“Not a miner, then?”
“No.” Hilel rose. “I’m sorry, Kir Chung, but . . .”
“No, of course, Director,” Jin-Li said quickly, backing out the door. Hilel’s secretary came in at the same moment, and they brushed each other in the doorway.
The secretary closed the door, but not before Jin-Li heard Hilel speaking again into the wavephone. “Chief Director? Have you heard? Yes. Yes. Then you heard—sorry about this, Qadir—but you realize he’s on Zahras list?”
Jin-Li stumbled away from Hilel’s office and down the stairs, muscles sloppy from fatigue, head whirling with questions. Another man had died, which meant Onani would be calling Jin-Li again. Worse, a second one from Zahra’s clinic list. And what had become of Alekos Bezay? And how could any of it relate to the wife-killer, Binya Maris?
Onani was going to want to know everything Jin-Li had learned. Jin-Li slumped in the cart for a moment, one fist heavy on the wheel. The leptokis, the dead women, the suicidal son. Iris B’Hallet, Zahra IbSada, Asa. The threads wound together, weaving a pattern, the pattern Onani was trying to make out.
Jin-Li struck the wheel, once, making it groan. No matter what Onani threatened, no matter the price he extracted—it would not be Jin-Li Chung who sorted it all out for him.
* * *
Zahra was in the clinic when the frantic call came from the B’Neeli household. Diya had gone to the office with Qadir, so Asa had to call for a hired car. While they waited he murmured to her, “Do you know what this is, Medicant?”
Grimly, she nodded. Asa’s eyes went wide but he asked nothing more.
“Ishi, you can handle the clinic,” Zahra said as the hired car, too wide for the street in front of the clinic door, rolled up to the corner and waited. “If there’s anything too difficult, reschedule it for tomorrow. Lili, you’ll stay with her? Call Marcus if you need an escort.”
Lili nodded. Ishi stood with hands clasped, rill open, watching Zahra. Zahra had her medical bag under one arm, and a clinic coat over the other. She touched Ishi’s shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.
In the car, Asa gave instructions and the driver pulled away, turning east toward the Medah. Zahra leaned her head back against the seat, letting the layers of her veil fall against her face. Had she ever been so tired? And Ishi—Ishi knew something was going on. So sensitive, so empathetic. She’d be a wonderful medicant, was already wonderful with patients, within the scope of her knowledge. She was sixteen. In two years, she would take her final examinations, and there would be another Medicant IbSada. O Maker, Zahra prayed, let her be Medicant IbSada and not something, someone else. . . .
“Medicant?” Asa said softly. Zahra sat up quickly and blinked. “We’re here. The B’Neeli house.”
* * *
B’Neeli’s little house crouched too close to the narrow street, where scrawny met-olives had pushed their roots through the sidewalk. Zahra followed Asa to the door, and it was opened by Sofi’s grandmother. Sofi clung to her grandmother’s skirts. Both were veiled, though there was no sign of anyone else. If other people lived in this house, they had fled.
The smell was overpowering. Neither Zahra nor Asa needed directions to find B’Neeli.
The door to the small bedroom was closed. Zahra edged it open, and Asa gasped at the stench that roiled from the room.
Belen B’Neeli lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of excrement. His face was tipped far back, his eyes open. Zahra could imagine he had been gasping for air, and then, unconscious, had inhaled some of the vomitus puddled around his head. Zahra pulled gloves and masks out of her bag, passing some to Asa.
“Towels,” she said tersely.
Asa pulled on the gloves and mask, then tried other doors in the short corridor until he found one that opened on a bathroom. He was back in moments with a stack of worn towels. Zahra, gloved and masked, laid several on the fouled floor. She tied her skirts up around her thighs, under her medicant’s coat, then stepped on a path of towels to reach B’Neeli. His thick body was arched, limbs askew, one hand beneath his back. She bent to feel under his jaw for a pulse. His flesh was cold and still.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“So quickly?” Asa asked. Zahra shot him a glance. His voice shook slightly but he looked calm.
In an undertone, she said, “Straight into the bloodstream.”
“Ah.” Asa swallowed, watching. Zahra tried to mop up the mess, piling the sodden towels in one corner. She glanced up to see him standing, leaning forward as if he wanted to help but couldn’t make himself do it.
