14

Rigo asked Sebastian Mechanic to accompany him to the bon Laupmons’ place. He asked Persun Pollut and Asmir to come along as well, spending a few futile moments wishing the men were bigger, wishing they had weapons, wishing they were not commoners but bons so they would be taken seriously. Well, what use to wish? They were commoners and there were no weapons on Grass, none he had seen. None except the harpoons of the hunters, and the ungainly length of those instruments made them useless for protection. He felt very much alone and was foolishly ashamed of himself for feeling so.

He dressed with meticulous care, hating the froggy spread of the trousers, the effete look of the long pointed toes on his boots. Finally he took his hat and gloves from his villager-turned-valet and examined himself in the glass. At least from the waist up he looked like a proper gentleman. As though that made any difference. As though anything would make any difference!

He would not apologize for taking Persun and Sebastian and Asmir along, it was certainly not improper to take servants to the Hunt. Others did. When a bon Haunser returned from a bon Damfels Hunt and went into the bon Damfels’ guest quarters, it was his own servants who had prepared a room for him, his own servants who had kept the bath hot and laid out fresh clothing. When Rigo had ridden for the first time, he hadn’t known. No one had told him. He and Stella had had to return all the way to Opal Hill before they could bathe.

When he had ridden the second time he had brought a man along but there had been no question of bathing. Stella had vanished, and that is all he had been able to think of. Now, for the first time, he wondered what would have happened if Stella hadn’t vanished. He, Rigo, had taken a man along. He had forgotten to provide anyone for Stella. It was an uncomfortable thought, and he pushed it aside.

“Rigo?” A soft voice from the door.

He turned his self-hatred on her. “Eugenie! What are you doing here?” Ridiculously, for a moment he had thought it was Marjorie.

“I thought you might need some help. With Marjorie gone—“

“I have a valet, Eugenie.” Behind him the man prudently left the room. “Marjorie doesn’t dress me.”

She fluttered her hands and changed the subject. “Have you had any news about Stella?”

“I haven’t heard anything about any of them. And you don’t belong here in my bedroom. You know that.”

“I know.” A tear crept down her cheek. “I don’t feel like I belong anyplace.”

“Go to Commons,” he told her. “Take a room at the Port Hotel. Amuse yourself. For God’s sake, Eugenie, I don’t have time for you now.”

She caught her breath. Her face went white and she turned away. Something in that turn, the curve of the neck. Like Marjorie. Now he had insulted them both! God. what kind of man was he?

Full of angry self-loathing, he went out to the gravel court where the aircar waited, then stood about impatiently while Sebastian arranged for the other car to take Eugenie to Commons if she wanted to go. Women. Damned women. With no other driver available, Asmir would have to stay to take Eugenie into town.

“Grass can be very boring for women,” Persun Pollut remarked.

“My mother has often mentioned that.” Persun stood with his hands linked behind him, his long, lugubrious face turned toward the garden.

“From what you have said, your mother keeps very busy,” Rigo commented, his voice still full of edgy hostility.

“Oh, I don’t mean life is boring in Commons, Your Excellency. I mean out here. Out here can be death for women. From boredom. From the Hunt. From so many things....”

Rigo did not want to think about women. He did not understand women, obviously. He was no good with women. Marjorie. No good with her. Who would have expected her to take the initiative this way, go running off to involve Green Brothers, dragging Tony and Father Sandoval along. She had never been like that. On Terra she’d contented herself with being mother or horsewoman. There’d been that little charitable thing that took too much of her time, Lady Bountiful carrying cast-off clothing to the illegals. But then, what had she had to do with herself otherwise? She wasn’t like Eugenie, to spend half a day at the loveliness shops. Or like Espinoza’s wife, that time, getting hauled in by the population police because she’d been mixed up in illicit abortions to save some ignorant little cunts from getting executed. Poor ‘Spino hadn’t been able to face his friends. No, whatever Marjorie had done on Terra, she’d kept it insignificant, she hadn’t encroached on Rigo’s responsibilities....

There was some kind of mental trap there. He avoided it by returning to his earlier thoughts about weapons. Why were there no weapons on Grass? Surely the order officers at Commons must have some kind of tanglefoots or freeze batons. Such items were ubiquitous wherever there were ports and taverns and the need to knock down unruly men. Why didn’t the people at the estancias have them? Characteristically, preferring actual ignorance to the appearance of it, he did not ask Persun, who could have told him.

He got into the car at Sebastian’s summons. They flew in silence. The bon Laupmon estancia was about an hour distant, farther east than the bon Damfels’ place. Rigo was considering how he might approach Obermun Lancel bon Laupmon. What he might say to Eric bon Haunser, or Obermun Jerril bon Haunser. Both of them had been helpful and diplomatic when the Yrariers had arrived upon Grass. Still, they were hunters, and hunters did not seem to act logically. There was no point in talking to Gerold bon Laupmon, Lancel’s brother. According to Persun, the man’s comprehension was exceedingly limited. Lancel was a widower. There was a son. Taronce, related somehow to the bon Damfels, but Rigo had not met him. Perhaps there had been other children. Perhaps they had vanished, and bon Laupmon had ignored that fact, just as Stavenger had. As he continued to do.

Rigo ground his teeth. There had been a time on Terra when children had been sacrificed. To Moloch. To Poseidon. Even to God. There had been dangerous rites on Terra long ago. Maenads had run wild upon mountaintops, tearing youths apart with their teeth. Secret societies had demanded blood and silence. And yet, he could not recall a time in Terran history that men had lost their children and pretended not to notice. Never. Now, nowhere else. Only here, on Grass.

He shuddered, then drew in a deep breath, confused. Why was he going to this Hunt? Was he really going to ride? Again? Knowing what he knew now?

Why was he going?

To demand help in finding Stella, of course.

From whom? He went over the roll of all the bons he had met, listing them by families, ticking them off, going back to see if he had forgotten any.

“Pollut,” he said at last in a shamed voice. “Will any of them help me find my daughter?”

Persun Pollut gave him a long look. Around the eyes His Excellency looked rather like an old bit of carving, badly abused, chipped, and abraded. For a moment Persun considered equivocation, then discarded the idea. He owed it to Lady Westriding to tell the truth.

“No,” he said finally. “None of them will.”

“Marjorie warned me,” Rigo said in a whisper.

Despite the whisper, Persun heard him. “Many of us tried to warn you, sir. Lady Westriding has a clear eye. She was not taken in by these Hippae.”

“You believe it’s true that they do things to people’s minds....”

With some effort Persun kept any taint of sneer from his voice as he asked, “Has the ambassador any other explanation?”

“Landing!” said Sebastian. “There’s a considerable crowd on the court, sir. Almost as though they were waiting for us.”

Rigo looked down with a sense of forboding. Many pale faces looked up. And there were already Hippae down there! It was indeed as though they had been waiting He thought of telling Sebastian to go back, return home But that would seem such arrant cowardice! Death before dishonor, he sneered at himself. Of course. “Set it down,” he said.

When he opened the car door, Obermun Jerril bon Haunser was poised outside, his face empty of any emotion.

“Your Excellency,” he said. “I have the honor of conveying to you the challenge of Obermun Stavenger bon Damfels. He wishes me to say that the whore, your wife, has taken away his son, Sylvan. And that you will answer for it or be trampled to death.” He gestured backward, toward the wall of the estancia, where a dozen Hippae stood, shifting from foot to foot, clashing the barbs on their necks despite the empty-faced men and women on their backs.

Rigo felt molten iron rise into his face. That Jerril bon Haunser had said no more than he, Rigo, had implied toward Marjorie only redoubled his fury. “How dare you?” he snarled “How dares any of you?” He raised his voice to a shout. “A mother goes to look for her daughter, and you call her a whore? It is your wives who have made themselves whores. Your wives and your daughters! Who have whored themselves to them!” He thrust a rigid finger at the rank of Hippae along the wall. “Your wives and daughters have spread their legs for lovers who are not even human!”

There was no quiver of movement among the mounted men. Obermun bon Haunser’s face did not change. He might as well have been deaf and blind. He seemed not to have heard Rigo’s contemptuous insult. He bowed, twisted his lips into a vacant smile, and gestured toward an approaching Hippae. “Your mount,” he said.

Rigo felt Persun seize his arm. “Let us leave, Your Excellency. We can!”

Rigo shook off Persun’s hand. “I will not run,” he snarled through a red curtain of rage. “Not from them, not from any of them.”

“Then for God’s sake take this,” and Persun thrust something into Rigo’s jacket pocket from behind. “A laser knife, Your Excellency. One of my carving tools. The Lady Marjorie wilt not forgive me if I let you die.”

