Children of God (46 page)

Emilio Sandoz turned away and ducked back into the stone hut, where he was greeted by the wreckage of a woman, as forgotten as he was in the rejoicing. We cremate our dead, Rukuei had said. When? Two days ago? Three? So the Pope was right, Emilio thought numbly. No grave to dig…. Drained of emotion, he sat down heavily, next to what had been Ha’anala. If anything could prove the existence of the soul, he thought, it is the utter emptiness of a corpse.

Unbidden, unlocked for, the stillness came upon him: evoked by music and by death, and by the shadowless love that can only be felt at a birth. Once more, he felt the tidal pull, but this time he swam against it, as a man being swept out to sea fights the current. Putting his head in his hands, he let the weight of his skull press down on the hardware of his braces, for once in his life seeking a physical pain that he could rule, to block out what was beyond his control.

It was a mistake. Tears that sprang from his body’s hurt now began to bleed from his soul’s wounds. For a long time, he was lost, and freshly maimed. It was not his body violated, not his blood spilt, not his love shattered, but he wept for the dead, for the irreversible wrongs, the terrible sorrows. For Ha’anala. For Shetri’s losses, and his own—for Gina and Celestina, and the life they might have had together. For Sofia, for Jimmy. For Marc, and D.W., and Anne and George. For his parents, and his brother. For himself.

When the sobbing quieted, he lay down next to Ha’anala, feeling as empty as her corpse. "God," he whispered, over and over, until exhaustion claimed him. "God."

"SANDOZ? I’M SORRY." DANNY HESITATED, THEN SHOOK HIM AGAIN. "I’M sorry," he repeated when Emilio sat up. "We waited as long as we could, but this is important."

Sandoz looked around, bemused by the sensation of his own swollen eyelids. The confusion lifted quickly. Ha’anala’s body had been removed sometime during the night; the room was packed with priests.

"You okay?" John asked, wincing at the stupidity of the question when Emilio shrugged noncommittally. "Look, there’s something you have to see," John said, and he handed over his own tablet. Frans Vanderhelst had shot a set of data files to his root directory, leaving them for John to discover. A case of divided loyalties, John had decided, looking at the images with growing fear, and working out what they meant. Frans had evidently been watching the show for some time, trying to decide what, if anything, to do about it. A good mercenary has just so much latitude and Carlo was the padrone, but ultimately the fat man had done what he could…

"Jesus," Emilio breathed, scrolling through the images. "Do you have an estimate of the size of that force?"

"I make it something over thirty thousand in the main body," Joseba told him. Any picture in Joseba’s mind of the stately, deliberative life of the Runa had been swept away by the time-date stamps on the images, as he confronted the reality of an army that had conquered the known world of Rakhat as quickly, and more thoroughly, than Alexander had conquered his.

"This looks like light infantry in the vanguard," Danny said, reaching over Sandoz’s shoulder to point at the screen, "backed by armor, maybe two day’s march behind them. And that’s an image from about four days ago. Can you see how much brighter it looks? We’re picking up the glare off the metal."

"There’s infrared showing another large group behind them," Joseba said. "Look at the next one."

Sandoz stared at the image and then looked up at worried faces.

"Artillery," Sean confirmed, "and they’re headed right for us."

"But we came in above the cloud cover, and John stayed below the sound barrier!" Emilio said. "How could they have tracked us?"

It was Danny who answered. "Can’t say for sure, ace, but I could give it a guess."

Emilio thought, and then closed his eyes for a moment. "Carlo sold us out. He gave them the coordinates."

"Looks that way."

Nico stood just outside the door. "So the signora doesn’t have to wait for us to bring Isaac to her," he said. "She’s coming to get him."

"She doesn’t need an army t’do that," Sean pointed out sourly, hunkering down next to Joseba.

"Sandoz, there’s something else you should know," said Danny Iron Horse. "When you three first went missing, Sofia Mendes swore she would ’track those djanada bastards to their lair and finish this, once and for all.’»

