Grass Read online

  Rowena went back to the balcony and craned her neck to look over the top of the wall. She could see the movements of the waiting mounts, tossing heads, switching tails. She could hear the clicking of hooves, the hruffing sound of a breath suddenly expelled. It was too quiet. Always too quiet when the riders mounted. She had always felt there should be talk, people calling to one another, greeting one another. There should be … something. Something besides this silence.

  Outside the Hunt Gate the hounds circled and the mounts waited, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, tails lashing, necks arching as they pawed the ground, all quietly as in a dream where things move but make no sound. The air was warm with their steamy breath, full of the haylike smell of them, the sweaty stench. Stavenger's mount came forward first, as was proper, and then others, one by one, coming for the Huntsman and for the whippers-in, and then for the riders of the field, the oldest riders first. Dimity stood behind Emeraude and Amethyste, shivering slightly as first one, then the other vaulted up onto the backs of waiting mounts. Soon she was the only one left unmounted. Then, just as she decided that there was no mount for her, that she could slip back through the gate, the mount was there before her, within reach of her hand.

  It stared at her as it extended a front leg and crouched slightly so that she could put one foot on the brindled leg, grasp the reins, and leap upward, all as she had done time after time on the simulator, no different except for the smell and the heaving breath which spread the vast ribs between her legs, wider than the machine had ever done. Her toes hunted desperately for the notches between the third and fourth rib that should be there, finding them at last far forward of where she thought they should be. She slipped the pointed toes of her boots in, locking herself on. Then it was only a matter of hanging onto the reins and keeping her spurs dug in and her legs tight while the great creature beneath her turned high on its rear legs to follow the others away, west. She had worn her padded breeches for hours on the simulator, so they were properly broken in. She had had nothing to drink since early the previous evening and nothing to eat since noon yesterday. She wished fleetingly that Sylvan could ride beside her, but he was far ahead. Emeraude and Amethyste were lost in the welter. She could see Stavenger's red coat, the line of his back as straight as a stem of polegrass. There was no turning back now. It was almost a relief to know that she couldn't do anything but what she was doing. Nothing else at all, not until the Hunt returned. At last there was sound, a drumming of feet which filled all the space there was to hold it, a resonant thunder coming up from the ground beneath them.

  From her balcony above them, Rowena heard the sound and put her hands over her ears until it faded into silence. Gradually the small sounds of insect and bird and grass peeper, which had ceased when the hounds arrived, began once more.

  "Too young," brooded Salla. "Oh, mistress."

  Rowena did not slap her maidservant but turned to her with tears in her eyes instead. "I know," she said. She turned to see the end of the line of riders as it fled away down the garden trail toward the west.

  Riding out. she said to herself. Riding out And they'll ride back again.

  Back again. Saying it over and over like a litany. Back again.

  "She'll be back," said Salla. "She'll be back, wanting a nice hot bath." Then both of them stood staring into the west, not seeing anything there except the grass.

  Down the wide hallway from Rowena's suite of rooms, in the mostly unused library of Klive, certain nonhunting members of the aristocracy had assembled to consider a matter of continuing irritation to them all. Second leader at Klive was Stavenger's younger brother, Figor. Some years ago, following one of the many hunting accidents which occurred every season, Figor had stopped riding to the hounds. This left him free during hunting seasons to take upon himself many of the responsibilities of the estancia while Stavenger was otherwise engaged. Today Figor met with Eric bon Haunser, Gerold bon Laupmon, and Gustave bon Smaerlok. Gustave was the Obermun bon Smaerlok, head of the Smaerlok family still, despite his disability; but both Eric bon Haunser and Gerold bon Laupmon were younger siblings of the family leaders, men who were also hunting today.

  The quartet assembled around a large square table in one corner of the dimly lit room, passing among themselves the document which had occasioned their meeting. It was a brief document, headed with the cursive arabesques which spelled out the names and attributes of Sanctity, laden with seals and ribbons and signed by the Hierarch himself. This same group of aristocrats had responded to similar documents in both the remote and recent past, and Gustave bon Smaerlok betrayed considerable impatience at having to do so yet again.

