Grass

  Marjorie rubbed her head, ruefully. "Real pains in the neck, originally. Real vermin. The Hippae kick dead ones at one another. I've seen them do it."

  "We know that! Sylvan bon Damfels said it meant 'You're nothing but vermin.' "

  "Yes. Originally, it would have meant 'You're nothing but vermin.' That's what it meant when the Hippae kicked dead bats at the Arbai, too. On Terra there were once animals that threw feces at strangers. The Hippae despise strangers. They think of all other creatures either as useful tools, like the migerers or the Huntsmen, or as things to be despised and, if possible, killed. The Arbai fell into that category, so the Hippae kicked dead bats at them, and at their houses, and at their transporter. It was pure chance that a bat happened to go through the transporter to somewhere else. At this end, it was only symbolic. At the other end, it meant plague. Death."

  "The vector of infection … "

  "Yes. It happened. Somewhere, wherever the transporter was set for, Arbai died. And then the foolish Arbai here on Grass told the Hippae what had happened. From that moment on, the gesture no longer meant 'You're vermin' It meant 'You're dead.' Once the Hippae knew they could kill by putting bats through the transporter, they kept on repeating the act. It was not symbolic, it was real."

  "Kept on – "

  "Kicking dead bats through the transporter until all the Arbai were infected. It may not have taken long. Maybe only a day or a week. Whenever they weren't observed. The Arbai were so … so set in their thinking that they never thought to set a guard. I'm assuming the transporter must have worked like a voice-activated com-link. Whenever the network was in use, certain sets of terminals must have come on so that a bat kicked in at one terminal would have ended up far away. On Repentance? On Shame? There are Arbai ruins both places. On a hundred worlds we've never seen? Wherever, however many, it worked. The Arbai died, everywhere. Hippae memorialized the event in their dances. A great victory. 'Fun to kill strangers.' They remembered it.

  "When humans came to Grass, the Hippae would have repeated the act again, but we didn't have transporters, we had ships. Dead bats had worked with the Arbai, so the Hippae decided to put dead bats on our ships. Our ships, however, were inside the forest where the foxen had influenced us to put our port. The foxen had believed that if the port was inside the swamp forest, it would be safe. The foxen had enjoyed having the Arbai around. Though they would have liked direct contact, being telepathic they hadn't needed to have it. They had sought a kind of intellectual intimacy with the Arbai and been rebuffed, so they didn't try it with us. Instead, they regarded us as we might regard some intelligent, interesting, but unaffectionate pet, and they thought we would be safe enough …

  "They underestimated the Hippae. Perhaps they thought the Hippae wouldn't remember after all those centuries, but they did remember. They had codified their memory into dancing, into patterns. When men first arrived, the Hippae set the migerers to digging a tunnel, at first only a small one, one large enough to admit one human messenger at a time. Human messengers the Hippae had wiped clean except for a certain impetus, a certain programmed activity – "

  "That's unbelievable!"

  "It's quite believable because it was only a slight variation of their natural habit. Peepers have no such ability. Hounds have almost none. The Hippae have enough to affect the minds of those around them and bend those minds to their purposes. Think of what they do to the migerers and to the Huntsmen! When the Hippae change into foxen, the ability is multiplied a hundredfold. Hippae may not be truly intelligent. Evil and sly. yes, able to learn but incapable of true subtlety. They learned to kill by accident, but once having learned, they went on, and on. Everything they have done was merely a repetition of a pattern they already knew … "

  The doctor was very still, thinking. "You said you knew two important things."

  "The other thing was about your books. I tried to read them. I'm not scientific. All I can remember is that one of them was about this nutrient, this protein building block. You said it was something we all needed. Most living cells. And you said it existed in two forms here on Grass, and only here. I got to wondering why. Why two forms here? And then I wondered, what if something here turned it around? What if something here on Grass turned around an essential nutrient? Something all our cells need and use. Something we couldn't use in a reversed form … "

  There was a long silence.

  "I need a dead bat," said Lees Bergrem.

