But the labor went on and on. Toward the end, thirst was her main complaint, and he tried to help her drink, but she couldn’t hold anything down. He ducked outside the crude stone hut to ask about ice, but the small glacier that had formed between two peaks near the valley was too far away to be of use. John ran to the lander and got the oldest, softest shirt out of his pack; soaking a section of it in water, twisting it like a nipple, he handed this to Emilio, who offered it to Ha’anala. She sipped at the liquid this way and did not vomit, so for a time, Emilio simply dipped the cloth into water, over and over, until her need abated.
"Someone likes the sound of your voice," Ha’anala told him, eyes closed. "Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything. Take me somewhere. Tell me about your home. About the people you left behind."
So he told her about Gina, and Celestina, and they fell silent for a while, first smiling about rowdy little girls, then waiting for another contraction to pass. "Celestina. A beautiful name," Ha’anala said when it was over. "Like music."
"The name is from the word for heaven, but it can also mean a musical instrument, which sounds like a chorus of silver bells—high and chiming," he told her. "Sipaj, Ha’anala, what shall we call this baby?"
"That is for Shetri to say. Tell me about Sofia, when she was young." When he hesitated, she opened her eyes and said, "No, then. Nothing difficult now! Only easy things, until the hard one comes. What did you love when you were a child?"
He was ashamed to have failed her, and Sofia, but found himself describing La Perla and his childhood friends, losing himself in old passions and simple beauties: the solid smack of a ball into a worn glove, the swift arc into second base, a whirling throw to first for a double play. She understood very little but knew the joy of motion, and told him so in short, breathless phrases.
He helped her take more water. "Music, then," she said when she could. "Perhaps your Nico will sing."
Nico did, sitting in shafted light: arias, Neapolitan love songs, hymns he’d learned at the orphanage. Soothed, her thirst slaked, Ha’anala said once more, "Take the children to my mother." She slept; Nico sang on. Tired himself, Emilio dozed off, and awoke to a song that was surely the most beautiful he had ever heard. German, he thought, but he knew only a few of the words. It didn’t matter, he realized, transfixed and at peace. The melody was everything: supple and serene, rising like a soul in flight, obeying some hidden law…
All around them, the VaN’Jarri listened as well, children clinging to parents, everyone aware that the time was very near. Opening his eyes, Emilio Sandoz saw the last fall of the chest, drew back the blankets and studied the abdomen; saw the faint movement and thought, Still alive, still alive. Nico, wide-eyed, handed him the knife.
As though from a great distance, Sandoz watched his own unfeeling hands cut quickly and decisively. For hours, he had feared this moment, afraid that he would cut too deeply or too hesitantly. In the event, there was a kind of wordless grace. He felt purified, stripped of all other purpose as this body opened up beneath him, layer after layer, blossoming, glistening like a red rose at dawn, its petals bathed in dew.
"There," he said softly, and slit the caul. "Nico, lift the baby out."
The big man did as he was told, swarthy face paling in the shadowy hut at the awful sound—sucking and wet—as he pulled the child free. He stood then, thick-fingered hands supporting the infant’s fragile form as though it were made of glass.
John stood just beyond the door, ready to clean the baby and take it to the father, but when he saw what Nico carried, the steam rising wispily from its fine, damp fur, he threw back his head and cried, "Stillborn!" Nico burst into tears, and there was a great howl from the others that fell away when Sandoz lurched like a madman through the doorway and whispered in direct address, in denial and defiance, "God, no. Not this time."
Abruptly he snatched the child away from Nico and dropped to the ground with it, supporting his weight on his knees and his forearms, the tiny body so close he could feel the lingering warmth of its mother’s corpse. With his mouth, he sucked the slimy membrane and fluid from the nostrils and spat, enraged and resolved. Tipping the damp head back with one ruined hand, holding the blunt little muzzle closed with the other, he put his mouth over the nose again: blew gently, and waited; blew gently and waited, over and over. Eventually he felt hands on his shoulders drawing him back, but he wrenched his body from their grip, and went back to the task until John, more roughly now, yanked him away from the little body, and ordered in a voice ragged with weeping, "Stop, Emilio! You can stop now!"
Beaten, he sat back on his heels, and let a single despairing cry into the air. Only then, as the sound torn from his throat joined the high, thin wail of a newborn, did he understand.
The infant’s squall was lost in the eruption of astonishment and joy. Fine Runa hands gathered the baby up and Emilio’s eyes followed the infant as it was cleaned and wrapped, round and round, with homespun cloth, and passed from embrace to embrace. For a long time, he stayed slumped where he was, blood-soaked and spent. Then he pushed himself to his feet and stood, swaying slightly, looking for Shetri Laaks.
He was afraid the father would mourn the wife and curse the child. But Shetri was already holding the little one to his chest, eyes downcast, oblivious to everything but the son he jounced gently in his arms to quiet its crying.
Emilio Sandoz turned away and ducked back into the stone hut, where he was greeted by the wreckage of a woman, as forgotten as he was in the rejoicing. We cremate our dead, Rukuei had said. When? Two days ago? Three? So the Pope was right, Emilio thought numbly. No grave to dig…. Drained of emotion, he sat down heavily, next to what had been Ha’anala. If anything could prove the existence of the soul, he thought, it is the utter emptiness of a corpse.
Unbidden, unlocked for, the stillness came upon him: evoked by music and by death, and by the shadowless love that can only be felt at a birth. Once more, he felt the tidal pull, but this time he swam against it, as a man being swept out to sea fights the current. Putting his head in his hands, he let the weight of his skull press down on the hardware of his braces, for once in his life seeking a physical pain that he could rule, to block out what was beyond his control.
It was a mistake. Tears that sprang from his body’s hurt now began to bleed from his soul’s wounds. For a long time, he was lost, and freshly maimed. It was not his body violated, not his blood spilt, not his love shattered, but he wept for the dead, for the irreversible wrongs, the terrible sorrows. For Ha’anala. For Shetri’s losses, and his own—for Gina and Celestina, and the life they might have had together. For Sofia, for Jimmy. For Marc, and D.W., and Anne and George. For his parents, and his brother. For himself.
When the sobbing quieted, he lay down next to Ha’anala, feeling as empty as her corpse. "God," he whispered, over and over, until exhaustion claimed him. "God."
"SANDOZ? I’M SORRY." DANNY HESITATED, THEN SHOOK HIM AGAIN. "I’M sorry," he repeated when Emilio sat up. "We waited as long as we could, but this is important."
Sandoz looked around, bemused by the sensation of his own swollen eyelids. The confusion lifted quickly. Ha’anala’s body had been removed sometime during the night; the room was packed with priests.
"You okay?" John asked, wincing at the stupidity of the question when Emilio shrugged noncommittally. "Look, there’s something you have to see," John said, and he handed over his own tablet. Frans Vanderhelst had shot a set of data files to his root directory, leaving them for John to discover. A case of divided loyalties, John had decided, looking at the images with growing fear, and working out what they meant. Frans had evidently been watching the show for some time, trying to decide what, if anything, to do about it. A good mercenary has just so much latitude and Carlo was the padrone, but ultimately the fat man had done what he could…