Sheri Tepper - Grass

Brother Lourai grunted assent, got grudgingly to his feet, and went off toward the Friary. As he walked away, he managed to look adequately depressed without acting. Between his nighttime exaltations, he had begun to realize that though he might have found his real self again, he had found it in a foreign place that would be home for the rest of his life. Ever since they had taken him away from the canyon when he was twelve, he had hoped someday to go back home and see the trees. Sometimes he dreamed of trees. Now his hope of ever seeing a tree again was dying.

Brother Mainoa sighed, looking after the retreating figure. “He’s homesick,” he said to himself. “The way I was.”

From the grasses came an interrogative purr, like a very soft growl.

Accustomed to this, Brother Mainoa did not even start. He shut his eyes and concentrated. How did one explain homesickness? Longing, he thought, for a place one knows very well. A place one needs to be happy. He thought the words, then tried to come up with a few pictures. Coming home in the lamplit evening. Opening a familiar door. The feel of arms around him…

Tears were running down his cheeks and he pushed them away, half angrily. As often happened, the feelings he was trying to transmit had been picked up and amplified back at him. “Damn all you creatures,” he said.

The growl became sorrowful.

“Last time I saw you, you were down near the dig. What are you doing up here, anyhow?”

Into his mind came a picture of a copse near the dig. At the center of it was a blankness. Amorphous blobs in shades of amethyst and pink prowled around the blankness, howling.

“You missed me?”

A purr.

“I’m coming back in a day or two. I’m just trying to get Brother Lourai to come with me, if they’ll let him. A new man without all the sense knocked out of him is better for me than one of the old ones that’s all soft and mushy like a sponge. ‘Yes, Brother. No, Brother.’ Agreein’ with everything I say and then runnin’ off to report me to Doctrine the minute they can. And don’t you let Brother Lourai see you until I say so. You’d scare him out of a year’s growth. He isn’t even grown up yet. Poor lad. He’s all adrift. He was to have gone home this year, but he fell apart too soon.”

The picture of the opening door, the feel of arms. Brother Mainoa nodded as he tamped his pipe with a horny finger. “That’s right.” He shook the bag he kept his tobacco in, dried grass he called tobacco still, after all these years. He sighed.

“I’ve about run out of that scarlet grass that smokes so well. There’s that other one somebody mentioned to me…”

There was silence, no purr, nothing except a feeling of quiet breathing. Slowly, carefully, an image began to form in Brother Mainoa’s mind. It was of the buildings at Opal Hill. Brother Mainoa knew them well. He had helped design the gardens there.

“Opal Hill,” he said, showing that he understood.

The picture expanded, grew more ramified. There was a woman, a man, two younger people. Not Grassians, from the way they were dressed. And horses! God in heaven, what were they doing with horses?

“That’s horses,” he breathed. “From Terra. Lord, I haven’t seen a horse since I was five or six years old.” He fell silent, aware of the pressure in his brain, the demand.

“Tell me,” the pictures in his brain were asking. “Tell me about the people at Opal Hill.”

Brother Mainoa shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t know anything. I haven’t even heard anything.”

A picture of a horse, strangely dwarfed against its human rider, a sense of interrogation.

“Horses are Terran animals. Men ride on them. They are one of the dozen or so truly domesticated animals, as contented in association with man as they would be in the wild…”

Doubt.

“No, truly.” Wondering if it was, truly.

Brother Mainoa received a strong feeling of dissatisfaction. His questioner wanted more information than this.

“I’ll try to find out,” said Brother Mainoa. “There must be someone I can ask…”

The presence was abruptly gone. Brother Mainoa knew that if he looked into the grasses, he would see nothing. He had looked many times and had always seen just that, nothing. Whatever it was that spoke to him (and Mainoa had his own suspicions about the identity of the conversationalist), it wasn’t eager to be seen.

A hail came from the pathway, Brother Lourai’s voice. “Main — oh-ah.” Brother Mainoa got up and started in the direction of the voice, plodding down the trail toward the Friary with no sign of either haste or interest. Brother Lourai was hurrying toward him, panting. “Elder Brother Laeroa wants you.”

“What have I done now?”

“Nothing. Nothing different, I mean. Elder Brother Laeroa caught me just as I was going into Elder Brother Fuasoi’s office. It’s the people from Opal Hill. They want an escorted tour of the Arbai ruins. Elder Brother Laeroa says since you’ll have to go back to be tour guide, you can take me with you and just keep me there.”

Interesting. Particularly so inasmuch as Mainoa’s questioner had just been asking about Opal Hill. “Hum. Did you tell the Elder Asshole you didn’t think you’d like the dig much?”

Brother Lourai nodded, half hiding a grin. “I thought I’d better since I was in his office. He just glared at Laeroa and told me I have to go there and be your assistant. It will teach me humility, he says.”

“Well,” Brother Mainoa said with a sigh. “It will teach you something — and me too, no doubt — but I doubt humility will be it.”

When Rillibee and Brother Mainoa arrived at the dig, Mainoa lectured upon what was known about the Arbai while the two of them walked through the topless tunnels that had once been streets. To either side the fronts of houses were charmingly carved with stylized vines and fruits and humorous figures of the Arbai themselves, frolicking among the vines.

“These pictures aren’t of them when they were here on Grass, then,” Rillibee remarked. ‘There aren’t any vines like that out here.”

Mainoa shook his head. “No vines like that out here on the prairie, no. But there are vines with leaves and fruit like that in the swamp forest, twining around the trees, making hammocks and bridges for the birds. Almost everything that’s carved on these walls and doors can be found somewhere here on Grass. There’s Hippae and hounds and peepers and foxen. There’s flick birds and different kinds of trees, carved so detailed you can tell what kind of trees they are, too.”

“Where are the trees?” Brother Lourai wanted to know.

“In the swamp forest, boy. And in copses, here and there. I’ll show you a little copse not half a mile from here.”

“Trees,” breathed Brother Lourai.

“There’s thousands of pictures of the Arbai themselves on these walls, doing one thing and another,” Brother Mainoa went on. “Happy things on the fronts of the houses, ritual things on the doors. We think. At least, on the housefronts they seem to be smiling and on the doors they’re not.”

“That’s a smile?” Brother Lourai said doubtfully, staring at a representation of one toothy face.

“Well, given the kind of fangs they’ve got, we think so. What the researchers did was, they searched the archives for pictures of all kinds of animals in situations where one could postulate contentment or joy. Then they compared facial expressions. The high mucky-mucks say those are smiles. But the expressions carved on the doors aren’t. Those carved on doors are serious creatures doing serious things.” Brother Lourai examined an uninjured portion of door. The faces did seem very solemn. Even he could see that. The carving was of a procession of Arbai, bordered as always by the stylized vines. “But there aren’t any labels. No words.”