What made him nod his unspoken acquiescence to an act he found abhorrent? Was it truly ambition? Danny had examined himself with fierce scrutiny, and the answer was no, no matter what the others believed. Was it the majesty of the Vatican, the moral weight of two millennia of authority? Yes, partly. The strength of the Pope himself? The compassion and beauty of those lustrous, knowing eyes?
Yes. Yes, all of that.
Did the Holy Father and the Father General have more than one reason for sending Sandoz back to Rakhat? Unquestionably. There would be desirable political, diplomatic, practical outcomes of this decision. Did those other motives outweigh the Holy Father’s uncanny certainty and the Father General’s almost desperate hope that Sandoz was meant by God to return to the place of his spiritual and physical violation?
Daniel Iron Horse did not think so.
He didn’t know what he thought, what he believed anymore. He was sure of only one thing: it was beyond him to look into the eyes of Gelasius III and listen to his words and then to sneer, “Self-serving horseshit.” For Jesuits are taught to find God in all things, and Danny could not walk away from the moral and ethical problem he had been set: if you believe in God’s sovereignty and if you believe in God’s goodness, then what happened to Sandoz must be part of a larger plan; and if that is so, you can help this one soul and serve God by returning with him to Rakhat.
And so, for the betrayal of his ethics and the sacrifice of his integrity, Daniel Iron Horse could only watch what he had helped make possible: to live with what he had done, and try to find God in it—to hope that the ends would someday justify the means.
ON THE BRUNO, TIME SEEMED A SENTENCE TO BE SERVED, BUT THAT WOULD change as Daniel Iron Horse grew old on the planet of Rakhat.
“In the beginning,” Scripture taught, “there was the Word,” and Danny would come to believe that the two great gifts his God had given to the species He loved were time, which divides experience, and language, which binds the past to the future. Eventually all the priests who remained on Rakhat would devote themselves to buying time and working toward an understanding of the events that took place there during the years between the first and second Jesuit missions. For Daniel Iron Horse, this was not merely research but constant prayer.
The lady Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai was to become his partner in this task. By the time Danny met her, she was not the wife but the widow of the Mala Njeri ambassador to the court of Hlavin Kitheri, a woman bereft of status but not of respect, and well past middle age. Danny was enthralled by her from the start, but Suukmel was wary and inclined, herself, to delay trust in the man she knew as Dani Hi’r-norse.
Even so, as Danny’s hair grayed and Suukmel’s face whitened, there came a day when she and the foreigner could meet for pleasure and not only for policy. He believed, as she did, that the past was not dead but alive, and important by virtue of the very invisibility of its influence. When she discovered this, their friendship began in earnest.
It became their custom to walk together every morning, their path following the foothills encircling the N’Jarr valley, and to speak as they walked of what Suukmel now understood and wished Danny to understand as well. Danny would often begin these talks with a proverb, inviting her to respond. “On Earth, there is a saying: The past is another country,” he told her once, and Suukmel found this a useful notion, for she did indeed feel a foreigner in the present. But even when she disagreed with Danny’s maxims, the exercise was interesting.
“Power corrupts,” he suggested one day, as they started up the slope to the ring path on one of their earliest walks. “And absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“Fear corrupts, not power,” she countered. “Powerlessness debases. Power can be used to good effect or ill, but no one is improved by weakness,” she told him. “The powerful can more easily cultivate longsightedness. They can be patient—even generous—in the face of opposition, knowing that they will prevail eventually. They do not feel that their lives are futile, because they have reason to believe that their plans will become reality.”
“Do you speak of yourself, my lady Suukmel?” Danny asked, smiling. “Or of Hlavin Kitheri?”
She paused to consider him. “There were certain harmonies of soul,” she said carefully before resuming her ascent. Then she continued, “It was when Hlavin Kitheri was merely Reshtar that his life was corrupt. He was desperate, and he had the vices of desperation. This changed when he took power.”
