The Child Goddess

by Louise Marley

  “A medtech’s not the same as a doctor.”

  “No. I suppose not.”

  “Anyway, your Dr. Edwards went into twilight sleep twelve days into the voyage. He’s just coming out now.”

  *

  SIMON EDWARDS LOOKED pale when they met in the mess hall at the next meal. Jin-Li carried a tray to his table and, with a raising of eyebrows for permission, sat across from him.

  “Jin-Li,” he said, his voice rasping slightly. “When do you start to feel human again?”

  Jin-Li chuckled. “It takes a day or so. Do the exercises, drink a lot of water.”

  Simon reached for a glass. “I’ll do that.”

  “The techs tell me you stayed awake for two weeks of the voyage.” Simon drained the glass of water. “Yes. Jacob Boyer sent me the postmortem on the hydro worker who died. I was trying to find out what happened.”

  “And did you?”

  Simon tried to clear his throat, unsuccessfully. Jin-Li poured him another glass of water and he lifted it in salute before drinking it down. “Thank you. No, I don’t have an answer yet. I’m working on it.” He hesitated, swirling the glass on the table, making concentric rings of condensation. “There’s an odd coincidence, though, between the postmortem scans and Oa’s.”

  Jin-Li paused, holding the teacup. “Oa’s?”

  Simon nodded, his lips twisting slightly. “Yes. Not a welcome discovery, is it?”

  “Isabel won’t like it.”

  “No, and I don’t either. But I don’t know what it means yet.”

  “If you want to give me a copy of the readouts. I’ll put them into the file.”

  “Oh, yes,” Simon said. “I should have thought of that. I’m not used to working with an archivist, you know. In the Victoria Desert, we kept our own records.”

  Jin-Li smiled. “Not Port Force.”

  Simon chuckled wearily. “Most definitely not Port Force.”

  Jin-Li waited a moment, and then asked delicately, “And so—Dr. Edwards. You’ll be there when Isabel wakes up?”

  His eyes slid away, up to the blank wall of the mess. “Yes. I planned on it.”

  “She’ll be glad of that.”

  Simon’s brows drew together and he glared at the empty wall. When he spoke, his voice was hard. “She may be, Jin-Li. I don’t know. Things are . . . Things are difficult between us.”

  Jin-Li said nothing, letting a long pause stretch between them. The mess was empty except for the two of them, and the sound of the ventilation system swelled in the silence. Jin-Li stared at the table, wondering whether Simon wanted to talk, or be left alone.

  “I’m not a religious man,” he said at last. “And I don’t really understand what drives Isabel to . . . to be what she is. I understand the work, her dedication to studying people, trying to understand the societies that shape them. But her calling mystifies me.”

  Jin-Li supposed he was referring to the Magdalenes’ vow of celibacy. Perhaps he couldn’t bring himself to speak openly of something so close to his heart.

  “I knew someone on Irustan,” Jin-Li ventured. “Someone extraordinary, rather like Isabel. Someone who felt a responsibility I could not understand.”

  Simon drank more water, and waited.

  With one finger, Jin-Li traced a crack in the plastic of the table. “It was something about honor. Duty.”

  Simon said, “I’m not sure I would want to change Isabel, even if I could.”

  Jin-Li refilled the glass. Simon sipped automatically, and then stared into the clear water. “I’m not half so honorable as she is,” he murmured. “I’ve acted in my own interest, and people have been hurt by it.”

  Jin-Li waited, watching the doctor’s lean, sensitive face.

  “I have so much to atone for,” Simon said, and pushed himself away from the table. “And right now, I should . . .” There was an undertone in his words, a tinge of regret, and of shame. “I should call my wife.”

  *

  SIMON FOUND THE r-wave center deserted. He routed his call after checking the chronometer for Geneva, and used the speaker. He leaned back in his chair, glad there was no video feed from this far out. It was clear enough by the sound of her voice that she was tense and unhappy.

  “Simon? Are you there?”

  “I’m here, Anna. How are you?”

  “I’m all right.” She paused. “Thank you for having Hilda check with me now and then. It’s good to see someone who’s not from school.”

  “Are things okay at school?”

