The Sparrow

30 VILLAGE OF KASHAN AND CITY OF GAYJUR: YEAR THREE

"So, what do you think? Rain's probably done for the day. Feel lively enough for a walk?" Anne asked D.W.

"Well, now, I cain't say as I'm inclined to rush into a decision like that." D.W. took a sip of the meat broth Anne had brought him and then laid his head back against the hammock chair. His gaze traveling down the long meandering ridge of his nasal bones, he fixed her with a look of judicious consideration. "I thought maybe I'd save my strength up so's I can watch some mud dry later on."

She smiled, and it was gratifying that he could still make people smile.

He kept the mug in his hands for a while, to warm them, but then began to worry that it would slip out of his fingers, so he set it aside on the little table that Sofia and Emilio had once used as a desk out in this hampiy. The shelter was his now, had become pretty close to a permanent residence for him, barring really bad weather. He liked to be out where he could see the southern mountains or look northeast to find the line where the plains merged into sky. Manuzhai or Jimmy carried him down to the apartment if the weather looked to get ugly and then carried him back up to the hampiy when things settled down; he couldn't climb the cliff anymore on his own. Emilio stayed with him nights, so he wouldn't be alone. D.W. had worried about being a pain in the ass for everyone but felt better about it when Sofia told him, "It is your duty to let us help. Even your Jesus knew that: taking care of the sick is a commandment. It's a mitzvah for us."

"Finish that soup," said Anne, breaking into his reverie. "Doctor's orders."

" 'Finish that soup! You're pretty damn brisk," he informed her indignantly, but he picked up the cup with both thin hands and forced himself to continue working on it until he'd drunk it all. He made a face, which was a little redundant given how he looked when he wasn't making a face. "Everything tastes like metal," he told her.

"I know, but the protein does you good." Anne reached out and put a hand on his wrist for a brief squeeze.

She had tried everything she could think of. Half-killed him with parasiticides. Put him on an all-Earth diet from the lander stores. Boiled the rainwater he drank after passing it through all the filters and chemical treatments. Stopped the chemical treatments, thinking maybe they made it worse. Two or three times she thought they'd gotten the damned thing on the run, whatever the hell it was. He'd start to put on some weight, get some color and energy back, and then he'd slip again.

He was the only one affected. So, of course, they both wondered if he'd brought something with him, was carrying something from home. But all the crew members had been put through a fine-meshed medical sieve before they left, and D. W. Yarbrough had once been abundantly healthy, strong as a lean old racehorse. Maybe something had gone subtly wrong with his physiology: he was sequestering something that was usually excreted or some enzymatic process had gone to hell.

"It's not that bad, Annie," he'd told her once. "Most of the time, it's just bein' tired."

"If you really loved me, you'd get well, dammit. I hate patients who refuse to make their doctors appear omnipotent. It's very rude."

He knew bluster when he heard it. "People are mortal," he'd told her. "You and I both know there's lots worse ways to go."

Anne had turned away, blinking rapidly, but snuffled in a breath vigorously and got ahold of herself. When she spoke again, her voice was firm and irate. "It's not the fact or the method, it's the timing that pisses me off."

D.W. came back to the present with a start, wondering if he'd dozed off. "C'mon," he said, working his way forward in the hammock chair and then resting on its edge before standing. "Let's walk. I'll blow off the mud today."

"Right." Anne slapped her hands on her knees and pushed herself up, shaking off the worry. "Go for broke, I say. Live for the moment."

They moved slowly, not saying much, walking along the gorge edge toward the southern mountains, D.W. setting the pace. Anne kept a careful eye on him, knowing that they shouldn't go very far because D.W. would have to walk back. Ordinarily, she could count on having someone to carry him home if he wore himself out, but they were alone in Kashan for the first time since the lander disaster. The Runa were out harvesting a flower called anukar. George, Marc and Jimmy had gone off with Supaari to see the city of Gayjur, at last. So there was no one around to help but Sofia, pregnant and nauseated, and Emilio, who was asleep. He'd been up most of the night with D.W., who'd had another bad time of it.

To Anne's surprise, and to his own, D.W. did all right. They got as far as their old place on the ledge, which had a comfortable flat spot and a good view of the ravine and the western sky. "If I set down, you reckon you can haul my raggedy old ass up again?" D.W. asked her.

"Leverage, my darling. If you can dig your heels in, I can get you on your feet." She let him take hold of her arm and leaned back to steady his descent before sitting down next to him. They were quiet a while, as he got his breath back.

"When I am gone—" he started. Anne opened her mouth, but he shut her up with a look. "When I am gone, and I expect that's three, four days off now, Marc Robichaux will be de facto Father Superior. I can't make that appointment, but it'll be almost nine years till we can get a radio order back from Rome." He stopped and, out of habit, scuffed his hand around in the dirt, feeling for pebbles, but he'd long since scoured the spot of rocks, so he gave up and let his hands go loose in his lap. "Now listen up. Marc's a good man but he's not a leader, Anne. And Emilio surprises me sometimes but he's off in his own world a lot. Neither one of 'em is much good in a crisis—"

"Well, they've always had you or some other superior to rely on. Maybe they'd rise to the occasion."

"Yeah. I've thought of that. But I worry about things. George is a good staff man, but I don't see him as a line officer, beggin' your pardon. If y'all don't get back, Anne, if this fuel idea of George's craps out? If you're here permanently, then you're going to need some kind of structure to keep from going nuts." He paused. "I been workin' it through in my mind. There's got to be one voice givin' the orders. I'm all for advice and consent, but you're too isolated and too vulnerable not to have some clear chain of command. One voice. But it don't have to be a Jesuit's voice, okay? Now, my opinion: you and Sofia are going to be the brains of the outfit. Don't argue with me, I ain't got the time nor the energy. The Quinn boy is bedrock. I want you to work it so Jimmy becomes recognized as the one who decides."

