Grass (63 page)

"Trooper," she said. "Take a quick look out the window. Some very dangerous creatures are rampaging around out there."

He gestured her back, as though she were the dangerous one, she standing there in her crumpled clothing with no weapon at all, her hair falling untidily around her face. When he had seen, however, he looked confused, as though teetering among several desires.

"If we're going to stay here," she said, "we need to make ourselves as safe from those beasts as we can. We have to assume they'll come here eventually."

"How?" he asked. "What do you mean?"

"They can't climb ladders," she said. "But they aren't stupid. They may know or be able to figure out what lifts are. We need to turn off the power to the chutes. We're on the fourth level here. Without lifts, they probably can't get up here."

"Power controls are probably all the way down," he said.

"Then we'll have to go all the way down."

He hesitated, starting toward the lift, then back.

"Come on, boy," she snapped. "I'm old enough to be your mother, so I can yell at you. Decide what you're going to do!"

He started to put his weapon down.

"Take it," she commanded. "They could get into the hotel while we're down below."

They fell into the down chute together, Marjorie complaining bitterly under her breath at the slowness of the thing. Luxury seemed to be equated with slow chutes. The Port Hotel held itself out as luxurious. They floated past the doors like dust motes, ending up five levels below the ground with a further five levels still beneath them indicated upon the board.

"Winter quarters down there," said Marjorie. "I'd forgotten there would be winter quarters.

"It must get really cold here, huh?" the guardsman wanted to know as he looked vaguely around himself.

"I have a feeling cold is only part of it," Marjorie answered. "Now where?"

He pointed. The power room was opposite the chute, a heavy metal door opening into a room full of consoles and bubble meters.

"We should probably shut it all down," said Marjorie.

"All? You won't have any water up there or anything. Besides, how'll we get back?"

"Climb the chute," she said succinctly. She moved down the console, reading labels. Main power control Main pump. The main pump seemed to be on a separate circuit from the power control. It might be possible to leave them with water. She folded back the barrier and thrust the power control sharply across. The room went black. "Damn," she snarled.

A blazing light came on in her eyes. "I should've had it on already," the trooper confessed, adjusting his helmet lamps. "Where do we climb back?"

"Up the chute," she said. "Up the emergency ladder." They went back to the chute, leaning out over a well of chill dark to seize a cold metal rung. They climbed, Marjorie first, their ascent lighted by the trooper's lamp.

"That's a handy gadget," she commented between puffs as they neared the fourth level once more. "Your helmet, I mean. Does it see in the infrared?"

"Infrared," he agreed. "Plus about six other filter combinations. It can tell living stuff from dead stuff. And it's got a motion detector. And if you tie it to the armor arm controls, it's got automatic fire potential." He sounded proud of it, and Marjorie approved of his pride and confidence. He might need it. Their safety could depend on it.

"Now," she said when they had reached the fourth level, "you might as well come inside the suite. We'll close and lock the door behind us just in case something – anything – gets up here." Rigo still slept. He looked drawn and worn. "He'll be hungry when he wakes," she said. "We don't have any food here."

"Emergency rations," the boy said from behind her, tapping a long compartment down one armored thigh. "Enough for one man, ten days. Enough for the three of us for a while, at least. They don't taste like much, but the Cherubim tell us they're sustaining." He gestured at the sleeping man. "Has he been sick?"

She nodded. Yes. Rigo had been sick. All the riders had been sick. "What's your name?" she asked him. "Are you Sanctified?" He grinned proudly. "Favel Cobham, ma'am. And yes, I'm Sanctified, ma'am. The whole family. I got registered when I was born. I'm saved for eternity."

"Lucky you," she said, turning again to Rigo's bed. Here in the Port Hotel she and Rigo weren't saved for even this life if the Hippae got in. Tony was, maybe, if someone found a cure soon. And Stella. Remembering how Rillibee had looked at her, perhaps Stella was saved. If not for eternity, at least for a very small being's lifetime, which was all one could expect.

