Children of God

11 Naples October—December 2060

"I’M NOT ARGUING, FATHER GENERAL," DANIEL IRON HORSE ARGUED, "I’M just saying that I don’t see how you’re going to convince him to go back. We could bring laser cannon with us, and Sandoz’d still be scared spitless!"

"Sandoz is my problem," Vincenzo Giuliani told the father superior of the second mission to Rakhat. "You just take care of the rest of them."

The rest of the problems or the rest of the crew? Danny wondered as he left Giuliani’s office that afternoon. Walking down the echoing stone hallway toward the library, he snorted: same thing.

Laying aside the question of Sandoz’s participation for the time being, Danny was less than confident about any of the men he’d be risking his life with. They were all bright, and they were all big; that much was clear. For the past year, Daniel Beauvais Iron Horse, Sean Fein and Joseba Urizarbarrena had worked to develop proficiencies that might prove critical on Rakhat: communications procedures, first aid, survival skills, dead reckoning, even VR flight training so that any of them could, in an emergency, pilot the mission lender. Each of them was thoroughly familiar with the first mission’s daily reports and scientific papers. Having worked through Sofia Mendes’s introductory AI language-instruction system, they had all studied Ruanja on their own, and had now converged on Naples to work directly with Sandoz on advanced Ruanja and basic K’San. Joseba was solid, and Danny understood why an ecologist had been assigned to the team, but no matter how much money the Company might be able to make by bringing back Rakhati nanotechnology, Sean Fein was a chronic pain in the ass, and Danny could think of a hundred other men who’d be better suited for the mission. John Candotti, by contrast, was a hell of a nice guy and very good with his hands, but he had no scientific expertise at all, and he was months behind the others in training.

The Father General, no doubt, had his reasons—usually at least three for every move he made, Danny had observed. "I must consider myself and conduct myself as a staff in an old man’s hand," Danny would recite dutifully whenever he found himself thoroughly mystified, but he kept his eyes open, watching for clues as he and the others settled into an efficient working routine.

Mornings were devoted to language training, but afternoons and evenings were given over to further study of the first mission’s records under Sandoz’s direction, and it was during these sessions that Danny began to see why Giuliani remained adamant that Sandoz would be an asset. Danny himself had all but memorized the first mission’s reports, but he was constantly startled by his own misinterpretations of events, and found Sandoz’s memories and knowledge invaluable. Nevertheless, there were days at a time when the man was incapacitated for one reason or another, and Danny’s own questions about the Jana’ata triggered the strongest reactions.

"Flashbacks, depression, headaches, nightmares—the symptoms are classic," Danny reported in late November. "And I sympathize, Father! But that doesn’t change the fact that Sandoz is dangerously unfit for the mission, even if he could be convinced to go."

"He’s coming around," Giuliani said carefully. "He’s made real progress in the past few months, scientifically and emotionally. Eventually, he’ll see the logic. He’s the only one with any experience on the ground. He knows the languages, he knows the people, he knows the politics. If he goes, it maximizes the mission’s chances of success."

"The people he knew will be dead by the time we get there. Politics change. We’ll have the languages and we’ve got the data. We don’t need him—"

"He will save lives, Danny," Giuliani insisted. "And there is no other way for him to come to grips with what happened," he added. "For his own good, he’s got to go back."

"NOT IF YOU WENT DOWN ON YOUR KNEES AND BEGGED ME," EMILIO SANDOZ repeated each time he was asked. "I’ll train your people. I’ll answer their questions. I’ll do what I can to help. I won’t go back."

Nor had Sandoz reconsidered his decision to leave the Society of Jesus, although this was not being made easy for him. His resignation was a private matter of conscience and should have been a straightforward administrative procedure, but when he signed the necessary papers "E. J. Sandoz" and sent them to the Father General’s Rome office in late September, they were returned — weeks later—with a memo telling him that his full signature was required. Once more, he took up the pen that Gina had brought him one Friday, its grip designed for stroke victims whose dexterity was as impaired as his own, and spent his evenings in painful practice. Not surprisingly, another month passed without the new paperwork being forwarded from Rome for signing.

He found Giuliani’s delaying tactics first tiresome and then infuriating, and ended them by sending a message to Johannes Voelker asking him to inform the Father General that Dr. Sandoz planned to be too sick to work until the papers arrived. The documents were hand-delivered the next morning by Vincenzo Giuliani himself.

The meeting in the Father General’s Naples office was brief and intense. Afterward, Sandoz strode to the library, stood still until he had the attention of all four of his colleagues, and snapped, "My apartment. Ten minutes."

"SOMEONE ELSE HELPED ME WITH THE PEN," SANDOZ TOLD CANDOTTI tightly, tossing a small stack of papers down onto the wooden table where John sat with Danny Iron Horse. At the bottom of each sheet, in unhandy cursive, was a reasonably legible signature: Emilio José Sandoz. "If you didn’t want to be a party to this, you might have been honest enough to tell me, John."

