Boreson said, “There is no sign of them. That was the problem in the first place.”
Adetti added sourly, “We’ve tried to ask the girl. She won’t talk.”
Isabel said as crisply as she could, “Oa’s English is fragmentary. At first she could neither understand what was said to her, nor make herself understood. She began to learn English on the transport only thanks to the kind offices of one of the crew.” She turned to fix Adetti with a hard gaze. “Dr. Adetti saw fit to keep the child awake the entire journey. Fourteen months in space. That offense is the first of my objections to ExtraSolar’s custody of Oa.”
She let a little silence fall. Adetti opened his mouth as if to deny the allegation, but evidently thought better of it. His face flushed.
Isabel went on. “My second objection is to countless examinations under the medicator on the transport and again here at the Multiplex, examinations that terrified and upset the child.”
Adetti burst out, “There’s no pain associated with those scans!”
“Oa dreads the medicator. That’s perfectly clear. It was cruel.”
“No one was cruel to the girl!” Adetti glared at Isabel. He moved in his chair, and his knee struck the table leg with an audible bump.
“My third objection is that three days ago, at a time when I was beginning to make progress with the child, she was removed from my care. In the middle of the night, and without my knowledge. I believe I was drugged, and so was Oa. I woke to find her gone.” Her voice faltered. She took a sip of water, and Simon touched her elbow lightly with his fingers. “I haven’t seen her since.”
“Were drugs used?” This was from a startled-looking woman from Eastern Europe.
Adetti folded his arms. “There’s absolutely no proof of such an allegation.”
“I assume ExtraSolar believes Dr. Adetti’s actions were justified?” It was the regent from Oceania, a man Isabel had met in Australia. She knew him to be hardheaded but fair.
“Of course they were justified!” Adetti erupted. “Listen, we brought in this—this Magdalene—as an anthropologist. She’s not a physician, not even a medtech, yet she questioned my research and interfered with it. She broke quarantine, she destroyed equipment, and she obstructed communication with the subject!” He glared around the table. “We’re replacing her as guardian.”
Several heads were shaking. Boreson said icily, “You all understand how upset Dr. Adetti is by the interruption in his work.”
“Where is the child now?” Fujikawa asked.
“We’re going to explain about that,” Adetti began.
Boreson interrupted him. “We deemed it necessary to place the girl out of the public eye.” Her cheek twitched once, twice, three times. She pressed her hand to her face.
Isabel tapped her reader, and read from the screen. “I quote from the Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment: ‘Interference in native affairs is forbidden to all Offworld Port Force employees. This includes, but is not limited to, dispensing unauthorized Earth materiel, interfering with native culture, engaging in violence against native citizens, and fraternization with native citizens.’ ” She lifted her eyes. “End quote.”
Next to her Simon put his elbows on the table and set his fingertips together.
Isabel said firmly, “I count three violations of the Terms of Employment. In light of this, and my other objections, I request that the regents instate me as Oa’s permanent guardian.” She closed her reader with a click. “I am lodging a formal complaint with World Health over the violations of the human rights of this Sikassa child.”
Adetti almost shouted, “She’s not a child, dammit!”
His voice echoed in a sudden, embarrassing silence. Every face turned to him.
Simon made a small sound in his throat.
Fujikawa held up one hand. “Pardon, please. Forgive my slowness in understanding. We understood this was a young girl—” He glanced down at the flexcopy on the table before him. “One point thirty-seven meters of height, thirty-five point three-eight kilograms of weight, blood pressure and heart rate normal for a child of her size. There is nothing about her that is inconsistent with an age of ten years old.” He scanned the sheet again. “No dwarfism, no other abnormality.”
Gretchen Boreson said faintly, “We are delighted at this chance to explain . . .”
Isabel turned to Simon, her heartbeat thudding in her ears.
He gave her a small nod, a gesture meant to reassure. Everyone else stared at Adetti, some openmouthed, some frowning. Boreson’s cheek wrinkled like paper where her fingers pressed against it.
Adetti coughed. “You’re right. Dr. Fujikawa. The girl appears to be about ten years old. But in actuality, she is much older.”
