Entering his Neapolitan office during one of his periodic visits several days later, Vincenzo Giuliani was startled to find in it a superb seventeenth-century table, its highly polished and intricately inlaid surface gleaming in the sunlight that poured through tall, mullioned windows. The table was not, the Father General noted, an exact match for the one Emilio Sandoz had wrecked eleven months earlier, but it was close enough. On it was an envelope containing a paper confirmation of the transfer to the Society of Jesus of a breathtaking sum of money, drawn on the private account of E. J. Sandoz. All of which elicited from the Father General a lengthy and meditative curse.
Debts paid, in possession of more than sufficient funds to shelter himself and to hire his own bodyguards and support a family, Emilio Sandoz was at forty-seven an independent man, ghosts laid to rest, guilt fading, God renounced.
It’s not too late to live, he thought. So it was decided: a civil ceremony, on the morning of September 3, with a few friends in attendance.
THAT SUMMER, DETAILED REPORTS OF WHAT GINA GIULIANI AND Emilio Sandoz had every right to believe was a purely private matter rose along the lines of hierarchy in three ancient organizations, reaching at various velocities the Father General of the Society of Jesus, the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church and the Neapolitan Capo di Tutti Capi, each of whom was interested for different but dovetailing reasons. In the face of this unfortunate new circumstance, their collective decision was to accelerate preparations for the latest attempt to reach Rakhat.
The ship chosen for this voyage was now fully configured for interstellar travel. Carlo Giuliani had christened it the Giordano Bruno, after a Florentine priest burned at the stake in 1600 for suggesting that the stars were like Sol, and might be orbited by other planets where life could exist. The Bruno was highly automated; her crew was small but competent and experienced. Her Jesuit passengers’ training was nearing completion. Food, trade goods, medical supplies and communications and survival gear were already being ferried to the Bruno, now in low Earth orbit. Navigation programs were locked in for launch in mid-September of 2061.
There was no need to convey any urgency to Sandoz. Indeed, the Jesuits assigned to the mission were very nearly exhausted by the pace he set, for he meant to finish the K’San analysis by August 31 if it killed them all, and threw himself into the project with astonishing energy.
Bedridden less than two years earlier, the linguist’s first word to John Candotti had been a bewildered question: “English?” Now Emilio was in nearly constant motion, pacing the length of the library, explaining, reasoning, arguing, gesturing, shifting with lightning suddenness from K’San to Latin to Ruanja to English; then, he was suddenly still, thinking, dark hair falling over his eyes and tossed back with a jerk of the head as the answer to some puzzle came to him, and the pacing began again.
Gina, fuel for this engine, came each evening at eight to pry him out of the library, and in some ways the other men welcomed her arrival as much as Emilio did. Without her intervention, Sandoz would have gone on hours more, and the bigger men were usually famished by the day’s end and looked forward, in spite of themselves, to hearing Celestina’s piping voice call to Don Emilio and her small footsteps clattering down the long hallway from the front door.
“Christ! Look at them. Gabriel and Lucifer, with a wee cherub in attendance,” Sean Fein muttered one night, watching the three of them leave. He turned from the window, face sour, his features a collection of short horizontal lines: a small, lipless mouth, deep-set eyes, a snub nose. “Whoredom,” he quoted lugubriously, “is better than wedlock in a priest.”
“St. Thomas More could hardly have had Emilio’s situation in mind,” Vincenzo Giuliani commented dryly, walking into the library unexpectedly. “Please—sit down,” he said, when the others got to their feet. “The old orders have retained our vow of celibacy, but diocesan priests may marry now,” he pointed out reasonably to Sean. “Do you disapprove of Emilio’s decisions, Father Fein?”
“The parish men may marry because ordainin’ women was the only alternative to changin’ the rule,” said Sean with luxurious cynicism. “Hardly a ringin’ endorsement of familial love, now, was it?”
Giuliani bought himself time by strolling through the library, lifting reports from desks, smiling a greeting to John Candotti, nodding to Daniel Iron Horse and Joseba Urizarbarrena. As troubled by the situation as he was personally, Giuliani decided it was time to address the issue.
