Grass Read online

  "What's your name?" Rigo had asked.

  The acolyte's voice was hollow, inattentive. "We don't have – "

  "I don't care about that. What's your name?"

  "Rillibee Chime." The words fell softly into quiet, like rainwater into a pool.

  "Is he dying?"

  A moment's pause. Then, softly, as though to answer was difficult or forbidden. "The whispers say he is."

  "What is it?"

  "Everyone says ... plague." The last word came as bile comes, choking. The anonymous face turned away. The anonymous person panted. It had been a hard word to say. It meant an end to time. It meant two years might not be long enough for him to get out of this place.

  It was also a hard word to hear.

  "Plague!" It came out of Rigo's belly like a grunt.

  These days the word meant only one thing. A slow virus of the most insidious type and hideous aspect. A slow virus which emerged at last to make the body devour itself as in a spasm of biological self-hatred. Father Sandoval had insisted on showing Rigo a banned documentary made by a fellow priest, now dead, at an aid station where plague victims were treated and given whatever rites would comfort them. There had been bodies on all the cots, some of them still living. Rigo's eyes had slid across the picture, observing it without wanting to see it. The cube had made him see it. It had included sound and smell, and he had recoiled from the stench as he tried to shut out the guttural, agonized coughs, the mutilated bodies, the eyes sunk so deep they made the faces seem skull-like.

  "Plague," he muttered again. The rumor was that it had moved from planet to planet, lying dormant for decades, only to emerge at last in place after place, giving no hint of its origin, subverting every attempt to stay it. The rumor was that science had proved helpless, able to isolate the monster but utterly incapable of stopping it once it had invaded a human host. The rumor had been circulating for over twenty years. If there really was plague, by now the victims must be numbered in the billions. So said rumor and rumor only, for Sanctity denied that there was plague, and what Sanctity denied, the human worlds denied – by and large.

  "You mean my uncle?" Roderigo demanded.

  "I didn't know he was your uncle until today. The Hierarch." The acolyte turned to stare at him with suddenly human eyes. "I'm not supposed to say anything to you, sir. Please, don't tell them I did. Here are the rooms of the division chief for Missions, sir. If you have questions, you must ask the division chief. You must ask Sender O'Neil."

  The acolyte turned away, losing himself in the stream of anonymous acolytes, only at the turn of the corridor turning back to stare at Roderigo Yrarier, who still stood there before the door, his eyes down, an expression of loathing on his face.

  "That acolyte should be disciplined," said a watcher. "Look at him, standing there, staring." The watcher himself was staring nearsightedly through the crack of a very slightly opened door, his age-spotted hand trembling on the wall beside it.

  "He's only curious," said his companion from over his shoulder. "How often do you think he gets to see anyone except the Sanctified. Shut the door. Did you understand what the old man said, Mailers?"

  "The Hierarch? He said his nephew had a chance of finding what we need because of the horses."

  "And do you think Yrarier will succeed?"

  "Well, Cory, he has a fine dramatic look to him, doesn't he? All that black hair and white skin and red, red lips. I suppose he has as good a chance as anyone."

  The man addressed as Cory made a face. He, himself, had never been dramatic-looking, and he often regretted that fact. Now he looked simply old, with wispy hair frilling his ears and spiderwebs of wrinkles around his eyes. "He looks more dramatic than clever, but I hope he succeeds. We need him to succeed, Hallers. We need it."

  "You don't need to tell me that, Cory. If we don't get a cure soon, we're dead. Everyone."

  There was a pause. Hallers turned to see his lifelong companion staring at the floor, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Even if we get it very soon, I think it will be better if we let the dying go on, some places."

  Hallers moved uncertainly toward his companion, his expression confused. "I don't understand what you mean."

  "Well, Hallers, suppose we get the cure tomorrow. Why should we save everyone? Our own best people, of course, but why bother with everyone else? Why bother with some of the worlds, for example?"

  Silence in the room while Hallers stared and Cory Strange watched for his reaction. Shock at first. Well, when Cory had first had the idea, he had been shocked at it too But then Cory had realized what it could do for Sanctity …

  "You'd let them die? Whole worlds of men?"

