The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

  In all their months together, Marc had kept his distance from Sofia Mendes. He found her rather cold, disturbingly self-sufficient, almost unfeminine, but her physical beauty sometimes took his breath away, and he had never permitted himself to draw her, to feel the shape of her with his hands, even on paper at a chaste distance.

  Now he knelt at her side. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, he thought, and with as much detachment as he could muster, still badly shaken himself, searched along her arms and legs for breaks and cuts. Her torso was undoubtedly as bruised as his own but, for many reasons, he simply could not bring himself to determine if she had ribs broken or abdominal injuries. There wasn’t anything he could do for such hurts anyway. So he laid out one blanket, moved her onto it and then wrapped her securely in the other before finding his way to the creek for a container of water.

  He returned and dampened a clean cloth from the first-aid kit to wipe the dried and fresh blood from her face. He found the oozing source: her scalp was gashed. Fighting nausea at the sight of all the blood, Marc forced himself to feel along the edges of the cut. He couldn’t be sure but it seemed that there was no depression in the skull itself. Concentrating manfully on the task, he didn’t realize her eyes had opened until he heard her say, "If you’ve baptized me, you’re in a lot of trouble, Robichaux."

  "Mon Dieu!" he shouted, falling back from her, tipping over the bucket of water, so shocked that the cloth flew out of his hand.

  For several minutes, Sofia was treated to an impressive display of agitated Gallic emotion. Her French was academic and Robichaux’s dialect was almost incomprehensible to her even when he had not been scared senseless. Nevertheless, she understood quite clearly that he was veering wildly between relief and anger. "I’m sorry I frightened you," she said when he started to slow down.

  He held up a hand, swallowing, and shook his head, still breathing double time. "De rien." It was a moment more before he could produce English. "I beg you, mademoiselle. Do not ever do that to me again."

  "I’ll try not to, but I doubt that the situation is likely to recur," she said dryly. "Am I damaged? Are you?"

  "As far as I have been able to determine, we are bruised and cut but not anywhere broken. How do you feel, mademoiselle?" Marc pulled up his shirt briefly to let her see the imprint of the belts. "We were thrown forward with a great deal of force. Is it possible that your ribs are broken?"

  She moved under the blanket and he saw her face take on an unusual self-absorbed look. "I’m certainly very sore," she admitted. "And I have quite a headache. But I think that’s all."

  Marc waved a hand limply at the wreckage. "We are both either beloved of God or very lucky."

  She rose a little and looked at what was left of the Ultra-Light. "God evidently doesn’t love small airplanes. On the other hand, D. W. Yarbrough does. He is going to be very angry about this." Marc rolled his eyes in agreement. Sofia stared at the mess and realized that the destruction of the plane had saved their lives; its framework was designed to go to pieces and absorb the momentum of a crash. She lay back, a little dizzy, and began to calculate the minimum number of hours since they’d gone down. "Marc, does the radio still work? The others must be worried."

  He put a palm to his forehead and, muttering in French, went to the remains of their plane, where he began rummaging inefficiently through the ruins. The wind was picking up now, and shreds of polymer film flapped and snapped in the stiffening breeze.

  "Robichaux, forget it!" Sofia called. "There’s a transceiver in the lander." She sat up with great care, listening to her body. Everything moaned but nothing screamed. Moving the blanket off herself, she pulled the neck of her shirt forward and peered downward. "Very colorful," she remarked and added brightly, "We have matching chests."

  "The topography differs considerably," the priest said with a ghost of humor. He came back and sat a little abruptly next to her on the ground, putting his head down again. After a few moments, Marc looked up. "I speak, of course, from inference, not direct observation."

  "Marc," she said wryly, "if we are ever in another plane crash together, please feel free to make sure my rib cage is not crushed. Modesty is hardly of paramount importance during medical emergencies." He might have blushed. It was hard to tell in the orange glow of the camplight. There was a roll of thunder and Sofia looked around at the trees flexing in the wind. "We should get inside the lander."

  They picked up the blankets and first-aid kit and, using the camplight to find their way, climbed achingly through the portside cargo door. The wind was coming from starboard, so they left the door open and watched the lightning play. The storm was, at the beginning, very violent but soon settled into a steady downpour, loud against the skin of the lander but somehow comforting.