"Yes. You can see the appeal," said Sandoz. A lasting peace, secure borders, an unblighted future for the Runa…. He rubbed his face against his arms, and they all got to their feet. For an instant—in a small stone room, surrounded by huge bodies—he felt reality shift, but pulled himself back to the present, which was bad enough. "We have to warn the VaN’Jarri;" he said. "They should probably evacuate. Pull back to that Athaansi’s settlement, yes? Concentrate in one valley and set up a defense?"

Danny shook his head. "Fish in a barrel, once the artillery gets here."

"Small, scattered groups might have a better chance of escaping detection," said Joseba, "but they may also starve to death, or die of exposure."

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other," John said. "Either way, they’re in a real bad place."

"It’s not our decision, now, is it?" said Sean. "We give ’em the facts and let the VaN’Jarri make the move." And when the others shrugged their agreement, he moved to the doorway, jerking his head at Joseba. "Come on, lad. Let us go forth and spread the good news."

"I wonder what Carlo got for us?" John mused as Sean and Joseba stepped past Nico and strode off.

"An excuse to quit before he failed," said Emilio, working through the images Frans had sent. "Look at this one. They’re taking on cargo. Carlo’s going to load up and go home. The drone has been down to Agardi, what? Three times already." He stopped, and then said, "Oh, my God."

"What?" John asked, frightened now. "What’s in Agardi? Munitions factories? Is he—"

"No. Nothing like that. Distilleries," said Sandoz softly, looking up at Danny and John.

"Distilleries?" John echoed, confused. "Then he’s loading—"

"Yasapa brandy," said Danny. Sandoz nodded, and Danny sighed, shaking his head.

"So that’s it, then?" John cried, throwing his hands in the air. "Carlo sells us out, stocks up on Rakhati brandy and goes home richer than Gates!" Furious, he slumped down the wall opposite the door and sat, legs out straight, back against the stones.

"And yet," Emilio remarked mildly, "there does seem to be some justice in the universe after all." He was standing in the doorway, and the light behind him lit up his hair, obscuring his expression. "You see," Emilio said, "I never had a chance to tell Carlo, but yasapa brandy is—"

Danny’s eyes widened. Mouth open, he paused, barely breathing. "Awful?" he suggested hopefully.

"Say yes," John urged, scrambling to his feet and moving to Danny’s side. "Please, Emilio, say it’s awful! Lie if you have to, but tell me it’s the worst liquor you ever drank in your whole life."

Face haggard, eyes seraphic, Sandoz spoke. "It tastes," he said, "just… like… soap."

HAD ANYONE ASKED, EMILIO SANDOZ COULD HAVE EXPLAINED THE KIND of half-hysterical laughter that can overcome grief and fear and desperation, but no one was listening to the Jesuits in Ha’anala’s hut. By the time Emilio went outside, the evacuation of the N’Jarr valley was under way— parents gathering children, bundling possessions, arguing and shouting, making snap decisions, having second thoughts, trying not to panic. There was an island of calm in the midst of all this, and he pushed toward it, knowing somehow that Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai would be at its center, where Ha’anala’s pyre was still smoking.

He dropped to his knees at her side. "We have brought trouble on you," he said. "I am sorry for it."

"You meant well," she said. "And there is a life because of you."

"You’re not packing," he observed.

"As you see," she said serenely, ignoring the tumult around them.

"My lady Suukmel, hear me: you are not safe here anymore."

"Safety, I find, is a relative term." She lifted her hand, as though to draw a veil over her head, but stopped, midgesture. "I am staying," she said in a tone that invited no argument. "I have decided that if this foreigner Sofia comes to the N’Jarr, I shall have a talk with her. We have some things in common." Her lips curled slightly, and her eyes seemed to him amused. "And what are your plans?" she asked.

"Much like your own," he told her. "I’m going south, to have a talk with Sofia."

HE DIDN ’T DARE USE THE LANDER, PREFERRING TO RESERVE ITS REMAINING fuel for emergencies, so he and Nico went south on foot. The priests stayed in the N’Jarr to help in whatever ways they could, but Nico would not hear of being separated from him and Emilio did not protest. It was unlikely that what they’d face in twelve days’ time would yield to a handgun and a resolute attitude, but Nico had repeatedly proved his worth and Emilio was glad of his company. Tiyat and Kajpin came along as well, to lead the way through the mountain passes and twisted ravines and foothills. The plan was to walk back to the ruins of Inbrokar, and then go on a bit farther south, where they would wait on the road for Sofia and the Runa army to come upon them.