“How much older?” Fujikawa said.
Adetti said, “We’re not sure yet.”
Isabel stole another glance at Simon. He was gazing at his steepled fingers.
“Have you asked the child—the girl—herself?” Fujikawa pressed.
The ESC physician’s lip curled. “Oh, yes. Repeatedly. She won’t answer.”
Isabel blazed across the table at Adetti, “Or can’t answer. Or is afraid to answer.”
The regent from the Middle East, an Iranian woman with a silk scarf wrapped around her thick graying hair, asked, “Why would she not answer? What would be the point in keeping her age a secret?” She looked to Isabel for a response.
Isabel took a deep breath. “I’m trying to sort that out, Madame Mahmoud. It could be a cultural issue. But I can’t do it without her.” She turned to Boreson one more time, and choked out, “What have you done with her? Where is Oa?”
*
OA HAD SPENT hours watching from the window as the not-canoes traced their aimless patterns back and forth across the bay. Her hands and one cheek were bandaged. Someone had used a heavy comb on her hair, tugging and tugging at her scalp to remove the splinters of glass. A guard now lounged just inside the door to the apartment, arms folded, yawning and bored. Oa ignored her.
A whole day passed, and then another. Pale Gretchen came. She ordered the guard outside, and then sat again on the couch, poised like a snake over Oa’s food tray. Oa learned that she would leave sooner if Oa drank from a glass, or took a bite of some food and then set it down again. Gretchen would drink from the glass, or finish Oa’s half-eaten fruit or bread, and abruptly depart. Once she clumsily replaced one of Oa’s bandages, and carried the used and bloody one away. Doctor came once, making Oa lie down under the spider machine, but after that he, too, left her alone. Food trays appeared through a cupboard. The auto-cleaner whirred around the apartment. Towels and soap appeared while Oa slept. She saw no one else.
She knelt beside the tall window for hours, watching raindrops slither down the glass, or feeling the weak sunshine of this world on her cheeks, and she sifted through her memories.
Oa remembered the tatwaj on the island of the anchens. They knew it was time when the white smoke billowed up from the islands of the people, three steady columns far off, at the very edge of the blue horizon. They looked at each other, Micho and Usa and Ette and Bibi and the others, and then they ran to assemble the rough needles they made from the bones of birds, the ink they made by mixing water from Mother Ocean with a powder they ground from the gallnuts that grew on the nuchi trees. The anchens trudged together up the hill to the kburi, and built a fire. This fire they made very small. They didn’t dare create the great white smoke columns of the people, or they would be punished for raising a false alarm.
Their tatwaj was a private thing. They knelt together around the tiny fire, in the presence of Raimu-ke, and they marked each other. Micho was the best at it, his designs almost as nice as their first ones. After his death, they took turns etching the four-pointed motif into their skin.
Once a man came to their island, his canoe blown off course by a storm. He was wrinkled and gray-haired. He was the man who used to be Ette’s father. When he saw Ette, he seized her arm and sneered at
the row of marks, the signs Micho and later Po had labored over. He shouted at all of them, saying how foolish they were to go on marking, to pretend that it mattered. Do you think, he snarled, that pretending to hold the tatwaj makes you people?
None of the anchens answered him. When he released Ette’s arm, she fell in a heap at his feet, weeping soundlessly. He turned away from her, his face as tight and dark as a thundercloud.
He was right, of course. It was exactly what they thought. It was what they tried to believe. They knelt around the fire before the kburi and bore the prick of the needle and the sting of the ink, and they begged Raimu-ke to make them people.
Oa remembered the soft-skinned faces, the clear eyes, the tremulous lips of her fellow anchens. She remembered Micho’s long, thin arms, Micho who had grown so tall he looked like a person, though a slender one. She remembered how Ette’s little fingers curled around the inkpot, holding it for Micho, and in later ceremonies, for Po. She remembered that small Bibi cried out at the sticking of the needle, every time, every tatwaj. And she remembered how they would count, afterward, around the fire. The man who had been Ette’s father had spoken truly. They were pretending. They were anchens, and pretending was all they had.
