The Sparrow

21 RAKHAT: MONTH TWO, 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.

D.W.'s own list included a rifle, which he intended to bring down without mentioning because he didn't want any big damn discussion about it. And more rope. And he'd just about die before he admitted it, but he wanted to bring down more coffee. The climate had proved reasonably benign, although the thunderstorms could be literally hair-raising and it got too hot to move when the three suns were up simultaneously. They could use lighter clothing and more sunblock.

Most of all, though, he wanted the Ultra-Light. Like all the equipment they'd brought, it was solar-powered—a tiny two-person airplane with wings sheathed in a photovoltaic polymer film capable of running a fifteen-horsepower electric motor. Cute as a bug's ear and a lot of fun to fly. There hadn't been room for it the first time down, not with a full passenger complement. Now they could really use the little plane to scout the territory. Marc's maps were good, but D.W. wanted to fly out ahead and see with his own eyes what they were up against before the party moved out overland.

He tucked his tablet under his arm and walked across the clearing toward Anne Edwards, who noticed him on his way. She was going over her own records, sitting with her back against a «tree» trunk, knees up to support her notebook, which was on-line to the Stella Maris library.

"Could have been endocarditis," she said quietly when he was close enough to hear. "Bacterial infection of the heart valves. There was a new form of it I heard about just before we left. It could kill a healthy person pretty quickly, and it was a bitch to find in an autopsy, even at home."

He grunted and hunkered down next to her. "Where would he have picked up the bacteria?"

"Beats the shit out of me, D.W.," Anne said, waving her hand in front of her face to clear off a swarm of gnatlike things they called little buggers. "Might have been carrying it all along, until something weakened his immune system to the point that it overwhelmed his body's defenses. Ultraviolet radiation can suppress the immune system, and we are catching a real dose of UV down here."

"But you're not sure it was, whaddyacallit? That endo shit." He picked up a stick and toyed with it, passing it through his hands, bending it little by little into a hoop.

"No. It's just the best guess I've come up with so far." She closed her notebook. "It's hard to believe that he died just yesterday. I'm sorry about last night."

"Same here," D.W. said, glancing at her with one eye and then looking away, staring out at the forest. He tossed the stick aside. "Warn't good judgment, raggin' at a lady's had a real bad day."

She stuck out her hand. "Peace?"

"Peace," he affirmed, taking her hand and holding it a few moments. Then he let it go and stood up, groaning at the protest his knees made. "You may not want to be friends after I tell you what I've decided we're gonna do next." Anne looked up at him, with narrowed eyes. "I'm goin' back up to the Stella Maris and I want George to copilot."

"Oh, my," she said. A blue-green Fast Eddie skittered by her feet and dashed into the leaf litter nearby, and they could hear the Dominicans howling in the forest.

"He was the best of the bunch on the simulator, Anne, and I want him trained on the real thing. And he can check on the life-support systems while I'm loadin' supplies. He ain't had hardly any trouble with space sickness, so there's a good chance he won't get sick this time neither. I knew you'd be pissed, but that's how it parses."

"He'll probably love it, too," Anne said ruefully. "Oh, boy, do I ever hate this idea."

"I ain't askin' permission, Miz Edwards," he said, but his voice was very gentle. He grinned crookedly. "I just thought I'd tell you so's you could cuss me out in private."

"Consider yourself cussed," she said, but she laughed even as she shuddered. "Oh, well. It won't be the first time I've stood around waiting for George to get blown up. Or torn limb from limb. Or smeared across the pavement. Or squashed like a bug. The shit that man does for fun!" She shook her head, remembering the whitewater and the rock climbing and the dirt bikes.

"You ever hear that old joke about the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building?" D.W. asked her.

"Yeah. All the way down, you could hear him say, 'So far, so good. So far, so good. So far, so good. That is George's life story in a nutshell."

"He'll do okay, Anne. It's a good plane and he's got a talent for the job. I'll put him on the simulator again 'fore we go." D.W. scratched his cheek and smiled down at her. "Ain't in no big damn hurry to crash and burn, my own self. I don't get counted as a holy martyr if we just screw up a landing and pancake into the ground. We'll be careful."

"Speak for yourself, D.W. You don't know George Edwards as well as I do," Anne warned.

In the event, the flight went almost without a hitch and George made a beautiful landing, which Anne, hiding behind Emilio and Jimmy with her hands over her eyes, was too scared to watch. When she finally peeked out from behind the two men and between her fingers, George had already climbed out of the lander, yelling and whooping, and was running toward her, sweeping her up to swing her around, talking a mile a minute about how great it had been.

