Grass (32 page)

"I don't understand, Father."

"I wonder sometimes if this is what God has done with us."

Marjorie groped for his meaning. "Wouldn't that limit God's omnipotence?"

"Perhaps not. It might be an expression of that omnipotence. In the microcosm, perhaps He needs – or chooses – to create help. Perhaps He has created help. Perhaps he creates in us the biological equivalent of microscopes and antibiotics."

"You are saying God cannot intervene in this plague?" The invisible person beyond the grating sighed. "I am saying that perhaps God has already done his intervening by creating us. Perhaps He intends us to do what we keep praying He will do. Having designed us for a particular task, he has sent us into battle. We do not particularly enjoy the battle, so we keep begging him to let us off. He pays no attention because He does not keep track of us individually. He does not know where in the body we are or how many of us there are. He does not check to see whether we despair or persevere. Only if the body of the universe is healed will he know whether we have done what we were sent to do!" The young priest coughed. After a moment, Marjorie realized he was laughing. Was it at her, or at himself? "Do you know of the uncertainty principle, Marjorie?"

"I am educated," she snorted, very much annoyed with him.

"Then you know that with very small things, we cannot both know where they are and what they are doing. The act of observing them always changes what they are doing. Perhaps God does not look at us individually because to do so would interrupt our work, interfere with our free will … "

"Is this doctrine, Father?" she asked doubtfully, annoyed, wondering what had come over him.

Another sigh. "No, Marjorie. It is the maundering of a homesick priest. Of course it isn't doctrine You know your way around the catechism better than that." He rubbed his head, thankful for the seal of the confessional. Even though Marjorie needed to take herself far less seriously, Father Sandoval would not appreciate what he had just said ...

"If the plague kills us all, it will be because of our sins," she said stubbornly. "Not because we didn't fight it well enough. And our souls are immortal."

"So Sanctity says. So the Moldies say," he murmured. "They say we must all be killed off so our souls can live, in the New Creation."

"I don't mean we're excused from fighting the plague," she objected. "But it's our sins that brought it on us."

"Our sins? Yours and mine, Marjorie?

"Original sin," she muttered. "Because of the sin of our first parents." First parents very much like Rigo and Stella, passionately acting out whatever moved them, without thought. Even laughing, perhaps, as they tore the world apart. Never sober and reverent as they ought to be. Never peaceful. She sighed.

"Original sin?" the young priest asked, curious. At one time he had believed it without question, but he wasn't sure anymore. There were some other catechetical things he wasn't sure of, either. His doubt about doctrine should signal some crisis of faith, he thought, but his faith was as strong as it had ever been, even though his acceptance of details was wavering. "So you believe in original sin?"

"Father! It's doctrine!"

"How about collective guilt? Do you believe in that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are the bons guilty, collectively, for what happened to Janetta bon Maukerden?"

"Is that a doctrinal question?" she asked doubtfully.

"How about the Sanctified?" he asked. "Are they collectively guilty of condemning their boy children to prison? Young Rillibee, for example. Was he sent into servitude because of collective guilt, or because of original sin?"

"I'm an Old Catholic. I don't have to decide where Sanctity went wrong, so long as I know it did!"

He kept himself from laughing. Oh, if only Marjorie had more humor. If Rigo had more patience. If Stella had more perception. If Tony had more confidence – And if Eugenie had more intelligence. Never mind their sins, just give them more of what they needed.

He sighed, rubbing the sides of his forehead to make the sullen ache go away, then gave her both absolution and a reasonable penance. She was to accept that Rigo would ride to hounds and she was to try not to judge him harshly. Father Sandoval had been sentencing Marjorie to affectionate support for years. Father James thought affectionate support was probably a bit much Marjorie, repentant but weary, ready to grit her teeth over yet another session of affectionate support, was surprised enough by the penance to accept it. She wouldn't judge Rigo, but she needn't support him, either. It was not until later, as evening drew on, that she remembered what Father James had said about thinking viruses and guilt and sin. Once she began considering the questions he had asked, she could not get them out of her mind.