She started to protest but, hearing it, she remembered the hours after Alan's death and the way Jimmy came through when they realized they were marooned. She nodded.

"Now, I've said something along these lines to Marc and Emilio. Not in these terms, but they understand what I'm saying. The real struggle will be gettin' Jim to accept that he's the best person for the job. He'll want you or Sofia to take over." Yarbrough stopped. He lifted his arm and meant to put it around Anne's shoulders but that was more than he could manage, so he just put his hand over hers. "Annie, you feel too much and Sofia thinks too damn quick for her own good. Jim's got a fine strong balance to him. Y'all give him the benefit of your intuition and your intelligence and your knowledge. But let him decide."

"So Jimmy gets to be Elder after all," she said, trying to lighten the moment a little. But it wasn't a light moment, so she told him, "It's a good plan, D.W. I'll midwife it along as best I can."

D.W. smiled and she felt his hand tighten a little around hers, but he only looked at the sky, talked out.

He meant to tell her about his grandmother, who'd lived to be ninety-four and didn't recommend it. He meant to tell her to watch that Supaari character, there was something about him, and Anne shouldn't let herself get blinded by sentiment. He meant to tell her how really happy he'd been, even these last months. He thought he had a few days left. But death has its own agenda and its own logic, and it caught them both unaware, with less warning than they expected.

"My God," George breathed. "There it is."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Jimmy whispered. "It was worth the wait."

Marc Robichaux pulled himself away from the panorama and looked toward Supaari VaGayjur, serenely piloting the little powerboat through the buoyed channels toward the city. "Sipaj, Supaari. We thank you for this," he said quietly.

The Jana'ata merchant's chin lifted slightly in acknowledgment. He had planned their arrival thoughtfully, bringing them around the headland and into Radina Bay a little before second sundown. Ringed by three mountains, white stonework and red clay masonry gleaming in the lush pearlescent light, Gayjur embraced the crescent harbor in a long sweep from southeast to northwest; the deepening darkness hid the tangle of ships and derricks and warehouses and shops nearest the docks and their eyes were drawn upward toward Galatna Palace, set like a jewel in the deep aquamarine vegetation of the central mountain. This was the best time of day to see the city—when the sky took on colors that always reminded Supaari of marble from Gardhan. It was also the safest time to bring the foreigners into port.

Marc smiled at Jimmy and George, transfixed by the sight, and was glad for them. For almost six years of subjective time, these two men had dreamed of seeing the City of the Songs, which they now knew to be Gayjur. Whenever Supaari was in Kashan, they'd hinted, bargained, very nearly demanded and almost begged him to take them there. They wanted to see a real city, they told him. They had trouble explaining why they were so anxious to go. They had no Ruanja words for much of what interested them, which was everything. They wanted to find out what the buildings looked like, see where the food came from, where the sewage went, how the universities and government and hospitals were run, what transportation was like, how electricity was generated and stored and used. They wanted to talk to chemists, physicists, astronomers, mathematicians. See how the principles of the wheel, the lever and the inclined plane played out on this planet. Everything. They wanted to know everything.

Marc himself was less frantic to get out of Kashan, but he too yearned to see the architecture and the art, to hear the music and see the sights. Were there parks? Museums? Zoos! And Supaari said there were gardens. Formal or unplanned, utilitarian or purely decorative? Were there houses of worship? Who went? Were there religious specialists—priests or priestesses, monks, adepts? Did they believe in magic, in God or gods, in fate, in destiny, in the reward of good, the punishment of evil? How were the milestones of life marked? With cadenced ceremony or brief informal acknowledgments? And the food—was it better in the city? What did people wear? Were they polite or pushy, punctilious or casual? What was crime? What was punishment? What was virtue and what was vice? What was fun? Everything. Marc too wanted to know everything.

Finally, after stalling them for a full Rakhati year, Supaari VaGayjur had deemed the considerations to have been fully considered, the arrangements adequately arranged and the time, at long last, ripe for their visit to his adopted city. On the three-day trip downriver from Kashan, moving past slow trade barges and small skiffs, he answered as many of their questions as he could. They were interested in the sulfur-aluminum batteries that powered his craft, the material from which the hull was made, the waterproof coatings, the navigation equipment. When he finally convinced them that he simply used the boat, he did not make it, they went on to questions about the city itself, and when at last he could stand no more and told them finally, "Wait! You shall see it all shortly," they talked among themselves in H'inglish, never resting from their curiosity.

They stopped overnight at two villages along the way, the first one just above the Pon delta and the second on the Masna'a Tafa'i coast about twelve hours out of Gayjur. As in Kashan, the foreigners were accepted by the Runa without fuss. Supaari simply introduced them as traders, from far away. He was counting on this kind of reception by VaGayjuri Runa as well and was heartened to see the reality of it in these outlying villages, after so much worried anticipation. He began to hope things would go well. But once again he made the foreigners promise that they would only go out at redlight, and even then accompanied always by his Runa secretary, Awijan. It was important that they not be seen by other Jana'ata.

This restriction was in direct opposition to D. W. Yarbrough's desire to make contact with the Jana'ata government. It was past time, he believed. If the Jesuit party hung around much longer without making itself known, the authorities might think there was something sneaky about them, wonder why they'd kept themselves a secret such a long time. But they owed Supaari a debt of gratitude for all his assistance and in the end, D.W. decided that they should abide by his rule. "Get the lay of the land, this trip," Yarbrough told Marc and George and Jimmy before they left. "When you get back, y'all talk it over and decide what the next move is." He knew he wouldn't be a part of the discussion. He knew that he was dying. They all did.

