The streets of St. Magdalen’s were, as usual, deep in mud. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier had to leave her hover at the hamlet gate, next to the population post, and go slogging through mire which came almost to her ankles as she went past the chapel and the soup kitchen to the hovel that had been assigned to Bellalou Benice and her children. One child now: Lily Anne. The two legal children had publicly repudiated their mother a month ago, so they were well out of it. The phrase set up an ugly resonance, and Marjorie flushed, angry at herself for being angry at the two almost adult Benices. “Well out of it” was accurate, and Bellalou herself had probably encouraged her offspring to execute the demeaning ceremony as soon as both were old enough. On Terra, both the planetary and most of the provincial governments claimed a Judeo-Christian heritage, but “honor thy father and thy mother” had no meaning for illegals or for their parents.
At the hovel Marjorie set her pack on the stoop while she scraped her boots on the step edge, kicking the gluey clods off into the morass. There was no excuse for this. It would take less money to pave the streets than it took to lay temporary sidewalks during the quarterly visitations by the board, but Marjorie was a minority voice on the Board of Governors, which had a “no frills” policy vis-a-vis its charitable endeavor. Most of the board members made their decisions about Breedertown without ever seeing the place or any of the people in it. Not that they didn’t coo and flutter around Marjorie for being so “dedicated,” so “brave.” She had taken considerable satisfaction in that, once. Some time ago. Before she knew as much as she knew now.
The hovel door opened a crack, disclosing Bellalou’s swollen face. Someone had hit her again. Not her putative husband. He’d been shot last year for illegal procreation.
“Ma’am,” said Bellalou.
“Good morning. Bellalou.” Marjorie smiled her visitation smile, carefully not patronizing. “How’s Lily?”
“Fine,” the woman said. “She’s fine.”
Lily Anne was not fine, of course. When Marjorie came into the slovenly room, the illegal glared at her out of a sullen face as bruised as her mother’s. “You checkin’ up on me agin.”
“Trying to keep you alive until the ship goes, Lily.”
“Maybe I’d rather be dead, you ever think of that?”
Marjorie nodded soberly. Oh, indeed. She had thought of that. Maybe Lily would rather be dead. Maybe most illegal people would rather be dead than shipped away to Repentance, where two thirds of them would die before they were thirty anyhow. Though Marjorie had undertaken this work out of the religious conviction that life at any price was worth living, that was before she had seen certain documentaries, read certain exposes. Even she was no longer sure Repentance was preferable to simple death.
“You don’ mean that, Lily,” Bellalou remonstrated.
“Fuck I don’t.”
Marjorie intervened, trying to convince herself as much as the girl. “Look at it this way, Lily. You can have all the babies you want on Repentance.” That, at least, was true. Population was as much needed on Repentance as it was now rigidly controlled here on Terra. Babies born on Repentance would be citizens of that planet.
“Don’t want babies there. Want my baby you took.” It was the most recent plaint, since the abortion Marjorie had arranged, risking her own freedom and possibly her marriage in the process. Neither Rigo nor the local law would have looked kindly on that particular act of charity. Marjorie’s confessor, Father Sandoval, wouldn’t have been precisely cheery about it, either, had he known. Taking another step down a path she had prayed was not irreversible, Marjorie hadn’t told him.
“Lady Wesriding din take your baby, Lily. If you din have that abortion you’duh been shot by the pop’lation as soon as you showed, you know that.” Bellalou looked pleadingly at her daughter. “Illegals can’t do that.” Only third and subsequent living children were actually illegal. Though Bellalou herself was not an illegal, her status made little difference. As the parent of one she had been stripped of her civil rights. She went on, as though to claim a future joy for her daughter, “It’ll be better on Repentance.”
“Don’t want Repentance. Rather be shot,” the girl cried.
Neither Marjorie nor Bellalou contradicted her. Marjorie found herself wondering why she simply hadn’t let it happen. Poor little beast. Ignorant as a chicken. Half her teeth were falling out already and she couldn’t read or write. No one was allowed to teach illegals anything or give them medical care. On her sixteenth birthday, Lily would be taken to the port to join a mob of other young illegals destined to live and die on the colony planet, and if it hadn’t been for the recent abortion and the implant of a very illicit five-year contraceptive device, the poor little cow wouldn’t have lasted until deportation. Planetary law said any illegal who came up pregnant got shot, along with whatever male illegal or de-righted person she claimed was responsible — if she cared to claim, which a surprising number of them did. Such claims made against certain respectable men, however, had caused some changes in the law. Now, only women served as guards in Breedertown. Only women were on the visitation committee.
