Children of God (35 page)

"What is it that you sing with him, after the chants?"

"The Sh’ma: a song of our mother’s people."

Shetri had given up trying to work out Ha’anala’s notions of kinship. Music, on the other hand, was something he appreciated. "It’s beautiful."

"As are your own songs." She was silent for a time. "Someone thanks you for singing to Isaac. The Sti chants make the heart quiet. Someone wishes she understood the words, but the melody is enough."

Shetri paused in their procession, willing now to ask a question that made him uneasy. "How is it possible for Isaac to know the whole of an epic, hearing it but once? Someone studied years…" He looked away, embarrassed. "Is he a memory specialist or is such a feat normal for your… mother’s kind?"

"Our mother says that Isaac’s mind is made differently from anyone else’s anywhere. Isaac would not be like anyone else, even if he were among his own people."

"A genetic freak," Shetri suggested, but she didn’t understand. She knew the evening chants but very little modem K’San, and he couldn’t summon any similar idea in Ruanja. Falling silent, he set himself to study the low-growing foliage around them, noting the herbs that grew here, and leaned over to slice a stem of feverbalm, inhaling its fragrance. He was glad of the distraction, gladder still that the girl was not contemptuous of a man who cared about plants.

Until Ta’ana had proposed a match, Shetri had never in his life considered taking a mate, not even privately, not even after he had first learned of the deaths of Nra’il and his heirs. Ha’anala was young, he knew, but he himself felt newborn in the world. He wondered if Ta’ana had spoken to the girl already. He had no idea how these things were arranged; he was a third, and had never expected to care. "Ha’anala. It’s a strange name," he said.

"Someone was named for a person her father admired."

It seemed to him that she neither revealed nor concealed her identity. Perhaps she thought it obvious—and indeed, it had been to Ta’ana. Or perhaps she had told Shetri himself, but he had understood her Ruanja imperfectly and missed some subtlety. Her soul seemed to him like colored glass: translucent but not transparent.

He was embarrassed to find that he was staring at her again; she would not submit to being gowned, let alone to veiling, and her scent was intoxicating. Shetri gazed back toward his sister’s encampment in the distance, makeshift and muddy with the night’s rain. Very soon he would have to ask his sister to choose between nakedness and hunger. The valet was the most expendable Runao now; given Ta’ana’s abandonment of her veil, he suspected that the dresser’s time was coming. "We must move on to Inbrokar City. Ta’ana is concerned that they may not let us in if too many others have already taken shelter there," he told Ha’anala as they walked again. "What will you do, when Isaac’s wounds are healed?"

She did not seem to answer directly. "It’s wrong to eat Runa," she said. She stopped walking and met his eyes. "Sipaj, Shetri, otherwise, we would stay with you."

He had to listen to her words in his mind again, to be certain: she had used a form of address that meant him personally, not him as a part of his sister’s household. Before meeting Ha’anala, he had rarely spoken to a female not of his own family, but the meaning of Ha’anala’s scent was now unmistakable, and her eyes were the color of amethyst, and she looked at him with what he imagined might be the unfrightened gaze of a Runa courtesan. "Someone is…" His voice faded away. Then, recalling himself regent and determined to be honorable, he began again, "Someone’s nephew Athaansi—"

"Is of no interest," Ha’anala finished decisively. "Your sister will find another wife for him. Perhaps two." Shetri reared back, shocked. "Sipaj, Shetri, everything will change soon. There will no longer be any ’sires’ to waste," she told him, using the K’San term she’d learned from Ta’ana.

She had thought hard about what she must do. On the right foot, there was love for and obligation to Sofia, and a desire to ameliorate unavoidable sorrow. On the left, a need for refuge, for survival on her own terms. Ha’anala could not, would not turn against the Runa, whom she loved and understood; neither could she idly witness the destruction of her own kind. The solution had come as she watched Ta’ana and her maid working together with a practical equality as they organized the little band of refugees for the next leg of the journey.

The people themselves will choose from among us, Ha’anala thought. And we djanada will begin again, having been chosen.

Raised by Runa, Ha’anala had no wish to alarm a male, but she had confirmed Ta’ana’s own worst fears about the war. There would be no more talk of Isaac as hostage—he was to have full status as a brother-in-law.