Now, faced with Gayjur itself, the three humans understood that it would be a real job just to get a superficial impression of the city in the six days allotted to this visit. Marc Robichaux began to feel that this was another of the step-by-step increments they were meant to take.

Coming within line of sight to his compound, Supaari radioed Awijan, announcing their arrival, and steered the little powerboat through the towering mass of shipping. He docked with insouciant skill and a yawn and pointed out his compound's gateway with casual pride, trusting its impressive size and the obvious signs of prosperity to tell his visitors that they were dealing with a man of consequence. "Shall you rest now or go out to see the city?" he asked them, knowing full well what they would say. When they said it, he handed them over to his secretary and told them to trust Awijan to escort them properly and to answer their questions. He, Supaari, was going to sleep now and would see them the next day, in the morning at second sunrise.

And so, with as much preparation as they could have hoped for, Marc Robichaux, Jimmy Quinn and George Edwards plunged into an alien city for the first time. It was all very well to expect to be surprised and confused, but it was sheer bedlam to experience. The scents and noise of Gayjur assaulted them: warehouses filled with the sweet and spicy and grassy fragrances of perfume components; docks and shipyards smelling of wet sail, rotting sea life, sealants and paint, sailors and loaders shouting; cookshops and street stalls and factories turning the air fragrant and stinking by turns with soups and ammonia and frying vegetables and solvents. There was a vast amount of exchange going on, of buying and selling, of business being done in temporary but well-made booths with handsome fittings leaning against beautifully built masonry walls. Vendors hawked unidentifiable objects from pushcarts, simply designed and nicely balanced. Moving through the cramped side-streets, they caught glimpses through half-open doors of Runa working with their ears clamped shut amid a deafening clamor of hammers and chisels, drills and electric saws.

The pace was much faster than in Kashan, and there was far more variety of physical type, Marc noticed. The dockworkers were stockier, sturdy and drop-eared; there were others, robed as Supaari had been when they met him, but smallish and subtly different in the face, alert and fine-boned, with a direct and disturbing gaze, and Awijan was one of these. And there were differences in coat: the colors and textures varied, some rough and curling, others silkier and longer than normal in Kashan. Regional variations, Marc thought. Immigrant populations, perhaps, natural in a port city.

It was a weird feeling, walking along in plain view, undeniably strange, and yet no crowds gathered, no children screamed or pointed or hid. They were noticed and commented upon quietly as they passed through the streets, but when Awijan offered to buy them kebablike sticks of roasted vegetables, the vendor simply handed them their food with ordinary courtesy. They might have been buying pretzels in Philadelphia.

As night fell, Awijan led them back to Supaari's compound and took them through an open courtyard, past many small storage buildings, along the edge of an impressive warehouse, and then into the living quarters, spare and plain-walled but hung with brilliant tapestries and cushioned with deep carpets. After years of sleeping in the huddled company of Runa, they were astonished to be given small private rooms and found the circular bedding on raised platforms nestlike and very fine to curl up in. They slept soundly until long past first sunrise.

It was midday when Supaari met them for their first and his only meal. As they reclined against the pillows and cushions along the walls, a long low table was carried in and then paved with a stream of plates and bowls and platters emerging from the kitchen. There were roasted meats, soups, extraordinary things that appeared to be seafood stuffed with pastes of something savory and then formed somehow into loaves and sliced, and fruits they had not seen before and many kinds of vegetables, plain and with sauces and carved cunningly and left whole. There were strong flavors, and delicate and bland and spiced. The service was soft-footed and discreet, and the meal took hours. Awijan sat nibbling at a little distance and observed; Marc noted the next day that the dishes that had pleased no one were gone from the array and those that the guests had most enjoyed were prominently offered again, surrounded by other choices not seen earlier.

That second evening, Awijan took the foreigners farther uptown, and it was on this tour that they began to get a feel for the strangely hybrid layout of the city. There was, they now realized, the skeleton of rational gridwork, a rectilinear system of main streets well paved with good heavy cobbles and a system of canals, dividing the city into segments that linked incoming freight from the countryside or ocean to processing and distribution centers in the city.

The city was not crowded in the way that the teeming ports of Earth were. There were no beggars, no limbless cripples, no emaciated loners picking through garbage or potbellied children tugging at weary despairing parents. There was an increasingly noticeable contrast between the rich and the poor as they moved uphill and the congestion thinned and the buildings became more imposing, but it did not disturb the humans as they might have been disturbed in Rio or Calcutta or Lima or New York. Here, one had the impression that prosperity was attainable, that people were competent and confident and either on their way up or content to be where they were. The makeshift markets and bustle seemed due to a desire to get down to business without a lot of extraneous bother over display. And there was a kind of beauty in that.

They saw no schools but many small shops and little factories and minifoundries in which apprentices absorbed skills by patient accretion. For all the movement and hustle in the streets, there were gates to small yards in which families could be seen at rest, eating under wide overhanging eaves, sheltered from the rain but outside in the evening air. There was an eerie quiet sometimes, when the sounds of soft-booted feet and musical Runa voices and the plashing patter of steady rain were all that could be heard as they passed through districts where the trade, like tailoring and embroidery, involved no metal.

On their third evening, Awijan took them across the bay to the glassmakers' quarter to see the manufacture of spectacular serving pieces like those that graced Supaari's table: clear, heavy, polished glass with streamers of sparkling bronze-colored aventurine ribboning through the bodies of the bowls. Marc had the impression that there were two main aesthetic traditions, one encrusted and heavy with decoration, the other rather spare and clean. Made for Jana'ata and Runa, respectively, he guessed, gazing across the bay to Galatna Palace and the surrounding hillside compounds, with their mosaics and fountains, their high walls crenellated and corbeled, their facades barnacled with ornament. More money than taste, Marc thought uncharitably. Galatna had an overevolved look, like that of classical Chinese architecture, as though it had been worked on too long, layered and added to more than was strictly good for it.