  "This office of Sanctity is becoming importunate," the Obermun said now from the wheeled half-person he had occupied for the last twenty years. "Dimoth bon Maukerden says so. I asked him and he went into a rage over this business. And Yalph bon Bindersen. I asked him, too. Haven't had a chance to get over to bon Tanlig's place yet, but Dimoth and Yalph and I are agreed that whatever this Sanctity wants, it has nothing to do with us, and we won't have their damned fragras here. Our people came to Grass to get away from Sanctity – now let Sanctity stay away from us. It's enough we let them stay on digging up the Arbai city, enough that those Green Brothers make mud pies with their little shovels up there in the north. Let elsewhere stay elsewhere and Grass stay Grass. So we all agree. Let's tell them so, once and for all. It's Hunt season, for heaven's sake. We haven't time for all this nonsense." Though Gustave no longer rode, he was an avid follower of the Hunt, watching the pursuit from a silent, propeller-driven balloon-car whenever the weather would allow.

  "Easy, Gustave," murmured Figor, the fingers of his right hand massaging his left arm at the point where the flesh and the prosthesis joined, feeling the pain pulse beneath his fingers, a constant accompaniment to existence, even after two years. It made him irritable, and he guarded against expressing the irritation, knowing it arose from the body rather than the mind. "We don't need to make an open revolt out of it. No need to rub Sanctity's fur the wrong way."

  "Revolt!" the older man bellowed. "Since when does this fragras Sanctity rule on Grass?" Though the word fragras meant simply "foreign," he used it as it was usually used on Grass, as the ultimate insult.

  "Shhh." Figor made allowances for Gustave. Gustave was in pain also and was undoubtedly made irritable thereby. "I didn't mean that kind of revolt, and you know it. Even though we have no religious allegiance to Sanctity, we pay it lip service for other things. Sanctity is headquartered upon Terra. We acknowledge Terra as the center of diplomatic intercourse. Maintainer of our cultural heritage. Eternal cradle of mankind. Blah and blah." He sighed, massaging again. Gustave snorted but did not interrupt as Figor went on. "Many take our history seriously, Gustave. Even we don't entirely ignore it. We use the old language during conferences; we teach Terran to our children. We don't all use the same language in our estancias, but we consider speaking Terran among ourselves the mark of cultured men, no? We calculate our age in Sanctity years, still. Most of our food crops are Terran crops from our ancestors' time. Why run afoul of Sanctity – and all those who might come roaring to her defense – when we don't need to?"

  "You want their damn what-are-they here? Prodding and poking. You want their nasty little researchers upsetting things?"

  There was a moment's silence while they considered things that might be upset. At this time of the year only the Hunt could be upset, for it was the only important thing going on. During the winter, of course, no one went anywhere, and during the summer months it was too hot to travel except at night, when the summer balls were held. Still, "research" had an awkward sound to it. People asking questions. People demanding answers to things.

  "We don't have to let them upset anything," Figor said doubtfully.

  "They've told us why they want to come. There's some plague or other and Sanctity's setting up missions here and there, looking for a cure." He rubbed his arm again, scowling.

  "But
why here?" blurted Gerold bon Laupmon.

  "Why not here as well as anywhere? Sanctity knows little or nothing about Grass and it's grasping at straws."

  They considered this for a time. It was true that Sanctity knew little or nothing about Grass except what it could learn from the Green Brothers. Foreigners came and went in Commoner Town, allowed to stay there only so long as it took to get the next ship out and not allowed to come into the grass country at all. Semling had tried to maintain an embassy on Grass, unsuccessfully. Now there was no diplomatic contact with "elsewhere." Though the word was often used to mean Sanctity or Terra, it was also used in a more general sense: Grass was Grass; what was not Grass was elsewhere.

  Eric broke the silence. "Last time Sanctity said something about someone having come here with the disease and departed without it." He rose awkwardly on his artificial legs, wishing he could so easily depart, without his disability.

