Children of God

by Mary Doria Russell

  But now they could hear more ominous sounds: the creaking of the ship’s stony substance, the sound of water gushing from some pipe, the cyclonic hissing whistle of escaping air and the moan of stressed metal, like the mournful song of humpback whales.

  “Intercom: all transceivers on,” Carlo said, in a normal tone of voice, activating the ship’s internal communications system. One by one, he called the names of the men he could not see. One by one, Frans, Nico, Sean, Joseba and Danny reported in. Above and below the center deck, the spin had pinned each man to an unaccustomed surface, and they were now sealed in their cabins by AI emergency programs that turned each compartment of the ship into a lifepod.

  “This is like … our drills,” Nico’s voice gasped cheerfully. “We’re … going to be fine.”

  Face pulled toward the tabletop, John’s eyes bulged sightlessly at that sanguine pronouncement, but from somewhere in the ship came Frans’s voice, crying, “Brav’ scugnizz’, Nico!”

  Carlo, too, continued to sound serene. “Gentlemen,” he called, knowing he could be heard throughout the ship, “I believe … the Giordano Bruno must have struck a micrometeorite. Since … we have not been reduced to … mineral dust and a haze of organic … molecules, we may deduce that whatever we hit … was very small. But we are … moving very quickly, which accounts for … the result of that impact.” He began to find his rhythm, his breathing easier now. “Ah! You see, Sandoz?” Carlo asked, gray eyes moving in his immobilized head, “the vacuum is sucking dirt from … the Wolverton tube … through the channel … drilled by the particle. It has now been clogged with plant debris … and sealed itself off.”

  The hissing stopped, and the tornado inside the transparent tube was suddenly replaced by an apparently solid mass of soilmix, flung with a thud against the walls of the cylinder, just as Sandoz and Carlo were themselves pinned against the outer walls of the common room.

  Rolling his eyes wildly, John could just glimpse Carlo at the edge of his field of vision. “You mean … all that’s between … us and space is … dirt?” John gasped frantically.

  “That, and the … love o’ God,” came Sean Fein’s strained voice over the intercom.

  Carlo somehow managed to laugh delightedly. “If there is anyone among our passengers … who is so inclined, you might consider … praying to the soul of James … Lovell, patron saint of hard-luck spacefarers! He … was surely watching over us this morning, my friends. Listen!” he ordered, hearing the photonics systems powering on and resetting themselves. “Get ready to fall. If all goes well, the inertial guidance system will … begin firing the attitude rockets soon—”

  There were short, heartfelt prayers and curses—both consisting entirely of the name of Jesus—and more cries of fear, startlement and pain as the AI guidance system began firing its jets, which automatically registered their own effects on the stability of the ship and readjusted the Bruno’s pitch and roll and yaw with brief thrusts. In the commons, globules of orange juice formed up in momentary spells of weightlessness, and the carnival ride gave way to a nauseating kaleidoscope of scrambled eggs and dust, with Emilio’s fork spinning crazily near a floating plate. In the cabins, anything left loose—computer tablets, razors, socks, bedding, rosaries—danced with men’s bodies to the erratic forces of the ship’s motion, which changed instant by instant. Everywhere, boluses of spit and vomit and tears—briefly held together by surface tension—were now added to the mess, shattering as they splashed against surfaces or collided with some other object or were struck by the frantic movement of a man’s arms and legs seeking purchase.

  Within endless minutes, the spin stabilized and they were pulled back toward the ship’s periphery but now with far less force. “Do you feel that, Don Gianni?” Nico called, apparently concerned by the fear he’d heard in John Candotti’s voice. “Feel it? It’s starting to slow down—”

  “All right,” Carlo said, cool as ever, “start moving toward the floor as the centrifugal force decreases.”

  “Do you understand, Don Gianni?” Nico asked helpfully, without a trace of irony. “The ship is going to let us go now.”

  “When the engines fire,” Carlo warned, “we’re going to have full power—”

  Which meant full, normal gravity. Floors abruptly reestablished their claim on Down, and anyone who had not made it to the bottom of his wall while the guidance system slowed and stopped the spin acquired a few more bruises for his tardiness.

