Grass (38 page)

"You hear everything," Marjorie said ruefully. "Have you heard what any of it means?"

"As you do, Lady Westriding. As you do."

"Call me Marjorie, Brother. Please. Father James wants to see you while you are here. He particularly asked to be included."

Brother Mainoa nodded, smiling. He had wanted very much to talk with either of the Fathers.

When the time came, he spoke to the young priest, quiet young Father James – Rigo's nephew, Marjorie informed them – and also to Father Sandoval, and to Tony and Marjorie as well. Their luncheon was served on the terrace in the mild airs of spring. Neither Rigo nor Stella joined them. Neither Rigo nor Stella could be found.

"I wanted particularly to speak with you Fathers," Brother Mainoa confided in his comfortable voice, "because I have a philosophical matter which I am seeking advice upon."

"Ah?" Father Sandoval acknowledged in a patronizing tone. "You wish an answer from a religious point of view?"

"I do," said the Brother. "It pertains to creatures which are not human. You may regard the question as hypothetical but nonetheless important."

Father Sandoval cocked his head. "You mean in a doctrinal sense?"

"Precisely. A matter of no practical relevance whatsoever, but important in a doctrinal sense. To ask my question, I must ask you first to suppose that the foxen here on Grass are sentient beings and that they are troubled by matters of conscience."

Tony laughed. Marjorie smiled. Father Sandoval seemed only slightly amused. "I can accept that as a ground for ethical argument."

Brother Mainoa nodded, gratified. "It is a question of original sin."

"Original sin?" Father James looked as though he was genuinely amused. "Among the foxen?" He looked at Marjorie with a smile, as though reminded of their recent conversation on the same subject. She looked down at her plate. She was still troubled by the things he had said, and was not sure it was a laughing matter.

Brother Mainoa saw this interchange but pretended not to notice. "Remember that you agreed to accept that they are thinking beings, Fathers. Accept it. Regard them as fully sentient. As much as you yourself may be. Now, having done so – do not laugh, sir," this to Tony – "we are supposing that the idea of original sin oppresses the foxen. They are carnivores. Their bodies require meat. So, they eat meat. They eat the peepers, the larvae of the Hippae."

"You know!" exclaimed Marjorie. "You know what the peepers really are."

"I do, madam. Not many know, but I do. And let us suppose the foxen do, as well. They eat them."

"And the foxen consider this sinful?" Tony asked. "Well, young sir, it is an interesting point. If these were men, you yourself would consider it sinful. If a man or woman kills an unborn child, your faith and Sanctity both consider it murder, do they not? The larvae of the Hippae are not thinking beings. They are as near mindless as makes no matter. However, when they grow great and fat and unable to move, they make their first metamorphosis and emerge as hounds."

"Ah." Father Sandoval had already heard of this from Marjorie and he now saw where Mainoa was leading.

"The hounds, some say, are thinking beings. Certainly they are capable of some thought. I believe they are self-aware. Whether they are or not, they undergo a further metamorphosis and become something else … "

"Mounts." Marjorie nodded. "I have seen them."

"Of course. And as Lady Westriding knows in her heart, as we all know in our hearts, the Hippae are thinking beings. You and I have discussed this before, have we not? So, when foxen eat the peepers, they are killing the young of a thinking race."

"But if they know this, why – "

"What else can they eat? The mounts? The Hippae themselves? There are a few other creatures, all of them too fleet or too small to be of any use. The grazers are too huge. No, the foxen eat the peepers because they are available and abundant. There are many more peepers than the world could hold if all of them went through metamorphosis, and history upon Terra tells us what horrors follow upon religious mandates of unlimited reproduction. That is not the point, however. The point is that foxen eat and relish peepers, but let us suppose that in recent years, since being exposed to the thoughts of man, the foxen have acquired pudency. They have learned to feel guilt."

"They had no guilt until man came?"

"Let us suppose not. Let us suppose that they had reason, but no sense of shame. They have acquired it from men."

"They must have acquired it from the commoners, then," said Tony. "I've seen little enough among the bons."

Brother Mainoa laughed. "From the commoners. Surely. Let us say they have learned it from the commoners."

