"Command-and-control communications equipment?" Sandoz suggested. "Weaponry adapted to Runa requirements, and manufactured on site."
"I am certainly prepared to provide such technical support," said Carlo. "What is more important, I would not hesitate to suggest the ideology necessary to wrest liberty, equality and justice from their Jana’ata overlords."
"You wish to rule."
"As a transitional figure only. ’For all things fade and quickly become legend, soon to be lost in utter forgetting,’ " Carlo recited, quoting Aurelius grandly. "There is, nevertheless, a certain appeal to the notion of being immortalized in Runa mythology—as their Moses, perhaps! With you as my Aaron, speaking to Pharaoh."
"So. Not just southern Italy," Sandoz observed. "Not just Europe, an old whore, corrupted long ago, but a whole virgin planet. Your father will never know, Carlo. He’ll be dead before you return."
"Now there’s a cheerful thought," Carlo remarked comfortably. "Almost makes one glad for hell. I’ll tell him all about it when I arrive. Do you believe in hell, Sandoz, or are ex-Jesuits too sophisticated for that kind of melodrama?"
" ’Why this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God am not tormented with ten thousand hells?’»
"Mephistopheles!" Carlo cried, amused. "My role in the drama, surely, although you look the part. You know, I’ve always thought it was a tactical mistake for God to love us in the aggregate, when Satan is willing to make a special effort to seduce each of us separately." Carlo smiled, Apollonian beauty transformed by what he knew to be a devastating little-boy grin. "An inspiration!" he announced joyfully. "Shall we amuse ourselves? Shall we plumb our depths? Surely, even on a journey such as this, the greatest adventure is the exploration of the human soul. I offer you a bargain: you may decide whether or not we liberate the Runa! We shall pit my thirst for operatic grandeur against your moral strength. An interesting contest, do you agree?"
Sandoz lifted his head away from the bulkhead and gazed at Carlo from a drug-mediated distance. "John must be anxious," he said. "I should like a little time to consider your proposal in full. For now, I give my word not to interfere with your business arrangements. I agree to nothing further, but perhaps that will do as earnest money on what’s left of my soul?"
"Nicely," Carlo said, smiling benignly. "Very nicely indeed."
THEY LEFT THE SICK BAY, AND EMILIO FOLLOWED CARLO ALONG A CURVING hallway and up the spiral of a ship’s ladder. He had the impression of a hexagonal plan, the chambers fitting together like the space-efficient cells of a remarkably luxurious beehive: carpeted, quiet, beautifully appointed. There were at least three levels, stacked up, and undoubtedly storage bays he couldn’t see.
Making a turn around a final bulkhead before coming to the central commons room, he glanced into a bridge, off to one side, and saw a bank of photonics glowing with graphics and text. He could hear the thrumming of fans and filter motors and the musical splash of fish-tank aeration and the faint grinding sound of mining robots shunting slag to the mass drivers, which provided acceleration and gravity simultaneously. Like the Stella Maris, this ship was based on a partially mined asteroid and much of its fundamental equipment was recognizable. The air-and-waste system included a Wolverton plant tube in the central cell. Full marks to God, Emilio thought. Plants still do a better job of making air than anything humans have invented.
It was only after taking in the general layout of the room that he looked at the six men who now stood or sat staring back at him.
"You knew," Sandoz said to Danny Iron Horse. Joseba Urizarbarrena turned, open-mouthed, toward Danny. Sean Fein’s expression was already beginning to harden into censure. "A sin of omission," Sandoz commented, but Danny said nothing.
"Your braces are in storage, Sandoz," Carlo said. "Would you like them now?"
"After I get John, thank you. Where is the hangar hatch, please?"
"Nico!" said Carlo, "show Don Emilio the way."
Nico stepped forward and led Sandoz through a corridor. "Two landers, Sandoz!" Carlo called out while the air pressures between the crew quarters and the cavernous hangar were being equalized. "Both with fuel efficiency and range vastly improved over the lander that failed you in the first mission. And one of mine is a drone that can be operated remotely. I have learned from my predecessors’ mistakes! The crew of the Giordano Bruno shall not be marooned on the surface of Rakhat!"
There was a sighing hush as Nico unlocked the hatch. "Per favore," Sandoz asked, "un momento solo, si?"
Nico looked back down the passageway to Carlo for permission. This was granted with a regal nod. Stepping out of the way, Nico held the hatch open for Sandoz.