He questioned Awijan about this as they toured the next shop. "Most Jana'ata prefer such things as those," Awijan told him, indicating the highly decorated items, and added in a low confiding voice, "Someone's eyes get tired looking at them." Which confirmed Marc's admiration for Runa chic.

And yet on their final day in the city, Marc was forced to modify his dismissal of Jana'ata art. George and Jimmy had finally made it clear that the one thing they must do without fail was talk to a chemist about fuel for the lander. It took a fair bit of explaining, but Supaari finally caught on to what they were trying to say and Awijan dispatched a runner to a local distiller of perfumes who brought back a thin-faced and somewhat nervous-looking chemist. With graphics of the periodic table of elements to establish some common ground and 3-D displays of fuel components to work from, the chemist was quick to catch on to the problem. To the belly-deep relief of the foreigners, the formula did not seem at all daunting.

But Marc's eyes glazed over during the technical discussion that followed and Supaari, equally bored, asked if perhaps Robichaux would like to see something of Jana'ata art. The suggestion was so casual that Marc, who was beginning to know Supaari, suspected immediately that Supaari had planned it in advance. A two-passenger chair was summoned, and Marc was given a hooded robe that was far too large and helped into the curtained conveyance. Supaari declared that he himself would accompany the Foreigner Marc on this excursion, leaving Awijan behind to assist George and Jimmy with the chemist.

It was full daylight and Marc, peeking through the spaces between the curtains as they were carried uptown, caught glimpses of new areas of the city and got an entirely different impression of the place. Here, Jana'ata were everywhere and conspicuous, "In robes," Supaari murmured, a little sarcastically, "as heavy as their responsibilities, headdresses as lofty as their ideals." The faces were very like the Runa faces Marc was familiar with, but there was a hollow-cheeked and wolfish look to them that left him uneasy. Unlike Supaari, they seemed not lively but frighteningly intent, not friendly but coldly courteous, not humorous but keenly observant, and above all: unapproachable. Everywhere, Runa stepped back, bowed or nodded or turned aside. Marc shrank back into his enclosure, now feeling in his gut some of the reasons behind Supaari's repeated warnings about other Jana'ata, and gave thanks to God that they'd encountered the Runa first.

The commotion of the city receded as they continued uphill and turned toward the mountain south of Gayjur. At length they arrived at a solitary stone building, low-lying and horizontal in plan, galleried and deeply eaved. Supaari told Marc to wait out of sight, and then disappeared for some time. When he returned Supaari leaned in through the curtains and whispered, "You are an elderly Jana'ata lady here to observe the ceremony for your serenity. For this reason, you must be alone. You understand?" Marc lifted his chin and understood very well. Jana'ata were capable of lying, he observed with some amusement. Supaari continued very quietly, "Someone has purchased the exclusive viewing rights. They will clear the courtyard so you may enter the balcony. It is not permitted to speak Ruanja here. Say nothing."

When they were alone except for the Runa chaircarriers, Supaari assisted Marc out of the chair and led him, head down under his hood and dripping oversized Jana'ata draperies like a child playing dress-up, into the building and across a central open area with scented fountains. Holding up his robes, keeping his hands concealed under the long oversleeves, Marc found himself ascending a ramp to a second-level gallery. He was so intent on not tripping over his garment and keeping his alien anatomy under wraps that he hardly glanced at anything around him until they reached a small curtained room, like a box at the opera. Supaari stepped in first and found his position before drawing the front curtains close together. Then he motioned Marc in and closed off the back curtain, leaving the box in semidarkness, indicating with a gesture that it was safe for the foreigner to throw back his hood.

"You shall stand back a little, but watch carefully," Supaari whispered. "It is very beautiful. Like your 'landscapes. »

Marc was charmed by this compliment but very worried that they were taking some terrible risk. Before he could say anything, the ceremony began, and since they were already in as deep as he imagined they could get, he decided to trust Supaari's judgment and God's plan.

Moving slightly so he could see through the small gap in the curtain, Marc looked down into a little room of quiet perfection, the gray dressed-stone walls nearly mortarless and shining like polished granite, the floor paved with flags of something veined and figured like pink marble. There was a large, low, black stone bowl, filled with some colorless liquid, and around this knelt six plain-robed Jana'ata. At the knees of each was an array of pottery cups, containing pigment, and behind each, a small brazier in which some kind of incense had been set burning. The scent reached Marc just as the chanting began and although he had been told that these were artists, it all recalled for him the mood and awe of worship.

Then, in time with the telling of some epic poem, leaning toward the bowl in a balletic movement of body and arm, the adepts each dipped their styluslike talons into the pigment pots and touched the surface of the black bowl's contents. For an exquisite moment, colors appeared: blending, spreading, dispersing in a radiant mandala. Again and again, the artists, chanting and dipping and swaying in time, touched the liquid surface with magic and color, the shimmering patterns changing with every hypnotic verse, the incense growing more powerful…

Later, Marc would have no memory of leaving the box or of climbing into the chair again. The swaying rhythmic movement of the carriers merged in his mind with the poetry he had heard, and the ride back to the harbor compound of Supaari VaGayjur was a mixture of half-dreamt visions and floating moments of reality. Slumped against Supaari and staring with dilated eyes inside his fabric cocoon, Marc noted at one point with vague and distant interest that they were going past a public square of some kind. He saw through a space in the curtains three Runa publicly put to death, their throats slit as they knelt with their backs to the Jana'ata executioners, who stood behind them and drew their heavy claws across their victims' throats as cleanly and humanely as kosher butchers.

This scene registered at some level, but Marc could not be sure if it was real or a doped hallucination. Before he could inquire about it, the image drifted away, lost in pulsating bursts of glowing color and rhythmic chant.

