The Sparrow

31 NAPLES: AUGUST 2060

It was a desiccated version of Sofia's story that the Father General and his colleagues heard from Emilio, but they had Marc Robichaux's report from that night and from the days that followed.

"The VaKashani were kind," Sandoz told them. "When they returned and found out what had happened, they made certain no one was left alone. It was, I believe, in part a desire to comfort us but I think they were concerned that the VaHaptaa hunter who had taken Anne and D.W. was still in the region, looking for more easy prey. They were afraid for their children, naturally, but also for us because we obviously did not know how to take care of ourselves. And we had attracted trouble."

The headaches were very bad, clusters of them coming only hours apart, crushing thought and prayer, pressing even grief out of his mind. The Runa expected emotional distress to cause illness, but they were concerned that they could find no way to compensate him. Askama would lie down next to him in the dark, waiting it out with him, and he would awaken to find her eyes on him, searching for signs that he was better. She was older, more mature by then. "Meelo," she said in English one morning, "can you not be glad again? I am very worried you might die." It was a turning point, a lifeline he was able to grasp, and he thanked God for it. He didn't want to frighten her.

"Father Robichaux reported that there were a lot of babies at that time," John said. It seemed to him, reading the reports, that these births might have provided some sense of renewal. Indeed, Robichaux had felt this, marveling that he had forgotten "what a joy a new child can be, what a simple pleasure it is to have a baby's damp head on one's shoulder." In the last report Robichaux filed, about two weeks after the deaths of Anne Edwards and D. W. Yarbrough, Marc wrote that George Edwards had been greatly heartened by the infants placed in his arms, the press of new life around him. The Quinns, too, were awaiting a birth.

But at John's words, Emilio's face took on the careful neutral look that now told them all he was working hard. "Yes. There were a lot of babies." He sat very still but looked steadily at Johannes Voelker. "It was the gardens."

Knowing that he was being addressed directly for some reason but unable to see why, Voelker shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't follow."

"The mistake. What you've been waiting for. The fatal error."

Voelker flushed and glanced at the Father General, who remained impassive, and then looked back at Sandoz. "I deserved that, I suppose." Sandoz waited. "I deserved that," Voelker repeated, without qualification.

"We had all the information, really," Emilio said. "It was all there. We just didn't understand. I think perhaps that even if we had been told directly, we would not have understood."

They listened to the clock ticking and watched him, not sure if he'd go on or leave. Then Sandoz came back to the room from where he had been and began to speak again.

They heard the singing first. Martial and strongly measured. Snatches of it, from a distance, carried on the wind. The VaKashani stirred and gathered themselves, and moved up onto the plain to watch the patrol approach. Why hadn't they stayed in the apartments? Why hadn't they run? They might have hidden the babies, he thought later. But then again, they'd have laid down a trail that any half-competent predator could have followed. What would have been the point? So they circled—the infants, the children, the fathers in the center—and waited on the plain for the patrol to arrive.

Later on, when he'd lived in Gayjur for a while, he understood better the limitations of village Runa; it was incomprehensible at the time. They gave the babies up. They must have known at some level that they would not be allowed to keep them, but the juices of life had risen in them and they'd chosen their own mates and nature, unnaturally aided by the foreigners' gardening with its richer food close by for the eating, had taken its course.

"They breed to their feed, you see," Sandoz told the others. "I realized this later, and Supaari confirmed it. The system is balanced so that the Runa are ordinarily untroubled by sexual desire. They have a family life, but they don't breed unless the Jana'ata want them to. Normally, their fat levels stay low. They travel out to naturally growing resources. It costs energy to do this, yes? The gardens upset the balance." He looked from face to face, to see if they understood. "It's difficult to take it in, isn't it. You see, the Jana'ata don't keep Runa in stockyards or enslave them. The Runa work within the Jana'ata culture because they want to. They are bred to it, and it is normal for them. When a village corporate account reaches a certain level, they are provided with extra food, extra calories, and this brings the females into estrus."

Suddenly, a phrase from a report came back to Giuliani. "Passive voice," he said. "I wondered about it when I read it. Dr. Edwards said their mates were chosen using criteria other than those used for choosing spouses."

