Grass (15 page)

On Grass bodies lie by the hundreds in the houses, in the streets, in the library and the plaza. Everywhere the Green Brothers dig, they find mummified remains.

Most of the digging over the years has been done by strong young men who have had little interest in what they uncovered. Inevitably, however, there have been a few who found themselves fascinated and enthralled by the ancient walls, the ancient artifacts, the ancient bodies. Some few have willingly given their lives to this work, applying all their intelligence to it. Sometimes there have been two or three of these fanatics at a time.

But only one man is currently focusing his intelligence upon the Arbai. He, like others before him, has learned to hide his genuine interest from those in authority. Brother Mainoa, once a miserable young acolyte of Sanctity, long since exiled and grown to suck-toothed age, to the shaggy gray locks and the wrinkled eye-pockets of an elder though to none of the honors some find in that estate; Brother Mainoa, like his predecessors an amateur, a lover of his work, has found his heart's home amid these ancient stones. He has come to consider these trenchlike streets his own, these his dwellings and plazas, these his shops and libraries, though there is nothing in any of them that he can use or believes he will ever truly understand. Mainoa has uncovered almost half of the Arbai bodies himself. He has named them all. He lives out most of his life among them. They have become his friends, though not his only friends.

Of an evening, Brother Mainoa sometimes went away from the dig to a nearby copse where he could sit on a kneed-up root with his evening pipe, leaning against the trunk of the tree as he talked to the air. Tonight he reclined on his accustomed root with a sigh. His bones hurt. Not unusual. Most nights his bones hurt and some mornings, as well. Sleeping in barely heated quarters on a sack stuffed with grass didn't help much, though he'd been less achy since he'd fixed the roof. He took a deep puff of fragrant smoke, let it out slowly, then spoke, as though to himself.

"The purple grass, now, not that Cloak of Kings stuff but the lighter purple with the blue bloom on it. that goes well with the rose. Tests out a complete protein mixed about two to one, very sustaining. Flavor's nothing to proclaim at daily prayers, but it'll come, it'll come."

A sound as of some huge, interested purring came from the tree, high above the old man's head.

"Well, of course the yellowgrass is the old standby, just before I left the Friary last time to come down here to the dig, Elder Brother Laeroa told me he'd improved on it. I don't know whether to believe that or not; it'd be hard to do. Yellowgrass is almost perfect as it is, just that there's so little of it. It wants the tall orange stem on the sun side of it and something lower, like little green or middle 'zure, on the shade side, the blessed angels know why, but that's the way it is. Elder Laeroa says he's tempted to plant it in stripes and see how it does, but that'd stick out like a sore thumb … "

The purring again, with a note of interrogation.

"Of course they watch us," sighed Brother Mainoa. "Listen to the young Brothers, the cloud crawlers, the ones that wallow around up on that net among the towers. Listen to them tell it. What they see is eyes out there in the grass, staring at the Friary. Of course they watch us. That's what makes it so hard finding things out."

Nothing from above. Brother Mainoa risked a look straight up, seeing nothing but the pale sky through a thatch of twig and leaf, one star pricking out at the zenith, like a single sequin dropped from the skirt of a careless angel. A little to his left, so high that it caught the final rays of the sun with a silken glimmer, he could see a few strands of the net among the towers at the Friary itself, just over the horizon.

"Talking to yourself again, Brother?" said a reproving voice. Brother Mainoa started. The figure under the neighboring tree was half hidden in shadow. The voice was that of Elder Brother Noazee Fuasoi, deputy head of the office of Security and Acceptable Doctrine at the Friary, and what the blazing hell was he doing down here at the dig!

"Just muttering, Elder Brother," Mainoa murmured as he rose and stood respectfully, wondering if the man had followed him, and if so, how long he'd been standing there. "Muttering about the dig, trying to figure it out."

"Sounded like gardening to me, Brother."

"Well, yes. That, too. Trying out effects in my head, so to speak."

i"Bad habit to get into, Brother Mainoa. Disruptive of the silence and demeanor of the order. Clinging to such bad habits is probably why you're still assigned to digging up ruins rather than to the more dignified duties your age would warrant. If you'd behaved properly, you'd have been assigned to a desk job back at the Friary a long time ago."

