by Grass(Lit)
Waiting near the car was Eric bon Haunser. "My brother has joined the Hunt," he explained. "Since I no longer ride, I have volunteered to go with you. Perhaps you will have questions I can answer." He moved somewhat awkwardly on his artificial legs, stopping at the door of the balloon-car to nod for Marjorie to enter first.
They rose to float silently over the Hunt, driven by silent propellers as they watched long miles flow by under the hooves of the mounts, longer and more tortuous miles run beneath the wider-ranging feet of the hounds. From the air the animals were only short, thick blotches superimposed on the texture of the grass, blotches which pulsated, becoming longer and shorter as legs extended or gathered for the next leap, mounts and hounds distinguishable from one another only by the presence of riders, the riders themselves reduced to mere excrescences, warts upon the pulsating lines. The hunters entered a copse, hidden from the air. After a time they emerged and ran off toward another copse. After a time, the Yrariers forgot what they were watching. They could as well have been observing ants. Or fish in a stream, Or water flowing, wind blowing. There was nothing individual in the movement of the beasts. Only the spots of red spoke of human involvement. Except for those dots of red, the animals might have been alone in their quest. Though occasionally the grass moved ahead of the mounts, the observers could not see whatever quarry the Hunt was chasing.
Marjorie tried to estimate how fast the animals below them were running. She thought it was not as fast as a horse would cover the same distance, though it might not be possible for horses to thrust through tall, thick grasses as the animals below were doing. She spent some time estimating whether horses could outrun the Hippae- deciding they might be able to do so on the flat, though not uphill- then wondered why she was thinking of horses at all.
At last they came to a final copse and hovered above it. Branches quivered. High upon the roof of the copse the fox crawled onto a twiggy platform, screaming defiance at the sky. Over the soft whir of the propellers, they heard him. All they really saw was an explosion of what might have been fur or scales or fangs, talons, a great shaking and scouring among the leaves, an impression of ferocity, of something huge and indomitable.
"Fox," Anthony muttered, his voice breaking. "Fox. That thing is the size of half a dozen tigers." His mother's hand silenced his words, though his mind went on nattering at him. Where it isn't toothy, it's bony. My God. Fox, Merciful Father, will they expect me to ride after that thing? I won't. Whatever they expect, I just won't!
Ride, Stella thought. I could ride the way they do. A horse is nothing to that. Nothing at all. I wonder if they'll let me...
Ride, thought Marjorie in a fever of abhorrence. That isn't riding. What they are doing. Something within her writhed in disgust and horror; she did not know what the people below her were doing, but it was not riding, not horsemanship. Suppose they want us to join their Hunt? She thought. At least one of us. I suppose there are teachers. Will we have to do this to be respected by them?
Ride, thought Rigo. To ride something like that! They will not think me a man unless I do, and their tribal egotism will try to keep me out. How? We are being treated as mere tourists, not as residents. I won't have it! Damn Sanctity. Damn Uncle Carlos. Damn Sender O'Neil. Damn him and damn him."
"The whole of Grass is horse-mad," Sender O'Neil had said. "Horse-mad and class-conscious. The Hierarch, your uncle, suggested you for the mission. You and your family are the best candidates we have."
"The best candidates you have for what?" Rigo had asked. "And why the devil should we care?" The invocation of old Uncle Carlos was doing nothing to make him more polite, though it had made him slightly curious.
"The best candidate to be accepted by the aristocrats on Grass. As for why..." The man had licked his lips again, this time nervously. He had been about to say words which were not said, not by anyone in Sanctity. So far as Sanctity was concerned, the words were impossible to say. "The plague," he had whispered.
Roderigo had been silent. The acolyte had prepared him for this, at least. He was angry but not surprised.
Sender had shaken his head, waved his hands, palms out, warding away the anger he felt coming from Rigo "All right. Sanctity doesn't admit the plague exists, but we have reason to keep silent. Even the Hierarch, your uncle, he agreed. Every society mankind has built will fall apart the minute we admit it and start talking about it."
''You can't be certain of that!"
"The machines say so. Every computer model they try says so. Because there's no hope. No cure. No hope for a cure. No means of prevention. We have the virus, but we haven't found any way to make our immune systems manufacture antibodies. We don't even know where it's coming from. We have nothing. The machines advise us that if we tell people... well, it will be the end."
"The end of Sanctity? Why should I care about that?"
"Not Sanctity, man! The end of civilization. The end of mankind. The mortality rate is one hundred percent! Your family will die. Mine. All of us. It isn't just Sanctity. It's the end of the human race. It's you as much as me!"
Rigo, shocked into awareness by the man's vehemence, asked, "What makes you think there's an answer on Grass?"
"Something. Maybe only rumor, only fairy tales. Maybe only wishful thinking. Maybe like the fabled cities of gold or the unicorn or the philosopher's stone..."
"But maybe?"
"Maybe something real. According to our temple on Semling, there is no plague at all on Grass."
"There's none here on Terra!"
