The Terrorists of Irustan (33 page)

Ishi didn’t know what to do. She clung to the high desk, listening, not wanting to listen, thinking desperately, not wanting to think. She heard a couple of sharp commands from Zahra, short responses from Asa. There was a scuffling sound as they came down the hall, and the inner door to the house opened and shut. Then there was silence. Ishi leaned against the desk and listened to her heart pound.

Marry Diya? O Maker, surely not! Surely not Diya—and if Diya were ill, the medicator—but where had Lili gone? And why?

Everything seemed to happen all at once after that. Lili appeared from the inner door, a black, silent, terrifying figure, seizing Ishi’s arm. Qadir’s powerful car screeched to a halt at the corner where the avenue met the narrow street, and Qadir and Marcus (Marcus! Lili must have sent Marcus for Qadir!) came running up the short sidewalk. Samir Hilel appeared right behind them, with two strange men. Lili tugged on Ishi’s arm, and Ishi snatched it away from her with a cry of rage.

“Leave me alone! Where’s Zahra? What’s happened? Let go, Lili!” This was a shriek, uttered just as Qadir burst in.

Qadir ignored them both. He strode through the clinic, and finding both surgeries and Zahra’s office empty, he fairly ran through the inner door. Ishi, ignoring Samir and the other men, screamed at Marcus. “Marcus, what is it? What’s happening?”

Samir and his men followed Qadir. Lili took Ishi’s arm again and Ishi whirled on her, her fist raised. “Don’t touch me! Tell me what’s going on!” Lili, alone with Marcus and Ishi now, broke her silence. “They’re killing Diya, that’s what’s going on,” she snapped. “Poisoning him, like those others! Or did you already know?”

Ishi was struck dumb. Poisoning? Others? She stared at Lili’s black-veiled face, then at Marcus’s red, miserable one. She put her hands to her cheeks and found that her rill was open. Samir and the others had seen her half-veiled.

Qadir came back through the surgery, much more slowly, Samir close behind him. The other two men were not with them, and Samir had one hand firmly on Qadir’s shoulder. The gesture looked strange, but everything about the situation was strange. Qadir seemed to have lost his usual air of command. His lips were white, his hands trembling. It seemed to Ishi that Samir Hilel was holding Qadir up, as if he would fall without support. She forgot about her veil again. She ran to Qadir.

“Qadir, please,” she cried, suddenly choking with sobs. “Please tell me what’s happening! Please, won’t you tell me?”

Qadir took a long step forward and seized her arms with a painful grip. “Ishi, my dear,” he said hoarsely. “I wish I knew. You don’t know where Zahra’s gone, do you? Do you know where I can find her? Where I can find my wife?”

thirty-eight

*   *   *

Irustan is our test of fire and rock, set for us by the One. We meet the challenge through faith, but it is by our actions that we are judged.

—Second Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

T
he opiate
Zahra had ordered for Diya made him weak and mute. He stumbled and leaned on her, his eyelids fluttering. On his other side Asa provided balance, but Zahra had to take most of Diya’s weight on herself. She pulled his arm around her neck and held him upright with all her strength, her veil tangling under his arm and adding more stress to her already straining muscles. His eyes rolled at her, showing white. She felt a fleeting pang, but it was done now. There was no undoing it.

Their labored progress would never have conquered stairs, but Diya’s room was next to Qadir’s, on the first floor. Asa pushed the door open with his cane and the awkward trio staggered through. Asa and Zahra poured the near-nerveless man onto his bed. Asa leaned against the wall, sweat running down his cheeks.

Zahra’s own muscles trembled, and perspiration wet her neck and her ribs. She looked across Diya’s still form into Asa’s tormented eyes, and her pang became a knife that twisted in her breast. “He forced me to it,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Asa.”

No reproach crossed Asa’s face. “What do we do now?”

She shook her head. “You don’t do anything. I want to keep you out of this.”

He answered with a small smile. “Even you can’t manage that, Zahra. I’m in it as much as you are.”

