The Sparrow

The others complained about the constant talk and the physical closeness the Runa liked, the way they crowded around one another and around the foreigners, back leaning against back, heads in laps, arms draped around shoulders, tails curled around legs in a muddle of warmth and softness in the cool cavelike rooms of the cliff. Emilio found it beautiful. He had not realized how starved he was for touch, how isolated he had been for a quarter of a century, wrapped in an invisible barrier, surrounded by a layer of air. The Runa were unselfconsciously physical and affectionate. Like Anne, he thought, but more so.

Emilio pushed the hair off his forehead one-handedly and looked down at Askama, shifting in the hammock chair George had designed for him. Manuzhai made it, working from George's sketch, going beyond the plans he provided, her astonishing hands weaving complicated patterns into the rush basketry. Manuzhai often joined him and Sofia and Askama out in the hampiy, and he loved the Runao's low husky voice. Similar to Sofia's, now that he thought of it, but unusual among Manuzhai's people. And he loved the melody of Ruanja. Its rhythm and sound reminded him of Portuguese, soft and lyrical. It was a rewarding language to work on, full of structural surprises and conceptual delights…

Sofia snorted and he knew he was right when she fell back against her chair and stared balefully at him. 'Lejano'nta banalja,' she read. 'Tinguen'ta sinoa da. Both spatial.'

'Note, if you will,' Emilio Sandoz said, face grave, eyes alight, 'the awe-inspiring lack of smugness with which I greet your news.'

Sofia Mendes smiled prettily at a man she was very nearly content to call colleague and friend. 'Eat shit,' she said, 'and die.'

'Dr. Edwards has had a lamentable influence on your vocabulary,' Emilio said with starchy disapproval, and then continued without missing a beat. 'Now that you mention it, shit would, of course, fit the general rules for spatial versus nonvisual declension, but what about a fart? Would a fart be declined as a nonvisual, or would a Runao consider such odors to be in a category that implies the existence of something solid? Your levity is uncalled for, Mendes. This is serious linguistic inquiry. We can get another paper out of this, I promise you.'

Sofia was wiping tears away. 'And where shall we publish it? The Interplanetary Journal of Intestinal Gas and Rude Noises?'

'Wait! There's another category. Noise. Easy. Nonvisual. Has to be. Well, maybe not. Try enroa.'

'That's it! I'm quitting. I have had enough,' Sofia declared. 'It's too hot, and this has become entirely too silly.'

'At least it isn't smug,' he pointed out.

Askama, roused by the laughter, yawned and craned her neck to look at Emilio. 'Sipaj, Meelo. What is smug?'

'Let's look it up,' Sofia suggested airily, playing at using the tablet dictionary and deliberately talking over Askama's head. 'Here it is! Smug. It says, Sandoz comma Emilio; see also: insufferable.'

Ignoring Sofia, Emilio looked down at Askama and assured her with perfect aplomb, 'It is a term of endearment.'

They gathered up Askama's toys and the computer tablets and Sofia's coffee cup, which she emptied with a toss, and started back toward the cliff dwellings in the slanting light, one sun down, another dropping fast, and only the third and much dimmer red sun relatively high in the sky. For all the heat of these days, Jimmy Quinn was of the opinion that the weather might well turn soon. The rainfall was decreasing from torrential to merely soaking, and the heat lately had been drier, less enervating. The Runa were uninformative. The weather was just there, not much commented upon, except during thunderstorms, which scared them and seemed to provoke a lot of talk.

Sofia arrived at the apartment long before Emilio and Askama, undelayed by the swarm of children that coalesced around Sandoz, wheedling and teasing, hoping for some new delight or astonishment to appear in his hands. Most of the VaKashani napped during the heat, and the village was just waking up for the second round of daily activities. Emilio stopped to talk to people along the narrow walkways, lingering in terraces, admiring a toddler's new skill or flattering a youngster with a question that allowed the child to show off some new competence, accepting small bits of food or a sip of something sweet as he made his way home. It was dusk by the time he got there and Anne had already lit the camplights, a source of muted interest among the Runa, who might have been dismayed by the tiny eyes of their single-irised guests, but who merely observed the technical compensation for this handicap with sly, shy glances.