Rigo heard him at some level, though his anger would not let him respond. He dropped out of the car and stood waiting for the Hippae. It grinned at him, showing its teeth, eyes gleaming. There was no mistaking the impudence, the malice, the arrogance in those eyes. With a surge of panic Rigo realized that Stavenger bon Damfels had not issued the challenge. The challenge had come from the Hippae! It was they who had arranged and directed this confrontation, they who had choreographed this movement of men and beasts, Jerril bon Haunser did only their will, not his own.

Rigo cast a quick glance upward, toward the estancia. There were people gathered on the terraces, watching, mouths open in astonishment or wonder or fear. So this was not a familiar sight. How had the beasts managed it? How had they winkled their riders out of the estancia? How had they assembled these hunters?

There was no time to consider hows or whys. The Hippae before him thrust out a mottled blue leg, muscled like a monument. Rigo fumbled for his rein ring, found it in his pocket, tossed it clumsily over the bottom barb, and felt it tighten as he leapt upward. His toes found the stirrup holes. He braced himself just in time as the beast reared high. He was staring at the sky, suspended only by the tightened reins and his toes, leg and back muscles locked rigid to hold him in place. The Hippae walked on its hind legs, stalking, laughing an almost human laughter, seeming to move as easily in that position as it did on four legs. After what seemed an eternity, it dropped forward once more.

Another beast loomed beside him, a great green Hippae, lining up beside the blue as for a parade. Stavenger sat upon the green, face forward and empty as a hatched egg, only the shell which had once housed him remaining. The green Hippae clashed its barbs and Stavenger shouted. There were no words, only meaningless rage. His mouth opened. His face reddened. He howled. Then his mouth closed and he sat there once more, unmoved.

The blue beast clashed its barbs and Rigo felt himself shouting. He bit down on the shout, closed it off, swallowed it. Fury rose up in him and forced the Hippae out of his mind. The beasts danced, side by side, like a pair in a quadrille. They galloped, trotted, changed legs, did it once again. The horseman in Rigo grew even more wrathful. They had learned this from Don Quixote and El Dia Octavo. This was mockery. This was humiliation. He twisted his left hand tightly in both reins to free his right hand, then felt in his pocket for the laser knife. A simple, ordinary tool, one that Persun used to carve bits of wood and grass stem, one he had probably used on the panels in Marjorie’s study. A simple tool.

And yet ... it could be a weapon. He stared at the neck barbs clashing before him. They looked like horn. Or like teeth. If they were indeed like teeth or horn, the beast might not feel it if they were cut. The knife had a blade of variable power and length. At higher power the blade could take off these barbs at flesh level. As the Hippae danced, Rigo reached one hand forward, thumbed the knife on, and touched the top of the second barb. The knife cut a notch into it, like a heated blade into wax. The Hippae didn’t react. Rigo cast a quick look around. No one had seen him. No one was looking. This prancing dance was not for the benefit of the zombies along the wall, not for Jerril or Eric or even Stavenger. This was for the Hippae themselves. They were the only ones enjoying it, and they were so arrogantly intent upon displaying their power that they had not bothered to keep watch upon the riders. Rigo cut away the sharp edges of the first barb, narrowing it to make a place he could grip, then slipped the knife back into his pocket and waited to see what would happen next.

Next was a challenge. Bellowing at one another. Turning their backs on one another and using both front and rear feet to kick clods at one another. Clods? Something black and powdery that they took some trouble to find. Black dust powdered down upon him. Then the Hippae faced one another again and rose on their back hooves. Clashing barbs, hissing through teeth they separated, dancing backward until a considerable distance had opened between them. A hundred yards. Two hundred. Rigo risked a look at the assembly on the walls, at the mounted men. Nothing. No cries, no excitement. Only this deadly calm. He gritted his teeth and hung on. At last, the green beast lowered his head and charged. Rigo’s mount did the same.

The opposing mount was coming up on his right, neck arched down and turned so that the barbs jutted wickedly outward. Rigo’s mount had taken the same position. They were like two warhorses, thundering toward one another. Neither of the beasts could see where he was going. Each threatened the other. Stavenger sat like a dummy, unseeing. At the last possible moment, Rigo jerked the toe of his right boot out of the stirrup hole and stood on his left toe, right leg high and bent back, holding himself high by locking his left hand tightly around the blunted barb.

The barbs of Stavenger’s beast meshed with those of Rigo’s mount, passed through and raked the place where Rigo’s booted leg had been, missing the blue Hippae skin by the thickness of a finger. Still holding himself high, Rigo could see Stavenger’s right boot in tatters. Blood blew from the man’s leg, long ragged lines trailing into the dust. The animals had no intention of hurting one another. The barbs were aimed at their rider’s legs.

Rigo settled upon the creature’s shoulders, and as they moved apart he took out the knife and cut the four barbs immediately in front of him, striking them to make them fall to one side. Though there were longer barbs on the neck, the amputation made him safe from being skewered, at least. The Hippae had turned and were readying themselves for another charge. They had to aim themselves like missiles; once their heads were down, they could not see where they were going. Some instinct or long practice let them know precisely where their opponent was, however. They passed this time on the left, the barbs meshing like gears, screaming as they plunged past one another, and once again Rigo moved his leg and balanced high on the opposite side of his mount, glued there by equal parts rage and fear.

This time Stavenger’s left boot was in tatters, his left leg streaming blood. There was still no expression in his face. The Hippae would keep it up even if Stavenger fell, even if he died. The Hippae would keep it up until Rigo was dead. There was no point in trying to kill Stavenger. It would be like killing a flea on the neck of an attacking dog. No. To stop the battle, the Hippae themselves would have to be stopped.

The next charge was to the right again. Rigo wound the reins around his left arm, grasped the smoothed barb in his left hand, withdrew his right leg, threw himself across his mount as the other went by, and struck at its rear legs with the knife extended to its full length. The blade hummed and sliced, through the flesh as it had through wood.

The green beast screamed, tried to walk on a leg half cut through, and crashed to the ground. Rigo’s mount pranced and howled and lashed back at him with barbs that were no longer there. Rigo reached low along one side and cut a back leg from beneath it, rolling away as the beast fell.

Noise. Two beasts screaming. He staggered to his feet, eyes fixed on them. They were trying to crawl toward him. trying to get up on three legs. He turned the knife to its maximum length and moved forward, slashing once, then again, cleaving the two skulls down through those clamping jaws, to leave the truncated, cauterized necks to lash themselves into quiet.

A great noise was coming from somewhere else. He turned just in time to see the Hippae who had been ranked along the wall charging at him, hooves high, jaws extended. There was no way to avoid them. He threw himself behind the bodies of the dying Hippae and cut at the legs and teeth that sought him from above. Blood rained down on him, blinding him.

Something struck him on the head. He slumped, stunned. There was sound, roaring, screaming, voices howling. Hippae shrieking as they backed off. Blackness came up around him, sucking at him.

Persun Pollut’s voice said, “Up, up, sir. Get in. Oh, get in, we can’t hold them off for long.”

Then vibration, the sound dwindling, and at last the blackness took him entirely.

It was Figor bon Damfels who reached Stavenger first, after waiting a considerable time for the Hippae to finish their slaughter and go away. Roderigo Yrarier’s servants had driven the Hippae off with the aircar, had leapt out and rescued him. Figor was astonished at this. None of the bon Damfels servants or the bon Laupmon servants had made any move to protect their masters. The twelve riders had borne the full brunt of the Hippae fury. All twelve had died, most of them bon Laupmons, fourteen deaths including Stavenger bon Damfels and Obermun bon Haunser. Stavenger showed no wounds, though he was pale and cold. His boots were in tatters. Figor unbuckled the strap that held the boots high and drew them off. Stavenger’s feet came with them. Only a thin strip of leather on the inside had kept the boots together. They had filled with blood and overflowed. Stavenger had bled to death, without moving.

Four Hippae were dead also, the two who had taken part in the joust and two others, their legs lopped off as though by some great cleaver. It was this death of Hippae that the others had sought to avenge.

The death of Hippae, though perhaps Yrarier’s escape had infuriated them more. They had danced and howled and leaped, trying to get their teeth into the ascending car. While all of it had been going on, Figor had not had time for much thinking, not time, nor ability. There was nothing in anyone’s mind then but red rage and a furious astonishment. After the Hippae had gone away, however, room for some thought had opened up. Thought and reflection on what eyes had seen even while minds had been unable to comprehend.

“Figor,” his cousin, Taronce bon Laupmon, said. “I found this where thefragraswas.”

Figor took it. Some kind of tool. It had a thumb switch and he clicked it on. The blade quivered, humming with deadly force, and he clicked it off again. He whispered, shocked, “By our ancestors! Taronce!”

