Children of God

18 Giordano Bruno 2061–2062 Earth-Relative

"REALLY, SANDOZ, I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT SULKING WAS BENEATH your dignity," Carlo Giuliani remarked with cool amusement, watching as Nico d’Angeli checked the blood chemistry readouts before adjusting the IV line running into Sandoz’s arm. "It’s your own fault, you know. You were given every opportunity to volunteer. This attitude will get you nothing but bedsores and a bladder infection."

Leaning with elegant composure against the soundproofed bulkhead of the Giordano Bruno’s sick bay, Carlo studied the still, dark face. He saw nothing of coma’s slackness or sleep’s easing. This was sheer obstinance.

"Do you enjoy opera, Sandoz?" Carlo asked curiously when Nico, humming "Nessun dorma," started the sponge bath. "Most Neapolitans are mad for opera. We love the passions, the conflict—life lived on a grand scale." He waited for a moment, watching the man’s closed eyes as Nico lifted the unresisting limbs, wiping down the armpits and groin with gentle efficiency. "Gina never cared for opera," Carlo recalled. "Grandiose nonsense, she called it. A thoroughly boring little housewife, Gina. You should thank me, Sandoz. I have saved you from a stifling fate! You would not have been content for long to sit at home with her, eating pasta together and getting fat. You and I Were meant for greater things."

Finished with the bath, Nico set aside the washcloth and covered Sandoz with the sheet for a few minutes, to let the dampness subside before reapplying the electrodes. In no hurry, Carlo waited until the heart monitor had begun its steady ping before speaking again. "We have a great deal in common, you know—even apart from our use of Gina," he suggested, and smiled with satisfaction at the raggedly quickened tempo of the pinging. "We were both despised by our fathers, for example. Papa used to call me Cio-Cio-San. The allusion is to Madama Butterfly, of course. To call me Cio-Cio-San was to accuse me of flitting from one thing to another, do you see? Since the day of my birth, I have been a bitter disappointment to my father. Like yours, my father saw in my face only evidence of his wife’s infidelity. There, perhaps, our experience differs: my mother was falsely accused. But it has always been easier for Papa to assume that I am not his than to accept that I am not he."

Unable to work without singing, and partial to Bellini, Nico went on to Norma: "Me protegge, me difende…"

"I have always been good at anything I put my hand to," Carlo reported without false modesty. "Every teacher I studied with took an interest in me. Each assumed I’d be a protégé—an engineer or biologist or pilot. When I refused to follow in their footsteps, they blamed my inconstancy and disloyalty, rather than recognize their own disappointed desire for acolytes. But I am no one’s disciple. My life is my own, and I follow no one else’s path."

Nico moved to the foot of the bed to change the urine bag. It was a tight fit in the cramped space at that end of the medical bay, but he was a methodical and careful person who did one thing at a time, in a set order, and he had learned how to accomplish this maneuver with a minimum of disturbance.

"I know what you’re thinking, Sandoz: delusions of grandeur," Carlo continued soberly. "Men like you and my father excel in a narrow field of endeavor. You are intent from your youth on one thing, and achieve a great deal early in your lives, and you scorn those who are not similarly focused. My father, for example, took over Naples before he was thirty—it was quite a remarkable rise to power," Carlo admitted. "By the time he was forty, he controlled businesses accounting for eighteen percent of Italy’s gross national product, with an annual income greater than Fiat. At forty-two, only a year older than I am now, Domenico Giuliani was the head of an empire with tentacles reaching into the whole of Europe, South Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and the Americas. An empire larger than Alexander’s—my father would remind me of this at breakfast, nearly every morning."

Carlo fell silent for a time. Then he drew himself up and shrugged. "But true greatness is in part a matching of the man and the times, Sandoz. Versatility can be a virtue! I’d have done well in the Renaissance, for example. A merchant prince! Someone who could write a song and wage war and build a catapult and dance well. Even my father had to admit that launching this venture required talent in many fields. Politics, finance, engineering…"

Finished with his chores and two arias, Nico looked to his padrone. "Well done," Carlo said, on cue. "You may go now, Nico." He waited for Nico to leave before standing and moving to the bedside. "You see, Sandoz? Knowing your frailties as well as your strengths, I have even provided you with a very fine nurse. Not one as delightfully accommodating as Gina, perhaps, but quite adequate to his task."