  The other shrugged elaborately, wincing as the shrug started a sudden pain in one arthritic shoulder. "In the long run, I think it would be best for Sanctity, don't you? Mankind is too widespread already. Sanctity has done what it can to stop exploration, but it does go on. A group here, a group there, sneaking out. Little frontier worlds, here and there. And what happens? A place like Shame, for example, where we can't even get a decent foothold! No, men are spread far too widely for us to control well."

  "That's certainly the current view of the Council of Elders, I agree, but – "

  "In any case," the other interrupted, "we need to keep an eye on Yrarier so we know what he's up to. Didn't you tell me that Nods had been assigned to Grass? Head of Acceptable Doctrine with the penitents there, didn't you say? Or did someone else tell me?"

  "It must have been someone else. You mean our old friend Noddingale?"

  "Him, yes. Though he's adopted one of those strange Green Brother names. Jhamlees. Jhamlees Zoe."

  "Jhamlees Zoe?" The other laughed breathlessly. "Don't laugh. The Brothers are quite serious about their religious names. Stay a moment while I write a note. Have one of your youngsters pack it into something innocent-looking, cover it with a code note and a destruct-wrap, and send it on the ship that takes Yrarier." He sat at his desk and began to write, "My dear old friend Nods … " his hand forming the letters with some difficulty.

  His equally ancient friend, leaning over his shoulder, interrupted him by venturing curiously, "The old Hierarch will be dead within hours everyone says. Will the new Hierarch feel the same way about this business, Cory? About consolidating and letting some of the worlds just … well, just go?"

  "The new Hierarch?" Cory laughed again, this time with real amusement as he turned his wide, fanatical eyes on his companion. "You mean you didn't know? That's right! You've been outside for a while. The Council of Elders met a week ago. The new Hierarch will be me."

  4

  It looks as though it has been winter forever," Marjorie Westriding Yrarier remarked, careful to keep her voice level and without complaint. Complaint would not have been diplomatic, but her host and escort, Obermun Jerril bon Haunser, would not allow himself to take offense at a mere expression of opinion. Taking offense would be even more undiplomatic than giving it – certainly by someone who did not know her but whose business it undoubtedly was to get to know her as soon as possible. Looking at the angular planes of his long, powerful face, she wondered if he ever would. He had not the look of a man who cared much who others were or what they thought.

  However, he set himself to attempt charm with an unaccustomed smile. "When summer comes," he said in the heavily accented Terran he used as diplomatic speech, "you will believe it has lasted forever also. All the seasons on Grass are eternal. Summer never ends, nor fall. And though you do not see it at this moment, spring is upon us."

  "How would I know?" she asked, genuinely curious. From the window of the main house, which was set upon a slight rise, the landscape below her seemed an unending ocean of grayed pastels and palest gold, dried grasses moving like the waves of a shoreless sea, a surface broken only by scattered islands of broad and contorted trees, their tops so thickly twigged they appeared as solid masses inked blackly against the turbid sky. It was not like spring at home. It was not like any season a
t home, where she now desperately longed to be, despite the enthusiasm she had at first whipped up for this mission.

  "How do you know it is spring?" she demanded, turning away from the window toward him.

  They stood amid high, echoing walls in an arctic and empty chamber of what was to be the embassy. The distant ceiling curved in ivory traceries of plaster groins; tall glass doors opened through gelid arches onto a balustraded terrace; pale glowing floors reflected their movements as though from polished ice through a thin, cold film of dust. Though it was one of the main reception rooms of the estancia, it did not seem to require furnishings or curtains across the frigid glass. It seemed content with its numbing vacancy, as did the dozen other rooms they had visited, each as tall, wintery, and self-contained as this one.

  The estancia, though conscientiously maintained, had been untenanted for some time, and Marjorie, Lady Westriding, had the feeling that the house preferred it that way. Furniture would be an intrusion in these rooms. They had accommodated themselves to doing without. Rejecting carpets and curtains in favor of this chill simplicity, they were content.

