In the Friary of the Green Brothers, nights sat gently upon the sills. The great, night-freezing cry which haunted the southern latitudes was seldom heard here, though whole choruses of grublike peepers filled the dark hours with dulcet sound. Days were spent in labor, nights in sleep. Brothers, so it was said, had once spent their time in study, but little study was needed here. All the questions had been reduced to doctrine; all the doctrine had been simplified to catechism; all the catechism had been learned long ago. Besides, what would the penitents do with more knowledge? They had no use for it here. The Friary sat upon shortgrass prairie, though there were tall grasses not far away. Every year in mid to late summer the Brothers went out to cut down quantities of strong, thick grass stems that grew to the height of seven or eight tall men. Other Brothers remained behind them at the Friary, digging deep and narrow trenches, in parallel pairs, outlining the new halls which would be needed during the Grassian year. Though penitents grew old and penitents died, the number of Brothers kept growing. Seemingly it was becoming a more frequent happening for acolytes of Sanctity to fly apart, like fragile wheels, spun too fast.
When the great grasses had been sawn through and tied in bundles, they were dragged back to the Friary and upended side by side in the waiting trenches. The top of each bundle was pulled over and tied partway down the bundle in the opposite ditch until the whole double line had been bowed into a vaulted hall which would be roofed with thatch, its openings walled with panels of woven grass. Within this lofty space the Brothers would build whatever kind of rooms were needed: a new chapel or kitchen or another set of cells.
So space was enclosed, said the historians of the order, long ago on another world by people who lived among tall grasses. The historians did not say what such people did in the winter. During winters on Grass, the Brothers retired below to a cramped underground monastery where they suffered through a lengthy season of sequestered and jam-packed irascibility. Winters drove more than a few of them past the pale of sanity. A sick wildness lurked among the brethren — skulking, endemic, more often erupting among the younger than among the aged. The old felt themselves past hope, but the young had hope continually frustrated and as continually strained against their frustration in strange and dangerous ways.
In the summer Friary, there was room enough for frustration to find an out. The narrow halls sprawled this way and that among the low grasses, some making vaulted cloisters around enclosed gardens, some with doors opening upon wide vegetable plots, some giving upon farmyards where chickens scratched or pigs grunted contentedly in their pens. If it had not been for the towers, the Friary could have been a tumulus left by a great tunneling mole, the round-topped halls dried to very much the color of the native soil.
But there were towers — towers everywhere. Demented with boredom, young Brothers had been erecting these grass-stalk steeples for decades. At first they were mere tapering masts, no taller than fifteen men, or twenty, topped by plumy seed-head finials. Later more elaborate three- and five-legged monstrosities had climbed into a cloud-streaked sky, almost beyond the sight or belief of those on the ground — always more towers, and more.
Over the wide courtyards lacy needles soared, their joints securely tied with tough ropes of wiregrass. Rearing upward at each juncture of the reed-vaulted halls, spidery pinnacles pierced the clouds Filigree masts rose above the kitchens and gardens. Outside the precincts of the Friary, forests of spicules like those of some lacework sea urchin thrust into the Grassian sky in myriad gothic spires. From any place within or around the Friary, one could not look up without seeing them, fantastically high and ridiculously fragile, the steeples of the climbers.
Upon these structure young Brothers, shrunk by distance into the stature and compass of spiders, had crawled and swung among the clouds, trailing their slender ropes behind them, connecting all the towers with bridges which seemed no wider than a finger, scarcely stronger than a hair. Up ladders thin and wavery as web silk they climbed to the high platforms to keep watch. At first they had watched for hounds, or for grazers. Then they watched for golden angels like those on the towers of Sanctity, so said some of them, disillusioned with watching when no one ever saw anything interesting. Lately they had made a sport of seeing indescribable things, or so they said, and Elder Brother Laeroa had all he could do to keep them out of the hands of Doctrine. Jhamlees Zoe would have relished a good disciplinary session or even a trial for heresy. Those in the Office of Acceptable Doctrine were, after all, as bored as everyone else.
Over the decades the towers had been climbed by amateurs, then by enthusiasts, and finally by experts who had invented a cult with its own hierarchs and acolytes, its own rituals of baptism and burial, its own secrets shared among its own adherents. Each new acolyte was tested within days of his arrival to know whether he would be one of the climbers or not. When Brother Mainoa first warned Brother Lourai that the climbers would be after him, he spoke no more than the truth.
They did not wait long.
Brother Lourai, lately Rillibee Chime, sat in the refectory as generations had sat before him, the front of his robe rubbing another layer of gloss upon the table edge, waiting for the gong which would allow him to rise from the table, carry his plate to the service hatch, and then go out to the washing house for his evening duty. The voice which whispered at him came as a surprise, for it came from behind him. Nothing was there but a blank walled end of the hall without even a shelf on it.
“You, Lourai,” it said. “Pay attention.”
He looked up and around, doing it slowly so as not to attract attention. His nearest neighbors were some distance away, minor functionaries recently sent to beef up the Office of Acceptable Doctrine, or so Mainoa had said, and the least notice attracted from them, the better.
