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The Jesuit scientists went to learn, not to proselytize. They went so that they might come to know and love God’s other children. They went for the reason Jesuits have always gone to the farthest frontiers of human exploration. They went ad majorem Dei gloriam: for the greater glory of God.
THE FATHER GENERAL’S PRIVATE secretary contacted Father John Candotti on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, three weeks after Emilio’s arrival at Number 5.
RUMINATING OVER THE SAME problem as he walked back to his lightless room on the eastern side of the Rome Ring, John Candotti had his own theory about how things had gone wrong. The mission, he thought, probably failed because of a series of logical, reasonable, carefully considered decisions, each of which seemed like a good idea at the time. Like most colossal disasters.
John Candotti had once waded into a street fight simply because he thought the odds were too lopsided. He got his big nose broken for his trouble and the guy he helped wasn’t notably grateful. Still, it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll tell you something about the Balkans. If people there think they’re going to forget a grudge, they write an epic poem and make the children recite it before bed. You’re up against five hundred years of carefully preserved and very bad memories about imperial Catholic Spain.”
“Do you experience God?” Sandoz asked him without preamble. Odd, how uncomfortable the question made him. The Society of Jesus rarely attracted mystics, who generally gravitated to the Carmelites or the Trappists, or wound up among the charismatics.
Jimmy began working his way through the log, becoming absorbed in the process, talking more to himself than to Sofia. Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman. Slavering was hardly attractive.
Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn’t perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt. After all, Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who had killed and whored and made a thorough mess of his soul, said you could judge prayer worthwhile simply if you could act more decently, think more clearly afterward.
Military orders, being the most lucrative contracts, took precedence over civilian projects. Intense prayer, along with astute technical and diplomatic skill, was dedicated to this problem.
Emilio could be so casual and funny that you forgot sometimes that he was a priest and it came as a surprise when you saw his face during the Mass, or watched him doing something ordinary extraordinarily well, in that Jesuit way of making everyday labor a form of prayer.
who could condemn him? Not Edward Behr, who had some measure of the man’s strength and of what it must have taken to bring him to the state he’d been found in, on Rakhat. Johannes Voelker, by contrast, was convinced that Sandoz was simply a dangerous rogue, gone to appalling excess in the absence of external controls. We are what we fear in others, Edward thought, and wondered how Voelker spent his time off.
“You can see it, can’t you. Hasta’akala: to be made like sta’aka. To be made visibly and physically dependent on someone stronger. He offered us hasta’akala. He took me to the garden and showed me the ivy and I didn’t make the connection. I thought he was offering Marc and me his protection and hospitality. I thought I could trust him. He asked my consent and I gave it. And I thanked him.”
Concrete and abstract, dammit, she thought stubbornly. “Yes, fine. What I don’t understand is—” “I know what you don’t understand! Stop arguing with me and listen!”
Once they’d all seen the underlying logic of it, it seemed perfectly reasonable, and Anne declared that Emilio was entitled to feel superior for precisely one half hour, which she offered to time for him. He refused the honor, admitting cheerfully that he’d already indulged in a sufficiency of self-congratulation.
“I’d rather eat that than eat this,” George said, pointing at a bowl still half-filled with what he could only think of as fodder, thoughtfully left for them by Manuzhai, who would be offended if any were left. “This is not eating. It’s just chewing.”
“Your man sounds upset, Candotti,” Voelker said quietly, smiling. “He’s a scientist and his work was buried, Voelker. He’s got a right to be upset,” John said just as softly with as gentle a smile. “How’s the secretary biz these days? Scheduled any first-rate appointments lately?”
“Have you ever wondered about the story of Cain, Ed? He made his sacrifice in good faith. Why did God refuse it?”
Relying on vague directions from the porter and dead reckoning, John Candotti worked his way into the bowels of the retreat house to a dimly lit cellar that had been converted to a modern laundry facility in the 1930s, updated almost a hundred years later and never again since. The Society of Jesus, John noted, was willing to commit to interstellar travel on less than two weeks’ notice, but it did not rush into things like new laundry equipment.
A self-made man, Supaari was not reticent about his early life and his present status, and since all the surviving members of the Jesuit party came from cultures on Earth that value such people and disdain hereditary privilege, they were prepared to see him in a somewhat heroic light, a plucky boy who’d made good. Alan Pace might have been better equipped to handle the class aspects of Rakhati society, since Britain still retained some traits of a culture that takes good breeding seriously. Alan might have understood how truly marginal Supaari was, how little access he had to real sources of
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George and Jimmy and Awijan ate and watched and listened and talked, and at some point in the evening, one of the Runa challenged Jimmy to a sort of arm-wrestling competition. Jimmy tried to beg off, saying, “Someone would be sad to make your heart porai,” which he meant as courtesy but which was in fact exactly the kind of backward insult this crowd loved.
My God, Giuliani was thinking, genius may have its limits but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
“There’s an old Jewish story that says in the beginning God was everywhere and everything, a totality. But to make creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the universe, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists.” “So God just leaves?” John asked, angry where Emilio had been desolate. “Abandons creation? You’re on your own, apes. Good luck!” “No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering.”
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Old joke. Three Catholic priests are having dinner: a Franciscan, a Dominican, and a Jesuit. Suddenly the lights go out. The Franciscan says, “Let us welcome Sister Darkness and wait patiently for Brother Sunlight to return.” The Dominican says, “God gives us the darkness of ignorance so that we might, by contrast, discern the light of truth.” The Jesuit finds a flashlight and goes downstairs to flip the breaker.
Take it from me: if you come face-to-face with an adult male red kangaroo in the Outback, you will feel a very definite respect. They’re startlingly big with a broad muscular chest and three-inch claws. They look you right in the eye, which is intimidating even when you know they’re dumber than a five-pound bag of sand.
In science, all sensibly phrased questions are at least potentially answerable, while answers to the questions of faith are, by their very definition, unknowable.