  “Well!” Carlo cried cheerfully, picking himself up with the almost magical self-satisfaction that handsome Italian males acquire in middle age. “That went about as well as could be expected. Will everyone please report to the commons?”

  AGAINST ODDS, THE MEN OF THE GIORDANO BRUNO WERE ALL CAPABLE of staggering out of their compartments when the emergency lockdown was released, and presented themselves one by one, naked or in under-shorts. Frans, amply padded and phlegmatic, had come through without injury, and Nico’s inability to imagine how much danger they’d just been in had served him well. Joseba was silent and breathing hard, but otherwise intact. Sean was visibly shaken, but Danny Iron Horse was focused and alert. Carlo himself knew exactly where each Newtonian law of motion had been demonstrated on his body, but was fully functional. John, too, insisted he was okay and was already at work; having located a galley water pipe that had burst under torsion, he had cut off the main valve and was going through the plumbing supplies with Nico, looking for what he needed to fix it. Sandoz was calm, of course, saying only, “One of my braces is damaged. It looks repairable.”

  Apart from cuts and bruises, there were no injuries, perhaps because most of them had been in bed. Allowing no time for anyone to give way to post-traumatic panic, Carlo handed out assignments with a brisk, businesslike dispatch. “I want everyone in pressure suits until we are certain the ship is stabilized. Nico, after you have your suit on, you’ll be cleaning up for us. Start in the galley. Make a list of what needs to be repaired for Don Gianni. Sean, help Sandoz get into his suit, then put on your own—”

  “My hands are useless in a suit,” Sandoz objected. “I can’t …”

  “Just until we’re certain we’ve got the ship stabilized,” Carlo said. Sandoz shrugged: resigned or indifferent. “Frans, as soon as you’re ready, take Sandoz with you to the bridge. Sandoz, you’ll be helping with a complete review of the photonics—check the ship’s status, system by system. That can be done with voice control, and as soon as the emergency passes, we can dispense with the pressure suits. Candotti,” he called, “leave the swabbing for Nico—check out the plumbing on the other levels. There may be damage elsewhere and we don’t need anything shorting out. Sean! Wake up! Help Sandoz into his pressure suit.”

  When the others had gone, Carlo spoke to Joseba and Danny. “After the ship is sound, the priority will be to reactivate the biological air and waste systems.” It was only then that Joseba and Danny looked at the Wolverton tube in the center of the commons and stared, horrified, at the battered and torn plants that had been ripped from their moorings. “This is not fatal, gentlemen,” Carlo insisted. “We can maintain air quality with scrubbers and we have backup oxygen generators, but I don’t like to lose redundancy in any system, so we need to salvage as many plants as we can—that’s your job,” he told Joseba. “Even if they’re all dead, we’re carrying seeds on board, and we can reestablish the tube in a couple of months. When Sean is capable, put him to work on the fish tanks, Joseba. They’re sealed, but have him check for leaks and cracks. I imagine the tilapia survived the ride, but the tanks and filters themselves will need to be checked over and thoroughly cleaned at the very least.”

  Joseba stood there dumbly for a moment, but finally moved off toward his cabin to suit up, and to make sure Sean and Sandoz were doing the same.

  “Hail, Caesar!” Danny Iron Horse said to Carlo when they were alone. “Very cool, ace.”

  One hand raised, palm inward, the other laid gracefully upon his chest, Carlo struck a pose i
mplying an invisible toga. “I am not cold, unscrupulous and selfish,” he declared, brows raised imperiously. “I am a philosopher-king, and the embodiment of Stoic detachment!”

  “In a pig’s eye,” Danny said affably. “You Giulianis are stone-hearted bastards to a man.”

  “So my father tells me,” Carlo said, unruffled. “My mother denied everything and demanded DNA tests. Suit up. You’re coming with me. We need to check out the hull and see how bad the damage to the landers is. I think we’ll all sleep better if we seal those pinholes with something a bit more reliable than clumps of dirt.”

