The Sparrow

When Emilio walks into the Father General’s office, Johannes Voelker feels disgusted by his presence and wonders, “How many of the others did this evil man corrupt […] before they died? Did he kill them, too, as he did the child?” (192). The Jesuit priests are sitting around a long table for the first of many hearings, and Vincenzo makes it clear that this isn’t an inquisition; rather, the purpose is to “establish a clear picture of events that took place during the mission to Rakhat. Father Sandoz has a unique perspective and a degree of insight into these events that we hope will clarify our partial knowledge” (193).

Vincenzo also says that he has news that may be new to Emilio. Apparently, after learning about the secret Jesuit mission, the U.N. sent their own crew to Rakhat. According to messages sent back from two U.N. crewmembers, Emilio was found doing sex work in a brothel, and he killed Askama, a little Runa girl he had been close to. After hearing the allegations, Emilio says that it’s all sort of true but doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he begins breathing strangely and gets a migraine, and Edward thinks he has “seen this kind of thing before—the body punished for what the soul could not encompass” (200).

Edward thinks about how:

Emilio’s very survival had been improbable, not to say miraculous. Alone for months, in a crude vehicle, navigated by only slightly less crude computers, he had been found in the Ohbayashi sector of the asteroid belt when a support ship investigated the automatic distress signal. By that time, he was so malnourished that the healed scars of his hands had reopened, the connective tissue going to pieces (201). 

Edward thinks he’s probably the only one who believes it’s a good thing Emilio was found alive.

Emilio quickly falls asleep after taking migraine medicine. Edward talks to Vincenzo privately and tells him that Emilio clearly doesn’t enjoy pain and that “[i]f he worked as a whore, it gave him no pleasure” (202). Vincenzo agrees that Emilio is clearly not a “depraved libertine” as the initial reports seemed to suggest (203). That night, Vincenzo apologizes to Emilio, but Emilio tells him to leave him alone. From outside the door, Vincenzo hears Emilio weeping, and in that moment, he thinks he’s “learned the sound of desolation” (204).

Everyone on the crew except for Marc and Jimmy is playing poker. They’ve been circling “at .25 G above the plane of the Alpha Centauri system for weeks and [a]re collectively bored witless” (206). In the middle of the game, Jimmy announces that they’ve found a planet, most likely the alien singers’ planet. As excited commotion grows amidst the crew, Emilio faints. D.W. carries him to Anne’s room so that she can look him over without alarming anyone.

Emilio admits to Anne that he has always been agnostic, hearing others talk about their relationship with God but never experiencing it for himself. However, after everything lined up for the mission, he began to believe, for the first time, that God had a plan for him. He says, “It’s amazing. Inside me, everything makes sense, everything I’ve done, everything that has ever happened to me—it was all leading up to this, to where we are right now” (213). He tells Anne that he feels like he’s falling in love with God for the first time, and he feels naked and terrified about it all.

Two weeks pass as the Stella Maris gets closer and closer to the planet in preparation for landing. Everyone is on edge. During this time, Marc surveys the geography and concludes:

the air is breathable, and the weather was stinking hot but wouldn’t kill them. There were a lot of thunderstorms and cyclones going on at any given time, which could have been due to the season or to the amount of energy pouring into the system from the three suns (218).

The group begins arguing about where to land: Some want to land near the biggest discernable city, to make contact immediately, while others want to acclimate to the world before meeting the locals. They finally decide to land outside the city so that everyone has time to get used to the environment and study the flora and fauna.

Russell writes, “The following days were the worst they’d experienced, physically and mentally” (222). Everyone is irritable and preoccupied with trying to decide the essentials they need to take with them to the new planet. The night before making contact, Anne goes to D.W.’s room and asks if Emilio could be the first to step foot on the new planet. Despite it being D.W.’s “risk to take and privilege,” seeing as he is the leader of the mission, D.W. ultimately agrees with Anne’s idea.

