Children of God (45 page)

"Small individuals can be surprisingly powerful," Ha’anala observed breathlessly, leaning over to press her lively belly between her chest and legs, glad that she could summon up a little humor even now.

Hearing his name, Sandoz had joined them, making an obeisance rather than offering his hands..When the introductions were over, he sat where he too could watch the party: silent, hunched and rocking slightly, his arms crossed over his chest. His posture very nearly mimicked her own during a contraction, and Ha’anala’s first words to him were, "Funny, you don’t look pregnant."

He stared and then hooted, startled by the remark but apparently amused. "If I am, we’re definitely going to have to start a new religion," he replied, and if she didn’t understand all of his words, she liked his smile. He had eyes like Sola’s—brown and small—but warm, not stony. "My lady, what language best pleases you?" he asked.

"Ruanja for affection. English for science—"

"And jokes," he observed.

"K’San for politics and poetry," Ha’anala continued, pausing as the wave crested and then receded. "Hebrew for prayer."

For a time, the five of them watched Runa tending fires and roasting sticks of root vegetables now that the Jana’ata had been able to eat their fill. "We have dreamed of this," Suukmel said, smiling at Tiyat and then reaching out to grasp first Rukuei’s ankle and then Ha’anala’s.

"Dreamed of what?" Sandoz asked. "Eating well?"

Suukmel considered him for a time and decided he was being ironic. "Yes," she agreed easily, then swept an arm across the panorama. "But also of this: all of us together."

"Someone’s eyes feel good to see it," said Tiyat. She looked down at her sleeping son, and then at the people surrounding Ha’anala. "Three kinds are better than one!"

"Sandoz, tell me about each of your companions," Ha’anala said, in the language of politics.

He motioned toward the one with the bare skull first and answered her in the language of affection. "Djon has clever hands, like a Runa, and a generous heart. Look now at his face, and you will learn how a human appears when he enjoys something. Someone thinks: to help others is Djon’s greatest pleasure. He has a talent for friendship." He paused, and switched to K’San. "I believe he is incapable of lying."

"The one next to him?" Ha’anala asked, glancing at Suukmel, who was also listening carefully.

The answer was in Hebrew. "He is called Shaan. He sees very clearly, without sentiment." Sandoz paused, looking at the others, and realized that only Ha’anala spoke Hebrew. In K’San he said, "Sometimes it is necessary to hear hard truths. Shaan is fierce, like a Jana’ata, and unsparing. But what he says is important." He gestured then toward Joseba, and simplified the name. "Hozei also sees clearly, but he is subtle. When Hozei speaks, I listen carefully."

"And the black-haired one?" Suukmel asked, when Ha’anala was silenced by another contraction.

Sandoz drew in a chestful of air and let it out slowly. "Dani," he said, and they waited to hear which language he selected. "He may be of use to you," he said in K’San. "He knows from his own people’s experience what the Jana’ata face, and he wants very much to be of aid to you. But he is a man of ideals, and has sometimes chosen them over ethics."

"Which makes him dangerous," Suukmel remarked.

"Yes," Sandoz agreed.

"The one who is singing?" Ha’anala asked. "He, too, is like a Jana’ata, I think. Is he a poet?"

Sandoz smiled and continued in Ruanja. "No, not a poet, but Nico appreciates the work of poets, and his voice graces it." He glanced at Tiyat and chose his words carefully. "Nico is more like a village Runao, who can be led easily by anyone who is forceful." He paused as the three Jana’ata exchanged looks. "Nico can be a danger, but I trust him now. In any case, he won’t stay with you," Sandoz told them. "He is a member of a trading party that will only be here long enough to do business in the south. The others wish to remain here, to be of use and to learn from you, if you will permit it."

"And you, Sandoz?" Rukuei asked. "Will you stay or go?"

He did not answer because Ha’anala closed her eyes, folding over her belly, and this time, gave a strangled cry that brought Shetri to her side. When her breath returned, she said, "It will be well. I am not afraid."

AS THE LIGHT FADED, SO DID THE PAINS, WHICH SEEMED NOW TO BE AT some distance. Her attention flickered like the fire that warmed her and lit up the night, but she continued to listen to the quiet conversation around her, marveling at Sandoz’s voice, so unlike Isaac’s—not loud and halting but soft and musical, its pitch rising and falling, its cadences varied and flowing. Ha’anala had forgotten that humans could speak that way, and she was saddened by the years that had passed since she had last heard Sofia’s voice.

