The Sparrow Page 8

  He had made his fortune in the Americas, where he’d mined slums and orphanages for bright, determined children whose feckless or dying parents could provide neither an environment nor an education adequate to develop their offsprings’ potential. "Brazil, of course, was the first to privatize their orphanages," he told her. Burdened by hundreds of thousands of children, abandoned or orphaned by HIV and TB and cholera or just running wild, the government had finally given up pretending that it could do anything with these kids. Jaubert’s backers had another way.

  "Everyone wins," Jean-Claude Jaubert explained. "The taxpayers’ burden is reduced, the children raised in a proper manner, fed and educated. In return, the investors receive a percentage of the children’s earnings for life."

  A lively secondary market had developed, a bourse where one could invest in an eight-year-old who’d tested extraordinarily high in mathematical ability, where one could trade rights to the earnings of a medical student for those of a talented young bioengineer. Liberals were horrified, but men like Jaubert knew that the practice gave children a monetary value, which made them less likely to be shot during street-cleaning sweeps through the slums.

  "And yet," Jaubert told her, "I think that the most promising and spirited young people are depressed by the lifelong contracts they are held to. They burn out, refuse to work. You can see perhaps what a waste this is." Jaubert proposed that a more equitable contract be drawn, lasting perhaps twenty years, which would include the years of training provided by the investors. "Brokers, such as I, will find work for the talent, who will receive a decent living wage. When released from the contract, mademoiselle, you would have a reputation, experience and contacts—a firm foundation upon which to build." It was necessary that Sofia be tested for various diseases and disabilities that might affect her work, of course. "Should anything untoward be detected," Jaubert told her, "you would be treated if possible and with your consent, naturally, ma cherie. The medical costs are added to the contracted debt."

  It was Sofia herself who negotiated the clause allowing her to buy Jaubert out if she were able to earn his backers’ investment, plus four percent over projected inflation, compounded annually over the contract life, in less than twenty years. Jaubert was delighted. "Mademoiselle, I applaud your business sense. It is a pleasure to work with someone as practical as she is beautiful!" The clause provided her with a motive to earn the highest fees as quickly as possible, a benefit to them both.

  Their relationship from that time on was cordial. After the handshake that sealed their agreement, he never touched her again: Jaubert had his own code of ethics. Her tutors and trainers found her a machine for learning. Polyglot from childhood, she spoke Ladino, classical Hebrew, literary French, commercial English, as well as the Turkish of her neighbors and schoolmates. To these, the investors determined, she should add Japanese and Polish, to widen her sphere of usefulness. She had a natural bent toward AI analysis, which the investors lost no time in developing. In the great Sephardic tradition, her programs were distinguished by their strict logical clarity, the transitions from one subject to the next graceful and simple.

  Jaubert was congratulated, and prospered along with his backers. He himself felt he had rescued something very fine when he found Sofia Mendes. Jaubert had seen self-possession and intelligence under the dirt and hunger, and his perception paid off handsomely.

  What Sofia Mendes saw now, with vision unclouded by emotion, was an end to a time of bondage. All she had to do was learn an astronomer’s job and then do it faster, cheaper and more accurately than he could do it himself. She resisted both hope and fear. Either could weaken you.

  DR. YANOGUCHI INTRODUCED her to George Edwards on her first day at the dish. "Mr. Edwards is our most knowledgeable volunteer," Yanoguchi told her, as she shook the hand of a lean, silver-haired man the age her father would have been, had he lived. "We get quite a few tourists and school groups. He’ll give you the standard tour, but don’t hesitate to ask questions. George knows everything! And when you’re finished, you can get started with Jimmy Quinn."

  She was startled by the size of the Arecibo dish—three hundred meters in diameter, a vast aluminum bowl set into a natural depression in the mountains. Above the bowl, hundreds of tons of steerable antennae hung from cables connected to support towers anchored in the surrounding hills.

