Grass (55 page)

The tunnel was full of sound, trills and snarls and demands.

"He wants us to go on," said Brother Mainoa. "There is danger behind us."

They resumed to their splashing journey, fear lending speed to all of them. Marjorie looked at Don Quixote and wondered if he might not understand the foxen far better than she herself did. He moved alertly, as though summoned. Al! the horses did.

Far back in the tunnel, something screamed. The echoes went by them –
ee-yah, ee~yah, ee-yah –
ricocheting along the walls, fading into quiet.

"Hurry," something said in their minds. The Terran word pulsated at them, black letters on orange, large, plain capital letters, underlined, with an exclamation point. "HURRY!"

"What?" Marjorie whoofed. "What was that?"

"He does that sometimes," Mainoa breathed. "He's not much interested in written words, but sometimes he picks one up from me and broadcasts it."

Another picture, this one of all of them mounted and running. It had scarcely faded before they were all on horseback, lying flat while the horses trotted rapidly through the water, blindly moving into darkness as though moving in accordance with some guidance system known only to themselves. The prisoners, hastily thrown across Irish Lass, snarled and complained.

"Shut up, or we'll leave you for the Hippae," Rillibee commanded. The climbers fell silent.

Then there was rosy light, slightly above them and far ahead. The way sloped upward. The horses dug in with their rear legs, pushing. A foxen was silhouetted against the light, then gone. Then they too were out in the world once more. The tunnel emerged on a tiny island. Pools of water surrounded them. Ahead, the trees stopped and the land sloped up toward a red-flushed sunset. Illusory shapes prowled out of the tunnel behind them and took to the trees. "Go," the word said, red on white, imperative. "Go!" They went. The horses walked-swam to the edge of the trees and lunged up onto the long slope. The riders stared back, expecting horror to erupt behind them. Nothing. No sound. Perhaps the foxen had bought them time.

"I'll take these two to the order station," said Rillibee, tugging on the rope that bound the captives. He pointed up the hill. "That's the hospital. Where Stella and your husband are, next to the Port Hotel." Marjorie urged Don Quixote up the slope, covering half of it before she realized that she was actually going to a place where Rigo was. Rigo. She said the word to herself. Nothing resonated. He was someone she knew, that was all. Normally the thought of him brought feelings: guilt and anxiety and frustration. Now she felt only curiosity, perhaps a slight sorrow, wondering how it would feel to see him after all that had happened.

The Port Hotel was packed with people, anonymous groups going here and there, anonymous faces turning to stare curiously at Marjorie and the others. Someone shouted. Someone else pointed. Then Sebastian Mechanic separated himself from the mass and came running toward them.

"Lady Marjorie," he cried. "Your son's here, and your daughter and husband."

She dismounted stiffly, wiping at her muddy face. "Rillibee told me," she said. "I need to see them. I need somewhere to wash." Then Persun Pollut was beside her, leading her in one direction while Sebastian and Asmir led the horses in another.

"Lady Westriding, I'm glad you're here." His heart lay in his eyes, but she did not see it there. "They'll take the horses to the barn. How can i help you?"

"Do you known where Rigo is?"

"In there." He pointed through a door to a crowd of people, seemingly all talking at once. "The doctor let him get up a few hours ago.

They're talking about the plague and whether the Hippae are going to get in and eat us all!"

"The plague!" She could see Rigo's lean form at the center of the mob. He sat in a chair, pale and haggard, but he seemed to be functioning. Still, to be talking about the plague!

"Everyone knows, ma'am. Your husband is there, trying to bring some order out of it all … "

"I'll join them," Brother Mainoa said from behind them. "I have to tell them about that tunnel … something has to be done about it."

"And Stella?" Marjorie asked Persun.

"Through there," Persun pointed toward a hallway.

"I'll go with you," said Rillibee, as Brother Mainoa, leaning heavily on Father James's arm, went in to join the crowd.

Persun guided Marjorie and Rillibee along the building, into it through a small side door and down a corridor to a corner room which was almost filled by a humming box, a Heal-all.

"In there," Persun said.

She peered down through the transparent lid to see Stella lying below, slender wires and tubes connecting her to the box.