"Sipaj, Shetri," Ha’anala said then, "someone has discussed this matter with Ta’ana, and we-but-not-you are agreed. Isaac wishes to remain with people who sing, and someone wishes you for a husband. Your sister agrees." She looked at Shetri until his own eyes dropped; he had begun to tremble, and she herself was hardly less driven by the need to fill an emptiness she had never felt so physically. "It remains for your consent," she said, her voice not quite as steady as she might have wished.

It was all he could do to order his thoughts in K’San and when he was as ready as he could be, he translated them into Ruanja for her. "Someone," he said quietly in a language ill-suited to his tongue and task, "has no experience. Someone studied the Sti epics all his life. There is—there was a small estate, ten day’s travel south of here, but now someone’s sister says there is nothing. Everything is gone. Someone can promise nothing—not even food—to…"

She waited for him to find his words, familiar with Isaac’s need for silence in which to think. After a time, she said, "To study poetry seems an enviable life."

She turned away then and looked south, toward the broad, flat plains she’d traveled over, and thought of all that had happened since leaving Trucha Sai. She thought again of the people, and how much she loved them; of their engulfing affection and their never-ending concern; of their beautiful, terrible need to touch, to speak, to watch, to care. She closed her eyes, asking herself what she wanted.

This, she thought. I want to live among people who sing, who are quiet enough to let Isaac think. I want to be with this shy and awkward man, who is kind to Isaac and who will be a good father. I want to belong with someone. I want to feel at the center of something, and not the edge. I want children and grandchildren. I don’t want to grow to be old and die, knowing that when I die, there will be no more like me.

"I won’t go back," Shetri heard her say, but in a language he did not recognize.

She spoke again, and this time he understood. "Someone’s father once told her that it was better to die than to live wrongly. I say: better to live rightly." Once again, he was confused by the mix of languages she needed to think this way. So she said, "Someone can feed herself and her brother. And you, until you learn." He knew this to be so. She had brought back wild game; roasted, it was tough and fibrous, but the remaining domestics were convinced they could make such meat palatable, given time to learn its preparation. "Someone requires a promise: you will not eat Runa."

It seemed a small thing, somehow, almost reasonable, very nearly sensible, to throw aside the very basis of Jana’ata civilization, merely because this extraordinary girl asked it of him. "As you wish," he said, wondering if this conversation too were some drugged illusion, knowing suddenly that it was not the power of the Sti inhalants but her fragrance, her nearness—

He should not have been surprised. If Ha’anala was who his sister said she was, then she had grown up with Runa and mating was no mystery to her. Even so, that morning, under a wide sky, with three suns’ witness, and no wedding guests but wind and herbs, Shetri Laaks found that it was once again necessary to reassess his capacity for astonishment.

"Sipaj, Shetri: it is not safe to go to the city of Inbrokar," she said, later, when she believed that he could hear again. "We-and-you-also must go beyond the Gamu mountains. Ta’ana agrees. There are places in the far north that will be safe."

Wordless, enveloped, emptied, felled: if she had told him to take up residence on a sun, he’d have climbed through cloud and fallen into fire for her.

"Do you know who we are?" she asked him. "This one and her brother?"

"Yes," he said.

She pulled away, leaving him chilled by her withdrawal, and faced him. "I am a teacher," she said. "My brother is a messenger."

He understood little more than the Ruanja word, messenger. "And what is his message?" he asked, seeing he was meant to.

"Walk away," she said. "And live."

"WE MUST TELL OUR MOTHER," HA’ANALA TOLD ISAAC THAT AFTERNOON. "Someone needs the tablet."

Isaac lifted his chin: permission.

They would be able to monitor any radio transmission on Rakhat, via the Magellan, and tap all its resources, but they themselves could not be located. The Magellan’s systems would record only that their tablet’s signals had passed by way of one of the satellite relays positioned over the continent. Sofia would know that much: they were still on the continent.

Ha’anala sat thinking for a long time, trying to find the words to tell Sofia that there were Jana’ata who were good and decent, that justice could become tainted with revenge. But she knew what the people thought of those who collaborated with the djanada; no matter how nuanced, her words would be understood as treachery.

Throat tight, Ha’anala opened the connection to the Magellan. The enormity of her decision made speech impossible; she pecked out a short message with a single claw. "Sofia, my dear mother," she wrote, "we have left the garden."