  "It works just like an old-fashioned TV satellite dish," George said, wondering for a moment if she was too young to remember TV. It was hard to tell; the girl might have been twenty-four or thirty-four. "A radio telescope focuses every radio wave that hits it down toward a central collection point. The signals bounce off the dish to a system of amplifiers and frequency converters suspended above the bowl." He pointed things out as they walked along the edge of the dish. "From there, the signals travel down to the building that houses the processing equipment." The wind made it hard to hear, and George had to shout. "The astronomers use what’s essentially a very fancy spectrometer to analyze the polarization, intensity and duration of the radio waves. Jimmy Quinn can explain how all that works, or you can ask me if you like."

  George turned to her before they went inside. "Have you ever done anything like this system before?"

  "No," she admitted, shivering. She should have realized it would be chilly in the highlands. And one had a sense of being overwhelmed at the beginning of a project. She was always starting from scratch and there was always the chance that, this time, she wouldn’t be able to understand, that something would simply be beyond her. Sofia straightened her back. I am Mendes, she thought. Nothing is beyond me. "I’ll manage," she said aloud.

  George looked at her sideways for a moment and then reached past her to open the door to the main building. "I’m sure you will. Listen, if you don’t have any plans next weekend, why not come down to San Juan for dinner …" And they went indoors.

  UPON MEETING MR. Quinn for the first time, Sofia Mendes noted privately that it was evidently her day for being startled by the size of things. She was accustomed to being the smallest adult in nearly any gathering but she had never stood next to anyone as tall as Jimmy Quinn before. She had to reach up to shake his hand and momentarily felt herself to be ten years old, meeting a friend of her father’s.

  She followed him to his work space, Quinn ducking under doorways and pipes as they passed through aisles flanked by cubicles constructed from old-fashioned movable panels. As they walked, he pointed out the locations of the coffee machine and the WC, not seeming to notice that she could not see over the half-walls that rose only chest-high for him. When they arrived at his cubicle, Sofia noticed that he’d removed the middle drawer of his desk, probably to keep his knees from being bruised, she decided.

  For his part, Jimmy was half in love with Sofia Mendes before they sat down. For one thing, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, in real life. And she’d made the first cut in his mind already by not saying anything about his height. If she managed to go one more minute without asking any stupid basketball questions or the odious "How’s the weather up there?" he swore he’d marry her, but before he could propose, Sofia opened her notebook and asked him for an overview of his job.

  Emilio had warned him that she was not much for small talk, so Jimmy began by walking her through the process of collecting data from a bright region called 12-75. "There’s a stable configuration near the central engine of the system, with two very powerful jets at right angles to it, throwing off material at half the speed of light." He sketched on the screen as he spoke, using an open display so she could take notes while he talked. "Elizabeth Kingery is a light astronomer who thinks she’s got a new way of finding out if there are two galaxies surrounding two black holes locked in orbit around each other, like this, see? And she wants to compare the data to quasars, which people think used to be twinned galaxies like 12-75. Are you following this?"

  Mendes looked up from her notes and impaled him with a stare. Very bright, Emilio had told him. Don’t underestim
ate her. Jimmy cleared his throat. "So, the idea is to map this region of the sky using both radio and light astronomy in synchronized observations. The astronomer who originates the request gives the observatories at least two or three times when we can do the work. We have to work around the celestial conditions and the weather on Earth."

  "Why not use orbiting observatories?"

  "Liz doesn’t have enough funding or clout for access. But you can do a lot with land-based data. So. Anyway, you get a consensus on the schedule and then you hope it doesn’t rain or something, because that messes things up. Sometimes if there’s a narrow window, we gut it out and do the work even if conditions are bad. Do you want to know about that now?"

  "Later, please. Just an overview for now."

  "Sure. Let’s see. Once we decide to go ahead, I have to check the noise floor." She looked up. "That means I see if the target region is emitting a signal strong enough to be detected above the background noise. All electrical equipment generates electrical noise—electrons banging around in the metal of the equipment itself. We chill the receivers down in liquid helium to keep them really cold, because cold slows down the movement of the electrons and that reduces the not—" The stare again. "Right. You know that. Okay. If the target signal is really faint, we go around turning stuff off. Computers we aren’t using for the shoot, lights, air conditioners, whatever. Then I choose a calibration signal—a known radio source. I shoot that to tune the system up."

