The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  Jimmy had taken a couple of courses in Japanese culture and he tried to apply what he learned but even after working at the Arecibo dish for almost a year, he found it hard to think of the Japanese as wild gamblers. And yet, his professors insisted, their entire history proved they were. Time after time, the Japanese had risked everything on a titanic throw of the dice. The horrific consequences of that single mistake at Pearl Harbor had made them the world’s most calculating, meticulous and painstaking gamblers, but gamblers nonetheless. Westerners who understood this, one prof had commented in a wry aside, could occasionally propose a crap game and win.

  Jimmy cut himself when the idea came at last, and laughed out loud and danced a little while he dabbed at the blood. Masao Yanoguchi was not going to fire him, at least not right away. Peggy the Hun would not eviscerate him and might even give him some credit for brains. He might get Sofia Mendes as his vulture, and he thought Emilio would be pleased. And hell, now that he thought of it, he might even have a topic for a doctoral thesis.

  "You’ve done it again, Quinn," he crowed to his bloody reflection and finished up quickly in the bathroom, anxious to get to the dish.

  "COME IN, MR. Quinn." Masao Yanoguchi waved Jimmy through his open office door. "Please, have a seat."

  They each played the other’s game: Yanoguchi, the friendly American-style boss; Quinn, the proper Japanese employee, uncomfortable sitting in the presence of a superior, letting his nervousness show. They chatted for a few minutes about the World Cup game coming up, but eventually Jimmy came to the point.

  "Dr. Yanoguchi, I have been thinking about the AI program," Quinn began. "I know my job is pretty mechanical and I understand that it makes good business sense to automate what I do, so I’ve begun thinking about going back to school for a Ph.D., and it occurred to me that you and ISAS might be interested in the topic I hope to use for my thesis." Jimmy paused, brows up, looking for permission to continue. Yanoguchi nodded, apparently relieved that Quinn was not there to fight. Pleased with the sincerity of his own performance, Jimmy warmed to his topic. "Well, sir, I would like to attempt a little pilot project, a comparison of an AI astronomy program with the human subject it was based on. I’d like ISAS to use a first-rate AI analyst to develop the program. Then I’d do a side-by-side comparison of the program’s data handling with my own, for perhaps two years." Yanoguchi sat up a millimeter straighter. Jimmy smoothly amended his proposal. "Of course, a year or even six months might be enough, and then I could work up a grant proposal. I might be able to come back to work here, on grant money, later on."

  "Mr. Quinn," Yanoguchi said at last, "it could be argued that the results of such a comparison would be suspect because the subject held back critical information."

  "Yes, that’s true, sir. But that might be true of anyone who resented being the subject of an AI analysis, sir. I’m sorry, Dr. Yanoguchi, but it’s common knowledge that most people do hope the programs will fail. I think that the use of a really good AI analyst would mitigate the possibility that the subject is holding back. Plus, since I’d be using the data myself in my thesis research, I’d have a personal motive to make sure the results were reliable." Yanoguchi said nothing but he didn’t exactly frown, so Quinn continued. "It seems to me, sir, that it might be in ISAS’s interests to have some kind of hard comparative data, to judge each AI program, wouldn’t it? To see if a program misses things that humans pick up? And if that’s not so, then the Institute can go on using artificial intelligence to eliminate low-level jobs like mine, knowing that it’s truly as competent as the people it was based on. It’s just one more aspect of the system that could be nailed down properly, sir." Jimmy waited a few moments and then said thoughtfully, "Of course, it’s just a little pilot project. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll only have gambled six months’ extra salary for me. If it comes to something, it would reflect well on Arecibo …"

  And on Masao Yanoguchi. Who said nothing. Jimmy forged ahead.

  "If you have no objection, sir, I wonder if we could get Sofia Mendes to do the analysis. I’ve heard she’s very good and—"

  "Very expensive," Yanoguchi pointed out.

  "But I have a friend who knows her and he says she might be willing to do the project for the publicity. If her program beats me, her broker could use that to command higher fees. Maybe we could work something out with him. If she wins, ISAS could double the usual fee?"

  "And if she loses, the broker gets nothing?" suggested Masao Yanoguchi thoughtfully.