“Asa, are you all right?” He nodded, but he looked miserable. “Listen, go to the kitchen, find a bag of some kind, plastic, and a box. We’ll burn all these. Oh, and I brought disinfectant, but I need some sponges.” Asa turned, eager to leave the disgusting scene.
“And Asa ...” Zahra straightened, dropping the last towel on the pile, looking down at B’Neeli’s twisted body. “You might as well make the call now, if the B’Neelis have a wavephone. For transport for the body. Tell them to carry it to the clinic for a postmortem.”
Asa nodded again, and spoke through a dry mouth. “Medicant,” he said raspily, “it seems—it all seems different, seeing the real thing. Up close, like this. Does it bother you? Seeing how bad it was, how it must have been?”
Zahra replied, “No, Asa. I can see you’re upset, and I’m very sorry. But I knew, you see. I knew just how it would be for him.” And she added frankly, “For all of them.”
Asa’s eyes showed white. He shook his head with a jerking motion. “It’s terrible,” he whispered.
Zahra gestured at the body. “Do you know what I see here, Asa?” she asked in an even voice. “I see Maya B’Neeli, beaten to death by a man twice her size. I see Sofi, his little daughter, with welts and bruises on top of welts and bruises.” She looked into Asa’s gentle, troubled eyes. “I see a whore with a broken arm refused medical treatment because she’s not on any clinic list. I see a desperate mother raped and beaten in the very shade of the Doma.” “I know,” Asa said. “I’m sorry, Medicant. I thought I was stronger.” Zahra crossed the room in two swift strides. She couldn’t touch Asa with her soiled gloves, but she brought her face close to his. “Asa, you are strong. You’re as strong as any man I know, and you bear no responsibility for any of this. You are my good right arm, but you’re no more responsible for my actions than my arm is. It does as I ask it, and you have done the same, with loyalty and courage.”
She saw him blink, and she drew away a little. “Asa, my dear Asa, if I could do anything to make this easier for you, I would. I will—I swear—you have only to ask!”
Asa’s eyes reddened and he looked away, embarrassed. “Thank you, Zahra,” he said huskily. He took a slow and deliberate breath. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’ll go get the things.”
Zahra watched him limp away. It wasn’t until later, as they were making arrangements for the removal of the carefully wrapped corpse, that she realized he had called her by her first name.
thirty-one
* * *
If a thing needs doing, shall I wait for my brother to accomplish it? If a thing needs saying, shall I leave it unsaid? We are endowed by the One with conscience. We must heed the gift and be ruled by it, or how shall we approach Paradise?
—Twenty-ninth Homily, The Book of the Second Prophet
Zahra and Asa, both exhausted, arrived back at the clinic to find Qadir waiting in the dispensary. Qadir had not set foot in the clinic since first showing Zahra where it was, when they were newly married. His unprecedented appearance shook Zahra’s composure. She put out her hand to her husband, alarmed to see her fingers tremble.
“Qadir—how could you have heard so quickly? Asa can’t have made the call more than an hour ago.”
Qadir’s bare scalp glistened. He gripped Zahra’s hand. With the other, she stripped away her rill to meet his eyes. He said, “We’re wanted at the Port Force offices. Onani again.”
Lili sat at her desk, and Ishi stood beside her, the attitude of her body one of waiting and watching. Diya frowned behind Qadir. The room smelled of fear, Zahra thought. It was almost as nasty a smell as the one in B’Neeli’s bedroom.
She lifted her chin. She had expected all of this. What good would it do to be afraid now? “I should do the postmortem first,” she told Qadir.
He shook his head. “Sullivan’s going to do it. Onani’s office called.” He swallowed, and his eyes looked around at the spare furnishings of the dispensary, then back to Zahra. “Port Force is going to pull rank, I’m afraid. I don’t like it.”
“I need to shower,” Zahra said.
“They want us right away, Zahra,” Qadir urged. “They’re waiting.”
“Let them wait,” she answered. She took her hand from his and turned to stride through the surgery with her back straight, her head up. Qadir followed. She marched upstairs to her room, street shoes clicking on the floor, and Qadir hurried to keep up.
“Be quick, will you, Zahra?” he asked.
“No. What difference could it possibly make? Besides, I’ve spent the whole morning clearing up the awful mess B’Neeli left.”
