The Terrorists of Irustan (19 page)

Below, at the curb, Laila was being helped into her car by Samir. Idora’s car was next in line. Qadir had offered to escort Kalen and Rabi to the farewell. He reached the women, and with Asa behind them, they all started down the steps.

A sudden high-pitched wail made Zahra think for a moment the keening had begun again. She was halfway down the stairs. She looked back, casting about for the source of the sound.

She caught only a glimpse of the woman kneeling before the Simah before a group of hurrying men cut off her view. The woman wore a brown veil that was bedraggled but intact. It was she who had cried out, was still crying out. Zahra thought she heard the words, “Please! Simah, please!”

Qadir hurried Ishi and Kalen and Rabi down the stairs. Zahra froze, with Asa behind her. Several men closed around the woman and the Simah, and there was another, wordless cry, rising to a shriek, abruptly cut off. A hideous silence followed.

The Simah stepped back, into the shadows of the big doors. The gang of men dragged the woman away down the steps. Her feet, exposed in worn sandals, struck the stairs one by one as they hauled her roughly down to the sidewalk. Zahra could just see her brown figure between the white-garbed men. Her neck was now limp, her head hanging forward, her forehead perilously close to the stone of the steps. Someone had struck her, made her lose consciousness. Zahra picked up her skirts and strode toward her.

“Zahra!” Qadir commanded from the street. Zahra made no answer. She angled down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He dashed up the steps and seized her arm, jerking her to a halt.She whirled to hiss at him. “Qadir, let me go! That woman! 1 must help her!”

“Zahra, she’s unveiled,” Qadir answered shortly. “Not your concern.” “You’re wrong, Qadir!” Zahra tried to pull free of his iron grip. “She’s no prostitute—and she needs my help!”

Qadir growled, “Zahra, don’t do this! You shame me!”

“You! What does it have to do with you? I’m a medicant, there’s someone injured!” Zahra struggled with Qadir. The men had dropped the woman on the sidewalk now, and a thickset man with gray hair tore off her pitiful veil. Zahra burned with rage and resentment. Her voice rose. “Let me go! Look, look at them, Qadir! Stop them! You can’t let them do that!”

Diya suddenly appeared on Zahra’s other side. Between them, he and Qadir forced her down the stairs toward the car. She fought them, twisting her head, trying to see. The gray-haired man looked familiar to her. He and another man picked the unconscious woman up again, one lifting her shoulders, one taking her feet. “Qadir! Don’t do this! Let me go to her!” Desperate, she tried to think of some plea she could make. Her arms hurt, they would be bruised, but she hardly noticed. The woman’s white legs, the blue veins of childbearing, were exposed as the heavyset man pulled at her skirts. “Qadir—oh, Maker, look what they’re doing!”

As Qadir and Diya forced her into the car, the burly man looked up. “Stop!” she screamed at him. “Leave her alone!”

Diya pushed her into her seat, and Qadir slammed the door. He fairly leaped into the driver’s compartment, and twisted his neck to snarl, “Not another word, Zahra! Not another word!”

“But you know what they’re going to do!” Zahra shrieked. Kalen had Rabi’s head buried in her shoulder, shielding her from the sight. Ishi stared only at Zahra, her veil trembling. Qadir stamped the accelerator, and the tires squealed as he pulled away. Zahra, frantic, watched the men bearing the woman away into the alley. Asa stood forgotten on the sidewalk.

“Asa! You left Asa!” Zahra cried.

“Diya will go back for him," Qadir said grimly. “Now you will be silent, or I’ll leave you there too.”

Ishi burst into tears. Kalen shushed her, reaching past Rabi to pat her shoulder. Above her head, her eyes met Zahra’s.

Shaking with fury and shock, Zahra wrapped her arms around herself and huddled into her seat. That woman had not been unveiled. She had petitioned the Simah, risked herself to beg his help for someone—her child, her husband, her father? And for her pains she was now being raped in the shadow of the very Doma those men attended. The Simah had refused her, Qadir had turned away. It would seem even the Maker cared nothing for her.

