“Mm hm. What else?”
I shrugged. “We talked about children. She said you can’t make rules for children. They don’t listen.”
“Did you agree?”
I shrugged. “She believed it. I don’t know. I mean, I might not like all the rules we have to live by—especially in the Dome—but we have to follow them, because have to. Da always says that if you don’t follow the rules, you might get results, but you have no right to expect them. So I always follow the rules so I’ll get results. And I think other people should too.”
Smiller refilled her coffee cup. She scratched her nose and looked to Jake. “What do you think? Do you have any questions?”
Jake shook his head. “I agree with Byrne.”
I looked up at that. “About what?”
“Well, Byrne told us what you said. That you insist on staying in the mission.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to say what I was thinking.
Because I knew Smiller was going to say it anyway. “You look pretty beat up, Kaer. Sorry to say it so bluntly—but you don’t exactly look like an angel any more. In a few days, perhaps, when the swelling goes down. . . .”
“Doesn’t Byrne have any more medicine?”
“She might have a few things. And if we decide to go ahead, we’ll see what she can do. Right now, my primary concern remains your well-being. I won’t put you in any more danger.”
“You brought me all this way, Smiller. Use me. I insist.” And then I put my fork down and looked across the table at her as if I was an adult. “You think my night in the grass weakened me, don’t you? It didn’t. It strengthened me. More than ever now, I know what a wrongness the Hale-Stones represent. I know. You can’t afford to waste me.”
I could see she recognized the truth of what I was saying, but there was one more point to make. “This team you’ve assembled here, most of them—their hearts still live on Earth. But after last night, I can tell you that my heart lives here in the sea of grass. Who better to speak for the Mother now than me?”
Smiller swirled her coffee in her cup. She looked like she was arguing with herself. Finally she looked up. “Can anyone else argue with that? I can’t.” She glanced around the table. So did I. Alex and Jake shook their heads.
Da said, “I think we have to treat Kaer as a full member of the team. Kaer accepted that responsibility, we have to accept it too.”
“All right, that settles it then.” Smiller reached into her shirt pocket and laid a piece of paper on the table. “Look at this, Kaer. What do you think?”
You will love yourself.
You will love the one you’re with.
You will love your neighbor.
You will love your parents.
You will love your children.
You will love your God.
You will celebrate and express yourself fully.
I read it over once, twice, then a third time. I shook my head. “I don’t understand. What do you intend to do with this?”
“Well, the Hale-Stones have told the Linneans to expect a list of commandments from the Mother. We thought we’d preempt their miracle—and their list. Maybe deliver our own commandments. . . .”
“Where did this list come from?”
“All of us. We had a brainstorm session all last night. While we sat around and watched you and Beck on the monitors. We started talking about the Ten Commandments and what we would change if we could. Your da said that he thought that too many of the commandments said thou shalt not and not enough of them said thou shalt. So we created a list of thou shalts. You should have seen the first draft. We had thirty-seven commandments. Then we started eliminating all but the most important ones.” She pushed the paper forward. “Do you think these commandments represent the Mother’s wishes?”
I thought about the old woman in the sea of grass. I thought about what she might say if I showed her such a list. I giggled.
“What?”
“She’d throw it in the fire.”
“Why?”
“Because—” I took a breath while I thought about it. “—because this list just says what people want to do anyway. It doesn’t sound like the kind of instructions that produce results.” I looked to da. “Do you know what I mean?”
Da nodded. “Exactly.”
Jake looked to Smiller. “We don’t have time for a long philosophical discussion, you know. . . .”
“We have time for a short one.” She turned back to me. “Kaer, if you could write the Ten Commandments, what would you write?”
I started to giggle—
“What?” Smiller demanded.
I turned the piece of paper over. The back side was blank. “Do you have a pen?” I asked. She handed one over. “Thank you.” I started writing busily.
Smiller looked to da. “Lorrin? What did I miss?”
“You didn’t miss anything.” He poured himself some more coffee. “Remember when the Dobersons quit? No, that happened before you came back to the Dome. Never mind. Anyway, after they left, at one of the morning sessions, the Kellys asked if the Linneans had the Ten Commandments. Whitlaw told him no and that triggered a prolonged argument about the Linneans and the state of sin they lived in. How could they achieve salvation if they didn’t even know they lived in sin?”
Smiller rolled her eyes. “Yes, the Kellys. We’ve known about them for a long while—even before they came to the Dome.”
“And you approved their admission?”
“We knew they’d probably disappear once they crossed over. We intended to bug them so thoroughly and so completely that we’d find out the full extent of the Hale-Stones’ influence. We might still do it. The Kellys have pretty much given themselves away, but we have a couple of other families in the Dome who we suspect may have come in with plans of their own. We’ll see. Anyway—?” She looked back to da.
