Grass

  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."

  16

  Everyone knew, the doctor said, and it seemed she told only the truth. Everyone knew there was plague. Everyone knew there might be Moldies already on Grass. Everyone knew there was a trail half a mile wide out there in the grasses, ending next to the swamp forest, which all at once seemed a fragile and penetrable curtain rather than the impassable barrier they had always relied upon. Hysteria mounted as the talk gathered both volume and speculative intensity, here and there, about the town.

  Among other topics was much discussion of whether Grass's seeming immunity to plague meant anything. Foremost among those who thought it did was Dr. Bergrem She had seen one or two people arrive on ships with filthy gray lesions. After a week or two on Grass, they had departed cured. Once there had even been a man in a quarantine pod …

  Roald Few challenged the doctor to explain herself. "You mean more than that the disease isn't here, doctor. You mean it can't come here. Something here prevents it?"

  To which she nodded and said she thought so, in her experience, from what she'd seen, turning to Tony and Rillibee for their opinion.

  "No, that isn't it," Tony told them wearily. "It isn't that it can't come here. It isn't that no one gets it here. The disease started from here. Somehow. The foxen think."

  This was a statement requiring more than a little explanation. Since when had the foxen been talking to people? And where were these foxen? Tony and Rillibee told what they knew to Roald and Mayor Alverd Bee while dozens of other people came and went. They tried to describe foxen, unconvincingly, and were greeted with skepticism, if not outright disbelief.

  Ducky Johns and Saint Teresa were there with an outlandish scenario of their own: Diamante bon Damfels, sneaking around naked in the port. Diamante bon Damfels now occupying a room in the hospital next to ones already taken by her sister, Emeraude, who had been beaten, and by Amy and Rowena, who refused to return to Klive. Sylvan, hearing this, went off to see his mother and sisters. Commoners looked after him, pityingly. A bon, here in Commons. Useless as a third leg on a goose.

  "How did Diamante get here?" Tony demanded of the assembled group. "We've just come through the swamp forest, and if it's the same everywhere as the parts we saw, there is literally no way through! There are some islands near the far edge, and some near this edge, too, but in the middle it's deep water and tangles of low branches and vines everywhere you look, like an overgrown maze. If she wasn't a climber, like Rillibee here, or if the foxen didn't bring her, then how did she get here?"

  "We've been asking ourselves that, sweet boy," said Ducky Johns. "Over and over. Haven't we, Teresa? And the only answer is there has to be another way in. One we haven't known about until now." Ducky's usual girlish flirtatiousness was held in abeyance by her anxiety.

  "One we still don't know about," Teresa amended.

  "Oh, yes we do, dear," Ducky contradicted. "We know it's there. We just don't know exactly where. Unless these strange foxen creatures did bring her, which they may have done, for all we know!"

  Rillibee heard all this through a curtain of exhaustion. He said, "I don't think the foxen brought her. Brother Mainoa would have known."

  "Do I know this Brother Mainoa you keep speaking of?" asked Alverd Bee.

  Rillibee reminded him who Brother Mainoa was.

  Sylvan joined them again, his face white and drawn. Dimity was conscious, but did not know him. Emmy was unconscious, though she was getting better. Rowena was sleeping. Amy had talked with him. She had told him his father was dead, and he was wondering why he felt nothing.

  Rillibee was telling the mayor about Mainoa's attempts to translate the Arbai documents.

  "And you say they've translated something already?" Roald cried. He didn't sound astonished, merely wild with a kind of quavery excitement. His gray hair tufted around his ears like a spiky aureole; he cracked his knuckles between
jabs at the tell-me link, clickety crack. The sound was like someone walking on nutshells. "I want to see that, just as soon as I can. Let me get on to Semling."

  "Are you a linguist?" Sylvan asked him curiously, wondering why there would be any such thing on Grass.

  "Oh, no, my boy," Roald said. "My living comes from the family supply business. At languages, I'm only an amateur." He said it without even looking at Sylvan, then asked Rillibee, "Who was Mainoa's contact on Semling?"

