The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  "I said nothing of the kind," Sofia shot back. "I said he had spent the afternoon raising smugness to an art form. It was the analysis that was brilliant."

  "A very fine distinction," Anne pointed out. She plunked a bowl onto the wooden table and sank onto a cushion next to George before adding, "Isn’t he awful when he’s right?"

  "I am a simple man, just trying to do my job," Emilio said in injured tones, persevering despite the moans, "and for this, scorn and sarcasm are heaped on my head."

  "So, what is this brilliant analysis?" D.W. asked grumpily. "I got reports to write, son." He’d put his plate aside almost immediately and Emilio now did the same, having filled up on the snacks pressed on him as he walked through the village. Like Jimmy Quinn, D.W. once observed, the Runa ate damn near anything pretty much continuously, and there was no way to visit anyone without being fed and there was no such thing as "not hungry." It meant that the food supply brought from Earth would last a lot longer than expected. That didn’t make the Runa stuff any more palatable, although it did seem to be reasonably nutritious for them.

  Emilio spent the next ten minutes explaining the rules for declension he’d worked out that morning. To Sofia’s intense satisfaction, everyone else initially confused the ideas with abstract and concrete nouns, as she had. 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 couldn’t have gotten this far this fast without Askama. And, in any case," he said seriously, "there are whole areas of this language that are still closed to me. For example, I am completely confused about gender."

  Jimmy cracked up and D.W. muttered, "I wouldn’t touch that line with a ten-foot pole," which made Anne choke on her food and everyone else laugh. Emilio blushed and told them all to grow up.

  "I wonder what they’d do about an AV display. Or VR stuff," George said, pounding on Anne’s back as she coughed and giggled helplessly. They’d been very careful about what they used in front of the Runa. Everyone was engaged in research that required computers but as much as possible, they lived as the Runa lived.

  "Marc, what declension do they use for your drawings?" Emilio asked. "You create the illusion of space. They’d use spatial for the paper itself, I think, but what about the images?"

  "I can’t remember. I’ll pay attention next time it comes up," Marc promised. "Has anyone seen what Kanchay is doing? He watched me while I was working on a portrait a few weeks ago and asked for materials. I believe he had never seen two-dimensional representation of volumes before but he’s already produced some beautiful work."

  "So that’s where it started!" George exclaimed. It had seemed like spontaneous combustion. All of a sudden, paper and inks and pigments started showing up in the trade boats and everyone was drawing. Fads like that would flash through the village. It could be unnerving. You would hesitate to blow your nose, afraid the whole village would take up the practice en masse, as a hobby.

  "You know, I’m beginning to think God really likes these guys best," Anne said, deliberately sounding like a jealous child. "First off, they’ve got a much nicer planet than we do. Lovely plants, prettier colors. And they’re better looking than we are. And they have better hands." The Runa had five digits, but the innermost and outer fingers were fully opposable to the central three; it was almost as though they could work with four human hands simultaneously. Anne was fascinated by the way Askama would sit in Emilio’s lap, fingers busy with her ribbons, plaiting them into one pattern after another. The ribbons were each scented differently and the combination of colors, fragrance and braiding pattern constituted much of Runa fashion. The rest consisted mostly of what you tied them around, as far as Anne could tell. "I mean, we thought thumbs were pretty slick, but we must seem almost crippled to the Runa."

  "No, I don’t think so," Sofia said. "I asked Warsoa once if our hands looked strange to him and he said, ‘If you can pick up food, your hands are good enough.’ Very practical outlook."

  "The craftsmanship is superb," Marc acknowledged.

  "Granted," George said dismissively, "they are great with their hands, but these folks are not the ones who invented radio. Or anything else much more advanced than a chisel."

  "They’ve got glass and metal and pottery," Marc pointed out.

  "Trade goods," said George dismissively. "They’re not making that stuff in this village. I hate to say it, boys and girls, but I don’t think they’re all that bright, on the whole."

  Emilio was about to protest that Askama was very quick but there was, he thought, something to George’s observation. The Runa could be perceptive, but he did occasionally find some of them—not dense, really, but limited somehow.