"Yes. Subtle, isn't it. Their mates were chosen for them: by Jana'ata geneticists. The Runa select anyone they like to marry but they are bred according to the standards of the Jana'ata." He laughed, but it was not a good sound. "It is, when you think about it, quite a humane system, compared to the way we breed meat animals."

Felipe Reyes blanched and breathed, "Oh, my God."

"Yes. You see it now, don't you?" Sandoz looked at Voelker, who had not yet realized. Then Voelker's eyes closed. "You see it now," Sandoz repeated, watching Voelker react. "The standards in the city, for specialists, are very high. But nothing is wasted. If the result of a mating is not up to standard, the offspring is removed as soon as possible, before an attachment can be formed. A sort of veal, one might say." Johannes Voelker looked as though he might be sick. "The village Runa are in some ways the most fortunate. They gather food and fibers and other plant products, very much as they might have without Jana'ata interference in their lives. Their breeding is strictly controlled, but they are not preyed on as they were in prehistory, except for the occasional VaHaptaa poacher, who still exploits the Runa in the old way, as free-range food. Supaari told us that. When was it? About two days after Anne and D.W. were killed. I myself used the word, poacher. I simply didn't realize that it implied the existence of legal use of the meat."

"It wouldn't have made any difference, Emilio," John said.

Sandoz stood suddenly and began to pace. "No. It wouldn't have. I understand that, John. It was already too late. The gardens had been planted. The babies had been conceived. Everywhere. All over Inbrokar. Even if I had understood the day Supaari told us, it wouldn't have made any difference." He came to rest in front of Voelker. "We asked permission. We considered the ecological impact. We simply wanted to feed ourselves, not to be a burden on the village." He stopped and then, rigorously honest, added, "And we wanted something familiar to eat. No one saw any harm in it. Not even Supaari. But he was a carnivore! He thought the garden was ornamental. It never occurred to him that we would grow food."

The Father General sat back in his chair. "Tell us what happened."

Emilio stood still and looked at Giuliani for a long time, as though confused. Then he told them.

The Jana'ata officer was evidently aware of the unauthorized breeding and ordered the Runa to bring the babies forward. This was done with near silence, only some of the older children like Askama keening. The humans had been concealed in the center of the crowd. They might have escaped detection if Sofia had not gone forward, Sandoz thought. Or perhaps not. Their scent might well have been picked up within moments even if they hadn't called attention to themselves.

"We had no idea what was going to happen. We just went up to the plain because everyone else did," Sandoz said. "Marc was the only one of us who'd seen any Jana'ata besides Supaari, and he was very uneasy about this patrol. The VaKashani asked us to stay in the center and keep quiet, and Marc thought this was correct. He was very agitated, yes? He told me he'd seen something in the city but he couldn't be sure he'd understood it. Manuzhai told us to be quiet, so I never found out what he meant. All I knew was that Marc was frightened, but the Runa seemed to be taking the situation fairly calmly. Then the patrol began to kill the babies."

Emilio sat down and put his head in his hands. Brother Edward went to the lavatory for the Prograine, but Sandoz was talking again when Behr came back into the office, and he ignored the bottle of pills Ed put next to him. "There is a phrase in Hebrew," he was telling them. "Eshet chayil: woman of valor. Sofia realized what was happening before the rest of us."

"And she resisted," Giuliani said, realizing now how violence had become linked with the Jesuit party.

"Yes. I heard her say it first, but then it was picked up by the VaKashani and became a sort of chant: 'We are many. They are few.' She said this and then she walked forward." He saw her at night, in the dreams: head up, a princely posture. "She lifted one of the babies from the ground. I think the Jana'ata commander was so astonished by her existence that he simply couldn't move at first. But then the whole village surged forward to retrieve the children, and when the Runa moved, the patrol began to react very quickly." He sat, breathing deeply, eyes wide, staring at the table. "It was a bloodbath," he said finally.

Voelker leaned forward. "Perhaps you would like to stop now?"