The path became steep and treacherous with scree, and for a time they climbed in silence. A little winded near the top, Suukmel sat on a fallen tupa’s smooth, substantial trunk, and gazed across the N’Jarr toward mountains rising from the ground like colossal projectiles shot from the center of Rakhat. “Of course, power can come to inadequate people,” she admitted, when her breath again came easily. “Dull minds, small hearts, impoverished souls could once inherit power. Now such people can grasp it, or buy it, or stumble into power by chance.” Her voice hardened. “Power does not necessarily ennoble.” She said this looking south, and rose once more to her feet. “Tell me, Dani, why do you spend so much time with old women?” she asked with a sidelong glance as they resumed their walk.
He offered his strange naked hand to help her around an eroded ditch that thwarted the trail. “When I was very young,” he told her, “my father’s beforemother came to live with us. She would tell us tales of the old times, which she herself had learned from her own beforemothers. Everything had changed, during those few generations. Everything.”
“Do you remember her stories?” Suukmel asked him. “Perhaps,” she suggested lightly, “knowledge of earlier times was of no use to you.”
“I remember them.” Danny stopped, and Suukmel turned back to see him looking at her—shyly, she thought. “But I was a scholar in my own land. So I tested the truth of the tales that came to me from five generations removed against the research of many other scholars.”
“And did your beforemothers remember truly?” she asked.
“Yes. The tales proved themselves not stories but history. Why else would I spend so much time with old ladies now?” he teased, and she laughed.
“Change can be good,” Suukmel said then, walking once more. “Many Jana’ata still believe as we all did in ages past: that change is dangerous and wrong. They believe everything my lord Kitheri did was error—that he was wicked to change a way of life bequeathed from one generation to the next without degradation or fallacy. Can you understand this? Have you such perfection on your H’earth, Dani?”
Danny fought a smile. “Oh, yes. I myself am a member of a ‘church’ that is believed by many to be an infallible repository of timeless truth.”
“My lord Kitheri and I considered this problem very carefully,” Suukmel told him. “It was our belief that any institution considering itself the guardian of truth will value constancy, for change by definition introduces error. Such institutions always have powerful mechanisms to shore up invariance and defend against change.”
“Appeal to tradition,” he said, “and to authority. And to divinity.”
“Yes, all those,” she said serenely. “Nevertheless, change can be desirable or necessary, or both at once! How then does a wise prince introduce change when the generations have enshrined a practice or a prohibition that now harms or cripples?”
She stopped to look at him directly, no longer startled by the clarity of near vision she now enjoyed, with no veil to film her eyes. “Tell me, Dani, do you tire of an old woman?” Suukmel asked, head tilted in speculation. “Or shall I tell you of those first days of Kitheri’s reign?” Even now, knowing what would come, her eyes still glowed with the excitement of those times.
“Please,” he said. “Everything you can remember.” And so she began.
THE FIRST OF KITHERI’S DECREES MET WITH NO RESISTANCE, FOR HE merely revived the tournaments that had fallen out of practice: the dance duels, the massed voices of choir battles. “Not change,” Suukmel murmure
d in conspiratorial remembrance. “Simply a return to earlier ways—which were, as he said, purer and closer to the old truth.”
Soon, Kitheri established national competitions in poetry, architecture, engineering, mathematics, optics, chemistry. Having sworn during his investiture as Paramount to uphold the immutable Inbrokari order, he had to leave the ancient lines of inheritance untouched, and so prizes in such competitions were of no intrinsic value. “Tokens, merely,” Suukmel said dismissively. “A single traja’anron blossom, or a pennant, or a rhyming triplet composed by the Paramount himself.” But it was not long before there were acceptable ways for warriors with a scholarly bent or third-born merchants of athletic talent to hone their knowledge or skills: to be recognized for what they had within, and not merely for what they had been born to.
“Parallel hierarchies, based on competence,” Danny observed. “Open to all, and bleeding off discontent. Your idea, my lady?”
