Children of God (48 page)

WAITING FOR SANDOZ IN THE FOREIGNERS’ HUT, RUKUEI KITHERI PACED and paced, helpless against imagination, burdened with possibility, like a pregnant woman who cannot know what she carries within her.

"Go back with them," Isaac had told him. And Rukuei heard in those words an echo of his own yearning.

He feared that Sandoz would refuse him this. All of the foreigners had argued against it, and Sandoz more than anyone had reason to hate the Jana’ata. But everything was different now, and for days, Rukuei had planned the plea he would make to a man he hardly knew and barely hoped to understand.

He would tell the foreigner: I have learned that poetry requires a certain emptiness, as the sounding of a bell requires the space within it. The emptiness of my father’s early life provided the resonance for his songs. I have felt in my heart his restlessness and lurking ambition. I have felt in my own body the violent exuberance, the almost sexual exultation of creation.

He would tell the foreigner: I have learned that a soul’s emptiness can become a place where Truth will dwell—even if it is not made welcome, even when Truth is reviled and fought, doubted and misunderstood and resisted.

He would tell the foreigner: My own hollowed heart has made a space for others’ pain, but I believe there is more—some larger Truth we are all heir to, and I want to be filled with it!

He heard the footsteps then, saw Sandoz rounding the corner of the hut, followed by the others, talking among themselves. Blocking the foreigner’s way into the hut, turning swiftly, Rukuei swept out a circular swath of pebbly dirt. "Hear me, Sandoz," he began, throwing back his head in a gesture that offered battle. "I wish to go back with you to H’earth. I wish to learn your poetry and, perhaps, to teach you ours—"

He stopped, seeing the color leave Sandoz’s face.

"Don Emilio needs rest," Nico said firmly. "You can talk tomorrow."

"I’m fine," Sandoz said, not that anyone had inquired. "I’m fine," he said again. Then his knees buckled.

"Is that normal?" Kajpin asked, sauntering over with a bowl of twigs, just as Sandoz hit the ground. The foreigners just stood there gawking, so she sat down to eat. After a while, she told them, "We usually lie down before we fall asleep." Which seemed to wake everyone but Sandoz up.

THE FAINT SEGUED SEAMLESSLY INTO A SLEEP THAT WAS VERY NEARLY coma, as he began to pay the toll extracted by weeks on the road, months of strain, years of bewilderment and pain. He slept through the day and into the night, and when he opened his eyes, it was to starlit darkness.

His first thought was, How odd—I’ve never dreamed of music before. Then, listening, he knew that what he heard was real, not dreamt, and that he’d never heard its like—not on Rakhat, not on Earth.

He rose soundlessly, stepping over and around the sleeping forms of Nico and the priests. Emerging from the hut into still night air, he picked his way between stone walls glowing with moonlight and the shimmer of the Milky Way. As if drawn by a thread, he followed the uncanny sound to the very edge of the village, where he found a ragged tent.

Isaac was inside, bent almost double over an antique computer tablet, his face in profile rapt: transfigured by a wordless harmony, as delicate as snowflakes and as mathematically precise, but of astonishing power, at once shattering and sublime. It was, Emilio Sandoz thought, as though "the stars of morning rang out in unison," and when the music ended, he wanted nothing more in all the world than to hear it once again—

"Don’t interrupt. That’s the rule," Isaac said abruptly, his voice in the quiet night as loud and flat and unmodulated as the music had been softly nuanced and chastely melodious. "The Runa drive me crazy."

"Yes," Emilio offered when Isaac fell silent. "They drove me crazy sometimes, too."

Isaac did not care. "Every autistic is an experiment," he announced in his blank and blaring voice. "Nobody like me exists anywhere else." He watched his fingers’ patterning for a while but then glanced briefly at Sandoz.

Not knowing what else to say, Emilio asked, "Are you lonely, Isaac?"

"No. I am who I am." The answer was firm if unemotional. "I can’t be lonely any more than I can have a tail." Isaac began to tap his fingers on the smooth place above his beard. "I know why humans came here," he said. "You came because of the music."

The tapping slowed and then stopped. "Yes, we did," Emilio confirmed, falling into Isaac’s pattern: a burst of talk, perhaps three seconds long, then a silence of thirty seconds before the next burst. A longer pause meant, Your turn. "We came because of Hlavin Kitheri’s songs."

"Not those songs." The tapping started again. "I can remember an entire DNA sequence as music. Do you understand?"

No, Emilio thought, feeling stupid. "You are a savant, then," he suggested, trying to follow this.