He glanced at the readouts, but this time Gina’s name provoked no change in the life-sign data now flowing to the monitors. "An extraordinary situation, is it not?" said Carlo Giuliani, looking down at the man who’d very nearly married his own ex-wife. "Unforeseen and unfortunate. You may believe that I have taken you away from Gina out of some romantic Neapolitan fury but I assure you, I was finished with her. The simple fact is that I need you more than she does." He opened the sick-bay door, standing there for a time without leaving. "Don’t worry about Gina, Sandoz. She’ll find someone new, now that you’re gone."

It was not until the sick-bay hatch was shut and locked from the outside that the readouts changed.

CARLO HAD SENT THREE OF THEM FOR HIM. THEY KNEW HE’D BEEN A priest and were, perhaps, complacent in that knowledge. They could see that he was small. They were told he had been sick and that his hands were essentially useless. What they did not know was that he was a veteran of a hundred emetic nightmare reenactments of this very experience. Over and over, he relived it and what came afterward. This time, there was no hesitation, no foolish hope, and he did damage before, inevitably, they overpowered him. For weeks afterward, he would remember with satisfaction the feel of a cheekbone giving way under his heel when a face came within striking distance, would recall with pleasure the nasal cry of the man whose nose he broke when he got an elbow loose.

He marked them. This time, he made himself felt.

He had been beaten before and there was no novelty in it. He rolled with as much as he could, kept tensed and braced for as long as possible, and finally took a savage satisfaction in the silence that would become his principal weapon against them. Unconscious during the trip to the launch site, he was kept under sedation for a time, even after they were on board the Giordano Bruno.

But he had sampled product when he was a kid; familiar with the doped drift between dream and waking, it did not frighten him. Slack and boneless whenever anyone was near, he let them think the dose was enough to put him under, and waited. A chance came while the crew was occupied with the final preparations for leaving high Earth orbit. Ripping the IV line out of his arm with his teeth, he lay motionless until his head cleared a little, watching his blood mix with the saline and glucose and medication from the pumpwell, dispersing evenly throughout the compartment in a pale iridescent haze that suddenly sank to the floor as the engines fired and the ship began to accelerate. He struggled out of the zero-G moorings that had held him in place; stood, wobbling slightly; made his way with the careful balance of a self-conscious drunk to the system access panel in the sick bay. What he could not stop, he could sabotage. A minute error in navigation would be enough to throw them years off course and he meant to change a single number in the navigation calculations.

He was caught, and there was another beating, fueled this time by fear of what he’d almost done. There was blood in his urine a few days afterward, and they did not find it necessary to restrain him that week.

It occurred to him that if he had taken this kind of abuse a year ago, it would have killed him. Timing, he thought bitterly, is everything.

Throughout the days that followed, he lay still, hating in silence. Sometimes, for a moment, when the sick-bay door opened, he would hear voices. Some were well known. Others were new to him, most notably that of a tenor: unschooled and a little nasal, with a slightly sanded quality that took the brilliance off his top notes, but true and often lovely. He hated them all, without reservation and without exception, with a pure and incandescent outrage that sustained him and replaced the food he would not take. And he resolved to die rather than be used again.

THERE WERE, OF COURSE, MANY WAYS TO OBTAIN COOPERATION. CARLO had, at one time, considered having Gina and Celestina killed, to loosen Sandoz’s ties to Earth, but had rejected the idea. Sandoz was more likely to commit suicide under those circumstances than to work out his grief in space. Studying his quarry, Carlo settled on a judicious combination of direct force, modern chemistry and traditional threat.

"I will come straight to the point," Carlo said briskly, entering the medical bay one morning, after Nico had reported that Sandoz was dressed and calm, and prepared now to discuss the situation rationally. "I would like you to consider working for me."

"You have interpreters."

"Yes," Carlo conceded readily, "but without your breadth of experience. It will take the others years to develop the knowledge of Rakhat that you carry—consciously and unconsciously. I have waited a long while to come into my own, Sandoz. Decades will pass on Earth while we make this journey. I have no intention of wasting additional time."

Sandoz looked faintly amused. "So. What deal am I offered?"