That night, each of them prepare:

both for death and for a kind of resurrection. Some confessed, some made love, some slept exhausted and dreamed of childhood friends or long-forgotten moments with grandparents. They all, in their own ways, tried to let their fear go, to reconcile themselves to their lives prior to this night, and to what might come tomorrow (225).

As the night goes on, each of them “gave themselves up to God’s will and trusted that whatever happened now was meant to be. At least for the moment, they all fell in love with God” (225).

The next day, Emilio lands first on Rakhat, with everyone following behind him. The subsequent days are filled with “rapture and hilarity. Children on a field trip to Eden, they named everything they saw” (226). Everyone notes how the “sheer beauty and ingenuity of the animals’ adaptations were breathtaking and the gorgeousness of the plant life staggering” (227). The crew lives mostly in a dense foliated area, and when they go out into a clearing, they always travel in pairs.

One afternoon, Sofia wanders through the woods alone and finds Emilio sleeping. She thinks about how they have one thing in common: “the continual rushed confrontation with change, the feeling of being hothoused, forced to bloom early, the exhausting exhilaration of doing the unreasonable not just adequately but well and with grace” (229). She draws closer to him and touches a lock of his hair, and he opens his eyes. She makes an excuse for her intimate stance, realizing that he had been praying and not sleeping.

The group decides to test the plants and animals to see what is edible. They use Jimmy as the first test subject since he is the biggest and is used to eating anything, and therefore most likely to live through eating poison. After a couple of issues with diarrhea and stomachaches, the group slowly “compiled a list of things that didn’t seem to damage them, even if it was still unclear whether or not they were deriving any useful nutrients from the food” (233).

The weeks come and go, and the crew begins to feel at home on Rakhat—until Alan suddenly dies. Anne immediately performs an autopsy, but she finds no cause of death. Everyone begins hypothesizing about the death, and Anne gets upset. She wonders why, when good things happen, God gets the credit, but when she’s unable to save someone, she gets the blame. She wonders why God would bring Alan all the way here only to let him die.

Alan’s death brings up questions of faith. Marc had been diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia at the age of five. Marc says that if he had been diagnosed earlier, he surely would have died, but thankfully, a new treatment had been developed that saved his life. His grandmother called it a miracle, and Marc grew up to become a priest. The morning after Alan’s death, Marc gives the funeral Mass. He says:

questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God (240). 

Felipe and Vincenzo are sailing in Vincenzo’s boat and talking about Emilio. Vincenzo says he knew him as a kid and that he was good at everything he did, whether it was speaking Latin or playing baseball. Felipe says that Emilio was a very good priest and a likable guy, very different from today. Apparently, the hearings haven’t been going well, as Emilio seems to have shut down.

Vincenzo says that he never figured Emilio out, and Felipe says that Emilio is a typical Latino boy who “aspires to the F’s. They want to be feo, fuerte y formal,” or “Ugly, strong and serious” (244). Felipe says that both he and Emilio, as poor Puerto Rican boys, have always felt like outsiders in the priesthood. He thinks about how “Giuliani could never understand the price scholarship boys paid for their education: the inevitable alienation from your uncomprehending family, from roots, from your own first person, from the original ‘I’ you once were” (247). However, Giuliani reveals that he understands more than Felipe thinks. Vincenzo’s family money came from the Camorra, Naples’s version of the mafia. For him, the priesthood was a way to compensate for the sins of his family.

John is fitting Emilio with a custom pair of gloves that he made. Emilio is initially mad at John for not warning him about how intense the hearings would be, but John is adamant that he tried telling him. John asks Emilio why the creatures did this to his hands, and Emilio says he’s not sure, adding that the procedure is called hasta’akala:

It wasn’t supposed to be torture. I was told that the Jana’ata sometimes do this to their own friends. Supaari was surprised by how bad it was for us. I don’t think Jana’ata hands are innervated as extensively as ours. They don’t do much fine-motor work. The Runa do all that (251).