“Oh, well, we have a family tradition. If you monitored us as closely as you’ve monitored everyone else, you should know about it—”
“I don’t know everything, Lorr.”
“Well, we have our own seminar. Mom-Wu usually leads it. She used to teach. We usually take our subjects from the seminars, we rehash what we’ve learned—to make sure we all heard it the same way. And sometimes we talk about the stuff that didn’t get discussed in the seminar. Like the Ten Commandments. After the Kelly thing, we talked about what kind of commandments we would write if we could write new ones. We argued about that for a couple of weeks, but eventually we had a pretty good list. Kaer? Have you finished? Let’s see if you remembered them all.” To Smiller, he said, “We had everybody memorize them, and they became our family rules. Now you know why Kaer laughed.”
I passed the paper over to da. He scanned it quickly. “Yes, I think you’ve gotten them all correct.” He passed it over to Smiller. “You might want to notice, we covered everything you came up with last night. And a little bit more.” He passed the paper to Smiller. She squinted and read.
You will . . .
Love yourself before all others. If you don’t take care of your own well-being first, you will have nothing to give to others.
Remember always that forgiveness is the greatest part of love. Forgive yourself. Forgive others as you would have them forgive you.
Love your partner and find joyous work to share.
Love your parents and honor them for the gifts they have given to you—your life, your family, and your heritage.
Love your children and pass on to them the gifts that your parents have entrusted to you.
Love your neighbors and honor them as part of your community.
Love the land, and everything that lives upon it, all the beasts of the field and the forest and the air and the sea, without exception.
Celebrate your love throughout every part of your life, in your work as well as your play.
Hold all life everywhere sacred. * Bring humility to your world.
Make a difference, everywhere. Do all this faithfu
lly and sincerely, and that is how you will love your God.
At last, Smiller put the paper down. She was frowning, but not with anger at what she had read. She glanced across to da. “Why didn’t you tell us about these last night, Lorrin?”
Da grinned. “I wanted to see what you would come up with. You did good.”
“Not as good as this. You could have saved us a lot of work.” She handed the paper to Jake. “Have that printed up and passed around for comment. We could almost use these verbatim.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “By rights—according to the charter—we should pass these back to the Dome for review and approval. But if we do that, we’ll never get an answer in time. They’ll tell us to wait. And wait. And wait. They’ll argue about culture shock and memes and ripples of contamination. They’ll worry about paradigm shifts and the Mother knows what else. And when they finish, they’ll send us back a list of new commandments that make no sense at all. Or they’ll forbid us to tamper at all. Or who knows what? If we do this, all they can do is complain afterward and analyze the impact.” She smiled grimly and added. “And of course, if they don’t like what we did . . . well, we could all be brought up on charges for violating the charter.”
Da shrugged. “We crossed that line a long time ago. When you said we’d go ahead with the rescue mission no matter what the Agency decided.”
Jake spoke up then. “Officially, the Agency decided no. Officially, the Agency said that we could observe and nothing else. Officially, the Agency said that if our people could escape without specifically identifiable alien influence, we could pull them out, but officially, we couldn’t aid them for fear of detection. And officially, the Agency sent us a very strict set of orders . . . all of which got lost or garbled in transit.”
Smiller looked to me. “We have two kinds of people in the Agency, Kaer. We have people who give instructions. And we have people who get results. The two kinds of people don’t always get along. The first kind of person makes rules that he thinks will produce results—and most of the time they do. But sometimes, the second kind of person has to break the rules because otherwise he can’t get a result. And no, it doesn’t make for a great working environment—but once in a while, both kinds of people agree on a result. So the first kind of person goes through the motions of giving instructions, while the second kind of person goes out and gets the result, however he can.
“And in case you wonder about how the Agency got set up that way . . . we set it up that way deliberately, because we knew this kind of situation might happen someday. And we knew we might have to do exactly this.” She patted my hand. “I like your commandments very much.”
“Mm,” I said.
“You don’t?”
“Yes, I do. But after last night . . . they don't sound quite right to me anymore. Almost right. But not completely. I keep thinking I’ve missed something. It’ll come to me.”
“Well, these will do very nicely, Kaer. Even if you don’t remember. I think you’ve solved a big problem for us. Your whole family. No wonder the Mother picked you out when she had so many of us to choose from. Hey? You want some dessert? We have chocolate ice cream.”
____________________________
* “Life is sacred everywhere” cannot be translated verbatim into Linnean, because there is no form of the verb “to be” in the Linnean language. Hence: “Hold all life everywhere sacred.”
The People of the Grass
A long time ago, in the time before time, an old woman lived in the sea of grass in a house of grass that she built with her own two hands. And she sang of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth. And the grass grew tall and strong around her.
The woman sang to the grass every day, and every night the grass sang back to her, and she knew contentment. She slept soundly and without fear. Every night, she tied down all the shutters that covered her windows, because if she did not, the wind would creep into her house and sing songs all night, keeping her awake. And in this way, she passed her days in peace.
