The Terrorists of Irustan

by Louise Marley

  Qadir turned back to face the men. “The medicant is aware that men working in the processors must be especially careful. Watch the gauges on your masks, clear the dust from the filters, and adjust the calibration often.”

  Two rows of miners looked at one another, and Qadir, sensing their discomfort, spoke quickly. “Any questions? Please feel free. We came just for this purpose.”

  A man in the second row stood up. He was tall and strong-looking, clear-eyed. The large letters Theta Ro above the ESC logo on his coverall proclaimed him a squad leader. “I have a question, Chief Director,” he called in a firm voice.

  Qadir nodded to him. “Squad Leader,” he said respectfully.

  The Theta Ro leader gestured to the men seated around him. “We’ve been taught that there’s been no leptokis disease outbreak for more than thirty years,” the man said. “But if that’s the case, why do we still need treatment?”

  Qadir said, “A moment, kir,” and bent his head to Zahra.

  She whispered, “All humans, like all animals, carry the prion gene. It’s well-established that exposure to rhodium causes it to degenerate. The altered gene makes anyone, man or woman, fithi or fish, susceptible to the leptokis disease through inhalation.”

  “Zahra, they prefer not hearing details,” Qadir murmured. “Can you simplify it?”

  She paused. The eyes on her, on both of them, were expectant. There was so much she could teach them, so much these young and old men could know about themselves and the risks they faced. She could have seized the wand mike—a violation in itself—and explained the whole thing, as she had painstakingly learned it, as Ishi was learning it now. It was so clear in her mind: the thin, long string, a single molecule, that was the chromosome, the bright beads on the string that represented the genes. She could see the illustration in her mind as if she had reviewed it this morning, the locus shifting and darkening as the gene changed, making its bearer receptive to the prion, the proteinaceous infectious particle, produced by the small, dark leptokis that infested the mines, scuttling through the darkness.

  The disease wasn’t unique to Irustan. Earth had several prion diseases in its past. One called kuru arose among aborigines who ceremonially ate bits of their own dead relatives. Earth sheep contracted a prion disease called scrapie from being fed supplements made of animal products. Zahra had read all the histories when she was no older than Ishi. The worst one, jovially dubbed Mad Cow disease, shocked scientists when they realized it had crossed the species barrier. That had been believed to be impossible. Now, of course, the leptokis disease, aided by rhodium degeneration, crossed the barrier unimpeded. It was a fascinating history, a challenging bit of study. And they didn’t want to hear it.

  Zahra sighed. “Ask them, Qadir, if any of them have seen a leptokis in the tunnels.”

  He did. At least half raised their hands and nodded.

  “Then tell them," Zahra said, “that there have been isolated cases, some time ago, all caused by failure to wear the masks consistently, clean the filters, and take regular inhalation therapy. There has been no outbreak because the ESC has closely monitored these procedures.”

  Qadir repeated her words. Zahra watched the Theta Ro squad leader listen to Qadir. He opened his mouth briefly as if to press for more information, but then evidently thought better of it. He touched his heart and called, “Thank you, Chief Director,” and sat down.

  “Qadir,” Zahra murmured. “I know none of you wish to discuss it, but surely if they know the symptoms—the dementia, the discoordination— they’ll be more likely to follow the guidelines?”

  Qadir’s lips twitched slightly, distastefully, but he nodded and turned back to the wand mike. “The medicant wishes each of you to understand how serious the leptokis disease can be. You’ve all heard rumors, of course.” He hesitated, and Zahra knew he was searching for the words—euphemisms—to express her message. “Whatever you’ve heard, men, remember— contracting the leptokis disease is the end of your work in the mines, the end of your dreams of rewards—it’s quick, and it’s fatal.”

  Zahra folded her arms, feeling the dampness on the insides of her elbows, the prickling heat held close to her body by her drape. She had done her best, she told herself. If Qadir could not bring himself to use the words, then he couldn’t. He, as much as these other men, was a product of his upbringing.

  There were one or two other questions for Qadir, none for Zahra. She stood silently, waiting, watching everything. Hot though she was, the outing, her brief freedom, was over too soon.

