Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two

by David Gerrold

  She had woven a wide couch of soft grass, wide enough for two, so I checked the rope at my waist, and sat down on one end of it.

  Her eyes followed my movement and glanced at the nylon cord. “A rope. Very smart.” Then she bent to the fire again and busied herself with tea things.

  I blinked and tried to get used to seeing without my goggles. We were in a dark clearing in the middle of nowhere. The grass stretched up to its full height around us, but here in the middle, the grass lay down to form a carpet beneath our feet. At one end, the woman had woven a little dome of grass not much taller than herself. It had one opening for a door and two—no, three—openings for windows. Inside, I saw a tiny bed and a small pile of belongings, wrapped in a cloth sack. I wondered how far she had traveled, and where she was going.

  In front of the grass hut she had dug a small fire pit, lined with flat stones. A ceramic teapot sat in a fire so small it looked almost ineffective. Indeed, the fire was so small, it gave off almost no heat and very little smoke. The night remained cold around us. Next to the fire pit, she had several tied bundles of dry grass, her fuel.

  She also had a ceramic lantern—a pot with many tiny holes bent into it. A fire burned brightly within. Light escaped through the holes, but no sparks could. This woman respected the grass. She kept her fire caged.

  She didn’t have much else. I assumed she was a refugee from Callo—or maybe she was one of those folks who lived by the rails, begging off the good will of strangers. But if that was the case, why did she live so far from the rails? Did she fear bandits?

  “Here you are,” she said, using both of her hands to put a ceramic bowl into both of mine. The outside of the bowl was wrapped in beaded leather, making it a guest-bowl. The tea-welcoming ritual. I held the bowl out as I had been taught in the Dome and she poured hot tea into it. The warmth burned through the ceramic, but the leather protected my fingers. I pulled the bowl close to my chest and let the steam from the salty-tea rise up into my nostrils. “It smells good,” I said. “Thank you.” And then, realizing where I was, I asked the blessing of the Mother. “Thank you, Mother, for all of your gifts.”

  “A child with manners, what a surprise.”

  Cradling the bowl carefully in both hands, I lifted it to my face and inhaled deeply. I took a tiny sip. “Mm, you make good tea. As good as my Gamma.” The tea warmed its way through me, enough so that I forgot the coldness of the morning air. It had a warm salty taste, like tears—she’d made it thick, so it was more like soup than tea.

  “Your Gamma doesn’t make tea anywhere as good as mine. Drink and grow healthy.” The old woman sat down next to me and raised her own bowl to her lips. I noticed she didn’t ask a blessing, but I didn’t say anything. Her fingers were dirty, her fingernails were black.

  “So, child, tell me. What keeps you awake this night? What sends you out into the grass?”

  “Nothing. Nothing important.”

  “Child, you speak to an old woman, not a stupid one.”

  “I apologize, grandmother. I didn’t want to waste your time with my foolishness or trouble you with my worries.”

  “You can’t trouble me.” She sounded almost annoyed. “But you’ve come to my house, so I expect you to entertain me. Look around. Does it seem as if I have anything better to do tonight? Besides, I enjoy listening to the troubles of children. It makes me laugh. Because children have such small troubles. And I have none of my own, so I have to enjoy yours.” She rattled on until she ran out of rattles. “Now, you’ve drunk my tea—so you have to share yourself.”

  I took a breath. After everything we’d heard in the Dome about not telling anything at all to the Linneans, I felt like I was about to commit a betrayal of something. But right now, here in the dark, in the middle of the sea, with nothing but a tiny fire for light, I guessed it didn’t matter. And besides, I didn’t have to tell her everything—only what I felt inside. That wasn’t a mistake, was it? “I worry about my da,” I said. “I worry about my friends. I worry about doing the right thing.”

  “You don’t worry about yourself? Most children only worry about themselves.”

  I shrugged. “I do. Sometimes. But I worry about my da and my family and my friends more.”