  It’s worth considering, Jimmy urged Yanoguchi mentally. Very little downside risk. Take a chance, he prayed. But Jimmy didn’t expect an answer and didn’t press for one. Yanoguchi would never say yes until he’d gotten a consensus about the project from everyone in ISAS and maybe even beyond the Institute. A lot of people had a lot riding on artificial intelligence. And that was the beauty of the thing: the longer the Japanese took to make a decision on this, the longer he had a job. And if they said yes, he’d be around for the months it took the vulture to pick his brains and then for at least another six months to do the comparison. If he beat the program, he’d be able to stay on, and if it was a near thing, maybe ISAS would at least change the policy so that there was always a test period after an AI analysis, which should make Peggy happy because it bought a little time for people, some of whom might beat their AI counterparts in a fair test. And if the program beat him, then maybe he really would go back to school …

  Masao Yanoguchi gazed at the open, innocent face and suddenly laughed. "Mr. Quinn," he murmured, not unkindly, "your subtlety is showing." Jimmy flushed, caught in the act. "Nevertheless, this is an interesting proposition," Yanoguchi said, standing up and walking Jimmy to the door. "Please put it in writing."

  5

  CLEVELAND, OHIO:

  AUGUST 2014–MAY 2015

  IF HIS RETURN from the Sudanese refugee station to the United States hadn’t been so disorienting, Emilio Sandoz might have handled the impact of his first meeting with Sofia Mendes a good deal better. As it was, he took the brunt of it while jet-lagged and culture-shocked, and it was several weeks before he could establish custody of his reactions to the woman.

  In the space of twenty hours, he had moved from a war zone in the Horn of Africa to the suburban campus of John Carroll University, set in the placid peace of a pretty neighborhood of old and well-kept houses, where the children screamed and ran but in play, laughing and robust, not stunned or desperate or starving or terrified. He was amazed at how shocking the children were to him. The gardens also startled him, on many levels—the soil, black as coffee grounds, the luxurious jumble of summer blossom and ornamental plants, the profligate use of rain and fertility …

  He might have wished for a few days off but arrangements had already been made. He was to meet Sofia Mendes on his second day back, at a campus restaurant that served Turkish coffee—a fuel that, he would later learn, she required at regular intervals. Emilio got to the coffee shop early the next morning and sat in the back, where he could watch the door, silently taking in the ripples of laughter and witty, empty conversation all around him, getting used to English again. Even if he hadn’t spent the past three years in the field and more than a decade before that studying for the priesthood, he would have felt a stranger among these students—the young men in brilliantly colored, intricately pleated coats that broadened shoulders and narrowed hips, the young women wasp-waisted and delicious in pale and shimmering fabrics the colors of peony blossoms and sherbet. He was fascinated by the beautiful grooming and attention to detail: the arrangement of hair, the delicacy of shoes, the perfection of cosmetics. And thought of shallow graves in the Sudan, and mastered the anger, knowing it was partly exhaustion.

  Through this garden of artificial delights and into his inclement mood, Sofia Mendes strode purposefully. Catching sight of her, knowing somehow that this was the woman he was waiting for, he recalled the words of a Madrid dance mistress describing what she looked for in an ideal Spanish danc
er. "Head up, a princely posture. The waist held high above the hips, the arms suavamente articuladas. The breasts," she said with absurd aptness that made him laugh, "like a bull’s horns but suave, no rígido." Mendes carried herself so well that he was surprised to find when he stood that she was hardly over five feet tall. Her black hair drawn back severely from her face in the traditional manner, she was dressed plainly in a red silk blouse and a black skirt. The contrast with the students around her was unavoidable.

  Brows up, she held out her hand to shake his briefly and then looked back toward the crowd she had just walked through. "As pretty as a vaseful of cut flowers," she remarked, accurate and cool.

  At a stroke, the vigor of the boys, the loveliness of the girls looked temporary. He could see which ones would age badly and which would soon be shapeless and how many would give up their extravagance and dreams of glory. And he was startled by the precision with which the image matched his mood, chilled by his own harshness, and hers.

