The Hierarch, who had started the inquiry with a furious intensity, now looked stricken. “A Moldy?”
“Brother Mainoa thought so,” Rigo said, following Marjorie’s lead. “Because—“
“Because Fuasoi wouldn’t have ordered Mainoa killed, otherwise,” Marjorie concluded. “If he thought Mainoaknewsomething about the plague, the only reason to kill him would be if Fuasoi was a Moldy. Anyone who was nota Moldy would want Brother Mainoa alive, talking about what he knew.” She looked at the Hierarch helpfully, feeling hysteria pushing at the back of her tongue.
“Moldies here, on Grass?” the Hierarch whispered, very pale, his mouth drawn into a rictus of horror. “Here?”
Rigo saw the man’s terror and was thankful for it “Well, Your Eminence,” Rigo offered in a placating tone, “it was only a matter of time until they came here. Everyone knew that. Even Sender O’Neil told me that!”
The audience ended abruptly. They were outside the chamber, being escorted to the shuttle once more. Highbones wasn’t with them. AdmitbonMaukerden wasn’t with them. Those two were taken away in some other direction.
“Where are they going?” Marjorie asked.
“Down to the port,” the escort leader responded. “We’ll hold them there in case the Hierarch wants them again.”
Marjorie felt a surge of hope. If they had been believed, perhaps the Hierarch would depart. Perhaps this is all it would take! When Marjorie and Rigo reached the port, however, they were not allowed to return to the town. Instead they were taken to the empty Port Hotel and given a suite with a guard outside the door
“Are we to stay here without food?” Marjorie demanded.
“Somebody’ll bring it from the officer’s mess,” the guard said. “Hierarch wants you here where he can lay hands on you if he needs you.”
When the door was shut behind them, Marjorie put her lips almost against Rigo’s ear. “Anything we say here can probably be overheard.”
He nodded. “I think Mainoa was right,” he said loudly. “I think Brother what’s-his-name was a Moldy. He probably had virus shipped in weeks ago. That’s probably what the people in town have. I think we ought to get off this planet, Marjorie. As soon as possible.” He shook his head at her tiredly. What more could they say or do than this mixture of half truth and part lies? If the Hierarch was frightened enough, perhaps his own fear would drive him away.
Rigo sat down, leaning back, eyes closed. Marjorie sat near him. The room was full of unsaid things and of the teasing memory of said ones. She looked at his exhausted face and felt an almost impersonal sorrow, like the feelings she had often had for the people of Breedertown. And she could help him no more than she had ever helped them.
Behind his slitted eyelids, Rigo wondered if it was too late. If too much had happened. Eugenie. Stella. His accusations against Marjorie. Stupid of him. He knew better. If he knew anything about her, he knew she had no appetites of that kind. Why had he accused her?
Because he had had to accuse her of something.
And now? Was it too late to forgive her for what she had never done?
18
In the Tree City of the Arbai two religious gentlemen sat in the mild breezes of evening, eating fruit which had been brought from the surrounding trees by foxen, one of whom had remained to join the feast.
“Like plums,” said Father James. He had arrived at the city by foxen back in midmorning. Father Sandoval had refused to come. Brother Mainoa had come to the city earlier, an exhausting trip from which he had not yet recovered. Now the Brother reclined against the breast of a foxen, like a child in a shadowy chair, while Father James tried to convince himself yet again that the foxen were real—not dreams, not amorphous visions, not abstractions or delusions. Conviction was difficult when he couldn’t really see them. He caught a glimpse of paw, or hand, a glimpse of eye, a shadowed fragment of leg or back. Trying to see the being entire was giving him eye strain and a headache. He turned aside, resolving not to bother. Soon everything would resolve itself, one way or another.