The Sparrow

them, while collaborating with Sofia on an instructional program for Ruanja and with Askama and Manuzhai on a Ruanja dictionary. Marc had begun sketching and painting the Runa and their lives within days of arriving, and this continued as the seasonal round was played out. To Emilio's delight, the Runa referred to Marc's images using the spatial declension. And now when the women left on trading expeditions, they commissioned a portrait from Marc or his apprentices, so they could be with their families even as they traveled, Chaypas explained. Absent mothers were gone but not invisible.

George and Jimmy installed improvised plumbing and a pulley system for hauling things up and down the cliffside. The Runa soon added similar arrangements to the other apartments. And then there was George's ever- elaborating waterslide complex down by the river's edge, which the kids adored and which they all, native and alien, worked on sporadically.

The Runa took everything in stride. Nothing ever seemed to surprise them, and it had begun to seem that they were incapable of astonishment. But toward the end of Supaari's first visit, Marc had asked if the merchant knew of any objection to the foreigners starting a garden. Ruanja, Emilio found, had no word for plants grown in an artificial ecosystem, so Supaari was shown images of gardens. Familiar with the notion, Supaari brought the subject up with the Kashan elders and obtained permission for Marc to plant.

And so, for no good reason that the VaKashani could conceive, Marc Robichaux and George Edwards and Jimmy Quinn set about digging in ground where no useful roots grew. They used giant spoons to lift up big bites of dirt and then simply put the dirt back where it had been, but upside down. The Runa were absolutely flabbergasted.

That this mysterious activity was hard physical labor for the foreigners made the whole business funnier. George would pause to wipe his brow, and the Runa would quake with laughter. Marc would sit a while to catch his breath, and the Runa would gasp with merriment. Jimmy worked doggedly on, beads of sweat sparkling on the ends of his coiling red hair, and Runa observers would comment helpfully, 'Ah, the dirt is much better that way. Big improvement!' and wheeze in a transport of amusement. The Runa were capable of sarcasm.

Soon, Runa from other villages came to watch the gardeners while their children played on the waterslide, and George began to feel a retroactive sympathy for the Amish farmers of Ohio, unwilling tourist attractions subjected to stares and pointing fingers. But the initial hilarity tapered off as the garden took shape and the Runa began to perceive the geometric plan underlying the foreigners' inexplicable work. The garden was a serious scientific experiment and careful records of germination and yield would be kept, but everything Marc Robichaux did was beautiful and he laid the garden out as a succession of interlocking diamond-shaped and circular beds, edged in herbs. George and Jimmy constructed trellises and adapted the Runa terrace parasols to shade the lettuces and peas and to control the downpours of rain. Manuzhai, intrigued now, joined them in this, and the resulting structures were lovely.

The «dry» season on Rakhat turned out to be reasonably well suited to the husbandry of Earth plants. As the season progressed, it could be seen that the rows and hills of vegetables were thoughtfully planned. Scarlet-stalked Swiss chard rose over beds of emerald spinach. Zucchini and corn and potatoes, tomatoes and cabbages and radishes, cucumbers and feathery carrots, red beets and purple turnips—all were incorporated into overflowing parterres, interplanted with edible flowers: pansies and sunflowers, calendula and Empress of India nasturtiums. It was glorious.

Supaari came back to Kashan periodically and dutifully admired the flourishing potager on his third visit. 'We Jana'ata also have such gardens. The scents are different from yours,' he said tactfully, for he was greatly offended by some of the foreign odors, 'but this is more beautiful to the eye.' He took no interest in it thereafter, considering it a harmless eccentricity.

Supaari, they noticed, brought his own food from the city with him and ate in privacy, in the cabin of his powerboat. Sometimes he also brought Runa with him from the city, memory specialists who were apparently like living textbooks, who could answer some of the more technical questions the foreigners asked. And there were written materials as well, in the K'San language and therefore completely incomprehensible except for the engineering drawings. George and Jimmy were particularly interested in radio, and they wanted to know about power generation, signal production, receiving equipment and so forth. Supaari found this understandable, since he knew in a somewhat foggy way that the foreigners had come to Rakhat because they'd overheard the Galatna concerts somehow, but he was unable to give them much information. He knew of radio only as a listener. This ignorance was frustrating to the technophiles.

