Sheri Tepper - Grass

by Grass(Lit)

  Inside that hall a shadowed emptiness was supported by pillars of rubbly stone, stones uncovered when the caverns were dug, each stone mortared into place with the adhesive which resulted from mixing migerer shit and earth. Marvelous creatures, the migerers-builders, almost engineers, certainly cave makers of no small talent who made similar, though smaller, caverns for themselves, each cavern linked to others by miles of winding tunnels.

  In this great hall they blinked their squinty eyes, deep-pocketed in indigo fur, and chirped to one another in flute tones as they plodded across the cavern, scraping the high places into the low with urgent flat-edged claws, stamping the loose dirt down with the hard pads on their industrious hind feet.

  A Hippae came into the cavern, striding on great tripartite hooves across the smoothed floor, quartering the cave again and again, nodding approval with his monstrous head, the teeth showing slightly where the lips drew back in a half snarl, the razorlike neck barbs making a dissonant clash as the beast tossed its head and bellowed at the ceiling.

  The migerers affected not to notice, perhaps really did not notice. Nothing changed in their behavior. They still darted about under the very hooves of the prancing monster, scraping, packing, filling their furry pockets, and darting away into the grasses to dispose of this evidence of industry. Only when they were finished, when the floor was as smooth as their instinctive skills could make it, did they desist and fall to grooming round bellies and small tough feet, combing whiskers with curved ivory claws, blinking in the half light of the entrance slits. Then a whistle, a plaint on the wind as from some bird calling in mild distress, and they were gone, away, vanished in the grasses as though they had never been. In the cavern behind them the Hippae continued its slow parade, bellowing now and again to make the cavern ring, alone in majesty surveying and approving the work which had been done.

  A second monster called in response, entering the cavern to begin a quartering of its own. Then came a third and fourth, then many, prancing in intricate patterns upon the cavern floor, interweaving and paralleling, twos and fours and sixes becoming twelves and eighteens, the files of them turning and braiding in complicated design, hooves falling as precisely as artisans' hammers into the tracks themselves had made.

  Not far off, in Opal Hill village. Dulia Mechanic turned restlessly on her bed, half wakened by the subterranean thunder. "What, what's that?" she murmured, still mostly asleep.

  "The Hippae are dancing," said her young husband Sebastian Mechanic, wide awake, for he had been listening to the rhythmic surge for an hour or more while she had breathed quietly beside him. "Dancing," he reasserted, not sure whether he believed it or not. Besides, he had something else on his mind.

  "How do you know? Everyone says that, but how do you know?" she whined, still not awake.

  "Someone saw them, I suppose," he said, wondering for the first time how that particular someone had seen what he claimed he had seen. Sebastian himself would rather face certain death than sneak around in the tall grasses, spying on Hippae. Without identifying the source, he murmured, "Someone, a long time ago," and went back to thinking what he had been thinking of for a long time now, about those at Opal Hill.

  Out in the night, in the cavern where all the thunder came from, the Hippae moved their anfractuous quadrille along to its culmination.

  Suddenly, without any sense of climax, it was over. The Hippae left the cavern as they had entered it, by ones and twos, leaving a pattern intricate and detailed as a tapestry trampled deep into the floor behind them. To them who made it, it had meaning, a meaning otherwise expressible only by a long sequence of twitches of hide and particular blinks of eye. The ancient Hippae language of gesture and quiver and almost undetectable movement was useless for this particular purpose, but the Hippae know another language as well. In the other language, learned long ago from another race, this design stamped deep into their cavern floor was their way of writing-and thereby giving notice of-a certain inexorable word.

  In the stables at Opal Hill, the horses were awake, listening as they had listened many nights, most nights, since they had come to Grass. Millefiori whickered to the stallion, Don Quixote, and he in turn to Irish Lass next to him, the whispering rattle running down the length of the stalls and then back again, like a roll-taking. "Here," each seemed to say. "Still here. Nothing yet."

