Jin-Li tensed, ready to dash after the fugitives. They were almost to the corner. Now they had reached it. Jin-Li came up into a crouch.
The three couldn’t go around the corner to the right. That way led to the front door of the house. To the left their accomplice was distracting the guard. Their only route was across the street, which meant crossing the wide circle of light cast by the streetlamp. They weren’t fast enough.
“Hey!” The deep voice of the guard rang out. He appeared in the light of the streetlamp. With his right hand he held his unbuttoned trousers together. His left hand clutched the long rifle, and swung its blank muzzle at the three fleeing figures.
The three froze, trapped in the light. There was no time to think. Making a quick decision, Jin-Li jumped up and darted into the street, between the man and the fugitives.
There were soft frightened cries, from the prostitute, from one of the veiled figures, but Jin-Li didn’t hear them. Jin-Li saw only the Pi Team man, his right hand holding his trousers up, his ugly dark rifle. The gym shoes made it easy to dance toward him, muscles charged with adrenaline, mind focused. At that moment there was nothing in the world for Jin-Li Chung but the big man in the street and the weapon pointed at Zahra IbSada.
Jin-Li gave him no time to pull himself together. Moving lightly, much faster than the guard was able to, Jin-Li chambered a kick. It took only one, leveled from the hip, to send the rifle spinning and clattering onto the pavement. The Irustani’s heavy face contorted. “Hellfire!” he growled. “Who are you?”
His arms were much longer than Jin-Li’s. He was a head taller, and many kilos heavier. He swung his left fist and planted a glancing blow on the point of the shoulder that made Jin-Li’s eyes sting with pain. Bouncing away before he could do more damage, then in again, Jin-Li’s next kick caught only the fabric of his black shirt. His meaty fist hit Jin-Li’s cheekbone hard enough to blur vision and scrape the skin. A trickle of blood dripped and ran from the wound.
The Pi Team man was struggling to fasten his trousers with one hand, keeping the other fist raised as defense. He hadn’t yet taken Jin-Li seriously. He had only to touch the wavephone clipped on his shirt to raise the alarm. No doubt he didn’t want his squad to know he’d been dallying on the job. Jin-Li had to keep him busy, keep him from thinking too much.
Jin-Li moved in, fists raised. The guard threw out his free arm in a massive punch. Jin-Li sidestepped neatly and launched a sidekick at his midriff, connecting solidly with his right hand. He yelped and let go of his trousers, and they sagged around his thighs, showing underwear also in disarray, a thick, hairy belly jiggling. Startled, he grabbed for his pants with both hands.
Jin-Li was ready, body and brain singing with energy. As usual when fighting, time slowed. The guard’s every movement was clear, its purpose exposed. He reached out again with his huge left hand, and Jin-Li sidestepped and kicked, a roundhouse that brought the point of one gym shoe to the point of his chin with a resounding crack. His head snapped back and his eyes widened.
The Irustani suddenly appeared to grasp the reality of his situation. Forgetting his pants, he reached for the phone that would summon the rest of his squad. Seeing that, Jin-Li risked the reach of those massive arms. One leap into range, and Jin-Li delivered two swift punches, one to the thick nose, the other to the soft spot of the temple. Cartilage cracked with a crunching sound, and blood poured over the man’s mouth. He made no attempt to stop it. The blow to his temple had put him completely out.
Jin-Li was panting, dry-mouthed. Waiting, bouncing lightly, watching to see that the man didn’t get up again, didn’t reach for his phone.
He lay on his back in the street, his trousers around his knees, his mouth open. A little pool of blood gathered on the pavement behind his neck. Jin-Li wanted to take the phone, but was afraid that touching it might set off an alarm. Glancing left and right to see if anyone else was coming, Jin-Li backed away, around the corner.
Zahra, Asa, and a thin, veiled girl huddled beneath a met-olive in the next street. Without speaking, hoping not to draw attention from the surrounding houses, Jin-Li ran to them and signaled for them to follow. No one came after them, not yet. But it wouldn’t be long before someone wondered why the guard at the service door had not checked in.