  "So," Sofia said, when the noise abated somewhat, "did you?"

  "Pardon?" He seemed taken aback by the question.

  "Did you baptize me?"

  "Oh," he said, and then, rather indignantly, "no, of course not."

  "I’m glad to hear it," Sofia said, but she was puzzled. If it had been Sandoz, she’d have been willing to joke with him. Some missionary you are, she’d have said, trusting his sense of irony. She was less sure of how to treat Marc, who in any case seemed quite unnerved by the accident. She herself felt remarkably cheerful, on the whole. "Shouldn’t you have?"

  "Absolutely not. It would have been completely unethical."

  He seemed better, more focused, when talking, so she decided to keep the conversation going. "But if I had been dying, would it not have been your duty to save my soul?"

  "This is not the seventeenth century, mademoiselle. We do not go about snatching the souls of dying heathens from perdition," he said huffily, but he continued more equably. "If you had earlier indicated that you sincerely desired to be baptized but had not yet taken instruction in the Faith, I would have baptized you, yes, out of respect for your intention. Or if you had regained consciousness and requested it, I would have complied with your wish. But without your permission? Without a prior statement of intent? Never."

  He was still a little upset but felt steadier now and pulled himself to his feet slowly, making small noises. Standing at a console, he called up a photographic map of the region between the forest camp and the village of Kashan. "It’s going to be a long walk home."

  He turned at the sound of her husky laugh. Tinted by half-washed blood and its bruises growing more colorful hourly, the beautiful Sephardic face remained cool and composed, but the eyes smiled as Sofia Mendes looked around her. "Why walk," she asked, arched brows high, "when we can fly?"

  THEY SLEPT THEN and awoke late, tight-muscled and sore, but heartened by the poststorm sunlight and by their survival. They made a simple breakfast from the stock in the lander and Sofia reacquainted herself with the plane, going through the exercise of takeoff and landing on the simulator. Marc occupied himself with a brief survey of the forest life-forms he’d studied during their first weeks on Rakhat, taking notes on what might be seasonal changes. And he went to the grave of Alan Pace, neatened it, and prayed for a while.

  At midmorning, Sofia climbed stiffly out of the lander and walked over. "We should be ready to go in about two hours."

  Marc suddenly straightened. It was a mistake and he groaned, but then he asked, "Have you contacted the others yet?"

  "Oh, my God! They’ve probably given us up for dead by now," Sofia cried, appalled. "I meant to raise them last night. It slipped my mind entirely. Oh, Marc, they must be frantic!"

  Marc had never before seen her in the least flustered. It humanized her and, for the first time, he decided that he liked her very much. "Sofia," he said, mimicking her own wry tone of the previous night, "next time we are in a plane crash together, I’m sure you will remember to radio in news of our survival. We are, after all, amateurs at this sort of thing. A few mistakes are to be expected."

  "I may have been more shaken than I realized." She shook her head. "Come on. Better late than never.
"

  They went to the lander and tried to contact Kashan but got only dead air. "Blackout," Sofia said disgustedly. It was one of those irritating hiatuses in satellite relay coverage. "Four hours before we get a carrier signal back."

  "Ah, well, we shall be home soon, like ones arisen from the dead!" Marc said gaily. Then he added conspiratorially, "Perhaps in his surprise, the Father Superior won’t notice that we’ve smashed his little airplane to bits."

  Sending Marc back to his plants, Sofia began a rigorous preflight inspection. There were a hundred potential hazards: little green guy nests in the engines, Richard Nixons roosting in the undercarriage, bugger swarms in the electronics boxes. When at last she was as certain as she could be that the lander was safe to fly, she went aft to the cargo bay and called Robichaux over. "I’ll be doing a test startup and then I’ll take off for a few practice maneuvers. Would you like to come for the ride or have you had enough excitement for the week?"

  "I believe I should prefer to spend the time collecting samples."

  If it had been Sandoz, she’d have said, No guts. She smiled at Marc. "I’ll be back in half an hour."

  He helped her fasten down the bay door and then moved well back to the edge of the forest, out of range of the engine blast. When he turned, he could see her through the cockpit window, wincing as she tightened the straps over a body as sore as his own. She looked at him then, and he put his hands together and raised them over his head in a painful good luck gesture. She nodded, and started the ignition countdown.