  But there was something. Something they had begun to be more than remotely aware of. One of those shadows one shies at, one of those bridges one will not walk over. A thing like that, full of menace, which the riders usually do not understand. Most of them. The woman, she understood. She always understood. If there was a thing like that, she never insisted. Never. And in return, each gave her total trust. When she rode them at the high fence, the fence one could not see over, with no knowledge at all of what might be beyond, each one trusted that she would bring them safely down on the other side. They knew it as trust. She would not betray them, not one of them.

  Not that they thought in words. They did not have the words. It was more an understanding of the way things were. The rewards, the threats. That thing out there on the ridge that day. This noise, moving in the night, this noise that tried to crawl into ears, into heads, to take over everything. These were threats.

  But there was something else abroad in the night, and that... that was something they could not identify as either a threat or a reward. It fought against the horrid noise; it kept the insinuating thoughts away. And yet, it came no closer, it offered no hay, it stroked no necks. It was simply there, like a breathing wall, a thing they did not understand at all.

  So the whicker ran, left to right, then back again. "Here. Still here. All right. Still alive. Nothing..."

  "Nothing yet."

  Jandra Jellico did as she had threatened and went over to Portside in her half-person to visit with Ducky Johns. She'd met Ducky before and quite liked her, despite the business she was in, which Jandra didn't altogether approve of. Pleasure was pleasure, had been for ages, and people would seek it out. Some of the ways they sought it, though, in Jandra's opinion, were not quite tasteful.

  Still, she made nothing of that as she sat in Ducky Johns' private parlor, sipping tea and staring at the girl who sat on the carpet, humming to herself. Itself. Whatever. When the girl got an itch, up came the skirt and the hand scratched, wherever the itch might be. No inhibitions at all, no more than a cat, licking itself where it needed it.

  "My, my," Jandra said. "You can't keep her here, Ducky."

  "Well, and who wanted to?" Ducky sulked, waving her tiny hands in circles to express innocent annoyance. "It was Jelly, your own Jelly, made me bring her back here. She's useless to me, dear. Can't sell her. Who'd want her? Needs to be trained before she's any use at all."

  "Does she potty?" Jandra wanted to know.

  "Except for eating, that's all she does, but potty she does. Like my wallo-pup, whines when she needs to go."

  "Have you tried-"

  "Haven't tried anything at all. No time. This business keeps me at it, day on day. No time for fooling with that!" The little hands waved again, then folded themselves into an obdurate lump buried deep in Ducky's lap. "Tell me you'll take her away, Jandra. Do say so. Anyone else, your Jelly would argue."

  "Oh, I'll take her," Jandra agreed. "Or send for her, rather. But it's, the strangest thing. The very strangest thing. Where'd she come from?"

  "Wouldn't we like to know that, my dear? Wouldn't we all?"

  Jandra sent for the girl that afternoon. Thereafter she spent a good part of several days teaching the girl to keep her skirts down and to eat with her fingers instead of burying her face in the food and to go potty by herself without whining. When she'd done that much, she called Kinny Few on the tell-me and invited her over, and the two of them sipped tea and nibbled at Kinny's seed cakes while they watched the girl playing with a ball on the floor.

  "I thought you might know who she is," Jandra said. "Or who she was. Surely she hasn't always been like this."<
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  Kinny thought hard about it. There was something in the tilt of the girl's head that reminded her of someone, but she couldn't say who. No one in Commons, that was certain. "She must have come in on a ship," she offered, having already been told that this was impossible. "Must have."

  "I keep thinking so, too," Jandra agreed. "But Jelly says no. She was just there, on Ducky Johns' back porch, and that's it. Like she hatched there. No more memory than an egg."

  "What are you going to do with her?" Kinny wanted to know.

  Jandra shrugged. "See if I can find her a home, I guess. Pretty soon, too. Jelly's losing patience, having her around."