“It must be what he used on the mounts,” cousin Taronce whispered, rubbing at his shoulder where his prosthesis joined his body. “Cut their legs out from under them Chopped their heads in two. The way they chop at us. They way they chopped at me.” He looked around, guiltily. “Put it away before someone sees it.”

“What does Obermun bon Laupmon say? Lancel?”

“He’s dead, Gerold is alive. He wasn’t one of the mounted ones.”

“How did this all ...” He gestured around him. “When I got here, it was already started.”

“The Hippae were waiting this morning, waiting on the gravel court. They took people, that’s all. They took Stavenger as soon as he arrived, and bon Haunser, as well.”

“No one bothered me.”

“No one else was bothered, just twelve riders, and Stavenger, and Jerril bon Haunser. And now they’re all dead.”

“Plus four mounts,” whispered Figor. “I’ve got the thing put away. I won’t let them know we have it.”

“You’d use it, wouldn’t you?”

“Would you?”

“I think so. I think I’d use it. It’s so neat. So little. You could keep it in your pocket. They wouldn’t know you had it. Then, if one of them came at you ...”

“If Yrarier had this thing, they’re probably easy to get. In Commons, maybe.”

“Why didn’t we know? Before?”

“They didn’t let us know before. Or maybe we haven’t wanted to know, before.”

When Persun and Sebastian Mechanic reached Opal Hill they left Rigo in the aircar while they called Persun’s father on the tell-me and told him they wanted to evacuate the estancia. Rigo was unconscious. There was nothing they could do for him; he needed to go to the hospital in Commons at once, but there was this other very important consideration.

“Evacuate the village?” Hime Pollut asked. “You’re joking, Pers.”

“Father, listen. Rigo Yrarier killed at least two Hippae. I don’t know how many men died in the ruckus we left behind us, but some must have. I’m remembering the stories of Darenfeld estancia. How it was burned after somebody wounded a Hippae. How all the people in the village died. The people at Opal Hill village, the servants here in the big house, they’re our people, Father. Commons people.”

“How many at Opal Hill?”

“A hundred and a bit. If you can get Roald Few to send out some trucks ...”

“Will the people be ready?”

“Sebastian is on his way to the village now. If you can get the trucks we use when we go into winter quarters, they can bring the livestock in. They’ll need their animals....”

A long silence. “Can you bring the foreigners from the estancia?”

“His Excellency, yes. His secretary and her sister. The old priest. That’s all.”

“Where’s the wife? The children? The other priest? Yrarier’s fancy woman?”

“Asmir Tanlig took Eugenie to Commons this morning. None of the others are here, but I don’t have time to explain about them now.” He left the tell-me and ran through the dwelling, stopping all the servants he met. They were all from the village. Some he sent to find Father Sandoval and Andrea Chapelside and her sister, telling them he could allow only an hour for packing. Waiting even that long might endanger Rigo’s life, but he could not simply gather up the women and fly away, leaving all their belongings behind. They would need things. Women always needed things.

Marjorie. She, too, would need things. He gathered three of the maids together and told them to pack Marjorie’s things. “Her clothes,” he said. “Her personal things.”

And Stella’s? Would Stella ever be found? What did Stella value? “How long, Persun? What shall we pack?”

“Never mind,” he said in frustration. “Take a few sensible clothes for Marjorie and Stella, their jewelry and treasures, and leave it at that.”

And perhaps it was all mere supposition, mere paranoia. Perhaps the Hippae would do nothing to Opal Hill at all. Perhaps the village would be safe.

And perhaps not. In panic he went back to the tell-me. “Roald Few has borrowed four cargo trucks from the port,” his father said. “They’re on their way. He agrees on the importance of saving the livestock.”

Well then, it was not merely his own fear. Or, if it was, he had been successful in spreading it about. He scurried through the place to Marjorie’s study, intent upon saving anything there that she might ever want again. He came face to face with the panels he had carved for her, a lady moving among the trees of a copse, sometimes clearly seen, sometimes hidden, her lovely face always slightly turned away. Like a dream, just out of reach. There were birds in the trees. He reached out to touch one of them, stroke one of them, wondering foolishly if there were time to cut the panels out and save them. He broke away with an exclamation. No time.

When he had gathered together what he could, he picked up Sebastian and those who were ready and drove the aircar directly to the hospital near the Port Hotel. The doctors carried Rigo away; Andrea, her sister, and Father Sandoval went to the port hotel.

Asmir was there. “Where’s Eugenie?” Persun asked.

“I don’t know. Wasn’t she with you?” Asmir asked in return.

‘This morning she wanted to come in to Commons.”

“She told me she’d changed her mind. I just came to pick up some supplies.”

Persun counted his passengers on his fingers and ran to ask them where Eugenie was. No one knew. He flew back to Opal Hill, anxious to use all the daylit hours. In the village the trucks were loading: people, livestock, necessary equipment. Another truck landed as he stood there. Sebastian was driving it.

“I can’t find Eugenie,” Persun yelled at him.

“His Excellency’s woman? Isn’t she in Commons? Didn’t she go in with Asmir?”

“She didn’t, Sebastian. She changed her mind.”

“Ask Linea, over there. She took care of Eugenie.”

Persun chased the indicated woman and asked. Linea didn’t know. She hadn’t seen Eugenie since early this morning. She thought Eugenie must be in her own house, or perhaps in the garden.

Persun ran back up the trail to the estancia, to Eugenie’s house, cursing under his breath. She wasn’t there. Soft pink curtains blew in the spring wind. The house smelled of flowers Persun Pollut had never seen. The woman wasn’t there. He went out into the grass garden and searched for her, down this path and that, the mild spring airs moving above him and around him, the perfumes of the fragrant grasses like a drug in his nostrils.

He called, “Eugenie?” It did not seem a dignified thing to do, to walk about the gardens calling her by her first name, but he knew no other name to call her. It was what everyone called her. “Eugenie!”

From the village the trucks rose with a roar of engines. He went there once more, plodding. A few remaining people. A few remaining pigs, chickens, a lonely cow lowing at the sky. The sun, down in the west, burning its hot eye into his own

“Are they coming back?” he asked. “The trucks?”

“You don’t think we planned to stay here with everyone gone, did you?” an old woman snapped at him. “What happened? No one seems to know, except that the Hippae are coming to slaughter us all in our beds.”

Persun didn’t answer. He was already on his way back to the house to try one last time, He went through the big house, room by room. She wasn’t there. To her own house again. She wasn’t there.

He did not think to go to the chapel. Why would he? The people of Commons had scant use for chapels. Some of them claimed religions, but they were not of edificial kinds.

He went out to the car, offered the old woman a seat in it, loaded her crate of chickens aboard, and took off once more, flying low as he cross-hatched the grass gardens, looking for Eugenie. Once at commons, he searched for her again, thinking perhaps she had been in one of the trucks.

Darkness came. “I have to go back,” he cried to Sebastian, who had just returned from a final trip. “She has to be still out there.”

“I’ll go with you,” the other said. “I’ve got everyone unloaded. They’re all getting settled down in winter quarters.” “Have you heard any news of His Excellency?” Sebastian shook his head. “No one’s had time to ask. How was he hurt?”

“His legs were trampled. And he was struck on the head. He was breathing well, but he didn’t move his legs at all. I think he may be paralyzed.”

“They can fix that kind of injury.”

“Some kinds they can fix.” They lofted the car once more and headed it away from Commons toward Opal Hill. They had not gone far before they saw the fire, wings and curtains of fire, sweeping across the grasses and towering above the estancia.

“Ah, well then,” murmured Persun. “So I was not a hysteric after all. Father said I might be.”

“Are you glad of that?” Sebastian asked curiously, turning the car in a long curve so that he could look down on the blaze. “Or would you rather have been called a hysteric and Opal Hill still be whole? I saw the panels you carved in the lady’s study. They were the best things I have seen in a long time. No, the best I have ever seen.”

“I still have my hands,” Persun said, looking at them, turning them over, thinking what might have happened to them if he hadn’t been skittish as any old woman. “I can carve more.” If Marjorie was safe, he could carve more. If they were for her.

“I thought the gardens were supposed to stop the fires.”

“They do. Unless the fires are set and dragged through the gardens and carried into the buildings. As these were, Sebastian. As these were.” He peered down at the ruin, biting back an exclamation. “Look! Sebastian. Look at the trail!”

Away from Opal Hill, toward the swamp forest, straight as an arrow, a trail trampled into the grasses as though ten thousand Hippae had marched there in files. The two looked at one another in horrified surmise.

“Do you suppose she’s down there?” Sebastian whispered.

Persun nodded. “Yes. She is. Was. Somewhere.”