  “Your friends—?” She pointed vaguely in the direction I’d come from. “They blunder around in the grass? They make loud noises?”

  I nodded. “They don’t mean any harm.”

  “They’ve kept me awake all night.” Her annoyance was obvious.

  “I apologize for that,” I said. I took another sip of the warming broth. And then another. “They have good intentions.” And then I realized how stupid that sounded.

  “Everybody has good intentions, or so they say,” said the old woman. She sounded bitter.

  “What you do shows your intentions,” I said. “Not what you say.”

  She slurped her tea. Loudly. “So you say.”

  Um. “—But sometimes, a person doesn’t always know the right thing to do.”

  “How does anyone know the right thing to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what other people do,” I said. “I always pray to—the Mother of the World and ask her for advice.”

  The old woman snorted. “Hmp.”

  “You don’t pray?”

  “Why should I sit alone in the dark, talking to myself?”

  Her words startled me. I’d always thought Linneans were more respectful of the Mother than that. I looked around. I wondered if I was sitting out here with a crazy woman. She picked at something on her leg. A flea? She examined it and tossed it off into the dark, without killing it first.

  “So?” she asked suddenly. “Does the Mother answer you?”

  I shrugged. “She usually sends me a teacher.”

  “Hah! When you want to learn, anyone can teach.”

  Her skepticism annoyed me. So I said, “Well, I’ve never asked the Mother for anything important. At least, I don’t think I have. But just talking to her makes me feel better. And that lets me figure it out for myself, so . . . I guess she does answer, in her own way. I just have to know how to listen.” I shrugged. “It seems to work. I guess.”

  She didn’t say anything. She was gouging at the back of her jaw with a bony index finger, as if she was trying to dig out a seed from between her teeth. Eventually, she found it and flicked it off into the dark too. I turned my attention back to my bowl and finished my tea quickly.

  “So, what do you think?” she demanded abruptly. “That the Mother should tell everybody exactly what to do?”

  “It would make life a lot easier, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. Not yours. Not mine. Do you know the truth about people? No, of course not. Well, I’ll tell you. People don’t listen. You give them instructions, they don’t listen. You give them advice, they don’t listen. You make rules, they don’t listen. They argue, they negotiate, they disobey, they ignore, or they just plain go away. People think only other people need rules, not themselves. So why make rules? Why give advice? Why tell anyone anything if you know they won't listen? Eh? You tell me that? If you know that your child will disobey any instruction you give him, don’t give him any instruction at all. Then he can’t disobey, eh?” She poked me and cackled. “You’ll see, when you have children of your own someday. You’ll have a son and then you’ll have a daughter. And you’ll make rules for them and they will promptly ignore and forget and disobey—and you will get angry. Your children will make you crazy, because children do that. So listen to me. Don’t make rules.”

  “But if I don’t make rules for my children, I’ll make them crazy.” A thought occurred to me. “Did you have children?”

  “Oh, yes. I had children.” She laughed wildly, her voice crackling in the dark. “And I learned my lesson. Never give rules.”

  I wondered about her children. Her poor, poor children. I put my bowl aside. “I should go now. Thank you for the tea.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I did
instead of rules?”

  Despite myself, I had to ask. “What did you do?”

  “I asked them to make promises.”

  Promises? “Did it work?”

  “Yes. When they kept their promises.” She cackled at her own joke. “No, you listen, child. I’ll give you a piece of wisdom. When you give people rules, they won’t take them. Only hand-made rules work. People have to make them for themselves. So ask them to make promises instead. Ask them to keep their promises. You’ll see.”

  I thought about that. In a weird kind of way, it made sense. Promises.

  “Promise me you’ll do that.” Her eyes bored into mine.

  She was almost scary, but not quite. “Uh—all right.” I said. “I promise.”

  “Do you mean that?” She looked at me ferociously, her dark eyes darting up and down my features, searching for honesty. In the flickering dark, I wondered how deep she could see.

  “Uh—yes. I do. I promise. I’ll remember. Promises—ask them to make and keep their promises.”

