The Sparrow (5 page)

Sitting in their screened-in back porch, sipping drinks in the dusk, he learned that George was an engineer whose last job had involved life-support systems for underwater mining operations but whose career had spanned the technological distance from wooden slide rules to
ILIAC IV
and
FORTRAN
to neural nets, photonics and nanomachines. New to retirement, George had spent the early weeks of freedom cutting a swath through the old house, catching up on every small repair, taking curatorial pride in the smoothly working wooden window casings, the tuck-pointed brickwork, the tidiness of the workroom. He read stacks of books, eating them like popcorn. He enlarged the garden, built an arbor, organized the garage. He sank into pillowy contentment. He was bored brainless.

"Do you run?" he asked Sandoz, hopefully.

"I went out for cross-country in school."

"Watch out, dear, he's trying to sucker you. The old fart's training for a marathon," Anne said, the admiration in her eyes contradicting her tartness. "We're going to have to rebuild his knees if he keeps this nonsense up. On the other hand, if he croaks doing roadwork, I'm going to be a tastefully rich widow. I believe very sincerely in overinsuring."

Anne, he found out, was taking his course because she'd used medical Latin for years and was curious about the source language. She'd wanted to be a physician from the start but chickened out, afraid of the biochem, and so she began her career as a biological anthropologist. After finishing her Ph.D., she got work in Cleveland, teaching gross anatomy at Case Western Reserve. Years of working with med students in the gross lab did nothing to sustain her awe of the medical curriculum and so, at forty, she went back to school and wound up in emergency medicine, a specialty that required tolerance for chaos and a working knowledge of everything from neurosurgery to dermatology.

"I enjoy the violence," she explained primly, handing him a napkin. "Would you like me to explain about how that nose thing happens? The anatomy is really interesting. The epiglottis is like a little toilet bowl seat that covers the larynx—"

"Anne!" George yelled.

She stuck out her tongue. "Anyway, emergency medicine is great stuff. In the space of an hour sometimes, you get a crushed chest, a gunshot wound to the head and a kid with a rash."

"No children?" Emilio asked them one evening, to his own surprise.

"Nope. Turned out, we don't breed well in captivity," George said, unembarrassed.

Anne laughed. "Oh, God, Emilio. You'll love this. We used the rhythm method of birth control for years!" Her eyes bulged with disbelief. "We thought it
worked
!" And they howled.

He loved Anne, trusted her from the beginning. As the weeks went by and his emotions became more tangled, he felt more strongly the need of her counsel and the conviction that it would be good. But disclosure was never easy for him; the fall semester was half over before, one night after he finished helping George clear up the dinner wreckage, he found the nerve to suggest a walk to Anne.

"Behave yourselves," George ordered. "I'm old, but I can shoot."

"Relax, George," Anne called over her shoulder, as they started down the driveway. "I probably flunked the midterm. He's taking me out to break the news gently."

They chatted amiably for the first block or two, Anne's hand on Emilio's arm, her silver head nearly level with his dark one. He started twice but stalled out, unable to find words. Amused, she sighed and said, "Okay, tell me about her."

Sandoz barked a laugh and ran a hand through his hair. "Is it that obvious?"

"No," she assured him, gentle now. "It's just that I've seen you with a gorgeous young woman at the coffee shop on campus a few times, and I put two and two together. So. Tell me!"

He did. About Mendes's adamantine single-mindedness. Her accent, which he could mimic to perfection but could not identify. The hidalgo remark, so out of proportion to his mild attempt to soften the relationship. The antagonism he sensed but could not understand. And finally, ending at the beginning, the almost physical jolt of meeting her. Not just an appreciation of her beauty or a plain glandular reaction but a sense of … knowing her already, somehow.

At the end of all this, Anne said, "Well, it's just a guess, but what occurs to me is that she's Sephardic."

He came abruptly to a halt and stood still, eyes closed. "Of course. A Jew, of Spanish ancestry." He looked at Anne. "She thinks my ancestors threw her ancestors out of Spain in 1492."

"It would explain a lot." She shrugged and they began to walk again. "Personally, I love the beard, darling, but it does make you look like central casting's idea of the Grand Inquisitor. You may be pushing a lot of her buttons."

Jungian archetypes work both ways, he realized. "Balkan," he said, after a while. "The accent could be Balkan."

Anne nodded. "Maybe. A lot of Sephardim ended up in the Balkans after the expulsion. She might be from Romania or Turkey. Or Bulgaria. Someplace like that." She whistled, remembering Bosnia. "I'll tell you something about the Balkans. If people there think they're going to forget a grudge, they write an epic poem and make the children recite it before bed. You're up against five hundred years of carefully preserved and very bad memories about imperial Catholic Spain."