It was not, evidently, a day meant for sobriety.

Assured now that the lander fuel could be duplicated, George and Jimmy were alternately limp with relief and jubilantly keyed up. Awijan did not entirely grasp the motive behind the transaction just concluded but saw the foreigners' need for celebration and felt moved to make this possible for them.

For a time, Awijan did not act on this feeling, for she was an unnaturally controlled and unspontaneous Runao, the product of several hundred generations of selective breeding and a thorough education. Supaari's first yard boss, she had quickly moved up to secretary, and he had always treated her as an equal, subordinate in position but not inferior. Indeed, Awijan's bloodlines were more ancient and in some ways superior to those of Supaari himself, a fact that he noted with characteristic amusement at the irony. And though the other Jana'ata merchants disapproved of Supaari's almost egalitarian relationship with the Runa in general and there was ungrounded gossip about him and Awijan, she had enjoyed full use of her own capacities and lived in a good deal of physical comfort. The price Awijan paid for her position in life was solitude. She had no peers, nor anyone to look to for guidance. She rarely ventured beyond Supaari's compound except on business, bearing proper identification and taking care to appear deferential to Jana'ata and Runa alike. She had no wish to arouse ei­ther outrage or envy. It made for a tense, compressed life. One had to have an outlet.

"Tomorrow you shall return to Kashan," she told the foreigners, who had treated her with respect and kindness. "Someone would like to invite you to share a meal. Shall this be acceptable?"

It was. It was altogether acceptable. And so, as Marc Robichaux was carried, dozing, through the streets of Gayjur toward Radina Bay, Jimmy Quinn and George Edwards followed Awijan out of Supaari's compound and into a Runa neighborhood a little distance inland from the harbor. Standing with her at a gateway, they found themselves looking into something like a restaurant or perhaps a private club, filled with Runa of many types, exuberant and louder than the humans were accustomed to hearing them.

"Jeez, it's like the wedding," Jimmy said, smiling broadly.

They moved inside and Awijan led them to a corner where people made room for them on the padded floor. Huge platters of food circu­lated from hand to hand through the crowd, along with beautiful plates of jellied lozenges and these, George and Jimmy found, were delicious. There was no dancing or music but there was a storyteller and all around the room, there were games of strength and gambling going on and cash was definitely changing hands. Nudging Jimmy as they settled onto the cushions, George murmured, "I guess city Runa don't get porai as easy as country Runa."

Soon even the reserved and self-contained Awijan opened up and joined in the raucous commentary on the storyteller's tale, and the two foreigners were delighted to find their Ruanja good enough to understand the funny parts. George and Jimmy and Awijan ate and watched and listened and talked, and at some point in the evening, one of the Runa challenged Jimmy to a sort of arm-wrestling compe­tition. Jimmy tried to beg off, saying, "Someone would be sad to make your heart porai," which he meant as courtesy but which was in fact exactly the kind of backward insult this crowd loved. So the two unlikely competitors squared off across a low table, Awijan coaching Jimmy with stupendously unhelpful athletic advice and George cheering wildly when Jim took two of the five contests in spite of being handicapped by the lack of a stabilizing tail. And they all three had some more of the jellied stuff, sweet and tart and cool on the tongue, to celebrate.

The crowd's attention shifted then to another pair of happy combatants and Jimmy eventually lay back flat, his legs out straight, and put his hands behind his head, smiling serenely at Awijan and then at George, who sat cross-legged and motionless next to him. He is a wonderful-looking man, Jimmy thought suddenly. White hair sweeping back in silken waves from a tanned and splendid old face, George Edwards was the very embodiment of venerable dignity: Seneca amid a gathering of statesmen reclining on Roman daybeds, if you could overlook all the tails.

As though feeling Jimmy's eyes on him, George turned toward the younger man. There was a pregnant pause. "I can't feel my lips," George announced, and then he giggled.

"Me neither. But I do feel something." Jimmy pondered this feeling. It required the entirety of his concentration to identify it. "I feel meself suddenly overcoom with a startlin' desire to sing 'Danny Boy.' "

George rolled himself into a ball laughing, fists pounding the cushion on either side of his knees with uncoordinated appreciation. Jimmy sat up and snaked out a long arm to snare another jellied thing from a passing tray. He frowned at it with unfocused but mighty scientific interest. "Jaysus, Mary an' Joseph! What d' fook is this stuff?"

"Alien Jell-O shots!" George sang breathlessly. He leaned toward Jimmy to whisper something but misjudged his center of gravity and fell over. "Bill Cosby would be so proud!" he said, sideways.

"And who d' fook would Bill Cosby be?" Jimmy demanded. Not waiting for an answer, he blinked at George with owlish deliberation and confided in his own South Boston accent, "I am hammahd."

George Edwards spoke fair Ruanja, good Spanish and excellent standard English. He considered "hammahd." He compared the sound to many mental templates. He found a match. "Hammered!" George cried triumphantly, still sideways. "Trashed. Destroyed. Totaled. Wiped. Bombed. Smashed. Wrecked."

Jimmy stared down at the small gelatinous timebomb shimmering innocently in his limp hand. "This stuff is great," he declared to no one in particular, since George continued to chant his litany of synonyms, unperturbed by the lack of attentive audience. "You don't even have to take time off from the party to pee."

And Awijan, who had not understood a single word her howling guests were saying, nevertheless gazed upon them with beneficent pleasure. For Awijan was wholly relaxed and utterly unconcerned about her peculiar life and its almost unremitting tensions: quietly and intentionally and magnificently drunk, among friends.

Supaari was aware of his secretary's occasional need to dissipate the uneasiness she fell prey to, and although he was surprised that she had taken the foreigners with her to the club, he was not angry. Truth be told, he enjoyed the almost complete silence that prevailed during their first day's journey back to Kashan.

