"I won’t go back," Shetri heard her say, but in a language he did not recognize.
She spoke again, and this time he understood. "Someone’s father once told her that it was better to die than to live wrongly. I say: better to live rightly." Once again, he was confused by the mix of languages she needed to think this way. So she said, "Someone can feed herself and her brother. And you, until you learn." He knew this to be so. She had brought back wild game; roasted, it was tough and fibrous, but the remaining domestics were convinced they could make such meat palatable, given time to learn its preparation. "Someone requires a promise: you will not eat Runa."
It seemed a small thing, somehow, almost reasonable, very nearly sensible, to throw aside the very basis of Jana’ata civilization, merely because this extraordinary girl asked it of him. "As you wish," he said, wondering if this conversation too were some drugged illusion, knowing suddenly that it was not the power of the Sti inhalants but her fragrance, her nearness—
He should not have been surprised. If Ha’anala was who his sister said she was, then she had grown up with Runa and mating was no mystery to her. Even so, that morning, under a wide sky, with three suns’ witness, and no wedding guests but wind and herbs, Shetri Laaks found that it was once again necessary to reassess his capacity for astonishment.
"Sipaj, Shetri: it is not safe to go to the city of Inbrokar," she said, later, when she believed that he could hear again. "We-and-you-also must go beyond the Gamu mountains. Ta’ana agrees. There are places in the far north that will be safe."
Wordless, enveloped, emptied, felled: if she had told him to take up residence on a sun, he’d have climbed through cloud and fallen into fire for her.
"Do you know who we are?" she asked him. "This one and her brother?"
"Yes," he said.
She pulled away, leaving him chilled by her withdrawal, and faced him. "I am a teacher," she said. "My brother is a messenger."
He understood little more than the Ruanja word, messenger. "And what is his message?" he asked, seeing he was meant to.
"Walk away," she said. "And live."
"WE MUST TELL OUR MOTHER," HA’ANALA TOLD ISAAC THAT AFTERNOON. "Someone needs the tablet."
Isaac lifted his chin: permission.
They would be able to monitor any radio transmission on Rakhat, via the Magellan, and tap all its resources, but they themselves could not be located. The Magellan’s systems would record only that their tablet’s signals had passed by way of one of the satellite relays positioned over the continent. Sofia would know that much: they were still on the continent.
Ha’anala sat thinking for a long time, trying to find the words to tell Sofia that there were Jana’ata who were good and decent, that justice could become tainted with revenge. But she knew what the people thought of those who collaborated with the djanada; no matter how nuanced, her words would be understood as treachery.
Throat tight, Ha’anala opened the connection to the Magellan. The enormity of her decision made speech impossible; she pecked out a short message with a single claw. "Sofia, my dear mother," she wrote, "we have left the garden."
30
Giordano Bruno
2070–2073, Earth-Relative
"I FAIL T’SEE THE PROBLEM HERE," SAID SEAN FEIN, SERVING HIMSELF some stew from the pot in the center of the table. "Put it on the speakers. Crank up the volume. It’s not as though the wee man can take himself out for a little walk, now, is it?"
"It’s not a matter of simply hearing the songs. It will require study and analysis," Danny Iron Horse insisted. "Half the words are a mystery to me, but what I did understand is—. Look, I’ve done all I can with them! Sandoz has to help."
"I told him once that the music changed after he was there. He had no interest in this," joseba informed them, bringing his plate to the table. "He was averse to listening to these songs even before we left."
"That was when it was Hlavin Kitheri’s voice," John pointed out, chewing thoughtfully. "Or one of the others he recognized. These are so different!"
"But it’s unquestionably Kitheri’s style," Carlo commented, pouring himself a little Ferreghini red.
"Yes," Danny agreed, "and if this is what Kitheri is writing now, then the whole structure of that society—"
Sandoz appeared in the doorway to the commons, VR visor tucked under an arm. The room fell silent, as it generally did whenever he first walked in and his mood was unclear. "Gentlemen, Geryon is tamed," he announced. "I have successfully completed a simulated lander flight from the Bruno to the surface of Rakhat and back again."
"I’ll be damned," Frans Vanderhelst breathed.
"Quite likely," Sandoz replied, and bowed with mock modesty when cheers and whistles and applause erupted.
"I really don’t understand why you had so much trouble with it," said John, as he and Nico came to Emilio’s side, like attendants at a prize fight, to remove the VR gloves and take the visor from him. "I mean, how much harder could it be than fielding a baseball?"
"Just couldn’t seem to picture what I had to do. I’m almost blind, mentally," Sandoz told him, taking his place at the table. "I didn’t even know other people could see things in their heads until I was in college." He nodded to Carlo when a celebratory glass of wine was offered. "And I can’t read maps for shit—if somebody gave me instructions on how to get someplace, I used to write it all out in prose." He sat back in his chair, looking relaxed if tired, and smiled up at Nico, who’d brought him a bowl from the galley. "I should still probably be dead last on the flight schedule—"
"So to speak," John murmured sitting across the table from him, inordinately pleased with himself when Emilio laughed. "Now maybe you’ll cut everybody a little slack!"
There was a round of grunted agreement with that sentiment, and for the first time since the voyage had begun, a sort of communal contentment took hold as they ate and drank and the talk became general. They were all aware of the fragile sense of being on the same team, but no one dared comment on it, until the end of the meal when Nico said, "I like it better this way."
A small silence settled in then, as it will at any dinner party, but it was broken by Danny Iron Horse saying, "Listen, Sandoz, there’s a new Rakhati song I’ve been working on—"
"Come on, Danny!" John protested. "No shop talk, okay?"
But Emilio hadn’t frowned and Danny took this as permission to continue. "Just this one piece," he insisted. "It’s extraordinary, Sandoz. I honestly think it’s important from a political standpoint that we understand what these lyrics imply, but I’ve done as much as I can with them."
"Danny—" John started again.
"John, when I want a spokesman, I’ll let you know," Emilio warned. John shrugged: I wash my hands of it. Emilio went on, "All right, Danny. Let’s hear it."
The music itself was as recognizable as Mozart’s, as powerful in its play on the emotions as Beethoven’s. Except for a chanted baritone bass line, the voices were unlike anything previously heard: creamy, sumptuous altos, shimmering, brilliant trebles, the whole woven into harmonies that left them breathing raggedly. Then a single voice: rising, rising, pulling them helplessly—
"That word," Danny said emphatically as the soprano sank into the chorus, like a spent wave into the ocean. "That’s the key. It has to be. Do you know it?"
Sandoz shook his head, and held up a hand, listening to the entire piece before speaking. "Again, please," he said when it was finished. And then: "Once more," listening the third time before breaking his silence. "Get my tablet, please, Nico," he said, when it was over. "When did this arrive, Danny?"