three or four types in small quantities in order to observe which were eaten. They watched as the Terrans saddled three of the horses, asking questions in trade lingua without embarrassment or shyness. “What is that for?” “Why are you doing that?”

“Don’t the bons ride?” asked Tony. “Haven’t you seen a saddle before?”

Silence fell while the two men and one woman looked at one another. It was evidently not a topic they felt comfortable discussing. Finally the woman said, almost in a whisper, “The Hippae would not ... would not allow a saddle. The riders wear padding instead.”

Well, well, well, said Marjorie to herself. Isn’t that something. She caught Tony’s eye and shook her head slightly just as her son was about to say something like, since when did a horse decide what it would allow.

“Our horses find the saddle more comfortable than they would our bony bottoms,” she said evenly. “Perhaps the Hippae are constructed differently.”

This seemed to smooth things over, and the hands went back to their questions. Marjorie noted which questions were most intelligent and which questioners most understanding.

“It is hard to cut the bluegrass,” one of them said. “But the horses like it best.”

“What are you using to cut it?” she asked. They showed her a sickle of inferior steel. “I’ll give you better tools.” She unlocked a tack box and gave them laser knives. “Be careful.” she said, showing them how they were used. “You can lose an arm or a leg with these. Be sure no one is in the way of the blade.”

She watched them experimenting with the knives, cutting armfuls of grass with single strokes, exclaiming in surprise and pleasure and giving her grateful looks. She would need a stud groom, and of necessity he would have to be drawn from among the villagers. Already these people were patting and stroking the horses much more than was absolutely necessary.

Sanctity had allowed them to bring only six animals. Considering how long their stay might be, they had chosen to bring breeding stock. Marjorie had volunteered to leave her favorite mount, the bay gelding Reliant, behind. Instead, she rode El Dia Octavo, a Barb stallion trained by a former Lippizaner rider. Rigo was mounted on Don Quixote, an Arabian. Tony was riding Millefiori, one of the thoroughbred mares. Three of the mares were thoroughbreds and one, Irish Lass, was a draft animal, brought along for size If they were stuck on this planet for a full Grassian year or more, at least they would have the amusement of building their own stud.

Tony led them along a low fold of ground which took them some half a mile toward a natural arena he had been using to exercise the horses, a level place of low, amber grass, almost circular in shape. Once there, they fell into the ritual of exercise, walk, trot, collected canter, trot, walk again, first in one direction then in the other, extending the trot, the canter, then stopping to dismount and examine the horses.

“Not even breathing hard,” said Rigo. “They’ve been getting better every day.” He sounded enthusiastic, and Marjorie knew that he was scheming. Rigo was always happiest when he had some kind of covert activity going on. What would it be? Something to astonish the natives? He went on bubbling about the horses. “Remarkable how quickly they’ve recovered.”

“Like us,” Marjorie offered. “A day or two feeling miserable and then we felt like ourselves. They haven’t lost their muscle tone. Let’s do a few minutes more and then walk them back. We’ll do more tomorrow.”

She mounted, again falling into the familiar rhythm. Half pass, tight circle, half pass again.

Something at the ridge line caught her eye, a darker shadow in the glare of spring sun. She looked up, puzzled, seeing the forms there, silhouetted against the light, so dazzled by the sun that she could not make them out clearly. Horses? An impression of arched necks and rounded haunches, only that. She couldn’t tell how large they were or how far away.

El Dia Octavo stopped, staring where Marjorie stared, making a troubled noise in his throat, the skin over his shoulders quivering as at the assault of stinging flies. “Shhh,” she said, patting him on the neck, troubled for his trouble. Something up there bothered him. She stared up at the sun-dazzle again, trying to get a good look. A cloud moved toward the sun, but just before the light dimmed, the dark silhouettes vanished from the ridge.

The watchers seemed to prefer to remain unobserved. She urged Octavo forward, wanting to ride to the ridge and see where they had gone, whatever they were.

The stallion quivered as though he were in pain, as though something were terribly wrong. He made a noise in his throat, precursor to a scream. Only her legs tight around him and her hand on his neck held him fast. He seemed barely able to stand, unable to advance.

Interesting, she thought with the surface of her mind, noticing the way Octavo’s hide was trembling over his shoulders. She no longer urged him to move but concentrated only on calming him. “Shhh,” she said again. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

Then, suddenly aware of the deep, causeless thrill of terror inside herself, she knew what the horse was feeling and that it was not all right.