But one night, after the dark had fallen over the sea of grass, the wind found a frayed spot in one of the cords she used to tie her shutters down. The wind tugged and tugged at the frayed spot, until finally the cord parted and the corner of the shutter came loose.
And so that night, as the old woman lay silent in her bed, the wind came creeping in and began to sing to her. “Old woman, all alone in your bed. You have no lover. You have no child. You have no life that will live after you. You have nothing but the grass. You will die alone. And the grass will forget you. No one will sing your song. And the grass will die. And no one will remember you at all.” And then, before the woman could awake and chase the wind away, it crept out again. So when she awoke in the morning, she had a terrible feeling and she did not know why.
The terrible feeling stayed with her all day. And when she sang to the grass of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth, the grass sang back, “You sing unhappily today.”
The old woman said, “I worry that you will not remember me after I die.”
And the grass sang back, “But you will never die. Not as long as the song continues.”
And this reassured the old woman and she let her terrible feeling sail away into the golden sky.
That night, when she tied down her shutters again, she found where the wind had frayed the cord, so she carefully repaired it, tied her shutters down as she always did, and turned to her bed.
Later, when the dark had fallen over the sea of grass, the wind came creeping around her house, it couldn’t get in by the same window, so it looked for another frayed cord, and when it found one, it began to tug at the shutter. Soon the cord parted and the wind crept into the old woman’s house to sing to her again. “Old woman, all alone in your bed. You have no lover. You have no child. You have no life that will live after you. You have nothing but the grass. You will die alone. And the grass will forget you. No one will sing your song. And the grass will die. And no one will remember you at all.” And as it had the night before, it crept away before the old woman could awake.
In the morning, when she awoke she had that terrible feeling again. This time when she sang to the grass of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth, the feeling did not go away as easily. Despite the reassurance of the sea that she would never die as long as the song lived, the old woman still felt the chill of age in her bones. She looked to the east and the approaching night with an ill-defined feeling of dread. As she tied down her shutters, she discovered where the second cord had broken, so she repaired that cord too before turning to her bed.
Later, when the dark had fallen over the sea of grass, the wind came creeping round yet again. Once more, the wind found a frayed cord that had missed her attention, and once more it tugged at the cord until it broke. And once more, it crept in to devil the old woman’s sleep. “Old woman, all alone in your bed. You have no lover. You have no child. You have no life that will live after you. You have nothing but the grass. You will die alone. And the grass will forget you. No one will sing your song. And the grass will die. And no one will remember you at all.” And as it had both nights before, it crept away before the old woman could awake.
In the morning, the old woman awoke again with the same terrible feeling that had plagued her the two mornings previously. But this time, the woman knew what to do. She went out into the grass and gathered the strongest young stems she could find. As she sang to the grass of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth, her fingers flew like strummingbirds, weaving the strong stems of the friendly grass into new cords to keep her shutters secure at night.
That night, when the dark had fallen over the sea of grass, the wind came creeping as it always did. But this time it could find no entrance to the woman’s house at all, and it crept away again into the shadows. The old woman slept soundly and peacefully.
But when she awoke in the morning, she awoke with the same terrible feeling, because even though the wind could no longer sing to he
r, its dreadful song had carved its words in her heart. “Old woman, all alone in your bed. You have no lover. You have no child. You have no life that will live after you. You have nothing but the grass. You will die alone. And the grass will forget you. No one will sing your song. And the grass will die. And no one will remember you at all.”
The old woman pondered her dilemma for a whole day, and then a second day and a third one as well. She thought about it as hard as she could. And after three days had passed, she thought about it for three more days, just to make sure. And then, she thought about it three more days as well.
After nine days in all had passed, she went out into the grass and called to the sea. “I need the softest and the strongest, the fairest and the sharpest and the tallest. I need stems of green and gold. Come to me and I will teach you how to sing of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth.” And soon, the grass began to rustle and wave, as every stalk and stem presented itself to her. She gathered the softest and the strongest, the fairest and the sharpest and the tallest. She gathered stems of green and gold and took them back to her little house of grass.
And then she started to weave. She began by weaving the grass into little green and gold bodies. She wove skillfully, as if she had done it a thousand times before, and perhaps she had. Her fingers flew like fireflies, darting in and out, pushing strands in and around, pulling them through, tying them around. She worked with love and care, for her work would have to last forever.
She wove families of happy grass people. She wove them soft of feature and strong of heart. She wove them fair of face and sharp of mind and tall of spirit. She wove brawny grass arms and long grass legs, and on top of each grass body she put a smiling grass head.
At the end of the day she had woven the people of the sea. She had woven golden-dark people for the north and golden-fair people for the east, golden-bright people for the south, and golden-green people for the west. She had them laid out in neat little rows, awaiting only her breath to give them life.
Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two Page 21