“Even when I was young, more men left the Society than stayed,” he told the others lightly, sitting with a window at his back so that he could see their faces clearly in the waning light, while his own was obscured. “It is better for everyone if only those who feel truly called to this life remain in it. But there was a time, long ago, when we treated a resignation as though it were a suicide—a death in the family, and a shameful one at that—particularly if a man left to marry. Friendships that had endured decades would rupture. There were often feelings of betrayal and abandonment, on both sides.”
He paused, and looked around as the younger men shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. “How does it make you feel, to see Emilio and Gina together, I wonder?” the Father General asked, brows up with mild curiosity.
The Father General was looking at Daniel Iron Horse as he said this, but it was Sean Fein who threw his head back and closed his eyes with schoolboy earnestness. “Persistence in celibacy requires a firm sense of its value in making us perpetually available for God’s good use of us,” he recited in a loud monotone, “as well as a desire to uphold an ancient and honorable tradition, and the sincere hope of drawing on a source of divine grace that enables us to love the presence of God in others, without exclusion. Otherwise, it is pointless self-denial.” Having delivered himself of this statement, Sean looked around with theatrical melancholy. “Then again, pointless self-denial was half the fun of Catholicism in the old days,” he reminded them, “and I, for one, regret its passing.”
Giuliani sighed. It was time, he decided, to unmask the chemist. “I have it on good authority, gentlemen, that Father Fein is a man capable of describing the hydrogen bond as being, and I quote: ‘like the arms of Christ crucified, flung wide, holding all life in an embrace.’ I am assured by Sean’s Provincial that when you know poetry lurks in his soul, it is somewhat easier to put up with his bullshit.” Noting with aesthetic pleasure the way Sean’s pink flush was set off by his blue eyes, Giuliani returned to the task at hand without missing a beat. “You do not shun Emilio Sandoz, and none of you begrudges him this happiness. And yet it must raise questions for you, and it should. Which of us is doing the right thing? Has he thrown away his soul or have I thrown away my life? What if I’m wrong about everything?”
It was Joseba Urizarbarrena who put the problem in its starkest terms. “How,” the ecologist asked quietly, “in the face of that man’s joy, can I go on alone?”
John Candotti’s eyes dropped, and Sean snorted, looking away, but the Father General’s gaze remained on the mission’s father superior. “The stakes are enormous: life, posterity, eternity,” Giuliani said, looking directly at Daniel Iron Horse. “And each of us must discern the answers for himself.”
For a long time, the quiet was unbroken by any sound elsewhere in the house. Then the silence was ripped by the the abrasive squeal of wooden chair legs grating against the stone floor. Danny stood looking at Vincenzo Giuliani for a few moments, his small, black eyes hard in the broad, pitted face. “I need some air,” he said, throwing down a stylus, and left.
“If you will excuse us, gentlemen?” Giuliani said mildly, and followed Iron Horse out of the room.
DANNY WAS WAITING FOR HIM IN THE GARDEN: CONSCIENCE INCARNATE, a massive presence in the deepening darkness. “Allow me,” the Father General said placidly, when it became obvious that Iron Horse would not give him the satisfaction of speaking first. “You find me contemptible.” “That’ll do for a start.”
Giuliani sat on one of the gar
den benches and gazed upward, picking out the few bright constellations visible at twilight. “Ignatius once said that his greatest consolation was to contemplate the night sky and its stars,” he said. “Since Galileo, space has been the domain of telescopes and of prayer.… Of course, Loyola and Galileo didn’t have to deal with light pollution from Naples. The sky must be astonishing on Rakhat. Perhaps the Jana’ata are right not to permit the artificial extension of daylight.” He looked at Danny. “You wish to ask me how, in the face of that man’s joy, can the mission go forward as planned?”
“It is dishonest,” Danny said with clipped exactitude. “It is arrogant. It is cruel.”
“The Holy Father—”
“Stop hiding behind his skirts,” Danny sneered.
“You are scrupulous,” Giuliani observed. “There is a way out, Father Iron Horse—”
“And cede the Society to your kind?”