She went back to the window, looking across the battle to the huge barns against the wall. The horses! She could see the barn where they were stabled. It was stout, true, but not impenetrable. It was connected to the building they were in by the tunnel network. Everything was connected to everything else. Could she find her way there? She fumbled in her jacket pocket, finding the trip recorder that Brother Mainoa had returned to her.

"The Seraph, he had a few men in town," the trooper said.

"What will they do?" she wondered.

He shook his head. "The Seraph, he's what you'd call conservative, ma'am, I've heard the Cherubim say that, a few times. He'll wait until morning, then he'll prob'ly make a sweep from the wall with all the men moving on automatic fire. By that time, he'll have more men down from the ship."

"There's at least one tunnel where the Hippae came in," Marjorie said. "It'll have to be blown up, or flooded, or something."

"Do the people in the town know that?" he asked. When she nodded, he said, "Then they'll tell the Seraph and he'll take care of it. Maybe even tonight if he can get an assault hopper down. Seraph has an assault group moves with him, wherever he goes. Assault group's got all kinds of demolition stuff."

"Would he have taken a group like that into town?" she asked incredulously.

"Everywhere," he said soberly. "Everywhere he goes, even to the toilet. In case something happens while he's gone and he has trouble getting back to his command. Like a mutiny or something."

She shook her head, amazed. How insecure a Hierarch must feel to make a routine provision for mutiny.

"Mutiny?" asked an angry voice from the door. Rigo, stripped to his trousers, feet bare. "What's going on?"

Marjorie stood aside from the window to let him see.

"They've come through," she said. "This young man and I have turned off the power to the hotel," she said. "They won't be able to get up here unless there are some stairs I'm unaware of. By the same token, however, I'm afraid we're trapped. For the time being." She believed they might not outlive their entrapment, though she did not say so.

Rigo looked expressionlessly out the window. "Hippae," he said unnecessarily. "How many?"

"Enough to do a great deal of damage," Marjorie replied. "I quit counting at eighty some-odd, and there were still more arriving."

"If you'll wait outside," Rigo said to the trooper, "I'd like to talk to my wife."

"No." she said. "He can wait here. I don't want him out in the hall, where they might smell him or hear him. There might be another way up, and I don't want to attract them. If you want to talk, we'll talk in your room." She went before him, rumpled, uncombed, and yet stately. In the room where Rigo had slept, she sat in a chair and waited while he stalked about, three paces, three paces back.

"While you were away," he said, "I had an opportunity to discuss our situation with Father Sandoval. I think we need to talk about our future."

She felt sorrow mixed with a faint annoyance. It was so like him to pick a time when there might not be any future to discuss their future together. He had always picked times when there was no love to talk about love; times when there was no trust to talk about trust. As though love and trust were not feelings but only symbols or tools which could be manipulated to achieve a desired result. As though the words themselves were keys to open some mechanical lock. Twist love, love happens. Twist trust, trust occurs. Twist future … 

"What about our future?" she asked expressionlessly.

"Father Sandoval agrees with me that there will be a cure," he announced in his laying-down-the-law voice, as though his saying it made it fact. Well, Rigo's use of that voice had almost always produced the desired result. So he had spoken to his mother, his sisters, to Eugenie and the children, to Marjorie herself. If his voice hadn't worked, Father Sandoval's had, setting penances, invoking the power of the church. Now Rigo was going on, telling her what would happen.

"Someone will find it. Now that we know the answer lies here, someone will find it, and it won't take long. The cure will be disseminated. We will stay here only until then. Then we must get back to our real lives, all four of us."

"We must what?" she asked, thinking of the monsters in the town, in the port. How could he simply ignore them? But then, how could he have ignored the fact that they were monsters before? "What must we do?"

"All four of us." he repeated. "Including Stella." His eyes were angry. Evidently Stella's going to the forest had rankled. "She'll take a lot of attention, but you needn't give up your charities or your riding. We can hire people to care for her."

"To care for her."