  “Yes. But very busy. Our head count is twelve over maximum.”

  “Did you tell Hilda?”

  “She’s making a request at World Health for more staff.”

  “Good, that’s good. Weather?”

  He heard Anna’s sigh, cut off as if she had made up her mind to be cheerful. “It’s summer here, Simon.”

  “I know. I guess that means it’s hot.”

  “Unbearably.”

  “You should get away, Anna, go up to the mountains for a weekend.”

  She paused, and he could imagine her straightening, rubbing her face, determined to be pleasant. “Good idea,” she said, although he knew perfectly well she would never do it. “You’ve been sleeping all this time, then,” she said.

  “I just woke up a few hours ago,” he answered. “We’re almost to Virimund.”

  “What happens next?”

  “The rest of the team wakes up, gets adjusted. And then we make planetfall.” He heard a noise in the corridor outside, and he shifted in his chair. “Anna, I’ll have to go now.”

  “But, Simon—I haven’t spoken to you in more than a year! Can’t we—when will you call again?”

  He hesitated, not certain what was the right thing to do. “Anna—I don’t know what we’ll find when we land, what the facilities are. It may be hard.”

  She paused again, and when she spoke, her voice, even over the vast reaches of empty space, had an edge to it. “I’ll just wish you good luck, then, Simon.”

  “Thank you, Anna. I’ll call again as soon as I can.”

  “Simon—” Her voice faltered, and steadied. “I miss you.”

  “Take care, Anna. Take care of yourself.”

  When the call was over, Simon sat on for a few moments, listening to the hum of the ship’s machinery around him. He tried, for a few moments, to remember the young woman he had married, the shy, smiling girl whose quick mind and quiet ways had appealed to the young, preoccupied physician he had been then. He could hardly retrieve the memories. They seemed beyond his reach, as distant as Earth from Virimund, and he could see no way to recover them.

  *

  ISABEL HAD SPECIFIED that she wanted to be fully awake and recovered from twilight sleep before Oa roused. Simon watched her sleeping face as the tech spoke to the medicator. Her closed eyelids and slightly parted lips were pale, her brows smooth. Her hair had grown in, fine straight dark strands that stirred in the gentle breeze from the circulation fans. Simon touched her hair with one finger to feel its texture. He knew it would be gone within an hour of her waking.

  “Doctor?” the tech said. “She’ll be awake in a moment. There’s nothing more for me to do, as long as you’re going to stay here. You can buzz if you need me.” He pointed to a button on the wall beside Isabel’s cradle.

  “That’s fine,” Simon said. “I’ll be right here.”

  The tech nodded, gathered up a few bits of equipment, and left them. In the cradle opposite Isabel’s, the child still slept, the brown teddy bear tucked under one thin dark hand. Simon pulled a stool close to Isabel and sat down.

  Her breast rose and fell, and then again, her breath coming quicker as she swam up from oblivion. Her eyelids fluttered, opened, closed again.

  Her fingers, twined together over her midriff, opened and stretched, and she drew an audible breath. She muttered something Simon didn’t catch, and he bent close to her.

  “Isabel,” he said gently. “Time to wake up now.”
<
br />   She breathed, “Time?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Time. It’s Simon, Isabel.”

  “Simon?” Her hand groped, reaching out.

  “Yes.” He took her hand in his, lightly. “Yes, Isabel, it’s Simon. I’m right here.”

  Her lips curved. “Simon. Simon. I thought I was dreaming . . .”

  He had one eye on the medicator readout, the other on her eyelids struggling to open. He chuckled softly. “You may have been dreaming, Isabel, but I’m here. It’s time to wake up. Do you feel all right?”

  Her eyelids lifted slowly, reluctantly. Her eyes were blurry with sleep. “Simon,” she breathed again, smiling. “Darling Simon.” She put her hands on the sides of the cradle, trying to pull herself up. He reached to help her, his hands under her shoulders, sliding down her back as she rose to a sitting position. He glanced back at the readout, checking that her blood pressure was stabilizing, her temperature coming up, her heart rate and respiration reaching normal levels.

