Sheri Tepper - Grass

Sylvan had vanished. Where he had been was nothing, no movement. Marjorie screamed in anger and pain, tears streaking her face. “I’ll begin by burning the swamp forest. It won’t burn easily, but we’ll do it somehow. Then the grasses, all of them. That will take care of the plague and the Hippae. There’ll be no more Hippae.”

“What about us?” voices cried.

“What about you?” she snarled. “If you’re no help, you’re no help. You don’t care about us. Why should we care about you?”

A whine. A snarl. A slap, as from one being to another being. Then, suddenly, there was something behind Millefiori, rising to confront the approaching. Hippae Mauve and plum and purple, a lash of tail and ripple of shoulders, a moving mirage of trembling air.

“If He has to do it alone,” Marjorie cried, “I’ll still burn the forest, even if I have to do it by myself.”

“The ones behind us are gaining,” Tony called. “Blue Star’s exhausted.”

“We’re all exhausted,” she cried, tears running down her face. Where Sylvan had been was a tumult of beasts. “Turn more toward the road.” She looked behind her, then up at the sun. They’d been running for well over an hour. Perhaps two. Thirty miles, more or less, all of it over rough ground and a lot of it uphill. With another twelve or fifteen miles to cover before they got back to the gate. “If I die out here,” she threatened, “my family will burn the forest, I swear to God they will.”

“What’s going on down there?” cried Tony. “The Hippae have stopped.”

They had stopped. Stopped, turned, were running away. Not back the way they had come, unfortunately. Uphill. Toward Marjorie. “Foxen,” Marjorie cried. “Not quite where I would have wanted them, but better than nothing, I suppose.”

She was trying to feel philosphical about dying, not managing it, trying not be frightened, and not managing that, either. “Tony, we have to take out the two behind us before those others reach us.”

He turned a stricken face upon her.

“We have to! If the other four reach us first, we’ll have them all around us.”

He nodded, biting his lip. She saw blood there, the only color in his face.

“Turn on your lance.”

He’d forgotten about it. He thumbed it on. looking at the humming blade almost as though hypnotized.

“Tony! Pay attention.” She motioned, showing him how she wanted him to circle — the two of them wide, in opposite directions, coming back to hit the wounded Hippae from both sides.

They broke from one another, circled tightly, and were running back toward the pursuing monsters before the Hippae understood what was happening. Then they, too, broke, one headed for each of the horses. Marjorie tried to forget about her son, concentrate on what she was doing. Lance well out in front, the blaze of its blade apparent even in the light of day.

There was a roar above her. She looked up to see Asmir Tanlig and Roald Few beckoning from an aircar, screaming at her. She lip-read. “We’ll pick you up, pick you up.”

Leave Quixote and Blue Star to face these beasts alone! She shook her head, waved them off. no. Only when the car rose did she realize what she had done. Oh, God, how silly. How silly. And yet…

The Hippae was before her, circling just out of reach, darting forward, then back. He could maneuver more quickly than Quixote could. Quixote kept his head toward the beast, dancing, as though he wore ballet shoes, as though he stood on tiptoe. Behind her she heard Tony yell. She didn’t dare look. Again dance, dance. Then Quixote charged. She hadn’t signaled him to do it. He simply did it. There was an opening, the lance found it, and they were dancing away again while the Hippae sagged before them, yammering at the sky, its neck half cut through.

Five, her mind exulted as she tried to find Tony. Five. Six was standing over her son while Blue Star fled toward the distant gate as though she knew where it was, as though she had been told it meant safety. Great jaws wide, the crouching Hippae howled at the boy, ready to take off his face in one huge bite. Quixote raced forward, screaming…

There was a furry blur on the Hippae’s back. Another between the jaws and the boy. Another at its haunches, clawing at it. Three foxen. The screaming battle tumbled to one side and rolled toward the hill. Tony lay still.

She dismounted and struggled to get him onto Quixote’s back. The horse knelt to receive him, again without a signal to do so. Then Marjorie was up once more, holding her son before her, and they were running the way Blue Star had gone. Not really running. Moving, at least.

Down the hill, other foxen had taken on the other Hippae. Rowena was just behind Rigo. Millefiori came behind, limping badly.

“Now,” thought Marjorie. “Now bring out your damned aircar or airtruck or what-have-you. Now.”

And it was there, only a short distance from them all, with Persun Pollut driving it and Sebastian Mechanic dropping out a ramp for the horses.

“I knew you wouldn’t leave the horses,” Persun called as they came aboard. “I told Asmir you wouldn’t, but Roald said you wouldn’t be that silly.”

Silly, she said to herself. Silly. As though that were the answer to a problem that had bothered her for a very long time. In her mind she sensed an enormous, unqualified approval.

Headquarters had been set up in the order station under James Jellico’s watchful eye. A dozen eager volunteers offered to rub down the horses. Aside from Millefiori’s bad leg they seemed to be all right. In one corner Dr. Bergrem was looking at Rowena with an expression of concern. Rowena had broken something in that fall. Her shoulder, maybe. Something inside her had broken as well. She sat still and white-faced, unresponsive. When Marjorie went to her, she was whispering Sylvan’s name, over and over.

“We found him,” Marjorie said. “We went out and found him, Rowena.”

“What?” she asked. “How?”

“He’s dead, Rowena. The fall broke his neck. They didn’t touch him.”

“He’s not… oh, he’s not—”

“No, Rowena,” she cried. “He’s not. We brought his body back to be buried.”

She returned to Tony, who was sitting white-faced in a corner, slowly coming to himself. Beyond him she saw Brother Mainoa seated at the tell-me. Marjorie fumbled awkwardly at her pocket flap with hands that seemed frozen from their long grip upon lance and reins.

Her fingers were made of wood. Eventually she got the pocket open and the letter out.

She laid it before Brother Mainoa. “I think this should be sent to Semling,” she said.

He read it, his face turning gray as the sense of it reached him. “Ah… ah,” he murmured. “Ah, yes… but—”

“But?”

He rubbed his forehead, started to speak, stopped to think again. “If you spread this around now, there will be panic, rebellions, riots. Then, if we find a cure, the authorities will be so occupied with maintaining order, they won’t be able to disseminate the cure. This letter shouldn’t be made public until there’s a cure, Marjorie.”

“All right,” she agreed. “But I’m concerned that it might not get out at all if we wait. Who knows what those—”

“Devils,” he offered. “Sanctified devils. The Hierarch and his retinue.”

“It’s your faith. I didn’t want to…”

“It’s what I was born to,” he admitted. “What I was given to. That’s not the same thing. No. This was written by someone unworthy of any faith, Marjorie.”

She threw up her hands. “You know what I’m saying, Brother. What’s-his-name, Zoe, may miss this letter at any time. May come looking for it. May take steps to stop its getting out.”