The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  It’s all true, he thought as the drug took hold. But it’s all wrong.

  THE LANDER FROM the Magellan had set down near the village of Kashan, where the Jesuit party had lived for over two Rakhati years. The humans were met not by priests but by a terrifying mob of individuals they later learned to call Runa. The Runa were very big, very agitated, and Wu had expected to be killed on the spot. The Magellan party was about to retreat to their lander when a smaller person, whom they believed to be quite young, made her way through the crowd and went directly to Trevor Isley, whom she addressed, astonishingly, in English.

  She introduced herself as Askama and asked Trevor if he had "come for Meelo?" Askama seemed convinced that Isley was a relative of Father Emilio Sandoz—or Meelo, as she called him—a family member come to fetch the priest. When they asked about any others like Sandoz, Askama said that the other foreigners were gone but told them over and over, "Meelo is not dead," that he was in the city of Gayjur now. Gradually the Magellan party understood that Askama meant to take them there. It seemed wise to go with her. They hoped that Sandoz would be able to explain the situation once they reached Gayjur.

  They went by river barge to the city. Along the route, Runa villagers shouted from the banks and, once, rocks were thrown. Trevor Isley, who happened to be wearing black, was obviously the target of that assault and it seemed clear that the missionaries had somehow poisoned the atmosphere, the very thing the Magellan crew had expected and feared.

  The city population was not openly hostile but the humans were watched silently as they made their way through the streets. Askama brought them to Supaari VaGayjur, whom they found to be something of a scholar. Supaari, they learned, had studied with Sandoz for a long while and his English was surprisingly good, although more heavily accented than Askama’s. He was also a member of the ruling Jana’ata, a person of apparent wealth and a gracious host, although Askama was dismissed rather abruptly. She was not allowed to stay with them but she was permitted to remain in the compound somewhere and the humans saw her often. While Supaari confirmed Askama’s story that Emilio Sandoz had once been accepted as a member of his household, he informed the Magellan party that Sandoz no longer resided with him. Why? they asked. Where was he now? Supaari was indirect. Other living arrangements had been made for the Foreigner Sandoz that were "more suited to his nature," Supaari told them, and changed the subject.

  Over the next few weeks, the Magellan party was entertained lavishly, Supaari showing off his knowledge of their lingua franca and doing his best to answer their questions. At their request, he introduced them to other Jana’ata of influence. Everyone seemed cool and distracted, uninterested in trade or cultural exchanges. It became obvious that something ugly was brewing. Even the normally urbane Supaari became upset one afternoon, telling them that the Runa had attacked and killed several Jana’ata on a riverway near the city. Nothing like this had ever happened previously. Supaari assured them that relations between the Runa and the Jana’ata had always been good before. Supaari was of the opinion that the foreigners, as everyone called the Jesuits, were responsible for this. Balance had been lost. Traditions had been broken.

  The Magellan party brought up Sandoz’s name repeatedly, hoping for a more complete explanation of the situation from him, but Supaari seemed in no hurry to produce the man. In the end, it was not Supaari VaGayjur but the child Askama who located Sandoz and took Wu and Isley to him.

  Father Emilio Sandoz was found in a state of shocking degradation in what was obviously a whorehouse, where he was employed as a prostitute. His first act when found was to kill Askama, a child who had clearly been devoted to him. Upon questioning, the priest became hysterical and then refused to speak. The Jana’ata, preoccupied with larger affairs, pressed no charges and released Sandoz to the custody of the Consortium. Wu and Isley were not in a position to conduct any kind of investigation, so they decided to send Sandoz back to Earth and let the authorities there deal with him. The priest was transported to the Stella Maris, along with a cargo of remarkable gifts from Supaari VaGayjur, and the Magellan party turned their attention to repairing relations with the VaRakhati.

