Children of God

by Mary Doria Russell

  “No. Sit down. Don’t change the subject. When did you sleep before that?”

  “Memory fails.” Sandoz put the coffee back, banging the cupboard door, and sank into the chair across the table again. “Don’t mother me, John. I hate it.”

  “Giuliani said your hands were giving you hell,” John persisted. “I don’t get this. They’re healed!” he cried, gesturing at them accusingly. “Why do they still hurt?”

  “Dead nerves, I am reliably informed, confuse the central nervous system,” Sandoz said with a sudden acid vivacity. “My brain becomes alarmed because it hasn’t heard from my hands in a long time. It thinks they might be in some kind of trouble so, like a pain-in-the-ass old friend, it calls attention to the situation by giving me a lot of crap!” Sandoz stared out the window for a moment, getting a grip on himself, and then glanced at John, who sat impassively, a veteran of these outbursts. “I’m sorry. The pain wears me out, okay? It comes and it goes, but sometimes …”

  John waited a moment, and then finished the sentence for him. “Sometimes when it comes, you’re afraid it will never go.”

  Emilio didn’t agree, but he didn’t deny it either. “The redemptive power of suffering is, in my experience at least, vastly overrated.”

  “Too Franciscan for me,” John agreed. Emilio laughed, and John knew if you could get Sandoz to laugh, you were halfway home. “How long this time?” he asked.

  Sandoz shrugged the question off, eyes sliding away. “It’s better if I’m working. Concentrating on something usually helps.” He glanced at John. “I’m okay now.”

  “But beat down to your feet. Right,” John said, “I’ll let you get some rest.” He slapped his hands on his thighs and stood, but rather than leave, he went to the sound-analysis gear along the gable wall opposite the stairway. Curious, he looked it over and then spoke casually. “I just wanted to check in with my new boss—unless, of course, you already hired the Pope.”

  Sandoz closed his eyes and twisted in the chair so he could stare over his shoulder at John. “Excuse me?”

  John turned, grinning, but his smile disappeared when he saw Emilio’s face. “You said you wanted someone who spoke Magyar. And English or Latin or Spanish. My Latin is pretty feeble,” John admitted, faltering under the chilly gaze. “Even so, I’m four for four. And I’m all yours. If you want me.”

  “You’re joking,” Emilio said flatly. “Don’t fuck with me, John.”

  “Sixteen languages to choose from and that’s the kind you use? Listen, I’m not a linguist, but I know my way around systems and I’m educable,” John said defensively. “My mom’s parents were from Budapest. Gramma Toth took care of me after school. My Magyar is actually nicer than my English. Gram was a poet in the old country and—”

  Sandoz, by this time, was shaking his head, not sure whether to laugh or to cry. “John, John. You don’t have to convince me. It’s only—” Only that he had missed Candotti. Only that he needed help but hated asking for it, needed colleagues but dreaded breaking in someone new. Father John Candotti, whose great gift as a priest was to forgive, had heard everything—and still, somehow, failed to despise or pity him. Emilio’s voice was mercifully steady when he found it. “It’s only that I thought there had to be a catch. I haven’t had much practice at receiving good news lately.”

  “No catch,” John declared confidently, for his life had not taught him to brace for the unexpected blow. He headed toward the stairway down to the garage level. “When can I start?”

  “Right away, as far as I’m concerned. But use the library system, okay? I am going to bed,” Sandoz announced as firmly as he could around a huge yawn. “If I am still sleeping in October, as I devoutly hope I shall be, you have my permission to wake me up. In the meantime, you can begin with the instructional program for Ruanja—Giuliani’s got the lock codes. But wait until I can help you with the K’San files. It’s a bitch of a language, John.” He put his left hand on the tabletop, rocking the arm outward to unhinge the braces, then froze, struck by a thought. “Jesus,” he said. “Is Giuliani sending you out with the next bunch?”

  There was a long silence. “Yeah,” John said. “Looks like it.”

  “And you’re willing to go?”

  John nodded, eyes serious. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  Breaking out of the paralysis, Emilio fell back against his chair and quoted Ignatius with brittle grandiosity. “Ready to move at a moment’s notice, with your breastplate buckled.”