Sofia, smiling at George as they passed, went to help D.W. with the postflight inspection. "You look a little pale," she remarked quietly, moving along the port-side wing.

"He did jes' fine," D.W. muttered, "for a stupid damn sumbitch with more guts than sense."

"A rather more exciting flight than you anticipated," Sofia ventured dryly and smiled with her eyes alone when D.W. grunted and ducked under the fuselage, where he occupied himself with the starboard systems until his heart rate returned to normal.

Anne, still shaking, came over and made a point of congratulating Sofia on the obvious effectiveness of the flight simulator. "I am tempted to say, Thank God!" she said quietly, hugging the younger woman. "But thank you, Sofia."

Sofia was gratified by the acknowledgment. "I must admit I am also relieved to have them back in one piece."

"It is also nice to have the plane back, mes amis," Marc said un-sentimentally as he and Jimmy wrestled a packing crate out of the cargo bay. And everyone who'd waited on the ground silently seconded that. There was only one way off this planet, and everyone knew it.

George, wholly smitten with flying, now wanted to try piloting the Ultra-Light as well but had to be content with simply putting the diaphanous miniature plane together the next day. D.W. had already decided that Marc would go up with him on the first flight so the naturalist could get a feel for how the space images corresponded to the actual terrain and vegetation.

While George and D.W. were off-planet, the ground crew had passed the time preparing a runway for the Ultra-Light, which required a forty-meter strip. There were still two stumps to finish pulling, and then they had to wait for the right amount of rain to pack the loose soil down without turning it into a swamp, so it was nearly a week before D.W. and Marc were able to start their flight down a river gorge that passed through a minor mountain range northeast of their position in the clearing.

There had been no indication yet that anyone knew they were there, despite two noisy trips in and one out of the clearing, and that was to the good. Their flight paths had been chosen to minimize the likelihood of passing over inhabited regions, and evidently no air transportation had been developed locally. While still on the Stella Maris, George had worked out the AM radio frequencies used by the Singers and recommended that the Jesuit party use UHF and virtually undetectable spread-band encryption for radio communication with the shipboard systems and with each other when separated, to avoid attracting attention prematurely. Even so, D.W. and Marc were forced to maintain radio silence during the last part of their first reconnaissance flight. They did not have full coverage from the satellites they used to relay signals and a period of blackout coincided with the time when the runway was usable.

After fifteen hours, the last five of which were incommunicado, Jimmy broke the silence with a shout. Then they all heard the Ultra-Light's motor and everyone stood to scan the sky for the little plane. "There!" Sofia cried and they watched D.W. circle and then drop down for the bumpy landing.

Marc was smiling broadly as he climbed out of his seat. "We found a village! Perhaps six, or seven days' walk from here, if we move along the river valley," he told them. "Set into the side of some cliffs, about thirty meters up from the river. We almost missed it. Very interesting architecture. Almost like Anasazi cliff dwellings but not at all geometric."

"Oh, Marc!" Anne moaned. "Who gives a shit about the architecture?"

"Did you find any Singers? What do they look like?" George asked.

"We didn't see anyone," D.W. told them, climbing out and stretching. "Damnedest thing. The place didn't look to be abandoned. Not like a ghost town. But we didn't see a soul stirrin'."

"It was very bizarre," Marc admitted. "We landed across the river and watched for a long time, but there was no one to be seen."

"So what do we do now?" Jimmy asked. "Look for another village with some people in it?"

"No," said Emilio. "We should go to the village Marc and D.W. found today."

They all turned to look at him blankly, and Emilio realized that no one had expected him to have an opinion about this. He couldn't stop himself from running his hands through his hair but he straightened and spoke again, with more confidence than usual and in his own voice. "We have been here for some time, in seclusion. To become used to the planet, as we hoped, yes? And now, we have the possibility of investigating this village, also in some privacy. It appears to me that things are proceeding step by step. And next perhaps, we will meet whom we are meant to meet."

"Do you suppose," Marc Robichaux asked, breaking the silence and turning to D.W. with shining eyes, "that this village constitutes a turtle on a fencepost?"