"No. No. I need to finish this." Emilio's head lifted and he looked at the bottle of Prograine but did not touch it. "The patrol, I think, was out of control for a time. I believe it was the combination of shock over our presence and outrage that the Runa had moved against them. And what Sofia said was terrifying to them, yes? You must understand that the Jana'ata also strictly limit their numbers to those that can be sustained by this system of breeding. Their population structure is almost exactly that of a predator species in the wild, about four percent of the prey population. Supaari explained this to me. So to hear the Runa chanting, 'We are many. They are few'—this must have been nightmarish for them."

"I can't believe you're defending them," Felipe said, aghast. There was a burst of talk, argument about the Stockholm syndrome. Emilio put his hands over his head while it went on. Suddenly he brought his fists down to the table with soft control, careful not to damage the braces, and said with quiet precision, "If you keep up this noise, I will have to quit."

They fell silent then, and he pulled in a careful breath. "I am not defending them. I am trying to explain to you what happened and why. But it is their society, and they pay their own price for their way of life." He looked, hard-eyed, at Reyes and demanded, "What is the population of Earth now, Felipe? Fourteen, fifteen billion?"

"Almost sixteen," Felipe said quietly.

"There are no beggars on Rakhat. There is no unemployment. There is no overcrowding. No starvation. No environmental degradation. There is no genetic disease. The elderly do not suffer decline. Those with terminal illness do not linger. They pay a terrible price for this sys­tem, but we too pay, Felipe, and the coin we use is the suffering of children. How many kids starved to death this afternoon, while we sat here? Just because their corpses aren't eaten doesn't make our species any more moral!"

Giuliani let this outburst burn itself out. When Sandoz got ahold of himself again, the Father General repeated, "Tell us what happened."

Emilio looked at him, as though lost, but finally realized that he had gone off track. "I believe the patrol meant only to kill the infants, origi­nally. Supaari told me later that if the villagers bred a second time without permission, it would have been a capital offense for the females who'd given birth. But because the Runa resisted, the patrol overreacted. They clearly meant to crush the riot."

"How many were killed?" Giuliani asked levelly.

"I don't know. Perhaps a third of the VaKashani. Maybe more." He looked away. "And Sofia. And Jimmy. And George." Emilio finally gave in and reached for the Prograine. Too late, most likely, for it to do any good. They watched him as he washed down two of the tablets and drained the glass of water.

"And where were you?" Giuliani asked.

"Toward the center of the crowd. Askama was very frightened. When the killing started, Manuzhai and I were trying to shield her with our bodies. Chaypas was killed, defending us."

"And Father Robichaux?"

"He ran." Sandoz looked at Felipe and said softly, "I'm not defending him either, but there wasn't anything he could have done. We were the size of half-grown children and it was utter chaos. There was no chivalry. Anyone who came within reach was cut down." He was almost pleading with them to understand. "We were completely unprepared for this! Supaari was so different. Try to imagine what it was like!"

"The Jana'ata military is the martial arm of a sentient predatory species," Voelker said quietly. "And they were defending civilization as they know it. It must have been terrifying."

"Yes." It was getting harder. "I've got to have the lights out." Voelker got up to take care of it for him. Then he heard the Father General's voice again.

"Tell us."

"I was taken prisoner immediately." He could hear Askama, screaming his name. "Marc was hunted down without difficulty. We were taken with the Jana'ata patrol. From village to village. I don't think they necessarily understood that we were responsible for the gardens. They didn't know what to make of us. They had a job to do, and they took us along. I believe they meant eventually to bring us to the city of Inbrokar, to the capital. In every village along the route, the gardens were burned and there was a slaughter of innocents. I've got to finish this." He stopped, concentrated on keeping his breathing steady. "Marc—you understand that the gardens were Marc's, yes? To witness this slaughter—" A few more minutes. "The Jana'ata eat only once a day. We were offered food each morning and then force-marched for many hours. Marc refused to eat. I tried to persuade him, but he would only say something in French. A few words."

He took his hands away from his head and tried to look at them. "I am illiterate in many languages," he told them. "I have learned to speak Arabic and Amharic and K'San, but not to read them. French is the only language I read but do not speak. It is very different in its spoken form, yes?" The light was too much. He closed his eyes again. "When I tried to make Marc eat, he would say, 'Ill son, less and sawn.' Something like that. I should have recognized it…"

"Us sont les innocents," It was Giuliani's voice. "It is hard to think the unthinkable. They were offering you the meat of the innocents."