  “If I die on Rakhat,” John said solemnly, “I ask only that my body be returned for burial in Chicago, where I can continue to participate—”

  “—in Democratic party politics!” Emilio finished with him. He snorted a laugh, and shook his head. “Well, you know not to eat the meat. And you’re big. You may have a fighting chance if some godforsaken Jana’ata takes a fancy to you.”

  “I guess that’s what Giuliani thinks, too. If I bulk up a little, we’ve got the makings of a pretty decent NFL offense. The other guys are huge.”

  “So you’ve met them already?”

  “Just the Jebs, not the civilians,” John said, rejoining him at the table. “The father superior’s a guy named Danny Iron Horse—”

  “Lakota?” Sandoz asked.

  “Partly—French and Swedish, too, he says, and he’s kind of sensitive about it. Apparently, the Lakota side of the family’s been off the rez for about four generations, and he’s pretty tired of people expecting him to wear feathers and speak without contractions, you know?”

  “Many moons go Choktaw …” Emilio intoned.

  “Turns out, he grew up in the suburbs of Winnipeg, and he must have gotten his size from the Swedes. But he’s got Black Hills written all over him, so he gets that shit all the time.” John winced. “I pissed him off almost immediately, telling him about a guy I know out on Pine Ridge. He cut me off at the knees—’No braids, no shades, ace. I’m not a drunk, and I’ve never been in a sweat lodge.’ ”

  Sandoz whistled, eyes wide. “Yep—that counts as sensitive. So, that’s what he isn’t. What is he?”

  “One of the sharpest political scientists in the Society, from what I hear, and it’s not like we’re short of them. There’s been talk about him winding up General one of these days, but when Giuliani offered him Rakhat, Danny left a full professorship at the Gregorian without a backward glance. He’s pumped for this.”

  “What about the others?” Emilio asked.

  “There’s a chemist from Belfast—he’s supposed to check out that nanoassembly stuff they do on Rakhat. I just met him last week, but Giuliani’s had these guys in training for months! Who knew? Anyway, get this: his name is Sean Fein.” Sandoz looked at him blankly. “Think about it,” John advised.

  “You’re joking,” Sandoz said after a moment.

  “No, but his parents were. Daddy was—”

  “Jewish,” Sandoz supplied, straight-faced.

  “Full marks. And his mother was political—”

  “Sean Fein, Sinn Fein,” Emilio said sympathetically. “Not just a joke, but a lame one at that.”

  “Yeah. I asked Sean if it helped at all to know that I went to high school with a kid named Jack Goff. ‘Not a blind bit,’ was all he said. The most morose Irishman I’ve ever met—younger than I am, but he carries himself like he’s a hundred.”

  “Sounds like a fun group,” Emilio commented dryly. “Giuliani said he was sending out four. Who’s the other guy?”

  “Oh, you’ll love this—you asked for someone who spoke Basque, right?”

  “Euskara,” Sandoz corrected him. “I just wanted people who were used to dealing with really different grammatical structures—”

  “Whatever.” John shrugged. “Anyway, he walks in—this enormous guy with the thickest hair I’ve ever seen, and I’m thinking, Hah! So that’s where all mine went! And then he says something absolutely incomprehensible, with way too many consonants. I didn’t know whether to say hello or punch him! Here—he wrote it d
own for me.” John dug a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “How the hell do you pronounce that?”

  Emilio took the paper in his right hand, still braced, moving it back and forth at arm’s length. “Playing air trombone! Can’t see small print worth a damn anymore,” he noted ruefully, but then he got a bead on it. “Joseba Gastainazatorre Urizarbarrena.”

  “Show-off,” John muttered.

  “They say the devil himself once tried to learn the Basques’ language,” Sandoz remarked informatively. “Satan gave up after only three months, having learned just two words of Euskara—both curses, which turned out to be Spanish anyway.”

  “So what should we poor mortals call him?” John asked.

  “Joe Alphabet?” Emilio suggested, yawning as he unhinged the second brace. “The first name is just like José. It’s easy: Ho-SAY-ba.”

  John tried it a couple of times and seemed satisfied that he could manage, as long as nobody expected him to go past the first three syllables. “Anyway, he’s an ecologist. Seems to be a nice guy. Thank God for small mercies, huh? Jeez—sorry! I forgot how tired you are,” John said, as Emilio yawned for the third time in as many minutes. “Okay, I’m going! Get some rest.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Emilio said, moving toward his bed. “And, John—I’m glad you’re here.”

