The Fifth Sacred Thing (63 page)

“You can’t take away what’s freely given. We’ll never stand by and see our waters harmed or wasted or polluted. But what you need, you’re welcome to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There is a place set for you at our table. We invite you to join us. You don’t have to stay in the army.”

“You mean I could join your side, fight with you?”

“Fight in our way, yes.”

“But what about the boosters?”

“Immunoboosters?”

“Once you’re on them, they say you’ll die if you don’t get them.”

“Not always,” Bird said. “I’ve known deserters who lived. But it’s a risk. We have healers, though, and doctors. They can help you.”

Just then they heard a loud cry from the cross street behind them.

“My unit,” the soldier explained. “Got to go!”

“Think about it,” Bird said. “The offer stands.”

Grabbing his gun, the soldier ran off.

A strange calm settled over the city. Life resumed a veneer of normality. People worked in their gardens, cooked food and ate it, changed the diapers on the babies. But they stayed near their own homes. The markets were deserted, the cafes empty at night, the streets nearly unused except for companies of soldiers making their way through the labyrinthine net of walkways and pathways and vehicle corridors that twined through the city. They seemed lost, most of the time, stunned into silence by the abundance of hanging fruit and the colorful banks of flowers.

For three days Sam went to the hospital at his usual time, but on the third day he returned in midmorning. The soldiers had commandeered the hospital, turning the civilian patients out into the streets. The Healers’ Council had anticipated this eventuality; each patient was assigned to a house or family, and Lou and Aviva made sure they all got there. Sam had returned to Black Dragon House to pace the kitchen, fuming.

“It’s war, all right,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d react this way, but when that punk walked in and ordered me out of my own hospital, where I’ve worked since before he was regretfully conceived, I wanted to kill him. I
wanted to shove a fist in his gut and rip his limbs off. How’s your head, by the way, Bird?”

“Fine,” he said, although it still ached. He was pouring himself a cup of herb tea, wondering how long they would continue to be allowed these simple comforts.

“You always say you’re fine, even when you’re half dead,” Maya complained.

“My head is okay,” Bird said. “In an odd way, I almost feel better, now that something’s happened. We’re not waiting anymore. Of course I’m worried, like everybody else. What can we do about the boosters, Sam? Half this army would come over to us tomorrow if they weren’t afraid of withdrawal. We’d still have the other half to deal with, but the odds would be a bit more even.”

“I had hoped Madrone would be back by now,” Sam said. “Although maybe she’s better off where she is. But without knowing exactly what they’re using, it’s tough.”

“Maybe we can find out,” Bird said thoughtfully. “Raid them, or catch a soldier and drain his blood.”

“Is that nonviolent?” Sam asked.

“We’ll drain it gently.”

Sam grabbed his jacket up from the couch where he’d flung it.

“Where are you going, old man?” Maya asked.

“Out to check on my patients.”

“You be careful.”

“I’m extremely careful. I have every intention of living to see our victory.”

“We might have one,” Bird said. “We might not.”

“We need more than just a victory,” Maya said. “We need to win in such a way that everything changes, that we’re not threatened again. Because I don’t want to go through this one more time, or have others go through it after us.”

“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Sam said. The door closed behind him.

“Will you be okay alone?” Bird asked Maya.

“Where are
you
going?”

“Another meeting.” He leaned over and kissed her. “I know all the thousand things you want to say to me. You don’t have to say any of them. I will be careful.”

Maya reached up and touched his cheek. She’d bloodied her nails ripping the catches off the cabinet doors, and the dried blood matched what seeped through his bandages.

“But I want to go with you,” she said. “Inside this withered husk lives a nineteen-year-old street-fighting woman who doesn’t understand why she should stay behind.”

Bird laughed. “To keep her out of trouble, that’s why. And preserve your reputation. How would it look after that great speech on nonviolence if you up and chucked a few rocks at the soldiers?”

He was teasing her, but instead of laughing her eyes filled with tears, and her lips trembled. She is old, Bird realized. If I die, she won’t survive long. The knowledge settled onto his shoulders as one more weight.

“But I can’t do anything!” she cried. Bird reached over and hugged her, thinking all the while, I can’t stay to comfort her, I’ve got to go.

“Do some magic,” he said. “That’s what you’re good at.”

She nodded as he slipped out the door. Later, when she cast the ritual circle and lit a candle in the center, no spirits came to her. Wax sputtered and dripped. In the empty air, nothing spoke.

23

“T
his looks like the place,” Madrone said. She was standing with Hijohn on one of the side streets that wound uphill beside the grounds of the great university that sprawled over the rising foothills at the edge of the mountains. The streets around were thronged with students and professors, servants on errands, and beggars with outstretched hands in stained and ragged clothes like those she and Hijohn wore. Madrone was observing a large pink house, one of the many comfortable old houses that lined the street.

“Third house from the corner,” Hijohn agreed. “This is it.”

A flight of steps went up to the main entrance, but he led them around the side to a back door and knocked quietly. The door opened, and a young woman in a blue headcloth ushered them into a large institutional kitchen, where an older woman in a voluminous apron was chopping vegetables. She looked up at them, assessed them carefully, and then resumed work.

“We’re here to see Beth,” Madrone said.

“I’ll get her. Sit down.”