“Ah. My kind,” the Father General said, almost smiling. The evening seemed oddly still. In his childhood, Vince Giuliani had loved the sound of swamp peepers, trilling in every low spot, filling the summer dusk with wordless song. Here in Italy, he heard only the treble rasp of crickets, and the night seemed poorer for it. “You are young, Father Iron Horse, and you have a young man’s vices. Certainty. Shortsightedness. Contempt for pragmatism.” He leaned back, hands clasped and untrembling in his lap. “I only wish that I could live long enough to see what kind you turn out to be.”
“That could be arranged. Would you care to exchange positions? Spend a year in transit to Rakhat. When you get back, I’ll be eighty.”
“The proposal has a certain appeal, I assure you. Unfortunately, it is not an option. We are each alone before God, and cannot exchange lives. Shall I hang one of those ubiquitous Italian signs on the Gesù?” Giuliani offered, brows climbing. His light ironic tone was infuriating, and he knew it. “Chiuso per restauro: closed, until Daniel Iron Horse returns, for restoration.”
“I hope to Christ that your job is harder than it looks, old man,” Daniel Iron Horse hissed, before he turned on his heel to walk away. “Otherwise, there’s no excuse for you.”
“It is. It is very hard,” Vincenzo Giuliani said with a sudden ferocity that stopped Danny in his tracks and forced him to turn back. “Shall I confess to you, Father Iron Horse? I doubt. In my old age, I doubt.” He stood and began to pace. “I am afraid that I have been a fool to live as I have lived and to believe as I have believed all these years. I am afraid that I have misunderstood everything. And do you know why? Because Emilio Sandoz is not an atheist. Danny, we have among us one of our own, whose life has been touched by God as mine has never been touched, and who believes that his soul has been laid waste in a spiritual rape—his sacrifice mocked, his devotion rejected, his love desecrated.”
He stopped, coming to rest in front of the younger man, and spoke very softly. “I envied him once, Danny. Emilio Sandoz was everything I ever hoped to be as a priest, and then—this! I have tried to imagine how I would feel, were I Sandoz and had I experienced what he has.” He looked away into the darkness and said, “Danny, I don’t know what to do with what happened to him—and all I had to do was listen to the story!”
And then he was moving again, the pacing an outward sign of the in-ward argument that had drowned out prayer and faith and peace for nearly a year. “In the darkness of my soul, I have wondered if God enjoys watching despair, the way voyeurs watch sex. That would explain a great deal of human history! My faith in the meaning of Jesus’s life and in Christian doctrine has been shaken to its core,” he said, his voice betraying the tears that glistened now in the moonlight. “Danny, if I am to sustain my belief in a good and loving deity, in a God who is not arbitrary and capricious and vicious, I must believe that some higher purpose is served by all this. And I must believe that the greatest service I can do Emilio Sandoz is to make it possible for him to discover what that purpose may have been.”
Giuliani stopped and, in the shadowed, shifting night, he searched the other man’s face for understanding, and knew that he had been heard, that his words had registered.
“Post hoc reasoning,” Danny said, backing away. “Self-serving horse-shit. You’ve made up your mind and you’re trying to justify the unjustifiable.”
“And for my penance?” Giuliani asked with a desolate amusement that mocked them both.
“Live, old man,” Danny said. “Live with what you’re doing.”
“Even Judas had a role in our salvation,” Giuliani said, almost to himself, but then he spoke at last with the authority it was his duty to exercise. “It is my decision, Father Iron Horse, that the Society of Jesus will once again serve the papacy, as it was meant to—by its founder and by Our Lord. This tragedy of rupture will end. We will once again accept the authority of the Pope to send us on whatever mission he deems desirable for the good of souls. Once again, ‘all our strength must be bent to the acquisition of that virtue we call obedience, due first to the Pope and next to the Superior of the Order—’ ”
“ ‘In everything that is not sin!’ ” Danny cried.
“Yes. Precisely: in everything that is not sin,” Vincenzo Giuliani agreed. “So I cannot and I will not order you to do what you find unacceptable, Danny. Your soul is your own—but others’ souls are at risk as well! Act in accordance with your conscience,” he called as Danny strode away into the darkness. “But, Danny—remember the stakes!”