“Shall we—“

“No. See there, in the flames. Hippae. There must be hundreds of them. Some dancing near the flames. Some going down that great trail. How many of them did it take to make that trail? And hounds, too. Every hound on Grass must be down there, all moving toward Commons. No. No, we can’t go down. We’ll come back tomorrow. When the fire burns out, we’ll look. Maybe she got into the winter quarters. I hope she doesn’t burn.”

Eugenie didn’t burn. The hounds that had swept through the place ahead of the flames had seen to that.

Commons was in a considerable uproar, busy with speculation and rumor. The housing of a hundred or so people was no great thing. The winter quarters were large enough to hold the entire population of Commons plus those of the villages, and only the very young among them found these underground halls and rooms at all new and frightening. The caverns had been here when men first came, but they had been enlarged and fitted out for human occupancy, and everyone over one Grassian year of age knew them well. The evacuated animals went into the winter barns. Though this year’s cutting of hay had not begun, there was enough of last year’s hay and grain to keep them. Feeding the people was no great thing either. They began using the winter kitchens with the ease of long practice.

Despite this ease, this familiarity, there was disquiet and anxiety both among those who had arrived and those who had welcomed them. The burning of an estancia was not a familiar occurrence. It had happened before, but that had been long ago, in their great-grandparents’ time It was not something easy to comprehend or accept. When Persun Pollut brought news of the great trail toward the swamp-forest, anxiety deepened. Everyone knew the Hippae couldn’t get through the forest, and yet ... and yet, people wondered. They were uneasy, wondering if this event betokened mysterious dangers.

The unease spread even to Portside, where those occupied in serving and housing strangers became jittery. Saint Teresa and Ducky Johns were not immune to the common case of nerves. They met at the end of Pleasure Street and walked along Portside Road, Ducky bobbling and jiggling inside her great golden tent of a dress, Saint Teresa stalking beside her like a heron, long-legged and long-nosed to the point of caricature. He wore his usual garments: purple trousers tight at the knee but baggy elsewhere, and a swallow-tailed coat cut of jermot hide, a scaly leather imported through Semling from some desert planet at the end of nowhere. His bare cranium gleamed like steel in the blue lights of the port, and his great hands gestured as he spoke, never still for an instant.

“So ... so what does it mean?” he asked. “Burning Opal Hill that way. There was no one there....” His hands circled, illustrating a search from the air, then swooped away, conveying frustration.

“One person,” Ducky Johns corrected him. “That fancy woman of the ambassador’s is missing.”

“One person, then. But the Hippae dragged fire through the gardens and burned it. all of it. It’s burning now.” His fingers flickered like flames, drawing the scene on the air.

Ducky Johns nodded, the nod setting up wavelike motion which traveled down from her ears through all the waiting flesh below, a tidal jiggle, ending only at her ankles, where her tiny feet served as a check valve. “It’s why I wanted to talk with you, Teresa. The things are obviously raging. Furious. Out of all control. You knew the ambassador killed some of them.”

“I heard. First time that’s ever happened, from what I hear.”

“So far as I know, yes. Darenfeld wounded one, years and years ago, before the Darenfeld estancia burned.”

“I thought that was a summer fire. Lightning.”

“So the bons say, but others say no. The bons pretended it was lightning and began to build grass gardens around themselves, but Roald Few says the CommonsChroniclecalled it what it was. Hippae, going rampageous.”

He compressed thin lips into a tight line, more disturbed than he cared to admit. “Well, so! The bons are no concern of ours. If all of them got crisped tomorrow, it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to custom, Ducky. They may think they’re the pinnacle of creation, but we know different.”

“Oh, it’s not just them. It’s this plague, too. We’re hearing more and more of that.”

“There’s none here.”

“So there isn’t, which is strange on the face of it. I hear things. Asmir Tanlig has been around, asking this, asking that. Sebastian Mechanic has been around, digging here, digging there. Questions. Who’s been sick. Who’s died. Both of them work for the ambassador. So he’s trying to find out something. I talked to Roald about it. He talked to some others, including some of us here in Portside who’ve heard what foreigners have to say. Seems there’s plague everywhere but here. Hidden, though. Sanctity trying to keep the lid on it, but the word getting out, getting around.”

“So? What are you saying, Ducky?”

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

“They can’t get in through the forest.”

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

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

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

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

“See to it, Teresa. Do. I can’t move fast enough.”

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

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

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

“What’s that in her hand?” Ducky asked. “What’s she carrying, and what was she doing there?”

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

“It’s a dead bat,” she said. “All dried up. What was she carrying that for?”

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

He didn’t contradict her. “Now what?” he asked at last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Another metamorphosis,” Marjorie told them. “Hippae metamorphose into foxen.”

“Some do,” he assented. “Not all do.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t the Hippae know that they themselves ...” Father James shook his head.

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

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

“Yes. Because we bons hunt them. Because we help the Hippae hunt them.”

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

“What do you call him?” Marjorie asked. “I can’t come up with a label for him. Them.”

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

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

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

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

“No. Not merelythatslaughter. I mean the genocide of the Arbai,” Mainoa repeated. “All the Arbai. Everywhere. I don’t know how it was done, but the Hippae killed them all.”

“Everywhere?” Marjorie was incredulous. “On other worlds? Everywhere?”

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

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

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

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

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

15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where’s Flumzee?”

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

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

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

“Me!” Shoethai squeaked. “Me!”

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

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

“You know where to go?”

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

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

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

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

Highbones laughed. “Not over the sound of the engines, Brother. “Isn’t there a speaker?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And not even a chance to say goodbye to Lisian. Lisian of the soft, warm, ahhhh ...

Memory was as strong in him as reality. The throbbing spilled over into a spasm he couldn’t control, and the car dipped and shimmied while the others howled and yelled at him. “Whooee, Highbones must be dankin’ himself, look at that. Dank, dank, Highbones. Do it again, we wanta watch.”

He snarled at them, striking out with one arm to knock Little Bridge off his seat, struggling against tears. “Shut up. I wasn’t dankin’. I was ... I was thinking what old Fuasoi said, about women.”

Silence. Highbones had said he had a girl once, even though he wouldn’t talk about her. Steeplehands had had women, so he said. None of the others had. Both the Bridges had been too young when they came to Sanctity, ten or eleven. And Ropeknots liked boys. Well, hell, they all liked boys. When that’s what you had, that’s what you did.

“Tell us about women,” Long Bridge said. “Come on, Bones. Tell us about your girlfriend.”

“Let Steep tell you,” he snarled again, surreptitiously wiping at his face. “I’m busy.” Darenfeld’s Coppice was below them and he had found the side trail. The trail wasn’t easy to follow, though. Long shadows crossed it and hid it from sight, even from above. When he could see it, it wound among grass hillocks and through copses, leading generally westward. Far ahead, a dark line on the horizon, the swamp-forest stretched away to the north and south. The trail led toward it.

Behind him, Steeplehands was describing women in urgent, prurient detail, dwelling upon orifices and the feel and lubrication thereof. Highbones tried not to listen. That wasn’t it. What Steep was saying wasn’t it. It was something else about women. Something he’d lost but wanted to remember.

The swamp forest was not far ahead of them now. Highbones scarcely saw it in his effort to recall what it was he’d lost, among old images, half-forgotten names. Something. He could almost put his mind on it!

The drive sputtered. Highbones frowned, came to himself with a start of panic, eyes darting across the dials in front of him. The car had been serviced just before they left. That monster Shoethai had seen to it. Fuasoi had seen to it.

It sputtered again, then whined. “Grab something,” Highbones shouted. “We’ve got a problem.”

He headed downward, faster than he knew to be safe, but if the thing zizzed out he wanted to be on the ground, near the trail. It sputtered, hissed, whined, then sputtered again. They dropped a hundred feet and Long howled in pain. “I bit my tongue—“

“You’ll bite more than that if you don’t hold on.”

They slipped sideways, then recovered just long enough for Bones to set it down in a long, sliding skid through lashing grasses which ended with all of them thrown against the door, which broke open and spilled them out onto the bruised stems.

“Oh, God,” whined Steep. “Oh, God.”

“Shut up,” commanded Highbones. “If the Hippae don’t know we’re here, don’t go telling them we are.” He stood up, feeling himself to make sure he was all there, not broken anywhere, not bleeding. Aside from a graze along his jaw, he was whole. “Rope, you all right? Long? Little?”

“All right, I guess.”

“Fucking thing hit me right across my nose ...”

“Think I broke something.”

Highbones slapped and snarled. “You didn’t break anything. Lie down and your nose’ll stop bleeding.” When he was sure they were all accounted for, he turned back to the car and tried the door to the rear compartment. It was jammed, or locked from inside. He hammered on it, trying to make enough noise to rouse those inside yet not enough to rouse something else out in the grass. “Elder Brother!”