5

The morning of the Hunt found all the Yrariers full of odd anxieties they were loath to show, much less share. Marjorie, sleepless through much of the night, rising early to walk through the connecting tunnel to the chapel, attending early mass, admitting her nervousness to Rigo when she found him in the dining room when she returned. He, pretending calm, inside himself as jittery as any pre-race jockey, full of mocking lizards squirming in his belly. Tony, lonely, that much evident from the eagerness with which he greeted them when he came into the room, bending over his mother with a hug that was slightly clinging. Stella, disdainful, expressing no affection at all, half dressed, full of angry invective and threats against the peace and tranquility of Grass.

“It’ll be awful.” she said. “Not riding, I mean. I have half a mind not to go. Why won’t they—“

“Shh,” said her mother. “We promised one another we wouldn’t ask. We don’t know enough yet. Eat your breakfast. We want to be ready when the thing comes.” The thing. The vehicle. The not-horse which they were expected to ride within. All the Grassian vehicles seemed to be mechanical devices trying to look like something else: drawing room ornaments or lawn statuary or bits of baroque sculpture. The one that had brought the horses had looked like nothing so much as an aerial version of an ancient wine amphora, complete with stylized representations of dancers around its middle. Tony had told her it had been all he could do not to laugh when he saw it; and Marjorie, who had watched its laborious descent with disbelief, had turned aside to hide her amusement. Now she said again, “Eat your breakfast,” wondering if she needed to warn Stella not to laugh. If she warned Stella not to, Stella would. If she didn’t, Stella might not. Sighing, Marjorie fingered the prayer book in her pocket and left it to God.

They did eat their breakfast, all of them, ravenously, leaving very little of what had looked like a large repast for twice as many people. Marjorie ran her hand around her waistband, noting that it seemed loose. With everything she was eating she still seemed to be losing weight.

The aircar, when it arrived, was overly ornamental but not actually funny, a luxurious flier, engineered for vertical ascent. Once inside it with Obermun bon Haunser as their guide, they lowered themselves into deeply padded seats and were given cups of the local hot drink—which was called, though it did not resemble, coffee—while the silent (and apparently non-bon) driver set off toward an unseen destination. They flew to the northeast as the Obermun pointed out notable landmarks. “Crimson Ridge,” he said, indicating a long rise deeply flushed with pink. “It will be blood-red in another week or two. Off to your right are the Sable Hills. I hope you feel somewhat privileged. You are among the very few non-Grassians who have ever seen anything of our planet except for Commoner Town, around the port”

“I wondered about Commoner Town,” said Rigo. “On the maps it shows as a considerable area, some fifty miles long and two or three miles wide, completely surrounded by forest. I understand it is entirely given over to commerce or farming. When we arrived, I saw roads in and around Commoner Town, though there are none on the rest of the planet”

“As I have previously explained to your wife, Ambassador, there is no grassland around Commoner Town. When we speak of the town, we mean the whole area, everything right down to the edge of the swamp. Here on Grass, where swamp is, trees are, as you can see if you look to your left. That is the port-forest coming up below. Quite a different surface from the rest of the planet, is it not? It doesn’t matter if they have roads in Commoner Town, because there is no grass to destroy, and they cannot get out through the swamp.” Obermun bon Haunser pointed down at the billowing green centered with urban clutter, his nostrils flaring only very slightly in what was unmistakably an expression of contempt. He had spoken of the roads as though they were something malevolent, something seeking subtle egress, like serpents caged against their will.

Stella started to blurt something but held it in as she received the full force of a forbidding glare from her father.

“You prefer they not get out?” Anthony asked, with precisely the right tone of disingenuous interest. “The roads or the commoners? Why is that?”

The Obermun flushed. He had obviously said something spontaneous and unplanned which he now regretted. “The commoners have no wish to leave the town. I meant the roads, my boy. I cannot expect you to understand the horror we have of marring the grasses. We have no fear of harvesting them, you understand, or making use of them, but scarring them lastingly is abhorrent to us. There are no roads on Grass except for the narrow trails linking each estancia to its own village, and even these we regret.”

“All exchanges between estancias, then, are by air?”

“All transport of persons or material, yes. The tell-me provides informational exchange. Information entered at your node at Opal Hill can be directed to specific recipients or to certain sets of recipients or used for correspondence withelsewhere.The tell-me links all the estancias and Commoner Town. All travel, however, all deliveries of imports or shipments of export material, are by air.”

“Imports and exports? Consisting of what, mostly?” This was Stella, deciding to be a good child for the moment.

