The Sparrow

10 SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO: AUGUST 2–3, 2019

Looking back on what happened that warm August night, Anne Edwards always wished she'd dug out horoscopes for everyone at the dinner. It would have been an excellent test of astrology, she thought. Somewhere, under someone's sign, there should have been a warning: "Brace yourself. Everything changes tonight. Everything."

Emilio, when she asked him over for dinner on Saturday, had suggested with telling casualness that George might invite Jimmy Quinn and Sofia Mendes as well. Sure, Anne agreed, putting misgivings aside. The more, the merrier.

Emilio had not seen Sofia since Cleveland, and it was beginning to seem as though he was deliberately avoiding her, which was probably uncomfortably close to the truth. Well, Anne knew what it took to convert attraction to valued friendship and believed Emilio capable of it; she was willing to provide neutral ground for the task. And Sofia? An emotional anorexic, Anne diagnosed privately. That, perhaps, along with her beauty, was what drew men. Jimmy had long since confessed to his infatuation, unaware that Sofia'd had a similar effect on Emilio. And George, for that matter. And I'm in no position to complain, she thought. My God, all this misplaced sexual heat! The house is going to be flooded with pheromones tonight.

So, she decided, locking up the clinic on Saturday afternoon, my job is to make the evening feel like a family gathering, make the kids feel like cousins, maybe. Above all, she understood, it was necessary to avoid treating Emilio and Sofia, or even Jimmy and Sofia, as a couple. Keep it fun, she told herself firmly, and then keep out of it.

On Friday of that week, Jimmy Quinn had begun explaining to Sofia the portion of his job involving the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

"The SETI work is similar to the rest of the observations but it's on the back burner," he told her. Headsets and gloves on, they felt themselves to be sitting in front of an old-fashioned oscilloscope, some VR engineer's idea of a joke. "When we aren't using the dish for anything else, SETI does a systematic scan for radio signals from other planets. The program flags anything that looks like a possible ET message—anything with a constant frequency that's not one of the known sources like registered radio broadcasts or military transmissions, things like that."

"I understand there are already very sophisticated pattern-recognition programs in place," Sofia said.

"Yeah. The SETI programs are old but they're good, and ISAS updated the signal-processing equipment when they took Arecibo over. So the system already knows how to screen out junk signals from things we know are nonsentient sources like hydrogen atoms vibrating or stars making noise." He pulled up an example. "See how crazy this looks? This is a star's radio signal. It's completely irregular and it sounds like this in audio," he said, making a breathy crackly noise through his teeth. He pulled up a new display. "Okay. Radio used for communication uses a constant frequency carrier with some kind of amplitude modulation. See the difference?" Sofia nodded. "SETI scans over fourteen million separate channels, billions of signals, looking for patterns in the noise. When the system picks out something interesting, it logs the time, the date, the source location, the frequency and the duration of the signal. The problem is the backlog of transmissions the SETI tech has to look at."

"So your job is to disprove the standing hypothesis that a transmission is intelligent communication."

"Exactly."

"So—" Stylus raised, flipping up one eyepiece, she settled herself to take in the next load of information. Jimmy took off his headset and gazed at her, until she cleared her throat.

"Can I ask you something first? It'll be quick," he assured her when she sighed. "Why do you take notes in longhand? Wouldn't it be easier to record these sessions? Or to type directly into a file?"

It was the first time anyone had asked her about her own methods. "I don't just transcribe what you tell me. I'm organizing the information as I listen. If I recorded the session, I'd have to take the same amount of time listening to it later as the original interview took. And over the years, I've developed a personal shorthand. I write faster than I can type."

"Oh," he said. It was the longest she'd ever talked. Not exactly a date but sort of a conversation. "Are you going to George and Anne's tomorrow night?"

"Yes. Mr. Quinn, please, can we move on?"

Jimmy replaced his headset and dragged himself back to the display. "Okay, I begin by taking a look at the flagged signals. A lot of them nowadays turn out to be coded transmissions from dope factories about five hundred kilometers out. They're always moving around, and they change frequencies all the time. Usually the software screens them out because they're so close to Earth, but sometimes the transmissions take an odd bounce off an asteroid or something and the signal looks as if it's coming from far away."

Jimmy began working his way through the log, becoming absorbed in the process, talking more to himself than to Sofia. Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman. Slavering was hardly attractive. And yet, she was surprised to recognize, she had begun to like Jimmy Quinn very much. She shook the thought off. There was no place for it in her life and she had no wish to foster whatever fancies he might be nurturing. Sofia Mendes never promised what she could not deliver.

"That's interesting," Jimmy said. Sofia concentrated on the eyepiece image and saw a table-shaped signal. "See? There's a signal that comes out of the background noise, stays around for—lemme look up the duration. Here. It was there for about four minutes and then it dropped off." He laughed. "Well, hell, it's got to be something homemade. This part right here?" He pointed to the tabletop portion of the signal.

"A constant carrier frequency with amplitude modulation," she said.

