Children of God

"THIS INGWY, SHE’S A HIGH GODDESS, IS SHE?" SEAN ASKED SANDOZ when the others had cleared out of the commons after a quiet breakfast.

Emilio set his coffee mug on the table, brace servos humming. There was still a fault in one of the electroelastic actuators, but he had learned to work around it. "I don’t think so. I had the impression she might be a personification of foresight or prophesy—just from context. Supaari was not a believer, but her name came up now and then." It was interesting, the way the drug took him. He felt almost like an AI construct, able to respond to requests for information, even to solve problems at times. On the other hand, it seemed impossible to learn anything new. No desire for mastery, he guessed. "There are others," he told Sean. "Wisdom—or Cu

"Female deities," Sean said, frowning. "Odd, wouldn’t y’say? In a society dominated by males?"

"There is perhaps an older belief system underlying the present culture. Religion is generally conservative."

"True. True for you." Sean looked away, quiet for a time. "Did y’ever wonder then why Orthodox Jews count lineage through the mother’s ancestry?" Sean asked. "Strange, isn’t it? The entire Old Testament, filled with begats. Twelve tribes for the twelve sons of Jacob. But Jacob had a daughter, too. Remember? Dina. The one who was raped." There was no reaction from Sandoz. "And yet, there’s no Tribe of Dina. Patrilineage, all through the Torah! Religion is conservative, as y’say. So why? When was it declared that a Jew is the child of a Jewish mother?"

"I have always hated the Socratic method," Sandoz said without heat, but he answered dutifully. "During the pogroms, to legitimize the Cossacks’ bastards."

"Yes, so none of the children would be stigmatized as half-Jew or no Jew a-tall. And good for the rabbis, I say." Sean had spent a childhood being asked, "What are y’then?" Whatever he answered, the buggers’d laugh. "So. To legitimize the children of rape, when rape was so common the rabbis had to overturn twenty-five hundred years of tradition to cope with it. Good girls and bad. Virgins and whores. Young and old alike. Devout and indifferent and apostate. All done." He gazed at Sandoz with steady blue eyes. "And not a one of ’em ever got an apology from God, nor from the fackin’ basturd who done her."

Sandoz didn’t even blink. "Your point is taken. I am neither the first nor the only person to be worked over."

"So what?" Sean demanded. "Does it help to know that?"

"Not a blind bit," Sandoz said in Sean’s own voice. He sounded irritable. It might have been the mimicry.

"Nor should it," Sean snapped. "Sufferin’ may be banal and predictable, but it doesn’t hurt any less for all that. And it’s despicable to take comfort in knowin’ that others have suffered as well." He was watching Sandoz carefully now. "I’m told y’blame God for what happened on Rakhat. Why not blame Satan? Do y’believe in the devil, then, Sandoz?"

"But that is irrelevant," Sandoz said lightly. "Satan ruins people by tempting them to take an easy or pleasurable path." He was on his feet, taking his mug and plate to the galley.

"Spoken like a good Jesuit," Sean called to him. "And there was nothin’ easy nor pleasurable in what happened to you."

Sandoz reappeared, empty-handed. "No. Nothing," he said, voice soft, eyes hard. " ’As fish are caught in a net and as birds are trapped, so are the children of men entrapped—this I experienced under the sun, and it seemed a great evil to me.’»

"Ecclesiasticus. Omnia vanitas: All is vanity and chasing after the wind. The wicked prosper and the righteous get rooted up the hole, and is that all y’learned in a quarter of a century in the Company of Jesus?"

"Fuck off, Sean," Sandoz said and moved toward the doorway that led to the cabins.

Suddenly, Sean was out of his chair and, cutting him off, blocked the way out of the room. "Nowhere t’run now, Sandoz. Nowhere t’hide," Sean said, and he did not waver under the murderous glare he got for his trouble. "You were a priest for decades," Sean said with quiet insistence, "and a good one. Think like a priest, Sandoz. Think like a Jesuit! What did Jesus add to the canon, man? If the Jews deserved one thing, it was a better answer to sufferin’ than the piss-poor one Job got. If pain and injustice and undeserved misery are part of the package, and God knows they are, then surely the life of Christ is God’s own answer to Ecclesiasticus! Redeem the suffering. Embrace it. Make it mean something."

There was no response except that stony stare, but the shaking was visible.

"Yer feelin’ it now, aren’t you. Carlo stopped the Quell aerosol he’s been pumpin’ into yer room while y’slept," Sean informed him. "There’s no way past the next forty-eight hours except through them. Y’watched a thousand babies die, slaughtered like lambs. Y’saw the bloody corpses of everyone y’loved. You were gang-raped for months and when you were rescued, we all assumed you’d prostituted yersalf. Well, the dead are dead. You’ll never be unraped. And you’ll never live out yer life with sweet Gina and her wee daughter. And yer feelin’ it."

Sandoz closed his eyes, but Sean’s voice went on, with its hard r’s and the flat, unmusical poetry of Belfast. "Pity the poor, wee souls who live a life of watered milk—all blandness and pleasantry—and die nicely asleep in ripe old age. Water and milk, Sandoz. They live half a life and never know the strength they might have had. Show God what yer made of, man. Pucker up and kiss the cross. Make it your own. Make all this mean something. Redeem it."

Sean noticed only then that Daniel Iron Horse was standing silently behind a bulkhead just beyond the commons. Da

Sandoz would look at neither of them, and remained silent. But he didn’t say no, and so Sean left and Da

SANDOZ SEEMED STUNNED IN THE BEGINNING BUT, BEFORE LONG, withdrawal began to work on him physically. Too tense to stay still, he needed to walk the pain out, and Da

For the first hours, Sandoz said nothing, but Da

Then the silence settled in again.

Da

In spite of himself and his intentions, Da