The silence lasted a little too long to give credence to his next remark. "I only wanted to understand her better." Anne made a face that said, Oh, sure. Emilio went on doggedly. "The work we are doing is difficult enough. Hostility simply makes it harder."

Anne thought of an off-color comment. She didn't say it, but Emilio read it on her face and snorted, "Oh, grow up," and she giggled like a twelve-year-old who's just discovered smutty jokes. Anne took his arm then and they started back toward the house, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood buttoning up for the night. Dogs barked at them, the leaves rattled and whispered. A mother called out, "Heather! Bedtime! I'm not going to tell you again!"

"Heather. Haven't heard that one in years. Probably named after a grandmother." Anne suddenly stopped and Emilio turned back to look at her. "Shit, Emilio, I don't know—maybe God is as real for you as George and I are for each other … We were barely twenty when we got married, back before the Earth's crust cooled. And believe me, nobody gets through forty years together without noticing a few attractive alternatives along the way." He started to say something, but she held up her hand. "Wait. I intend to bestow upon you unsolicited advice, my darling. I know this will sound glib, but don't pretend you aren't feeling what you feel. That's how things slide into hell. Feelings are facts," she said, her voice a little hard, as she began to walk again. "Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If God is anything like a middle-class white chick from the suburbs, which I admit is a long shot, it's what you do about what you feel that matters." They could see George now, sitting on the front stoop in a pool of light, waiting for them. Her voice was very soft. "Maybe God will love you more if you come back to Him with your whole heart later."

Emilio kissed Anne good-night, waved to George, and started back to John Carroll with a great deal to think about. Anne joined George on the porch, but before Emilio got beyond earshot, she called out, "Hey! What did I get on the midterm?"

"Eighty-six. You messed up the ablative."

"Shit!" she yelled. And her laugh sailed out toward him in the dark.

By Monday morning, he had come to some conclusions. He did not shave, feeling that would be too obvious, but he adjusted his manner, becoming as neutrally Anglo as Beau Bridges. Sofia Mendes relaxed fractionally. He permitted himself no small talk and fell into the rhythm of question and answer that suited her. The work went more smoothly.

He began meeting George Edwards on his training circuit and going part way with him. Emilio decided to run the 10K in the big spring race. George, who would be running the full marathon, was glad for the company. "Ten kilometers is nothing to be ashamed of," the older man assured him, grinning.

And he found work to do at a high school in a miserable neighborhood of East Cleveland. He brought the energy to God.

In the end, he was rewarded with something like a moment of friendship. Sofia Mendes had suspended their meetings for several weeks and then let him know she had something for him to look at. He met her at his office and she spoke to his system, calling the file in from the net. Waving him into a chair and sitting down next to him, she said, "Just start in. Pretend you are preparing for assignment to a mission where you'll use a language you have never studied and for which no formal instruction is available."

He did as he was told. After several minutes, he began skipping around, asking questions randomly, pursuing instruction at different levels. It was all there, the experience of years, even the songs. His best effort, ordered and systematized, seen through the prism of her own startling intellect. Hours later, he pushed away from the desk and met her eyes, which were shining. "Beautiful," he said ambiguously, "just beautiful."

And for the first time, he saw her smile briefly. The look of fierce dignity returned and she stood. "Thank you." She hesitated but then continued firmly. "This has been a good project. I enjoyed working with you."

He rose, as it was clear she intended to leave, just like that. "What will you do next? Take your fee and relax on a beach, perhaps?"

She stared at him for a moment. "You really don't know, do you," she said. "A very sheltered life, I suppose."

It was his turn to look at her, uncomprehending.

"You don't know the significance of this?" she asked, indicating the metal bracelet she always wore. He had noticed it, of course, a rather plain piece of jewelry, in keeping with her preference for simple clothing. "I receive only a living stipend. The fee goes to my broker. He contracted my services when I was fifteen. I was educated at his expense and until I repay his investment, it is illegal to employ me directly. I cannot remove the identification bracelet. It's there to protect his interests. I thought such arrangements were common knowledge."

"This can't be legal," he insisted, when he could speak. "This is slavery."

"Perhaps intellectual prostitution is nearer the mark. Legally, the arrangement is more like indentured service than slavery, Dr. Sandoz. I am not held for life. When I repay the debt, I am free to go." She gathered her belongings as she spoke and made ready to leave him. "And I find the arrangement preferable to physical prostitution."

