The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  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.

  22

  NAPLES:

  JUNE 2060

  "SO THIS CHILD was assigned to learn your language and to teach you hers, is that correct?" Johannes Voelker asked.

  "Essentially. The Runa are a trading people who require many languages to do business. As among us, their children learn languages quickly and easily, so they take advantage of that, yes? Whenever a new trading partnership is formed, a child is raised jointly by its family and the foreign delegation, which also includes a child. It takes only a couple of years to establish fairly sophisticated communication. The language is then passed along within Runa lineages. There are stable relationships developed over generations with established trading partners."

  It was a gray windless day. They’d left the windows open to the June warmth and the steady sound of the rain, which matched the soft and steady narrative of Emilio Sandoz. Vincenzo Giuliani had changed the schedule so that the hearings took place in the afternoon, allowing Sandoz to sleep through the mornings if the nights had been difficult. It seemed to help.

  "And they imagined you to be a child with this function?" Johannes Voelker asked.

  "Yes."

  "Presumably because you were somewhat smaller than others in the party," Felipe Reyes supposed.

  "Yes. And because I carried on all the earliest attempts at communication, as such an interpreter would have. Actually, for a long time, only Mr. Quinn was accepted as an adult. He was about average height for a Runao."

  "And they were not frightened at the beginning? Surely they’d never seen anything like you before," Giuliani said. "I find that remarkable."

  "The Runa are very tolerant of novelty. And we were obviously not a threat to them physically. They assumed, evidently, that whatever we were, we had come to trade. They fit us into their worldview on that basis."

  "How old was the child Askama at the time of contact, would you estimate?" Voelker asked, coming back to the child. Sandoz did not stiffen, Giuliani noted. His voice remained, as it had throughout the session, unstressed and even.

  "Dr. Edwards thought at first that Askama was the equivalent of a human child at seven or eight years of age. Later on we decided that she was only about five. It is difficult to compare the species but it was our impression that Runa maturation rates are relatively accelerated."

  Voelker made a note of this response as Giuliani commented, "I was under the impression that intelligence was inversely correlated with rate of maturation."

  "Yes. Father Robichaux and Dr. Edwards discussed that. I think they decided that it was not a tight correlation, either between or within species. I may be remembering that wrong. In any case, the generalization may not hold in other biological systems."

  "What was your impression of the Runa’s intelligence in general?" Felipe asked. "Did you find the Runa to be our equals or of greater or lesser capacity?"

  There was a hesitation, for the first time that morning. "They are different," Sandoz said at last, moving his arms from the table to his lap. "It’s hard to say." He fell silent, clearly trying to settle this in his own mind. "No, I’m sorry. I can’t answer that question with any confidence. There is a wide range of variation in intelligence. As among us."

  "Dr. Sandoz," Johannes Voelker said, "what precisely was your relationship with Askama?"

  "Exasperating," Sandoz said promptly. That got a laugh, and Felipe Reyes realized it was the first sign of Emilio’s normal sense of humor he’d seen since arriving in Naples.

  Smiling thinly in spite of himself, Voelker said, "I don’t suppose you could expand upon that somewhat?"

  "She was my teacher and my pupil and a reluctant collaborator in my research. She was spunky and bright. Insistent, relentless and a huge pain in the neck. She drove me crazy. I lo
ved her without reservation."

  "And did this child love you?" Voelker asked in the silence that fell at Sandoz’s last statement. The man had, after all, admitted to killing Askama. John Candotti held his breath.

  "This is another difficult question, like ‘How intelligent are the Runa?’ " Sandoz said neutrally. "Did she love me? Not maturely. At least not in the beginning. She was a child, yes? She liked the magic tricks. I was the best toy she could imagine. She was pleased by the attention I showed her and liked the status of being a foreigner’s friend and she enjoyed ordering me around and correcting me and teaching me manners. Marc Robichaux believed that there was an element of imprinting—a biological factor in her craving to be with me all the time, but it was also her conscious choice. She could get angry with me and resentful when I refused to acquiesce to her demands, and that would upset everyone. But yes, I believe that she loved me."

  " ‘A reluctant collaborator’ in your research. How do you mean that?" Voelker asked. "Did you coerce her?"

  "No. I mean she was bored by it and became impatient with me when I persisted. I drove her crazy too," Sandoz admitted. "Do you understand the difference between being multilingual and being a linguist?"

  There was a murmur. They all recognized the words but no one had ever been called upon to define the distinction.

  "The ability to speak a language perfectly does not necessarily confer any linguistic understanding of it," Sandoz said, "just as one may play billiards well without any formal understanding of Newtonian physics, yes? My advanced training is in anthropological linguistics, so my purpose in working with Askama was not merely to be able to ask someone to pass the salt, so to speak, but to gain insight into her people’s underlying cultural assumptions and cognitive makeup."