Sheri Tepper - Grass

“I am, yes. I believe I must stay here, Father. I agree with Marjorie that it may be the most important work we have to do.”

Rigo’s nostril lifted. “What work is that? More charities? Resettling the homeless Grassians? More widows and orphans?”

Father James shook his head, giving Rigo a perceptive, tilt-headed look. “No widows or orphans, Uncle Rigo. No. The foxen are the only other intelligent race man has ever found. I’ve already sent an inquiry to Shame, to the Church in Exile. Despite what Father Sandoval says, I’m confident the Secretariat will think it important for us to find bonds of friendship with the foxen. Kinship, as it were. To find a way to share ourselves. Marjorie says that even small beings may be friends.” He laughed, shrugging. “But then you know—”

“I don’t know,” he replied angrily. “She talks very little to me.”

“Well,” theyoung man reflected, “that’s probably natural. You always talked very little to her, Uncle Rigo. She says she used to suffer from the Arbai disease.”

“Arbai disease?”

“Terminal conscientiousness,” he replied, his brow furrowed. “Scrupulousness of the kind that creates conditions making poverty and illness inevitable, then congratulates itself over feeding the poor and caring for the sick. Those are my words, not hers, and I may have it wrong…”

He nodded, then walked away as Marjorie had done, leaving the two to discuss threats and confrontations, knowing as they did so that anything they might propose was as useless as what they had already done. Neither Marjorie nor Father James would change minds in the time before the ship for Terra left, even though both of them were to know by then that what they were doing was a good deal more complicated than they had assumed.

In the Tree City of the Arbai, spring gave way to an endless summer, and summer to an endless fall. The season moved slowly toward winter, day succeeding day in a kind of tranquil haze. The inhabitants of the city knew they must go down to winter quarters soon, but they delayed. Two, or perhaps more, were waiting for a certain occasion; others waited for no occasion at all. Sun still spangled the tops of the trees. The wind was only occasionally chill. On most days, it was warm enough to sit beside an open window with a book, or with a letter…

“My dear Rigo,” Marjorie wrote.

You have written once more to ask that Tony and I return to Terra. Tony must answer for himself. I’ve written several times since you left, attempting to explain why I can’t return. It seems silly to use these same words over and over again when they meant nothing before. It is autumn here on Grass. That means years have gone by where you are. After all this time, I wonder why you even care.

She looked out the window of her house to see Rillibee Chime drop down onto the plaza, returning from a climb among the treetops. Other young Green Brothers were still up there. She could hear them yodeling to one another. The older Brothers, including Elder Brother Laeroa, were in their Chapter House, away among the trees. There were still Green Brothers upon Grass, and would be. Who would make grass gardens if the Brothers went away?

“All the leaves are curling or falling or withdrawing into the twigs,” Rillibee called to her. “All the little things that live up there are going down.” He stopped beside Stella, who was reading on the plaza. “Froggy things and all, burrowing down into the mud.”

Stella looked up from her book. Her face was open and childlike, yet it was not a child’s. She was a young woman once more, though a different woman than she had been. “Even the furry ones?”

“Those, too,” he replied, leaning over to kiss her while she kissed him back. From a window across the bridge two faces appeared, two mouths making kissy noises, teasing, with a kind of feral abandon. Like young dogs, tearing at something.

“You,” Rillibee called. “Get back to your lessons.”

Obediently, the two heads withdrew. “They’re doing better,” remarked Stella. “Janetta can read ten whole words, and Dimity almost never takes her clothes off anymore.”

“Your brother’s a good teacher.”

“Foxen are good teachers,” she replied. “They don’t make you learn to read or talk human or anything. Dimity and Janetta can talk foxen a little. I wish I could just talk foxen.”

“Don’t you want to be able to talk to your mother?”

Stella wrinkled her nose.

Marjorie stared at the mostly blank page on her lap-desk and sighed silently. No. Even now, Stella did not particularly want to talk to her mother, though she was much nicer about it than she had once been. Soon there would be no mother to talk to, so there was no profit in regret.

“How about talk to me?” Rillibee asked.

“Yes,” Stella caroled. “Yes, I want to talk to you.”

“What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“Go say hello to Brother Mainoa. Pretty soon he’ll be all by himself, so we’d better say hello now.”

“That’s true.” Rillibee nodded, taking her hand as they set slowly off toward the bridge, stopping every step or two to exclaim at a creature or a leaf or a flower.

Marjorie returned to her letter.

Thank you for bringing us current on what has happened at Sanctity. We had already heard that the Hierarch had been overthrown in absentia and that Sanctity itself has been invaded and largely destroyed. The last time Rillibee went to Commons, he was told that Sanctity is only a shell, that the angels upon the towers raise their trumpets to an empty sky. He also learned that all those in the Israfel perished of the plague on an unsettled planet where they’d fled for refuge. They must have carried the plague with them from Grass. I remember Favel Cobham and weep for him. He was a goodhearted boy.

“Stop.” She heard Stella’s voice.

Marjorie looked out. Rillibee had stopped obediently, just short of the bridge. “Why are we stopping?” he asked her.

“I want to see the Arbai lovers. They’re coming along the bridge now.”

The two humans on the bridge and the one in the house watched the inhuman lovers bending across the rail, curling into one another; arms, entwined. “What’re their names?” Stella said in a stage whisper.

“You know their names as well as I do,” Rillibee replied.

“Tell me!”

“The probably-a-boy’s name is Ssanther. The probably-a-girl’s name is Usswees.”

“Arbai names.”

“Yes. Arbai names.”

Marjorie mouthed the well-known names to herself. Experts had come from Semling and Shame to record the language spoken in this city and connect it to written words. According to them, the tiny projectors hidden among the trees would go on working for another century or more, throwing Arbai images into the city they had built and died in. Similar projectors had been found in the other city, buried in the ruined walls, lost under the soil, the source for the mysterious visions which had filled the ruins. Now that the specialists understood the language, Arbai artifacts were no longer so enigmatic. Scientists had even succeeded in restoring the Arbai transporters, at least from this end, though they had not been tested yet. She turned back to her writing.

Here on Grass, the foxen have determined to take charge of their lives. Several new villages have been built with solar-powered fences to keep peepers in and Hippae out. Those foxen who are still capable of doing so have begun laying eggs in these areas. The peepers that hatch from foxen eggs will be kept separately. Foxen will eat only those hatched from Hippae eggs. In time, through this purposeful predation, the malice of the Hippae may be abated.

The Green Brothers have begun gardens around these villages. Where the gardens of Opal Hill once flourished, I have stood upon a newly sprouted first surface which may one day astonish the great Snipopean. The foxen agree that beauty must not be allowed to perish, that whatever else is done, beauty must be conserved lest we impoverish our destinies. Even Klive will be reborn.