"Are you her mother?" The doctor had come in behind them.

Marjorie turned. "Yes. Is she? I mean, what do you … "

The doctor gestured toward a chair. "I'm Doctor Lees Bergrem. I'm not entirely sure yet what the prognosis is. She's been here only a little more than a day. There was no … well, no lasting physical damage."

"They had done something to her … to her body?"

"Something. Something in the pleasure centers of the brain and nervous system, in the sexual connections to it. I'm not yet sure exactly what was done. Something perverse. Sexual pleasure seems to result from obeying commands. I think I can fix that part."

Marjorie didn't say anything. She waited.

"She may not remember everything. She may not be just the way she was. She may be more as she was as a child … " The doctor shook her head. "You know about Janetta bon Maukerden? Had you heard that another one has been found? Diamante bon Damfels. It's as though they were wiped clean, except for that one circuit." She shook her head again. "Your daughter is more fortunate. She hadn't been disconnected yet. Even if she loses something, she'll have time to rebuild, relearn."

Marjorie didn't reply. What was there to say? She felt Rillibee's hand on her shoulder. "It'll be all right." he said. "I have a feeling."

She wondered if she should cry. What she felt was anger. Anger at Rigo. Anger even at Stella herself. Rigo and Stella had done this with their foolishness. And the bons had done this. Forget the Hippae, malevolent though they were. It was human foolishness that had laid Stella in that box.

Mercy, a voice in her mind said softly. Justice. I wouldn't waste my time on guilt.

The doctor interrupted her thoughts. "You don't look at all well yourself. There's a knot on your head as big as an egg. Look here." And she began shining lights in Marjorie's eyes and hooking her up to machines. "Concussion," she said. "Let's set you right while you're here, before you try to do something about this mess and collapse. I'll send someone in to clean you up, as well. Do you have a change of clothes?"

Attendants came and went. There were basins of water and soft towels. Someone loaned her a shirt. Then Marjorie sat beside Stella's box, hooked-through tubes and wires to a box of her own. Gradually the vision she had had in the swamp-forest began to fade. She remembered it, but it lacked the clarity of immediate seeing. The words faded. What God had said to her faded. The doctor came back and sat beside her, talking quietly of her medical education on Semling, of her further education on Repentance, of the young people from Commons who had been recently trained as scientists and were working now on a puzzle Lees Bergrem herself was interested in. "I know," said Marjorie. "I ordered your books."

The doctor flushed. "They really weren't written for the layman."

"I could tell. But I understood parts of some of them, anyhow."

The doctor asked about the swamp-forest, the foxen, and Marjorie answered, omitting her vision but telling about the assailants, telling more than she knew … 

"Oh, I would have forgiven them before," she admitted. "Oh, yes. I'd have let them go. I'd have been afraid not to. For fear society or God would have judged me harshly. I'd have said pain in this life isn't that important. A few more murders. A few more rapes. In heaven they won't matter. That's what we've always said, isn't it, doctor. But God didn't say anything about that. He just said we should get on with our work … "

The doctor gave her a strange look and peered into her eyes. Marjorie nodded. "They're always telling us what God has said in books. All my life I've had God's word in my pocket, and here He wrote it all somewhere else … "

"Shhh," said Dr. Bergrem, patting her on the arm. Marjorie relaxed and let it go. After a time the doctor went away, and there was nothing to listen to but her own breathing and the machines' humming. She thought of Dr. Bergrem's book. She thought about intelligence. She thought about Stella. Faintly she remembered the face of God, and almost as though she had read it in a fairy tale long ago, how Father Sandoval looked with dragonfly wings.

In the crowded room where Rigo sat, Brother Mainoa was being wearily firm, drawing on the last of his strength to insist upon action. "The tunnel has to be closed," he said. "At once. It's available as a way for the Hippae to invade Commons. We heard them behind us when we came in, no great numbers because the tunnel is too small for them to come through except one at a time, but still a few of them are enough to do great damage."

"Some of them came in behind you," said Alverd Bee, the mayor. "The minute you arrived and told us there was a way through, I sent two men to keep watch, and they report a handful of the beasts at the tunnel entrance."