  Thus dismissed, Sylvan sat down at a table nearby, resting his head on his arms as he considered the continuing bustle around him. Things were busier in Commons than he had assumed they would be. People were more intelligent and far more affluent than he would have thought. They had things even the estancias didn't have. Foods. Machines. More comfortable living arrangements. It made him feel insecure and foolish. Despite all his fury at Stavenger and the other members of the Obermun class, still he had accepted that the bons were superior to the commoners. Now he wondered if they really were – or if the bons were even equal to the commoners? Why had he thought Marjorie would welcome his attentions? What had he to offer her?

  The thought struck him with sick embarrassment. He sought words he had read but seldom if ever used. "Parochial." "Provincial." "Narrow." True words. What was a bon among these people? None of the commoners were deferring to him. None of them were asking for his opinion. Once Rillibee and Tony had told everyone that Sylvan was deaf to the foxen, Commons had disdained him as though he were deaf – and mute – to them as well. He could have accepted their disdain more easily if they had been professionals, like the doctor, but they were only amateurs, like this old man talking translation with Rillibee. Mere hobbyists. People who had studied things that had nothing to do with their daily lives. And every one of them knew more than he did! He wanted desperately to be part of them, part of something …

  He heaved himself up and went to find something to drink. Rillibee rose from his chair beside Roald. "You know everything I do, Elder Few. I must get back to the others. I can't stay here." He yawned again, thinking briefly of asking Tony to come back with him. No. Tony would want to stay until they knew something more about Stella. As for Sylvan – better that Sylvan stayed here. Marjorie hadn't wanted him back.

  He went out of the place, still yawning, breaking into a staggering jog that carried him down the slope to the place the foxen waited. Something dragged at him. insisting upon his return. Perhaps the trees. Perhaps something more. Some need or purpose awaited him among the trees. If nothing else, then he would carry the news of the bon Damfels girl and of Rigo's injuries and of all that both those events implied.

  In the room he left behind, the doctor and the two madams were trying to figure out why a naked, mindless girl should have been trying to get into a freighter. "Why was she carrying a dried bat? What does that mean?" Dr. Bergrem demanded of the group at large.

  "Hippae," said Sylvan as he wandered by. "Hippae kick dried bats at each other. There are dried bats in Hippae caverns."

  Now they were looking at him. Now, suddenly, he wasn't mute anymore. He explained, "It's a gesture of contempt, that's all. That's how the Hippae express contempt for one another, part of the challenge. Or at the end of a bout, to reinforce defeat, they kick dead bats at each other. A way of saying, 'You're vermin.' "

  Lees Bergrem nodded. "I've heard that. Heard that the Hippae have a lot of symbolic behaviors … "

  Feeling foolishly grateful for their attention, Sylvan told them what little more he had learned about the Hippae when he was a child, wishing Mainoa were there to tell them more.

  Midmorning found Mainoa with Marjorie and Father James on the spacious open platform of the Tree City. Brother Mainoa had been studying the material recorded in his tell-me link while Marjorie had explored and Father James had tried to talk to foxen, thanking God that he was present rather than Father Sandoval. Father Sandoval had no patience with the idea that there might be other intelligent races. Father James wondered what the Pope in Exile would think of the whole idea.

  Marjorie hadn't tried to speak to the foxen. From time to time He had reached out and said something to her. She had accepted these bits of information, trying to keep her face from showing what happened to her each time He spoke, a fire along her nerves, an ecstatic surge, taste, smell, something. Now the three humans sat face to face, trying to put bits and pieces of knowledge and hypothesis together.

  "The Arbai had machines that transported them," Marjorie said. She had finally understood that. "That thing on the dais in the center of town? That was really a transport machine. Machines like that moved the Arbai from one place to another."

  Brother Mainoa sighed and rubbed his head. "I think you're right, Marjorie. Let's see, what have I picked up in the last few hours? There's been another message from Semling." He took out the tell-me and put it at the center of their space, tapping it with one hand.

  "On the theory that things written immediately before the tragedy might be of most use to us, Semling put a high priority on translating a handwritten book I found in one of the houses some time ago. They've translated about eighty percent of it. It seems to be a diary. It gives an account of the author trying to teach a Hippae to write. The Hippae became frustrated and furious and killed two Arbai who were nearby. When the Hippae calmed down, the author remonstrated with it. He or she explained that killing intelligent beings was wrong, that the dead Arbai were mourned by their friends, and that the Hippae must never do it again."

