The Child Goddess

by Louise Marley

  Isabel led Oa to a seat on a long bench facing the center of the church. Matty Phipps sat on the bench behind theirs. Isabel pointed to the white table. “That’s the altar, Oa.”

  “Al-tar.”

  “Right. Altar. And you see, there beside the altar?” She pointed to the cross, with the suffering figure hanging on it.

  “Raimu?”

  Isabel shook her head. “I don’t know, Oa. We call it a crucifix.”

  “Cru-ci-fix.”

  “That’s right.” Isabel knelt, and put her hands together, as she did in her morning prayers. Oa knelt beside her in imitation. Isabel smiled at her, and then closed her eyes and turned forward, toward the white table. And the crucifix. Some people in long robes, like those of the statues, moved here and there lighting candles, spreading a cloth on the table, setting silver cups on a sideboard. All of it together, Oa thought, made a kburi. She almost touched Isabel’s arm to tell her so, but then she dropped her hand. She wasn’t sure.

  Isabel opened her eyes, and the two of them sat down. A moment later, a crash of sound made Oa jump. Isabel touched her hand, and Oa relaxed, but it took a few seconds for her ears to adjust to the volume of it, to understand that it was music. It seemed to fill her head right to the brim. The people in robes made a procession up one of the aisles to their places around the kburi—the altar—and Ash Wednesday began.

  After a time Isabel left Oa with Matty and joined a long line of people making a slow progress around the altar. When she returned, she bore a smear of gray on her forehead, and she knelt again for a long time. There was singing, and a lot of incomprehensible words. Oa watched the people move back and forth, up to the altar, back to their seats, the robed ones weaving in and out with slow, sure steps. Everyone seemed to know just what to do and when to do it, as if they had performed the ritual many times, and always in the same way. Oa supposed that, as with the tatwaj, they had. The mark on Isabel’s forehead reminded her of the tatwaj, too, although it couldn’t mean the same thing. Of that she had no doubts at all.

  They left the church together, with Matty following. One of the men in robes stood by the tall doors, shaking hands with the people who filed past him. He wore the same white collar as Isabel, and he put out his hand to her. “You’re a Magdalene,” he said.

  “Yes.” Isabel shook his hand. “I’m Isabel Burke.”

  He nodded. “I saw you on the news.” He glanced down at Oa, past her to Matty, then back to Oa. He had kind eyes, she thought. Not brilliant ones, like Isabel’s, but nice. “This is the girl, then?” he asked.

  “This is Oa,” Isabel said. “Oa of Virimund.”

  “Hello, Oa,” the priest said.

  Oa ducked her head. Isabel said, “Oa is rather shy,Father.”

  The priest chuckled. “I am, too, Oa. Don’t worry about it.” He released Isabel’s hand, saying, “Mother Burke, the sacristan told me you called. It was generous of you, especially under the circumstances.”

  “I’ve missed saying Mass,” Isabel said softly.

  The other priest nodded, and bent closer to murmur, “Our bishop is old-fashioned.”

  “I understand,” Isabel said. She turned to go down the broad stone steps.

  The priest called after them, “Good luck, Mother Burke. I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Isabel said over her shoulder. As they descended the stairs to the street, Oa heard her say, under her breath, “We’ll need them.”

  *

  ISABEL GAZED OUT the car’s window as they descended the hill to the Multiplex. Spring was in full swing, she decided, though the indifferent sunshine spoke of winter still. But daffodils and tulips had sprung up in window boxes and beds, and buds swelled slowly on the deciduous trees. The Tuscan hills would be turning green under the March sunshine. She thought with a pang of the Mother House, the quiet chatter of the novices clustered on the patio to study, the ringing of the bell for Mass in the ancient chapel. Marian in her office, waiting to hear of Isabel’s success, of the bolstering of the Magdalenes’ reputation.

  “Isabel?”

  She tore herself back to the present. “Yes, Oa.”

  Oa pointed to Isabel’s forehead and whispered, a question, “Tatwaj?”

  Isabel couldn’t think for a moment what she meant. She put her hand to her forehead, and when it came away smeared with ash, she remembered.

