Grass (33 page)

When he, assured that she had been merely inquisitive, had gone back to his work, Marjorie went out to the stables and saddled Don Quixote. It was not part of her intention to tell anyone where she was going, though she did leave a message with one of the grooms.

"If I'm not back by dark," she said, "but not before then, tell my husband or son I'd like him to come look for me in the aircar. I'm carrying a beacon, so I should be easy to find." The personal beacon was strapped to her leg under her trousers. Any sharp blow would set it off. If she were thrown from a horse, for example. Or if she struck it sharply with her fist. She was carrying a trip recorder of the type used by cartographers, which would serve as a direction finder. She had a laser knife with her as well, to clear her way through tall grass if that became necessary. She showed both of these to the stableman, telling him what they were for. She wanted everything about her journey to speak of purpose. She wanted no one to suppose that she had planned not to come back. It was a risk, that's all. Still, if something happened to her, it would solve Rigo's problem. And Stella's. And her own. Resolutely, she did not think of Tony.

Quixote pawed the soil, flickers of movement running up his twitching hide from fetlocks to withers and down again. Not nerves, not precisely. Something more than that. It was a kind of agitation Marjorie was unfamiliar with, and she stood for a long time stroking his legs, talking to him, trying to imagine what had brought him to this state. He leaned into her, as though for support, yet when she mounted him he trotted out into the grasses as though for a ride on any ordinary day. He meant by this that he trusted her. Though he might die of it, he trusted her. He could not quite keep the nervous quiver from his skin, however, and the message eventually reached her after they had traversed some little distance. She flushed, ashamed to be using him in this fashion when his own nature spoke so strongly against it. She stroked him. expressing her own trust. "Father James says God has made viruses of us, Quixote, but I suppose one virus may still love another, or have another kind of virus as a friend. I won't put you into a trap, my friend. I won't let you get close enough for that." And myself? she thought. Shall I put myself in danger?

Suicide was forbidden, but much glory was given to martyrs. If she killed herself, would God even notice? According to what Father James had said, God probably did not know which of His viruses were involved in doing His work. To God, she had no name. No individuality. If she killed herself, would He even know? Did it matter if He knew? When He had created her, had He also created a mechanism for saving her soul? Did viruses even have them?

Still, there had been all those years of being taught it was wrong to take one's own life. She would not feel right about getting herself purposely killed off. She could take a calculated risk, however. If she died, it would be accidentally, and Don Quixote would survive. Fleet as the wind, Quixote. Without her on his back he could outrun the devil himself. So she told herself before she stopped thinking about it. devoting most of her energy to not thinking of it. She could not help wondering about Rigo's reaction if she didn't return. "That silly fool." he would say. "That silly woman who never loved me as she ought."

She did love him. Or. she wanted to love him. Wanted to love him and wanted to love Stella with a desire that poured out hurtfully until she was exhausted from the flow of it. At home, she had known about Eugenie, and the one before Eugenie, but they had not been nearby. At home, Stella had had distractions and friends. Here, both Stella and Eugenie beat at her like huge trapped birds, pecking at her. Their frustrations hammered at her. She had not expected to feel weak, to be sleepless, to feel the threat of death always at her back. Each day on Grass had taken a little more of her strength, a little more of her purpose. Lately she had felt no hope, she who had always lived from disappointment to disappointment on a childlike, hopeful optimism which she could now barely remember.

She rode past the little arena where the horses were exercised, a place that lay just outside the grass gardens of Opal Hill, though it seemed remote because of the topography. Now, for the first time, Marjorie was leaving the close confines of that area which those who defined such things considered to be the estancia. The gardens were behind her. The prospects that the gardens overlooked were behind her. She was entering upon the wild grasses, the surface of the planet, the part into which men and their works and their creatures were not allowed to intrude. She rode, eyes forward, not thinking about anything very much except that she was unhappy enough that if the Hippae were to be found, out here in the grass, perhaps she would learn something useful about them or they would kill her, and she did not at that moment much care which.