D.W. snorted and laughed shortly and rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the ground for a while, heartily sorry that he had ever mentioned turtles. Then he looked around at the civilians. George and Jimmy were clearly ready to hoist backpacks and go. He shook his head and appealed wordlessly to Anne and Sofia, hoping that one of the women had something logical or practical to contribute. But Anne only shrugged, palms up, and Sofia simply asked, "Why walk when we can fly? I think we should use the Ultra-Light for transport. No fuel problems. We can ferry in personnel and equipment in several trips."

At that, D.W. threw his arms up and looked at the sky in resignation and walked in a circle with his hands on his hips muttering to himself that the whole damn thing beat the livin' shit out of him. But finally he came to rest and gazed at Emilio Sandoz, whom he had known, boy to man, for almost thirty years now. Whose astonishing, diffident, whispered confessions he now heard while fighting back his own tears. For a moment, D.W. was overwhelmed by the sense that he had seen this soul take root and grow and blossom in a way he never would have predicted and could hardly have hoped for and barely understood. A mystic! he thought, astounded. I got a Porter Rican mystic on my hands.

The others were all waiting for his decision. "Sure," D.W. said at last. "Okay. Fine by me. Why not? There's a flat patch where I can land, outta sight, a few miles south of the village on the same side of the river. We'll ferry the heaviest equipment in with Mendes, here, 'cause she don't weigh nothing. Quinn can carry the damn toothbrushes on his trip."

There were cheers then and high fives and a general sense of being ready to roll and they began talking all at once. In the midst of the commotion, Emilio Sandoz stood silently, as though listening, but he heard none of the discussion of plans and procedures that went on around him. When he came back from wherever he had been, it was Sofia Mendes he saw, a little distance away, as apart from the others as he was, watching him with intelligent, searching eyes. He met her gaze without embarrassment. And then the moment passed.

One by one, they were carried over forest, along the river course, and into a drier mountain-lee land, to the staging area D.W. had identified. They took with them the camping and communications gear and a two-month supply of food, leaving the bulk of their cargo stored in the lander, which D.W. locked down and camouflaged. The last thing each of them looked at as they rose skyward from the runway was the grave of Alan Pace. No one commented on or admitted to leaving the flowers.

Everything east of the mountains seemed a little dwarfed and less colorful than in the forest. The blues and greens and lavenders were more muted and dusty, the animal species more dependent on stealth and concealment for safety. There were treelike plants, widely spaced, but with multiple stems and a tangle of branches in place of the graceful canopies of the forest. That evening, between the second and third sunsets, George found a place in the rocks to conceal the disassembled Ultra-Light, while the others secured the new food depot. They were constantly startled as they worked by small gray-blue animals, almost invisible until they stepped near one, which Anne named coronaries for the heartstopping habit the little animals had of exploding upward, grouselike, in brief flights from the ground. Their voices sounded loud even when they spoke quietly. Without any discussion, they pitched the tents very close together that night. For the first time since landfall, they all felt alien and misplaced, and a little scared as they crawled into sleeping bags and tried to get some rest.

The next morning, Marc led them cautiously down the river valley to a sheltered place where they could see the village, although at first none of them could make out what he was pointing at. It was a wonder, not to say a miracle, he had noticed it at all, soaring past it in the Ultra-Light. Intended to blend into their surroundings, the masonry and terraces fit seamlessly into the layered, river-cut stone of the cliffside. Roof lines showed sudden displacements, changing height and materials to mimic subsidences and shifts in the rock. Openings were not squared or uniform but varied in concert with the shadowed overhangs where the natural rock had spalled off and fallen toward the river.

Even at this distance, they could see many rooms that opened directly onto terraces overlooking the river. There were large open-weave river-reed parasols, nearly invisible in the surrounding vines and foliage, providing midday shade. These relatively flimsy structures supported D.W.'s impression that the village had been inhabited not long ago; they would not have withstood many storms without upkeep.

"Plague?" Jimmy asked Anne softly. There was still no sign of the villagers, and seeing their emptied dwellings was distinctly eerie.

"No, I wouldn't think so," she said quietly. "There'd be bodies lying around, or mourners, or something. Maybe there's a war going on and they were all evacuated?"

They watched for a while, speculating and studying the village, trying to estimate population and drawing grim whispered conclusions about the missing inhabitants.

"Awright, awright, let's go take a closer look," D.W. said finally.

D.W. posted George and Jimmy as lookouts, armed with radio transceivers, in positions high above the village, where they could see the river and the plain that sloped away eastward from the clifftops. Then he let Marc lead the rest of them up the cliffside, where they began a furtive tour of the dwellings they could enter through the terraces without disturbing anything.

