The Terrorists of Irustan

by Louise Marley

  Zahra received Camilla and her mother and an aged uncle in the dispensary. She ushered her friend into the surgery, gaze averted. Both girls unbuttoned their rills when they were alone in the surgery, but there was none of their usual easy chatter. In silence, Zahra helped Camilla to sit on the exam bed. She picked up her portable and it prompted her with questions. She stood close to Camilla, but she stared at the screen.

  “Age?” she asked. Her voice cracked and she flushed beneath her veil.

  “Fourteen,” Camilla whispered in return. Zahra knew that already, of course, but she could hardly think. It was so soon, too soon for her friend to be crossing this line that separated the girl from the woman! Zahra’s heart beat fast and her mouth was dry. She knew of nothing to do but follow the form, adhere to procedure. It was a ritual in itself, this questioning.

  “Menses at what age?”

  Camillas eyes flashed up to hers, then away. “Twelve,” she said.

  Zahra caught her breath. Twelve. This could have happened even sooner.

  “And your genetic history?" Zahra was following the form to the letter, and they both knew it. It made everything easier, somehow. At this moment, Zahra was distanced from Camilla by the formality, the routine performance of her duty. She knew perfectly well Camilla had a clean genetic background. The whole file on her family was right there in the computer. They were all on Nura’s list, and Nura had even helped Camilla into the world—such a short, very short, time ago.

  “No problems that I know of,” Camilla answered.

  Their eyes met briefly then, Camilla’s gray ones wide and anxious. They were lovely eyes. They darkened and lightened with her moods. Only her friends knew the flashes of vivacity that sometimes made them sparkle with light like that of the little sprinkle of Irustan’s moons. Her skin was clear and white, her brown hair as fine as a baby’s. She wasn’t pretty, but better than pretty, they had always assured her, Zahra and Kalen and Idora and Laila. Her waist was small, her early-budding breasts rounded. Her fingers were long and fine. Zahra remembered saying to her once that she was one of those girls who would one day be a beautiful woman, graceful and soft, her narrow face filling out to match the arching nose that Camilla the adolescent deplored.

  “Oh, Camilla,” Zahra murmured, her fingers poised unmoving above the glowing screen of the portable. “I will miss you so.”

  Camilla’s eyes filled with tears and she hung her head. “I’m so scared, Zahra,” she said. “What—I don’t know how . . .” She shook her head, words failing.

  Zahra gripped her friend’s hand. “Nura will tell you,” she murmured quickly. “I’ve heard her do it before. She’ll tell you what to do! Just ask her.”

  Nura came in then, her wrinkled face stern but her hands gentle as she clasped Camilla’s shoulders. “Now, don’t cry,” she said. Zahra knew Nura, knew the compassion in the controlled monotone of her voice. She hoped Camilla could hear it.

  Nura plumped the pillow and Camilla lay back with her head on it. Her eyes closed, and only one small tear escaped her. Zahra ran the scanner over her, watching the monitor with Nura. Camilla was perfectly healthy, every reading on the monitor within normal limits. The smallest syrinx of the medicator applied to her forefinger gave them a blood test which confirmed that there were no chromosomal shifts. Another tested her hormone levels, to assure that she was in fact menarchic.

  Zahra held up her portable to Nura. “What about this one?”

  For answer, Nura pointed to one of the frames on the monitor. “There,” she said softly. “That tells you the hymen is intact.” Zahra tapped in the answer.

  Nura turned back to the girl on the bed. “Your babies should be perfectly healthy, Camilla,” she said evenly.

  Zahra bit her lip. She couldn’t help wishing that there might actually be something wrong, something that would forestall this cataclysm of change. But of course there wasn’t. There was nothing she could input to the official form that would cause Leman Bezay to reject Camilla as his bride.

  The last time the girls had all been together, Zahra and Kalen had played a riotous game of team touch against Camilla and Idora and Laila. Like rowdy children, they had raced up and down staircases, in and out of closets, hid in bathtubs and under beds. But next Doma Day, if Camilla’s husband allowed her to come, she would sit with the married women, sit still all day talking and sipping coffee. Zahra knew that none of them would feel like playing touch on that day, or maybe ever again.