  It was her last bit of small talk for many months. They met three mornings a week for what felt to Sandoz like a relentless interrogation. He found that he could stand only ninety minutes at a time; afterward, he was nearly ruined for the day and it was difficult to concentrate on the elementary Latin course and the graduate seminars in linguistics he was assigned to teach during his stay at John Carroll. She never wished him a good morning or engaged in any chitchat. She simply slid into the booth, opened her notebook and began questioning him about his steps in learning a language, about tricks he used, habits he’d formed, methods he’d developed almost instinctively, as well as the more formal and academic techniques he used to analyze and understand a language, on the fly, in the field. When he tried to leaven the sessions with jokes or asides or funny stories, she stared at him, unamused, until he gave up and answered her question.

  Courtesies provoked outright hostility. Once, at the very beginning, he rose as she sat down and replied to her first demand for information with an elaborate and ironic bow worthy of Cesar Romero. "Good morning, Señorita Mendes. How are you today? Are you enjoying the weather? Would you care for some pastry with your coffee?"

  She looked up at him, eyes opaque and narrowed, as he stood waiting for a slight unbending from her, a simple civil greeting. "The gentlemanly Spanish hidalgo act is tasteless," she told him quietly. She let the silence go on for a moment and then her eyes dropped to her notebook. "Let’s get on with it, shall we?"

  It didn’t take much of that to exorcize the Jungian vision of her as the ideal Spanish woman from his mind. By the end of the month, he was able to see her as an actual person and began trying to figure her out. English was not her first language, he was sure. Her grammar was too precise and her dentals were a bit damped, the sibilants a little drawn out. Despite her name and appearance, her accent was not Hispanic. Or Greek. Or French or Italian, or anything else he could identify. He put her single-mindedness down to the fact that she was paid on a fee-for-project basis: the faster she worked, the more she made. It was an assumption that appeared to be confirmed when she berated him once for being late.

  "Dr. Sandoz," she said. She never called him Father. "Your superiors are paying a great deal of money to have this analysis done. Do you find it amusing to waste their resources and my time?"

  The only occasion she said anything about herself was toward the end of a session that embarrassed him so thoroughly he even dreamed about it once, and awoke cringing at the memory. "Sometimes," he told her, leaning forward over the table, speaking without realizing how it would sound, "I begin with songs. They provide a sort of skeleton grammar for me to flesh out. Songs of longing for future tense, songs of regret for past tense, songs of love for the present."

  He blushed when he heard what he’d said, making it worse, but she took no offense; indeed, she seemed to miss any connection that might have been taken wrongly. Instead, she seemed struck by a coincidence and looked out the café window, her mouth open slightly. "Isn’t that interesting," she said, as though nothing else he’d told her so far had been, and continued thoughtfully, "I do the same thing. Have you noticed that lullabies nearly always use a lot of command form?"

  And the moment passed, for which Emilio Sandoz thanked God.

  IF THE SESSIONS with Mendes were draining and faintly depressing, he found balance in an extraordinary Latin 101 student. In her late fifties, fine white hair drawn into a neat French braid, Anne Edwards was compact, quick and intellectually fearless, with a lovely pealing laugh she made frequent use of in class.

  Two weeks into the course, Anne waited until the rest of the students cleared out of the room. Emilio, gathering his notes from the desktop, looked up at her expectantly.

  "Are you allowed out of your room at night?" she asked. "Or do the cute ones like you have a curfew until they’re senile?"

  He flicked the ash off an air cigar and waggled his eyebrows. "What do you have in mind?"

  "Well, I considered suggesting that we shatter our vows and run away to Mexico for a weekend of lust, but I’ve got homework," she said, shouting the last word, "because some sonofabitch Latin prof thinks we should learn ablative way too soon, in my humble opinion, so why don’t you just come over for dinner on Friday night?"

  Leaning back against his chair, he looked up at her with frank admiration. "Madam. How could I resist an invitation like that?" he asked. And leaning forward, "Will your husband be there?"

  "Yes, dammit, but he’s a very liberal and tolerant person," Anne assured him, grinning. "And he falls asleep early."