'Aycha's little one is walking already,' Emilio announced as he ducked in from the terrace, accompanied by Askama and three of her friends, attached to various of his limbs, all talking.

Anne looked up. 'So is Suway's. Isn't it darling? Just when a human child would plump down on its behind, these kids shoot those little tails out and catch themselves. There are few things quite as charming as the inept functioning of an immature nervous system.'

'Has anyone seen an infant?' Marc asked from his corner of the large irregular room. He'd completed an approximate census that morning; to be honest, he had trouble telling individuals apart. 'The population structure here is quite odd, unless there is a distinct breeding season—there are age cohorts with long gaps between them. And seems to me that there should be many more children, given the number of mature adults.'

'It seems to me that there are a multitude of children,' said Emilio wearily, talking a little loudly above the amazing clamor that four small kids could produce. 'Legions. Hordes. Armies.'

Anne and Marc launched into a discussion of infant mortality, which Emilio tried to follow but couldn't because Askama was pulling on his arm and Kinsa was trying to climb onto his back. 'But they all seem so healthy,' Anne was saying.

'Healthy and loud,' Emilio said. 'Sipaj, Askama! Asukar hawas Djordj. Kinsa, tupa sinchiz k'jna, je? George, please, ten minutes? Jimmy?'

George scooped Askama up and Jimmy distracted the other kids long enough for Emilio to go down to the river and wash up in some privacy before dinner. When he got back to the apartment, he found that the household numbers were somewhat reduced that evening. Askama had left to play with her friends, as she often did if Emilio was out of sight for a while. Manuzhai had gone visiting. She might not come back at all; equally likely, she might return with five or six guests who'd spend the night. Chaypas was away on some errand, for some unspecified length of time. People often disappeared like that, for hours or days or weeks. Time seemed unimportant to the Runa. There were no calendars or clocks. The nearest Emilio had come to finding vocabulary for the idea was a series of words having to do with ripening.

'Miz Mendes here says you spent the day bein' brilliant,' D.W. drawled as Emilio sat down to eat.

'I said nothing of the kind,' Sofia shot back. 'I said he had spent the afternoon raising smugness to an art form. It was the analysis that was brilliant.'

'A very fine distinction,' Anne pointed out. She plunked a bowl onto the wooden table and sank onto a cushion next to George before adding, 'Isn't he awful when he's right?'

'I am a simple man, just trying to do my job,' Emilio said in injured tones, persevering despite the moans, 'and for this, scorn and sarcasm are heaped on my head.'

'So, what is this brilliant analysis?' D.W. asked grumpily. 'I got reports to write, son.' He'd put his plate aside almost immediately and Emilio now did the same, having filled up on the snacks pressed on him as he walked through the village. Like Jimmy Quinn, D.W. once observed, the Runa ate damn near anything pretty much continuously, and there was no way to visit anyone without being fed and there was no such thing as 'not hungry.' It meant that the food supply brought from Earth would last a lot longer than expected. That didn't make the Runa stuff any more palatable, although it did seem to be reasonably nutritious for them.

Emilio spent the next ten minutes explaining the rules for declension he'd worked out that morning. To Sofia's intense satisfaction, everyone else initially confused the ideas with abstract and concrete nouns, as she had. Once they'd all seen the underlying logic of it, it seemed perfectly reasonable, and Anne declared that Emilio was entitled to feel superior for precisely one half hour, which she offered to time for him. He refused the honor, admitting cheerfully that he'd already indulged in a sufficiency of self-congratulation.

'I couldn't have gotten this far this fast without Askama. And, in any case,' he said seriously, 'there are whole areas of this language that are still closed to me. For example, I am completely confused about gender.'