Sheri Tepper - Grass

“Well for heaven’s sake,” Marjorie cried, “tell him, Admit. Tell the Hierarch anything he wants to know.”

“I am more interested in what this other one tells me,” the Hierarch said silkily from behind his transparent partition.

The other one lounged on his chair like a lizard on a rock, his relaxed manner belied by his scratched and bruised face and arms. Highbones.

“Brother Flumzee?” Marjorie asked the Hierarch. her voice calm. “He and his friends intended to kill me in the swamp forest. What else does he tell you?” She looked at Highbones gravely.

He saw the look and remembered what it was he had forgotten about women. They pitied you sometimes. When you didn’t even know why.

The Hierarch said in a silky voice, “He tells me that you were well acquainted with one of the Brothers, Brother Mainoa. He says that Brother Mainoa was thought to be a backslider. And that he knew something about plague.”

“Did he really? What did he know, Brother Flumzee? Or do you still prefer to be called Highbones?”

“He knew something,” Highbones shouted, hating what he saw in her face. “Fuasoi wanted him killed.”

“What did he know?” asked the Hierarch. “It would be in your best interest, Lady Westriding, and you, Ambassador, to tell me everything the Brother knew, or thought he knew.”

“We’ll be glad to,” Rigo said. “Though he himself would be able to tell you much more than we can—”

“He’s alive?” The Heirarch snapped.

Marjorie replied calmly, “Well, of course. Highbones left his two friends to kill Mainoa and Brother Lourai, but they didn’t succeed. I think Highbones hated Brother Lourai. and that was the reason for it.”

“Fuasoi ordered Mainoa killed!” Highbones shouted.

“Well, I suppose that’s possible,” Marjorie continued, keeping her voice calm, though she was in a frenzy of concentration. “Since Brother Mainoa thought Fuasoi was a Moldy.” She turned her face toward Rigo, nodding. She had never mentioned Brother Mainoa’s speculation to him. She prayed Rigo would understand what she was trying to do.

The Hierarch, who had started the inquiry with a furious intensity, now looked stricken. “A Moldy?”

“Brother Mainoa thought so,” Rigo said, following Marjorie’s lead. “Because—”

“Because Fuasoi wouldn’t have ordered Mainoa killed, otherwise,” Marjorie concluded. “If he thought Mainoa knew something about the plague, the only reason to kill him would be if Fuasoi was a Moldy. Anyone who was not a Moldy would want Brother Mainoa alive, talking about what he knew.” She looked at the Hierarch helpfully, feeling hysteria pushing at the back of her tongue.

“Moldies here, on Grass?” the Hierarch whispered, very pale, his mouth drawn into a rictus of horror. “Here?”

Rigo saw the man’s terror and was thankful for it “Well, Your Eminence,” Rigo offered in a placating tone, “it was only a matter of time until they came here. Everyone knew that. Even Sender O’Neil told me that!”

The audience ended abruptly. They were outside the chamber, being escorted to the shuttle once more. Highbones wasn’t with them. Admit bon Maukerden wasn’t with them. Those two were taken away in some other direction.

“Where are they going?” Marjorie asked.

“Down to the port,” the escort leader responded. “We’ll hold them there in case the Hierarch wants them again.”

Marjorie felt a surge of hope. If they had been believed, perhaps the Hierarch would depart. Perhaps this is all it would take! When Marjorie and Rigo reached the port, however, they were not allowed to return to the town. Instead they were taken to the empty Port Hotel and given a suite with a guard outside the door.

“Are we to stay here without food?” Marjorie demanded.

“Somebody’ll bring it from the officer’s mess,” the guard said. “Hierarch wants you here where he can lay hands on you if he needs you.”

When the door was shut behind them, Marjorie put her lips almost against Rigo’s ear. “Anything we say here can probably be overheard.”

He nodded. “I think Mainoa was right,” he said loudly. “I think Brother what’s-his-name was a Moldy. He probably had virus shipped in weeks ago. That’s probably what the people in town have. I think we ought to get off this planet, Marjorie. As soon as possible.” He shook his head at her tiredly. What more could they say or do than this mixture of half truth and part lies? If the Hierarch was frightened enough, perhaps his own fear would drive him away.

Rigo sat down, leaning back, eyes closed. Marjorie sat near him. The room was full of unsaid things and of the teasing memory of said ones. She looked at his exhausted face and felt an almost impersonal sorrow, like the feelings she had often had for the people of Breedertown. And she could help him no more than she had ever helped them.

Behind his slitted eyelids, Rigo wondered if it was too late. If too much had happened. Eugenie. Stella. His accusations against Marjorie. Stupid of him. He knew better. If he knew anything about her, he knew she had no appetites of that kind. Why had he accused her?

Because he had had to accuse her of something.

And now? Was it too late to forgive her for what she had never done?

In the Tree City of the Arbai two religious gentlemen sat in the mild breezes of evening, eating fruit which had been brought from the surrounding trees by foxen, one of whom had remained to join the feast.

“Like plums,” said Father James. He had arrived at the city by foxen back in midmorning. Father Sandoval had refused to come. Brother Mainoa had come to the city earlier, an exhausting trip from which he had not yet recovered. Now the Brother reclined against the breast of a foxen, like a child in a shadowy chair, while Father James tried to convince himself yet again that the foxen were real — not dreams, not amorphous visions, not abstractions or delusions. Conviction was difficult when he couldn’t really see them. He caught a glimpse of paw, or hand, a glimpse of eye, a shadowed fragment of leg or back. Trying to see the being entire was giving him eye strain and a headache. He turned aside, resolving not to bother. Soon everything would resolve itself, one way or another.

“Chameleons,” Brother Mainoa whispered. “Psychic chameleons. The Hippae can do it too, though not as well.”

Father James’ lips trembled. “Don’t you think the fruit is like plums?” he repeated, longing for something familiar. “Though perhaps the texture is more like a pear. Small, though.”

“Ripening this early, they’d likely be small,” Brother Mainoa offered in a breathy whisper. “The fruits of summer and fall are larger, even from these same trees.” He sounded contented, though very weak.

“They fruit more than once during the season, then?”

“Oh, yes,” Mainoa murmured. “They fruit continually until late fall.”

Along a bridge leading from the plaza Janetta bon Maukerden was dancing, humming to herself. Dimity bon Damfels watched from the plaza, mouth open around a thumb, eyes remotely curious. Stella was with Rillibee in a room facing the plaza. The older men could hear his voice.

“Take the fruit in your hand, Stella. That’s it. Now, have a bite. Good girl. Wipe your chin. Good girl. Have another bite…”

“He’s very patient,” whispered Brother Mainoa.

“He would have to be,” murmured Father James. “Three of them!”

“Poor unfortunates,” Father James said. “We’ll help him with them while we’re here. It’s the least we can do.” He thought a moment, then added, “If we’re here long enough.”

A group of shadow Arbai came toward them, checkered them with arms and legs and shoulders, battered them with sibilant conversation, then moved on past. A swoop of scarlet and brilliant blue swept below them, from one tree to another, a colorful almost-bird, quite different from the Terran species, yet enough resembling them that one would think “parrot” on seeing them. Out on the bridge where Janetta danced, one of the shadow figures grasped a railing with shadow hands and squatted over the edge. The Arbai had been casual about elimination.