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 the fragras was.”
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 Commons Chronicle called 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 the Star-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 merely that slaughter. 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.”