The howl, when it came, made Don Quixote tremble, ears up, stopping dead still. Marjorie sat, scarcely breathing, aware that the howl had come from behind her. In that instant she remembered Janetta bon Maukerden and realized that the Hippae, if they found her, might do less – or more – than kill her. She had considered that they might kill her and had accepted that. She had not considered the range of alternatives which might result from her behavior, and she was abruptly both shamed and terrified.

They had been following a kind of trail, a winding path of short grasses among the taller ones. She urged Don Quixote off this easy way and into the taller grass, dismounting to tug stems into line to hide the way she had come.

"They'll smell you," she told herself, trying to quell her alarm by moving slowly and deliberately. The wind was blowing toward her from the direction the howl had come. That one would not smell her. Some other one might. It would be wise to return. Overwhelmed with the stupidity of what she had been doing, she told herself that returning would be the best possible thing to do.

She opened the trip recorder, watching it as she guided the stallion in a shallow turn which ended with him headed back toward the embassy, still hidden in tall grass, now traveling toward whatever it was she had heard. He went only a little way, then stopped. Something howled again, quite close, between them and the embassy.

The horse turned and walked quietly on his own trail. When Marjorie attempted to guide him, he ignored her. After one brief spasm of panic, she sat quietly, letting him alone. So. So, he knew something she didn't. Smelled something she couldn't. Felt something she couldn't. She sat still, not bothering him, trying to say an act of contrition, unable to remember phrases she had known since childhood. The words didn't fit, anyhow. How could she be heartily sorry for having offended God when, for all she knew, she was doing exactly what God intended!

The stallion moved up and down hills, along the sides of ridges, always walking, not hurrying, ears alert, as though someone were whispering his name. When he slowed at last, it seemed to be in response to other sounds, ahead of them. When he stopped, he went down on his side all at once, without the signal. She drew her leg from beneath his upcurved body and stood up, staring at him. He flattened himself, ears still alert, watching her.

"All right," she whispered. "So now what?"

He made no sound, but his skin quivered, flicked, as though stung by flies. Danger. All around them.

Marjorie felt it, could see it on the horse's skin, could smell it. The trip recorder said that they had come in the general direction Sebastian had indicated. A repetitive sound, not loud but persistent, made Don Quixote move his head about, seeking its source. It was not the violent thunder of the previous night, but rather an organized series of moans and cries, rhythmic both in occurrence and volume. Quixote's nostrils dilated, his skin jerked as though from a terrible itch. The wind had gusted toward them, bringing the sound clearly and a smell … a smell of something totally strange. Not a stink. Not a perfume. Neither attractive nor repellent. Marjorie got out her laser knife and cut armfuls of grass, laying these across Don Quixote's body, hiding him, perhaps hiding his smell. Then she fell to her belly and crawled through the taller grasses toward the sounds the wind brought, down from a low ridge to the south. As she crested the ridge, she lay quiet, peering through the grass stems.

Toward the smell the wind brought. She breathed it in, lungs full. The sky dilated and she fell simultaneously upward toward it and downward, crushing herself.

Under her chin her arm flattened, becoming no thicker than a sheet of paper.

Something stepped painlessly on her head, smashing it.

Her body vanished. She tried to move a finger and could not.

Hounds. A shallow, grassy bowl of hounds, seated hounds, crouched hounds, gray and algae green and muddy violet, heads back and lips drawn to reveal lengthy fangs and a double row of teeth down each side of the massive jaws from which the grunting, rhythmic chorus came. Their hides danced, plunged, were jabbed at erratically from within, as though they had swallowed living things which fought to gain release. Blank, white orbs of eyes stared at the sky. The open, falling sky.

The smell. The shallow bowl of earth was full of the smell. She lay at the edge of that bowl. Her tongue lolled on her lower teeth, dripping.

There, across the bowl, an abrupt, vertical wall, the wall pierced with tall, evenly spaced openings through which the morning light intruded to reveal a cavern beyond. Hippae moved there, one or two, in a pattern, weaving, prancing, feet high, heads back, barbs clashing.