  “Yeah. You will. I can see it in your face. You mean what you say. I wouldn’t talk to you if you didn’t.” She made an expression that wasn’t a smile, but wasn’t anything else either, just a squinch of satisfaction. “All right, you should go. I’ve had enough of this talk.” She began pushing me back toward the dark wall of grass.

  “Thank you for the tea,” I started to say.

  “You already said that. Tell your Gamma to boil it down thicker. Tea needs chewing. Tea should stick to your insides. And it should taste like tears. You’ll see. Oh, wait—” She tugged at the hem of her dress, ripping off a small piece. She spat into it and wiped at my forehead, just above my eyes. “There, I washed it away.”

  “Washed what away?”

  “Your sorrow.” Abruptly, she glanced around—as if startled by a noise. “Too many strange noises tonight. Strange voices, strange people in the sea. Too many of them will end up living here. I don’t need any more voices keeping me awake. They should all go home to their nice warm beds. You too—you shouldn’t live in the grass either. You should go and grow up. And then make some children so they can make you crazy. Hah! You’ll see. Don’t forget what I said. Now, hurry away with you before I lose my temper—”

  “Can I do anything for you? Do you need anything?”

  “Do I look like I need anything?” she snapped angrily. She pushed me into the grass. Hard. Crazy old lunatic. Shadows flickered and blackness closed around me as the thick grass snapped back into place. I lowered my goggles and switched them on—for half a second I worried that maybe these goggles too would fail, but they flickered brightly on and I could see clearly again.

  I fumbled for the rope still clipped to my belt—it was still there. Good. All I had to do was follow it to Beck. Or she could follow it here to me and I could show her—

  No, that would make her angry.

  But it gave me an idea.

  I unclipped the rope and jammed the clip into the good dark earth. Now the rope would lead us back here after the sun rose. Hand over hand, I followed the rope carefully back to the sleeping Scout.

  My watch said dawn was only a few minutes away.

  The Empty Sea

  By the time I had pushed my way to Beck, the eastern sky was already showing a faint white tinge. But only in the goggles. Without the goggles, everything was still dark. The sticky grass closed in so tightly, that even when the sun was directly overhead, I’d still be in deep shadow.

  Beck was still sleeping. I almost tripped over her. The only way I knew where she was, the rope grew taut in my hands. I pushed the grass aside and found a place by her feet that had been mashed down a little—where I’d been sitting before.

  I sat down next to her again and looked at my watch. Should I wake her or not? I flipped up the goggles. It was still too dark to do anything. Might as well let her sleep. I flipped the goggles down again. I adjusted the ears on the helmet and listened to the grass. It crackled and stretched, but all the little voices had gone silent. I wondered about the old woman. How many other crazy people lived out here in the grass?

  One of the Scouts had told us once that it was possible to survive in the sea. If you knew what you were doing. You could eat grass seeds and grass roots and young grass shoots. You could suck water out of grass stalks and you could collect the dew every morning. You wouldn’t get fat, but you could keep going for a long time. They didn’t recommend it as a way of life, they said you would go mad real fast, and most people who tried it were dead within a few weeks, but some people survived in the grass. And every so often, somebody reported meeting someone who seemed to be thriving in the grass, so that was probably how some of the stories got started about strange folks living in the sea. Still, it was kind of an interesting coincidence to meet anyone in such a vast wilderness. . . .

  One of the Trainers had once said that we suspected the Linneans might be able to see deeper into the ultra-violet and the infra-red than we could, so that might give them an enhanced ability to see in the grass. Or maybe their hearing was different. Certainly, it wouldn’t be unlikely that over time, they would evolve and adapt to their lives in the sea of grass. Or maybe there was something else at work.