“Not this. Not Diya. You had nothing to do with Diya.”

Asa pushed away from the wall and hobbled toward the door. “A little late for such a fine distinction, I think,” he said. He paused in the doorway, watching her.

Zahra drew a quilt over Diya, arranged a pillow beneath his head. How strange it was, that she should try to make him comfortable now. This comfort wouldn’t last long. She turned to follow Asa, but she looked back once at Diya’s blank face, his closed eyes. No doubt, Diya, she thought bleakly, you and I shall meet again all too soon. We may burn together.

In the hall, Zahra said, “Go to the kitchen, Asa. Just say Diya was taken ill and we put him to bed. I must go to Ishi.”

“No, Zahra,” Asa said. He took her arm. “It’s too late.”

She pulled her arm free with an exasperated sound. “Asa, please!” she said. “I have to try to make Ishi understand. I have to talk to her, somehow explain all of this!”

She suddenly longed to see Ishi, had to see her. She picked up her skirts and began to run toward the clinic. Asa struggled after her, calling, “Zahra, wait! Listen to me!”

At the turning of the hall, she stopped abruptly. Ahead of her Lili, black veil flying, sailed in through the clinic door like a hunting hellbird. As the door opened, Zahra heard Ishi cry out. “Leave me alone! Where’s Zahra?” and, “Marcus! What’s happening?”

There were deep voices, men’s voices. Men in her clinic.

Zahra froze. Only Asa’s insistent hand on her sleeve made her move. “Come with me, Zahra!” he hissed. “This way, hurry!”

In a daze, she submitted, let herself be drawn away. The very pointlessness of it made her dumb and obedient. She whispered, “Ishi,” but she obeyed Asa’s commands.

Asa led her back, past the kitchen to the pantry, and into the dim, cool interior that smelled of citrus and olives. She followed him on numb feet up the stairs to the loft. She missed the top step and almost tripped on her skirts. With a kind of distant amazement she watched Asa push aside an empty bin and then, bent almost double, he disappeared into the wall.

A moment later, his head reappeared. “Zahra, come on!”

Slowly, hardly aware of doing so, she went to him. She stooped to fit into the irregular hole in the wall, coming out on the other side into a space less than a meter wide. Blankets padded the floor and threadbare cushions leaned against the walls. With a grunt of effort Asa settled himself on the floor, his back against a pillow. Zahra knelt on a blanket. Asa told her, “You have to pull the bin back, hide the opening.”

She slid the bin back into its place with some effort, then turned on her knees in the nest of blankets. “Asa, what is this place?”

Slivers of light came from somewhere above them, perhaps four meters up. As her eyes adapted to the darkness, Zahra saw that the space, though narrow, stretched long, no doubt as long as the outer wall of the pantry. The light came from the slots in the roof where the pv collectors were fitted to the walls.

“There’s a double wall here,” Asa said. “Ritsa found it.” At Zahra’s uncomprehending look, he explained, “Eva’s daughter.”

“Oh!” Zahra had forgotten. She had arranged for Eva’s daughter to join Qadir’s household. “But—what is it for?”

“It keeps the pantry cool.” Asa’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “And it gives us privacy. A place we can be alone.”

Us. Asa meant himself, and the girl. Zahra could think of nothing to say except, “Oh. Oh.”

He only smiled, rather sadly.

The two of them huddled, cramped and uncomfortable, in the space between the walls. The swiftness of unfolding events left Zahra stunned into a kind of paralysis. She was hardly aware of her physical discomfort. What must Ishi be thinking? How frightened she must be! And Diya—when his symptoms began, who would help Ishi? And would Ishi think being saved from marriage to Diya was worth all this?

Not until she had passed through these stages did Zahra begin to wonder what to do next. She opened her eyes, not knowing she had closed them. Asa lay flat on the layers of blankets. Her own thighs cramped as she tried to straighten her legs. As soon as she moved, Asa turned his face to her.

“Not too much longer,” he said softly.