Among the crouching hounds, heaps of pearly spheres the size of her head. Migerers there, moving the spheres, shifting them so that all lay in the sun evenly, turning them over, holding them up in horny forepaws and listening to them. What were they then? Eggs?

There, also, in the bowl outside the cavern, some dozens of the sluglike peepers, only the rippling movement of their hides betraying that they were living things.

The smell seemed to press her down. She was two-dimensional, a limp cloth lying flat behind the grasses, a cloth with eyes.

The hounds were large, very large. As large as draft horses, though not so long in the leg. The peepers were huge ones, twice the usual size. Within the cavern, a myriad of tattered shapes danced on the air, dark batlike creatures with a fringe of fangs. One of them landed on the back of a hound's neck, fastening itself there. After a time it detached and began its jerking, erratic flight once more.

One of the hounds began to pant, then to howl. The howling faded into a whining cry, then the panting began once more. On the sunlit soil, the peepers drew themselves into spherical masses, all wrinkles smoothed away. So familiar. She had seen it before. Somewhere. Somewhen.

Gradually, all sound ended. The creatures seemed frozen in their immobility. The violent motion inside the hides of the hounds ceased. There was quiet, long quiet.

A Hippae emerged from the cavern, pacing slowly, feet raised high at every step, nostrils flared, lips opening to emit breathy barks, warning sounds. After a time, the other Hippae came out to confront the first, neck swollen, jaw pulled back against the arching neck, eyes roiling wildly as it joined in the brusque, hostile sounds.

They backed away from one another, turning their heads, bowing their necks, the wicked neck barbs bristling to one side like a fan of sabers as they moved back, back, the distance widening between them. Then they charged one another, each array of barbs passing through the other, to gouge long wounds along the other's ribs and flanks. Long streaks of blood appeared on their sides, and they pawed the ground with razorlike hooves, hammering at it before they turned to charge again. Again the flashing barbs and the streaks of blood. Marjorie cowered, mentally, as they thrust at one another, rearing high, hooves flashing.

Until, at last, one of the Hippae fell to his knees and was slow to rise to all four feet again.

The other animal backed away to the front of the cave and rummaged there. It turned its back on its enemy, kicked backward, sending black missiles flying. What was it kicking at its defeated opponent? Black things. Powdery black things that broke when they landed. Like puffballs, bursting into clouds of black dust when they struck. Kicking dead bats at one another. The thing Sylvan had said … 

Silent. A game. The game. In silence.

The victorious Hippae tossed its head, sought with its teeth for new missiles from around the entrances to the cavern, laid them out in the open, then turned to kick back once more. One of the missiles struck the head of the kneeling beast, covering it in black dust. The defeated one bowed low, struggled to its feet, and departed, walking up the bank of the hollow and away.

It had had the pace and finish of ritual. A ritual battle. Now over.

And then sound. The wind was blowing from behind her. One of the swollen peepers ripped open. Protruding from the torn skin of the peeper was the triangular, fanged head of a hound. The peeper skin ripped further. Two hound forelegs emerged, and then, very gradually, the entire beast.

It looked small and ridiculously fragile as it staggered to its feet and stumbled through one of the vertical openings into the cavern, carefully avoiding the heaped eggs. Marjorie heard the sound of lapping from within. After a long pause, the creature emerged once more with dripping jaws, already more sure upon its feet, already sleek, its body distended with moisture. The Hippae stood upon the edge of the hollow, whistling. The young hound climbed to meet it, nibbling, as it went, at the low, blue grasses which grew there. Even as Marjorie watched, the beast seemed to enlarge in size, gaining both stature and bulk. After a time it went away, slowly though purposefully. The wind was blowing harder.

Another ripping sound drew her eyes across the hollow. As a hound had emerged from the torn skin of a peeper, so now a Hippae was emerging from the torn skin of a hound. Metamorphosis. Through the sundered skin of one of the huge hounds a row of barbs protruded, tiny blades which slit the skin, allowing the Hippae head to emerge. The process stopped when the head was out, its eyes closed and unseeing. All was silent.