"I feel like Goldilocks," Anne whispered, as they peeked into rooms and moved through passageways and picked their way along exterior rock walkways.

"I was hoping for some artwork that would show us what they look like," Marc admitted. The walls were bare, the stone neither plastered nor painted. There were no sculptures. No representational art at all. There was, in general, a sparseness of furnishings, but evidence of craftsmanship was everywhere. Large cushions with beautifully woven, brilliantly colored covers filled some spaces; other rooms had low platforms, of grained material like wood, that might have been tables. Or benches, perhaps. The joinery was superb.

The inhabitants' departure did not appear to have been rushed. There were rooms or regions of rooms that were apparently used for food preparation, but no food was left out. They found closed containers that probably contained staples but did not open anything, not wanting to tamper with the seals. Pots, bowls, platters, ceramic containers of all kinds were stored on high rock shelves and cutlery was suspended from racks in rafters, high overhead.

"Well, they've got hands," Anne said, looking at the knife handles. "I can't quite work out how I'd hold one of those things, but some kind of fingers are involved."

"They'll be closer to Jimmy's height than ours," Sofia said to Anne. Almost all the storage was far above her reach. That was true at home as well, but it was more extreme here. She found it odd that everything was either very low or very high.

There was no pattern to the rooms that they could figure out on their first pass. Spaces varied in size and shape, often following natural hollows in the rock but with subtle enlargements in volume. In one very large room, they found a vast collection of huge baskets. In a smaller one, beautiful friction-stoppered glassware, filled with liquids. They moved along in the spooky silence for a while longer, expecting at any moment to come face to face with who knew what. Just as they were about to leave, George's voice, tinny in the tiny radio speaker, sounded in the quiet.

"D.W.?"

Anne almost jumped out of her skin at the sound of her own husband's words, and there was a burst of nervous laughter all round, which D.W. silenced with a scattershot glare.

"Right here."

"Guess who's coming for dinner."

"How far off? And how many of 'em?"

"I can just see the first of them coming around a hill about five miles northeast of here." There was a short silence. "Wow. It's a gang of 'em. Walking. Bigs and littles. Looks like families. Carrying stuff. Baskets, I think." There was another brief silence. "What do you want us to do?"

D.W. sorted through their options quickly and was about to say something when Emilio headed out through the nearest terrace, pausing momentarily, and inexplicably, to pick small blossoms from the vines he passed before setting off toward George's outpost. D.W. watched Emilio leave, open-mouthed, and looked at Anne and Marc and Sofia. Then he spoke into the radio. "We're on our way. Meet us where you see us."

They caught up with Emilio as he emerged from the village level onto the plain above the river gorge, and there they were joined by Jimmy and George. From this vantage, they could see an unpaved path that led to a group of several hundred individuals coming their way. Following some inner direction, Emilio had already started down the path with an even stride, covering the ground without haste or hesitation.

"I don't think I'm givin' the orders anymore," D.W. said quietly, to no one in particular. It was Marc who said, "Ah, mon ami, I think we are now on the fencepost and we didn't get here on our own. Deus qui incepit, ipse perficiet."

God who has begun this will bring it to perfection, Anne thought, and shivered in the warmth.

The six of them followed in Emilio's footsteps and watched him stoop to pick up small bright pebbles, leaves, anything that came to hand. As if realizing that his actions must seem mad, he turned back to them once and smiled briefly, eyes alight. But before they could say anything, he turned again and continued along the path until he closed the distance to the villagers by half. There he stopped, breathing a little quickly, partly from the walk and partly from the pregnancy of the moment. The others drew close but conceding primacy to him in this, they left Emilio standing a few steps ahead, his black and silver hair lifted and blown by the breeze.

They could hear the voices now, high and melodic, fragments of speech carried toward them on the prankish wind. There was no recognizable order to the march at first, but then D.W. realized that the small ones were bunched toward the center of a mixed crowd and there were large powerful-looking individuals at point and flank, not armed, as far as he could see, but alert and staring directly at the Jesuit party.

"No surprises, no quick movements," D.W. counseled quietly, pitching his voice carefully so it could reach all his people, including Emilio, who remained motionless, a slender flat-backed figure in black. "Stay spread out a little, so you're in full view. Keep your hands where they can see 'em."

