“The whole of Grass is horse-mad,” Sender O’Neil had said. “Horse-mad and class-conscious. The Hierarch, your uncle, suggested you for the mission. You and your family are the best candidates we have.”
“The best candidates you have for what?” Rigo had asked. “And why the devil should we care?” The invocation of old Uncle Carlos was doing nothing to make him more polite, though it had made him slightly curious.
“The best candidate to be accepted by the aristocrats on Grass. As for why…” The man had licked his lips again, this time nervously. He had been about to say words which were not said, not by anyone in Sanctity. So far as Sanctity was concerned, the words were impossible to say. “The plague,” he had whispered.
Roderigo had been silent. The acolyte had prepared him for this, at least. He was angry but not surprised.
Sender had shaken his head, waved his hands, palms out, warding away the anger he felt coming from Rigo “All right. Sanctity doesn’t admit the plague exists, but we have reason to keep silent. Even the Hierarch, your uncle, he agreed. Every society mankind has built will fall apart the minute we admit it and start talking about it.”
’’You can’t be certain of that!”
“The machines say so. Every computer model they try says so. Because there’s no hope. No cure. No hope for a cure. No means of prevention. We have the virus, but we haven’t found any way to make our immune systems manufacture antibodies. We don’t even know where it’s coming from. We have nothing. The machines advise us that if we tell people… well, it will be the end.”
“The end of Sanctity? Why should I care about that?”
“Not Sanctity, man! The end of civilization. The end of mankind. The mortality rate is one hundred percent! Your family will die. Mine. All of us. It isn’t just Sanctity. It’s the end of the human race. It’s you as much as me!”
Rigo, shocked into awareness by the man’s vehemence, asked, “What makes you think there’s an answer on Grass?”
“Something. Maybe only rumor, only fairy tales. Maybe only wishful thinking. Maybe like the fabled cities of gold or the unicorn or the philosopher’s stone…”
“But maybe?”
“Maybe something real. According to our temple on Semling, there is no plague at all on Grass.”
“There’s none here on Terra!”
“Oh, Lord, man if that were only true! There’s none here that anyone is allowed to see. But I’ve seen it.” The man wiped his face again, eyes brimming with sudden tears, and his jaw clenched as though he were holding down bile that threatened to flood his throat. “I’ve seen it. Men. Animals. It’s everywhere. I’ll show it to you, if you like.”
Roderigo had already seen plague. He hadn’t known it was on Terra or that it afflicted animals, but he, too, had seen it. He waved the offer aside, concentrating. “But there’s none on Grass? Perhaps it’s only hidden, as you do here.”
“Our people don’t think they could be hiding it. The Grassians seem to have no structure to hide it. Funny kind of place. But if there’s none there…”
“What you’re implying is that it’s the only place where there is none. Are you saying there is plague everywhere else?”
Sender, pallid and sweating, nodded and then whispered, “We have at least one temple on virtually every occupied world. In the few places where there’s no temple, there’s at least a mission. We are responsible for hiding what’s happening, so yes, we know where plague is. It is everywhere,”
Rigo flushed with sudden fury. “Well then, for the sake of heaven, why aren’t the scientists and researchers on the way there! Why come to me?”
“The aristocrats who run the place won’t give permission for scientists and researchers to visit the planet. Oh, we could send our people into the port town, yes. Place is called Commoner Town. It’s open to visitors. But there’s no such thing as immigration. They’d get a visitor’s permit, good until the next ship came through headed in the right direction. We’ve already done that a few times. Our people can’t find out anything. Not there in the port. And do you think they can get anywhere else on Grass? Not on your life. Not on anyone’s. Sanctity has no power on the planet.”
Rigo stared, frankly unbelieving. “You really have no mission there?”
’The only contact Sanctity has with Grass is through the penitential encampment working on the Arbai ruins. Not all our acolytes work out. It won’t do to send them home to teach other unwilling boys how to get out of their service. So we send them to Grass. Our encampment was already there when the Grassians arrived. The Green Brothers. So named because of the robes they wear. There must be over a thousand of them, but they have virtually no contact with the aristocrats. Over a hundred years ago the Hierarch ordered them to develop some interest they could use as common ground with the Grassians, but there really is no common ground.”
“Trying to make your penitents into more of your damn missionaries,” snarled Rigo.
O’Neil wiped his brow. “Oh, I won’t deny that’s what the man in charge of Acceptable Doctrine would like. His name’s Jhamlees Zoe, and he gets madder than a teased bull about our not converting the planet to Sanctity, by force if necessary. The Hierarch sends him word to calm down or come home, and it only makes him madder,” O’Neil wiped his forehead where the sweat glistened.
“What did the brothers do to develop ties with the aristocrats?”
“They took up gardening.” O’Neil laughed harshly. “Gardening! They’ve become specialists in that. Oh, they’ve become renowned for that. So well known even Jhamlees didn’t dare put a stop to it. But that still doesn’t give them any day-to-day contact with the rest of the planet, not enough to learn anything. And the damned aristos won’t let us in!”
“Not even when you told them…”
“The Grassians aren’t suffering. We’ve tried to describe to them what’s happening, but they don’t seem to care. They were separatists to begin with, more concerned with maintaining the privileges of their rank than with any human concerns. Lesser nobility. Or perhaps merely pretenders at nobility. European, mostly, and ridiculously proud of their noble blood, full of pretensions about it. That’s why they’ve consistently refused permission for a temple or a mission. Ten generations on Grass has only made them more isolationist, more… more strange It’s like they’ve had iron walls built in their heads! They refuse to be studied. They refuse to be proselytized. They refuse to be visited! Except, maybe, by someone like you…
“Sanctity has a navy.” Rigo said it as fact. He disapproved of that fact, but it was true. Planetary governments were isolated and parochial and content to be so, Once the initial explosive overflow of humanity had taken place, Sanctity had done everything it could to stop further exploration. The faith had not wanted men to be so widespread they couldn’t be evangelized and controlled. Discovery had stopped, along with science and art and invention. Though its military technology was centuries old, Sanctity maintained the only interstellar force.
Sender O’Neil sighed deeply. “It’s been considered. If we take troopers in there, the reason couldn’t be kept secret, not for long. All hell would break loose. We can’t even consider it until we know for sure that there’s something there. Please. Whatever you think of us, give us credit for some intelligence! We’ve computer-modeled everything. Our best people have done it over and over again. News of the plague and use of force would be equally disastrous! Have you heard of the Moldies?”
“Some kind of end-of-the-world sect, aren’t they?”
“End of the universe, more likely. But yes, they fervently desire the end of the world, the human world. They call themselves the Martyrs of the Last Days. They believe the time has come to end all human life. They believe in an afterlife which will only commence when this one has ended, for everyone. We’ve recently learned that the Moldies are ‘helping’ the plague.”