  "How do you choose the calibration target? Briefly, please."

  "There’s a huge catalog on-line and we pick one near the target signal. Usually I just look at the signal using a virtual oscilloscope. We know what a signal from a calibration source is supposed to look like."

  "And if the signal differs from expected?"

  All business, Emilio said. Well, she has to eat …

  "Mr. Quinn. If the signal differs from the expected?" she repeated, dark brows raised, stylus poised.

  "That’s where the art comes in. Each one of these dishes is essentially handmade. They all have quirks—cabling problems, grounding problems. The weather affects them, the time of day, the ambient noise. You have to get to know a piece of equipment like this. And then when you’ve eliminated everything, you have to use your intuition about what could be causing distortions or interference or stray signals. One time," he said, warming up again, "we thought we had an ET signal, extraterrestrial. We got it every few months but nobody else could confirm. Turned out it was the ignition of this one old school bus and we heard it every time the kids from that school came up here on a field trip."

  The Stare. It already had a capital letter in his mind. "Listen," he said seriously, "I’m not just wasting your time telling funny stories. You have to know about stuff like this or your program is going to claim it’s found intelligent life on Mars. And everyone knows there’s only Australians there, right?"

  She smiled, in spite of herself. "Ah," said Jimmy shrewdly. "I see you’ve worked with Australians."

  For a moment, she struggled to return to sobriety but finally laughed. "There’s no such thing as beer too warm to drink," she said with a very good Australian accent. Jimmy laughed then as well but, wisely, did not press his luck.

  "HOW’S IT GOING?" George Edwards asked her, a month or so after she started. They met for lunch frequently, Sofia saving up questions to ask him on the days when he came to the dish.

  "Slowly. Mr. Quinn is very cooperative," Sofia conceded, looking up at George from the thick coffee mug she held in both small hands, "but easily distracted."

  "By you," George ventured, to see how she’d react, knowing that Jimmy was miserably besotted with a woman whose only interest seemed to be a relentless deconstruction of his brain, cell by cell. Sofia simply nodded. No blush, George noted, no compassion. She’s not a romantic, that’s for sure.

  "It makes things difficult. Animosity is easier to deal with," she said, glancing across the cafeteria at Peggy Soong. George grimaced: Peggy could be a pain in the ass. "On the other hand, infatuation is preferable to condescension. I appreciate that you treat me as a competent professional, Mr. Edwards. It’s nice to work without being patronized. Or chatted up."

  "Well, I hope this doesn’t count as chatting you up," George said dryly, "but that dinner invitation is still open. What do you say?"

  She had decided, upon reflection, to accept his invitation if he repeated it. People were often hostile to her work and, by extension, to her; she had not been invited to anyone’s home since childhood. "I’d be happy to come, Mr. Edwards."

  "Good. Anne’s been wanting to meet you. Sunday afternoon? About two?"

  "That will be fine. Thank you. I have some questions about weather effects on radio reception, if you wouldn’t mind," she said, setting her plate aside and pulling out her notebook. And they went on to business.

  ON SUNDAY, SHE drove to San Juan, allowing time for the dreadful traffic. She parked with difficulty, found a flower stall with ease, and bought a bouquet for Dr. Edwards. She liked Puerto Rico, actually, and had been pleasantly surprised to find how close Spanish and Ladino were. There were spelling differences, divergences in vocabulary, but the basic words and grammar were often identical. She asked the flower vendor the way to the Edwardses’ address and climbed the stair-street to the shell-pink stucco house she was directed to. The doors to an ironwork balcony overlooking the street were open, as were the windows, and she clearly heard a woman’s voice call, "George? Did you get that pump fixed down in the clinic?"