Zahra prayed the poor woman stayed unconscious. And she remembered the gray-haired man. She knew him from somewhere—not the clinic, not the Doma, but somewhere. Her heart pounded with impotent, consuming rage.

*   *   *

“Whoever she was, she’s ruined,” Zahra said raggedly through a tight throat. “And you, the chief director, let it happen.”

“She had no business accosting the Simah on the steps of the Doma,” Qadir answered.

They were in Qadir’s rooms. They were overdue for Leman Bezay’s farewell, but Qadir had propelled Zahra through the foyer, the evening room, and down the corridor to his bedroom. His face was contorted with anger, his lips white, but she didn’t care. She had begun to speak the moment the door was closed.

“Think what they’re doing to her, Qadir! Right now, what they’re doing, what they’ve already done! She came for help, came to the Simah for help, and look what she got for it! And you wouldn’t let me do anything!”

“Zahra,” Qadir said through clenched jaws. “Do you think I could have prevented them from doing the same to you?”

“By the Maker, Qadir, you’re the chief director! You could have stood up for me, interceded for that poor woman!”

“It’s not easy to stop Binya Maris,” Qadir snarled.

Zahra suddenly went cold all over. “Binya Maris?”

“Didn’t you recognize him?” Qadir snapped. “You must have attended one or two dinners with him. Binya Maris is almost a law of his own. And when he sets his mind on something, he’s hard to stop.”

Zahra’s flesh prickled. “Binya Maris,” she whispered.

“I wouldn’t have interfered anyway,” Qadir said harshly. “That woman shamed us all by approaching the Simah in that way. She should have sent her husband, or her father!”

“And what if she has none, Qadir? There are women, you know, who have lost their fathers, or their husbands! Who is there to speak for such women? Who is there to take them where they need to go, to provide for them, to protect them?”

“There are friends, uncles, cousins . . .” Qadir said.

Zahra pulled her veil off her head in one swift movement, and fixed her gaze on Qadir. Her fury had cooled. She felt it sinking, contracting, going deep inside her, turning her muscles to ice. “Don’t you think, Qadir, that if there were anyone else to speak for her, she would have sent him? Don’t you think she—or any of us—would know the risks?”

Qadir’s features were immobile, closed, his very soul hidden from her. His lips barely moved as he spoke. “Zahra, get ready. We’re going to Leman Bezay’s farewell.”

She turned on her heel, her scarlet dress flaring.

“And, Zahra,” Qadir said. “Don’t ever—
ever
—make such a scene in front of Ishi again. If you do, I’ll send her away.”

Zahra whirled. “Qadir, you wouldn’t!”

“I would,” he said. “I’m responsible for her. 1 won’t have her ruined.” Zahra stumbled this time as she went to the door. Blindly, she groped her way out, and along the corridor toward her own room. Send her away? Send Ishi away?

O, Maker, she prayed. Not Ishi. Never Ishi. She couldn’t bear it. Qadir knew it was the one threat that would move her.

There would be no more scenes, she swore to herself. There would be no public displays. She would do nothing that could anger Qadir. Nothing he could see or hear, and rebuke her for.

But she was not powerless. Like the woman on the steps of the Doma, she had no one to speak for her, and she dared not speak for herself. Words were useless, in any case. But, unlike the woman at the Doma, she had resources. The Maker had seen to that. And she was not alone.

twenty-two

*   *   *

Assimilation of any Port Force employee by the indigenous community will result in immediate termination of employment, without exception. This requirement is mandated by both the board of directors of the ExtraSolar Corporation and by the national governments that grant the corporation its charter.

—
Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment

J
in-Li strolled
through the busy market. The Medah was crowded with Irustani just leaving their Doma services. A few Port Forcemen visited the outer stalls, buying trinkets, a cup of cider, a fiber shirt. Jin-Li headed into the heart of the market, where the stalls were set so closely their canvas walls flapped against each other, overlapping patterns of blue and green and yellow. The fish vendor, in his little blue-striped booth, caught sight of Jin-Li and called out.

“Good reservoir fish, kir!” the little vendor cried loudly. “Fried fresh by my wife not a moment ago!”

