"Second base, usually. Not enough arm to play outfield. I was pretty consistent at bat, mostly singles and doubles. I wasn't that good but I loved it."
"The Father General claims he's still got a bruise where you took his ankle out sliding in to steal third once. He says you were savage."
"This is slander!" Emilio cried. Indignant, he pushed his way out the door again and carried the basket to the line. "Serious, yes. Barbaric, quite possibly. But savage? Only if the score was close."
They worked their way through the basket together, listening to the late morning sounds, pots and pans banging in the kitchen nearby as Brother Cosimo started on lunch, and now the silence was companionable. "You follow baseball, John?" Emilio asked after a while, his voice coming through the rows of wet fabric.
"Cubs fan," John muttered. The Chicagoan's curse.
Sandoz pushed a towel aside, eyes wide. "How bad?"
"Anybody can have a couple of lousy centuries."
"I guess. Wow." Sandoz let the towel fall back into place. There was a thoughtful silence. "Well, that explains why Giuliani brought you over." Suddenly John heard the Father General's voice saying: "Voelker, I need someone to take care of a hopeless wreck coming back from Rakhat. Get me a Cubs fan!"
"You're not hopeless, Emilio."
"John, I could tell you things about hopeless that even a Cubs fan wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
When Sandoz spoke next from the other side of the laundry, it was to change the subject. "So. How's San Juan doing this year?"
"Three games out of first. They took the Series in 58," John said, pleased to be delivering good news. Emilio reappeared, smiling beatifically, nodded a couple of times and returned to his work, a contented man. John paused in his progress down the clothesline and looked at Sandoz through a gap in the sheets. "Do you know that this is the first time you've asked about current events? Listen, this has been driving me crazy! I mean, you've been gone since before I was born! Don't you wonder how things turned out? What wars are over and who won and stuff like that? Technological revolutions, medical advances? Aren't you even curious?"
Sandoz stared at him, open-mouthed. Finally, he dropped a towel into the basket and backed up a few steps to the stone wall, where he sat down, suddenly exhausted. He laughed a little and shook his head before looking up at John through the veil of black and silver hair that fell over his eyes. "My dear Father Candotti," he said wearily, "allow me to explain something. In the past fifteen years or so, I must have lived in what? Thirty different places? Four continents, two islands. Two planets! An asteroid! Seven or eight ecosystems, from desert to tundra. Dormitories, huts, caves, tents, shacks, hampiys…I have been required to function in over a dozen foreign languages, often three at a time. I have contended with thousands of strangers, in cultures involving three sentient species and perhaps twenty nationalities. I am sorry to disappoint you, but my capacity for curiosity is tapped out." Emilio sighed and put his head in his hands, careful not to tangle the joint mechanisms in his hair. "John, if I had my way, nothing new or interesting would happen to me ever again as long as I live. Laundry is just about my speed. No quick movements, no sudden noises, no intellectual demands."
"And no damned questions?" John suggested ruefully, sitting next to Sandoz on the wall.
"No damned questions," Emilio confirmed. He looked up, eyes on the rocky hills to the east. "And very little potential for death, destruction and degradation, my friend. I've had a couple of rough years."
It no longer came as a surprise to John Candotti that people found him easy to confess to. He was tolerant of human failings and it was rarely difficult for him to say, "Well, you screwed up. Everybody screws up. It's okay." His greatest satisfaction as a priest was to grant absolution, to help people forgive themselves for not being perfect, make amends, and get on with life. This might be the opening, he thought. "Want to tell me about it?"
Sandoz stood and went back to his basket of towels. When it was empty he turned and saw that Candotti was still sitting there. "I can finish this myself," he said curtly and disappeared back into the basement.
Vincenzo Giuliani was not idle during this time, nor did the Rakhat inquiry come to a halt. The Father General used the hiatus to rethink his strategies. The situation required a different tack and more sail, he decided, and called a meeting with Candotti, Behr, Reyes and Voelker. They were charged with two tasks during these hearings, he told them. One was institutional: to gather information about the mission itself and about Rakhat and its inhabitants. But the other was pastoral. A fellow priest had been through an extraordinary experience and needed help, whether he was willing to admit that or not.
