The Sparrow Read online

  Felipe was too dumbfounded to move and Giuliani had to yank him out of the way of the boom. He let Reyes absorb it for a while and then spoke again, reminiscing. "My father was relatively clean but the family money was as dirty as it comes. I found out when I was about seventeen. Very idealistic age, seventeen." The Father General glanced at Reyes. "I never cease to marvel at the variety of motives men have for the priesthood. I suppose originally, for me, the vow of poverty was a way of compensating."

  He began lowering the jib and took over the tiller, to bring the boat into dock. "The first cutter I ever sailed was a gift from my grandfather, and dirty money bought it. Probably bought this boat as well, come to think of it. And it’s buying Emilio Sandoz the privacy and protection he needs, even as we speak. That’s why we’re in Naples, Reyes. Because my family owns this town."

  "WHERE DID YOU learn to make gloves like this?" Emilio asked John.

  They were sitting outdoors, on opposite sides of a wooden table in the green shade of a grape arbor. Servos whirring spasmodically, Emilio was doggedly picking up pebbles one by one from the table, dropping them into a cup, and then tipping them out again to start the exercise over with the other hand, while John Candotti stitched the latest pair of gloves.

  John had been almost glad to see that an earlier design was flawed, a seam running too close to the scar tissue between two of the fingers, rubbing it raw. It was an opening, a way to reestablish some kind of peace between them. Sandoz had barely spoken to him since that first awful day of the hearings, except to accuse John of allowing him to be blindsided.

  "I thought you were supposed to help me prepare for this shit," he’d snarled when John approached him the next day. "You let me walk in there cold, you sonofabitch. You could have warned me, John. You could have given me some idea of what they said."

  John was at a loss. "I tried! I did, dammit! And anyway, you knew what happened—" He thought Sandoz was going to hit him then, as ludicrous as that might have been, a small sick angry man with wrecked hands attacking him. Instead Sandoz had turned and walked away, and refused even to look at John for over a week.

  Finally the fury had burned down and today, Sandoz seemed simply tired and depressed. The morning had been difficult. They were going over the death of Alan Pace. Edward Behr speculated that the man’s heart might have fibrillated. There’d have been no evidence of that in an autopsy. Emilio seemed indifferent. Who knew? When John offered to redesign the gloves and make a new pair this afternoon, Sandoz shrugged listlessly and seemed willing to sit at the same table at least while Candotti worked on the new pattern.

  "I used to make gloves and shoes for a living," John told him.

  Emilio looked up. "Everything was mass-produced when I left."

  "Yeah, well, it mostly still is but for a while, there were a bunch of us who were going to bring dignity back to human labor," John said cynically, embarrassed to admit this. "Everyone was going to have a trade, and we’d all buy only handmade things, to make a market for it all. We weren’t exactly Luddites or hippies, but it was that kind of thing. Make a shoe, save the world, right?"

  Sandoz held up his hands, the braces dull in the shade. "That’s a movement that’s going to pass me by. Unless someone wants to make a market for putting pebbles into cups."

  "Well, it’s long gone anyhow. You’re doing better with those," John told him, motioning at the braces with his thimble. Only a few months ago, Sandoz had almost sweat blood just to close his hand around a stone the size of his fist.

  "I hate these things," Emilio said flatly.

  "You do? Why?"

  "At last. A simple question with an easy answer. I hate the braces because they hurt. And I am tired of pain." Emilio looked away, watching bees service daylilies and roses in the bright sunlight beyond the arbor shade. "My hands hurt and my head is pounding and the braces bruise my arms. I feel like hell all the time. I’m sick to death of it, John."

  It was the first time John Candotti had ever heard the man complain. "Look. Let me take them off for you, okay?" He stood and reached across the table, ready to unfasten the harnesses. "You’ve done enough for today. Come on."

  Emilio hesitated. He hated also that he could neither put on nor take off the braces himself and was dependent on Brother Edward to do this for him. He was used to that and to worse, with Edward, but had rarely allowed anyone else to touch him since leaving the hospital. It was a struggle to permit it. Finally, he held out his hands, one after the other.

