Children of God

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 i

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 i

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 tyra

"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."