He saw nothing but the woven mats which made up the end wall of the hall. “You,” came the voice again. “After duty tonight. Time for your initiation.”
The sound that followed was suspiciously like a giggle, a nasty giggle, almost a snigger. Rillibee closed his eyes and prayed for help. All that came in answer was the sound of the old men shouting at one another far away on the dais. After a time, Rillibee opened his eyes and looked around him, wondering if he could find anything in the Great Refectory which would help him.
The refectory had four vaulted halls radiating like fingers from a central dome. Under the dome was the dais on which the Eldest Brothers sat: Jhamlees and Fuasoi and Laeroa, plus half a dozen others. Down the splayed halls, in long, single rows, stood the woven grass tables of the penitents, seated in order of seniority. The tables themselves were wonderful, or at least so Rillibee thought.
Strips of grass stem had been spiraled and woven into shapes representing twigs and leaves and blossoms. Tabletops curved down into serrated aprons and thence into legs bulging with rococo excess. At home, Rillibee’s mother would have called it wicker, pointing out the similarities to the old brown rocking chair beside the fire. Here it was known only as grass weaving, but the grass had dozens of hues and a hundred tints.
Lifetimes of Brothers had fondled the braided arms of these chairs, rubbed the basketry seats smooth with their bottoms, shined the convoluted edges of these tables with their bellies and sleeves. Brother Rillibee/Lourai’s place was at the far end of a row of tables so long that it dwindled almost to nothing as he looked along the tops toward the dome. It made eating a lonely business for the newest Brothers, however much it encouraged reflection.
And it made living a lonely business, too. The chairs to either side of him were empty. There was no one he could ask for help. Probably, no one who would help him if he did ask. And no time to ask, in any case, for the harsh clangor of the ending bell broke through all other sounds and stopped them. He rose to follow hundreds of other shuffling forms as they set their plates within the hatch and went out into the evening.
When he reached the open air, he turned aside from the court into an alleyway which led back beside the refectory to the washing house. There he stationed himself at one handle of the pump and waited for his coworker to arrive. This anonymous, middle-aged Brother sat down at his own handle and the two of them began the monotonous thrusting which would bring water from a hot spring far below. From the pump the water went into the hot kettles. When the kettles were full, the water went into the rinsing trough. By the time the rinsing trough was full, the kettles would be empty again.
“Damn fool thing,” muttered Brother Lourai, thinking of solar batteries and wind-driven pumps, both of which were in use elsewhere at the Friary to pump bath water and fill the fish ponds and the large tank that provided drinking water.
“Hush,” said the older man with a glare. Pumping was a penitential service. It wasn’t supposed to be easy or make sense.
Rillibee hushed. No point in wanting it over sooner. Tonight, it would be better for it to last as long as possible. He spent the time thinking about the interview he’d had with Elder Brother Jhamlees the previous day.
“It says here, boy…” the Elder Brother had announced, “it says here you flew apart in refectory and began making wild accusations.”
Rillibee had started to retort, started to say something daring and angry, then had remembered Mainoa’s advice. “Yes, Elder Brother.” he had said.
“Only had two years to go,” the Elder Brother went on. He was a man with a face like cork, evenly colored, evenly textured, as though he were wearing a mask. All his features were ordinary except his nose, so tiny a nose, like a slice off the end of a wine cork stuck on the middle of his face, the nostrils mere slits. Around that tiny nose the other features seemed disturbingly large. “Two years, and you had to go doubting. Well, we won’t have any of that here, you know that.”
“Yes, Elder Brother.”
“Let’s see what you remember of your catechism. Ah, well now, what is the purpose of mankind?”
“To populate the galaxy in God’s time.”
“Ah. Well, what is women’s duty?”
“To bear children for the population of the galaxy.”
“Ah, well, how shall this population be accomplished?”
“By the resurrection of all those who have ever lived, to the time of our first parents.”
“And how shall we be led?”
“By the resurrection of the Son of God and all the saints who shall again be saints, of the latter days, to guide us to perfect Sanctity, Unity, and Immortality.”
“Hmm,” said Elder Brother Jhamlees. “You know your doctrine well enough. What the hell happened to you?”
Mainoa’s advice forgotten, Rillibee asked, “When we all get resurrected, Elder Brother, will the machines do it?”
“What do you mean, boy!”
“There won’t be any people left. The plague will have killed us all. Will the machines do all the resurrecting?”
“That’ll be ten stripes for impertinence,” Elder Brother Jhamlees said. “And another ten for uttering falsehood. There is no plague, Brother Lourai. None.”
“I saw my mother die of it,” said Rillibee Chime. “And my father and my sister had it. I may have it. They say sometimes it doesn’t come out for years…”
“Out,” the Elder Brother had blustered. “Out. Out.” His face had turned pale as he bellowed, so pale that Brother Lourai wondered if the Elder Brother had ever met anyone who had actually seen the plague.