  “Oh,” she said. She turned her hand to show Oa the smudge. “This is ash, which is why we call it Ash Wednesday. Do you know the word ‘ash’? Ash is what’s left when you burn something. In this case, palm branches—that is, fronds of the palm tree. The ashes remind us of our mortality.”

  Oa sighed and nodded. “Not-tatwaj,” she said, with an unreadable expression on her face, something like relief, something like sadness.

  *

  SIMON WAS WAITING in their suite, and he stood up when they came in. “How was it?”

  Isabel shrugged out of her coat. “It was traditional,” she said. “The cathedral is a bit dilapidated, but it’s a beautiful old building. Wonderful bronze doors, and an oculus.” She turned and helped Oa with her coat and hat. “And a nice young priest to say Mass,” she added, hoping she had kept the wryness from her tone.

  “Ah.” Simon smiled at her, and she allowed herself to enjoy the warmth that their mutual understanding always gave her. He said, “Do you want some lunch?”

  “Not for me,” Isabel said. “But Oa is probably hungry. Are you, Oa?”

  Oa had settled herself on one of the chairs with her little reader.

  Matty Phipps had brought some new disks from the Multiplex library, and she was spending every spare minute with them. She spoke without glancing up. “Oa is hungry.”

  Matty laughed. “Oa is always hungry,” she said cheerfully. “And so am I. How about if I take her down to the kitchens? Okay by you, Mother Burke?”

  “Thank you, Matty. You’re a great help.”

  “Nah.” She grinned and turned to the door. “Come on, Oa. Food!”

  With a glance at Isabel, Oa pushed away her reader and followed Matty.

  “I’ll see you soon, Oa.”

  Matty grinned and waved as they went out into the hall.

  The moment the door closed, Simon said, “I want to show you something, Isabel.”

  The table was covered with piles of plastic-sleeved disks, a few scattered hardcopies, piles of flexcopies, and Simon’s computer. He turned the screen to face Isabel. She sat down, and he pulled a chair close beside her. When his shoulder brushed hers, the warmth of flesh and solidness of bone radiated strength and confidence, made her want to lean into him. Sometimes, she thought, her little talent was more a curse than a blessing. She bit her lip to make herself concentrate. “You see this,” he said, pointing to a figure on the screen. “This is the hormone the medicator couldn’t identify.” He brought up a scanning image to overlay on the chart. “And this” —pointing again— “is a small anterior pituitary tumor. It was on the imaging scans, and Adetti didn’t want you to see it. That’s what’s producing the hormone.”

  “What is the hormone, Simon? What is it doing?”

  “Well,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “As to what it is—give it whatever name fits, because we haven’t seen it before. Adetti wants to call it delayed senescence factor. As to what it does—it’s producingtelomerase.”

  Isabel stared at the three-dimensional image, the tiny scarlet cloud Simon had touched with his fingertip. Her heart beat loudly in her ears.

  Even the word “tumor” was upsetting. “Benign tumor, Simon?”

  “Yes, it’s benign.”

  “And what’s telomerase?”

  “First you have to know what telomeres are.” He leaned past her to bring up another screen. “Telomeres are the caps that stabilize the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, its telomeres get a little shorter, thereby dictating how many times a cell can divide before it shuts down.” He pointed to an artist’s rende
ring of a cell. “Telomerase is an enzyme that lengthens and strengthens telomeres, replacing the bits of DNA lost in ordinary cell division. Cancer cells have a lot of telomerase, for example. It stops malignant tumors from shedding telomeres, the natural process of cell decay and death, and helps make the tumors stronger than the healthy cells around them. Oa’s little tumor is producing telomerase, and a lot of it. It’s interacting with her own hormones in some way that will require more study. And it’s stopping her from aging.”

  Isabel stared at the colorful diagram. Hardly knowing she did it, she took her cross in her fingers. “Simon . . . how long . . . I mean, theoretically . . .”

  “Theoretically, Isabel, forever. Barring accidents. I suspect her immune system is almost impregnable. And she probably aged normally right to the point of puberty, and then stopped.”

  “And the others, then . . .” Isabel took a deep breath. “The other children must be the same. Old children.”

