Children of God

"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 a

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 Da

"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 gri

"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.