“How can you forget someone who looks like that?”
“His face is only a little lopsided.”
“His face is a nightmare. And so is the rest of him. First time I saw him, I couldn’t decide whether to throw up or kill him. He looks like a monster that someone tried to mash.”
“I think someone did. His father, if one listens to rumor. When he saw what Shoethai looked like, he tried to kill him but didn’t quite manage it. They took the man’s cells out of the files and consigned him to absolute death. Then they brought Shoethai into Sanctity. He was raised there. Fuasoi got used to the way he looks, I suppose. Used to it enough to bring him here, anyhow. As for the other two Doctrine assistants, Yavi and Fumo, I’ve always thought they looked a little like peepers. Square and floppy and without much you could call a face.” He chanted, “Jhamlees Zoe and Noazee Fuasoi, Yavi and Fumo and Shooothai,” drawing the latter’s name out into a chant. “Something strange about Fuasoi and Shoethai. Something weird!”
“And you want me to tell him …”
Brother Mainoa hummed. “Mind what I say. Just look depressed and tell him you don’t think you’d like the dig much.”
“Would I?”
“Would you what?”
“Would I like the dig much?”
“You’d like it better than staying here at the Friary for the next four or five Terran years, even though you’ve become quite a sky crawler in the last week or two. It may seem exciting right now, but it’ll get boring if you live long enough. Once you’ve seen sky, you’ve seen sky, now, haven’t you? Fog is fog and mist is mist and one moth is very like another. Eventually your bodyguards will get forgetful about watching out for you, and about that time Highbones or one of his cronies will knock you off a tower. Out at the dig, however, there’s nobody trying to kill you and we’re always finding new things. It’s interesting. Here it’s prayers five times a day and penitential walks between times. Here it’s mind your Doctrine and keep your mouth shut, because if Fuasoi isn’t listening, one of his little friends is. Yavi or Fumo or Shoethai, take your pick.”
Brother Lourai grunted assent, got grudgingly to his feet, and went off toward the Friary. As he walked away, he managed to look adequately depressed without acting. Between his nighttime exaltations, he had begun to realize that though he might have found his real self again, he had found it in a foreign place that would be home for the rest of his life. Ever since they had taken him away from the canyon when he was twelve, he had hoped someday to go back home and see the trees. Sometimes he dreamed of trees. Now his hope of ever seeing a tree again was dying.
Brother Mainoa sighed, looking after the retreating figure. “He’s homesick,” he said to himself. “The way I was.”
From the grasses came an interrogative purr, like a very soft growl.
Accustomed to this, Brother Mainoa did not even start. He shut his eyes and concentrated. How did one explain homesickness? Longing, he thought, for a place one knows very well. A place one needs to be happy. He thought the words, then tried to come up with a few pictures. Coming home in the lamplit evening. Opening a familiar door. The feel of arms around him….
Tears were running down his cheeks and he pushed them away, half angrily. As often happened, the feelings he was trying to transmit had been picked up and amplified back at him. “Damn all you creatures,” he said.
The growl became sorrowful.
“Last time I saw you, you were down near the dig. What are you doing up here, anyhow?”
Into his mind came a picture of a copse near the dig. At the center of it was a blankness. Amorphous blobs in shades of amethyst and pink prowled around the blankness, howling.
“You missed me?”
A purr.
“I’m coming back in a day or two. I’m just trying to get Brother Lourai to come with me, if they’ll let him. A new man without all the sense knocked out of him is better for me than one of the old ones that’s all soft and mushy like a sponge. ‘Yes, Brother. No, Brother.’Agreein’ with everything I say and then runnin’ off to report me to Doctrine the minute they can. And don’t you let Brother Lourai see you until I say so. You’d scare him out of a year’s growth. He isn’t even grown up yet. Poor lad. He’s all adrift. He was to have gone home this year, but he fell apart too soon.”