Sheri Tepper - Grass

“I stopped in her room. I couldn’t really see her. She’s boxed up in a huge Heal-all. Rillibee stayed there with her.”

“How is she?”

“The doctor says she hopes for recovery. She was careful not to say full recovery. I gather some things were destroyed.” Marjorie rubbed at her eyes.

He stood stiffly away from her, aware she had not reproached him and yet feeling reproached. He did not want to talk about their daughter, not yet. The paper cracked in his hand, reminding him. “You must look at this. The head of the Friary came to see me to ask about the plague. This thing fell out of his pocket.” He thrust the letter at her.

She read, read again, turning a white face toward him at last. “Sanctity won’t spread the cure even if we find one?”

“You read what I read. The man who signed that letter is the new Hierarch. Uncle Carlos may have been an apostate, but he wouldn’t have been capable of this!”

“What are we going to do?”

“All I’ve done so far is wish I hadn’t told the man anything. I don’t know what to do next!”

She touched him gently on the shoulder. “One thing at a time, Rigo. That’s all any of us can do.”

“Very well. One thing at a time. There’s an immediate threat from the Hippae at the tunnel. We’ll probably end up having to kill all those damned Hippae…”

“No!” she folded the letter and put it carefully in a flapped pocket of her jacket. “No! We can’t kill them all. Not even most. They become other creatures. Important creatures. The foxen, Rigo. They’re an intelligent race. Even the Hippae themselves are intelligent, in a way.”

“We’re going to have to kill some,” he objected, thinking that Marjorie did not sound like herself. “No matter what they become. If we don’t, we die ourselves. We have to make Commons secure from them, or everyone here will die, just as the Arbai did.”

“Kill some,” she agreed. “Yes. It will be necessary. But the fewest possible That’s what I came to tell you. I heard what you said about enticing them away. We must use the horses.”

At first he wanted to laugh. When he had heard what she had to say, he wanted to cry. He objected, and she looked at him in firm decision, unlike herself. He could offer nothing better. Moved from mockery to despair, he stumbled out of the Port Hotel to make the preparations she had convinced him were necessary. Aircars could not get into the forest where the tunnel ended. At any threat from above, the Hippae would merely retreat into the swamp or the tunnel or both, as they had retreated from the aircar when Rigo had been wounded. If men were to destroy the tunnel, the Hippae would have to be enticed away. The Hippae hated the horses. They would use the horses.

“At least…” he said to himself, trying to laugh, “at least I’ll never have to wear those damned bon boots or those fat-bottomed pants again!”

Not long after dawn they assembled in the great hay barn where the horses were stalled. They met without many words. What words had been necessary had already been carried from each to each, and they were all tired of words. Tired of words, afraid of action, yet determined nonetheless.

Rigo, pale but resolute, was saddling El Dia Octavo. Marjorie had chosen Don Quixote. Tony took Blue Star, and Sylvan, Her Majesty. Irish Lass, they had regretfully decided, was not quick enough. That left only Millefiori.

“I wish we had someone,” Sylvan said, looking at the mare.

“We do,” said Marjorie. She was very calm. Father Sandoval had suggested he hear her confession and give her absolution. She had told him there wasn’t time. She wasn’t sure she wanted to confess anything. She wasn’t sure anything needed confession. Even if it did, she didn’t think she would, or could, share it, because she hadn’t figured it out yet. “Tony, we do have someone.”

“Who?” he asked in surprise.

“Me,” said a voice from the door. She stood there in the light from outside, very pale, dressed in her bon riding coat and a hastily remodeled set of trousers. Rowena.

Sylvan gasped. “Mother!”

“I’m glad I have a child left to call me mother,” she said coldly. “Have you seen Dimity, Sylvan?”

He bowed his head, for a moment unable to reply. “I’ve seen her, yes. I know what condition she’s in. But it won’t help her for you to do this,” he murmured. “You’re not well, not healed…”

“I promised Marjorie my help if ever she should need it. She needs it. And who else will do it? A few hours ago Marjorie took me out and taught me how. It’s nothing. Nothing compared to what I did all my girlhood, most of my Obermum life, even after you were born, Sylvan. Oh, I’ve enough experience riding to get through this, I think. Have you seen Emmy, Sylvan? She looks almost like Dimity. Though the doctors say she will heal, in time.”

“Father did that,” he said expressionlessly.

“I don’t blame Stavenger,” she said. “Why blame a dead man? I blame the Hippae. I blame who’s responsible, and that has always been the Hippae.”

“The bons and the foxen both deserve a share of blame,” Marjorie said hotly. “The foxen let it happen. They allowed themselves a comfortable retirement. They let happen what would. Then, when it all went wrong, they chose to discuss it philosophically. When men came here, they learned new ideas of guilt and redemption and talked about that. They engaged in great theological arguments. They sent Brother Mainoa to find out if they could be forgiven. They talked of original sin, collective guilt. They’re still doing it. They haven’t learned that being penitent sometimes does no good at all.” She pulled on a girth so furiously that Don Quixote whuffed in complaint.

“Mother,” Tony said. “Don’t.”

“Damn it, Tony, they could help. They’re great, powerful beasts, evolved to be so to protect themselves from something even more terrible that was long ago extinct. But they no longer do anything. They think. They discuss. They don’t decide.”

“I thought when they helped you, they had decided,” Rigo said. She had told him about the climbers.

“Aaah,” she growled, “Aaah. One of them helped me. By himself. I don’t think even he would be much help against a dozen of the Hippae. Not alone. The rest of them are all sitting up there in the trees, thinking about it. Wondering what they might do if they ever decide to do anything. I made a mistake back there in the Tree City when I didn’t kill those two climbers. I set a good example. They’re all too ready to take a good example if it means they won’t have to do anything and then take responsibility for it.”

For the tenth time she checked her lance, a strong spear of light metal alloy with a trigger mounted on it which would turn on a big laser knife, one of the kind they had given their workmen for harvesting grasses. The knife was mounted at the tip of the lance and was counterbalanced by a weight in the butt end. Roalds’ workmen had built the lances as well as the bucklers each of them wore, a kind of light breastplate with a hook under the left arm to hold the end of the lance down. The breasts and flanks of the horses were armored in similar fashion, with light plates strung on tough fabric, to keep the weight down. Rigo had remembered the breastplates from armor he had seen, armor dating from a time when lances had been monstrously heavy and had had to be carried dead level.

It didn’t matter how level these were carried. Actually they would do more damage if they wobbled and swung. If they moved about a good deal, it would do maximum damage at the greatest distance. Still, the hook would help to control them and keep the tips from dipping or catching on the ground — for at least one charge. Marjorie hadn’t really intended a charge. She had suggested a quick sally to bring the Hippae away from the tunnel mouth in pursuit, and then a long flight which would keep the Hippae away long enough for Alverd’s men to blow up the tunnel. Rigo, having seen what knives would do to Hippae flesh, had suggested improving their chances with weapons. So each of them had a lance plus a knife in a pocket. Armed or not, after one charge horses and riders would probably be fleeing for their lives. If they survived that long.