Danny pursed his lips judiciously. "Like Saint Teresa said: If that’s how God treats His friends, it’s no wonder He’s got so few of them." Iron Horse lifted his glass to eye level and contemplated the contents before taking a last sip of single malt—leaving, as he always did, precisely one finger’s worth of alcohol at the bottom of the glass before setting it aside. "This is prime liquor. I admire your taste," he remarked, but his next words were uncompromising. "Sandoz is medically fragile, emotionally unstable and mentally unreliable. The mission doesn’t require him and I don’t want him on it."

"He is the toughest man I’ve ever known, Danny. If you had seen what he was like a year ago, even a few months ago. If you knew what he’s—" He stopped, astounded that he was arguing. "He will be on that ship, Father Iron Horse. Causa finita. The matter is closed."

Giuliani moved to leave, but Iron Horse remained where he was, immobile as the Grand Tetons. "Do you hate him that much?" Danny asked curiously as Giuliani’s hand touched the door. "Or does he just scare you so bad, you don’t even want to share a planet with him?"

The Father General, mouth open slightly, was too amazed to walk out.

"No. That’s not it." Iron Horse paused, the speculative look on his unlovely face replaced by serene certainty. "Taking Sandoz back to Rakhat is the price of getting the Suppression lifted, isn’t it. All we have to do is humor the Pope! Put one poor, old, broken-down ex-Jeb on the next ship out, and win, lose or draw—the prodigals shall be welcomed back to the bosom of Peter, with Vatican bells ringing and a glory of angels shouting hosannah." There was a low appreciative chuckle. "The Dominicans will be furious. It’s a beautiful deal, Father General," Danny Iron Horse said, smiling with all the warmth and good humor of a timber wolf at the end of a bad winter. "Why, this time, you’ll be the one making history."

There had been a fad for a while, Giuliani recalled while standing at the door, for housing domestic photonics in folksy-looking pine cabinetry with iron-work hinges, all cozy and warm on the outside and pure highspeed calculation on the inside. "You are a first-class sonofabitch, Danny," Giuliani said pleasantly, as he walked out the door. "I’m counting on that."

Daniel Iron Horse sat still as the old man’s footsteps receded. He stood then and retrieved his glass from the heavy silver service tray, for once in his life draining the contents, while Vincenzo Giuliani’s ambiguous laughter echoed down the stone-paved hallway.

12

Village of Kashan

2046, Earth-Relative

"SUPAARI HAS BROUGHT SOMEONE HOME!" KINSA CALLED JOYFULLY AS the barge tied up briefly at the Kashan dock.

The cliffside village was not quite one day’s travel south from Kirabai, and Supaari had been content to spend that time drowsing on the sun-warmed boards of the barge deck with the Runa passengers, planning no plans, thinking no thoughts, holding the baby Ha’anala, and chatting with Kinsa and the others. Off-loading his own baggage, he glanced up as the Runa poured out of their cut-stone dwellings and smiled as they cascaded like a spring torrent down the rocky paths toward the riverside.

"Sipaj, Kinsa: they were worried about you," he told the girl, before acknowledging the shouted farewell of the barge pilot as the vessel disappeared around the southern branch of the river.

But it was Supaari himself whom the VaKashani crowded around—all of them swaying, the children keening. "Sipaj, Supaari," was the most common refrain, "you are not safe here."

With an effort, he restored some kind of order to the gathering, speaking loudly over the chaotic Runa babble, persuading them finally to go back up to their largest meeting room, where he could listen to them properly. "Sipaj, people," he assured them, "everything will be peaceful. There is nothing worth making such a fierno about."

He was wrong, on both counts.

The proclamation had reached his hometown of Kirabai only hours after he’d left, received when the storm-downed radio tower was repaired. The Inbrokari government had declared him renegade. Hlavin Kitheri, now Paramount Presumptive, had called Supaari’s life forfeit for the murder of the entire Kitheri family and of some man named Ira’il Vro, whom Supaari had never heard of. Already, a bounty hunter had come here to Kashan. "Sipaj, Supaari," one of the elders told him, "the midwife Paquarin sent us word. She used your money to send a runner." "So we knew why the hunter came," another woman said, and then the others began again to talk all at once. "Sipaj, Supaari. Paquarin is gone now too."

Of course, he thought, eyes closing. She knew I didn’t do it—not that Runa testimony would have made a breath of difference.

"A hunter took her," someone said. "But her runner saw, and came to us." And the cry went up again, "You are not safe here!"

"Sipaj, people! Someone must think!" Supaari pleaded, ears folded flat against the uproar. Ha’anala was hungry and rooted near Kinsa’s neck, but the frightened girl was swaying witlessly. "Kinsa," he said, laying a still-blunt hand on her head, "take the baby outside and feed her, child. There’re provisions in the luggage." Turning back to the elders, he asked, "The hunter who came here—where is he now?"

The sudden silence was startling. A young woman broke it. "Someone killed him," said Djalao VaKashan.

If she had burst into song, he could not have been more dumbfounded. Supaari looked from face to face, saw the shuffling, swaying confirmation in their bodies and thought, The world’s gone mad.

"The djanada say there must be balance," said Djalao, ears high. She was perhaps seventeen. Taller than Supaari himself, and as powerful. But clawless. How had she…? "Birth by birth," Djalao was saying. "Life by life. Death by death. Someone made a balance for Paquarin."

He fell back against his tail like a random-bred drunk. He had heard the stories — there were other Runa like this, who had dared to kill Jana’ata, even after most of the rebels had been culled. But here? In Kashan, of all places!

Sinking onto the stone floor, he began to think the business through. He was known to have traded with Kashan and Lanjeri. None of the southern towns would be safe. He had been seen on the barge, so the river-ports would be watched. Pieces of his bedding would be distributed to all the checkpoints: his scent would be known wherever he fled.

"Sipaj, Supaari," he heard someone say. Manuzhai, he realized, looking up and seeing him for the first time since the death of the man’s daughter, Askama, almost three years earlier. "Can you not become hasta’akala?"

"Sipaj, Manuzhai," Supaari said quietly. "Someone is sorry for your loss." The VaKashani’s ears dropped listlessly. Supaari turned back to the others, as the impossible idea of making him hasta’akala rippled through the crowd. "No one will take this one for hasta’akala," he told them. "When someone was made Founder, he gave everything he had to endow the new lineage. Now there is no property to compensate the sponsor."

"Then we will sponsor you," somebody cried, and this idea was taken up with enthusiasm.

They meant well. A man in trouble could barter his property and titles for immunity to prosecution if he could find someone to take him on as a dependent and keep him off the public stipend rolls. In return for lodging and provision, the hasta’akala yielded everything he possessed to the sponsor and had his hands clipped—a lifelong guarantee against his becoming a VaHaptaa poacher. Supaari stood so they could all see him clearly. "Someone will explain. The sponsor must be able to feed the one taken hasta’akala. You would not be able to feed this one," he said as gently as he could.