  "I brought one," Marjorie said, reaching into her deep pocket. First had left the barn, had gone out onto the sloping lands to get it for her. She put the dried crumbling thing on Lees Bergrem's table. Then she sat down and put her head between her trembling knees and tried to think of nothing at all.

  The two women stayed in the makeshift laboratory for two days. Above them in the town, battles were fought street by street, building by building. People died, though not so many as had at first been feared. There were allies no one could see. There were fighters no one could look at. Hippae were found dead, and no one remembered killing them. Then, too, since the Hierarch was not awake to countermand the Seraph's orders, troopers came down on the shuttle, a few at a time, to take over segments of Commons and man a slowly expanding perimeter. Demolition teams found the tunnels beneath the swamp forest and collapsed them into sodden ruin. No more Hippae came through. Those already inside hid, chameleonlike, to come screaming out of alleys, shrieking along walls. Sharing this much of the foxen invisibility, they found their way into houses and shops. Death came to Commons, death and blood and pain, but slow victory came also.

  Roald Few missed death by inches, saved by something he could not describe. One of his sons died. Many of his friends were dead, or missing. A morgue was set up in the winter quarters. The first body there was Sylvan bon Damfels' His was joined by a hundred others. In death he became what he could not manage in life, one with the Commons.

  One by one the remaining Hippae were found and killed. Many were still hiding in the edges of the forest. Troopers ringed that perimeter, their heat-seeking weapons set on automatic fire. Within the trees, other beings found the Hippae, and none came out onto Commons ground again.

  Toward the end of the battle, Favel Cobham climbed back down the chutes and restored power to the Port Hotel before going out to join his fellows. He had not been ordered to stop guarding the Yrariers, but neither had he been told to continue.

  Rigo came out of the hotel later, when he saw the last of the troopers straggling back toward the port, and made his way toward the gate. In the port area, the men were already burying their dead and readying for departure.

  "Going already?" Rigo asked a gray-haired Cherub with a wrinkled, cynical face.

  "Lord and Master woke up and found out what happened to his tame scientists," the Cherub replied. "Found out what happened to the town, too. I guess he figures he might get gobbled up by something if we stay."

  Rigo went on into Commons to ask if anyone had seen his wife. He was told to look where everyone was looking for missing kinsmen, in the morgue. He found her there, standing by Sylvan's body.

  "Rowena asked me to come and arrange burial," she said. "She wants him to be buried out there, where Klive used to be."

  "Wouldn't you have come anyhow?" he asked. "Didn't you care for him? Weren't you in love with him?" It was not what he had planned to say. He and Father Sandoval had agreed that recriminations were not appropriate. He had expected to find Marjorie's body and grieve over it. Thwarted of grief, thwarted of good intentions, this other emotion had happened.

  She chose not to answer his question. Instead, she said. "Sebastian is dead too, Rigo. Kinny lost one of her children. Persun Pollut was almost killed. His arm is terribly hurt. He may never carve again." He was shamed into silence, and angered for being shamed. She walked toward the door, he following. "I've been working with Lees Bergrem," she said, looking around to be sure she was not overheard "She thinks we've found a cure. She already had some of the pieces. It can't
be tested here on Grass. She's sent word to Semling. They can manufacture the cure, get some victims together, and test it."

  "Manufacture?" he asked her, disbelieving. "Some kind of vaccine?" She nodded, coming close to him, actually hugging him, an awkward, one-armed embrace, tears on her face. "Not a vaccine at all. Oh, Rigo, I really think we've found the answer."

  He reached for her, but she had already turned away. She would not say anything more until the people in Semling had received everything Lees Bergrem could send them. "Wait," she said to Rigo and Roald and Kinny. "Don't say anything to anyone until the word comes back. Don't get people's hopes up until we know for sure."

  Marjorie and Lees Bergrem spent the third day since their discovery fretting together, stalking back and forth through the echoing room where they had worked. On this day the Semling victims would either improve or go on dying. At noon on the fourth day the word came from Semling. Within hours of being treated, all the victims had started to mend.

