“If anybody mortals in the swamp forest, you’ll never explain it,” Asmir said firmly. “If they mortal in the grasses at night, it’s probably foxen. You’ve seen foxen?”
Marjorie nodded. She had seen foxen. Not close enough to describe, but quite as close as she cared to come.
“You’ve seen more’n me, then,” he said, lapsing into a less portentous style. “But I’ve seen pictures.”
“I take it you don’t go out into the grass?”
“Oh, sir, no! What kind of flick bird do you take me for? Oh, daytimes, yes, a little way, for a picnic or a romantic walk, say. Or to get away by yourself for a bit. But that’s what village walls are for, and estancia walls too. To keep them out.”
“Them?” queried Marjorie, gently.
He told the roll of them, words that clanged like the toll of a knell as his awestruck voice invoked incipient funerals out of each one: “Peepers. The thing that cries out in the deep night. The great grazers. Hounds. Hippae. Foxen. All them.”
“And no one really goes far into the prairie?”
“People say the Green Brothers do. Or some of them. If so, they’re the only ones that dare. And how they dare, I wouldn’t know.”
“The Green Brothers,” mused Rigo. “Oh, yes. Sanctity’s penitential monks. The ones digging up the Arbai city. Sender O’Neil mentioned the Green Brothers. How would we go about reaching them?”
Rillibee Chime, robed in unfamiliar green, his tear-streaked face unpowdered, crouched behind Brother Mainoa in a little aircar as it scuttled bouncily northward. “Can you tell me where we’re going?” he asked, wondering whether he cared. He felt hag-ridden and nauseated, unsure even of his own identity, he who had always fought so hard to keep it.
“To the Arbai city I’ve been digging,” said Brother Mainoa comfortably. “Some ways north of here. We’ll stop there for a day or two, let you get to feeling better, then I’ll take you on up to the Friary. I’m supposed to bring you directly there, but I’ll tell ’em you were sick. Soon as you get to the Friary, either Jhamlees Zoe or the climbers’ll be after you, and there’s nothing I can do about that. So, best you be feeling well when we get there.”
“Climbers?” Rillibee asked, wondering what on all this great, flat prairie there was to climb.
“You’ll learn about them soon enough. Not much I could tell you. They started their nonsense long after I was young enough to take part in it. You’ll feel better sooner if you lie down, you know. Lie down for a little bit and when we’re out of this wind, I’ll let the tell-me drive while I get you some broth.”
Rillibee let his crouch sag into a slump, the slump into a prostrate misery full of gulpings and more silent tears. Ever since they had wakened him from coldsleep he’d had these nightmares, these horrid feelings, this insatiable hunger.
“What did you do to get sent to us?” Brother Mainoa asked. “Tear one of the angels off Sanctity and sell it to the Pope?”
Rillibee sniveled, finding this funny in a sodden way. “No,” he managed. “Nothing quite that bad.”
“What, then?”
“I asked questions out loud.” He reflected. “Well, I screamed them, really. In refectory.”
“What kinds of questions?”
“What good it would do to have us all listed in the machines when we were all dead. How reading our names in empty rooms gave us immortality. Whether the plague wasn’t going to kill us all. That kind of questions.” He sobbed again, remembering the horror and confusion and his own inability to control what he was doing.
Ah.” Brother Mainoa struggled with the controls, grunting as he punched buttons that did not seem to want to stay punched. “Fouled up houndy uselessness,” he muttered. “Damned shitty mechanics.” At length the controls responded to being whacked with the palm of his hand and the car settled upon a level course. “Broth,” he said calmly and comfortingly, smiling down at Rillibee. “So you asked about plague, did you?”
Rillibee didn’t reply.
After a time the older man said, “We’ll have to come up with a name for you.”
“I’ve got a name.” Even in the depths of his present depression he bridled at the thought that he could not keep his own name.
“Not a Friary name, you don’t. Friary names have to be made up out of certain qualities.” Brother Mainoa whacked the cooker with the flat of his hand, scowling at it. “Twelve consonant sounds and five vowels, each with its own holy attribute.”
“That’s nonsense,” mumbled Rillibee, licking tears from the corner of his mouth. “You know that’s nonsense. That’s the kind of thing— That’s what I was asking in refectory. Why so much nonsense?”
“Got too much for you?”
Rillibee nodded.
“Me, too,” said Brother Mainoa. “Except I didn’t ask questions. I tried to run away. You were probably a pledged acolyte too, weren’t you? How long were you pledged for?”
“I wasn’t really pledged. They took me, is all, when … well, when I didn’t have anyplace else to go. They said twelve years and I could do what I wanted.”
“Me, I was pledged for five years, but I couldn’t get through them. Just couldn’t. My folks pledged me from my fifteenth birthday. By age seventeen I was here on Grass, digging up Arbai bones, and I’ve been here since. Penitent as all get-out. Ah, well. Maybe if I’d been a little older.” He took the steaming cup from the cooker. “Here, drink this. It