In the chapel, meantime, Father James knelt to beg forgiveness for himself. It had been wicked of him to challenge Marjorie's faith when what he was really wanting was to shore up his own. He was not at all sure that being nonjudgmental about Rigo was a good thing for Marjorie to do. If what the bons were doing was sinful, then Rigo had no business doing it at all. Rigo had convinced himself he was joining the bons in their obsession out of a sense of duty. Father James thought ego was the more likely reason, and Father Sandoval was too set in his ways to offer anything but cliches. Father James wished for Brother Mainoa to talk with. Or the younger one, Lourai. He had a feeling they shared a good many things besides their age.

In the night, a rhythmic thunder.

Marjorie woke and went walking through the halls of the residence, encountering Persun Pollut, himself stalking nervously from place to place, pulling his long ears, twisting his beard into tails.

"What is it?" she whispered. "I've heard it before, but never so close as this."

"The Hippae, they say," he murmured in return. "In the village, that's what they say. Often in the spring they hear this sound, many times during the lapse. It woke me, so I came up here to the big house see that all of you were all right."

She laid a hand on his arm, feeling the shivering of his skin beneath the fabric. "We're fine. What are they doing, the Hippae?"

He shook his head. "I don't think anyone knows. Dancing, they say. Sebastian says he knows where. Someone told him where, but he doesn't like to talk about it."

"Ah." They stood together, looking out the tall windows across the terrace, feeling the beat of the thunder through the soles of their feet. A mystery. As all of Grass was a mystery. And she, Marjorie, was doing nothing about it.

She was still thinking of viruses, considering what a thinking virus might do, one whom God did not observe or command but merely allowed to do what it was created for.

"Ask Sebastian to come see me, will you, Persun?"

" 'Tomorrow," he promised, "When it gets light."

Far across the grasses, beyond the port and Commons, beyond the swamp forest, the same sound beat upon the ears of all those at Klive. The bon Damfels family was wakeful, listening. Some were more than merely wakeful.

In a long, dilapidated hallway in the far reaches of the vast structure, Stavenger bon Damfels dragged his struggling Obermum down a long, dusty hallway. One of his hands was twisted into Rowena's hair, the other held her by the collar of her gown, half throttling her. Blood from her forehead dripped onto the floor.

"Stavenger." She choked, clinging to his legs. "Listen to me, Stavenger."

He seemed not to hear her, not to care whether she spoke. His eyes were red and his mouth was drawn into a lipless line. He moved like an automaton, one leg lurched forward, then the other drawn up to it, heaving at her with both hands as though he lifted a heavy sack.

"Stavenger! Oh, by all that's holy, Stavenger! I did it for Dimity!"

Behind the struggling pair, hiding themselves around corners and behind half-open doors. Amethyste and Emeraude followed and cowered. Since they had seen Stavenger strike Rowena down in the gardens – he either not noticing his daughters behind a screening fountain of grass or not caring if they saw – they had followed him and their mother. The corridor they had come to was ancient, littered, untended and untenanted. The five-story wing that held it had not been used for at least a generation. Above them, the ceiling sagged in wide, shallow bubbles, stained with water which had leaked through the rotted thatch and permeated the three floors above. The portraits on the walls were corrupted with mold, and the stairs they had climbed were punky with rot.

"He doesn't know what he's doing," Amy whispered, tears running down her face and into the corners of her mouth. She licked them away and said again, "He's gone crazy. He doesn't know!"

"He does," Emmy contradicted, pointing to the light she carried. "There haven't been any lights in this old place since before we were born, but there's everlights all along the hall. He got them out of the garage, just like I got this one. He put them here before. He planned it."

Amy, looking at the dim lanterns set here and there on rickety tables or hung on doorknobs, nodded unwillingly. "Why! Why is he doing this to her?"

"Shhh," her sister cautioned, pulling them both back into the shadow. Stavenger had stopped at the end of the corridor to thrust Rowena through an open door, pulling it closed behind her and locking it. The key ground in the lock with a rusty finality. He thrust it into his pocket and then stood there, as though listening. "Rowena." A voice like metal – harsh and hideous. No sound from beyond the door.

"You'll never go there again! Never to Opal Hill again! Never consort with
fragras
again! Never betray me again!" Silence.