  "Now." Marjorie was crying, tears flowing into the corners of her joyously curved mouth. "Now we can let everyone know." She went to the tell-me to call Brother Mainoa. Only then did she learn he had died in the lap of a foxen, days before. Only then did she understand a part of what First had tried to tell her.

  19

  "Our job is over," Marjorie said. "What we were sent to do is done." She and Rigo and Father Sandoval were sitting at a table at Mayor Bee's restaurant, drinking genuine Terran coffee. Around them the work of renewal went on. Renewal and burial. At the foot of the street, litter carriers went past, and Marjorie averted her eyes. She did not want to think any more about death.

  "So you have said," Father Sandoval said in the aloof voice he had used to her recently. "I've seen no proof of it."

  "I think I can explain it," she offered. They had scarcely spoken during the past few days. Father Sandoval had not forgiven her for going off like that, though, since a cure had seemingly resulted, he had not said much about it. He had not forgiven Father James, either. He and Rigo had been discussing the recalcitrants, Rigo's nephew, Rigo's wife. Their emotions were at war with their sense of what was fitting, and she wanted to help them both. She said, "I can at least tell you what Lees Bergrem told me, what she's telling everyone."

  Father Sandoval set his cup down and twisted it on the tabletop, leaving a wet circle there when he picked it up again. He touched the circle with a fingertip, stretching it, breaking it.

  "Perhaps that would be useful," he admitted.

  She folded her hands in her lap, the way she had used to do as a child when called on to recite.

  "Lees says that everything we've found in our universe has proven to share pretty much the same assortment of left-right molecules. She says there's no particular reason that we know of why some molecules are twisted one way and some are twisted the other, but they are, everywhere we've been. Some of these substances are essential to different forms of life, and one of these is a nutrient, L-alanine. L-alanine exists everywhere we've ever been. Human cells, most cells, can't get along without it.

  "Here on Grass, however, a virus evolved which, as part of its process of reproduction, creates an enzyme, an isomerase, which converts L-alanine to D-alanine. L-alanine is the usual form. D-alanine is the mirror image, the isomer, and it is virtually nonexistent anywhere we know of. I'm quoting Lees exactly. She's said it a hundred times, so I know I've got it right." She stopped for a moment to drink, to watch Rigo watching her. He gestured vaguely, telling her to go on.

  "After hundreds of thousands of years, the virus became widely dispersed here, in the living cells of all plants. As the plants died, the D form was released into the environment. Over time, here on Grass, the D form became as common as the L form. That's the important fact, Rigo. Here on Grass, both D-alanine and L-alanine are floating around, ubiquitous. We can't breathe or drink this coffee or eat anything grown here without taking in some of both – along with the virus.

  "The minute we stepped off the ship from home, we were infected. The virus is in the air, in the dust, in the water. Lees says we probably had viruses in almost every cell of our bodies within minutes. The virus needs a co-factor in order to reproduce, however. A kind of activator. D-alanine is the co-factor. The viral protein binds to this co-factor, and then it converts L to D, very rapidly. However, the virus works both ways. It can also bind to L-alanine, and when it does, the viral protein converts D to L.

  "Binding to D-alanine takes almost no time here on Grass because there's so much D-alanine around. Someplace like Terra, where there are maybe only a few accidental molecules, it could take a long, long time. That's why the plague was so slow to start elsewhere. It's also why there isn't any plague here on Grass. As soon as we started breathing on Grass, all our cells got supplied with D and L both.

  "So, here on Grass, the virus inverts L, which we need in order to live, to D, which our bodies can't use. However, since both D and L are plentiful, it turns both forms around simultaneously, and each of our cells finds enough L-alanine to go on living. On other planets there was little or no D-alanine to start with. When L was reversed, only D was left, and the cells couldn't use it. When human cells died, the viruses escaped into neighboring cells in their immediately infective stage, and the process was repeated. People got sores that spread. Bandages, wash water, anything that touched the body served as a source of infection, and the dead cells provided the co-factor for newly infected cells."

