The Child Goddess (8 page)

9

JIN-LI PARKED THE
cart in the alley that separated the five-story Admin building from the low-roofed infirmary. The two of them watched as a tall quarantine-suited figure emerged from the infirmary, carrying a small form wrapped in a dark blanket. Steady rain streaked the infirmary’s dimly lit windows and slicked the dark streets. A black van, with tinted windows and no insignia, was waiting in front of the infirmary. The driver jumped out, shielding his face from the rain with one hand and opening the back door with the other. The man in the quarantine suit slid into the back seat with his burden, and the driver shut the door. No one else appeared.

“Just the girl, then,” Phipps muttered.

“Yeah.” Jin-Li waited until the van’s engine started, and its lights came on, before starting the cart’s light motor.

“Bastards.”

“No argument.” The van began to move, passing their alley, picking up speed as it moved toward the Rec Fac.

“Better keep a good distance.”

“I will.” When the van had passed the Rec Fac, Jin-Li let the cart roll down the sloping alley and into the street. There was no other traffic, nothing to hide behind. The cart, its headlights off, chugged through the murky streets, following the van’s amber taillights. The windshield wipers slapped left and right, spraying rainwater. The van’s taillights flashed red when the driver applied the brakes, and Jin-Li slowed the cart.

Phipps leaned forward, peering into the darkness. “Where do you think?” she growled.

“Don’t know.” Jin-Li swung the cart around a corner. The black van was making a right at the next intersection. “Looks like they’re leaving the Multiplex.”

“Bastards,” Phipps repeated.

Beyond the restricted streets of the Multiplex, other traffic appeared. The van turned west toward the Sound, and then took a sharp right up a steep entrance into a six-lane throughway. Jin-Li turned on the cart’s headlights, and tried to blend with the light nighttime traffic. Theirs was the only Port Force cart, but trucks, cars, other vans whirled past. The little motor whined, struggling to keep up speed.

Phipps gave a short laugh. “Like riding in a can-opener.”

“I know it. Hope the battery holds up.”

“Got a spare?”

“Yes. Have to stop to change it, though.”

Phipps grunted. “Keeping my fingers crossed.”

They cast each other a look of relief when the van took an exit from the throughway. It turned left when it reached the surface street, and drove north along the darkened waterfront, following the curve of the bay. Jin-Li doused the headlights again, and concentrated on the van’s taillights. In moments it came to a stop before a controlled-access gate.

“Who lives there?” Phipps asked, gesturing with her long arm. Beyond the guarded gate a thicket of residential towers rose into the mist. Discreet lights set into the landscaping picked out their silhouettes and gleamed on exaggeratedly tall windows and miniature scrollwork balconies.

“Mostly ESC executives. Nobody else could afford those apartments.” Jin-Li parked the cart at an unmarked curb that was masked by the drooping branches of a tall cedar.

They climbed out, and stood in the rain, watching. A guard leaned from a lighted booth to talk with someone through the van’s open window, then moved to a control board. The long iron gate slid silently back on well-oiled wheels, opening just enough to admit the van. It closed again, just as silently, as the van disappeared between two of the towers, taillights winking out one by one as it turned and disappeared.

Jin-Li and Phipps stood impotently beneath the cedar tree. Cold raindrops dripped past their caps and down their necks.

“That’s it,” Jin-Li said glumly. “Far as we can go.”

And Phipps growled, “Bastards.”

*

OA OPENED HER
eyes to a dazzling brightness, and squeezed them shut again. Something had happened. She had slept hard, with no dreams. Her head ached, and the light that blazed in her eyes was too bright, not the light of her room at the infirmary, her room with Isabel.

She heard Doctor’s voice, and someone else’s, a woman’s. She had woken to some new place. Some new power, greater than Isabel’s, had moved her while she slept.

For a long time she lay without moving, wishing it was a mistake. Perhaps when she opened her eyes a second time, she would be back in the familiar cramped room, with the reader on the chair and the fuzzy toy. And Isabel.

But she knew it was not a mistake. This was not the infirmary. The woman’s voice was not Isabel’s. The scratchy blanket that covered her was unfamiliar, and the brilliant light burned even through her closed eyelids.

