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 corn-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 Shafne? 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 paterns. 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—”
“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