The second day was a little more animated but now the foreigners were thoughtful. Supaari suspected that they would have a great deal to say to one another when they reached the privacy of their homes and companions in Kashan. He knew from their meals together and their questions and comments that Gayjur had not disappointed them and that his hospitality had been appreciated. This pleased him. He now looked forward to doing the same for Ha'an and the others, more confident that he could control the situation in the city.

Supaari recognized that the silence on their last day of travel was of a different quality, although he could not have known why. In fact, as they came around the last bend of the river and Supaari tied up to the Kashan dock, Marc Robichaux, George Edwards and Jimmy Quinn were preparing themselves to be met by people in mourning.

Knowing that D.W. was close to the end, they'd offered to postpone the trip to Gayjur but he'd insisted they go on, not trusting Supaari to make the offer a second time after stalling them a whole year. So they had said their good-byes before they left. Now, they could see Sofia spot them from her terrace and watched as she and Sandoz picked their way down the cliffside to the dock. The ravaged faces of Emilio and Sofia told them, they thought, all they needed to know. Climbing out of the boat, Jimmy went to his wife and stooped low to hold her while she cried. Marc Robichaux, taking in the obvious, said quietly, "The Father Superior." Mute, Emilio nodded but continued to look at George, as he had from the moment he'd emerged from the Quinns' apartment and come within sight of the returning travelers.

"And Anne," George said, uncomprehending but certain, the heart in him going dead.

Emilio nodded again.

The Runa were still out harvesting anukar, so they were alone. Supaari came with them to Sofia and Jimmy's apartment, having been told only that Ha'an and the Elder had been killed. He was shocked and could see the distress all around him. They love one another, he thought, hardly knowing whether to envy or pity them.

Fia, the tiny one with the black mane, told the tale. Knowing Supaari had been fond of Ha'an, she repeated parts of it in Ruanja for him. Dee and Ha'an were killed by some kind of animal, she told him. "Manuzhai and the others told us to be careful for djanada. Someone thinks a djanada attacked them."

"This was not an animal. Djanada are Jana'ata, do you understand? But these are dishonorable men. The killer was VaHaptaa," Su­paari said, making his contempt obvious. "Do you understand this word? Haptaa? In Ruanja, it is brai noa."

The small, dark interpreter spoke for the first time, in Ruanja first and then in H'inglish for the others. "Brai noa. Without a home. Va­Haptaa is 'from nowhere.' Landless, perhaps."

Sandoz, Supaari remembered then. He had learned the names of Ha'an's companions slowly but had trouble with the interpreter's. Meelo, the Runa called him. And Ha'an had called him Emilio. And the Elder had called him Son, and the others called him Sandoz. So many names! They had confused Supaari at first. "VaHaptaa are criminals," Supaari explained. "They have no place. They are outsiders: n'jorni." He searched for some simple parallel. "Do you recall the first day of our meeting? Someone was angry because it is a crime to take meat without permission. This taking is called khukurik"

"Poaching," Sandoz said, lifting his chin to show he understood.

"VaHaptaa take without permission. Khukurik is not permitted. You should kill that one if you see him again," Supaari told them. "Someone would thank you for this service. And the VaKashani will also be grateful. VaHaptaa are dangerous to them: djanada, do you un­derstand?"

They did now, they thought. Too late, but now they understood.

Supaari bid them farewell after that, feeling it was time to leave the foreigners to their own death rituals. Sandoz accompanied him to the dock, always courteous if he understood how to express respect. Supaari knew the foreigners well enough now to realize that insult was always born of ignorance, not malice. "Sipaj, Sandoz. Someone is sorry for your loss," he said, climbing down into the boat.

Sandoz looked at him. The strange brown eyes were less disturbing to Supaari now; he was used to the tiny round iris and knew that Sandoz and the others did not see through some sorcery but in a normal way. "You are kind," Sandoz said at last.

"Someone will return before the end of Parian."

"Our hearts will be glad of it."

Supaari cast off and backed the powerboat around the dock, turning it into the southern channel toward the village of Lanjeri, where he had business to attend to. He looked back once before his boat rounded the bend and saw the foreigner still standing on the dock, a small black silhouette against the Kashan cliffside.

The long evening passed with George alternately sitting and pacing, sobbing suddenly and then laughing through the tears, telling Jimmy and Sofia stories of Anne and of their marriage, and then falling silent. It was almost impossible to go home to where Anne wasn't, but George finally moved to leave. Sofia burst into tears again, undone by memories of her widowed father's grief and by her own sadness and by the thought of losing Jimmy as George had lost Anne. Pressing George's hand against her belly, she said with fierce conviction, "You are this baby's grandfather. You will live with us." And held him until the crying stopped and got him into the bed Jimmy made up. The two of them watched over George until at last he slept.

"I'm all right," Sofia whispered to Jimmy then. "See about Emilio. It was bad, Jimmy. You can't imagine. It was terrible."

Jimmy nodded and kissed her and left to check on the priests, neither of whom had been seen for hours. Stooping to peer into their apartment, he saw how things were and motioned Marc outside. "D.W. would tell you to write up the damn report," Jimmy said very softly, stepping back to the far side of the terrace with Marc. "It can probably wait until tomorrow, if you don't feel up to it."

A fitful smile appeared on Marc's face, pale in the moonlight. He understood that he was being offered a good excuse to shirk his real duty, which was to comfort Emilio somehow. He regretted his own lack of pastoral experience. What could one say? Sandoz, he knew, had been prepared for the Father Superior's death, but Anne, too—a staggering blow, to lose them both at once, and horrifically. "Thank you. I shall write the report tonight. It will be good to have something to do."