There was no panic in either group. The villagers stopped a few hundred paces down the path from Emilio and unburdened themselves of the big well-made baskets, which were filled with something that was not heavy, judging from the ease with which the containers were handled, even by the smaller individuals. They were unclothed, but around their limbs and necks many wore bright ribbons, which fluttered and floated sinuously in the wind. The breeze shifted more decisively then and suddenly D.W. was aware of an exquisite scent, floral, he thought, coming from the crowd. He focused again on the openwork basketry and realized the containers were filled with white blossoms.

For a short while the two groups simply stood and looked at one another, the piping voices of juveniles hushed by adults, murmurs and commentary falling off to silence. As the crowd quieted, D.W. took note of who spoke and who stood silent in the discussion that followed. The flankers and point men remained on guard and aloof from the deliberations.

As D.W. took in the command structure of the group, so Anne Edwards studied the anatomy. The two species were not grotesque to one another. They shared a general body plan: bipedal, with forelimbs specialized for grasping and manipulation. Their faces also held a similarity in general, and the differences were not shocking or hideous to Anne; she found them beautiful, as she found many other species beautiful, here and at home. Large mobile ears, erect and carried high on the sides of the head. Gorgeous eyes, large and densely lashed, calm as camels'. The nose was convex, broad at the tip, curving smoothly off to meet the muzzle, which projected rather more noticeably than was ever the case among humans. The mouth, lipless and broad.

There were many differences, of course. On the gross level, the most striking was that the humans were tailless, an anomaly on their home planet as well; the vast majority of vertebrates on Earth had tails, and Anne had never understood why apes and guinea pigs had lost them. And another human oddity stood out, here as at home: relative hairlessness. The villagers were covered with smooth dense coats of hair, lying flat to muscular bodies. They were as sleek as Siamese cats: buff-colored with lovely dark brown markings around the eyes, like Cleopatra's kohl, and a darker shading that ran down the spine.

"They are so beautiful," Anne breathed and she wondered, distressed, if such uniformly handsome people would find humans repulsive—flat-faced and ugly, with ridiculous patches of white and red and brown and black hair, tall and medium and short, bearded and barefaced and sexually dimorphic to boot. We are outlandish, she thought, in the truest sense of the word…

From out of the center of the crowd an individual of middle height and indeterminate sex came forward. Anne watched, scarcely breathing, as this person separated from the group to approach them. She realized then that Marc had been making a similar biological assessment, for as this person stepped nearer, he cried very softly, "The eyes, Anne!" Each orbit contained a doubled iris, arranged horizontally in a figure-eight around two pupils of variable size, like the bizarre eye of the cuttlefish. This much they had seen before. It was the color that transfixed her: a dark blue, almost violet, as luminous as the stained glass at Chartres.

Emilio continued to stand still, letting the person who stood before him decide what to do. At last, this individual spoke.

It was a lilting, swooping language, full of vowels and soft buzzing consonants, fluid and melting, without any of the staccato glottal stops and rhythmic choppiness of the language of the songs. It was, Anne decided, more beautiful, but her heart sank. It was as unlike the Singers' language as Italian was unlike Chinese. All that work, she thought, for nothing. George, who like all of them had been trained by Emilio to recognize the Singers' language, must have been thinking the same thing. He leaned over to Anne and whispered, "Shit. On Star Trek, everybody spoke English!" She elbowed him but smiled to herself and took his hand, listening to the speech and tightening her grip as the person stopped speaking and she waited for Emilio's response.

"I don't understand," said Emilio Sandoz in a soft clear voice, "but I can learn if you will teach me."

What happened next was a puzzle to all those in the Jesuit party but Sandoz. The spokesperson called a number of individuals out of the crowd, including several half-grown children, one by one. Each spoke briefly to Emilio, who met their eyes with his own calm gaze and repeated to each of them, "I don't understand." He was almost certain that each had spoken a different language or dialect to him, one of which was indeed that of the Singers, and he realized that they were interpreters and that the leader was attempting to find some language they had in common. Failing in that, the adult returned to the crowd. There was a discussion that lasted a good while. Then a juvenile, much smaller than anyone who'd spoken earlier, came forward with another adult, who spoke reassuringly before gently urging the little one to approach Emilio alone.

She was a weedy child, spindly and unpromising. Seeing her advance, scared but determined, Emilio slowly dropped to his knees, so he would not loom over her, as the adult had loomed over him. They were, for the moment, all alone together, the others of their kinds forgotten, their whole attention absorbed. As the little one came closer, Emilio held out one hand, palm up, and said, "Hello." She faltered only an instant before putting her hand, long-fingered and warm, in his. She repeated, "Hello." Then she said, in a voice as clear and soft as Emilio's, "Challalla khaeri." And leaned forward to put her head next to his neck. He could hear the slight intake of breath as she did this.

