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.
“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,
