This was a statement requiring more than a little explanation. Since when had the foxen been talking to people? And where were these foxen? Tony and Rillibee told what they knew to Roald and Mayor Alverd Bee while dozens of other people came and went. They tried to describe foxen, unconvincingly, and were greeted with skepticism, if not outright disbelief.
Ducky Johns and Saint Teresa were there with an outlandish scenario of their own: Diamante bon Damfels, sneaking around naked in the port. Diamante bon Damfels now occupying a room in the hospital next to ones already taken by her sister, Emeraude, who had been beaten, and by Amy and Rowena, who refused to return to Klive. Sylvan, hearing this, went off to see his mother and sisters. Commoners looked after him, pityingly. A bon, here in Commons. Useless as a third leg on a goose.
“How did Diamante get here?” Tony demanded of the assembled group. “We’ve just come through the swamp forest, and if it’s the same everywhere as the parts we saw, there is literally no way through! There are some islands near the far edge, and some near this edge, too, but in the middle it’s deep water and tangles of low branches and vines everywhere you look, like an overgrown maze. If she wasn’t a climber, like Rillibee here, or if the foxen didn’t bring her, then how did she get here?”
“We’ve been asking ourselves that, sweet boy,” said Ducky Johns. “Over and over. Haven’t we, Teresa? And the only answer is there has to be another way in. One we haven’t known about until now.” Ducky’s usual girlish flirtatiousness was held in abeyance by her anxiety.
“One we still don’t know about,” Teresa amended.
“Oh, yes we do, dear,” Ducky contradicted. “We know it’s there. We just don’t know exactly where. Unless these strange foxen creatures did bring her, which they may have done, for all we know!”
Rillibee heard all this through a curtain of exhaustion. He said, “I don’t think the foxen brought her. Brother Mainoa would have known.”
“Do I know this Brother Mainoa you keep speaking of?” asked Alverd Bee.
Rillibee reminded him who Brother Mainoa was.
Sylvan joined them again, his face white and drawn. Dimity was conscious, but did not know him. Emmy was unconscious, though she was getting better. Rowena was sleeping. Amy had talked with him. She had told him his father was dead, and he was wondering why he felt nothing.
Rillibee was telling the mayor about Mainoa’s attempts to translate the Arbai documents.
“And you say they’ve translated something already?” Roald cried. He didn’t sound astonished, merely wild with a kind of quavery excitement. His gray hair tufted around his ears like a spiky aureole; he cracked his knuckles between jabs at the tell-me link, clickety crack. The sound was like someone walking on nutshells. “I want to see that, just as soon as I can. Let me get on to Semling.”
“Are you a linguist?” Sylvan asked him curiously, wondering why there would be any such thing on Grass.
“Oh, no, my boy,” Roald said. “My living comes from the family supply business. At languages, I’m only an amateur.” He said it without even looking at Sylvan, then asked Rillibee, “Who was Mainoa’s contact on Semling?”
Thus dismissed, Sylvan sat down at a table nearby, resting his head on his arms as he considered the continuing bustle around him. Things were busier in Commons than he had assumed they would be. People were more intelligent and far more affluent than he would have thought. They had things even the estancias didn’t have. Foods. Machines. More comfortable living arrangements. It made him feel insecure and foolish. Despite all his fury at Stavenger and the other members of the Obermun class, still he had accepted that the bons were superior to the commoners. Now he wondered if they really were—or if the bons were even equal to the commoners? Why had he thought Marjorie would welcome his attentions? What had he to offer her?
The thought struck him with sick embarrassment. He sought words he had read but seldom if ever used. “Parochial.” “Provincial.” “Narrow.” True words. What was a bon among these people? None of the commoners were deferring to him. None of them were asking for his opinion. Once Rillibee and Tony had told everyone that Sylvan was deaf to the foxen, Commons had disdained him as though he were deaf—and mute—to them as well. He could have accepted their disdain more easily if they had been professionals, like the doctor, but they were only amateurs, like this old man talking translation with Rillibee. Mere hobbyists. People who had studied things that had nothing to do with their daily lives. And every one of them knew more than he did! He wanted desperately to be part of them, part of something….