  There was always more pain when the pressure was released, the blood moving back into cramped, exhausted muscles. He closed his eyes and waited, stiff-faced, for the sensation to ease and was startled when Candotti picked up one of his arms and began to massage some feeling back into it. He pulled away, dreading that someone might see them and make some insufferable remark. The same thought occurred to Candotti perhaps, for he didn’t protest.

  "Can I ask you something, Emilio?"

  "John, please. I already answered a thousand questions today."

  "It’s just—why did they do this to you? Was it torture? I mean, it looks like such a neat job."

  Sandoz let out an explosive breath. "I am not entirely sure I understand it myself. The procedure was called hasta’akala." Draping his hands on the rough wood of the table like a merchant displaying a length of cloth for a buyer, he stared at them without evident emotion. "It wasn’t supposed to be torture. I was told that the Jana’ata sometimes do this to their own friends. Supaari was surprised by how bad it was for us. I don’t think Jana’ata hands are innervated as extensively as ours. They don’t do much fine-motor work. The Runa do all that."

  John said nothing, chilled, but stopped stitching and listened.

  "It might have been an exercise in aesthetics. Maybe long fingers are more beautiful. Or a way of controlling us. We didn’t have to work but then again, we couldn’t have. There were servants to take care of us. After. Marc Robichaux and I were the only ones left by then. It was supposed to be an honorable estate, I think." His voice changed, harder now, the bitterness coming back. "I’m not sure to whom the honor accrued. Supaari, I suppose. It was a way of showing that he could afford to have useless dependents in his household, I think."

  "Like binding the feet of aristocratic Chinese women."

  "Perhaps. Yes, maybe it was something like that. It killed Marc. He never stopped bleeding. He— I tried to explain to them about putting pressure on the wounds. But he never stopped bleeding." He stared at his hands awhile longer but then looked away, blinking rapidly.

  "You were hurt, too, Emilio."

  "Yes. I was hurt, too. I watched him die."

  Somewhere in the distance, a dog started barking and was soon joined by another. They heard a woman shouting at the animals and then a man shouting at the woman. Sandoz turned away, bringing his feet onto the bench, and lay his forehead on his drawn-up knees. Oh, no, John thought. Not another one. "Emilio? You okay?"

  "Yeah," Sandoz said, lifting his head. "Just an ordinary headache. I think if I could just get some unbroken sleep …"

  "The dreams are bad again?"

  "Dante’s Inferno, without all the laughs."

  It was an attempt at humor but neither of them smiled. They sat for a while, lost in their own thoughts. "Emilio," John said, after a time, "you told us that Marc began eating the native foods at the beginning, while you and Anne Edwards were still acting as controls, right?"

  "Shit, John. Give me a break." He stood to leave. "I’m going down to the beach, okay?"

  "No. Wait! I’m sorry, but this might be important. Was there anything you ate that Marc didn’t?" Sandoz stared at him, his face unreadable. "What if Marc Robichaux was developing scurvy? Maybe that’s why he died. Maybe because he’d been eating their food longer than you, or maybe you were getting vitamin C from some food he didn’t eat. Maybe that’s why he didn’t stop bleeding."

  "It’s possible," Sandoz said finally. He turned away again and had walked a few steps
into the sunlight when he jerked to a halt with an involuntary cry and then stood still as a pillar.

  John got up instantly and moved around the table, squinting in the dazzle as he went to Sandoz. "What? What’s wrong?" Sandoz was bent over, breathing hard. Heart attack, John thought, frightened now. Or one of the spontaneous bone fractures they’d been warned about. A rib or a vertebra simply shattering without warning. "Talk to me, Emilio. Are you in pain? What’s wrong?"