By second sunset, Emilio and Nico were both bleeding from the knees, and Emilio was beginning to reconsider the definition of "emergency." The Gamu mountain strata were thin and fragile, tipped nearly vertical: an evil surface to hike, exhausting and treacherous underfoot. The Runa had three limbs to call upon but even for them, the climb was difficult. "Are you all right, Nico?" Emilio asked, as Tiyat and Kajpin helped the big man up a fifth time. "Perhaps we should go back for the lander after all—"

He stopped, hearing the scrabbling sound of sliding rocks behind him, and turned with Nico to watch a tall, naked human striding down the incline on dirty, storklike legs, a tattered blue parasol held high over his head.

"Isaac?" Nico suggested, brushing debris from his scraped palms as he rubbed the newest sore spots.

"Yes," Emilio guessed softly. "Who else could it be?"

He had expected a mixture of Jimmy and Sofia in their child’s face. Perhaps that was the greatest surprise: Isaac was not a child. He must be close to forty, Emilio realized. Older than Jimmy was when he died…. The father’s coiling hair had been passed on, but Isaac’s was a darker red, now shot with gray, and matted into brittle, filthy dreadlocks. There was something of Sofia’s delicacy in the long, birdlike bones, and a familiarity to the mouth, but it was difficult to find the mother in this grimy wraith with evasive blue eyes.

"Isaac has rules," Tiyat informed them quickly, when the man stood still a few paces up the incline. "Don’t interrupt him."

Isaac did not even glance at the newcomers, but appeared rather to be studying something just to Emilio’s left. "Isaac," Emilio began hesitantly, "we are going to see your mother—"

"I won’t go back," said Isaac in a loud, toneless voice. "Do you know any songs?"

Baffled, Emilio hardly knew what to reply, but Nico simply answered, "I know a lot of songs."

"Sing one."

Even Nico seemed a little taken aback, but rose to the occasion, offering Puccini’s "O mio bambino caro" with floating top notes in a soft falsetto, repeating the song when Isaac told him to. For a time, there was no sound in the world but the two of them together: twin untutored tenors, artlessly beautiful in close harmony. Nico, beaming, would have sung "Questa o quella" next, but Isaac said, "That’s all," and turned to go.

No prosody at all, Emilio noted, recalling symptoms he’d studied long ago in a developmental linguistics course. The VaN’Jarri had mentioned Isaac’s oddities but, until now, he had not realized that there was something more than isolation that would account for the things they’d described.

"Isaac," he called before the man had stalked away, knees rising high as a waterbird’s as he walked through the splintery rocks. "Do you have a message for your mother?"

Isaac stopped, but did not face him. "I won’t go back," he repeated. "She can come here." There was a pause. "That’s all," he said, and disappeared around an outcropping.

"She’s already on her way," Kajpin muttered.

"That lander is too noisy and stinks too much," Tiyat remarked, going back to the topic abandoned when Isaac showed up. "We’ll be through the worst of this bad ground by tomorrow at third sunset," she promised.

ONCE BEYOND THE INFLUENCE OF THE GARNU RANGE, THE LAND GENTLED, rising and falling by little more than a Runao’s height. The sapphire hills darkened to indigo with distance, the near country afire with magenta blossoms flaring in sunlight, and Emilio began to be glad after all that they had remained on foot. Repetitive movement had always calmed him, narrowing the focus to the burning of his muscles, the impact of the ground against his feet. He did not try to anticipate Sofia’s arguments or his own. It will be well, he thought, hour after hour, putting one foot in front of the other like a pilgrim walking to Jerusalem. Over and over: It will be well. He did not believe this; Ha’anala’s words simply matched the rhythm of his pace.

They foraged frequently as they walked; camped in the open, heedless of detection. "If we’re arrested, they’ll take us to the army anyway," Kajpin pointed out with untroubled practicality. "What difference does it make?"