"Yes, Elder Brother," said Brother Mainoa obediently while thinking something not at all obedient about those who were assigned to desk jobs at the Friary. "I'll try to curb the habit."

"See that you do. I wouldn't want to call you up before Eldest Brother Jhamlees Zoe. Eldest Brother Jhamlees takes his Doctrine very seriously."

At least that was the truth. Jhamlees Zoe was too recently arrived to have calmed down yet. Still trying to find something on Grass to convert. Mainoa sighed. "Yes, Elder Brother."

"I came down here to tell you you're assigned to escort duty. We have a recalcitrant acolyte coming in from Sanctity. Brother Shoethai and I brought a car down from the Friary for you to use when you pick him up tomorrow morning."

Brother Mainoa bowed obediently and kept his mouth shut. Elder Brother Fuasoi belched and rubbed his stomach reflectively. "Boy had less than a year to go and he went jerky. Lost his demeanor and had a fit in refectory, so I'm told. He traveled under his birth name. Rillibee Chime. Think up a Green Friar name for him."

"Yes, Elder Brother."

"The ship will be in early, so be ready. And no more talking to yourself." Brother Fuasoi rubbed at his belly again before he started off.

Brother Mainoa bowed humbly at Fuasoi's retreating back and hoped Fuasoi's belly would kill him soon. Shithead, he thought. All from Acceptable Doctrine were shitheads. And so was Elder Jhamlees Zoe, the mad proselytizer, cast away here on Grass with nobody to convert and going slowly crazy because of it. Nothing between their ears but excrement or they'd know what was really here on Grass. Anyone with any sense could see … purr was back above, this time full of quiet amusement. "You'll get me in big trouble," muttered Brother Mainoa. "Then what will you have to purr about?"

The hundred-square-mile area which the aristocrats called Commoner-Town was divided into two parts by a precipitous, convoluted knob of stone which was called, half in jest, Grass's Only Mountain, or Gom. The mountain extended east and west in an uninterrupted wall, a sheer-faced outcropping that ran down on both sides to lose itself in the depths of the swamp forest, making an effective barricade between the permanent and transient. Craftsmen, farmers, merchants, and their families lived and worked north of the barrier in an area they called Commons, centered on the town. The area south of the wall, though largely sloping pastureland, contained the port and all its appurtenances.

Appurtenances included, adjacent to the port on the east, a district containing warehouses for the storage of goods being transhipped, hay barns for winter feed of Commons' livestock, various respectable shops and amusements run by local citizens, the Port Hotel, and the hospital. This area, including the port itself, was called the Commercial District.

Also included was an area on the west side of the port, where buildings blazoned with tawdry glitter stood along Portside Road, where the sensees stayed open around the clock and where visitors routinely stepped over bodies without worrying much about it. Not many of the bodies were dead; few of them were seriously wounded; some of them were still busily engaged. The crowded buildings led an indefinable stink made up of drugs, dirt, and various biological exudates. This disreputable area took its name from its road and was called simply Portside.

In addition to the Commercial District and Portside, the southern area contained about forty square miles of common hay meadow and grazing land, sloping on the east, south, and west from the high plateau of the port down to the swamp forest.

Connecting the port areas and Commons through a notch cut through the wall of Gom was Grass Mountain Road, a well-traveled thoroughfare which ran along the east side of the peak past the order station and the tall, solid gates occasionally used to block all traffic. It was not unknown for freighter crews to emerge from Portside establishments in the waning hours of the night determined to seek the extraordinary pleasure that comes from disrupting the sleep of ordinary people. Under such conditions, the gates were shut. Usually, however, traffic moved along Grass Mountain Road between port and Commons with no hindrance.

The port was busy, far busier than the planetary population could have warranted on its own behalf. Grass lay at a topological crossroads, an accessible destination in qua-space that coincided with a planet in real-space, and this alone made it valuable. The aristocrats, isolated on their estancias and concerned with other matters, had never considered how advantageous Grass's location was. They would have been amazed to learn that the wealth of Grass was not, as they continued to believe, concentrated in the estancias, but was in fact held in off-planet banks by a sizable fraction of the people of the town. Few bons ever came to Commoner Town, and if they came at all, they came no farther than the merchants' offices. The residents of Commons who went to the estancias kept their mouths shut about town business. What the bons thought of as eternally true regarding their own social and economic superiority, Commons had long since discarded in favor of a more pragmatic view. Without the aristocrats becoming more than superficially aware of it, the Commercial District had gradually become a major transshipment point offering temporary lodging to sizable numbers of travelers.