"Bingo." He laughed. "It's gotta be local. We're probably picking up some religious broadcast from Tierra del Fuego bouncing off that new hotel Shimatzu is building. The one with the microgravity stadium?"

She nodded.

"Well, anyway, this gives me a chance to show you how I'd play around with a possible ET. See, the whole signal looks like a pulse when it's displayed like this," he said, tracing the tabletop shape with an electronic finger. "Now. I can focus on just this section along the top of the pulse, like this, and change the amplitude scale." He did so. The formerly straight horizontal line now looked jagged. "See? The amplitude varies…quite a bit, actually." His voice trailed off. It looked sort of familiar. "Got to be local," he muttered.

Sofia waited a few minutes as Jimmy fiddled with the signal. Triple time, she thought. "Mr. Quinn?" He flipped up an eyepiece to look at her. "Mr. Quinn, I'd like to begin with the details of the existing pattern-recognition software, if you please. Perhaps there is documentation I can work from."

"Sure," Jimmy said, killing the display, pulling off the VR equipment, and getting up. "We haven't transferred all that old stuff. The working programs are here but nobody does much with the documentation, so it's still archived on the Cray. Come on, I'll show you how to access it."

When Sofia Mendes arrived at the Edwardses' on Saturday evening, precisely on time and bearing a bottle of Golan Heights cabernet, Jimmy Quinn was already there, wired up and too loud, in stylishly bloused trousers, resplendent in a vividly colored shirt that would have fit Sofia like a bathrobe. She smiled in spite of herself at his patent pleasure in seeing her, thanked him for his compliment to her dress, and then to her hair, and not giving him any time to go further, handed the wine to Mr. Edwards and took shelter in the kitchen.

"Emilio might be a little late," Dr. Edwards told her, kissing her cheek. "Baseball game. Don't be alarmed if he shows up in a full-body cast, dear. His team's in second place and when it's that close, Father Sandoz plays ball for keeps."

But Sofia heard his voice only ten minutes later, announcing the score, clearly pleased with the result. Greeting George and Jimmy on the run, Sandoz came straight to the kitchen, hair still damp from his shower, shirttails flying, with flowers for Dr. Edwards, upon whom he bestowed a brief courtly kiss. Obviously at home, he reached past Anne for a vase on one of the shelves, filled it with water and put the flowers into it, arranging them a little before turning from the sink to take them out to the table. Then he saw Sofia, sitting on the stool in the corner, and his eyes warmed while his face remained gravely dignified.

Drawing one flower from Anne's bouquet, he tapped the moisture from it and inclined his head in a short, formal bow. "Senorita. Mucho gusto. A su servicio," he said with exaggerated courtesy, a parody of the Spanish aristocrat who had so offended her before. Familiar now with the squalor of his childhood, she understood the joke this time and, laughing, accepted the flower. He smiled and, his eyes slowly leaving hers, turned to Jimmy, who'd just come into the kitchen, effectively jamming it with humanity. Anne hollered for everyone to clear out so she could move and Emilio pushed Jimmy back out of the room, picking up the thread of an argument Sofia couldn't follow about something they evidently fought over frequently and to no useful purpose. Anne handed her a platter of banderillas and they began ferrying food out to the table. The conversation quickly became general and lively. The meal was good and the wine tasted of cherries. It all contributed to what happened.

After dinner, they moved into the living room and Sofia Mendes felt herself relaxing in a way that she had never experienced as an adult. There was a kind of safety here that she found as exotic as a dogwood and as beautiful. She felt that she was wholly welcome, that people in this home were prepared to like her, no matter who she was or what she'd done. She felt she could tell Anne, or even George, about the days before Jaubert, and that George would forgive her and Anne would say that Sofia had been brave and sensible to do what she had to.

As dusk deepened into night, the conversation trailed off and Anne suggested that Jimmy play something, an idea that met with universal approval. He looked like a child looming over a toy piano, Sofia thought, his knees splayed to the outside, almost level with the keys, feet angled in toward the pedals. But he was a graceful and fluid player, his big hands easily dominating the keyboard, and she tried not to be embarrassed as he sang a rather obvious love song.

"Jimmy, I know you adore me, but try to be discreet," Anne said in a stage whisper, glancing at Sofia and hoping to change the mood before the boy dug himself in too deeply. "George is standing right here! And anyhow, this stuff is too damned sentimental."

"Come on, punk, get out of there," George ordered, laughing, waving Jimmy away from the piano. "Sofia, your turn."

"You play?" Jimmy asked, knocking over the piano bench in his haste to vacate for her.

"A little," she said and added honestly, "not so well as you."

She began with a small piece by Strauss, not too difficult but pretty. Gaining confidence, she tried some Mozart but got lost in one of the more complicated passages and gave up, despite the encouragement mixed with good-natured razzing. "I think I must be very nervous, to play like this," she said smiling ruefully, turning toward the room.