Isaac reached up and began to pull a coil of hair straight, over and over, running the tangled rope through his fingers. "Music is how I think," he said finally.

"Then this music is one of your compositions? It is—" Emilio hesitated. "It is glorious, Isaac."

"I didn’t compose it. I discovered it." Isaac turned and, with evident difficulty, looked for a full second into Emilio’s eyes before breaking contact. "Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine: four bases." A pause. "I gave the four bases three notes each, one for each species. Twelve tones."

There was a longer silence, and Emilio realized that he was supposed to draw a conclusion. Out of his depth, he guessed, "So this music is how you think about DNA?"

The words came in a rush. "It’s DNA for humans and for Jana’ata and Runa. Played together." Isaac stopped, gathering himself. "A lot of it is dissonant. " A pause. "I remembered the parts that harmonize." A pause. "Don’t you understand?" Isaac demanded, taking stunned silence for obtuseness. "It’s God’s music. You came here so I would find it." He said this without embarrassment or pride or wonder. It was, in Isaac’s view, a simple fact. "I thought God was just a story Ha’anala liked," he said. "But this music was waiting for me."

The lock of hair stretched and recoiled, over and over. "It’s no good unless you have all three sequences." Again: the glancing look. Blue eyes, so like Jimmy’s. "No one else could have found this. Only me," Isaac said, flat-voiced and insistent. "Do you understand now?"

Dazed, Emilio thought, God was in this place, and I–I did not know it. "Yes," he said after a time. "I think I understand now. Thank you."

There was a kind of numbness. Not the ecstasy, not the oceanic serenity he had once known, a lifetime ago. Just: numbness. When he could speak again, he asked, "May I share this music with others, Isaac?"

"Sure. That’s the point." Isaac yawned and handed Emilio the tablet. "Be careful with it," he said.

LEAVING ISAAC’S TENT, HE STOOD ALONE FOR A WHILE, EYES ON THE sky. The weather on Rakhat was notoriously changeable and the Milky Way was rapidly losing custody of the night to clouds, but he knew that when it was clear, he could look up and, without effort, recognize familiar patterns. Orion, Ursa major, Ursa minor, the Pleiades: arbitrary shapes imposed on random points of light.

"The stars look the same!" he’d exclaimed years earlier, standing with Isaac’s father, seeing Rakhat’s night sky for the first time. "How can all the constellations be the same?"

"It’s a big galaxy in a big universe," the young astronomer had told him, smiling at the linguist’s ignorance. "Four point three light-years aren’t enough to make any difference in how we see the stars back on Earth and here. You’d have to go a lot farther than this to change your perspective."

No, Jimmy, Emilio Sandoz now thought, gazing upward. This was far enough.

Like father, like son, he thought then, realizing that Jimmy Quinn had, like his extraordinary child, discovered an unearthly music that changed one’s perspective. He was pleased by that, and grateful.

EMILIO WOKE JOHN FIRST, AND LED HIM A LITTLE DISTANCE AWAY FROM the settlement to a place where they could listen to the music alone; where they could speak in privacy, where Emilio could study his friend’s face as he listened and see his own astonishment and awe mirrored.

"My God," John breathed, when the last notes faded. "Then this was why…"

"Maybe," Emilio said. "I don’t know. Yes. I think so." Ex corde volo, he thought. From my heart, I wish it…

They listened again to the music, and then for a time to the night noise of Rakhat, so like that of home: wind in the scrub, tiny chitterings and scratchings in nearby weeds, distant hoots, hushed wingbeats overhead.

"There was a poem I found—years ago, just after Jimmy Quinn intercepted that first fragment of music from Rakhat," said Emilio. " ’In all the shrouded heavens anywhere / Not a whisper in the air / Of any living voice but one so far / That I can hear it only as a bar / Of lost, imperial music.’»

"Yes," John said quietly. "Perfect. Who wrote that?"

"Edward Arlington Robinson," Emilio told him, and added, " ’Credo.’»

"Credo: I believe," John repeated, smiling. Clear-eyed and clear-souled, he leaned back, hands locked around a knee. "Tell me, Dr. Sandoz," he asked, "is that the name of the poem, or a statement of faith?"

Emilio looked down, silvered hair spilling over his eyes as he laughed a little and shook his head. "God help me," he said at last. "I’m afraid… I think… it might be both."

"Good," said John. "I’m glad to hear that."