His speech was a little slurred. Carlo made a mental note to reduce the dosage. "I am a reasonable man, Sandoz. For a mere cessation of hostility to the mission, you will be allowed to send a message back to Gina and my daughter. If, however, you attempt to undermine my plans or harm me in any way, now or in the future," Carlo Giuliani warned regretfully, "I’m afraid John Candotti will die."

"Iron Horse, I presume, suggested that particular carrot and stick."

"Only indirectly," Carlo confided. "Interesting man, Iron Horse. I don’t envy him. He was placed in a difficult position. Isn’t that what they used to say about the Jesuits? They stood between the world and the Church, and got shot at by both sides. Speaking of difficult positions, by the way, Candotti is in the lander hangar now. If I don’t countermand my instructions within ten minutes, my people will vent it to vacuum."

There was no reaction but, after a time, Sandoz asked, "And for active cooperation?"

Carlo leaned toward a mirrored medicine cabinet for a moment of contemplation, his long-nosed, high-boned face serious under a cap of golden hair, cropped but curling: Apollo come to life. "There will be money, of course, but—" He shrugged an acknowledgment of the paltriness of such a motive; in any case, Sandoz had money. "And a place in history! But you have that as well. So," he continued, turning back to Sandoz, "for active cooperation, I am prepared to offer you an opportunity for revenge. Or justice, depending on how you look at it."

Sandoz sat for a time, staring at his hands. Carlo watched with unconcealed interest as the man straightened the fingers and then let them drop, their fall from his wrist bones almost beautiful, the ribboning scars faded to ivory. "The nerves to the flexors were destroyed, for the most part. As you see, the extensor muscles are still fairly well innervated," Sandoz pointed out with clinical accuracy: he had cross-trained as a medic for the first mission, and was quite knowledgeable about hand anatomy now. Over and over, the fingers straightened and dropped. "Perhaps it’s a sign," he said. "I can’t grasp anything. All I can do is let things go."

How very Zen, Carlo thought, but he didn’t say it. Not that Sandoz would have been angered—nothing could anger him now, although Carlo had taken the precaution of stationing Nico just outside the door.

"Cooperation in what?" Sandoz asked, coming back to the point.

"Simply stated, my goal is to establish trade with the VaRakhati," Carlo said. "The cargo Supaari VaGayjur sent back with you on the Stella Maris was remarkable in many ways, not least of which was the price that even the most insignificant item of Runa manufacture brought from museums and private collectors. Imagine what could be accomplished if the cargo were chosen with its intended market in mind, rather than according to the tastes of a Jana’ata merchant. I expect this enterprise to make me immensely wealthy, and completely independent of the opinions of others."

"And what do you bring in trade, Don Carlo?"

Carlo shrugged. "Most of it is quite innocuous, I assure you. Pearls, perfumes. Coffee, of course. Botanicals with distinctive scents—cinnamon, oregano. Belgian ribbon- and lace-manufacturing equipment that can produce multiple colors, patterns, varying weaves. Given the Runa taste for novelty, I should do quite well." Carlo smiled disarmingly and waited for the obvious question, Then why do you need me?

The maimed hands quieted and basilisk eyes lifted to meet Carlo’s own. "You mentioned revenge."

"You prefer that term to justice? Perhaps we can do business after all," Carlo cried good-humoredly. Sitting in the sickbay chair, he rested an ankle on his knee, watching his man carefully. "I have studied the relationship between predators and prey, Sandoz. It interests me. I would argue that the human species came into its own when it stopped being prey, when it turned on its predators and made itself master of its own fate. There are no wolves in the streets of Moscow or Rome," he pointed out. "There are no pumas in Madrid or Los Angeles. No tigers in Delhi, no lions in Jerusalem. Why should there be Jana’ata in Gayjur?" He stopped, his gray eyes unreadable. "I know what it is to be prey, Sandoz. As do you. Be honest: when you watched the Jana’ata slaughter and eat Runa infants, it wasn’t like watching bear eat salmon, was it?"

"No. It wasn’t."

