The Sparrow

On Friday of that week, Jimmy Qui

"The SETI work is similar to the rest of the observations but it's on the back burner," he told her. Headsets and gloves on, they felt themselves to be sitting in front of an old-fashioned oscilloscope, some VR engineer's idea of a joke. "When we aren't using the dish for anything else, SETI does a systematic scan for radio signals from other planets. The program flags anything that looks like a possible ET message—anything with a constant frequency that's not one of the known sources like registered radio broadcasts or military transmissions, things like that."

"I understand there are already very sophisticated pattern-recognition programs in place," Sofia said.

"Yeah. The SETI programs are old but they're good, and ISAS updated the signal-processing equipment when they took Arecibo over. So the system already knows how to screen out junk signals from things we know are nonsentient sources like hydrogen atoms vibrating or stars making noise." He pulled up an example. "See how crazy this looks? This is a star's radio signal. It's completely irregular and it sounds like this in audio," he said, making a breathy crackly noise through his teeth. He pulled up a new display. "Okay. Radio used for communication uses a constant frequency carrier with some kind of amplitude modulation. See the difference?" Sofia nodded. "SETI scans over fourteen million separate cha

"So your job is to disprove the standing hypothesis that a transmission is intelligent communication."

"Exactly."

"So—" Stylus raised, flipping up one eyepiece, she settled herself to take in the next load of information. Jimmy took off his headset and gazed at her, until she cleared her throat.

"Can I ask you something first? It'll be quick," he assured her when she sighed. "Why do you take notes in longhand? Wouldn't it be easier to record these sessions? Or to type directly into a file?"

It was the first time anyone had asked her about her own methods. "I don't just transcribe what you tell me. I'm organizing the information as I listen. If I recorded the session, I'd have to take the same amount of time listening to it later as the original interview took. And over the years, I've developed a personal shorthand. I write faster than I can type."

"Oh," he said. It was the longest she'd ever talked. Not exactly a date but sort of a conversation. "Are you going to George and A

"Yes. Mr. Qui

Jimmy replaced his headset and dragged himself back to the display. "Okay, I begin by taking a look at the flagged signals. A lot of them nowadays turn out to be coded transmissions from dope factories about five hundred kilometers out. They're always moving around, and they change frequencies all the time. Usually the software screens them out because they're so close to Earth, but sometimes the transmissions take an odd bounce off an asteroid or something and the signal looks as if it's coming from far away."

Jimmy began working his way through the log, becoming absorbed in the process, talking more to himself than to Sofia. Watching him with one eye, she wondered if men ever figured out that they were more appealing when they were pursuing their own work than when they were pursuing a woman. Slavering was hardly attractive. And yet, she was surprised to recognize, she had begun to like Jimmy Qui

"That's interesting," Jimmy said. Sofia concentrated on the eyepiece image and saw a table-shaped signal. "See? There's a signal that comes out of the background noise, stays around for—lemme look up the duration. Here. It was there for about four minutes and then it dropped off." He laughed. "Well, hell, it's got to be something homemade. This part right here?" He pointed to the tabletop portion of the signal.

"A constant carrier frequency with amplitude modulation," she said.

"Bingo." He laughed. "It's gotta be local. We're probably picking up some religious broadcast from Tierra del Fuego bouncing off that new hotel Shimatzu is building. The one with the microgravity stadium?"

She nodded.

"Well, anyway, this gives me a chance to show you how I'd play around with a possible ET. See, the whole signal looks like a pulse when it's displayed like this," he said, tracing the tabletop shape with an electronic finger. "Now. I can focus on just this section along the top of the pulse, like this, and change the amplitude scale." He did so. The formerly straight horizontal line now looked jagged. "See? The amplitude varies…quite a bit, actually." His voice trailed off. It looked sort of familiar. "Got to be local," he muttered.

Sofia waited a few minutes as Jimmy fiddled with the signal. Triple time, she thought. "Mr. Qui

"Sure," Jimmy said, killing the display, pulling off the VR equipment, and getting up. "We haven't transferred all that old stuff. The working programs are here but nobody does much with the documentation, so it's still archived on the Cray. Come on, I'll show you how to access it."

When Sofia Mendes arrived at the Edwardses' on Saturday evening, precisely on time and bearing a bottle of Golan Heights cabernet, Jimmy Qui

"Emilio might be a little late," Dr. Edwards told her, kissing her cheek. "Baseball game. Don't be alarmed if he shows up in a full-body cast, dear. His team's in second place and when it's that close, Father Sandoz plays ball for keeps."

But Sofia heard his voice only ten minutes later, a

Drawing one flower from A