  “Duct tape?” Danny suggested as they walked toward the spiral stairs that led to their cabins below. Carlo laughed, but before he could go through the hatch, Iron Horse put out an imposing arm, blocking his way.

  “Just how close was that?” Danny asked curiously, black eyes steady.

  “I won’t know for certain until I inspect the hull,” Carlo said, but Danny wouldn’t let him pass so Carlo took a step back and stood quietly, hands behind his beautiful back, classical head cocked, gray eyes speculative. His contemporaries found him surprisingly fastidious: Carlo Giuliani rarely used vulgarities unless the situation genuinely seemed to demand them. “So fucking close,” he said very gently and very distinctly, “that the only reason we can possibly be alive is that the Pope and Don Vincenzo were right—God wants Sandoz on Rakhat.”

  They looked at each other for a long time. Dropping his arm, Danny nodded and started down the stairs.

  ENCASED IN PRESSURE SUITS FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, DANNY AND Carlo met again in the passageway beyond their cabins and moved from room to room, surveying the damage. Carlo’s orders to keep every loose item stowed and secure had been fairly well complied with, even in private spaces, and this had undoubtedly decreased the severity of the injuries sustained. Mostly they saw a jumbled mess but ignored that, pushing bedding and clothing aside to inspect the walls, floors and ceilings of each room.

  The surfaces were coated with a stress-crackle polymer on which the effects of twisting were evident. It was most severe on the outer walls, but research and experience had shown that in-line collisions were the only survivable scenario, so Carlo had chosen an asteroid and configured it with that in mind. Cracks in the outer shell were still a possibility—it would take sonar soundings to discover those. But the life-supporting central cylinder of the Bruno, it seemed, was in no immediate danger of splitting apart.

  Passing through the commons on the way to the lander bay, Carlo noted that Nico was already done with the galley. Food and equipment had been kept tightly packed and locked in storage bins. Nothing but Sandoz’s frying pan had been left out. Satisfied, Carlo stopped at the bridge, where Frans and Sandoz were already running diagnostics.

  “Where’s your suit, Frans?” Carlo said. His voice through the throat mike was thin and uninflected; even so, it was clear that there had better be good reason for insubordination.

  “I’m a growing boy. It doesn’t fit anymore,” Frans said shortly. He grinned then at Danny Iron Horse, impassive behind his suit’s face shield. “Pray that we don’t suck any serious vacuum, Chief. If I explode, you’ll be scrubbing fat out of the instrumentation for the rest of the trip.”

  “Or resting in the bosom of Jesus,” Danny said dryly.

  “What have you found so far?” Carlo asked Frans.

  “We’re blind in one eye,” Frans informed him, serious again. “When you go forward, look near the starboard sensor panel.”

  Lucky, Carlo thought. Very lucky indeed. But he said, “All right. Iron Horse: go check on Sean and Joseba—see how the biologicals came through. Then take a look at the landers yourself. I’m going forward to see what the hull looks like. Frans: monitor me.”

  “THE CHIEF SOURCE OF ALL EVILS TO MAN,” WROTE THE STOIC EPICTETUS, “as well as of baseness and cowardice, is not death but fear of death.”

  Carlo Giuliani had read those words at the age of thirteen, a week after one of the many funerals he attended as a child. A cousin had been blown to bits by a car bomb; there was nothing much to put in the coffin, but two hundred vehicles had followed the nearly empty box as the cortege wound its way through Naples. Carlo had not personally witnessed that particular demise, but he had been spattered with blood and gobbets of brain at the age of seven—an uncle that time—and so had contemplated mortality from an early age.

  Another boy might have gone into the priesthood; certainly, there was ample precedent for that in the family—there was even a fourteenth-century stigmatic surnamed Giuliani. But there were far too many martyrs in Christian hagiography to suit Carlo. With an adolescent’s romantic sense of self-importance, he focused not on Jesus Christ but on Marcus Aurelius. It took the greatest of the caesars, a hero of monumental self-control and fearlessness, to shore up the fragile courage of a boy who would be fair game soon, should a rival famiglia need to target a low-risk victim for a revenge execution.

