Sheri Tepper - Grass

by Grass(Lit)

  So musing, Jhamlees Zoe wrapped the packet, the letter, and the itinerary once more and hid the resultant bundle in his files.

  For a time, Rillibee spent his days in required prayer, in morning song and evening song, in special services now and again, with routine duties taking up all the time between. There was gardening to do in the sun-blessed springs and summers and falls, when crop succeeded crop endlessly under the light-handed benison of rain. Though the long, elliptical orbit of the planet brought it almost under the sun's eyelids during midsummer, this far north the heat was lessened to an almost tolerable level. There were pigs to care for and slaughter and chickens to feed and kill. There was food to put up for wintertime. They would keep him busy, they told him. Soon he would be assigned to his permanent job

  When that day came, Rillibee in his guise as Brother Lourai sneaked off to hide among the grasses with Brother Mainoa and talk about Rillibee's future. He had decided again, only that morning, not to die just yet, but that decision was not sufficient for the purposes of the Friary.

  "They want to know what I want to do," Rillibee said in an aggrieved voice. "I have to tell them this afternoon."

  "That's right," answered Brother Mainoa comfortably. "Now that you've settled down and it's known that the climbing apes aren't going to kill you-and that Brother Flumzee that calls himself High-bones has killed a few, though him and his friends always claim it was accidental-those set in authority over us have to decide what to do with you."

  "I don't know why you think the climbers have given up wanting me dead," Rillibee objected. "Several of them are still set on killing me. Highbones wants me done with because he says I made a fool of him. He had some kind of bet that I'd end up splattered. Topclinger's friends want him to pay up. He says his bet was with Topclinger, and with him dead, there's no bet anymore, but they keep nagging at him, and that makes him hate me more. Ropeknots wants me out of the way because I've made him out to be a liar. The longer I stay clear of 'em, the worse they want me gone."

  "Well, you should give them what they want, Brother. I always try to do that. When someone else wants something very badly, I always try to give them what they want. They want you gone, you should go. I think it's best if we can get you back to the dig with me, especially if we can do it before Elder Brother Jhamlees remembers those twenty stripes he promised you, which I heard about from someone I can't remember. However, if you say you want to come back to the dig with me, Elder Brother will send you anywhere on Grass except there." Brother Mainoa sucked at the grass stem he was chewing and considered the matter.

  "What you should do, Lourai, is look depressed and ask them what there is for you to do. They'll mention half a dozen things, including the dig. They'll mention the gardens and the henhouses and the pig farm and carpentry shop and weaving shop and the dig. If they don't mention it. you do. Say, 'I saw the dig, too, when Brother Mainoa brought me in.' Get it into the conversation. Then, when they say 'dig?' you say, 'Dig, Elder Brother? I was there and I don't think I'd like that much.'"

  "Why should I fool around with the Elder Brother? I thought you said Elder Laeroa was a sympathetic person."

  "Oh, Elder Laeroa's good enough. He's interested in things, Laeroa is. In the dig. In the gardens. He's a good botanist, too. But it won't be Laeroa that assigns you to your job. That'll be assistant to the office of Sopority and Ignoble Doctrine, Elder Asshole Noazee Fuasoi. He hates people. His greatest joy comes from telling people to do things they don't like, so Asshole Fuasoi does all the assignments. Him and his assistant, Shoethai. Except Shoethai's so inconsequential, it's easy to forget him."

  "How can you forget someone who looks like that?"

  "His face is only a little lopsided."

  "His face is a nightmare. And so is the rest of him. First time I saw him, I couldn't decide whether to throw up or kill him. He looks like a monster that someone tried to mash."

  "I think someone did. His father, if one listens to rumor. When he saw what Shoethai looked like, he tried to kill him but didn't quite manage it. They took the man's cells out of the files and consigned him to absolute death. Then they brought Shoethai into Sanctity. He was raised there. Fuasoi got used to the way he looks, I suppose. Used to it enough to bring him here, anyhow. As for the other two Doctrine assistants, Yavi and Fumo, I've always thought they looked a little like peepers. Square and floppy and without much you could call a face." He chanted, "Jhamlees Zoe and Noazee Fuasoi, Yavi and Fumo and Shooothai," drawing the latter's name out into a chant. "Something strange about Fuasoi and Shoethai. Something weird!"

  "And you want me to tell him..."

  Brother Mainoa hummed. "Mind what I say. Just look depressed and tell him you don't think you'd like the dig much."

  "Would I?"

  "Would you what?"

  "Would I like the dig much?"

  "You'd like it better than staying here at the Friary for the next four or five Terran years, even though you've become quite a sky crawler in the last week or two. It may seem exciting right now, but it'll get boring if you live long enough. Once you've seen sky, you've seen sky, now, haven't you? Fog is fog and mist is mist and one moth is very like another. Eventually your bodyguards will get forgetful about watching out for you, and about that time Highbones or one of his cronies will knock you off a tower. Out at the dig, however, there's nobody trying to kill you and we're always finding new things. It's interesting. Here it's prayers five times a day and penitential walks between times. Here it's mind your Doctrine and keep your mouth shut, because if Fuasoi isn't listening, one of his little friends is. Yavi or Fumo or Shoethai, take your pick."

