The Sparrow

Sandoz stood and turned to leave. Giuliani reached out and locked a hand over the man's arm to keep him from ru

"Don't ask me, Vince," Sandoz said bitterly. "Ask God."

He knew it was Edward Behr who'd come after him. The wheezing was unmistakable. He'd felt his way down the stone stairs, blinded by the tears and the lingering pain, and when he realized he'd been followed, he swore viciously and told Ed to leave him the hell alone.

"Do you miss the asteroid?" Brother Edward asked curiously. "You were alone there."

Emilio laughed in spite of it all. "No. I do not miss the asteroid," he said as dryly as a crying man could. He sat down where he stood, feeling boneless and bereft, and put his head in what was left of his hands. "There's no bottom to this."

"You're better, you know," Edward said, sitting down. Emilio looked out at the Mediterranean, gunmetal blue and oily under a flat pewter sky. "Of course, there are good days and bad days, but you're a lot stronger than you were a few months ago. You couldn't have sustained an argument like that before. Physically or mentally."

Wiping his eyes on the backs of his gloves, Emilio said angrily, "I don't feel stronger. I feel that this will never be over. I feel that I will never be over it."

"Well, I can only speak to the grief. You lost so much and so many out there." Edward saw rather than heard the sobbing and resisted the impulse to put a hand out; Sandoz hated being touched. "In the normal way of things, it takes about a year, when you lose someone you really care for. Before the worst of it lets go of you, I mean. I found a

"How did your wife die, Ed?" Sandoz asked. He'd gotten a grip again. Brother Edward wished he'd let himself go, but there was some overriding need to keep control, something that couldn't be wept away. "You don't have to tell me," Sandoz said then. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

"Oh, I don't mind. It helps actually, to talk about her. Keeps her alive to me in some ways." Edward leaned forward, pudgy elbows on his knees, head close to Emilio's now. "It was a stupid thing, really. I was rooting around in the glove box, looking for a tissue to blow my nose with. Can you imagine? I had a cold! Dumb luck. Kind of thing you do a hundred times and it makes no difference and then one bright winter morning, it makes all the difference in the world. Wheel hit a hole in the tarmac and I lost control of the car. She was killed and I was barely scratched."

"I'm sorry." There was a long silence. "Was it a good marriage?"

"Oh, it had its ups and downs. We were actually in a rough patch when the accident happened but I think we'd have sorted things out. We weren't either of us quitters. We'd have done all right, I think."

"Did you blame yourself, Ed? Or did you blame God?"

"Fu

They listened for a while to the mournful screams of the gulls wheeling overhead. The water was too far away to hear the waves, but watching the rhythmic ebb and flow was nearly as soothing and Emilio's headache began to ebb as well. "How did you come to this life, Ed?" he asked.

"Well, I was fairly religious as a child. Then I was an atheist for a while. I think they call that period of spiritual development 'adolescence, " Edward said dryly. "Then about two years after Laura was killed, a friend talked me into going to a Jesuit retreat. And when we got to the part about following the standard of Christ, I thought, well, why not? I'll have a go. I was at loose ends, you see. Wasn't exactly a Pauline conversion. No voices. And you, sir?"

"No voices," Sandoz said, his voice normal again and a little hard. "I never heard voices and the migraines do not feel like metal bands around my head. I'm not psychotic, Ed."

"I don't believe anyone has suggested that you were* sir," Brother Edward said quietly. "I meant, how did you come to the priesthood?"

It was some time before Sandoz answered, flat-voiced and unexpansive, "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

Brother Edward thought that might be the end of the conversation, but after a few minutes Sandoz said, "You've been on both sides. Which is the better life?"

"I'd never give up the years I had with Laura, but this is the right place for me now." Edward hesitated, then thought it might be as good a time as any to broach the subject. "Tell me about Miss Mendes. I've seen pictures. She was beautiful."

"Beautiful and bright and very brave," Sandoz said, the sound leached from his voice. He cleared his throat and ran an arm over his eyes.

"A man would have to be a fool not to love someone like that," Edward Behr said gently. Some priests were so hard on themselves.

"Yes, a fool," Sandoz agreed and added, "but I didn't think so then." It was a puzzling thing to say and Sandoz followed it with something just as unexpected. "Have you ever wondered about the story of Cain, Ed? He made his sacrifice in good faith. Why did God refuse it?"

Sandoz stood and, without looking back, made his way down the long stairway to the sea. He was small and foreshortened, halfway across the beach to the huge stone outcropping he often retreated to, before Edward Behr realized what he had just been told.

26

VILLAGE OF KASHAN AND GREAT SOUTHERN FOREST:

EIGHT WEEKS AFTER CONTACT

A

She went first to D.W. and, reassured, moved on to Jimmy's sleeping shape in another corner. She looked, with a pang, at the empty beds of Marc and Sofia and wished she were a praying person so their absence would not fill her with such helpless anxiety. Then she saw a third bed empty but before her heart could lurch, she began to hear the faint clicking of a keyboard. Picking her way along a stone path only a goat could appreciate, she ducked into Aycha's place next door and saw her favorite semi-son kneeling like a scholarly geisha at a low table, typing rapidly.

"Emilio!" she cried softly. "What the hell are you—"

He shook his head without looking up and continued to type. She sank onto a cushion next to him and listened to the night noises. It smelled like rain to her but the stones were still dry. Well, she thought, noticing the radio monitor propped next to Emilio, I'm not the only one sweating it out.