Grass

“She’s mine, too, and there’s nothing in her head at all. She doesn’t know me. She plays with a ball, bouncing it off a wall. What are you going to do with her? Take her back to Terra and hire a keeper for her?”

“This… this…” he pointed at Rillibee.

“What?”

“This young man,” she said, “who has been ill used by Sanctity, as we all have. This young man, who has certain talents and skills. What about him?”

“You trust him not to—”

“I trust him not to do anything to her nearly as bad as the Hippae have already done,” she cried, “because you let them. I trust him to care for her better than we did, Rigo! Better than her father or her mother. I trust him to look after her.”

Rillibee, who had tried to make himself inconspicuous during most of this, now asserted, “I will do for her what is best for her. From the moment I first saw her, I wanted only what was best for her. Right now there is only one good place left on Grass, and the Tree City is it. If there is trouble on Grass, it has not touched the trees.”

Rigo did not reply. Marjorie could not see his face. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see it, and she did not wish to argue it further with him. At the tell-me she reached Geraldria and Rowena, telling them of Rillibee’s offer and advising them to accept it. When she turned, Rigo was there, and she said impatiently, “Yes?”

“Yes,” he responded, as though granting a favor. “I’ll accept this for now. It may be the best place for her for a time.”

She tried to smile, not quite successfully. “I hope I am right about this, Rigo. I’d like to be right, a few times.”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he turned and left her, going back to his own room. Though she tried to get back to sleep, she could not. It was only hours later, near dawn, when the Seraph and his armed escort came for them, that she learned he had been as sleepless as herself.

They were given little time to dress. Perhaps it was only imagination, but it seemed they were treated with less courtesy than previously. When they were escorted into the Hierarch’s presence, two other persons were already there. Rigo’s hand tightened on Marjorie’s arm as he saw the first. Her face grew momentarily rigid as she saw the second.

“Admit!” she cried in what she hoped was a glad-sounding voice. “Rigo, it’s Admit Maukerden. I’m so glad you escaped the fires at Opal Hill. Sebastian and Persun went back time after time, but you weren’t among the people they brought in.”

“My name is Admit bon Maukerden,” he said.

“A bon? Jerril bon Haunser told me he would provide a lateral,” she exclaimed.

“I was assigned to find out what you were doing on Grass,” he said. “The bons wanted to know what you were up to. As this one does, now.” He gestured through the glass at the Hierarch. “He wants to know what you were up to.”

“Well for heaven’s sake,” Marjorie cried, “tell him, Admit. Tell the Hierarch anything he wants to know.”

“I am more interested in what this other one tells me,” the Hierarch said silkily from behind his transparent partition.

The other one lounged on his chair like a lizard on a rock, his relaxed manner belied by his scratched and bruised face and arms. Highbones.

“Brother Flumzee?” Marjorie asked the Hierarch. her voice calm. “He and his friends intended to kill me in the swamp forest. What else does he tell you?” She looked at Highbones gravely.

He saw the look and remembered what it was he had forgotten about women. They pitied you sometimes. When you didn’t even know why.

The Hierarch said in a silky voice, “He tells me that you were well acquainted with one of the Brothers, Brother Mainoa. He says that Brother Mainoa was thought to be a backslider. And that he knew something about plague.”

“Did he really? What did he know, Brother Flumzee? Or do you still prefer to be called Highbones?”

“He knew something,” Highbones shouted, hating what he saw in her face. “Fuasoi wanted him killed.”

“What did he know?” asked the Hierarch. “It would be in your best interest, Lady Westriding, and you, Ambassador, to tell me everything the Brother knew, or thought he knew.”

“We’ll be glad to,” Rigo said. “Though he himself would be able to tell you much more than we can—”

“He’s alive?” The Heirarch snapped.

Marjorie replied calmly, “Well, of course. Highbones left his two friends to kill Mainoa and Brother Lourai, but they didn’t succeed. I think Highbones hated Brother Lourai. and that was the reason for it.”

“Fuasoi ordered Mainoa killed!” Highbones shouted.

“Well, I suppose that’s possible,” Marjorie continued, keeping her voice calm, though she was in a frenzy of concentration. “Since Brother Mainoa thought Fuasoi was a Moldy.” She turned her face toward Rigo, nodding. She had never mentioned Brother Mainoa’s speculation to him. She prayed Rigo would understand what she was trying to do.

The Hierarch, who had started the inquiry with a furious intensity, now looked stricken. “A Moldy?”

“Brother Mainoa thought so,” Rigo said, following Marjorie’s lead. “Because—”

“Because Fuasoi wouldn’t have ordered Mainoa killed, otherwise,” Marjorie concluded. “If he thought Mainoa knew something about the plague, the only reason to kill him would be if Fuasoi was a Moldy. Anyone who was not a Moldy would want Brother Mainoa alive, talking about what he knew.” She looked at the Hierarch helpfully, feeling hysteria pushing at the back of her tongue.

“Moldies here, on Grass?” the Hierarch whispered, very pale, his mouth drawn into a rictus of horror. “Here?”

Rigo saw the man’s terror and was thankful for it “Well, Your Eminence,” Rigo offered in a placating tone, “it was only a matter of time until they came here. Everyone knew that. Even Sender O’Neil told me that!”

The audience ended abruptly. They were outside the chamber, being escorted to the shuttle once more. Highbones wasn’t with them. Admit bon Maukerden wasn’t with them. Those two were taken away in some other direction.

“Where are they going?” Marjorie asked.

“Down to the port,” the escort leader responded. “We’ll hold them there in case the Hierarch wants them again.”

Marjorie felt a surge of hope. If they had been believed, perhaps the Hierarch would depart. Perhaps this is all it would take! When Marjorie and Rigo reached the port, however, they were not allowed to return to the town. Instead they were taken to the empty Port Hotel and given a suite with a guard outside the door.

“Are we to stay here without food?” Marjorie demanded.

“Somebody’ll bring it from the officer’s mess,” the guard said. “Hierarch wants you here where he can lay hands on you if he needs you.”

When the door was shut behind them, Marjorie put her lips almost against Rigo’s ear. “Anything we say here can probably be overheard.”

He nodded. “I think Mainoa was right,” he said loudly. “I think Brother what’s-his-name was a Moldy. He probably had virus shipped in weeks ago. That’s probably what the people in town have. I think we ought to get off this planet, Marjorie. As soon as possible.” He shook his head at her tiredly. What more could they say or do than this mixture of half truth and part lies? If the Hierarch was frightened enough, perhaps his own fear would drive him away.

Rigo sat down, leaning back, eyes closed. Marjorie sat near him. The room was full of unsaid things and of the teasing memory of said ones. She looked at his exhausted face and felt an almost impersonal sorrow, like the feelings she had often had for the people of Breedertown. And she could help him no more than she had ever helped them.

Behind his slitted eyelids, Rigo wondered if it was too late. If too much had happened. Eugenie. Stella. His accusations against Marjorie. Stupid of him. He knew better. If he knew anything about her, he knew she had no appetites of that kind. Why had he accused her?

Because he had had to accuse her of something.

And now? Was it too late to forgive her for what she had never done?