"A dozen now could be a hundred by nightfall," Rigo said. "Brother Mainoa is right. That tunnel has to be destroyed."

"I wish I had some idea how to go about that," the mayor said, turning to his father-in-law. "Roald? Do you have any ideas?"

Roald fidgeted. "Alive, what the hell can you try? Blow it up with something. Flood it somehow. Get some kind of gate across it." He rubbed his head. "Hime Pollut is good at this kind of thing. Ask him."

Alverd went to find Hime Pollut. In a few moments he returned "Hime thinks we ought to blow it up. He just doesn't know what we've got that'll do the job."

Rigo said, "Don't you have construction explosives, things you use to loosen up the rock when you have to expand the winter quarters? Or in mines? You have mines. Use that!"

"We've thought of that, Ambassador, but there are Hippae massed at this end of the tunnel. There's no way we can get in there close to blow it up without getting eaten first." Alverd chewed his lips, thinking.

"The other end – "

"The same, Ambassador. Hippae. at both ends. As soon as I heard about the ones at this end, I sent an aircar to see what was happening at the other end. The driver counted about a hundred of the beasts out in the grasses, with about a score or so guarding the tunnel entrance. Assuming they stay that way, still we've no way to get to the tunnel."

"Drop something from above?"

"What? We have a few explosives but no bombs. No – what do you call them – detonators. There are people here who could
build
bombs, if we had the materials, or make the materials, possibly, if we had the time. You and your friend here say there may not be time. If we could get into the swamp forest far enough, if we could locate the tunnel from above, and if we had days or weeks to work, we could drill into it and flood it. We don't have days or weeks. We have hours. Maybe. They've laid their plans. Your wife found their declaration of war trampled into that cavern. We've seen it. Brother Mainoa here has told us what it means. That word says they plan to come in here and slaughter us all, just as the Arbai were slaughtered. Fun and games for the Hippae, they say."

"Where does the tunnel come to the surface?" Rigo asked.

Brother Mainoa said, "On a little island among the trees at the bottom of this slope. The forest is narrowest here, on the east side of the port. Two or three Terran miles through, perhaps. Elsewhere it's wider, but on this side the land slopes up on either side of the swamp and narrows it to a neck. There's where the damned migerers dug. That's where they must have been digging for years. The tunnel has to go deep enough to have a good rock layer above or it'd be full of water. Who knows how long it's taken them!"

"Can you reach the entrance to the tunnel? Can you physically get to it?" Rigo asked Alverd Bee.

"We could if the Hippae weren't there, yes. But not with them there. Not with them rampaging around, coming after us," Alverd ran his fingers through his hair, pulled his lips back to reveal his teeth, furrowed his brow. "We don't have any armor, any kind of combat vehicle. The little runners we use around town, they're like pea pods. We could use aircars to drive them back inside the tunnel, just inside, but then they'd come out again when any one of us tried to lay explosives."

"If we enticed them away, you could go in close and blow up the entrance, block it."

"Entice them away how?" Alverd turned to regard Rigo with an expression of half hope, half suspicion.

"I don't know yet. Could you do it?"

"Maybe. Probably."

"Then get ready to do it."

"God, it seems pretty hopeless." Alverd shook his head.

Rigo glared up at him. "Those of us here on Grass may end up being the last of humanity, Mayor Bee. Assume that we are. How would you prefer to die? Waiting or fighting?"

Alverd showed his teeth again and went away. Rigo turned to Roald Few. "If we entice the creatures out, some of them may go around us. Can you get everyone down into the winter quarters and barricade the entrances? Can you arm people? If you have nothing else, arm them with laser knives, the kind Persun gave me."

"People can be armed, yes. But I think we have a line of defense to use before we're forced into winter quarters, Ambassador. We have the barrier at Gom. Let's put weapons there, first. Weapons and some courageous people."

"That could work. Get everyone behind that line. Evacuate the Commercial District and Portside. Get everyone into the winter quarters except those who are going to fight. Be sure the ships in port are shut up tight- !f we get out of this, we may need them later. Where's your power station?"

"Below the town, in winter quarters. They'll have to get us first before they can get the power station."