  "Foolishness," Gustave barked. "They couldn't even tell us who it was, or when. Some crewman, they said. Off a ship. What ship, they didn't know. It was only a rumor. Maybe this plague doesn't even exist," he growled. "Maybe it's all an excuse to start proselytizing us, snipping at us with their little punches, taking tissue samples for their damned banks." Even though the bon Smaerloks had come to Grass long ago, the family history was replete with accounts of the religious tyranny they had fled from.

  "No." said Figor. "I believe the plague exists. We've heard of it from other sources. And they're upset about it, which is understandable. They're running about doing this and that, not to much purpose. Well, they will find a cure for their plague. Give them time. One thing you can say for Sanctity, it does find answers eventually. So why not give them time to find the answer somewhere else, without saying no and without upsetting ourselves? We'll tell this Hierarch we don't take kindly to being studied, blah and blah, right of cultural privacy – he'll have to accept that, since it's one of the covenants Sanctity agreed to at the time of dispersion – but we'll say we're sensible people, willing to talk about it, so why not send us an ambassador to discuss the matter." Figor made an expansive gesture. "Then we can discuss and discuss for a few years until the question becomes moot."

  "Until they all die?" Gerold bon Laupmon asked – meaning, Figor supposed, everyone of human origin not upon Grass.

  Figor sighed. One was never certain with Gerold that he quite understood what was going on. "No. Until they find a cure. Which they will."

  Gustave snorted. "I'll give that to the Sanctified, Gerold. They're clever." He said it in the tone of one who did not think much of cleverness.

  There was a pause while they considered it Eric bon Haunser urged at last, "It has the advantage of making us look perfectly reasonable."

  Gustave snorted again. "To who? Who is it looking at us? Who has the right?" He pounded on the arm of his chair, scowling, turning red in the face. Ever since the accident which had cut short Gustave's riding career, he had been irascible and difficult, and Figor moved to calm him.

  "Anyone can, Gustave, whether they have the right or not. Anyone can look. Anyone can have an opinion, whether we want them to or not. And if we should ever want something from Sanctity, we'd be in a good position to ask that the favor be returned."

  Eric nodded, seeing that Gustave was about to object. "Maybe we'll never want anything, Gustave. Probably we won't. But if we did, by chance, we'd be in a good position. Aren't you the one who always tells us not to give up an advantage until we have to?"

  The older man simmered. "Then we have to be polite to whoever they send – bow, scrape, pretend he's our equal, some fool, some off-planeter, some foreigner."

  "Well, yes. Since the ambassador will be from Sanctity, he'll probably be Terran, Gustave. Surely we could suffer that for a time. As I mentioned, most of us speak diplomatic."

  "And this fragras will have a silly wife and a dozen bratlings, probably. And servants. And secretaries and aides. All asking questions."

  "Put them someplace remote, where they can't ask many. Put them at Opal Hill." Eric named the site of the former Semling embassy with some relish, repeating it. "Opal Hill."

  "Opal Hill, hah! Farther than nowhere! All the way across the swamp-forest to the southwest. That's why the people from Semling left. It gets lonely at Opal Hill."

  "So, the man from Sanctity will get lonely and leave as well. But that will be his fault, not ours. Agreed? Yes?"

  Evidently they were agreed. Figor waited for a time to see if anyone had any second thoughts or if Gustave was going to explode again, then rang for wine before leading his guests down into the grass gardens. Now, in early fall, the gardens were at their best, the feathery seed heads moving like dancers to the beat of the southern wind. Even Gustave would mellow after an hour in the gardens. Come to think of it, Opal Hill had very nice gardens as well, young but well designed. The Sanctified penitents expiating their sins here on Grass by digging up ruins and designing gardens – the ones who called themselves the Green Brothers – had spent considerable care upon the Opal Hill gardens. Nothing had disturbed the gardens since the people from Semling had left. Perhaps this ambassador person could be interested in gardening. Or his wife, if he had a wife. Or the dozen bratlings.

  Afar from Klive, deep among the grasses, Dimity bon Damfels tried to exorcise the pain in her legs and back. Even after all those hours on the simulator, all the pain she had experienced there, this was different. This was intrusive, hateful, intimate.