"Even before you left Rakhat, some Runa had already begun to fight back. The Contact Consortium reported that there were minor rebellions all over southern Inbrokar after your party demonstrated that tyranny could be resisted." He paused, genuinely puzzled. "The Jesuits seem ashamed of this! I cannot imagine why. Your own Pedro Arrupe said that injustice is atheism in action! No human society has ever wrested liberty from its oppressors without violence. Those in power rarely give up privilege voluntarily. What was it you said at the hearings? ’If the Runa were to rise against their Jana’ata masters, their only weapon would be their numbers.’ We can change that, Sandoz."

"Command-and-control communications equipment?" Sandoz suggested. "Weaponry adapted to Runa requirements, and manufactured on site."

"I am certainly prepared to provide such technical support," said Carlo. "What is more important, I would not hesitate to suggest the ideology necessary to wrest liberty, equality and justice from their Jana’ata overlords."

"You wish to rule."

"As a transitional figure only. ’For all things fade and quickly become legend, soon to be lost in utter forgetting,’ " Carlo recited, quoting Aurelius grandly. "There is, nevertheless, a certain appeal to the notion of being immortalized in Runa mythology—as their Moses, perhaps! With you as my Aaron, speaking to Pharaoh."

"So. Not just southern Italy," Sandoz observed. "Not just Europe, an old whore, corrupted long ago, but a whole virgin planet. Your father will never know, Carlo. He’ll be dead before you return."

"Now there’s a cheerful thought," Carlo remarked comfortably. "Almost makes one glad for hell. I’ll tell him all about it when I arrive. Do you believe in hell, Sandoz, or are ex-Jesuits too sophisticated for that kind of melodrama?"

" ’Why this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God am not tormented with ten thousand hells?’»

"Mephistopheles!" Carlo cried, amused. "My role in the drama, surely, although you look the part. You know, I’ve always thought it was a tactical mistake for God to love us in the aggregate, when Satan is willing to make a special effort to seduce each of us separately." Carlo smiled, Apollonian beauty transformed by what he knew to be a devastating little-boy grin. "An inspiration!" he announced joyfully. "Shall we amuse ourselves? Shall we plumb our depths? Surely, even on a journey such as this, the greatest adventure is the exploration of the human soul. I offer you a bargain: you may decide whether or not we liberate the Runa! We shall pit my thirst for operatic grandeur against your moral strength. An interesting contest, do you agree?"

Sandoz lifted his head away from the bulkhead and gazed at Carlo from a drug-mediated distance. "John must be anxious," he said. "I should like a little time to consider your proposal in full. For now, I give my word not to interfere with your business arrangements. I agree to nothing further, but perhaps that will do as earnest money on what’s left of my soul?"

"Nicely," Carlo said, smiling benignly. "Very nicely indeed."

THEY LEFT THE SICK BAY, AND EMILIO FOLLOWED CARLO ALONG A CURVING hallway and up the spiral of a ship’s ladder. He had the impression of a hexagonal plan, the chambers fitting together like the space-efficient cells of a remarkably luxurious beehive: carpeted, quiet, beautifully appointed. There were at least three levels, stacked up, and undoubtedly storage bays he couldn’t see.

Making a turn around a final bulkhead before coming to the central commons room, he glanced into a bridge, off to one side, and saw a bank of photonics glowing with graphics and text. He could hear the thrumming of fans and filter motors and the musical splash of fish-tank aeration and the faint grinding sound of mining robots shunting slag to the mass drivers, which provided acceleration and gravity simultaneously. Like the Stella Maris, this ship was based on a partially mined asteroid and much of its fundamental equipment was recognizable. The air-and-waste system included a Wolverton plant tube in the central cell. Full marks to God, Emilio thought. Plants still do a better job of making air than anything humans have invented.

It was only after taking in the general layout of the room that he looked at the six men who now stood or sat staring back at him.

"You knew," Sandoz said to Danny Iron Horse. Joseba Urizarbarrena turned, open-mouthed, toward Danny. Sean Fein’s expression was already beginning to harden into censure. "A sin of omission," Sandoz commented, but Danny said nothing.

"Your braces are in storage, Sandoz," Carlo said. "Would you like them now?"

"After I get John, thank you. Where is the hangar hatch, please?"

"Nico!" said Carlo, "show Don Emilio the way."

