The Terrorists of Irustan (15 page)

“Camilla!” Laila protested.

Camilla flashed her a look. Zahra almost shuddered at the intensity of her expression, some inner flame that flared inside her quiet friend. “1 do,” Camilla said again. “Kalen’s lucky.”

Kalen thrust out her chin. “Luck had nothing to do with it,” she said.

Zahra froze, her spine stiff. Kalen had to stop, she had to stop her. She gasped for air, not realizing she had been holding her breath. Kalen’s head snapped around, and their eyes met.

Camilla was watching them, one and then the other, her mouth slightly open, her bosom rising and falling beneath her drape. Laila and Idora were distracted by raised voices from the side of the room. The anahs rose and went to the children to settle some dispute. Laila and Idora turned back to the circle when the fuss was over. Camilla was still staring at Kalen and at Zahra.

Zahra put her hand over her eyes. Kalen leaned back, chin jutting, freckles standing out on her pale face.

Camilla seized Kalen’s arm. “What did you do?” she breathed. “Kalen— what did you do?”

“I did what I had to do,” Kalen said. Her lips trembled, and her pale eyes glittered. “What I had to do. That’s all.”

Laila bit her lip, and her eyes were red. Idora hissed, “What? Did you do something? What are you talking about?” Laila leaned to her and whispered. Idora gave a little cry.

Camilla turned to Zahra, comprehension clear on her face. Kalen’s face was triumphant. Laila pressed her fingers to her temples, and the tears slipped down her cheeks.

Zahra felt as if the five of them were spinning out into space. She had lost control of her life, of herself. The room rocked around her. She closed her eyes, gripping the arms of her chair, dizzy with foreboding.

Warm fingers closed over hers, loosening her grip on the chair, pulling her hand into a silken lap. She opened her eyes to see that it was Camilla, her mild features looking fierce. Camilla had taken Kalen’s hand, also. Idora seized Kalen’s other hand. Laila, her face pale, took Idora’s plump hand in hers, and seized Zahra’s free hand, her little fingers strong and hot on Zahra’s cold ones.

The spinning subsided, and it seemed to Zahra the room grew brighter, shining, sparkling with a cool light.

Linked, the five women gazed at each other. Their hands, the circle of their hands, was a ring of power. Zahra took a deep breath, letting the energy of the circle surge through her. Their eyes made a promise, a sacred vow. No one said a word.

Zahra’s guilt burned away in the heat of their circle, leaving a numbness behind it. In time the friends resumed their conversation, ate of Cook’s bounty, moved about the dayroom as if nothing had happened. Zahra went through the motions of being hostess. She reflected that she had felt almost nothing for thirty days, not since the death of Maya B’Neeli. She felt as cold and distant as one of the moons, and she wondered if she would ever feel warm again.

fifteen

*   *   *

The labors of the few benefit the many. Fortunate are the Irustani, who earn their passage to Paradise in the tunnels of the mines.

—Twenty-second Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

“O
h, Diya,
good,” Zahra said over her shoulder, not taking her eyes off Ishi’s hands on the medicator. “We’re expecting the cart from the port, and Asa’s down in the Medah at the market.”

Ishi and Zahra were preparing the medicator for restocking. Its syrinxes were extended, tubes of all sizes hanging loose like the drooping branches of a met-olive. The cabinet was open, and Ishi, gloved and masked, was using a thin sponge to swab each compartment. Zahra watched her closely, making sure nothing was missed. She had always been thorough, but now her attention to possible contamination was intense. Thank the Maker, Ishi accepted that as a logical step in her continuing training.

Diya took one look at the task in progress and stepped behind the screen. He gave an audible sniff. Ishi glared at the screen and stuck out her tongue. Soundlessly, Zahra laughed. Diya was never pleasant when he had to come into the surgery. Occasionally Zahra thought of complaining to Qadir, but she always decided to let it go. There would be no changing Diya.

“There, Ishi,” Zahra said, stripping off her gloves. “All cleaned and ready. Good work.”

Ishi, too, peeled off her gloves, and dropped both pairs in the wave box. Zahra watched her with satisfaction. Ishi had grown much taller than her mother. Adolescent plumpness rounded her cheeks now, accenting the dimple in her pointed chin. Her thirteenth birthday had just passed, and her mother had come to celebrate with the IbSadas. It had been a strange feeling for Zahra. She thought of Ishi as hers now, and to see her with her mother had made her feel superfluous. She had been glad when the birthday party was over, the guests departed, and Ishi all hers again. She shook her head, thinking how selfish that was.

“What is it?” Ishi asked.

Zahra smiled at her. “Just thinking how tall you’ve grown!”

The bell rang at the dispensary door. “Oh, Diya, that must be the Port Forceman. Let him in, will you?” Zahra fastened her veil, and Ishi did too.

