The Sparrow

29 VILLAGE OF KASHAN: YEAR TWO

Supaari VaGayjur, they found, was an ideal informant, a man who moved with knowledgeable ease between the Runa and the Jana'ata, able to see both ways of life from a point of view that few in either society shared. Irony and objectivity formed the converging lines of his perspective. Shrewd and humorous, he saw what people did and not simply what they said they did, and he was well suited to the task of interpreting his culture to the foreigners.

Anne, shrewd and humorous herself, dated her affection for him from the moment he managed to tell Sofia that the scent of coffee was "agreeable," even as he was almost certainly thinking that the flavor was revolting. Alien savoir faire, Anne thought admiringly, as she watched him overcome what must have been a staggering shock. Laudable aplomb. What a guy.

It was Anne Edwards's greatest delight that humans and VaRakhati of both species shared basic emotions, for though she was a woman of highly trained intelligence, she passed all experience through her heart. As an anthropologist, she had loved the fossil Neandertals she studied with a ferocity that embarrassed her, considered them maligned and misunderstood because they were ugly. For her, their browridges and heavy bones receded into insignificance in comparison with their care for the infirm among them and their loving burial of the many children who died around the age of four. Anne had almost wept one day, in a Belgian museum, when it came to her that these children had probably died in springtime, replaced at the breast by younger siblings while still too small to withstand the rigors of the leanest season of the year without a mother's milk. What were physical differences, when one knew that such children were buried with flowers on boughs of evergreen?

So Anne looked beyond Supaari's claws and teeth, hardly cared about his tail, and took only anatomical interest in his prehensile feet, revealed when he was comfortable enough to remove his boots after dinner that first afternoon. It was his ability to laugh, to be astounded, to be skeptical and embarrassed, proud and angry and kind that made her love him.

He could not pronounce her name, simple as it was. She became Ha'an, and the two of them spent countless hours together in those first weeks, asking and answering as best they could thousands of questions. It was exhausting and exhilarating, a sort of whirlwind love affair that made George cranky and a little jealous. Sometimes, she and Supaari were overcome by the sheer strangeness of their situation, and they were reassured that they were both moved to laugh when this happened.

Despite this goodwill, they were often at an impasse. Sometimes Ruanja had no words to convey a Jana'ata concept that Supaari was trying to describe or Anne's vocabulary was too limited for her to follow the thought. Emilio sat at their sides, translating when his knowledge of Ruanja bettered Anne's, expanding his grasp of that language, getting a start on Supaari's own K'San language, which Emilio already suspected had a monstrously difficult grammar. Sofia participated as well, for her vocabulary included many trade terms and she already had some understanding of the commercial aspects of the Runa-Jana'ata relationship, although she'd previously assumed that the differences between the groups were simply those of country folk and city folk.

Marc was often called upon to sketch some object or situation in Runa life for which they had no words and which Supaari could elucidate, after he'd gotten over the initial surprise of seeing Marc's drawings. Once that hurdle had been jumped, Jimmy and George pulled up visuals on tablet screens for him. Supaari would sometimes be struck by parallels or would describe differences. "Here it is done in a similar manner," he would tell them, or "We have no such thing as that object," or "When this happens, we do thusly." When Anne judged Supaari ready to handle it, George modified a VR headset for him and began to show him the virtual realities of Earth. This was even more frightening to him than Anne had anticipated, and he tore the headset off more than once but kept going back to it with a horrified fascination.

D.W., his own self, never warmed to Supaari, but the Winchester eventually went back into storage. Yarbrough said little during the sessions with the Jana'ata but often suggested lines of inquiry for the following day after Supaari, yawning hugely, retired at second sundown. There were seven of them and only one of Supaari, so they held back, not wanting to make the encounter feel like interrogation. He, after all, was still coming to grips with the very idea that they could exist, that their planet could exist, that they had traveled an incomprehensible distance by means of propulsion he was wholly unprepared to understand, simply to learn about him and his planet. No such notion had ever entered his head.

That the Jana'ata were the dominant species on Rakhat seemed probable from the beginning of their relationship with Supaari. They were used to carnivores being at the top of food chains and accustomed to killer species being in charge of a planet. And, to be honest, they'd been vaguely disappointed by the Runa. The stateliness and deliberation and placidity of Runa life made the humans feel almost drugged; the constant eating, the constant talk, the constant touching dragged on their energy. "They are very sweet," Anne said one night. "They are very boring," George replied. And Anne admitted in the privacy of their tent that she was often tempted during interminable Runa discussions to shout, "Oh, for chrissakes, who gives a shit? Get on with it!"