  In the weeks that followed, there were reports of additional Runa attacks on Jana’ata civilians near the city. Fearing that they would be caught up in the civil war that seemed imminent, Wu and Isley thanked Supaari for his hospitality and aid, and made plans to take their party back up to the Magellan, where they could either sit out the unrest or try a different region of the planet. Wu’s last transmission reported his group’s plan to head back toward their lander with an escort provided by Supaari VaGayjur. The Magellan party was never heard from again.

  And so it was that the only person to return from Rakhat alive was the priest and whore and murderer Emilio Sandoz, who had very much wanted to die.

  THE BREATHING HAD steadied now and Edward Behr knew that the medication had finally taken hold. It was much more effective if it could be taken orally when the headaches began. Edward tried to be alert to their onset, but Emilio hid a great deal. This time the pain had come screaming in with startling suddenness, and no wonder: to sit and read an indictment like that, minutely observed, the tiniest reaction analyzed for what clues might be given away.

  Edward Behr had seen this kind of thing before—the body punished for what the soul could not encompass. Sometimes it was headache, as with Emilio. Sometimes excruciating back pain, or chronic stomach trouble. You saw it in the alcoholics, often, drinking to dull the sensitivity, to mute the hurt. So many people buried the soul’s pain in their bodies, Edward thought. Even priests who, one would have thought, might have known better.

  Brother Edward had spent many hours sitting like this, watching Emilio sleep, praying for him. Of course, he’d known the stories about Sandoz before being assigned to care for him. And he had tended the man’s body, was well aware of the injuries, which were not merely those to his hands and which silently told the sordid story. The original release of the information came when Edward Behr was married, before he ever thought of his present life or imagined he might meet one of the principals, but he’d been interested, naturally. It was the news story of the century, after all. He recalled the teasing insinuations, the dramatic revelations, the scandalized reactions overshadowing the scientific and philosophical importance of the mission to Rakhat. Then there was, for the second time, a mysterious end to the transmissions and the long wait for Sandoz to return, bringing with him the only hope for some kind of explanation.

  Emilio’s very survival had been improbable, not to say miraculous. Alone for months, in a crude vehicle, navigated by only slightly less crude computers, he had been found in the Ohbayashi sector of the asteroid belt when a support ship investigated the automatic distress signal. By that time, he was so malnourished that the healed scars of his hands had reopened, the connective tissue going to pieces. He would have bled to death if the Ohbayashi people hadn’t picked him up when they did.

  Brother Edward realized that he might be the only one who believed wholeheartedly that it was a good thing Emilio had been found alive. Even John Candotti was ambivalent, if only because death seemed kinder and God was merciful.

  Edward didn’t know what to think about the killing of Askama or the violence said to have been triggered by the Jesuit missionaries. But if Emilio Sandoz, maimed, destitute, utterly alone, had turned to prostitution, 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.

  There was a quiet knock at the door. Edward rose silently and went into the hallway, pulling the door almost but not quite closed behind him.

  "Asleep?" the Father General asked.

  "Yes. It’ll be hours,"
Brother Edward said softly. "Once the vomiting starts, I have to inject the Prograine, and that knocks him out."

  "The rest will do him good." Vincenzo Giuliani rubbed his face with both hands and let out a long uneven sigh. He looked at Brother Edward and shook his head. "He admits it’s all true. But I could have sworn he was dumbfounded."

  "Sir, if I may speak frankly?"

  "Of course. Please."

  "I can’t say anything about the murder. I’ve seen real anger. To be honest, I’ve seen potential for violence, although he’s always turned it on himself. But, Father, you only read the medical reports. I saw—" Brother Edward stopped. He’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even Emilio, silent always in the early days when he’d been too ill to move from bed. Perhaps the reports had been too clinical. Perhaps the Father General hadn’t understood what the sodomy had done, how desperate Sandoz must have been …

  "It was brutal," Brother Edward said plainly, and he looked at the Father General until Giuliani blinked. "He does not enjoy pain. If he worked as a whore, it gave him no pleasure."

  "I don’t suppose the work ever does give much pleasure, Ed, but your point is taken. Emilio Sandoz is not a depraved libertine."

