"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!"
&
nbsp; "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.
When he, assured that she had been merely inquisitive, had gone back to his work, Marjorie went out to the stables and saddled Don Quixote. It was not part of her intention to tell anyone where she was going, though she did leave a message with one of the grooms.
"If I'm not back by dark," she said, "but not before then, tell my husband or son I'd like him to come look for me in the aircar. I'm carrying a beacon, so I should be easy to find." The personal beacon was strapped to her leg under her trousers. Any sharp blow would set it off. If she were thrown from a horse, for example. Or if she struck it sharply with her fist. She was carrying a trip recorder of the type used by cartographers, which would serve as a direction finder. She had a laser knife with her as well, to clear her way through tall grass if that became necessary. She showed both of these to the stableman, telling him what they were for. She wanted everything about her journey to speak of purpose. She wanted no one to suppose that she had planned not to come back. It was a risk, that's all. Still, if something happened to her, it would solve Rigo's problem. And Stella's. And her own. Resolutely, she did not think of Tony.
Quixote pawed the soil, flickers of movement running up his twitching hide from fetlocks to withers and down again. Not nerves, not precisely. Something more than that. It was a kind of agitation Marjorie was unfamiliar with, and she stood for a long time stroking his legs, talking to him, trying to imagine what had brought him to this state. He leaned into her, as though for support, yet when she mounted him he trotted out into the grasses as though for a ride on any ordinary day. He meant by this that he trusted her. Though he might die of it, he trusted her. He could not quite keep the nervous quiver from his skin, however, and the message eventually reached her after they had traversed some little distance. She flushed, ashamed to be using him in this fashion when his own nature spoke so strongly against it. She stroked him. expressing her own trust. "Father James says God has made viruses of us, Quixote, but I suppose one virus may still love another, or have another kind of virus as a friend. I won't put you into a trap, my friend. I won't let you get close enough for that." And myself? she thought. Shall I put myself in danger?
Suicide was forbidden, but much glory was given to martyrs. If she killed herself, would God even notice? According to what Father James had said, God probably did not know which of His viruses were involved in doing His work. To God, she had no name. No individuality. If she killed herself, would He even know? Did it matter if He knew? When He had created her, had He also created a mechanism for saving her soul? Did viruses even have them?
Still, there had been all those years of being taught it was wrong to take one's own life. She would not feel right about getting herself purposely killed off. She could take a calculated risk, however. If she died, it would be accidentally, and Don Quixote would survive. Fleet as the wind, Quixote. Without her on his back he could outrun the devil himself. So she told herself before she stopped thinking about it. devoting most of her energy to not thinking of it. She could not help wondering about Rigo's reaction if she didn't return. "That silly fool." he would say. "That silly woman who never loved me as she ought."
She did love him. Or. she wanted to love him. Wanted to love him and wanted to love Stella with a desire that poured out hurtfully until she was exhausted from the flow of it. At home, she had known about Eugenie, and the one before Eugenie, but they had not been nearby. At home, Stella had had distractions and friends. Here, both Stella and Eugenie beat at her like huge trapped birds, pecking at her. Their frustrations hammered at her. She had not expected to feel weak, to be sleepless, to feel the threat of death always at her back. Each day on Grass had taken a little more of her strength, a little more of her purpose. Lately she had felt no hope, she who had always lived from disappointment to disappointment on a childlike, hopeful optimism which she could now barely remember.
She rode past the little arena where the horses were exercised, a place that lay just outside the grass gardens of Opal Hill, though it seemed remote because of the topography. Now, for the first time, Marjorie was leaving the close confines of that area which those who defined such things considered to be the estancia. The gardens were behind her. The prospects that the gardens overlooked were behind her. She was entering upon the wild grasses, the surface of the planet, the part into which men and their works and their creatures were not allowed to intrude. She rode, eyes forward, not thinking about anything very much except that she was unhappy enough that if the Hippae were to be found, out here in the grass, perhaps she would learn something useful about them or they would kill her, and she did not at that moment much care which.
The howl, when it came, made Don Quixote tremble, ears up, stopping dead still. Marjorie sat, scarcely breathing, aware that the howl had come from behind her. In that instant she remembered Janetta bon Maukerden and realized that the Hippae, if they found her, might do
less – or more – than kill her. She had considered that they might kill her and had accepted that. She had not considered the range of alternatives which might result from her behavior, and she was abruptly both shamed and terrified.
They had been following a kind of trail, a winding path of short grasses among the taller ones. She urged Don Quixote off this easy way and into the taller grass, dismounting to tug stems into line to hide the way she had come.
"They'll smell you," she told herself, trying to quell her alarm by moving slowly and deliberately. The wind was blowing toward her from the direction the howl had come. That one would not smell her. Some other one might. It would be wise to return. Overwhelmed with the stupidity of what she had been doing, she told herself that returning would be the best possible thing to do.
She opened the trip recorder, watching it as she guided the stallion in a shallow turn which ended with him headed back toward the embassy, still hidden in tall grass, now traveling toward whatever it was she had heard. He went only a little way, then stopped. Something howled again, quite close, between them and the embassy.
The horse turned and walked quietly on his own trail. When Marjorie attempted to guide him, he ignored her. After one brief spasm of panic, she sat quietly, letting him alone. So. So, he knew something she didn't. Smelled something she couldn't. Felt something she couldn't. She sat still, not bothering him, trying to say an act of contrition, unable to remember phrases she had known since childhood. The words didn't fit, anyhow. How could she be heartily sorry for having offended God when, for all she knew, she was doing exactly what God intended!
The stallion moved up and down hills, along the sides of ridges, always walking, not hurrying, ears alert, as though someone were whispering his name. When he slowed at last, it seemed to be in response to other sounds, ahead of them. When he stopped, he went down on his side all at once, without the signal. She drew her leg from beneath his upcurved body and stood up, staring at him. He flattened himself, ears still alert, watching her.