They were quiet for a time, alone with their thoughts, but then John sat up straight, struck by a thought. "There’s a passage in Exodus—God tells Moses, ’No one can see My face, but I will protect you with My hand until I have passed by you, and then I will remove My hand and you will see My back.’ Remember that?"

Emilio nodded, listening.

"Well, I always thought that was a physical metaphor," John said, "but, you know—I wonder now if it isn’t really about time? Maybe that was God’s way of telling us that we can never know His intentions, but as time goes on… we’ll understand. We’ll see where He was: we’ll see His back."

Emilio gazed at him, face still. "The brother of my heart," he said at last. "Without you, where would I be now?"

John smiled, his affection plain. "Dead drunk in a bar someplace?" he suggested.

"Or just plain dead." Emilio looked away, blinking. When he could speak again, his voice was steady. "Your friendship should have been proof enough of God. Thank you, John. For everything."

John nodded once and then again, as though confirming something. "I’ll go wake the other guys up," he said.

ONCE AGAIN RADIO WAVES CARRIED MUSIC FROM RAKHAT TO EARTH, and once again Emilio Sandoz was preceded by news that would change his life.

Long before he arrived home, reaction to the DNA music had rigidified. Believers found it a miraculous confirmation of God’s existence and evidence of Divine Providence. Skeptics declared it a fraud—a clever trick by the Jesuits to distract attention from their earlier failures. Atheists did not dispute the music’s authenticity, but they considered it just another fluke that proved nothing—like the universe itself. Agnostics admitted the music was magnificent, but suspended judgment, waiting for who knew what?

The pattern was established at Sinai and under the Buddha’s tree; on Calvary and at Mecca; in sacred caves, at wells of life, amid circles of stone. Signs and wonders are always doubted, and perhaps they are meant to be. In the absence of certainty, faith is more than mere opinion; it is hope.

Emilio himself had read once of a savant in Lesotho who had memorized every street in every city in Africa. If such a person made names into notes, would he have found harmony in addresses? Perhaps—given enough material and enough time and nothing better to do. And if that happened, Emilio asked himself on the long voyage home, would the music be any less beautiful?

He was a linguist, after all, and it seemed entirely possible to him that religion and literature and art and music were all merely side effects of a brain structure that comes into the world ready to make language out of noise, sense out of chaos. Our capacity for imposing meaning, he thought, is programmed to unfold the way a butterfly’s wings unfold when it escapes the chrysalis, ready to fly. We are biologically driven to create meaning. And if that’s so, he asked himself, is the miracle diminished?

It was then that he came very close to prayer. Whatever the truth is, he thought, blessed be the truth.

The Giordano Bruno was nearly halfway home when Nico noticed that Don Emilio’s nightmares had ended.

WITH ONLY SIX MONTHS OF SUBJECTIVE TIME BEFORE THEIR ARRIVAL ON Earth, Emilio Sandoz concentrated on the task at hand: teaching Rukuei English, trying to prepare the poet for what might await him. It helped to worry about someone else, to put his own experience to work in Rukuei’s behalf. Suspended in time, Emilio refused to listen to the transmissions from Rakhat that Frans intercepted, ignored the responses from Earth. It will be well, he told himself, and let the universe take care of itself while he took care of one apt and eager student. So when Frans Vanderhelst finally docked the Bruno at the Shimatsu Orbital Hotel high above the Pacific, Emilio Sandoz was, in many ways, a man at peace. He was, therefore, completely unprepared for his reaction to a letter that had been waiting for him nearly four decades.

Handwritten on a fine rag paper, selected because it would not crumble during his anticipated absence from Earth, the note read: "I am so very sorry, Emilio. I will not stoop to the scoundrel’s defense—that I had no other choice. I was simply acting on the principle that it is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Because I trust in God, I trust also that you will have learned something of value on your journey. Pax Christi. Vince Giuliani."

The middle-aged Jesuit who handed Sandoz the note did not know its contents, but he knew its author and the circumstances under which it was written, so he could take a pretty good guess at what that long-dead Father General must have said.

"One last jerk on the chain, you goddamned sonofabitch!" Sandoz cried, confirming the priest’s hypothesis. The rest of the commentary was heartfelt and in a splendid assortment of languages. When Sandoz was done, and he did not finish quickly, he stood in the curving air lock, the letter in one braced hand, arms at his sides, limp with exasperation. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded in English.