So despite their inauspicious introduction to Supaari, they were glad to be dealing with someone who came to a decision on his own, even if that decision was to take somebody's head off at the shoulders. They were happy to find someone on Rakhat who was quick on the uptake, who caught jokes and made them, who saw implications. He moved faster than a Runao, did more things in a given day without making such a damned production out of it. His energy levels came closer to their own. He could, in fact, exhaust them. But then he crashed at second sundown and slept like a gigantic carnivorous baby for fifteen hours.

That the relationship between the Jana'ata and the Runa was asymmetrical became unquestionable when the VaKashani Runa returned to their village, huge baskets filled with pik, a few days after Supaari's arrival in the village. Great deference was shown to the Jana'ata. He was, for all the world, like a Mafia don or a medieval baron, receiving Runa families, laying hands on the children. But there was also affection. His rule, if that was the proper word, was benign. He listened carefully and patiently to all comers, settled disputes with solutions that struck everyone as fair, steering participants toward a conclusion that seemed logical. The VaKashani did not fear him.

There was no way for the foreigners to know how misleading all of this was, how unusual Supaari was. A self-made man, Supaari was not reticent about his early life and his present status, and since all the surviving members of the Jesuit party came from cultures on Earth that value such people and disdain hereditary privilege, they were prepared to see him in a somewhat heroic light, a plucky boy who'd made good.

Alan Pace might have been better equipped to handle the class aspects of Rakhati society, since Britain still retained some traits of a culture that takes good breeding seriously. Alan might have understood how truly marginal Supaari was, how little access he had to real sources of power and influence, and how much he might crave such access. But Alan was dead.

When, toward the end of Partan, it was time to see the Jana'ata off after those first extraordinary weeks, the entire population of Kashan, alien and native, accompanied Supaari to the dock or hung from terraces to call farewells and toss flowers on the water and float long scented ribbons in the wind.

"Sipaj, Supaari!" Anne said quietly as he prepared to cast off, the chatter and press of Runa all around them. "May someone show you how our people say farewell to those we feel fond of?"

He was touched that she should wish this. "Without hesitation, Ha'an," he said in the low and slightly rumbling voice she was now familiar with. Anne motioned him to bring his head closer and he stooped low, not knowing what to expect. She rose on her toes and her arms went around his neck and he felt her tighten the pressure slightly before she let him go. When she drew back, he noticed that her blue eyes, almost normal in color, were glistening.

"Someone hopes you will come back here soon and safely, Su-paari," she said.

"Someone's heart will be glad to be with you again, Ha'an." He was, Supaari realized with surprise, reluctant to leave her. He climbed down into the powerboat cockpit and looked up at the others of her kind, each one different, each a separate and peculiar puzzle. Suddenly, because Ha'an wished it, Supaari was moved to please the others, and so at last made a decision he'd found troublesome. He looked around and found the Elder. "Someone will make arrangements for you to visit Gayjur," he told D.W. "There are many things to be considered, but someone will think on how this may be done."

"Well, my darling children," Anne announced gaily, shaking off the sadness of Supaari's departure as his powerboat disappeared around the north bend of the river and the Runa began moving back up to their apartments, "it is time for you and me to have a little talk about sex."

"Memory fails," said Emilio, straight-faced, and Marc laughed.

"What if we had a review session?" Jimmy suggested helpfully. Sofia smiled and shook her head, and Jimmy's heart rose but then went obediently back where it belonged.

"What's this about sex?" George asked, shushing Askama and turning to look at Anne.

"Good grief, woman, is that all you ever think about?" D.W. demanded.

Anne grinned like the Cheshire cat as they started up the cliffside together. "Wait until you guys find out what Supaari told me yesterday!" The path narrowed at that point and they strung out into a line, Askama chattering to George about some long, elaborate story they'd been making up together until she saw Kinsa and Fayer, and the children took off to play.

"It seems, my darlings, that we have been caught in a web of sexism, but so have our hosts," Anne told them when they arrived at the apartment. It was filled with Runa, but endless cross talk was normal to them now and she hardly noticed the other conversations. "Jimmy: the Runa think you are a lady, and the mother of us all. Sofia, you are taken to be an immature male. Emilio: an immature female. They don't know quite what to make of D.W. and Marc and me, but they're pretty sure George is a male. Isn't that nice, dear?"

"I'm not sure," George said suspiciously, sinking onto a cushion. "How do they decide who's what?"

