The Sparrow

beautiful, but her heart sank. It was as unlike the Singers' language as Italian was unlike Chinese. All that work, she thought, for nothing. George, who like all of them had been trained by Emilio to recognize the Singers' language, must have been thinking the same thing. He leaned over to Anne and whispered, 'Shit. On Star Trek, everybody spoke English!' She elbowed him but smiled to herself and took his hand, listening to the speech and tightening her grip as the person stopped speaking and she waited for Emilio's response.

'I don't understand,' said Emilio Sandoz in a soft clear voice, 'but I can learn if you will teach me.'

What happened next was a puzzle to all those in the Jesuit party but Sandoz. The spokesperson called a number of individuals out of the crowd, including several half-grown children, one by one. Each spoke briefly to Emilio, who met their eyes with his own calm gaze and repeated to each of them, 'I don't understand.' He was almost certain that each had spoken a different language or dialect to him, one of which was indeed that of the Singers, and he realized that they were interpreters and that the leader was attempting to find some language they had in common. Failing in that, the adult returned to the crowd. There was a discussion that lasted a good while. Then a juvenile, much smaller than anyone who'd spoken earlier, came forward with another adult, who spoke reassuringly before gently urging the little one to approach Emilio alone.

She was a weedy child, spindly and unpromising. Seeing her advance, scared but determined, Emilio slowly dropped to his knees, so he would not loom over her, as the adult had loomed over him. They were, for the moment, all alone together, the others of their kinds forgotten, their whole attention absorbed. As the little one came closer, Emilio held out one hand, palm up, and said, 'Hello.' She faltered only an instant before putting her hand, long-fingered and warm, in his. She repeated, 'Hello.' Then she said, in a voice as clear and soft as Emilio's, 'Challalla khaeri.' And leaned forward to put her head next to his neck. He could hear the slight intake of breath as she did this.

'Challalla khaeri,' Emilio repeated and gravely reproduced her physical greeting with exactitude.

There was a burst of talk among the villagers. It was startling, and the humans stepped back a bit, but Emilio kept his eyes on the child and saw that she was not frightened and did not draw away. He had kept her hand in his and now pulled it gently toward his chest and said, 'Emilio.' Once again, the child repeated the word, but this time the vowels defeated her and it came out, 'Meelo.'

Smiling, he did not correct her, thinking, Close enough, chiquitita, close enough. He had come somehow to the conclusion that she was a little girl and he was already deeply in love, his whole soul open to her. He simply waited, knowing that she would pull his own hand toward her. This she did, although she drew his hand to her forehead instead of her chest. 'Askama,' she told him, and he repeated it, accent on the first syllable, the second and third given little emphasis, slurred quickly together, the pitch falling slightly.

Emilio shifted then from his knees, and sat cross-legged in the fine ocher dust of the path. Askama moved slightly as well, to face him, and he knew they could be seen from the side by both groups, native and alien. Before his next move, he turned his head and established eye contact with the adult who'd brought the child forward and who was standing nearby at the edge of the group of villagers, watching Askama steadily. Hello, Mama, he thought. Then he returned his attention to Askama. Rearing back in gentle surprise, he pulled in a little gasp and asked, wide-eyed, 'Askama, what's this?' Reaching behind her ear, Emilio's hand suddenly revealed a flower.

'Si zhao!' Askama exclaimed, startled out of the pattern of repetition.

'Si zhao,' Emilio repeated. 'A flower.' He glanced back at the adult, whose mouth was open and ovalled. There was no move, so he went on, producing then two flowers from nowhere.

'Sa zhay!' Askama cried, giving him what might be an indication of plural formation.

'Sa zhay, indeed, chiquitita' he murmured, smiling.

Soon other children came forward, and their parents moved closer as well, until the two groups, alien and native, merged, enthralled, surrounding Emilio and Askama as he made pebbles and leaves and flowers multiply and vanish and reappear, gathering possible numbers and nouns and, more important, expressions of surprise and puzzlement and delight, watching Askama's face as he worked, glancing at the adults and other children to check responses, already absorbing the body language and mirroring it in a dance of discovery.

Smiling and in love with God and all His works, Emilio at last held out his arms and Askama settled happily into his lap, thick-muscled tapering tail curling comfortably around her as she nestled down and watched him greet the other children and begin to learn their names in the tripled sunshine that broke through the clouds. He felt as though he were a prism, gathering up God's love like white light and scattering it in all directions, and the sensation was nearly physical, as he caught and repeated as much of what everyone said to him as he could, soaking up the music and cadence, the pattern of phonemes on the fly, gravely accepting and repeating Askama's quiet corrections when he got things wrong.

When the talk became more chaotic, he took a chance and began to reply to the children in nonsense, mimicking the melody and general sound of the phrases with great seriousness but no longer trying for accuracy. This tactic had worked well with the Gikuyu, but the Chuuk Islanders had been offended. To his relief, the adults here seemed amused; certainly there were no shouts or threatening gestures as the children shrieked and vied for the chance to have him «talk» to them in this hilarious and silly way.

He had no idea how much time passed in this manner but, eventually, Emilio became aware that his back was cramped and his legs were paralyzed from Askama's weight. Easing the child out of his lap, he staggered to his feet but kept her hand in his as he looked around as though seeing it all for the first time. He spotted Jimmy and Sofia, who called to him, 'Magic! You held out on me, Sandoz!' — for this was not in her AI program at all. He found Marc Robichaux next, engulfed in the crowd with a little one sitting on his shoulders so the child could see over the adults. And there was D.W., whose eyes, astonishingly, were brimming. He searched for George and Anne Edwards, finally picking them out, arm in arm, and Anne was crying too, but George beamed at him and called out, voice raised to carry above the ruckus the kids were making, 'If anybody asks, I'm a hundred and sixteen!'

Emilio Sandoz threw back his head and laughed. 'God!' he shouted into the sunshine and leaned down to kiss the top of Askama's head and pull her up into his arms for an embrace that included the whole of creation. 'God,' he whispered again, eyes closed, with the child settling onto his hip. 'I was born for this!'

It was the simple truth. Nothing else explained his life.

22 NAPLES: JUNE 2060

'So this child was assigned to learn your language and to teach you hers, is that correct?' Johannes Voelker asked.

'Essentially. The Runa are a trading people who require many languages to do business. As among us, their children learn languages quickly and easily, so they take advantage of that, yes? Whenever a new trading partnership is formed, a child is raised jointly by its family and the foreign delegation, which also includes a child. It takes only a couple of years to establish fairly sophisticated communication. The language is then passed along within Runa lineages. There are stable relationships developed over generations with established trading partners.'

It was a gray windless day. They'd left the windows open to the June warmth and the steady sound of the rain, which matched the soft and steady narrative of Emilio Sandoz. Vincenzo Giuliani had changed the schedule so that the hearings took place in the afternoon, allowing Sandoz to sleep through the mornings if the nights had been difficult. It seemed to help.

'And they imagined you to be a child with this function?' Johannes Voelker asked.

'Yes.'

'Presumably because you were somewhat smaller than others in the party,' Felipe Reyes supposed.

'Yes. And because I carried on all the earliest attempts at communication, as such an interpreter would have. Actually, for a long time, only Mr. Quinn was accepted as an adult. He was about average height for a Runao.'

'And they were not frightened at the beginning? Surely they'd never seen anything like you before,' Giuliani