The Obermun hemmed and hawed. “Well, imports are mostly manufactured goods and some luxury products such as wines and fabrics. For the most part, exports are what you might expect: various grass products. Grass exports grain and colored fiber. I am told by the commoners who attend to such matters that the larger grasses are much in demand for the construction of furniture. The merchants liken it to Terran bamboo. There is some export of seed, both as grain and for planting elsewhere. Some of the grasses thrive on other planets, I am told. Some which thrive only here yield valuable pharmaceutical products. Some are highly ornamental, as you have no doubt observed. It’s all done by license to various commoner firms. We bons haven’t the time or inclination to be directly involved with the business. I don’t suppose it’s very lucrative, but it is sufficient to support us and the town, which is to our advantage.”

Rigo, remembering the huge warehouses and the thriving shipping he had seen at the port, suppressed any comment. “And do I understand correctly that the grasses aren’t botanically related to Terran grasses? They’re indigenous? Not imports?”

“No. They are not even similar on the genetic level. Almost all the varieties were here when we arrived. The Green Brothers have hybridized a few to get certain colors or effects. You will have heard of the Green Brothers?” It was not really a question, for the man stared out the window of the flier, the line of his jaw and mouth expressing discomfort. Whatever they had been talking about was something that upset him. “They were sent here long ago to dig up the ruins of the Arbai city, and they took up gardening as a sort of hobby.”

Marjorie welcomed the change of subject. “I didn’t know there was an Arbai ruin on Grass.”

“Oh, yes. In the north. The Brothers have been digging away at it for a very long time. I am told it is like most such cities, flat and widespread, which makes it a long task to uncover. I have not seen it myself.” He was manifestly uninterested.

Marjorie changed the subject again. “Will we have the opportunity to meet any members of your family today, Obermun?”

“Mine?” he started, surprised. “No, no. The Hunt is still at the bon Damfels’. It will be at the bon Damfels’ all this period, before moving on to the bon Maukerdens’.”

“Oh,” Marjorie said, surprised into speaking without thought. “I thought you said the bon Damfels were in mourning.”

“Of course,” he said impatiently. “But that would not interrupt the Hunt.”

Rigo threw her an admonitory glance which she pretended not to see, persisting sweetly. “Will others be riding with the bon Damfels?”

“Two or three houses usually hunt together. Today the bon Damfels will be hunting with the bon Laupmons and the bon Haunsers.”

“But not your family.”

“Not my wife and children, no. The women and younger children usually ride only with the home Hunt.” He set his jaw. She had happened upon a sensitive subject once more.

Marjorie sighed to herself. What subjects were not sensitive on this place?

“We will be landing just ahead!” the Obermun cried. “Have we arrived at Klive so soon?”

“Oh, you could not come to Klive in this flier, Lady Marjorie. It is too noisy. It would upset the hounds. No, we will go from this point by balloon-car. Balloon-cars are virtually silent. And comparatively slow, so you will be able to see what is going on.”

And in the luxurious cabin of a propeller-driven balloon-car, a car with windows at the sides and below and so overly garnished as to appear unintended for its function, they went forward to land silently upon a side lawn of Klive. They were greeted by Stavenger. the Obermun bon Damfels, and by Rowena, the Obermum bon Damfels. both dressed in black with small purple capes and veils. Mourning garb, obviously.

The visitors were offered wine. Rowena sipped. Stavenger took none. The Yrariers commented upon the fine weather. Marjorie murmured a few words of sympathy for their loss. Stavenger seemed not to hear what she said. Rowena, eyes deep-sunk in shadowed circles, seemed to be elsewhere, lost in some private grief too deep and remote to let her communicate with the outside world. Or perhaps verbal expressions of grief were not customary. Seeing the behavior of others around them, Marjorie gradually came to the conclusion that this interpretation was correct. Though the bon Damfels wore mourning, no one took any notice of it.

The Yrariers were introduced to other family members—two daughters, two sons, the names merely mumbled so that Marjorie was unsure of them. One of the sons gave her a long look, as though measuring her for a suit of clothing—or a shroud, Marjorie thought with a shiver. He was very pale and intense in his dark clothing, though no less handsome for that. It was a handsome family. The other bon Damfels children seemed remote and distracted, responding only to direct questions, and not always then.

Stella frankly flirted, in a gay, self-deprecating way She had always found it useful in making friends, and it had never failed her until now. Only the one bon Damfels son returned her gambits with a few words and a half smile. All the others seemed frozen. Gradually the girl fell silent, confused, slightly angry.

A bell rang. All the bon Damfels but Rowena excused themselves and departed suddenly. One moment they were there, the next they were gone.