"Well, there is a certain logic to it all. Emilio, you seemed to have guessed correctly that Askama is a little girl. Fifty-fifty chance, and you won the toss. The trick is that Chaypas is Askama's mother, not Manuzhai. Yes, indeed, darlings!" Anne said when they stared at her in shock. "I'll come back to that in a minute. Anyway, Supaari says that the Runa females are the ones who do all the business for the village. Listen to this, Sofia, this is really cool. Their pregnancies are fairly short and they aren't much inconvenienced by them. When the baby is born, mom hands the little dear over to daddy and goes back about her business without missing a beat."

"No wonder I couldn't make sense of the gender references!" Emilio said. "So Askama is in training to be a trader, and that's why they think I am also female. Because I'm the formal interpreter for our group, yes?"

"Bingo," said Anne. "And Jimmy, they think, is our mom because he's the only one big enough to seem like a full-grown female. That's why they always ask him to make decisions for us, maybe. They only think he's asking D.W.'s opinion to be polite, I guess." Yarbrough snorted, and Anne grinned. "Okay, now here's the neat part. Manuzhai is Chaypas's husband, right? But he is not Askama's genetic father. Runa ladies marry gentlemen they believe will be good social fathers, as Manuzhai is. But Supaari says their mates are chosen using" — she cleared her throat—"an entirely separate set of criteria."

"They pick out a good stud," D.W. said.

"Don't be crude, dear," Anne said. Chaypas and her guests decided to go to Aycha's to eat and suddenly the apartment emptied out. When they were alone, Anne leaned forward and continued conspiratorially. "But yes, that was certainly the implication. I must say, the custom has a certain rude appeal. Theoretically, of course," she added when George pouted.

"So why are they only 'pretty sure' I'm a male?" George asked petulantly, his manhood under oblique attack from two quarters.

"Well, aside from your virile good looks, my love, they have also noted how wonderful you are with the children," Anne said. "On the other hand, you don't show much interest in collecting blossoms, so they're a little confused by you, actually. Same for Marc and D.W. and me. They think I might be a male because I do most of the cooking. Maybe I'm sort of the daddy? Oh, Jimmy, maybe they think you and I are married! Obviously, they don't have a clue about relative ages."

Emilio had become increasingly thoughtful and D.W., watching him, began to chuckle. Emilio didn't laugh at first, but he came around.

"What?" Anne asked. "What's so funny?"

"I'm not sure funny is the word," D.W. said, right eye on Emilio, one brow up speculatively.

Emilio shrugged. "Nothing. Only: this notion of separating the roles of genetic father and social father would have been useful in my family."

"Might have saved some wear and tear on your sorry young ass," D.W. agreed.

Emilio laughed ruefully and ran his hands through his hair. Everyone was looking at him now, curiosity plain on their faces. He hesitated, probing old wounds, and found them scabbed over. "My mother was a woman of great warmth and a lively nature," he told them, choosing his words carefully. "Her husband was a handsome man, tall, strong. Brunette but very light-skinned, yes? My mother was also very fair." He paused to let them absorb this; it didn't take a geneticist to work out the implications. "My mother's husband was out of town for a few years—"

"Doing time for possession and sale," D.W. supplied.

"— and when he returned, he found he had a second son, almost a year old. And very dark." Emilio sat still then, and the room was quiet. "They did not divorce. He must have loved my mother very much." This had never occurred to him before and he had no idea how he should feel about it. "She was charming, yes? Easy to love, Anne might say."

"So you took the blame for her," Anne said astutely, hating the woman for letting it happen and silently berating God for giving this son to the wrong mother.

"Of course. Very poor taste, being born like that." Emilio looked briefly at Anne, but his eyes slid away. A mistake, he realized, to speak of this. He had tried so hard to understand, but how could a child have known? He shrugged again and steered the talk away from Elena Sandoz. "My mother's husband and I used to play a game called Beat the Crap out of the Bastard. I was about eleven when I worked out the name, yes?" He sat up and threw the hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. "I changed the rules for this game when I was fourteen," he told them, savoring it, even after all the years.

D.W., who knew what was coming, grinned in spite of himself. He'd deplored the random violence of La Perla and worked hard to find ways for kids like Emilio to settle things without knifing somebody. It was an uphill battle in a place where fathers told sons, "Anybody give you shit, cut his face." And this was advice given to eight-year-olds on the first day of third grade.