“You get to have kids,” Lily whined. “You rich people!”
“Two children,” Marjorie said. “Only two, Lily. If I had a third child, it would be illegal, just like you. They’d take away my rights, just like they did your mother’s. They’d make my older children repudiate me, just like your brother and sister did to Bellalou.” She said it all wearily, not believing it. Rich people didn’t get in that kind of mess. They never had. Only the poor got trapped: by ignorance, by religion, by self-righteous laws passed by people who broke them with impunity. Marjorie herself had an implant, imported from the Humanist Enclave on the coast. Another thing she hadn’t told Father Sandoval. She hadn’t told Rigo, either, but surely he suspected. Probably his mistress had one as well.
She brushed the wrinkles out of her trousers as she rose. “I brought some clothes for you to wear on the ship,” she told the girl. “And some things you’ll need on Repentance.” She handed the package to Bellalou. “Lily will need these things, Bellalou. Don’t let her trade them for euphies, please.” Despite all efforts to keep them out, dealers in euphoriacs managed to do a good business in St. Magdalen’s.
“Gimme,” whined Lily, snatching at the package.
“Later,” said her mother. “Later on, honey. I’ll give it to you later on.”
Her business with Bellalou finished, Marjorie returned to the clammy air and the mud, glad that one visit was over, not eager to go on to the half dozen other hovels she had scheduled for today. There was so little she could do. Food for hungry children. A few antiseptics and painkillers that weren’t considered really “medical.” The local province was populated largely by the Sanctified, which meant there were provincial laws against both contraception and abortion. Stack that up against the planetary population laws against more than two living children per mother and what did you get? St. Magdalen’s Town. Breedertown. A charitable foundation set up by rich Old Catholics to shelter the unfortunate and unwise who followed either their inclination or their religion. As head of the Visitation Committee, Marjorie saw more of the place than most. Hands smoothing her disordered hair, she corrected herself: She saw more of it than any of them. They had been quick to admire her for her dedication but damned slow to emulate it.
All of which merely increased her doubts The chairmen before her had been chairmen in name only, or they had been women no wealthier than Marjorie who hired others to do the visitations for them. Why did she insist on doing this herself?
“You’ve got visions of yourself as a saint,” Rigo had sneered. “Being an Olympic gold medalist wasn’t enough for you? Being my wife isn’t enough? You also have to be Saint Marjorie, sacrificing herself for the poor?”
That had stung, though it hadn’t been true, not really. The gold medal had been long ago before they were married. Young Marjorie Westriding had been a medalist. yes, but a lot of subjective opinion on the part of judges and officials went into deciding who got medal: One might take a great deal of pride without being at all certain of one’s personal merit, at least so Marjorie had tried to explain to an unsympathetic Rigo, who barked laughter, pretended to disbelieve her even as he seized her in a passionate embrace. The truthful answer to his question would have been, no; the gold medal wasn’t enough. Besides, it was a long time ago. She needed something comparable now, something uniquely her own, some perfect achievement. At one time she had thought it might be her family, her children, but seemingly that wasn’t how it worked out…
So she had tried this, and this wasn’t working either. Gritting her teeth, she stepped down into the mud and started for the next hovel. When she returned to the hover some hours later she was tired and filthy and sunk deep in depression. One of “her” girls had been executed that week by a population patrol. Two children in one family seemed to be dying, probably from something contagious which could have been prevented if immunizations were allowed for illegals, which they weren’t. A thousand years ago the population of Breedertown could have been shipped off to Australia. A few hundred years ago, they might have been allowed to emigrate to wild colony planets. But with Sanctity meddling and threatening whenever people tried to spread out, there was no real colonization anymore. There wasn’t anyplace to send excess people except Repentance, if they stayed alive long enough to get there.
