Grass (10 page)

Anthony made no comment but merely looked around himself with dismay, trying not to let it show through the calm demeanor he had determined upon as appropriate for the son of an ambassador. He had carefully thought out what his role should be, and prayed hourly for the fortitude to continue in it. He was the one who resembled Marjorie. He had her wheat-colored hair and hazel eyes, her cool, white skin, her sapling-slender body, her placid appearance and equable temperament. Like her, he was prey to a thousand inner doubts and horrors he never let show on the surface. Like her, he was thought beautiful, was passionately admired even by unlikely people. At nineteen he was almost of his father's height, though not yet of a man's bulk.

A stripling, his mother thought, admiring him. A mere boy, his father thought to himself, wishing Tony were older so that he could be told why they had come, older so he could be of more help.

"A social problem of some dimension," Obermun bon Haunser was at that moment remarking to some of his fellow bons. "And so is the daughter, Stella. We'll have to warn off our own young ones," he said. Sooner or later the Yrariers would learn of this opinion, and he wondered what he would say then. He did not like the idea of being looked at angrily by Lady Westriding. Her look had a quality of knives about it. Knives which cut deeply.

Currently, however, Marjorie was cutting only into the structure of the stables, carving one part mentally from the whole. "We can partition this part of the cavern off," she offered. "Make half a dozen nice box stalls along this side with an opening from outside into each one and build a little paddock out there. Later, when winter comes … " She stopped in dismay, remembering what winters here were said to be like, wondering what they would do with the horses when winter came.

"We won't still be here, surely?" Anthony said, his own apprehension coming through. He heard it and amended himself more calmly. "Will the mission last that long?"

His father shook his head. "We don't know, Tony."

"What kind of horses can these Hippae be?" Marjorie mused, turning to look into the shadowy corners of the vast, low space. "This looks like some great burrow Like the meeting hall of a badger's set."

"The meeting hall of a badger's set?" her daughter mocked. "Mother, you amaze me." She shook her hair over her shoulders, the depthless black silk of it flowing down over her back like lightless water. Her seventeen-year-old body was still slight, and the beauty which would be ravishing was only beginning to emerge. Now she smiled a siren's smile and sulked at her parents out of deeply fringed eyes. "When were you last in a badger's set?" It was not said lovingly. Stella had not wanted to come to Grass. They had insisted that she come, but they had been unable to tell her why. To Stella, the journey had been a violation of her person. With maximum drama, she likened it to rape and let them know it as often as possible. "In some other life?" she mocked now. "In some other time?"

"When I was a changeling," her mother answered firmly. "Long and long ago, when I was unconscious of my dignity. As I am about to be again. I am going to change into some nice old robe and become sedentary. I need food, a lot of food, and then some familiar book and sleep. There is too much that is strange here. Even the colors of things aren't right."

And they weren't. Her words brought it to all their attention as they left the caverns to walk through a bleached alley of imported trees toward the residence. The colors weren't right. The sky should be blue and was not. The prairie should be the color of dried grass, but their eyes insisted upon making it pale mauve and paler sapphire, as though under a stage-light moon.

"It's only that it's foreign to us," Tony said, trying to comfort her, wanting to be comforted himself. He had left things behind, too. A girl who mattered to him. Friends he cared about. Plans for education and life. He wanted the sacrifice to have been for something, for some reason, not merely to exist for a time in this chill discomfort amid strange colors. Tony had not been told why, either, but he trusted Marjorie when she told him it was important. It was Tony's nature to trust, as it had been Marjorie's at his age, when she married.

"We will ride to the Hunt," Rigo said firmly. "The horses will be recovered by then."

"No," Marjorie said, shaking her head. "Apparently we mustn't."

"Don't be ridiculous." He said it, as he often did, without thinking, and was immediately annoyed as he saw the pain in her face.

"Rigo, my dear, surely you don't think it's my idea not to ride." She laughed, a light little laugh which said in the only way she could that he was being obtuse and unpleasant. "Obermun bon Haunser almost came apart at his impeccable seams when I suggested we would merely join the field on horseback. Apparently arrangements have been made otherwise."