  Marjorie breathed. "Poor, naive, well-meaning fool."

  "Do you mean that this Arbai person, this diarist, simply told the Hippae not to do it again?" Father James was incredulous. "Did he think the Hippae would care?"

  Mainoa nodded sadly, rubbing at his shoulder and arm as though they hurt him.

  Marjorie said, "When He … when the foxen think of the Arbai, they always put light around them, as we might picture angels."

  Brother Mainoa wondered how the golden angels high on Sanctity's towers would look with Arbai fangs and scales. "Not as though they were holy, though, do you think, Marjorie? More as though they were untouchable."

  Marjorie nodded. Yes. The vision had that feeling to it. Untouchable Arbai. Set upon pedestals. Unreachable.

  "The Arbai could believe no evil of the Hippae?" Father James could not believe what he was hearing.

  Mainoa nodded. "It wasn't that they couldn't believe evil of the Hippae. They couldn't believe in it, period. They seem to have had no concept of evil. There is no word for evil in the material I've received from Semling. There are words for mistakes, or things done inadvertently. There are words for accidents and pain and death, but no word for evil. The Arbai word for intelligent creatures has a root curve which means, according to the computers, 'avoiding error.' Since the Arbai considered the Hippae to be intelligent – after all, they'd taught them to write – they thought all they had to do was point out the error and the Hippae would avoid it."

  "Of course it wasn't an error," Marjorie said. "The Hippae enjoyed the killing."

  Father James demurred. "I have a hard time believing in that kind of mind … "

  Brother Mainoa sighed. "She's right, Father. They've translated the word the Hippae trampled into the cavern. It's an Arbai word, or rather a combination of three or more Arbai words. One of them means death, and one means outsiders or strangers, and one means joy. Semling gives a high probability to translating it as joy-to-kill-strangers."

  "They think they have a right to kill everything but themselves?"

  Father James shook his head.

  Marjorie laughed bitterly. "Oh, Father, is that so unusual? Look at our own poor homeworld. Didn't man think he had a right to kill everything but himself? Didn't he have fun doing it? Where are the great whales? Where are the elephants? Where are the bright birds who once lived in our own swamp-forests?"

  Brother Mainoa said, "Well, they couldn't kill the ones who lived here in the tree city. The Hippae can't swi
m, they can't climb, so they couldn't kill the Arbai who were here."

  "It must have been too late for the ones who lived here, nonetheless," Marjorie said, looking at the shadow lovers who had just returned to the bridge and leaned there in the sun, whispering to one another. Shadow lovers, perilously intent upon one another. Not seeing what was to come. "Perhaps they died when winter came. It was too late for all the others, out there on other worlds."

  "The ones here in the city must have been immune to the disease," Father James said. "They could have gone underground. Why didn't they? We must be immune, too. All the people on Grass must be immune."

  "Oh, yes," Marjorie said. "I'm sure we're immune, so long as we stay on Grass. It stands to reason the Arbai on Grass were immune, also. That's why the Hippae killed them as they did. But it doesn't help to know that! Nothing we've found out helps! Nothing tells us how it started. Nothing tells us how to cure it once it's started. I keep thinking of home. I have a sister back home. Rigo has a mother, a brother, we have nieces and nephews. I have friends!"

  "Shhh," he said. "We know one way to cure it, Marjorie. Anyone who comes here – "

  "We don't even know that," she contradicted. "Even if we could bring every living human from every populated world to Grass, we don't know whether they'd catch it again after they left. We don't know whether we will get it if we leave. We don't know how it is spread. The foxen know something that will help us, but they won't tell us! It's almost as though they're waiting for something. But what?" She looked up to confront a shadowed mass across the railing. There were eyes, for a moment. Something brushing through her mind. She shook her head angrily. "I have this dreadful feeling of hopelessness. As though it's already too late for all this. As though things have gone past the point of no return." Something had changed irrevocably. Some point had been passed. She was sure of that.

  A foxen touched her mind with incorporeal hands. She heard a comforting voice saying, "Hush, dear, hush." She leaned her forehead on a vast shoulder which was nowhere near. The foxen danced in her mind, and she with them.