The Terrorists of Irustan (37 page)

Jin-Li headed for the stairs at a trot, and Ritsa ran behind her. They rushed down the two flights of stairs, Jin-Li jumping two at a time, her shoes banging on the bare treads. She ran to the door of the cavernous dining room and flung it open.

Inside, the same women were still seated with Asa at the table. Several children sat together, spooning soup, squabbling. Zahra wasn’t there. “Have you seen Zahra?” Jin-Li cried. Everyone froze, staring at her but not answering.

“She’s gone,” Jin-Li said, to no one in particular. Then to Asa, miserably, “Zahra’s gone.”

*   *   *

Jin-Li ran through the streets of the Medah until her calves cramped and her breath burned in her lungs. She walked until she recovered her breath, then ran again. The market square was roughly seven kilometers from the Doma, a distance Jin-Li could run easily under normal circumstances. But it was dark, and the streets of the Medah were rough and slanting, and her Irustani shoes were not meant for running. It was like running in a nightmare, her legs heavy, her feet unwilling. There was no way to know how long Zahra had been gone.

As she ran, Jin-Li worried that Zahra would have already reached the Doma, or that Pi Team had caught her. It gave her a bit of comfort to see that no Pi Team squads were patrolling the streets. A few cars and a number of cycles passed. Jin-Li dodged pedestrians, paused at street corners, and pushed the pace as fast as she was able. Heads turned as she raced past.

In the Akros, no people were about. Occasionally a car wheeled past, but mostly the broad, smooth streets were empty. When the circular roof of the Doma came in sight, Jin-Li slowed to a walk, sobbing for breath.

She came around the last corner and looked up at the broad steps and the great double doors. Zahra, fully veiled, was mounting the stairs with slow, deliberate steps. Her back was straight, her head high. She didn’t see Jin-Li’s approach. Jin-Li forced another burst of strength from her trembling legs, and dashed to catch Zahra before she reached the doors.

Zahra gasped when Jin-Li seized her arm. “Jin-Li! What are you doing here? Your clothes—you mustn’t get caught like that!”

Jin-Li barely had breath to speak. “Zahra, don’t go in there. Don’t give in to them!”

Zahra’s eyes were calm through the gauze of her veil. “I must,” she said coolly. “No one, most certainly not Qadir, is going to suffer for my sins.”

Jin-Li’s blood chilled in her veins. “Zahra, what good will it do? What point will it serve?” She still held Zahra’s slender arm, and she squeezed it tightly, unwilling to let go. Zahra didn’t try to pull free.

“Jin-Li,” she said patiently. “If Qadir had been punished in my place, I would have died of shame. Of guilt. Of a broken heart. And that would mean nothing, say nothing.”

“But we’ll make this a revolution! A rebellion!”

“I hope so,” Zahra said, almost offhandedly. “Then I will be its martyr.” She turned her face toward the huge doors, as if only waiting for Jin-Li to let go of her arm.

“Zahra,” Jin-Li said again, and was shocked to find tears on her cheeks. She dashed them away with a rough hand. “Don’t do this. I can’t bear it.”

Zahra looked back at Jin-Li. With her free hand, she unbuttoned her rill. Her eyes were a clear violet, her brows level. “This has been inevitable from the beginning. I’ve done what I’ve done, and I’ll pay the price. Only the Maker will judge me in the end.”

Jin-Li shook her head, wordless, lost.

“Jin-Li,” Zahra said gently. “Go back to Port Force. Onani won’t bother you now.”

Jin-Li burst out, “Zahra—change your mind! Let’s go—we’ll go somewhere, anywhere. Don’t go in there!”

With firm fingers, Zahra pried Jin-Li’s hand from her arm. She leaned close, pressed her cheek to Jin-Li’s. “Don’t cry anymore, dear friend,” she murmured. “It doesn’t do any good.”

Jin-Li hung her head, mute, defeated, and when she looked up again, Zahra was gone.

forty-three

*   *   *

Above all things, love your Maker.

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

Z
ahra struggled
to pull one of the doors open enough to allow her to enter. The interior of the Doma was dimly lighted by a few wall sconces, and smelled faintly of the incense used at the last service. Very far away, at the other end, four figures made a hazy tableau. She moved toward them on silent feet.

As she came closer, the figures resolved into men. Two thick-bodied Pi Team members stood with arms crossed, rifles ready. The Simah knelt on a mat with Qadir across from him. Whispered prayers echoed in the vast space, only slightly louder than the whisper of Zahra’s borrowed sandals on the tiles.