The more he thinks about it, the more Emilio wonders if it was just meant to be aesthetically pleasing, or if it was used as a way of controlling him and Marc, since they were left useless after the procedure. John likens the procedure to the foot binding of aristocratic Chinese women, and Emilio says the analogy might be correct. Marc’s hand never healed, and he died from the bleeding.

The more Emilio thinks about it, the more he pieces together the idea that the word hasta’akala is similar to their word sta’aka, referring to a type of ivy that “would climb on larger, stronger plants, like our ivies, but it had branches with a weeping growth habit, like a willow” (253). He holds up his hands, and his fingers fall like ivy, and he realizes that the procedure was meant to make him and Marc like the ivy, “visibly and physically dependent on someone stronger” (253). He’s suddenly very mad at himself for consenting to the procedure, especially since it killed Marc.

That night, Vincenzo watches over Emilio as he sleeps. He wakes up and says that he has reconsidered the meaning of the word “whore.” He says that if it’s someone “whose body is ruined for the pleasure of others,” then he is “God’s whore, and ruined” (255). Vincenzo begins to leave Emilio’s room, but Emilio asks him to stay.

Sobered by Alan’s death, the group prepares to make contact with the inhabitants of Rakhat. They try to pack for the trip, hypothesizing what might be useful for trading. George and D.W. fly the Ultra-Light, a two-person plane, over the flatlands in order to scope out their destination. After a few more flights, Marc says that they've found a village a few days’ walk from where they are now. It’s “[s]et into the side of some cliffs, about thirty meters up from the river. We almost missed it. Very interesting architecture. Almost like Anasazi cliff dwellings but not at all geometric” (262). The village appears to be uninhabited.

Instead of walking, they travel one by one in the Ultra-Light, bringing two months’ worth of food and camping gear. They leave most of their supplies behind in the lander, which is hidden in some brush: “For the first time since landfall, they all felt alien and misplaced, and a little scared as they crawled into sleeping bags and tried to get some rest” (265). Their new home, unlike the dense foliage they grew accustomed to, is open, bare, and less colorful, making it feel less hospitable.

In the morning, they walk to the dwelling and notice that although the walls are bare, with no signs of artistry, evidence of craftsmanship is apparent in the finely woven cushions adorning the space, along with the superbly crafted tables and benches. It doesn’t appear that the dwelling has been abandoned, considering everything is meticulously placed. D.W., who is on the lookout, radios the group to say that he sees “a gang of ‘em. Walking. Bigs and littles. Looks like families. Carrying stuff. Baskets, I think” (267). Emilio immediately leaves the dwelling and begins walking towards the villagers. Everyone follows him.

The two groups meet, and for a while, they just stand and stare at each other. Anne notes:

The two species were not grotesque to one another. They shared a general body plan: bipedal, with forelimbs specialized for grasping and manipulation. Their faces also held similarity in general, and the differences were not shocking or hideous […] [l]arge mobile ears, erect and carried high on the sides of the head. Gorgeous eyes, large and densely lashed, calm as camels’. The nose was convex, broad at the tip, curving smoothly off to meet the muzzle, which projected rather more noticeably than was ever the case among humans. The mouth, lipless and broad (269).

Despite the similarities, the aliens’ eyes have two irises and are dark blue, almost violet. However, when hearing the villagers talk, the crew’s heart sinks because they realize these aren’t the singers that attracted them to the planet in the first place.

Russell writes that “[w]hat happened next was a puzzle to all those in the Jesuit party but Sandoz” (271). A juvenile villager, Askama, approaches Emilio, and they begin trying to teach each other their language. Emilio is “[s]miling and in love with God and all His works” as Askama sits in Emilio’s lap. He feels like a “prism, gathering up God’s love like white light and scattering it in all directions,” and he feels like he was born for this moment (273).