He stepped through, the heavy steel door closing behind him with a metallic clang that would have been terrifying if he weren’t doped to the gills. Working his way around the landers, he stopped to check the tie-downs and the cargo doors. Everything was secure. Even the engines’ bell housings were clean. Then he spotted John. Candotti was sitting on the uneven surface of the floor, his back against the roughly sealed bulkhead, just behind the drone.
Gray as the stone guts of the asteroid that formed the Bruno’s hull, John looked up as Emilio ducked under the lander fuselage and stood above him. "Oh, my God," John moaned miserably. "Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse."
"Take it from a man who knows," Emilio said, voice slightly blurred. "Things can always get worse."
"Emilio, I swear, I didn’t know!" John said, starting to cry again. "I knew Carlo had somebody in the sick bay, but I didn’t know who or why—. I should have tried—. Oh, Jesus…"
"It’s okay, John. There was nothing you could have done." Even drugged, Emilio knew how to go through the motions: what to do and what to say. "That’s better," he said, kneeling next to Candotti, using his wrists to pull the larger man’s head to his chest. "It’s better to cry," he said, but he didn’t feel anything, not really. Odd, he thought numbly, as John sobbed. This is what I wished for, all those months before Gina…
"I couldn’t pray," John said in a small voice.
"It’s okay, John."
"I sat here by the door so I wouldn’t make a mess and foul up the landing gear," John said, sucking in snot and trying to get a grip on himself. "Carlo told Nico that if he didn’t come back in ten minutes, vent the bay! I couldn’t pray. All I could think about was raspberry jam." He made a sound like an explosion and grinned wetly, eyes raw. "Too many space vids."
"I know. It’s okay." His hands were bad, but he let John cling to him in spite of that, and realized with detached interest that the pain was easier to tolerate because he couldn’t seem to worry that it would be permanent this time. A useful lesson, he thought, looking over John’s head at the exterior hangar doors. They were free of dust and had been cycled recently. "Come on," he said. "Let’s go inside. Can you stand?"
"Yeah. Sure." John got to his feet on his own and wiped his face, but flopped against the sealed rock wall, looking even more loosely strung together than usual. "Okay," he said after a time.
When they got to the hatch that led back into the living quarters of the ship, Emilio motioned for John to bang on it, not wanting to jar his own hands. "Don’t give ’em anything, John," he said as they waited for the door to be reopened. John looked blank at first, but then nodded and stood straighter.
"Words to live by," Emilio Sandoz said quietly, not seeing John anymore. "Don’t give the bastards a goddamned thing."
IT WAS NOT NICO BUT SEAN FEIN, LOOKING LIKE THE WRATH OF GOD, WHO reopened the door for them and silently took charge of John, shepherding him around a bulkhead toward the upper-deck cabins. Carlo was nowhere to be seen and Iron Horse was gone as well, but Joseba’s voice, demanding and insistent, could be heard indistinctly from somewhere below the commons.
The braces were waiting on the table, where Nico was eating lunch with a square and fleshy person whose gross bulk made a remarkable contrast to his flowery Impressionist coloring: jonquil-yellow hair falling lankly over skin of rosebud pink and eyes of hyacinth blue.
Sandoz sat down and dragged the braces closer, drawing his hands into them, one by one.
"Frans Vanderhelst," the fat man said, by way of introduction. "Pilot."
"Emilio Sandoz," his table companion replied. "Conscript." Hands in his lap, he regarded the huge young man who sat next to Frans. "And you are Nico," Sandoz acknowledged, "but we have not been formally introduced."
"Emilio Sandoz: Niccolo d’Angeli," said Frans obligingly, around a mouthful of food. "He doesn’t say much, but—chizz è un brav’ scugnizz’— you’re a good boy, aren’t you, Nico? Si un brav’ scugnizz’, eh, Nico?"
Nico dabbed at his mouth with a napkin before speaking, careful of his nose, which was faintly discolored. "Brav scugnizz," he affirmed obediently, liquid brown eyes serious in a skull that was a little small for a man of his size.
"How’s your nose, Nico?" Sandoz asked without a hint of malice. "Still sore?" Nico seemed to be thinking hard about something else, so Sandoz turned to Frans. "Last time we met, you were helping Nico kick the shit out of me, as I recall."
"You were fucking with the navigation programs," Frans pointed out reasonably, taking another bite. "Nico and I were only doing our jobs. No hard feelings?"
"No feelings at all, as far as I can tell," Sandoz reported amiably. "I presume from your accent that you are from… Johannesburg, yes?" Frans inclined his head: very good! "And from your name, that you are not a Catholic."