He turned and took up the nearest lamp, then came down the corridor toward them, gathering up the everlights as he came. Slowly he plodded, his face expressionless, passing the door behind which his daughters trembled, leaving the place in darkness, going away as though forever.

They waited, listening for the sound that came at last, the heavy thunder of the door closing, two stories below.

Behind the locked door at the end of the corridor rose the sound of a woman's howling, an interminable, grief-driven wail of pain and betrayal.

With trembling fingers, Emeraude turned on the everlight she carried and the two of them ran to the door, stumbling over warped floorboards, kicking up small, choking clouds of dust.

The door was heavy and thick, made of wood from a swamp-forest tree and hung by great metal hinges in a solid frame. Only a few doors at the estancia were this heavy, this immovable. The main door of the house. The door of Stavenger's private office. The treasury door. What had this room once been, to have needed all this weight of wood?

They knocked, called, knocked again. The howl went on and on.

"Find Sylvan!" Emeraude urged her sister in a frantic whisper "He's the only one who can help, Amy."

Amethyste turned haunted eyes on her sister, babbling, "I thought I'd ask Shevlok – "

Emmy shook her, demanding her attention. "Shevlok's useless. He's done nothing but drink since Janetta showed up at that party. He isn't even conscious most of the time."

"If the lapse would get over – "

"If the lapse would get over, he'd go hunting all day and be drunk all night. Find Sylvan!"

"Emmy … "

"I know! You're scared to death of Papa. Well, so am I. He's like … he's like one of the Hippae, all shining eyes and sharp blades so you can't come near him. I keep thinking he will knock me down and trample me to death if I open my mouth. But I'm not going to leave Mama bleeding in there, penned up like that with no food and no water. I won't let her die like that, but you know Papa will if we let him."

"Why did Papa – "

"You know perfectly well why. Mama went to Opal Hill, she talked to the people who found Janetta. She's got the idea that … that … " Emeraude struggled for words, choking on them, eyes bulging as she tried to say what she was not permitted to say.

"Never mind," her sister said, shaking her. "I know. I'll find Sylvan. You stay here and tell him what happened, in case I don't have a chance to explain."

"Take the light. I'll wait here."

Amy sped down the stairs, shuddering away from the banister, which creaked and sagged outward beneath her hand. This ruin was connected to the main house by the old servants' quarters and the aircar garage. The connecting door was locked, had been locked by their father when they had followed him here, he with that wild, mad look in his eyes, dragging Rowena as though she had been a sack of grain. He had locked the door again when he went out, but there was a broken window nearby which gave onto a long drying yard and the summer kitchens. The girls had come through that. It was almost midnight. The servants would long ago have gone to bed. Even if one or two of them lingered in the kitchens, their sympathies would be with Rowena more than with Stavenger.

A Stavenger who was at this moment in the main hallway screaming unintelligibly at Figor, ranting and threatening so that the whole household had wakened to hear him. Figor, wisely, was saying nothing while allowing the storm to pass. Other family members, wakened by the uproar, stayed out of the way. The great building hummed with murmuring voices, clattered with doors opening and closing, and was yet quiet, silent except for the bellowing voice.

Amy ignored the noise. At this hour, Sylvan would be in his room, or in the library, or in the gymnasium, two floors below. The library was closest, and she found him there in a secluded corner, eyes fixed on a book, fingers in his ears. She knelt beside him and pulled the fingers away.

"Sylvan, Papa has beaten Mama and locked her in the old wing. Emmy's waiting there. Mama's got no food, no water, Sylvan. Emmy and I think he means to leave her there … "

She was talking to the chair. Sylvan was up and gone.

In the first light of morning Sebastian Mechanic came to the estancia, where he found Marjorie having a very early breakfast. In answer to her request, he pointed a direction, though unwillingly, suggesting to her that going out into the grasses alone was not a good idea. He did not like the look of her. Her eyes were haunted and she was too thin. Some deep tiredness seemed to oppress her. Despite her appearance of weariness, perhaps illness, she was sensible enough to agree with him that it would be foolish to go into the grasses. She told him she had simply been curious, then asked after his wife and family and made small talk with disarming patience and charm.