The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [132]
"All right, all right," she said ungraciously, picking up her tablet, "I concede. Give me a few minutes to get it all down."
They were a good team. Sandoz was a master of this discipline but she was a far better writer, fast and clear. Already three papers bearing the authorship "E. J. Sandoz and S. R. Mendes" had been radioed back for submission to scholarly journals.
Finished with her notes, Sofia looked up and smiled. She had met before, in yeshiva students whom her parents often invited to dinner when she was a girl, this mixture of incisive intelligence and dreaminess, the joyful combative intellectual style and the tendency to fall into an inner world, absorbed and remote. Barelegged and barefoot, Sandoz was tanned to the color of cinnamon, wearing the loose khaki shorts and oversized black T-shirt that had replaced the soutane, impossibly hot in this climate. Sofia herself was equally browned, similarly dark and slender, dressed as simply, and she could understand why Manuzhai had assumed at first that she and Emilio were "littermates." The notion had been funny and embarrassing, as Manuzhai’s pantomimed explanation of the word had been, but she could see how a Runao might come to that conclusion.
Askama sighed, stretching out a little. Emilio came to life and looked at Sofia with round-eyed alarm. Askama was dear, but she chattered incessantly; naps like this one were a welcome relief. "I wonder," said Sofia very softly, when it was clear that Askama would not awaken, "if a blind Runao would always use the nonvisual declension."
"Now that is an interesting question," Emilio said, inclining his head with respect, and she was tartly pleased to have reestablished claim to an adequate intelligence. He thought a while, rocking the hammock chair gently, one fine-boned foot braced against a hampiy stem, fingers stroking the soft fur behind Askama’s ears. The sunrise smile reappeared. "If you could feel a thing, you would also know it took up space! Look for something that has contour or form or texture. Wager?"
"Lejano, maybe, or tinguen," she suggested. "No bets." "No guts! I could be wrong," he said cheerfully, "but I doubt it. Try lejano first." He smiled down at the top of Askama’s head before returning his eyes to the small herd of piyanot grazing on the plain beyond the stems of the hampiy shelter.
"THEY MAKE A handsome couple, don’t they," Anne said as she and D.W. strolled along the edge of the gorge, above the village.
"Yes, ma’am," D.W. agreed. "They do indeed." Everyone else was occupied or asleep, and they had found themselves restless together. Anne proposed a walk, and D.W. was happy to accompany her. Manuzhai had warned them all, repeatedly, against walking alone. A "djanada," whatever that was, might get them; so they traveled in pairs, more to mollify Manuzhai and the other Runa than because of any serious fear of predators or bogeymen.
"Jealous?" Anne asked. "They’re both yours in a way, aren’t they."
"Oh, hell, I’m not sure jealous is the right word," said D.W., who stopped for a moment to gaze crookedly at Sofia and Emilio, playing house with Askama out in the hampiy. He turned back to Anne and grinned lopsidedly and briefly before he squinted off into the west, across the river. "It’s kinda like watchin’ Notre Dame go up against the University of Texas in the Cotton Bowl. I don’t hardly know what to hope for."
Anne laughed appreciatively and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Oh, D.W, I love you. I truly do. Of course, I’ve always had a weakness for a guy in a uniform."
It was an opening, and he walked through it, smiling. "You, too?"
"The Marines are looking for a few good men," Anne intoned, quoting the old recruitment