Vanderhelst swallowed and made an offended face. "Dutch Reformed agnostic—very different from a Catholic agnostic, mind you."
Sandoz nodded, accepting the observation without comment. He leaned back in his chair and looked around.
"The best of everything," Frans pointed out, following Sandoz’s gaze. Every fixture, every piece of equipment was shining, dustless and neatly stowed or properly in use, Frans noted with pride. The Giordano Bruno was a well-run ship. And a hospitable one—Frans raised his nearly invisible yellow eyebrows, along with a bottle of pinot grigio. Sandoz shrugged: Why not? "Glasses’re stowed on the second shelf above the sink," Frans told him, going back to his meal. "You can get yourself something to eat if you’re hungry. Plenty to choose from. The boss sets a nice table."
Sandoz stood and moved to the galley. Frans listened to him unlocking spot lids and opening food storage compartments to look over the possibilities, which were dazzling. A few minutes later, Sandoz returned with a glass in one robot hand and a plate of chicken cacciatore in the other. "You do pretty well with those things," Frans said, motioning at the braces with his fork.
"Yes. Takes practice," Sandoz said without emotion. He poured himself some wine and took a sip before starting on the stew. "This is excellent," he said after a time.
"Nico made it," Frans told him. "Nico is a man of many talents."
Nico beamed. "I like to cook," he said. "Bucatini al dente, grilled scamorza, pizza Margherita, eggplant fritatas…"
"I thought you didn’t eat meat," said Frans, as Sandoz chewed chicken.
Sandoz looked down at his plate. "I’ll be damned," he remarked mildly. "And my hands are killing me, but I don’t seem to care about that either. What am I on?"
"It’s a variant of Quell," said Danny Iron Horse, just behind him. He moved noiselessly around the table and stood behind Nico, across from Sandoz. Frans, feeling very happy, looked from one face to the other like a spectator at Wimbledon. "It’s generally used to control prison riots," Iron Horse said. "Leaves cognition intact. Emotion is flattened."
"Your idea?" Sandoz asked.
"Carlo’s, but I didn’t try to talk him out of it." Danny might have been doped on Quell himself for all the emotion he showed; Frans began to be disappointed.
"Interesting drug," Sandoz commented. He picked up a knife, examining its edge idly, and then glanced at his plate. "The smell of meat has nauseated me ever since the massacres, but now…" He shrugged, raising his eyes from the blade to Iron Horse. "I believe I could cut out your heart and eat it," he said, sounding vaguely surprised, "if I thought it would buy me ten minutes with my family."
Iron Horse remained impassive. "But it wouldn’t," he said. Frans was smiling again.
"No. So I may as well make the best of things as they are."
"I was hoping you’d see it that way," said Iron Horse, and he turned to leave.
"Danny?" Sandoz called, as Iron Horse was about to disappear.
If the bulkheads hadn’t been treated with a polymer that made them resistant to rupture, the knife would have sunk a good way in; instead, it bounced off the wall next to Danny’s face and clattered to the floor.
"Amazing how old skills come back when you need them." Sandoz smiled, cold-eyed. "I would like to have seen one child grow up," he said in that awful, ordinary voice. "How long have we been under way, Mr. Vanderhelst?"
Frans realized that he’d stopped breathing and shifted his bulk in the chair. "Almost four weeks."
"I was never able to understand why time contracts this way. Kids change so quickly, especially when their daddies are traveling at relativistic speeds. Why, Danny? The means are very nasty indeed. May I know the ends that justify them?"
"Tell him," Sean Fein snapped wearily, entering the commons after having seen Candotti safely into his cabin. "God knows what day it is on this forsaken tub, but it must be Yom Kippur on some calendar or other. A rabbi would tell you it isn’t enough t’beg God’s forgiveness, Danny. You must ask pardon of the man y’wronged." When Danny remained silent, he snapped, "Tell him, dammit, for Jesus’ sake and the good of your miserable soul."
Back stiff against the bulkhead, Daniel Iron Horse spoke, the hollowness of his voice matching that of his rationales. "The reversal of the Suppression of the Society of Jesus, with all suits and countersuits dropped or settled out of court. A position of influence from which programs of birth control and political action on behalf of the poor will be implemented throughout the sphere of Church authority. The transfer from the Camorra to the Vatican of evidence establishing the identity of priests corrupted by organized crime, as well as those who are known to be incorruptible, so that the Church can be purged of elements that have undermined the moral authority of Rome. The means for the Society of Jesus to return to Rakhat and to continue God’s work there." He paused, and then gave the only reason that mattered. "The salvation of one soul."