Children of God

Night after night, he’d awakened from such dreams nauseated to the point of vomiting. The screaming was new. Had the nightmares themselves changed? he wondered, and answered himself: Who cares? Screaming beats the hell out of throwing up.

John was probably right—he’d have to return to reality sometime, he supposed. But reality didn’t have a great deal to recommend it these days, and Emilio was quite willing to exchange whatever message was embedded in these new dreams for the artificial tranquility of Quell.

Chemical Zen, he thought, as he slid back down under the covers of his bunk, submerging again in the drug’s quietude. Cops’re probably handing this crap out on the street comers like candy.

Just before he dozed off, he wondered idly, Christ—what kind of dream would it take, to make me scream? But, like Pius IX after the Mortara boy’s kidnapping, ipse vero dormiebat: he slept well after that.

NO ONE ELSE DID.

John Candotti went directly from Sandoz’s cabin to his own, where he activated the intercom codes needed to speak to everyone but Emilio. "Commons. Five minutes," he said, in a voice that left no doubt that he would personally drag each of them out of bed if they didn’t come voluntarily.

There was a certain amount of grumbling, but no one could pretend they hadn’t been startled awake again by the screams, so, one by one, they appeared as summoned. John waited silently, arms over his chest, until Carlo finally strolled in, fresh-looking and beautifully dressed, as always, with Nico in his wake.

"Okay," John said with tight and quiet courtesy, looking at each of them in turn, "you’ve all got your reasons. But he’s no good to anybody if he’s psychotic, and that’s where this is heading!"

Sean nodded, rubbing his prematurely drooping jowls with both hands. "Candotti’s right. Y’ can’t fack with the man’s neurochemistry forever," he told Carlo. "This’ll get worse."

"I have to agree," Joseba said, raking fingers through the snarled mess of his hair and studying Iron Horse. He stretched and yawned. "Whatever the motive for drugging him in the begi

"I imagine he’s over his sulk by now," said Carlo, shrugging ersatz indifference, for his own dreams lately had been of falling alone through black places that appeared under his feet and had no bottom. It was difficult not to be u

"It’s not just the Quell," John warned, glaring at Da

"Lock up the knives," Frans Vanderhelst advised cheerfully, his pale belly lunar in the dim light of a shipboard night, "or the Chief is going to get it in the back."

Nico shook his head. "There will be no fighting on the Bruno," he said firmly, pleased when Don Carlo nodded his approval.

"I’ll speak to him, then, Da

Iron Horse nodded and left the commons, without having said a word.

"FOR YOU, CHEMISTRY IS HOLY ORDER AND SACRED BEAUTY," VINCENZO Giuliani had remarked on the day he’d assigned Sean to the Rakhat mission. "Humans simply fuck things up, don’t they, Father Fein."

And there was no point in denying the observation.

Sean Fein was only nine when he received his first imperishable lesson in human folly. The movement that made an orphan of him had gotten its start in the Philippines in 2024, the year he was born, but by the time it reached its peak in 2033, he was old enough to be concerned. It had seemed that Belfast, for once, would not get caught up in the craziness; having concentrated venomous attention on the hairsbreadth of difference between its Catholic and Protestant citizens, the town seemed not to notice the odd Jew here and there in its brick mazes. And yet there had been great expectation that the second mille

"Don’t worry," his father told Sean the night before the firebomb. "It’s nothin’ to do with us."

Bitterness was the backbone of Belfast, but Maura Fein was a philosophical woman who took her widowhood in stride. Sean had asked her once why she had not converted to Judaism when she married. "The great appeal of Jesus, Sean, is the willingness of God to walk among the benighted creatures He just can’t seem to give up on," she told him. "There is a glorious looniness to it—the magnificent eternal gesture of salvation, in the face of pere

Sean had not inherited his mother’s basic cheer, but he did share her jaundiced enjoyment of divine lunacy. He had followed the ba

Hand out free will, he’d think gazing at a crucifix, and look where it gets You! Bored with physics, were You? Plants too predictable, I suppose? Not enough drama in big fish eatin’ the littlies, eh? What on Earth were Y’ thinkin’ of! Or what on Rakhat, for that matter…

Sean had been born into a world that took the existence of other sentient species for granted. He was fourteen when the first mission reports had come back from Rakhat; seventeen when they ended mysteriously. Twenty-two when he heard of the scandals and tragedies that surrounded Emilio Sandoz. He had merely shrugged, unsurprised. Humans and their ilk were God’s problem, as far as Sean Fein was concerned, and the Almighty was more than welcome to them.

But if Sean Fein, chemist and priest, rarely found reason to approve the results of his God’s whimsical decision to bestow sentience on the odd species here and there, he could nevertheless admire the mechanics that ran the show. Iron and manganese, pried by rain from stone, swirled with calcium and magnesium in ancient milky seas. Small, nimble molecules— nitrogen, oxygen, water, argon, carbon dioxide—dancing in the atmosphere, spi

"Steep yourself in the sea of matter," the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin advised. "Bathe in its fiery waters, for it is the source of your life." This was a glory Sean Fein could appreciate, this was a glimpse of Divine Intelligence that he could adore unreservedly.

"The people you feel sorriest for are the fools who hope for justice and sense, and not just in the world to come," the Father General told him. "But God instilled in us a capacity to value mercy and justice, and it’s only human to hope for them, here and now. Maybe it’s foolish, but we do. This mission is going to teach you something, Sean. Compassion for fools? Perhaps even respect? Learn the lesson, Sean, and pass it on."