“They have gone to dress for the Hunt. If you will come with me,” she invited in a near whisper, “we will watch from the balconies until the Hunt departs.”

Tony and Marjorie went with her, casting one another questioning looks. Nothing here was predictable or familiar. No word, no attitude conveyed any emotion with which they could empathize. Rigo and Stella stalked along behind them, their dark, intense eyes eating up the landscape and spitting it out. There and there. So much for your gardens. So much for your hospitality. So much for your grief and your hunt which you will not share with us. Marjorie felt them simmering behind her, and her skin quivered. This was not diplomatic. This hostility was not the way things should go.

Still, they went on simmering as they were ensconced upon the balcony and provided with food and drink. Nothing was familiar, nothing resembled any such gathering at home. They looked down at the empty first surface for a time in silence, sipping, nibbling, trying not to seem ravenous, which they were, casting sidelong looks at Rowena’s distracted face.

After a time, servant women in long white skirts came out onto the first surface, bearing trays of tiny, steaming glasses. The hunters began to trickle in. At first glance the hunters seemed to be dressed in familiar fashion, then one noticed the vast and padded trousers, like inflated jodhpurs, creating bowlegged, steatopygous curves, at first laughable, and then, when one saw the hunters’ faces, not amusing at all. Each hunter took a pale, steaming glass and drank, one glass only, a swallow or two, no more. Few of them spoke and those few were among the younger ones. When the horn sounded, though it sounded softly, Marjorie almost leapt from her chair. The hunters turned toward the eastern gate, which opened slowly. The hounds entered and Marjorie could not keep from gasping. She turned toward Rowena and was surprised to see a look of hatred there, a look of baffled rage. Quickly. Marjorie looked away. It had not been an expression their hostess had meant anyone to see.

“My God,” breathed Rigo in awe, all his animosity set aside in that moment of shock.

The hounds were the size of Terran horses, muscled like lions, with broad, triangular heads and lips curled back to display jagged ridges of bone or tooth. Herbivores, Rigo thought at first. And yet there were fangs at the front of those jaws. Omnivores? They had reticulated hides, a network of lighter color surrounding shapeless patches of darker skin. Either they had no hair or very short hair. They were silent. Their tongues dripped onto the path as they paced in pairs, split to go around the waiting riders, joined again in pairs, and proceeded toward another gate at the western side of the courtyard.

“Come,” said Rowena in her expressionless voice. “We must go down the hall to see the Hunt depart.”

They followed her wordlessly down a long corridor and onto another balcony which looked out over the garden beyond the wall— where jaw-dropping shock waited, and a blaze of fear which was like sudden fire. They stood swaying, clutching the railing before them, not believing what they saw. “Hippae.” Marjorie identified them to herself, shuddering. Why had she supposed they would look like horses? How naive she had been! How stupid Sanctity had been. Hadn’t anyone at Sanctity made any effort to—No. Of course they hadn’t. Even if they had tried, there hadn’t been time. Her thoughts trailed away into shivering depths of barely controlled terror.

“Hippae,” thought Rigo, sweating, taking refuge in anger. Mark another one down against Sender O’Neil. That damned fool. And the Hierarch. Poor uncle. Poor dying old man, he simply hadn’t known. Rigo held onto the railing with both hands, pulling himself together with all his force. Beside him he was conscious of Stella leaning forward, breathing heavily, quivering. From the corner of his eye he saw Marjorie put her hand over Tony’s and squeeze it.

Below them the monsters pranced silently, twice the size of the hounds, their long necks arching in an almost horselike curve, those necks spined with arm-long scimitars of pointed, knife-edged bone, longest on the head and midway down the neck, shorter at the lower neck and shoulders. The eyes of the mounts were burning orbs of red. Their backs were armored with great calluses of hard and glistening hide.

Stavenger bon Damfels was preparing to mount, and Marjorie bit back an exclamation. The mount half crouched as it extended its left foreleg. Stavenger stepped up on the leg with his left foot, raising his left arm at the same time to throw a ring up and over the lowest of the jutting spines. With his left hand on the ring, close to the spine, he pulled and leapt simultaneously, right leg high to slide over the huge back. He settled just behind the monstrous shoulders, his hands parting widely to reveal thin straps which pulled the ring tight around the blade of bone. Stavenger turned his hands, wrapping the straps around his fingers, gripping them. “Reins,” Marjorie thought fleetingly; then, “No, not reins,” for the straps were obviously only something to hold on to, only a place to put one’s hands. There was no way they could be used to direct the enormous mount or even to signal it. One could not take hold of the razorlike barb itself without cutting off ones fingers. One could not lean forward without skewering oneself. One had to brace oneself back, leaning back in an endless, spine-straining posture which must be agonizing to hold even for a few moments. Otherwise ... otherwise one would be spitted upon those spines.

