The Child Goddess (10 page)

11

IT SEEMED TO
Oa that the spider machine’s appetite would never be satisfied. Its microneedles sucked at her wrists, her elbows, her knees, her temples. Its black legs trailed over her face and her chest and made her tremble with horror. Isabel had said there would be no more of it. But Isabel was not here. There was only Doctor.

Oa closed her eyes and retreated into memory.

The anchens found a new nest, after Micho was killed. It was a place of entwined branches and arching roots, a shallow bowl of leaves and moss that they reinforced as best they could. They had tried many times to weave vines, pulling on the thick thorny stems until their fingers bled. If three worked together, they could manage to twist the vines into thick braids, the plaits shading from green to brown as the air leached away the color. The stems stiffened as they dried, and the corner knots became impossible.

Oa remembered her father’s big hands bending, forcing, swiftly twisting the vines to make wall mats and floor mats, to make the roofs of shahto that kept out any raindrops that slipped through the forest canopy. Shahto kept out the forest spiders, but the anchens had only their nest. They had better luck with nuchi bark, soaking it in the surf, pounding it with stones to soften it. They made sleeping mats of the pounded bark, and spread them in the nest, snuggling together at night like abandoned fledglings.

They took turns watching for the forest spiders, crying the alarm when one minced out of the forest on its long, jointed legs. But sometimes the watcher fell asleep. Once, in their old nest, Oa had woken to feel a forest spider crawling up over her hair and onto her face, its legs like needles, its forward eyes glowing amber in the starlight. She had frozen with horror, whimpering in her throat. Micho heard her, and leaped up, seizing one of their digging knives, striking the spider down before it could sink its fangs into her throat. He speared the spider, and flung its body as far as he could into the forest. All the anchens huddled around Oa, stroking her, comforting her. They all knew the forest spider’s bite.

When Doctor released Oa from the spider machine at last, she crept to the long gold couch and curled up in one corner. She tucked her forehead against her knees, and wrapped her arms around her ankles. She still wore the pajamas from the infirmary, with the black sweater pulled tightly around her, more for comfort than for warmth. Night was coming again, and there was still no sign of Isabel.

Gretchen came in after Doctor left. She tried to get Oa to move, to uncurl her body, to join her over a tray of food. She shook her by the shoulder. “Come on, honey, come on now. Eat. Drink something.” Oa tried to cover up her icy, desperate scent by burying her nose in the black wool of her sleeve, breathing the calm fragrance of Isabel. Eventually Gretchen went away, leaving a bowl of soup to chill on the table.

Beyond the locked door, crockery clinked, doors closed, water ran. Past the tall windows the sky darkened. Brilliant lights like tiny white fires burned in the buildings and the streets, flamed from the tops of the great towers like bonfires on the hilltops of the three islands.

When the sounds quieted, and Gretchen didn’t return, Oa slowly unwound herself. She got up gingerly, wincing as she straightened her stiff knees. The room lights had dimmed, though the one on the ceiling camera still winked its warning amber. The chairs and couches and tables cast thick shadows on the white carpet. Oa went to kneel beside the windowsill. The rain had stopped, leaving tracks on the glass like tear marks. The strange crescent shone dimly white in the night sky. Moon, they called it. Virimund had no such Moon, but Oa had read about it in her books.

Even now, the not-canoes floated back and forth in the bay, blazing with lights strung in looping patterns over their spread sails. What were they doing there, on the night-dark water? Perhaps there were fish to catch. Perhaps the people had islands to visit. But they seemed only to drift, going nowhere, crossing and recrossing the bay.

Oa remembered a feast day, long ago. She was very small, having passed no more than four or five tatwaj. Canoes came from all the three islands, and there was roasted fish and steamed pishi and hot nuchi milk spiced with honey. The people sang, and danced, and went in and out of shahto, giving gifts and receiving them. It was the feast of the ancestors, a time to sing the songs and tell the tales.

The anchens struggled to remember the songs and stories. In the evenings, the anchens sat on the great boulder on the northern side of their island, with the waves of Mother Ocean splashing up to their toes as they sang the songs of the three islands.

Oa remembered the mildness of the evening air, the brilliance of the stars, the deep song of Mother Ocean, the treble voices of the anchens reciting memories. Kikya spoke of Raimu-ke. Kikya claimed to remember Raimu-ke, and the others pretended to believe him.

