Children of God

"What did you tell her?" Da

Such a quiet man, Sofia thought. So careful with her, so loath to judge. When she was very young, Sofia had thought of priests as condemning and punitive. Whatever made me believe that? she wondered. Not knowing any priests, perhaps. That was the root of so much fear and hatred, she realized. Not knowing any…

You’re drifting, Mendes, she told herself, and came back to his question. "Well, at first, I told her what Marc Robichaux always used to say about things like that: Because that’s the way God likes it." She reached out, to feel Da

"And Isaac? Did you show him? DNA sequences for all three species?"

"Not directly. Isaac was often nearby when I taught Ha’anala. I had the impression he was listening sometimes. He must have been, I guess. I didn’t realize how closely he was paying attention. Or perhaps he went back to the tutorials on his own. Autistics of normal or superior intelligence sometimes read very deeply on one subject at a time." It must have seemed to him to be the perfect reduction of life’s chaos and noise to its constituent elements, she thought. Simple, neat, explanatory. Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine—that was all you needed.

There was a long silence. Maybe Da

No one could say the word. It was too frightening. "No," she said. "Not until I heard the music. I had no idea. But I knew from the begi

"A remarkable insight," Da

"Yes. She was an extraordinary child—" Sofia stopped, struck by a thought. Perhaps Ha’anala wasn’t extraordinary. Perhaps she was just what others of her kind could have been, but Sofia hadn’t known any others. Except Supaari. And now…. So many dead, she thought, her small, arthritic hands curled on her thighs. So many dead…

That was when the other priest spoke up. Sean Fein. "And what did y’tell her about the God of Israel?" he asked.

How long has he been listening? Sofia wondered irritably. John Candotti always tells me when he’s here. Why don’t people speak up? Then she thought, Maybe Sean did, and I forgot. "I told her, That is why my people fear God, but also why we love Him, because He sees all we do, knows all we are, and still loves us."

As was so often the case these days, she drifted away then, to spend her time with people who were long gone, who were more real to her than these new ones. "Even if it’s only poetry, it’s poetry to live by, Sofia—poetry to die for," D. W. Yarbrough had told her—when? Fifty years ago? Sixty? And she herself was so old, so old. She didn’t know if there was an afterlife, but she had begun to hope so, not because she feared oblivion, but simply because she wanted to know if she had done the right thing.

It might have been a minute, or an hour, or a day later when she spoke again. "Once I told Ha’anala about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah," she said, and waited for some response.

"I’m right here, Sofia," John told her.

"I told her how Abraham bargained with God for the lives of ten righteous men who might have lived there. She said to me, ’Abraham should have taken the babies from the cities. The babies were i

"You did the right thing," John Candotti told her. "I’m sure of it."

She slept then. John’s faith was enough.

26

Giordano Bruno

2065, Earth-Relative

"WHAT? WHAT IS IT?" SANDOZ ASKED, SHIELDING HIS EYES AGAINST THE sudden light with an arm thrown across his face.

"You were screaming again," John told him.

Emilio sat up in his bunk, puzzled, but not distressed. He squinted at John, who was standing half-naked in the cabin doorway. "Sorry," Emilio said blandly. "Didn’t mean to wake you up."

"Emilio, this can’t go on," John said tightly. "You’ve got to make Carlo take you off this drug."

"I don’t see why, John. It helps with my hands, and I’ve been overamped so long, it’s kind of nice not to give a damn about anything."

John gaped at him. "You’re screaming damned near every night!"

"Yeah, well, the nightmares have been bad for years. At least now I don’t remember them when I wake up." Moving back to lean against the bulkhead, he studied John with an infuriatingly tolerant amusement. "If the noise bothers you, I could move back into the sick bay—that room’s soundproofed

"Jesus, Emitio—it’s not my sleep I’m worried about!" John cried. "I looked this Quell shit up, okay? You are going into debt, man. You don’t feel anything directly, but the bill is coming due! Look at how you’re-breathing! Pay attention! Your heart is racing, right?" Sandoz frowned, and then nodded, but shrugged. "Quell’s only supposed to be used for a couple of days at a time. You’ve been on it for almost two months! You’ve got to come back to reality some time, and the sooner the better—"

"Jeez, John, relax, will you? Maybe you should try this stuff—"

John stared at him, openmouthed. "You’re not thinking straight," he said flatly, and with that, he touched off the light and left, closing the cabin door behind him.

EMILIO SANDOZ SAT FOR A TIME PROPPED AGAINST THE BULKHEAD, ruined hands limp and nerveless in his lap, as his body cooled. He tried to reconstruct the nightmare that had jarred John awake, but was content when it stayed just beyond his mind’s reach.

Nocturnal amnesia was quite possibly the best part about being doped, he decided.

He had always paid attention to dreams. Early in formation, he’d made a habit of thinking about the last one of the night, probing for anxieties and hidden concerns that hadn’t yet surfaced in his waking life. But for the past three years, his dreams had rarely required interpretation. Terrifying in their unadorned verisimilitude, his ordinary nightmares were plain and simple reenactments of incidents during his last year on Rakhat. Even now, drugged and placid, he could see it all: the slaughter, the poets. Not needing to dream, he could hear the sounds of massacre and of violation. Taste the meat of infants. Feel the unbreakable grip, the hot breath on the back of his neck. Watch from a distance as he shouted God’s name and heard nothing but his own sobbing and a rapist’s labored groan of satisfaction…