Children of God

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."