"I FAIL T’SEE THE PROBLEM HERE," SAID SEAN FEIN, SERVING HIMSELF some stew from the pot in the center of the table. "Put it on the speakers. Crank up the volume. It’s not as though the wee man can take himself out for a little walk, now, is it?"

"It’s not a matter of simply hearing the songs. It will require study and analysis," Danny Iron Horse insisted. "Half the words are a mystery to me, but what I did understand is—. Look, I’ve done all I can with them! Sandoz has to help."

"I told him once that the music changed after he was there. He had no interest in this," joseba informed them, bringing his plate to the table. "He was averse to listening to these songs even before we left."

"That was when it was Hlavin Kitheri’s voice," John pointed out, chewing thoughtfully. "Or one of the others he recognized. These are so different!"

"But it’s unquestionably Kitheri’s style," Carlo commented, pouring himself a little Ferreghini red.

"Yes," Danny agreed, "and if this is what Kitheri is writing now, then the whole structure of that society—"

Sandoz appeared in the doorway to the commons, VR visor tucked under an arm. The room fell silent, as it generally did whenever he first walked in and his mood was unclear. "Gentlemen, Geryon is tamed," he announced. "I have successfully completed a simulated lander flight from the Bruno to the surface of Rakhat and back again."

"I’ll be damned," Frans Vanderhelst breathed.

"Quite likely," Sandoz replied, and bowed with mock modesty when cheers and whistles and applause erupted.

"I really don’t understand why you had so much trouble with it," said John, as he and Nico came to Emilio’s side, like attendants at a prize fight, to remove the VR gloves and take the visor from him. "I mean, how much harder could it be than fielding a baseball?"

"Just couldn’t seem to picture what I had to do. I’m almost blind, mentally," Sandoz told him, taking his place at the table. "I didn’t even know other people could see things in their heads until I was in college." He nodded to Carlo when a celebratory glass of wine was offered. "And I can’t read maps for shit—if somebody gave me instructions on how to get someplace, I used to write it all out in prose." He sat back in his chair, looking relaxed if tired, and smiled up at Nico, who’d brought him a bowl from the galley. "I should still probably be dead last on the flight schedule—"

"So to speak," John murmured sitting across the table from him, inordinately pleased with himself when Emilio laughed. "Now maybe you’ll cut everybody a little slack!"

There was a round of grunted agreement with that sentiment, and for the first time since the voyage had begun, a sort of communal contentment took hold as they ate and drank and the talk became general. They were all aware of the fragile sense of being on the same team, but no one dared comment on it, until the end of the meal when Nico said, "I like it better this way."

A small silence settled in then, as it will at any dinner party, but it was broken by Danny Iron Horse saying, "Listen, Sandoz, there’s a new Rakhati song I’ve been working on—"

"Come on, Danny!" John protested. "No shop talk, okay?"

But Emilio hadn’t frowned and Danny took this as permission to continue. "Just this one piece," he insisted. "It’s extraordinary, Sandoz. I honestly think it’s important from a political standpoint that we understand what these lyrics imply, but I’ve done as much as I can with them."

"Danny—" John started again.

"John, when I want a spokesman, I’ll let you know," Emilio warned. John shrugged: I wash my hands of it. Emilio went on, "All right, Danny. Let’s hear it."

The music itself was as recognizable as Mozart’s, as powerful in its play on the emotions as Beethoven’s. Except for a chanted baritone bass line, the voices were unlike anything previously heard: creamy, sumptuous altos, shimmering, brilliant trebles, the whole woven into harmonies that left them breathing raggedly. Then a single voice: rising, rising, pulling them helplessly—

"That word," Danny said emphatically as the soprano sank into the chorus, like a spent wave into the ocean. "That’s the key. It has to be. Do you know it?"

Sandoz shook his head, and held up a hand, listening to the entire piece before speaking. "Again, please," he said when it was finished. And then: "Once more," listening the third time before breaking his silence. "Get my tablet, please, Nico," he said, when it was over. "When did this arrive, Danny?"

"Last week."

