The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [187]
Marc and George accompanied the first Runa gardeners on expeditions to pik and k’jip fields and helped them bring back transplants. Seeds were collected, slips taken and rooted. Some crops failed but others flourished. New plants were added. The foreigners were glad to provide potatoes, which the Runa loved, and to share beets and even popcorn, which was an enormous hit, both as entertainment and as food. When Sofia wondered if this sharing of seeds and transplants from Earth might trigger some sort of ecological disaster, Marc said, "All the varieties I brought have very low volunteer-germination rates. If they or we stop taking care of the gardens, these plants will die off in a year."
Freed from the endless marching from home to naturally growing food sources, their diet supplemented by garden produce, the VaKashani and their neighbors grew visibly opulent. Fat levels rose. Hormone production kicked in at concentrations that brought on estrus, and life got a good deal more interesting in Kashan and the surrounding villages. Even if Supaari had not tipped Anne off to the general outlines of Runa sexuality, she’d have worked it out by observation alone that year: there was no real privacy in Runa life.
And the Runa, she discovered, were in fact quite curious about where little foreigners came from, so to speak. "Earth" was not the answer they were interested in. So, with sex and pregnancies and new households suddenly of universal interest, Anne explained certain aspects of human behavior, physiology and anatomy. This soon led to a new accuracy in the way Ruanja personal pronouns were applied to the foreigners.
And though single-irised eyes were affectionately averted and human commentary was thoughtfully circumspect in the sexually charged atmosphere of Kashan, there was no way for the courtship of Jimmy Quinn and Sofia Mendes to go unnoticed. The VaKashani were delighted by the couple. They showed this by being rowdy and lewd, making bawdy remarks that frequently went beyond the suggestive into the realm of the expository. Jimmy and Sofia took it all in the good-natured spirit with which it was given. Shyness was not a luxury they were vouchsafed. And to be honest, as friendship deepened and a love was at long last permitted to flourish, there was only one person around whom they felt shy. Nothing was ever spoken among the three of them; to speak would solidify truths that had been kept, at some cost to them all, insubstantial. Emilio did not join in the ribaldry or joke with them the way he might have with another couple. But now and then, when they returned together from a walk or looked up and saw him across the room, they would know that his eyes had been on them and they found in the still face and quiet gaze a benediction.
When at last it came, fully two months after Sofia was ready for it, Jimmy’s proposal was typically comic and her response typically decisive. "Sofia," he said, "I am painfully aware of the fact that I am, for all practical purposes, the last man on Earth—"
"Yes," she said.
And so on the fifth of Stan’ja, approximately November 26, 2041, in the village of Kashan, Southern Province of Inbrokar, on the lavender and blue and green planet of Rakhat, James Connor Quinn and Sofia Rachel Mendes were married under a chuppah, the traditional open-sided canopy of Jewish weddings, decorated at its corners with streamers of yellow and amethyst, of green and aquamarine, of carnelian and lilac, scented with something like gardenia and something like lily.
The bride wore a simple dress Anne