Brother Lourai had gone out. Ever since then, he’d been expecting someone to summon him to receive the twenty stripes Elder Brother Jhamlees had assigned him. No one had. The only summons had been the summons in refectory, the one he didn’t want to answer. The one he was delaying now, pumping water while the dishes got washed.
Still, inevitably, the task was finished at last. The kettles were emptied into a ditch that led to the cesspool, the rinsing troughs emptied into a ditch leading to the gardens, the soapy steam vanished out the open door as Brothers scattered wordlessly. Rillibee’s counterpart at the other end of the pump handle hitched up his robes and went out. After a long, silent moment, Rillibee did likewise.
He thought he might stay in the washing house and hide. He considered this for a time, quite seriously, knowing it for nonsense but unwilling to let the idea go entirely. Where would they be waiting for him? Outside the courtyard somewhere, perhaps in the alley which led to his dormitory?
“Come on,” said an impatient voice. “Get it over.” It was too much trouble to answer the voice. It would be even more trouble to avoid it. Unwillingly, he shambled toward the summoner, through the gateway from the yard, into the alley, where three of them grabbed him and forced him through a door and down a hallway into an unfamiliar room. They wore only their tights and undershirts. Their faces were lit in the lantern light with shiny and unholy glee. There was no doubt at all that these were the climbers Mainoa had told him about. Not warned him. What good was it to warn someone about the inevitable? But one could be told. One could be given time to consider. Not that it had done Rillibee any good.
They pushed him toward a bench and he sat on it to hide the trembling of his legs. It wasn’t fear. It was something else, something some of those confronting him might have understood if there had been time to talk. There was no time.
The foremost among those standing there — the group had grown to a dozen or so — struck a posture and announced, “Call me Highbones!” He was a lean, long-armed man with a taut-skinned boyish face, though the wrinkles around his eyes said he was no boy. A hank of dun hair fell over his forehead and was pushed back with a studied gesture. The color of the hair was ageless. His brows grew together over his nose. His eyes were so pale a blue as to be almost white. Everything about him was studied, his stance, his gesture, his manner, his voice. Created, made up, out of what?
Rillibee saw all this as he nodded an acknowledgment just to let them know he had heard. No point in saying anything. Least said, the easiest denied, as the master of acolytes at Sanctity had been fond of telling them.
“As for you, having observed you carefully for several days, we can say without fear of contradiction that you’re a root peeper.” That snigger again, as though the insult meant something.
Rillibee nodded again.
“You’re required to acknowledge, peeper. Say you’re a peeper.” The voice was like a chant, empty of any feeling. Like the mosquito voices at Sanctity.
“I’m a peeper,” said Rillibee, without embarrassment or emotion. “The point of all this is,” Highbones went on, striking another pose, “that we climbers consider peepers to be the lowest possible form of life. Brother Shoethai, he’s a peeper. Isn’t that true, boys?”
There was a chorus of agreement. Yes. Grass peepers were beneath contempt.
Rillibee had seen Brother Shoethai, a misshapen creature of uncertain age, the butt of everyone’s jokes — though covertly, for Brother Shoethai worked for the Office of Acceptable Doctrine. Highbones gave Rillibee little time to reflect on this.
“Of course, we realize that some are like old Shoethai, constitutionally incapable of climbing, and all of those will end up as peepers anyhow. Still, we’ll give you a chance. Everyone gets a chance. That’s only fair, wouldn’t you agree?”
Unwisely, Rillibee risked a comment. “I’m willing to be a peeper.”
There were yelps and halloos from those assembled, men who could have been Highbones’ brothers or cousins, all as shiny-skinned and slender as he, all with that long-armed look, like ancient apes.
Highbones shook his head. “Oh, no, no you’re not willing, peeper. No, you speak from ignorance. Perhaps even from congenital stupidity. Peepers get hung from the towers by their feet. Peepers get knocked about by this one and that one. Their lives are sheer misery, nothing but misery, nothing anyone would choose for himself. Far better to take the test and see how it all comes out, don’t you think? And if you simply can’t climb, well, then we’ll consider mercy. But you have to try. Those are the rules.” Highbones smiled. It was a kindly smile, a practiced smile; only the eyes betrayed the cruelty of it.
Rillibee, seeing those eyes, felt his stomach clench. They were like Wurn’s eyes, long ago, big, angry Wurn, when he used to borrow Rillibee’s school supplies, hoping Rillibee would say no so Wurn would have an excuse to hit. It had been only a matter of time until Wurn would kill someone. Only a matter of time until Highbones did, or had. Considering his age, he probably already had. He probably would again. He might tonight. Highbones wouldn’t much care. He might not desire his victims dead, but he did not care so long as the process offered some amusement. Or perhaps not amusement. Perhaps something else.
Even now he was saying, “Peepers have such a horrible life, little man. Such a horror as you’ve never thought of. Ask old Shoethai, if you don’t believe us!”
“Have you ever seen anyone dying of plague?” Rillibee asked, the words coming out without thought. He wished them back in the instant, but the group did not react as though they knew what he meant.