"Oh, Lord, man if that were only true! There's none here that anyone is allowed to see. But I've seen it." The man wiped his face again, eyes brimming with sudden tears, and his jaw clenched as though he were holding down bile that threatened to flood his throat. "I've seen it. Men. Animals. It's everywhere. I'll show it to you, if you like."
Roderigo had already seen plague. He hadn't known it was on Terra or that it afflicted animals, but he, too, had seen it. He waved the offer aside, concentrating. "But there's none on Grass? Perhaps it's only hidden, as you do here."
"Our people don't think they could be hiding it. The Grassians seem to have no structure to hide it. Funny kind of place. But if there's none there..."
"What you're implying is that it's the only place where there is none. Are you saying there is plague everywhere else?"
Sender, pallid and sweating, nodded and then whispered, "We have at least one temple on virtually every occupied world. In the few places where there's no temple, there's at least a mission. We are responsible for hiding what's happening, so yes, we know where plague is. It is everywhere,"
Rigo flushed with sudden fury. "Well then, for the sake of heaven, why aren't the scientists and researchers on the way there! Why come to me?"
"The aristocrats who run the place won't give permission for scientists and researchers to visit the planet. Oh, we could send our people into the port town, yes. Place is called Commoner Town. It's open to visitors. But there's no such thing as immigration. They'd get a visitor's permit, good until the next ship came through headed in the right direction. We've already done that a few times. Our people can't find out anything. Not there in the port. And do you think they can get anywhere else on Grass? Not on your life. Not on anyone's. Sanctity has no power on the planet."
Rigo stared, frankly unbelieving. "You really have no mission there?"
'The only contact Sanctity has with Grass is through the penitential encampment working on the Arbai ruins. Not all our acolytes work out. It won't do to send them home to teach other unwilling boys how to get out of their service. So we send them to Grass. Our encampment was already there when the Grassians arrived. The Green Brothers. So named because of the robes they wear. There must be over a thousand of them, but they have virtually no contact with the aristocrats. Over a hundred years ago the Hierarch ordered them to develop some interest they could use as common ground with the Grassians, but there really is no common ground."
"Trying to mak
e your penitents into more of your damn missionaries," snarled Rigo.
O'Neil wiped his brow. "Oh, I won't deny that's what the man in charge of Acceptable Doctrine would like. His name's Jhamlees Zoe, and he gets madder than a teased bull about our not converting the planet to Sanctity, by force if necessary. The Hierarch sends him word to calm down or come home, and it only makes him madder," O'Neil wiped his forehead where the sweat glistened.
"What did the brothers do to develop ties with the aristocrats?"
"They took up gardening." O'Neil laughed harshly. "Gardening! They've become specialists in that. Oh, they've become renowned for that. So well known even Jhamlees didn't dare put a stop to it. But that still doesn't give them any day-to-day contact with the rest of the planet, not enough to learn anything. And the damned aristos won't let us in!"
"Not even when you told them..."
"The Grassians aren't suffering. We've tried to describe to them what's happening, but they don't seem to care. They were separatists to begin with, more concerned with maintaining the privileges of their rank than with any human concerns. Lesser nobility. Or perhaps merely pretenders at nobility. European, mostly, and ridiculously proud of their noble blood, full of pretensions about it. That's why they've consistently refused permission for a temple or a mission. Ten generations on Grass has only made them more isolationist, more... more strange It's like they've had iron walls built in their heads! They refuse to be studied. They refuse to be proselytized. They refuse to be visited! Except, maybe, by someone like you....
"Sanctity has a navy." Rigo said it as fact. He disapproved of that fact, but it was true. Planetary governments were isolated and parochial and content to be so, Once the initial explosive overflow of humanity had taken place, Sanctity had done everything it could to stop further exploration. The faith had not wanted men to be so widespread they couldn't be evangelized and controlled. Discovery had stopped, along with science and art and invention. Though its military technology was centuries old, Sanctity maintained the only interstellar force.
Sender O'Neil sighed deeply. "It's been considered. If we take troopers in there, the reason couldn't be kept secret, not for long. All hell would break loose. We can't even consider it until we know for sure that there's something there. Please. Whatever you think of us, give us credit for some intelligence! We've computer-modeled everything. Our best people have done it over and over again. News of the plague and use of force would be equally disastrous! Have you heard of the Moldies?"
"Some kind of end-of-the-world sect, aren't they?"
"End of the universe, more likely. But yes, they fervently desire the end of the world, the human world. They call themselves the Martyrs of the Last Days. They believe the time has come to end all human life. They believe in an afterlife which will only commence when this one has ended, for everyone. We've recently learned that the Moldies are 'helping' the plague."
"My God!"
"Yes. Anyone's God!"
"How?"
"Carrying infected materials from one place to another. Like the ancient anarchists, destroying so that something better can come."
"What has this to do with-"
"It has this to do with. All Sanctity's resources are tied up in tracking and expunging the Moldies. They seem to be everywhere, to breed out of nothing. If they heard... if they knew there was a chance that Grass-"
"They'd go there?"