Jin-Li went closer. “How many drakm this time, kir?"

The vendor reached through the back flap of the stall to take a basket from his wife’s hands. He held it up, white teeth flashing in his brown face. Fragrant oil still sizzled on the filets, and salt fragments gleamed in the dusk. “Only four drakm for loyal customers!”

Jin-Li dug out the coins and handed them over, took a seat on one of the two stools in front of the stall. A tide of people swirled through the market. Miners, freshly scrubbed, mingled with housemen and a very few heavily veiled, escorted women. If there were three hundred people in the square, Jin-Li guessed, no more than twenty of them were female. Not counting, that is, the women who labored over hot stoves or juice pressers behind the stalls. Beyond the square, Jin-Li caught sight of one of the unveiled ones in search of custom. The Port Forcemen would find her if they wanted to. Though it was against the Terms of Employment, such violations were tolerated. Miners, too, were enjoined against whores, but as Jin-Li watched, one approached the woman, and they disappeared together into the shadows. It seemed Pi Team could look the other way when it wanted to.

Jin-Li ate the last of the fish and gave the basket back, then wandered away in the opposite direction from three laughing Port Forcemen.

Except for the market vendors, few Irustani were friendly with Port Force. They kept a distance, a margin between them, a space defined by their differences. Most Irustani found it difficult that some Earthers dressed and decorated themselves strangely, that gender identification could be a complex thing. Jin-Li doubted they were capable of understanding how blurred the line could be between male and female, heterosexual and homosexual. Some of the miners, young men at the peak of sexuality, had been caught in liaisons with each other, and the penalty was hideous, and final. It was one of the crimes Pi Team would never overlook. Port Force, of course, wouldn’t intervene in any Irustani jurisdiction. Port Force and the directorate were as separate from each other as Jin-Li, strolling alone through the bustling square, was separate from the Irustani.

A woman veiled in deep blue stood near a vegetable stall while her husband haggled with the man inside. Jin-Li slowed, walking past, to hear their dickering. At the next stall three young miners laughed with the vendor as they fingered his wares. Shining brooches, bracelets, rings, and necklaces hung from racks. They were plated with platinum, commonplace on Irustan.

Beyond the jewelry vendor’s was the leptokis seller. Jin-Li skirted the kiosk with only a quick glance. The vendor didn’t call out this time, being occupied with a customer.

A customer. Asa IbSada.

Jin-Li stopped dead still, right in the path of two men.

With a murmured apology, Jin-Li stepped to the shelter of a stall where shirts and trousers on elevated hooks blocked the view. The leptokis seller was just visible.

It had not been a mistake. Asa, leaning on his cane, bent his head to talk with the little man. The leptokis vendor apparently had no aversion to Asa or his disability. Asa glanced about once or twice. Money changed hands. Then, cane in one hand, woven wood cage in the other, Asa IbSada limped straight into one of the narrow alleys radiating from the square. Jin-Li saw the rippled hide of the leptokis glimmer under the lights. Its tiny black eyes shone once, as if illuminated from within.

There was no need to follow Asa IbSada to know where he was going. His purchase was going to the house of the chief director. Of the medicant. And this was exactly the sort of intelligence Onani had asked for.

*   *   *

The circle spent their Doma Day at Idora’s. Once the children and the anahs were established in the dayroom, the women retreated together to Idora’s bedroom.

Idora loved color. Bright cushions in red and blue and purple and green crowded her bed, littered the floor, padded her chairs. A tiny fountain splashed in one corner of her bedroom, a miniature of the spillway that drained the reservoir. Like the rest of the circle, Idora had never seen the original.

Idora waved her hand at all of it. “It’s a bit untidy,” she said. “But just shove things around and find a place to sit.”

On another day the friends would have teased her, and laughed about the clutter. But on this day, the first Doma Day after Leman’s funeral, they were somber. Kalen was there, but Camilla had been unable to arrange an escort. There had been no word from her since the farewell.

“Do you suppose she’s heard?” Kalen asked. She paced back and forth, occasionally jabbing at a pillow with her toe.

