The Sparrow

eyed, at Reyes and demanded, 'What is the population of Earth now, Felipe? Fourteen, fifteen billion?'

'Almost sixteen,' Felipe said quietly.

'There are no beggars on Rakhat. There is no unemployment. There is no overcrowding. No starvation. No environmental degradation. There is no genetic disease. The elderly do not suffer decline. Those with terminal illness do not linger. They pay a terrible price for this sys­tem, but we too pay, Felipe, and the coin we use is the suffering of children. How many kids starved to death this afternoon, while we sat here? Just because their corpses aren't eaten doesn't make our species any more moral!'

Giuliani let this outburst burn itself out. When Sandoz got ahold of himself again, the Father General repeated, 'Tell us what happened.'

Emilio looked at him, as though lost, but finally realized that he had gone off track. 'I believe the patrol meant only to kill the infants, origi­nally. Supaari told me later that if the villagers bred a second time without permission, it would have been a capital offense for the females who'd given birth. But because the Runa resisted, the patrol overreacted. They clearly meant to crush the riot.'

'How many were killed?' Giuliani asked levelly.

'I don't know. Perhaps a third of the VaKashani. Maybe more.' He looked away. 'And Sofia. And Jimmy. And George.' Emilio finally gave in and reached for the Prograine. Too late, most likely, for it to do any good. They watched him as he washed down two of the tablets and drained the glass of water.

'And where were you?' Giuliani asked.

'Toward the center of the crowd. Askama was very frightened. When the killing started, Manuzhai and I were trying to shield her with our bodies. Chaypas was killed, defending us.'

'And Father Robichaux?'

'He ran.' Sandoz looked at Felipe and said softly, 'I'm not defending him either, but there wasn't anything he could have done. We were the size of half-grown children and it was utter chaos. There was no chivalry. Anyone who came within reach was cut down.' He was almost pleading with them to understand. 'We were completely unprepared for this! Supaari was so different. Try to imagine what it was like!'

'The Jana'ata military is the martial arm of a sentient predatory species,' Voelker said quietly. 'And they were defending civilization as they know it. It must have been terrifying.'

'Yes.' It was getting harder. 'I've got to have the lights out.' Voelker got up to take care of it for him. Then he heard the Father General's voice again.

'Tell us.'

'I was taken prisoner immediately.' He could hear Askama, screaming his name. 'Marc was hunted down without difficulty. We were taken with the Jana'ata patrol. From village to village. I don't think they necessarily understood that we were responsible for the gardens. They didn't know what to make of us. They had a job to do, and they took us along. I believe they meant eventually to bring us to the city of Inbrokar, to the capital. In every village along the route, the gardens were burned and there was a slaughter of innocents. I've got to finish this.' He stopped, concentrated on keeping his breathing steady. 'Marc—you understand that the gardens were Marc's, yes? To witness this slaughter—' A few more minutes. 'The Jana'ata eat only once a day. We were offered food each morning and then force-marched for many hours. Marc refused to eat. I tried to persuade him, but he would only say something in French. A few words.'

He took his hands away from his head and tried to look at them. 'I am illiterate in many languages,' he told them. 'I have learned to speak Arabic and Amharic and K'San, but not to read them. French is the only language I read but do not speak. It is very different in its spoken form, yes?' The light was too much. He closed his eyes again. 'When I tried to make Marc eat, he would say, 'Ill son, less and sawn.' Something like that. I should have recognized it…'

'Us sont les innocents,' It was Giuliani's voice. 'It is hard to think the unthinkable. They were offering you the meat of the innocents.'

Emilio was trembling badly now. 'Yes. Later, I myself saw what—Nothing was wasted. Ed?' He managed to hold on until Brother Edward got him to the lavatory, and when the sickness passed, Ed replaced the vomited Prograine with an injected dose. He had no idea who took him to his room but before he fell asleep, he said, 'I dream of it sometimes.'