"Those of our faith," said Marjorie with a frown, "seem to agree that the original sin of humankind was ah … an amatory one."

"And the foxen, who have learned of this doctrine from someone, heaven knows who, wonder if it is not as valid to have one that was and is gustatory. Let us suppose they have come to me with this matter. 'Brother Mainoa,' they have said, 'we wish to know if we are guilty of original sin.'

"Well, I have told them I do not understand the doctrine of original sin, that it is not a doctrine Sanctity has ever concerned itself about. 'I know someone who knows, however.' I have told them. 'Father Sandoval, being an Old Catholic, should know all about it,' and so they want to discuss the matter."

"Discuss the matter?"

"Well, in a manner of speaking. Let us postulate that they have found some way to communicate."

Father Sandoval's brow creased and he sat back in his chair, fingertips of his hands pressed together to make a cage, staring at it for a time as though it held his thoughts captive. "I would tell them," he said after a considerable pause, "that their sense of guilt does not arise from original sin at all. It is not their first parents who have committed the sin,
if
it is a sin, but they themselves."

"Does this make a difference?"

"Oh, yes. A sin that they themselves have committed, if it is a sin, can be remedied by their own penitence and forgiven by God. If they are penitent. If they believe in God."

If God believes in them, amended Marjorie, silently. If God did not know the names of his human viruses, would he care about foxen?

Brother Mainoa shifted the utensils before him, frowning in concentration. "But suppose it had been a sin of their … their ancestors."

"It is not simply a matter of who committed the sin, whether the creatures themselves or their ancestors or their associates with or without their connivance or acquiescence. We would have to ask how God sees it. In order to have been the equivalent of original sin, then it would be necessary to determine whether the foxen had ever existed in a state of divine grace. Was there a time when they were sinless? Did they fall from grace as our religion teaches us that our first parents fell?"

Brother Mainoa nodded. "Let us suppose they did not. Let us suppose things have always been this way, so far back as anyone can remember."

"No legend of a former time. No scripture?"

"None."

Father Sandoval grimaced, drawing his upper lip back and ticking his thumbnail against his teeth. "Then it is possible that there is no sin."

"Not even if, in this latter day, these reasoning beings are beset by conscience over something they have always done?"

Father Sandoval shrugged and smiled, raising his hands as though to heaven. "Brother, let us suppose that we think they may be guilty of original sin. First we must establish whether their salvation is possible – that is, whether any divine mechanism exists to remove their sense of sin by forgiving them. They cannot be truly penitent for something they did not do, and therefore penitence is useless to them. They must rely upon a supernatural force to redeem them from a sin committed long ago or by someone else. Among Old Catholics, that redemption was offered by our Savior. We are granted immortality through Him. Among you Sanctified, redemption is offered by your organization. You are granted immortality through it."

"The Sanctified believe in the same Savior," Brother Mainoa remarked. "They once called themselves His saints."

"Well, perhaps. If so, it is no longer any significant part of Sanctity's belief, but I will not argue that point with you. This is no time to discuss the types of immortality and what our expectations may be. My church teaches that those pious men and women who lived prior to the human life and sacrifice of the Savior were redeemed by that sacrifice despite the fact that they lived and died long before it was made. So, I suppose, might these foxen have been saved by that same sacrifice despite the fact that they lived and died in another world. I would not say, here and now, that this is impossible. However, it is a question for the full authority of the church to decide. No mere priest should attempt to answer such a question."

"Ah." Brother Mainoa grinned widely, shaking his head to indicate amazed amusement. "It is an interesting point, is it not. It is with such conjecture I while away the time while I am digging and cataloguing."

Seeing the slightly angry expression on Father Sandoval's face, Marjorie turned to the younger Brother in an effort to change the direction of their conversation. "And you, Brother Lourai. Do you also consider such philosophical and ethical points?"

Rillibee Chime looked up from his salad, peering deeply into Father Sandoval's eyes, seeming to see more there than the old priest was comfortable with.

"No," he said. "My people sinned against no one, and I have never had any chance to be guilty. I think of other things. I think of trees. I remember my parents and how they died. I think of the name they gave me. I wonder why I am here."

