Grass

  The Hierarch considered this. The pair had been chosen by the former Hierarch because they were kin, because they were athletes. Not known for brains, athletes. That's where old Carlos had gone wrong. He should have sent someone cleverer. Someone slyer. And he should have done it long before instead of waiting until the last possible moment. There was no point in keeping the Yrariers locked up. And he, the Hierarch, would be safe enough in the specially modified isolation shuttle his people had built for him. Once he himself was on the ground, things would happen! Discoveries would occur! He knew it!

  As he was about to depart, however, a bulletin arrived from the surface. Danger, the Seraph said. Not only the possibility of plague, but the presence of large, fierce beasts would make it dangerous for the Hierarch to descend. Hostile creatures might be planning to overrun the port.

  The additional frustration was enough to send the Hierarch into one of his infrequent fits of screaming temper. Servitors who had barely survived previous such fits were moved to panicky action. After emergency ministrations by the Hierarch's personal physician, the Hierarch slept and everyone sighed in relief. He went on sleeping for days, and no one noticed or cared that no orders had been given for the Yrariers' release.

  Persun Pollut, Sebastian Mechanic, and Roald Few took the Seraph's listening devices out into the meadows north of town to set them up. They were simple enough to install: slender tubes to be driven into the ground with a mechanical driver, long, whiskery devices to be dropped into the tubes, and transmitters to be screwed onto the tops.

  "Foolproof," the Seraph had told them "As they must be if inexperienced troopers are to use them. A-B-C. Pound it in, drop it in, screw it on."

  Foolproof they might be. In the aggregate, heavy they also were. The men used an aircar to transport the dozen sets and the bulky driver that went with them. They started at the western end of the proposed arc, setting each device and then moving northward, parallel to the curve of the forest. Most of the day had passed by the time seven of the gadgets were in place, and they were bending the arc toward the east when Persun shaded his eyes with his arm and said, "Somebody in trouble up there."

  When they stopped working, they could all hear it: the stutter of an engine, start and stop, the pauses like those in the breath of someone dying – so long between sounds one was sure no other sound would come – only to catch again into life.

  Then they saw it, an aircar coming toward them, scarcely above the forest. It jerked and wobbled, approaching by fits and starts. When it had barely cleared the trees it fell, caught itself, then dropped, coming down hard midway between them and the swamp, not a hundred yards away.

  Persun set out toward it at a run, with Sebastian close behind. Roald followed them more slowly. At first there was no sign of life in the fallen car, but then the door opened with a scream of tortured metal and a Green Brother emerged dazedly, holding his head. Others followed: six, eight, a dozen of them. They sank to the ground by the car, obviously exhausted.

  Persun was the first to reach them. "My name's Pollut," he said. "We can get some cars out here to pick you up, since yours seems to be disabled."

  The oldest among them struggled to his feet and held out an age-spotted hand. "I'm Elder Brother Laeroa. We stayed out near the Friary thinking we could pick up survivors. Obviously, we stayed too long. Our fuel was barely enough."

  "I'm surprised to see any of you," Sebastian said. "The place was pretty well wiped out."

  Laeroa wiped his face with trembling fingers. "When we heard of the attack on Opal Hill and the estancias, we suggested to Elder Brother Jhamlees Zoe that he evacuate the Friary. He said the Hippae had no quarrel with the Brothers. I tried to tell him the Hippae needed no excuse to kill." He tottered on his feet, and one of his fellows came forward to offer an arm. After a moment he went on in his precise voice, as though he spoke from a pulpit. "Zoe was always impatient with argument and impervious to reason. So these Brothers and I started sleeping in the aircar."

  "You were in the car when the Hippae struck?"

  "We were in the car when the fires started," said one of the younger Brothers. "We took off and went out into the grass a ways, thinking we'd pick up survivors later. I don't know how many days we've been out there, but we only found one man."