Johannes Voelker, the beads of a rosary passing through his fingers, was with him when he awoke. 'I am sorry,' he said.

It was two days before Sandoz was able to continue. 'You told us that you believed you were being brought by the military to the capital city,' Giuliani began. 'I take it you did not reach—' He consulted his notes. 'Inbrokar.'

'No. Supaari told me later that he arrived at Kashan about two days after the massacre. He attended to matters there and then came af­ter Marc and me. He had to guess at the route, I suppose. I think we were on the march for perhaps two weeks before he caught up with us. This period of time was very confused. And we were not functioning well. I tried to get Marc to eat. I—He was not able to do this. After a while I gave up.'

'But you ate the meat,' John said. 'After you knew.'

'Yes.' Emilio stopped, searching for some way to explain. 'There was a time in the British military when it was possible to punish a man with as many as eight hundred lashes. Have you read of such things? Some men actually survived this, and they reported that after a time, they no longer felt any pain. They felt only a sort of hammering. It was like that, in my soul. Do you understand? To watch the children killed, to eat the meat. After a time, it felt only like hammering.' He shrugged. They were trying, but he knew they couldn't imagine it. 'Anyway, Supaari caught up to the patrol. By the time he found us, Marc was very weak. I think the commander would have killed him soon. He was slowing them up.' There had been no emotion when he saw Supaari. He and Marc simply sat on the ground, too tired to think or hope or pray. Even with the meat, he was exhausted. He knew he couldn't keep Marc on his feet much longer, that he was close to collapse himself. 'I think Supaari bribed the commander. There was a long discussion. It was in a language I didn't know.'

'So Supaari took you back to Kashan?' John prompted, when the silence went on too long.

Sandoz roused himself. 'No. I don't know that we'd have been welcome there. He took us to Gayjur. To his own compound. I never saw Kashan again.'

'Based on Father Robichaux's descriptions of his time in that city, you would have been relatively safe there, as long as you kept out of sight,' the Father General said. 'Or perhaps I am wrong?'

'I believe Supaari originally meant it to be safe for us. He may not have been clear about his own motives. He felt some duty toward us, perhaps. He was fond of Anne, genuinely, I believe. And we had made him a very wealthy man. He was quite empathetic for a Jana'ata. I think he could imagine to some extent what it might be like, to be alone and unsupported.'

Vincenzo Giuliani became very still, but Sandoz did not notice. I deserved that, Giuliani thought, echoing Johannes Voelker's remark, even if it wasn't intentional.

'In any case,' Sandoz was saying, 'he evidently decided to ransom us and brought us to his home and took responsibility for us. He made us part of his household.'

'That was when he took you to see the ivy, the sta'aka?' John asked.

'Yes.' For once, he did not have to explain. Sitting impassively, his mind drifted as John Candotti told the others about the hasta'akala. About the way the hands were made to look like the trailing branches of ivy, which grows on stronger plants, to symbolize and enforce dependence. John now realized why Marc died. 'What if Marc was developing scurvy?' he'd asked Sandoz. 'Was there something you ate that Marc didn't?' It wasn't scurvy that killed Marc Robichaux, it was starvation and anemia. And, quite possibly, despair.

He realized later that he'd gone into clinical shock about halfway through the destruction of his left hand. Over the next few days, he would come to himself at intervals, damp and cold and suffering from a thirst unlike anything he'd experienced previously. It seemed impossible to draw enough breath and when he slept, there were dreams of suffocation or drowning. Sometimes, dreaming, he would reach for something, trying to pull himself to air, and his hands would spasm as a dog's legs will twitch during dreams of running, and he would awaken screaming as the involuntary motion sent thin bolts of phosphorescent pain up the long nerves of his arms.

For a time, the heavy immobility of bloodlessness kept him from looking at what had been done. His hands felt clubbed, swollen and throbbing, but he could not lift his head to see them. Periodically, someone would come