  "The technological basis for this society is gathering," George was saying, disgusted. "They collect food. And flowers, for crying out loud. Damned if I know what they do with them."

  "For the perfume trade," Sofia said. "I have the impression that there’s a lot of manufacturing in the city. Sandoz, did I tell you I found out the name of the city? It’s Gaiger or Gaidjur, something like that. In any case, each village specializes in trading something." She was allowed to sit in on what seemed to be village council discussions and picked up a lot of information that way. "In Kashan, it’s blossoms for the fragrance industry. I think the Runa are much more interested in scent than we are. That’s why the coffee is so valuable."

  Anne cleared her throat and made a small movement with her head in D.W.’s direction, grinning.

  Yarbrough grunted, refusing to be bullyragged. To his everlasting irritation, coffee was their choicest trade item. Worse yet, it wasn’t even coffee per se, but the aroma of coffee. Sofia would brew some of her awful damn Turkish mud and Manuzhai would hold the cup in her hands, breathe the fragrance in and then pass it around to other guests. When the coffee cooled off, they’d hand it back to Sofia, who’d drink the wretched stuff. The Jesuit party could pay for almost anything by sharing a cup of coffee with someone.

  "But George is right," said Jimmy who, like George, was perilously close to being bored by the Runa. The two men were working mainly on downloaded astronomical and meteorological data these days, but the city with the transmitters beckoned. "There’s almost no advanced technology here. I haven’t seen any sign that they even listen to radio. They can’t be the Singers. They don’t even like music!"

  D.W. grunted an assent. There had been no sung Masses since the first one witnessed by the Runa, who had become agitated and distressed. At first he thought it was the ritual aspects of the behavior that bothered them; the Runa didn’t seem to have any religious specialists or ceremonies themselves. But it turned out that if the Liturgy was merely said, the Runa were fine. And they liked the incense. So it wasn’t the rites; it was evidently the singing itself.

  "Someone is making the boats and the glass and the rest of it," Marc said. "Consider things at home. If you go to the highlands of Bolivia, it is like stepping into the Middle Ages. Travel to La Paz and they’re designing satellite components and synthesizing pharmaceuticals. This village is simply at the edge of the more advanced culture."

  "And, to be fair, there’s very little need for industry here," Anne said. "Daylight almost all the time—who needs electric lights? Rivers all over the place—who needs paved roads or land transport? They eat such a variety of things, they just wait for something to ripen. Why plow when you can just pick?"

  "If people like you were in charge of life," George said, "we’d still be living in caves."

  "Q.E.D.," Jimmy pointed out, waving an arm at the stone walls around them, and there was a round of applause from everyone but Anne.

  Emilio laughed but lost the thread of the discussion at that point, as he often did when too many people had strong opinions and expressed them well; he’d always hat
ed seminars. Where’s Askama? he wondered, missing her already. She was with him so continually that he felt as though he had taken over as her parent in some ways, and there were aspects of this strange cross-species pseudofatherhood that were deeply satisfying. But while the VaKashani generally addressed him by name, they also used a kinship term that seemed to make him Askama’s older sibling. And Manuzhai sometimes corrected him rather sharply for inadvertent infractions, as though he were also her child. At the same time, there was a commercial aspect to their relationship having to do with trade goods, and he was not at all clear about what was expected of him.

  His status among his human friends was sometimes equally confusing. The first time he’d fallen apart during Mass had been frightening, but neither Marc nor D.W. seemed surprised or upset; they were instead oddly careful with him, as though he were pregnant—that was the only parallel that came to mind. It was Sofia who put words to what he felt. "You are drunk on God, Sandoz," she told him flatly one afternoon, and he realized then that what he had believed to be entirely interior had been more apparent than he could have imagined. He wished he had time to think it all through but there was just too much going on, and even when things slowed up for a while, he tended to meditate on beer and baseball.

  A pebble landed on his chest. "Sandoz," said Sofia, "pay attention!"