  "We picked up a couple dozen of your people," Sebastian Mechanic said to them. "Young fellahs, most of 'em. They were wandering around pretty far out in the grass. There may be more. We been going out there every day to look. The Hippae aren't around there anymore. They're all around the swamp forest now."

  "They can't get through, can they?" asked one of the men, obviously the one man the Brothers had rescued. His face was very pale and he carried what was left of one arm in a sling.

  "Not so far as we know," said Sebastian, wanting to be comforting. "And if they did, we've got heavy doors down in the winter quarters and people down there already making weapons for us to use."

  "Weapons," breathed one of the Brothers. "I had hoped – "

  "You'd hoped we could talk to them?" asked Elder Brother Laeroa bitterly. "Forget it Brother. I know you worked for the office of Doctrine, but forget it. I'm sure Jhamlees Zoe still retained his hope of converting the Hippae up to the moment they killed him He's hoped for that ever since he came to Grass, no matter how many times we told him it would be like trying to convert tigers to vegetarianism." Sebastian nodded agreement as he said, "lust be thankful the Hippae don't have claws like Terran tigers do. Otherwise, they'd be able to climb and we couldn't get away from 'em. Now, you start on up the slope there. I'll get on the tell-me and have somebody come pick you up."

  The Brothers got wearily to their feet and started up the long meadow in a shuffling line. When Sebastian and Persun had seen that all of them could walk, they went to listen outside the car while Roald messaged for help.

  "On their way," Roald said at last.

  "Good," Sebastian murmured. "Some of 'em look like they couldn't walk more than a hundred yards or so."

  "Thirty some-odd brothers left out of a thousand," Persun commented, as he went to install the next device.

  "One thing we can be grateful for," the other replied. "There's nothin' left of the other nine hundred and some-odd to bury." He paused beside the mechanical driver. "Have you noticed how quiet it is?"

  The two men stood looking around them. "The noise of the tube driver," Persun said. "It's frightened everything."

  "The driver isn't that noisy. And we haven't been using it for the past little while."

  "The noise of that aircar, then."

  The silence persisted. The swamp forest, usually full of small croakings and rattles, the call of flick birds, the cry of leaf dwellers, was silent.

  "Eerie," whispered Persun. "Something wrong. I can feel it." He started back toward the aircar, feeling in his pocket for his knife. Behind him Sebastian moaned.

  A head peered sightlessly at them from the edge of the trees. Blank eyes glared in their direction. Above the eyes, flesh was torn to expose the bone, which gleamed moistly white. The head wobbled on its neck, rising into view, shoulders, arms, then the hideous Hippae maw below. A rider on a mount! A rider dead or so nearly dead as made no difference. The corpselike mouth opened to emit a screaming rattle, and with that sound the edge of the forest erupted into life. They burst into the open across a wide front, both riders and mounts screaming hate, defiance, death, and dismemberment. Persun turned back to grab Sebastian, who stood as one hypnotized.

  Sebastian's only thought, before his body was ripped apart, was that their morning's labor had been too late.

  Persun backed toward the aircar and swung the knife, a scream choked back, there had been another tunnel to the north. Teeth like razors raked his knife arm. His weapon clattered onto a rock. He clenched his jaw, readying himself for the final pain, his eyes staring into the blind dead eyes of the rider above him.

  Something forced its way between him and the Hippae teeth. The aircar was hovering low be
side him; Roald was shrieking at him. Hippae teeth darted toward him, then away. He threw himself backward into the open car, seeing, as he did so, that other cars hovered beside the pathetic line of green-robed Brothers, some staggering as they fled, some cut down and dead, some making it to the refuge of the cars, while all around them the Hippae howled and rampaged, their riders jerking and twitching as though they had been tied in position.

