Sheri Tepper - Grass

Persun Pollut, Sebastian Mechanic, and Roald Few took the Seraph’s listening devices out into the meadows north of town to set them up. They were simple enough to install: slender tubes to be driven into the ground with a mechanical driver, long, whiskery devices to be dropped into the tubes, and transmitters to be screwed onto the tops.

“Foolproof,” the Seraph had told them “As they must be if inexperienced troopers are to use them. A-B-C. Pound it in, drop it in, screw it on.”

Foolproof they might be. In the aggregate, heavy they also were. The men used an aircar to transport the dozen sets and the bulky driver that went with them. They started at the western end of the proposed arc, setting each device and then moving northward, parallel to the curve of the forest. Most of the day had passed by the time seven of the gadgets were in place, and they were bending the arc toward the east when Persun shaded his eyes with his arm and said, “Somebody in trouble up there.”

When they stopped working, they could all hear it: the stutter of an engine, start and stop, the pauses like those in the breath of someone dying — so long between sounds one was sure no other sound would come — only to catch again into life.

Then they saw it, an aircar coming toward them, scarcely above the forest. It jerked and wobbled, approaching by fits and starts. When it had barely cleared the trees it fell, caught itself, then dropped, coming down hard midway between them and the swamp, not a hundred yards away.

Persun set out toward it at a run, with Sebastian close behind. Roald followed them more slowly. At first there was no sign of life in the fallen car, but then the door opened with a scream of tortured metal and a Green Brother emerged dazedly, holding his head. Others followed: six, eight, a dozen of them. They sank to the ground by the car, obviously exhausted.

Persun was the first to reach them. “My name’s Pollut,” he said. “We can get some cars out here to pick you up, since yours seems to be disabled.”

The oldest among them struggled to his feet and held out an age-spotted hand. “I’m Elder Brother Laeroa. We stayed out near the Friary thinking we could pick up survivors. Obviously, we stayed too long. Our fuel was barely enough.”

“I’m surprised to see any of you,” Sebastian said. “The place was pretty well wiped out.”

Laeroa wiped his face with trembling fingers. “When we heard of the attack on Opal Hill and the estancias, we suggested to Elder Brother Jhamlees Zoe that he evacuate the Friary. He said the Hippae had no quarrel with the Brothers. I tried to tell him the Hippae needed no excuse to kill.” He tottered on his feet, and one of his fellows came forward to offer an arm. After a moment he went on in his precise voice, as though he spoke from a pulpit. “Zoe was always impatient with argument and impervious to reason. So these Brothers and I started sleeping in the aircar.”

“You were in the car when the Hippae struck?”

“We were in the car when the fires started,” said one of the younger Brothers. “We took off and went out into the grass a ways, thinking we’d pick up survivors later. I don’t know how many days we’ve been out there, but we only found one man.”

“We picked up a couple dozen of your people,” Sebastian Mechanic said to them. “Young fellahs, most of ’em. They were wandering around pretty far out in the grass. There may be more. We been going out there every day to look. The Hippae aren’t around there anymore. They’re all around the swamp forest now.”

“They can’t get through, can they?” asked one of the men, obviously the one man the Brothers had rescued. His face was very pale and he carried what was left of one arm in a sling.

“Not so far as we know,” said Sebastian, wanting to be comforting. “And if they did, we’ve got heavy doors down in the winter quarters and people down there already making weapons for us to use.”

“Weapons,” breathed one of the Brothers. “I had hoped—”

“You’d hoped we could talk to them?” asked Elder Brother Laeroa bitterly. “Forget it Brother. I know you worked for the office of Doctrine, but forget it. I’m sure Jhamlees Zoe still retained his hope of converting the Hippae up to the moment they killed him He’s hoped for that ever since he came to Grass, no matter how many times we told him it would be like trying to convert tigers to vegetarianism.” Sebastian nodded agreement as he said, “lust be thankful the Hippae don’t have claws like Terran tigers do. Otherwise, they’d be able to climb and we couldn’t get away from ’em. Now, you start on up the slope there. I’ll get on the tell-me and have somebody come pick you up.”

The Brothers got wearily to their feet and started up the long meadow in a shuffling line. When Sebastian and Persun had seen that all of them could walk, they went to listen outside the car while Roald messaged for help.

“On their way,” Roald said at last.

“Good,” Sebastian murmured. “Some of ’em look like they couldn’t walk more than a hundred yards or so.”

“Thirty some-odd brothers left out of a thousand,” Persun commented, as he went to install the next device.

“One thing we can be grateful for,” the other replied. “There’s nothin’ left of the other nine hundred and some-odd to bury.” He paused beside the mechanical driver. “Have you noticed how quiet it is?”

The two men stood looking around them. “The noise of the tube driver,” Persun said. “It’s frightened everything.”

“The driver isn’t that noisy. And we haven’t been using it for the past little while.”

“The noise of that aircar, then.”

The silence persisted. The swamp forest, usually full of small croakings and rattles, the call of flick birds, the cry of leaf dwellers, was silent.

“Eerie,” whispered Persun. “Something wrong. I can feel it.” He started back toward the aircar, feeling in his pocket for his knife. Behind him Sebastian moaned.

A head peered sightlessly at them from the edge of the trees. Blank eyes glared in their direction. Above the eyes, flesh was torn to expose the bone, which gleamed moistly white. The head wobbled on its neck, rising into view, shoulders, arms, then the hideous Hippae maw below. A rider on a mount! A rider dead or so nearly dead as made no difference. The corpselike mouth opened to emit a screaming rattle, and with that sound the edge of the forest erupted into life. They burst into the open across a wide front, both riders and mounts screaming hate, defiance, death, and dismemberment. Persun turned back to grab Sebastian, who stood as one hypnotized.

Sebastian’s only thought, before his body was ripped apart, was that their morning’s labor had been too late.

Persun backed toward the aircar and swung the knife, a scream choked back, there had been another tunnel to the north. Teeth like razors raked his knife arm. His weapon clattered onto a rock. He clenched his jaw, readying himself for the final pain, his eyes staring into the blind dead eyes of the rider above him.

Something forced its way between him and the Hippae teeth. The aircar was hovering low beside him; Roald was shrieking at him. Hippae teeth darted toward him, then away. He threw himself backward into the open car, seeing, as he did so, that other cars hovered beside the pathetic line of green-robed Brothers, some staggering as they fled, some cut down and dead, some making it to the refuge of the cars, while all around them the Hippae howled and rampaged, their riders jerking and twitching as though they had been tied in position.

Persun tried not to look at what was left of Sebastian as they rose higher. Blood was dripping from his motionless fingers. His head was half out the aircar door. Packs of Hippae and hounds were already moving toward the town. Roald was screaming into the tell-me. Persun saw a Brother snapped in half. Others were shouting. All he could think of was that his fingers did not move. His carving fingers did not move. Beside him Roald cried out at something he saw, but Persun did not turn. His fingers did not move, and he thought it might have been better to have died.