Nothing. No response.

He turned to the forward cabin and dug out the packs they had brought with them.

“Listen,” said Little Bridge with a frightened look at the sun. low in the western sky. “If we’re going to be here after dark, we oughta stay in the car. If some Hippae find us, there’d be some protection being in there.”

“Swamp forest just ahead,” said Highbones. “We’re going there.”

“Swamp forest! Are you crazy?”

“I said, we’re going there. Anybody wants to stay here can stay. Anybody feels like trying to fix the car, that’s up to you. I’m going to the forest. Hippae don’t go in the forest.”

“Neither do people,” muttered Steeplehands. “Or they come out dead.” He was careful not to say it loudly.

Highbones didn’t answer. He was already halfway back to the trail they had been following when the car zizzed out. When he reached it, he turned to his right and started down it. Those who has passed this way had broken enough of the tall and tough grasses that it wasn’t difficult to walk in the stubble. Though he didn’t look back, within moments he heard the others blundering along behind him. He hoped they’d picked up their own packs; he didn’t intend going back for them.

Inside the rear cabin, Shoethai came to himself slowly. Both he and the Elder Brother had been thrown against the door, or rather, thrown against the latch bar which held it closed. He looked upward through the viewport. Sky. Darkening sky.

“Elder Brother!”

Fuasoi put his hands under himself and pushed himself into an upright position. “What happened?”

“We ... it ... it came down/’

“You serviced it!”

“We ... I ... I didn’t know we’d be on it!”

“You did this?”

Shoethai was silent, crouched in a faceless huddle. The irony of it didn’t escape Fuasoi. He laughed, one short bark of laughter. “Hated them, did you?” he asked, not expecting a response. “Thought you’d kill two birds with one stone—or more than that?” He received only a snivel in reply. “Let’s get out of here. You know you may have just lost your chance in the next world, Shoethai. I’m not sure the Creator is going to look kindly on you.”

Shoethai screamed in rage and threw himself at Fuasoi. The latch on the door jarred loose and spilled them out, Shoethai still screaming.

Fuasoi knocked his assailant aside and got to his feet. Shoethai cowered among the grasses, alternately sobbing and yelling. The carrying bag had fallen out with them. Fuasoi unfastened it and took out the package it contained. The virus. Well. He had intended to spread it about in Commons, but perhaps it would have to be trusted to the winds. He reached for his knife and slit the package.

And stopped. Coming through the grasses was a hound. A huge hound. Grinning at him.

Reflex action took over. He threw the package with all his strength and then tried to scramble back into the car. The package burst, spreading its dark, powdery contents over the approaching beast. Shoethai had time for one more howl

From the crest of a long ridge, Highbones and the others heard howling behind them at the same moment they could look down on the stretching barricade of trees. The sound behind them was almost gleeful For a time it stayed where it was, yammering. Highbones and the others did not remain where they were. As they ran, however, the sound grew nearer, coming on their trail. Highbones ran faster than he had known he could, hearing the thump and pant of Steeplehands and Long Bridge close behind him. The other two had fallen back. They had shorter legs. Little Bridge was still a kid.

“Wait,” yelled Ropeknots “Wait for us.”

“Wait, hell,” breathed Steeplehands, drawing slightly ahead.

Their feet hammered on the ground as the howling neared. Behind the leaders came one scream, then another. Whatever was chasing them stopped for a moment. Highbones and the two close behind him did not stop to see what it was.

In a moment the howling started again Though it came very swiftly, it had not caught them by the time they splashed through the shallow mire at the edges of the forest. They stopped only when they came to the first deep pools gleaming with oily reflections in the dying of the daylight.

“Now what?” Long Bridge demanded. “You want to go wading in there?”

“Not likely,” said Highbones. His eyes were fixed on vine-draped trees towering from liquid depths. “Not likely.” He laid a hand on the nearest vine and asked, “Will he climb?” as he swung himself up, feet pushing him along a spiraled vine-trunk and onto the first branch above their heads. “Will he?”

They stopped halfway up to look back the way they had come. The grass moved ominously, but there was nothing there to see. Of Little Bridge and Ropeknots, no sign. They waited, then Steeplehands said, “They’re deaders, Bones, lust like on the towers. No different than that.”

The three exchanged glances, then lofted themselves with the ease of long practice, moving effortlessly into the heights.

In his private quarters at the Friary, Administrator Jhamlees Zoe sought among a miscellany of papers for the packet which had come from Sanctity, from his old friend Cory Strange. He had sealed it up and hidden it to keep it safe from prying eyes. Now that he had seen Mainoa’s book, he needed to read the letter again.

The packet had a security wrap on it, and Jhamlees had to stop several times to remember the proper sequences to prevent the thing from going off in his hands and taking his face with it. All this nonsense. Well, what was the office of Security and Acceptable Doctrine to do with itself, back there on Terra, if it did not engage in these senseless exercises. Coded cover letters. Explosive wraps.

Once he had burrowed his way into the packet, Jhamlees skimmed the pages, reminding himself that he was expected to inform his old friend if anything at all were discovered on Grass, Jhamlees referred to the enclosed itinerary with a pout of frustration. Much though he would have liked to seal his former friendship with the Hierarch, there was no point in attempting to send word about this Mainoa matter. The Hierarch was already on the last leg of his journey to Grass.

Jhamlees folded the letter and thrust it into his pocket. No more need to keep it. He’d dispose of it later. The rest of the packet— twelve pages of sanctimonious hash and the publicly announced itinerary of the Hierarch—could be left out where anyone could see it.

Advance word or no advance word, when the Hierarch arrived he would expect his friend Nods to know anything there was to be known. Mainoa had written as though those at Opal Hill knew something, or as though he, Mainoa, knew something. Question: Was there a cure? That’s what the Hierarch would want to know! Brother Mainoa had gone off somewhere, so he couldn’t be asked until and unless he was found. That left the only other one who might know. Roderigo Yrarier. Not even one of the Sanctified! A heretical Old Catholic, no better than a pagan!

Elder Brother Jhamlees summoned Yavi Foosh. “Find out where Ambassador Roderigo Yrarier is now. Arrange for me to visit him.” Yavi shuffled his feet, staring at the floor. “Well?”

“Well, Elder Brother, I think he could be dead.”

“Dead!”

“There was a great set-to at the bon Laupmons’ place. Hippae and riders and all. Lots of them got killed. Hippae, too. This ambassador was in the middle of it. Way I hear it, his servants took him away to the hospital at the port, but he may be dead.”

“Dead.” Elder Brother Jhamlees sat down and frowned at the desktop with a sick, panicky feeling. Cory would not like that. “Well, if he isn’t dead, I need to see him. Find out.”

Yavi scuttled off to find out while Jhamlees thought bleakly how the new Hierarch would react to a message saying, “Dear Brother in Sanctity. The only two people who might know anything at all about this are probably dead.” In his anything but amused contemplation of this possibility, Jhamlees forgot his intention to burn the Hierarch’s letter.

Rigo came to himself among a whisper of machines. He tried to move and found he could not. His arms had been thrust inside two bulky mechanisms, one at either side of the narrow, barely padded bed he lay upon. Heal-alls, he told himself as he fought down panic. Another Heal-all had swallowed his legs. He tried to speak and could not. A mask was fastened over his nose and mouth.

Someone came, however, and peered at his eyes with an expression of gratification. After a moment the same someone took the mask away and demanded, “Do you know where you are?”

“Not sure,” Rigo said in a slushy, bubbling voice. “Hospital, I suppose. At the port. I think I got trampled.”

“Good, good.” The figure turned away and gloated over the dials and flashing lights on the machines. A woman. Not much to look at, but definitely a woman. “Good,” the woman said.

“Who?” Rigo asked. “Who brought me here?”

“Your man,” the woman answered. “Or men. One or several.”

“Is he here?”

“No. Good heavens, no. Had to go back and evacuate your house. Get the people out. He said something about the Hippae retaliating.”

“Marjorie!” Rigo tried to sit upright.

“Now, now.” Rigo was pushed into a recumbent position once more. “You aren’t to worry. They’ll get everyone out.”

They couldn’t get Marjorie out. She hadn’t been there. Not Marjorie, nor Tony, nor Father Sandoval. Nor the two Brothers from the Arbai city, according to Tony’s note; they hadn’t been there either. All of them had gone away together. With Sylvan. At least according to the challenge delivered by bon Haunser for the Hippae, they had gone away with Sylvan.

Rigo groaned, trying to recall what had happened. The last clear memory was of that damned bon Haunser saying something about Marjorie and Sylvan. Sylvan who had gone away with her.