But Repentance really could be worse than the alternative. Now that Marjorie had decided that was true, it seemed rather pointless to go on. So long as Sanctity ruled, there was no legal way to do anything significant. Every week there would be a new girl pregnant or about to be, on and on, forever. If Marjorie spent everything she had, money and blood, it would do no lasting good. Did it matter whether any of them individually escaped from Terra? Lily? Bets, from last month? Dephine, from the month before that? If one didn’t get there, someone else would. What kind of life would they have, the ones who got there? Mired in ignorance and resentment, probably dying young…
Marjorie gritted her teeth, forbidding herself to cry. She could quit, of course. There were dozens of excuses she could give the board, all of them acceptable. But she had taken on this duty, and it would be sinful, surely, just to lay it down…
She shook her head violently, sending the hover into a sickening lurch. The blare of a warning siren from the console brought her back to herself. It would be better to think of something else. Of the children: Tony’s aspirations. Stella’s tantrums. She would think of anything else, even of Rigo and his mistress. Mistresses. Plural. Sequential.
The car slid across the boundary of the estate from the hoverway, and she lifted a hand to the head groom as she passed the stables, praying that Rigo wasn’t home to fight with her about where she had been, what she had been doing. She was too tired and depressed to argue. She’d wanted to do something significant, an achievement, some fine gesture, and she’d failed, that’s all. It hadn’t been an unworthy desire, not one Rigo should challenge her about, insisting that she explain why, why, why. Especially now that she wasn’t sure any longer.
Perhaps Rigo had been right in the first place. Perhaps she really had wanted to be a saint. And if that were true?
Wry laughter seized her; tears squeezed from her eyes as she parked the hover and sagged against the seat, wondering how one went about being a saint these days. She started to wipe her face and compose herself, remembering all at once that she didn’t need to pretend composure, didn’t need to pretend certainty, didn’t need to pretend anything. This time, at least, she would not have to explain herself to Rigo. He would not be home until evening. This was the day Roderigo Yrarier, faithful Old Catholic and staunch son of the Church, had done the unthinkable. He had answered a summons to Sanctity.
One hundred golden angels stand on the tower spires of Sanctity, wings wide, trumpets lifted, lit by internal fires which make them shine like a century of suns. Sanctity’s crystal towers mass against one another in a lofty and breathtaking bonfire of glittering surfaces against the dark of an empty sky. Both day and night they are a lighthouse, a guide — so Sanctity says — to the great diaspora of humanity clustered on the nearest possible worlds out there in the darkling seas of space.
They are also a beacon for tourships which hang in swarms the requisite fifty kilometers away, viewports clustered with spectators. The ships are allowed no closer for fear of some unspecified disaster.
They may come only near enough for the tourists to make out the huge angels on the summits of the towers and read the linked words picked out in mirrors and lights upon the highest walls.
Sanctity. Unity. Immortality.
Though it is impossible to see anything in detail from that distance with the naked eye, Sanctity is never observed at closer range. To all the worlds Sanctity stands forever upon the Terran horizon, perceivable yet remote, holy and unapproachable, fully accessible only to its chosen ones: the Hierophants, the servitors, the acolytes. If there is reason for a male outsider to come inside (women may not come at all), he must first obtain the proper papers. Then he must use those papers, after proving he is indeed male, to gain access to the well-guarded terminus far out in the surrounding countryside, if satisfied, the guards will allow him to enter a conveyance which will take him through silent tunnels to a reception area a respectful distance from Sanctity’s protected heart.
That heart would be the subterranean quarters of the Hierarch himself, far below the angel-spiked towers and protected by half a mile of earth and stone from all possible harm. The Hierophants of exalted degrees occupy apartments nearby. The machines are above that, and then the chapels, and only then the terminus and reception area. In the lowest rooms of the towers are the suites of the servitors and clergy of moderate status. The farther up one is assigned to live, the lower down the organizational ladder one finds himself, or such is the conventional wisdom. The higher up, the longer it takes one to get down to the chapels and the tunnels where the ritual work of Sanctity is conducted. The higher up one lives, the less valued one is. At the top, communing with the clouds, are the eager converts with too little intellect to be good for anything much; the old, their anonymity fading into forgetfulness; the pledged acolytes, serving out their unwilling terms.
