Grass (6 page)
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?
