perhaps, contributed to what she had always perceived as a certain unfledged quality, made more striking by a willingness to submit to authority, odd in a grown man of intelligence and energy, but part and parcel of Jesuit formation. Not childish, but certainly childlike. And yet, she could see now the skin of the eyes pleating, the mouth bracketed by deeper grooves than she had noticed the first time she'd seen him. Half his life, she thought, given to this jealous God of his.
And perhaps a third of my own life given to Jaubert, she thought, and before that…Who am I to judge a life misspent?
She drew closer to him, the humus and herbage cushioning her step and absorbing the sound of her approach, and dropped silently almost to her knees. Her hand was drawn to a lock of hair near his face, silver against the black, and she reached out tentatively, as though to touch a butterfly. Sensing her movement, his eyes opened, and she took cover behind Anne's unwitting lessons.
'Sandoz!' she cried, lightly seizing his hair and pulling it playfully toward his eyes, 'Look at this! You're getting gray, old man.'
He laughed. She smiled back and stood again, looking around, as though there were something, anything in this world, that was of more interest to her now than the man she'd just turned away from.
'So. You are pleased with your choice?' When she said nothing, Emilio asked again, 'Happy that you came here?'
'Yes, I am happy with my choice.' Sofia gazed at the forest, her hands gesturing toward it all, before turning to look at him. 'This makes everything worthwhile, doesn't it.' She was aware, always, that he knew what she had been and wondered with fresh interest how this shadowed his thoughts of her.
'I had a dream last night,' Emilio told her. 'I was floating in the air. And in the dream, I said to myself, I wonder why I never tried this before? It's so easy.'
'REM-mediated dendrite formation,' she told him. 'Your brain is trying to organize a response to prolonged weightlessness followed by all this new sensory input.'
Emilio regarded her through narrowed eyes. 'You spend entirely too much time with Anne. What is it with the women on this mission?' he demanded suddenly. 'If I looked up
He had been praying, Sofia realized, not sleeping. His voice was light and ironic, but she had seen his face that day and knew he meant it. She tried hard to identify the feeling, to name what swept her, and realized that it was tenderness. This is impossible, she thought. I can't let this happen.
'Aside from exasperating me,' he continued, 'did you have some reason for—?'
She blinked. 'Oh. Yes, actually, it's time for work. Anne sent me for you.'
'No one is hurt?' he asked, getting to his feet.
'No. But Robichaux is ready to begin the experiments with local food sources. Anne wants you to help monitor the responses.'
They walked back to the encampment, bantering amiably on the way. But she was careful to keep her distance, and believed she gave no sign that she had at last taken up a burden that Emilio had long carried for both of them, without her conscious knowledge. Sofia Mendes, after all, had survived by sealing off emotion, her own and others'. It was an old skill, employed in times past to protect herself and now honorably exercised on behalf of another. I am Mendes, she thought. Nothing is beyond me.
Anne looked up from her notebook as Emilio and Sofia joined the others. It's happened, Anne thought, but she turned immediately to the work at hand.
'We'll start with a little meat,' she told the group sitting in a circle in front of the lab tent. 'Marc wants to go first, but he's just spent a lot of time throwing up in zero G so I don't want to put him under any further stress. Jimmy's big and healthy and he'll eat anything that gets near his mouth. I expect he'll survive if the stuff here turns out to be poisonous to us.' Jimmy laughed but looked a little nervous. Anne wasn't joking. 'Emilio, you and I are going to watch him in shifts for the next twenty-four hours,' Anne continued. 'I'll take the first three hours and then you're on.'
'What are we looking for?' Emilio asked, sitting on the ground between Alan and George.
'Vomiting within the first hour or so. Then abdominal pain. Then intestinal pain, and then diarrhea ranging from annoying to bloody and life threatening. And then,' she said seriously, looking at Jimmy the whole time, 'there's the possibility of strokelike bleeding in the brain and a whole range of damage to the intestines and liver and kidneys, which could be either temporary or permanent.'
'You'd never get permission from the National Institutes of Health to run this experiment,' Jimmy said.
'Not even if the lab rats signed their consent forms with perfect penmanship,' Anne agreed. 'But we're not applying for a research grant. Jimmy, you know the risks. Marc and I have run a hundred tests, but there are endless chemical compounds in anything as complicated as a plant or an animal. Alan has volunteered to go first if you want to back out.'
He didn't, and they began with a small amount of roasted little green guy because the animals were abundant and easy to catch. Everyone watched as Jimmy got ready to take his first bite.
'Simply hold it in your mouth for thirty seconds and then spit it out, please,' Marc instructed him. 'Any tingling or numbness around the lips or in the mouth?'
'No. It's not bad,' Jim told them. 'Could use some salt. Tastes just like chicken.' There were moans, as he knew there would be, and he beamed happily at the response.
'So. Another bite and this time swallow,' Marc told him. Jimmy sucked the rest of the meat from the little pair of legs. And was shouted at by Marc, to everyone's surprise, since they didn't know Marc had shouting in him. 'Never again, do you understand? There is a protocol and you will observe it!'
Sheepish, Jimmy apologized but, despite the risk he took, suffered no ill effects, either immediately or at any time during the next twenty-four hours. Like the rainwater they'd drunk, little green guy meat seemed harmless.
They went on from there, with Jimmy taking the first taste of each item they sampled. If it didn't make Jimmy sick, Alan and D.W. tried it next and then George and Marc, and finally Sofia, with Anne and Emilio acting as controls, recording the foodstuffs they tested and tracking the responses, ready to do what they could if someone reacted badly. Marc's protocol was observed to the letter after Jimmy's rashness. If anyone experienced the tingling or numbing that indicated potential poison, the item was described carefully for the record and not tried again. If there was no numbing and if the item was reasonably palatable, then they'd take another small bite and swallow. Wait fifteen minutes and try some more. Then finish a good-sized sample an hour later and hope to be as lucky as Jimmy had been.
They rejected many things on the basis of taste. Most of the leaves they tried were too bitter, and many of the fruits were too sour, although one that tasted great gave even Jimmy the shits. Alan broke out in a rash once, and Marc threw up after one meal. But slowly they compiled a list of things that didn't seem to damage them, even if it was still unclear whether or not they were deriving any useful nutrients from the food. That would require time and a gradual shift from a diet made up primarily of food brought from Earth to one comprising native elements.
The planet seemed so welcoming and their contentment was so thorough that the weeks came and went without a return to the
The first and only sign of trouble was simply that Alan slept late one morning. In the relaxed discipline of those days, D.W. let him but finally decided to roust him out for breakfast. First with humor and then with concern, he jostled Alan with a toe and then shook his shoulder. Getting no response, he called to Anne, who knew from the tenor of his voice to bring her kit.
Shouting Alan's name, talking to him constantly, she surveyed his condition. Airway open. Breathing and heartbeat irregular. 'Alan, honey, come on back. Come on, sweetheart, we know you're in there,' she said in what she hoped was a mother's voice as D.W. began the ritual anointing. Pupils dilated and fixed. 'Father Pace!' she yelled. 'You'll be late for services!' Anything. Try to engage him, find a way into wherever he was now, pull him
