Children of God

"Prepare to be wrong. Assume that whenever you find something simple or obvious, you are wrong," Sandoz advised. "Everything we thought we understood, all the most basic things we shared with them—sex, food, music, families—those were the things we were most wrong about."

There were midnight exercises involving the drone lander, details of simulated Rakhati geography, a theoretical but statistically likely cyclone, and not one but two surface rendezvous sites. He would permit them two or three hours of sleep and then the klaxons would go off again, and he’d badger them in K’San or Ruanja to explain who they were, why they had come, what they wanted, dissecting each man’s answers publicly and without anesthesia, exposing weaknesses, blind spots, assumptions, stupidities, laying them open like frogs on a tin plate. It was brutal and insulting and very nearly intolerable, but when Sean dared to protest the ill treatment, Sandoz reduced him to tears.

And yet, even as the others trudged off to stuporous sleep after some grueling drill or interrogation, Sandoz himself would put in a few more kilometers on the treadmill. No matter how ferocious his program of training became for the rest of them, they had to admit its rigor was always exceeded by that of his own, despite the fact that he was the smallest man among them and nearly twenty years older than the youngest of them.

He even ate standing up. Nothing stopped the dreams.

"SANDOZ!" CARLO SHOUTED, SHAKING HIM. THERE WAS NO RESPONSE, so he shook the man harder, until the bruised eyes focused.

"iJesús!" Emilio cried, pulling violently away. "iDéjame—"

Carlo released Sandoz’s shoulders abruptly, letting him drop against the bulkhead. "I assure you that my intentions were strictly honorable, Don Emilio," he said with specious courtesy, sitting down on the end of the bunk. "You were screaming again."

Still breathing hard, Sandoz looked around his cabin blearily, trying to get his bearings. "Fuck," he said after a while.

"Now there’s a thought," said Carlo, eyes half-closed in speculation. "Versatility can be a virtue, you know." Sandoz stared at him. "It doesn’t have to hurt," Carlo suggested silkily.

"You come near me," Sandoz assured him wearily, "I’ll find a way to kill you."

"Just a suggestion," Carlo said, unruffled. He stood and moved to the desk, where he’d laid the paraphernalia out. "So, barring a more interesting avenue to relief and rest, what shall it be tonight? Quick oblivion, I hope. Perhaps I should have Nico move the treadmill into the sick bay so the rest of us don’t have to listen to you pounding away all night." He picked up the injection canister and turned, brows raised in inquiry. "You’re building up a tolerance to this, by the way. I’ve doubled the dosage over the past two weeks."

Sandoz, who had obviously been too tired even to undress before falling into bed, got out of his bunk, put on his braces and left the room, brushing past Nico, who always rose when Don Carlo did.

"Treadmill it is, then," Carlo observed. Sighing, he sat alone for a few minutes, waiting for the relentless sound of footfalls to begin. He could tell from the tempo that Sandoz had set the pace for a thirty-seven-minute ten-kilometer run, hoping to exhaust himself, wearing out the rest of the ship’s company in the bargain.

Determined to have things out, Carlo rose and walked to the small gym, moving to the front of the treadmill, where he stood with his hands behind his back, head cocked in contemplation. "Sandoz," he said, "it has come to my attention that you have commandeered the Giordano Bruno. The situation suits my purposes, although frankly I find your command style lacking in finesse." Amused black eyes returned his stare; Sandoz was back in control now, deigning to be entertained. "In the begi

"Shall I tell you why you allowed me to take over your ship?" Sandoz offered, cutting him off. "Your father was right about you, Cio-Cio-San. If you ever finished anything, you could be judged, and found wanting. So you find a reason to quit and tell yourself lies about Renaissance princes. Then you move on to the next thing before you can demonstrate inadequacy. My coup d’état suits your purposes because now you have someone you can blame when this venture fails."

Carlo continued as though the other man had not spoken. "It is not power or revenge that drives you, Sandoz. It is fear. You are afraid, all day, every day. And the closer we get to Rakhat, the more frightened you become."

In superb physical condition now, sweat coming easily, Sandoz decreased the pace until the treadmill stopped. He stood still, his breathing hardly affected by the exertion; then he simply let the mask drop.

Carlo blinked, startled by the unexpected nakedness of Sandoz’s face. "You are afraid," Carlo repeated quietly, "and with good reason."

"Don Emilio," Nico said, coming into the room, "what do you see in your dreams?"

Carlo had asked this very question many times, in the hours before what would have been dawn, awakened night after night by the u

Always before, Sandoz had refused to talk. This time, he told Nico, "A necropolis. A city of the dead."

"Always the same city?" Nico asked.

"Yes."

"Can you see the dead clearly?"

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"Everyone I ever loved," said Sandoz. "Gina is there," he said, looking at Carlo, "but not Celestina—not yet. And there are others, whom I do not love."

"Who?" Carlo demanded.

There was an ugly laugh. "Not you, Carlo," Sandoz said with cheerful contempt. "And not you, Nico. The others are VaRakhati. Whole cities of them," he said lightly. "The bodies change. I’ve seen them rot. I can smell them in my sleep. There’s a time, while the carcasses are decomposing, when I can’t tell what they were—Jana’ata or Runa. They all look alike then. But later, when it’s just the bones, I can see the teeth. Sometimes I find my own body among them. Sometimes not. It’s better when I do because then, it’s over. Those are the nights I don’t scream."

"Do you know how to use a sidearm?" Carlo asked after a silence.

Sandoz nodded in the Rakhati fashion—a short jerk of the chin upward—but held his hands out slightly, inviting Carlo to think it through. "I could probably get a burst off…"

"But the recoil would damage the brace mechanisms," Carlo observed, "and you’d be worse off than before. You will, of course, be under my protection, and that of Nico."

The derisive eyes were almost kindly. "And you believe you will succeed, where God has failed me?"

Carlo stood his ground, head back. "God may only be a fable, whereas I have an investment to watch over. In any case, my family has generally found bullets rather more reliable than prayer."

"All right," Sandoz said, smiling briefly and broadly. "All right. Why not? My experience with illusions has not been happy, but who knows? Perhaps—short-term—yours will help us both."

Satisfied with what he had learned, Carlo nodded to Nico. He turned to leave the exercise bay and saw John Candotti standing in the doorway. "Worried, Gia