The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [59]
Four hours later, to Peter Lynam’s astonished chagrin and Tomás da Silva’s pure delight, a second transmission was detected.
Despite the recent decline in interest, there were several radio telescopes set to receive the signal when it came. The word "hoax" was permanently retired from discussion of the songs. And around the world, those few who knew the extent of the plans for a Jesuit mission to the source of the music were greatly relieved, and began to be very excited indeed.
IN THE END, it was not George or Emilio who convinced Anne Edwards to sign on to the plan. It was a bus accident.
A trucker going east on the coast road swerved briefly onto the shoulder to avoid a chunk of rock in the road but then overcooked his return to the pavement. For a few moments, the truck went into the oncoming lane and sheared the side off a westbound bus that had just rounded the curve. The truck driver was killed. Among the bus passengers, there were twelve DOA, fifty-three others more or less badly hurt, and quite a few hysterical. By the time Anne took the call and got to the hospital, its lobby was filled with distraught relatives, and lawyers.
She helped first with triage and then moved to a trauma theater, part of the team trying to save a woman in her sixties with extensive head injuries. Anne had talked to the husband in the lobby. They were tourists from Michigan. "I gave her the window seat, so she could see. I was sitting right next to her." He kept putting his hand to the side of his face, where his wife’s head had been hurt. "This trip was my idea. She wanted to go to Phoenix to see the grandkids. No, I said, let’s do something different. We always go to Phoenix."
Pressed, Anne had murmured something about doing their best for his wife and moved on to the next task.
At dawn, the crisis was over and the patients who had passed through Emergency were distributed to their waiting relatives, to the wards, to the ICU, to the morgue. By chance, Anne glanced into an open door on her way out of the hospital and saw the man from Michigan seated at the foot of his wife’s bed, his face striped and stippled with glowing readouts from the machinery surrounding them. Anne wanted to say something comforting, but the punch-drunk reaction to hours on her feet was beginning and the only thing that came to mind was, "Next time, go to Phoenix," which was clearly inappropriate. Then, oddly, the final scene of La Bohème came to her and, instructed by Puccini’s librettist, she put a hand on the man’s shoulder and whispered, "Courage."
When she got home, George was awake and dressed and offered her coffee, but she decided to clean up and catch a few hours of sleep. Standing in the shower, soaping herself, she glanced down at her own nakedness and a vision of the woman with the head trauma came back to her. The woman had been in good shape; her body might go on for decades, but she’d never know the grandkids were all grown up. One minute, she was in the State of Puerto Rico and the next minute, she was in the State of Persistent Vegetables. Jesus, Anne thought, shuddering.
She rinsed off and stepped out of the shower. Towel wrapped around her wet hair and terry robe wrapped around her durable dancer’s body, she padded into the dining room and sat across the table from George. "Okay," she said. "I’m in."
It took him a few moments to realize what she was agreeing to.
"What the hell," Anne said, seeing that he understood. "It’s gotta be better than not quite dying in a bus wreck on vacation."
ON SEPTEMBER 13, Jean-Claude Jaubert received a message asking for an AV appointment to discuss a buyout of the remaining time on Sofia Mendes’s contract. The individual making the request gave no name and, seeing no referral, Jaubert denied video access but agreed to open an electronic meeting, which he would encrypt and route through several networks. Jaubert was not a criminal but his was a business subject to jealousies, hard feelings,