The Sparrow

recognized that she'd fallen in love with him. They had shared work and humor and comradeship, and they had also shared self-restraint. And this increased his regard for Sofia, made it that much harder not to love her as George loved Anne.

Unbidden, the thought came. Rabbis marry. Ministers marry. And he told himself that, yes, if he were a rabbi or a minister, he would love her as a whole man and thank God for her every day. And if he were an Aztec, he thought ruthlessly, he'd cut the hearts from the living breasts of his enemies and offer blood to the sun. And if he were Tibetan, he'd spin prayer wheels. But he was none of those things. He was a Jesuit, and his path was different.

What was dying, he recognized in those quiet hours, was the possibility of himself as a husband and a father. More: as Sofia's husband and the father of her children. He had not truly understood that he'd kept part of his soul open to that possibility until he'd seen Sofia in Jimmy Quinn's arms in the rain and had felt a cold wash of violent jealousy.

This was, he thought, the first time that celibacy would truly rob him of something. Before, he was aware of the clarity, the singleness of purpose, the concentration of energy, the gifts bestowed by the discipline. Now, he was aware in some much deeper way, not of sexual famine, which was familiar, but of the loss of human intimacy, the sacrifice of human closeness. He felt with an almost physical pain what it would mean to renounce his last opportunity to love Sofia, what it would mean to free her to love Jimmy, who would surely cherish her as dearly as Emilio might have himself. For he was honest with himself: before Sofia turned to another, she would look to him for some sign. If he made any move to encourage her love of him, he had to be prepared to meet it wholly. He knew D.W. and Marc would accept it, that George and Anne would rejoice in it. Even Jimmy, he thought, might take it with good grace…

So here it was. A time to ratify or to repudiate a vow made in youth and ignorance, to be lived out in maturity and in full understanding. A time to weigh the extraordinary and spiritual and fathomless beauty that God had shown him against the ordinary and worldly and incalculable sweetness of human love and family. A moment to consider if he would trade everything he had hoped for and had been given as a priest for everything he yearned for and desired as a man.

He did not flinch from the knife. He cut the thread cleanly, a priest in perpetuity. God had been generous with him. He could not stint in return. It did not occur to him to wonder then if Sofia Mendes had been as much a gift from God as all the rest of the love he'd been offered, or if he had been God's gift to her. Two thousand years of theology spoke, five hundred years of Jesuit tradition spoke, his own life to that moment spoke.

God was silent on the matter.

Later that day, Sofia met his eyes as he watched her accept a cup of coffee and a sandwich from Jimmy, who made a comic display of his knightly service. Emilio saw Sofia read him and then look to Jim: already a dear friend, steady and good and strong and patient. He saw her pause and consider, and he felt at that moment like a woman giving a child to adoptive parents—certain it was the right thing, best for the beloved child, good for all. But the grief was real.

Having made his decision, he bided his time, waiting for the right moment for his next move. It came during the quiet of midmorning a week or so later when Marc and Sofia, bruises fading to yellow and green, were moving with notably less lamentation, D.W.'s color was better and George had pulled out of his gloom. Everyone seemed rested.

'I have been considering my present situation,' Emilio Sandoz announced. They all looked at him curiously, surprised that he should make such a personal statement. Only Anne caught the tone, and she was already half- smiling, waiting for the punchline. 'I have decided that I am happier than I have ever been in my life. And yet,' he assured them with great and solemn sincerity, 'I would crawl over your dead, burnt bodies if it meant getting to absolutely anything deep-fried.'

'Bacalaitos fritos,' Jimmy said. Emilio moaned in agreement.

'Beignets with powdered sugar,' Marc said wistfully.

'French fries,' George sighed.

'Cheese puffs,' Anne said with conviction. 'I really miss orange food coloring.'

'Chicken-fried steak,' D.W. said. And added, 'Hell. Steak, period.'

Sofia stood, creaking a little, and started toward the terrace.

'Mendes, where you goin'?' D.W. called.

'To the grocery store.'

D.W. looked at Sofia as though she'd just revealed a second head. But Anne joined her. 'To the world's most astoundingly high-tech pantry,' Anne explained inexplicably before spelling it out. 'To the lander, D.W.! To get ready for the party.'

Sandoz clapped once, delighted to be understood, and at that the men jumped up to join Anne and Sofia, all except Marc, who simply got up, but with enthusiasm. It was, in fact, exactly what the doctor would have ordered, except Emilio thought of it first. What he needed, what they all needed, he decided, was a feeling of expansiveness, a jolt of freedom to counter the sense of being boxed in, of having options closed down.

They trooped up the cliffside and paraded to the lander, which was filled with food from home, arguing spiritedly about menus until they finally agreed along the way that everyone should just dig in and find some soul food. And as they chattered, it became obvious that meat was on everyone's mind, not just D.W.'s. With the Runa away, they could crank up the music and dance and eat meat, by God, and everyone was ready for that. The Runa were vegetarians, and there was a great outcry the first and only time the humans opened a vacuumpak containing beef; the apartment they'd used was declared off-limits in a way they did not understand and abandoned, whether permanently or temporarily they did not know. So the Jesuit party had been vegetarian as well all these weeks, and they'd eaten mostly fish on the Stella Maris.

Striding toward the lander, pleased to see that D.W. was also moving with some of his old energy, Emilio remembered seeing the rifle and suggested suddenly that D.W. take a shot at a piyanot, an idea that met with cries of approbation, except from Sofia, who surprised them all by mentioning that Jews don't eat game, but that she could find something in the lander stores. They came to a halt and looked at her.

'Hunting isn't kosher,' she told them. No one had heard of this before. She waved off her initial objection. 'I don't keep kosher, as you know,' she told them, a little embarrassed. 'I still found it impossible to eat pork or shellfish, and I've never eaten game. But if you can kill the animal cleanly, I suppose it doesn't matter.'

'Darlin', if a clean kill is all you need, I shall be happy to oblige,' D.W. said as they reached the lander. He flung open the cargo-bay door, feeling his oats, and fetched out the rifle, a sweet old Winchester his grandfather had taught him to use and which he had brought along partly from sentiment. D.W. checked it over thoroughly, loaded it, and then walked a little way out toward one of the piyanot herds that grazed on the plain above the river. Sitting down, he used his own knobby knee as a tripod. Anne watched him sight down the gun, still curious as to how he managed not to be confused by the skewed images his eyes must be taking in, but he dropped a young piyanot like a stone at three hundred yards, the report of the gunshot echoing off the hills to the north.

'Wow,' George said.

'That's clean enough for me,' Sofia said, impressed.

D.W., who was made to endure the title Mighty Hunter for some hours, sauntered off to butcher the carcass with Anne, who later declared the activity to have been an interesting exercise in field anatomy, while the others set up for a barbecue. By early afternoon, they were as happy and relaxed as a prehistoric band of Olduwan hunters, full of unaccustomed and highly desirable protein and fat, feeling well and truly fed for the first time in months. They were savannah creatures, deep in their genes, and the flat grassland with widespread trees felt right in some vague way. The plants of this plain were now familiar, and they knew a number of them that could sustain life. The coronaries only made them laugh, the snakenecks' bites were known to be simply painful and not poisonous to them, although there was unquestionably a venom that killed the little animals' prey. The land around them was beginning to feel like home, in emotion as well as in hard fact, and they were no longer unnerved by their exposure.

Rakhat, therefore, seemed a known quantity to them and when, one by one, they noticed a stranger striding toward them intently, they were only a little surprised, thinking that a barge trader had stopped for blossoms and did not know that the VaKashani were all out digging pik root somewhere. And they were