Marc ducked into the apartment for his tablet, hesitated, and then picked up the Father Superior's, with its preprogrammed transmission codes; Yarbrough had shown him how to use it, knowing this day was coming. He looked to Sandoz, concerned that this practical reminder of D.W.'s passing would distress him, but Emilio seemed not to know Marc was in the room. Returning to the terrace, Marc told Jimmy quietly, "I shall be in Aycha's apartment." He turned back toward Sandoz and then faced Jimmy again, giving a small shrug.

Putting a hand on Marc's shoulder, Jimmy looked past him at Emilio sitting in the gloom. "It's okay. I'll see what I can do."

Jimmy went inside. For a while, he was as helpless as Marc had been, unable to imagine what was keeping Emilio from falling apart. The Irish weep and drink and sing and talk at a wake, so George's reaction had seemed normal and predictable to Jimmy, a kind of grief he understood. But this…You poor macho bastard, Jimmy thought suddenly, realizing that Sandoz probably just wanted some privacy so he could finally cry without witnesses and shame. Jimmy got to his feet but then hunkered down on his heels so he could see Emilio's face. "¿Quieres companeros o estar solo?" he asked gently, to be sure before he left Sandoz alone.

"Soy solo."

Jimmy was almost out of the apartment before he caught the change in the verb and went back. "Mirame, 'mano. Look at me!" he said, dropped down to Emilio's level again. He put his hands on Emilio's shoulders and shook him a little. From a great distance, Emilio's eyes came to him. "You are not alone, Emilio. Sofia loved them and I loved them, too. Do you hear me? Maybe not for so long, maybe not so deeply, but truly and well. We loved them, too." It was only then, saying it, that the reality of the deaths hit Jimmy, and no burden of stoicism dammed up his tears. Emilio's eyes closed and he turned his head away and then at last, Jimmy understood the rest of it. "Oh, Jesus. You're not alone, Emilio. I love you. Sofia loves you. And our kid's gonna need an uncle, man. You're not alone. You've still got us, right? Oh, Jesus," he said again, taking Sandoz in his arms. "That's better. Thank God! That's better…"

It was over sooner than Jimmy thought was good for him but at least there'd been some release. Jimmy waited until he thought the time was right and then, wiping his own eyes on his sleeve, lifted Sandoz to his feet. "Come on. No one sleeps alone tonight. You're coming with me." He steered Emilio out of the apartment and, voice roughened by tears, called to Robichaux, "Marc, you come on up to our place, too. No one sleeps alone tonight!"

When Jimmy brought Emilio and Marc into the apartment, Sofia was still awake, dark eyes huge in her small face, lips and eyelids swollen. She had heard what her husband had called out to Marc and guessed what had given rise to it. Flooded with love, she thought to herself: I have chosen well. She watched, too worn out to help, as Jimmy cobbled together sleeping cushions for the two priests. Marc was subdued but fine. Emilio, she knew, was not fine but he was spent, and slept almost as soon as Jimmy covered him.

When everyone else was taken care of, Jimmy came to her and she took his hand, getting to her feet wearily. They walked out to their terrace and sat close together in the two-person glider George and Manuzhai had built, Sofia nestling under Jimmy's arm, her small hand on his thigh. Jimmy set the chair in motion and for a while, they rocked in companionable quiet. It was clouding up. Moons that had been bright only half an hour earlier were already reduced to hazy glowing disks in the sky. Sofia felt the baby move and drew Jimmy's hand to her belly and watched his face light up, his red-rimmed eyes unfocused as he listened with his fingers to the dance within her.

They spoke then, with the dear and ordinary intimacy of the well-married in the eye of a storm. George was doing okay, considering. Marc was getting his bearings. Emilio seemed stunned but had been able to cry a little.

"And you, Sofia? You look so tired," Jimmy said, worried about her and the child. My God, he thought suddenly. What will we do without Anne? What if the baby is breech? Please, God, let it be a girl, a tiny girl who takes after Sofia and my mom. An easy birth, please, God. And he wondered if they could get back home before the due date if the lander fuel could be manufactured soon enough. But he said, "Do you want to tell me about it tonight or wait until later?"

She had sworn she would never again keep anything from him. Her vow to herself and to him: she would not carry burdens alone. So she began, voice pitched low, to tell him of the past two days.

"Sandoz? I'm sorry." She watched him struggle awake, feeling terrible for waking him. "I'm sorry," she repeated as he sat up blinking.

Emilio looked around him, a little confused yet. Then his eyes opened wide and he asked anxiously, "D.W.?"

Sofia shook her head and shrugged. "It's only that I heard something a while ago. I'm probably being an alarmist, but Anne and D.W. have been gone a long time. I think we should go find them."

Still thickheaded, he nodded agreeably: Sure, absolutely, if you say so. And looked around for his clothes, his hand dropping onto his discarded shirt, where he looked at it for a moment, as though he had no idea what to do with it. Finally, he seemed to come fully awake and Sofia said, "I'll wait outside."

As he dressed, she berated herself for timidity. "I should have gone out myself," she called. "I shouldn't have gotten you up." Emilio was showing the effects of broken nights spent nursing D.W. and needed all the sleep he could get during the day. She felt like a caricature of a pregnant woman, scared of noises, apt to burst into tears for no good reason. The early weeks of her pregnancy had been an embarrassing emotional roller coaster.

"No. It's okay. You did the right thing." A minute later, Sandoz appeared on the terrace, reasonably alert. He'd had perhaps four or five hours of sleep.

They went first to the hampiy and saw the cup with its dregs of soup. Stepping back outside, Sandoz looked around. "It's quiet out there," he drawled, squinty-eyed, like an old-time cinema cowboy. "Too quiet." He said it to make her laugh, and she smiled but wished she could see Anne and D.W. somewhere.

"They usually walk off that way." He waved vaguely toward the south. "You stay here. I can manage." D.W. was so thin now that Emilio could almost carry him alone. He and Anne could lock hands and make a sort of sling for him.