"Our esteemed Father Superior," he heard Emilio tell the others with vast enjoyment, "was in those days a parish priest in La Perla. Of course, he did not condone unpleasantries among family members, however tenuously related. Nevertheless, Father Yarbrough did impart a certain wisdom to young acolytes. This included the precept that when there is a substantial difference in size between adversaries, the larger man is fighting dirty simply by intending to take on a much smaller opponent—"

"So nail the sumbitch 'fore he lays a hand on you," D.W. finished, in tones that suggested the sagacity of this was self-evident. He had, in fact, taught the kid a few little things in the gym. Emilio being small, surprise was necessarily a prerequisite to some maneuvers. The subtlety came in making the boy understand it was okay to fight in self-defense when Miguel came home mean-drunk, but it was not necessary to take on a whole neighborhood of taunting kids.

"— and while there is a certain primitive satisfaction in decking an asshole," Emilio was telling them with serene respect for his mentor, "this should not be indulged in without temperance and forbearance."

"I sort of wondered where you learned to do what you did with Supaari," Jimmy said. "That was pretty amazing."

The conversation drifted off into stories of a priest Jimmy had known in South Boston who'd boxed in the Olympics and then D.W. started in on a few sergeants he'd known in the Marines. Anne and Sofia started lunch and listened, heads shaking, to tales of certain illegal but remarkably effective hockey moves available to alert goalies in the Quebec league. But the talk came back to the Jana'ata Handshake, as Supaari's attack on Sandoz was known among them, and when it veered toward Emilio's childhood once more, he stood.

"You never know when an old skill will come in handy," he said with a certain edgy finality, moving toward the terrace. But then he stopped and laughed and added piously, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."

And it was impossible to tell whether he was serious or joking.

The cruise downriver from Kashan seemed to Supaari to go more quickly than the trip out from Gayjur. The first day, he simply let his mind go blank, his attention absorbed by the eddies and driftwood, the sandbars and rocks. But the second day on the river was a thoughtful one, full of wonder.

He had been deluged by new facts, new ideas, new possibilities, but he had always been quick to grasp opportunities and willing to take friendships where he found them. The foreigners, like the Runa, were sometimes startlingly different from his people and often incomprehensible, but he liked Ha'an very much—found her mind lively and full of challenge. The rest of them were less clear to him, only adjuncts to the sessions with Ha'an, translating, illustrating, providing food and drink at bizarre and irritating intervals. And to be honest, they nearly all smelled alike.

He would buy the rented powerboat outright when he got back, Supaari decided, watching a good-sized river kivnest breach and roll nearby. The purchase price had been rendered trivial; he had examined the foreign goods, knew now the dimensions of the trade he could broker. Wealth beyond counting was guaranteed. This trip alone had yielded a fortune in exotica. He had explained his business to the foreigners and they were happy to provide him with many small packets of aromatics, their names as marvelous as their scents. Clove, vanilla, yeast, sage, thyme, cumin, incense. Sticks of brown cinnamon, white cylinders called beeswax candles which could be set afire to give off a fragrant light that Supaari found enchanting. And they'd given him several «landscapes» that one foreigner made on paper. Beautiful things; remarkable, truly. Supaari almost hoped the Reshtar would turn them down; Supaari rather liked these landscapes himself.

It was obvious that the foreigners had no understanding of the value of their goods, but Supaari VaGayjur was an honorable man and offered the interpreter a fair price, which was one in twelve of what he'd get from Kitheri and, at that, a substantial amount. A great deal of embarrassing confusion ensued. Ha'an had tried to insist the goods were gifts: a disastrous notion that would have prevented resale. The small, dark interpreter and his sister with the mane sorted that out but then—what was his name? Suhn? Suhndos? He'd tried to hand the packets directly to Supaari! What kind of parents did these people have? If Askama hadn't guided her counterpart's hands to Chaypas's for the transfer, the VaKashani would have been cut out of the deal entirely. Shocking manners, although the interpreter had abased himself prettily enough when he recognized the mistake.

Because the VaKashani were hosts to the foreign delegation and thus entitled to a percentage of Supaari's profit, the village would move nearly a year ahead of schedule closer to breeding rights. Supaari was pleased for them, and slightly envious. If life were as simple and straightforward for a Jana'ata third as for a Runa corporation, his own problem would have been solved. He could simply buy breeding rights and get on with it, having proven his fiscal responsibility and obedience to the government. But Jana'ata life was never simple and rarely straightforward. Deep in the Jana'ata soul there was an almost unshakable conviction that things must be controlled, thought out, done correctly, that there was very little margin for error in life. Tradition was safety; change was danger. Even Supaari felt this, although he defied the instinct often and to his profit.

