but no one had mentioned plague. Illness, yes. The people had illnesses. Things went wrong with old bones and joints. Hearts wore out. There was very little lung trouble, though. The air breathed cleanly and caused no problems here. There were few if any infectious diseases. They had been wiped out in this small population, and the quarantine officers at the port kept Commons clean.
But plague?
“Mother,” he asked softly, thinking of people he had left behind, of one person he had left behind, “is there plague at home?”
She turned a horrified look upon him, prepared to lie as she had told herself she must. “Yes,” she confessed to his open, waiting face, feeling the words leave her in an involuntary exhalation. “Yes, there is plague at home. And on every other inhabited world as well.”
“Here?”
“Except here. Maybe. We think. We have been told.”
“You’re here to find out?”
She nodded.
“You didn’t tell us?”
“Stella…” Marjorie murmured. “You know Stella.”
“But me, Mother. Me?”
“It was thought you were too young. That you might forget yourself.”
“A secret? Why?”
“Because ..” said Father Sandoval, leaning forward to grip the young man’s arm, “because of the Moldies, the nihilists. If they learned of it, they would try to bring the plague here. And because the Grassians do not care if all the other worlds die. They do not wish to be disturbed.”
“But… but that’s inhuman!”
“It is not fair to say they do not care,” Marjorie murmured again. “Let us say rather that they do not perceive. Various efforts to make them perceive have resulted in nothing but their annoyance. Father Sandoval is right, they do not wish to be disturbed; but there is more to it than that. Something psychological. I should say, pathological. Something that prevents their seeing or attending So we are here under false pretenses, Tony, as ambassador and family. What we are really here for is to find out whether there is plague here. If there is not, we must somehow get permission for people to come here and find why not.”
“What have you found?”
“Very little. There does not seem to be plague here, but we are not certain. Asmir Tanlig is finding out from the villagers and from servants in the estancias whether there are any unexplained deaths or illnesses. Sebastian Mechanic knows many of the port workers, and he is trying to find out the same information from them. The two men don’t know why they are asking the questions. They’ve been told that we’re making a health survey for Sanctity. We need information from the bons, as well, but we seem unable to establish any contact with them beyond the purely formal. We have been trying to make friends.”
“That’s why the reception was held.”
“Yes.”
“Eugenie’s showing up with that girl didn’t help things, did it.”
“No, Tony. It didn’t.”
“Eugenie hasn’t the brains of a root peeper.” He said it hopelessly, waving his fingers, as though to wave Eugenie away. Neither he nor Stella could understand their father’s fondness for Eugenie. “No brains at all.”
“Unfortunately, that’s probably close to the truth.” She caught Father James’ eyes upon her and flushed. Rigo’s nephew probably had family loyalties to Rigo. She should not have criticized Rigo before him. She should not do it before Tony, either, except that Tony already knew… so much.
“I wondered what could be important enough to get you to come.”
Tony said, shaking his head. “Leaving your work at Breedertown that way. But surely they can’t be depending only on us. What is Sanctity doing?”
“According to Rigo, everything they can. They can’t get any animal, including man, to create an antibody to the virus. They can kill the virus, but not in a living creature. Eventually, if we find there is no plague here, we will ship some tissue samples from here back to Sanctity.”
“Tissue samples? Will the bons let you do that?”
“They have no physicians among themselves, Tony. If they are injured, they must call upon doctors from Commons. I think we can buy whatever samples will be needed.”
“But so far, Sanctity has found nothing.”
“Nothing. No tissue they have tested makes antibodies to the virus.”
The four of them were huddled together like conspirators. “Tony, you mustn’t—”
“Mustn’t tell Stella. I know. She would blurt it out, just to prove we can’t tell her what to do.”
Father Sandoval nodded in agreement. “I think that’s probably true.” He had known Stella since she was a child. She confessed a fair number of sins — usually, with maximum drama, not the ones she was most guilty of. Anger, mostly. Anger at Marjorie for not having provided that indefinable something Stella had always wanted. After long thought and meditation, Father Sandoval had decided it was perhaps the same thing Rigo wanted — the thing called intimacy. Though neither of them would set themselves aside long enough to work for it. They wanted family, but they wanted it on command, like water from a spout, ready when they turned it on, absent otherwise. “Help me now, give me now, comfort me now. Then, when you’ve done it, get out of my way!”
Father Sandoval sighed again, wishing his years had given him better insight into Stella, and into her father, Stella, of course, would eventually marry and could then be instructed to be obedient to her husband as she was now instructed to be obedient to her parents. But what could one do with Rigo? Both he and Stella were too impatient to woo. They would storm or nothing. Overwhelm, or nothing. They would not beg. They would take by right. Even things they should not take at all.
Unaware of Father Sandoval’s concern, Stella, meantime, was upon the simulacrum in the sixth hour of her current ride: eyes glazed, back braced, beyond hunger or thirst in a trance of her own evoking.
Her father had finished his own session on the machine hours ago. Hector Paine was gone. No one else would come into the winter quarters. She had set the timing mechanism for seven hours, two hours longer than she had ever ridden before, and had vaulted aboard. There was no way to stop the machine once she had started, no way to get off the mount save by falling.
On the screens around her the grasses whipped past. Devices at her side mimicked the blows of the blades, striking her hat, her coat. The machine rocked and twisted, always slightly off rhythm so that she could not relax. The body stayed alert, but the brain eventually gave up thinking and retreated into some never-never land beyond exhaustion. Stella was there now, dreaming of Sylvan bon Damfels. During the reception at Opal Hill, she had watched him as he danced with Marjorie, watched, devoured, swallowed him whole. When she had danced with him, she had absorbed him through her skin, taken his image into herself so that he dwelt there, a paradigm of the real and genuine man. And since that time she had undressed him and possessed him and done with him all those things she had not yet done with others, not through any sense of morality but because she had not yet found one she thought worthy of herself. Now she had. Sylvan was worthy. Sylvan was noble. Sylvan was one to whom she might be mated. No! The one to whom she would be mated. In just a little time. In the time it would take for her to ride, as he rode, so that she might ride by his side.
She ignored what he had said to Marjorie about riding, ignored his advice to the Yrariers. It did not fit her picture of him, so she struck it from his image as she built him anew, according to her own needs — the gospel of St. Sylvan, according to Stella, his creator.
The machine galloped on, its springs and levers walloping and sliding, the sound of hooves thundering softly from its speakers, the pictured stems of grass fleeing everlastingly on either side, the blades lashing at her with softly sounded strokes.
In some remote part of her mind she told Elaine Brouer all about Sylvan, about their meeting, the way their eyes had met. “He loved me in that moment. In that very moment, he loved me as he had never loved anyone before.”
Sylvan was saying much the same thing to himself as he walked a winding path deep in the famed grass
