“That’s unbelievable!”
“It’s quite believable because it was only a slight variation of their natural habit. Peepers have no such ability. Hounds have almost none. The Hippae have enough to affect the minds of those around them and bend those minds to their purposes. Think of what they do to the migerers and to the Huntsmen! When the Hippae change into foxen, the ability is multiplied a hundredfold. Hippae may not be truly intelligent. Evil and sly. yes, able to learn but incapable of true subtlety. They learned to kill by accident, but once having learned, they went on, and on. Everything they have done was merely a repetition of a pattern they already knew…”
The doctor was very still, thinking. “You said you knew two important things.”
“The other thing was about your books. I tried to read them. I’m not scientific. All I can remember is that one of them was about this nutrient, this protein building block. You said it was something we all needed. Most living cells. And you said it existed in two forms here on Grass, and only here. I got to wondering why. Why two forms here? And then I wondered, what if something here turned it around? What if something here on Grass turned around an essential nutrient? Something all our cells need and use. Something we couldn’t use in a reversed form…”
There was a long silence.
“I need a dead bat,” said Lees Bergrem.
“I brought one,” Marjorie said, reaching into her deep pocket. First had left the barn, had gone out onto the sloping lands to get it for her. She put the dried crumbling thing on Lees Bergrem’s table. Then she sat down and put her head between her trembling knees and tried to think of nothing at all.
The two women stayed in the makeshift laboratory for two days. Above them in the town, battles were fought street by street, building by building. People died, though not so many as had at first been feared. There were allies no one could see. There were fighters no one could look at. Hippae were found dead, and no one remembered killing them. Then, too, since the Hierarch was not awake to countermand the Seraph’s orders, troopers came down on the shuttle, a few at a time, to take over segments of Commons and man a slowly expanding perimeter. Demolition teams found the tunnels beneath the swamp forest and collapsed them into sodden ruin. No more Hippae came through. Those already inside hid, chameleonlike, to come screaming out of alleys, shrieking along walls. Sharing this much of the foxen invisibility, they found their way into houses and shops. Death came to Commons, death and blood and pain, but slow victory came also.
Roald Few missed death by inches, saved by something he could not describe. One of his sons died. Many of his friends were dead, or missing. A morgue was set up in the winter quarters. The first body there was Sylvan bon Damfels’ His was joined by a hundred others. In death he became what he could not manage in life, one with the Commons.
One by one the remaining Hippae were found and killed. Many were still hiding in the edges of the forest. Troopers ringed that perimeter, their heat-seeking weapons set on automatic fire. Within the trees, other beings found the Hippae, and none came out onto Commons ground again.
Toward the end of the battle, Favel Cobham climbed back down the chutes and restored power to the Port Hotel before going out to join his fellows. He had not been ordered to stop guarding the Yrariers, but neither had he been told to continue.
Rigo came out of the hotel later, when he saw the last of the troopers straggling back toward the port, and made his way toward the gate. In the port area, the men were already burying their dead and readying for departure.
“Going already?” Rigo asked a gray-haired Cherub with a wrinkled, cynical face.
“Lord and Master woke up and found out what happened to his tame scientists,” the Cherub replied. “Found out what happened to the town, too. I guess he figures he might get gobbled up by something if we stay.”
Rigo went on into Commons to ask if anyone had seen his wife. He was told to look where everyone was looking for missing kinsmen, in the morgue. He found her there, standing by Sylvan’s body.
“Rowena asked me to come and arrange burial,” she said. “She wants him to be buried out there, where Klive used to be.”
“Wouldn’t you have come anyhow?” he asked. “Didn’t you care for him? Weren’t you in love with him?” It was not what he had planned to say. He and Father Sandoval had agreed that recriminations were not appropriate. He had expected to find Marjorie’s body and grieve over it. Thwarted of grief, thwarted of good intentions, this other emotion had happened.
She chose not to answer his question. Instead, she said. “Sebastian is dead too, Rigo. Kinny lost one of her children. Persun Pollut was almost killed. His arm is terribly hurt. He may never carve again.” He was shamed into silence, and angered for being shamed. She walked toward the door, he following. “I’ve been working with Lees Bergrem,” she said, looking around to be sure she was not overheard “She thinks we’ve found a cure. She already had some of the pieces. It can’t be tested here on Grass. She’s sent word to Semling. They can manufacture the cure, get some victims together, and test it.”
“Manufacture?” he asked her, disbelieving. “Some kind of vaccine?” She nodded, coming close to him, actually hugging him, an awkward, one-armed embrace, tears on her face. “Not a vaccine at all. Oh, Rigo, I really think we’ve found the answer.”
He reached for her, but she had already turned away. She would not say anything more until the people in Semling had received everything Lees Bergrem could send them. “Wait,” she said to Rigo and Roald and Kinny. “Don’t say anything to anyone until the word comes back. Don’t get people’s hopes up until we know for sure.”
Marjorie and Lees Bergrem spent the third day since their discovery fretting together, stalking back and forth through the echoing room where they had worked. On this day the Semling victims would either improve or go on dying. At noon on the fourth day the word came from Semling. Within hours of being treated, all the victims had started to mend.
“Now.” Marjorie was crying, tears flowing into the corners of her joyously curved mouth. “Now we can let everyone know.” She went to the tell-me to call Brother Mainoa. Only then did she learn he had died in the lap of a foxen, days before. Only then did she understand a part of what First had tried to tell her.
19
“Our job is over,” Marjorie said. “What we were sent to do is done.” She and Rigo and Father Sandoval were sitting at a table at Mayor Bee’s restaurant, drinking genuine Terran coffee. Around them the work of renewal went on. Renewal and burial. At the foot of the street, litter carriers went past, and Marjorie averted her eyes. She did not want to think any more about death.
“So you have said,” Father Sandoval said in the aloof voice he had used to her recently. “I’ve seen no proof of it.”
“I think I can explain it,” she offered. They had scarcely spoken during the past few days. Father Sandoval had not forgiven her for going off like that, though, since a cure had seemingly resulted, he had not said much about it. He had not forgiven Father James, either. He and Rigo had been discussing the recalcitrants, Rigo’s nephew, Rigo’s wife. Their emotions were at war with their sense of what was fitting, and she wanted to help them both. She said, “I can at least tell you what Lees Bergrem told me, what she’s telling everyone.”
Father Sandoval set his cup down and twisted it on the tabletop, leaving a wet circle there when he picked it up again. He touched the circle with a fingertip, stretching it, breaking it.
“Perhaps that would be useful,” he admitted.
She folded her hands in her lap, the way she had used to do as a child when called on to recite.
“Lees says that everything we’ve found in our universe has proven to share pretty much the same assortment of left-right molecules. She says there’s no particular reason that we know of why some molecules are twisted one way and some are twisted the other, but they are, everywhere we’ve been. Some of these substances are essential to different forms of life, and one of these is a nutrient, L-alanine. L-alanine exists everywhere we’ve ever been. Human cells, most cells, can’t get along without it.
“Here on Grass, however, a virus evolved which, as part of its process of reproduction, creates an enzyme, an