Diya gave them both a disapproving look, his thick lips pursed and his eyelids fluttering. “Medicant,” he said. “This girl should stay in the surgery.”

Ishi stopped in her tracks, and Zahra made a sound of irritation. “Diya, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. He bridled, but she didn’t care. There was work to be done. “She’s going to have her own clinic one day. She needs to learn all of this.”

Diya sniffed again. Ishi barely smothered her giggle as she followed Zahra into the dispensary.

Zahra was pleased to see Longshoreman Chung. With that elegance that was still surprising in a Port Force uniform, Chung touched his heart to Diya and then to her. Diya started to extend his hand to Chung, and realized too late that the Port Forceman had a box in his hand, a small flat carton marked Sterile Newskin beneath the circled star. Diya retracted his hand with a snap of the fabric of his loose shirt. Chung withdrew his own hand and glanced at Zahra, lips twitching.

Zahra was mortified by Diya’s rudeness, and she spoke sharply. “Tell Longshoreman Chung I appreciate his promptness. I saw the shuttle come in this morning.”

Diya relayed the message. “Always a pleasure,” Chung said to Diya, but his long, sleepy eyes smiled at Zahra and at Ishi. “More in the cart.” Zahra had forgotten the rather high timbre of his voice. It somehow suited his physical grace.

Chung indicated the cart, parked very close to the clinic entrance. Its slatted shelves were half-f with CA containers and metal barrels holding uncompressed pharmaceuticals.

“All that will take him an hour,” Zahra murmured to Diya. “Can’t you give him a hand, at least with the dry cartons?”

Diya’s lip curled. “Offworlders may not care about contaminating their hands, but I do,” he said. “I don’t choose to be diverted!”

He stared at the wall, his face as closed and blank as a reader with no power. Zahra could have slapped him.

“Go, then, sit!” she exclaimed. Diya went to the low couch. Irritated, Zahra turned back to Chung. There were meds to be fridged before they were damaged. “I apologize,” she said. She spoke directly to the longshoreman. Damn Diya. She would hear about this later from Qadir. “My husbands secretary is quoting the Second Prophet.”

With astounding delicacy, Chung spoke his response in Diya’s general direction. “I know the quotation,” he said in a neutral tone. ‘“Neither work nor play, neither illness nor health’ . . . Don’t worry, Kir IbSada, I can manage. Do it all the time.” He smiled and set the box on Lili’s desk.

Zahra picked it up. “Just the same, I’m going to help,” she said. “If Kir Chung could just bring the things to the door.” The phrasing invited Diya to repeat it, but he was silent.

“I’ll help, too,” Ishi offered.

Diya still didn’t speak, but he turned a warning gaze on Zahra, and she supposed she had pushed him as far as she dared. She gave Ishi the box. “Take this to the surgery, Ishi, please, and then wait there for me. You can arrange the other meds in the CA cabinet until we’re ready to stock the medicator.”

Ishi took the box with a gusty sigh and went off with it.

Chung was already outside, the muscles of his brown arms flexing as he lifted cartons from the powercart. Zahra stood in the shadow of the door and waited. She had no desire to give Diya further cause to report to Qadir on her breaches. As Jin-Li Chung labored in the heat, bringing the canisters and dry cartons to the door, hauling two heavy ones by hoisting them on his shoulders, she was struck again by the grace of his movements. He lifted his dark glasses to crinkle his sleepy eyes at her in a friendly smile, but he didn’t speak. He replaced the glasses and trotted back, hands empty, to the cart. He jumped into the back with a flash of strong leg muscles, to open the CA compartment and take out one of the slippery little vacuum barrels.

She wondered at this unusual Earther, this unlikely longshoreman. Many Port Forcemen had come to her clinic, but she could not remember a single one who understood Irustan so well.

*   *   *

The scene in the dispensary fascinated Jin-Li. There was obvious friction between the escort and the medicant, and the young apprentice was caught between them. Jin-Li longed to see Zahra IbSada’s face, to see the shape of her nose and mouth below the beauty of her barely hidden eyes. The blue of those eyes was layered, mysterious, like the blue of the reservoir. Not even the gauzy rill could disguise it.

This was Jin-Li’s last delivery. All the other clinics on the manifest were checked, shipments complete. Medicant IbSada’s clinic was the reward, the treat saved for the end of the day.

Jin-Li unfastened the handles of the last vacuum barrel from their niche in the CA compartment and set the barrel down before jumping off the cart. It wasn’t heavy, but it was slippery and cold, the handles necessary to keep from dropping it on the hot pavement. Jin-Li carried it to the doorway.

The medicant was waiting there, just out of the glare. She reached for the barrel. Jin-Li’s brown fingers, strong and hard, slid against the medicant’s fine-skinned long ones as the handles of the little barrel were transferred from one to the other. The medicant gasped and pulled her hand back. Jin-Li had to lurch forward to catch the barrel as it tipped to one side.

