Grass (7 page)

In the depths of Sanctity is the name of every man and woman who has ever lived in all of human history. Those for whom no written history could be found have been extrapolated by the humming machines back to the edge of the time when there was no mankind. There are men and women in the machines with names no historic person ever knew, names in languages that were spoken at the dawn of time. Never mind that no one alive can speak the language of Homo habilis; the machines know what it was and the names of those who spoke it. Adam, just down from the trees, is on the list, and Eve, scratching her butt with a splay-thumbed hand. Their genotypes are there as well, designed by the machines and assigned appropriate DNA sequences. Every person ever alive is there, in Sanctity/Unity/Immortality.

And all of it, every machine, every entry, every sample, all of it is guarded. There are guards everywhere, watching, noticing, reporting. Watching for those who may not conform to the ideal of S/U/I. Watching for acolytes who fall apart into gibbering madness. Watching for Moldies, members of that sect that has wearied of troublesome life and desires only the end, the ultimate destruction of Sanctity, of Terra, of a hundred worlds, of life itself – the end of all those men and women on the eternal list.

Every day, in each of a thousand chapels, parts of the list are read by the machines, read aloud, dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn. When the list has been read in its entirety, the machines start over. The mosquito whine of the reading has no end as it rehearses all of humanity from father Adam to little Dom, over and over again.

As it goes on Rillibee sits staring at the elder, half listening to the names put forward by the acolyte, lifting the mechanism back to his ear as the machine recitation goes on. "Violet Wilberforce. Nick En Ching. Herbard Guston." Everyone else who has ever lived, but not Rillibee Chime. He has never heard his name in that mechanical voice. Perhaps he will not be enrolled until he has completed his twelve years and gone. The earpieces are thick with dust. It has been a long time since anyone has come there to listen, a long time since anyone has cared about the litany.

In a little while he will pick up the cleric-all and report for duty to Room 409, level three minus. In a moment. For now, he will sit here very quietly, choking down his loneliness as he says
Rillibee Chime
to himself, carefully listening to the sound of it, words spoken aloud in a human voice in this empty hell where no one speaks his name.

As Rigo Yrarier stepped out of the conveyance pod in the reception area deep underground, he was not entirely surprised to find his skin crawling with superstitious revulsion. He hadn't wanted to come here. Uncle Carlos had sent a message begging him to come. Uncle Carlos, the family scandal. Carlos, a skeleton in the confessional, as it were. Apostate Uncle Carlos, long ago lapsed from the Old Catholic religion of his birth and now Hierarch of all this … 
this.
Rigo looked around himself trying to define
this.
This hive. This unholy ant's nest. Outside the glass room in which he stood, identically suited and powdered figures scurried like so many anonymous insects.

Rigo had not wanted to come, not even on a mission of mercy, which is what Uncle Carlos had called it in his message. Missions of mercy were Marjorie's business, not Rigo's, and he was not even sympathetic with hers. Useless, all of it. One could not save people who were too stupid to save themselves, and the same thing applied to Sanctity, so far as Rigo was concerned. Then, surprisingly, Father Sandoval had urged Rigo to answer the plea. No doubt Father had reasons of his own. He would probably want a report; he would want to know all about Sanctity, what it looked like, what went on there. Old Catholic clergy were allowed to take tours of Sanctity about as often as Old Catholic clergy allowed the devil to assist at mass.

The superstitious revulsion Rigo felt was only part of his reluctance. There was a good deal of anger and hostility in him as well, which he recognized and tried to guard against showing as he looked about for someone who would tell him where to go next. The ghostly aspect of the suited and powdered nonentity who came through the hissing door and bowed in greeting did nothing to alleviate Rigo's sense that something was crawling on him. Neither did the long walk as he followed his guide down ramified corridors, past chapel after chapel, all of them empty, all of them buzzing with the shrill telling of names, endless lists of names.

It would be better, he thought, if they invented machines to listen as well as machines to speak, or simply let one machine rehearse the names quietly and eternally to itself. As much would be achieved, certainly, without this mosquito howl which made his skin itch and his head hurt. His own name was undoubtedly in that noise somewhere. His own and Marjorie's and the children's. There was no escaping it, even though their families had filed the exemption forms saying they were of another faith, did not wish to be listed in Sanctity, did not wish their children to be listed, did not believe in the mechanical immortality and the hope of physical resurrection which was the best Sanctity could offer. Despite his father's passionate outbursts against Sanctity's arrogance and its pretensions, despite his mother's hysteria and Father Sandoval's gentle resentment, Sanctity would have done as it pleased. Everyone knew the exemption forms were a travesty. Filing them was merely a signal for one of the Sanctified missionaries to track the exempted ones down, to haunt them until the missionary could obtain a few living cells. Any crowded street or walkway would do. A quick punch was all it took. Like a pinch, a nip, a needle touch. They were like rats, those missionaries, a secret multitude, sneaking and prodding, bringing names and tissue samples here to become part of this ... this.

This. Sanctity/Unity/lmmortality. The words were on all sides of him, engraved in the floors, set into the 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
Hierarch.
"You know we are not among the Sanctified … "

"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 … 

"You'd let them die? Whole worlds of men?"

The other shrugged elaborately, wincing as the shrug started a sudden pain in one arthritic shoulder. "In the long run, I think it would be best for Sanctity, don't you? Mankind is too widespread already. Sanctity has done what it can to stop exploration, but it does go on. A group here, a group there, sneaking out. Little frontier worlds, here and there. And what happens? A place like Shame, for example, where we can't even get a decent foothold! No, men are spread far too widely for us to control well."