"Damn it, Marjorie. Why was I sent here? Why were you? Except for the horses?"

She didn't try to answer him. It was not a question which could be answered. He glared at her. Stella stared, giggling a little, enjoying this discord. Tony made uncomfortable little
hrnching
sounds in his throat as he did when caught in some seeming conflict between them. "Surely," he said softly, "surely … "

"I thought it was something important we were here for?" sneered Stella, unwittingly derailing her father's hostility toward Marjorie and bringing it upon herself.

"We would scarcely have come otherwise," he snapped angrily. "Our lives have been disrupted, too, and we are no fonder of Grass than you are. We, like you, would prefer to be at home, getting on with our lives." He lashed at an offending seed head with his whip. "What's this about not riding?"

Marjorie answered softly, trying to keep them all calm. "I don't know why we mustn't ride to the Hunt, but it is clear that we must not. My counsel, Ambassador, for what it is worth, is that we do what that stiff, awkward Haunser man has arranged for us until we find out what is going on here. We are not
bons,
after all, and Obermun bon Haunser took some pains to point out to me that neither Sanctity nor Terra know anything at all about Grass."

Rigo might have said something more, except that a sound interrupted him. Such a sound as a tormented soul might make, if such a one had the voice of the thunder and the cataract. It was a wholly natural sound, as a small world might make, being rent apart, and yet they did not doubt that it issued from a throat and lungs and a body of some indescribable sort. Something that a name could be put to if one only knew what it was. A cry of desperate loneliness.

"What?" breathed Rigo, unmoving, alert. "What was that?" They waited, poised, perhaps to run. Nothing. In the time ahead they were to hear the cry several times. Though they asked about it, no one knew what made it.

El Dia Octavo woke from evil dream to uncomfortable reality. His feet were not on the ground and he thrashed, though weakly. A voice came incomprehensibly through a veil of pained dryness. "Lower that sling, you fool, and put him down."

Hooves touched solid surface and the stallion stood trembling, head lowered. He could smell the others. They were somewhere near, but it was impossible to lift his head and look. He flared his nostrils instead, trying the odor for that complexity which would include them all. A hand ran along his side, his neck. Not
her
hand. A good hand, but not her hand. Not
his
hand, either. This was the male-one most like
her,
not the female-one most like
him.

"Shhh, shhh," said Tony. "That's a good boy. Just stand there a little while. It'll come back to you. Shhh, shhh."

What came was the dream. Galloping with something after him. Something huge. Huge and fast. A threat from behind. A fleeing. He whickered, begging for reassurance, and the hand was there.

"Shhh, shhh."

He slept standing, the dream fading.

He woke enough to walk up a ramp into something that moved, then he slept again. When the thing stopped moving, he woke enough to walk down the ramp again and
she
was there.

"
She
," neighed Millefiori. "All right.
She
."

He nodded, making a sound in his throat, dragging his feet as he tried to follow
her.
Nothing smelled quite right. There were familiar sounds, but the smells were wrong. When he was inside the stall, lying on the grass there, it didn't smell right either.

There was noise outside The other stallion screaming, making a fuss.

El Dia Octavo nickered at him, and so did the mares. In a moment Don Quixote quieted, making a sound of misery.

Then
she
came, patting, stroking, talking to them, saying, as Tony had, "Shhh, shhh," giving him water.

He drank, letting the water flow into that place of dry fear. After a time he slept again, dreamlessly, the dream gradually losing itself in the smell of the strange hay.

"Odd," murmured Marjorie, staring down at him.

"They seemed frightened," said Tony. "The whole time, they seemed scared to death but so lethargic they couldn't do anything about it."

"I had bad dreams when I first got here. And I woke up frightened all the time."

"So did I." Tony shuddered. "I wasn't going to say anything, but I had real nightmares "

"An effect of coldsleep?" Marjorie wondered.

"I asked around at the port. Nobody seems to think that's a usual thing after coldsleep."