"Upon much reflection," the Father General told them, "I have decided to release to you transcripts of the mission reports by Yarbrough and Robichaux, as well as certain private communications from them." He gave them the passwords necessary to unlock the files. "I am sure I don't have to tell you that this information is confidential. You will find as you read that Emilio has been entirely forthcoming about the mission facts. I believe he means to cooperate fully with us in our first task. He will tell us what happened on Rakhat as long as it does not touch on his personal state of mind, past or present. Which brings us to our second task."
Giuliani rose. "It has become clear to me that there is some private theological aspect to Emilio's emotional problems. I am, personally, convinced of the sincerity of his spiritual engagement at the beginning of the mission." Giuliani stopped pacing and came to rest directly across the table from Johannes Voelker. "I do not ask you to be credulous as you read the mission reports, but I ask you to accept as a working hypothesis the accuracy of the statements of his superiors on this subject." Voelker nodded noncommittally and Giuliani resumed his circuit of the room, coming to a halt by the windows. He pushed the gauzy curtain back and looked outside. "Something happened to him. It changed everything. Until we know what that was, we are sailing in the dark."
As the days went on, Giuliani observed and responded to the sea change in Sandoz himself. The man's general health began to improve again, due to some lifting of the depression and to a set of newly implanted semipermeable rods that released steady doses of vitamins C and D as well as calcitonin derivatives and osteoclast inhibitors, directly into his bloodstream. The fatigue gradually lessened, although it was unclear if this was because he felt better and got more exercise or because his physiological status was becoming more normal. Certainly, he bruised less easily. The probability of spontaneous bone breakage began to recede.
On Brother Edward's advice, Sandoz was given direct access to the drugs he used regularly: Prograine and dHE compounds for muscle aches, which were now more often from overuse, as he reclaimed ground, than from the lingering effects of scurvy. Edward felt Sandoz would use the medication responsibly and would feel freer to obtain relief if he didn't have to ask anyone's permission.
Then Sandoz asked about sleeping tablets. The Father General had decided to acquiesce to any reasonable request, but Emilio had mentioned suicide on several occasions and Giuliani could not risk being wrong on this. So he offered a compromise, which Sandoz refused: that he'd be allowed to use the drugs if someone witnessed him swallowing the pills. It was hard to know whether Emilio considered this too humiliating to be borne or only unacceptable because he'd hoped to stockpile the drugs against a future decision to take his own life.
In any case, Sandoz no longer permitted anyone into his room. He found and removed the monitor near his bed. The dreams and their sequelae were his own to manage in privacy. Maybe the sickness had stopped or maybe he had schooled himself to control even that, as he now controlled his hands and face and voice, and vomited in silence, sweating out the nights alone. The only indication that the dreams continued was the hour at which he rose in the morning. If things had gone well, he was up at dawn. If not, it might be ten o'clock before he appeared in the refectory for a small breakfast, which he now insisted on making
himself. Brother Cosimo did not offer help after the first morning.
Felipe Reyes inquired about phantom limb syndrome and Sandoz stiffly admitted to this and asked if Reyes dealt with this kind of neuralgia himself. Felipe was fortunate not to, but he knew other amputees who did and he was aware of how bad it could be. For some, Felipe told Sandoz, the pain was unrelenting. This information clearly appalled Emilio, which gave Felipe a measure of the severity of the intermittent problem for Sandoz. Reyes suggested that Emilio simply call a halt to the hearings if he was in distress. A few days later Sandoz asked for and received assurance from the Father General that he could end the sessions at will, without stating any reason. It was, Emilio had evidently decided, preferable to continuing while distracted and taking a chance on the kind of breakdown he'd experienced on the day he broke the cup.
