The Child Goddess

1

THE JANUARY WIND
chilled Isabel Burke’s naked scalp as she trudged up the slope through the winter-dry vineyard. Fingers of dormant grapevines caught at her black shirt and trousers. Desiccated leaves crunched under her feet, and the faint fragrance of burning olive wood floated in the crisp air. She paused for a last look at the pastel houses of San Felice, framed by the sere brown folds of the Tuscan hills. This view had comforted her in the last difficult months.

Above her, in front of the Mother House, she could just see the nose of the long black car in the gravel drive. It was time. She adjusted the white band of her collar with cold fingers and resumed her climb.

The long sweep of aging, stuccoed elegance that was the Magdalene Mother House molded itself to the hillside overlooking the vineyards and the village. Once the castello of a noble Italian family, it now housed the priests and novices of the struggling Priestly Order of Mary Magdalene. Isabel had thought of it as home for the past fourteen years, the length of her priesthood. Its gardens lay black and lifeless, but cheerful yellow lights beckoned from its windows. All the ground-floor rooms were alight, the foyer, the r-wave center, the Mother General’s office.

On the second floor one darkened window marked Isabel’s room, empty now.

And at the foot of the broad cement steps, the black car waited for Isabel.

It had all happened too fast. Ordinarily she would have had months to get ready for field work, months to plan and study. Only two days had passed since she’d met ExtraSolar Corporation’s administrative envoy, Cole Markham, in the Mother General’s office. Two days since she’d learned of the near-alien child taken from her home, transported to Earth, isolated for months in quarantine. Two days of hurried preparation, scanty research, packing. She had bid her fellow priests good-bye, smiled at the novices’ curiosity, thanked the staff as they hurried to help her prepare for her flight to the far northwest coast of America.

Isabel could have refused this assignment, but she didn’t. It was her penance. And she could never have left the child in the control of people like Cole Markham. She had known that the moment she touched his hand.

The Mother General, Marian Alexander, had summoned her early that decisive morning, two days before. Isabel was just leaving Mass in the tiny chapel behind the castello, chatting with two of her sister priests, when Marian’s secretary found her. She circled around to the front of the castello, past the crumbling stonework of the courtyard. An unfamiliar car, long and black, was parked in the drive, gleaming darkly in the pallid sunshine. Isabel went through the double doors and waited briefly in the foyer before Marian put her head out.

Marian Alexander was also bald, like all the Magdalenes. When they could, they wore their black shirts and trousers, the white priest’s collar. But often, in their farflung missions, it was necessary to wear other clothes. The bare scalp, the full tonsure, was their sign of community. It singled them out, sometimes inviting resentment from those Roman Catholics who thought the priesthood should be reserved to men. But the Magdalenes persevered.

Marian was much older than Isabel’s thirty-six years. The Mother General’s thick eyebrows were silver, her pale face lined. Isabel’s own slender brows were still dark, but she knew that she, too, had begun to accumulate lines around her eyes and her mouth. They had deepened in the painful year just past, reminding her of her shame whenever she looked into a mirror.

“Isabel, come in,” the Mother General said, and Isabel obeyed.

A stranger rose at her entrance. He wore a light suit with pencil lapels and a matching shirt, a fashionable look out of place among the simple wooden shelves of paper books, the racks of disks that crowded Marian’s office. His smile was pleasant, but when Isabel shook his hand, a sense of emptiness, a sort of hunger, distressed her. She managed to say, “How do you do, Mr. Markham,” and released his hand as quickly as she dared.

“Mother Burke,” he said. “I’ve been hearing great things about you.”

Isabel turned to Marian, one eyebrow lifted. “Yes,” the Mother General said. “I’ve been giving Mr. Markham your resume, Isabel.” She sat down behind her desk, and Isabel took a chair. Markham stood where he was, hands thrust into his pockets, smiling his bland smile.

“Would you like to explain, Mr. Markham, or shall I?” Marian said.

He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. “I’m happy to do it. Mother Alexander. Thank you.” He smiled down at Isabel as if he were about to give her very good news. “Have you ever heard of Virimund, Mother Burke?”

Isabel linked her hands in her lap and tried not to look away from his face. “One of the expansion worlds, I think?”