“I don’t see how she could,” Laila said. She perched cross-legged on the bed, her delicate features drawn. “We only heard because of Asa.”

“Poor Asa,” Idora murmured. She sat at her dressing table, absently pushing bottles here and there. “It must have been awful for him.”

Zahra stood by the window. She folded her arms tightly, digging her fingers into her skin. “It was terrible,” she said. Her voice sounded cold and flat to her. She felt cold. Since that moment in Qadir’s bedroom, after Leman’s funeral, she felt as if a sheet of ice had settled over her. She welcomed it, she hid behind it. She feared that if it broke, she would lose her control, start to scream, break things. She would shout at Qadir, and at Diya. She would hurl Qadir’s case through a window, slap Diya’s sneer from his face, all the things she longed to do. And Qadir would snatch Ishi away from her forever.

“Qadir was furious with me,” she said. “He forgot all about Asa, and Diya never went back for him. In the end, Asa called for a car, but in the meantime he stood there on the steps of the Doma and listened as Binya Maris and the others raped that poor woman. She screamed and screamed, and Asa—what could he do?”

“It must have been worse when he heard the news,” Kalen grated. She was anything but cold. Kalen was alive with anger, radiant with fury. Her freckled cheekbones flamed.

“Much worse,” Zahra said. “Now Asa blames himself.”

“They might have killed Asa, too!” Kalen cried with bitter satisfaction. “And Qadir?” This was Laila, always hopeful of some mercy.

“Yes,” Zahra said. “Qadir filed a complaint against Binya Maris—not for the death of the widow Thanos—but for abetting the corruption of young men. The miners, the other two men.”

“Why not for her death, for the widow?” Idora asked. Her plump cheeks were pale, her full lips trembling.

“Because,” Zahra said, leaving the window. She gripped a bedpost and looked into each of their faces. “Because she was doing a dishonorable thing. This widow Thanos came out unescorted, and approached the Simah directly, without an intermediary. The widow Thanos ...” Zahra felt the chill of despair. “The widow Thanos who, mind you, had no one to speak for her, came, to the Simah herself to plead for help for her daughters and her son. Her husband had died in a mine accident, and she was having trouble supporting her children . . . because ...”

Zahra’s throat closed. She turned away to the window again. The ice that held her made everything seem flat, featureless.

“Because,” Kalen finished for her. “Because she had no escort. She couldn’t go out to work. She couldn’t even go out to the Medah, to buy food!” “And now,” Zahra said, staring out the window, “now that she’s dead, Qadir has ordered a pension for her children.”

Laila, her cheeks wet with tears, came to Zahra and put her arms around her friend. “Zahra, Zahra, you must come and sit down, let some of this out. You’ll make yourself ill.” She tugged at her, the tiny woman pulling on the tall one.

Zahra allowed herself to be led to the bed. “I can’t let it out, Laila," she said. “Not until I do something about it.” She looked around the comfortable bedroom. “We live so well,” she said. “How can we sleep at night, knowing our sisters suffer?”

“But Zahra,” Laila said with a little whimper. “What can we do? We’re only women, like they are!”

Zahra said, “I can’t rest, knowing that man is out there. He’s free to hurt other women. He’s certain to hurt other women! I’m going to stop him before he does. Will you help me?”

*   *   *

Zahra was at dinner with Qadir and Ishi when the buzzer sounded from the clinic. She excused herself, and hurried upstairs for her medicants coat before going to the surgery. At the clinic door Ishi was waiting for her.

“You may need me,” Ishi said. “I want to go with you.”

Zahra touched Ishi’s cheek with her finger. “No, Ishi, go and finish your dinner. I’ll call you if I need help. Now, here’s Asa—you go on.”

“But, Zahra—” Ishi tried again.

“No!” Zahra said, more sharply than she intended. Ishi’s smooth cheeks flushed pink. “Please—just go and keep Qadir company. That will be a help to me.”

Ishi met her eyes for a moment, boldly. Then she tossed her head. “All right! I’ll keep Qadir company—that experience will stand me in good stead when I have my own clinic!” She turned in a swirl of skirts and veil and stamped away down the corridor.