  Giuliani walked to the doorway and hesitated before taking a step into the room. Most men were simple. They were looking for security, or power, or a feeling of usefulness or of certainty or competence. A cause to fight for, a problem to solve, a place to fit in. There were many possibilities but once you grasped what a man was looking for, you had the beginnings of understanding. At a loss, he studied the exotic face, half-hidden by dark hair and bed linens, and whispered, "So what, in the name of Jesus, is he?" It was a question he’d pondered, one way or another, off and on, for sixty years. He didn’t expect an answer, but he got one.

  "A soul," said Edward Behr, "looking for God."

  Vincenzo Giuliani stared at the fat little man standing in the hallway and then at Sandoz, sleeping drugged against an assault on his own body, and wondered, What if that’s been it, all along?

  IT WAS WELL into the night before Emilio stirred. He became aware that the small reading lamp by the chair was on and said quietly, his voice blurred with sleep, "I’ll be okay, Ed. You don’t have to sit up. Go to bed." When he heard no response, he roused himself and turned over, rising onto an elbow, and saw not Edward Behr but Vincenzo Giuliani.

  Before Sandoz could spit out the words that were forming in his mind, Giuliani spoke. "Emilio, I am sorry," he said, the calm conviction in his voice concealing the calculated risk he was taking. "You were condemned in absentia by men who had no right to judge. I can’t think of any adequate way to apologize. I don’t expect you to forgive me. Or any of us. I am sorry." He watched the words sink in, rain to parched ground. So, he thought, that’s how he sees it. "If you can bring yourself to it, I’d like to begin again. I know it won’t be easy, but I think you need to tell us your side of all this, and I know we need to hear it."

  The face closed to him, pride warring with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep.

  "Get out," Emilio Sandoz said at last. "And shut the door."

  He did, and was about to go to his own room when he heard something that gave the Father General pause. It had been, simply, a gamble: a guess at how Sandoz might have felt. But hearing this, Vincenzo Giuliani required himself to remain in the hallway. Head against the wooden door, hands gripping the frame, he listened until the weeping was over, and learned the sound of desolation.

  18

  THE STELLA MARIS:

  SEPTEMBER 2039, EARTH-RELATIVE

  "NONE FOR ME, thanks," Emilio said.

  Sofia sighed. "Three."

  "I got a hand that looks like a foot," said D.W., staring at his cards with disgust.

  "I’m a skilled surgeon," Anne said. "I could help you with a problem like that." Emilio laughed.

  "Nothing’s gonna help this mess. Fold."

  "One for me," Anne told Alan.

  "Dealer takes three. You know, Sandoz, it’s draw poker. You don’t always have to stand pat," Alan Pace explained patiently, dealing out his own three cards. "You can draw."

  "Robichaux’s the artist," Emilio said serenely. "He draws. I stand pat."

  "Leave me out of this," Marc yelled from the little gym off the commons.

  "Nice that you guys have nothing better to do than play cards," Jimmy called from the bridge, where he and George were processing sequential images of the vast region between the center sun and the two outliers, hoping to detect some telltale difference—a smeared line or a displaced dot—that would indicate a planet moving in orbit. They’d been circling at .25 G high above the plane of the Alpha Centauri system for weeks and were collectively bored witless. "Some people around here are actually working."

  "Anne and I could take your appendix out if you like," Emilio offered, raising his voice slightly. He looked back at his cards. "See your two and raise you two."

  Sofia and Anne folded. Alan tossed in two more Wolverton tube peanuts. George, taking a break, strolled buoyantly into the common room and reached over Anne’s shoulder to look at the cards she’d thrown down. "No guts!" he said. "I’d have played that!" She glared at him, but he planted a noisy kiss on the back of her neck. Quarter G was a lot of fun.

  Emilio added four peanuts and then four more and leaned back in his chair, squinting through imaginary cigarette smoke. "Cost you eight legumes to find out what I’ve got, Pace."