  When Sandoz spoke, it was with the precision and clarity of a linguistics professor explaining something to a student. "The word hasta’akala is a K’San compound probably based on the stem sta’aka. The suffix ala indicates a similarity or a parallel. Or an approximation. The prefix ha makes the stem take on an active aspect, like a verb. Sta’aka was a kind of ivy," Emilio said, his voice regulated and even, his eyes wide and sightless. "It was very pretty. It would climb on larger, stronger plants, like our ivies, but it had branches with a weeping growth habit, like a willow." He held up his hands, the fingers falling gracefully from the wrists, like the branches of a weeping willow, or sta’aka ivy. "It was symbolic of something. I knew that, from context. Supaari tried to explain, I think, but it was too abstract. I trusted him, so I gave my consent. Oh, my God."

  John watched him labor to bring this new understanding to light. It was a bitter birth.

  "I gave consent for Marc, as well. And he died. I blamed Supaari, but it was my fault." Bleached and shaking, he looked at John for confirmation of what he took to be an inescapable conclusion. John resolutely refused to follow Emilio’s logic, unwilling to assent to anything that would add to the burden of guilt the man carried. But Sandoz was relentless. "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."

  "It was a misunderstanding. Emilio, you couldn’t have known—"

  "I could have! I knew everything then that I have just told you now. I just didn’t think!" John started to protest, but Sandoz wouldn’t listen. "And Marc died. Christ, John. Oh, Jesus."

  "Emilio, it wasn’t your fault. Even if you’d understood about the ivy, you couldn’t have known that they’d do this to your hands," John said, gripping the man’s shoulders, helping him control the fall, dropping to his own knees as Sandoz went down. "Robichaux was probably already sick. You didn’t cut up his hands, Emilio. You didn’t make him bleed to death."

  "I am responsible."

  "There is a difference between being responsible and being culpable," John insisted.

  It was a fine distinction and one which was not very comforting but on short notice, with a man crumpled on the ground in front of him, his face bruised with sleeplessness and now with fresh grief, it was the best John Candotti could do.

  IT MUST HAVE been past one in the morning several nights later when Vincenzo Giuliani heard the first signs of the nightmare. He had dozed off reading in the room next to that of Sandoz, having given Edward Behr the night off. "Old men don’t need much sleep," he’d told Behr. "You’re no good to him if you’re as worn out as he is."

  There was an unobtrusive monitor near Emilio’s bed that carried the sounds of his night into the Father General’s room. Like a new parent, alert to the slightest disturbance of an infant’s sleep, Giuliani came fully awake the moment the breathing became harsh and irregular. "Don’t wake him," Behr had instructed, his own eyes shadowed with the effects of broken sleep and the emotional toll of the aftermath of the nightmares, which were coming now three and four to a week. "It’s not always the same dream, and sometimes he gets through it on his own. Just be ready with a basin."

  On this night, Giuliani moved out into the hallway, pulling on a robe, and listened for a time before stepping into Emilio’s room. There was a full moon and his eyes had little trouble adjusting to the light. Emilio had quieted and Giuliani, relieved, was about to turn away when suddenly Sandoz sat up, gasping. He struggled to get out of the bed, the loose and nerveless fingers tangling in the sheets, and seemed unaware that anyone else was in the room with him. Giuliani went to the bedside, helped him clear the linens, and held the basin until the sickness passed.

  Brother Edward had not exaggerated the violence of the vomiting. Vincenzo Giuliani was a sailor who’d experienced a great deal of sea-sickness but never anything like the gut-wrenching reaction to this dream. When it was over, he took the basin away, rinsed it and brought it back with a plastic tumbler of water. Sandoz accepted the glass, pressing it between his wrists awkwardly and bringing it to his lips. He spat into the basin several times and then let Giuliani take the glass from him.

  Giuliani left the room again and brought back a wet cloth to wipe the sweat from Emilio’s face. "Ah," Sandoz said ironically, "Veronica."

  When Giuliani returned a third time, he went to the wooden chair in the corner of the room to wait for whatever would come next. For a while, Sandoz simply stared at him through lank black hair dampened by exertion, mute and trembling, hunched over on the edge of the bed.