She meant to apologize for her ineptitude after Jimmy's lovely playing and to yield the instrument to him, but then her eyes fell on Sandoz, sitting in a chair in the corner, at a little distance from the rest of them, withdrawn by choice or by nature or by circumstance. Unclear about her own motives, warmed by the wine and the company, she began something she thought would be familiar to him, a very old Spanish melody. To everyone's surprise, probably even his own, Emilio left his corner, came to the side of the piano, and began to sing in a clear light tenor.

Judging him, Sofia changed keys and then the tempo as well. His eyes narrowed slightly but he started the second verse in the minor key she was using, following her lead. Pleased that he'd understood her intent, holding his eyes with hers, she began to sing a different song, in counterpoint.

She had a grainy contralto and the voices were gorgeous together, despite or perhaps because of the oddity of a male taking the higher notes, and for a little while there was no other sound in the world than the song Emilio Sandoz and Sofia Mendes sang.

Jimmy looked sick with envy. Anne moved behind him, bending over the sofa to put her thin, strong arms around his big shoulders and rest her head next to his. When she felt the rigidity give way, she tightened her embrace briefly and let him go, straightening up and standing quietly as the song went on. Ladino, she thought, recognizing elements of Spanish and Hebrew. Sofia's song was a Sephardic variation on the Spanish tune, perhaps.

Anne looked at George and saw him come to his own conclusion, suspecting the outcome, but not from the music, only from a feeling of inevitability about these two people. And then her silent analysis fell away and she listened, trying not to shiver, as the two songs diverged and interwove until, at the very end, the harmony and counterpoint resolved: lyrics and melodies and voices coming together, across the centuries, to a single word and note.

Tearing her eyes away from Emilio's face, Anne led the chorus of praise, restoring a fragile equilibrium. Jimmy did his best, but ten minutes later he made excuses about having work to catch up on and, calling out his good-byes, headed for the door. This was the cue for a general exodus, as though all of them needed to put space between themselves and a kind of intimacy no one had planned or anticipated. Anne hesitated, feeling that as hostess she should wait until Emilio and Sofia left as well. But it was taking them a few minutes to get organized, so she covered herself with a plausible excuse and followed Jimmy out the door.

He was more than halfway to the plaza when Anne caught up with him in the dark. The neighborhood was quiet, although there were snatches of music coming in with the sea breeze from La Perla, where things went on later. Hearing her footsteps, he turned, and she stopped two stairs upward of him, so she could look him in the eye. It wasn't cold but Jimmy was shaking, a gigantic Raggedy Andy doll with his spiraling yarnlike hair, mouth drawn up in his silly crescent smile.

"Do you suppose suicide is a viable option?" he joked lamely. Anne didn't dignify that with a reply, but her eyes were compassionate. "Why didn't you stop me sooner when I was playing? I don't know if I can stand to be in the same time zone with her after tonight," he moaned. "God, she must think I'm a complete idiot. But, Jesus, Anne," he cried out quietly, "he's a priest! Okay, okay, he's a really good-looking priest, not a big ugly Mick with shit for brains—"

Anne stopped him with a finger on his lips. She could think of dozens of things to say: that nobody can make anyone else love them, that half the world's misery was wanting someone who didn't want you, that unavailability was a powerful aphrodisiac, that Jimmy was a sweet, intelligent, dear man—None of it would help. She joined him on his step, laid her head against his chest and put her arms around him, marveling again at the sheer size of the boy.

"Jesus, Anne," he whispered above her. "He's a priest. It isn't fair."

"No, my darling, it never is," she assured him. "It never, ever is."

That time of night, it was less than an hour's drive back to Arecibo. By the time he pulled into the apartment parking lot, Jimmy was done crying and almost past the desire to get drunk, which he'd rejected as too dramatic a response to the situation. Sofia had never given him any encouragement. The whole thing had been a fantasy, and that was that. And really, what did he know about Emilio? Priests were just men, Eileen Quinn had always reminded him when he'd come home from school full of hero worship and awe. Ordination doesn't make you a saint. And anyway, in other religions, priests married and had children.

Shit, he thought. It was just a song. I've got them married, with kids! It's none of my business.

But he couldn't get the sound of them together out of his mind. It was like watching…Sleep was out of the question. He tried a few pages of the book he was reading but ended up tossing it across the room, unable to concentrate. He rooted around in the cupboards and wished he'd taken Anne up on her offer when she asked him if he wanted to take some leftovers home with him. Finally, he decided to make good on the excuse he'd used to leave early and connected with the dish system. He opened the SETI log, picking up where he'd left off with Sofia on Friday afternoon, deciding to bull his way through the hideously embarrassing prospect of seeing her again by going straight at the topic he'd cover with her on Monday.

At 3:57 A.M. on Sunday, August 3, 2019, James Connor Quinn pulled off his headset and sat back in his chair, sweating and sucking air, sure now, but hardly able to believe what he alone in all his world knew.

"Jesus Christ," Jimmy breathed, meeting the future by turning to the ancient past. "Holy Mother of God."

He rubbed his eyes and combed his fingers through his tangled, scribbly hair and sat, staring blankly, for a few moments longer. Then he called Anne.