The storytellers claimed that the first five Jana'ata hunters and the first five Runa herds were created by Ingwy on an island, where balance could be easily lost and annihilation was the price of poor stewardship. Five times the hunters and their mates erred: leaving things to chance, killing without thought, letting their own numbers grow uncontrolled, and all was lost. On the sixth attempt, Tikat Father of Us All learned to breed the Runa and Sa'arhi Our Mother was made his consort and they were brought to the mainland and given dominion. There were other stories about Pa'au and Tiha'ai and the first brothers, and on and on. Who knew? Maybe there was some truth in it all, but Supaari was a skeptic. The Ingwy Cycle was too pat an explanation for duogeniture, too convenient for the firsts and seconds justifying their grip on the world.

It didn't matter. Whether the legends grew from ancient seeds of truth or sprang fully formed from the self-interest of the rulers, Supaari thought, things are as they are. He was a third; how, then, to convince the Reshtar of Galatna that Supaari VaGayjur was worthy of being created Founder? It was a delicate business and required subtlety and cunning, for reshtari were rarely generous in granting to others the very prerogative denied themselves. Somehow, Hlavin Kitheri must come to believe it was in his interest to bestow this privilege. A pretty puzzle for Supaari VaGayjur.

He let the problem go, for pursuit can drive the quarry away. Better to stroll along, alert for opportunity, wasting no effort on mad dashes and undignified chases. If one is patient, he knew, something always comes within reach.

After Supaari's first visit, the Jesuit party settled into a routine that made their second full year on Rakhat as productive and satisfying as they could have hoped for.

They were given their own apartments, two of them, thanks to Supaari, who had arranged it when Anne admitted that they found it wearying to be with the Runa all the time. She also told him, privately, that D.W. was not well and sometimes found the distance to the river difficult. Supaari had no guess as to the cause or cure for the Elder's illness but thoughtfully specified living space further down the cliffside than Manuzhai's home.

Sofia lived with Anne and George. The apartment next door became a dormitory for the unmarried men and an office for everyone. Anne's side was home. This orderly division of use was, they found, a great improvement over the endless ad hoc arrangements made day by day when they were living with Manuzhai and Chaypas.

They now knew from Supaari that they were not just tolerated by the VaKashani but welcome. They had fit into the economic structure of the community by providing Supaari with goods that benefited the village and, in their own minds, this allowed them to be more assertive about requesting small accommodations, like limits to overnight visits and periods of privacy during the day. They still did a lot of visiting and often had guests who stayed overnight, especially Manuzhai and the ubiquitous Askama, but there was now some privacy on a regular basis. The relief was startling.

That year Anne, Sofia and D.W. devoted most of their time to writing up the interviews with Supaari, with an emphasis on Runa biology, social structure and economy, and on Runa-Jana'ata cooperation. Every paragraph written generated a hundred new questions, but they took it one step at a time and a stream of papers went back to Rome, week after week, month after month. In recognition of the partnership she felt with Supaari, Anne suggested listing him as the second author on all their papers. Sofia, instructed by Emilio's generosity in this, did so immediately. Eventually D.W. took up the practice as well.

Emilio Sandoz, a contented spider in the center of an intellectual web, collected lexemes, semantic fields, prosody and idiom, semantics and deep structure. He answered questions, translated and aided research for all of them, while collaborating with Sofia on an instructional program for Ruanja and with Askama and Manuzhai on a Ruanja dictionary. Marc had begun sketching and painting the Runa and their lives within days of arriving, and this continued as the seasonal round was played out. To Emilio's delight, the Runa referred to Marc's images using the spatial declension. And now when the women left on trading expeditions, they commissioned a portrait from Marc or his apprentices, so they could be with their families even as they traveled, Chaypas explained. Absent mothers were gone but not invisible.

George and Jimmy installed improvised plumbing and a pulley system for hauling things up and down the cliffside. The Runa soon added similar arrangements to the other apartments. And then there was George's ever-elaborating waterslide complex down by the river's edge, which the kids adored and which they all, native and alien, worked on sporadically.

The Runa took everything in stride. Nothing ever seemed to surprise them, and it had begun to seem that they were incapable of astonishment. But toward the end of Supaari's first visit, Marc had asked if the merchant knew of any objection to the foreigners starting a garden. Ruanja, Emilio found, had no word for plants grown in an artificial ecosystem, so Supaari was shown images of gardens. Familiar with the notion, Supaari brought the subject up with the Kashan elders and obtained permission for Marc to plant.

And so, for no good reason that the VaKashani could conceive, Marc Robichaux and George Edwards and Jimmy Quinn set about digging in ground where no useful roots grew. They used giant spoons to lift up big bites of dirt and then simply put the dirt back where it had been, but upside down. The Runa were absolutely flabbergasted.