In private, Johannes Voelker was given to understand by the Father General that Sandoz was never again to be accused of malingering. Voelker agreed and admitted that it was not a productive attitude. The others were told as well: when Sandoz balked, no one was to press him. Even gentle handling like John Candotti's drove the man further away.
When the hearings reconvened after this hiatus, there was no mistaking the change. They noticed the outward sign first. Sandoz was able to control a razor better now. The neatly trimmed beard was back, still black in the main, but with unfamiliar stripes of gray bracketing the long line of the mouth, just as the dark and now uninformative eyes had come to be bordered by streaks of silver in his hair.
They now saw, for the most part, whomever Sandoz wished them to see. Sometimes they were dealing with a Spaniard, invulnerable and aristocratic, a man who had rebuilt the castle walls and found some bastion from which to defend his integrity, and whose composure could not be disturbed by pointed questions about beloved children, now dead. Or Mephistopheles, dry-eyed and contained, to whom the lower depths of hell were known and familiar and drained of swampy emotion. Most often, it was Dr. Emilio Sandoz, linguist, scholar, a man of wide experience, attending a dreary colloquium that had some bearing on his specialty, after which his work and that of his colleagues might be published at last.
The sessions under this new regime got started with a question from Professor Reyes, comparative theologian, regarding the likelihood that the Runa had some concept of the soul. Dr. Sandoz, linguist, was on home ground and cited the Runa's grammatical categories for reference to things unseen and nonvisual. Reyes thought this might indicate at least the capacity to understand the concept of soul, even if they had not developed it themselves.
"Quite likely," Sandoz agreed. "In comparison to the Jana'ata or to our own species, the Runa are not notably creative thinkers. Or perhaps I should say, not original. Once a basic idea has been provided, they are often quite creative in elaborating on it."
"It seems to me that this idea of 'heart' that keeps coming up might be analogous to soul," Felipe said.
"Understand that 'heart' is my translation, yes? It might be close to the concept of soul within a living person, but I don't know if the Runa believe the essence of an individual persists beyond death—" He stopped. His body tensed, as though ready to stand, but then the Spaniard spoke. "When deaths occurred, I was not in a position to inquire about the Runa belief system." And Dr. Sandoz resumed a moment later, turning to Giuliani. "Anne Edwards sent back several papers on the subject of 'heart. May I summarize her observations, sir? Or does that constitute a form of premature publication?"
"Nothing said in this room is for publication. Please."
Sandoz turned back to Felipe. "Dr. Edwards believed that the concept of 'heart' and the Runa's theory of illness were closely related and both served as a rather benign means of social control. The Runa are not openly aggressive and claim never to become angry. If, for example, someone was refused a legitimate request or was thwarted or disappointed in some way, the aggrieved person would fall into a state of porai. When you are porai, your heart is sad and you may grow ill or become prone to accidents. Making someone sad is very bad form, yes? If you make someone else porai, you feel considerable social pressure to give in to the request or provide compensation to the supposed victim: apologize or make some gift that restores the victim's heart to happiness."
"There would be a good deal of room for misuse of a concept like that," Voelker commented. "What prevents people from claiming they are porai simply to obtain presents?"
"The Runa are almost never alone. Hardly any social interaction is without witnesses, so it is hard for someone simply to lie about an occurrence. However, there was often disagreement about the seriousness of the victim's state of porai and about the amount or kind of compensation due. If the argument got loud, the participants were told that they were making a fierno—a big noise, yes? If you make a fierno, it supposedly attracts thunderstorms, which can be violent and frightening."
He paused for a sip of water, handling the glass with remarkably improved dexterity, although he had to stop speaking and concentrate on the task. He lifted the glass toward John, as though toasting him. "New friction pads," he pointed out. John nodded appreciatively and Emilio continued. "Parents use thunderstorms as mild threats to teach children not to argue or make fusses to get their way. 'Make your heart quiet, or we'll have a thunderstorm soon. The storms are frequent. It is easy for children to believe there is some connection between their noise and bad weather."
"What if there's a storm when no one's been arguing?" John asked.