At Zahra’s approach the Pi Team men lifted their rifles. The Simah and Qadir looked up, their prayers interrupted. The look on the Simah’s face was one of astonishment at the unprecedented intrusion of a woman on their private devotions, but Qadir stared at her veiled figure, and then, with a look of great sadness, he held out his hand to her. She went to him, took his hand, knelt beside him.

“Zahra. You shouldn’t have come,” he said hoarsely. “You should have stayed wherever you were, stayed safe.”

“Of course I had to come, Qadir,” she said quietly. “This is my penance. My vigil. You can’t keep it for me.”

He pressed her fingers to his lips with a trembling hand, and she saw how aged he was, how thin and worn and damaged. It was this that brought the tears to her eyes, tears that fell before she knew they were there, the first she had shed in years. He saw them, and whispered, “Don’t, my dear. Don’t be afraid.”

She shook her head. “I’m not afraid, Qadir. I’m just so very, very sorry to have hurt you.”

The Simah found his voice. “Zahra IbSada! Have you come to your senses? Have you come to pray for forgiveness?”

Zahra’s tears dried as suddenly as they came. She stood up, and folded her arms, looking down at the Simah.

“Either I am forgiven, or I am not,” she said. “And neither you nor I know which it is to be.” She glanced at the Pi Team men and laughed. “It appears I will know before you do.”

“Kneel, daughter, and pray!” the Simah intoned.

“I’m not your daughter, Simah. I don’t belong to anyone.”

“You belong to this man, to Qadir IbSada!”

Qadir struggled to his feet, shakily. Zahra helped him, holding his arm, and he stood beside her. “I don’t think she does anymore, Simah,” he said weakly. “I did think so, but I no longer do. Zahra IbSada is my wife, but she is her own person.”

The Simah gestured to one of the Pi Team members. The man tugged on Zahra’s arms to make her kneel. When she resisted, he struck a sudden blow on the tops of her shoulders with both of his meaty fists. Her knees struck the tiled floor with a force that jarred her teeth and ripped her already ragged dress. She made no sound, but Qadir cried out.

“Never mind, Qadir,” she muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Zahra, my Zahra,” he said brokenly, weakly.

“Simah,” she said swiftly, looking up. “I will pray with you, if you let my husband go home!”

“No!” Qadir cried. He fell to his knees again. “No, I’m staying with you. To pray or not, I don’t care. I’m staying.”

*   *   *

Through the long night Zahra and Qadir knelt together, and when they could no longer kneel, they sat side by side on the mat. The Simah went on intoning prayers, apparently indefatigable. The Pi Team guards stood at attention, faces turned into the shadows as if they were blind and deaf.

Still, Zahra felt no fear. She only craved peace, and release. As the night wore on, she felt increasingly distant from all that bound her to life. Everything around her, the Simah, Pi Team, the mosaics and sculptures, seemed illusory, fleeting apparitions, the stuff of dreams. Only her worry for Qadir and concern for Ishi were real.

When dawn began to flicker outside the Doma, the Simah concluded his prayers and rose stiffly to his feet. He looked at Qadir over his folded hands. “Chief Director,” he said. “You were sentenced in this woman’s place. You are now released.”

Qadir shook his head. “No, Simah,” he said calmly. “I will go with her.”

Zahra flinched as if he had struck her. “No, Qadir!” she said sharply. “This is my sin, and my punishment.”

“This woman is right,” the Simah said. “She has confessed, and accepted judgement.”

Qadir got to his feet, and pulled Zahra up with him.

“Zahra, I have no life ahead of me,” he said simply. “Without you, without my work—what will I do?” There was no pathos in his voice or his face, only a sort of resignation. Zahra recognized it, because she had felt it herself for several days now. But there was more at stake than simply Qadir’s life.

“Qadir,” she said softly, for his ears alone. “There is Ishi. She will need you. Who will protect her?”

Qadir looked more grieved at that moment than at any time since Zahra had come to the Doma. He had really, truly, intended to die with her, Zahra thought, and she was moved to the depths of her being. But she knew she had to do this alone. She felt a brief shiver of fear at the thought of what was to come, but she thrust it away. She had sent men to their deaths, not without compunction, but certainly without mercy. She would atone for those deaths. And she would face her own death with all the courage the Maker had given her.

“Qadir,” she said. “Go home. Comfort Ishi. Tell her—”

Qadir gripped her hands as if he were falling. “No,” he whispered.

She smiled at him, and leaned to kiss his cheek. “Yes, my dear,” she said. “Tell Ishi that I loved her from the first moment I saw her. Tell her to be a fine medicant. And find her the best, the kindest, the gentlest husband you can. For me.”

