She had slept at last, and wakened undecided in the morning. Camilla believed she was going to do it. Zahra was not so certain. She looked over at Ishi, at her smooth face dewy with sleep, her hair scattered in rich brown strands across the pillow. How could the Maker create such beauty as resided in this girl, and yet tolerate the ugliness of a Belen B’Neeli?
B’Neeli’s latest victim now lay under her scanner. The monitor made no mistakes, but just the same, Zahra lifted the girl’s long skirts and ran her hand under each bony leg. The grandmother protested.
“What are you doing? Why are you doing that?”
Zahra shot a hard glance at the woman’s veiled face. She was aware of the harshness in her own voice as she said, “Sofi has serious bruising on her legs. Have you beaten her?”
The woman folded her arms and turned her head away. “No!”
“Well, then, it must be something else.”
The child trembled under Zahra’s hand. Zahra caught Ishi’s troubled glance, and looked away, back to the monitor.
She hadn’t needed to ask the question. She knew perfectly well what the readout meant. The medicator was already administering regen to heal bruises from external trauma. A broom, a long spoon, straps from a miner’s equipment. It didn’t matter, and she’d seen it before. What did matter was the opportunity it presented to her. The only obstacle was Ishi.
“Do you see that?” she said quietly to Ishi.
Ishi nodded without looking up. She smoothed wisps of Sofi’s hair back under her cap, and straightened the child’s skirts where Zahra had disturbed them. Zahra would have to justify her actions to Ishi, but her reasons were now hard-edged and clear as shards of glass.
“Come with me,” she said to the grandmother. The woman hesitated, and Zahra said it again in a voice that few could have disobeyed.
In the dispensary, Zahra signaled to Diya to come and stand beside her. He complied, but slowly, with an insolent stare. Had he always been so open about his dislike? Lately it seemed more overt than ever. Perhaps she should speak to Qadir—but there was no time to worry about that now.
“Diya, please tell this man that his daughter is having a special treatment just now, a treatment for the blood.”
The grandmother started. She looked at her son, and then quickly at the floor. B’Neeli’s face was impassive as Diya repeated Zahra’s words. Zahra went on, “Sofi’s legs are severely bruised. You and Sofi’s grandmother must have the treatment, and some tests. If it’s a genetic problem it will go in your records.” B’Neeli’s eyes widened blankly at that. Zahra said, with relish, “The directorate tracks all genetic abnormalities.”
Diya repeated everything. Belen B’Neeli began to understand that he was to receive some medical procedure. His face paled. He shoved himself roughly to his feet. “I’m not sick! There’s nothing wrong with me!” Fear made his voice quiver.
Diya turned to Zahra. “Kir B’Neeli says he is not ill.”
“That’s for me to decide,” Zahra said. “If he refuses treatment, I’ll have to report it to his director.” B’Neeli’s mouth opened, closed. Zahra nodded. “As soon as the medicator has finished with Sofi, bring this man into the large surgery, Diya. Lili will stay with Kira B’Neeli until it’s her turn.”
Zahra turned with a swirl of her medicant’s coat. Ishi and Sofi passed her in the hallway. By the time Diya ushered B’Neeli into the large surgery, she had retrieved one of the little vials marked Dikeh from the CA cabinet. It was simple to exchange it in the medicator for a canister of enzyme supplement. She patched a tiny syrinx to B’Neeli’s thick wrist and ordered the medicator to begin. She was unmoved by B’Neeli’s frightened face, his quick breathing and perspiring forehead. She offered no reassurance, nor did she put her hand on his shoulder as she might have with another patient. Diya sat in silence on his side of the dividing screen. Zahra watched as the viscous liquid was fed into the syrinx and through the dermis to be taken up by the bloodstream. There wasn’t much of it. It didn’t take long.
“Fine,” she said. It was done. Done. She felt even less than she had with Binya Maris, no more than a small, chill laugh deep in her body. “Diya, please send Lili in with Kira B’Neeli.”
When Diya and B’Neeli left the room, Zahra quickly extracted the vial from the medicator, ripped the little syrinx right out of the machine, and thrust both into a biowaste bag. When Lili and the grandmother came down the short hall and into the surgery, Zahra was scrubbing her hands up to the elbows.
