'Yes. You could do that.'
'There must be someone who'd pay me for them. John says people will pay to interview me. I could make a living outside.'
'I'm sure you could.'
Sandoz, squinting into what seemed to him painfully bright light, looked directly at Giuliani. 'So give me one good reason why I should put up with this crap, Vince. Why should I stay?'
'Why did you go?' Giuliani asked simply.
Sandoz looked blank, not understanding.
'Why did you go to Rakhat, Emilio?' Giuliani asked again gently. 'Was it just a scientific expedition? Did you go just because you were a linguist and it sounded like an interesting project? Were you just another academic grubbing for publications? Did your friends really die for the data?'
The eyes closed and there was a long silence before his lips formed the word, 'No.'
'No. I didn't think so.' Giuliani took a deep breath and let it out. 'Emilio, everything I have learned about the mission leads me to believe that you went for the greater glory of God. You believed that you and your companions were brought together by the will of God and that you arrived at your destination by the grace of God. In the beginning, everything you did was for the love of God. I have the testimony of two of your superiors who believed sincerely that something far out of the ordinary happened to you on Rakhat, that you—' He hesitated, not knowing how far to go. 'Emilio, they both believed that you had, in some sense, seen the face of God—'
Sandoz stood and turned to leave. Giuliani reached out and locked a hand over the man's arm to keep him from running away but released it instantly, startled by the strangled scream as Sandoz pulled away violently. 'Emilio, please don't leave. I'm so sorry. Don't go.' He had seen before this look of sheer panic, the terror that sometimes swamped the man when you least expected it. This
'Don't ask me, Vince,' Sandoz said bitterly. 'Ask God.'
He knew it was Edward Behr who'd come after him. The wheezing was unmistakable. He'd felt his way down the stone stairs, blinded by the tears and the lingering pain, and when he realized he'd been followed, he swore viciously and told Ed to leave him the hell alone.
'Do you miss the asteroid?' Brother Edward asked curiously. 'You were alone there.'
Emilio laughed in spite of it all. 'No. I do not miss the asteroid,' he said as dryly as a crying man could. He sat down where he stood, feeling boneless and bereft, and put his head in what was left of his hands. 'There's no bottom to this.'
'You're better, you know,' Edward said, sitting down. Emilio looked out at the Mediterranean, gunmetal blue and oily under a flat pewter sky. 'Of course, there are good days and bad days, but you're a lot stronger than you were a few months ago. You couldn't have sustained an argument like that before. Physically or mentally.'
Wiping his eyes on the backs of his gloves, Emilio said angrily, 'I don't feel stronger. I feel that this will never be over. I feel that I will never be over it.'
'Well, I can only speak to the grief. You lost so much and so many out there.' Edward saw rather than heard the sobbing and resisted the impulse to put a hand out; Sandoz hated being touched. 'In the normal way of things, it takes about a year, when you lose someone you really care for. Before the worst of it lets go of you, I mean. I found anniversaries the hardest. Not just formal things like wedding anniversaries, you understand. I'd be going along, functioning fairly well really, and then I'd realize, today would have been ten years since we met, or six years since we moved to London, or two years since that trip to France. Used to lay me away properly, little anniversaries like that.'
'How did your wife die, Ed?' Sandoz asked. He'd gotten a grip again. Brother Edward wished he'd let himself go, but there was some overriding need to keep control, something that couldn't be wept away. 'You don't have to tell me,' Sandoz said then. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry.'
'Oh, I don't mind. It helps actually, to talk about her. Keeps her alive to me in some ways.' Edward leaned forward, pudgy elbows on his knees, head close to Emilio's now. 'It was a stupid thing, really. I was rooting around in the glove box, looking for a tissue to blow my nose with. Can you imagine? I had a cold! Dumb luck. Kind of thing you do a hundred times and it makes no difference and then one bright winter morning, it makes all the difference in the world. Wheel hit a hole in the tarmac and I lost control of the car. She was killed and I was barely scratched.'
'I'm sorry.' There was a long silence. 'Was it a good marriage?'
'Oh, it had its ups and downs. We were actually in a rough patch when the accident happened but I think we'd have sorted things out. We weren't either of us quitters. We'd have done all right, I think.'
'Did you blame yourself, Ed? Or did you blame God?'
'Funny about that,' Brother Edward said, musing. 'There was plenty of blame to go around, but it never occurred to me to blame God. I blamed myself, of course. And the council for not keeping the roadways in good repair. And the wretched little boy in the flat upstairs who gave me the cold. And Laura, for letting me drive when I was sick.'
They listened for a while to the mournful screams of the gulls wheeling overhead. The water was too far away to hear the waves, but watching the rhythmic ebb and flow was nearly as soothing and Emilio's headache began to ebb as well. 'How did you come to this life, Ed?' he asked.
'Well, I was fairly religious as a child. Then I was an atheist for a while. I think they call that period of spiritual development 'adolescence, ' Edward said dryly. 'Then about two years after Laura was killed, a friend talked me into going to a Jesuit retreat. And when we got to the part about following the standard of Christ, I thought, well, why not? I'll have a go. I was at loose ends, you see. Wasn't exactly a Pauline conversion. No voices. And you, sir?'
'No voices,' Sandoz said, his voice normal again and a little hard. 'I never heard voices and the migraines do not feel like metal bands around my head. I'm not psychotic, Ed.'
'I don't believe anyone has suggested that you were* sir,' Brother Edward said quietly. 'I meant, how did you come to the priesthood?'
It was some time before Sandoz answered, flat-voiced and unexpansive, 'Seemed like a good idea at the time.'
Brother Edward thought that might be the end of the conversation, but after a few minutes Sandoz said, 'You've been on both sides. Which is the better life?'
'I'd never give up the years I had with Laura, but this is the right place for me now.' Edward hesitated, then thought it might be as good a time as any to broach the subject. 'Tell me about Miss Mendes. I've seen pictures. She was beautiful.'
'Beautiful and bright and very brave,' Sandoz said, the sound leached from his voice. He cleared his throat and ran an arm over his eyes.
'A man would have to be a fool not to love someone like that,' Edward Behr said gently. Some priests were so hard on themselves.
'Yes, a fool,' Sandoz agreed and added, 'but I didn't think so then.' It was a puzzling thing to say and Sandoz followed it with something just as unexpected. 'Have you ever wondered about the story of Cain, Ed? He made his sacrifice in good faith. Why did God refuse it?'
Sandoz stood and, without looking back, made his way down the long stairway to the sea. He was small and foreshortened, halfway across the beach to the huge stone outcropping he often retreated to, before Edward Behr realized what he had just been told.
26
VILLAGE OF KASHAN AND GREAT SOUTHERN FOREST:
EIGHT WEEKS AFTER CONTACT
Anne awoke that night without knowing what had disturbed her. Her first thought, accompanied by a spurt of adrenaline that snapped her eyes open in the dark, was that D.W. was sick again or that someone else had fallen
