CHAPTER 9
A wave of revulsion turned Comstock's stomach making him forget, for a moment, the girl for whom he was seeking. All around him in eddying mobs were elderly, grey and white-haired women, their long dresses dragging on the ground. The idea that he had ever found them exciting was hard for him to bear. And the way the young men held the women's arms, talked to them, guided and protected them, made Comstock feel even queazier.
It was a Grandfather's Meeting night and all the couples were on their way to the meeting house. Above them all, the crazily careening green moon sent down harsh high lights that made the old women seem even more decrepit than they really were.
But search as Comstock would, of the red-haired girl he found no sign.
It was getting later and he saw an R.A.'s carriage come down the street, its astrobats dancing as the R.A. driver lashed them. He called out, "Nine o'clock, time for meeting!"
Knowing that he would be arrested if he stayed out on the street while everyone else went into the meeting house, Comstock decided he had better try to look like a normal citizen. Even so, however, he was the recipient of an icy stare from the R.A. For he was the last person to enter the meeting place.
Comstock's flesh crawled when he found the last empty hard seat, and sat listening to the only too familiar smooth patter of the Elder who stood in the front of the hall, on a little podium and mouthed the old, only too familiar platitudes, about The Grandfather.
Closing his eyes, Comstock tried unavailingly to close his ears to the now meaningless words that flooded him and all the others in the crowded smelly meeting place.
The Elder was speaking, his seamed face hanging in lank folds, his jowls wobbling as they barked out the words, "And so, we know now that only in the lap of The Grandfather is there to be found the peace that passes all understanding...."