The Sparrow s-1

by Mary Doria Russel

  Arriving at her apartment that afternoon, wrung out from the unremitting labor of the previous weeks, Sofia fell onto the bed and fought tears. Nonsense, she told herself, just get on with it. But she conceded the need for a day of rest before informing Jaubert that she was ready for the next assignment. He had contacted her in August about the Jesuit asteroid project. It would be interesting work. There were compensations for her situation, she reminded herself.

  To Sandoz's intense dismay, the Jesuits had only been willing to contract her services through Jaubert. She was surprised at the depth of his shock. Business is business, she told him and reminded Sandoz that he'd said himself that he had no authority to speak. She'd harbored no hopes, she assured him, and consequently had none to be dashed. That seemed to make him feel worse. A strange man, she thought. Intelligent, but naive. And slow to react to changed circumstances, she felt. Then again, most people were.

  Releasing her hair from its habitual chignon, she ran a bath, planning to soak in it until the water was tepid. Idly, waiting for the tub to fill, she checked her messages to see what, if anything, was awaiting her attention.

  She read the transcript of the negotiations twice and still found it impossible to believe. The sheer viciousness of Peggy Soong's practical joke choked her. Hands shaking, stunned by the violence of her outrage, Sofia turned off the bathwater, tied her hair back and went to work on breaking the file's intervening encryption, hoping to trace it to Soong, trying to imagine what she could do to the woman that was terrible enough to repay her for this pointless, heartless—

  It took only minutes to realize that Peggy was not involved with this at all. It was, in fact, Jaubert's code. Sofia had written it herself, early in their association. It had been modified over the years, but her style was unmistakable.

  Working through the transcript, she confirmed that the transaction had taken place. She accessed the international monetary exchange and saw that Jaubert had made a 2.3 percent gain overnight by hanging on to the zlotys. Singapore was down; Jaubert's luck was intact. But she could not pry from the network the origin of the money. Who on earth would have done such a thing? she wondered, very nearly frightened now. Jaubert had been a reasonable man to work for, had never asked her to do anything illegal or distasteful. But the possibility had always existed.

  There had to be a legal transfer of rights to her. She combed through the civil records covering her contract, registered in Monaco, thinking over and over, Who owns me now? What bloodsucking vampire owns me now? Finding the correct file, she read the final entry and sat back, hand to her mouth, throat so tight she thought she might suffocate.

  Contract terminated. Free agent. Inquiries: contact principal directly.

  As though from a distance, she heard a wail. She walked numbly to the window and pushed the curtain away, looking outside for the child who was sobbing somewhere nearby. There was no one there, of course, no one else anywhere to be heard. After a while, she walked to the bathroom to blow her nose and wash her face and think about what she might do next.

  When the bell rang two nights later, Anne Edwards went to the door and saw Emilio looking like a boy again, standing behind a tall, lean priest in his fifties. Late that night, alone at last in their bedroom, Anne, eyes bulging, confessed to George in a tiny, strangled voice, "That is the butt-ugliest man I ever met. I don't know what I expected but—wow!"

  "Well, hell, a Texas Jesuit! I pictured the Marlboro man dressed up like Father Guido Sarducci," George admitted in a whisper. "Jesus. Which eye are you supposed to look at?"

  "The one that looks back at you," Anne said decisively.

  "I like D.W., I really do, but all during dinner I kept wondering if he'd be offended if I put a bag over his head," George said, suddenly breaking up. That set Anne off, and pretty soon they were hanging on to each other, appalled and ashamed, laughing helplessly, but trying to be as quiet as they could, since the subject of their merriment was in the guest room, right down the hallway.

  "Oh, God, we're bad!" Anne gasped, struggling to sober up and losing the battle. "This is awful. But, shit! That one eye, wandering off on its own recognizance!"

  "The poor bastard," George said quietly, getting ahold of himself momentarily, trying to sound sympathetic. There was a fleeting silence, as they each pictured D.W., his long broken nose almost as badly askew as his cast eye, loose-lipped grin displaying teeth just as disheveled.