“Plague?” Highbones laughed “No good trying to detour us, peeper. Tell your stories to somebody else but not to us. Time for you to climb.”
“Climb where?” Rillibee asked. With difficulty he kept his voice reasonable and calm. This dozen and whatever others there were waiting elsewhere were a pack. Rillibee had seen packs when he was a child. Packs of coyotes. Packs of wild dogs. Joshua had explained about packs Let one start baying, and all would follow. It had happened that way in Sanctity, too. Let one start panting and screeching and others would join in. They had done so when Rillibee started yelling. By the time they’d knocked him off the table and carried him away, twenty or thirty others were shouting as well. A pack. If one didn’t want to deal with a pack, it was important to keep the leader from baying.
“Are you the only one with a name?” he asked of Highbones, attempting a diversion.
It worked, for a moment. Hardflight was introduced, and Topclinger. Mastmaster and Steeplehands. Roperunner and Long Bridge and Little Bridge. Rillibee distracted himself by memorizing their names, their faces. Lean faces, all atop slender forms, and most with those long arms and big hands. Light weight was obviously an advantage. Rillibee’s hands were inside the sleeves of his robe, and he put his fingers around his arms, feeling the ropy muscle there. All those years of exercise at Sanctity. All those years climbing up and down the towers.
Topclinger was staring at Highbones, his face carefully blank, his eyes unreadable. Here was one who did not follow blindly, exclaiming and shouting. Here was one to whom appeals could be made, perhaps?
But there was no time to appeal to anyone.
“Time’s passing,” cried Highbones. “Light’s going. Time to climb!”
Rillibee was surrounded by a whispering mob of them, hustled down one corridor and into a storage building, then up a flight of stairs and out a hatch onto the thatched roof of the hall. Beside him was the leg of a tower, a slender ladder running beside it to the first crossbrace. Above that were other legs, other ladders. The mists hung about the top of the towers, hiding them. Between the clouds and the earth speared the last rays of the setting sun, beginning the long dusk of Grass,
Topclinger whispered, “This one’ll climb, this one will,” gripping Rillibee’s shoulder in his hard hand, squeezing it.
“Oh, I’ll wager on that, Tops, I will,” snarled Highbones.
Rillibee heard them through the muttering. All those years listening to the mosquito whines at Sanctity, picking meaningful language out of nonsense, let him understand what they said though they did not mean him to hear.
“Bet,” responded Topclinger. “Bet one whole turn on kitchen duty.”
“Done,” said Highbones, giggling. “In my opinion he’s a deader.”
Rillibee felt the chill of that giggle run down his bones.
“Oh, God, oh,” said the parrot in his mind.
“Shut up,” he whispered to himself.
“Did you say something, peeper?”
Rillibee shook his head. Highbones was not the sort to leave the winning of his bet to chance. Highbones would try to make sure, up there somewhere.
But then, did it matter? Why not let him have his way?
“Let me die,” begged the parrot.
The dozen surrounded Rillibee, all of them posturing now as though they were one creature, pointing upward toward the heights, toward the last of the sunlight.
“Will he climb?” they wanted to know, pressing closer to him as they explained the rules. They would give him three minutes’ start and then come after him. If he could reach another ladder and get down without being caught, then he’d be a climber. If they caught him, he’d be a peeper, but they wouldn’t beat him too badly if he gave them a good chase. If he fell off, he’d be a deader, depending on where he fell from. He might get away with no injury at all. But if he wouldn’t climb, he would die right there on the thatch. They would rub his face in shit and keep hitting him in the stomach until he’d wished he’d died up there, rather than here. If he didn’t climb, said Highbones, there were other pleasures some might find in Brother Lourai’s anatomy before they killed him. Others agreed to this with wide, toothy grins and feverish eyes.
“Up,” they chanted. “Up, Lourai. Got to be initiated. Got to climb!” The word “climb” was howled from half a hundred throats as others, drawn by the initial ruckus, ran to join the ten or twelve who had started the racket, clambering up the side of the hall on rope sashes dropped to them from those above, clustering upon the thatch. “Climb, Lourai! Climb,” bellowed the Brothers of Sanctity, the Green Brothers, with Green Brother names like Nuazoi and Flumzee and faces intent upon mayhem.
Bored, Brother Mainoa had said. Bored to insanity. And Brother Lourai would just have to learn to get along with them.
It wasn’t their threats that moved Rillibee. He had considered death many times during recent years. He had seen no reason why he should go on living when Joshua and Songbird and Miriam had all died. Dying had not seemed a bad thing, though getting dead had seemed to be more difficult than he had liked. So now getting dead seemed the problem. If he gave himself to this pack, here and now, there would be pain first, and humiliation, neither of which he wanted. If he was to die, he wanted it to be in peace, and not at the hands of some long-armed barbarian like Highbones.
What really moved him to the first ladder, however, was the confounded noise they made, the derisive cacophony centered on him, the knowledge that they would give him no peace until he acted.