  Actually, it was not Jelly's patience he was in danger of losing. Devotedly fond of Jandra though he was (and they two with an understanding about fidelity), the proximity of the girl's body, lovely and uninhibited as some half-tamed beast, was leading him to worrisome desires.

  "A week," he told Jandra. "I'll give you a week." He thought he'd probably be able to control himself at least that long.

  Rigo was determined to have a diplomatic reception. He was much encouraged in this by Eugenie, who was tired of the company of Opal Hill but who had no status which would allow her to go elsewhere. She could not even go to the Hunts. After the bon Damfels' Hunt the Yrariers had observed three other Hunts; twice as a family, once with Fathers Sandoval and James along as guests. It was quite enough, as Tony said, to know that they were all alike. They had declined to observe more, and by doing so had confirmed the bons' prejudice about them. By that time, however, Rigo had other things to think about. Some of the furnishings for the summer quarters had arrived along with Roald Few. who promised that everything would be completed in two weeks' time.

  "Draperies, rugs, furnishings, image projectors for the walls-everything. Everything elegant and of the highest quality."

  "Rigo wants to have a reception for the bons," Marjorie told him.

  "Hmmph," snorted Persun Pollut.

  "Now, Pers," chided Roald. "The ambassador doesn't know. During Hunt season, Lady Westriding, he's unlikely to get anybody but second leaders and lower. People who don't ride. Those who ride wouldn't even consider coming, don't you see?"

  "We'd get Eric bon Haunser but not the Obermun?"

  "That's right. You'd get nobody at all from the bon Damfels' except Figor. Obermum won't go anywhere Obermun doesn't. That isn't done. All the rest of the family rides, what's left of it."

  Marjorie stared at him, evaluating the open countenance before her. The man seemed without guile, and thus far he had treated her fairly. "I need information," she said at last in a very quiet voice.

  Roald dropped his own voice to a confidential level. "I am at your service, Lady Westriding."

  "The bon Damfels were in mourning when we were there."

  "Yes."

  "They'd lost a daughter. In a hunting accident. Eric bon Haunser has lost his legs, also, so he said, in a hunting accident. When I looked about me after that first Hunt I saw more biotic appendages than I would have seen in a year at home. I would like to understand these accidents."

  "Ah. Well." Roald shuffled his feet.

  "There are various kinds of accidents," offered Persun in his soft, dry lecturer's voice. "There is falling off. There is getting oneself skewered. There is offending a hound. And there is vanishment." He said this last almost in a whisper, and Roald nodded agreement

  "So we understand, Lady. The servants at the estancias are kinfolk of ours. They see things; they overhear things; they tell us. We put two and two together to make forty-four, when we must."

  "Falling off?" she asked. Riders fell off all the time. Rarely was it fatal.

  "Followed by trampling. If a rider falls off, he or she is trampled into the grasses. Until nothing is left, you understand."

  Marjorie nodded, feeling sick.

  "If you've seen a Hunt, you've seen how a rider might get skewered. It doesn't happen often, surprisingly. The young ones ride simulators for days at a time, learning to stay out of the way of those horny blades. But still, once in a while someone faints or a mount stops too suddenly and the rider falls forward."

  Marjorie wiped her mouth, tasting bile.

  "Offending a hound usually results in the hunter having an arm or leg or hand or foot or two bitten off when he dismounts at the end of the Hunt."

  "Offending...?"

  "Don't ask us, Lady," replied Persun. "There aren't any hounds in Commons. They can't get into town, and nobody with any sense goes far out into the grasses where hounds're likely to be. Close to the villages is fine, no hounds there, but farther out... those that go don't come back. We really don't know what would offend a hound. So far as we can tell, the bons don't know either"

  "And vanishment?"

  "Just that. Somebody starts out on the Hunt and doesn't come back. The mount disappears, too. Usually a young rider it happens to. Girls, usually. Rarely, a boy."