And it is there, in the highest floor of the highest tower, that Rillibee Chime spends his undutied hours, squatting in purported meditation in cloud-surrounded silence, sprawling through papery, celibate nights on his narrow bed, untinted by happy dream. It is here he rises in the morning and washes himself, here he dons his soft slippers, here he puts on a clean, colorless suit with its tight, anonymous hood and touches his face with powder to remove any unseemly color. As he does this, he watches birds going by in long, purposeful V-shaped lines, headed southward toward the warm lands, toward Rillibee’s home. Sanctity is set upon the edge of the waste, both to separate itself from the humdrum daily affairs of the world and to avoid taking up room which nature needs for other things. Behind the glittering towers lie the arctic tundra and the ice and a cold uninterrupted for many centuries.
Though cold has no meaning in Sanctity. Within the towers the temperature never changes. Rain does not fall, nor snow intrude upon these quiet corridors. Nothing grows. Nothing is acknowledged to die. If Rillibee were to fall seriously ill, he would be spirited away and another acolyte would occupy his room, do his work, attend to his services. No one would care that one had gone and another had come. A message might be sent to his parents or guardians, if he had any such, but that is the only notice that would be taken. Though doctrine teaches that the immortality of the person is the sole reason for Sanctity’s edificial existence, there is no personality allowed in its service — at least not at Rillibee’s level. There are few names known in Sanctity: the Hierarch, Carlos Yrarier; the division chief for Missions, Sender O’Neil; the name of the Hierarch Elect. Rillibee’s name will never be among them.
Sometimes he says his name to himself, over and over, silently, reminding himself who he is, clinging to himself, the self he had known, the self with memories and a past and people he loved once. Sometimes he stares out at a neighboring tower, trying to see through the sparkling surface to any person there, to someone else, someone with another name, fighting down the cries that threaten to break loose in his rigid throat.
“I am Rillibee Chime,” he whispers to himself. “Born among the cactus of the deserts. Companion of birds and lizards.” He summons up the memory of birds, lizards, of the lines of ducks overhead, of flat corncakes cooked on a hot griddle, the taste of savory beans, the memory of Miriam, Joshua, Songbird as they were, once, long ago. “Two more years,” he whispers to himself. “Two more years.”
Two more years of his term of service. Not that he had been pledged by his parents as the sons of the Sanctified were pledged. Not that he had been promised in order for his mother to receive permission to bear a son. It was only among the Sanctified that women had to pledge their boy children to years of service in Sanctity itself, and Rillibee’s people had not been Sanctified. No, Rillibee had been taken, taken in, adopted, assigned to service because there had been no one left to keep the grasping minions of Sanctity at bay.
Two more years, Rillibee says to himself, if he can last that long. And if he cannot? Sometimes he asks himself that question, fearing what the answer is. What happens to those who cannot last out their terms? What happens to those who cannot choke the screams down, who gibber or shout or curse, as he wants to curse… ?
“Damn,” the parrot had said, long ago, making Miriam laugh. “Damn. Shit.”
“Damn,” Rillibee whispers now.
“Let me die,” the parrot had said. No one had laughed then.
“Let me die,” Rillibee agrees, hands outstretched to the glowing six-winged seraphim on the towers.
Nothing happens. The angels, though constantly solicited, do not strike him down.
Each day he goes out of his cubicle to the drop chute and stands looking at it for a moment, wondering if he has the courage to leap into it. When he first came to Sanctity he was pushed into it, pushed into it time after time, feeling himself falling forever while his skin crawled and his stomach fought to get out through his nose. Ten years now, and he still screams mentally each time he thinks of dropping into the chute. He has found an acceptable alternative. Inside the bottomless well of the chutes are fat metal staple-shaped rungs, set there for men to climb upon when the chutes must be cleaned or repaired. A thousand feet down. A thousand feet up. Rillibee climbs them twice each day, rising early to be sure he has time.
After the climb, mess hall. He has come to mess hall for ten years now, every day since he was twelve, but he still fights down the urge to cough at the smell of breakfast. Mess hall. Full of the forever stink of nasty-tasting stuff. He does not stay to eat.
He goes climbing, down once more to duty hall, searching out his number from among a thousand others on the lighted board. RC-15-18809. Clerical duties for the Hierarch. Cleric-all required. Guide duty. Level three minus, Room 409, 1000 hours.