"Odd," said Marjorie again. "Well, at least the stalls were finished on time."

"They did a good job. People from the village?"

"People from the village. It seems to be a reciprocal kind of arrangement. We give them employment and buy their produce, and they provide whatever help we need. They've been here for years, maintaining the place. I've picked a few of them to work with the horses. Perhaps we can find two or three grooms among them."

They left the stables and went back to the house, turning once or twice to look back as though to assure themselves the horses were all right, both of them thinking it strange that the animals gave every sign of sharing their own bad dreams. Marjorie swore to herself she would spend time with them over the next few days, until the trauma had passed.

Other matters intervened, however. Among them was the arrival of the craftsmen's committee for Newroad. who went through the summer rooms of Opal Hill making lists.

"You want it done in the local manner, don't you?" the spokesman of this delegation asked in trade lingua. He was a stocky, bald-headed man with froggy bags around his eyes and an engaging grin. His name was Roald Few. "You don't want anything that will make the bons' tongues clack, right?"

"Right," she had agreed, amazed, and amused at herself for being so. What had she expected? Poor ignorant fools like those in Breedertown? "You're very quick, Mr. Few. I thought we were the first embassy Grass has had."

"The only one now," he replied. "There've been a few. They can't winter it, you know. Can't stay. Too lonely. Semling had a man here for a while. Here, I mean. At Opal Hill. Semling built the estancia, you know."

"Why weren't the summer quarters furnished?"

"Because it was coming autumn by the time it was built, and by the time autumn was half gone, you know, so was the man from Semling. He never got to the good part of the year. So, what have you to tell me about colors and all that?"

"Can I depend upon you to make us look acceptable?" she asked. "If I can, there's a bonus in it for you. My husband likes warm colors, reds and ambers. I prefer the cooler ones. Blue. Soft gray. Sea green. Hah," she paused. "There is no sea on Grass, but you apprehend." He nodded. "Perhaps, if it is in keeping with local usage, you could give us a little variation?"

"Variety and make you look good," he said, pursing his lips as he noted it down "Do my best, madam, and may I say you show good sense in leaving it to us. Us on the Newroad work well together, and we'll do you well who trusts us." He gave her a sharp look, meeting her open gaze with a frank nod of his own "I'll tell you something, just me to you. You and the family come over the forest into commoner territory every now and then. Commoner Town, the aristos say, but we say Commons, meaning it's for all of us. We've got food there you'll never get but here, things we ship in for ourselves. It gets damned lonely out here if you're not all turned inside out like these bons. You might even decide you'd like to live in Commons during wintertime, if you're here that long. You've got animals, too, and they'll do better in Commons than they will out here. We're set up to winter animals there. There are hay barns we fill every summer, and cow barns down along our own quarters. All the villages close up, wintertime, and move into town. Among the aristos nobody'd know, did you or not. Anybody calls you on the tell-me. splice you through to Commons and who'll know you're not out here, sufferin' winter. Do you speak Grassan, by any chance."

"I thought Grassians spoke Terran or trade lingua," she replied, dismayed. "Obermun bon Haunser spoke diplomatic Terran to me."

"Oh, they'll do that if they like," he said with a nasty grin. "They'll speak diplo and some of them will even lower themselves to speak trade lingua, and then the next time they'll turn their backs to you and pretend they don't understand you at all. You'll get further with 'em if you know Grassan. Way I understand it, it's a mishmash of languages they all spoke when they came here, and then it's changed since. Each family speaks its own variety of it, kind of a family dialect, a game they have, but mostly that's a matter of family words and you can understand the sense if you know the language. You'll get further yet if they don't know you speak it until you speak it pretty good. I can send you a teacher."

"Do," she agreed, all at once trusting and liking him. "Send me a teacher and be very close-mouthed about it if you will, Mr. Few."

"Oh, I will." He snorted "I'll send you a man in two days. And you call me Roald, like all the Commons do. Damn bons." The animosity seemed habitual rather than acute, and Marjorie did not inquire into it, merely making a note that Rigo should hear of it if he had not already learned of it for himself.