  THE EDWARDSES’ HOUSE was a square, sensible-looking structure, surrounded by a garden that, Emilio was delighted to see, mixed flowers with tomatoes and pumpkin vines, lettuces, carrot patches and pepper plants. Pulling off gardening gloves, George Edwards greeted him in the front yard and waved him in through the door. A good face, Emilio thought, full of humor and welcome. Anne’s age, with a full head of silver hair but with the alarming leanness one associated with chronic HIV or toxic hyperthyroidism, or aging runners. Running was the most likely explanation. The man looked very fit. Not, Emilio thought, smiling inwardly, the sort to fall asleep early.

  Anne was in the large, bright kitchen, working on dinner. Emilio recognized the smell instantly but it was a moment before he could put a name to it. When he did, he collapsed into a kitchen chair and moaned, "Díos mío, bacalaitos!"

  Anne laughed. "And asopao. With tostones. And for dessert—"

  "Forget the homework, dear lady. Run away with me," Emilio pleaded.

  "Tembleque!" she announced, triumphant, laughing but happy that she’d pleased a guest. "A Puerto Rican friend of mine helped with the menu. There’s a wonderful colmado on the west side. You can get yautía, batatas, yuca, amarillos—you name it."

  "You are probably unaware," Emilio said, face sincere, eyes glowing, "that there was a seventeenth-century Puerto Rican heretic who claimed that Jesus used the smell of bacalaitos to raise Lazarus from the dead. The bishop had him burned at the stake, but they waited until after dinner and he died a happy man."

  George, laughing, handed Sandoz and Anne frosty shallow-bowled glasses, froth floating on creamy liquid. "Bacardi añejo," Sandoz breathed, reverent. George raised his glass and they toasted Puerto Rico.

  "So," Anne said in a serious tone, delicate brows raised in polite interest, the soul of propriety but about to take a sip of her drink. "What’s celibacy like?"

  "It’s a bitch," Emilio said with prompt honesty, and Anne exploded. He handed her a napkin to wipe her nose and, without waiting for her to recover, stood and created an earnest face to address a phantom crowd at an old-time Twelve Step meeting. "Hello. My name is Emilio and though I can’t remember it, my unempowered inner child might have been a codependent sex addict, so I rely on abstinence and put my trust in a Higher Power. You’re dripping."

  "I am a highly skilled anatomist," Anne declared with starchy dignity, dabbing at her blouse with the napkin, "and I can explain the exact me
chanism by which one blows a drink out one’s nose."

  "Don’t call her bluff," George warned him. "She can do it. Have you ever thought about a Twelve Step program for people who talk too much? You could call it On and On Anon."

  "Oh, God," Anne groaned. "The old ones are the best ones."

  "Jokes or husbands?" Emilio asked innocently.

  And so the evening went.

  When he next showed up for dinner, Anne met him at the door, put her hands on both sides of his face, rose on tiptoe and planted a chaste kiss on his forehead. "The first time you’re here, you are a guest," she informed him, looking into his eyes. "After that, my darling, you’re family. Get your own damned beer."

  He took the long enjoyable walk to the Edwardses’ house at least once a week after that. Sometimes he was the only guest. Often there were others: students, friends, neighbors, interesting strangers Anne or George had met and brought home. The conversation, about politics and religion and baseball and the wars in Kenya and Central Asia and whatever else caught Anne’s interest, was raucous and funny, and the evenings ended with people calling out last jokes as they walked off into the night. The house became his cave—a home where a Jesuit was welcome and relaxed and off-duty, where he could soak up energy instead of being drained of it. It was the first real home Emilio Sandoz had ever had.

  Sitting in their screened-in back porch, sipping drinks in the dusk, he learned that George was an engineer whose last job had involved life-support systems for underwater mining operations but whose career had spanned the technological distance from wooden slide rules to ILIAC IV and FORTRAN to neural nets, photonics and nanomachines. New to retirement, George had spent the early weeks of freedom cutting a swath through the old house, catching up on every small repair, taking curatorial pride in the smoothly working wooden window casings, the tuck-pointed brickwork, the tidiness of the workroom. He read stacks of books, eating them like popcorn. He enlarged the garden, built an arbor, organized the garage. He sank into pillowy contentment. He was bored brainless.