That was altogether more than he could take in. "Where will you go next?" he asked, still stunned.

"The U.S. Army War College. A military history professor is retiring. Good-bye, Dr. Sandoz."

He shook her hand and watched her go. Head up, a princely posture.

6

ROME AND NAPLES:
MARCH–APRIL 2060

I
N
M
ARCH,
a man with stolen Jesuit credentials managed to get past Residence security and into Emilio Sandoz's room. Fortunately, Edward Behr happened to be on his way there, and when he heard the reporter badgering Sandoz with questions he went through the door low and fast. The momentum of his drive slammed the intruder into a wall, where Brother Edward kept him pinned while shouting wheezily for assistance.

Unfortunately, the entire incident was broadcast live, transmitted by the man's personal AV rig. Even so, Edward thought afterward, it was rather gratifying to believe that the world might incidentally have gained some respect for the athletic abilities of short, fat asthmatics.

The intrusion was a setback for Sandoz, for whom the incident had been literally nightmarish. But even before the break-in, it was clear that he wasn't improving much mentally, despite the fact that his physical condition had stabilized. The worst symptoms of scurvy were under control, although the fatigue and bruising persisted. The doctors suspected that his ability to absorb ascorbic acid had been impaired by long exposure to cosmic radiation. There was always some kind of physiological or genetic damage in space; the miners did fairly well because they were shielded by rock, but the shuttle crews and the station staffs always had trouble with cancers and deficiency diseases.

In any case, Sandoz healed poorly. Dental implants were impossible; he'd been fitted with a couple of bridges so he could eat normally, but he had no appetite and remained underweight. And the surgeons wouldn't touch his hands. "There's no point in trying, as things stand," one of them said. "His connective tissue is like a spider web. It'll hold if you don't disturb it. Maybe in a year …"

So the Society brought in Father Singh, an Indian craftsman known for his intricate braces and artificial limbs, who fabricated a pair of near-prostheses to strengthen and help control Sandoz's fingers. Delicate-looking as spun sugar, the braces were fitted over his hands and extended back toward his elbows. Sandoz was courteous, as always, and praised the workmanship and thanked Father Singh for his help. And he practiced daily with an obstinate persistence that first worried and then frightened Brother Edward.

Eventually, they were told, Sandoz would learn to use only the wrist flexors to activate the servomotors that ran off electrical potentials generated in the muscles of his forearms. But even after a month, he couldn't seem to isolate the movement he needed, and the effort to control his hands took every bit of strength he had. So Brother Edward did his best to keep the sessions short, balancing the progress Emilio made against the price they both paid in tears.

T
WO DAYS AFTER
another reporter was caught climbing an outside wall near Sandoz's bedroom, the Father General called Edward Behr and John Candotti into his office, just after his regular morning meeting with his secretary. To John's dismay, Voelker stayed.

"Father Voelker has suggested that Emilio might benefit from a retreat, gentlemen," Vincenzo Giuliani began, glancing at Candotti with eyes that said quite clearly, Shut up and play along. "And he has kindly offered to conduct the Spiritual Exercises. I am interested in your views."

Brother Edward shifted in his chair and leaned forward, hesitant to speak first but with a definite opinion about this. Before he could form a sentence, Johannes Voelker spoke. "We are taught that we should make no decision in times of desolation. It's clear that the man is experiencing a darkness of the soul, and no wonder. Sandoz is spiritually paralyzed, unable to move forward. I recommend a retreat with a director who would help him focus on the task he has before him."

"Maybe if the guy didn't have people breathing down his neck, he'd do better," said John, smiling genially and thinking, You pedantic prig.

"Forgive me, Father General," Brother Edward broke in hastily. The animosity between Candotti and Voelker was becoming the stuff of legends. "With respect, the Exercises are a very emotional experience. I don't think Emilio's ready for them now."

"I'd have to agree with that," John said pleasantly. And Johannes Voelker is the last man on Earth I'd choose as a spiritual director for Sandoz, he thought. Shit or get off the pot, my son.

"Strictly from a safety standpoint, however," Edward Behr continued, "I'd like to see him elsewhere. He feels as though he's under siege, here in Rome."

"Well, in a manner of speaking, he is," the Father General said. "I agree with Father Voelker that Emilio must face up to his situation, but now is not the time and Rome is not the place. So. We are agreed that it's a good idea to take Emilio out of the Residence, even if we have different motives for the move, correct?" Giuliani rose from his desk and went to his windows, where he could see a morose crowd standing around under umbrellas. They'd been fortunate with the cold, wet weather, which had discouraged all but the most persistent reporters that winter. "The retreat house north of Naples would provide more privacy than we can guarantee here."