Sean Fein had been examining Sandoz’s personal photonics rig, but now he studied Candotti, as did Joseba Urizarbarrena, leaning against a half wall that separated the apartment from the stairway to the garage. Danny Iron Horse also glanced at John but said nothing, watching Sandoz move from place to place in the bare room, angry and keyed up.

John’s eyes dropped under the scrutiny. "I just couldn’t—"

"Forget it," Sandoz snapped. "Gentlemen, I ceased to be a Jesuit at nine o’clock this morning. I am informed that while I may resign from the Society or the corporation or whatever the hell it is now, I remain nevertheless a priest in perpetuity. Outside of emergencies, I am not permitted to exercise priesthood unless I am incardinated by a bishop into a diocese. I shall not seek this," he said, eyes sweeping over them all. "Thus, I am declared vagus, a priest without delegation or authority."

"Technically, that’s pretty much the situation for a lot of us since the suppression. Of course, sometimes we stretch the definition of ’emergency’ pretty thin," Danny pointed out amiably. "So. What’re your plans?"

The guinea pig, aroused by Emilio’s pacing, began to whistle shrilly. He went to the kitchen and got a piece of carrot, hardly aware of what he was doing. "I shall remain here until my expenses are paid," he said, dropping the carrot into the cage.

Iron Horse smiled humorlessly. "Let me guess. Did the old man have an itemized list going back to your first day in formation? You aren’t liable for that, ace."

"He can’t make you pay for them fancy braces either," Sean added, around a thin-lipped smile. "The Company is a great one for insurance these days. You’re covered."

Sandoz stood still and looked at Danny and then Sean for a moment. "Thank you. Johannes Voelker briefed me on my rights." John Candotti sat up straighter, hearing that, but before he could say anything, Sandoz continued. "There are, however, certain extraordinary debts for which I hold myself responsible. I intend to pay them off. It may take a while, but I retain my pension and I have negotiated a salary equal to that of a full professor of linguistics at Fordham for the duration of this project."

"So you’re staying, for now at least. Good," Joseba remarked, satisfied. But he made no move to leave.

Danny Iron Horse, too, settled in, making himself comfortable somehow in the little wooden chair. "What about after the K’San project?" he asked Sandoz. "Can’t hide forever, ace."

"No. I can’t." There was a silence. "Perhaps when this job is done, I’ll walk into Naples and call a news conference," Sandoz continued with airy bravado. "Admit everything. Announce that I ate babies! Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll lynch me."

"Emilio, please," John started, but Sandoz ignored him, pulling himself erect, the Spaniard in ascendance. "Gentlemen," he said, returning to the issue at hand, "I am not just leaving the active priesthood. I am apostate. If you do not wish to be associated with me under these conditions—"

Danny Iron Horse shrugged, unconcerned. "Doesn’t make any difference to me. I’m here to learn the languages." He glanced, brows up, at the others, who nodded their agreement, then returned his gaze to Sandoz. There was a single uneven breath, a slight diminution of the rigidity. Sandoz stood still for another few moments and then sat on the edge of his bed, silent and staring.

"Nice duds," Danny observed after a time.

Taken by surprise, Sandoz gave a sort of gasping laugh and looked down: blue jeans, a white shirt with narrow blue stripes. Nothing black. "Signora Giuliani’s selections," he told them self-consciously. "Everything seems big to me, but she says this is the style."

Glad of the change in subject, John said, "Yeah, they’re wearing everything loose these days." Of course, almost anything would have looked big on Sandoz’s fleshless frame, John realized with a start. Emilio had always been small, but now he looked wasted again—almost as bad as when he first got out of the hospital.

Apparently following the same line of thought, Iron Horse remarked, "You could stand to put a little weight on, ace."

"Don’t start," Emilio said irritably, standing. "All right. Break’s over. There’s work to do."

He went to the wall of sound-analysis equipment, evidently dismissing them. Joseba stood and Sean moved toward the stairs. John rose as well, but Danny Iron Horse sat there like a pile of rocks, hands behind his head. "I got one leg weighs more than you, Sandoz," he said, looking Emilio over with canny black eyes, small in the pitted face. "You eating?"

John tried to wave Danny away from an injudicious display of solicitude, but Sandoz pivoted on a heel, and said with brittle clarity, "Yes. I eat. Father Iron Horse, you are here to learn Ruanja and K’San. I don’t recall engaging you as a nurse."

"Well, good, because I’m not interested in the job," Danny said agreeably. "But if you’re eating and you look like you do, what I’m wondering is if you’ve got whatever D. W. Yarbrough was dying of, on Rakhat. Anne Edwards never did figure out what he had, before they both got killed, eh?"