  Whatever it was, the Linneans seemed to be better equipped to surviving in the grass than we were. And not just the people, the animals too. How could a nesting bird find her eggs again? How could a badgerine find its burrow? We knew the badgerine left a trail of urine and pheromones, but the badgerines often traveled tens of klicks from their burrows—so how pungent was their urine trail and how good were their noses that they always found their way back. And what about the birds? A bird couldn’t do the same thing. And the magnetic chaos of the grass invalidated all other markers, didn’t it? There was so much to learn about the sea of grass.

  The boulder had been designed so that a science team could live in the sea for half a year, but even before its construction had been authorized, it had already been coopted for observation and military purposes. So it would be awhile before some of these questions were even addressed, let alone answered.

  But if people could live in the sea, then maybe there was a whole Linnean world we still hadn’t discovered. And maybe they were watching us as intensely as we were watching the ones who lived above the sea. I’d have to suggest that thought to Smiller and Jorge.

  As if they didn’t have enough to worry about.

  I looked at my watch. I looked up. With the goggles turned way up, enough to make the top of the sea invisible, the sky was shading to pink in the east.

  Beck stirred. She sat up and yawned. She pushed the grass away from her face. “Kaer?”

  “Here.”

  She had to press the button on her watch to make it light up so she could see what time it was, I was still wearing her helmet. She grunted and said, “All right, pass me my helmet, I’ll check in.”

  I picked up my helmet from the grass, then pulled hers off and passed it over with real regret. Now I would be almost blind again until the sun rose high enough to warm up the sea. I pulled my helmet on, so I could hear any radio conversation, and flipped the goggles up. There was a faint glow above us, just enough to make out dark boundaries all around. It wasn’t enough to see by, but it was better than nothing.

  “Cee Oh. Six and Nine. Over the rainbow.” Control Officer. Six and Nine are switching to rainbow codes.

  “Copy that. Ding dong.” No bad guys on the screen.

  The code-books were keyed to the wearer and could be displayed on the goggles’ heads-up function. It would only work for someone whose implant had the right codes for the mission, or whose ID had been registered in the helmet. That’s why I’d been able to use Beck’s helmet. But if anyone else tried to wear either of our helmets, it wouldn’t work for him.

  “Thank you. Brick road?” Can we come to Oz?

  “Poppy field.” Not yet. The team is still sleeping.

  “But we’ve come such a long way.” That one wa
sn’t in the code book. Beck was playing.

  “Surrender, Dorothy!” Stick to the code phrases! Don’t talk in the clear!

  “Copy that. Bell out of order.” We’ll sit here and wait.

  “Glinda.” We know you’re in trouble. We will come for you as fast as we can.

  “There’s no place like home. . . .”

  “Bell out of order. Out.”

  “Did you make him angry?” I asked.

  “No.” I heard her rustling in her pack. “Did you eat?”

  “Yes. I had some tea.”

  “Tea?”

  “Yes. With the old woman. I forgot to tell you. I got up to pee. I had to pee. I had the rope tied to us, so I wasn’t worried about getting lost. I didn’t go very far. Maybe ten meters or so. Maybe a little farther.”

  “You didn’t have to go that far,” she interrupted.

  “I thought I heard a voice—”

  “Kaer! What did we tell you about that?”

  “I know, but I had the rope. And I heard a real voice. I found a strange old woman living in the grass. She looked like a wild thing, and she babbled a lot, but she didn’t mean any harm. At least, I don’t think she did. She had a little grass house and a very carefully sheltered fire. She made tea and we sat and talked.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “She complained about all the strange people in the grass keeping her awake. She meant us. It seemed like she knew everything.”

  “She knew? What did she say?”

  “She didn’t say anything, except about the noise waking her up. And she said, ‘You’ve come a long way.’ But the way she looked, the way she talked, I didn’t think she really knew. She seemed feral.”

  “Tell me everything. What did you say to her?”

  “I told her I worried about my da and my friends and I worried about doing the right thing, but I didn’t tell her anything about us or what we intended here. I just said I worried. And she said that she liked to hear about other people’s problems because they made her laugh. I think that she’s lived in the grass too long. Only a crazy person would laugh at someone else’s problems.”