Qadir tried to speak, but couldn’t. He struggled, throat working, and then he gave up. He took Zahra in his arms and held her, very gently, for a long time. His body trembled against hers, and she supported him.

*   *   *

For Zahra the public progress to the cells passed in a hot blur. She was only dimly aware of the open truck she rode in, of the blaze of the star on her veiled head, of the hundreds of people that lined the road. Many of those who jeered as she passed were veiled, but she ignored them. She concentrated on standing straight, holding her head high, keeping her eyes fixed on the hills and the small white prison awaiting her. Only once did she look into the crowd lining the road out of the city.

A flash of long, heavy-lidded dark eyes caught her attention, and her heart fluttered in her throat. Surely that was Jin-Li, still in Irustani clothing! She grieved for her friend, wondered what would become of her. But that, too, was now in the past, out of her hands, like all the others she had borne for so long. Ishi, Rabi, Maya. Out of her hands. She looked forward again, yearning for the end of her journey.

The ceremony was short. Zahra heard not a word of it. She stared at the cells until she was lifted down from the truck. Pi Team made as if to haul her bodily up the slope, but she shook herself free of their heavy hands and walked up the hill with a strong and eager step. Pi Team surrounded her, as if at the last moment she might make a run for it. But nothing, not anything in heaven or hell, could have been further from Zahra IbSada’s mind.

The inside of the cell glared white, baking with the relentless heat of the star. It smelled of hot stone and dry dirt. It was just wide enough to allow a person to sit, but not to lie down. The door was shut with some final formalities. At the sound of the lock falling into place, Zahra tore off her veil and turned her face up to the pale and cloudless sky.

Minutes began to pass, hours to flow swiftly away. Time stretched beyond Zahra’s measure. Outside the cell chanting and shouting went on for several hours, but before nightfall most of the people went off to their homes, to eat and drink, kiss their children, relish their freedom. Zahra leaned against the wall of the cell, her head tipped back, in a trance of waiting.

The brutal daylight faded to the cool darkness of night, and then the damp chill of early morning. From time to time Zahra startled from her trance into awareness of how hot she was, or how cold, but those physical details seemed unreal, secondhand, like symptoms someone else was describing.

By midday of the next day she was on her knees, unable to stay on her feet, and not caring. She looked down at her hands, her arms, and distantly recorded the fact that her skin was terribly burned, though she had no sensation of it. She was no longer perspiring, but she didn’t know it. She also didn’t know whether she was hot or cold, burning or drowning. She only knew she was waiting. She strove for patience.

The next time she was truly conscious, she was crouched on the bottom of the cell, bent double, her forehead resting in the dirt. That made her laugh. She fumbled at the dirt to brush it away, but her fingers would not obey her. They were as thick and senseless as sticks.

Again she laughed, but she didn’t know if any sound came from her dry throat. Her tongue was parched and stiff, and felt as if it were choking her. She tried to swallow, but nothing happened. She tried to breathe, but no air came into her lungs. Were her eyes open or closed? She couldn’t tell anymore. She tried to blink, to test them.

She looked up, out of the roofless cell. A dim face, outlined by stars, looked down at her from the dark sky. Was it night again already? And who was this, bending to her from the darkness?

A gentle hand took hers, lifted it.

She put up her other hand to her visitor, seeking. The face was hard to distinguish. If only her eyes would really open. But it didn’t seem to matter. The visitor’s hands were soft and firm and cool. They lifted her up, right out of the cell. They lifted her right out of her body.

With a sigh of pleasure at the ease of it, Zahra floated up into the cool night air.

On the ground below her, people were still gathered around the cell, but she gave them no thought. A sweet breeze healed her ruined flesh, and the gentle hands drew her farther up, so far that she could no longer see the stone prison, the people, the ground. Her eyes began to clear at last, and she focused on the face above her. “Nura? Is it you, Nura?”

The face smiled, and the features shifted. It was Nura! And they were moving so fast now, the cool breeze giving way to the smooth darkness of space, stars glittering everywhere, almost too bright to bear. How lovely, how unutterably lovely, to fly like this, to soar far from the dirt and stones of Irustan, to float, free of all restrictions.

“Nura!” Zahra cried, in a voice full of joy at seeing her beloved teacher once again. They floated side by side, suspended in the beautiful starry landscape. Nura held out her arms, and Zahra drifted into them, propelled only by her thought, her longing. The embrace was as sweet as any she had ever known. Together, arms intertwined, cheeks touching occasionally like flower petals brushing together, the two of them left the bonds of Irustan behind, to voyage among the brilliant stars.