"Let me see if I understand the process by which we received this transmission," Sandoz said dryly as Nico trudged off for the computer. "When these songs were first broadcast on Rakhat, they were automatically collected by the Magellan, encoded, compressed and packeted, yes? Held in memory, and not sent out until the stars were right. Picked up at home by radio telescopes over four years after the Magellan sent them. Sold by the Contact Consortium to the Jesuits, no doubt after a period of negotiation over price. Studied, packeted again. Shot off to us, after what? Two years, perhaps? And we’re now moving at maximum velocity?" he asked, looking at Fat Frans for confirmation. "So more years have gone by since the packet caught up with us last week, because of the relativity effects. I have no idea what that adds up to, but it’s old news, Danny—. Ah, grazie, Nico."

For a time, they simply watched the process they were all familiar with, as Sandoz checked through his files, looking for similar roots, to confirm or disprove whatever hypothesis was forming in his mind.

"The word is related, I think, to a stem word for change: sohraa," he said at last. "The first syllable is an intensifier, of course. The term is, I think, a poetic neologism, but I am not familiar with this construction. It could be archaic rather than new, yes? It combines sohraa with a stem that implies a breaking out or breaking free: hramaut. The only time I heard that was when Supaari took me to his courtyard to show me a small animal that was emerging from a kind of chrysalis." His eyes rose to meet Danny’s. "If I must guess, I would say the force of the word is emancipation, perhaps. The theme of the entire piece is perhaps joy at the breaking of bonds."

Daniel Iron Horse closed his eyes briefly, perhaps in prayer. There was a burst of talk, but Danny spoke above it. "You agree that this is Kitheri’s composition? His style, both in lyric and musical form?" Sandoz nodded: unquestionably. "The voices?" Danny pressed. "Who is singing? Not who. I mean, what species?"

"The basses, of course, are male Jana’ata. The others are of a much higher register," Sandoz observed calmly.

"Scuzi," Nico said politely. "What does emanci—. What is that word?"

" ’Emancipation.’ It means, to set free," Emilio told him. "When slaves are legally freed, it is called emancipation."

"Runa have much higher voices, don’t they?" Nico suggested. "Maybe they’re singing because they’re happy they’re free."

Iron Horse’s eyes were steady on Emilio’s. "Sandoz, what if Kitheri’s emancipated the Runa?"

It was the first time he’d dared to say this aloud. Around the room, the men sat straighter, blinking, and reconsidered what they’d just heard.

"My God, Emilio," John cried, "if the Runa are singing—. If emancipation is the theme of that song…"

"That would change everything," Sean whispered, as Carlo sighed theatrically, "I’m too late!" and Frans Vanderhelst cried, "Congratulations, Johnny! There is your hidden meaning!"

"Sandoz," Danny said carefully, "maybe this is why you were meant to go back—"

Sandoz cut the rising noise of speculation off, staring at Danny. "Even if you are correct, and I doubt that for a number of reasons—linguistic, political and theological—it would hardly have required my presence on Rakhat to learn of this." He glanced at the Earth-relative time-date readout. "I could have heard this music when the transmission reached Earth. Years ago, yes? About the time Gina and I celebrated our eighth anniversary, perhaps?" he said, glancing cold-eyed at Carlo.

There was an uneasy quiet.

"I am sorry to disappoint Nico and the more romantic among you," Sandoz continued, "but the voices don’t sound to me like those of Runa. Also, the song is in High K’San, which does not disprove Danny’s hypothesis, but hardly supports it. The altos consistently use personal pronoun forms I’ve never heard. I was never spoken to by any Jana’ata woman, not even when I was a member of Kitheri’s harem, so my guess is that the pronoun is feminine and that these voices are adult females. Perhaps the highest voices are those of children, but it seems likely to me that these are Jana’ata children, not Runa."

"But even if it’s Jana’ata women he’s liberated—" Danny started.

"Father Iron Horse, I detect a certain indulgence in wishful thinking," Sandoz said with the acid courtesy they all had come to dread. "Why do you credit Kitheri with precipitating such an event, instead of merely observing it, for example? Is it possible that you are imposing your own desire for self-justification on a situation and a man you can know nothing about?" Danny absorbed that like the slap in the face it was meant to be. "If," Sandoz continued, "Hlavin Kitheri were somehow responsible for a change in the status of such members of his own species—and I can’t imagine how he could be-I would be happy for them. I forgive him nothing."