Emilio is sitting in the hearing, telling them this story about the first time they encounter the villagers. He says:

Runa are a trading people who require many languages to do business. As among us, their children learned languages quickly and easily, so they take advantage of that, yes? Whenever a new trading partnership is formed, a child is raised jointly by its family and the foreign delegation, which also includes a child. It takes only a couple of years to establish fairly sophisticated communication (275).

The Runa villagers sent Askama to Emilio, believing Emilio to be a child, too, because he is small and was the first to attempt language with the villagers.

When asked if the Runa were frightened by their presence, Emilio says that the Runa “are very tolerant of novelty. And we were obviously not a threat to them physically. They assumed, evidently, that whatever we were, we had come to trade. They fit us into their worldview on that basis” (276).

Emilio admits that he loved Askama like a daughter, but it’s hard to tell if she loved him in a familial way. She was certainly attached to him, craving to be by his side in all moments, but she also got impatient when Emilio didn’t understand what she was trying to teach him about their language. Emilio then explains the differences in their languages, realizing that the “Runa do not have vocabulary for the edges we perceive separating one element from another. This reflects their social structure and their perceptions of the physical world and even their political status” (279).

Johannes makes a comment about how Emilio killed Askama, and Emilio ends the session. Vincenzo goes to Emilio privately, and Emilio admits, for the first time, that he’s in constant pain from his hands and the headaches. Vincenzo ups the dosage of his medicine and takes it as a good sign that Emilio is talking about his feelings. Vincenzo also reveals that in D.W.’s reports, he wrote that Emilio is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and he very well may be a saint. Emilio tells Vincenzo to stop. He says, “Do you know what the worst of it is? I loved God…It’s all ashes now. All ashes” (284). Vincenzo says he could be more help to Emilio if he could tell him whether he views this as comedy or tragedy, but Emilio says he doesn’t know.

The chapter opens with “Supaari Vagayjur profited from the presence of the Jesuit party on Rakhat before he knew of its existence” (288). Supaari, a member of the Jana’ata species, is meeting with Chaypas, from the Runa species. Despite being from different species, Supaari notes how attractive Chaypas is, and how “they were alike enough to be sisters or near cousins, seen with a casual eye, from a distance” (289).

Supaari is a third-born child, a lower class Jana’ata, but he’s unusual because he intimately interacts with the Runa and treats them like they’re on his level. However, he has made his wealth by trading with the Runa, so he doesn’t consider his friendship with them surprising.

Chaypas hands Supaari “the most extraordinary thing he’d ever encountered…a few small brown objects, oval, incised with a longitude line” with a smell unlike anything else (293). She says the item came from foreigners, and it’s made clear to the reader that the objects are coffee beans. Chaypas says that the foreigners are like children. Supaari is delighted by this new find; in a show of appreciation, he pays for Chaypas to be carried home in a chair, like a lord.

Meanwhile, Sofia and Emilio are arguing about the difference between concrete and abstract in the Runa language. They have been working together on scholarly linguistic papers that they frequently send back to Earth in hopes of getting published.

Anne and D.W. watch them from a distance, noting that Sofia and Emilio would make a fine couple. Anne has a heart-to-heart with D.W., and he confesses to her that he prefers men to women. She says that he should confide in Emilio, but he says that it was a lifetime ago, and he’s celibate now, so why does it matter? Anne wonders if Marc prefers men also, but D.W. is taken aback because apparently Marc has always been a lady’s man.

The group reconvenes together in the main dwelling while the Runa are away. They talk about how, despite all the children they’ve seen, they haven’t seen any babies. They find this unusual, considering most species have a constant batch of babies being born. They also talk about the herd mentality of the Runa and how fads flash through the village like wildfire.

George makes it clear that despite all the fun things about the Runa, they clearly aren’t the singers, nor are they the ones who invented the radio. In other words, he’s saying he’s bored by the Runa and wants to find the singers. He proposes they travel to the city. Emilio feels uneasy about this idea and says that he’s just started understanding the Runa language and isn’t ready for a new language yet.