Along the animal’s mighty ribs were a series of deep pockmarks, into which Stavenger thrust the long pointed toes of his boots, bracing himself away from the danger before him. His belly was only inches from the razor edges. On his back, slung across his shoulder, he wore a case like a narrow, elongated quiver. As the mount turned, rearing, Stavenger’s eyes slid across Marjorie’s gaze with the slickness of ice. His face was not merely empty but stripped bare. There was nothing there. He made no effort to speak to the mount or guide it in any way. It went where it decided to go, taking him with it. Another of the Hippae approached a rider and was mounted in its turn.

Marjorie still held Tony’s hand, turned him to face her, looked at him deeply, warningly. He was as pale as milk. Stella was sweating with a feverish excitement in her eyes. Marjorie was cold all over, and she shook herself, forcing herself to speak. She would not be silenced by these ... by these whatever they were.

“Excuse me,” Marjorie said, loudly enough to break through their silence, through Rowena’s abstracted fascination, “but do your . . your mounts have hooves? I cannot see from here.”

“Three,” murmured Rowena, so softly they could scarcely hear her. Then louder. “Yes. Three. Three sharp hooves on each foot. Or I should say, three toes, each with a triangular hoof. And two rudimentary thumbs, higher on the leg”

“And the hounds?”

“They, too. Except that their hooves are softer. More like pads. It makes them very sure-footed.”

Almost all of the hunters were mounted.

“Come,” Rowena said again in the same emotionless voice she had said everything else. “The transport will be waiting for you.” She glided before them as if on wheels, her wide skirts floating above the polished floors like an inconsolable balloon, swollen and ready to burst with grief. She did not look at them, did not say their names. It was as if she had not really seen them, did not see them now. Her eyes were fixed upon some interior vision of intimate horror so vividly imagined that Marjorie could almost see it in her eyes. When they approached the car, Rowena turned away and floated back the way they had come.

Waiting near the car was Eric bon Haunser. “My brother has joined the Hunt,” he explained. “Since I no longer ride, I have volunteered to go with you. Perhaps you will have questions I can answer.” He moved somewhat awkwardly on his artificial legs, stopping at the door of the balloon-car to nod for Marjorie to enter first.

They rose to float silently over the Hunt, driven by silent propellers as they watched long miles flow by under the hooves of the mounts, longer and more tortuous miles run beneath the wider-ranging feet of the hounds. From the air the animals were only short, thick blotches superimposed on the texture of the grass, blotches which pulsated, becoming longer and shorter as legs extended or gathered for the next leap, mounts and hounds distinguishable from one another only by the presence of riders, the riders themselves reduced to mere excrescences, warts upon the pulsating lines. The hunters entered a copse, hidden from the air. After a time they emerged and ran off toward another copse. After a time, the Yrariers forgot what they were watching. They could as well have been observing ants. Or fish in a stream, Or water flowing, wind blowing. There was nothing individual in the movement of the beasts. Only the spots of red spoke of human involvement. Except for those dots of red, the animals might have been alone in their quest. Though occasionally the grass moved ahead of the mounts, the observers could not see whatever quarry the Hunt was chasing.

Marjorie tried to estimate how fast the animals below them were running. She thought it was not as fast as a horse would cover the same distance, though it might not be possible for horses to thrust through tall, thick grasses as the animals below were doing. She spent some time estimating whether horses could outrun the Hippae— deciding they might be able to do so on the flat, though not uphill— then wondered why she was thinking of horses at all.

At last they came to a final copse and hovered above it. Branches quivered. High upon the roof of the copse the fox crawled onto a twiggy platform, screaming defiance at the sky. Over the soft whir of the propellers, they heard him. All they really saw was an explosion of what might have been fur or scales or fangs, talons, a great shaking and scouring among the leaves, an impression of ferocity, of something huge and indomitable.

“Fox,” Anthony muttered, his voice breaking. “Fox. That thing is the size of half a dozen tigers.” His mother’s hand silenced his words, though his mind went on nattering at him. Where it isn’t toothy, it’s bony. My God. Fox, Merciful Father, will they expect me to ride after that thing? I won’t. Whatever they expect, I just won’t!

Ride, Stella thought. I could ride the way they do. A horse is nothing to that. Nothing at all. I wonder if they’ll let me ...