  The car, at least, was cool. Diya drove once again, and Qadir sat with Zahra. She was still not at liberty to unbutton even her rill. Someone, some man, might see inside the car, and be diverted from his duty. And of course, Qadir IbSada’s honor would be compromised as well, should she show a sliver of flesh, a flash of eyes as the car passed by.

  Qadir sat with his hands on his knees, his strong chin lifted as he watched the city glide past. He looked satisfied, content, safe in his shell of complacency. The urge to crack the shell was irresistible to Zahra.

  “Qadir,” she said softly.

  He turned to smile at her, eyebrows raised.

  “Your men need to understand exactly what will happen if they ignore procedure.”

  “But my dear,” Qadir said. “We made it quite clear to them, I think.”

  “I don’t think so,” Zahra said mildly. “They should know what it’s like for the victims—falling down as if intoxicated, unable to recognize anyone, all muscle control gone ...”

  Qadir stared at her. “Zahra, please! There’s no need to go over this!” She persisted. “In the end, a man loses control of his breathing, but even before that, his bowels.”

  “Zahra!” Qadir exclaimed. His discomfort was palpable, and verged on anger. “That’s enough!”

  She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Qadir, but it’s the truth.”

  He turned away from her. His knuckles were white, and a muscle flexed convulsively under his jaw. Zahra was surprised by a twinge of remorse, and she put her hand over his and pressed it lightly. “Never mind,” she said. “I know you couldn’t say all those things to your men.”

  He was silent for some moments. At length he turned his hand up to hers, and said, “You know, my dear, I thank the Maker for Ishi. You must sometimes need someone to talk with about . . . about such things.” He sat straighter, lifted his chin higher. “I have abundant responsibilities, Zahra, but tending to the body is not among them.”

  Zahra watched his profile for a moment before she took her hand back into her own lap and turned away to watch the city sweeping past.

  * * *

  The alarm jarred Zahra from the deepest cycle of sleep, and she was dressed and on her way to the clinic almost before she knew she was awake. She trailed one hand against the wall for balance, mindful of the little sculptures, not wanting to stumble in the half-dark.

  She and Ishi, with Lili and Asa, had returned late from Kalen’s, all of them yawning as they were driven down the dark avenue. Now the moons had risen. The streets outside were brighter than her dim corridor.

  She made her way quickly down the back staircase, stopping to veil just before going into the clinic. As she stepped into the surgery, she saw Diya hunched on the stool, his back turned to the dividing screen, his face buried in his hands.

  “Diya?” Zahra said. “Is it so bad?”

  He straightened his shoulders and dropped his hands, but he wouldn’t turn. She pressed her lips together and went around the screen to see what awaited her there.

  It was not so serious, perhaps, but it was messy. A young man lay on the exam bed, clutching a ragged cloth around his head and face. The rag was scarlet with his blood, and vivid spatters marked the white linen beneath him. A trail of droplets led from the dispensary, and his fingernails were outlined in rust, fresh blood still slipping over his hands. It was no wonder Diya had turned away in revulsion. Head wounds could be upsetting, even to those less tolerant
than Diya.

  Zahra bent over the man. “Kir? I’m the medicant. Can you tell me what happened?" Gently, she loosened his fingers and began to peel the soaked rag away from his face.

  He let go of the bloody cloth all at once, and it fell in a sodden mess to the floor. Zahra winced at the sight of him. One of his eyes was swollen completely shut, and something had split the skin of his skull so that a jagged flap of skin and hair hung loose over his brow. It was this that bled so profusely, but his face was also lacerated, a long deep cut from cheek to chin. None of it looked life-threatening, but she wished Diya would help her. Asa would have. She would have to call Lili. She didn’t have enough hands to put all of this back together.

  “I want to help you, Zahra.”

  Zahra spun about. Ishi had come in behind her on silent small feet. She was veiled, rill open but verge buttoned, ready, as if she had done such a thing a dozen times.

  “Ishi!” Zahra exclaimed. “I don’t think—”

  She was interrupted by a sound from the injured man, and she glanced down at him. With his own soiled hands, moaning, he was trying to push the flap of his torn scalp back into place. A fresh gout of blood trickled down his face and he gagged.