By day, Emilio could almost match that fatalism, but the nights were bad, spent wandering in charred, empty dream-cities, or pacing in the noisy darkness waiting for dawn. At last, the others would rouse, and they’d break their fast with leftovers from the previous night’s meal. Once or twice, Nico brought down some small game, but much of the meat went to waste. Emilio ate very little—his usual response to tension. Pacing restlessly until their journey resumed, he would lose himself in the silent chant: It will be well.

Eight days’ travel south of the mountains, they saw the glint and flash of equipment in the sunlight, flaring now and then on the horizon. By late afternoon, they could pick out a dark mass at the base of a dust plume when the rolling land lifted the army into sight.

"We’ll be there tomorrow," Tiyat said, but she looked west and added, "unless the rain comes sooner."

That night they all slept badly, and woke to haze and sultry air. Leaving the others to their breakfast, Emilio walked up a low rise, gazing out toward the army bivouac. The first sun had barely begun to climb, but even now the heat was making the ground dance and shimmer, and he was already sweating. Screw it, he thought, and called back to his companions, "We’ll wait here."

"Good idea," said Kajpin, joining him. "Let them come to us!"

They spent the morning sitting on the little hill, Nico and the Runa eating and chatting like picnickers waiting for a parade. But as the army grew closer and they saw the numbers, they fell as silent as Sandoz, ears straining for the first sounds. It was hard to tell if they truly heard or only imagined the thudding of feet, the clank of metal, the caroling of commands and commentary from the ranks; storm clouds now hid the western horizon with columns of black rain, and the breeze carried away all but the nearest noises.

"This is going to be a fierce one," Tiyat predicted uneasily, standing with her tail braced against a stiffening wind. The lightning in the west was nearly continuous, illuminating the underside of the thunderheads.

Kajpin stood as well. "Rain falls on everyone," she said without concern, but then added the more ominous phrase, "lightning strikes some." Tramping down the hillock to a small dip in the ground, she sat again, lowering her profile, calmly contemplating the soldiers’ ranks before remarking cheerfully, "Glad I’m not wearing armor."

"How long do you think before the storm comes?" Nico asked.

Emilio looked west and shrugged. "An hour. Maybe less."

"Do you want me to go to them and ask for Signora Sofia?"

"No, Nico. Thank you. Wait here, please," Sandoz said. He joined Tiyat and Kajpin, and repeated, "Wait here." Then, without looking back, he walked without hurry down the road until he’d halved the distance and stood alone: a small flat-backed figure, silver and black hair lifted and blown by the breeze.

By this time the vanguard had also come to a halt, and before long these ranks parted to make way for a curtained sedan chair borne from the bivouac by four Runa.

Emilio tried to prepare himself for the sight of her, the sound of her voice, but gave up and simply watched as the bearers set the chair down gently. With dispatch, they unfurled a temporary shelter like a veranda around the litter, its waterproof fabric the color of marigolds, bright in the sunlight east of the approaching storm. There was a short delay while an ingeniously designed folding chair was brought forward from an equipment wagon, snapped into shape and placed in front of the conveyance. Finally a staircase, hinged at the base of the litter’s entrance, was tipped outward, and he saw a tiny hand as it separated the curtains and took a proffered arm as support in her descent.

He had expected her to be altered but still lovely; he was not disappointed. The raking scars and the empty socket were a shock, but the harsh suns of Rakhat had rendered her face so finely creased that it seemed made of gauze; the seams of scar tissue were now merely three lines among many, and her remaining eye was lively and observant, and seemed to sweep her surroundings in continual compensation for her halved field of vision. Even the arc of her spine seemed graceful to him: a curve of curiosity, as though she had bent to examine some object on the ground that had caught her attention on her way to the camp chair. She sat, and looked up, her head tilted almost coyly, waiting for him. Delicate as a wren, with her small spare hands in her lap, she had in repose a skeletal purity: elegant and fleshless and still. "Thou art beautiful," he thought, "comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners…."

"Sofia," he said and held his hands out to her.

Her’s remained quiet. "It’s been a long time," she observed coldly, when he drew near. "You might have come to me first." She held his gaze with her one eye until his own dropped. "Have you seen Isaac?" she asked, when he could look at her again.