  "I'm not a cruel woman," Anne whispered, pleading for understanding. "But I kept wanting to kind of tidy him up, you know?"

  "Maybe if we wear the bags?" George asked. Anne, whining and holding her stomach, fell onto the bed and buried her face in a pillow. George, completely undone, followed her.

  It had been an evening of laughter, in fact, and none of it at D.W.'s expense until the Edwardses reached their bedroom after midnight.

  "Dr. Anne Edwards and Mr. George Edwards," Emilio had said, formally introducing his guest at their door, "I would like to present to you Dalton Wesley Yarbrough, New Orleans Provincial of the Society of Jesus."

  "From Waco, Texas, ma'am," D. W. Yarbrough began.

  "Yes, I know, Vatican City of the Southern Baptists," Anne said. If she was startled by him, there was no hint of it then. She took the hand he offered, knowing what was coming but ready for him.

  "I sure am pleased to meet you, ma'am. Milio has told me a lot about you," D.W. said, smiling, purest malice dancing in his variously arranged eyes. "An' I want straight off to extend to you the profound sympathy of the entire state of Texas on the humiliating loss Dallas handed Cleveland in the World Series last year."

  "Well, we all have our crosses to bear, Father." Anne sighed bravely. "It can't be easy for a Texan to say Mass while the entire congregation is praying, Oh, Jesus, just give us one more oil boom—this time we promise we won't piss it all away."

  D.W. roared, and they were off and running. Emilio, anxious that these people who meant so much to him should like one another, unleashed a smile like sunrise, went to his chair in the corner and settled in to watch the show. The dinner conversation, as hot and colorful as the barbecue sauce, soon found its center of gravity around politics, there being a presidential-election campaign heating up in which a Texan figured prominently, as usual.

  "The country's already tried Texans," George protested.

  "And you cowards keep throwin' 'em back to us after just one term!" D.W. hollered.

  "Lyndon Johnson, George Bush," George soldiered on.

  "No, no, no. You can't blame Bush on Texas," D.W. insisted. "Real Texans never use the word 'summer' as a verb."

  Wordlessly, Emilio handed a napkin to Anne, who wiped her nose.

  "Gibson Whitmore," George continued.

  "Awright. Awright. I admit that was a mistake. He couldna poured water out a boot if the instructions was on the heel. But Sally's good people. Y'all're gonna love her, I guarantee."

  "And if you believe that," Emilio said informatively, "D.W. has a very nice piece of the True Cross you might like to invest in."

  It was three hours after they sat down to eat when Yarbrough pushed himself reluctantly away from the table, declared that he was stuffed insensible, and then told three more stories that left everyone else at the table worn out and breathless, stomachs and cheeks aching. And it was yet another hour before the four of them got up and started moving glasses and dishes into the kitchen. But there, finally, in the hard bright light of that room, the real reason for D. W. Yarbrough's visit came out.

  "Well, folks, where I come from the only thing in the middle of the road is yellow stripes and dead armadillos," D.W. announced, hooking his hands over the top of the door frame and stretching like a gorilla. "So I'll tell y'all right now, I plan to recommend to the Father General, bless his narrow ole Portugee ass, that Emilio go ahead on this asteroid bidness and that the two of you go along, if you're willin'. I talked to the Quinn boy this mornin' and he's okay, too."

  George stopped putting plates into the dis
hwasher. "Just like that? No tests, no interviews? Are you serious?"

  "Serious as snakebite, sir. Y'all been researched, I guarantee. Public records, and so forth." There had, in fact, been hundreds of man-hours expended in studying their qualifications, and a rancorous in-house debate over including non-Jesuits in the party. There was ample historical precedent for a mixed crew and solid logic in selecting people with a broad range of experience, but with that established, Father General da Silva had, in the end, simply decided the issue in favor of what appeared to him to be God's will.

  "And tonight was the interview," Anne said shrewdly.