Emilio was trembling badly now. "Yes. Later, I myself saw what—Nothing was wasted. Ed?" He managed to hold on until Brother Edward got him to the lavatory, and when the sickness passed, Ed replaced the vomited Prograine with an injected dose. He had no idea who took him to his room but before he fell asleep, he said, "I dream of it sometimes."

Johannes Voelker, the beads of a rosary passing through his fingers, was with him when he awoke. "I am sorry," he said.

It was two days before Sandoz was able to continue. "You told us that you believed you were being brought by the military to the capital city," Giuliani began. "I take it you did not reach—" He consulted his notes. "Inbrokar."

"No. Supaari told me later that he arrived at Kashan about two days after the massacre. He attended to matters there and then came af­ter Marc and me. He had to guess at the route, I suppose. I think we were on the march for perhaps two weeks before he caught up with us. This period of time was very confused. And we were not functioning well. I tried to get Marc to eat. I—He was not able to do this. After a while I gave up."

"But you ate the meat," John said. "After you knew."

"Yes." Emilio stopped, searching for some way to explain. "There was a time in the British military when it was possible to punish a man with as many as eight hundred lashes. Have you read of such things? Some men actually survived this, and they reported that after a time, they no longer felt any pain. They felt only a sort of hammering. It was like that, in my soul. Do you understand? To watch the children killed, to eat the meat. After a time, it felt only like hammering." He shrugged. They were trying, but he knew they couldn't imagine it. "Anyway, Supaari caught up to the patrol. By the time he found us, Marc was very weak. I think the commander would have killed him soon. He was slowing them up." There had been no emotion when he saw Supaari. He and Marc simply sat on the ground, too tired to think or hope or pray. Even with the meat, he was exhausted. He knew he couldn't keep Marc on his feet much longer, that he was close to collapse himself. "I think Supaari bribed the commander. There was a long discussion. It was in a language I didn't know."

"So Supaari took you back to Kashan?" John prompted, when the silence went on too long.

Sandoz roused himself. "No. I don't know that we'd have been welcome there. He took us to Gayjur. To his own compound. I never saw Kashan again."

"Based on Father Robichaux's descriptions of his time in that city, you would have been relatively safe there, as long as you kept out of sight," the Father General said. "Or perhaps I am wrong?"

"I believe Supaari originally meant it to be safe for us. He may not have been clear about his own motives. He felt some duty toward us, perhaps. He was fond of Anne, genuinely, I believe. And we had made him a very wealthy man. He was quite empathetic for a Jana'ata. I think he could imagine to some extent what it might be like, to be alone and unsupported."

Vincenzo Giuliani became very still, but Sandoz did not notice. I deserved that, Giuliani thought, echoing Johannes Voelker's remark, even if it wasn't intentional.

"In any case," Sandoz was saying, "he evidently decided to ransom us and brought us to his home and took responsibility for us. He made us part of his household."

"That was when he took you to see the ivy, the sta'aka?" John asked.

"Yes." For once, he did not have to explain. Sitting impassively, his mind drifted as John Candotti told the others about the hasta'akala. About the way the hands were made to look like the trailing branches of ivy, which grows on stronger plants, to symbolize and enforce dependence. John now realized why Marc died. "What if Marc was developing scurvy?" he'd asked Sandoz. "Was there something you ate that Marc didn't?" It wasn't scurvy that killed Marc Robichaux, it was starvation and anemia. And, quite possibly, despair.

He realized later that he'd gone into clinical shock about halfway through the destruction of his left hand. Over the next few days, he would come to himself at intervals, damp and cold and suffering from a thirst unlike anything he'd experienced previously. It seemed impossible to draw enough breath and when he slept, there were dreams of suffocation or drowning. Sometimes, dreaming, he would reach for something, trying to pull himself to air, and his hands would spasm as a dog's legs will twitch during dreams of running, and he would awaken screaming as the involuntary motion sent thin bolts of phosphorescent pain up the long nerves of his arms.

