Children of God

Each night, Sofia would add some tiny element to her son’s virtual world: sound that gave a letter’s name when it appeared, over and over; then whole words, written and spoken, to match pictures. He taught himself to read that way, to her astonishment. It was, she thought, more like learning Chinese ideographs than like reading phonetically, but it worked for him somehow. Sofia showed him the file that displayed Marc Robichaux’s detailed and beautiful drawings of Rakhati plants and animals, and for these she supplied names in Ruanja. She wept the day he appeared at her side with a real leaf to match one on the screen, but she did not embrace him. Love for Isaac had to be on his terms. On his own or by obliquely watching Sofia with Ha’anala, he learned to call up the Magellan library and find his bookmarked nodes. He learned where the music was kept and would take the tablet off to a quiet corner to listen. The rapt look that came over him then reminded Sofia forcefully of her own mother’s face when she lost herself in a nocturne at the piano. When he listened, Isaac seemed not merely normal but transcendent, transfixed.

In this creeping, incremental way, she came to know that some of what she valued in herself and admired in Isaac’s father had been passed on: intellect and a love of music. Isaac was, she realized, very bright, or would have been if—

No, she decided, he is bright, but in his own way: a truly alien intelligence.

"He is like an angel," Sofia had mused when Ha’anala was only seven. They clung together watching Isaac stand, long-boned and slender, at the edge of the river, oblivious to anything but the water. Or perhaps a rock in the water. Or perhaps simply oblivious. "An angel, pure and beautiful and remote."

"Sipaj, Fia," Ha’anala had asked. "What is an angel?"

Sofia came to herself. "A messenger. A messenger from God."

"What is Isaac’s message?"

"He can’t tell us," Sofia said, and turned away, dry-eyed.

EVENTUALLY THE TIME CAME FOR THE OLDEST OF THE TRUCHA SAI girls to leave. Sofia asked that the brightest of them be allowed to stay in the forest, to become teachers in other villages like Trucha Sai—mling with young Runa as the front lines expanded and fathers fell back to raise their children far from the fierno of war. The answer was almost always, "No. Boys can teach. It is the women’s way to die for children."

Sofia understood this, and did not weep when girls were judged ready to join the struggle, and left the forest to be devoured not by djanada but by revolution. It was, she realized, just as well that she could love the Runa as a people, but rarely mourned them as individuals.

Her mistake, if that was what it was, lay in loving Ha’anala.

HA’ANALA: HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER-QUICK AND DECENT AND FULL of energy, who repaid with intellectual interest all that Sofia Mendes could offer a child, who wanted more of an answer to "Why should I be good?" than "Making a fierno brings thunderstorms." Ha’anala, who could hold in her mind both science and song, fact and fable; who could, as young as nine, move easily from the Big Bang to "Let there be light."

I am making a Jew of her, Sofia thought one day, alarmed. But then she asked herself, Why not? Ha’anala loved the stories that Sofia told to satisfy the child’s hunger for authoritative answers. So Sofia freely drew upon ancient parables to teach enduring morals, with slight emendations to allow for local conditions. The story of the Garden was a favorite because it seemed so like the forest in which they lived. Following Isaac on his solitary wanderings through the trees, it was easy to believe that they were all alone, with no one but God and each other for companions.

But Ha’anala was her own person and drew her own conclusions and one day, she stopped in her tracks and said, "Sipaj, Fia: God lied."

Startled, Sofia stopped as well and looked back at her, her eye moving nervously between Isaac, who continued on his way, and Ha’anala, who stood her ground.

"The wife and husband didn’t die, and they knew good and evil," Ha’anala said in English, looking up at Sofia with her head cocked back, the image of her father about to issue a declaration. "God lied. The longneck told the truth."

"I never thought of that," Sofia said after a moment. "Well, they did die eventually, but not that day. So, both God and the longneck told part of the truth, I suppose. They had different reasons for what they did." Which led, as they began to walk again, to a long, delicious discussion of complete honesty, partial truth, tact, and deliberate deception for personal gain.

Sofia would report all this to Supaari in their daily radio contacts, sharing stories of his daughter’s insights, of her cleverness and creativity, her mischief and essential goodness. His reaction told Sofia a great deal. If he had been behind Runa lines for a time, he would soften and laugh and ask questions. But if he had been in a city, among the Jana’ata, steeped in Runa scent, dressed as a Runao, silently accepting humiliation and unthinking slights as he spied on fortifications and the strength of a garrison, then stories of his daughter’s squandered splendor would fuel his anger.

"They wanted her dead," he would say, with a cold fury that Sofia understood and shared. "They wanted such a child dead!"

And yet, he hardly ever visited Ha’anala. Sofia understood this, too. He could not let himself be weakened. He needed to focus on war’s clean and uncomplicated emotions. It was necessary that his daily companion be not a child of bright promise with no future but a Runao whose reputation for ferocity of devotion to the making of a new world matched his own— Djalao VaKashan.

It seemed quite likely that they were lovers. Sofia knew that this was both possible and accepted, among VaRakhati of both species. Djalao had taken no husband. "The people are my children," she said. Sofia understood as well what Djalao represented to Supaari: respect earned and acceptance given, recognition that this one djanada was worthy to be called one of the People. Supaari shared danger with Djalao, Sofia told herself, and dreams and work. Why not share respite as well? She did not begrudge them that small comfort.

Another woman might have been jealous, but not Sofia Mendes. She had, after all, survived a great deal by blocking out emotion—her own and others’. And love was a debt, best left unincurred.

25

City of Gayjur

2082, Earth-Relative

"WHEN DID ISAAC FIRST BECOME INTERESTED IN GENETICS?" DANIEL IRON Horse would ask Sofia, near the end of her life.

She was all but blind by then, one eye clouded by a cataract, the other gone; bent nearly in half by a lifetime without the calcium her bones had needed. A crone, she thought. A ruin. But she said aloud, "It was when we were all still living in Trucha Sai, Isaac and Ha’anala and I. Isaac was twenty, I think. Perhaps twenty-five, by your count—the years are longer here. It was just before he left." She sat for a time remembering. "He became, I think, increasingly unsuited to life among the Runa. The constant talk—. Well, you get used to it. You learn to tune it out. But Isaac couldn’t do that, and the noise seemed almost painful to him. When he was younger, he would press his fingers into his ears and moan—just make his own noise to drown the talk out. But he simply couldn’t stand it as he got older. He spent more and more time by himself, and one day he disappeared."

"And Ha’anala followed him?"

"Yes."

The priests were always so patient with her when she stopped speaking. Sometimes she simply forgot what they had asked and got lost in her own thoughts, but not this time. This was simply difficult to face, and she found it necessary to approach it from a distance. "You see, the Runa children had questions about the weather and the suns and moons, and about plants," she told Da