“Until what?” she asked. She wriggled, trying to find an easier position. “Ritsa will come,” he said. “She’ll be looking for me.”

“But what will you do, Asa? Where can you go?”

Asa sat up, using his cane to brace himself until he could lean on a small stack of cushions. Irrelevantly, Zahra recognized one as a castoff from the dayroom. It had a large stain on one corner where a child had spilled fruit juice on it.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Asa said. “For a long time. I thought this day might come.”Zahra said, “I’m so sorry, Asa. Can you ever forgive me?”

“For what?” Asa asked. “It was my cause, too.”

“Was it?” she whispered.

“I’ll have to stay out of the Akros,” Asa went on. “But I can hide myself with Ritsa’s mother and her sisters, in the Medah. I won’t be the only cripple there. And Eva and her sort can use a man among them, even one like myself.”

“Will Ritsa go with you?”

Asa said, “I hope so, Zahra. She’s everything to me.”

Zahra drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Her heart ached for Asa, and for Ishi, and for Ritsa.

“Come with me,” Asa said. “The street women know you. They’re the only people on Irustan who would never betray you.”

Zahra shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said. “They would be in danger. You know what happened to that poor woman at the Doma—it would be worse than that. And 1 could never spend my whole life like that, Asa. It would be like dying, like a slow death.” She paused. “It’s over for me, Asa.”

Asa’s voice was sharp. “No! It’s not over. Don’t say it!”

“But it’s true. There’s nowhere I can hide. Neither Pi Team nor Port Force will rest until they find me.”

“But—” Asa began.

“You already know, Asa,” she interrupted. “When Ritsa comes, go with her. I’ll wait a little, and then I’ll go to Qadir.”

“No,” Asa said simply. “I won’t go without you.”

Zahra fell silent. She was too tired even to argue. All emotion, even the pain over Ishi, drained away, and she was left with the familiar cold solace of no feeling. She and Asa sat on together, far into the night, and didn’t speak again until the girl Ritsa came to slide away the bin that hid their little den.

*   *   *

Ishi had no answer for Qadir when he begged her for news of Zahra. The clinic seemed jammed with people, Marcus standing wide-eyed, tall men all talking at once, their deep voices filling every corner. Lili sat unmoving at her desk. The strange men had burst through the inner door into the house, hurrying back minutes later to murmur to Samir Hilel.

Ishi stood in mute misery as Hilel, teeth gritted with distaste, examined every room in the clinic. He marched resolutely around the screens in the surgeries, opened closet doors, bent to look behind Lili’s tall desk. He lifted and then put down the wavephone. In Zahra’s office he opened her desk drawers, moved her books, shuffled through her disc files. Qadir followed him about, pale and shaking and passive. Ishi saw his shock and despair that mirrored her own. She touched her face, and found it sticky with dried tears. She pinched her cheeks, hard. The pain made her feel alive again.

You’re right, Zahra,
she thought fiercely.
You’re right about crying. It does no good. I won’t do it again.

She buttoned her rill and verge, and took two deep breaths. With Zahra absent, this was her clinic. Properly veiled, in control, she went to Zahra’s office. “Qadir,” she said. “What is the director looking for? Can I help?”

Qadir turned, his face full of anguish. His pupils were dilated, making his eyes almost black.

Samir Hilel was bent over Zahra’s desk, and he straightened now. “Qadir, could you ask this girl if the medicant said anything to her about Diya?”

Qadir could not speak. It was clear to Ishi that, although he was on his feet, he was in shock.

“Director Hilel,” Ishi said, “forgive me for speaking to you. I’m worried about Qadir, I’d like to put him on the medicator.”

Hilel nodded. “Yes, yes, you probably should. But, Ishi . . .”

She had turned to go, to draw Qadir away. She looked back now to see Hilel standing beside Zahra’s desk, an empty disc reader in one hand, an old Port Force manifest in the other. “Do you know that Diya is lying on his bed, unconscious?”

