Her mouth grew tight and hard.
"And are you aware that your son is not genuinely psychotic at all?"
At that she laughed. "Good. All the more reason to get him away from here-- if he lives through this night out there in that hell that passes for a terraformed planet."
"Actually, your son is quite sane, half the time-- a very intelligent, very creative young man. Very much like his father." That last was intended as a very deep dig. It worked.
She rose from her chair. "I don't want any mention of that son-of-a-bitch!"
"But the other half of the time, he is merely reenacting childhood. Children are insane, all of them-- by adult standards. Their defense strategies, their adaptations, are all such that an adult using them is regarded as utterly mad. Paranoia, acting out, denial, self-destruction. For some reason, Mrs. Danol, your son has been kept penned into the relationship structures of his childhood."
"And you think the reason is me."
"Actually, it's not just a matter of opinion. The only times that Linkeree was sane were the times when he believed he had killed you. Believing you dead, he functions as an adult. Believing you alive, he functions as an infant."
He had gone too far. She shouted in rage and struck out at him across the desk. Her fingers raked his face; her other hand sprawled along his desk, shoving papers and books off onto the floor. He managed to push the call button while he grappled with her with his other hand. But he had lost a handful of hair and gained bruises in his shins by the time the attendants came in and held her back, sedated her, took her to a room in the hospital to rest.
* * *
Morning. The hairy birds of the plains were awake, foraging briskly in the dawn, eating the now sluggish suckers that had bloated themselves on the night life of the grasslands. Linkeree woke, mildly surprised at how natural and good it felt to awaken in the open, lying on a mat of grass, with birds crying. Is there some racial memory of life in the open land that makes me feel so comfortable? he wondered. But he yawned, stood, stretched, feeling vigorously alive, feeling good.
The Vaqs watched him, even as they pursued their morning tasks-- packing up for the day's journey, fixing a skimpy breakfast of cold meat and hot water. But after the eating, they came to him, touched him again, knelt again, making arcane signs with their hands. When they were through (and Linkeree thought bitterly that it was strange that murder and worship were the only intercourse men could have with the Vaqs) they led Linkeree out of the camp, back in the direction he had come last night.
Now, in daylight, he could see why it was that the Vaqs were such deadly adversaries when met in their native habitat. They were short, and not one of them stood taller than the thickest part of the grass, though Link, not a tall man by any human standard, could see clearly over the crest of the blades. And the grass ate up their footprints, closed behind them, hid their movements from any possible observer or follower. An army of Vaqs could pass by unnoticed a meter from the keenest observer, he thought, with some exaggeration.
And then they arrived. They had brought him back to where the baby had been abandoned. It shocked Linkeree profoundly, that they would return to the scene of their crime. Was there no shame to the murders? At least they could have the decency to forget the existence of the child, instead of coming back to gloat.
But they formed a circle around the small corpse (how had they found him again in the grass?) and Linkeree looked down at the child's body.
A chewer had come in the night, and then several others. The first had (shades of Mother's nighttime threats) chewed off the infant genitals, gnawed into the abdomen at the soft entrails, ignoring the muscle tissue entirely. But the baby and the placenta had attracted a huge concentration of suckers, and these had eagerly transferred to the much warmer chewer, bleeding it to death before its meal was finished, The later chewers were bled to death even faster, as more and more suckers came, sucked, laid eggs, and died.
And then the birds, which had danced skyward when Link and the Vaqs had arrived, eating the dying suckers, but ignoring the sucker eggs which were implanted on the blades of grass, where tonight they would hatch, and the lucky ones would find food before they starved to death, find food and reproduce in a mad, one-night life.
Except for the gnawed away crotch, the child's body was intact.
The Vaqs knelt, nodded toward Link, and began cutting up the child's body. The incisions were neat, precise. Breastbone to crotch, a U-shaped cut around the breasts, a long slice down the arms, the head completely removed; all cuts were quick and deft, and in a moment the body was entirely skinned.