  Candotti nodded happily and stood to leave, but paused at the top of the stairs and looked back. Emilio, too whipped to undress, had already fallen onto his mattress in a heap. “Hey,” John said, “aren’t you going to ask me what’s in the box?”

  Emilio kept his eyes closed. “Say, John, what’s in the box?” he asked dutifully before muttering, “Like I give a shit.”

  “Letters. And that’s just the paper stuff. Why don’t you ever check your messages?”

  “Because everybody I know is dead.” The eyes popped open. “So who the hell would write to me?” Sandoz asked the ceiling in rhetorical wonderment. There was a hoot of genuine amusement. “Oh, John, I’m probably getting mash notes from male convicts!”

  Candotti snorted, startled by the idea, but Sandoz rose on his elbows, transfixed by the sheer delicious absurdity of it, his face vivid, all the tiredness draining away for a minute. “My dear Emilio,” he started and, falling back on the bed, he began to improvise, obscenely and hilariously fluent, on the broad literary theme of prison romance in terms that rendered John breathless. Finally, when Sandoz had exhausted himself and his topic and John had wiped his eyes and caught his breath, Candotti cried, “You’re so cynical! You have a lot of friends out there, Emilio.”

  “Indulge me, John. Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I’m presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money.”

  Candotti laughed again and told Sandoz to say two rosaries for having spectacularly impure thoughts, and waved and started down the stairs. He was almost out the door when he heard Emilio call his name. Hand on the knob, still grinning, he looked back up toward Sandoz’s room. “Yeah?”

  “John, I … I need a favor.”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “I—. There are going to be some papers I’ll have to sign. I’m out, John. I’m leaving the Society.” Sucker-punched, Candotti sagged against the doorjamb. A moment later, Sandoz’s voice went on, quiet and hesitant. “Can you fix a pen so I can hold it? Like you did with that razor, yes?”

  John ascended the stairs partway and then halted, as unwilling as Sandoz to carry out this awful conversation face to face. “Emilio. Look—. Okay, I understand, I guess—as much as anyone else can. But are you sure? I mean, it’s—”

  “I’m sure. I decided this afternoon.” Candotti waited and then heard, “I’m carrying a lot of shit, John. I won’t add fraud. Nobody can hate the way I do and claim to be a priest. It’s not honest.” John sat heavily on a stair tread and rubbed his face with his hands as Emilio said, “I think— some kind of wedge-shaped thing that would hold the pen up at an angle, yes? The new braces are good, but I still haven’t got much of a precision grip.”

  “Yeah. Okay. No problem. I’ll figure something out for you.”

  John stood and headed back down the stairs, feeling ten years older than he’d been five minutes ago. As he shambled his loose-limbed way over to the main house, he heard Emilio’s call drift out the dormer window: “Thanks, John.” He waved a hand dispiritedly, without looking back, knowing Emilio couldn’t see him. “Sure. You bet,” John whispered, and felt a nasty crawling sensation on his face as wind off the Bay of Naples dried the tears.

  City of Inbrokar

  2046, Earth-Relative

  THE ERROR, IF THAT’S WHAT IT WAS, LAY IN GOING TO SEE THE CHILD. Who knows what would have happened if Supaari VaGayjur had simply waited until the morning and, unsuspecting, freed his child’s spirit to find a better fate?

  But the midwife came to him, sure that he would want to see the baby, and he was rarely able to resist the uncomplicated friendship the Runa always seemed to offer him. So Supaari strode toward the nursery importantly: heavy embroidered robe rustling as softly as his slippered footsteps, eyes focused on the middle distance, ignoring the Runa midwife’s chatter with his ears cocked forward, not deigning to reply to her pleasantries—all in conscious mimicry of an aristocratic Jana’ata crammed full of incorruptible civic virtue and monumental self-regard.

  Who am I to sneer? Supaari asked himself. A jumped-up merchant prone to unfortunate commercial metaphors in conversation with his betters. A third-born son from a backwater town in the midlands who made a fortune brokering trade among the Runa. An outsider among outsiders, who’d literally stumbled onto a pack of impossible foreigners from somewhere beyond Rakhat’s three suns, and parlayed that experience into this exacting facsimile of nobility that nobody but the Runa believed in.