"Yes," he said. She stiffened slightly and took in a breath, and he understood then that Sofia had believed her son long dead, his name used heartlessly to lure more hostages to the djanada stronghold. "Isaac is well," he began.

"Well!" She gave a short laugh. "Not normal, but well, at least. Is he with you?"

"No—"

"They are still holding him hostage."

"No, Sofia, nothing like that! He is a person of honor among them—"

"Then why isn’t he here, with you?"

He hesitated, not wanting to wound her. "He—Isaac prefers to stay where he is. He has invited you to come to him." He stopped, looking past her to the troops visible beyond the golden tenting. "We can take you to him, but you must come alone."

"Is that the game?" she asked, smiling coolly. "Isaac is the bait, and they’d have me."

"Sofia, please!" he begged. "The Jana’ata aren’t—. Sofia, you’ve got it all wrong!"

"I have it wrong," she repeated softly. "I have it wrong. Sandoz, you’ve been here, what? A few weeks?" she asked lightly, brows up, one twisted by scar tissue. "And now you tell me that I have it all wrong. Wait! There is a word in English for this—now let me think…" She stared at him, unblinking. "Arrogance. Yes. That’s the word. I had almost forgotten it. You have come back, after forty years, and you have taken almost three whole weeks to get to know the situation, and now you propose to explain Rakhat to me."

He refused to be intimidated. "Not Rakhat. Just one small settlement of Jana’ata, trying not to starve to death. Sofia, do you realize that the Jana’ata are nearly extinct? Surely you didn’t mean—"

"Is that what they told you?" she asked. She snorted with derision. "And you believed them."

"Dammit, Sofia, don’t patronize me! I know starvation when I see It—"

"What if they are starving?" she snapped. "Shall I regret that a cannibal starves?"

"Oh, for crissakes, Sofia, they aren’t cannibals!"

"And what would you call it?" she asked. "They eat Runa—"

"Sofia, listen to me—"

"No, you listen to me, Sandoz," she hissed. "For nearly thirty years, we-but-not-you fought an enemy whose whole civilization was the purest expression of the most characteristic form of evil: the willingness to erase the humanity of others and turn them into commodities. In life, the Runa were conveniences for the djanada—slaves, assistants, sex toys. In death, raw materials—meat, hides, bones. Labor first, livestock in the end! But the Runa are more than meat, Sandoz. They are a people who have earned their liberty and won it from those who kept them in bondage, generation after generation. God wanted their freedom. I helped them to get it, and I regret nothing. We gave the Jana’ata justice. They reaped precisely what they sowed."

"So God wants them extinct?" Emilio cried. "He wants the Runa to turn the planet into a grocery store? God wants a place where no one sings, where everyone is alike, where there is one kind of person? Sofia, this has gone way past an eye for an eye—"

The sound was like a gunshot, flat and unresonant, and he could feel the exact outline of her hand, stinging and sharp, form on his face.

"How dare you," she whispered. "How dare you leave me behind, and come back now—after all this time—and presume to judge me!"

He stood still, face averted, waiting for the sensation to ease, eyes wide to keep the tears from spilling. Tried to imagine forty years alone and unsupported, without John or Gina, without Vince Giuliani or Edward Behr, or any of the others who’d helped him.

"I’m sorry," he said finally. "I’m sorry! I don’t know what happened here, and I won’t pretend to understand what you have lived through —»

"Thank you. I am glad to hear it—"

"But, Sofia, I do know what it is to be a commodity," he said, cutting her off. "I know what it is to be erased. I also know what it is to be falsely accused, and God help me! I know what it is to be guilty—" He stopped and looked away, but then met her eye and said, "Sofia, I have eaten Runa, and for the same reason the djanada did: because I was hungry and I wanted to live. And I have killed—I killed Askama, Sofia. I didn’t mean it to be her, but I wanted to kill, I wanted someone to die so that I could be free, one way or the other. So you see," he told her with bleak cheer, "I am the last person to judge anyone else! And I grant you that the Jana’ata you fought got what was coming to them! But, Sofia—you can’t let the Runa kill them all! They’ve paid for their sins—"