"The problem, I should think, is how to get Sandoz out of Number 5 without being detected," Edward Behr said. "The bread van won't work a second time."

"Reporters follow every vehicle," Voelker confirmed.

Giuliani turned from the windows. "The tunnels," he said.

Candotti looked puzzled. "I'm sorry?"

"We are connected to the Vatican by a complex of tunnels," Voelker informed him. "We can take him out through St. Peter's."

"Do we still have access to them?" Behr asked, frowning.

"Yes, if one knows whom to ask," Giuliani said serenely and moved toward the door of his office, signaling the end of the meeting. "Until our plans are in place, gentlemen, it is best, perhaps, to say nothing to Emilio. Or to anyone else."

F
INISHED AT
N
UMBER 5,
John Candotti stood by the front door with his umbrella at the ready, irrationally irritated that the weather had been so bad for so long. Sunny Italy, he thought, snorting.

He shouldered his way through the media crowd that rushed at him as soon as he opened the door and took perverse pleasure in answering all the shouted questions with pointless quotations from Scripture, making a great show of piety. But as soon as he left the reporters behind, he turned his thoughts to the meeting that had just ended. Giuliani obviously agreed it was crazy to put Sandoz through the Exercises in his present state, John thought as he walked back to his room. So what was the point of that little show with Voelker?

It wasn't in John Candotti's nature to be suspicious of motives. There were people who loved to play organizational chess, to pit one person against another, to maneuver and plot and anticipate everyone else's next three moves, but John had no talent for the game and so he was nearly home before he got it, at the very moment that he managed to step into a fresh pile of dog droppings.

Crap, he thought, in observation and in commentary. He stood there in the rain, contemplating his shoe and its adornment and his own guileless good nature. This meeting, he realized, was part of some kind of good cop, bad cop balancing act Giuliani was encouraging. Gee, nice thinking, Sherlock! he told himself mordantly.

Obedience was one thing. Being used, even by the Father General, was another. He was offended but also embarrassed that he had taken so long to wise up. And even suspicious, now, because Giuliani had agreed so easily to find a way out of town for Sandoz. But, scraping the shit off his shoe and considering things, John was also sort of flattered; after all, he'd been brought here all the way from Chicago because his Jesuit superiors knew he was almost genetically programmed to despise assholes like his beloved brother in Christ, Johannes Voelker.

John was so anxious to get away from Rome himself that he didn't want to inquire too closely into the Father General's permission to leave. Just play the cards the way they lay, he told himself, and hope that God is on Emilio's side.

O
N
E
ASTER WEEKEND,
the Vatican was packed with the faithful: 250,000 people, there to receive the Pope's blessing, to pray, to gawk, to buy souvenirs, to have their pockets picked. The Jihad promised bombs, and security was tight, but no one noticed a sickly man bent over his own lap, wrapped against the April chill, being wheeled out of the plaza by a big guy in a popular tourist jacket that proclaimed
VESUVIUS
2,
POMPEII
0. Anyone watching might only have been surprised at how easily they flagged down a central city taxi.

"Driver?" Sandoz asked as John belted him into the back seat. He sounded close to tears. The crowds, John supposed, and the noise. The fear of being recognized and mobbed.

"Brother Edward," John told him.

Edward Behr, in a cabbie's uniform, raised a dimpled hand in greeting from the front seat before turning his attention back to the streets. Outlawing private vehicles in the city had reduced the density of traffic but acted as Darwinian selection pressure for the most combative drivers. Edward Behr was, for good reason, an exceptionally careful driver.

John Candotti settled into the seat next to Sandoz and got comfortable, pleased with himself and with the day and with the world. "A clean getaway," he said aloud as Edward pulled onto the clogged autostrada to Naples. He turned to Sandoz, hoping that he'd caught the infectious, boyish spirit of getting away with something, of skipping school for a day of stolen freedom … And saw instead a desperately tired man, slumped in the seat beside him, eyes closed against a jarring, exhausting journey through the city, against new pain layered over scurvy's constant hemorrhagic ache and a damnable bone-deep weariness that rest could not remedy.

In the silence, John's eyes met those of Brother Edward, who had seen the same man in the rearview mirror, and he watched Ed's smile fade, just as his own did. They were quiet after that, so Brother Edward could better concentrate on feathering the turns and smoothing out the ride while driving as fast as he dared.