And with Tony, he reminded himself, and with a priest and two Brothers. Hardly a tete-a-tete. No, Marjorie had never had tete-a-tetes. Marjorie had never been unfaithful. Marjorie had never been guilty of any of the things he had accused her of. She had never refused him. Always let him come into her room, into her bed, whenever he’d wanted to. And now Marjorie was— Well, where was she?

“Is there any news of my wife?” he asked as the moment of clarity passed into a morass of threatened pain, great pain somewhere, being held back by a slender dike, a thin wall, a tissue which was fragile and beginning to leak.

“Hush,” said the woman. “You can talk later.” She fiddled with a dial, looking narrowly at Rigo’s face as Rigo felt himself being irresistibly sent into sleep once more, to dream of Marjorie alone with Sylvan.

Marjorie was alone with Sylvan.

Brother Mainoa and Rillibee Chime were asleep. Rillibee had climbed to the top of a tall tree and had then come down again to tell them there was no way through the swamp forest to Commons. Not on the ground. Through the trees the way would be a little slow, but he could get there, he said, if there was any reason to go. Then he had lain down beside Brother Mainoa and fallen into recurrent dreams. From time to time Marjorie could hear his voice, raised in wordless ejaculations, wonder or complaint, perhaps both.

There were no foxen nearby. For a time, earlier, all of the humans had crouched in a house, arms folded protectively around their heads while the foxen disputed something among themselves. The dispute washed over them like waves of fire. After a time, they felt noticed by the foxen, and then there was a sense of departure. Almost as though one of them had said to another, “Oh, we’re killing the little human creatures. We’d better go farther away.” Brother Mainoa had seemed wearier than ever after they left, weighed down by some great burden of care.

‘They won’t tell me,” he cried. “They know, but they won’t tell me.”

Marjorie could guess what it was they wouldn’t tell. The foxen knew all about the plague, she was sure of it. They knew, but they wouldn’t tell. And poor old Mainoa was so tired and distraught, she could not suggest that he try to talk to them more.

Tony and Father James had gone to explore the Tree City. Marjorie had thought Sylvan was going with them. She found he hadn’t only when the others were well gone, too long gone for her to join them.

Sylvan had planned to remain behind. Now that Marjorie was away from her family, away from this husband she spoke of as though he were a barrier—now that she was away from that, he wanted to talk of love again. She would probably tell him to go away. He would tell her he had nowhere to go, and he would be charming. So he told himself. So he had been telling himself for some time.

Surprisingly, she didn’t tell him to go away. Instead, she looked at him with a detachment he found almost chilling. “I find you very attractive. Sylvan. I found Rigo attractive, too, before we were married. It was only afterward that I found out we didn’t fit together at all. I wonder if it would be like that with you.”

What was there to say to that? “I don’t know,” he said haltingly. “I really don’t know.”

“He has never once allowed me inside his masculine skin,” she said with a rueful smile. ‘He doesn’t notice what I am, but only what I am not, which is whatever he may be wanting at any particular time. Eugenie does far better than I. He expects very little from her, and that helps. Then too, she is soft for him, like clay. She takes his impress and accepts it, like a reverse image, suiting herself to him.” She frowned, thinking. “I tried that, at first. It didn’t work at all. I cannot be that to him. I could have been something else, a friend perhaps, but that didn’t fit his notion of what a wife should be, so we are not very good friends, Rigo and I.” She turned to Sylvan, fixing him with a resolute glare. “I will never love anyone who is not first my friend, Sylvan. I wonder if you could be my friend.”

“I would!”

“Well then, let us set about it!” She smiled at him, a humorless bowing of the lips. “First I must find my child. I have no choice but to do that, or kill myself trying. You can help me. If we accomplish that, then there is another task awaiting us. People are dying everywhere. We must try to find a solution. So, if you love me, let us talk with one another of what we have to do, but not of ourselves. We will be careful not to touch one another. Gradually, if we are successful and do not die, our natures will emerge and we may understand one another. Perhaps we could become friends.”

“But ... but—“

She shook her head at him warningly. “If you’re unwilling to do that, then you could show the love you claim to have by leaving me alone. I apologize for dragging you along with us, but I needed you to guide us. The apology is all I can offer. Until we find Stella, I can’t spare the time for anything more, not even for argument.”

She leaned on the railing, her hair falling forward around her face, a golden veil, masking her from him. Sometimes for a few moments she forgot Stella, only to remember her again with a spasm of intimate agony. Like backward childbirth. As though she were trying to take the child back, encompass it once again. Keep it safe. Suck it up into her womb once more. As obscene as it was impossible, despite the pain she felt. Still, it would do no more good to scream or cry or thrash about now than it would have done when she bore the child. It would do no good to grieve. It would do no good to try to distract herself with Sylvan either, though the thought had crossed her mind. She had wondered whether it would be the same with him as with Rigo. Whether it would be the same with all men as with Rigo. Awful, to live out one’s life and never know! But no. As she had begun, so let her go on. At least she would not have to reproach herself later for that! “Stella,” she said aloud, reminding herself.

Sylvan was abruptly angry at himself. If Stella had died, he wouldn’t have expected Marjorie to be interested in lovemaking. Why had he thought she could be interested with Stella gone?

Lost in their separate worlds, neither was given the opportunity to reconcile them. Tony’s voice called from among the glowing alleys. When he came closer they sensed that he and Father James were accompanied by First, by Him. In Marjorie’s mind, the name announced itself. For Sylvan’s benefit she said, “It’s Brother Mainoa’s friend.

“I see,” he said, annoyed. He could barely detect the creatures. He could not hear them. He could not have an hour alone with Marjorie. He could not, seemingly, accomplish anything he desired.

“I think he’s trying to tell me he’s found Stella.” Tony cried. “I can’t be sure. Where’s Brother Mainoa?”

“Here.” The old man leaned from the door of a neighboring house. “Here, Tony. Ah ...” He fell silent, one hand stretched toward the foxen like an antenna, feeling for meaning. “Yes,” he said. “Your daughter. They’ve found her.”

“Oh, God,” she cried. It was a prayer. “Is she—?”

“Alive,” he confirmed. “Alive but either asleep or unconscious. They haven’t disturbed her.”

“Shall we get the horses?”

“They suggest, if you have no objection, that they will take you.” Even in this extremity she remained concerned about the horses. “Will we be coming back here?”

Quiet, then Brother Mainoa gesturing. “Yes.” He clutched at some passing pain in his side, shaking his head. “In fact, I think I’ll stay here now, if you don’t mind. You don’t need me for this.”

Father James, with a troubled look at Mainoa, chose to stay with him. The others crept apprehensively upon foxen backs and were carried away through the trees, along walkways and branches, moving away from the tree city into darkness, over moving water, under stars, coming at last to the edge of the forest. Foxen backs were wider than horse’s backs—wider, muscled differently. There seemed to be no limit, no edges to those backs. It was not so much a matter of riding as of being carried, like children sitting upon a slowly rocking table. The message was clear “We won’t let you fall.” After a time, they relaxed and let themselves be transported.

They sensed other foxen meeting them at the edge of the trees and escorting them along the swamp, not far but slow going as they detoured patches of bog and arms of the forest itself. Finally they came to a declivity where water ran, the first stream any of them had seen on Grass. It didn’t run far, only into a wide pool from which it seeped invisibly away. Beside the water Stella lay in a nest of grass, curled up, barefooted, half unclothed, with her thumb in her mouth.

When Marjorie knelt beside Stella and touched her, the girl woke screaming, fighting, saying her own name over and over,”Stella, I’m Stella, Stella,”writhing with such violence that Marjorie was thrust away. Rillibee grabbed the girl, hugged her, held her quiet. After a time the screaming stopped. Rillibee spoke to her softly, calmly. Tony touched her. She twitched, opening her mouth to scream once more. Tony drew back and she quivered but did not scream. She would not tolerate even Sylvan’s touch, and each time Marjorie came near her, she went into frenzied spasms of screaming and weeping, her face contorted with guilt and pain and shame.

Though Rillibee, who was a stranger, could hold her, evidently she could not bear to be near anyone she knew, Marjorie turned away, pained at being rejected, ecstatic to have found her. At least Stella reacted. At least she knew her name. At least she could distinguish between those she knew and those she didn’t. At least she wasn’t like Janetta.

Sylvan laid a caressing hand on her shoulder. “Marjorie.”

She drew herself up, made herself nod, made herself think and speak There was no time for grieving or for pointless agitation. “If the foxen will carry you, I want you to carry her through the forest to Commons. She needs medical care, and the quickest way will be if the foxen can get her there through the trees. You go, Rillibee, because she seems to trust you. Tony, you go to arrange things. I’ll go back to Brother Mainoa and Father James.”

Sylvan said hopefully, “I’ll come back with you.”

