In Nathaniel Drake's day, the worms of Forget Me Not were legion.
All over Silk City you could hear the sad susurrus of their tiny
bodies as they spun their colorful cocoons in the long low sheds
thoughtfully provided for them by the good folk of Pastelsilks, Inc.
Toward twilight, the whispering would fade away, then, with the timid
twinkling of the first star, it would come to life again and build up
and up and up until the night would be one great vast whispering of
worms at work---pink worms, green worms, blue worms, yellow worms,
spinning silk such as had never been known before and will never be
known again, for now the worms of Forget Me Not are dead.
Raise one more monument to the onward march of mankind. Place it beside
the statue of the buffalo. You know where the statue of the buffalo
stands. It stands right next to the statue of the blue whale.
Nathaniel Drake was well acquainted with the whispering. Forget Me
Not was his birthplace, and his father had brought him to the fabled
city-farm when Drake was a small boy. In his capacity as merchant
spaceman, Drake had been there many times since, but it was the first
time that stood out the most vividly in his memory. His father had
been a grower of multi-pastels, a Forget Me Not plant genus whose
mulberry-like leaves formed the worms' main diet, and had occasionally
come to Silk City on business. On one of these occasions he had brought
the boy Nathaniel with him and taken him through several of the long
low sheds, hoping that the experience might help the boy to forget
about his mother, who had died the spring before and about whom he had
been brooding ever since. There had been the sad susurrus of the worms
working, and the glowing of colorful cocoons in the gloom, and in the
processing sheds there had been the relentless turning of the automatic
reels and the tiny corpses falling to the floor, one by one, and the
boy Nathaniel, obsessed with thoughts of death, had wondered why more
of the larvae were not spared the ignominy of the heat-treatment ovens
and allowed to attain the apotheosis that was their birthright, not
knowing then the senseless selfishness of mankind.
The man Nathaniel had not wondered. The man Nathaniel had not cared.
The ghost of the man Nathaniel cared even less.
"Hello," said the ghost to a pretty girl as it passed her on the street.
The girl screamed, and ran away.
An old woman looked at him with horror in her eyes, then looked the
other way. An IRS trooper stopped and stared.
Nathaniel Drake went on.
Behind him in the Silk City spaceport, a trio of reluctant techs from
Pastelsilks, Inc. were conducting various tests upon his cargo in order
to determine whether or not it could be salvaged. As their findings
would have to be processed through the executive echelons of the
company and would not be made known to him till later in the day, he
had a few hours to kill.
He did not intend to kill them in lush lairs, however. He had a wound
to take care of.
* * * * *
It was the wound that had appeared in the side of his conscience. It
had festered on the trip in from Dior, and now it was so painful that
he could barely endure it. Madame Gin had only made it worse.
Conscience-wounds are different from physical wounds. In treating
physical wounds, you attack the effect. In treating conscience-wounds,
you attack the cause. Once the cause is eliminated, the wound
automatically closes. This is rarely possible, but quite often the
cause can be weakened, in which case the wound, while it will never
completely close, will at least be less painful. In Nathaniel Drake's
case, the cause was Saint Annabelle Leigh. If he could prove to himself
that his suspicions were correct and that she had been something less
than her sainthood would seem to indicate, a quantity of his pain might
go away, and if he could discredit her sainthood altogether, his wound
might close completely.
He proceeded directly to the local headquarters of the Army of
the Church of the Emancipation. There, he inquired whether a
Saint Annabelle Leigh were assigned to any of the local chapels. A
white-faced clerk replied in the affirmative, and referred him to the
Saint Julia Ward Howe chapel on Redemption Street.
In common with all Church of the Emancipation chapels, the Saint Julia
Ward Howe chapel was an unpretentious wooden building, long and narrow,
with crossed Confederate and Union flags hanging above its entrance.
Entering, Drake walked down a narrow aisle between two rows of backless
benches and paused in front of a small pulpit upon which a crude
lectern stood. Beyond the lectern there was a curtained doorway, and
above this doorway two more crossed-flags hung. Presently the curtains
parted, and a tall, pale man with a seamed and narrow face and gray and
quiet eyes stepped onto the pulpit. "I am Saint Andrew," he began, then
stopped in staring consternation.
"I'm Nathaniel Drake, the captain of the _Fly by Night_," Drake said.
"I've come about Saint Annabelle Leigh."
Comprehension supplanted the consternation on Saint Andrew's lined
face--comprehension and relief. "I am so glad you came, Mr. Drake. I am
but just returned from the port, where I was informed that you had just
left. I--I refrained from asking them about Saint Annabelle. Tell me,
is she all right? Did you put her down on Iago Iago? I have been half
out of my mind ever since I heard what happened to you and your ship."
"I had bad news for you," Drake said. "Saint Annabelle Leigh is dead."
* * * * *
The whispering of the worms crept into the room. Saint Andrew's
immaculate blue-gray uniform seemed suddenly several sizes too large
for him. "Dead? Please tell me that's not true, Mr. Drake."
"I can't," Drake said. "But I can tell you how it happened." He did
so briefly. "So you can see it wasn't my fault," he concluded. "I
_couldn't_ put her down on Iago Iago. It would have meant jeopardizing
my pilot's license, and piloting a ship is all I know how to do. It
isn't fair to ask a men to put his livelihood on the block--it isn't
fair at all. She should have contacted me before she stowed away. You
simply _can't_ hold me responsible for what happened."
"Nor do I, Mr. Drake." Saint Andrew wiped away a tear that had run
halfway down his cheek. "She did what she did against my advice," he
went on presently. "The information she had received concerning a
resurrection on Iago Iago was of dubious origin to say the least, and I
was dead set against her stowing away on board your ship in any event,
but she was very set in her ways. None of which in the least alleviates
the cruel fact of her death."
"She left much to be desired as a saint then?" Drake asked.
"On the contrary, she was one of the finest persons I have ever
indoctrinated. One of the kindest and the gentlest. And in all my years
of service in the Army of the Church of the Emancipation I have never
seen a more dedicated and selfless soldier than she was. Her--her
passing grieves me immeasurably, Mr. Drake."
Drake looked at the floor. He felt suddenly tired. "May I sit down,
Saint Andrew?" he said.
"Please do."