Piss on it.
I’d rather be here. Even if I die, I’d rather be here. If there’s anything important for a very small being to do, it’s fighting the plague. That’s first. We’ve got to buy time to find the answer. The only thing that matters now is the plague. We’ve got to find the cure and make sure that Sanctity doesn’t get it before someone else does. And if we do that, then … then there’s something else. Oh, God, let Him talk to me. I want Him to talk to me.
Rigo thought: This damned lance doesn’t balance right. It needs to be heavier at the butt so it’ll swing with less strength. Maybe it’s just that I feel lousy. Sick, weak. I should still be back there in a chair letting somebody put a blanket over my legs. Instead, I’m here. Where is here? How the hell did I get here? Well, no one forced me. I’m the only one of us who’s ever fought a Hippae. I’m the only one who knows where to hit them. Legs first. Jaws second. Cut their legs out, their jaws off, let the damned, stinking things die.
I’m not healed yet. My legs don’t feel right. My thighs feel soggy, like wet sponges. As though there were no muscle there. Someone may die out here today. Maybe me. Better me than Marjorie or Tony. They haven’t played the fool, the way I have.
But if it’s me, she’ll be free. Free to do whatever she likes, go to whomever she likes. Sylvan. Look at him. Never ridden a horse before, but he looks like he was born riding. Well, it’s not that different. The strengths are the same; legs, back.
If I get killed, will she go to him?
If she does, is it any worse than my having Eugenie? Poor Eugenie. Damn. I wish they’d saved her. Lovely Eugenie. Nothing in her head but how to make things pretty and taste good and smell good and feel good. No high aspirations. No high-minded innocence to offend against. No modesty to invade. No expectations to fall short of. No serious thoughts at all. Still, she deserved better than to die like that.
If she died. God. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe the hounds took her, the Hippae took her, the way they took Stella….
Don’t think of that! The only thing that matters now is the plague. We’ve got to save Commons from being overrun, just for a while, until someone can come up with the answer. We will, will come up with an answer. Mankind will come up with an answer! Something always saves us, just in the nick of time. God will intervene. There’ll be time. Marjorie will turn back to me. She always has. Always, no matter what happens….
Sylvan thought: You have to give him credit. Not a day out of bed, half killed by the mounts, and here he is. He keeps looking at me, letting his eyes slide across me. I know what he’s thinking. If he gets killed, I get Marjorie. Fool. If he gets killed, Marjorie does what she pleases, and that doesn’t include me. I don’t know why. I’ve never had trouble with any woman I’ve ever wanted, but I’m no good with her. I’m the real fool. I thought she was like one of us. What’s the Terran word? Pleasure-seeking. Hedonistic. Well, what else have we had to think of but pleasure? The damned Hippae haven’t let us think of anything else. They’ve tapped into us and enslaved us and kept us right where they wanted us….
Look at Marjorie! Like a queen! Regal and tall and rides that thing as though she were part of it. That thing! Ha-ha. Horse. Horse. They make soft noises when you pat them and they look at you kindly when you get on. This one, Her Majesty, she does what I ask her to. It’s almost like loving a woman. Horse. Not Hippae.
Tony’s watching me, too. He doesn’t like me. I thought at first it was because of Marjorie, but that’s not it. I offend him somehow. My manner. My bon manner. Maybe it was because I didn’t take their plague seriously. I didn’t know. Did I even think it mattered whether there was anything left of humanity, elsewhere? That’s what the Hippae thought. They didn’t care. If they thought it, we thought it. How long have they been doing our thinking for us? They don’t want there to be another intelligent race. And they won’t believe that they themselves become another intelligent race. Foxen. What was it Brother Mainoa said? We never believe we’ll get old. The Hippae don’t know what they have in them to be. They’ve stopped themselves, half grown. They’ve stopped themselves at adolescence. Brutal time, that. Hateful time. Not a child. Not grown. Full of strength and fury and no place to put it….
Well, they stopped us there, too. Marjorie looks at me the way she looks at Tony. As though I’m a boy. And when have I ever had the chance to be anything else….
Mother. Mother. You shouldn’t be out here at all. Oh, Mother, do you really think this pays back for Dimity….
Tony thought: Let’s get this over with and go home. If I die, I die, but if I don’t die, let me go home. Let’s leave these people, these crazy bons, let’s go! Let me go through this hour, two hours, whatever it takes, then we’ll go, I’ll go, somehow. Let’s get it over with. If I die …
Rowena thought: Dimity. For Dimity. For Emmy. For Stavenger. For my other children, dead so long ago