  He rose onto his elbows. "What?"

  "The question was, is Ruanja related to the language of the songs?"

  "I doubt it. My guess is that they aren’t even close."

  "There! You see?" George cried. "I say we try for the city—"

  Drawn back into the argument that ensued, Emilio found himself uneasy about going to the city. Things felt so right here. It might simply be an emotional attachment to Askama and her people, but the notion of starting another language so soon was daunting. He’d taken on two and sometimes three languages simultaneously before, but there had always been someone who spoke Latin or English. Without Askama or someone like her, he’d be badly handicapped when he tried the Singers’ language. He waited for a break in the conversation and said, "I think it’s too soon. To go to the city."

  It was D.W. who asked, "Why do you say that, son?"

  "It’s been seven weeks! I just don’t feel ready for another language and another culture yet. I could do it if I had to, but I’d like to be more solid in Ruanja first. I’m sorry," he apologized suddenly. "I’m holding other people up. It’s okay. I’ll manage. If everyone else wants to move on, we should go."

  Marc’s eyes slowly left Emilio’s face and he turned to D.W. "Emilio’s instincts have been reliable so far. We’ve taken one step at a time, and this has worked well. There is still a great deal to be learned here. Rather than rush him," Marc said, pausing to clear his throat, "into another language, we should perhaps settle for a time."

  "We came because of the songs," Jimmy insisted stubbornly. "We came to find out about the Singers."

  "This is true," Emilio said to Marc, shrugging. He was willing to go or stay.

  "Okay, okay." D.W. held up a hand. "We ain’t gonna make the decision tonight, but it’s time to start thinkin’ about what comes next."

  "George, I admit that there is a sort of simplicity to Runa thinking, but we barely speak their language and we hardly know them," Emilio pointed out. "What seems like simplemindedness may be our ignorance of their subtlety. And it’s very difficult, sometimes, to tell ignorance from lack of intelligence. We may seem a little dim to the Runa." He flopped back on the cushion.

  "Right," Anne confirmed. "Eat that, techno pigs!"

  "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."

  "It helps if you think of it as salad," Emilio advised, speaking at the ceiling. "But not much."

  "It could use some Roquefort," Marc grumbled. He held up a leaf and examined it critically. Feeling ungrateful, he searched for something nice to say. "Runa cuisine has, perhaps, a certain je ne sais quoi."

  "Entirely too much quoi, for my taste," D.W. said sourly.

  Emilio smiled at that and was about to comment when he realized that D.W.’s eyes were closed, which was odd. "Emilio," Marc said, interrupting his thoughts, "have you asked anyone yet about us planting an experimental garden? I would like to get a start on that work."

  "If we could grow our own food, they might stop thinking they have to feed us this stuff," George said. He knew if they started a garden, they’d be stuck here for a while, but George Edwards had been a serious gardener back in Cleveland and the idea of trying to grow things here had a certain compensatory appeal. Jimmy would be restless, but that was his problem. "Maybe they’re only being polite."

  Anne nodded. "I am not a picky eater but I’m not Bambi either. There are just too damned many twigs in it."

  "The twigs are the best part!" Jimmy exclaimed. Anne stared at him, aghast. "No. Really! They taste like chow mein noodles."

  "Well, I like the food," Sofia declared. There were howls, but Jimmy looked blandly vindicated. "Seriously. I do. It reminds me of the food in Kyoto. Or Osaka."

  "De gustibus non est disputandum," D.W. growled, adding darkly, "but some folks got a taste for shit. That stuff is purely dreadful."

  Emilio sat up and looked at Yarbrough directly now, but said he’d feel Manuzhai out about the garden idea. The talk moved on and after a while, Jimmy began clearing dishes, his job now that astronomers had been replaced on the active-duty roster by linguists. Emilio waited until the room emptied a little, everyone moving off to their own after-dinner activities, and went to D.W., hunched over and silent, his meal untouched. "¿Padre?" he said, dropping down next to Yarbrough so he could look up at the creased and crooked face, hidden now behind bony fingers. "¿Estás enfermo?"

