And then, as he stared into the child's dead face, remembering that last night the infant had been alive, had responded to his touch, he realized that there was more truth than they realized to their belief. Yes, he was the infant, chewed and cut and eaten and cast away to be buried in a hundred tiny graves. Yes, he was dead. And he nodded in acceptance, nodded in agreement.
The Vaqs all nodded, too, and one by one they came to him and kissed him. He was unsure of whether the kiss was a prelude to leaving or to killing; but then they each kissed the child's head that he held in his hands in front of him, and as he saw their lips tenderly rest on the infant forehead or cheeks or mouth he was overcome by self-pity and grief; he wept.
And, seeing his tears, the Vaqs grew afraid, babbled quietly among themselves, and then disappeared silently into the tall grass, leaving Linkeree alone with the child's relics.
Dr. Hort went to see Mrs. Danol as soon, as he woke up in the morning. She was sitting in one of the empty private rooms, her hands folded in her lap. He knocked. She looked up, saw him through the window, nodded, and he came in.
"Good morning," he said to her.
"Is it?" she answered. "My son is dead by now, Dr. Hort."
"Perhaps not. He wouldn't be the first to survive a night in the grass, Mrs. Danol."
She only shook her head.
"I'm sorry about last night's fracas," he said. "I was tired."
"You were also too damn right," she answered. "I woke up at four this morning, sedative or no sedative. I thought and thought about it. I'm poison. I've poisoned my son just by being his mother. I wish I could be out there on the plain in his place, dying for him."
"And what the hell good would that do?"
She only cried in answer. He waited. The sobbing let up only a few moments later.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I've been crying off and on all morning." Then she looked at Hort, pleading in her eyes, and said, "Help me."
He smiled-- kindly, not triumphantly-- and said, "I'll try. Why don't you just tell me what you've been thinking about?"
She laughed bitterly. "That's a rat's nest we hardly need to go into. I spent most of the time thinking about my husband."
"Whom you don't like."
"Whom I loathe. He married me because I wouldn't sleep with him otherwise. He slept with me until I got pregnant; then he moved on. When Linkeree turned out to be a boy, he was delighted, and changed his will to leave everything to the boy. Nothing to me. And then, after he had slept with every girl on this planet and half the boys, he was run over by a tractor and I gave a little cheer."
"He was well thought of on the planet."
"People always think well of money."
"They often think well of beauty, too."
And at that she cried again. Through her sobs, in a twisted, little-girl voice, she said, "All I ever wanted was to go to Capitol. To go to Capitol and meet all the famous people and be on somec so that I could live forever and be beautiful forever. It's all I had, being beautiful-- I had no money, no education, and no talent for anything, not even motherhood. Do you know what it means to have only one thing that makes other people love you?"
No, Hort thought to himself, but I can see what a tragedy it is.
"You were your son's guardian. You could have taken him to Capitol."
"No, I couldn't. It's the law, Hort. Planet money must be invested on the planet until it achieves full provincial status. It protects us from exploitation. " She spat the word. "No somec allowed until we're a province. No chance to have life!"
"There are some of us who don't want to sleep for years on end, just to stay young a few years longer," Dr. Hort said.
"Then you're the insane ones," she retorted, and he almost agreed. Eternal life didn't appeal to him. Sleeping through life seemed like a disgusting waste of time. But he knew the draw, knew that most people who came to the colonies were desperate or stupid, that the gifted ones or the rich ones or the hopeful ones stayed where somec was within reach.
"Not only that," she said, "my damnable husband entailed the entire fortune, everything. Not a penny could be taken from Pampas."
"Oh."
"So I stayed, hoping that when my son grew up we could find some way, go anyway--"
"If your son hadn't been born, the money would all have been left to you, unentailed, and you could have sold it to an offworlder and gone."
She nodded, and began to weep again.
"No wonder you hated your son."
"Chains. Chains, holding me here, stripping away my only asset as the years made hash of my face and my figure."
"You're still beautiful."
"I'm forty-five years old. It's too late. Even if I left for Capitol today, they won't let someone over forty-five go on somec at all. It's the law."
"I know. So--"
"So stay here and make the best of it? Thanks, Doctor, thanks. I might as well have a priest as you."
She turned away from him, and muttered, "And now the boy dies. Now, when it's too late. Why the bloody hell couldn't he have died a year ago?"
Linkeree patted the last of the earth over the grave he had dug for the head and skin of the child. The tears had long since dried; now the only liquid on him was sweat from the exertion in the hot sun of digging through the heavy roots of the grass. No wonder the Vaqs had dug shallowly to hide the bones. It was already afternoon, and he had only just finished.
But as he had worked, he had forced himself back, coldly reassembling his memories in his mind, burying them one by one in the child's grave. It was not Mother I killed in the street, it was Zad. Mother is still alive; she visited me yesterday. That was why I fled the hospital; that was why I wanted to die. Because if ever there was a person who deserved to live, it was Zad. And if ever one deserved to die, it was Mother.
Several times he felt himself longing to curl up and hide, to retreat into the cool shade under the standing grass, to deny that any of this had ever happened, to deny that he had ever turned five at all. But he fought off the feeling, insisted on the facts, the whole history of his life, and then hid it under the dirt.
You, child, he thought. I am you. I came out here last night to die in the grassland, to be eaten alive, to have my blood sucked out. And it happened; and the Vaqs ate my flesh and now I'm buried.
I who bury you, child, I am the you who might have been. I am without a past; I have only a future. I will start from here, without a mother, without blood on my hands, rejected by my own tribe and unacceptable to strangers. I will live among the strangers anyway, and live unencumbered. I will be you, and therefore I will be free.
He brushed the dirt off his hands, ignored the painful sunburn on his back, and stood. Around him the sucker eggs on the grassblades were already hatching, and the newborn suckers were devotedly eating each other so that only the few thousand strongest would survive, fed by the others. Link avoided obvious comparisons, merely turned and headed back toward the government compound.
He avoided the gate, instead climbing the fence and enduring the electricity that coursed through him when he gripped the top wire. And then, as the alarms went off, he walked back to the hospital.
Dr. Hort was alone in his office, eating a late lunch from a tray that Gram had brought him. Someone tapped at his door. He opened it, and Linkeree walked in.
Hort was surprised, but out of long professional habit, he didn't show it. Instead, he dispassionately watched as Linkeree walked to the chair, sat down comfortably, and leaned back with a sigh.