  Nura lifted Camilla to a sitting position and drew up a chair beside theexamining bed. Her expression didn’t change, but she placed her wrinkled hand on the girl’s smooth white one. “Now, Camilla, is there anything you want to know?”

  Camillas eyes dropped to her lap, and she shook her head.

  “Are you sure?” Nura pressed her. “This is the time. I’m your medicant, as well as . . There was a little pause, and Nura allowed the timbre of her voice to change, ever so slightly. “As well as your friend, little sister,” she said. “Have you and your mother talked?”

  Camilla nodded, her lips trembling against each other.

  “Perhaps, just the same,” Nura began, “I should describe to you what it might be like. ...”

  Camilla interrupted her. “No, no! I already know—1 don’t want to talk about it!” She threw up her hands, looking as if she were about to cover her ears, but then she put her arms about herself instead, very tightly. Again she shook her head.

  Nura sighed, one small ragged breath. Zahra stared at her. For Nura, these few signs were practically an emotional outburst. But the medicant only said, “Well. We’re all done, then, Camilla.” She held the girl’s arm as she climbed down from the exam bed. Rills were refastened, and then, all of them properly veiled, Nura led the way back to the dispensary where Camilla’s mother and her escort waited.

  “Everything is in order,” Nura said to Camilla's mother. She took the portable from Zahra’s hand and inserted it into the desk unit. “Camilla’s report has been submitted to the registry. If Director Bezay has questions, he can ask them there.” Nura’s escort repeated these words to the uncle, who nodded stiffly.

  Camilla’s mother embraced her daughter. “Oh, my dear, I’m so proud of you! That’s wonderful. Thank you, Medicant, thank you, Zahra. It’s wonderful, just marvelous.” She bustled out, drawing Camilla behind her. The uncle followed them out and ushered them into the hired car.

  Zahra went to the door. She stood just beyond the shaft of hot light glaring against the tiles, and watched the car bear her friend away. She would not see Camilla again until she saw her through the white silk of her wedding veil. Hot tears burned her eyes. She wanted to call her back, call Camilla back to her, back to their childhood. It was so relentless, this change, so disregarding of their youth, their innocence, their helplessness.

  She felt the tears spill from her eyes, and she stamped her foot. What’s the point of tears? she demanded of herself. They’re useless, childish. And I will not be helpless!

  She set her jaw, and she made a silent vow. No more, she promised herself as she blinked the betraying tears away. I will shed no more tears.

  That night, studying as always, Zahra began her secret search, her pursuit of a remedy. She was determined that if the day came that she must be ceded to some man, she, like Camilla, would also pass her exam without difficulty. But she, unlike her friend, would prepare for her marriage with all the knowledge and intelligence at her disposal. Nothing must be detectable, nothing the monitor could read. She would find the way. She had time alone in the surgery often enough. She would do it herself. Over her own body, at least, she would have some control.

  * * *

  Zahra remembered that night with great clarity, despite the intervening twenty years. She had been a young girl making a momentous decision, implementing it in secret. She had never regretted it.

  Now, seated in the car beside Qadir as Diya drove them through the city, she mused in the privacy of her heavy veil. It was
black today, as was her dress, carefully chosen by Lili to protect Zahra from the invasive glances of a thousand men. Never mind, thought Zahra, that any number of those men were on her patient list, having their exams and medicator treatments in her own surgery She could care for their bodies, but they mustn’t be allowed to look on her face. Qadir’s honor might be slighted, and they could be diverted from their sacred duty!

  From time to time Qadir took advantage of the fact that his wife was a medicant to emphasize to the miners their need for frequent inhalation therapy. This afternoon they were to visit the eastern arm of the mines, where Omikron Team waited to be addressed by the chief director.