13
OA SPENT HER third day in the apartment alone with the sullen guard. Gretchen didn’t come, nor did Doctor. Meal trays were slipped through the cupboard by invisible hands. The auto-cleaner whirred around the apartment, neatly dodging the guard’s booted feet, circling Oa where she knelt by the windowsill.
Oa got up to go into the little bathroom. She looked in the scalloped mirror, and she saw that her bandaged cheek had gotten dirty, and her hair tangled again. She didn’t do anything about it. She wandered back to the windows to watch for Isabel, but without much hope. Raimu-ke had tried, she thought, but it seemed the power of Earth was too great for her.
Darkness shrouded the white peaks of the western mountains, and shadows crept over the water while she knelt beside the windowsill. The white gulls cried to her from beyond the glass. She let her chin rest on her arm, nestled in the soft warmth of Isabel’s black sweater, and she followed the circling birds with her eyes. When the darkness was complete, she could still see them, their white feathers glowing against the night sky.
She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep until the click of the lock releasing woke her. She startled, and scrambled to her feet. The sudden light from the corridor dazzled her eyes, and she blinked, not knowing if it was night or day.
The guard spoke, and a man’s voice answered, a voice she didn’t recognize. She pressed her back to the window, the sweater pulled tightly round her, and she peered into the brightness.
Her eyes had not yet adjusted when she heard Isabel’s voice. “Oa! Are you all right?”
Oa pushed away from the window, stumbling in her haste. Isabel! She tried to answer, but her voice squeaked and broke. She tried again, “Yes. Yes, Isabel! Oa is—all right.” She ran across the expanse of white carpet.
Isabel met her halfway, looking just as Oa remembered, bare scalp gleaming above her white collar and black shirt and trousers. A man was with her, and some other people in the corridor. They came into the apartment cautiously, giving each other little glances, and then staring at Oa, but Oa cared only that Isabel was there, that she looked the same, that she had not changed. “Isabel is—all right?” Oa breathed. She wanted to throw her arms around her, but she felt too shy. She settled for standing as close as she dared.
Isabel’s lamplight smile banished every shadow from the room. “Isabel is fine,” she said, with a little laugh. “Isabel is fine now.”
*
AT THE SIGHT of Oa, Isabel felt as if a weight had suddenly lifted from her soul, a weight she had not properly measured before that moment. The child wore white bandages on both hands, and on one cheek. No one had reported that the girl was injured, but Isabel’s relief outweighed her anger. Her arms tingled with the urge to hug the girl. A rush of gratitude stole her breath.
She nodded to Simon, and included Dr. Fujikawa and Madame Mahmoud, the designated observers, in her glance. “This is Oa of Virimund,” she said, her voice husky. “Could you say hello, Oa? This is my very good friend Simon. He and these other people wanted to meet you.”
Oa needed a bath. Her hair needed brushing. Her bandaged cheek was smudged, and her nails were dirty, but she managed a smile at Isabel, and a shy glance at the others. “Hello,” she said in a small voice. Her hand stole into Isabel’s, and Isabel sighed and closed her fingers around it, feeling the stickiness of the bandage against her palm.
Simon said, “It’s good to see you at last, Oa.”
Oa turned her face up to Isabel. “Oa goes with Isabel now?”
“Yes, indeed,” Isabel said. “Oa is coming with Isabel.”
Oa’s wide eyes flicked around the room. “Doctor?” she whispered.
Isabel followed her gaze to the medicator. “Not today, Oa,” she said. “Not today.”
Relief gave way all at once to a wave of fatigue, the aftermath of worry and of the hours of wrangling she had endured in the conference room. Adetti had fought Oa’s removal from his control with every argument at his disposal. Without Simon, Isabel would have never won the battle. Simon had countered every assertion with facts. Since Isabel showed no infection, nor did the hydro workers, he convinced the regents that the child should be freed at last from her isolation. He failed to win revocation of the extraordinary empowerment provision, but he succeeded in securing Isabel’s guardianship. As a concession, ExtraSolar was allowed to post a guard over both of them. But Oa was to be in Isabel’s care until the next meeting.