And then they ate.
Link watched, appalled, as they each in turn lifted a strip of raw meat toward him, as if it were a votive offering. He shook his head each time, and each time the Vaq murmured (in thanks) and ate.
And when the raw bones were left, and the skin, and the heart, the Vaqs opened the skin smoothside up and laid it before Link. They picked up the pile of bones, and held it out to him. He took them-- he was afraid, in the face of such inhumanity, to refuse. Then they waited.
What do I do now? he wondered. They were beginning to look a bit disturbed as he knelt, motionless, with the bones in his hands. And so, vaguely remembering some of his classical history, he tossed down the bones onto the blanket of skin and then stood, wiping the blood off his hands onto his trousers.
The Vaqs all looked at the bones, pointing to this one and that one, though they had landed in no pattern discernible to Link. At last, however, they began to grin, to laugh, to jump up and down and jig in delight at whatever the bones had told them.
Linkeree was more than a little glad that the portents had turned out so well. What would they have done if the bones had somehow spelled disaster?
The Vaqs decided to reward him. They picked up the head and offered it to him.
He refused.
They looked puzzled. So did he. Was he supposed to eat the head? It was ghastly-- the stump had not bled at all, looked like a laboratory specimen, reminded him of--
No, he would not.
But the Vaqs were not angry. They seemed to understand-- they only took the bones, buried each in a separate but shallow hole scrabbled out of the rich deep soil under the grass, and then took the skin and draped it over Link's bare shoulders. It occurred to him that they were signifying that he was the child. The leader's gesture confirmed that they believed that-- he kept gesturing from the skin and the head to Linkeree, and then pausing, waiting for an answer.
Linkeree didn't know how to respond. If he denied he was the child's spirit or successor or something, would they kill him? Or if he admitted that he was, would they finish their sacrifice by killing him? Either choice might end his life, and he was not feeling suicidal this morning.
And then, as he stared into the child's dead face, remembering that last night the infant had been alive, had responded to his touch, he realized that there was more truth than they realized to their belief. Yes, he was the infant, chewed and cut and eaten and cast away to be buried in a hundred tiny graves. Yes, he was dead. And he nodded in acceptance, nodded in agreement.
The Vaqs all nodded, too, and one by one they came to him and kissed him. He was unsure of whether the kiss was a prelude to leaving or to killing; but then they each kissed the child's head that he held in his hands in front of him, and as he saw their lips tenderly rest on the infant forehead or cheeks or mouth he was overcome by self-pity and grief; he wept.
And, seeing his tears, the Vaqs grew afraid, babbled quietly among themselves, and then disappeared silently into the tall grass, leaving Linkeree alone with the child's relics.
* * *
Dr. Hort went to see Mrs. Danol as soon, as he woke up in the morning. She was sitting in one of the empty private rooms, her hands folded in her lap. He knocked. She looked up, saw him through the window, nodded, and he came in.
"Good morning," he said to her.
"Is it?" she answered. "My son is dead by now, Dr. Hort."
"Perhaps not. He wouldn't be the first to survive a night in the grass, Mrs. Danol."
She only shook her head.
"I'm sorry about last night's fracas," he said. "I was tired."
"You were also too damn right," she answered. "I woke up at four this morning, sedative or no sedative. I thought and thought about it. I'm poison. I've poisoned my son just by being his mother. I wish I could be out there on the plain in his place, dying for him."
"And what the hell good would that do?"
She only cried in answer. He waited. The sobbing let up only a few moments later.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've been crying off and on all morning." Then she looked at Hort, pleading in her eyes, and said, "Help me."
He smiled-- kindly, not triumphantly-- and said, "I'll try. Why don't you just tell me what you've been thinking about?"
She laughed bitterly. "That's a rat's nest we hardly need to go into. I spent most of the time thinking about my husband."
"Whom you don't like."