The Hierarch. Strange that they should appoint someone so young and uncommitted as Rillibee to attend the Hierarch. Or, perhaps, not strange. So far as Sanctity is concerned, he is merely a part, interchangeable with any other part. It takes no commitment to guide a visitor or operate a cleric-all.
His body will not be required for two hours. Time to do something. Time to go to Supply and check out a cleric-all. Time to go up to commissary level and buy something to eat that tastes like real food. Time to go to the library and pick out something for recreation. He is afraid to go where people are. Cries of loneliness and frustration are too close to the roots of his tongue He swallows, trying to drive them down, but they stay there, rough greasy lumps of unswallowed and habitual grief.
Better to go where almost no one goes. One more climb down to chapel level and a slow walk along the corridor, passing chapel after chapel, hearing the mosquito whine of the speakers over each altar. Picking a chapel at random, Rillibee goes in and sits down, putting on the earphones which slow the mosquito whine to an understandable speed. A ponderous bass voice is chanting. “Artemus Jones. Favorella Biskop. Janice Pittorney.” Rillibee slips the earphones off and watches the altar instead.
Each day an elder sits behind the altar, waiting for the anonymous acolyte to present a list of new enrollees. The elder nods his head and the acolyte begins, “On the world of Semling, a womanchild born to Martha and Henry Spike who has been named Alevia Spike. On Victory, a boychild born to Brown Brittle and Hard Lost Blue who has been named Broken Sound. On Repentance, a boychild to Domal and Susan Crasmere who has been named Domal Vincente II.”
To each such intelligence the elder bows low, intoning words made nonsensical by overuse, words none of them in the towers hear any longer. “Sanctity. Unity. Immortality.” Meaning doesn’t matter. The mere utterance of these words opens the holy door. The mere syllabic mutter enters the name into the rolls of humanity. When the words have been intoned, the robed acolyte holds his forms and tissue samples for a moment in the sacred smoke before thrusting them into slots where they plunge down slanted surfaces of polished stone into a place this acolyte, like most short-term acolytes, will never see. There the name is put into the files and the cell sample is put into the tissue banks, both making an immortal place in the holy history for little red-wrinkled Alevia, for screaming infant Broke, for drowsy Dom.
Rillibee has been down in the clucking depths once or twice on records duty. The genealogy machines are down there, muttering to themselves as they assign numbers and make note of the genetic information in the cell samples, information which will serve, should the occasion arise, to resurrect the body of Alevia or Broke or Dom or this one or that one or anyone who has ever lived, uniquely himself or herself, distinguishable from all their human brethren alive or dead, emerging newborn from the clone machines. In body only, of course. No one has found a way yet to record memory or personality. Still, better body than nothing, so the Sanctified say as they drop their samples down. If the body lives, it will accumulate memory, and in time there will be a new creation not unlike the old. Who is to say the new Alevia will not, on strange occasions and with a sense of deja vu, relive her former life? Who is to say that Dom will not look into the mirror and see there the ghost of a former self?
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/1, 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.”
“That’s certainly the current view of the Council of Elders, I agree, but—”
“In any case,” the other interrupted, “we need to keep an eye on Yrarier so we know what he’s up to. Didn’t you tell me that Nods had been assigned to Grass? Head of Acceptable Doctrine with the penitents there, didn’t you say? Or did someone else tell me?”
“It must have been someone else. You mean our old friend Noddingale?”
“Him, yes. Though he’s adopted one of those strange Green Brother names. Jhamlees. Jhamlees Zoe.”
“Jhamlees Zoe?” The other laughed breathlessly. “Don’t laugh. The Brothers are quite serious about their religious names. Stay a moment while I write a note. Have one of your youngsters pack it into something innocent-looking, cover it with a code note and a destruct-wrap, and send it on the ship that takes Yrarier.” He sat at his desk and began to write, “My dear old friend Nods…” his hand forming the letters with some difficulty.
His equally ancient friend, leaning over his shoulder, interrupted him by venturing curiously, “The old Hierarch will be dead within hours everyone says. Will the new Hierarch feel the same way about this business, Cory? About consolidating and letting some of the worlds just… well, just go?”
“The new Hierarch?” Cory laughed again, this time with real amusement as he turned his wide, fanatical eyes on his companion. “You mean you didn’t know? That’s right! You’ve been outside for a while. The Council of Elders met a week ago. The new Hierarch will be me.”