“No,” she said, looking him in the eyes, her mouth stern. “I want you to go with them, Sylvan. I said this to you before. I came to Grass for a reason, an important reason. The more I find out, the more important that reason becomes, but I keep getting sidetracked—by you, by Rigo, by Stella, by disappearances and alarms, cluttering up everything. All you do is distract me and bother me.”

“Mother.” said Tony. “Leaving you here—“

“Go, Tony. Stella is alive. I’m joyful about that, but we mustn’t forget all the others. There is plague out there, and people dying of it. The foxen know things. Someone must find out what they know.

Brother Mainoa is old and tired, and Father James may need my help. I’ll stay and find out what I can.”

“After Stella’s cared for, I’ll come back,” Tony said. “Yes. Do. Either you or Rillibee. And let your father know what’s happened if you can.”

She turned and reached out in the direction of the foxen, thinking of Commons, across the forest. She pictured Tony going there, Tony and Stella and Sylvan and Rillibee. The picture solidified in her mind, became real, as clear as though she were seeing it, and she had a sudden headache. A purring sound came from the grasses. Foxen drew near. People were drawn upon broad backs once more, fished up like wreckage from the deep, Rillibee dragging Stella’s limp body up with him while she whimpered like some small, hurt animal.

An uncertain number of foxen moved into the forest and disappeared. Marjorie felt herself summoned, and she climbed upon His back once again with a strange mixture of feelings: relief, grief, anger all mushed up together like an emotional goulash. Into her mind came both the picture and the feel of stroking hands. She leaned forward upon the endless expanse of hide and cried while the stroking went on. After a time the stroking changed into a firm patting, the feeling was of someone telling her to straighten up, behave herself. Marjorie felt herself saying, “Yes, Mother,” in her mind. Laughter. At least amusement.

“Yes, Father,” she amended, slightly amused despite herself. Beneath her His shoulders moved gently. Male. Indisputably male. Prancing, prowling. The gait, male. Head moving, so, so. Male. Claws sliding in their sheaths, fingers touching, delicate as needles. Male. She saw multitudes of shapes, not quite clearly, most of them male. The males were violet and plum and mauve and deep wine red. The females were smaller, more softly blue, though she could not see them, either. Male, he told her. I. “First.” Male.

Yes, she assented. He was male. He had thought “First” at her with quotation marks around it. Not his name, then. Merely something Mainoa called him. In his own mind the symbol of his name had movement and color—a purple wildness, full of scarlet lightning, veiled with gray-blue cloud. Himself.

Pictures moved in her mind. She saw Mainoa, stout and green-clad, walking soberly among the foxen shapes. Around him an aura bloomed, a shadow gathered, pale light on a dark ground, the light growing dimmer. Still he walked, indomitable, his feet a counterpoint to the movement beneath her.

Mainoa, she thought. I like him, too.

A new vision. Marjorie among the multitude of foxen. Not herself, precisely, but an idealized Marjorie who danced on low turf amid a gathering of foxen, creatures without shape or limitation and yet indisputably themselves. They were dancing with their shadows as the sun either rose or set, the long shadows seeming to stretch almost to the horizon. Sinuous shadows. Sensuous shadows. She, Marjorie, among sinuous, sensuous shadows, dancing with the foxen.

They danced in pairs, male and female, weaving their shadows together, letting their shadows touch. Shadows, and minds, touching. The others danced in pairs. Marjorie danced with First, the sleeves of her shirt growing wide, like wings, flowing like a tail, her hair loose in a silky mane. A female. Dancing. She still could not see His vision of Himself, but she could see His vision of her.

You. Marjorie. Female. Gait. Motion. Color. Smell.

Perilous, she whispered inside herself.Dangerous.

Beneath her the muscles of his shoulders moved like fingers, touching her. Perilous. Yes. Dangerous. Yes. Mysterious. Wonderful. Awful. Mighty. His skin spoke to her as horses’ skin had always spoken to her, conveying emotion, conveying intention. She lay upon his back as she had lain upon Quixote’s, trusting— For one blinding instant she saw clearly, and the glory of sight stunned her into shocked withdrawal. She felt herself draw shudderingly away, refusing. Denying.

He sensed her denial. In the dance he stood on his hind legs and changed, becoming manlike, maned and tailed, not a man but manlike, mane and tail flowing, mixing with her hair as he drew her into a closer dance. The other foxen were paired, moving, part of it all, unintrusively part.

Joy. Movement in joy. One pair touching another pair. Like the pendants of a wind chime, striking one another, each moving, each striking, each sounding, but gently, barely touching, the minds striking, soft blows as from gigantic paws, gentle as leaves, sounds like bells, like soft horns blowing.

No words. Purring, roaring, growling from wide gullets where ivory fangs hung like stalactites of feeling into her, penetrating deep. Wide jaws closing, holding, gentle as a caress. She would not join the dance of her own will. She would be joined in it by His. She would not see Him. He would see her.

No thought at all. Sensation only. Floating on it as it billowed up beneath her like a great sail. No commitment. Merely sensation. Now. Only now.

Dangerous, he reminded her with laughter. Perilous. A presence, hovering, ready to pounce, able to pounce. Herself the prey. Floating, as though on blood, warm, liquid, permeating, becoming air to breathe Aware of him. The sensuous extrusion of claws. Ripple of muscle in a leg. Mass of shoulder, heave of gut, thunder of heart. Lightning trickling along nerves like golden wire.

Claws touched her, gently, drawing down her naked flesh like fingernails, sensation running behind them, shivering. Perilous.Perilous.

The edge of his tongue touched her naked thigh, sliding like a narrow, flaming serpent into her crotch.

A flaming symbol with two parts which moved together to fuse with aching slowness into one. She could almost see them. My name, He said. Your name. We.

The serpent raised her up and took her far away. She came to a door made of flame and He invited her in, but she was afraid and would not go....

When she returned, she was lying on the short grass against his chest, between his forelegs, cushioned in the softness of his belly fur. His breath made wind sounds in her ear. Her face was wet, but she could not remember crying. Her hair was loose, spread around her like spilled silk.

He stood up and went away, leaving her there. She rose in the dark, glad it was dark so He could not see her face, hot with embarrassment as she realized He did not need to see her face. She fumbled with her clothes, thinking she needed to dress herself, realizing only then that she was dressed, that the nakedness lay within. Her mind. Changed. Something that had covered it stripped away.

After a few moments, He came back, offering His shoulders again. She mounted and He carried her, discreetly, neatly, an egg in a basket, while the dance faded into memory. Something marvelous and awful. Something not quite completed.

Maenads, she thought. Dancing with the god.

He was talking to her. Explaining. He saidnames,but she saw only a few females, obviously not as many as the males. Only a few of them capable of reproduction. Many of them deciding not to bother. Grieving over that. Now only melancholy. Dark brown-gray distress.

Hopelessness. The future opening like a sterile flower, its center empty. No seed.

How did the foxen know flowers? There were no flowers here on Grass. Yours, He said. Your mind. Everything there. I took it all ... A time of wonder. So he knew her. Really knew her. We are guilty, He said. All should die, perhaps, He suggested. Expiation. Sin. Not original sin, maybe, butsin,nonetheless. The sound of the word in her ears. The sound of the word wickedness.Collective guilt. (A picture came into her mind of Father Sandoval, talking. Evidently Father Sandoval had thought of that diagnosis.) The foxen had let it happen. Not they, but others like them, long ago. She saw the pictures, foxen elsewhere while Hippae slaughtered the Arbai. Screams, blood; then, elsewhere, disbelief. Clearly. As though it had been yesterday. They were guilty, all the foxen.

Postcoital depression? Part of her mind giggled hysterically and was admonished by some other part. No. Real sadness.

It wasn’t your fault,she said. Not your fault.

She felt cold from the images. So much death. So much pain. Why would she say that?

Because it’s true,she thought. Damned sure. Not your fault.

But suppose some of us did it. When we were Hippae. Some of us.

Not your fault,she insisted. When you were Hippae, you didn’t know. Hippae have no morals. Hippae have no sense of sin. Like a child, playing with matches, burning down the house.

More pictures. Time past. Hippae were better behaved long ago. Past memory. Before the mutation. Didn’t kill things then. Not when foxen laid the eggs. A picture of a foxen bowed down with grief, head bent between the front paws, back arched in woe. Penitence.

Her fingers were busy with her hair, trying to braid it up. She thought,Then you must go back. Make things the way they used to be. Some of you can still reproduce,

So few. So very few.

Never mind how few. Don’t waste your time on penitence or guilt. Solving the problem is better!It was true. She knew it was true. She should have known it was true years ago, back in Breedertown. Lack of understanding.