'He's a merchant, not an engineer,' Anne said in Supaari's defense. 'Besides, the last human with a clear grasp of all the technology he used was probably Leonardo da Vinci.' And she invited a disgruntled George to tell Supaari how aspirin works.

Supaari was, at least, able to explain why the Runa disliked music. 'We Jana'ata use songs to organize activities,' he told Anne and Emilio, as they sat outside in a hampiy equipped with cushions, unconcerned about the light drizzle falling. He seemed to have trouble finding the correct Ruanja phrasing for this. 'It is something we do only among ourselves. The Runa find this frightening.'

'The songs or the activities the songs organize?' Anne asked.

'Someone thinks: both. And we also have—there is nothing in Ruanja—ba'ardali basnu charpi. There are two groups, one here and one here.' He motioned to indicate that these groups would stand opposite each other. 'They sing, first one group and then the other. And a judgment is made, for a reward. The Runa don't like such things.'

'Singing contests!' Anne exclaimed in English. 'What do you think, Emilio? Does that make sense to you? It sounds like competitive singing. They used to have contests like that in Wales. Fabulous choirs.'

'Yes. I should think the Runa would avoid competitions like that. Porai is built into the situation. All the contestants would want to win the prize.' Emilio switched to Ruanja. 'Someone thinks perhaps the hearts of the Runa become porai if one group is rewarded but not the other,' he ventured and explained his logic to Supaari, to test the model.

'Yes, Ha'an,' the Jana'ata said, thinking Emilio was merely translating. He leaned back onto an elbow comfortably and added with a tone that Anne found wry, 'We Jana'ata do not have such hearts.'

But Supaari brought no other Jana'ata with him and stalled when George and Jimmy repeated their request to see the city and meet others of his people. 'Jana'ata speak only K'San,' he told them when pressed for a reason. It was unusual, he let them understand, that he had learned Ruanja; ordinarily, it was the Runa who were required to learn Jana'ata languages. It was a lame enough excuse that they accepted it as a polite fiction, and D.W. reckoned ole Supaari was probably keeping their existence secret to preserve his monopoly on the trade. The Jesuit party was familiar with capitalism and didn't begrudge the merchant his corner on the coffee and spice market. So while Yarbrough was getting anxious to make contact with someone in authority, they tried to be patient. Cunctando regitur mundus, after all. In the meantime, Emilio stepped up his work on K'San.

At last there came a day, a Rakhati year and a half after their arrival in Kashan, when Supaari told them that he had worked out a way for them to visit Gayjur. It would take some time; there were many arrangements, and the visit would have to wait until after the next rainy season. He would not be able to come upriver to visit them during that time but he would return at the beginning of Partan and take them to the city. His plan hinged somehow on their ability to see in redlight, but he was indirect about why this should be so.

In any case, they were reasonably content with the situation as it stood. They were all productively employed. Supaari had been wonderfully helpful in many ways, and they did not want to impose on his good nature. 'Step by step,' Emilio would say, and Marc would add, 'It is as it should be.'

During this time, the health of the Jesuit party remained good, on the whole. They were free of viral illness since there was no disease reservoir here that could affect them. Jimmy broke a finger. Marc was badly bitten by something he'd found while poking around and lifting up rocks; it got away, so they were never sure what the culprit was, but Robichaux recovered. George confirmed Manuzhai's fears by falling off a walkway one night, but he wasn't seriously hurt. There was the usual run of cuts, bruises, blisters and muscle pulls. For a while Sofia had a lot of headaches, trying to cut back on coffee because the VaKashani now swayed with dismay whenever the foreigners actually drank the stuff instead of selling it. After a month of doling out analgesics, Anne suggested that Sofia should just do her drinking in private. Sofia adopted this solution with relief.

In general, it was a tidy little practice for Anne Edwards, M.D., flawed only by despair for one of her patients.