  Persun tried not to look at what was left of Sebastian as they rose higher. Blood was dripping from his motionless fingers. His head was half out the aircar door. Packs of Hippae and hounds were already moving toward the town. Roald was screaming into the tell-me. Persun saw a Brother snapped in half. Others were shouting. All he could think of was that his fingers did not move. His carving fingers did not move. Beside him Roald cried out at something he saw, but Persun did not turn. His fingers did not move, and he thought it might have been better to have died.

  While the Hippae in their hundreds overran the town from the north, battalions of migerers cut through the final few yards of a second tunnel on the south, one both taller and wider than the previous hole, an access route large enough to allow hosts of Hippae to move through it at a run. They came in waves, as they had come over the Arbai city long before; up from the forest toward the port, howling, ready to kill. There was no substantial opposition south of the wall. The handful of troopers at the port were inexperienced. They were taken by surprise and immediately overrun.

  Even so, three or four of the quicker among them had time to arm themselves and get to upper levels of a ship maintenance gantry where the Hippae could not follow. Hippae died by the dozens in screaming disbelief, learning thereby to avoid the guns.

  North of the wall the horn had been set off in response to Roald's alarm, and all Commons had fled to the winter quarters, sheltering behind doors already reinforced against attack, though not, most people feared, sufficiently so to stand against repeated battering by Hippae. At the sound of the alarm, James Jellico locked the tall gates. He also had the presence of mind to send runners to find the troopers who had been dallying among the friendly kitchens of town. Though Jelly didn't yet know where the threat was coming from, the dozen men with the Seraph at least had proper weapons. Possibly the Seraph could bring additional men and weapons from that ship above.

  The hastily summoned Seraph chose the order station as his base and sensibly set about keeping danger at bay.

  "Two men at every opening," he ordered, sweating at the sight of Hippae rampaging among the motionless bodies at the port. "Ninety-five degrees auto-fire coverage. Helmet lights on full fan. Night goggles. Auto on anything that moves."

  "There's a dozen saints at the port," one of the troopers objected from a dry mouth. "They may try for the gate."

  "There's fire from the upper levels of that structure, Cherub," the Seraph replied bleakly, pointing it out as though the trooper were blind. "If the men there have any intelligence at all, they'll stay where they are. They're safer there than we are here. If you see anything moving toward the gate, kill it. Communication silence except to report those things breaking in here. I've got to get reinforcements down." He knew it would take hours, even days. The Israfel had not been equipped with assault craft. Who could have thought they would be needed? They had only small shuttles, which would have to come down bringing ten men at a time, setting up a fire perimeter as they did so.

  "Sir," said the Cherub again, "what about those people out in that hotel?"

  "What people?" demanded James Jellico in surprise.

  "The scientists that the Hierarch sent down," the Cherub replied. "And that ambassador. Him and his wife."

  In the suite at the Port Hotel. Marjorie wakened at the first howls of the invading Hippae. Her windows faced the wrong way. She went through the room where Rigo lay in exhausted slumber to the window in the outside room. There were darting, wildly moving lights at the port. She saw Hippae lunging in and out of shadow. Without waking Rigo, she went to the door of the suite and opened it. The daytime guard had been replaced by another man.

  "Trooper," she said. "Take a quick look out the window. Some very dangerous creatures are rampaging around out there."

  He gestured her back, as though she were the dangerous one, she standing there in her crumpled clothing with no weapon at all, her hair falling untidily around her face. When he had seen, however, he looked confused, as though teetering among several desires.

  "If we're going to stay here," she said, "we need to make ourselves as safe from those beasts as we can. We have to assume they'll come here eventually."

  "How?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

  "They can't climb ladders," she said. "But they aren't stupid. They may know or be able to figure out what lifts are. We need to turn off the power to the chutes. We're on the fourth level here. Without lifts, they probably can't get up here."

  "Power controls are probably all the way down," he said.

  "Then we'll have to go all the way down."

  He hesitated, starting toward the lift, then back.

  "Come on, boy," she snapped. "I'm old enough to be your mother, so I can yell at you. Decide what you're going to do!"