  Anne heard the question and came over. D.W.’s breathing was shallow, but when Emilio reached up to put a hand on his shoulder, he jumped like he’d been hit with a cattle prod and cried, "Don’t!" Anne moved between the two men and spoke quietly to D.W., who answered her questions in monosyllables and remained immobile until he suddenly doubled up and groaned, gripping Emilio’s arm in spite of himself.

  24

  VILLAGE OF KASHAN AND CITY OF GAYJUR:

  THIRD–FIFTH NA’ALPA

  WITHIN AN HOUR, it became obvious that D. W. Yarbrough was very sick. Emilio, hoping that Manuzhai might be of some help, went looking for her and found her in one of the biggest rooms, surrounded by people deep in a discussion of "pik" somethings. Everyone’s ears cocked toward him expectantly as he entered the room, so he tried to explain what seemed to be wrong with D.W. and asked if anyone recognized this illness, knew what caused it or what might help.

  "It is like all sickness," Manuzhai told him. "His heart desires something he cannot have."

  "There is no animal whose bite does this?" Emilio persisted. "His belly—his gut gives pain: so." He made a gripping motion with his hands. "Is there a food sometimes that does this?"

  That set off an interminable discussion of what for all the world sounded like the arcane rules for keeping kosher, with everyone offering stories of how so-and-so got sick once from mixing long foods with round foods, which triggered skeptical commentary along the lines of whether or not that was true or just an excuse someone had used to get out of doing work, and then several people said they mixed round and long all the time and never got sick. Finally, he began to sway from side to side, to indicate to them that he was getting anxious. This was getting him nowhere.

  Manuzhai seemed to understand his need to return to the apartment, so she stood up and took her leave of the rest to escort him home, afraid he’d fall from the narrow walkways connecting the apartments and terraces; no matter what they told her, she remained convinced that the foreigners couldn’t see in the dim red light of Rakhat’s smallest sun. Askama came with them, clinging to
her mother for a change, but she looked up at Emilio and asked with a child’s bluntness, "Sipaj, Meelo, will Dee be gone in the morning?"

  Emilio was speechless. It was his unvarying policy to tell the truth and in truth, after Alan Pace’s death, it seemed all too possible that Yarbrough would not live through the night, but he couldn’t find the words to speak the thought aloud.

  "Perhaps," Manuzhai answered for him, raising her tail and letting it drop in what he had come to believe was the equivalent of a shrug. "Unless he gets what his heart wants."

  Finding his voice, Emilio said, "Someone thinks it was something Dee ate or drank that makes him sick."

  "Sometimes food makes you sick but many have eaten the same food as Dee and only Dee is sick," Manuzhai said, with unassailable logic. "You should find out what he wants and give it to him."

  THERE WAS NO real privacy in Runa life. The apartments had, at most, alcoves or irregularities that could serve to separate some habitual divisions of use. No one seemed to own any apartment, other than by occupying it. Families sometimes left to visit other villages and rooms might be left empty for a little while, but if another family liked the apartment, they moved in; when the travelers returned, they simply chose someplace else in the village to stay. Anne and George Edwards found the lack of a bedroom door embarrassing and they’d appropriated the most recessed region of Manuzhai and Chaypas’s apartment, going so far as to set up a tent inside the dwelling. The rest had put up their camp beds in a different place every night or, if the apartment was filled with guests, simply dossed down on Runa cushions wherever there was space.

  D.W.’s bed was toward the back of the apartment ordinarily, but Anne had it moved to the entrance so he could get out fast. He’d already had several bouts of intestinal distress and was now lying still, curled around a heated rock wrapped in cloth, eyes closed, face rigid. Sitting on the floor next to him, Anne put a hand on his head, pulling the damp hair off his forehead, and said, "Call if you need me, okay?" He made no sign that he’d heard, but she rose anyway and went to Emilio, who’d just returned with Manuzhai and Askama. "Did you find anything out?" she asked, motioning him away from D.W.’s bed and out to the terrace, where they could talk.