"Is that all?" She smiled.

"No," he replied, surprising both her and himself. "I wonder what your daughter's name means, and whether I will see her again."

"Well," said Mainoa, lifting his brows and patting his younger colleague on the arm. "He's young yet. I thought of such things too, long ago."

A brooding silence fell. Marjorie persisted in moving the conversation away from these troublesome areas. "Brother Mainoa, do you know of an animal here on Grass which looks something like a bat?" She described the creature she had seen in the caverns, dwelling upon its most noteworthy feature, the fringing teeth.

"Not only know it," the friar answered, "but been bitten by it. Most people have, at least once. It's a bloodsucker. It comes out of the dusk and hits you right here – " he clamped a work-roughened hand on the back of his neck, just at the base of his skull, "and tries to sink those teeth into you. Since our headbones get in the way, they don't do much damage to humans. Evidently the Grassian animals have a notch in the skull right there. Miserable-looking things, aren't they?"

Marjorie nodded.

"Where did you see them?"

She explained, telling the story of the cavern once more. Rillibee and Father James were interested, even though Brother Mainoa was quite unsurprised.

"Then you undoubtedly saw dead ones, also. Their bodies lie around the Hippae caverns like leaves on a forest floor in a Terran fall. I do know about them. I'm among the few who've sneaked up on a cavern and gotten away afterward." He gave her a look which told her that he guessed more of her reasons for going into the grasses than she wanted him to.

"Gotten away?" she repeated faintly.

"I would say it's a rare thing to get away, Lady Westriding. If you'd been smelled or spotted, they'd have had you." He had fallen into his colloquial, avuncular manner.

"I was riding. On a horse."

"Still, I find it amazing. Well, if your horse got you out of there quickly, you may have outrun 'em. Or maybe the wind was just right and you simply weren't noticed. Or maybe the smell of the horse confused them just long enough. You took your life between your teeth, Lady." He gave her a concentrated, percipient look. "I'd suggest you not do it again. Certainly not during the lapse."

"I … I had already decided that." She cast her eyes down, embarrassed at Tony's scowl of agreement. Could the man read her mind?

"They don't like to be spied upon?" Tony asked.

"They won't tolerate it. That's why so little's known about 'em. That's why so few people that wander off into the grasses ever come home. I can tell you, though. Hippae lay eggs sometime during the winter or early spring. I've seen the eggs in the backs of caverns in late spring and I know they weren't there in the fall. When the sun gets enough warmth in it, the migerers move the eggs into the sun and shift 'em around until the heat hatches 'em. About the same time, some of the peepers and some of the hounds, those that are grown enough, come back to the caverns and change themselves into something new. The Hippae guard 'em while they're doing it. That's why the lapse."

"The bons don't know," Marjorie said, a statement rather than a question.

"Right, they don't know. Don't know, won't be told, don't want to hear. Taboo for 'em."

"I do have something you may not know," she said, getting up to fetch the trip recorder and punching up the pattern she had walked over in the cavern. "I have been told that the thunderous noise we sometimes hear is Hippae, dancing. Well, this seems to be what the dancing produces."

Brother Mainoa stared at it, at first in confusion, then in disbelief.

Marjorie smiled. Good. For all his knowing looks, he wasn't omniscient, then.

It was Rillibee who said, almost casually, "It looks like the words in the Arbai books, doesn't it, Brother?"

"The spherical peepers!" Marjorie exclaimed, remembering suddenly where she had seen the rotund peepers and heraldric hounds, carved on the housefronts of the Arbai city. The twining design did look like the words in the Arbai books – or like the vines carved on the housefronts. She mentioned this, occasioning a deep and thoughtful silence from everyone.

Though the conversation later turned to other things, including whether there was or was not unexplained death upon Grass (for Marjorie and Tony remained aware of their duty) the pattern on Marjorie's recorder was in all their minds. Brother Mainoa, particularly, wanted very much to show it to a friend – so he said as he departed – and Marjorie let him borrow the recorder, believing he meant some friend among the Green Brothers.