Madrone and Hijohn took seats at a small table nestled under a high window. The woman in the headcloth brought them each a glass of water, and Madrone thanked her. After their hot, dusty trek from Katy’s enclave through the scorched streets of early May, the water was welcome as love.

“What is this house?” Hijohn asked. “Who lives here?”

“Nursing students,” the woman answered. “Miss Beth is their housemother.” She turned away, back to her vegetables, and they sat in silence. Madrone was grateful for a moment of rest. Walking through the city always wore her out, much more than a trek through the hills. I should be used to it by now, she thought, but even with her bee senses tightly shut down, the air itself was an assault, carrying the odors of filth and the stench of hunger into her unwilling nostrils.

She wondered what Beth wanted. The message had come through the network, passed on by one of their contacts at the hospital. Beth was the gray-haired woman at Sara’s luncheon, the woman who herself had once been a
doctor. What was it like for her, Madrone wondered, to have that work taken away? What would I do if it happened to me? Exactly what I’m doing now, I guess.

Hijohn had volunteered to be her guide. He was down from the mountains, on one of the missions he invented partly, Madrone suspected, to visit Katy. He came often, and for three or four days he and Katy would linger close together, gazing at each other’s faces with yearning, tender eyes. Then they would fight about something, strategy or politics or where to put their meager resources, and Hijohn would go.

They had been on one of their downhill slides, and he was eager for escape. “I’ll take you, and on the way back we can cruise by the hill camps, see how they’re fixed.” Madrone had agreed, although “cruise” meant a twenty-mile hike over rugged terrain in the waterless heat of late spring.

“You came!” Beth hurried into the room, shutting the door behind her, and embraced Madrone. “Thank you for coming! Let’s go into the other room, where it’s more private.”

They followed her through a door and down a stairway that led to the basement, furnished with rugs and old couches. It was comfortable, unpretentious, like the living room of the house Madrone had shared when she was at school in Berkeley.

“Now,” Beth said, “no one can interrupt us. Gloria and Marta will watch the door.”

She looked at Hijohn, smiling inquisitively, as they settled into chairs.

“My friend Hijohn,” Madrone said. “This is Beth, one of the women I told you about, that I met the day I took the swim.”

“I wasn’t sure the message would reach you,” Beth said. “But I do a little doctoring, sometimes, for people who need help, and some of them have connections to the Web. It was good of you to come, with no explanation.”

“I’ve wanted you two to meet,” Madrone said. “All the groups working for change should have some contact with each other.”

“I’m not sure the women you met are working for anything,” Beth said. “Talking is more their line—and mine too, I’m afraid. Real change might terrify us.”

“And it might not,” Hijohn said. “Every revolution starts with talk. Sometimes talk breeds action.”

Beth peered at him for a moment, as if she were considering how to think about him.

“Sometimes it does,” she admitted. “Do you have the magic formula to make that happen?”

She was half teasing, but he answered her seriously. “There’s no magic about it, just patience. You take it one step at a time. Start with something
safe, but something you can do. Collecting clothes for the poor. Raising money”—he winked and grinned at her—“for us.”

“We’d like that,” Beth said. “A low-cost revolutionary thrill.”

“It wouldn’t have to be low-cost. We’ll take as much as we can get. And put it to good use, where it’s needed most.”

“I’m sure you would.” She shifted her attention to Madrone. “You’re probably wondering what this is about.”

Madrone waited expectantly. Beth was dressed in a simple blue shift covered with a white apron, her neat gray cap of hair brushed smooth. She looked softer than she had seemed at Sara’s, more matronly, but submerged tension lurked beneath the surface of her eyes.

“I need to ask for your help.”

“What’s the problem?”

Beth hesitated. She looked around nervously, as if checking to be absolutely sure no one could overhear them. Her voice dropped so low that Madrone could hardly make out the last word.

“How do you feel about … abortion?”

Madrone shrugged. “I’ve done quite a few, although it isn’t a very common procedure back home. We’re all trained to monitor our cycles pretty closely, from the time we first begin to bleed. And we know how to block conception. But there are times when abortion is necessary. Although I always feel a little sad, especially nowadays when so many women who try can’t seem to get pregnant.” Was that what Beth wanted her to do? But it was a simple enough procedure; surely she could handle that herself.

Beth looked at her long and thoughtfully and then sighed, as if she’d made up her mind. “Come.”

She shifted a pile of empty boxes on a back wall, revealing a low doorway. Leaving Hijohn in the main room, Madrone followed her into a tiny, almost airless room, lit by a single candle. On a mattress on the floor, a young woman lay, moaning and tossing, her face flushed and feverish, her long chestnut hair damp and tangled.

Madrone stooped down and touched the woman’s distended belly. She opened her bee sense and smelled putrefaction, death.

“How do you feel?” she murmured to the woman. “I’m Madrone. I’m going to try to help you.”

“Not so good,” the woman whispered.

“What happened?”

The woman closed her eyes. She opened her lips to answer, then closed them again.

“Something went wrong,” Beth said. “I didn’t do it—I don’t know who did. She came to us, hemorrhaging and feverish, three nights ago. Of course
she couldn’t go to the hospital. Perhaps you don’t know how they treat abort ants.”

“I can guess,” Madrone said grimly.