For a long time, the quiet was unbroken by any sound elsewhere in the house. Then the silence was ripped by the the abrasive squeal of wooden chair legs grating against the stone floor. Danny stood looking at Vincenzo Giuliani for a few moments, his small, black eyes hard in the broad, pitted face. "I need some air," he said, throwing down a stylus, and left.
"If you will excuse us, gentlemen?" Giuliani said mildly, and followed Iron Horse out of the room.
DANNY WAS WAITING FOR HIM IN THE GARDEN: CONSCIENCE INCARNATE, a massive presence in the deepening darkness. "Allow me," the Father General said placidly, when it became obvious that Iron Horse would not give him the satisfaction of speaking first. "You find me contemptible."
"That’ll do for a start."
Giuliani sat on one of the garden benches and gazed upward, picking out the few bright constellations visible at twilight. "Ignatius once said that his greatest consolation was to contemplate the night sky and its stars," he said. "Since Galileo, space has been the domain of telescopes and of prayer…. Of course, Loyola and Galileo didn’t have to deal with light pollution from Naples. The sky must be astonishing on Rakhat. Perhaps the Jana’ata are right not to permit the artificial extension of daylight." He looked at Danny. "You wish to ask me how, in the face of that man’s joy, can the mission go forward as planned?"
"It is dishonest," Danny said with clipped exactitude. "It is arrogant. It is cruel."
"The Holy Father—"
"Stop hiding behind his skirts," Danny sneered.
"You are scrupulous," Giuliani observed. "There is a way out, Father Iron Horse—"
"And cede the Society to your kind?"
"Ah. My kind," the Father General said, almost smiling. The evening seemed oddly still. In his childhood, Vince Giuliani had loved the sound of swamp peepers, trilling in every low spot, filling the summer dusk with wordless song. Here in Italy, he heard only the treble rasp of crickets, and the night seemed poorer for it. "You are young, Father Iron Horse, and you have a young man’s vices. Certainty. Shortsightedness. Contempt for pragmatism." He leaned back, hands clasped and untrembling in his lap. "I only wish that I could live long enough to see what kind you turn out to be."
"That could be arranged. Would you care to exchange positions? Spend a year in transit to Rakhat. When you get back, I’ll be eighty."
"The proposal has a certain appeal, I assure you. Unfortunately, it is not an option. We are each alone before God, and cannot exchange lives. Shall I hang one of those ubiquitous Italian signs on the Gesù?" Giuliani offered, brows climbing. His light ironic tone was infuriating, and he knew it. "Chiuso per restauro: closed, until Daniel Iron Horse returns, for restoration."
"I hope to Christ that your job is harder than it looks, old man," Daniel Iron Horse hissed, before he turned on his heel to walk away. "Otherwise, there’s no excuse for you."
"It is. It is very hard," Vincenzo Giuliani said with a sudden ferocity that stopped Danny in his tracks and forced him to turn back. "Shall I confess to you, Father Iron Horse? I doubt. In my old age, I doubt." He stood and began to pace. "I am afraid that I have been a fool to live as I have lived and to believe as I have believed all these years. I am afraid that I have misunderstood everything. And do you know why? Because Emilio Sandoz is not an atheist. Danny, we have among us one of our own, whose life has been touched by God as mine has never been touched, and who believes that his soul has been laid waste in a spiritual rape—his sacrifice mocked, his devotion rejected, his love desecrated."
He stopped, coming to rest in front of the younger man, and spoke very softly. "I envied him once, Danny. Emilio Sandoz was everything I ever hoped to be as a priest, and then—this! I have tried to imagine how I would feel, were I Sandoz and had I experienced what he has." He looked away into the darkness and said, "Danny, I don’t know what to do with what happened to him—and all I had to do was listen to the story!"
And then he was moving again, the pacing an outward sign of the inward argument that had drowned out prayer and faith and peace for nearly a year. "In the darkness of my soul, I have wondered if God enjoys watching despair, the way voyeurs watch sex. That would explain a great deal of human history! My faith in the meaning of Jesus’s life and in Christian doctrine has been shaken to its core," he said, his voice betraying the tears that glistened now in the moonlight. "Danny, if I am to sustain my belief in a good and loving deity, in a God who is not arbitrary and capricious and vicious, I must believe that some higher purpose is served by all this. And I must believe that the greatest service I can do Emilio Sandoz is to make it possible for him to discover what that purpose may have been."
Giuliani stopped and, in the shadowed, shifting night, he searched the other man’s face for understanding, and knew that he had been heard, that his words had registered.
"Post hoc reasoning," Danny said, backing away. "Self-serving horse-shit. You’ve made up your mind and you’re trying to justify the unjustifiable."
"And for my penance?" Giuliani asked with a desolate amusement that mocked them both.
"Live, old man," Danny said. "Live with what you’re doing."
"Even Judas had a role in our salvation," Giuliani said, almost to himself, but then he spoke at last with the authority it was his duty to exercise. "It is my decision, Father Iron Horse, that the Society of Jesus will once again serve the papacy, as it was meant to—by its founder and by Our Lord. This tragedy of rupture will end. We will once again accept the authority of the Pope to send us on whatever mission he deems desirable for the good of souls. Once again, ’all our strength must be bent to the acquisition of that virtue we call obedience, due first to the Pope and next to the Superior of the Order—’»
" ’In everything that is not sin!’ " Danny cried.
"Yes. Precisely: in everything that is not sin," Vincenzo Giuliani agreed. "So I cannot and I will not order you to do what you find unacceptable, Danny. Your soul is your own—but others’ souls are at risk as well! Act in accordance with your conscience," he called as Danny strode away into the darkness. "But, Danny—remember the stakes!"
MOMENTS LATER, DANIEL IRON HORSE FOUND HIMSELF LOOKING UP AT the brightly lit dormer windows. He hesitated, half-turned, and then went back to the garage door and knocked. There were light, quick footsteps on the stairway and he heard the metallic snick of the hook being flicked out of its eye. Sandoz appeared and the two men stood silently for a time, adjusting their reactions, each having thought Gina might be on the other side of the door.
"Father Iron Horse," Emilio said at last, "you look like a man with something to confess." Danny blinked, startled. "I was a priest for a long time, Danny. I recognize the signs. Come upstairs."
Sandoz had been halfway to bed, but he put the braces back on and went to his cupboard for two glasses and a bottle of Ronrico, carefully pouring out a measure for each of them, his bioengineered dexterity now strangely graceful. He sat across the table from Iron Horse and inclined his head, willing to listen.
"I came to apologize," Danny told him. "For that crap I pulled on you last winter—when I said you might have brought back whatever Yarbrough died of. I knew that wasn’t so. I did it to see how you’d react. It was dishonest and arrogant and cruel. And I am ashamed."
Sandoz sat still. "Thank you," he said finally. "I accept your apology." He closed his hand around the glass and tossed the contents back. "That couldn’t have been easy to say," he observed, pouring himself another shot. "The end justifies the means, I suppose. You got me to pull myself together. I’m better off because of what you did."