  Brother Lourai grunted assent, got grudgingly to his feet, and went off toward the Friary. As he walked away, he managed to look adequately depressed without acting. Between his nighttime exaltations, he had begun to realize that though he might have found his real self again, he had found it in a foreign place that would be home for the rest of his life. Ever since they had taken him away from the canyon when he was twelve, he had hoped someday to go back home and see the trees. Sometimes he dreamed of trees. Now his hope of ever seeing a tree again was dying.

  Brother Mainoa sighed, looking after the retreating figure. "He's homesick," he said to himself. "The way I was."

  From the grasses came an interrogative purr, like a very soft growl.

  Accustomed to this, Brother Mainoa did not even start. He shut his eyes and concentrated. How did one explain homesickness? Longing, he thought, for a place one knows very well. A place one needs to be happy. He thought the words, then tried to come up with a few pictures. Coming home in the lamplit evening. Opening a familiar door. The feel of arms around him....

  Tears were running down his cheeks and he pushed them away, half angrily. As often happened, the feelings he was trying to transmit had been picked up and amplified back at him. "Damn all you creatures," he said.

  The growl became sorrowful.

  "Last time I saw you, you were down near the dig. What are you doing up here, anyhow?"

  Into his mind came a picture of a copse near the dig. At the center of it was a blankness. Amorphous blobs in shades of amethyst and pink prowled around the blankness, howling.

  "You missed me?"

  A purr.

  "I'm coming back in a day or two. I'm just trying to get Brother Lourai to come with me, if they'll let him. A new man without all the sense knocked out of him is better for me than one of the old ones that's all soft and mushy like a sponge. 'Yes, Brother. No, Brother.' Agreein' with everything I say and then runnin' off to report me to Doctrine the minute they can. And don't you let Brother Lourai see you until I say so. You'd scare him out of a year's growth. He isn't even grown up yet. Poor lad. He's all adrift. He was to have gone home this year, but he fell apart too soon."

  The picture of the opening door, the feel of arms. Brother Mainoa nodded as he tamped his pipe with a horny finger. "That's right." He shook the bag he kept his tobacco in, dried grass he called t
obacco still, after all these years. He sighed.

  "I've about run out of that scarlet grass that smokes so well. There's that other one somebody mentioned to me...."

  There was silence, no purr, nothing except a feeling of quiet breathing. Slowly, carefully, an image began to form in Brother Mainoa's mind. It was of the buildings at Opal Hill. Brother Mainoa knew them well. He had helped design the gardens there.

  "Opal Hill," he said, showing that he understood.

  The picture expanded, grew more ramified. There was a woman, a man, two younger people. Not Grassians, from the way they were dressed. And horses! God in heaven, what were they doing with horses?

  "That's horses," he breathed. "From Terra. Lord, I haven't seen a horse since I was five or six years old." He fell silent, aware of the pressure in his brain, the demand.

  "Tell me," the pictures in his brain were asking. "Tell me about the people at Opal Hill."

  Brother Mainoa shook his head. "I can't. I don't know anything. I haven't even heard anything."

  A picture of a horse, strangely dwarfed against its human rider, a sense of interrogation.

  "Horses are Terran animals. Men ride on them. They are one of the dozen or so truly domesticated animals, as contented in association with man as they would be in the wild...."

  Doubt.

  "No, truly." Wondering if it was, truly.

  Brother Mainoa received a strong feeling of dissatisfaction. His questioner wanted more information than this.

  "I'll try to find out," said Brother Mainoa. "There must be someone I can ask...."

  The presence was abruptly gone. Brother Mainoa knew that if he looked into the grasses, he would see nothing. He had looked many times and had always seen just that, nothing. Whatever it was that spoke to him (and Mainoa had his own suspicions about the identity of the conversationalist), it wasn't eager to be seen.

  A hail came from the pathway, Brother Lourai's voice. "Main-oh-ah." Brother Mainoa got up and started in the direction of the voice, plodding down the trail toward the Friary with no sign of either haste or interest. Brother Lourai was hurrying toward him, panting. "Elder Brother Laeroa wants you."

  "What have I done now?"

  "Nothing. Nothing different, I mean. Elder Brother Laeroa caught me just as I was going into Elder Brother Fuasoi's office. It's the people from Opal Hill. They want an escorted tour of the Arbai ruins. Elder Brother Laeroa says since you'll have to go back to be tour guide, you can take me with you and just keep me there."

  Interesting. Particularly so inasmuch as Mainoa's questioner had just been asking about Opal Hill. "Hum. Did you tell the Elder Asshole you didn't think you'd like the dig much?"

  Brother Lourai nodded, half hiding a grin. "I thought I'd better since I was in his office. He just glared at Laeroa and told me I have to go there and be your assistant. It will teach me humility, he says."

  "Well," Brother Mainoa said with a sigh. "It will teach you something-and me too, no doubt-but I doubt humility will be it."

  10

  When Rillibee and Brother Mainoa arrived at the dig, Mainoa lectured upon what was known about the Arbai while the two of them walked through the topless tunnels that had once been streets. To either side the fronts of houses were charmingly carved with stylized vines and fruits and humorous figures of the Arbai themselves, frolicking among the vines.