Lili helped Kira B’Neeli to lie down on the exam bed, and Zahra patched a fresh syrinx to her wrist.
“What is it?” the woman begged her. “What is it Sofi has? That we might have?”
“A disease of the blood,” Zahra said coolly, and not, she thought, all that untruthfully. “It could be leukemia, or it could be some kind of deficiency. We’ll leave all that to the medicator. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But what if . . .” The older woman hesitated, and Zahra heard the dryness in her throat as she spoke. “What if we don’t have this thing, but you’ve given us medicine for it?”
Zahra looked down at her. “If you don’t have a disease, kira,” she said, very slowly, “then why would little Sofi have those terrible bruises?”
The woman shuddered, a ripple of silken layers, and said nothing.
“You don’t trust your medicant?” Zahra asked.
The older woman muttered something Zahra couldn’t catch. She leaned closer, said, “What was that?”
She heard, “You’re not my medicant.”
“Ah.” Zahra spoke to the medicator, and the pump stopped its gentle click. She removed the syrinx from the woman’s wrist. “In that case, I’ll just send a message to your own medicant. Who is it, please?”
There was a long silence. Zahra lifted the woman to a sitting position. Lili stood rigid, her arms folded under her verge, staring at Kira B’Neeli. Her disapproval of such rudeness was clear, even through the layers of her veil.
Kira B’Neeli tossed her head in Lili’s direction. “Never mind,” she snapped. “Just never mind.” Her stiff legs were considerably quicker as she hurried out of the surgery.
Zahra let Ishi, Diya, and Lili see their patients off. She went to her office and shut the door, leaning against it with her eyes closed and her teeth clenched. She examined herself for many minutes, searching for regret, for guilt. She found only the memory of Maya, and of Sofi’s frightened eyes, the layers of new and old bruises on her thin legs. Perhaps, if the serum worked quickly enough, Sofi would survive her tortured childhood.
Zahra had taken a terrible chance, infecting another man on her patient list. Camilla had suggested they let Kalen do what she wanted to do, as a distraction, a decoy, but Zahra’s refusal had been firm. Only killers would be killed. She had said those very words, and Camilla had gripped her hand so hard it hurt.
A knock sounded on Zahra’s office door, and she moved behind her desk and sat down. “Yes?”
Ishi came in, unfastening her verge. “Zahra, what happened there? What did you see on the monitor?”
Zahra’s veil was already open, and she rubbed her face with her fingers. “I saw what you saw, Ishi,” she said with a sigh. “Bruises, welts, old and new ones. The child’s been whipped with something hard, and more than once.” “But you said . . . you told them it was a blood disease!” Ishi dropped into the other chair and leaned forward, her hands on the desk. “I’ve never heard you say anything untrue before!”
Zahra took one of Ishi’s hands in hers. “Well, my Ishi,” she said quietly. “I did say it was a genetic problem, didn’t I? And so it is. B’Neeli is beating his daughter, as he beat her mother. And I suspect the grandmother is doing the same, though I can’t prove it.”
“What medicine did you give them, then?” Ishi asked. Her cheeks flushed with amazement. Zahra shrugged.
“The medicator can always find some deficiency to treat,” she said, deliberately negotiating around the trut
h. “But I can tell you B’Neeli was as frightened as if he really had a blood disease.” She let go of Ishi’s hand and stood up, moving to the little window to gaze out at nothing.
“Listen, Ishi. On the very night you first came to me—to us—a young mother came to the clinic. She was eighteen. She had been beaten and kicked by her husband. She almost died.”
Zahra turned her head to meet Ishi’s eyes. “We live in a difficult world, my Ishi. I protested to Qadir, and made an official complaint, but Maya was only another girl in a world where girls are property, to be treated by their owners in whatever way the owners see fit. Three years later, when you were about eleven, Maya was beaten to death by the man who owned her. Her husband, Belen B’Neeli.”
Ishi gasped and her eyes filled. Zahra bent and took her hands in a firm grip.
“Don’t cry, Ishi,” she said in a hard voice. She had never used that voice with Ishi. “Don’t ever cry. It doesn’t help.”