  TO AN EX-COMBAT pilot like D. W. Yarbrough, the words "missing in action" always brought a hollow-bellied horror. Planes went down and you didn’t know where or why. You knew the odds, but you didn’t know the truth. And your next move was always awful with finely calculated risk. Did you send others into danger in hope of an unlikely rescue or did you accept the reality of casualties? There was a price, either way.

  D.W. was not one to flagellate himself with knotted cords of regret and hindsight. Nevertheless, he wished with all his heart that he had not yielded to the pressure to let Sofia and Marc go. He should have waited and made the flight himself when he felt better.

  As the hours dragged by with no word from them, D.W. had only that coldest of comforts: it had seemed like a good idea at the time. His best guess was that they’d crashed at the lander site. They might have survived, might be too hurt to move. It would take more than a week’s march through unknown terrain to reach them, dead or alive. There was no good solution to this problem. He knew he wasn’t well enough to make the trek on foot himself. Anne would probably be needed, but he hesitated about sending her overland. Emilio was a good medic and tough enough but small. Better to send Jimmy, who was almost as well trained in first aid as Emilio. If Marc or Sofia survived the seven or eight days it would take to reach them, they’d probably live for one more without expert treatment. So, it would have to be Jimmy, who was big, and George, who was tough and had flown the lander successfully on their last trip to the asteroid. He’d have George pilot the survivors straight to the Stella Maris, leave Jimmy with them, and refuel. Then George could come back down at Kashan to ferry Anne up. It would eat into their freedom of movement. They’d be down to three flights by then, but there wasn’t any other way.

  Shit, he thought. If the survivors were badly hurt, they might be worse off in zero G, if either of them took ill with space sickness. D.W. sighed and was about to consult Anne on the vagaries of the business when he heard a surprising roll of thunder. Usually at this point in the storms, all they heard was the steady drumming of rain on the flagstones of the terraces and the muted roar of the river below them, rising and roiling with runoff.

  "That’s the lander," Emilio said.

  Wishful thinking, was D.W.’s first response. Then his heart lurched as he realized Emilio might be right. He stood and went outside, cold to the bone. "My God," he prayed, searching the sky, "not the lander. Please: not the lander." He listened closely and, in an agony of ambivalence, recognized the engine note.

  The others surrounded D.W. now, yelling with excitement and joy. He followed them up the slick stone walkways, Jimmy taking the cliff at a lope, George running behind Jim. D.W. listened, dying a little, to a jubilant Emilio shouting, "I told you so" and "Oh, ye of little faith!" at a laughing, relieved Anne, who was saying, "Okay, okay, Deus vult already!" as they climbed the stairs ahead of him. Squinting into the downpour, he lagged behind the saturated exuberant parade, not really over his illness and needing time to come to grips with the disaster before he broke the news to the others.

  By the time D.W. could see the plane, Jimmy had thrown back the cargo bay door and was lifting Sofia down. Marc climbed out under his own power. Even at this distance, D.W. could see the black eyes and swollen faces and the painful stiffness with which Sofia and Marc moved. Why hadn’t they waited? Why hadn’t they radioed home for instructions? He could have warned them! Then, hating to blame others, D.W. asked himself why he hadn’t anticipated this. He’d reckoned they’d either come straight back if the landing strip was too dangerous, or land safely. Still befuddled and sick, he hadn’t considered that Sofia might simply fly back in the lander if the Ultra-Light got wrecked.

  Sofia saw him and, leaving the others behind, walked toward him, face shining and wet and discolored with injury she had risen above, after what must have been an awful crash. She is so beautiful, D.W. thought. And it had taken a lot of nerve to do what she had done. Logical girl, Sofia, brave girl: all brains and guts. And George, too. He’d taken such fearless pleasure in the barrel rolls and loops, not realizing how fine they were cutting things. It’s not our weaknesses but our strengths that have endangered us, D.W. thought, and he searched for some way to soften the impact for Sofia, for George, for all of them.

  "So," said Sofia, smiling widely as she approached, "we have returned like Elijah, in a chariot of fire!"