"No," Sofia said, practical even about her own emotional upheavals. "I'll only sit and worry. I may as well come." He looked at her doubtfully so she added, "It's all right. I feel fine. Really."

They were still north of the lander when they began to know something was wrong. The wind must have shifted because their first indica­tion of what had happened was the odor, the unmistakable smell of blood. Emilio went to the lander and quietly opened the cargo door a few inches, enough to reach in and grab D.W.'s Winchester. "Get inside, lock the door and stay there," he told her. He checked to see that the rifle was loaded, that a round was in the chamber, and walked around the lander without looking back.

She was not sure what made her disobey the order. Maybe she was frightened to be alone and unknowing or simply determined not to shrink from whatever was waiting, but she followed him around the lander and saw then, as he did, the carnage, indistinct in the distance. Even from where they stood, some things were clear. Whatever Sandoz had thought to do with the rifle, it was too late now. Emilio turned, ashen, and saw her. "Stay here," he said, and this time she did as she was told, frozen by memories of her mother's corpse.

She watched Emilio move toward the bodies, saw the rifle fall from his hands, saw his head turn down and away. He looked back toward it all almost immediately, and she saw his hands rise toward his head as he stood, taking in the details. She knew suddenly that it was insupportable for him to be alone with this. I am Mendes, she thought, and she forced herself to go closer but stumbled at the sight of it, and fought nausea. Nimrod, she thought numbly. The hunter of Genesis, whose prey was man.

Emilio turned and saw her moving toward him again. She meant to pull him away from it or hold him, but before she could get closer, he said in a quiet level voice, "There are tarps and a shovel in the lander." He looked at her, eyes steady and dry, until finally she realized why he wanted her to leave. Craven, she walked back to the plane. When she returned, he was streaked and smeared and soaked with blood, and had laid the two bodies out, putting limbs in position. He wiped his gory hand on his shirt and then reached out to close the eyes, smooth the hair.

She was almost blind with tears now but as silent as Emilio. She wanted to help him unfold the tarps, but her arms wouldn't seem to move and so, alone, he covered the butchered bodies of the father of his soul and the mother of his heart. Sick with reaction, Sofia moved to the edge of the cliff and vomited over the side. All she could think of was what a meager meal they must have made.

The graves took a long time, the ground stony and grudging. Emilio dug close by; it was unthinkable to move the bodies in pieces. He had been too busy with the language research to help with the garden, so his hands were not hardened to the shovel. After a while, Sofia realized that he needed gloves and went for them, glad to be able to help somehow. She decided next to collect rocks in a pile, to put over the graves when the time came. That accomplished, she sat and watched, but left again an hour later to fill a canteen for him. As the long Rakhati evening wore on, he would now and then stop digging and stare hollow-eyed and at those times, Emilio would accept water from her wordlessly. Then he would lean to the task again, the relentless sound of the shovel filling the world. At dusk, Sofia got a camplight from the lander and stayed with him until he was done, sometime after midnight.

Emilio climbed out of the second grave and sat for a time, hunched on the ground with his head in his hands. Then he stirred and pushed himself to his feet. Sofia had by that time come to some sticking point. Together, they laid the remains of D. W. Yarbrough and Anne Edwards to rest, and the shoveling began again.

When the mounds were covered with stones, the brief, endless night was over and they simply stood staring at the graves, too exhausted to think or speak. Sofia leaned over and turned off the camplight, its orange glow lost in the light of morning. When she straightened, she found herself looking directly into the eyes of Emilio Sandoz and was appalled by what she saw.

How long had they known each other? she wondered. Was it ten years? In all that time, she had never even called him by his given name…She tried to find words for him, some way to let him know that she had the measure of this loss, knew the weight and depth and breadth of it, and shared it.

"Emilio," she said finally, "I am your sister and we are orphaned."

He was, she thought, too tired to weep, too shocked, but he looked at her and nodded, accepting it; let her come to him then and hold him. And when at last they embraced, she was a married woman, pregnant with his friend's child, and he was a priest in perpetuity, gutted by grief, and they clung to each other in dumb, bewildered misery.

She led him by the hand down the cliffside, stopping for clean clothes, which she carried to the river. They washed away the blood and dirt and sweat, and dressed, and she brought him to her home, as eerily silent as the first day they'd entered this strange and beautiful village. She fixed them both something to eat; he refused at first, but she insisted. "It's a Jewish law," she told him. "You have to eat. Life goes on." Once he took the first bite, he was ravenous and finished everything she put in front of him.

She knew as clearly as her husband would the next evening that no one should sleep alone, not now, not after all that, so she put him to bed, in Jimmy's place, and cleaned things up a little before lying down next to him. It was then that she felt the baby move for the first time. She was motionless for a moment, astonished and absorbed. Then she reached toward him and took his hand and held it against her belly. There was a breathless pause and then again the turning, the quickening. Life goes on, she meant for him to understand. Death is balanced.

"I did not mean to be cruel," she would tell Jimmy the next night, despairingly, her small hands fisted. "I only wanted him to feel a part of life again."

Emilio sat up suddenly and twisted away from her, shattering at last. She realized then how it must have seemed to him and begged him to forgive her, trying to explain. He understood, but it was so vivid and his isolation now seemed total, and he could not speak. She rose on her knees behind him and held him as tightly as she could, as though to keep his body from going to pieces. He was so worn out, but the sobbing lasted a long time. Finally he lay down again, his back to her, hands over his face. "God," she heard him whisper over and over, "God."

She lay down behind him and pulled her knees up close, cradling the shaking body until she felt the spasmodic shuddering diminish and heard his breathing slow and grow even. And so they slept: bereaved and exhausted, with mourning as their chaperone.