The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [56]
This dream first sustained and then haunted him for many years afterward.
13
EARTH:
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2019
ANNE EDWARDS WAS finishing up her morning appointments when she saw Emilio hanging around the clinic’s open door. She stopped midstride but then continued out of her office into the tiny reception area.
"You angry with me?" he asked quietly, not coming in.
"I’m angry with somebody," she conceded waspishly, drying her hands and stepping to the door. "I’m just not sure with whom."
"With God, perhaps?"
"I liked you better when you didn’t bring God into every damned conversation," Anne muttered. "Do you want lunch? I’m going home for half an hour. There’s leftover pasta."
He shrugged and nodded and stood out of her way as she locked up. They climbed the eighty steps to the house, Anne breaking the silence only to return the greetings of people they passed. Once inside, they moved to the kitchen and Emilio perched on the stool in the corner, watching Anne steadily as she rummaged around, putting together a light lunch for both of them.
"It is often hard to tell from the way people behave whether or not they believe in God," he remarked conversationally. "Do you, Anne?"
She started the ancient microwave and then turned to him, leaning against the counter and meeting his eyes for the first time since noticing him at the clinic. "I believe in God the way I believe in quarks," she said coolly. "People whose business it is to know about quantum physics or religion tell me they have good reason to believe that quarks and God exist. And they tell me that if I wanted to devote my life to learning what they’ve learned, I’d find quarks and God just like they did."
"Do you think they’re telling the truth?"
"It’s all rock and roll to me." She shrugged and turned away to pull the plates out of the oven and carry them to the table. He hopped off the stool lightly and followed her to the dining room. They sat down and began to eat, the sounds of the neighborhood drifting in with the breeze through the open windows.
"And yet," Emilio said, "you behave like a good and moral person."
He expected an explosion and he got it. She threw her fork down with a clatter on the plate and sat back. "You know what? I really resent the idea that the only reason someone might be good or moral is because they’re religious. I do what I do," Anne said, biting off each word, "without hope of reward or fear of punishment. I do not require heaven or hell to bribe or scare me into acting decently, thank you very much."
He let her simmer down enough to pick up her fork and resume eating. "A woman of honor," he observed, inclining his head with respect.
"Damned straight," she muttered around a mouthful of food, glaring at her plate and spiking a piece of rigatoni with her fork.
"We have more in common than you might suppose," Emilio said mildly but did not elaborate when her head came up. As she struggled to swallow, he set his plate aside and became businesslike. "There has been a great deal of work done in the past few weeks. Our physicists have confirmed the practicality of using an altered asteroid for transport, and Alpha Centauri can in fact be reached in under eighteen years. I am told that if Jupiter and Saturn had been big enough to produce sustained fusion, our solar system might have looked like the three suns of Alpha Centauri. So the plan is to come in above the plane of the system and look for solid planets in the same relative orbit as Earth or Mars, between the sun and the gas giants." She grunted: sounds reasonable. Watching her reactions carefully, he continued, "George has already proposed an imaging technique that would help us identify planetary movement, which he can coordinate with radio monitoring, once we reach the system."
He expected surprise and anger. He saw resignation. It suddenly came to him that George might leave Anne and that she might be willing to let him go. The possibility made him go cold. Beyond their