  Unaware of her brief fantasy the Obermun suggested, "Look at the grasses along the stairs to the terrace. What do you see?"

  She stared, convincing herself at last that the amethyst shadow she saw there was not merely an effect of the often very tricky light. "Purple?" she asked. "Purple grass?"

  "We call that particular variety Cloak of Kings," he said. "There are hundreds of grasses on this world, of many shapes and sizes and of an unbelievable array of colors. We have no flowers in the sense someone from Sanctity would understand, but we do not lack for bloom." He used the word "Sanctity," as did most of those they had encountered upon Grass, as a virtual synonym for Terra. As before, she longed to correct him but did not. The time when Sanctity had been contained on Terra was many generations past, but there was no denying its ubiquity and virtual omnipotence on man's birthplace.

  "I have read Snipopean's account of the Grass Gardens of Klive," she murmured, not mentioning it was almost the only thing she had been able to read about Grass. Sanctity knew nothing. Terra knew nothing. There was no diplomatic contact and no information could be transmitted and returned much more quickly than the Yrariers themselves could arrive – months after Sanctity had begged permission, months after permission for an ambassador had been given, months after Roderigo's old uncle – now long since dead – had begged them to come. All had happened as swiftly as possible, and yet almost two Terran years had passed since these aristocrats had said they would allow an embassy. Now the Yrariers must make up for lost time. She went on calmly, "The Grass Gardens of Klive are at the estancia of the Damfels, I believe?"

  He acknowledged her slight interrogative tone with a nod. "Btw Damfels," he said, emphasizing the honorific "Stavenger and Rowena bon Damfels would have been pleased to welcome you, but they are in mourning just now."

  "Ah?" she said in a questioning tone.

  "They recently lost a daughter," he said, an expression of distaste and embarrassment upon his face. "At the first spring Hunt. A hunting accident."

  "I sympathize with their sorrow." She paused for a moment, allowing her own face to reflect an appropriately assessed measure of compassion. What could she say? Would too much sympathy be effusive? Would curiosity be misplaced? A hunting accident? The expression on the man's face indicated it would be safer to let more information be given rather than ask for it. She waited long enough for the Obermun to continue, and when he did not she returned to the safety of the former subject. "What does it mean when the Cloak of Kings shows purple along its bottom?"

  "The color will be halfway up the stems in a matter of days, and you will begin to see the flush of the gardens – rose and amber, turquoise, and emerald. This estancia was named Opal Hill because of the play of color each spring evokes. These gardens are young, but well laid out. The flat place there at the bottom of the stairs is what we call a first surface. All grass gardens have such an enclosed, flat area of low turf It is the place from which all garden walks begin. From that place, trails lead from prospect to prospect. In a week, the winds will soften. We have entered upon the spring collect. By the end of the period – "

  "A period being?"

  "Sixty days. An arbitrary choice made by the earliest settlers. When a year extends over two thousand days, it is hard to make shorter lengths of time mean much. A period is sixty days, ten periods make a collect, four collects – one corresponding to each season – make a year. We reflect our Terran ancestry by dividing each period into four fifteen-day weeks, but there is no religious significance attached."

  She nodded her understanding, risked saying, "No Sabbath."

  "No planetary religious holidays of any kind. Which is not to say there is no religion, simply that matters of faith have been irrevocably removed from any civil support or recognition. Our ancestors, while all benefiting from noble blood, came from a variety of cultures. They wished to avoid conflict in such matters."

  "We have much to learn," she said, fingering the limp leather of the little testament in her pocket. Before they left Terra, Father Sandoval had sent it to the Church in Exile to be blessed by the Pope. Father Sandoval, claiming to know her better than she knew herself, had said it would help reconcile her to the experience after her first enthusiasm wore off. So far she had noticed little reconciliation. "The authorities at Sanctity told us almost nothing about Grass."

  "If you will forgive my saying so, Terrans know almost nothing about Grass. They have not, in the past, been particularly interested."