  He started to put his weapon down.

  "Take it," she commanded. "They could get into the hotel while we're down below."

  They fell into the down chute together, Marjorie complaining bitterly under her breath at the slowness of the thing. Luxury seemed to be equated with slow chutes. The Port Hotel held itself out as luxurious. They floated past the doors like dust motes, ending up five levels below the ground with a further five levels still beneath them indicated upon the board.

  "Winter quarters down there," said Marjorie. "I'd forgotten there would be winter quarters.

  "It must get really cold here, huh?" the guardsman wanted to know as he looked vaguely around himself.

  "I have a feeling cold is only part of it," Marjorie answered. "Now where?"

  He pointed. The power room was opposite the chute, a heavy metal door opening into a room full of consoles and bubble meters.

  "We should probably shut it all down," said Marjorie.

  "All? You won't have any water up there or anything. Besides, how'll we get back?"

  "Climb the chute," she said succinctly. She moved down the console, reading labels. Main power control Main pump. The main pump seemed to be on a separate circuit from the power control. It might be possible to leave them with water. She folded back the barrier and thrust the power control sharply across. The room went black. "Damn," she snarled.

  A blazing light came on in her eyes. "I should've had it on already," the trooper confessed, adjusting his helmet lamps. "Where do we climb back?"

  "Up the chute," she said. "Up the emergency ladder." They went back to the chute, leaning out over a well of chill dark to seize a cold metal rung. They climbed, Marjorie first, their ascent lighted by the trooper's lamp.

  "That's a handy gadget," she commented between puffs as they neared the fourth level once more. "Your helmet, I mean. Does it see in the infrared?"

  "Infrared," he agreed. "Plus about six other filter combinations. It can tell living stuff from dead stuff. And it's got a motion detector. And if you tie it to the armor arm controls, it's got automatic fire potential." He sounded proud of it, and Marjorie approved of his pride and confidence. He might need it. Their safety could depend on it.

  "Now," she said when they had reached the fourth level, "you might as well come inside the suite. We'll close and lock the door behind us just in case something – anything – gets up here." Rigo still slept. He looked drawn and worn. "He'll be hungry when he wakes," she said. "We don't have any food here."

  "Emergency rations," the boy said from behind her, tapping a long compartment down one armored thigh. "Enough for one man, ten days. Enough for the three of us for a while, at least. They don't taste like much, but the Cherubim tell us they're sustaining." He gestured at the sleeping man. "Has he been sick?"

&nb
sp; She nodded. Yes. Rigo had been sick. All the riders had been sick. "What's your name?" she asked him. "Are you Sanctified?" He grinned proudly. "Favel Cobham, ma'am. And yes, I'm Sanctified, ma'am. The whole family. I got registered when I was born. I'm saved for eternity."

  "Lucky you," she said, turning again to Rigo's bed. Here in the Port Hotel she and Rigo weren't saved for even this life if the Hippae got in. Tony was, maybe, if someone found a cure soon. And Stella. Remembering how Rillibee had looked at her, perhaps Stella was saved. If not for eternity, at least for a very small being's lifetime, which was all one could expect.

  She went back to the window, looking across the battle to the huge barns against the wall. The horses! She could see the barn where they were stabled. It was stout, true, but not impenetrable. It was connected to the building they were in by the tunnel network. Everything was connected to everything else. Could she find her way there? She fumbled in her jacket pocket, finding the trip recorder that Brother Mainoa had returned to her.

  "The Seraph, he had a few men in town," the trooper said.

  "What will they do?" she wondered.

  He shook his head. "The Seraph, he's what you'd call conservative, ma'am, I've heard the Cherubim say that, a few times. He'll wait until morning, then he'll prob'ly make a sweep from the wall with all the men moving on automatic fire. By that time, he'll have more men down from the ship."

  "There's at least one tunnel where the Hippae came in," Marjorie said. "It'll have to be blown up, or flooded, or something."