Zahra sighed. Asa shook his head, looking after Ishi. “So much like you, Medicant,” he murmured.

Laila, with her houseboy, was waiting in the dispensary, her arms wrapped around her stomach, groaning dramatically behind her veil. Zahra put an arm around her, helped her to make a slow progress down the hall to the large surgery. Asa spoke for a moment with the houseboy, and then followed. When he was inside, he closed the door. Carefully, silently, he turned the lock.

As soon as they entered the surgery, Laila stood straight and unbuttoned her rill. “There,” she said, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink above her verge. “How was that?”

“It was perfect, Laila,” Zahra said. “Thank you. Now just hop up on the bed and have a rest. Asa and I will do what we have to do, and then you can go home, all well again.”

“I’d better have a name for it, something I can tell poor Samir. He’s so worried,” Laila smiled. “He asked me a lot of questions. 1 didn’t think he was going to let me get away!”

“We’ll think of something.”

Zahra pushed the screen close to the exam bed, protecting Laila from the sight of the dead leptokis laid out in a metal tray. Zahra had killed it with one stroke of the sonic scalpel to its heart. It had been bloodless and quick, and the little beast lay with its triangular head falling back. Asa had cleared everything from the area except the small wavebox.Laila’s visit was their cover. They knew from the first time that they would need at least two hours to accomplish their task. Gloved and masked, Zahra used the remote sampler to extract the leptokis’ brain. It was remarkably small, a lumpy, grayish material that quivered when she touched it. The thought came to her that Qadir would faint dead away if he had to look at it. No wonder some women kept leptokis as pets—could any man but Asa, or the leptokis vendor himself, stand to be near them? But Zahra had no need of a leptokis to keep Qadir at a distance now. He had hardly spoken to her since the funeral.

So as not to use any more instruments than necessary, Zahra minced the brain tissue by hand, using a common knife from the kitchen. She immersed the leptokis brain tissue in a saltwater solution and placed it in the wave box. She checked it at intervals, removing it finally when it was reduced to a clear, viscous liquid with no visible residue. At the very end she added the accelerant. Then, carefully, she poured the lethal concoction into several small vials. By hand, she labeled them.

Asa, also masked and gloved, carried the vials to the CA cabinet and put them with the one that remained from their first effort. Zahra felt certain the first one was still effective, but she was not sure it was enough. There must be no mistakes. And there must be no one who could complain afterward.

It took them another hour to scrub the surgery clean to Zahra’s satisfaction. Without actually ingesting the serum, no one should be affected by the presence of the leptokis in the surgery. But she would take no chances. Miners came to her surgery, miners who were careless about their masks and their therapy. She would protect them. She had one target only. One.

Laila was sent home in due time with her escort and some sugar pills which Asa explained in great detail to the houseboy. Then Asa and Zahra went to their beds. But as they parted, Asa asked, “What did you write on the labels, Medicant? That word?”

A chill smile curved Zahra’s lips.
"Dikeh,"
she said. “It’s an old word, from Earth. Very old.”

“And what does it mean?”

“It means reckoning, Asa. An accounting. Justice.”

“Ah. I see. Well, good night, Medicant.”

“Good night, Asa.”

Ishi was waiting for Zahra in the bedroom, Lili sitting nearby with a little sewing in her lap. “Who was it?” Ishi demanded. “You were gone so long, why didn’t you call me?”

Zahra wearily pulled off her veil.

“Why, Medicant,” Lili exclaimed. “Where’s your coat? Your medicant’s coat?”

Zahra froze suddenly, her veil in her hand. “Oh,” she said. “I—I snagged it on something, the table, some sharp edge—ripped it almost in half. 1 threw it away.”

Asa had placed her coat, along with the old one he had worn, every bit of equipment they had used, and the little black carcass of the leptokis, into a biowaste bag, and then put that into the large wave box that disintegrated medical waste. When it had reduced everything to one dull, gray, shapeless mass, all danger of contamination eradicated, he carried it to the big city refuse bin behind the kitchen and buried it under the garbage. Within a day or two it would be on its way to the desert. Even the tray that had held the leptokis was gone.