They had a week until then, seven days. Isabel wished it were longer. It was hardly enough time, even with Simon’s help, to solve the mystery that was Oa.
*
OA CLUNG TO the white rail that ringed the boat—ferry, Isabel had said, it was called a ferry—and laughed into the wind. Her hair, tied back with a wide red ribbon, lifted behind her head, and the cold air brought tears to her eyes. She felt intoxicated with freedom, with the joy of open spaces, moving air, birds wheeling above her. She glanced around to check that Isabel was still nearby.
She was. She had pulled a knit cap over her bare head, and wrapped herself in a black coat. Beside her stood the man, the doctor, called Simon. He was a little taller than Isabel, and a little older, with a thin face and clear brown eyes that seemed tired, and a bit sad. His brown hair blew in his eyes as the ferry chugged across the gray water. Behind Doctor Simon and Isabel was the guard, but Oa didn’t mind this one. It was the ship lady. Matty Phipps.
She looked ahead once again, letting the wind blow into her open mouth, stealing her laughter even as it pealed into the misty sky. It hardly seemed possible that only yesterday she had wakened alone on Gretchen’s hard gold couch. Now she had a bedroom right next to Isabel’s, and a big bathroom with a tub to soak in. There was no spider machine. There were clothes, all warm and soft and new. There had been hot soup and fresh bread, and now there was what Doctor Simon called an “outing.”
It wasn’t easy to understand Doctor Simon. When Isabel spoke, her voice was clear and slow, each word precisely separated from the ones before and after. Doctor Simon spoke fast, and the words sounded different in his mouth. But Isabel liked Doctor Simon, Oa knew that. And if Isabel liked Doctor Simon, Oa would, too. She would listen very closely, and in a few days she would understand him as well as she did Isabel.
When Isabel explained that Simon was a doctor, too, Oa had asked anxiously, “Doctor?”
And Isabel understood immediately. “Yes. A very good, very smart doctor.”
“Spider machine?”
Isabel had touched her hand. “Oa, I will not lie to you. Simon will be examining you. But if he needs to use the medicator, I will be right with you every moment. I promise. ”
Today, at least, there would be no spider machine. Today was their “outing.” Ahead lay a green island where th
ey would walk, Isabel had promised, and have a meal, and not come back to the city for hours. Oa bounced on her toes, and cried out her thanks. The wind snatched her words from her lips and hurled them away to sail up through the piled gray clouds, on through the emptiness of space, to fly past the stars to the island of the anchens, and the kburi, and the invisible ear of Raimu-ke.
*
SIMON CAME TO Isabel’s suite very early the next morning, carrying a little sheaf of flexcopies and a wavephone in his hand. Isabel gave him a cup of excellent espresso, and he savored it, seated on the couch. Her window faced east, over the roofs of the Multiplex, all of them layered with solar panels.
“Do you suppose those are any help in this cloudy place?” he asked Isabel, gesturing to the panels.
“Doesn’t seem likely, does it?” She stood by the window with her coffee cup in her hand. “I’ll rouse Oa in a bit, Simon. I wanted to let her sleep. She was exhausted.”
“That’s fine. No hurry.”
“Thank you for yesterday, by the way. We both needed it. A day off from worrying.”
“It was a good day.” His wavephone buzzed and he made a little gesture of apology as he picked it up. “This is Dr. Edwards.”
“Simon?” The voice sounded even more fragile than usual.
“Anna.”
Isabel turned from the window, her hand to her lips.
“Simon, I needed to know . . . I want to know what’s happening. The news is saying . . .”
“Anna, I’m sorry. I should have called you. I—it’s been a busy time.”
Isabel averted her eyes as she circled the couch and disappeared into the tiny kitchen. Simon covered his eyes with his hand, and tried to think what to say to his wife. He could see her worried face in his mind’s eye, the habitual lines of fatigue. He tried to muster some feeling of affection. Mostly he felt pity. And irritation. He hated himself for it. “I’m sorry if the news worried you, Anna. Tell me about it.”
“It’s about this meeting of the regents, and your name keeps coming up. Something to do with Virimund, and something about a child. What is it about Virimund that involves you, Simon? Who is this little girl?”
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