Ride, thought Marjorie in a fever of abhorrence. That isn’t riding. What they are doing. Something within her writhed in disgust and horror; she did not know what the people below her were doing, but it was not riding, not horsemanship. Suppose they want us to join their Hunt? She thought. At least one of us. I suppose there are teachers. Will we have to do this to be respected by them?

Ride, thought Rigo. To ride something like that! They will not think me a man unless I do, and their tribal egotism will try to keep me out. How? We are being treated as mere tourists, not as residents. I won’t have it! Damn Sanctity. Damn Uncle Carlos. Damn Sender O’Neil. Damn him and damn him.”

“The whole of Grass is horse-mad,” Sender O’Neil had said. “Horse-mad and class-conscious. The Hierarch, your uncle, suggested you for the mission. You and your family are the best candidates we have.”

“The best candidates you have for what?” Rigo had asked. “And why the devil should we care?” The invocation of old Uncle Carlos was doing nothing to make him more polite, though it had made him slightly curious.

“The best candidate to be accepted by the aristocrats on Grass. As for why ...” The man had licked his lips again, this time nervously. He had been about to say words which were not said, not by anyone in Sanctity. So far as Sanctity was concerned, the words were impossible to say. “The plague,” he had whispered.

Roderigo had been silent. The acolyte had prepared him for this, at least. He was angry but not surprised.

Sender had shaken his head, waved his hands, palms out, warding away the anger he felt coming from Rigo “All right. Sanctity doesn’t admit the plague exists, but we have reason to keep silent. Even the Hierarch, your uncle, he agreed. Every society mankind has built will fall apart the minute we admit it and start talking about it.”

“You can’t be certain of that!”

“The machines say so. Every computer model they try says so. Because there’s no hope. No cure. No hope for a cure. No means of prevention. We have the virus, but we haven’t found any way to make our immune systems manufacture antibodies. We don’t even know where it’s coming from. We have nothing. The machines advise us that if we tell people ... well, it will be the end.”

“The end of Sanctity? Why should I care about that?”

“Not Sanctity, man! The end of civilization. The end of mankind. The mortality rate is one hundred percent! Your family will die. Mine. All of us. It isn’t just Sanctity. It’s the end of the human race. It’s you as much as me!”

Rigo, shocked into awareness by the man’s vehemence, asked, “What makes you think there’s an answer on Grass?”

“Something. Maybe only rumor, only fairy tales. Maybe only wishful thinking. Maybe like the fabled cities of gold or the unicorn or the philosopher’s stone ...”

“But maybe?”

“Maybe something real. According to our temple on Semling, there is no plague at all on Grass.”

“There’s none here on Terra!”

“Oh, Lord, man if that were only true! There’s none here that anyone is allowed to see. But I’ve seen it.” The man wiped his face again, eyes brimming with sudden tears, and his jaw clenched as though he were holding down bile that threatened to flood his throat. “I’ve seen it. Men. Animals. It’s everywhere. I’ll show it to you, if you like.”

Roderigo had already seen plague. He hadn’t known it was on Terra or that it afflicted animals, but he, too, had seen it. He waved the offer aside, concentrating. “But there’s none on Grass? Perhaps it’s only hidden, as you do here.”

“Our people don’t think they could be hiding it. The Grassians seem to have no structure to hide it. Funny kind of place. But if there’s none there ...”

“What you’re implying is that it’s theonlyplace where there is none. Are you saying there is plague everywhere else?”

Sender, pallid and sweating, nodded and then whispered, “We have at least one temple on virtually every occupied world. In the few places where there’s no temple, there’s at least a mission. We are responsible for hiding what’s happening, so yes, we know where plague is. It is everywhere,”

Rigo flushed with sudden fury. “Well then, for the sake of heaven, why aren’t the scientists and researchers on the way there! Why come to me?”

“The aristocrats who run the place won’t give permission for scientists and researchers to visit the planet. Oh, we could send our people into the port town, yes. Place is called Commoner Town. It’s open to visitors. But there’s no such thing as immigration. They’d get a visitor’s permit, good until the next ship came through headed in the right direction. We’ve already done that a few times. Our people can’t find out anything. Not there in the port. And do you think they can get anywhere else on Grass? Not on your life. Not on anyone’s. Sanctity has no power on the planet.”

Rigo stared, frankly unbelieving. “You really have no mission there?”