  “I think they must be,” Simon said gently.

  “And their parents? The adults?”

  “I hope Oa can tell us something about that,” Simon said. She turned to look at him. He was watching her intently, his expression sympathetic. “There has been no sign of other Sikassa on Virimund. Only the children on the island. I know you don’t want to push Oa, Isabel. But before anything else happens, to her or to the others, we need to understand. And we’re going to be under a lot of pressure from ExtraSolar. They need that power park, to supply the long-range transports. And what they need, the charter nations want them to have. It’s not just Adetti’s ambition we’re dealing with, but a necessity.”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. I see that.” She stood up, and moved to the window, which had the same view as her own, the flat rainwashed roofs of the Multiplex stretching away down the sloping landscape. “But what Adetti and Boreson care about is this hormone, this telomerase-producing substance.”

  “I presume so.”

  Isabel sighed. “He knew? Adetti?”

  “He must have known about the tumor. Whether he was able to understand the function of the hormone, I don’t know. I have more research experience in this area, of course, because I worked with reproductive problems in the Victoria Desert. And—” He laughed. “Frankly, I’m just a hell of a lot smarter than Adetti is.”

  “I know, Simon. I know.” She twisted her fingers together. “He’s so cold, though, he and Boreson both. I’m surprised he didn’t just take out the tumor, squeeze it for all it’s worth.”

  “Maybe he thought of the fable,” Simon mused. “The goose that laid the golden egg.”

  “Yes, perhaps.” She turned her back to the window, and folded her arms. “So this is a profit issue, for Adetti, and for Boreson.”

  “Sure. Fame and fortune. They think they’ve got their hands on an anti-aging miracle.”

  “Maybe they do, Simon.”

  He spread his hands. “If you believe in miracles,” he said. “I’m all for science, myself.”

  She smiled a little, saying drily, “I believe I remember that, Dr. Edwards.”

  Simon stood up, and leaned on the table, his palms pressed flat against the wood. “Isabel. There’s something else.”

  She raised her eyebrows, waiting.

  “They threatened me. Us, I should say.”

  “Threatened us? How?”

  He sighed, and she saw now how tired he was, the lines around his mouth deeply graven. “Somebody’s been doing some digging. I’m afraid.” He straightened, stretching his shoulders. “Probably happy to have anything they can use to discredit us. Somebody at the Victoria project told them.”

  Isabel’s mouth went dry. “Oh, lord. Told them about you and me.”

  He nodded, his lips pursed. “Yes. I’m sorry, Isabel.”

  “But that’s personal!” she exclaimed. She was surprised at how much it hurt, how fresh her shame still was. “That doesn’t affect your professionalism . . . or even mine!”

  “Question of character,” he said shortly. He came around the table to stand beside her. She knew he meant to support her, to comfort her, but his nearness only sharpened her pain.

  “You mean,” she faltered, searching his face with her eyes. “My character. Because of Oa, and the guardianship.”

  “That’s it.”

  He didn’t touch her, but she felt the warmth of him, so close, and she longed to put her head on his shoulder, to let his capable arms take away the weight of responsibility. She shook her head sharply, and moved a step away.

  “They don’t know anything, though, Isabel. Not really.”

  “If they ask me . . .”

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, I know, Mother Burke. If they ask you, you’ll tell them everything. But it’s not you they threatened to ask. It’s Anna.”

  Isabel put her hands over her eyes. “Oh, god, Simon. Anna.”

  “And if she tells them what they want to know, they’ll use it against us.”

  “And will she?”

  He nodded. “She’s one of the most honest people I’ve ever known. I’m not sure she’s capable of a direct lie. Or even a mild prevarication.”

  “Poor Anna,” was all Isabel could say, wearily, sadly. “Poor Anna.”

  16

  WHEN THEY WALKED into the boardroom at the Seattle World Health offices, Isabel felt tension grip the room, a heart-stopping cessation of sound and movement.

  They had decided, she and Simon, that the board of regents should meet Oa.