“Oh, kir, I’m sorry!” the medicant exclaimed in a whisper. She shot a glance over her shoulder, and let out a breath of relief. Her escort had moved to the high desk and was standing behind it, back turned, speaking into the wave phone. The apprentice, her drape tied back behind her shoulders in a loose knot, was just visible, bent over the CA cabinet in the surgery.

Jin-Li righted the barrel, and carried it in to set it in the short hall. The girl came and picked it up carefully, carried it to the cabinet. The medicant, shaking her head, swore softly beneath her veil. Her cheeks showed red above her verge. At the door she repeated, softly, “It was reflex. I’m sorry.”

“No need, Medicant.”

Zahra’s eyes were level with Jin-Li’s. The simile of the water had been perfect. Her eyes were indigo in the depths, azure on the surface.

She colored again, with embarrassment, it seemed. “I wouldn’t want you to think that—that it was you—a personal thing.” She looked over her shoulder, making sure her escort was occupied. Jin-Li gave a shake of the head, one hand lifted to stop the apology, but the medicant hurried on. “I think you know—Irustani women don’t touch men not of their household.”

Jin-Li thought of confiding in Zahra IbSada. It would be so easy, just to say it. It would be a relief, even, to have someone on this world know the truth. But what then? It wasn’t as if they two—the Irustani medicant and the Port Force longshoreman—could be friends. There would be no point to it.

The medicant was perceptive. Her eyes suddenly fastened on Jin-Li as if they could see right through the uniform, right through the skin and the bones to the very heart of the person. Jin-Li froze, mouth open, pinned by Zahra’s intense gaze.

Jin-Li abruptly stepped back, toward the door.

*   *   *

Zahra had been a medicant for twenty years, and the recipient of more than one confidence in that time. She knew, both empirically and intuitively, that Chung’s open mouth, suddenly hesitant gaze, and the arrested motion of his hands all spoke of confession, some secret needing to be told. She put out her hand, palm up, to stop his flight.

“Kir Chung,” she murmured. “Of course Port Force has doctors. But if you need something—it’s different between medicants and their patients. There is this irony in our lives, because as a medicant I have contact with men who are not IbSada men. You’ve been kind to me, and to Asa. I would be pleased to return the favor.”

Chung’s long dark eyes flashed once, and then the long lids fell. “I’m not ill, Medicant,” he said.

They spoke in low tones, like conspirators. Zahra saw by the slant of the light through the open door that the star was sinking to the west of the city. Soon the shadows would stretch across the white concrete of the streets, and the mock rose blooms would fold their petals.

Chung saw it, too. He touched his heart with his hand, and opened the fingers toward her. The gesture looked different in Chung’s hand, she saw now, than in anyone else’s. Why was that? “Must go,” he said lightly. “See you next time, Medicant.”

Zahra stayed where she was. She watched as Chung backed out the door and shut it behind him. He jogged to the cart and leaped into the driver’s compartment.

Ishi came to stand beside her and they watched as Chung, one hand lifted in farewell, backed and turned the cart, then spun away down the street. Diya put down the phone and turned to eye them both suspiciously. Zahra was glad to have a target for the sudden surge of temper she felt.

“Next time, Diya,” she said testily, “make sure it’s Asa when we have a delivery.”

“I’ll tell the director you requested it,” Diya said, and turned on his heel.

When he was gone, Ishi unbuttoned her veil with a sigh of relief. Zahra did the same, rubbing her eyes. Ishi looked closely at her. “Zahra— something happened, didn’t it?”

“What do you mean, Ishi?” Zahra moved around the dispensary. “Other than Diya being a nuisance, that is?”

“No, not Diya,” Ishi said. She grinned suddenly, her little pointed chin dimpling, her eyes forming dark, sparkling crescents. “It’s that longshoreman! Something happened!”

Zahra smiled back at Ishi. “Nothing happened. What could happen with Diya as escort?”

Ishi made a face at that. She went to the window and peeked out through the curtains at the street, empty now in the fading afternoon light. “He’s different, though, isn’t he?”

“Well, Ishi, Kir Chung’s not an Irustani.”

“But I’ve seen other Earthers—he’s different even from them. His manners, his walk—even his voice is different.”

Something clicked in Zahra’s mind, a little chiming recognition, as clear as if she had struck a glass with her fingernail. The voice, the elegant behavior—the
gentleness
of this person. She turned quickly to the surgery, hiding a smile. Jin-Li had been tempted to confess, to blurt out a secret.

Of course Jin-Li Chung had not known whether to trust her with the knowledge. An offworlder could hardly know the mind of an Irustani woman. But Jin-Li’s secret was completely safe with Zahra. She had secrets of her own.