While waiting for a connecting ship, transients staying at the Port Hotel often went into Commons in pursuit of local color. Sellers of grass cloth and grass pictures and cleverly woven multihued grass baskets shaped like fantastic birds or fish did a brisk business. The purchase of some such gimcrack was as close as any of the transients would come to seeing the reality of Grass. The aristocrats had forbidden aircar tours over the prairies. At one time the Port Hotel had offered tours into the edges of the swamp forest, but after a boatload of influential persons had failed to return, the tours had been discontinued. The only sightseeing was in Commons, which meant a constant easy flow of traffic along the road. Townees were not surprised to see new faces.

Thus, when Ducky Johns stopped early one morning at the Order Station with a beautiful girl in tow, the officer thought no more of it than that some off-worlder had escaped from the Port Hotel and fallen into questionable company. Not that Ducky Johns was a bad sort. She and Saint Teresa were the madams of the two largest sensee houses in Portside, and they often traveled into Commons with their housekeepers and cooks. Ducky was usually at the top of the list of contributors to any charitable cause, if Saint Teresa didn't have his name there first. Ducky's machines were well maintained and seldom damaged anyone other than superficially, and none of her girls or boys or genetically altered whatsits had ever tried to kill any of the customers.

"What's this, Ducky?" the officer, James Jellico, asked. He was a husky and muscular man of middle years, covered with the misleading layer of plushy flesh which had earned him his nickname. "Tell good old Jelly what you've got there."

"Damned if I know," replied Ducky, sketching helplessness with both shoulders, the flounces on her tent-dress quivering in response to the mountain of shivering flesh beneath. "I found it on my back porch, under the clothesline." Her flutelike voice made it a plaint, minor key. Her spangled eyebrows arched and the fringes of her tattooed eyelids drooped across her cheeks.

"You should've taken it back to the hotel," Jelly said, giving the girl a hard look, which she returned with a wide, innocent eye.

"I tried," Ducky said, sighing and pursing baby-lips, waving a baby-hand, the wrist braceleted with gems between tiny rolls of fat. "I'm not a fool, Jelly. I thought the same as you. Off a passenger ship, I thought, waiting around for another one. Wandered out of the Commercial District and got lost, I thought, just as you did. I asked it its name, but it didn't have a thing to say for itself."

"Mental, you think? Drugged up?"

"No sign of it."

"Maybe it's one of those, what you call 'em, de-personed things they sell on Vicious."

"I looked and it isn't. It's been used some, but it hasn't been tampered with, not the way they do there."

"So what did the hotel say?"

"The hotel picky-pecked at its little keyboards and winky-winked at its little screens and told me to take it away. Not theirs, they said. They didn't have any like this one, and if they did have, all theirs were accounted for."

"I be damned."

"Yes. Exactly what I said. Couldn't be a Commons townee, could it?"

"You know every one of 'em as well as I do, Ducky. You know every face and every figure and if any of 'em puts on five pounds or insults his sister-in-law, you'd know and so would I."

"Well, we both know what that leaves, Jelly That leaves the estancias, that does. Lots of unfamiliar faces out there. But that's very puzzling indeed, isn't it, my dear? If it had come from there, we'd have seen it."

Aircars going between Commoner Town and the estancias were permitted to land only at the car terminal at the center of town or at the port. Any aircar landing at the port or in town would be observed. If this lovely creature with the strange eyes had turned up either place, surely somebody would have seen it.

"Off a ship?" hazarded Jellico.

"You know the silly regulations as well as I do, Jelly, dear. Passengers and crew off, fumigate at every port. How could this have lived on a ship while it was being debugged? No, it didn't come off an empty ship. And it didn't come from the hotel. And it doesn't belong to me or to Saint Teresa or to any of the other bitty bit-players down in our place, no it doesn't. I'm afraid it's your problem, Jelly. Yours alone." Ducky Johns giggled, the ruffles on the tent-dress quivering, a fleshquake in paroxysm.