  Alan ignored the Bogart impression and took the bet. Sandoz would play with anything or nothing. "Fives? You stood pat with a pair of fives?" Alan cried when they laid the cards down. "Sandoz, I will never understand you! Why didn’t you draw three cards?"

  Emilio smiled delightedly and shrugged. "Fives are good enough to beat fours, yes? My deal. Ante up, ladies and gentlemen, ante up." The cards went out again, Emilio’s infectious merriment spreading around the table as they each looked at the hands he dealt them.

  "The perfect poker face," D.W. said, shaking his head. "He laughs at everything he gets. The good hands are funny and so are the lousy ones."

  "This is true," Emilio agreed amiably. "Alan, just for you. Pick a card at random and I’ll draw."

  Alan pulled a card from the middle of Emilio’s hand and Emilio dealt himself a new one off the top of the deck. Predictably, he found it hilarious, and it was impossible to tell if he’d just gotten four of a kind or busted a flush. When the bets came around to him, he pushed his whole pile of peanuts into the center. "Winner takes all. Come on, Pace," Emilio urged.

  They laid their cards down again and Alan roared with indignation. "I don’t believe it! A straight."

  Emilio was practically crying now. "And the worst part is, you filled it. I was holding nothing!" He pushed the peanuts over to Alan and held up a hand, becoming before their eyes the very Buddha, soul of disinterest. "The trick is not to care. I have a perfect indifference to winning."

  There were cries of "Liar!" and dark mutterings about confession from Anne and Sofia and D.W., who’d all seen Emilio take the skin off his face maniacally sliding into home, and wide eyes from Alan, amazed by the eruption.

  "He is completely full of shit, Alan," George told him. "He doesn’t care about poker because he doesn’t like peanuts. But he’ll cut your heart out at second base if he thinks you’re going to steal third."

  "This is also true," Emilio acknowledged peaceably, gathering up the deck while the others vilified him. "And if we were playing for raisins, it would be different. I like raisins."

  "Raisins make a mess of the cards," Sofia pointed out.

  "Do you ever get tired of being practical?" Emilio demanded.

  "Bingo," they heard Jimmy say quietly.

  "No, poker," Emilio corrected him. "Bingo is with those square cards, and you put beans on the numbers …" He fell silent as Jimmy came into the common room. One by one, they turned to look and went motionless, waiting.

  "A planet," Jimmy said, dazed. "We found it.
We found a planet. Might not be the Singers’ planet, but we found a planet."

  SINCE ROTATING THE asteroid at the halfway point, to turn the engines around and begin deceleration, they’d stopped every two weeks to do periodic broad-spectrum imaging, engines off, and to listen for radio signals, which became relatively strong but remained strangely intermittent. As the Stella Maris passed out of the plane of the Alpha Centauri system, rising "above" it in order to image the system at right angles, there was something far odder than interval to worry about: they lost the radio signals completely. It was generally unnerving, although the reactions ranged from Marc’s faith that everything would come right in the end to George’s palpable frustration at being unable to figure out what could account for it. But Emilio seemed strangely relieved, almost giddy, suggesting cheerfully that they turn around and go home, an idea that provoked howls of rejection.

  Now they all crowded around the bridge display as Jimmy ran the images back and forth in sequence, so they could see a point of light, varying in brightness from image to image, moving slightly. "Look," he said, "you can even see the difference in the reflected sunlight. It’s sort of gibbous here."

  Marc Robichaux, who’d come out of the tiny gym when he heard the uproar, leaned around Jimmy and pointed to a smear, somewhat closer to the central sun. "And here. Another one."

  "Good eye, man," Jimmy said. "Sure enough. That’s one, too."

  "Can you enlarge these regions, Jimmy?" Marc asked, towel hung over his neck, still breathing fast, but not from treadmill work any longer.

  "No point in it. Real-time observation, folks. We can just plain look at them with the telescope." A few minutes later, they could see the first planet directly, appearing now as a fuzzy ball, grayish and lumpy. And then the second, the one Marc had spotted, much larger and with two substantial companion bodies.