  "Someone at the rear of the Hunt," she said in sudden comprehension. "So the others wouldn't notice?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened to the bon Damfels girl?"

  "Same as happened to Janetta bon Maukerden last fall, her that Shevlok bon Damfels was so set on. Vanishment. The way I know is, my brother Canon is married to a woman who's got a cousin, Salla, and she's a maid at the bon Damfels. Practically raised Dimity from a baby. Last fall Dimity thought a hound was watching her, and she told Rowena. Next time out, same thing. Rowena and Stavenger had a set-to, and Rowena kept the girl from riding any more Hunts that season. This spring, Stavenger took a hand and made the girl go out again First spring Hunt! Poof, she was gone"

  "Dimity, did you say? How old was she?"

  "Diamante bon Damfels. Stavenger and Rowena's youngest. Somewhere around seventeen in Terran terms."

  "The bon Damfels had five children?"

  "They had seven, Lady. They lost two others when they were young riders. Trampled, I think. I'm sorry not to remember their names. Now it's just Amethyste and Emeraude and Shevlok and Sylvan."

  "Sylvan," she said, remembering him from the first Hunt- He had not been at any of the others they had witnessed. "But he wouldn't come to a reception, because he rides."

  Roald nodded.

  "There is the lapse." murmured Persun.

  "I'd forgotten the lapse," said Roald in a tone of annoyance. "Here I am almost ten Grassian years old and I'd forgotten the lapse."

  "Lapse?"

  "Every spring there's a time when the mounts and the hounds disappear. Far's I know, no one knows where they go. Mating time, perhaps? Or whelping time. Or something of the kind. Sometimes people hear a great lot of baying and howling going on. Lasts a week or a little more."

  "When?" she asked.

  "When it happens. No exact time. Sometimes a little earlier in the year, sometimes a little later. But always in spring."

  "But doesn't everyone on the planet know when it happens?"

  "Everyone out here in the grasses, Lady. Tssf, in Commons we'd pay it no attention. Out here, though-yes. Everyone knows. If no way else, they go out to Hunt that day and no mounts or hounds show up. They know."

  "So, if we sent an invitation, saying-oh, 'On the third night of the lapse you are invited to...' "

  "It's never been done," muttered Persun

  "So, who's to say it shouldn't be?" Roald responded. "If your good husband is determined, my Lady, then it would be a thing to try. Otherwise, wait until summer when the hunting stops. Then you can have your reception among the summer balls."

  Rigo did not want to wait until summer. "That's over a year and a half. Terran," he said. "We have to start getting some information from the bons, Marjorie. There's no time to wait. We'll get everything ready and send the invitation as soon as the place looks decent. Undoubtedly I'll hear from bon Haunser if we've overstepped some barrier of local custom "

  The invitations were dispatched by tell-me to all estancias. Surprisingly, at least to Marjorie, acceptances were prompt and fai
rly widespread. She got a bad case of stage fright and went up into the summer rooms to reassure herself.

  The chill rooms had been transformed. Though still cool, they glowed with color. From the greenhouse in the village-which had been half ruined until Rigo had ordered it rebuilt-had come great bouquets of off-world bloom. Terran lilies and Semling semeles combined with plumes of silver grass to make huge, fragrant mounds reflected endlessly in paired mirrors. Marjorie had provided holo-records of valued artworks the Yrariers had left behind, and duplicates of the originals glowed at her from the walls and from pedestals scattered among the costly furniture.

  "This is a beautiful table," she said, running her fingers across satiny blue-shadowed wood.

  "Thank you, Lady," said Persun. "My father made it."

  "Where does he get wood, here on Grass?"

  "Imports much of it. Much though they talk of tradition, now and then the bons want something imported and new. Things he makes for us, though, he cuts from the swamp forest. There are some lovely trees in there. There's this wood, the one we call blue treasure, and there's one that's pale green in one light and a deep violet in another. Glume wood, that is."