“Right, right. I’ve been telling Mother Alexander, here, that Virimund is mostly ocean, but with a ring of equatorial islands. Moderate climate, no moon. ExtraSolar has established a branch of Offworld Port Force on one of the islands to construct a hydrogen retrieval facility—a power park. For the long-range transports, you know. Fuel cells. Electricity.”

He sat down in the chair next to her, leaning forward. She inched back in her chair. “The problem is. Mother Burke,” he said. “We found people there.”

“People? You mean, human beings?”

He nodded. His face adopted a grave expression. “It seems one of the emigrant ships of the old U.N. found this planet and landed there.”

Isabel glanced at Marian. The Mother General was staring at her cluttered desk. Isabel turned back to Markham. “The discovery of a lost colony is a remarkable event, isn’t it? But none of this has been in the news services.”

“You’re right. ESC and Port Force decided it’s best to keep this under wraps for the moment. Until we can figure out what’s happened.

“My superior—the General Administrator of Earth Multiplex—is hoping you can help us.”

Warily, she asked, “Figure out what? Has anyone communicated with these people?”

His eyelids flickered. “Well,” he said. “Not really.” The bland smile returned. “That’s why we need you. Mother Burke. We need an anthropologist.

“And we thought a Magdalene would be best, would be . . . would be sensitive to our needs.”

“Your needs.”

“Yes, yes—confidentiality, you understand.”

Isabel folded her arms. “Who are these people?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, it seems—that is, ExtraSolar thinks they were from one of the first ships. A colony from Africa. The Sikassa.”

“You’re not answering my questions, Mr. Markham. What do you know about them? Their history, their culture—who led them?”

Marian put in, “I told you, Mr. Markham. Isabel is a determined woman.”

“Yes, yes. Well, it’s difficult, Mother Burke. We’re, uh, having trouble communicating with them.”

“Has there been recontact?”

Marian Alexander lifted her head. “Recontact didn’t go well, Isabel.”

“Tell me.”

Markham’s smile wavered slightly. “You have to understand, no one realized they were there—no city lights, no radio signals. Then when the Port Forcemen saw smoke and so forth, they did a fly-over, and found an inhabited island.” He coughed again. “I only read the reports, of course. But there was an incident.”

“What kind of incident?”

The Mother General said, “It was a tragedy, Isabel. We don’t want it to happen again.”

“Someone was hurt?”

Markham sighed. “One of our people died, a man named Garcia. And two of the Sikassa were injured. Our guys didn’t know what to do, so they carried them back to the power park, to the infirmary. One of the Sikassa recovered, but the other—ahem—expired.”

“This is appalling,” Isabel breathed. “How could this have happened?”

“It was most unfortunate,” Markham said lamely. “But the hydro workers didn’t mean to hurt anyone. They were attacked, spears and knives thrown at them by this gang of children. Caught them by surprise, so they said.”

Isabel sat very still. “Did you say—you can’t mean—they were children.”

He nodded, mutely.

Isabel straightened, her back rigid with indignation. “Let me see if I understand, Mr. Markham. Your workers killed an indigene, a child. And ExtraSolar is keeping it quiet.”

“The Sikassa aren’t indigenes,” Markham protested. “They’re Earthers! Emigrants!”

“How long since the emigration? Three centuries? I doubt very much they think of themselves as Earth citizens.” Isabel spoke bitterly. There had been other offenses committed by the ExtraSolar Corporation in its rush for expansion, offenses protested by the Global Coalition, by World Health and Welfare, by the Church. She fixed Marian with a challenging gaze. “Why would the Magdalenes become involved with this disaster?”

The Mother General nodded acknowledgment of the irony. She laid her hands on her desk, palms down. “Isabel. There’s more.”

*

NOW, ON THE
day of her departure, Isabel stepped through the double doors into the warmth and light of the Mother House, wondering how long it might be before she saw her home again. She touched the Magdalene cross on her breast, and offered a petition for patience, for wisdom. For forgiveness.

She stood beside the pile of her luggage and equipment waiting on the marble floor, listening to Markham’s and Marian’s voices from the office. There was nothing more for her to do. She had attended Mass, the memorial day of St. Angela Merici. She had resisted the urge to pick up the wavephone and call Simon. He would take her call, of course, he would come to her if she asked him. But she wouldn’t ask.