"Jesus, Danny!" Sean burst out, as Joseba stared and John cried, "For God’s sake, Danny! What the hell are you trying to do?"

"I’m not trying to do anything! I’m just saying—"

"They kept me in isolation for months," Sandoz said, his color vanishing. "They wouldn’t have released me if I was carrying something. Would they?"

"Of course not," John said, shooting a murderous glare at Danny. "You had every test known to science, Emilio. They wouldn’t have let you out if there was any chance that you’d brought back anything dangerous."

Danny shrugged, getting to his feet, and waved the idea off as well. "No, Candotti’s right. Couldn’t be the same thing," he said. "Forget I mentioned it."

But it was too late. There was a thin gasp as the full weight of it hit Sandoz. "Oh, my God. Celestina and—. My God, John. If I brought something back, if she gets sick—"

"Oh, no," John moaned, and pleaded, "Emilio, nobody’s sick! Please, don’t do this to yourself!" But by the time he got across the room, Sandoz had already fallen apart and there was nothing anyone could do but wait it out: Joseba and Sean acutely uncomfortable, Iron Horse sitting hugely in the little wooden chair.

"I just… don’t want… anyone else… to die because of me," Sandoz was sobbing. "John, if Celestina—"

"Don’t talk like that," John snapped, kneeling next to him, unfriendly eyes on Iron Horse. "Don’t even think like that. Okay. I know. Oh, God— I know! But nobody’s dying! Let’s calm down, okay? Listen to me. Emilio? Are you listening? If you were carrying anything, Ed Behr or I would have caught it by now, right? Or someone from the hospital when you first got home, right? Right? Emilio, nobody’s sick!"

Sandoz held his breath, tried to slow himself down, tried to think. "There was a lot of diarrhea. For D.W, I mean. Very bad. Anne said it was like Bengali cholera. He said everything tasted like metal. There’s been nothing like that for me."

"It’s not the same thing," John insisted. "You aren’t sick, Emilio! You’re just skinny."

Joseba and Sean looked at each other, eyes wide, and then let out breath that had been trapped in their lungs for what felt like hours. Released from embarrassed immobility, Joseba found a glass and brought some water; Sean looked around for tissues and settled for handing Sandoz some toilet paper. With John still at his side, Emilio blew his nose awkwardly and sucked in a deep breath, getting shakily to his feet. Wrung out, he went to the table, sat abruptly in the chair opposite Danny and put his head down. For a while, the room was quiet, and John Candotti, for one, spent the time mentally composing a venomous letter of admonition to the Father General regarding his brother in Christ, Daniel Iron Horse, who seemed neither surprised nor notably remorseful about what he’d triggered, and who had observed Sandoz’s collapse with the bland analytical interest of a civil engineer watching a bridge fail.

"Don’t take this wrong, ace, but one breed to another?" Danny said to Sandoz. "I never saw an Indian turn that white before." John was appalled but, to his astonishment, Emilio laughed and sat up, shaking his head. "I’m sorry, Sandoz. I really am," Danny said quietly.

It even sounded sincere, John noted. But Emilio nodded, apparently accepting the apology. Relieved that the whole awful business seemed to be resolving itself and determined to pull some good out of it, John went to the kitchen cupboards and threw open the doors. "You just don’t eat enough, that’s your problem," John told him. "Look what you got in here—nothing but coffee, rice and red beans!"

Sandoz pulled himself straight, drawing tattered dignity around his shoulders like an ermine cloak. "I like beans and rice."

"For true," Sean remarked, "and y’don’t have to cut up beans and rice, now, do you?"

"Hell," Danny said, "if you made anyone else exist on that diet, it’d be a human-rights violation, ace."

"The guinea pig eats better than you do," Joseba said, arms over his chest. "You aren’t sick, I think. You’re just living on your own miserable cooking."

"They were sure I wasn’t carrying anything," Sandoz said, as much to himself as to the others.

"They were sure," Iron Horse confirmed softly. "You okay now? You want some more water?" Joseba took the glass from him and refilled it silently.

"Yes. No. I’m okay." Emilio wiped his face on his sleeves, still shaken but better. "Jesus. It’s only that…"

"It’s only that y’had yersalf all nerved up about resigning," Sean finished for him, looking at Iron Horse with hard blue eyes. "And Danny Boy comes up with this crap about being sick. Y’got scared for the little girl, that’s all."

Iron Horse shrugged and with self-deprecating humor cheerfully declared himself "Big Chief Shit for Brains." John, who had watched this performance with increasing suspicion, folded his arms and stared. Shit for brains, John thought. Like hell.

"Candotti, you cook Italian?" Iron Horse asked, with a disarming smile.

John nodded, refusing to be charmed. "Yeah, I can cook."