That this mysterious activity was hard physical labor for the foreigners made the whole business funnier. George would pause to wipe his brow, and the Runa would quake with laughter. Marc would sit a while to catch his breath, and the Runa would gasp with merriment. Jimmy worked doggedly on, beads of sweat sparkling on the ends of his coiling red hair, and Runa observers would comment helpfully, "Ah, the dirt is much better that way. Big improvement!" and wheeze in a transport of amusement. The Runa were capable of sarcasm.

Soon, Runa from other villages came to watch the gardeners while their children played on the waterslide, and George began to feel a retroactive sympathy for the Amish farmers of Ohio, unwilling tourist attractions subjected to stares and pointing fingers. But the initial hilarity tapered off as the garden took shape and the Runa began to perceive the geometric plan underlying the foreigners' inexplicable work. The garden was a serious scientific experiment and careful records of germination and yield would be kept, but everything Marc Robichaux did was beautiful and he laid the garden out as a succession of interlocking diamond-shaped and circular beds, edged in herbs. George and Jimmy constructed trellises and adapted the Runa terrace parasols to shade the lettuces and peas and to control the downpours of rain. Manuzhai, intrigued now, joined them in this, and the resulting structures were lovely.

The «dry» season on Rakhat turned out to be reasonably well suited to the husbandry of Earth plants. As the season progressed, it could be seen that the rows and hills of vegetables were thoughtfully planned. Scarlet-stalked Swiss chard rose over beds of emerald spinach. Zucchini and corn and potatoes, tomatoes and cabbages and radishes, cucumbers and feathery carrots, red beets and purple turnips—all were incorporated into overflowing parterres, interplanted with edible flowers: pansies and sunflowers, calendula and Empress of India nasturtiums. It was glorious.

Supaari came back to Kashan periodically and dutifully admired the flourishing potager on his third visit. "We Jana'ata also have such gardens. The scents are different from yours," he said tactfully, for he was greatly offended by some of the foreign odors, "but this is more beautiful to the eye." He took no interest in it thereafter, considering it a harmless eccentricity.

Supaari, they noticed, brought his own food from the city with him and ate in privacy, in the cabin of his powerboat. Sometimes he also brought Runa with him from the city, memory specialists who were apparently like living textbooks, who could answer some of the more technical questions the foreigners asked. And there were written materials as well, in the K'San language and therefore completely incomprehensible except for the engineering drawings. George and Jimmy were particularly interested in radio, and they wanted to know about power generation, signal production, receiving equipment and so forth. Supaari found this understandable, since he knew in a somewhat foggy way that the foreigners had come to Rakhat because they'd overheard the Galatna concerts somehow, but he was unable to give them much information. He knew of radio only as a listener. This ignorance was frustrating to the technophiles.

"He's a merchant, not an engineer," Anne said in Supaari's defense. "Besides, the last human with a clear grasp of all the technology he used was probably Leonardo da Vinci." And she invited a disgruntled George to tell Supaari how aspirin works.

Supaari was, at least, able to explain why the Runa disliked music. "We Jana'ata use songs to organize activities," he told Anne and Emilio, as they sat outside in a hampiy equipped with cushions, unconcerned about the light drizzle falling. He seemed to have trouble finding the correct Ruanja phrasing for this. "It is something we do only among ourselves. The Runa find this frightening."

"The songs or the activities the songs organize?" Anne asked.

"Someone thinks: both. And we also have—there is nothing in Ruanja—ba'ardali basnu charpi. There are two groups, one here and one here." He motioned to indicate that these groups would stand opposite each other. "They sing, first one group and then the other. And a judgment is made, for a reward. The Runa don't like such things."

"Singing contests!" Anne exclaimed in English. "What do you think, Emilio? Does that make sense to you? It sounds like competitive singing. They used to have contests like that in Wales. Fabulous choirs."

"Yes. I should think the Runa would avoid competitions like that. Porai is built into the situation. All the contestants would want to win the prize." Emilio switched to Ruanja. "Someone thinks perhaps the hearts of the Runa become porai if one group is rewarded but not the other," he ventured and explained his logic to Supaari, to test the model.

"Yes, Ha'an," the Jana'ata said, thinking Emilio was merely translating. He leaned back onto an elbow comfortably and added with a tone that Anne found wry, "We Jana'ata do not have such hearts."

But Supaari brought no other Jana'ata with him and stalled when George and Jimmy repeated their request to see the city and meet others of his people. "Jana'ata speak only K'San," he told them when pressed for a reason. It was unusual, he let them understand, that he had learned Ruanja; ordinarily, it was the Runa who were required to learn Jana'ata languages. It was a lame enough excuse that they accepted it as a polite fiction, and D.W. reckoned ole Supaari was probably keeping their existence secret to preserve his monopoly on the trade. The Jesuit party was familiar with capitalism and didn't begrudge the merchant his corner on the coffee and spice market. So while Yarbrough was getting anxious to make contact with someone in authority, they tried to be patient. Cunctando regitur mundus, after all. In the meantime, Emilio stepped up his work on K'San.