The farewell was brief. Marian gave Isabel the Enquirer’s Blessing, and kissed her cheek. The driver of the black car loaded her things into the capacious trunk, held the door for her to get in, and they were off. Isabel watched the castello over her shoulder as they wound down the narrow road leading to the village. Only when she could no longer see its tiled roofs did she turn to face Cole Markham, sitting across from her on the cushioned seat.

The driver negotiated San Felice’s cramped streets, and picked up speed as they turned west toward the Pisa airport. Isabel asked, “Have you seen the child, Mr. Markham?”

“I’ve seen pictures,” he said. He seemed more tense today. Perversely, Isabel preferred this terse, taut mood to the forced sincerity he had displayed at their first meeting.

“Did she look well?”

“I don’t really know anything about children. She looked okay.”

Isabel persisted. “No one seems to know how old she is.”

“Dr. Adetti thinks she’s about ten. But the girl’s not saying.”

“She’s not saying, or no one can understand her?”

He folded his arms. “I don’t really know. Mother Burke. Sorry.”

“Tell me, Mr. Markham. Was it your idea to ask for a Magdalene?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Nothing to do with me. I’m only an envoy. It was the General Administrator’s idea. Gretchen Boreson.”

“And why a medical anthropologist?”

“I guess because they want to know how the Sikassa survived without any help from Earth. That’s a biological issue, isn’t it?”

“It may be.”

After a pause he added, “They called Mother Alexander, and she suggested you.”

Isabel understood that, of course. Marian would have jumped at the commission, and Isabel, under the circumstances, was the perfect choice to fulfill it. She turned her eyes to the peaceful Italian countryside. It always seemed to her that the land of Italy, the age-worn hills, the old farms, the houses of stone and stucco, knew something, some essential life lesson that she had been in search of since her girlhood.

Markham broke into her thoughts. “What is that on your cross?”

She turned from the view, and lifted the cross in her fingers. “Do you mean the flame?”

“Is that what it is?”

She slipped the cord over her head, and handed him the bit of carved wood. He held it awkwardly in his hand as she pointed to the stylized candleflame above the crosspiece. “This symbolizes our charism,” she said. “Our gift, our special grace, is ‘to shed light in dark places.’ Because our patroness, Mary of Magdala, was maligned by untruths.”

“What are these words?”

He handed the cross back, and she ran her finger over the tiny symbols. “It’s old Greek,” she said. “From the Gospel of Mary. It says, ‘Ask what you will.’ ”

“I never heard of a Gospel of Mary.”

She smiled at him. “Many haven’t. It came to light at the turn of the twentieth century, but it wasn’t authenticated for two more centuries.”

“I thought Mary Magdalene was a—excuse me, but—a prostitute.”

“Yes, I understand. It was a myth that developed in the western church, and it’s what we mean when we say she was maligned by untruths.”

He put his head on one side, looking truly interested. “But then what was she?”

Isabel lifted the cross and hung it about her neck again. “She was the first apostle,” she said, stroking the cross with one finger. “The first witness to the Resurrection. And the one with the courage to ask the hard questions.” She put her head back against the leather seat cushion. “And that’s what Magdalenes do—ask hard questions. We are Enquirers. Researchers, investigators—and like our patroness, not always popular.”

“I see.” He drew breath to speak again, but hesitated.

“Do you have more questions?”

He lifted one shoulder in an apologetic way. “I’m curious about the bald heads.”

Isabel lifted her head and ran a hand over her scalp. “The tonsure,” she said. “The Magdalenes travel all over the world, the Moon, Mars—places where we don’t wear a collar, or vestments. The full tonsure is the Magdalene sign of community.”

“You know. Mother Burke—I don’t really get the whole priest thing.”

Isabel chuckled. “It’s not for everyone, Mr. Markham. I could say I don’t get the whole ExtraSolar thing, I suppose.”

He granted her a dry sound that might have been a laugh. “I guess so. But you’re a smart woman. Educated.”

“Is that incongruous with religious orders?”

“I guess I don’t know exactly.”

“In the past, religious orders were often the only way to get an education,” she said.