Qadir sucked in his breath. “Oh, Prophet!” he whispered.
Zahra sighed and shook her head. “Qadir, why don’t you lie down? There, on my bed. Try to rest.”
Ishi knocked gently on the door and put her head in. “Zahra, what can I do to help you? Was it terrible?”
“It was bad enough, my Ishi,” Zahra said. “What you can do is to help Qadir relax. Talk to him. I need a shower.”
Ishi smiled at Qadir. “All right?” she said gently.
He sat heavily on the bed, his back against the bedpost. “Of course,” he said. “Thank you, Ishi. Yes, you sit there, on your cot, and talk to me. Zahra’s right. They can wait until she’s ready. It certainly won’t change anything now.” Zahra went into her bathroom and closed the door. She undressed facing the mirror. A stranger looked back at her, a too-thin woman with deeply shadowed eyes, hollow cheeks, lines graven round the lips. When had she begun to look like that?
She stood under a steaming shower for many minutes, washing her hair, scrubbing her hands and nails and feet, letting the water lave her face until the tension washed away. She had done a difficult job, she told herself, one no one else could do. She was exhausted. It was no more complicated, no more subtle than that. She was tired.
* * *
Zahra had thought there could be no surprises in Onani’s office. She already knew the administrator and Dr. Sullivan. Tomas Echevarria, Onani’s secretary, was got up as usual with bizarre additions to his Port Force uniform. Thick curtains were drawn. A lamp threw a circle of light around the desk, leaving the rest of the office in gloom.
Qadir and Diya flanked Zahra as before. The layers of her veil were silver-gray and her dress was of black silk with gray edging. Through silvery gauze, she surveyed the somber Port Force faces. Echevarria, Onani, Sullivan, and . . . Zahra stumbled, and had to lean on Qadir’s arm.
In the shadows, Jin-Li Chung leaned against the far wall of Onani’s big office. Neatly folded cap drooping from a pocket, a small reader in one hand, Jin-Li’s eyes met Zahra’s from the semi-darkness. They sparkled into hers for an instant before the long lids drooped, disguising all expression.
Zahra felt her breath come quickly. She should have thought of this, she supposed. She should even, perhaps, have worried about it. Instead, as she settled herself on a chair just behind Qadir’s, she found that Jin-Li’s presence added a note of excitement, a thrill of complicity, to this confrontation. Jin-Li was a bridge between the Irustani and the Earthers. What might pass over that bridge Zahra could not yet know. She allowed herself an ironic smile behind her veil, and folded her hands together in her lap.
“We think there’s been another case of the prion disease,” Onani blurted, without formality.
Qadir tilted his head toward Zahra. She murmured, “How do they know? There’s been no time for an autopsy.”
The Port Force physician answered before Qadir could repeat Zahra’s words. Qadir stiffened, offended, but it was already too late to stop Sullivan’s outburst.
“Postmortem’s in progress now, but prelims from the lab are virtually incontestable. No time to lose. Need to know how the disease is being contracted, how spread. Whether these men had contact with each other, in which case we’re dealing with a contagious disease rather than an acquired one. Or did they have contact with a leptokis outside the mines?”
Onani shot Sullivan a narrow-eyed glance and held up one finger to stop the barrage of words. He turned to Qadir. “Chief Director, you must excuse Dr. Sullivan. We’re quite alarmed by this fourth death. We’re hoping the medicant can provide us with information about this latest victim, this Belen B’Neeli, a”—Onani glanced at the reader on his desk—“a clerk from City Administration. He was reportedly on your wife’s clinic list. Could you ask the medicant about him?”
Qadir pointedly turned his back on the Earthers as he spoke to Zahra. “Is there anything you can tell Administrator Onani and Dr. Sullivan about your patient, Belen B’Neeli?”
Zahra leaned close to Qadir and said in a tone so soft that no one but Diya should be able to hear her, “Belen B’Neeli was on my clinic list, along with his family. If they have specific questions, I’ll try to answer them.”
Qadir turned back to Onani. “The medicant confirms that B’Neeli was on her list,” he said succinctly. “She asks what you would like to know.”
Sullivan, pink-faced, opened his mouth, but Onani forestalled him.