‘The only contact Sanctity has with Grass is through the penitential encampment working on the Arbai ruins. Not all our acolytes work out. It won’t do to send them home to teach other unwilling boys how to get out of their service. So we send them to Grass. Our encampment was already there when the Grassians arrived. The Green Brothers. So named because of the robes they wear. There must be over a thousand of them, but they have virtually no contact with the aristocrats. Over a hundred years ago the Hierarch ordered them to develop some interest they could use as common ground with the Grassians, but there really is no common ground.”

“Trying to make your penitents into more of your damn missionaries,” snarled Rigo.

O’Neil wiped his brow. “Oh, I won’t deny that’s what the man in charge of Acceptable Doctrine would like. His name’s Jhamlees Zoe, and he gets madder than a teased bull about our not converting the planet to Sanctity, by force if necessary. The Hierarch sends him word to calm down or come home, and it only makes him madder,” O’Neil wiped his forehead where the sweat glistened.

“What did the brothers do to develop ties with the aristocrats?”

“They took up gardening.” O’Neil laughed harshly. “Gardening! They’ve become specialists in that. Oh, they’ve become renowned for that. So well known even Jhamlees didn’t dare put a stop to it. But that still doesn’t give them any day-to-day contact with the rest of the planet, not enough to learn anything. And the damned aristos won’t let us in!”

“Not even when you told them ...”

“The Grassians aren’t suffering. We’ve tried to describe to them what’s happening, but they don’t seem to care. They were separatists to begin with, more concerned with maintaining the privileges of their rank than with any human concerns. Lesser nobility. Or perhaps merely pretenders at nobility. European, mostly, and ridiculously proud of their noble blood, full of pretensions about it. That’s why they’ve consistently refused permission for a temple or a mission. Ten generations on Grass has only made them more isolationist, more ... more strange It’s like they’ve had iron walls built in their heads! They refuse to be studied. They refuse to be proselytized. They refuse to be visited! Except, maybe, by someone like you....

“Sanctity has a navy.” Rigo said it as fact. He disapproved of that fact, but it was true. Planetary governments were isolated and parochial and content to be so, Once the initial explosive overflow of humanity had taken place, Sanctity had done everything it could to stop further exploration. The faith had not wanted men to be so widespread they couldn’t be evangelized and controlled. Discovery had stopped, along with science and art and invention. Though its military technology was centuries old, Sanctity maintained the only interstellar force.

Sender O’Neil sighed deeply. “It’s been considered. If we take troopers in there, the reason couldn’t be kept secret, not for long. All hell would break loose. We can’t even consider it until we know for sure that there’s something there. Please. Whatever you think of us, give us credit for some intelligence! We’ve computer-modeled everything. Our best people have done it over and over again. News of the plagueanduse of force would be equally disastrous! Have you heard of the Moldies?”

“Some kind of end-of-the-world sect, aren’t they?”

“End of the universe, more likely. But yes, they fervently desire the end of the world, the human world. They call themselves the Martyrs of the Last Days. They believe the time has come to end all human life. They believe in an afterlife which will only commence when this one has ended, for everyone. We’ve recently learned that the Moldies are ‘helping’ the plague.”

“My God!”

“Yes. Anyone’s God!”

“How?”

“Carrying infected materials from one place to another. Like the ancient anarchists, destroying so that something better can come.”

“What has this to do with—“

“It has this to do with. All Sanctity’s resources are tied up in tracking and expunging the Moldies. They seem to be everywhere, to breed out of nothing. If they heard ... if they knew there was a chance that Grass—“

“They’d go there?”

“They’d wreck whatever slim chance there may be. No, whatever we do, it must be covert, quiet, without drawing any notice. According to the computers, we’ve got five to seven years in which to act. After that, the plague may have gone so far that—Well. The Grassians have said they’ll accept an ambassador.”

“I see.” And he had seen. The Grassians would consent to a delaying action. Enough to make Sanctity eschew any ideas of using force, but not enough to seriously inconvenience anyone on Grass.

“You say they ride?” Rigo had asked Sender O’Neil, trying to change the pictures of doom and destruction which had swarmed into his mind. “You say they ride? Did they take horses, hounds, and foxes with them when they settled there?”

“No. They found indigenous variants upon the theme.” O’Neil had licked his pursy lips, liking this phrase and repeating it. “Indigenous variants.”

Indigenous variants,Rigo thought now as he sat in a balloon-car poised above a copse of great trees on Grass and saw the thing called fox climb into view. He could not see it clearly. He did not glance at his family, though he felt the strain of their silence. He stared down, unconscious for the moment of the need to hide his feelings, and repeated O’Neil’s phrase. “Indigenous variants.” He said it aloud, not realizing he had spoken. When Eric bon Haunser looked at him inquiringly he blurted, without meaning to, “I’m afraid it is utterly unlike our foxes at home.”

