The Sparrow

'Shut the fuck u-u-u-u-p!' Emilio supplied, doubling over.

'Oh, well, what the hell. Maybe I'll give religion another try,' Anne said softly, wiping her eyes as the cleansing laughter faded and they caught their breath. 'You think God can handle the kind of crap that I'm likely to dish out?'

Emilio lay back on a cushion, exhausted and happy. 'Anne,' he said, putting his hands behind his head, 'I think God will be glad to have you back.'

The last thing Marc Robichaux thought before the crash was, Merde, the Father Superior will be furious.

It had looked reasonable to him. The runway was still quite distinct and the vegetation looked soft and leafy. He believed that the root systems might actually be helpful in stabilizing the soil so that the wheels of the plane would not sink. Sofia had landed on many forms of terrain during her training and seemed confident that she could manage this. So they decided to go down.

Neither Marc nor Sofia had counted on vines. They must have been woody, like grapevines, or the plants would have pulled apart when the wheels touched down. Instead they grabbed viciously at the fragile little plane's undercarriage and the sudden stop had thrown him and Sofia brutally into their harnesses. Sitting in the front seat, Marc had a terrifying view of the ground coming up to meet him, but he blacked out before the Ultra-Light tore apart, the safety belts ripping the suddenly stationary framework to pieces as their bodies hurtled forward.

He had no idea how long he'd lain unconscious. It was daylight when they crashed. Both moons were up now. For a while, he kept still, concentrating on each limb and on the pain in his chest, trying to judge the seriousness of his injuries. His legs were numb and, heart drumming, he was horrified, thinking he'd broken his back. But when he moved his head cautiously, he saw that Sofia had been thrown onto him in the wreck and that the numbness was simply due to impeded circulation.

There was blood all over her face but she was still breathing. Marc slowly slid out from under her, trying not to jar her body, all Anne's apocalyptic descriptions of compound fractures coming back to him. He was able to turn and cradle her head as he pulled his legs clear and, in his concern for her, he forgot to be worried about his own body. By the time he got to his knees, he realized that he couldn't be badly hurt himself or the pain would have been worse.

He pulled his shirt up to see why his chest felt so awful and saw in the moonlight the exact outline of the safety harness, drawn in burst skin and ugly bruises; he almost passed out again, but put his head down for a few minutes and was better. Then he looked to Sofia and began to clear away hollow poles and guy wires and polymer film, all that was recognizable from the Ultra-Light. When she was free of the wreckage, Marc got up and made his way to the lander, unlocking the cargo bay door and flicking on the battery-powered lamp inside. When his eyes adjusted, he found the first-aid kit, a portable camplight and a set of insulated emergency blankets, which he carried back to Sofia.

In all their months together, Marc had kept his distance from Sofia Mendes. He found her rather cold, disturbingly self-sufficient, almost unfeminine, but her physical beauty sometimes took his breath away, and he had never permitted himself to draw her, to feel the shape of her with his hands, even on paper at a chaste distance.

Now he knelt at her side. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, he thought, and with as much detachment as he could muster, still badly shaken himself, searched along her arms and legs for breaks and cuts. Her torso was undoubtedly as bruised as his own but, for many reasons, he simply could not bring himself to determine if she had ribs broken or abdominal injuries. There wasn't anything he could do for such hurts anyway. So he laid out one blanket, moved her onto it and then wrapped her securely in the other before finding his way to the creek for a container of water.

He returned and dampened a clean cloth from the first-aid kit to wipe the dried and fresh blood from her face. He found the oozing source: her scalp was gashed. Fighting nausea at the sight of all the blood, Marc forced himself to feel along the edges of the cut. He couldn't be sure but it seemed that there was no depression in the skull itself. Concentrating manfully on the task, he didn't realize her eyes had opened until he heard her say, 'If you've baptized me, you're in a lot of trouble, Robichaux.'

'Mon Dieu!' he shouted, falling back from her, tipping over the bucket of water, so shocked that the cloth flew out of his hand.

For several minutes, Sofia was treated to an impressive display of agitated Gallic emotion. Her French was academic and Robichaux's dialect was almost incomprehensible to her even when he had not been scared senseless. Nevertheless, she understood quite clearly that he was veering wildly between relief and anger. 'I'm sorry I frightened you,' she said when he started to slow down.

He held up a hand, swallowing, and shook his head, still breathing double time. 'De rien.' It was a moment more before he could produce English. 'I beg you, mademoiselle. Do not ever do that to me again.'

'I'll try not to, but I doubt that the situation is likely to recur,' she said dryly. 'Am I damaged? Are you?'

'As far as I have been able to determine, we are bruised and cut but not anywhere broken. How do you feel, mademoiselle?' Marc pulled up his shirt briefly to let her see the imprint of the belts. 'We were thrown forward with a great deal of force. Is it possible that your ribs are broken?'

She moved under the blanket and he saw her face take on an unusual self-absorbed look. 'I'm certainly very sore,' she admitted. 'And I have quite a headache. But I think that's all.'

Marc waved a hand limply at the wreckage. 'We are both either beloved of God or very lucky.'

She rose a little and looked at what was left of the Ultra-Light. 'God evidently doesn't love small airplanes. On the other hand, D. W. Yarbrough does. He is going to be very angry about this.' Marc rolled his eyes in agreement. Sofia stared at the mess and realized that the destruction of the plane had saved their lives; its framework was designed to go to pieces and absorb the momentum of a crash. She lay back, a little dizzy, and began to calculate the minimum number of hours since they'd gone down. 'Marc, does the radio still work? The others must be worried.'

He put a palm to his forehead and, muttering in French, went to the remains of their plane, where he began rummaging inefficiently through the ruins. The wind was picking up now, and shreds of polymer film flapped and snapped in the stiffening breeze.

'Robichaux, forget it!' Sofia called. 'There's a transceiver in the lander.' She sat up with great care, listening to her body. Everything moaned but nothing screamed. Moving the blanket off herself, she pulled the neck of her shirt forward and peered downward. 'Very colorful,' she remarked and added brightly, 'We have matching chests.'

'The topography differs considerably,' the priest said with a ghost of humor. He came back and sat a little abruptly next to her on the ground, putting his head down again. After a few moments, Marc looked up. 'I speak, of course, from inference, not direct observation.'

'Marc,' she said wryly, 'if we are ever in another plane crash together, please feel free to make sure my rib cage is not crushed. Modesty is hardly of paramount importance during medical emergencies.' He might have blushed. It was hard to tell in the orange glow of the camplight. There was a roll of thunder and Sofia looked around at the trees flexing in the wind. 'We should get inside the lander.'

They picked up the blankets and first-aid kit and, using the camplight to find their way, climbed achingly through the portside cargo door. The wind was coming from starboard, so they left the door open and watched the lightning play. The storm was, at the beginning, very violent but soon settled into a steady downpour, loud against the skin of the lander but somehow comforting.

'So,' Sofia said, when the noise abated somewhat, 'did you?'

'Pardon?' He seemed taken aback by the question.

'Did you baptize me?'

'Oh,' he said, and then, rather indignantly, 'no, of course not.'

'I'm glad to hear it,' Sofia said, but she was puzzled. If it had been Sandoz, she'd have been willing to joke with him. Some missionary you are, she'd have said, trusting his sense of irony. She was less sure of how to treat Marc, who in any case seemed quite unnerved by the accident. She herself felt remarkably cheerful, on the whole. 'Shouldn't you have?'