Nico stepped forward and led Sandoz through a corridor. "Two landers, Sandoz!" Carlo called out while the air pressures between the crew quarters and the cavernous hangar were being equalized. "Both with fuel efficiency and range vastly improved over the lander that failed you in the first mission. And one of mine is a drone that can be operated remotely. I have learned from my predecessors’ mistakes! The crew of the Giordano Bruno shall not be marooned on the surface of Rakhat!"

There was a sighing hush as Nico unlocked the hatch. "Per favore," Sandoz asked, "un momento solo, si?"

Nico looked back down the passageway to Carlo for permission. This was granted with a regal nod. Stepping out of the way, Nico held the hatch open for Sandoz.

He stepped through, the heavy steel door closing behind him with a metallic clang that would have been terrifying if he weren’t doped to the gills. Working his way around the landers, he stopped to check the tie-downs and the cargo doors. Everything was secure. Even the engines’ bell housings were clean. Then he spotted John. Candotti was sitting on the uneven surface of the floor, his back against the roughly sealed bulkhead, just behind the drone.

Gray as the stone guts of the asteroid that formed the Bruno’s hull, John looked up as Emilio ducked under the lander fuselage and stood above him. "Oh, my God," John moaned miserably. "Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse."

"Take it from a man who knows," Emilio said, voice slightly blurred. "Things can always get worse."

"Emilio, I swear, I didn’t know!" John said, starting to cry again. "I knew Carlo had somebody in the sick bay, but I didn’t know who or why—. I should have tried—. Oh, Jesus…"

"It’s okay, John. There was nothing you could have done." Even drugged, Emilio knew how to go through the motions: what to do and what to say. "That’s better," he said, kneeling next to Candotti, using his wrists to pull the larger man’s head to his chest. "It’s better to cry," he said, but he didn’t feel anything, not really. Odd, he thought numbly, as John sobbed. This is what I wished for, all those months before Gina…

"I couldn’t pray," John said in a small voice.

"It’s okay, John."

"I sat here by the door so I wouldn’t make a mess and foul up the landing gear," John said, sucking in snot and trying to get a grip on himself. "Carlo told Nico that if he didn’t come back in ten minutes, vent the bay! I couldn’t pray. All I could think about was raspberry jam." He made a sound like an explosion and grinned wetly, eyes raw. "Too many space vids."

"I know. It’s okay." His hands were bad, but he let John cling to him in spite of that, and realized with detached interest that the pain was easier to tolerate because he couldn’t seem to worry that it would be permanent this time. A useful lesson, he thought, looking over John’s head at the exterior hangar doors. They were free of dust and had been cycled recently. "Come on," he said. "Let’s go inside. Can you stand?"

"Yeah. Sure." John got to his feet on his own and wiped his face, but flopped against the sealed rock wall, looking even more loosely strung together than usual. "Okay," he said after a time.

When they got to the hatch that led back into the living quarters of the ship, Emilio motioned for John to bang on it, not wanting to jar his own hands. "Don’t give ’em anything, John," he said as they waited for the door to be reopened. John looked blank at first, but then nodded and stood straighter.

"Words to live by," Emilio Sandoz said quietly, not seeing John anymore. "Don’t give the bastards a goddamned thing."

IT WAS NOT NICO BUT SEAN FEIN, LOOKING LIKE THE WRATH OF GOD, WHO reopened the door for them and silently took charge of John, shepherding him around a bulkhead toward the upper-deck cabins. Carlo was nowhere to be seen and Iron Horse was gone as well, but Joseba’s voice, demanding and insistent, could be heard indistinctly from somewhere below the commons.

The braces were waiting on the table, where Nico was eating lunch with a square and fleshy person whose gross bulk made a remarkable contrast to his flowery Impressionist coloring: jonquil-yellow hair falling lankly over skin of rosebud pink and eyes of hyacinth blue.

Sandoz sat down and dragged the braces closer, drawing his hands into them, one by one.

"Frans Vanderhelst," the fat man said, by way of introduction. "Pilot."

"Emilio Sandoz," his table companion replied. "Conscript." Hands in his lap, he regarded the huge young man who sat next to Frans. "And you are Nico," Sandoz acknowledged, "but we have not been formally introduced."