The ladder did not frighten him. All those years, up and down the towers of Sanctity, ten times taller than these. He knew enough not to look down. He knew enough to have a good hold before he shifted his weight. He went up the ladder, slowly at first, then faster, his eyes up, seeing something there that those assembled on the thatch evidently had not seen or had taken no notice of.
The mists were coming down. The fog was falling over the Friary. Even now, the tops of the towers were lost in it, the spidersilk bridges were striped with veils. Perhaps those down on the rooftop would not notice it in time, if he could get far enough ahead of them.
He came to the first crossbrace on the tower. Getting to the next ladder required that he move along a curved rod of grass as thick as his leg. Though this was rounded and the girders at Sanctity had been square, this was wider than the girders he had crossed in the drop shafts. Without stopping to think about it; Rillibee ran along the crossbrace and started up the second ladder, eyes examining the route above him. Where the ladders were. Where the bridges were. And where was the nearest cloud?
A howl from below greeted his run. Newcomers did not run across the braces! Though the allotted time had not elapsed, Highbones waited no longer. He started up the ladder even as some few below had the temerity to shout, “Time. Time. Unfair!”
Anger spurted in Rillibee Chime. Highbones had broken his own rules. What right had he to break his own rules?
Highbones did not acknowledge the shouts. After a moment, his followers started after him, Hardflight and Steeplehands in the lead with Long Bridge close behind. Topclinger did not follow. He stood aside, shouting, “You didn’t give him his fair time, Bones. You didn’t give him time.” Rillibee heard it. He heard the shout of approval that greeted it, as well, a dozen voices perhaps. Topclinger had his admirers.
Rillibee also heard Highbones below him, heard the threats, the sniggers designed to make Rillibee nervous, to make him tremble. Instead, the sound only fed his anger, making him move more surely and swiftly upward. There were three more ladders between him and the cloud that was sinking toward him. He had already memorized the ladders and bridges above it. He had seen one thing that would be useful if he decided to try life and several things which would do if he decided to die. Now, spurred by his anger, possessed by a devil of contrariness, part fear, part hate, he lunged upward, hands and feet pulling and thrusting while the howl of the climbers rose from below as the time was up and all of them leapt for the towers.
“Comin’ after you, peeper,” cried Highbones exultantly from below. “Comin’ after you.”
Rillibee risked one quick glance. He was already a great height above the ground. The bottom of the ladder below him was swarming with climbers now, as were those to either side. He lunged upward. There were two more runs along crossbraces which grew more slender the higher he went, and finally the ladder which led upward into the mist.
His anger made him tense. The tension made him gasp for breath, made his arms ache. Not so hard a breath or so aching an arm as would make him fall. Not yet. But he knew that could happen eventually. In time. How much time? The wet of the fog lay on his cheeks, cooling them. He climbed.
Suddenly the mist wrapped him, sweeping across him like a fabric so that he was muffled in it, all at once draped in an impenetrable gauze. Those below him could no longer see him or be seen by him. He was alone in the cloud with only the trembling of the tower to tell them where he was moving, to tell him where they came after him. He climbed more slowly, looking to his side, peering through the growing dusk. The thing he had been looking for appeared at last as a shadow, an extrusion of the tower into space, ending out there, lost in the gray mist, only a few feet away.
Rillibee untied the knot of his rope sash, unwound it from his waist, tugged his robe off, rolled it up, and tied it in the end of the sash. Clad now only in slim trousers and sleeveless shirt, he crawled out onto the spur, the line draped around his neck, the tightly rolled robe dangling against his chest. The spur had obviously been left over from the time the tower had been constructed, a crane from which tackle had been suspended to raise materials from below. It was supported from below by a series of diagonal braces. Behind him the spidery legs of the tower vanished in the damp gray of the cloud, just beyond the last brace he sat up and waited in a misty bubble where sound was muted.
Ten or twelve feet above the spur was a bridge, three ropes strung from this tower to another not far away, one rope to walk upon, two to hold onto, with slender lines woven between. Rillibee could not see it now, but he knew it was there. He had seen it from below and memorized its position. He hoped it was no farther above him than his rope sash could reach.
Balanced upon the spur, legs anchored in the angle of the brace below it, he swung his rolled robe, pendulum fashion, gaining length with each swing, finally throwing the robe up and over as it caught on the bridge above him. He had intended to tie the two ends of the belt together to make a loop and suspend himself under the bridge, lost in the mist where no one would think of looking for him. Now he tugged at the end of the rope, dismayed. It had caught on the bridge. Even as he jerked at it again and again he realized his scheme would not have worked. The rope bridge would have sagged under the weight of his body. Those who climbed these heights every evening would know that someone was out there in midspan. If they could not find that person on the bridge, they would look below it. So. He took a deep breath and stayed as he was, squatted on the spur, the end of the rope still in his hand. Someone was grunting and mumbling below him on the tower, within a few arm’s lengths. “Up here!” shouted Highbone’s voice, cracking in hysterical delight “He’s up here.” Other voices answered, not far below.