  “No, no, kir,” Zahra said quickly. “I’m going to do all of that for you, please lie still.”

  She cast a quick glance at Ishi. The girl looked intent and concerned, but more interested than frightened. Zahra didn’t want her patient to lose any more blood. She decided quickly.

  “Ishi,” she said, “you’re a blessing straight from the Maker. Hand me the master syrinx, all right?” She reached beneath the bed for a pair of sterile gloves. “Then sponges and a basin, and when this is cleaned up a bit, the surgical dome.”

  Ishi put the master syrinx in her hand, then ducked under its long tube and went to the cupboard. Zahra spoke to the medicator, ordering pain medication and a sedative. She could worry later about what had happened—indeed, she could guess. He would not be the first young man to end Doma Day in a fight.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the open door to the waiting room. No doubt one of his friends had swallowed his aversion long enough to bring him here, and now cowered in the dispensary, waiting for the medicant to make everything tidy again. There must be others involved. She hoped no one was hurt worse than her own patient.

  Zahra sponged the wounds clean with her right hand, using her left to keep the oozing piece of scalp out of the way. She used one of the smaller syrinxes to spray regen evenly over the lacerations. The man’s moaning had already ceased, and the lid of his uninjured eye drooped sleepily as the medicator measured out the sedative. Ishi wheeled the surgical dome into place with deft movements, no awkwardness revealing that she had never done it before. Zahra nodded to her.

  “Excellent, Ishi,” she said. “This would have been very difficult without you.”

  Above her verge, Ishi’s eyes curved into smiling crescents. Zahra glanced at her from time to time as she began to suture the edges of the man’s torn skin. Ishi seemed not at all disconcerted by the blood and the mess. She watched closely as Zahra, her hands in the gauntlets, smoothed the skin into place and secured it with infinitesimal bursts from the radiant wand.

  “How does that work?” Ishi asked.

  Zahra regarded her own hands with new eyes, seeing them as Ishi must see them. “It’s actually a very simple principle,” she said. “In ancient times, on Earth, they would burn a wound to close its edges. Then they used thread, like Lili uses to mend your clothes. Doctors have used all kinds of things to seal the edges of wounds, absorbable sutures, even staples of various materials. The radiant wand uses tiny stitches of regen. The places we touch heal almost immediately, and the wound is held together. I could just use newskin, but this is better for the scalp because it doesn’t interfere with the hair. Our patients,” she added dryly, “are happier if they don’t have reminders of their visits to us.”

  She surveyed her handiwork, lifting blood-crusted locks of hair to make certain the scalp wound was securely closed. Satisfied, she sprayed more regen over the scalp and the facial laceration. “Within twenty-four hours, the wound’s edges will be completely closed.”

  “How does the regen work? Where do we get it?”

  “Like so many things, Ishi, it comes from Earth. We haven’t the materials here to make it, or the knowledge. Regen is just short for ‘regeneration accelerator.’ It speeds the healing process by sort of nudging the immune response, not systemically—that is, throughout the whole body—but locally, at the point of contact. Microscopic bacteria, like little smart bugs, know just which parts of the tissues to talk to.”

  “They must know so much on Earth,” Ishi breathed.

  Zahra pulled her hands out of the gauntlets and moved the surgical dome away from the exam bed. She smiled at her apprentice as she stripped off her gloves and discarded them.

  “Indeed they do,” she agreed. She moved to the sink to scrub her hands. “Perhaps someday we’ll know that much!”

  Ishi’s small head tilted to look up at her. “I don’t know, Zahra. We have to do it all by ourselves, don’t we? That slows us down. On Earth, both men and women are doctors, so—”

  Zahra quickly put her fingers over Ishi’s lips, and gave a sharp warning movement of her head. With her eyes she indicated the screen that hid Diya from their sight. Ishi’s eyes widened and she nodded. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  Zahra smiled down at her, and caressed her forehead with her fingers. Barely audibly, she murmured, “Never mind.”