"But a small change can perturb a system," Joseba remarked, still taken by the idea. "What if something you said or did influenced Kitheri or one of the other Jana’ata? That would make what happened—" He stopped when Sandoz rose abruptly and walked to the other side of the room.

"What, Joseba? Forgivable?" Sandoz asked. "Tolerable? Okay? All better?"

"It would redeem what happened to you," Sean Fein suggested quietly. He nearly recanted under the sear of the black-eyed stare, but forced himself to go on. "Look, y’never know, Sandoz!" he cried. "What if that bloody Austrian admissions committee had accepted young Mr. Hitler for art school? He was pretty decent with landscapes and architecture. Maybe if he’d gotten his wretched arts degree, everything would have been different!"

"A few words, Emilio!" said John with urgency. "An act of kindness, or love, or courage—"

Sandoz stood still, his head turned down and away from them. "All right," he said reasonably, looking up. "For the sake of argument, let’s assume that unintended consequences can be for good as well as ill. The trouble with your proposition, as applied to my case, is that there was never any opportunity for me to give Hlavin Kitheri or his associates a stirring sermon on liberty or the value of souls—Jana’ata, Runa or human." He stopped, waited, eyes closed. He was tired, naturally. That was part of it. "I don’t recall being allowed to say a single word, actually. I did scream quite a bit—fairly incoherently, I’m afraid." He stopped again and took in an uneven breath, letting it out slowly before lifting his eyes to their faces. "And I fought like a sonofabitch to keep those fuckers off me, but I doubt even the most charitable of observers would have called that a display of courage. ’An amusing exercise in futility’ may have come to mind."

He paused again, breathing carefully. "So you see," he resumed calmly, "I don’t think there is a shred of hope that anyone abstracted any edifying lessons about the sanctity of life or the political virtues of freedom during my… ministry to the Jana’ata. And I suggest, gentlemen, we drop this subject for the duration of our journey together."

THE OTHERS WATCHED, BLINKING IN THE AFTERMATH, AS SANDOZ LEFT the room under his own power. No one noticed when Nico, standing unobserved in the corner, left the commons as well and went to his cabin.

Opening the storage cabinet on the wall over his desk, Nico rummaged through his small collection of personal treasures and located two hard cylinders of unequal length: one and a half Genoa salamis he had hoarded away. Laying them on his desk, he sat down and breathed in the fragrance of garlic while giving serious thought to the issue of salami. He considered how much he had left, and how long it would be before he could buy more, and how Don Emilio felt when he had a bad headache. It would be a waste to give salami to a person who was only going to throw it up. Still, Nico thought, a present could make a person feel better, and Don Emilio could save it for later when the headache was gone.

People often laughed at Nico for taking things too seriously. They would say something seriously, and he would take it seriously, and then be embarrassed when it turned out that they were only joking. He could rarely tell the difference between that kind of joking and sensible talk.

"It’s called irony, Nico," Don Emilio had explained to him one night. "Irony is often saying the opposite of what is meant. To get the joke, you must be surprised and then amused by the difference between what you believe the person thinks and what he actually says."

"So it would be irony if Frans said, Nico, you’re a smart boy."

"Well, perhaps, but it would also be making fun of you," Sandoz said honestly. "Irony would be if you yourself made a joke by saying, I’m a smart boy, because you believe you’re stupid and most other people believe this of you as well. But you’re not stupid, Nico. You learn slowly but thoroughly. When you learn something, you have learned it well and don’t forget it."

Don Emilio was always serious, so Nico could relax and not try to find hidden jokes. He never made fun of Nico and he took extra time to teach him and made it easy to remember the foreign words.

All that, Nico decided, was definitely worth half a salami.

THE LAST THING EMILIO SANDOZ WANTED WAS A VISITOR, BUT WHEN HE responded to the knock on his door with a parsimonious "Piss off!" there were no footsteps and he could tell that whoever it was intended to stay there as long as necessary. Sighing, he opened the door and was not surprised to find Nico d’Angeli waiting expectantly in the curving hall.

"Buon giorno, Nico," he said patiently. "I am afraid I would rather not have any company right now."

"Buon giorno, Don Emilio," Nico responded pleasantly. "I am afraid this is very important."