"I wonder what Carlo got for us?" John mused as Sean and Joseba stepped past Nico and strode off.
"An excuse to quit before he failed," said Emilio, working through the images Frans had sent. "Look at this one. They’re taking on cargo. Carlo’s going to load up and go home. The drone has been down to Agardi, what? Three times already." He stopped, and then said, "Oh, my God."
"What?" John asked, frightened now. "What’s in Agardi? Munitions factories? Is he—"
"No. Nothing like that. Distilleries," said Sandoz softly, looking up at Danny and John.
"Distilleries?" John echoed, confused. "Then he’s loading—"
"Yasapa brandy," said Danny. Sandoz nodded, and Danny sighed, shaking his head.
"So that’s it, then?" John cried, throwing his hands in the air. "Carlo sells us out, stocks up on Rakhati brandy and goes home richer than Gates!" Furious, he slumped down the wall opposite the door and sat, legs out straight, back against the stones.
"And yet," Emilio remarked mildly, "there does seem to be some justice in the universe after all." He was standing in the doorway, and the light behind him lit up his hair, obscuring his expression. "You see," Emilio said, "I never had a chance to tell Carlo, but yasapa brandy is—"
Danny’s eyes widened. Mouth open, he paused, barely breathing. "Awful?" he suggested hopefully.
"Say yes," John urged, scrambling to his feet and moving to Danny’s side. "Please, Emilio, say it’s awful! Lie if you have to, but tell me it’s the worst liquor you ever drank in your whole life."
Face haggard, eyes seraphic, Sandoz spoke. "It tastes," he said, "just… like… soap."
HAD ANYONE ASKED, EMILIO SANDOZ COULD HAVE EXPLAINED THE KIND of half-hysterical laughter that can overcome grief and fear and desperation, but no one was listening to the Jesuits in Ha’anala’s hut. By the time Emilio went outside, the evacuation of the N’Jarr valley was under way— parents gathering children, bundling possessions, arguing and shouting, making snap decisions, having second thoughts, trying not to panic. There was an island of calm in the midst of all this, and he pushed toward it, knowing somehow that Suukmel Chirot u Vaadai would be at its center, where Ha’anala’s pyre was still smoking.
He dropped to his knees at her side. "We have brought trouble on you," he said. "I am sorry for it."
"You meant well," she said. "And there is a life because of you."
"You’re not packing," he observed.
"As you see," she said serenely, ignoring the tumult around them.
"My lady Suukmel, hear me: you are not safe here anymore."
"Safety, I find, is a relative term." She lifted her hand, as though to draw a veil over her head, but stopped, midgesture. "I am staying," she said in a tone that invited no argument. "I have decided that if this foreigner Sofia comes to the N’Jarr, I shall have a talk with her. We have some things in common." Her lips curled slightly, and her eyes seemed to him amused. "And what are your plans?" she asked.
"Much like your own," he told her. "I’m going south, to have a talk with Sofia."
38
On the Road to Inbrokar
November 2078, Earth-Relative
HE DIDN ’T DARE USE THE LANDER, PREFERRING TO RESERVE ITS REMAINING fuel for emergencies, so he and Nico went south on foot. The priests stayed in the N’Jarr to help in whatever ways they could, but Nico would not hear of being separated from him and Emilio did not protest. It was unlikely that what they’d face in twelve days’ time would yield to a handgun and a resolute attitude, but Nico had repeatedly proved his worth and Emilio was glad of his company. Tiyat and Kajpin came along as well, to lead the way through the mountain passes and twisted ravines and foothills. The plan was to walk back to the ruins of Inbrokar, and then go on a bit farther south, where they would wait on the road for Sofia and the Runa army to come upon them.
By second sunset, Emilio and Nico were both bleeding from the knees, and Emilio was beginning to reconsider the definition of "emergency." The Gamu mountain strata were thin and fragile, tipped nearly vertical: an evil surface to hike, exhausting and treacherous underfoot. The Runa had three limbs to call upon but even for them, the climb was difficult. "Are you all right, Nico?" Emilio asked, as Tiyat and Kajpin helped the big man up a fifth time. "Perhaps we should go back for the lander after all—"
He stopped, hearing the scrabbling sound of sliding rocks behind him, and turned with Nico to watch a tall, naked human striding down the incline on dirty, storklike legs, a tattered blue parasol held high over his head.
"Isaac?" Nico suggested, brushing debris from his scraped palms as he rubbed the newest sore spots.
"Yes," Emilio guessed softly. "Who else could it be?"
He had expected a mixture of Jimmy and Sofia in their child’s face. Perhaps that was the greatest surprise: Isaac was not a child. He must be close to forty, Emilio realized. Older than Jimmy was when he died…. The father’s coiling hair had been passed on, but Isaac’s was a darker red, now shot with gray, and matted into brittle, filthy dreadlocks. There was something of Sofia’s delicacy in the long, birdlike bones, and a familiarity to the mouth, but it was difficult to find the mother in this grimy wraith with evasive blue eyes.
"Isaac has rules," Tiyat informed them quickly, when the man stood still a few paces up the incline. "Don’t interrupt him."
Isaac did not even glance at the newcomers, but appeared rather to be studying something just to Emilio’s left. "Isaac," Emilio began hesitantly, "we are going to see your mother—"
"I won’t go back," said Isaac in a loud, toneless voice. "Do you know any songs?"
Baffled, Emilio hardly knew what to reply, but Nico simply answered, "I know a lot of songs."
"Sing one."
Even Nico seemed a little taken aback, but rose to the occasion, offering Puccini’s "O mio bambino caro" with floating top notes in a soft falsetto, repeating the song when Isaac told him to. For a time, there was no sound in the world but the two of them together: twin untutored tenors, artlessly beautiful in close harmony. Nico, beaming, would have sung "Questa o quella" next, but Isaac said, "That’s all," and turned to go.
No prosody at all, Emilio noted, recalling symptoms he’d studied long ago in a developmental linguistics course. The VaN’Jarri had mentioned Isaac’s oddities but, until now, he had not realized that there was something more than isolation that would account for the things they’d described.
"Isaac," he called before the man had stalked away, knees rising high as a waterbird’s as he walked through the splintery rocks. "Do you have a message for your mother?"
Isaac stopped, but did not face him. "I won’t go back," he repeated. "She can come here." There was a pause. "That’s all," he said, and disappeared around an outcropping.
"She’s already on her way," Kajpin muttered.
"That lander is too noisy and stinks too much," Tiyat remarked, going back to the topic abandoned when Isaac showed up. "We’ll be through the worst of this bad ground by tomorrow at third sunset," she promised.
ONCE BEYOND THE INFLUENCE OF THE GARNU RANGE, THE LAND GENTLED, rising and falling by little more than a Runao’s height. The sapphire hills darkened to indigo with distance, the near country afire with magenta blossoms flaring in sunlight, and Emilio began to be glad after all that they had remained on foot. Repetitive movement had always calmed him, narrowing the focus to the burning of his muscles, the impact of the ground against his feet. He did not try to anticipate Sofia’s arguments or his own. It will be well, he thought, hour after hour, putting one foot in front of the other like a pilgrim walking to Jerusalem. Over and over: It will be well. He did not believe this; Ha’anala’s words simply matched the rhythm of his pace.