"Whom I loathe. He married me because I wouldn't sleep with him otherwise. He slept with me until I got pregnant; then he moved on. When Linkeree turned out to be a boy, he was delighted, and changed his will to leave everything to the boy. Nothing to me. And then, after he had slept with every girl on this planet and half the boys, he was run over by a tractor and I gave a little cheer."
"He was well thought of on the planet."
"People always think well of money."
"They often think well of beauty, too."
And at that she cried again. Through her sobs, in a twisted, little-girl voice, she said, "All I ever wanted was to go to Capitol. To go to Capitol and meet all the famous people and be on somec so that I could live forever and be beautiful forever. It's all I had, being beautiful-- I had no money, no education, and no talent for anything, not even motherhood. Do you know what it means to have only one thing that makes other people love you?"
No, Hort thought to himself, but I can see what a tragedy it is.
"You were your son's guardian. You could have taken him to Capitol."
"No, I couldn't. It's the law, Hort. Planet money must be invested on the planet until it achieves full provincial status. It protects us from exploitation. " She spat the word. "No somec allowed until we're a province. No chance to have life!"
"There are some of us who don't want to sleep for years on end, just to stay young a few years longer," Dr. Hort said.
"Then you're the insane ones," she retorted, and he almost agreed. Eternal life didn't appeal to him. Sleeping through life seemed like a disgusting waste of time. But he knew the draw, knew that most people who came to the colonies were desperate or stupid, that the gifted ones or the rich ones or the hopeful ones stayed where somec was within reach.
"Not only that," she said, "my damnable husband entailed the entire fortune, everything. Not a penny could be taken from Pampas."
"Oh."
"So I stayed, hoping that when my son grew up we could find some way, go anyway--"
"If your son hadn't been born, the money would all have been left to you, unentailed, and you could have sold it to an offworlder and gone."
She nodded, and began to weep again.
"No wonder you hated your son."
"Chains. Chains, holding me here, stripping away my only asset as the years made hash of my face and my figure."
"You're still beautiful."
"I'm forty-five years old. It's too late. Even if I left for Capitol today, they won't let someone over forty-five go on somec at all. It's the law."
"I know. So--"
"So stay here and make the best of it? Thanks, Doctor, thanks. I might as well have a priest as you."
She turned away from him, and muttered, "And now the boy dies. Now, when it's too late. Why the bloody hell couldn't he have died a year ago?"
* * *
Linkeree patted the last of the earth over the grave he had dug for the head and skin of the child. The tears had long since dried; now the only liquid on him was sweat from the exertion in the hot sun of digging through the heavy roots of the grass. No wonder the Vaqs had dug shallowly to hide the bones. It was already afternoon, and he had only just finished.
But as he had worked, he had forced himself back, coldly reassembling his memories in his mind, burying them one by one in the child's grave. It was not Mother I killed in the street, it was Zad. Mother is still alive; she visited me yesterday. That was why I fled the hospital; that was why I wanted to die. Because if ever there was a person who deserved to live, it was Zad. And if ever one deserved to die, it was Mother.
Several times he felt himself longing to curl up and hide, to retreat into the cool shade under the standing grass, to deny that any of this had ever happened, to deny that he had ever turned five at all. But he fought off the feeling, insisted on the facts, the whole history of his life, and then hid it under the dirt.
You, child, he thought. I am you. I came out here last night to die in the grassland, to be eaten alive, to have my blood sucked out. And it happened; and the Vaqs ate my flesh and now I'm buried.
I who bury you, child, I am the you who might have been. I am without a past; I have only a future. I will start from here, without a mother, without blood on my hands, rejected by my own tribe and unacceptable to strangers. I will live among the strangers anyway, and live unencumbered. I will be you, and therefore I will be free.
He brushed the dirt off his hands, ignored the painful sunburn on his back, and stood. Around him the sucker eggs on the grassblades were already hatching, and the newborn suckers were devotedly eating each other so that only the few thousand strongest would survive, fed by the others. Link avoided obvious comparisons, merely turned and headed back toward the government compound.