Oa crouched by the sill for a long time, until she began to get cold, and then, slowly, she stood. Isabel had not come. Isabel was not coming.

Oa wandered back to the couch, and curled up under the blanket. The soup Gretchen left had grown a skin of pale yellow, with bits of vegetables and rice poking from it. The bread had gone dry and hard. Oa drank a bit of water, but ignored the rest. She lay for a long time staring out at the white lights of the alien city. Before she finally fell asleep, she sent one feeble, hopeless prayer into the night. At least, she prayed to Raimu-ke, at least send me Isabel.

*

SIMON SHOOK JIN-LI’S
hand, and then Phipps’s. Isabel invited them to the table, hastily clearing stacks of flexcopies and slumping piles of disks from the chairs. They all sat. Isabel watched Jin-Li’s heavy-lidded eyes assessing Simon. A tired grin creased Phipps’s freckled face.

“I’m glad to see both of you,” Isabel said. “But—” She spread her hands. “I can’t imagine what you’re doing here!”

“Same thing as you, I bet,” Phipps said stoutly. “Trying to help the kid.”

“We followed,” Jin-Li said. “When Adetti moved her.”

Sudden hope flamed in Isabel. She leaned forward across the table. “You know where she is? Can you take us to her?”

“Careful,” Simon said. Isabel flashed him a look. “We can’t just break in someplace.”

Jin-Li’s eyes gleamed. “Not possible, in any case. They took her into a complex of condo towers down by the water. With a guarded gate. And we don’t know which building.”

“Tell us what happened,” Isabel said. She wanted to rush out, to bash down someone’s door, but she knew Simon was right. She tried to tell herself that one more night would not matter. But it did. It very much did.

“Please, Jin-Li, Matty, as long as you’re here, do eat something.”

She stood to divide the fish casserole into portions, using saucers to make enough plates. In the bathroom sink, she rinsed the cups they had used earlier, dried them on a hand towel, and poured coffee. Phipps smiled her thanks and took a plate.

Jin-Li accepted a cup of coffee, saying, “Matty knew they were up to something, so we went to the infirmary. It was late, almost midnight.”

Isabel said, “They put a sedative in our food.”

“I guessed that.” Jin-Li nodded. “It was Adetti who carried her out, I think.”

Phipps said, “Bastard,” and then her freckled cheeks flushed. “Sorry, Mother Burke.”

Isabel managed a small laugh. “It’s the right word, Matty.”

Jin-Li went on, “He wore a quarantine suit. We followed them out of the Multiplex, down to the condo towers. Had to stand and watch the guard let them in.”

“Do you know who lives there?” Simon spoke quietly, eyes fixed on his steepled fingers.

Phipps said, “Yeah. I asked my friend in transportation services.” She pushed her fingers through her rough red hair and said triumphantly, “The General Administrator lives there. Great apartment, apparently. Big windows, wonderful view of Elliott Bay and the Olympic Mountains. Very, very expensive.”

*

WHEN GRETCHEN CAME
in again in the morning, Oa was already kneeling beside the window, watching the slow morning light brighten the vista of sea and mountain and city.

“Good morning!” Gretchen cried.

Oa turned, still on her knees.

Today the pale lady wore a brown suit, with pleated trousers and a tie at her collar. She carried a fresh tray of food, and Oa, though she hated to take anything from her, was ravenous.

“Come now, honey,” Gretchen said, stretching her scarlet lips in a rictus of a smile. “You come right over here and sit with me, and we’ll have some breakfast. You must be hungry this time! Come on, now, come on. I don’t want to have to drag you.” She laid the tray on the table before the gold couch, sitting down, patting the cushion beside her. “Come on, now, honey.”

Oa stood up slowly, and took small, wary steps toward the table.

The fragrance of yeast bread and sugar drew her to a basket full of tiny golden-crusted rolls. A bowl held sliced rounds of some soft white fruit with a yellow rind. Her stomach clenched with hunger.

She didn’t sit on the couch, but knelt beside the table. It didn’t seem to matter to Gretchen. She pushed the tray closer to Oa, her smile fading, the skin of her cheek twitching and distorting her mouth. Her left hand twitched, too, and she gripped it with the fingers of her right. She watched Oa pick up the juice glass.

Oa remembered what Gretchen had done before with her empty glass. She set the juice down without drinking.