Rillibee waited. If they decided to climb out on the spur, he would jump. Getting dead from this height would be almost certain. He hoped he was over bare earth and not over a densely thatched roof which would break his fall. He kept his mind on this, scarcely breathing, still as a stone.
Someone climbed past him on the tower, then someone else. Sudden inspiration struck him, and he tugged at the rope, feeling the motion transmitted to the rope bridge above him.
“He’s on the bridge,” shrieked Highbones. “I can feel him. On the bridge!”
An answering bellow came out of the fog from the far tower where the bridge ended.
The rope in Rillibee’s hands jiggled and danced, transmitting the motion of the bridge as the climbers moved out upon it. He left the rope hanging there, jiggling behind him, as he crawled back toward the tower, hand by hand, harkening to the sound of climbers-by, losing himself in the fog to descend as he had ascended, sometimes standing aside from the climbing shadows and shouting wraiths to let them go by, sometimes slipping down wet ladders, himself invisible in the mist, hidden by cloud, one with the sky. Above him was a discordancy of voices, directions and misdirections, shouts of “Here he is” mixed with cries of “Where is he?”
No one was guarding the bottom of the ladder he had climbed. The rooftop was empty. The fog had sunk almost to the level of the roof, and the door stood open with empty stairs below. From high above still came voices crying, “Here, here,” and the ladder still trembled with the force of the bodies rushing to and fro. He went out silently, down the stairs and through the vacant hall, out into the alleyway and back to his cell in the new dormitory, which was still only partially finished and almost uninhabited. As he entered the dormitory, he heard a dwindling cry, as of someone falling forever from a high place.
Once inside his cell he crawled under his cot and lay there, almost without breathing, tight against the wall. Twice in the night his door opened and a light was thrust inside.
Before dawn he rose and climbed back onto the tower, moving through gray dusk to the bridge where his robe was caught, with the rope girdle still dangling below. A sleeve of the robe had come loose and wound itself around the foot rope of the bridge, only enough to prevent the bundle falling, not enough that anyone had noticed it. Rillibee retrieved his robe and put it on, then sat on a high crossbrace for a long time, looking out over the Friary and the surrounding prairie.
In his head the parrot said, “Let me die.”
“I planned to,” he replied. “This morning.”
He put it off a little. He had planned to die this morning, but it was interesting upon the heights. The grass rippled below like an unending sea, stretching on every side to a limitless horizon. Things moved in the grass. Great beasts with barbed necks paraded on the ridge: Hippae. Torso-sized white crawlers struggled among the grass roots: peepers. Far to the south a line of great grazers moved slowly toward the east. He stared at them all, at the birds moving in clouds across the grasses, at the ripples here and there betokening mysterious movements by creatures he could not see. He wished there were trees. If there had only been trees… Still, the warm light shone on him like a benison, like a promise of something good to come.
By the time the sun rose, he was hungry enough to climb down and go to breakfast.
He was interrupted twice while he ate.
Once by Highbones, who strolled down the long line of tables to hiss at him, “Nobody makes a fool out of me and gets away with it, Lourai. Watch your back, because I’m coming to get you.”
Once by a man who called himself Ropeknots, accompanied by two others who seemed to be watching Ropeknots more than they watched Rillibee. Ropeknots had an angry, frustrated look as he said, “Topclinger got hisself killed last night, peeper. Some of us was his friends and we figure you must’ve knocked him off his perch tryin’ to get down.”
“I went up,” Rillibee explained, not looking at Ropeknots — who was livid with resentment and obviously unable to listen — but at the other two. “I hid in the fog and then when everyone went past, I came down the same ladder again. I didn’t knock anybody off anything, and by your own rules I’m not a peeper anymore.”
The calmer two of the delegation exchanged glances. Ropeknots growled, “I was guarding the door. You didn’t get past me. You killed Topclinger, then you got down somewhere else.”
“I went down through the same door. There was no guard there,” Rillibee said, tired of it all. “There was no one there at all.”
“I was there,” the other claimed with an ugly flush on his face and a sidelong glare at his companions. “Highbones told me to stay there and guard the door and I did.”
He turned and went away, leaving Rillibee staring after. After a moment, his two companions followed him. Rillibee wondered if the lie had been as patent to them as it was to him. The man had been told to keep watch, but he had left his post. Afterward, he had denied it. The denial suited Highbones’ purpose, too, for it served to throw suspicion for Topclinger’s death upon Rillibee. If anyone had killed Topclinger, it had been Highbones himself.
So, a faithless guard and a treacherous pack leader. Fine enemies to have. Rillibee sighed, wishing he had thrown himself off the spur when he’d had the chance last night. Or jumped off at dawn, as he’d planned to do.
