Danny had asked himself that question over and over, as the weeks in Naples crawled by in the presence of the man they intended to harm irreversibly and, perhaps, for no good reason. He lived with that question for months on the Bruno in the company of men who could hardly stand the sight of him. He accepted their judgment. Pride was his sin, the worm at the core—a surefooted drive, powered by a lifelong and quite possibly deluded sense of having been prepared by God to do something extraordinary.
As far as his father’s family had come from the squalor and debasement of the reservations, as much as he himself publicly rejected the stereotypes and romance of his Lakota heritage, Daniel Iron Horse had taken secret satisfaction in it. From childhood, he had known himself to be the scion of men who rode with Crazy Horse and Little Big Man of the Oglalas, with Black Shield and Lame Deer of the Miniconjous, with Spotted Eagle and Red Bear of the Sans Arcs, with Black Moccasin and Ice of the Cheyennes, and with Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas—heroes who led the finest light cavalry in history in defense of their families and their land, who had fought to preserve a way of life that valued, above all else, courage, fortitude, generosity and transcendent spiritual vision.
Just as strong a tradition: his family’s long association with the Black Robes, whose own beliefs upheld those same values. His five-times great-grandmother was among the first of the Lakota to be converted to Christianity by Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Jesuit of legendary charm and grace, whose utter fearlessness had afforded him unrivaled credibility among the tribes of the American West. The Lakota believed that all peoples, if not all persons, seek the divine; the Christian God’s call to universal peace was proclaimed as well by the White Buffalo Calf Woman. Blood sacrifice to the Wakan Tanka—the Great Mystery—was familiar as well. Even the crucifix was resonant: Jesus’s body, arms outstretched, pierced and hung from a cross, so like the pierced and suspended bodies of the Sun Dancers, visionaries who knew what it was to offer their own flesh and blood to God on behalf of their people—in thanks, in supplication, in terrible joy. At Masses celebrated by Jesuit friends, many Lakota had worshiped the sacred and incomprehensible power that watched over all, that listened to the prayers of those who offered sacrifice, not their own flesh and blood any longer—for Jesus changed all that—but bread and wine, consecrated in memory of ultimate sacrifice.
Surely, this was apprenticeship: the mixed nature of his making, the manner of his education, the talent and energy and insight that Daniel Iron Horse brought to maturity. It was all preparation for the day when he first opened the Rakhat mission reports and read the accounts of what the Stella Maris party had seen and learned. He came to believe, with a conviction that grew stronger and more unshakable as he read, that he was meant to go to Rakhat, for of all those who might have been sent, only Daniel Iron Horse would truly understand the fragile beauty of Jana’ata culture.
He feared for them.
The people of the plains, too, had depended utterly on a single species of prey and they, too, had been been thought by outsiders to be a dangerous people who loved war. Danny knew that was true, but only a small crooked part of the truth. And he came to believe that if he went to Rakhat, he might somehow redeem the heartbreaking losses that had befallen the Lakota by helping the Jana’ata find a new way of life—one that would preserve the highest virtues of the warrior, and of the hunter, and of the Jesuit: courage and fortitude, generosity and vision.
Sometimes on the Bruno, late at night, the filter fans humming, the subaural rumble of the Bruno’s engines more felt than heard, Danny would recall the thought that had come to him as he read the Rakhat reports: I would do anything to go. He had meant it only as a figure of speech but God held him to a Faustian bargain.
"We are closer to the old ways, you and I," Gelasius III had said to Daniel Iron Horse, in private audience. "We understand the need for sacrifice, to make our belief in God concrete, to offer God our faith entire: that if we align ourselves with His will, all will be well. Now you and I are called upon to offer a sacrifice that will test our faith, almost as Abraham’s was tested. It is harder than to offer our own bodies. You and I must offer Sandoz, bound like Abraham’s son Isaac. We must do what seems cruel and incomprehensible and, in doing so, prove that we trust in God’s plan and act as His instruments. We serve a Father Who did not flinch from Abraham’s sacrifice, Who required and permitted the crucifixion of His own Son! And Who sometimes requires that we also sacrifice that which we hold dearest, in service to His will. This I believe. Can you also believe this?"
What made him nod his unspoken acquiescence to an act he found abhorrent? Was it truly ambition? Danny had examined himself with fierce scrutiny, and the answer was no, no matter what the others believed. Was it the majesty of the Vatican, the moral weight of two millennia of authority? Yes, partly. The strength of the Pope himself? The compassion and beauty of those lustrous, knowing eyes?
Yes. Yes, all of that.
Did the Holy Father and the Father General have more than one reason for sending Sandoz back to Rakhat? Unquestionably. There would be desirable political, diplomatic, practical outcomes of this decision. Did those other motives outweigh the Holy Father’s uncanny certainty and the Father General’s almost desperate hope that Sandoz was meant by God to return to the place of his spiritual and physical violation?
Daniel Iron Horse did not think so.
He didn’t know what he thought, what he believed anymore. He was sure of only one thing: it was beyond him to look into the eyes of Gelasius III and listen to his words and then to sneer, "Self-serving horseshit." For Jesuits are taught to find God in all things, and Danny could not walk away from the moral and ethical problem he had been set: if you believe in God’s sovereignty and if you believe in God’s goodness, then what happened to Sandoz must be part of a larger plan; and if that is so, you can help this one soul and serve God by returning with him to Rakhat.
And so, for the betrayal of his ethics and the sacrifice of his integrity, Daniel Iron Horse could only watch what he had helped make possible: to live with what he had done, and try to find God in it—to hope that the ends would someday justify the means.
ON THE BRUNO, TIME SEEMED A SENTENCE TO BE SERVED, BUT THAT WOULD change as Daniel Iron Horse grew old on the planet of Rakhat.
"In the beginning," Scripture taught, "there was the Word," and Danny would come to believe that the two great gifts his God had given to the species He loved were time, which divides experience, and language, which binds the past to the future. Eventually all the priests who remained on Rakhat would devote themselves to buying time and working toward an understanding of the events that took place there during the years between the first and second Jesuit missions. For Daniel Iron Horse, this was not merely research but constant prayer.
The lady Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai was to become his partner in this task. By the time Danny met her, she was not the wife but the widow of the Mala Njeri ambassador to the court of Hlavin Kitheri, a woman bereft of status but not of respect, and well past middle age. Danny was enthralled by her from the start, but Suukmel was wary and inclined, herself, to delay trust in the man she knew as Dani Hi’r-norse.
Even so, as Danny’s hair grayed and Suukmel’s face whitened, there came a day when she and the foreigner could meet for pleasure and not only for policy. He believed, as she did, that the past was not dead but alive, and important by virtue of the very invisibility of its influence. When she discovered this, their friendship began in earnest.
It became their custom to walk together every morning, their path following the foothills encircling the N’Jarr valley, and to speak as they walked of what Suukmel now understood and wished Danny to understand as well. Danny would often begin these talks with a proverb, inviting her to respond. "On Earth, there is a saying: The past is another country," he told her once, and Suukmel found this a useful notion, for she did indeed feel a foreigner in the present. But even when she disagreed with Danny’s maxims, the exercise was interesting.