Sheri Tepper - Grass

Long Bridge stared at his feet, one nostril lifting. “We was going to have a try, sure. Why not? We didn’t see those whatever-they-are hanging around, so why not.”

“Did you think that was a…” she struggled to find a word he might understand, “a smart thing to do? A good thing to do? What?”

“What are you?” he sneered. “You work for Doctrine? It was something we wanted to do, that’s all.”

“Did you care how I felt about it?”

“Women like it, no matter what they say. Everybody knows that.”

She shuddered. “Were you going to kill me, then?”

“If we’d of felt like it, sure.”

“Do women like that, too?”

He looked momentarily confused, licking his lips.

“Wouldn’t it have bothered you? Killing me?”

Long Bridge did not answer. Steeplehands did. “We’d of been sorry, later, if we’d wanted you around and you was already dead,” he mumbled.

“I see,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have been sorry for me?”

“Why?” Long Bridge asked angrily. “Why should we be sorry for you? Where was you when we got packed up and sent out here? Where was you when they took us away from our folks?”

Marjorie received a new picture of the two prisoners being dropped from a high tree. She drew a line across it in her mind, though more slowly than before “What do all these foxen want, Brother Mainoa? What are they here for?”

“I think they want to see what you’ll do,” he answered.

Father James asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to figure something out,” she said. “I’m trying to decide whether we can afford to be merciful. The Arbai were merciful, but when confronted with evil, mercy becomes an evil. It got the Arbai killed, and it could get us killed because these two might simply come back and murder us. The question is, are they evil? If they are, it doesn’t matter how they got that way. Evil can be made, but not unmade…”

“Forgiveness is a virtue,” Father James said, realizing as he did so that the suggestion came from habit.

“No. That’s too easy. If we forgive these two, we may actually cause another killing.” She put her head between her hands, thinking. “Do we have the right to be fools if we want to? No. Not at someone else’s expense.”

He stared at her with a good deal of interest. “You’ve never spoken this way, Marjorie. Mercy is a tenet of our faith.”

“Only because you don’t think this life really matters. Father. God says it does.”

“Marjorie!” he cried. “That’s not true.”

“All right,” she cried in return. The sullen ache in her head was now a brooding violence inside her skull. “I don’t mean you, Father James, I mean you, what you priests usually say. I say this life matters, and that means mercy is doing the best for them I can without allowing anyone else to suffer, including me! I won’t make the Arbai mistake.”

“Marjorie,” he cried again, dismayed. He had had his own doubts and troubles, but to hear her talking wildly like this disturbed him deeply. She was almost violent, something she had never been, full of words that spilled from her mouth like grain from a ripped sack.

She turned to the imprisoned men. “I’m sorry. The only way I can see that we can be safe from you seems to be to allow the foxen to kill you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Lady,” cried Steeplehands in dismay. “Take us into Commons and turn us over to the order officers there. We can’t do nothing tied up like this.”

She held her head, knowing it was a bad idea, but not knowing why. It was a very bad idea. She was sure of it. Inside her mind was an enormous question, waiting to be answered.

Father James was shaking his head anxiously, pleading with her. “Mainoa did tie them up very tightly. And we have to go to Commons eventually anyhow. We can turn them over to the order officers. They’re probably no worse than half the port-rabble the order officers keep in check.”

Marjorie nodded, though she wasn’t convinced. This wasn’t a good idea at all. This wasn’t what a very small being should do. A very small being should scream danger and drop them from the highest tree..,.

The foxen nearest them twitched, brooding shadow, hatching visions. Light and shadow spun across their minds, stripes of evanescent color, jittering.

“He’s dissatisfied,” Brother Mainoa offered.

“So am I,” Marjorie said, her eyes wild with pain. “Listen to them. All of them. And only a few of them came forward to help us. Maybe they’re like I’ve always been. Full of intellectual guilts and doubts, letting things happen, paying no attention to how I feel.”

Her head was in agony. She received a picture of foxen traveling through the trees, going away. She drew a shiny circle around it in her mind. Yes. Why not? They might as well go away. “They’re going away. We must wait here for Rillibee,” she announced.

A cannon went off in her brain. She crawled to her bedding and lay down to let the quiet come up around her. Gradually the pain diminished. Outside in the trees, the foxen moved away. Pictures fled through her mind: their thoughts, their conversation. She let the symbols and sounds wash through her like waves, lulling her into a drowsy half-consciousness.

The sun had moved to midafternoon before they heard a “Halloo,” off in the shadows, low among the trees.

A foxen breathed among the trees, close, threatening.

“Halloo,” came the voice again, closer. The threat in the trees diminished.

Marjorie struggled to her feet and went out onto the platform. “Rillibee,” she called.

He came into sight below them, moving wearily among the vines. “You look tired out!” His bony face was pale. His eyes were circled with shadow, making them look enormous, like a night-dwelling creature.

“Long climb,” he mumbled. “Long, long climb.” He pulled himself upward, slowly upward, sliding over the railing at last in an exhausted heap. “Oh, I’m thankful for all that climbing at the Friary. All those spidery ladders, all those bridges…”

“What happened?” Brother Mainoa asked.

“Highbones tried to catch me. He couldn’t. I led him off into the forest, a long, long way. Then I hid from him, let him pass me, and came back. I’d have killed him if I could have figured out an easy way to do it. Bastard.”

Marjorie touched his cheek. “We can go now. Back to Commons.”

Rillibee shook his head. “No. Not yet. We need… we need the foxen. I’m sorry to have wasted so much time on Highbones, but I didn’t know what else to do except get them away from here. I thought they’d all come. Highbones usually likes to outnumber his opponents. But you managed to deal with the others.”

“One of the foxen did.”

“Ah.” He sagged wearily. “I have to tell you things, Marjorie. Opal Hill has been burned by the Hippae. There’s a Hippae-hound trail half a mile wide leading toward the swamp-forest. The ambassador, your husband, is at the hospital. He’s going to be all right, but it was a close thing. Stavenger bon Damfels is dead, him and a dozen or so bons. They’ve found the bon Damfels girl in there, at the port. Dimity. The one who vanished this spring, just like they found Janetta…

“Both of them were taken by Hippae,” Marjorie said in wonderment. “And both of them ended up at the port!”

Rillibee nodded. “Naked. Mindless. Everyone at Commons is frantic over it. Janetta and Dimity got in there somehow. They couldn’t come through the trees unless the foxen carried them. If the foxen didn’t carry them, then there’s some other way in. Has to be. And if girls can get in, maybe Hippae can get in. We have to find how they got there—”