Swept by mourning, she grieved for the past, and also for the future she would not know, for there came a private moment when she knew that she would die—not with the unfocused theoretical understanding that she was mortal but with the physical certainty that death would come for her sooner rather than later. To her surprise, she slept, waking briefly with each gripping muscular wave, aware that she drew on a diminishing reserve of strength each time she rejoined the living. Once she came fully alert in the darkness, and told the others, "When I am gone, take the children to my mother." Soothing murmurs succeeded shocked silence, but she said, "Do as I ask. Remind her of Abraham. For the sake of the ten…" This said, she sank back into oblivion.

At dawn, her husband’s snarl brought her back to the world. She was in the house now but warm, covered with blankets the likes of which she’d never seen. Without moving, she could look out the door to a ghostly landscape softened by fog. "No! I won’t permit it!" Shetri was insisting. "How can you even think of such a thing?"

"Are you giving up then?" she heard a foreigner demand, his harsh accusatory whisper carrying easily in the still dawn air. "You needn’t lose them both, man—"

"Stop!" Shetri cried, turning away from Shaan, ears clamped shut. "I won’t hear of it!"

Closing her eyes, Ha’anala listened to Rukuei explain why she had to die, his words coming to her in scraps and tatters. "There’s no help for it… necessary… prevent generations of suffering in the future… the greater good…"

Ha’anala did not recognize the next voice, but it might have been Hozei who said, "This is not a thing of abnormality but weakness brought on by hunger!"

"Shetri, I think you are right and that Ha’anala will die soon," Sandoz said steadily. "I think Shaan is wrong. The procedure he wishes to try will kill Ha’anala. None of us is an adept—we don’t know how to do this in a way that will preserve the mother’s life, and I think Ha’anala is too weak now to survive it. I am sorry. I am so very sorry. But—among us, when this happens, the child sometimes lives for a very short time after the mother dies. Please—please, if you will permit it, perhaps we can at least save the child."

"How?" Ha’anala called, firm-voiced. "How do you save the child?"

She saw the small foreigner’s outline in the doorway, black against gray, and then he was at her side, kneeling, his hands in their strange machines, resting on his thighs. "Sipaj, Ha’anala, someone thinks that after you are gone, for a few moments, the child will live on, It would be necessary to cut open your body and lift the child out."

"Desecration," Shetri hissed again, standing above them both, tall and stiff backed. "No, no, no! If—. I don’t want the child! Not now, not this way! Ha’anala, please—"

"Save what you can," she said. "Hear me, Shetri. Save what you can!"

But he would not agree and Suukmel was arguing now, and Sofi’ala wailing, and the foreigners—

Suddenly, Ha’anala knew what it was to be Isaac, to have the music within her drowned out by noise. "Get out, Shetri," she said wearily, too far gone to tolerate the fierno another moment, too used up to be kind or tactful. "All of you: leave me alone!"

But she reached out and hooked her claws over Sandoz’s arm, and held him fast. "Not you," she said. "Stay." When the room was empty except for the two of them, she told him slowly, in the language of prayer, "Save what you can."

FOR NINE HOURS MORE, HE DID WHATEVER SHE ASKED OF HIM, TRYING to ease her any way he could. Assured that there was hope for her child, Ha’anala rallied, and Emilio allowed himself to believe that she’d manage on her own. Ashamed of himself for panicking, his greatest concern for a time was how he would ever apologize adequately to Shetri for making this birth so much more frightening than it already was for a terrified father who’d lost two earlier children.

But the labor went on and on. Toward the end, thirst was her main complaint, and he tried to help her drink, but she couldn’t hold anything down. He ducked outside the crude stone hut to ask about ice, but the small glacier that had formed between two peaks near the valley was too far away to be of use. John ran to the lander and got the oldest, softest shirt out of his pack; soaking a section of it in water, twisting it like a nipple, he handed this to Emilio, who offered it to Ha’anala. She sipped at the liquid this way and did not vomit, so for a time, Emilio simply dipped the cloth into water, over and over, until her need abated.

"Someone likes the sound of your voice," Ha’anala told him, eyes closed. "Talk to me."