"Emilio Sandoz: Niccolo d’Angeli," said Frans obligingly, around a mouthful of food. "He doesn’t say much, but—chizz è un brav’ scugnizz’— you’re a good boy, aren’t you, Nico? Si un brav’ scugnizz’, eh, Nico?"

Nico dabbed at his mouth with a napkin before speaking, careful of his nose, which was faintly discolored. "Brav scugnizz," he affirmed obediently, liquid brown eyes serious in a skull that was a little small for a man of his size.

"How’s your nose, Nico?" Sandoz asked without a hint of malice. "Still sore?" Nico seemed to be thinking hard about something else, so Sandoz turned to Frans. "Last time we met, you were helping Nico kick the shit out of me, as I recall."

"You were fucking with the navigation programs," Frans pointed out reasonably, taking another bite. "Nico and I were only doing our jobs. No hard feelings?"

"No feelings at all, as far as I can tell," Sandoz reported amiably. "I presume from your accent that you are from… Johannesburg, yes?" Frans inclined his head: very good! "And from your name, that you are not a Catholic."

Vanderhelst swallowed and made an offended face. "Dutch Reformed agnostic—very different from a Catholic agnostic, mind you."

Sandoz nodded, accepting the observation without comment. He leaned back in his chair and looked around.

"The best of everything," Frans pointed out, following Sandoz’s gaze. Every fixture, every piece of equipment was shining, dustless and neatly stowed or properly in use, Frans noted with pride. The Giordano Bruno was a well-run ship. And a hospitable one—Frans raised his nearly invisible yellow eyebrows, along with a bottle of pinot grigio. Sandoz shrugged: Why not? "Glasses’re stowed on the second shelf above the sink," Frans told him, going back to his meal. "You can get yourself something to eat if you’re hungry. Plenty to choose from. The boss sets a nice table."

Sandoz stood and moved to the galley. Frans listened to him unlocking spot lids and opening food storage compartments to look over the possibilities, which were dazzling. A few minutes later, Sandoz returned with a glass in one robot hand and a plate of chicken cacciatore in the other. "You do pretty well with those things," Frans said, motioning at the braces with his fork.

"Yes. Takes practice," Sandoz said without emotion. He poured himself some wine and took a sip before starting on the stew. "This is excellent," he said after a time.

"Nico made it," Frans told him. "Nico is a man of many talents."

Nico beamed. "I like to cook," he said. "Bucatini al dente, grilled scamorza, pizza Margherita, eggplant fritatas…"

"I thought you didn’t eat meat," said Frans, as Sandoz chewed chicken.

Sandoz looked down at his plate. "I’ll be damned," he remarked mildly. "And my hands are killing me, but I don’t seem to care about that either. What am I on?"

"It’s a variant of Quell," said Danny Iron Horse, just behind him. He moved noiselessly around the table and stood behind Nico, across from Sandoz. Frans, feeling very happy, looked from one face to the other like a spectator at Wimbledon. "It’s generally used to control prison riots," Iron Horse said. "Leaves cognition intact. Emotion is flattened."

"Your idea?" Sandoz asked.

"Carlo’s, but I didn’t try to talk him out of it." Danny might have been doped on Quell himself for all the emotion he showed; Frans began to be disappointed.

"Interesting drug," Sandoz commented. He picked up a knife, examining its edge idly, and then glanced at his plate. "The smell of meat has nauseated me ever since the massacres, but now…" He shrugged, raising his eyes from the blade to Iron Horse. "I believe I could cut out your heart and eat it," he said, sounding vaguely surprised, "if I thought it would buy me ten minutes with my family."

Iron Horse remained impassive. "But it wouldn’t," he said. Frans was smiling again.

"No. So I may as well make the best of things as they are."

"I was hoping you’d see it that way," said Iron Horse, and he turned to leave.

"Danny?" Sandoz called, as Iron Horse was about to disappear.

If the bulkheads hadn’t been treated with a polymer that made them resistant to rupture, the knife would have sunk a good way in; instead, it bounced off the wall next to Danny’s face and clattered to the floor.

"Amazing how old skills come back when you need them." Sandoz smiled, cold-eyed. "I would like to have seen one child grow up," he said in that awful, ordinary voice. "How long have we been under way, Mr. Vanderhelst?"

Frans realized that he’d stopped breathing and shifted his bulk in the chair. "Almost four weeks."