  Aurelius proved a difficult role model. Carlo strove for a Stoic’s rationality and courage, only to be dragged down into the strange Neapolitan mire of pre-Christian superstition and rococo Catholicism. He had grown up both cosseted and reviled, outrageously overindulged and viciously undermined. He remained in some ways his mother’s disastrously spoiled son, enraged by the slightest opposition; like his father, he could be all but blind to the desires of others, except insofar as they meshed with his own. Nevertheless, he knew these characteristics to be flaws and fought them. “The noblest kind of retribution,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, “is not to become like your enemy.”

  “I have learned from my predecessors’ mistakes,” Carlo had told Emilio Sandoz. This was no idle boast but the touchstone of his life, and the Giordano Bruno was proof that his struggles had not been without consequence. The ship was configured within a large, solid, unusually symmetrical rock—virgin mineral, with no prior mining to weaken its structure. Its interior cylinder was carefully assayed, sounded, and drilled out by mining robots. Top-of-the-line crew quarters were sealed into the center, well shielded from cosmic radiation. The entire outer surface of the asteroid was pressure-treated with resilient self-healing foam. All photonics, life-support and guidance systems were triply redundant, controlled by exhaustively tested artificial intelligences programmed to respond to any unscheduled interruption of function with automatic power-on sequences and stabilization procedures, even if the crew was incapacitated.

  It had cost a fortune. Carlo had made his arguments to his father in commercial terms and his sister Carmella had backed him up, of course—the project would remove him as a potential rival while the bitch consolidated power. But, as his sister pointed out, money spent up front to increase the chances of a successful voyage would pay a satisfying return on a long-term financial investment. That this might also result in the return of Domenico Giuliani’s son was, that estranged son suspected, an acceptable risk, given that Domenico would not be around to deal with it personally.

  Rot in hell, old man, Carlo thought, his own breathing loud in his ears as he climbed through the central access core of the ship to find out precisely how close he had come to joining his father there, two hours earlier.

  There was a fine coating of black dust everywhere inside the ship’s forward utility bay, where the remote sensing equipment was housed. Following the fanlike spray of dirt to its origin in the floor, he brushed at a miniature Vesuvius with a booted foot and then bent to clear the rest of the fine dust with his glove. He found a hole. Straightening, he stepped back and looked now to the ceiling, which was the ship’s bow when it was under power, and found the entry wound, also plugged with sieved soilmix sucked into the breach by the vacuum of space and held there by friction. He knew without looking that there would be identical exit holes at the other end of the ship.

  Trusting in physics for the time being, he left the plug alone and mentally charted the collision. A particle of matter—a speck of iron perhaps—got in their way and drilled a narrow column from
bow to stern …

  It was not a good moment. If the drill hole had been a bit more off-center, the spin would have been more violent and the ship would have gone to pieces; even if it held together, its passengers might have been pulped. If the micrometeorite had been much larger, the ship would have been destroyed. If the collision had occurred at their maximum velocity, an impact like this would have vaporized them before they knew anything had happened, and the Giordano Bruno would have joined the list of ships mysteriously lost en route to Rakhat.

  He almost giggled, giddy at last, when he heard himself thinking, A novena for the Virgin when I get home.… No—a whole church, filled with treasures from Rakhat! Rationality, he was finding, took a poor second to religion after a morning like this.

  He roused himself, and looked at the sensor box just to starboard of the drill hole. Careful not to disturb the dirt that stood between him and the void, Carlo pulled the box out of its housing and gently shook out a diaphanous shower of fine particles—it was fouled by soilmix. There were two more sensor packs stored below. He would replace this box, but decided to put Candotti to work reconditioning the one in his hands.

  We may yet need this one as a backup, Carlo thought. “The safest course,” Seneca taught, “is to tempt fortune rarely.” Which probably ruled out relying on miracles more than once a week.

  Trucha Sai

  2047–2061, Earth-Relative

  FOR YEARS AFTER SHE WAS MAROONED THE SECOND TIME, SOFIA MENDES dreamed of home. She hated this, and ended her transmissions to Earth, believing that to sever this last tie would end the dreams, but they continued.