  He’d known from the moment the Reshtar agreed to his proposition that he would never be more than who he was. It didn’t matter. Isolation felt normal to him. Supaari’s life had always been an interstitial one, lived between the worlds of Runa and Jana’ata; he enjoyed the perspective, preferred observation to participation. He’d spent his first year among these exalted members of his own species studying the habits of the men around him as carefully as the hunter studies his prey. He came to savor the growing accuracy with which he predicted the snubs. He could anticipate who would refuse outright to attend a reception if he attended, and who would come for the sport of baiting him; who would fail to greet him entirely, and who would do so but with a gesture more properly due a second. Firsts preferred direct insult; seconds were more subtle. His eldest brother-in-law, Dherai, would push past Supaari through a door, but the second-born Bhansaar would merely stand as though Supaari were invisible and enter the room a moment later, as though it had just occurred to him to go inside.

  Inbrokar society, taking its cue from the Kitheri princelings, ignored Supaari or gazed at him contemptuously from corners. Sometimes the word “peddler” would rise above the general conversation, sinking a moment later beneath gentle waves of well-bred amusement. Privately entertained, Supaari had borne all this with courteous detachment and genuine patience: for the sake of a son and a future.

  The nursery was far into the interior of the compound. He had no idea where Jholaa was. The Runa midwife Paquarin had assured him of his wife’s health but added, “She’s worn to tatters, poor lady. It’s not like that for us,” the Runao said thankfully. “For us, the babies come out as easily as they get in—it’s a mercy not to be a Jana’ata. And the Kitheri women are so small in the hips!” she complained. “Makes the job harder for a poor midwife.” Paquarin admitted that Jholaa was upset by the birth, when Supaari asked. Naturally. Another reason for his wife to hate him: he’d gotten a deformity on her.

  Busy with his thoughts, it was only when Supaari heard soft, huffing Runa laughter and cheerful, harmless Runa chatter drifting out of the kitchen with the smell of spices and frying vegetables that he realized Paquarin had led him through the nursery and past it. Passing
through one last louvered door and entering a barren courtyard at the back of the compound, he noticed a small wooden box pushed into a corner of the yard. This was what he’d been brought to see, and he stopped in midstride.

  No lavish embroidered nest net, no festive ribbons fluttering in the breeze to catch the child’s eye and train attention to movement. Just a rag from the kitchen draped over the crate to shade her, to hide her shame— and his own—from sight. It was not a new box, Supaari noted. It was ordinarily used for Runa infants, he supposed. A cradle for a cook’s child.

  Another man might have blamed the midwife, but not Supaari VaGayjur. Ah, Bhansaar, he thought. A hit. May your children become scavengers. May you live to see them eat carrion.

  He had not expected this, not even after a year of affinal insult and effrontery. He accepted that his daughter was doomed. No one would marry a cripple. She was more hopeless than a third, first-born but fouled. Of all the things he had learned of the foreigners’ customs, the most incomprehensible, the most unethical was the notion that anyone could breed, even those known to carry traits that would damage their offspring. What kind of people would inflict known disease on their own grandchildren? Well, not us! he’d thought. Not Jana’ata!

  Even so, Dherai might have overridden Bhansaar’s pettiness and allowed the child a decent nest in the nursery for her single night of life. Daughters who serve travelers, Supaari thought savagely. Cowards for sons, Dherai.

  He strode to the cradle, snatching the cloth away with a hooked claw. “It’s not the child’s fault, lord,” the midwife said hurriedly, frightened by the acrid smell of anger. “She’s done no wrong, poor thing.”

  And who is to blame? he meant to demand. Who put her in this detestable little—. Who brought her to this wretched—

  I did, he thought bleakly, gazing down.

  Bathed, fed and sleeping, his daughter had the fragrance of rain in the first moments of a storm. He was dizzy with it, actually swayed before kneeling. Studying her tiny perfect face, he raised his hands to his mouth and bit hard, six times, severing each long claw at the quick, bewitched by the need to hold her and to do so without harming her. Almost at the same moment, he realized that he’d just committed a humiliating and irreversible gaffe. Clawless, he would have to let Ljaat-sa Kitheri carry out the father’s duty after all. But his mind was not clear, and he lifted his child from the box, bringing her awkwardly to his chest.