stripped bare. There was nothing there. He made no effort to speak to the mount or guide it in any way. It went where it decided to go, taking him with it. Another of the Hippae approached a rider and was mounted in its turn.
Marjorie still held Tony’s hand, turned him to face her, looked at him deeply, warningly. He was as pale as milk. Stella was sweating with a feverish excitement in her eyes. Marjorie was cold all over, and she shook herself, forcing herself to speak. She would not be silenced by these… by these whatever they were.
“Excuse me,” Marjorie said, loudly enough to break through their silence, through Rowena’s abstracted fascination, “but do your .. your mounts have hooves? I cannot see from here.”
“Three,” murmured Rowena, so softly they could scarcely hear her. Then louder. “Yes. Three. Three sharp hooves on each foot. Or I should say, three toes, each with a triangular hoof. And two rudimentary thumbs, higher on the leg.”
“And the hounds?”
“They, too. Except that their hooves are softer. More like pads. It makes them very sure-footed.”
Almost all of the hunters were mounted.
“Come,” Rowena said again in the same emotionless voice she had said everything else. “The transport will be waiting for you.” She glided before them as if on wheels, her wide skirts floating above the polished floors like an inconsolable balloon, swollen and ready to burst with grief. She did not look at them, did not say their names. It was as if she had not really seen them, did not see them now. Her eyes were fixed upon some interior vision of intimate horror so vividly imagined that Marjorie could almost see it in her eyes. When they approached the car, Rowena turned away and floated back the way they had come.
Waiting near the car was Eric bon Haunser. “My brother has joined the Hunt,” he explained. “Since I no longer ride, I have volunteered to go with you. Perhaps you will have questions I can answer.” He moved somewhat awkwardly on his artificial legs, stopping at the door of the balloon-car to nod for Marjorie to enter first.
They rose to float silently over the Hunt, driven by silent propellers as they watched long miles flow by under the hooves of the mounts, longer and more tortuous miles run beneath the wider-ranging feet of the hounds. From the air the animals were only short, thick blotches superimposed on the texture of the grass, blotches which pulsated, becoming longer and shorter as legs extended or gathered for the next leap, mounts and hounds distinguishable from one another only by the presence of riders, the riders themselves reduced to mere excrescences, warts upon the pulsating lines. The hunters entered a copse, hidden from the air. After a time they emerged and ran off toward another copse. After a time, the Yrariers forgot what they were watching. They could as well have been observing ants. Or fish in a stream, Or water flowing, wind blowing. There was nothing individual in the movement of the beasts. Only the spots of red spoke of human involvement. Except for those dots of red, the animals might have been alone in their quest. Though occasionally the grass moved ahead of the mounts, the observers could not see whatever quarry the Hunt was chasing.
Marjorie tried to estimate how fast the animals below them were running. She thought it was not as fast as a horse would cover the same distance, though it might not be possible for horses to thrust through tall, thick grasses as the animals below were doing. She spent some time estimating whether horses could outrun the Hippae — deciding they might be able to do so on the flat, though not uphill — then wondered why she was thinking of horses at all.
At last they came to a final copse and hovered above it. Branches quivered. High upon the roof of the copse the fox crawled onto a twiggy platform, screaming defiance at the sky. Over the soft whir of the propellers, they heard him. All they really saw was an explosion of what might have been fur or scales or fangs, talons, a great shaking and scouring among the leaves, an impression of ferocity, of something huge and indomitable.
“Fox,” Anthony muttered, his voice breaking. “Fox. That thing is the size of half a dozen tigers.” His mother’s hand silenced his words, though his mind went on nattering at him. Where it isn’t toothy, it’s bony. My God. Fox, Merciful Father, will they expect me to ride after that thing? I won’t. Whatever they expect, I just won’t!
Ride, Stella thought. I could ride the way they do. A horse is nothing to that. Nothing at all. I wonder if they’ll let me…
Ride, thought Marjorie in a fever of abhorrence. That isn’t riding. What they are doing. Something within her writhed in disgust and horror; she did not know what the people below her were doing, but it was not riding, not horsemanship. Suppose they want us to join their Hunt? She thought. At least one of us. I suppose there are teachers. Will we have to do this to be respected by them?
Ride, thought Rigo. To ride something like that! They will not think me a man unless I do, and their tribal egotism will try to keep me out. How? We are being treated as mere tourists, not as residents. I won’t have it! Damn Sanctity. Damn Uncle Carlos. Damn Sender O’Neil. Damn him and damn him.”
“The whole of Grass is horse-mad,” Sender O’Neil had said. “Horse-mad and class-conscious. The Hierarch, your uncle, suggested you for the mission. You and your family are the best candidates we have.”
“The best candidates you have for what?” Rigo had asked. “And why the devil should we care?” The invocation of old Uncle Carlos was doing nothing to make him more polite, though it had made him slightly curious.
“The best candidate to be accepted by the aristocrats on Grass. As for why…” The man had licked his lips again, this time nervously. He had been about to say words which were not said, not by anyone in Sanctity. So far as Sanctity was concerned, the words were impossible to say. “The plague,” he had whispered.
Roderigo had been silent. The acolyte had prepared him for this, at least. He was angry but not surprised.
Sender had shaken his head, waved his hands, palms out, warding away the anger he felt coming from Rigo “All right. Sanctity doesn’t admit the plague exists, but we have reason to keep silent. Even the Hierarch, your uncle, he agreed. Every society mankind has built will fall apart the minute we admit it and start talking about it.”
“You can’t be certain of that!”
“The machines say so. Every computer model they try says so. Because there’s no hope. No cure. No hope for a cure. No means of prevention. We have the virus, but we haven’t found any way to make our immune systems manufacture antibodies. We don’t even know where it’s coming from. We have nothing. The machines advise us that if we tell people… well, it will be the end.”
“The end of Sanctity? Why should I care about that?”
“Not Sanctity, man! The end of civilization. The end of mankind. The mortality rate is one hundred percent! Your family will die. Mine. All of us. It isn’t just Sanctity. It’s the end of the human race. It’s you as much as me!”
Rigo, shocked into awareness by the man’s vehemence, asked, “What makes you think there’s an answer on Grass?”
“Something. Maybe only rumor, only fairy tales. Maybe only wishful thinking. Maybe like the fabled cities of gold or the unicorn or the philosopher’s stone…”
“But maybe?”
“Maybe something real. According to our temple on Semling, there is no plague at all on Grass.”
“There’s none here on Terra!”
“Oh, Lord, man if that were only true! There’s none here that anyone is allowed to see. But I’ve seen it.” The man wiped his face again, eyes brimming with sudden tears, and his jaw clenched as though he were holding down bile that threatened to flood his throat. “I’ve seen it. Men. Animals. It’s everywhere. I’ll show it to you, if you like.”
Roderigo had already seen plague. He hadn’t known it was on Terra or that it afflicted animals, but he, too, had seen it. He waved the offer aside, concentrating. “But there’s none on Grass? Perhaps it’s only hidden, as you do here.”
“Our people don’t think they could be hiding it. The Grassians seem to have no structure to hide it. Funny kind of place. But if there’s none there…”
“What you’re implying is that it’s the
Sender, pallid and sweating, nodded and then whispered, “We have at least one temple on virtually every occupied world. In the few places where there’s no temple, there’s at least a mission. We are responsible for hiding