  “It’s been a long time since any cases of leptokis disease have appeared,” Qadir had said the evening before. “These men are young, they think they’re invincible—they get careless.”

  “And they fear the medicant’s surgery,” Zahra murmured.

  Qadir smiled at her and patted her hand. “That’s why your help is so invaluable, my dear,” he told her. “It’s generous of you. No other director has this advantage. I could hardly take another man’s wife with me to speak to the teams, could I?”

  Zahra did not say so, but she looked forward to these rare expeditions. The mines stretched in every direction away from the city like the outflung arms of a many-limbed beast. She treasured the opportunity to travel beyond the city, to see the great rolling reaches of the desert, inhabited only by puffers and fithi and a few scrawny, far-flying birds. Even the mines intrigued her. As Qadir helped her from the car she peered through her veil at the adit, neatly shored with curving walls of cement, that led straight into the rocky hill. She couldn’t see the crosscut tunnels, the raises that connected the deepest of them, the stopes where the raw rhodium was broken and mined, but she knew they were there. Fluorescent lights flickered vainly in the afternoon glare, but deep in the mines they were essential. A huge fan system labored above the adit, pumping in fresh air, pumping dangerous gases out. In the early years, the ESC had believed the fan ventilation would be enough.

  What must it be like inside? She imagined it cool and dark, the walls textured with different kinds of rock, glimmering under the lights. Did the weight of the planet above bother the miners as they worked? The boys about to go to the mines were often frightened, but they seemed to overcome their fear soon enough, to take pride in their teams, in their squads.

  They came to the mines at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, with the expectation of twenty-five years of labor along the buried veins of dull raw rhodium. There were fifteen teams of a thousand or more men, divided into squads that worked together, lived together, usually spent even their free hours together. Squad leaders reported to team leaders, who reported in their turn to the director of mines. Qadir IbSada had been a squad leader, then a team leader, singled out early by the ESC for a directorship. Zahra was sure he had not disappointed the ExtraSolar Corporation.

  Zahra looked around her with avid curiosity greedy for anything new. The circled star logo was everywhere, on the half doors of the mining machines they called rock wagons, on the coveralls of the miners, on the doors of the low sandrite building that housed the offices of Omikron Team. On the roof of the building the array of multispectral scanners flashed with the star’s light. Zahra kept her head bent but tipped slightly to the side to allow her to look up at the machinery. She was not permitted to ask its purpose, but she had no need. She frequently used ultrasound in her surgery. It was easy to surmise the way in which the scanners located the scattered veins and cast images to Omikron Team’s computers.

  Zahra smiled to herself, but it was a bitter smile. When one of these miners was in pain, crying out, or stoically enduring some injury, did they ever think to be grateful that their medicant was well-versed in the technology that would help them? But then, when their hurts were mended,they snatched that knowledge away, held it to themselves as some sort of obscure proof of their worth, their strength—their maleness.

  This was a familiar tumble of thoughts—brooding, futile. Zahra sighed and looked away, out over the scorched hills.

  Qadir, misunderstanding, put his hand under her arm. “Don’t be nervous, my dear,” he murmured. “You just talk to me, as always, and I’ll give your message to the men. There’s nothing for you to worry about, I promise.”

  Zahra had to bite her lip to keep from laughing aloud.

  * * *

  The address by the chief director, with the medicant beside him, meant something of a holiday for Omikron Team. Behind the office building, in an open amphitheater between it and the processing plant, the miners filled rows of sandrite benches. Most of the benches were now shaded from the afternoon heat by the bulk of the building and a few scattered met-olives. Zahra, Qadir, and the Omikron Team leader walked around the side of the building as the men settled themselves with gusts of chatter and calls back and forth. In the back, where the benches were still in the light, the men stood; the stone was too hot to sit on.

  Zahra scanned the miners from behind her veil. Above their heads, beyond the little amphitheater, the great disc of an enormous cooler revolved over the roof of the processing plant.

  Dust powdered everything. The men’s faces were masked with it. Only their eyes and noses, which had been covered by the protective masks that now hung at their belts, were clean. The circles of paler skin around the eyes, contrasted with the dark dust of the mines, gave them an exotic look.