Their progress through the empty streets to Jin-Li’s cart was agonizingly slow. No one spoke. The sound of Asa’s breathing was harsh in the quiet. The girl with him was working as hard as he was, suffering at his side through every painful step. Zahra made no complaint, but Jin-Li saw that her sandals were thin, indoor affairs, and before long the rough spots in the pavement had torn them to shreds. When half the distance had been covered, she began to limp.
Jin-Li began to worry that dawn would find them still on the streets. Where had the three of them been headed? They must have expected a long walk. The night air had begun to cool. A sparse dew fell, and Jin-Li shivered.
The black cars flashed past at intervals, their motors warning of their approach. Twice the fugitives stumbled into the darkness of an alley to escape their headlights. Once they had to flatten themselves against the wall of a house, the rough sandrite catching at their clothes. Asa’s cane fell to the pavement, but Jin-Li snatched it up before it struck. When they had to cross a street, they waited, listening, watching, and then made as quick a dash as was possible. Asa swung his cane in a wide arc, dragging his foot roughly behind. Zahra, though fully veiled, was now almost barefoot, but she hardly slowed her pace.
At the point where the Akros melded into the Medah, they came at last to the ruined building where Jin-Li had left the cart. In the Medah, big houses gave way to smaller ones, very close together. The streets were rougher and poorly lit. No lights shone in the windows nearby.
Warily, looking in every direction, they approached the cart. Jin-Li soundlessly unlocked the door and held it open. The veiled girl suddenly drew back.
“1 can’t ride in that!” she cried softly. “It’s forbidden!”
Asa managed a whispery, exhausted chuckle. “Ritsa,” he murmured. “Everything we’ve done today is forbidden.”
“But this—it’s Port Force!”
He pulled her close to him. “Come on, now,” he said in her ear. Jin-Li could barely hear his voice. “We’re almost there.”
Zahra moved around Ritsa and Asa and stepped into the unfamiliar vehicle as if she had always done it. She took the seat next to the driver’s. Asa and Ritsa followed to settle themselves on the floor in back.
Jin-Li had a hand on the door to close it when a woman appeared out of the darkness, a woman wearing a verge and drape but no rill. She ran to the cart on silent feet. Jin-Li froze, muscles tensing, and looked past her, into the shadows. Apparently the woman was alone.
“Mumma!” came a hushed cry from inside the cart.
The half-veiled woman looked at Jin-Li. Her eyes were hard in a way Jin-Li recognized. Jin-Li stepped aside, and the woman scrambled into the cart with neither thanks nor apology. Inside, on their knees, she and the veiled girl embraced.
Jin-Li hurried to the driver’s seat, got in and started the motor. With headlamps dark, the cart pulled away from the empty shop building. “Where?” Jin-Li asked.
Asa said, “Head for the market square.”
Jin-Li turned toward the square, the cart jouncing on the uneven pavement. They drove for several minutes without incident. Then, ahead, they saw a Pi Team car in their path.
Ritsa saw it too, and cried out. Asa hushed her. Jin-Li drove on, accelerating, directly at the small black vehicle. “All of you, get down. Zahra, you too, right on the floor. Asa, on the bottom shelf there’s a sheet of plastic, that gray quilted stuff. Pull it over yourselves and lie flat.”
Jin-Li shrugged quickly out of the Port Force sweatshirt, and when Zahra was huddled on the floor, threw it across her. With a quick jab of a fist, Jin-Li broke the interior light of the cart, heedless of the broken glass. Spots of blood flew across the windscreen. “Nobody move.�
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The cart reached the corner with a soft squeal of brakes. The black car was waiting, blocking the intersection.
Jin-Li let the cart come within inches of the Pi Team vehicle, then leaped out, slamming the door and shouting, “Hey! Get your damned car out of my way!”
forty
* * *
It is not for us to judge, but the One.
—Fourteenth Homily, The Book of the Second Prophet
Huddled on the floor of Jin-Li’s cart, the Port Force sweatshirt pulled over her head, Zahra prayed for the first time in years. 0 Maker. Don’t let them be caught. Take me, but don’t let them be caught. It’s my fault. Mine.
She heard Jin-Li’s brazen shout at the Pi Team pair. She heard the scrape of boots coming close, saw through closed eyelids how a light flickered over the interior of the cart.