  "So," Sandoz said at last, "you have come as a tourist perhaps? To see how the whore sleeps. As you see: the whore sleeps badly."

  "Emilio, don’t talk like that—"

  "The choice of word disturbs you? It did me, at first. But I have reconsidered. What is a whore but someone whose body is ruined for the pleasure of others? I am God’s whore, and ruined." He was still now. The physical effects were passing. "What was it you bastards used to call me?"

  "God’s best beloved," Giuliani said, almost inaudibly, ashamed sixty years too late.

  "Yes. I wondered if you’d remember. God’s favorite! Isn’t that what they used to call a king’s mistress? Or his catamite. His favorite?" There was an ugly laugh. "My life has a certain amusing symmetry, if viewed with sufficient detachment."

  Giuliani blinked. Sandoz saw the reaction and smiled mirthlessly. He turned away then and used his wrists to pull a pillow up so he could rest his back against the headboard of his bed. His quiet, lightly accented voice was cool and musical when he spoke again.

  " ‘The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is the middle of the night.’ Are you not concerned to be in the bedroom of someone so notorious?" Sandoz asked with theatrical insolence. He stretched the thin bruised arms out negligently, resting them on the top of the headboard, and raised one knee.

  The pose would have been lascivious but for the sheets, Giuliani thought, and at the same time it might have been a deliberately provocative imitation of the figure on the crucifix just above the man’s head. Vince Giuliani had been taken in by this kind of double-edged mockery once, but no longer, and he refused to be baited. Given a label, he realized now, Sandoz was apt to show his contempt with burlesque.

  "Are you not concerned," Sandoz pressed, with great sincerity, "that, alone and unsupported, you will make a decision that gives scandal?"

  It was devastatingly accurate. Giuliani heard his own voice, saw his own pious self-assurance mirrored, and found it difficult not to look away. "What can I do to help you, Emilio?" he asked.

  "Does one dream in coma? I have often wondered if a well-placed bullet to the brain would be helpful."

  Giuliani stiffened, angry in spite of himself. The man did not make anything easy.

  "Failing that," Sandoz continued, "you might provide enough liquor for me to drink myself insensible every night. I have headaches all the time anyway. A hangover would hardly register."

  Giuliani rose and moved to the door.

  "Don’t go," Emilio said.

  It might have been a dare. Or a plea.

  Giuliani paused and then returned to the corner chair. It was a difficult night but old men do not need much sleep.

  21

  RAKHAT:

  MONTH T
WO, CONTACT

  SEVEN NOW, SOBERED by the death of Alan Pace, the Jesuit party pulled itself together and began preparations to leave the Eden they’d occupied for almost a month.

  Taking stock on the afternoon of the funeral, with the last notes of the Jesuit hymn "Take and Receive" still echoing in his mind, D. W. Yarbrough had carefully weighed the pros and cons of making a trip back to the Stella Maris before they set out to find themselves some Singers. The fuel for the lander was limited. Based on the amount burned during their first landing, he estimated that the lander tanks held 103 to 105 percent of what was needed to make a single round-trip from mothership to ground and back, which was pretty damn lucky when he considered it, glancing at the sky. There was enough fuel in storage onboard the asteroid to allow five round trips. Maybe six, but that would be cutting it too fine. Call it five, then, he thought. Reserving fuel for their departure, he figured on four trips over a period of four years to transport supplies and trade goods, with a thin margin for emergencies.

  At this point, they had no idea what would be useful for trade, but they did have a notion of how quickly they were going through food. Increasingly supplemented by native foods and water, their supplies had held out longer than they’d originally estimated. Only Anne and Emilio were still on the control diet brought from Earth, and neither was a big eater. And now there was one less mouth to feed. They had, easily, enough for another week, but D.W. decided that he’d feel better if they established a full-scale food depot, with supplies for at least twelve months. So he had put everyone to work, drawing up lists of things that hadn’t been included in the cargo initially.