  The men grew quiet as they caught sight of Zahra’s veiled figure. Qadir and the team leader stood with a secretary from the team leader’s office. Zahra stood at Qadir’s right hand, but a pace behind him, in his shadow. The team leader spoke first, introducing the chief director, making no reference whatsoever to Zahra. He leaned too close to the slender wand mike held by the secretary, and his voice boomed, echoing against the sandrite walls around them. When Qadir spoke into it, his voice was modulated, clear and carrying.

  “Good afternoon, kiri,” he said. “All my staff have asked me to convey their congratulations to Omikron Team. Your production of pure metal in the last quarter topped eight thousand kilograms. Only one other team has a higher volume—Gamma Team—but Omikron also achieved the highest by-production of platinum of all fifteen teams. Every man of you . . .’’Qadir paused, smiling at the thousand faces turned his way. “Every man of Omikron Team will receive a fifty drakm bonus in his next pay.”

  Qadir’s timing and delivery were perfect. A cheer went up, young men slapping each other on the back, standing briefly to raise open hands to Qadir. Qadir laughed into the wand mike, just a chuckle, but audible to everyone. “Now, men,” he said. “We expect you to save this bonus for some worthy purpose!”

  There was general laughter. The Omikron Team leader watched Qadir with something like awe. Qadir waited, giving the men their moment, and spoke again just when the tide of laughter began to subside.

  “Now, kiri,” he said. “I’ve come to speak to you on a serious subject.” The men fell silent, folding their arms, some leaning forward with their elbows on their knees. The shadows stretched farther over the stone benches, and some who were standing were able to take their seats. Still, the amphitheater was as hot as Cook’s kitchen before a great dinner. Zahra felt perspiration pooling under her drape, rolling in a slender stream down her back and over her ribs. Her verge seemed to stifle every breath. She blew it away from her lips, seeking fresher air.

  Qadir spoke succinctly now, briskly. “The Second Prophet instructs us not to be diverted by matters of the body. I know you all study the Book, and follow your Simah in this. But the Second Prophet also reminds us that the mines are an Irustani’s sacred duty. You of Omikron Team are admirable in respecting that duty.”

  Qadir let a small silence fall over the amphitheater. “It’s right and natural,” he said, “for a man to avoid the medicant’s surgery when he can. But to fulfill your duty to the mines, and to your team, you must—at least once every fourth quarter—take your inhalation therap
y.”

  The miners moved a little, shifting in their seats, not speaking. There was a rustle of coveralls against stone, a sliding of heavy boots on sand. Zahra fidgeted too. Perspiration dripped across her flanks.

  Qadir spoke more quietly, with an air of intimacy. “Men, you know the rewards that wait for you when you complete your service. My own was marriage to a jewel of Irustan, a devoted wife, who is also a fine medicant respected by everyone in her care. Today she is with me, violating the seclusion that is her right, in order for us to emphasize the need for each of you to see your medicant on schedule.”

  Zahra felt the pressure of a thousand pairs of eyes, looking at her, not seeing her, guessing at her face, her figure. Qadir turned to her, his brown face shiny with sweat, and murmured, “Ready.”

  She took a half-step forward and tilted her head to Qadir’s. “Remind them of the maximum exposure.”

  Qadir hesitated. “What is it?”

  “The total of fumes and dust, measured by the mask, must not exceed one milligram per cubic meter. If there is exposure above that, extra treatment is necessary.”

  Qadir turned back to the wand mike and repeated what she had said, word for word. When he added, “The medicant wishes you to remember that the therapy is not at all unpleasant,” there was a little uneasy sniggering among the miners.

  Zahra murmured to Qadir, “The men in the processors should be particularly aware of the numbers.”

  He turned to her, his brows raised.

  “The platirig,” she said. “The evaporation releases more fumes. The mask calibration must be regularly checked, because heavy particulates disrupt the sensors.”