  Zahra showed Ishi where the warm blankets were kept, and they smoothed one over their now-sleeping patient. Ishi, without being asked, crouched with a damp cloth to mop drops of blood from the floor. Zahra raised the bars at the sides of the bed, and then both she and Ishi went around the screen to where Diya drowsed on his stool.

  “Did someone come with the patient?” Zahra asked. Her tone was sharp now, and Ishi glanced up at her in surprise. Diya stood up, rubbing his neck.

  “In the waiting room,” he said, with a negligent jerk of his head toward the dispensary.

  “All right. Let’s go see him,” Zahra said. She led the way, Diya following, Ishi trailing behind.

  A disheveled man, no older than the one she had just treated, stood up. He avoided Zahra’s eyes. “How’s Ohannes?” he asked, looking at Diya.

  Zahra said edgily, “Diya, please ask this man for information for my report to the chief director. I assume both these men”—she indicated the surgery—“are miners?”

  Diya repeated the question.

  “Yes,” the man answered.

  “And will you ask him, Diya, what happened last night?”

  Diya repeated her words again. The young miner had the grace to hang his head, and even to blush beneath his dirt. Zahra doubted he could be more than twenty or twenty-two.

  “Well?” Diya asked.

  “I’m—I’m sorry, Kir IbSada,” he mumbled. “We were having a drink, after the Doma rites. We were down in the Medah, you know, and there was a—” He broke off in utter embarrassment, eyes shifting from Diya to the street and back again. Zahra tapped her foot and waited, lips pressed together in exasperation. A gentle snore sounded from the surgery, and the miner looked up in alarm. “Is Ohannes all right?”

  Diya repeated that, too.

  “Diya, you may tell this man that his friend will recover,” Zahra said. “He’s sleeping now, and I still have a lot of cleaning up to do. . . She looked pointedly at the blood-spattered floor. “So if this man doesn’t mind?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m—uh, there was a fight over a—um, a woman,” the young miner finished in a mumble, his eyes cast down. “Some of the street women—um, unveiled women—were working the place. There were only three of them, and about fifteen of us. A fight broke out, and somebody hit Ohannes with a broken bottle. I don’t know who the other fellows were.”

  At this his eyes met Zahra’s directly, obstinately. She knew perfect
ly well that was one piece of information she would never get from him.

  “Ask if any of the women were injured,” she said to Diya.

  He stared at her, his thick lips pursed. “Surely you don’t expect me to ask that?”

  Zahra glared at him. “Repeat my question, Diya.”

  Diya said offhandedly, “The medicant wishes to know if the women were injured.”

  The miner shrugged. “Who knows? They were only prostitutes!”

  Diya didn’t bother to repeat the answer.

  Zahra was suddenly exhausted, and she was sure Ishi must be, too, though the child stood straight, as tall as she could, right beside her. “Just get our patient’s name and his barracks number, and this man can go. I’ll keep Ohannes in the surgery overnight. Asa will call his squad leader in the morning.”

  In a rush of relief, the young miner handed over the other man’s identity card to Diya. He nodded to them both, and backed out the door. Diya passed the card to Zahra.

  “Call Asa for me, would you, Diya?” Zahra said, rubbing eyes wearily. “He’ll have to watch over our patient. There’s no danger, I just don’t want him waking alone in the surgery.”

  Diya went to the desk and picked up the wavephone.

  “And Diya,” Zahra added. She put her hands on her hips. He looked up at her with sullen eyes. “Don’t make me repeat my requests again. Ever. In my clinic, you do as you’re told.”

  Diya turned his back on her as he spoke into the phone.

  “Come on, Ishi,” Zahra said. She didn’t want to look at Diya anymore. She and Ishi went back to the surgery. Ishi stayed beside her as she bent over Ohannes, her hand on his wrist, her eyes scanning the monitor for anything untoward.

  “He’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Together they walked down the hall, through the small surgery, into the house. After the brilliance of the clinic lights, the hall was dim, the wall niches in shadow. They trudged up the stairs to their own room. Zahra helped Ishi into her bed, kissing her forehead and tucking her quilt around her, before she climbed into her own rumpled bed, shivering a little with fatigue. She drew the quilt up to her chin.