  "But not here," Rigo said stiffly.

  "Not here. On Grass, both D-alanine and L-alanine are plentiful; our cells survive. The virus's life cycle is interrupted, the cells die naturally. People come here and get infected and go away, never knowing it … "

  "And it was spread by bats?" Father Sandoval asked.

  "Lees says the bats don't use alanine. It's only one of a number of amino acids, and the bats just don't use it. However, the blood of other animals has alanine in it. The bat doesn't need it, so the viruses and the co-factors exist in the bat's blood bladder. When bats die and dry, their insides are powdery with virus-rich material, as packed with viruses and with co-factors as a puffball is with spores. Dead blood-sucking bats are about as good a carrier as you could get."

  "You haven't said what the cure is," Father Sandoval said, finding on Rigo's face an expression which reinforced his own mood, one of frustrated anger. One could not be angry that a cure had been found; one was, however, annoyed at the way it had been found.

  "The cure?" She looked up, puzzled. "Well, of course, Father. I thought that was self-evident. All that's needed is to spread massive quantities of D-alanine around. Small doses are no good. If somebody gets small doses of D, it will bind to the enzyme and they'll die. But if they get massive amounts, more than is needed to bind, then there will be equal mixtures of L to D and D to L conversion And, of course, Semling found that it was extremely easy to make. They just used the virus to manufacture it out of L-alanine."

  Father Sandoval shook his head. "It sounds so simple the way you describe it. But the Arbai couldn't cure it, as wise as they were?" He would not believe in their wisdom, no matter what Father James had said. Furthermore, he felt the church would disbelieve in their wisdom as well. Doctrine, as he knew it, had no room for other children of God.

  "Perhaps they died faster than we did. My informant doesn't know.

  "Your informant?" Rigo said, his voice ugly. "A foxen! Horses weren't enough for you, Marjorie?"

  She frowned at him warningly, repressing her sudden anger. "Don't, Rigo. If you are ambassador to Grass, you are ambassador to them, as well. They aren't animals."

  "That is not for you to decide," the priest said, echoing her anger with a sullen fury of his own. "That is a question for the church, Marjorie. Not for you. They may be intelligent and still be animals. Your relationship with them may be a serious error. I caution you!"

  "You what?" she asked, incredulous. "You what?"

  "I caution you. On pain of excommunication, Marjo
rie. Do not continue in this mindless adulation of these creatures."

  She looked at the priest, betraying nothing. His face was red, then white. His hand, resting upon the table, was clenched. Rigo looked much the same. They had been discussing her again. Talking over how she was to be controlled, no doubt. Her mind scuttered in its usual pattern of evasion, of compromise, then stopped as though it had run into a wall.

  She had made a commitment.

  She laughed.

  "Does he speak for you, as well?" she asked Rigo.

  He did not reply. His face was reply enough. He, too, flushed, livid with rage.

  She rose from her chair, leaned forward. "You two … " she said calmly, "you two can go to hell." She turned and walked away, leaving them staring after her, their faces leaking anger until nothing was left except pallid amazement.

  All Rigo could think of as he watched her back as she walked away was to wonder who she was thinking of now that Sylvan was dead.

  "Father?"

  They looked up to see Father James standing at their sides. Father Sandoval nodded curtly.

  "I've come to say goodbye." said the younger priest, with only a slight tremor.

  "You recollect what I told you," Father Sandoval said through gritted teeth.

  "Yes, Father. I deeply regret you cannot see my point of view. However, I feel you're wrong and my conscience will not allow – "

  "Obedience would allow!"

  The younger man shook his head and went on. "My conscience will not allow me to be swayed. I came in today to hear about the cure. Before Brother Mainoa died, he said he knew we would find it. The foxen, he said. They would help us. Mainoa was almost a hundred Terran years old, did you know? Well, why would you? A wonderful old man. He would have wanted to be here himself … "

  "You're going back to the forest? Despite what I've told you?"

  "I am, yes. I believe I must stay here, Father. I agree with Marjorie that it may be the most important work we have to do."