Not since Hlavin had she enjoyed a man’s company so well. “Yes,” she said, eyes downcast but pleased. “These competitions allowed my lord Kitheri to identify men of talent, wit, imagination, energy.”
Drawing on a lifetime of well-used confinement, Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai had learned that almost any event or condition could be turned to advantage. “Locally strong government or evidence of incompetence could be equally favorable to the Paramount’s purpose, since both engendered resentment in the ranks below,” she told Danny during another stroll. “My lord Kitheri was third-born, and trained therefore in law as well as combat. He could nearly always find legal precedent for deposing uncomfortably powerful or egregiously stupid nobles when younger brothers were better men, more attuned to the new regime. Where legal means were lacking,” she said dryly, “accidents were encouraged to occur.” Ears cocked forward, she invited him to comment.
“With the Paramount’s complicity?” Danny asked. Suukmel did not deny it. “So those who acceded under these conditions did so knowing whose influence made their own rise possible. Their claims to power and position would have been every bit as questionable as Hlavin Kitheri’s.” He thought a moment. “Such men would have formed a reliable cadre of supporters, I think. Their fate was bound up with his.”
“Precisely.” She had become very frank with him as their time together lengthened. Danny was a wily listener, who appreciated careful phrasing, and his admiration perfumed her hours with him. “We found many ways to extend the Paramount’s reach,” she said. “For example, when a lord died, the interregnum between new and old could be prolonged by delaying investiture ceremonies. The Paramount, whose presence was indispensable, was simply unable to attend—often,” Suukmel said with limpid innocence, “for many seasons.”
Nephews or brothers-in-law or third-born uncles could be placed in regency while revenue ledgers and tax records were confiscated for inspection by merchant thirds and Runa bookkeepers from a far-removed province. “Sometimes it was merely a matter of putting the territory on a sound accounting basis,” Suukmel recalled. “Regional revenues often increased dramatically, and this was much to the advantage of the family in question.”
“But the Paramount would then have an inventory of all sources of wealth filed,” Danny said.
“At which time, he would, at last, become available for the necessary ceremonies,” Suukmel said. “When control of the patrimony was transferred, everyone knew now exactly how much could and would be extracted in taxes. Displaced regents, if they showed promise, could then be incorporated into the new chancery.”
“And these men, too, were added to the growing corps of Kitheri supporters,” Danny observed.
“Naturally.”
Danny looked at her with sly delight. “And, if I might know, my lady: to whom did the chancery report?”
“I was, by that time, a person of some modest influence,” Suukmel murmured, and remained carefully composed even while he laughed and shook his head. “If gross irregularities in territorial affairs were discovered,” Suukmel continued, “two paths were open. The day before his investiture, a new lord could be made aware of his ancestors’ dishonor in a private meeting with the Paramount. This man was given to understand that the Paramount had chosen to allow him to remain in office, and expected gratitude.”
“And cooperation, no doubt,” said Danny. “But if the lineage was unalterably opposed to changes favored by the Paramount?”
“If the lineage was unyielding,” Suukmel said carefully, “then news of its crimes would be broadcast, and these unworthy men were declared VaHaptaa—outlaws, their patrimonies forfeit.”
“And to enforce such judgments?”
“There was a small troop of martial tournament champions, equipped and fielded with monies brought in by the new taxes.” She looked across the valley. “There was also the war in the south,” she said. “My lord Kitheri could make it seem both honorable and necessary to the more … traditional men that they defend Jana’ata territory and our way of life.”
“Leaving northern land and titles open, when they were killed.” Suukmel’s chin lifted, acknowledging the inference. “Two birds with one stone,” said Danny, but left that untranslated.