“Medicine,” she heard Jin-Li say loudly in an exaggerated Earther accent. “Come on, kir, have a look. Ever seen medicator syrinxes, regen catalyst? How about opening the CA cabinet? Want to see what goes into your inhalation therapy?”
Deep voices answered Jin-Li, and the booted footsteps receded. Zahra’s lip curled. Pi Team couldn’t stop defeating itself this night. She could have laughed aloud, despite the raw ache of her abraded feet, despite her worry over Ishi, and Asa, and the girl Ritsa. And Jin-Li Chung.
Zahra had meant to demur, to stay behind when Ritsa spirited Asa away from the house. But she was so tired, and they were so insistent. She began to feel as if she had no mind of her own, no will. She couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Ritsa fussed over the inadequate sandals, but there was nothing to do about that, or about Pi Team. Pi Team searched the house twice over, their boots loud in the pantry, before going off to search at Laila’s and Camilla’s, Idora’s and Kalen’s.
Ritsa turned out to be a resourceful girl. She and Asa clung together in a painful embrace before she turned to Zahra and said, “My mother will be here tonight. I sent a message with the man who brings the fish—just a message to come and see me. She’ll get the guard away from the door, and we’ll run for it.”
“But how is that possible?” Zahra asked. “Pi Team—”
“They’re everywhere, Medicant,” Ritsa affirmed. “But no one knows about this double wall but me. And Asa, of course. The chief director shut himself up in his bedroom, and Ishi ate dinner with us in the kitchen—not that she ate much. Diya’s asleep. Everyone’s walking around like there’s been a death.” Zahra had bowed her head in utter misery. Nothing seemed to matter after that, not her tattered sandals, not their near-brush with capture in the street behind the house. Jin-Li had been magnificent, fast and strong and brave. None of it mattered.
Now Jin-Li was back in the cart. It shook as the little motor accelerated. “You can get up,” Jin-Li said calmly. “They were afraid to look in my CA cabinet. Or anything else.”
Zahra resumed the passenger seat. In the back, Eva and Ritsa and Asa slid out from beneath the quilted plastic. “Where are we?” Asa asked.
“I can drive a little farther, but we’re close to the square,” Jin-Li answered. “About half a kilometer.”
“Will they know it was you, Jin-Li?” Zahra asked.
Jin-Li grinned at her. “Doubt it.”
“Here, Kir Chung,” Asa said. “To the left.”
Jin-Li turned the wheel, and the cart jounced into a narrow, crooked street of three-story buildings very like the one where Zahra had taken Binya Maris. The night was far gone. Fingers of morning light scored the eastern sky, though the windows around them were dark. Delivery trucks rumbled in the distance.
“You can stop here,” Asa said.
There was no curb, and no space in the street to pull off. Jin-Li stopped the cart right where it was, beneath a ragged blue-striped awning, and turned off the motor. Asa and Ritsa and Eva climbed out. Zahra sat as if she would never move again.
“Please, Zahra,” Asa said, a gentle hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be light soon. We have to get inside.”
Zahra wanted to protest, to argue with him. She wanted to point out how useless it was, how dangerous for him, for Ritsa, for the others. But she was so tired, weary to her very soul. She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t think. She looked at Jin-Li, her eyes pleading for help.
Jin-Li took her hand, and Zahra gripped it as if she were drowning and it was her only lifeline. “Go, Zahra,” Jin-Li said softly. “Let them hide you. There’s nothing more you can do.”
Zahra looked into Jin-Li’s eyes for a long moment. “You . . .’’she began. She had to stop and swallow past the sudden ache in her throat. “You were wonderful, Jin-Li. I wish I—”
“Zahra, I’m sorry, we must hurry,” Asa said again.
Jin-Li leaned forward and put a smooth brown cheek against Zahra’s. “Go, Zahra. Be safe.”
Hardly knowing how it happened, Zahra was out of the cart and following Ritsa and Eva and Asa down a narrow lane of broken pavement and loose stone. She had no chance to look back at Jin-Li. The lane was so dark she could see nothing. It was like walking through a nightmare, her feet blazing pain at every step, her eyes useless in the darkness. She had no idea how long they went on.
