walls, cast into the surfaces of doorknobs. Where there was not room for the words, the initial letters pocked every surface, S/U/I, S/U/I, S/U/l.
“Blasphemous fiction,” Rigo muttered to himself, quoting Father Sandoval. He tried to take shorter steps so that he would not tread on the heels of his guide, wishing with every step that he hadn’t come. Not for Uncle Carlos. Carlos the traitor. Bad enough he had been a heretic without having become Hierarch, a source of embarrassment for all Old Catholics everywhere.
The hooded escort stopped, gave Rigo a quick look as though to see if he was properly dressed, then knocked at a deeply recessed door before opening it and gesturing for Rigo to enter. It was a small, featureless room furnished with three chairs. The hooded acolyte came in to perch on one of them, anonymous as a new nail, fingers poised over a cleric-all. In another chair, one set apart near a slightly open door, an old man huddled, a waking corpse with dull, deep-sunk eyes. His bandaged hands shook and his voice quavered.
“Rigo?”
“Uncle?” Rigo asked, not sure. He had not seen the old man for decades. “Uncle Carlos?” There was a stench in the room, like a closed attic where something had died.
The shaking moved from arms to head, and Rigo interpreted this as a nod. The hand motioned slightly toward the empty chair, and Rigo sat down. He saw death before him, death too long delayed.
Despite himself, he felt pity. The acolyte on the other chair was preparing to take notes, already keying his cleric-all to record and transcribe.
“My boy,” came the whisper. “We’re asking you to do something. To go on a journey. For a time. It is important. It is a family matter, Rigo.” He leaned back in the chair, coughing weakly.
“Uncle!” Damned if he would call him
“I am not asking that you do it for Sanctity, Rigo. I am asking for family. For your family. All families. I am dying. I am not important. We are all dying — “ He was shaken by a paroxysm.
The door opened and two robed attendants boiled in, offering a cup, half snarling at one another in their eagerness to help.
Rigo reached out a hand. “Uncle!”
He received glares from fanatical faces, his hand was slapped away.
The aged man beat at them weakly. “Leave me, leave me, fools. Leave me,” until they bubbled away from him and departed, reluctantly. “No strength to explain,” he murmured, eyes almost closed, “O’Neil will explain. Ass. Not you. O’Neil. Ass. Don’t write that down,” this to the acolyte. “Take him to O’Neil.” He turned to his nephew once again. “Please, Rigo.”
“Uncle!”
The man drew himself together and fixed Rigo with a death’s-head glare. “I know you don’t believe in Sanctity. But you believe in God, Rigo. Please, Rigo. You must go. You and your wife and your children. All of you, Rigo. For mankind. Because of the horses.” He began to cough once more.
This time the weak coughing did not stop, and the servitors came back with officious strength to bear the old man away. Rigo was left sitting there, staring at the powdered, anonymous figure across from him. After a moment, the acolyte put the strap of the cleric-all over his shoulder and beckoned for Rigo to follow him out. He led the way down a twisting hall to a wider corridor.
“What’s your name?” Rigo had asked.
The acolyte’s voice was hollow, inattentive. “We don’t have—”
“I don’t care about that. What’s your name?”
“Rillibee Chime.” The words fell softly into quiet, like rainwater into a pool.
“Is he dying?”
A moment’s pause. Then, softly, as though to answer was difficult or forbidden. “The whispers say he is.”
“What is it?”
“Everyone says… plague.” The last word came as bile comes, choking. The anonymous face turned away. The anonymous person panted. It had been a hard word to say. It meant an end to time. It meant two years might not be long enough for him to get out of this place.
It was also a hard word to hear.
“Plague!” It came out of Rigo’s belly like a grunt.
These days the word meant only one thing. A slow virus of the most insidious type and hideous aspect. A slow virus which emerged at last to make the body devour itself as in a spasm of biological self-hatred. Father Sandoval had insisted on showing Rigo a banned documentary made by a fellow priest, now dead, at an aid station where plague victims were treated and given whatever rites would comfort them. There had been bodies on all the cots, some of them still living. Rigo’s eyes had slid across the picture, observing it without wanting to see it. The cube had made him see it. It had included sound and smell, and he had recoiled from the stench as he tried to shut out the guttural, agonized coughs, the mutilated bodies, the eyes sunk so deep they made the faces seem skull- like.
“Plague,” he muttered again. The rumor was that it had moved from planet to planet, lying dormant for decades, only to emerge at last in place after place, giving no hint of its origin, subverting every attempt to stay it. The rumor was that science had proved helpless, able to isolate the monster but utterly incapable of stopping it once it had invaded a human host. The rumor had been circulating for over twenty years. If there really was plague, by now the victims must be numbered in the billions. So said rumor and rumor only, for Sanctity denied that there was plague, and what Sanctity denied, the human worlds denied — by and large.
“You mean my uncle?” Roderigo demanded.
“I didn’t know he was your uncle until today. The Hierarch.” The acolyte turned to stare at him with suddenly human eyes. “I’m not supposed to say anything to you, sir. Please, don’t tell them I did. Here are the rooms of the division chief for Missions, sir. If you have questions, you must ask the division chief. You must ask Sender O’Neil.”
The acolyte turned away, losing himself in the stream of anonymous acolytes, only at the turn of the corridor turning back to stare at Roderigo Yrarier, who still stood there before the door, his eyes down, an expression of loathing on his face.
“That acolyte should be disciplined,” said a watcher. “Look at him, standing there, staring.” The watcher himself was staring nearsightedly through the crack of a very slightly opened door, his age-spotted hand trembling on the wall beside it.
“He’s only curious,” said his companion from over his shoulder. “How often do you think he gets to see anyone except the Sanctified. Shut the door. Did you understand what the old man said, Mailers?”
“The Hierarch? He said his nephew had a chance of finding what we need because of the horses.”
“And do you think Yrarier will succeed?”
“Well, Cory, he has a fine dramatic look to him, doesn’t he? All that black hair and white skin and red, red lips. I suppose he has as good a chance as anyone.”
The man addressed as Cory made a face. He, himself, had never been dramatic-looking, and he often regretted that fact. Now he looked simply old, with wispy hair frilling his ears and spiderwebs of wrinkles around his eyes. “He looks more dramatic than clever, but I hope he succeeds. We need him to succeed, Hallers. We need it.”
“You don’t need to tell me that, Cory. If we don’t get a cure soon, we’re dead. Everyone.”
There was a pause. Hallers turned to see his lifelong companion staring at the floor, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Even if we get it very soon, I think it will be better if we let the dying go on, some places.”
Hallers moved uncertainly toward his companion, his expression confused. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, Hallers, suppose we get the cure tomorrow. Why should we save everyone? Our own best people, of course, but why bother with everyone else? Why bother with some of the worlds, for example?”
Silence in the room while Hallers stared and Cory Strange watched for his reaction. Shock at first. Well, when Cory had first had the idea, he had been shocked at it too But then Cory had realized what it could do for Sanctity…