“YOU WILL DOUBT THIS,” SUUKMEL WARNED DANNY ON ANOTHER DAY, but it is true. Hlavin had support among the Runa. He had learned to value their capabilities and made them a part of his plans. One of his earliest decrees regarding the Runa was that their urban specialists send delegations to the Inbrokar court. Their advice was sought in all that concerned them, and he did this despite opposition from the lesser nobility.”
At Suukmel’s suggestion and under the direction of her former maid, the discreetly emancipated Taksayu, a tapestry of Runa informants was woven during Kitheri’s first years as Paramount. Reports soon filtered back from cooks and valets, secretaries and masseurs; from groundskeepers, research assistants; from scullery maids and sexual servants. “Before long,” Suukmel said, “my lord Kitheri knew each great household’s disputes and discontents, their secret alliances and petty jealousies—”
“And knowledge is power,” Danny interjected.
Suukmel chuckled, a low and throaty sound. “Now that is a wise proverb,” she granted.
“And how were the Runa compensated for their contribution to Kitheri’s plans?”
“Naturally, the informants themselves had to be left in place, but their children were allowed to express an opinion about their area of work. And when the time came, about a preferred mate. These were my friend Taksayu’s suggestions,” she told him, pausing a moment to mourn the dead. “She was a Runao, but my lord Kitheri took wisdom where he found it. He even established pensions for Runa informants who had reached the age of slaughter—”
“Who could feed him information—a commodity more valuable than meat,” Danny pointed out coldly.
Not catching his tone, Suukmel went on, anxious to explain. “This was a radical change, in reality, but it was considered a harmless eccentricity of the Paramount by those whose domestics were pensioned. Who would object to an old retainer living off the Kitheri largesse?” she asked rhetorically. “Meat, after all, could be had from villagers backbred to doorkeepers and fan-pullers and draft Runa—”
She fell silent, stopped by his stare.
“It was the only way we knew,” she said, tired all at once. “Dani, you must understand it was not only the Runa who were born to their fate—we all were! Birth rank, the rank of one’s family—even for a man, those determined every detail of life! The length of his claws, which door he was permitted to pass through. Whom he could marry, what his work would be. The number of earrings he could wear, the grade of perfumes he could buy! And yes—what portion of a Runa carcass his meat would come from. Dani, Hlavin meant to change all that!”
“But change takes time,” Danny said. “Another proverb.”
Suukmel raised her tail slightly and let it drop: as you say. “I think perhaps that it is not change but resistance to change that takes time.”
“B
ut surely, my lady, the Paramount did not pension those elderly Runa purely, to reward their usefulness with kindness,” Danny pointed out, more aggressive now that he knew her better. “The accumulated knowledge of Runa from all over Inbrokar was made directly available to Kitheri’s chancery, to Kitheri’s private police and to Kitheri himself.”
“Yes! Of course! Can you build a wall with a single stone?” she asked. “The sign of a good decision is the multiplicity of reasons for it. If more than one goal is served, then a decision is more likely to be wise—”
To her surprise, Danny began to speak, fell silent and turned away. She understood that he was distressed by what she had just said, and felt compelled to make her words clearer for him.
“Dani, when we change things, we are like the little gods: we act, and from each act falls a cascade of consequence—some things expected and desired, some surprising and regrettable. But we are not like your God who sees everything! We cannot know the future, so we anticipate as much as we can, and judge by the outcome if we have done rightly.” His back was stiff, his breathing odd. She had never seen him react this way. “Dani, have I offended you?” she asked, astonished.
He spun, his face slack with dismay. “My lady: never!” He pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly. “You are the instrument of my conscience,” he said lightly. He tried to smile, but it was not convincing, not even to Suukmel, who still found foreign faces difficult to interpret. Seeing her confusion, he performed an obeisance. “My lady, it was once my belief that when a multiplicity of reasons is sought, the rightness of an act is suspect, that one is trying to justify the unjustifiable. Long ago, I made a decision for which I sought a multitude of reasons. That decision brought me here to you, but I will not know if it was right until I am judged by my God.”
Children of God Page 27