The huge, amorphous creature was pulled struggling from the crown of the copse while bon Haunser described what was probably taking place below the trees. He spoke openly, almost offhandedly, carefully ignoring their reaction to the sight of the thing.

When they had returned partway to Klive, Rigo recovered himself sufficiently to say, “You seem very objective about all this. Forgive me, but your brother seemed ... how can I describe it? Embarrassed? Defensive?”

“I don’t ride any longer.” said Eric, flushing. “My legs. A hunting accident. Those of us who don’t ride—some of us at least—we become less enthusiastic.” He said this diffidently, as though he were not quite sure of it, and he did not offer to explain what it was about the Hunt that made the current riders unwilling to talk about it. Each of the Yrariers had his or her own ideas about the matter, ideas which they incubated as they sailed silently over the prairies, in time each achieving an imperiled calm.

They arrived back at Klive before the riders did and were met, though scarcely welcomed, by Rowena. She escorted them to a large reception room overlooking the first surface, where she introduced them to the gaggle of pregnant women and children and older men who were eating, drinking, and playing games at scattered tables. She encouraged the Yrariers to tell the servants what they wanted to drink and serve themselves from the laden buffet, then she drifted away. Eric bon Haunser joined them. Very shortly thereafter a horn blew outside the western gate and the riders began to trickle in. Most went immediately to bathe and change their clothing, but a few came into the room, obviously famished.

Eric murmured, ‘They have drunk nothing for twelve hours before the Hunt except the palliative offered before the Hounds come in. Once the Hunt has begun, there is no opportunity to relieve oneself.”

“Most uncomfortable,” Marjorie mused, lost in recollection of the sharp implacable spines on the necks of the mounts. “Is it really worth it?”

He shook his head. “I am no philosopher, Lady Westriding. If you were to ask my brother, he would say yes. If you ask me, I may say yes or no. But then, he rides and I don’t.”

“I ride,” said a voice from behind them. “But I say no.”

Marjorie turned to confront the owner of the voice, tall, broad-shouldered, not greatly younger than herself, dressed in stained trousers and red coat, his hunting cap under his arm and a full glass held to his lips. She saw that those lips trembled, though so slightly she doubted anyone but herself would have noticed.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m excessively thirsty.” His lips tightened upon the rim of the glass, making it quiver. Something held him in the grip of emotion, slurring his words.

“I can imagine that you are thirsty,” she said. “We met this morning, didn’t we? You look quite different in your... in your hunting clothes.”

“I am Sylvan bon Damfels,” he said with a slight bow. “We did meet, yes. I am the younger son of Stavenger and Rowena bon Damfels.”

Stella was standing with Rigo across the room. She saw Sylvan talking to her mother; her expression changed, and she moved toward the two of them, her eyes fixed on Sylvan as she came. There were other bows, other murmurs of introduction. Eric bon Haunser stepped away, leaving Marjorie and the children with Sylvan,

“You say no,” Marjorie prompted him. “No, that riding isn’t worth it, even though you ride?”

“I do,” he said, coloring along his cheekbones, his eyes flicking around the room to see who might be listening, the cords of his throat standing out as though he struggled to speak at all. “To you, madam, and to you, miss and sir, I say it. With the understanding that you will not quote me to any member of my family, or to any other of the bons.” He panted.

“Certainly.” Anthony was still very pale, as he had been since he saw the fox—or foxen, as most of the Grassians called the beast, meaning one or a dozen—but he had regained his poise. “If you wish it. You have our promise.”

“I say it because you may be asked to ride. Invited, as it were. I had thought it impossible until I met your husband. Now I still consider it unlikely, but it could happen. If it does, I caution you, do not accept.” He looked them each in the eye, fully, as though seeking their inmost parts, then bowed again and left them, rubbing his throat as though it hurt him.

“Honestly!” Stella bridled, tossing her head. “Honestly, indeed,” said Marjorie. “I think it would be wise as well as kind not to repeat what he said, Stel.”

“Of all the snubs!”

“Not so intended, I think-“

“Those mounts of theirs may scare you, and they may scare him, but they don’t scare me! I could ride those things. I know I could.” Marjorie’s soul quaked within her, and it was all she could do to keep her voice calm. “I know you could, Stella I could, too. Given sufficient practice, I imagine any of us could. The question is, should we? Should any of us? I think we have one friend in this room, and I think that friend just told us no.”