The Sparrow

and exercise his fingers, stretching them flat. He had no idea why this was done. He knew only that the stretching was agony and, sobbing, begged for it to stop. His pleas were in Spanish and therefore unintelligible, but it wouldn't have mattered if he had spoken a pure and perfect High K'San. They believed it was necessary to prevent contractures from spoiling the line of his fingers' fall from the wrist. So they let him scream.

As his body slowly replaced the blood he'd lost, he was able to move, but there was no profit in it. The scabs were forming then and the itching that heralded healing maddened him. They tied him down to keep him from tearing at the bandages with his teeth, frantic and weep­ing with misery. His struggles against the binding may well have prevented blood clots from forming in his legs and breaking loose to kill him with stroke or heart attack. And, God help him, he had eaten the meat on the long march from Kashan and so had undergone the hasta'akala when decently nourished. These things, for good or ill, probably saved his life.

His first sentence in Ruanja was a request to know Marc's status. 'That one is not strong,' he was told, but he was too exhausted from the effort of asking to hear the answer and slept dreamlessly for once.

When next he woke, his head was clear and he was alone, unbound, in a sunlit room. With great effort, he got himself to a sitting position and looked at his hands for the first time. He had nothing left to react with, too weak even to wonder why it had been done.

He was still sitting, hunched and pallid and staring at nothing, when one of the Runa servants came in. 'Someone's heart will sicken if he does not see Marc,' he said as firmly as he could.

Like twin infants put in different rooms to keep them from waking each other up, the two foreigners had been separated. The Runa knew that the sheer physical stamina evidenced by screaming meant that the smaller of the two would likely survive. They had hope of the quiet one but not much, and took him away to keep his strength from being sapped by the other's constant waking. 'That one is sleeping,' Awijan told Sandoz. 'Someone will bring you to him when he wakes.'

Two days later, he sat again in wait for her, determined now to go to Marc no matter what. 'Someone's heart will stop if he does not see Marc,' he insisted, and stood, moving toward the door on thin legs empty of bone. The Runao caught him as he fell and, muttering, carried him through the compound to the room where Marc was sleeping.

The stink of blood was everywhere and Marc was the color of rain. Emilio sat on the edge of the sleeping nest, his own ruined hands in his lap, and called Robichaux's name. Marc's eyes opened, and there was a glimmer of recognition.

He had no clue to what Marc said during those last hours. In Latin, he asked Marc if he wished to confess. There was more whispered French. When it stopped, Emilio said the absolution. Marc slept then and he did as well, sitting on the floor next to the bed, his head resting next to Marc's right hand, still seeping blood. Sometime that night, he felt something brush his hair and heard someone say, 'Deus vult.' It might have been a dream.

In the morning, when the sunlight hit his eyes, he awoke, stiff and wretched. Rousing himself, he left the room and tried to get a Runab to call a healer or to put pressure on the oozing wounds between Marc's fingers. Awijan only looked at him blankly. Later, he wondered if he'd remembered to speak Ruanja. Maybe he'd used Spanish again. He would never be sure.

Marc Robichaux died about two hours later without regaining consciousness.

'Father Robichaux was in poor physical condition when this procedure took place,' John was saying, 'and did not survive it.'

Emilio looked up and saw that everyone was staring at his hands. He put them in his lap.

'It must have been very difficult,' the Father General said.

'Yes.'

'And then you were alone.'

'Oh, no,' Emilio said softly. 'Oh, no. I believed that God was with me.' He said this with great sincerity and because of that, it was impossible to know if he was serious or if this was mockery. He sat and looked into Vincenzo Giuliani's eyes. 'Do you believe that? Was God with me?' He looked around at each of them: John Candotti, Felipe Reyes, Johannes Voelker, Edward Behr, his eyes coming to rest again on Giuliani, who found it impossible to speak.

Sandoz rose and went to the door, opening it. Then he paused, struck by a thought. 'Not comedy. Not tragedy.' Then he laughed, a feral sound, devoid of humor. 'Perhaps farce?' he suggested. And then he left.

32 NAPLES: AUGUST 2060

'I think perhaps that I was a disappointment to Supaari,' Sandoz told them the next day. 'Anne was a delight to work with, and they had enjoyed each other a great deal. I was not nearly so amusing.'

'You were grieving and terrified and half-dead,' Voelker told him flatly. And John nodded, in agreement at last with something Johannes Voelker had said.

'Yes! A poor dinner companion.' Sandoz had a bright and brittle sound to him this afternoon. Giuliani was openly disapproving of this strange glittery mood; Sandoz ignored him. 'I'm not sure Supaari really thought through the idea of formally accepting me as a dependent. It might have been a sort of spontaneous gesture of interplanetary goodwill. Maybe he wished he'd let the government have me after all.' San­doz shrugged. 'In any case, he seemed primarily interested in the trade aspects of the situation, and I was not much good to him as an economic adviser. He asked me if I thought that there might be other parties coming from Earth. I told him that we had radioed news of our situation back to our home planet and that it was possible others might come. We had no way of knowing when. He decided to learn English from me because it is our lingua franca. He had already started to pick it up from Anne.'

'So. You had work as a linguist,' Giuliani said lightly. 'For a time, at least.'

'Yes. Supaari was making the best of things, I think. We had many conversations, once I was well enough to sort out which language I was supposed to use. It was good English practice for him, and he explained many things to me. You should be grateful to him. Most of what I understand about what happened came from him. He was very helpful.'

'How long were you with him?' Giuliani asked.

'I'm not really sure. Six to eight months, perhaps? I learned K'San during that time. Appalling language. The hardest I've ever learned. Part of the joke, I suppose,' he said, inexplicably. He stood up and began to walk around the room, jumpy and distractible.

'Did you hear anything of the violence that Wu and Isley reported?' Giuliani asked, watching him move from place to place.

'No. I was quite isolated, I assure you. I imagine, however, that with characteristic creativity, the Runa were beginning to expand on Sofia's suggestion that they were many and the Jana'ata were few.'

'Wu and Isley asked after you as soon as Askama brought them to Supaari's compound,' Giuliani said, pausing when he saw Sandoz flinch. 'Supaari told them that he had made other arrangements for you. What was the phrase he used? Ah. Here: 'more suited to his nature.' Can you tell us why you were removed from the household?'

There was an ugly laugh. 'Do you know what I said to Anne Edwards once? God is in the why.' He would not look at anyone now. He stood with his back to them and stared out the window, holding the gauzy curtain aside, careful with the hardware of his brace, so as not to snag the fabric. Finally, they heard him say, 'No. I don't know what he meant by that, except that somehow he believed he was justified in what he did.'

'In what he did,' Giuliani repeated quietly. 'You did nothing to cause your removal?'

'Oh, Christ!' Sandoz spun to face him. 'Even now? After all this?'

He walked to his place at the table and sat down, shaking with anger. When he spoke again, his voice was very soft, but he was obvi­ously fighting rage, braced hands rigid in his lap, eyes on the table. 'My position in the household of Supaari VaGayjur was that of a crippled dependent. Supaari was not a flighty person, but I believe he must have tired of me. Or perhaps he simply felt that I had fulfilled my role as a language tutor when he became