"Well, then! Sandoz, if you can cook beans and rice, you can make spaghetti. You like macaroni and cheese? That’ll put some weight on you. Macaroni and cheese was invented here in Naples. Pizza, too, eh? Did you know that?" Emilio shook his head. Iron Horse stood up decisively and moved toward the stairway. "You have never eaten until you’ve had real Neapolitan macaroni and cheese, right, Candotti? Tell you what. You guys start the water boiling and I’ll go get some groceries from the refectory and we’ll teach Sandoz here how to cook himself some decent food."

Then, with a big man’s surprising quickness, he brushed past Joseba at the head of the stairs and was gone.

"SHATTERED LIKE A WHISKEY BOTTLE HITTING MAIN STREET IN FRONT of the Hotel Bell," Daniel Iron Horse said that evening. "I’m telling you: he’ll be a liability out there. He will fall apart at the wrong time and somebody’ll get killed! Let’s just use him as a resource and then put the poor bastard out to pasture."

"Danny, we’ve been over this. We can’t afford to waste him. What he knows cost us billions and three priests and four good laypeople, not to mention all the damage that was done to the Society because of the bad publicity."

"Hell, we were already in deep shit when that hit the fan. Point is, what’d it cost Sandoz?"

"Everything," Vincenzo Giuliani admitted with prompt precision, but he didn’t turn from the window of his office. Staring into the darkness beyond the courtyard, or perhaps at his own reflection in the mullioned glass, he added, "I don’t need you to remind me of that, Father Iron Horse." He left the window and moved behind the shining walnut desk, but did not sit. "For what it’s worth, the Holy Father insists that Sandoz is meant to return to Rakhat," Giuliani said in a tone that left his own opinion of this matter strictly out of the discussion. "His Holiness points out that six ships have attempted to reach Rakhat in the past forty years, and only the two directly concerned with Sandoz have made it. Gelasius III sees Providence in this."

Booted feet stretched far in front of him, a heavy-bottomed crystal tumbler in one large languorous hand, Iron Horse watched the Father General circle the room, moving soundlessly over priceless antique Orientals. "So what does His Holiness propose?" Danny asked, amused. "We prop Sandoz up on the dashboard of our spaceship like a plastic Jesus and use him to ward off collisions with interstellar debris? Bundle up his little bones with some bird feathers in a medicine pouch and hope the hull doesn’t crack apart?"

"Are you finished?" Giuliani asked lightly, pausing in his circuit. Iron Horse nodded, unabashed and unrepentant. "The Pope believes Sandoz must return to Rakhat to learn why he was sent there in the first place. He believes Emilio Sandoz is beloved of God."

Danny pursed his lips judiciously. "Like Saint Teresa said: If that’s how God treats His friends, it’s no wonder He’s got so few of them." Iron Horse lifted his glass to eye level and contemplated the contents before taking a last sip of single malt—leaving, as he always did, precisely one finger’s worth of alcohol at the bottom of the glass before setting it aside. "This is prime liquor. I admire your taste," he remarked, but his next words were uncompromising. "Sandoz is medically fragile, emotionally unstable and mentally unreliable. The mission doesn’t require him and I don’t want him on it."

"He is the toughest man I’ve ever known, Danny. If you had seen what he was like a year ago, even a few months ago. If you knew what he’s—" He stopped, astounded that he was arguing. "He will be on that ship, Father Iron Horse. Causa finita. The matter is closed."

Giuliani moved to leave, but Iron Horse remained where he was, immobile as the Grand Tetons. "Do you hate him that much?" Danny asked curiously as Giuliani’s hand touched the door. "Or does he just scare you so bad, you don’t even want to share a planet with him?"

The Father General, mouth open slightly, was too amazed to walk out.

"No. That’s not it." Iron Horse paused, the speculative look on his unlovely face replaced by serene certainty. "Taking Sandoz back to Rakhat is the price of getting the Suppression lifted, isn’t it. All we have to do is humor the Pope! Put one poor, old, broken-down ex-Jeb on the next ship out, and win, lose or draw—the prodigals shall be welcomed back to the bosom of Peter, with Vatican bells ringing and a glory of angels shouting hosannah." There was a low appreciative chuckle. "The Dominicans will be furious. It’s a beautiful deal, Father General," Danny Iron Horse said, smiling with all the warmth and good humor of a timber wolf at the end of a bad winter. "Why, this time, you’ll be the one making history."

There had been a fad for a while, Giuliani recalled while standing at the door, for housing domestic photonics in folksy-looking pine cabinetry with iron-work hinges, all cozy and warm on the outside and pure highspeed calculation on the inside. "You are a first-class sonofabitch, Danny," Giuliani said pleasantly, as he walked out the door. "I’m counting on that."

Daniel Iron Horse sat still as the old man’s footsteps receded. He stood then and retrieved his glass from the heavy silver service tray, for once in his life draining the contents, while Vincenzo Giuliani’s ambiguous laughter echoed down the stone-paved hallway.