  Startled, he felt her hand on the back of his neck, her cheek against his arm. She drew herself to him, and her slender warmth, the very aliveness of her fine-boned body, was irresistible. He put his face against her hair, and held her close.

  “Where have you . . .” she began, still hoarse with sleep.

  “Isabel,” he murmured. “We’re on the transport, remember? Almost to Virimund.”

  He felt the stiffening of her shoulders, the slight intake of her breath. Over her shoulder, he saw the numbers on the readout screen spike, and then settle. She didn’t move, but he felt, very distinctly, how she shrank within herself. She was still in the circle of his arms, but she had, definitely and unmistakably, withdrawn.

  He released her abruptly. “Isabel . . . you reached for me . . . but I didn’t mean to . . .”

  She put her hands to her face and rubbed her eyes. “No, Simon, don’t. I know. I know.”

  He stood, and stepped back from the cradle. “I just wanted to be here when you woke.”

  A long, painful moment passed before she took her hands from her eyes, and turned her face up to him. In her habitual gesture, her palms went to her scalp. “Oh,” she said in surprise.

  He managed a grin. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Mother Burke has hair.”

  Her answering smile was tremulous. “Not for long.”

  “I thought not.”

  She looked past him, to the sleeping Oa. “Is she all right?”

  He glanced at Oa’s readout, and then back to Isabel’s. “Yes, she is, and so are you. Give yourself a couple of hours, do a few exercises, and you’ll be ready to wake her.”

  Isabel drew a deep, shaky breath. “Okay. Okay. Help me out of here, will you, Simon?”

  He stepped back to her cradle, and extended his hand to her, keeping his grip on her hand and elbow as impersonal as he could. She swung her legs over the edge of the cradle, put her feet gingerly on the floor, grimacing.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Pins and needles,” she said briefly. She tried to stand, but had to lean on his arm. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Isabel,” he said. He knew his tone sounded flat, even a little angry. He tried to lighten it. “I felt the same,” he added. “Take your time.”

  Her eyes were beginning to regain their usual clarity, that lighted-from-within quality that had turned his head from the instant of their first meeting. “I’m sorry about . . . about what happened just now. I wasn’t fully awake.”

  He patted her hand where it rested on his forearm. “I know. Vulnerable moment,” he said. “Forget it.”

  She took another deep breath, steadier this time. “All my moments with you are vulnerable, I’m afraid.”

  He averted his eyes to hide his rush of emotion. His chest ached with wanting to hold her. “I can’t help it, Isabel,” he said softly. “Nothing has changed for me.”

  *

  COMPUNCTION MADE ISABEL’S heart thud painfully in her chest. For that brief time, those seconds of first awakening, being in Simon’s arms had felt like coming home. It was the dream that had betrayed her, a dream in which she wasn’t Mother Burke but Isabel, without commitments, without duty, without her vow to honor. In her dream her body ruled, and Simon was there. Waking, with his hands lifting her, his familiar voice assuring her, the transition had been seamless, and all too easy.

  And now, knowing she had hurt him, she wished it had not happened. At least, she thought, part of her wished it; the other part of her, the betraying part, wanted to step back in time, to savor those few seconds once again.

  She saw how he dropped his eyes, disguising his feelings. She wanted to reach out to him, to draw him back to her, to comfort him, but it was not her prerogative. She had made her choice long before.

  She turned away from him, and went to bend over Oa’s cradle.

  “We can wake her whenever you’re ready,” Simon said. He stayed where he was as he spoke.

  Isabel glanced over her shoulder. “I want to take an hour or two first,” she said. “So that I’m really . . .” She lifted one shoulder, searching for the word.

  “Back in the world?” Simon said.

  She managed a smile. “That’s it. Back in the world.” She touched her ragged, half-grown hair. “And oh, my lord, get rid of this.”

  “It’s not so bad, you know,” he told her, laughing. He seemed to be recovered.

  Isabel groaned. “I’m sure I look an absolute horror! And Oa would be frightened to death at the change.”

  “You could never look an absolute horror,” Simon said. “But go on, there’s time. Get rid of your hair. Get some exercise and have a shower. Then we can wake her.”

  Isabel gathered her things and turned to the door, then turned back. “Simon,” she said expectantly. “Have you seen it? Virimund?”