He was considering climbing back up the tower for that purpose when he was interrupted again. This time it was half a dozen young Brothers who rubbed his head and laughed and said he had done a good job of losing them and named him Willy Climb on the spot because he’d climbed better than any other peeper of their generation. They loved him because he had confounded Highbones, whom they disliked, and because he had amused them. He became one of them in that instant, a leader of them, with several promising to watch his back for him and protect him from Ropeknots because everyone knew he was a shit and from Highbones, too, who yelled at other people for breaking the rules but always broke them himself.
Their easy friendship was enough to make Rillibee stop thinking about dying for a while. In the company of these newfound companions he climbed to the heights each evening in the dusk hours to sit on a brace and chant his own name while the others played tag across the bridges. He was aware of no distractions except the great night moths that blundered into him with their squishy bodies and the peepers that raised their hymns from the grass roots. Each sundown he ceased being Brother Lourai and became Rillibee Chime once again. As night came down he sat in cloudy silence, remembering his people and his place, and chanted, over and over again, Rillibee Chime, Songbird Chime, Joshua Chime, Miriam Chime. When his friends called him Willy Climb, he answered to that name, too. He was Willy Climb among the pack and ruck, becoming, so he thought to himself, multiple. Rillibee, Lourai, Willy. As though he had been folded and trimmed, like paper dolls, a chain of him extending from the planet of his birth to these cloud-wrapped steeples, where he would die, pretty soon, when he grew bored and depressed once more.
In the offices of Jhamlees Zoe, head of the Office of Security and Acceptable Doctrine, the man responsible for the affairs of the Friary was undoing, for the third or fourth time, a packet which had arrived a considerable time ago. Inside was a wad of printing beginning, as did all communications from the Hierarch — or even putatively from the Hierarch — “Dear Brother in Sanctity.” And so on and so on, wah, wah, wah. Pages of it, spewed out of a cleric-all, dull as porridge and meaningless as peeper song. The real meat was in the middle of this manuscript, two pages inserted there which were written in a familiar hand:
“My dear old friend Nods. By the time you read this, I will be the new Hierarch of Sanctity.” Which was interesting. Cory had always said he would be Hierarch someday. When they had been in seminary together as boys, Cory had said it; even then, Jhamlees Zoe nodded. It just went to prove how ruthless Cory really was.
He read further:
The Hierarch past, one Carlos Yrarier, has for some esoteric reason picked his nephew Roderigo to go to Grass and find out whether there is plague or a cure for plague on your world. Pay attention, old friend. Though it is still policy to deny it, there is plague here, as there is everywhere else. If Yrarier finds no help upon Grass, we may have to depend upon the machines to resurrect us after the danger has passed. Some of us, at least Thee and me, old friend. As you know, it has never been Sanctity’s intention to resurrect many! Why bring all that fodder to life again when it did so little the first time around?
Jhamlees nodded once again. That was sound doctrine, though not doctrine ever shared with the masses. If the machines ever woke them into some new world, it would be a very selective waking, Jhamlees’ cell-sample was in machine “A,” along with a few hundred thousand others. The other billions could be roused if needed, but such need was doubtful.
The letter went on:
However, since there is a chance you have no plague on your world, I plan to come to Grass with such personnel and so equipped as to do all that must be done in the shortest possible time to find a cure. But, we will do it quietly. It is not our desire that either information about the plague or the cure, assuming we find one, be widely disseminated. There are those among the Elders who see in this plague the Hand of God Almighty wiping out the heathen to leave worlds clean for Sanctity alone to populate. Hasten the day. While I am less inclined to see the Hand of God, I am no less willing to take advantage of the chance.
The information Sanctity initially received was that a person or persons had arrived on Grass with the disease and departed without it. In the serene hope that this is true, I am coming to Grass very soon. Too precipitous a move would betray our purpose, therefore I must take more time than I like. Still, I should arrive not long after Yrarier himself, having first taken time to make ritual stops here and there — the putative reason for my journey. If necessary, some of these ceremonial visits may be cut short. At the first inkling that Yrarier has found something, even if only a hint, you are to send word in accordance with the itinerary enclosed.
Jhamlees unfolded the itinerary, then finished the letter.
Needless to say, we want no premature soundings of alarums. All is poised here as on the point of a needle, swinging wildly as a compass does when it finds no pole. As I write this the old Hierarch is dying of plague. Your old friend and cousin is not touched yet, and is determined to come to Grass in order that he may never be touched by any but the hands of friendship. Let me know what is happening!
It was signed by Cory Strange, Nods’ oldest friend, a friend from the time he had been Nods Noddingale, which was many decades before he had become Jhamlees Zoe.
Well, Ambassador Yrarier had been on Grass only a short time. Jhamlees Zoe had heard nothing about plague yet. He thought it unlikely that he would hear anything about plague. Still, he would mention to his subordinate, Noazee Fuasoi, that he wanted to be informed of any unusual rumors. That should be vague enough.
So musing, Jhamlees Zoe wrapped the packet, the letter, and the itinerary once more and hid the resultant bundle in his files.