  "These pictures aren't of them when they were here on Grass, then," Rillibee remarked. 'There aren't any vines like that out here."

  Mainoa shook his head. "No vines like that out here on the prairie, no. But there are vines with leaves and fruit like that in the swamp forest, twining around the trees, making hammocks and bridges for the birds. Almost everything that's carved on these walls and doors can be found somewhere here on Grass. There's Hippae and hounds and peepers and foxen. There's flick birds and different kinds of trees, carved so detailed you can tell what kind of trees they are, too."

  "Where are the trees?" Brother Lourai wanted to know.

  "In the swamp forest, boy. And in copses, here and there. I'll show you a little copse not half a mile from here."

  "Trees," breathed Brother Lourai.

  "There's thousands of pictures of the Arbai themselves on these walls, doing one thing and another," Brother Mainoa went on. "Happy things on the fronts of the houses, ritual things on the doors. We think. At least, on the housefronts they seem to be smiling and on the doors they're not."

  "That's a smile?" Brother Lourai said doubtfully, staring at a representation of one toothy face.

  "Well, given the kind of fangs they've got, we think so. What the researchers did was, they searched the archives for pictures of all kinds of animals in situations where one could postulate contentment or joy. Then they compared facial expressions. The high mucky-mucks say those are smiles. But the expressions carved on the doors aren't. Those carved on doors are serious creatures doing serious things." Brother Lourai examined an uninjured portion of door. The faces did seem very solemn. Even he could see that. The carving was of a procession of Arbai, bordered as always by the stylized vines. "But there aren't any labels. No words."

  "Lots of words in the books, we think, but none that we've ever found connected to a carving, no."

  Brother Lourai sighed. It would have been pleasant to study the language of these Arbai, see what they had to think about things, see if it was the same as humans thought about things. There was a noise in the sky, away to the southwest, and his head came up-sniffing as though to smell out the sound the way Joshua always did when he heard something in the woods, like a bear, like a deer-peering into the clouds. "I hear an aircar."

  "Them from Opal Hill, I guess," said Brother Mainoa. "I wonder what they wanted to see this place for."

  Marjorie, aloft in the car, was wondering the same thing. It was Rigo who had wanted to meet the Green Brothers, Rigo who had felt they might have useful information. Now, however, Rigo had no time to follow up any such idea. These days Rigo had time for nothing but riding.

  Marjorie had volunteered to find out if the Brothers knew anything useful, but it was the invaluable Persun Pollut who suggested that if she wanted information she should stay away from the Friary.

  "They've got a kind of committee there," he had said, "an office. Acceptable Doctrine, it's called. Everyone on the committee is mostly concerned about what people believe. They're running things, too; don't let them tell you they aren't. Truth doesn't enter in. If they've decided something is doctrine, they'll ignore all evidence to the contrary and lie to your face. You don't want to run afoul of those types, do you? Not if you have questions to ask. No. Better for you to meet some of the more sensible ones. I've met Brother Mainoa, now, when he's come into the port for one thing and another. He's just as down-to-earth as any one of us commons. If there's any health problems among the Brothers, he'll tell you."

  "How do I meet Brother Mainoa without involving the-the committee?" Marjorie asked.

  "You might just ask to tour the Arbai ruin," Persun suggested. "He's usually there, and nine chances out of ten they'd send Brother Mainoa to guide you in any case. Mostly because the rest of them don't want to be bothered."

  "I might ask to see the ruins at that," she admitted, deciding after a moment's consideration that it made good sense to do so, as well as offering a chance at amusement. There had been little amusement for any of them thus far on Grass.

  Hungry for some family affection and fun, she packed an enormous lunch and asked the children if they would like to see the ruins. Tony said yes. Stella said no, she was tired, though what she had to be tired of, Marjorie couldn't imagine. Though she believed she was aware of every emotion the girl felt, Marjorie had no notion that Stella spent each night riding endlessly across the simulated prairies of Grass, creeping down the stairs to ride the Hippae machine every night while the rest of the family was asleep, retreating to her bedroom only when dawn came. Stella had told no less than the truth when she said she was tired. Only the resilien
ce of youth helped her give the appearance of normalcy.

  So Tony and Marjorie had determined to make a party of it. At the last minute, however, Father Sandoval had asked if he and Father James could go along, and so there were four of them in the over-ornamented aircar piloted by Tony with reasonable proficiency, considering he had flown the thing only a dozen times. As they approached the ruin, a misty rain began to fall, fading all the colors of the landscape into indistinct grays. When they landed they were met by two of the green-clad Brothers, an old fat one with interested eyes and a young skinny one with a tight cap of brown, curly hair, and a sad, drawn expression. When the old one saw Father Sandoval, he blinked as though he recognized--what? A colleague? An age-mate? Someone who might be expected to be sympathetic? Or antagonistic?

  "Religious?" asked Brother Mainoa. "Are you, sir, a religious?" He reached a hand toward the priest's collar, turning it into a palm-up gesture of supplication. "You and the other gentleman?"