  "When you think the pain is unbearable," the riding instructor had said, "you can review the track of the Hunt in your mind. Distract yourself. Above all, do not think of the pain itself."

  So she distracted herself, reviewing how they had come. They had ridden out along the Trail of Greens and Blues where the patterned turf along the path went from deepest indigo through all shades of turquoise and sapphire to dark forest green and bright emerald, upward to the ridge where tall plumes of aquamarine watergrass undulated in ceaseless waves. Beyond the ridge the watergrass filled a shallow basin dotted with islands of sandgrass, the whole making such a marvelously lifelike seascape that it was called the Ocean Garden. Dimity had once seen a picture of a real ocean when she went with Rowena to Commoner Town to pick up some imported fabric. It had been hanging on the fabric merchant's wall, a picture of a sea on Sanctity. She remembered saying at the time how much the imaged expanse of water looked like grass. Someone had laughed at this, saying it was the grass that looked like water. How would one know which looked like which? In fact, they looked like one another, were like one another, except that one could drown in water.

  Musing on this, Dimity surprised herself with the thought that one might almost drown in grass as well. One might wish to drown. Her left knee was in agony. Little trails of fire crept from the knee upward toward her groin. Distract yourself, she repeated mentally. Distract yourself.

  At the end of the Trail of Greens and Blues, the hounds had run silently into Thirty-shadows Forest, where giant black stems, thick as her body, grew tall, clucking hollowly far above as they collided in the small wind. Here velvet turfs were planted in mosslike clusters around hillocks of stonegrass, and here the mounts had followed as the trail led upward toward the Ruby Highlands.

  On the Highlands the vistas were of amber and peach, apricot and rose, with veins of deepest red threaded through the paler colors to climax in bursts of skyrocketing bloodgrass, and here the trail turned aside from the gardens to run off into the untended gramineae of the surrounding veldt. It was tallgrass veldt, with nothing to see but the stems rushing by as her mount forced his way through, nothing to hear but the rustle of the plumy seed heads, nothing to think of but steeling herself against the blows of the blades, keeping her head down so those blows fell on the padded cap and not on her face.

  Still, she could tell from the sun that they were running north, and Dimity concentrated upon this. The seven remaining estancias were separated from one another by at least an hour's air travel, and yet t
hey occupied only a small part of the surface of Grass. What did she know about the land north of the Damfels estancia? There wasn't another estancia there. The nearest estancia was that of the bon Laupmons, but it was a great distance to the southeast. Directly east were the bon Haunsers. The Friary of the Green Brothers was north, but some ways east of the bon Damfels estancia. There were no other estancias to the north, no villages, nothing except more prairie and a long, shallow valley where there were many copses. "Many copses means many foxes," she quoted silently to herself. Undoubtedly they were riding toward the valley.

  The pain was suddenly there again, moving in her other leg "Better than distraction," the riding master had said, "is to let yourself fall into the rhythm of the ride and think of nothing." She tried not fighting the pain, not distracting herself, just going with it. "Above all, do not disturb the mount or attract the attention of the hounds." She would not attract their attention. She would just let it go, let it go, not thinking about anything.

  On the simulator Dimity had never managed to think of nothing, and she was surprised to find how much easier it was here. Almost as though something was working inside her mind to wipe it clean. An eraser. Rub, rub, rub. She started to shake her head in annoyance, not liking the feel of it, remembering only just in time that one must not move, really must not move. The intrusion in her mind scraped at her. Deliberately, she went back to distraction, thinking of her newest ball gown, reviewing every flounce, each embroidered leaf and blossom, and after a time the hurtful feeling inside her head departed. "Ride," she said silently to herself. "Ride, ride, ride." The repetition took the place of the emptiness, driving out the ball gown, and she simply held on, moving as the mount moved, shutting her eyes, not seeing anything else. Her backbone was a fused column of agony. Her throat was dry. She wanted desperately to scream, and fighting down the scream took all her strength.