"Challalla khaeri," Emilio repeated and gravely reproduced her physical greeting with exactitude.

There was a burst of talk among the villagers. It was startling, and the humans stepped back a bit, but Emilio kept his eyes on the child and saw that she was not frightened and did not draw away. He had kept her hand in his and now pulled it gently toward his chest and said, "Emilio." Once again, the child repeated the word, but this time the vowels defeated her and it came out, "Meelo."

Smiling, he did not correct her, thinking, Close enough, chiquitita, close enough. He had come somehow to the conclusion that she was a little girl and he was already deeply in love, his whole soul open to her. He simply waited, knowing that she would pull his own hand toward her. This she did, although she drew his hand to her forehead instead of her chest. "Askama," she told him, and he repeated it, accent on the first syllable, the second and third given little emphasis, slurred quickly together, the pitch falling slightly.

Emilio shifted then from his knees, and sat cross-legged in the fine ocher dust of the path. Askama moved slightly as well, to face him, and he knew they could be seen from the side by both groups, native and alien. Before his next move, he turned his head and established eye contact with the adult who'd brought the child forward and who was standing nearby at the edge of the group of villagers, watching Askama steadily. Hello, Mama, he thought. Then he returned his attention to Askama. Rearing back in gentle surprise, he pulled in a little gasp and asked, wide-eyed, "Askama, what's this?" Reaching behind her ear, Emilio's hand suddenly revealed a flower.

"Si zhao!" Askama exclaimed, startled out of the pattern of repetition.

"Si zhao," Emilio repeated. "A flower." He glanced back at the adult, whose mouth was open and ovalled. There was no move, so he went on, producing then two flowers from nowhere.

"Sa zhay!" Askama cried, giving him what might be an indication of plural formation.

"Sa zhay, indeed, chiquitita" he murmured, smiling.

Soon other children came forward, and their parents moved closer as well, until the two groups, alien and native, merged, enthralled, surrounding Emilio and Askama as he made pebbles and leaves and flowers multiply and vanish and reappear, gathering possible numbers and nouns and, more important, expressions of surprise and puzzlement and delight, watching Askama's face as he worked, glancing at the adults and other children to check responses, already absorbing the body language and mirroring it in a dance of discovery.

Smiling and in love with God and all His works, Emilio at last held out his arms and Askama settled happily into his lap, thick-muscled tapering tail curling comfortably around her as she nestled down and watched him greet the other children and begin to learn their names in the tripled sunshine that broke through the clouds. He felt as though he were a prism, gathering up God's love like white light and scattering it in all directions, and the sensation was nearly physical, as he caught and repeated as much of what everyone said to him as he could, soaking up the music and cadence, the pattern of phonemes on the fly, gravely accepting and repeating Askama's quiet corrections when he got things wrong.

When the talk became more chaotic, he took a chance and began to reply to the children in nonsense, mimicking the melody and general sound of the phrases with great seriousness but no longer trying for accuracy. This tactic had worked well with the Gikuyu, but the Chuuk Islanders had been offended. To his relief, the adults here seemed amused; certainly there were no shouts or threatening gestures as the children shrieked and vied for the chance to have him «talk» to them in this hilarious and silly way.

He had no idea how much time passed in this manner but, eventually, Emilio became aware that his back was cramped and his legs were paralyzed from Askama's weight. Easing the child out of his lap, he staggered to his feet but kept her hand in his as he looked around as though seeing it all for the first time. He spotted Jimmy and Sofia, who called to him, "Magic! You held out on me, Sandoz!" — for this was not in her AI program at all. He found Marc Robichaux next, engulfed in the crowd with a little one sitting on his shoulders so the child could see over the adults. And there was D.W., whose eyes, astonishingly, were brimming. He searched for George and Anne Edwards, finally picking them out, arm in arm, and Anne was crying too, but George beamed at him and called out, voice raised to carry above the ruckus the kids were making, "If anybody asks, I'm a hundred and sixteen!"

Emilio Sandoz threw back his head and laughed. "God!" he shouted into the sunshine and leaned down to kiss the top of Askama's head and pull her up into his arms for an embrace that included the whole of creation. "God," he whispered again, eyes closed, with the child settling onto his hip. "I was born for this!"

It was the simple truth. Nothing else explained his life.