"They'd wreck whatever slim chance there may be. No, whatever we do, it must be covert, quiet, without drawing any notice. According to the computers, we've got five to seven years in which to act. After that, the plague may have gone so far that-Well. The Grassians have said they'll accept an ambassador."
"I see." And he had seen. The Grassians would consent to a delaying action. Enough to make Sanctity eschew any ideas of using force, but not enough to seriously inconvenience anyone on Grass.
"You say they ride?" Rigo had asked Sender O'Neil, trying to change the pictures of doom and destruction which had swarmed into his mind. "You say they ride? Did they take horses, hounds, and foxes with them when they settled there?"
"No. They found indigenous variants upon the theme." O'Neil had licked his pursy lips, liking this phrase and repeating it. "Indigenous variants."
Indigenous variants, Rigo thought now as he sat in a balloon-car poised above a copse of great trees on Grass and saw the thing called fox climb into view. He could not see it clearly. He did not glance at his family, though he felt the strain of their silence. He stared down, unconscious for the moment of the need to hide his feelings, and repeated O'Neil's phrase. "Indigenous variants." He said it aloud, not realizing he had spoken. When Eric bon Haunser looked at him inquiringly he blurted, without meaning to, "I'm afraid it is utterly unlike our foxes at home."
The huge, amorphous creature was pulled struggling from the crown of the copse while bon Haunser described what was probably taking place below the trees. He spoke openly, almost offhandedly, carefully ignoring their reaction to the sight of the thing.
When they had returned partway to Klive, Rigo recovered himself sufficiently to say, "You seem very objective about all this. Forgive me, but your brother seemed... how can I describe it? Embarrassed? Defensive?"
"I don't ride any longer." said Eric, flushing. "My legs. A hunting accident. Those of us who don't ride-some of us at least-we become less enthusiastic." He said this diffidently, as though he were not quite sure of it, and he did not offer to explain what it was about the Hunt that made the current riders unwilling to talk about it. Each of the Yrariers had his or her own ideas about the matter, ideas which they incubated as they sailed silently over the prairies, in time each achieving an imperiled calm.
They arrived back at Klive before the riders did and were met, though scarcely welcomed, by Rowena. She escorted them to a large reception room overlooking the first surface, where she introduced them to the gaggle of pregnant women and children and older men who were eating, drinking, and playing games at scattered tables. She encouraged the Yrariers to tell the servants what they wanted to drink and serve themselves from the laden buffet, then she drifted away. Eric bon Haunser joined them. Very shortly thereafter a horn blew outside the western gate and the riders began to trickle in. Most went immediately to bathe and change their clothing, but a few came into the room, obviously famished.
Eric murmured, 'They have drunk nothing for twelve hours before the Hunt except the palliative offered before the Hounds come in. Once the Hunt has begun, there is no opportunity to relieve oneself."
"Most uncomfortable," Marjorie mused, lost in recollection of the sharp implacable spines on the necks of the mounts. "Is it really worth it?"
He shook his head. "I am no philosopher, Lady Westriding. If you were to ask my brother, he would say yes. If you ask me, I may say yes or no. But then, he rides and I don't."
"I ride," said a voice from behind them. "But I say no."
Marjorie turned to confront the owner of the voice, tall, broad-shouldered, not greatly younger than herself, dressed in stained trousers and red coat, his hunting cap under his arm and a full glass held to his lips. She saw that those lips trembled, though so slightly she doubted anyone but herself would have noticed.
"Forgive me," he said. "I'm excessively thirsty." His lips tightened upon the rim of the glass, making it quiver. Something held him in the grip of emotion, slurring his words.
"I can imagine that you are thirsty," she said. "We met this morning, didn't we? You look quite different in your... in your hunting clothes."
"I am Sylvan bon Damfels," he said with a slight bow. "We did meet, yes. I am the younger son of Stavenger and Rowena bon Damfels."
Stella was standing with Rigo across the room. She saw Sylvan talking to her mother; her expression changed, and she moved toward the two of them, her eyes fixed on Sylvan as she came. There were other bows, other murmurs of introduction. Eric bon Haunser stepped away, leaving Marjorie and the children with Sylvan,
"Yo
u say no," Marjorie prompted him. "No, that riding isn't worth it, even though you ride?"
"I do," he said, coloring along his cheekbones, his eyes flicking around the room to see who might be listening, the cords of his throat standing out as though he struggled to speak at all. "To you, madam, and to you, miss and sir, I say it. With the understanding that you will not quote me to any member of my family, or to any other of the bons." He panted.
"Certainly." Anthony was still very pale, as he had been since he saw the fox-or foxen, as most of the Grassians called the beast, meaning one or a dozen-but he had regained his poise. "If you wish it. You have our promise."
"I say it because you may be asked to ride. Invited, as it were. I had thought it impossible until I met your husband. Now I still consider it unlikely, but it could happen. If it does, I caution you, do not accept." He looked them each in the eye, fully, as though seeking their inmost parts, then bowed again and left them, rubbing his throat as though it hurt him.