At last there came a day, a Rakhati year and a half after their arrival in Kashan, when Supaari told them that he had worked out a way for them to visit Gayjur. It would take some time; there were many arrangements, and the visit would have to wait until after the next rainy season. He would not be able to come upriver to visit them during that time but he would return at the beginning of Partan and take them to the city. His plan hinged somehow on their ability to see in redlight, but he was indirect about why this should be so.

In any case, they were reasonably content with the situation as it stood. They were all productively employed. Supaari had been wonderfully helpful in many ways, and they did not want to impose on his good nature. "Step by step," Emilio would say, and Marc would add, "It is as it should be."

During this time, the health of the Jesuit party remained good, on the whole. They were free of viral illness since there was no disease reservoir here that could affect them. Jimmy broke a finger. Marc was badly bitten by something he'd found while poking around and lifting up rocks; it got away, so they were never sure what the culprit was, but Robichaux recovered. George confirmed Manuzhai's fears by falling off a walkway one night, but he wasn't seriously hurt. There was the usual run of cuts, bruises, blisters and muscle pulls. For a while Sofia had a lot of headaches, trying to cut back on coffee because the VaKashani now swayed with dismay whenever the foreigners actually drank the stuff instead of selling it. After a month of doling out analgesics, Anne suggested that Sofia should just do her drinking in private. Sofia adopted this solution with relief.

In general, it was a tidy little practice for Anne Edwards, M.D., flawed only by despair for one of her patients. His spirit and mind remained strong, but D. W. Yarbrough's body was failing him and there was, as far as she could determine, nothing in this world Anne could do about it.

It was predictable, when they thought about it later, that the Runa would begin to garden. Once the Runa understood what all the ludicrous labor had produced, once they had seen how beautiful a garden could be, once they knew that food could be grown close to home, they seized upon gardening with typical enthusiasm and creativity. From Kashan, the practice moved along river courses to other villages and along the coast toward Gayjur. Anne, questioning Runa visitors and using satellite data, tracked the spread, said it was a textbook case of diffusion and wrote it up.

Marc and George accompanied the first Runa gardeners on expeditions to pik and k'jip fields and helped them bring back transplants. Seeds were collected, slips taken and rooted. Some crops failed but others flourished. New plants were added. The foreigners were glad to provide potatoes, which the Runa loved, and to share beets and even popcorn, which was an enormous hit, both as entertainment and as food. When Sofia wondered if this sharing of seeds and transplants from Earth might trigger some sort of ecological disaster, Marc said, "All the varieties I brought have very low volunteer-germination rates. If they or we stop taking care of the gardens, these plants will die off in a year."

Freed from the endless marching from home to naturally growing food sources, their diet supplemented by garden produce, the VaKashani and their neighbors grew visibly opulent. Fat levels rose. Hormone production kicked in at concentrations that brought on estrus, and life got a good deal more interesting in Kashan and the surrounding villages. Even if Supaari had not tipped Anne off to the general outlines of Runa sexuality, she'd have worked it out by observation alone that year: there was no real privacy in Runa life.

And the Runa, she discovered, were in fact quite curious about where little foreigners came from, so to speak. «Earth» was not the answer they were interested in. So, with sex and pregnancies and new households suddenly of universal interest, Anne explained certain aspects of human behavior, physiology and anatomy. This soon led to a new accuracy in the way Ruanja personal pronouns were applied to the foreigners.

And though single-irised eyes were affectionately averted and human commentary was thoughtfully circumspect in the sexually charged atmosphere of Kashan, there was no way for the courtship of Jimmy Quinn and Sofia Mendes to go unnoticed. The VaKashani were delighted by the couple. They showed this by being rowdy and lewd, making bawdy remarks that frequently went beyond the suggestive into the realm of the expository. Jimmy and Sofia took it all in the good-natured spirit with which it was given. Shyness was not a luxury they were vouchsafed. And to be honest, as friendship deepened and a love was at long last permitted to flourish, there was only one person around whom they felt shy. Nothing was ever spoken among the three of them; to speak would solidify truths that had been kept, at some cost to them all, insubstantial. Emilio did not join in the ribaldry or joke with them the way he might have with another couple. But now and then, when they returned together from a walk or looked up and saw him across the room, they would know that his eyes had been on them and they found in the still face and quiet gaze a benediction.