For a time, Rillibee spent his days in required prayer, in morning song and evening song, in special services now and again, with routine duties taking up all the time between. There was gardening to do in the sun-blessed springs and summers and falls, when crop succeeded crop endlessly under the light-handed benison of rain. Though the long, elliptical orbit of the planet brought it almost under the sun’s eyelids during midsummer, this far north the heat was lessened to an almost tolerable level. There were pigs to care for and slaughter and chickens to feed and kill. There was food to put up for wintertime. They would keep him busy, they told him. Soon he would be assigned to his permanent job.
When that day came, Rillibee in his guise as Brother Lourai sneaked off to hide among the grasses with Brother Mainoa and talk about Rillibee’s future. He had decided again, only that morning, not to die just yet, but that decision was not sufficient for the purposes of the Friary.
“They want to know what I want to do,” Rillibee said in an aggrieved voice. “I have to tell them this afternoon.”
“That’s right,” answered Brother Mainoa comfortably. “Now that you’ve settled down and it’s known that the climbing apes aren’t going to kill you — and that Brother Flumzee that calls himself High-bones has killed a few, though him and his friends always claim it was accidental — those set in authority over us have to decide what to do with you.”
“I don’t know why you think the climbers have given up wanting me dead,” Rillibee objected. “Several of them are still set on killing me. Highbones wants me done with because he says I made a fool of him. He had some kind of bet that I’d end up splattered. Topclinger’s friends want him to pay up. He says his bet was with Topclinger, and with him dead, there’s no bet anymore, but they keep nagging at him, and that makes him hate me more. Ropeknots wants me out of the way because I’ve made him out to be a liar. The longer I stay clear of ’em, the worse they want me gone.”
“Well, you should give them what they want, Brother. I always try to do that. When someone else wants something very badly, I always try to give them what they want. They want you gone, you should go. I think it’s best if we can get you back to the dig with me, especially if we can do it before Elder Brother Jhamlees remembers those twenty stripes he promised you, which I heard about from someone I can’t remember. However, if you say you want to come back to the dig with me, Elder Brother will send you anywhere on Grass except there.” Brother Mainoa sucked at the grass stem he was chewing and considered the matter.
“What you should do, Lourai, is look depressed and ask them what there is for you to do. They’ll mention half a dozen things, including the dig. They’ll mention the gardens and the henhouses and the pig farm and carpentry shop and weaving shop and the dig. If they don’t mention it. you do. Say, ‘I saw the dig, too, when Brother Mainoa brought me in.’ Get it into the conversation. Then, when they say ‘dig?’ you say, ‘Dig, Elder Brother? I was there and I don’t think I’d like that much.’”
“Why should I fool around with the Elder Brother? I thought you said Elder Laeroa was a sympathetic person.”
“Oh, Elder Laeroa’s good enough. He’s interested in things, Laeroa is. In the dig. In the gardens. He’s a good botanist, too. But it won’t be Laeroa that assigns you to your job. That’ll be assistant to the office of Sopority and Ignoble Doctrine, Elder Asshole Noazee Fuasoi. He hates people. His greatest joy comes from telling people to do things they don’t like, so Asshole Fuasoi does all the assignments. Him and his assistant, Shoethai. Except Shoethai’s so inconsequential, it’s easy to forget him.”
“How can you forget someone who looks like that?”
“His face is only a little lopsided.”
“His face is a nightmare. And so is the rest of him. First time I saw him, I couldn’t decide whether to throw up or kill him. He looks like a monster that someone tried to mash.”
“I think someone did. His father, if one listens to rumor. When he saw what Shoethai looked like, he tried to kill him but didn’t quite manage it. They took the man’s cells out of the files and consigned him to absolute death. Then they brought Shoethai into Sanctity. He was raised there. Fuasoi got used to the way he looks, I suppose. Used to it enough to bring him here, anyhow. As for the other two Doctrine assistants, Yavi and Fumo, I’ve always thought they looked a little like peepers. Square and floppy and without much you could call a face.” He chanted, “Jhamlees Zoe and Noazee Fuasoi, Yavi and Fumo and Shooothai,” drawing the latter’s name out into a chant. “Something strange about Fuasoi and Shoethai. Something weird!”
“And you want me to tell him…”
Brother Mainoa hummed. “Mind what I say. Just look depressed and tell him you don’t think you’d like the dig much.”
“Would I?”
“Would you what?”
“Would I like the dig much?”
“You’d like it better than staying here at the Friary for the next four or five Terran years, even though you’ve become quite a sky crawler in the last week or two. It may seem exciting right now, but it’ll get boring if you live long enough. Once you’ve seen sky, you’ve seen sky, now, haven’t you? Fog is fog and mist is mist and one moth is very like another. Eventually your bodyguards will get forgetful about watching out for you, and about that time Highbones or one of his cronies will knock you off a tower. Out at the dig, however, there’s nobody trying to kill you and we’re always finding new things. It’s interesting. Here it’s prayers five times a day and penitential walks between times. Here it’s mind your Doctrine and keep your mouth shut, because if Fuasoi isn’t listening, one of his little friends is. Yavi or Fumo or Shoethai, take your pick.”
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.”