Gretchen opened her mouth as if to urge her again, but though she caught a noisy breath, she didn’t speak. She put one of her bone-thin fingers between her teeth, and fixed Oa with a look of hunger. There were snakes on the islands who watched their prey just that way, heads and eyes very still, mouths open.

Oa didn’t want to eat or drink in front of Gretchen, but she was too hungry to resist. She took one of the rolls from the basket, and bit it in two.

It was fresh, sweet as if it had been drenched in honey. Her eyes closed involuntarily at the relief of it. Her mouth flooded with saliva, and she swallowed. She didn’t see the white hand coming toward her until Gretchen’s sharp-nailed fingers were right in her face. One scarlet nail caught her cheek and scratched it as the woman tore the half-eaten fragment of sweet roll from her mouth.

Oa’s eyes flew open, and she fell back, away from Gretchen’s reach. She lay on her back on the carpet as Gretchen Boreson thrust the bread into her own mouth and swallowed.

A drop of warm blood rolled down Oa’s cheek. Gretchen stood abruptly, reaching for her. Her hand wavered toward her face, and her painted lips parted. Oa tensed to wriggle backward, but Gretchen was too fast for her. She swiped at Oa’s cheek, smearing her fingertip with blood.

Gretchen put the finger in her mouth, and sucked on it.

Oa stared, openmouthed with surprise.

Gretchen took her finger out of her mouth and gave Oa a tight, empty smile. A crumb of bread was stuck to her chin. “You enjoy your breakfast now, honey,” she said. A moment later, she was gone, striding swiftly and silently away across the white carpet.

For several moments, Oa lay where she was, waiting for her to come back. When the door didn’t open again, and there were no sounds beyond it, Oa carefully inched back to the table. Her hunger was a hard, active thing, a twisting demand from her stomach. She knelt again beside the tray. In a rush of appetite, she ate all the bread and drank the juice. She sampled the white fruit, which had gone a little brown but was still sweet and chewy. There was a bowl of shelled nuts, too, white-meated and crunchy, vaguely reminiscent of the fruit of the nuchi. She ate these, thrusting handfuls into her mouth, until they were gone.

The tray was empty. Her stomach felt tight and swollen, and a burning began at the back of her throat. She sat back on her heels and stared at the spider machine in the corner. He would come again, she knew. Doctor would come, and the spider would crawl on her, endlessly. Isabel had vanished, and with her, all hope.

All at once her overfull stomach rebelled. Oa raced to the little bathroom, and vomited the meal in one great rush that left her gasping for air. She lay on the cold tile floor, shaking with nausea, and with despair.

There seemed no reason to get up off the floor. She didn’t want to open her eyes, or even to go on breathing. It seemed to Oa that she had been alone forever, and forever stretched ahead of her, with only pain to offer.

She struggled to her feet. She bent over the sink and rinsed her mouth with water. She splashed some on her face, not caring that it spattered the scalloped mirror and the wall, and then she looked at herself in the glass. Her scratched cheek stung, but there was no more blood. There would be, though, if pale Gretchen wanted it. Why didn’t Gretchen just take it all, take it from the spider machine, or straight from Oa’s throat?

Oa examined her arm in the harsh light of the bathroom. Under her dark skin, the vein on the inside of her elbow was a thread of indigo, pulsing gently with the beat of her heart. She knew what veins were. She had read about them in one of the books on Isabel’s computer. They carried her life in their red rivers, the same life the spider machine sucked and sucked at, but never finished. She would have to finish it herself.

She stood in the bathroom door, surveying the room until her eye fell on the piece of sunset glass. Her feet felt odd as she walked toward it, as if her legs, her ankles, already belonged in some other world. Would Raimu-ke turn away from her if she did it? The ancestors forbade it for the people, of course, but the ancestors did not care about anchens. Their rules did not apply. Tursi had deliberately stranded herself on the northern spit of the anchens’ island, and when the tide came in, she had thrown herself into the water. And Ulan—she tried not to think about what Ulan had done. The anchens had let the birds pick his bones clean on the rocks before they buried him under the kburi.

Oa picked up the slender scarlet and yellow glass from its pedestal. She held it by the thinnest end, and lifted it above her head. When she brought it down, hard, on the pedestal, it shattered into glittering shards that spread over the white carpet. The piece left in her hand was perfect, long and sharp-edged. Already it had pierced the skin of her palm, leaving a thin line of blood like the blood Gretchen had drawn from her cheek.