Ishi held back the tears, her little pointed chin trembling. “I don’t want to be owned,” she choked.
“I don’t want that either. Nothing in the world matters more to me than you,” Zahra said. Her own throat ached suddenly. “I want your world—your Irustan—to be better than the one Maya B’Neeli knew. I want Sofi, and Rabi, and Alekos, and all of Laila’s and Idora’s children, to live in a better place than the one I was born into. But such societies as ours are slow to change. And many people suffer in the meantime, boys and girls, men and women. I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to hurry the changes along.”
Zahra released Ishi with an abrupt gesture. She turned her back, and pulled up her verge to button it. She mustn’t say too much, not to Ishi. Above all else, Ishi was not to be involved. If Ishi were not protected, shielded from all of this, then it was all for nothing.
“Zahra,” Ishi said from behind her. One slender hand crept up Zahra’s arm. “Zahra, are you angry with me? For asking?”
For answer, Zahra turned and took the girl into her arms, pressing her close. “No, dear Ishi,” she murmured, stroking Ishi’s veiled head. “I’ve never been angry with you. Not ever.”
thirty
* * *
All decisions made by officers of Offworld Port Force are final. Review of such decisions will be only at the discretion of the general administrator.
—Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment
The disc from Zahra’s files lay on Jin-Li’s table beneath the framed calligraphy. For days Jin-Li had let it lie there. She had viewed it once, the same night she had seen Zahra. It wasn’t enough. She was grateful that Zahra had tried to help, but it wasn’t enough.
The disc held the medical history of Leman Bezay, his wife Camilla, his son Alekos. The entries, tersely recorded by the medicant, were routine examinations, inoculations, the medicant’s recommendations. The only entry for Bezay himself was the postmortem on his body.
At the end of a long, aimless day, Jin-Li decided she would scan the disc once again, scour it for whatever it might have to offer, and get it back to Zahra’s files. She sat cross-legged on the floor, the light of the moons bright beyond the window, and played the disc once again. She forced herself to go slowly, to examine every detail. Only one entry held any interest.
Alekos Bezay had been fourteen: “Self-induced lateral lacerations of both wrists, less than three millimeters in depth, treated with radiant wand and bandaged. Medicator administered antibiotics and sedatives. Further treatment refused by patient’s father.”
Jin-Li read this account over and over, trying to uncover some deeper message. Was there a hint? “Refused by patient’s father.” There wasn’t much to it. What could a suicide attempt by the son have to do with the father’s fate? It would never satisfy Onani.
There were other things Jin-Li could have offered Onani. There was the odd trip she had made with Asa, for Medicant IbSada, and there was Asa’s purchase of the leptokis. Onani would love those, but Jin-Li would keep them to herself. What she wanted to give Onani were random notes, secondhand rumors, assorted details. Facts to pile up, bits of intelligence to toss together in a semblance of information. No conclusions.
Jin-Li sat over the little reader for a long time, pondering. She realized how far gone the night was only when the oblong patches of silvery moonlight across the floor shrank to nothing and disappeared. Only a couple of hours remained until dawn. Stiffly, she rose and stretched. Where was Alekos Bezay now? The last record the disc had for him had been his examination prior to joining Delta Team. It was the next-to-last entry in the Bezay file. After that was only the report of Leman Bezay’s death from the prion disease. Alekos was presumably now on the list of Delta Team’s medicant. That shouldn’t be hard to confirm. It would be something, at least, to hand to Onani. Something that couldn’t hurt Zahra IbSada.
Jin-Li folded down her bed and stripped off her clothes. She fell into the uneasy sleep of utter exhaustion. A dream fragmented her sparse rest, a dream in which she stood naked in Onani’s office, no uniform, no breast band, only her portable in her hand. She was completely exposed to Onani’s dark gaze.
The star was high in the sky when Jin-Li startled awake from her nightmare. She lay trying to think through a cloud of fatigue. She climbed stiffly out of bed. Her face in the bathroom mirror was lined, dry from lack of sleep. She showered briefly, rubbed her brush of hair dry, and put on a fresh uniform. There was one other friendly face among her Irustani connections, one man who had been kind. Perhaps Director Hilel, Samir Hilel, might have some bit of intelligence she could use.