  Simon led the way, looking fresh and well-rested in a smoke-gray suit with pencil lapels and a cheerful green ribbon tie. Isabel wore a fresh clerical collar, and her Magdalene cross on its simple cord. With Jin-Li’s help, they had shopped for Oa. The girl’s slender arms and long, thin legs were exaggerated by the straight lines of her white neosilk jumpsuit, and her dark skin and hair were glorious against the pale fabric. Isabel had braided her hair into two long plaits that hung over her shoulders and across her flat chest, almost reaching her waist. Oa carried the plush teddy bear in her arms. Her eyes were wide with anxiety, and she touched her tongue to her lips, over and over. She clung tightly to Isabel’s hand.

  Simon had arranged for small readers to be set up at every chair for the tutorial on Oa’s condition. Water carafes waited in the center of the table, and there was a flexcopy chart at each place. All the regents were present as well as Gretchen Boreson and Paolo Adetti. Cole Markham stood beside the door. Boreson held a silver pen in her right hand, and she tapped it incessantly into her left palm. She didn’t look up when Oa came in, but everyone else in the room did.

  Isabel and Simon and Oa sat together at one end of the long table.

  Simon began. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think you will have guessed by now that this young lady is Oa of Virimund.”

  Isabel nodded to Oa, and Oa said, in an almost inaudible whisper, “Hello.”

  The Iranian regent smiled at her. “Hello, Oa.”

  Dr. Fujikawa stared at Oa, and then gave Adetti a deliberate frown.

  Simon let a silence stretch before he cleared his throat and began.

  “Our purpose today,” he said, “is to acquaint the board with the results of our work in the past week. Mother Burke and I will also explain why we think the installation of the Virimund power park should be postponed.”

  Boreson’s eyes flashed, and her scarlet lips pursed. Adetti sat as if carved from stone.

  Madame Mahmoud said, “I hope you know we’re only here to help, Oa.”

  Oa leaned close to Isabel, her cheek almost touching her sleeve. Isabel said gently, “Do you understand Madame Mahmoud, Oa?”

  Oa whispered, “Oa understands.”

  Isabel smiled at the Iranian woman. “Oa’s English is improving every day. She understands almost everything, but she is often unable to express herself in detail.”

  Madame Mahmoud nodded. “Children are very quick in this way.”

  Adetti expelled a noisy breath, and shifted in his ch
air. Boreson shot him a cold look.

  “Madame Mahmoud is right, of course,” Isabel said. “And we understand, Dr. Edwards and I, that Dr. Adetti does not regard Oa as a child.”

  Beside her, Oa hung her head. Isabel went on. “Chronological age, as every medical practitioner knows, is not the same as biological age. And in this unique circumstance, we must also take into consideration emotional and mental age. It’s true that Oa has lived many years—” She squeezed the child’s fingers to reassure her. She had already explained what she would be saying, and why, but Oa’s unease radiated through her very bones, filling Isabel’s hand with a prickly discomfort. “Oa is, by every other criterion, a child. A healthy, intelligent, and often charming child.”

  Simon gave Adetti his practiced cold smile. “Dr. Adetti does not agree with our assessment,” he said. “But that’s not the crux of our discussion today.” He flicked on the small reader before him, and the regents followed his example. As he had with Isabel, he led them through the explanation about osteon counts in cortical bone. He spoke of the stability of Oa’s hormone levels, and of the enzyme that the medicator had not been able to identify. He showed the scan of the small tumor on her pituitary gland, and described it.

  As Simon moved on to his conclusions, Isabel watched Adetti across the table. She didn’t need to touch him to feel his dismay and resentment. The regents gathered around the conference table were, without exception, quick-minded people. Although there was no hint of triumph or scorn in Simon’s demeanor, the implication of Adetti’s failure was unavoidable. And there was no time to waste on diplomacy.

  “We need to discover what caused the tumor, to know if the hydrogen workers on Virimund are at risk,” Simon said finally. “Oa is unable to tell us. Mother Burke has learned a lot from her, which she will share with you in a moment. But as World Health’s advisory physician. I’m categorically opposed to kidnapping more ‘subjects,’ as Dr. Adetti and Administrator Boreson have proposed. What is needed is research on the planet itself, to discover the source of Oa’s condition, and that, presumably, of any other surviving children.”