“Thank you, Chief Director,” he said. His voice was too controlled, pitched a little below normal conversational tone. Zahra didn’t like it. Without turning her head she looked sidelong at Jin-Li. Jin-Li’s dark, heavy-lidded gaze was fixed on Onani.
“Could you ask the medicant,” Onani went on, “whether B’Neeli took all of his inhalation treatments?”
Through Qadir, Zahra responded to this and other questions. Belen B’Neeli had left the mines ten years before. He was a widower with an eight-year-old daughter. No one asked what had happened to B’Neeli’s wife, and Qadir, Zahra noted dispassionately, had no memory of it. B’Neeli had, like many miners, been irregular in his inhalation therapy, and had not visited the medicant once for his own needs since leaving Kappa Team. Except, of course, two days before, when he brought his daughter in for her inoculations. At that time, the medicant and her apprentice had treated the whole family—B’Neeli, his daughter Sofi, and B’Neeli’s mother, for possible blood disease, unrelated to prion exposure. No, the medicant didn’t know what the medicator had administered. She had let the machine do its work. She had visited the B’Neeli home this morning because Belen B’Neeli had been taken suddenly and violently ill. She had gone there as soon as the call had come in, with her escort, Asa IbSada. They found B’Neeli already expired, cleaned and disinfected the room in which he had died, and sent the body out for the postmortem.
“And I gather, Qadir,” Zahra murmured dryly, “that from there Dr. Sullivan has taken responsibility, and that I’m to consider the matter out of my hands.”
Qadir turned to repeat these words, almost exactly, to Onani. Onani said, “Yes, Chief Director. Dr. Sullivan wanted to see the results for himself, meaning no slight to your wife.”
“And now.” Onani got to his feet. “Now we will see if we can put any of the information we have together. See if we can get to the bottom of this—this outbreak.”
* * *
Jin-Li stood with arms folded, watching the scene between Onani, Sullivan, and the Irustani. The chief director—Zahra’s husband—was obviously an intelligent and proud man, on the verge of outrage at Sullivan’s behavior. It angered Jin-Li too, on Zahra’s behalf, but it also inspired reluctant respect for Onani’s ability to defuse the situation.
The Irustani took their leave—were dismissed, actually, but Onani managed to make it seem
as if it were their choice—without Jin-Li’s presence being acknowledged. When the door closed behind them, Onani swiveled his chair and looked at Jin-Li.
“Well, Johnnie? What can you add to all of this?”
Sullivan barked, “Who’s this?”
Jin-Li pushed away from the wall and came into the light, portable in hand. “Jin-Li Chung, Dr. Sullivan. Mr. Onani requested my help.” The portable reader clicked neatly into Onani’s larger one. The screen sprang to life, and Jin-Li tapped instructions into the keypad.
“It’s not much. I did a comparison on the four men, their histories, their status. See if you find any commonality.”
A few statistics appeared on the reader and scrolled slowly past. All four men had worked in the mines, Leman Bezay the longest. Gadil IhMullah had been promoted early into the offices of Water Supply, and had attained the directorship in due course. Binya Maris, at the time of his death, was Delta Mining Team leader. The newest victim, B’Neeli, was also the youngest, having left the mines ten years before at the age of forty. He had been a widower with a small daughter. Maris had been twice widowed, with no children. Leman Bezay had a son, Alekos. Gadil IhMullah had left a wife and daughter.
“There are some coincidences,” Sullivan growled. He ran the program back and scrolled it forward again. “Two of four were directors. Two of four were widowers. Hard, because they’re all so damned old, except for this new one.”
Onani leaned back in his chair and regarded Jin-Li with his black gaze. “Johnnie?” he said. “Surely you’ve found something not on this screen?”
“A bit. Rumor, mostly, the gossip I’ve already told you. Binya Maris was something of a hero on his team, but had a reputation for hard living in his time off.”
“Meaning?” Sullivan asked.
Jin-Li shrugged. “Drink. Whores. Knocking women around. Cited in a nasty incident at the Doma not long ago.”
Onani steepled his fingers, then pressed his palms together. Jin-Li waited through a long silence. Sullivan fidgeted, crossing his legs, tapping his fingers on the desk. “Anything else?” Onani finally asked. “What about the directors?”
The Terrorists of Irustan Page 28