"About what?"

"Anything. Take me somewhere. Tell me about your home. About the people you left behind."

So he told her about Gina, and Celestina, and they fell silent for a while, first smiling about rowdy little girls, then waiting for another contraction to pass. "Celestina. A beautiful name," Ha’anala said when it was over. "Like music."

"The name is from the word for heaven, but it can also mean a musical instrument, which sounds like a chorus of silver bells—high and chiming," he told her. "Sipaj, Ha’anala, what shall we call this baby?"

"That is for Shetri to say. Tell me about Sofia, when she was young." When he hesitated, she opened her eyes and said, "No, then. Nothing difficult now! Only easy things, until the hard one comes. What did you love when you were a child?"

He was ashamed to have failed her, and Sofia, but found himself describing La Perla and his childhood friends, losing himself in old passions and simple beauties: the solid smack of a ball into a worn glove, the swift arc into second base, a whirling throw to first for a double play. She understood very little but knew the joy of motion, and told him so in short, breathless phrases.

He helped her take more water. "Music, then," she said when she could. "Perhaps your Nico will sing."

Nico did, sitting in shafted light: arias, Neapolitan love songs, hymns he’d learned at the orphanage. Soothed, her thirst slaked, Ha’anala said once more, "Take the children to my mother." She slept; Nico sang on. Tired himself, Emilio dozed off, and awoke to a song that was surely the most beautiful he had ever heard. German, he thought, but he knew only a few of the words. It didn’t matter, he realized, transfixed and at peace. The melody was everything: supple and serene, rising like a soul in flight, obeying some hidden law…

All around them, the VaN’Jarri listened as well, children clinging to parents, everyone aware that the time was very near. Opening his eyes, Emilio Sandoz saw the last fall of the chest, drew back the blankets and studied the abdomen; saw the faint movement and thought, Still alive, still alive. Nico, wide-eyed, handed him the knife.

As though from a great distance, Sandoz watched his own unfeeling hands cut quickly and decisively. For hours, he had feared this moment, afraid that he would cut too deeply or too hesitantly. In the event, there was a kind of wordless grace. He felt purified, stripped of all other purpose as this body opened up beneath him, layer after layer, blossoming, glistening like a red rose at dawn, its petals bathed in dew.

"There," he said softly, and slit the caul. "Nico, lift the baby out."

The big man did as he was told, swarthy face paling in the shadowy hut at the awful sound—sucking and wet—as he pulled the child free. He stood then, thick-fingered hands supporting the infant’s fragile form as though it were made of glass.

John stood just beyond the door, ready to clean the baby and take it to the father, but when he saw what Nico carried, the steam rising wispily from its fine, damp fur, he threw back his head and cried, "Stillborn!" Nico burst into tears, and there was a great howl from the others that fell away when Sandoz lurched like a madman through the doorway and whispered in direct address, in denial and defiance, "God, no. Not this time."

Abruptly he snatched the child away from Nico and dropped to the ground with it, supporting his weight on his knees and his forearms, the tiny body so close he could feel the lingering warmth of its mother’s corpse. With his mouth, he sucked the slimy membrane and fluid from the nostrils and spat, enraged and resolved. Tipping the damp head back with one ruined hand, holding the blunt little muzzle closed with the other, he put his mouth over the nose again: blew gently, and waited; blew gently and waited, over and over. Eventually he felt hands on his shoulders drawing him back, but he wrenched his body from their grip, and went back to the task until John, more roughly now, yanked him away from the little body, and ordered in a voice ragged with weeping, "Stop, Emilio! You can stop now!"

Beaten, he sat back on his heels, and let a single despairing cry into the air. Only then, as the sound torn from his throat joined the high, thin wail of a newborn, did he understand.

The infant’s squall was lost in the eruption of astonishment and joy. Fine Runa hands gathered the baby up and Emilio’s eyes followed the infant as it was cleaned and wrapped, round and round, with homespun cloth, and passed from embrace to embrace. For a long time, he stayed slumped where he was, blood-soaked and spent. Then he pushed himself to his feet and stood, swaying slightly, looking for Shetri Laaks.

He was afraid the father would mourn the wife and curse the child. But Shetri was already holding the little one to his chest, eyes downcast, oblivious to everything but the son he jounced gently in his arms to quiet its crying.