  Again that confusion between Terra, the planet, and Sanctity, the religious empire. She nodded, accepting his not ungentle chiding. Either way, it was probably true enough. Terrans had not cared about Grass. Not about Semling, or The Pearly Gates, or Shame, or Repentance, or any of the hundred human-settled planets far and adrift in the sea of space. What was left of human society on Terra had been too busy forcing its own population down and restoring an ecology virtually destroyed by the demands of an insatiable humanity to concern itself with those emigrations that had made its own salvation possible. Sanctity squatted on the doorstep of the north, regulating the behavior of its adherents wherever it could, while everyone else on Terra got on with trying to survive. Once each Terran year Sanctity celebrated with flags and speeches and off-planet visitors. The rest of the time Sanctity might as well have been somewhere else.

  Sanctity was not Terra. Terra was home, and this was not. Though Marjorie wanted to say this loudly, with emotion, she restrained herself.

  "Will you show me the stables?" she inquired. "I assume our horses have been revived and delivered?"

  Until this moment she had seen nothing approaching real discomfort on the aristocrat's face. He had met them in the reception area of the revivatory at the port, seen to the collection of their belongings, provided them with two aircars to bring them to the estancia which they were to occupy – aircars they were to retain during their "visit," he had said. He had remained to guide her through the summer domestic quarters while her husband, Roderigo Yrarier, toured the winter quarters and the offices of the new embassy with Eric bon Haunser, a younger but no less dutiful member of the Grassian aristocracy. Throughout this not inconsiderable itinerary, Obermun bon Haunser had been smooth and proper to a fault, but the question of the horses made him uncomfortable. If he did not precisely lose countenance, something at the corners of his mouth let composure slip, though subtly and only momentarily.

  Marjorie, whose Olympic gold medals had been in dressage, puissance jumping, and endurance events, was accustomed to reading such twitches of the skin. Horses communicated in this way. "Is something wrong?" she inquired gently, keeping herself strictly under control.

  "We had not been … " He paused, searching for a way to say it. "We had not been advised in advance about the animals."

  Animals? Since when were horses "animals"?

  "Does it create a problem? Someone fr
om Semling said the estancia has stables."

  "No, not stables," he said. 'There are some shelters nearby which were used by Hippae. Before this place was built, needless to say."

  Why needless to say? And Hippae? That would be the horselike animal native to this planet. "Are they so different that our mounts can't occupy their stalls?"

  "Hippae would not occupy stalls," he replied, seeming less than candid as he did so. He lost composure sufficiently to gnaw a thumbnail before continuing. "The shelter near Opal Hill is not being used by Hippae now. and it might serve to house your horses well enough, I suppose. However, at the time of your arrival we did not have available to us any suitable conveyance for large animals." Again, he attempted a smile. "Please excuse us, Lady Marjorie. We were set at a small contretemps that confused us for the moment. I am sure we will have solved the problem within a day or two."

  "The horses have not been revived, then." Her voice was sharper than she had intended, edgy with outrage. Poor things! Left lying about in that cold, nightmarish nothingness.

  "Not yet. Within the next few days."

  She took control of herself once more. It would not do to lose her temper and appear at a disadvantage. "Would you like me to come to the port? Or to send one of the children? If you have no one accustomed to handling horses, Stella would be glad to go, or Anthony." Or I, she thought. Or Rigo. Any of us, man. For the love of heaven …

  "Your son?"

  He sounded so immediately relieved that she knew this had been part of the problem. Some diplomatic nicety, no doubt. It was possibly thought inappropriate for the ambassador or his wife to have to attend to such matters, and yet who else could? Well, let it pass. Show no anxiety. Don't risk eventual acceptance of the embassy over the matter of a day or two – this embassy that might almost have been an answer to her prayers, this opportunity to do something of significance. Don Quixote and El Dia Octavo could sleep that much longer, along with Her Majesty. Irish Lass, Millefiori, and Blue Star. "We are looking forward to riding to our first Hunt," she said; then, seeing his dismay, "Only as followers, of course."