  "No, I forgot all about it." She recognized Mr. Edwards’s voice. "Hell. I’ll get to it. It’s on the list."

  A peal of laughter rang out. "So’s world peace. I need the pump working tomorrow."

  Sofia knocked. Anne Edwards, white hair pulled into a messy bun, flour up to her elbows, answered the door. "Oh, no!" she cried. "Not just brilliant but good bones as well. I do hope you have a terrible personality, dear," Anne Edwards declared. "Otherwise, I shall lose faith in a just God."

  Sofia hardly knew how to respond, but George Edwards called from the kitchen, "Don’t let her fool you. She gave up believing in a just God when Cleveland blew the World Series last year. The only time she ever prays is the ninth inning."

  "And the night before a presidential election, for all the good it does. God is a Republican from Texas," Anne asserted, bustling Sofia into the living room. "Come into the kitchen and keep us company. Dinner’s almost ready. The flowers are lovely, dear, and so are you."

  They passed through the living room, a pleasing jumble of books and watercolors and prints, with mismatched but comfortable-looking furniture and quite a good Turkish rug. Anne noticed Sofia take it all in and waved her floury hands at the place dispiritedly. "We’ve only been here a year. I keep thinking I should do something about this place but there’s never any time. Oh, well, maybe someday."

  "I rather like it as it is," Sofia said honestly. "It looks like someplace where you could fall asleep on the sofa."

  "Aren’t you splendid!" Anne cried delightedly. Emilio often did exactly that. "Oh, Sofia, that is so much nicer than thinking it’s just a plain mess!"

  They joined George in the kitchen. He directed Sofia to what Anne called the Kibitzer’s Stool and handed her a glass of wine, which she sipped as George finished slicing vegetables for the salad and Anne went back to whatever it was that involved flour. "George does all the knife work," Anne explained. "I can’t afford to get cut. Too much risk of infection. I dress like an astronaut when I’m in the ER or the clinic but it’s better to keep my hands out of harm’s way. Do these cookies look familiar?"

  "Why, yes. My mother used to make those," Sofia said, a little startled by the memory of meringue-topped sweets.

  "Ah, lucky guess," Anne murmured. The menu had been easy and Anne had enjoyed putting it together. Sephardic cuisine was basically Mediterranean—light, sophisticated, emphasizing vegetables and spices. She’d found a recipe for pandericas, "rich lady’s bread" ser
ved by Sephardim on Rosh Hashanah and other festive occasions. Peach melba, with the cookies, for dessert. "You’ll have to tell me if the recipe’s any good. I got it from a book."

  THEY TOOK TURKISH coffees into the living room after dinner, and the conversation turned to music. It was George who noticed Sofia looking at the old piano against the wall. "It doesn’t get a lot of use," he told her. "The last tenant left it in the house. We were going to give it away but then we found out that Jimmy Quinn can play, so we had the thing tuned last week."

  "Sofia, do you play?" Anne asked. It was a simple question. The girl’s hesitation was surprising.

  "My mother was a music teacher so, of course, I had lessons when I was little," Sofia said finally. "I can’t remember when I sat at a piano last." But she could remember. The time of day and the way the sunlight slanted through the window in the music room and her mother nodding and commenting and sitting down to demonstrate a different phrasing; the cat jumping onto the keyboard only to be dumped unceremoniously onto the carpet, the practice session punctuated by occasional gunfire and the thud of a mortar shell landing somewhere nearby. She could remember everything, if she let herself. "I’m terribly out of practice."

  "Well, give it a try," George said.

  "Anyone who can make her own music is way ahead of me. All I can play is the radio. Sit down, Sofia," Anne urged, glad of some activity that might replace the fits and starts of conversation. Sofia was an appreciative but quiet guest, and the dinner was more subdued than Anne was used to or entirely happy with, although it was pleasant enough. "Did the tuner do a decent job or did we simply contribute to the general reek of Puerto Rican corruption?"

  "No, truly, I can’t recall a single piece," Sofia pleaded.