Grass

invasion of privacy, and they rejected it. How familiar! How horrible!

He agreed. Nonetheless, He felt pity and guilt that they had died.

They died, she said, Now we are dying. The Hippae are up there. They’ll get into Commons and kill us.

Already in Commons. But not many are dying. Not this time.

You’re protecting us?

This time we know what is happening.

You didn’t know what was happening before? she asked. You didn’t know what was happening to the Arbai? It seemed impossible, and yet, would the foxen necessarily have known? The slaughter had been out on the prairie, away from the forest…

He said, Some hated humans because you hunted us. Some felt it was not our affair, not our concern, because you would not be our friends, no more than the Arbai. I told them Mainoa was friend. They said he was only one, a freak, unlike any other. I said no, there would be others. Then there was you. They say you, too, are freak, and I say there will be others yet. We have argued over it. Finally, we have compromised. Humor Almost laughter, yet with something sad and tentative in it. We agree if you are truly my friend, I can tell you.

Me?

If you will give your word. To be friend as Mainoa was friend. To be where I am.

She heard only the condition and assented to it at once. She had already decided to stay here She would not take Stella away from here. At least the people here understood what had happened to her.

I will give my word, she said.

To be where I am?

Yes.

Even if that is not here?

Not here? Where would He be, if not here? She waited for explanation and got none. Something told her she would receive none. If she could only see His face. See His expression… We see one another, He told her. We foxen.

She flushed. Of course they saw one another, in their intimacy. As she could have seen them if she had let go of herself and joined them. As humans stripped away their day-to-day habiliments to come to their lovers naked, so foxen stripped away concealing illusion to perceive the reality…

But she could not see Him now. If she accepted this condition, it would have to be blindly, like a ritual, like a marriage ceremony, swearing to forsake all others for this one, this enigma, with no more certainty than there had been before. Swearing to give up her central self for something else. She shivered. Oh, perilous. Take it or leave it.

How could she? This is what Rigo had wanted, too, and she had tried, over and over, but could not. Because she had not known him, had not trusted him… Did she trust this one?

He had known where to find her. He had committed Himself and His people to saving her and her people. What else could He have done to be trustworthy? What else would she have him do?

She sighed, choking on the words, committing herself forever. “Yes. I promise.”

He showed her then why and how the Arbai had died. Why men were dying.

When she understood, she leaned against Him, her mind whirling in a disorderly ferment of ideas, things she had heard, connections she had made. He did not interrupt her. At last things began to fall into place. She only partially understood, and yet the answer was there, close, like a treasure sparkling in a flowing stream, disclosing itself.

There is something you must get for me, she said. Then I must go through these tunnels into town…

Marjorie came into the cavern where Lees Bergrem was huddled over a desk. For a time she stood in the corner, unseen, putting her thoughts together. Lees looked up, aware of being observed.

“Marjorie?” she asked. “I thought you were at the Port Hotel! I thought the Hippae had you trapped!”

“There’s at least one tunnel under the wall. I came back through it,” she said. “I had to talk to you “

“No time,” the other said, turning back to her work. “No time to talk about anything.”

“A cure,” she said. “I think I know.”

The doctor turned burning eyes. “Know? Just like that, you know?”

“Know something important,” she said. “Two important things, really. Yes. Just like that.”

“Tell me.”

“First important thing: The Hippae killed the Arbai by kicking dead bats through their transporters. We don’t have transporters, so the Hippae have been killing us by putting dead bats on our ships.”

“Dead bats!” She pursed her lips, concentrating. “The bon Damfels man said that was symbolic behavior!”

“Oh, yes. It is symbolic. The problem is that we thought of it as purely symbolic. We should have remembered that symbols are often distillations of reality — that flags were once banners flown during battle. That a crucifix was once a real device for execution. Both are symbols of something that is or was once real.”

“Real what?” Lees sat down, glaring at Marjorie. “Bats are real what?”

Marjorie rubbed her head, ruefully. “Real pains in the neck, originally. Real vermin. The Hippae kick dead ones at one another. I’ve seen them do it.”

“We know that! Sylvan bon Damfels said it meant ‘You’re nothing but vermin.’”

“Yes. Originally, it would have meant ‘You’re nothing but vermin.’ That’s what it meant when the Hippae kicked dead bats at the Arbai, too. On Terra there were once animals that threw feces at strangers. The Hippae despise strangers. They think of all other creatures either as useful tools, like the migerers or the Huntsmen, or as things to be despised and, if possible, killed. The Arbai fell into that category, so the Hippae kicked dead bats at them, and at their houses, and at their transporter. It was pure chance that a bat happened to go through the transporter to somewhere else. At this end, it was only symbolic. At the other end, it meant plague. Death.”

“The vector of infection…”

“Yes. It happened. Somewhere, wherever the transporter was set for, Arbai died. And then the foolish Arbai here on Grass told the Hippae what had happened. From that moment on, the gesture no longer meant ‘You’re vermin’ It meant ‘You’re dead.’ Once the Hippae knew they could kill by putting bats through the transporter, they kept on repeating the act. It was not symbolic, it was real.”

“Kept on—”

“Kicking dead bats through the transporter until all the Arbai were infected. It may not have taken long. Maybe only a day or a week. Whenever they weren’t observed. The Arbai were so… so set in their thinking that they never thought to set a guard. I’m assuming the transporter must have worked like a voice-activated com-link. Whenever the network was in use, certain sets of terminals must have come on so that a bat kicked in at one terminal would have ended up far away. On Repentance? On Shame? There are Arbai ruins both places. On a hundred worlds we’ve never seen? Wherever, however many, it worked. The Arbai died, everywhere. Hippae memorialized the event in their dances. A great victory. ‘Fun to kill strangers.’ They remembered it.

“When humans came to Grass, the Hippae would have repeated the act again, but we didn’t have transporters, we had ships. Dead bats had worked with the Arbai, so the Hippae decided to put dead bats on our ships. Our ships, however, were inside the forest where the foxen had influenced us to put our port. The foxen had believed that if the port was inside the swamp forest, it would be safe. The foxen had enjoyed having the Arbai around. Though they would have liked direct contact, being telepathic they hadn’t needed to have it. They had sought a kind of intellectual intimacy with the Arbai and been rebuffed, so they didn’t try it with us. Instead, they regarded us as we might regard some intelligent, interesting, but unaffectionate pet, and they thought we would be safe enough…

“They underestimated the Hippae. Perhaps they thought the Hippae wouldn’t remember after all those centuries, but they did remember. They had codified their memory into dancing, into patterns. When men first arrived, the Hippae set the migerers to digging a tunnel, at first only a small one, one large enough to admit one human messenger at a time. Human messengers the Hippae had wiped clean except for a certain impetus, a certain programmed activity—”