He made a grim line with his lips. "I know she'll require a lot of attention, Marjorie. The point I wanted to make is that it needn't be a burden on you. I know how much your work means to you, how important you think it is. Father Sandoval has pointed out that I shouldn't have argued with you about that in the past. It was wrong of me. You're entitled to have your own interests … "

She shook her head at him, slowly, disbelievingly. What was he saying? Did he think they could go back as they were before, as though nothing had happened? Would he find someone to replace Eugenie and then go on, as they had before? Would she go down to Breedertown, taking food, arranging transport? As it had been?

"Have you and Father Sandoval discussed how you will introduce Stella to your friends?" she asked. "Will you say, This is Stella, my idiot daughter. I allowed her to be mentally and sexually crippled on Grass in order to show off my manliness to people who meant nothing to me.' Something like that?"

His face turned dark with fury. "You have no right – "

She put up a hand, forbidingly. "I have every right, Rigo. I'm her parent too. She's not yours alone to dispose of. She belongs to me, as well, and to herself. If you want to take Stella back to Terra, I suppose you can try. Somehow, I don't think you will easily remove her from where she is now. You would have great difficulty removing me. If you want to go back to the way things were, I can't stop you. I won't try. But you must not expect Stella or me to come along like dogs at your heels!"

"You're not thinking of staying here! What would you do here? Your work is at home. Our lives are at home."

"I would have agreed with you once. It's not true now."

"All those arguments you used to give me about your work at Breedertown? You're saying that was so much fluff? Lies?"

"I thought it was important then." Or made myself think so, she said to herself.

"And now you don't?"

"What difference does it make what I think? I'm not even sure what I think! And despite your assumption that the plague will be ended, we may die of it yet! Or the Hippae may kill us. This is no time to discuss what we will do
if,
what we will do
when.
We have no choices right now except to try to stay alive as best we can." She got up and went past him, laying a hand on his shoulder as she went, wanting to comfort him or herself. Now was not the time to have argued with him. If their lives were to end here, she would rather not have them end in rancor. What did it matter what he said now?

He went after her, finding her at the window with the trooper. Rigo, looking over her shoulder at scenes of fire and destruction, wondered why anyone would consider staying on Grass. The Hippae had found the scientists in the attached hospital and had dragged them out onto the weedy slope. Even when they were all dead, the Hippae rampaged among the bodies like bulls, trampling and bellowing.

Marjorie cursed in a quiet voice, tears running down her face. She had not known or remembered that there were other people in the port building. When she and the trooper had shut off the power, they could have brought the others up to safety. The sight of the rampaging creatures made her think again of the horses. She would not leave them to face this horror alone.

The two men were frozen at the window. She turned quietly and went out without their noticing. It would be a long climb down to the winter quarters and the tunnels which connected everything, as Persun Pollut had said, like the holes in a sponge.

Most of Commons managed to get behind the stout doors of winter quarters before the Hippae arrived. Most, not all. Those who were left above ground fought their way to such safety as they could find. Though most buildings in town were low, there were upper floors for refuge, stairways that could be held at least for a time. They had no weapons to oppose the Hippae and the hounds. While a knife could cut a leg or a jaw, a hound could come up from behind and take the arm that held the knife before the man knew the beast was there. Hounds could come up stairs like great cats. Bodies and parts of bodies began to accumulate in Commons streets. In the order station the Seraph sweated and swore, wishing he had ways of communicating with the defenders of the town.

"An aircar," James Jellico suggested. "You can fly overhead. Aircars have speakers."

"You do it," snapped the Seraph. "Tell them to get out of the streets onto roofs where we can pick them up. Tell them to stop dying uselessly until I can get my men down!"

So Jelly flew, and Asmir, and Alverd, and even old Roald, skimming the tops of the buildings as they bellowed at those below to get onto the rooftops.

"Climb," they shouted. "We'll pick you up."

Those who heard them swore and screamed and tried to get onto roofs while beasts darted at them from every doorway, lunged up at them from seemingly empty streets, materialized out of nothing in corners of walls. Always before, the Hippae had chosen to be seen. Now, in battle, they chose not to be seen until their teeth were fastened in their prey. Like chameleons, they faded against their backgrounds, their skins mottled the colors of brick or cobbles or plaster, only their teeth and the gleam of eyes betraying them, too often too late.