It was worth trying. Anything would be better than sitting uselessly in the little apartment, waiting for Onani to steal her last options.
* * *
Jin-Li waited by the sculpture in the lobby of the port director’s offices until Samir Hilel, smiling, came down the curving stairs. Jin-Li touched hand to heart. Samir Hilel responded in kind, and extended his hand to shake. It was cool and firm, an offer of friendship—an offer Jin-Li couldn’t accept.
“An unexpected pleasure, Kir Chung,” Director Hilel said.
Jin-Li had a manifest in hand, the little flat portable used for deliveries. Its screen showed only two entries, one for Medicant Iris B’Hallet and another for Delta Team.
“There’s been a mix-up in my deliveries,” Jin-Li said. “Would you mind checking your records? Perhaps they show what Delta Team and Medicant B’Hallet were each supposed to receive.”
The port director smiled and indicated the stairs. Jin-Li followed him up the stairs beneath the glass ceiling. The building was far warmer than the Port Force offices, but the men who worked here appeared unaffected. They all wore loose Irustani shirts and trousers in pale colors, even the director. Samir Hilel waved Jin-Li to a chair. “Kir Chung, you’re not ill, are you?” “No, Director, I’m not ill,” Jin-Li said hastily. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
Hilel made a sympathetic noise. “Coffee, then, perhaps?”
Jin-Li leaned against the back of the chair and nodded. “Coffee would be wonderful. It’s kind of you.”
The director took his own chair behind a polished whitewood desk. A wavephone was on one corner, a large reader set into the other, but the desk was otherwise bare. After asking his secretary for coffee, Hilel called up his own records of the two deliveries and compared them with Jin-Li’s little reader.
“These look all right to me,” he said. “What’s the problem, do you think?” The secretary came in with a tray, and served Jin-Li a cup of coffee with a friendly smile. Jin-Li murmured thanks. “I found a box of . . .” In her fatigue, Jin-Li almost forgot that Director Hilel wouldn’t want to hear medical details. It was no doubt distasteful for him even to read the manifests. In this case, the taboo was helpful. “Well, a carton of supplies. Behind the wheel well of my cart. I don’t know which medicant needed it, but I’m fairly certain it was one of these two,”
“Ah,” Hilel said. He turned the reader so Jin-Li could see it. “Why d
on’t you check these manifests, see if you can identify it? No doubt it’s faster for you to do it yourself.”
Jin-Li pulled the chair closer and tapped on the keypad of the big reader. It wasn’t true, of course. No undelivered box lay forgotten in the cart. But here was the record for Delta Team’s clinic, and with a little luck, some sign of Alekos Bezay. Jin-Li squinted at the screen through burning eyes. Hilel poured more coffee and took a call while Jin-Li scrolled through the Delta Team records, trying to hurry, to keep it simple. No Bezay at all, not Alekos, not any other name. Strange, but interesting. Maybe interesting enough to report to Onani.
A strange silence made Jin-Li look up. Hilel gripped his wavephone with a white-knuckled hand, speechless. He held the phone over its cradle and then dropped it in with a small clatter. “Prophet,” he whispered, entirely to himself.
Jin-Li turned off the reader with a tap of a button and watched, unsure what to do. Hilel had obviously had a shock.
“Director Hilel? Is there ... are you ...”
Hilel’s brows drew together, and his fine eyes were full of alarm. “Forgive me, Kir Chung,” he said hoarsely, and then cleared his throat. “Forgive me,” he repeated. “But there’s been another one. Another death.”
“Director! Not from the prion disease?”
Even in his shock, Hilel winced with distaste. His color began to return, and he reached for the phone again. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he told Jin-Li. “I’m sorry, but I have work to do. The chief director needs to know, and Administrator Onani.” He spoke swiftly and sharply into the phone, giving orders.
Jin-Li stood up, dropping the little portable into a pocket. “I’ll leave you to it, Director, and I’m very sorry. Thanks for your help.”
Hilel nodded, his eyes narrow now, distracted.
Jin-Li took a step toward the door, then hesitated. “Director—who was it? Who died?”
Hilel shook his head. “Someone from the Medah, a clerk. I don’t have a name yet.”
The Terrorists of Irustan Page 27