himself and his topic and John had wiped his eyes and caught his breath, Candotti cried, "You’re so cynical! You have a lot of friends out there, Emilio."
"Indulge me, John. Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I’m presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money."
Candotti laughed again and told Sandoz to say two rosaries for having spectacularly impure thoughts, and waved and started down the stairs. He was almost out the door when he heard Emilio call his name. Hand on the knob, still grinning, he looked back up toward Sandoz’s room. "Yeah?"
"John, I… I need a favor."
"Sure. Anything."
"I—. There are going to be some papers I’ll have to sign. I’m out, John. I’m leaving the Society." Sucker-punched, Candotti sagged against the doorjamb. A moment later, Sandoz’s voice went on, quiet and hesitant. "Can you fix a pen so I can hold it? Like you did with that razor, yes?"
John ascended the stairs partway and then halted, as unwilling as Sandoz to carry out this awful conversation face to face. "Emilio. Look—. Okay, I understand, I guess—as much as anyone else can. But are you sure? I mean, it’s—"
"I’m sure. I decided this afternoon." Candotti waited and then heard, "I’m carrying a lot of shit, John. I won’t add fraud. Nobody can hate the way I do and claim to be a priest. It’s not honest." John sat heavily on a stair tread and rubbed his face with his hands as Emilio said, "I think— some kind of wedge-shaped thing that would hold the pen up at an angle, yes? The new braces are good, but I still haven’t got much of a precision grip."
"Yeah. Okay. No problem. I’ll figure something out for you."
John stood and headed back down the stairs, feeling ten years older than he’d been five minutes ago. As he shambled his loose-limbed way over to the main house, he heard Emilio’s call drift out the dormer window: "Thanks, John." He waved a hand dispiritedly, without looking back, knowing Emilio couldn’t see him. "Sure. You bet," John whispered, and felt a nasty crawling sensation on his face as wind off the Bay of Naples dried the tears.
7
City of In broker
2046, Earth-Relative
THE ERROR, IF THAT’S WHAT IT WAS, LAY IN GOING TO SEE THE CHILD. Who knows what would have happened if Supaari VaGayjur had simply waited until the morning and, unsuspecting, freed his child’s spirit to find a better fate?
But the midwife came to him, sure that he would want to see the baby, and he was rarely able to resist the uncomplicated friendship the Runa always seemed to offer him. So Supaari strode toward the nursery importantly: heavy embroidered robe rustling as softly as his slippered footsteps, eyes focused on the middle distance, ignoring the Runa midwife’s chatter with his ears cocked forward, not deigning to reply to her pleasantries— all in conscious mimicry of an aristocratic Jana’ata crammed full of incorruptible civic virtue and monumental self-regard.
Who am I to sneer? Supaari asked himself. A jumped-up merchant prone to unfortunate commercial metaphors in conversation with his betters. A third-born son from a backwater town in the midlands who made a fortune brokering trade among the Runa. An outsider among outsiders, who’d literally stumbled onto a pack of impossible foreigners from somewhere beyond Rakhat’s three suns, and parlayed that experience into this exacting facsimile of nobility that nobody but the Runa believed in.
He’d known from the moment the Reshtar agreed to his proposition that he would never be more than who he was. It didn’t matter. Isolation felt normal to him. Supaari’s life had always been an interstitial one, lived between the worlds of Runa and Jana’ata; he enjoyed the perspective, preferred observation to participation. He’d spent his first year among these exalted members of his own species studying the habits of the men around him as carefully as the hunter studies his prey. He came to savor the growing accuracy with
"Indulge me, John. Cynicism and foul language are the only vices I’m presently capable of. Everything else takes energy or money."
Candotti laughed again and told Sandoz to say two rosaries for having spectacularly impure thoughts, and waved and started down the stairs. He was almost out the door when he heard Emilio call his name. Hand on the knob, still grinning, he looked back up toward Sandoz’s room. "Yeah?"
"John, I… I need a favor."
"Sure. Anything."
"I—. There are going to be some papers I’ll have to sign. I’m out, John. I’m leaving the Society." Sucker-punched, Candotti sagged against the doorjamb. A moment later, Sandoz’s voice went on, quiet and hesitant. "Can you fix a pen so I can hold it? Like you did with that razor, yes?"
John ascended the stairs partway and then halted, as unwilling as Sandoz to carry out this awful conversation face to face. "Emilio. Look—. Okay, I understand, I guess—as much as anyone else can. But are you sure? I mean, it’s—"
"I’m sure. I decided this afternoon." Candotti waited and then heard, "I’m carrying a lot of shit, John. I won’t add fraud. Nobody can hate the way I do and claim to be a priest. It’s not honest." John sat heavily on a stair tread and rubbed his face with his hands as Emilio said, "I think— some kind of wedge-shaped thing that would hold the pen up at an angle, yes? The new braces are good, but I still haven’t got much of a precision grip."
"Yeah. Okay. No problem. I’ll figure something out for you."
John stood and headed back down the stairs, feeling ten years older than he’d been five minutes ago. As he shambled his loose-limbed way over to the main house, he heard Emilio’s call drift out the dormer window: "Thanks, John." He waved a hand dispiritedly, without looking back, knowing Emilio couldn’t see him. "Sure. You bet," John whispered, and felt a nasty crawling sensation on his face as wind off the Bay of Naples dried the tears.
7
City of In broker
2046, Earth-Relative
THE ERROR, IF THAT’S WHAT IT WAS, LAY IN GOING TO SEE THE CHILD. Who knows what would have happened if Supaari VaGayjur had simply waited until the morning and, unsuspecting, freed his child’s spirit to find a better fate?
But the midwife came to him, sure that he would want to see the baby, and he was rarely able to resist the uncomplicated friendship the Runa always seemed to offer him. So Supaari strode toward the nursery importantly: heavy embroidered robe rustling as softly as his slippered footsteps, eyes focused on the middle distance, ignoring the Runa midwife’s chatter with his ears cocked forward, not deigning to reply to her pleasantries— all in conscious mimicry of an aristocratic Jana’ata crammed full of incorruptible civic virtue and monumental self-regard.
Who am I to sneer? Supaari asked himself. A jumped-up merchant prone to unfortunate commercial metaphors in conversation with his betters. A third-born son from a backwater town in the midlands who made a fortune brokering trade among the Runa. An outsider among outsiders, who’d literally stumbled onto a pack of impossible foreigners from somewhere beyond Rakhat’s three suns, and parlayed that experience into this exacting facsimile of nobility that nobody but the Runa believed in.
He’d known from the moment the Reshtar agreed to his proposition that he would never be more than who he was. It didn’t matter. Isolation felt normal to him. Supaari’s life had always been an interstitial one, lived between the worlds of Runa and Jana’ata; he enjoyed the perspective, preferred observation to participation. He’d spent his first year among these exalted members of his own species studying the habits of the men around him as carefully as the hunter studies his prey. He came to savor the growing accuracy with
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