She thought the kneeling figure, the foxen crouched in woe while Hippae pranced and bellowed. She crossed it out, negated it. She thought a standing figure, claws like sabers, a foxen rampant, laying eggs.Better. Much better.

This militancy fell as though into an umplumbable well, a vacancy. They had gone beyond that. They had decided they should no longer care about things of the world. They felt responsible without wanting to be responsive.

She cried, not knowing whether He had not heard her or whether she had merely been ignored as of no consequence. Changed as she was, she knew she should make Him hear, but there were others around and His thoughts were diluted and disarranged.

The night had gone on without their notice. Ahead and above hung glowing globes of Arbai light which they climbed toward. She heard the contented whicker of horses, grazing on their island below. She was very tired, so tired she could scarcely hold on. He knelt and rolled her off and went away.

“Marjorie?” She was looking up at Father James’ concerned face. “Is Stella—“

“Alive,” she said, licking her lips. Saying words felt strange, as though she were using certain organs for inappropriate ends. “She knows her name. I think she recognized us. I sent the others to take her to Commons.”

“The foxen took them?”

She nodded. “Some of them. Then the others went away, all but ... all but Him.”

“First?”

She couldn’t call Him that. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have committed adultery. Bestiality? No. Not a man, not a beast. What? I am in love with—Am I in love with ... ?

He said, “You’ve been a very long time. The night’s half gone.”

She blurted desperately, trying not to talk about what most concerned her, “I thought all that business about sin was just Brother Mainoa being a little contentious. It wasn’t. The foxen are obsessed with it. They either have considered or are considering racial suicide out of penitence.” Though it was not suicide merely to stand still, doing nothing. Or was it?

He nodded, helping her up and guiding her into the house she had selected, where she half sat, half fell onto her bedding. “You’ve picked that up, have you? Mainoa says so, too. There’s no doubt the Hippae killed the Arbai. There’s little doubt the Hippae are killing mankind. I don’t know how. The foxen don’t tell us how. It’s something they’re withholding. As though they’re not sure whether we’re worthy. ...

“It’s like playing charades. Or decoding a rebus. They show us pictures. They feel emotions. Once in a while, they actually show us a word. And difficult though it is with us, seemingly they communicate with us better than they do with the Hippae. They and the Hippae transmit or receive on different wavelengths or something “

It was no longer charades or rebuses to Marjorie. It was almost language. It could have been language if only she had gone on, entered in, if she had not drawn back there, at the final instant. How could she tell Father that? She could tell Mainoa, maybe. No one else. Tomorrow, maybe. “I think you’re right, Father. Since the mutation they have not communicated with the Hippae, though I get a sense that in former ages, when the foxen laid the eggs, they exercised a lot of guidance toward their young,”

“How long ago?” he wondered.

“Long. Before the Arbai. How long was that? Centuries. Millennia?”

“Too long for them to be able to remember, and yet they do.”

“What would you call it, Father? Empathetic memory? Racial memory? Telepathic memory?” She ran her fingers over her hair, pulling the braid into looseness. “God, I’m so tired.”

“Sleep. Are the others coming back?”

“When they can. Tomorrow, perhaps. There are answers here, if only we can lay our hands upon them. Tomorrow—tomorrow we have to make sense of all this.”

He nodded, as weary as she. “Tomorrow we will, Marjorie. We will.”

He had no idea what she had to make sense of. He had no conception of what she had almost done. Or actually had done. How much was enough to have done whatever it was? Was she still chaste? Or was she something else that she had no word for?

She could not tell anyone tomorrow, she knew. Maybe not ever.

Very early in the morning, while the sun hung barely below the horizon, Tony and his fellow travelers were deposited just below the port at the edge of the swamp forest. The foxen vanished into the trees, leaving their riders trying to remember what they had looked like, felt like. “Will you wait for us?” Tony called, trying to make a picture of the foxen waiting, high in a tree, dozing perhaps.

He bent in sudden pain. The picture was of foxen standing where they stood now while the sun moved slowly overhead. Rillibee was holding his head with one hand, eyes tight shut, as he clung to Stella with the other arm.

“You’ll wait here for us,” Tony gasped toward the forest, receiving a mental nod in reply.

“Tony, what is it?” Sylvan asked.

“If you could hear them, you wouldn’t ask,” said Rillibee. “They think we’re deaf. They shout.”

“I wish they could shout loud enough for me to hear them,” Sylvan said.

“Then the rest of us would have our brains fried,” Tony said irritably. While he had immediately warmed up to Rillibee, Tony wasn’t at all sure he liked Sylvan, who had a habit of commanding courses of action. “We’ll go over there.”

“We’ll stop for a while.”

Now Sylvan said, “Someone in the port will give us transport to Grass Mountain Road. We’ll speak to the order officer there.” He moved toward the port.

Though Tony felt arguing wasn’t worth the energy it would take, he wanted to get Stella to a physician quickly. “The doctors are at the other end of town?” he asked.

Sylvan stopped, then flushed. “No. No, as a matter of fact, the hospital is just up this slope, near the Port Hotel.”

Rillibee said, “Then we’ll go there,” admitting no argument. He picked Stella up and staggered up the slope toward the hospital. “Can I help you carry her?” Tony asked.

Stella had slipped into a deep sleep, and Rillibee wondered if she would even know who held her. Still, he shook his head. He was unwilling to give up the burden to anyone else, though he had become exhausted by carrying it. Though he thought of her as a child, she was not a small girl. He had been holding her on the foxen for hours. She was his heart’s desire, so he thought, without trying to figure out why.

“I’ll manage,” he said. “It’s not much farther.” It was at the top of a considerable slope, a long climb for men already weary. They came at the place from the back, where blank walls confronted them on either side of a wide door. A white-jacketed person stuck his head out, saw them, and withdrew. Others came out, with a power-litter. Rillibee handed over his burden with the last of his strength, then leaned on one of the attendants to get himself inside.

“Who is she?” someone asked.

“Stella Yrarier,” Tony said. “My sister.”

“Ah!” Surprise. “Your father’s here as well.”

“Father! What happened?”

“Speak to the doctor. Doctor Bergrem. In that office. She’s there now.”

Minutes later Tony was staring down at his father’s sleeping face.

“What’s wrong with him?” He asked the doctor.

“Nothing too serious, luckily. We wouldn’t be able to do systems cloning and replacement here the way they do elsewhere. We have no SCR equipment.”

Cloning! Systems replacement! The mortality rate for systems replacement was high. Besides, Old Catholics were prohibited from using cloned systems, though there were always backsliders who had a system cloned and confessed it later.

The doctor frowned at him. “Don’t get into a state, boy. I said not too serious. Some cuts and a bit of bruising on the brain. All that’s taken care of. Some nerve injury, his legs. That’s healing. All he needs to do is stay here and simmer quietly for a day or two more.” The slight, snub-nosed woman hovered over dials, twitching at them. Her plentiful dark hair was drawn back in a tight bun and her body appeared almost sexless in the flapping coat.

“You’ve got him sedated,” Tony commented.

“Machine sleep. He’s too nervous a type to leave conscious for long. He frets.”

That was one way of saying it, Tony thought with an ironic twist to his lips. Roderigo Yrarier frets. Or fumes. Or roars.

The doctor went on, “Your sister, now, that’s something else. Mind reconstruction, I wouldn’t doubt The Hippae have been at her.”

“You know about that!”

“Seen a bit of it when the bons come in with broken bones or bitten-off appendages. They don’t respond normally, so I tell them I’m testing their reflexes when I’m actually looking at their heads. Strangeness there, usually, though I’m not allowed to do anything about it. Not with the bons. They choose to keep their warps and twists, however strange it makes them.”

“We don’t want Stella twisted!”

“Didn’t think you did. Didn’t think so for a moment. May not be able to straighten her totally, though. There’s limits to what we can do.”

“Should we ship her out?”

“Well, young man, at the moment I’d say she’s safer here, warped or not, than she may be out there. You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean?” He stared, unwilling to understand.

“Plague,” she said.  ‘We’re getting a pretty good idea of what’s going on out there.”

“Do you know anything about it? What causes it? Do you know if there’s any here?”

“None here. That I can be almost sure of. Why didn’t you ask us medical people? Didn’t you think we’d be capable of doing anything? Me, for instance. I’ve got degrees in molecu-bio and virology from the University at Semling Prime. I studied immunology on Repentance. I could have been working on this.” She turned an open, curious face toward him. “The word is you’ve been trying to find out in secret.”

“It was secret,” he whispered. “To keep the Moldies from knowing. If they knew ...”

She considered this, her face turning slowly white as she realized what he meant. “They’d bring it here? Purposely?”

“If they found out, yes. If they once knew.”

“My God, boy!” She laughed bitterly. “Everybody knows.”