Emilio shrugged and made a face that said, This is obvious, surely. "Someone in a nearby village has made a fierno." And they smiled at the neatness of the thing.
"Prior to the appearance of Supaari VaGayjur, did you have any idea that there existed a second sentient species on Rakhat?" Johannes Voelker asked.
It seemed like an abrupt change in topic and the Spaniard turned to him, clearly expecting and prepared to meet an attack. "No." But then he admitted, "There were indications that we failed to recognize. The Runa have ten fingers, but the numbering system was based on six, for example. Which made sense to us once we found out that the Jana'ata hand has only three digits. And from the beginning, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Quinn noted a mismatch between the Runa culture we observed in Kashan and the culture that produced the radio signals that led us to Rakhat."
The Austrian was surprisingly conciliatory. "Yes. As I recall, Father Robichaux attributed the anomaly to cultural differences in economic and technical development," Voelker said. "It occurs to me—this peculiarity of the Runa language, by which things unseen at the moment are grammatically the same as those which are nonvisual at all times? This must have contributed to the surprise. Even if the Runa had told you about Jana'ata, you couldn't have known they were real, not mythical."
Sandoz looked at him for a long time, as if deciding how to take this change in tone. "Yes," he agreed finally. "In fact, we were told to beware of djanada. Obviously, a related word. We considered djanada to be a sort of bogeyman, used to keep children from wandering off. We took it as further evidence that, except for Mr. Quinn, we were not considered adults by the Runa for quite some time."
"Father Yarbrough reported that when you first saw Supaari VaGayjur, you assumed he was a Runao. Are the two species so similar as that? Or was it only because you were not expecting a second species?" Voelker asked.
"Initially, it was because we were unprepared to imagine that the Jana'ata existed. There were many subtle differences, once we knew what to look for. However, male Jana'ata do resemble female Runa in overall appearance and in size."
"How odd! Only the males?" Felipe asked.
"Female Jana'ata are sequestered and guarded. I cannot say how closely they resemble the Runa, male or female. The Runa sexes," Sandoz reminded them, "are quite alike, but the males are on average a good deal smaller. For a long time, we were confused about their gender because of that and because their sex roles did not match our expectations. Robichaux's Madonna and Child, by the way, should perhaps be r
enamed Saint Joseph and Child. Manuzhai was a male." There was a small burst of laughter and comment as the others admitted how surprised they'd been when they'd read this in the mission reports. "Manuzhai raised Askama and was smaller than his wife," Sandoz continued, "so we believed him female. Chaypas traveled extensively and carried on all the trade, which led us to assume that she was a male. The Runa were equally confused by us."
"If the Runa don't wear much besides ribbons," John said, clearing his throat, "couldn't you, um, see—?"
"Runa sexual organs are inconspicuous unless mating is imminent," Sandoz said and continued blandly, "Along with the dentition and claws, this is one unmistakable difference between male Jana'ata and Runa of either sex. It was not immediately apparent because Jana'ata are generally clothed."
Edward Behr, sitting as usual across the room from Sandoz, suddenly had a coughing fit. It was, the Father General thought, as though Emilio were testing his own strength, seeing how far back into the pit he could go. "We are to infer that male Jana'ata organs are not inconspicuous. Are you trying to shock us, Father Sandoz?" Vincenzo Giuliani asked in a light, bored voice, which he hoped was convincing.
"I wouldn't presume to know what would shock you, sir. I was explaining the limits of the similarity between the species."
"This Supaari VaGayjur," Johannes Voelker said, "he owned the village of Kashan?"
Giuliani looked up. Now who's changing the subject? he thought.
"No. Well, perhaps, in a manner of speaking. He did not actually own the real estate or the Runa villagers." Sandoz shook his head, more certain as he thought it through. "No. My understanding was that he owned the rights to trade with them. If they were dissatisfied, the VaKashani could have solicited another merchant to buy Supaari out, although he would have been given an opportunity to adjust his agreements with the VaKashani to address their concerns. It was in many ways an equitable contractual arrangement."
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