She waited for the dull ache in her head to recede. Her throat and mouth burned with thirst, and she was too hot under her blanket. When the voices stopped, she waited for the space of a few breaths, and then, cautiously, she lifted her eyelids.

A more different place than the infirmary Oa could not have imagined. Sunlight poured through tall windows, glittered off a bay of gray-green water, shone on white mountains in the distance. She lay on a couch upholstered in an unlikely gold color. A white woven fabric covered the floor. There were chairs and tables everywhere, real wood chairs and tables, and a variety of large and small objects for which Oa had no name, a riot of colors and shapes.

Slowly, she sat up, letting her bare feet touch the carpet. Its spongy softness invited her toes to sink into it. The view of water and sky and mountain also invited her, tantalized her, mocked her lack of freedom.

Trying to make no noise, Oa stood. She took one careful step forward, and then turned to look behind her.

It lurked in the farthest corner of the room, its black looping tubes and silver syrinxes poised as always over a white-sheeted bed, awaiting its chance. A spider machine. And this one, Oa could guess, had all its parts intact.

She backed away, toward the tall windows, as far from the medicator as she could get. She tugged her tangled hair, wondering where she was, how she had gotten here, what was to be done with her. She turned toward the wind-ruffled water of the bay. It looked cold. She pressed her hands to the glass, and that was cold, too. She leaned her forehead against it, letting it cool her brow, and she called out to Raimu-ke, silently, desperately, for help. She supposed Raimu-ke was lost to her. And now, Isabel was lost to her, too.

A door opened behind her, and she tensed. Her nostrils flared, hoping to detect Isabel’s clean, airy scent, but what she caught was something cloying and spicy, something not-real. Definitely not-Isabel. Someone was moving toward her. Oa’s legs felt weak, and she began a slow slide to the floor, her cheek grazing the chilly glass, her hands gripping, and then losing, the sill. She folded in on herself, her head on her knees, her arms around them, making herself as small as possible. If only she were brave, like Isabel, standing up with her shoulders straight and her eyes bright. But she was too small, and too afraid, and now, again, utterly alone.

The voice was brittle. “Good morning!” it cried. “You’re awake! Look, I have some lovely muffins here, and milk. Children like milk. don’t they? Come now, don’t huddle there on the floor! You’ll get dirty. Come and eat something.”

Now Oa knew who it was. She had never been in the same room with her, but she had heard her voice, and seen her face. It was the pale lady with the white hair, the one whose face twitched and quivered. She sometimes came to the infirmary with Doctor to look at Oa through the not-mirror. There had been something ravening in her face, a deep and intense hunger as if she wanted to bite Oa, taste her flesh, sip at her blood the way the spider machine did.

Oa tightened her grip on her knees. There was nowhere to run.

“Come now, honey. Come drink your milk. We’re going to have fun, you and I!” The pale lady’s voice grated like stones scraping together. “Come on, now,” she said more sharply. “I know you understand me. Don’t make me come and get you. You’re too old for that.”

Oa’s head snapped up. Did she know? Had she guessed?

Slowly, Oa released her knees. She put her trembling hands on the windowsill and stood up, still looking out at the bleak vista of cold water and icy peaks. Oh, Raimu-ke, she prayed. Help me. Help me. Slowly, slowly, she turned around, and put her back to the window.

The pale lady was not dressed in a quarantine suit.

She wore a dress of midnight black. Her hair, white and shining as the mountains, was pulled tightly back from her face. Her lips were a kind of vibrant pink that was lovely on the fish in Mother Ocean and somehow revolting on the pale lady’s mouth. Her cheek jerked at irregular intervals, a spasm that distorted her pink lips and tugged at her eyelid. Her hand, hovering over a tray with glasses and plates, also twitched and trembled. She tried to smile with her jittering mouth as she sat down on the gold couch. The tray waited between her and Oa, on a low round table with a raised edge.

“There, now,” the pale lady exclaimed. “Isn’t that better? Come now! Let’s have breakfast together, just us two girls!” She nudged a glass forward with one finger. Oa understood she was afraid to pick it up, afraid her shaking hand would spill it. “Drink it up, won’t you? Let’s be friends. You can call me Gretchen.” The ferocity of her pink-lipped smile made Oa’s stomach turn.