Ishi’s heart pounded, but her voice was even. Thank the Maker for the veil! “Yes, Director,” she said firmly. “Diya was hysterical. Screaming. The medicant gave him a sedative. He should be asleep by now.”

“Is that all she gave him?” Hilel asked.

Ishi said with asperity, “You can look at the readout for yourself, on the medicator in the large surgery.”

But this was too much for Hilel, and he shook his head, rejecting her suggestion.

Ishi took Qadir’s arm and propelled him down the short hall to the large surgery. She led him to the exam bed, but he seemed to waken suddenly at the sight of it.

“No, no, Ishi,” he said quickly. “I’m all right. I’m sorry, it’s just . . . it’s just . . .”

She looked at him closely. His pupils had begun to contract, his color to return. “You’re feeling better, then?”

“Ishi,” he said by way of answer, “they’re saying Zahra—they said she—O Prophet, I can hardly make myself speak it!” He gripped her arms until they hurt. “They’re accusing Zahra of killing people, poisoning these men! Giving them the prion disease! It can’t be true, why would it be true? Why would she do such a thing? Pi Team is coming! What will we do?”

A spasm of terror gripped Ishi’s heart. “Don’t, Qadir!”

“But they called her—Port Force, Onani, Sullivan—they’re calling her a terrorist!”

“Qadir, don’t give in to them! You have to protect Zahra!”

He released his grip on her. “Of course, Ishi, of course. It’s insane, that’s obvious. But you know what it’s like—they’ve already been to the Simah, there will be more men coming here—and I don’t know where my wife is!” Ishi was stunned to see a tear roll unimpeded down Qadir’s brown, lined cheek.

A moment later, Samir Hilel came to the door of the surgery. Ishi surreptitiously, gently, wiped the tear from Qadir’s face. He smiled at her with tremulous lips, and his skin looked sallow and worn. She thought he had aged ten years since the morning.

“Qadir, let’s go through the house again,” Hilel said brusquely. “I know how hard this is for you, and I’m very sorry. I’ll send one of my people home to Laila, ask if she has any ideas where Zahra might have gone.”

The men went through the surgery and into the house. Ishi turned back to the dispensary. Lili sat, black and brooding, at her high desk. Marcus lingered uncertainly by the door.

Ishi unbuttoned her rill. “Marcus, you can go,” she said, as if she were Zahra herself. “We won’t be seeing patients today.”

Marcus said, “I’m sorry, Ishi, really sorry. When Lili sent me—I didn’t know what it was about!”

“It’s all right, Marcus. Go now.”

Marcus fled, out the street door, to go all the way around the house to the service door. The moment he was gone Ishi turned on Lili, her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing.

“How could you?” she demanded. “You’re Zahra’s anah, and mine! How could you do this?”

Lili hissed, “Zahra deserves whatever she gets. She doesn’t follow the Second Prophet, does she? She’s broken our most sacred laws!”

“How do you know she did anything? Who are you to judge?”

Lili laughed, a nasty, short bark. “You all think I’m stupid, don’t you, old-fashioned, because I follow the laws. I was stupid at first! I thought it was just good luck for Kalen that Gadil died when he did, and I believed old Leman Bezay got what he deserved. But Binya Maris, and then Belen B’Neeli? And Zahra was so—so arrogant—she thought she could get away with it! This morning, I knew just what was up with Diya. He’s going to be your husband, and a perfect choice, as I told the chief director! But Zahra would have none of that, no, she made the chief director change his mind, and when Diya came back this morning I knew what would happen. So I sent Marcus to Samir Hilel! I knew if I tried to talk to Qadir he’d just deny it, wouldn’t see the facts laid out right in front of his face!”

“But Lili,” Ishi cried, “do you know what they’re saying?”

Lili sniffed, a perfect imitation of Diya. “You mean, that she’s a terrorist? What do you think a terrorist is, you little fool? Pi Team will have her before the night’s out, mark my words. She’ll end just like her teacher did, in the cells!”