  He held out his arms and she came to him for an embrace but, grimacing at the pressure against her battered body, moved away and began to describe the crash, one pilot to another, talking with the rushing manic emotion of someone who has cheated death. The others gathered around them and listened to the tale as well. Finally, as the rain began to abate and her need to tell him about the adventure subsided, D.W. saw her realize that something was wrong. "What is it?" she asked. "What’s the matter?"

  He looked at George and then at the daughter he’d never imagined having. There was the barest chance. If she’d held her speed down. If she’d flown straight to Kashan. If the tail wind was strong enough. If God was on their side. "Sofia, it’s my fault! It is my responsibility entirely. I should have warned you—"

  "What?" she asked, alarmed now. "Warned me about what?"

  "Sofia, darlin’," he said gently, when there was no longer any way to put it off, "how much fuel is left?"

  It took a moment. Then her hands went to her mouth and she went white beneath the bruises. He held her while she sobbed, loving her as much as any human being he’d ever known. They all understood then. There was no longer any way off Rakhat.

  Jimmy recovered first. "Sofia," he said quietly, his voice close to her ear. "Sofia, look at me." She responded to the calmness and lifted her eyes, swollen now with more than bruises. Shuddering and gulping, still huddled in D.W.’s arms, she looked up into clear blue eyes set deep in a face that knew itself homely at best, framed now by comic spirals of wet red hair. "Sofia," Jimmy said, his voice sure and his eyes steady, "we have everything we need, right here. We have everyone we care about, right here. Welcome home, Sofia."

  D.W. ceded her to Jimmy then, and sat wearily down in the mud as Sofia, crying now for a different reason, was enfolded by long arms. Around them, the others were coming out of their shock, George reminding Sofia of his part in it, Anne and Emilio already making jokes about being resident aliens and wondering where to apply for green cards, Marc assuring her this must be the way God wanted it.

  Lord, D. W. Yarbrough prayed, th
is is as fine a bunch of tailless primates as Your universe has to offer. I hope You’re proud of ’em. I sure as hell am.

  Surrounded by plants of dusty blues and purples, listening to his people come to grips and come together, D.W. put his hands out into the mud behind him and leaned back to offer his face to the rain. Maybe Marc’s right, he thought. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be.

  27

  VILLAGE OF KASHAN:

  SEVENTH NA’ALPA—FIFTH PARTAN

  WHEN THEY GOT inside, out of the rain, Anne swung into action, examining Marc and Sofia and confirming Marc’s inexpert assessment of their physical condition, informing D.W. that he looked terrible. George, Emilio and Jimmy helped her get the three semi-invalids dry and warm, fed and put to bed as the light faded. When it was clear that he could be of no more use to Anne, George Edwards took his tablet next door to Aycha’s empty apartment. Anne saw him go. When everyone else was taken care of, she went to her husband and knelt on the cushion behind him, reaching out to massage the back of his neck and then to put her arms around his shoulders. George smiled at her as she moved to his side and leaned over to kiss her but went back to his work without comment.

  Four and a half decades together had given them a core of certainty about each other, if not about life itself. Theirs was a companionable marriage of competent and self-reliant equals, and they rarely called on each other for aid or ministration. Anne was used to George’s response to crisis: don’t panic; take it piece by piece; make the best of it. But she also knew that he’d had a favorite Dilbert cartoon pinned over his desk for years: "The goal of every engineer is to retire without getting blamed for a major catastrophe." There was no way around it. What had happened was in large measure his fault.

  George’s initial concern was that D.W. and Sofia not take the blame for the fact that the lander fuel had been drawn down past the point of return. Sofia’s use of fuel had been sensible. George’s had been pure stupid self-indulgence: fooling around, showing off to D.W., trying out maneuvers he’d practiced on the simulator and wanted to do in real life, using up a slim margin for error that he hadn’t thought about. So George made sure everyone understood that it was he, George, who’d put them in this position, not Sofia. As for D.W. not anticipating what happened and not warning Sofia against it, George pointed out that nobody had thought of it. "We’ve got a collective IQ here that goes into quadruple digits," he’d told Yarbrough as they walked back down to the apartment, "and none of us, singly or together, anticipated this. Quit beating yourself up."