For a time, the heavy immobility of bloodlessness kept him from looking at what had been done. His hands felt clubbed, swollen and throbbing, but he could not lift his head to see them. Periodically, someone would come and exercise his fingers, stretching them flat. He had no idea why this was done. He knew only that the stretching was agony and, sobbing, begged for it to stop. His pleas were in Spanish and therefore unintelligible, but it wouldn't have mattered if he had spoken a pure and perfect High K'San. They believed it was necessary to prevent contractures from spoiling the line of his fingers' fall from the wrist. So they let him scream.

As his body slowly replaced the blood he'd lost, he was able to move, but there was no profit in it. The scabs were forming then and the itching that heralded healing maddened him. They tied him down to keep him from tearing at the bandages with his teeth, frantic and weep­ing with misery. His struggles against the binding may well have prevented blood clots from forming in his legs and breaking loose to kill him with stroke or heart attack. And, God help him, he had eaten the meat on the long march from Kashan and so had undergone the hasta'akala when decently nourished. These things, for good or ill, probably saved his life.

His first sentence in Ruanja was a request to know Marc's status. "That one is not strong," he was told, but he was too exhausted from the effort of asking to hear the answer and slept dreamlessly for once.

When next he woke, his head was clear and he was alone, unbound, in a sunlit room. With great effort, he got himself to a sitting position and looked at his hands for the first time. He had nothing left to react with, too weak even to wonder why it had been done.

He was still sitting, hunched and pallid and staring at nothing, when one of the Runa servants came in. "Someone's heart will sicken if he does not see Marc," he said as firmly as he could.

Like twin infants put in different rooms to keep them from waking each other up, the two foreigners had been separated. The Runa knew that the sheer physical stamina evidenced by screaming meant that the smaller of the two would likely survive. They had hope of the quiet one but not much, and took him away to keep his strength from being sapped by the other's constant waking. "That one is sleeping," Awijan told Sandoz. "Someone will bring you to him when he wakes."

Two days later, he sat again in wait for her, determined now to go to Marc no matter what. "Someone's heart will stop if he does not see Marc," he insisted, and stood, moving toward the door on thin legs empty of bone. The Runao caught him as he fell and, muttering, carried him through the compound to the room where Marc was sleeping.

The stink of blood was everywhere and Marc was the color of rain. Emilio sat on the edge of the sleeping nest, his own ruined hands in his lap, and called Robichaux's name. Marc's eyes opened, and there was a glimmer of recognition.

He had no clue to what Marc said during those last hours. In Latin, he asked Marc if he wished to confess. There was more whispered French. When it stopped, Emilio said the absolution. Marc slept then and he did as well, sitting on the floor next to the bed, his head resting next to Marc's right hand, still seeping blood. Sometime that night, he felt something brush his hair and heard someone say, "Deus vult." It might have been a dream.

In the morning, when the sunlight hit his eyes, he awoke, stiff and wretched. Rousing himself, he left the room and tried to get a Runab to call a healer or to put pressure on the oozing wounds between Marc's fingers. Awijan only looked at him blankly. Later, he wondered if he'd remembered to speak Ruanja. Maybe he'd used Spanish again. He would never be sure.

Marc Robichaux died about two hours later without regaining consciousness.

"Father Robichaux was in poor physical condition when this procedure took place," John was saying, "and did not survive it."

Emilio looked up and saw that everyone was staring at his hands. He put them in his lap.

"It must have been very difficult," the Father General said.

"Yes."

"And then you were alone."

"Oh, no," Emilio said softly. "Oh, no. I believed that God was with me." He said this with great sincerity and because of that, it was impossible to know if he was serious or if this was mockery. He sat and looked into Vincenzo Giuliani's eyes. "Do you believe that? Was God with me?" He looked around at each of them: John Candotti, Felipe Reyes, Johannes Voelker, Edward Behr, his eyes coming to rest again on Giuliani, who found it impossible to speak.

Sandoz rose and went to the door, opening it. Then he paused, struck by a thought. "Not comedy. Not tragedy." Then he laughed, a feral sound, devoid of humor. "Perhaps farce?" he suggested. And then he left.