When the chant drew to a close, she filled her lungs with air that seemed perfumed with music. Voice steady, face wet on one side, Sofia Mendes asked her son, "Isaac, would you like to learn another song?"
He did not look at her but, standing with the uncanny steadiness and balance that had attended his earliest attempt to walk, he came closer. Head averted, her elfin son lifted a small hand and placed on her lips a single finger, delicate as a damselfly’s wing. Yes, please, he was saying in the only way he could. Another song.
"This is what our people sing at dawn and sundown," she told him, and lifted her voice in the ancient call, "Sh’ma Yisrael! Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai Echad." Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One. When she was finished, the small finger brushed her lips again, and so she sang once more, and this time her son’s voice joined hers: word-perfect, and in harmony.
When it was over, Sofia blew her nose on a handful of balled-up leaves and wiped one side of her face against a shoulder clad in one of Jimmy’s remaining T-shirts. For a few moments, she fingered the soft, worn fabric, grateful for some contact with Isaac’s father. Then she stood. "Let’s go home," she said.
SHE HAD LONG SINCE LOCATED THE MAGELLAN’S LANDER, USING THE ORBITING ship’s transponder to activate its beacon to the global positioning subroutines of the orbiting satellites, which relayed its coordinates to her computer tablet. The abandoned plane was only a few kilometers outside Kashan. As far as she could tell, tapping its onboard systems, it had been locked down properly, was sufficiently fueled to return to orbit, and seemed potentially operational. Activating communications now, she zeroed a time-date stamp, set the transponder for infinite repeat, and recorded a new message. "This is Sofia Mendes, of the Stella Maris party. Today is March 5, 2047, Earth-relative. I have waited 165 days local time for a response to my call from any human on Rakhat. This message serves notice that I am planning to leave this planet in fifteen days Rakhat-relative, using the Magellan’s lander to get to the mother ship. If you can’t get to the lander by that time, you will be marooned here. I regret this, but I cannot wait any longer."
She had found it difficult to tell Kanchay and the others of her plan to leave Rakhat but, to her relief, there was no great distress among the Runa. "Someone was wondering when you would go home," Kanchay said. "You’ll need to bring goods back to your people, or they’ll think your journey was a failure." The Runa, she was thus reminded, had always assumed that the Jesuit party from Earth had come simply to trade. Suppaari’s sudden decision to go with her, they thought, was a sensible plan to do business abroad, where he was not under a death warrant.
So this is what the Jesuit mission had come to, and Sofia was content with that; she was, after all, a practical woman and the daughter of an economist. Commerce was perhaps the oldest motive for exploration, and it now seemed entirely sufficient to her. Her grandiose thoughts of a higher purpose seemed revealed for what they were: a reaction to isolation, a desire for significance. Delusional but adaptive, she thought, a way to cope with the fear of dying here, alone and forgotten.
Energized by the process of analysis and organization, Sofia had spent the months of waiting in thorough preparation for the journey home. In consultation with Supaari, she had drawn up lists of the light, compact trade goods and scientific specimens she thought most likely to be of financial or academic value at home: precious stones that were biological in origin, like pearls and amber, but unique to Rakhat; small and ordinary but exquisitely crafted bowls and platters carved from native shells and wood; soil samples, seeds, tubers. Textiles of dazzling complexity; polychrome ceramics of charm and wit. A plant extract that numbed wounds and seemed to speed healing, even for Sofia’s skin. Jewelry. Perfume samples. Vacuum-packed specimens of coatings that seemed impervious to weather; technical manuals from chemists, and formulas, and drawings that illustrated several manufacturing processes that Sofia thought unique to Rakhat. Enough to ensure financial independence, she believed, if there were still patent law and licensing agreements by the time they got to Earth.
She and Supaari would also be able to sell intellectual property— knowledge of Runa and Jana’ata culture, interpretive skills, unique understanding and perspectives that could be added to the uncounted gigabytes of geological, meteorological and ecological data collected continuously and automatically by the Magellan and relayed home all these years. But Sofia was no fool and her own experience of her home planet did not inspire Panglossian optimism. They might be killed on sight, out of fear of disease and xenophobia. Their cargo might be confiscated and Supaari seized for exhibit in zoos. Her son might be institutionalized and she herself held incommunicado by whatever government they might first encounter.
Or perhaps, God who has begun this will bring it to perfection, she thought, remembering Marc Robichaux. Perhaps there will be Jesuits to meet us at spacedock. Perhaps Sandoz—
She stopped, stunned by what it would mean for her to see Emilio again, and for him to meet Supaari. Perhaps, she thought, he’ll have forgiven Supaari by them. Christians are supposed to forgive. It occurred to her that when her reports were transmitted and finally heard at home, Emilio might simply turn around and come back for her as soon as a new ship could be configured. It was just the sort of Quixotic gesture he was capable of. Unnecessary, of course, but typical. We might pass each other! she realized, shivering at the thought.
No, she decided finally, God couldn’t be that cruel. And she forced herself to think of other things.
17
Naples
August 2061
"WHAT’S WRONG?" EMILIO ASKED AS GINA STOOD TO CLEAR THE PLATES after a meal that was pleasant enough but oddly charged.
"Nothing," she said, fussing at the sink.
"Which means that something is. Even an ex-priest knows that!" Emilio said with a smile that melted away when she didn’t answer.
Considering how short a time they’d been together, the two of them had already managed to have some remarkably good arguments. They had fought over the proper way to cook rice, the correct strength of coffee and various means of brewing it, and whether artichokes were edible, Gina taking the position that they were evidence of divine beneficence while Emilio declared tree bark more appealing. His favorite thus far was a memorable and still unresolved debate that had initially ended in incredulous shouting, succeeded by outraged silence, over which was more stupefyingly boring, World Cup soccer or World Series baseball. "Baseball uniforms are ugly, too," Gina declared a week later, which started that one all over again. And then there was a really wonderful fight about the cut and color of the suit that he was to wear at their wedding. Eventually Emilio gave in on the lapels Gina liked so he could get the gray silk he preferred to the black she insisted he looked fabulous in, but only because she’d made an aesthetic concession on the baseball uniforms.
It was fun. They were both products of cultures that considered marital dispute a performance art, and they encouraged Celestina to join in for the sheer pleasure of having her yell exuberantly along with whichever adult was currently her favorite—a status, Emilio had observed, that ordinarily accrued to whoever had thwarted her second to last. But nothing had been in earnest until today, when he’d walked over for lunch, intending to help them pack for the trip to the mountains with Gina’s parents.
Emilio frowned at Gina’s back, and then glanced at the kitchen clock. A great deal had changed in the years of his absence, but little kids still loved animation. "Celestina," he said evenly, "it’s time for I Bambini." He waited until Celestina had rocketed off to her bedroom to play the day’s installment of her favorite interactive. "Let’s try this again," he suggested quietly when he and Gina were alone. "What’s wrong?"