His reply was starchy, but the red-rimmed eyes were amused. "Vanity is not among my failings, madam, but I’m damned if I’ll stand here and be insulted." He made no move to go.
"I loved you once," she said.
"I know. I loved you, too. Don’t change the subject."
"You were to marry?"
"Yes. I left the priesthood, Sofia. I was done with God."
"But He wasn’t done with you."
"Evidently not," Emilio said wearily. "Either that, or this has been a run of bad luck of historic proportions." He walked to the edge of the awning to stare out at the rain. "Even now, I think maybe it’s all a bad joke, you know? This baby I’m so worried about? He could turn out to be such an evil bastard that everyone will wish he’d died in his mother’s womb, and I’ll go down in Rakhati history as Sandoz the Idiot, who saved his life!" Braced hands limp at his sides, he snorted at his own absurd grandiosity. "Probably he’ll just be another poor clown doing the best he can, trying to get things right more often than not."
Then, without warning, his posture shifted. He became, somehow, taller, rangier, and Sofia Mendes heard once more the beloved Texas twang of D. W. Yarbrough, the long-dead priest who’d taught them both so much. "Miz Mendes," Emilio drawled, defeated but not without humor, "the whole damn thing beats the livin’ shit outta me."
TALKED OUT, EMILIO SAT ON THE GROUND NEXT TO HER, AND TOGETHER they watched rain turn the world to mud. Before long, she realized he had fallen asleep, propped against the supports of her chair, the crippled hands lax in his lap. Mind empty, she listened to his soft snore and might have slept herself if she had not been disturbed by a huge and sodden young man, clutching a cloth cap and stooping to peer under the awning.
"Signora? Is everything going to be all right now?" he asked anxiously.
"And who are you?" she asked very quietly, glancing significantly at Emilio.
"My name is Niccolo d’Angeli. ’D’Angeli’ means from the angels," the young giant whispered. "That’s where I came from, before the home. The angels left me there." She smiled, and he took that for a good sign. "So everything will be all right?" he asked again coming in, out of the rain. "The Jana people can live up there, if they don’t bother anyone, right?" She didn’t answer so he said, "That would be fair, I think. Is Don Emilio all right? Why is he sitting there like that?"
"He’s asleep. He must have been very tired."
"He has nightmares. He’s afraid to sleep."
"Are you a friend of his?"
"I’m his bodyguard. I think his friends are all dead." Nico gave this some consideration, but looked unhappy. Then, visibly struck by a thought, he brightened. "You’re his friend, and you’re not dead."
"Not yet," Sofia confirmed.
Nico stepped to the edge of the shelter and watched the lightning play for a while. "I like the storms here," he remarked. "They remind me of the last act of Rigoletto." She had been thinking, He is retarded. But this gave her pause. "We found your son, signora," said Nico, facing her again. "He wants you to visit him, but I think he should put some clothes on first. Did I say something wrong?"
She wiped one eye. "No." She smiled then and confided, "Isaac has never liked clothes."
"He likes songs," Nico reported.
"Yes. Yes, indeed. Isaac has always liked music." She sat as straight as her contorted body would allow. "Signor d’Angeli, did my son appear well?"
"He’s skinny, but they all are up there," said Nico, warming to his topic. "There was a lady who died having a baby before we left. Joseba thinks she was too skinny and that’s why she died—because she wasn’t strong enough. We brought food, but a lot of people were so hungry, they threw up from eating too fast." He saw the signora’s distress but didn’t know how to interpret it. Turning the brim of his hat around and around, he shifted his substantial weight from one foot to the other, and squinted a little. "What should we do now?" he asked, after a little while.
She didn’t answer right away. "I’m not sure," she said honestly. "I need some time to think."
HOURS LATER, IN THE FIRST MOMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, LYING IN A bed of unaccustomed comfort, Emilio Sandoz believed himself to be back in Naples. "It’s all right, Ed," he was about to say. "You don’t have to wait up." Then he came fully awake and saw that it was not Brother Edward Behr but Sofia Mendes who’d spent the night watching his face as he slept.
"I have spoken with your colleagues in the N’Jarr valley," she told him without emotion, "and to a woman named Suukmel." She paused, face neutral. "I don’t rule here, Emilio, no matter what your djanada friends told you. But I have some influence. I will do my best to arrange safe conduct for a delegation of VaN’Jarri to speak with the Parliament of Elders. It will take time and it won’t be easy, even to get you a hearing. The elders remember what it was like, before. There is a woman named Djalao VaKashan who will be difficult to convince. But I will tell them that you and the priests are good men with good hearts. I can’t promise more than that."
He sat up, and groaned at the stiffness, but said, "Thank you." The rain was gone, and sunlight was pouring through the awning. "And you, Sofia? What will you do?"
"Do?" she asked, and looked away, to think, before she answered, of well-run cities, of lively politics and burgeoning trade; of festivals and celebrations; of a joyous appreciation of the novel and the untried. She thought of the florescence of theater and explosion of technology, the vigor of the art that had sprung up when the dead hand of the djanada was lifted from Runa lives. She thought of the Runa Elders, who now lived long enough to add real wisdom to raw experience, and of imperfect children, permitted to live, who brought unexpected gifts to their people.
Certainly, there had been a price to pay. There were those who thrived in the new world—liberated in every sense—and those who had been cast adrift, unable to adapt. Illness, debilities, failure, dispute; poverty, displacement, bewilderment—all these were a part of Runa life now. But what they had already accomplished was admirable, and who knew what else they were capable of? Only time would tell.
All that, balanced against tiny crescent claws, and amethyst eyes blinking in the sunlight…
She had read Yeats in Jimmy’s memory, and thought now of the Pensioner: I spit into the face of time / that has transfigured me…
"Do?" she asked again. "I am old, Sandoz. I have spent my life among the Runa, and among them I shall stay." She was profiled against the light, her blind side toward him, and she was silent for a long time. "I regret nothing," she said finally, "but I have done my part."
39
N’Jarr Valley
December 2078, Earth-Relative
AFTER MONTHS OF CONFINEMENT ABOARD THE GIORDANO BRUNO, Daniel Iron Horse found the mountains surrounding the N’Jarr as seductive as certainty, and set his sights on a high ledge east of the settlement, hoping for perspective of one kind or another. He had no equipment and his shoes were all wrong, and it crossed his mind that a fall in this terrain could easily result in a very fancy death. But Danny needed to be alone, craved the sense that only God would know where he was, and so he left at dawn, telling no one of his plans.
From the moment Emilio Sandoz left the valley to meet Mendes on the road, Danny had felt the man’s absence like a shedding of weight. Now, as he began to climb the main rockface, he was happier than he’d been in a year. Calm claimed him, his attention absorbed by the delicate, tactile search for purchase. Hooking his fingers into cracks in the stone, he saw the sturdy bone of Grampa Lundberg’s wrists, thick as fenceposts; felt in his chest the heart of Gramma Beauvais, strong and steady in her nineties. Funny, he thought, how his grandparents had always tried to parse him out. He’d resented their urge to divide his DNA, particularly when his father’s family warned him, with tragic justification, about having "that Lakota liver." Now, finally, he was in a place where none of that made any difference, where he was simply an Earthman. Only here had he come to understand that he was not a battleground—to be divided and conquered by his grandparents—but a garden, where each person who’d contributed to his existence longed to see that something of themselves had taken root and grown.