  "Yes, ma'am. You could say that." The accent and color abated somewhat as D.W. continued, "Emilio had it straight from the start. The skills are mostly all there. The relationships are already in place. We could dick around some, pickin' nits and lookin' at ever' kind of possibility, but I think she'll fly. Assumin' y'all can stand lookin' at me for months on end."

  Anne pirouetted abruptly, finding that the glassware in the sink suddenly required her undivided attention. She tried not to let her shoulders shake.

  "You're coming?" George asked, with admirable restraint.

  "Yessir. That's part of what makes the Father General so sure this bidness is ordained, so to speak. See, somebody's got to get the crew up and down, couple-three times. You recall, there's still the open problem of landin' on the planet. If we find it."

  "We could ask Scotty to beam us down," Anne suggested brightly, finally able to face her guest as Emilio, carrying a load of plates into the kitchen, ducked under D.W.'s arm.

  "I thought it pretty much has to be a standard Earth-to-dock space-plane," George said. "Of course, just because the Singers've got radio, there's no reason to assume they've got airports—"

  "So, the task becomes findin' some kind of flat land or desert to land on because they ain't no guarantee of a runway. And then the undercarriage might collapse from landin' on soft ground and the crew would be stranded." D.W. paused. "So we might do well to use a vertical lander, wouldn't you say?"

  "D.W. was in the Marines," Emilio remarked, picking up a dish-towel to dry the stemware Anne was washing. The old trick of keeping a straight face was failing him these days. More and more, his face matched his eyes. "I don't think I ever mentioned that."

  Anne looked sideways at D.W. "I have this terrible feeling that you aren't going to tell us that you were a chaplain."

  "No, ma'am, I wasn't. This was back in the late eighties, early nineties you unnerstan', 'fore I signed up as a lifer in Loyola's outfit. I flew Harriers. 'Magine that."

  Anne, who didn't quite see the point of this information, nevertheless tried imagining that and wondered how D.W. managed depth perception with a cast eye. Then she remembered LeRoy Johnson, a major-league ballplayer with a similar cast in one eye who consistently batted over.290, and she guessed their brains compensated for the problem somehow.

  "It couldn't be a stock plane," George said. "You'd have to special-order one with a biphasic skin like the spaceplanes use, so it could take the reentry heat."

  "Yeah, folks're workin' on that." D.W. grinned. "Anyhow, turns out, landin' a jump jet's real similar in some ways to flyin' an asteroid docker, 'cause they ain't no runways on space rocks neither. So I expect an ole Harrier pilot may be the very thing for the job at hand."

  This time even Anne realized the implications.

  "Kinda spooky, ain't it. Hell of a lot of coincidences. Like we say back home, when you find a turtle settin' on top of a fencepost, you can be pretty damn sure he didn't get there on his own." D.W. watched Anne and George look at each other and then continued. "Tomas da Silva, the General his own self, he thinks maybe God's been goin' around puttin' turtles on fenceposts. I don't know about that but I hafta admit, this's kept me up some long nights, thinkin'." D.W. stretched again and smiled crookedly at them. "I'm still in the Reserves and I've kept up my flight hours. I'll be spendin' the next little bit of time qualifyin' on a docker. Oughta be real interestin'. Which way is it to this guest room you've been so kind as to offer me, Dr. Edwards?"

  "Well, fuck me dead!" cried Ian Sekizawa, vice president of the Asteroid Mining Division of Ohbayashi Corporation, headquartered in Sydney. "It's Sofie! What a treat to see you again, girl! What's it been? Three years?"

  "Four," Sofia said, withdrawing a bit from her screen, not feeling safe from Ian's bear hug even across the electronic distance between them. "It's good to see you, too. Are you still happy with the system? It still suits your requirements?"

  "Fits like a finger in a baby's bum," Ian said, grinning when her eyes widened. His grandparents were from Okinawa but he and his language were pure Australian. "Our blokes could be pissed as a newt and still bring back the goods. Profits are up almost twelve points since you did that work for us."

  "I'm pleased to hear it," she said, genuinely gratified. "I have a favor to ask of you, Ian."

  "Anything, my beauty."

  "This is confidential, Ian. I have an encrypted business proposition for you to consider."