"Patras Yalamber Tamang," the priest replied, and continued in excellent Spanish. "I’m from the Nepal province, but I taught at El Instituto San Pedro Arrupe in Colombia until recently. I have been the Rakhat mission liaison for the last five years, working with governments and international agencies and a number of sponsoring corporations to coordinate the reception for Mr. Kitheri. And, of course, the Society would like to offer you yourself any assistance you are willing to accept from us."

Still fuming, Sandoz nevertheless listened to Tamang’s summary of the steps that had been taken to make Rukuei comfortable, and to ease the return of Sandoz and the crew of the Giordano Bruno. The hotel staff consisted of carefully chosen, highly trained volunteers who’d studied the history of the Jesuit missions and who all spoke at least some K’San. A medical team was standing by; the travelers would be isolated for some months, but the entire hotel had been booked for them and the facilities were quite nice and very extensive. There was a customized suite set aside for Frans Vanderhelst in the center of the hotel, near the microgravity stadium, where he would be able to breathe without strain. Endocrine experts were waiting to examine him; they had some hope of reversing the genetic damage that had unbalanced his metabolism. Carlo Giuliani’s cargo had, of course, been impounded, pending customs decisions. Giuliani himself was being detained—there were complex legal issues to be settled, not the least of which was whether Sandoz wished to file charges regarding his abduction. Signor Giuliani’s elderly sister had been notified of his return, but seemed in no hurry to provide him with legal representation.

The accumulated news from Rakhat was mixed. Athaansi Laaks had been overthrown, but his faction still refused to agree to the reservation solution; Danny Iron Horse sympathized, but continued to press for negotiations. Some kind of illness swept through the N’Jarr in 2084 but, by that time, the Jana’ata were better fed and the toll wasn’t as high as everyone first feared it would be. John Candotti had written of Sofia’s death. Shetri Laaks was well, and had remarried. Two more sons had joined the one Emilio had delivered—now a young man with a child of his own. Shetri’s second wife was pregnant again; they hoped for a third daughter. Sean’s latest census of the Jana’ata reported a population of nearly twenty-six hundred souls. Joseba added an analysis indicating that if birth and death rates and other conditions held steady, this was enough for stability. Some forty Runa had joined the VaN’Jarri in the year of the census. These did not quite balance the number of old VaN’Jarri Runa who had died, but it was a slight increase over the inflow from prior years.

"And Suukmel still lives?" Emilio asked, knowing this would be Rukuei’s first question.

"Yes," said Patras, "as of four years ago, at least."

"And the music? On Rakhat?"

"There are disputes over adding lyrics to it," Patras told him. "I suppose that was inevitable."

"Has anyone asked Isaac what he thinks about that?"

"Yes. He said, ’That’s Rukuei’s problem.’ Isaac is studying library files on South American nematodes now," Patras reported dryly. "Nobody has the faintest idea why."

Sandoz asked more questions, received thorough answers, and agreed that it sounded as though everything was under control.

"Thank you," Patras said, gratified by the recognition. He had, in fact, worked himself to exhaustion trying to make things right. "Let me show you the rooms we’ve prepared for Mr. Kitheri," he suggested, and led the way down a toroidal accessway. "As soon as you’ve gotten some rest, the Mother General would like to speak with you—"

"Excuse me?" Sandoz said, coming to a halt. "The Mother General?" He snorted. "You’re joking!"

Patras, already a few steps down the hall, turned back, brows up curiously: Is there a problem? Sandoz stared at him, dumbfounded.

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I am joking," Patras said then, delighted when Sandoz burst into laughter.

"You know, it’s not nice to tease old people," Emilio told him as they resumed their walk. "How long have you been waiting to use that line?"

"Fifteen years. I have a Ph.D. from Ganesh Man Singh University— mission history, with an emphasis on Rakhat. You were my thesis topic."

For the next few hours, they concentrated on the process of introducing Rukuei to new companions and new surroundings. In the press of duties, personal considerations were laid aside, but before the end of that long first day, Emilio Sandoz said to Patras Yalamber Tamang, "There was a woman—"

Inquiries followed; databases were searched. She had, evidently, remarried, changed her surname; had shunned publicity and lived as private a life as wealth could buy and guilt enforce. It was remarkably difficult to find even a minimal actuarial mention of her.

"I am so very sorry," Patras told him weeks later. "She passed away last year."

ARIANA FIOR HAD ALWAYS ENJOYED THE DAY OF THE DEAD. SHE LIKED the cemetery, tidy and rectilinear, with its stone paths freshly swept between rows and rows of high-walled burial niches—an island of grace amid the noise of Naples. The vaults themselves, stacked six high, were always brushed and dustless on November first, golden in autumnal sunlight or gleaming in silvery rain. She was an archaeologist, accustomed to the presence of the dead, and savored this orderliness, taking pleasure in the sharp scent of chrysanthemums mingling with the deeper musk of fallen leaves.