MOMENTS LATER, DANIEL IRON HORSE FOUND HIMSELF LOOKING UP AT the brightly lit dormer windows. He hesitated, half-turned, and then went back to the garage door and knocked. There were light, quick footsteps on the stairway and he heard the metallic snick of the hook being flicked out of its eye. Sandoz appeared and the two men stood silently for a time, adjusting their reactions, each having thought Gina might be on the other side of the door.
“Father Iron Horse,” Emilio said at last, “you look like a man with something to confess.” Danny blinked, startled. “I was a priest for a long time, Danny. I recognize the signs. Come upstairs.”
Sandoz had been halfway to bed, but he put the braces back on and went to his cupboard for two glasses and a bottle of Ronrico, carefully pouring out a measure for each of them, his bioengineered dexterity now strangely graceful. He sat across the table from Iron Horse and inclined his head, willing to listen.
“I came to apologize,” Danny told him. “For that crap I pulled on you last winter—when I said you might have brought back whatever Yarbrough died of. I knew that wasn’t so. I did it to see how you’d react. It was dishonest and arrogant and cruel. And I am ashamed.”
Sandoz sat still. “Thank you,” he said finally. “I accept your apology.” He closed his hand around the glass and tossed the contents back. “That couldn’t have been easy to say,” he observed, pouring himself another shot. “The end justifies the means, I suppose. You got me to pull myself together. I’m better off because of what you did.”
“Do you believe that?” Danny asked with an odd intentness. “The end justifies the means?”
“Sometimes. It depends, obviously. How important is the end? How nasty are the means?”
Iron Horse sat hunched over his untouched drink, his elbows almost reaching both corners of his side of the table. “Sandoz,” he asked after a little while, “is there anything that would persuade you to go back with us to Rakhat?”
Emilio snorted, and picked up his glass, taking a sip. “I honestly don’t think I could get drunk enough for that to seem like a good idea,” he murmured, “but I suppose we could give it a try.”
“Giuliani and the Pope both believe it’s God’s will that you go back,” Danny persisted. “D. W. Yarbrough said that you were once wedded to God—”
“Nietzsche, of course, would argue that I am a widower,” Emilio said crisply, cutting him off. “I consider that I am divorced. The separation was not amicable.”
“Sandoz,” Danny said carefully, “even Jesus thought that God had forsaken Him.”
“My brother Walter’s daughter drowned,” Danny said, reaching for the glass of rum and putting it at arm’s length. “Four years old. About six months after the funeral, Walt filed for divorce. It wasn’t my sister-in-law’s fault, but Walt needed someone to blame. He spent the next ten years trying to drink himself to death, and finally managed it. Rolled his car one night.” Having made his point, he said, with no little compassion, “You must be very lonely.”
“I was,” Sandoz said. “Not anymore.”
“Change your mind,” Danny implored, leaning forward. “Please. Come with us.”
Incredulous, Emilio gasped a laugh. “Danny, I’m getting married in twenty-five days!” He glanced at a clock. “And thirteen hours. And eleven minutes. But who’s counting, right?” His smile faded as he looked at Iron Horse; it was strangely affecting to see that big and unemotional man on the verge of tears. “Why is it so important to you?” Emilio asked. “Are you afraid? Danny, you and the others have so much more to go on than we had! Yes, you’ll make mistakes, but at least they won’t be the same ones we made.” Iron Horse looked away, his eyes glittering. “Danny,” Emilio ventured, “is there something else …?”
“Yes. No—. I don’t know,” Danny said finally. “I—I need to think about this.… But—. Just don’t trust any of the Giulianis, Sandoz.”
Confused, Emilio frowned. Danny seemed to think he was revealing some great secret, but everybody knew that the Father General’s family was Camorra. At a loss, and looking for a way out, Emilio could only change the subject. “Listen, John was asking me about some Ruanja syntax—I put together some notes for him this evening, but I know I was working on something similar just before—before the massacre. I told Giuliani to dump everything we sent back to my system, but I can’t find that file. Is there any chance that some of my stuff is stored separately?”
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