"I was never able to understand why time contracts this way. Kids change so quickly, especially when their daddies are traveling at relativistic speeds. Why, Danny? The means are very nasty indeed. May I know the ends that justify them?"

"Tell him," Sean Fein snapped wearily, entering the commons after having seen Candotti safely into his cabin. "God knows what day it is on this forsaken tub, but it must be Yom Kippur on some calendar or other. A rabbi would tell you it isn’t enough t’beg God’s forgiveness, Danny. You must ask pardon of the man y’wronged." When Danny remained silent, he snapped, "Tell him, dammit, for Jesus’ sake and the good of your miserable soul."

Back stiff against the bulkhead, Daniel Iron Horse spoke, the hollowness of his voice matching that of his rationales. "The reversal of the Suppression of the Society of Jesus, with all suits and countersuits dropped or settled out of court. A position of influence from which programs of birth control and political action on behalf of the poor will be implemented throughout the sphere of Church authority. The transfer from the Camorra to the Vatican of evidence establishing the identity of priests corrupted by organized crime, as well as those who are known to be incorruptible, so that the Church can be purged of elements that have undermined the moral authority of Rome. The means for the Society of Jesus to return to Rakhat and to continue God’s work there." He paused, and then gave the only reason that mattered. "The salvation of one soul."

"Mine?" Sandoz asked with amused detachment. "Well, I admire your ambition, if not your methods, Father Iron Horse."

"They wouldn’t have hurt John," Danny said. "That was a bluff."

"Really?" Sandoz shrugged, mouth pulled down in thought. "I’ve been kidnapped and beaten senseless twice in a month," he pointed out. "I’m afraid I’m inclined to take Carlo’s threats seriously."

Wretched, Danny said, "I am sorry, Sandoz."

"Your sorrow is of no interest to me," Sandoz said softly. "If you want absolution, go to a priest."

Disgusted, Sean went to the galley. When he returned to the table with a glass and a bottle of Jameson’s, Danny was still standing there, bleak eyes locked on Sandoz. "And what about Candotti?" Sean snapped at Iron Horse. Danny drew in a breath and turned to leave, but not before picking up the knife and laying it down in front of Sandoz.

Which, in Frans’s opinion, must have taken a fair bit of nerve. The Puerto Rican was unsteady from weeks of confinement to bed and, of course, his hands were crippled, so it was hard to distinguish inaccuracy from intent, but Frans had the impression that Sandoz could have nailed Danny to the wall if he’d felt like it. Carlo had Candotti for insurance, but the Chief was on his own…

"Well, now, like it or not, here we all are," Sean said, pouring himself a drink. He tossed it off before looking at Sandoz with humorless blue eyes. "It’s just a guess, but I’m willin’ t’bet nothin’ in God’s wide universe would make that man feel worse than your forgiveness. It’d be coals on his head, Sandoz."

"Well, now," Sandoz said dryly, mimicking Sean’s accent, "that’s worth considerin’."

Frans was hugely entertained. "You play cards?" he asked Sandoz.

"I wouldn’t want to take unfair advantage," Sandoz demurred, unruffled by the drama. He stood and carried his dishes back to the galley. "I have always heard that the Dutch Reformed aren’t much for cards."

"We aren’t much for liquor either," Frans pointed out, pouring another round for everyone but Nico, who didn’t drink because the sisters had told him not to.

"This is true," Sandoz said, returning to the table. "Poker?"

"It’ll make a change from that bloody scopa," said Sean.

"How about you, Nico?" Frans asked, reaching for a worn deck that was always on the table.

"I’ll just watch," Nico said courteously.

"I know, Nico," Frans said patiently. "I was only being polite. It’s okay, Nico. You don’t have to play."

"I’d like to send a message home first, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble," Sandoz said.

"Radio’s right through that hatch, to your left," Frans told him. "It’s all set up. Just record the message and hit ’send.’ Yell if you need help."

"Not bloody likely," Sean muttered as Sandoz left the commons.

He sat down in front of the communications equipment and considered for a while what he would say. "Fucked again," came to mind, but the message would arrive when Celestina was still very young, and he rejected the remark as too vulgar.

He settled on eleven words. "Taken by force," he said. "I think of you. Listen with your hearts."