The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [203]
But at John’s words, Emilio’s face took on the careful neutral look that now told them all he was working hard. "Yes. There were a lot of babies." He sat very still but looked steadily at Johannes Voelker. "It was the gardens."
Knowing that he was being addressed directly for some reason but unable to see why, Voelker shook his head. "I’m sorry. I don’t follow."
"The mistake. What you’ve been waiting for. The fatal error."
Voelker flushed and glanced at the Father General, who remained impassive, and then looked back at Sandoz. "I deserved that, I suppose." Sandoz waited. "I deserved that," Voelker repeated, without qualification.
"We had all the information, really," Emilio said. "It was all there. We just didn’t understand. I think perhaps that even if we had been told directly, we would not have understood."
They listened to the clock ticking and watched him, not sure if he’d go on or leave. Then Sandoz came back to the room from where he had been and began to speak again.
THEY HEARD THE singing first. Martial and strongly measured. Snatches of it, from a distance, carried on the wind. The VaKashani stirred and gathered themselves, and moved up onto the plain to watch the patrol approach. Why hadn’t they stayed in the apartments? Why hadn’t they run? They might have hidden the babies, he thought later. But then again, they’d have laid down a trail that any half-competent predator could have followed. What would have been the point? So they circled—the infants, the children, the fathers in the center—and waited on the plain for the patrol to arrive.
Later on, when he’d lived in Gayjur for a while, he understood better the limitations of village Runa; it was incomprehensible at the time. They gave the babies up. They must have known at some level that they would not be allowed to keep them, but the juices of life had risen in them and they’d chosen their own mates and nature, unnaturally aided by the foreigners’ gardening with its richer food close by for the eating, had taken its course.
"They breed to their feed, you see," Sandoz told the others. "I realized this later, and Supaari confirmed it. The system is balanced so that the Runa are ordinarily untroubled by sexual desire. They have a family life, but they don’t breed unless the Jana’ata want them to. Normally, their fat levels stay low. They travel out to naturally growing resources. It costs energy to do this, yes? The gardens upset the balance." He looked from face to face, to see if they understood. "It’s difficult to take it in, isn’t it. You see, the Jana’ata don’t keep Runa in stockyards or enslave them. The Runa work within the Jana’ata culture because they want to. They are bred to it, and it is normal for them. When a village corporate account reaches a certain level, they are provided with extra food, extra calories, and this brings the females into estrus."
Suddenly, a phrase from a report came back to Giuliani. "Passive voice," he said. "I wondered about it when I read it. Dr. Edwards said their mates were chosen using criteria other than those used for choosing spouses."
"Yes. Subtle, isn’t it. Their mates were chosen for them: by Jana’ata geneticists. The Runa select anyone they like to marry but they are bred according to the standards of the Jana’ata." He laughed, but it was not a good sound. "It is, when you think about it, quite a humane system, compared to the way we breed meat animals."
Felipe Reyes blanched and breathed, "Oh, my God."
"Yes. You see it now, don’t you?" Sandoz looked at Voelker, who had not yet realized. Then Voelker’s eyes closed. "You see it now," Sandoz repeated,