  "Jaubert doing a dirty?" he asked, eyes narrowed in speculation.

  "No, I'm independent now," she told him, smiling.

  "Fair dinkum? Sofie! That's beaut! Is this your own little project or are you fronting?"

  "I represent clients who wish to remain anonymous. And Ian," she said, "if you are interested, I am hoping you can take this step on your own authority."

  "Send the proposal and I'll do me dash," he told her forthrightly. "If it's buggered, I'll trash the code and no one's the wiser, right, love?"

  "Thank you, Ian. I appreciate your help," Sofia said. She ended the video conference and sent the code.

  Looking her proposition over, Ian Sekizawa lapsed into thoughtfulness. She wanted a good-sized rock, junk, ice-bearing, with a lot of silicates, more or less cylindrical around the long axis; crew quarters for eight, engines and mining robots included, used if possible, installed if necessary. He tried to reckon who would want such a thing and for what. A drug factory? But then why ask for the mining equipment? Sure, ice, but why so much silicate? He turned it around in his mind for a while but came up with nothing that struck him as practical.

  From his own point of view, it was sweet. Before Sofia's AI wizardry, Aussie wildcatters had gone from rock to rock, hoping to make the one big strike that could pay off the equipment mortgages they owed to Ohbayashi and set them up for life. Ninety-nine out of a hundred wildcatters went broke or crazy or both and abandoned their last asteroid with the equipment in situ. Rights reverted to Ohbayashi, which recovered the hardware whenever it was profitable to do so. He had a dozen or more rocks that could do for Sofia's client.

  "Oh shit, oh fuck, oh dear, cried the fairy princess as she waved her wooden leg in the air," he recited blandly, alone in his office.

  Sofia was offering a fair price. He could bury the transaction in "Obsolete equipment sales," maybe. The rocks were worth fuck-all as things stood. Why not sell one off? he thought. And who gives a damn what it's used for?

  Waiting in her small rented room for Ian Sekizawa's response to the proposal, Sofia Mendes stared out the window at the Old City of Jerusalem and asked herself why she had come here.

  In her first hours of freedom, she had decided simply to carry on as before. She informed the Jesuits in Rome of her new status, assured them of her willingness to act as general contractor on the previously negotiated terms, and made arrangements to have the agreement rewritten in her own name. There was a 30 percent advance payment and, realizing that she could fulfill the contract from anywhere in the world, she had used the money to buy passage to Israel. Why?

  Without her mother to light the Sabbath candles, without her father to sing the ancient blessings over the bread and wine, she'd lost touch with the religion of her truncated childhood. But after years of wandering, she felt a need to go home somehow, wanted to see if she was capable of belonging somewhere. There was nothing left for her in Istanbul—peaceful n
ow, exhausted from achieving its own destruction. And her ties to Spain were too tenuous, too faint and historical. So. Israel. Home by default, she supposed.

  On her first day in Jerusalem, shyly, never having done so before, she'd sought out a mikveh, a place of ritual cleansing. She chose a place at random, unaware that it catered to Israeli brides preparing for their weddings. The mikveh lady who took care of her assumed at first that she was about to be married and was distressed to find that Sofia did not even have a sweetheart. "Such a beautiful girl! Such a lovely body! What a waste!" the woman exclaimed, laughing at Sofia's blush. "So, you'll stay here! Make aliyah, find a nice Jewish boy and have lots of beautiful babies, naturally!"

  It was hopeless to contradict the good-natured advice, and she wondered why she wanted to, as she allowed herself to be preened and cleaned—hair, nails, everything rinsed, smoothed and shined, her body made free of cosmetics, of dust, of the past. Why not stay? she asked herself.

  Wrapped in a white sheet, she was escorted to the mikveh itself and then left alone to descend the tiled steps, with their intricate mosaic designs, into the warm, pure water. The mikveh lady, standing discreetly behind a half-closed door, helped her remember the Hebrew prayers and urged her, "Three times. All the way under, so every bit of you is immersed. There's no rush, dear. I'll leave you now."