But she was thirsty, so thirsty. It was making her head ache more. One of the glasses held something blue-white, unappealing. The other held some kind of fruit juice. Its fragrance drew her. It didn’t look as if the pale lady was going to come after her, or even as if she had strength for it. She was very thin, and she had bony white fingers, the hands of a skeleton.

Warily, Oa walked across the soft carpet, keeping the low table between her and the pale lady. She bent to pick up the glass of juice.

Gretchen watched her hungrily. Oa pulled back her hand.

Gretchen’s trembling lips parted. “Come on, Oa,” she hissed. “The juice is fine. Drink!”

Oa’s thirst overwhelmed her. She watched to see if the lady would get up, reach for her. She didn’t. Oa put out her hand again, picked up the glass. The juice was red and tart, tasting of sunshine and soil. She drank it all, and set the glass back on the tray.

Gretchen snatched up the glass with her sharp white fingers. She turned it upside down, letting the drops Oa had left trickle past her vivid lips. She put a finger inside to wipe up two or three more, and then she sucked her finger clean. She put her tongue out, and licked the rim of the glass, inside and outside, all the way around. Oa stared at her, mystified.

Gretchen set the glass down at last, and rose. Oa took a step backward, but Gretchen was no longer looking at her. Instead, she glanced around the room. “I think you have everything you need,” she said offhandedly. “There’s a bathroom just through there.” She pointed to a side door. “I guess you should brush your teeth and so forth. I’ll be back later.”

She crossed the room, the narrow high heels of her shoes making no sound on the thick carpet. She passed the medicator without glancing at its array of drooping wires and tubes, its lifeless readout screen, its scanning hood. She disappeared through the door, and Oa listened to the snick of the lock. It was a familiar sound. She had learned it very well on the ship.

*

SIMON FOLLOWED COLE
Markham through the carpeted corridors of the Multiplex, and up to the General Administrator’s office. Markham was new to him, but Gretchen Boreson was not. He remembered her as an intense, driven woman with a quick mind and a burning ambition. He was shocked, when he entered her office, to see how thin she had become, to notice the tremors that marred her features. Then he saw Isabel, and for the moment, he forgot everything else.

She stood by the mullioned windows, her slight figure framed by the rain-blurred view of the city. “Simon,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

He stood still for a moment, drinking in the sight of her. Her collar gleamed white against her black shirt. The carved wooden cross with its twisting flame hung on her breast as always. Her eyes—her magnificent eyes—shone like gray crystals in her slender face.

“Isabel,” Simon said huskily. “Are you all right?”

Boreson stepped forward before Isabel could answer, holding out her thin white hand. “Dr. Edwards,” she said. “It’s always a pleasure to have you here in Seattle.”

Isabel’s eyes flashed something, and Simon turned abruptly to Boreson. “What’s the meaning of all this. Administrator?” he demanded.

Boreson’s extended hand trembled. She withdrew it hastily, and pressed it to her stomach. “Dr. Edwards, I had hoped . . .”

He cocked one eyebrow. “Evidence suggests that ExtraSolar has committed actionable offenses against Mother Burke and against a child, in direct violation of its charters. To say nothing of the guidelines set up by World Health and Welfare.”

“We can explain,” she protested. “There are reasons for everything. There’s been a misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding? You mean you did not restrain Isabel Burke against her will? You did not transport an indigenous child away from her home world without demonstrable cause? If not, then, yes, there has been a misunderstanding.” The anger Simon had been containing made his voice hard. He was ready for a fight.

Boreson, though, was not strong enough. Faintly, she protested, “She’s not indigenous,” before her face colored, and then paled, leaving her skin white as paper. She groped for her chair. Her trembling hand did not quite reach it, and she stumbled. The muscles of her cheek jerked, and jerked again.

Simon and Isabel both stepped forward, but Simon was closer. “Administrator. Sit down. You don’t seem to be feeling well.” He helped Boreson into her chair, and touched her wrist with his fingers. It was icy cold. He glanced up at Isabel, and she raised her eyebrows and gave a slight shrug.

Cole Markham, his forehead creasing with concern and confusion, said, “Administrator? Shall I call your doctor?”

Boreson shook her head, and pressed one palm to the side of her face, as if to stop the spasms. “No, Cole, don’t do that. I’m just tired.”