Some of the loculi were simple: a polished brass plaque with a name and dates, the tiny luminos kept burning for a time after the death. The proud and the prosperous often added a small screen that could be activated with a touch, and she’d have liked to go from vault to vault, meeting the inhabitants, hearing about their lives, but resisted the impulse.

All around her, there were low voices and the crunch of footsteps on gravel paths. "Poveretto," she heard now and then, as flowers were placed with a sigh in a loculo’s little vase. Old affections, grudges, attachments and debts were silently acknowledged and then put aside for another year. Adults gossiped, children fidgeted. There was a sense of occasion and a formality that appealed to Ariana, but the cemetery was not a scene of active grief.

Which is why she noticed the man sitting on the bench in front of Gina’s vault, gloved hands limp in his lap. Alone among the mourners on this cool and sunny day, he was crying, eyes open, silent tears slipping down a still face.

She had no wish to impose herself on this stranger, had not even been certain that he would come today. His first months out of isolation were a circus, a whirlwind of public interest and private receptions—every moment accounted for. Ariana had waited a long time, but she was patient by nature. And now: here he was.

"Padre?" she said, soft-voiced and certain.

Solitary in sorrow, he hardly glanced at her. "I am not a priest, madam," he said as dryly as a crying man could, "and I am no one’s father."

"Look again," she said.

He did, and saw a dark-haired woman standing behind a baby stroller, her son so young that he still slept curled, in memory of the womb. There was a long silence as Emilio studied her face—blurred and shifting in the dampness—a complex amalgam of the Old World and the New, the living and the dead. He laughed once, and sobbed once, and laughed again, astonished. "You have your mother’s smile," he said finally, and her grin widened. "And my nose, I’m afraid. Sorry about that."

"I like my nose!" she cried indignantly. "I have your eyes, too. Mamma always told me that when I got angry: You have your father’s eyes!"

He laughed again, not quite sure how to feel about that, "Were you angry a lot?"

"No. I don’t think so. Well, I have my moods, I suppose." She drew herself up formally and said, "I am Ariana Fiore. You are Emilio Sandoz, I presume?"

He was really laughing now, the tears forgotten. "I can’t believe it," he said, shaking his head. "I can’t believe it!" He looked around, dazed, and then moved over on the bench and said, "Please, sit down. Do you come here often? Listen to me! I sound like I’m trying to pick you up in a bar! Do they still have bars?"

They talked and talked, as the afternoon light washed their faces with gold, Ariana filling him in on the barest outlines of the years of his absence. "Celestina’s the chief set designer at the Teatro San Carlo," she told him. "She’s been married four times so far—"

"Four? My God!" he said, eyes wide. "Has it ever occurred to her that she should rent, not buy?"

"That is exactly what I told her!" Ariana cried, feeling as though she had known this man all her life. "To be honest," she said, "I think perhaps—"

"She leaves them before they can leave her," he suggested.

Ariana grimaced, but then confided, "Honestly—she is such a drama queen! I swear she gets married because she likes the weddings. You should see the parties she throws! You probably will, before long— she’s on tour with the opera company right now, and that’s usually bad news for her current husband. Now, when Giampaolo and I got married, we had five friends and the magistrate—but we really earned the party we had for our tenth anniversary last year!"

Roused by the talk and the laughter, the baby stretched and whimpered. They both watched, quiet and in suspense. When it seemed likely that the child would not awaken, Ariana spoke again, very softly now. "I finally got pregnant just after Mamma died. You know what we say at New Year’s?"

"Buon fine, buon principio," he said. "A good end, a good beginning."

"Yes. I was hoping for a girl. I thought it would be as though Mamma had come back, somehow." She smiled and shrugged, and reached out to touch the baby’s plump and downy cheek. "His name is Tommaso."

"How did your mother die?" he asked at last.

"Well, you know she was a nurse. After I started school, she went back to work. You left us very well provided for, but she wanted to be of use." Emilio nodded, face still. "Anyway, there was an epidemic—they still haven’t isolated the pathogen—it’s all over the world now. For some reason, older women were hit hardest. They called it the Nonna Disease here in Naples because it killed so many grandmothers. The last coherent thing Mamma said was, ’God’s got a lot of explaining to do.’»