  He nodded. “It’s beautiful. Shades of green I’ve never seen before. Go on and get yourself together. When you’re ready, we can go to the bridge. There’s an observation bay.”

  Isabel moved carefully, feeling a little shaky on her feet. Surely, she thought, it was the aftereffect of twilight sleep, or it was anxiety about what was to come. It was not the memory of her dream, or the waking sensation of Simon’s arms around her, that made her tremble. It couldn’t be. She would not allow it.

  *

  THE OBSERVATION BAY was kept purposely dim so as not to fade the view beyond the long, curving space window. Jin-Li watched the Magdalene, her newly depilated head shining under the amber lights, lead Oa into the bay to look down on the planet beneath. Isabel kept a protective arm around the child’s shoulders. Simon Edwards followed, the lines of his face sharpened by the lighting, his eyes shadowed. Jin-Li observed them all from beneath lowered eyelids, thinking they looked something like an unusual family, cobbled together of disparate parts that didn’t quite fit.

  Oa’s eyes took in everything, their whites glowing in the dimness, their irises dark as space itself. Though she had been awake only an hour, she seemed to have thrown off the aftereffects of twilight sleep without difficulty. She moved to the window, and rested her small hands on the molded sill as she gazed down at the world of emerald waters. Her home. Isabel stood beside her, pointing, murmuring something. Simon stood apart. Once, Isabel looked back at him, and a moment of silent communication flashed between the two of them.

  They were close enough now to see the scattered islands ringing Virimund’s equator. Fly-overs had counted six hundred fifty-eight of them, most little more than atolls. Tides were minimal, with no moon to stir them. Only in the western hemisphere were the islands large enough to support any settlement, and there were no more than a dozen of those. ExtraSolar had chosen the most level island it could find. Port Force had almost completely deforested it before beginning construction of the power park.

  The island where the children were found was seventy-eight kilometers southwest of the power park. There were only three other islands of any size.

  “Jin-Li?” It was Isabel
, brows raised as if she had spoken more than once.

  “Oh! Excuse me,” Jin-Li said. “I was thinking.”

  Isabel’s eyes flickered with reflected green from Virimund’s oceans. “Indeed,” she said easily. “There’s a lot to think about just now, isn’t there? I only wondered if you had learned anything new.”

  “Assuming you mean about the Sikassa, no.”

  “But the anchens—the other children—are still there?”

  “Something is there. The scanners show heat signatures, but they can’t say how many . . . and they can’t say that they’re people, either.”

  “No,” Isabel said. She turned her eyes back to the planet. “No, I suppose that’s up to us.”

  Oa was staring through the thick glass. “Oa does not see the people.”

  “I think we’re still too far out to see anything,” Isabel said.

  Jin-Li stepped up to the window and traced the globe with one finger. “Your island is about there, Oa. As far as I can tell.”

  Oa glanced up at her. “Jin-Li goes to the island?”

  “Yes. I’m the archivist now.”

  Oa tried the word, carefully. “Ar-chi-vist.”

  Jin-Li smiled down at her. “Right. Observer and recorder. Historian.”

  “Ar-chi-vist.” Oa looked back at the rippling green and white of Virimund. “Jin-Li sees the anchens.”

  “Hope so.”

  “Oa, too. Oa hopes.”

  21

  THE SHUTTLE FLIGHT from Earth had not troubled Isabel, but the descent to Virimund left her headachy and slightly nauseated, the roar of the thrust engines vibrating in her very bones. She supposed it to be the aftereffects of twilight sleep. She had always felt slightly disoriented when she slept through a transcontinental flight and waked in a different hemisphere and completely different time zone, but she knew no word for the depth of the disorientation she felt now. It made her muscles feel strange, and her mind cloudy. The chronograph on her portable told her it was the memorial day of the humble St. Anthony of Padua, patron of those whose lives take unexpected turns. It was appropriate, she thought wryly. When the cabin door opened at last, and the rich, salty fragrance of the ocean world swept in, she took a deep, slow breath. The air felt thick in her lungs, and heavy with moisture after the dry air of the ship. It smelled of salt and some pungent, utterly alien spice.