A door opened before them, a pale rectangle in the darkness. Moments later, it seemed, Zahra was lying on a hard bed, gentle hands sponging her feet free of dirt and blood. She tried to see who it was, but her eyes were blurry with fatigue and the room was dim. She gave it up after a time and submitted to the gentle ministration, feeling not so much childlike as very, very old. Helpless. Someone carefully dried her feet, removed her veil, then drew a thin, stiff blanket over her. She slept.
Zahra woke with afternoon light warm on her face. She sat up, startled to find herself in a strange place. The events of the night before were like those of a dream, the details clear but too bizarre to be real.
A look around the room in which she had slept erased any doubt about the reality of her situation. It appeared she was on an upper floor of a run-down building. Meager blankets and worn pillows were stacked on the floor, and some tired-looking clothes hung on hooks behind the door. Someone had tried to make the place homelike with a pitcher of water and two glasses on a whitewood table with crooked legs. A small, round mirror hung near the bed. The floor was wood, with a worn bit of rug.
Zahra got up and went to the door. Cautiously, she put her head out to look down the dingy corridor for signs of a bathroom. At the opening of the door a grinning ragamuffin of undetermined gender ran to greet her.“Kira!” it cried. “Everyone’s waiting for you to wake up!”
Zahra looked down at the child. Its trousers and loose shirt implied that it was a boy, but it was too young for her to be certain. She had no idea where her cap and veil had gone, and supposed it didn’t matter now. Was this child safe with her in the house? She must leave, must get away as soon as possible, before all these people were punished for their kindness to her.
“Bathroom?” she inquired faintly of the child.
It pointed down the hall, still grinning with delight. “I’ll go tell Mumma! Wait for me!” and dashed off in the other direction to the head of a dark staircase.
Zahra found the bathroom and used it. She washed her face and hands, and tried to comb her hair with her fingers. Her dress was filthy, and her bare feet were tender. She stared at the lines around her eyes and her mouth, the blue patches beneath her lower eyes. How old are you? she asked the image in the mirror. Forty-three? You look sixty!
When she limped from the bathroom, she found Eva and Ritsa waiting for her. They took her arms, one on each side, offering soothing and welcoming words. Slowly, aware of her painful steps, they led her down two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Again, she submitted, thinking wryly that she had turned into a dependent old woman in the space of one night.
They took her to a long room that obviously doubled as both kitchen and dayroom. At one end an ancient stove and sink were littered with pots and dishes, and down th
e center of the room an assortment of chairs were arranged around a scarred table. A number of very young children scampered about, and three women, veils hanging free, alternately snapped at them and chatted with each other, sipping coffee.
Near the stove sat Asa, his cane leaning against his thigh. He got to his feet with an effort.
“Zahra,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I am,” she said.
“Mind the splinters, Medicant,” Eva said. She led the barefoot Zahra around the offending spot on the floor.
Zahra reached the chair nearest Asa and sat down. She looked at Asa’s tired face, and then at the women and children. “This isn’t a good idea,” she said. “These people are in jeopardy, harboring me. And you, too, perhaps.”
“But no one’s looking!” Ritsa said joyfully. “Not one Pi Team man has come to the Medah, or to any of our houses! The children have been up and down the street, and they’d know.”
Zahra leaned on the worn table and rubbed her forehead, trying to think why that didn’t sound like good news. There was something wrong with it, something to be alarmed about, but she couldn’t think what it was. When Eva put a cup of coffee before her, she drank it quickly, hoping to clear her mind.
The other women had fallen silent, watching Zahra’s slow entrance. Now one of them leaned forward. “I want to tell you, Medicant IbSada . . .”
Zahra forced herself to focus on the strange woman’s face. “Do I know you?” she blurted.
The woman colored, and Zahra wished she had softened her tone. “No, but I know who you are,” the woman said.
“Yes, of course,” Zahra said. “It was a bad night, and I feel . . .” She could think of no word for how she felt.
“It’s all right,” the woman said with a grin. “Most of my nights are bad ones! I can guess how you feel.”
Zahra only nodded.
The Terrorists of Irustan Page 35