He avoided the gate, instead climbing the fence and enduring the electricity that coursed through him when he gripped the top wire. And then, as the alarms went off, he walked back to the hospital.
* * *
Dr. Hort was alone in his office, eating a late lunch from a tray that Gram had brought him. Someone tapped at his door. He opened it, and Linkeree walked in.
Hort was surprised, but out of long professional habit, he didn't show it. Instead, he dispassionately watched as Linkeree walked to the chair, sat down comfortably, and leaned back with a sigh.
"Welcome back," Hort said.
"Hope I didn't cause any inconvenience," Linkeree answered.
"How was your night in the grass?"
Linkeree looked down at his scratches and scabs. "Painful. But therapeutic."
Silence for a moment. Hort took another bite of his sandwich.
"Dr. Hort, right now I'm in control. I know that my mother's alive. I know that I killed Zad. I also know that I was insane when I did it. But I understand and I accept those things."
Hort nodded.
"I believe, Doctor, that I am sane right now. I believe that I am viewing the world as accurately as most people, and can function in a capable manner. Except."
"Except?"
"Except that I'm Linkeree Danol, and as soon as it is known that I am capable of running things, I will be forced to take control of a very large fortune and a huge business that employs, in the long run, most of the people on Pampas. I will have to live in a certain house in this city. And in that house will be my mother."
"Ah."
"I don't believe my sanity would last fifteen minutes, Doctor, if I had to live with her again."
"She's changed somewhat," Dr. Hort said. "I understand her a little now."
"I have understood her completely for years, and she'll never change, Dr. Hort. More important, though, is the fact that I'll never change when I'm around her."
Hort sucked in a deep breath, leaned back in his chair. "What happened to you out on the desert?"
Linkme smiled wanly. "I died and buried myself. I can't return to that life. And if it means staying here in this institution all my life, pretending to
be insane, I'll do that. But I'll never go back to Mother. If I did that, I'd have to live with all that I've hated all my life-- and with the fact that I killed the only person I ever loved. It isn't a pleasant memory. My sanity is not a pleasant thing to hold onto."
Dr. Hort nodded.
There was a knock at the door. Link straightened up. "Who is it?" Hort asked.
"Me. Mrs. Danol."
Linkeree stood up abruptly, walked around the office to a point at the far wall from the door.
"I'm consulting, Mrs. Danol."
Her voice was strident, even through the muffling door. "They told me Linkeree had come back. I heard you talking to him in there."
"Go away, Mrs. Danol," Dr. Hort said. "You will see your son in due time."
"I will see him now. I have a writ that says I can see him. I got it from the court at noon. I want to see him."
Hort turned to Link. "She thinks ahead, doesn't she?"
Link was shaking. "If she comes in, I'll kill her."
"All right, Mrs. Danol. Just a moment."
"No!" Link shouted, making spastic motions as if he wanted to claw his way through the wall backward.
Hort whispered, "Relax, Link. I won't let her near you." Hort opened a closet-- Link started to walk in it. "No, Link." And Hort took his spare suit off the hanger, and a clean shirt. The suit, in the standard one piece, was a little long for Linkeree, but the waist and shoulders were not far wrong, and Link didn't look out of place in it when he had finished dressing.
"I don't know what you hope to gain by stalling, Dr. Hort, but I will see my son," Mrs. Danot shouted. "In three minutes I'll call the police!"
Hort shouted back, "Patience, Mrs. Danol. It takes a moment to prepare your son to see you."
"Nonsense! My son wants to see me!"
Linkeree was trembling, hard. Hort put his arms around the young man, gripped him tight. "Keep control," he whispered.
"I'm trying," Link chattered back, his lower jaw out of control.
Hort reached into his hipbag, pulled out his id and his cred, and handed them to Link. "I won't report them missing until you are on a ship out of here."
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