When at last it came, fully two months after Sofia was ready for it, Jimmy's proposal was typically comic and her response typically decisive. "Sofia," he said, "I am painfully aware of the fact that I am, for all practical purposes, the last man on Earth—"

"Yes," she said.

And so on the fifth of Stan'ja, approximately November 26, 2041, in the village of Kashan, Southern Province of Inbrokar, on the lavender and blue and green planet of Rakhat, James Connor Quinn and Sofia Rachel Mendes were married under a chuppah, the traditional open-sided canopy of Jewish weddings, decorated at its corners with streamers of yellow and amethyst, of green and aquamarine, of carnelian and lilac, scented with something like gardenia and something like lily.

The bride wore a simple dress Anne made from a silken Runa fabric that Supaari provided. Manuzhai made the circlet of ribbons and flowers Sofia wore around her head, with streamers of many colors woven into the crown, falling to the ground all around her. D.W., not much heavier now than Sofia and very frail, gave the bride away. George was the best man. Anne was supposed to be the matron of honor, but decided to cry instead. Askama was the flower girl, of course, and the VaKashani loved this element of the ritual, so close to their own aesthetic. Marc Robichaux officiated at the ecumenical ceremony, working some rather lovely Ruanja poetry into the Nuptial Mass. Anne knew that the husband would stomp on a glass at the end of a Jewish ceremony, but the closest she could come to that tradition was to suggest that Jimmy break a Runa perfume flask. Then D.W. said that in view of Sofia's dedication to the stuff, a coffee mug would be appropriately symbolic, so they used a pottery cup instead. And Marc ended the service with the Shehecheyanu, the Hebrew prayer for first fruits and new beginnings. Sofia stared, wide-eyed, when she recognized the French-accented words and then saw Marc concentrating on the lips of his language coach. When she turned to Emilio Sandoz, standing a little distance away, he smiled, and thus she received his wedding present.

There was a feast, with plenty of twigs and popcorn. And there were games and races, which had winners and losers but did not make anyone porai because there were no prizes. It was a good-hearted amalgam of Runa and human customs and cuisine. Afterward, Anne, who had done as much work on these arrangements as any Earthside mother of the bride, made it clear that Jimmy and Sofia were to be left strictly alone on their first night. Entering into the spirit of the thing, the VaKashani constructed a doorway for the apartment given to the new couple: a trellised screen of woven vines, decorated with flowers and ribbons. Escorted home, Jimmy and Sofia thanked everyone, laughing, for their very helpful instructions, and found themselves alone at last, the sounds of communal merriment receding and merging into somewhat more private celebrations as the third sun set.

Truths had been told, long before this night. In the delicious days of waiting that they gave themselves, as wedding plans went on around them, they spent hours in the shadowy filtered light of a hampiy shelter paved with cushions. There were many things to share: family legends, funny stories, simple biographical details. One afternoon Jimmy had lain next to Sofia, marveling at her small perfection and his good fortune. He had never assumed that she was coming to him an innocent and so, tracing the pure line of her profile with his finger, he looked down at her, his deep-set smiling eyes filled with erotic speculation, and asked in low tones of intimacy that left no doubt about his meaning, "What pleases you, Sofia?"

She burst into tears and said, "I don't know," for it had never occurred to her that anyone might ask such a thing. Startled, Jimmy kissed away salty tears, saying, "Then we'll just have to find that out together." But, puzzled by the strength of the reaction, he knew there was something behind this and looked at her, searching for it.

She had meant to keep this one region of her past behind its old defensive walls, but the last barrier between them came down. When he heard it all, Jimmy thought his heart would break for her but he only sat and held her, long arms and endless legs enfolding her like a nestling, and waited for her to quiet. Then he smiled into her eyes and asked, in the dry academic tones of an astronomer discussing a theoretical point with a colleague, "How long do you suppose I can go on loving you more every day?" And he devised for her a calculus of love, which approached infinity as a limit, and made her smile again.

So there were no more walls to be scaled, no more fortresses to defend by the fifth of Stan'ja, a month that marks the start of summer on Rakhat, when the nights are very short and full of stars and racing clouds and moons. But that first night was long enough for him to lead her in a private wedding dance, seeking the rhythm of her heart. And the moonlight, filtered through flowers and vines and streamers of color and fragrance, was very good for finding the way together to moments worthy of a Rakhati poet's song.

Later that summer, as rain fell, such a moment shimmered and paused on the brink, and then began the ancient dance of numbers: two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and a new life took root and began to grow. And thus the generations past were joined to the unknowable future.