The Terrorists of Irustan (27 page)

Zahra released Ishi with an abrupt gesture. She turned her back, and pulled up her verge to button it. She mustn’t say too much, not to Ishi. Above all else, Ishi was not to be involved. If Ishi were not protected, shielded from all of this, then it was all for nothing.

“Zahra,” Ishi said from behind her. One slender hand crept up Zahra’s arm. “Zahra, are you angry with me? For asking?”

For answer, Zahra turned and took the girl into her arms, pressing her close. “No, dear Ishi,” she murmured, stroking Ishi’s veiled head. “I’ve never been angry with you. Not ever.”

thirty

*   *   *

All decisions made by officers of Offworld Port Force are final. Review of such decisions will be only at the discretion of the general administrator.

—
Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment

T
he disc
from Zahra’s files lay on Jin-Li’s table beneath the framed calligraphy. For days Jin-Li had let it lie there. She had viewed it once, the same night she had seen Zahra. It wasn’t enough. She was grateful that Zahra had tried to help, but it wasn’t enough.

The disc held the medical history of Leman Bezay, his wife Camilla, his son Alekos. The entries, tersely recorded by the medicant, were routine examinations, inoculations, the medicant’s recommendations. The only entry for Bezay himself was the postmortem on his body.

At the end of a long, aimless day, Jin-Li decided she would scan the disc once again, scour it for whatever it might have to offer, and get it back to Zahra’s files. She sat cross-legged on the floor, the light of the moons bright beyond the window, and played the disc once again. She forced herself to go slowly, to examine every detail. Only one entry held any interest.

Alekos Bezay had been fourteen: “Self-induced lateral lacerations of both wrists, less than three millimeters in depth, treated with radiant wand and bandaged. Medicator administered antibiotics and sedatives. Further treatment refused by patient’s father.”

Jin-Li read this account over and over, trying to uncover some deeper message. Was there a hint? “Refused by patient’s father.” There wasn’t much to it. What could a suicide attempt by the son have to do with the father’s fate? It would never satisfy Onani.

There were other things Jin-Li could have offered Onani. There was the odd trip she had made with Asa, for Medicant IbSada, and there was Asa’s purchase of the leptokis. Onani would love those, but Jin-Li would keep them to herself. What she wanted to give Onani were random notes, secondhand rumors, assorted details. Facts to pile up, bits of intelligence to toss together in a semblance of information. No conclusions.

Jin-Li sat over the little reader for a long time, pondering. She realized how far gone the night was only when the oblong patches of silvery moonlight across the floor shrank to nothing and disappeared. Only a couple of hours remained until dawn. Stiffly, she rose and stretched. Where was Alekos Bezay now? The last record the disc had for him had been his examination prior to joining Delta Team. It was the next-to-last entry in the Bezay file. After that was only the report of Leman Bezay’s death from the prion disease. Alekos was presumably now on the list of Delta Team’s medicant. That shouldn’t be hard to confirm. It would be something, at least, to hand to Onani. Something that couldn’t hurt Zahra IbSada.

Jin-Li folded down her bed and stripped off her clothes. She fell into the uneasy sleep of utter exhaustion. A dream fragmented her sparse rest, a dream in which she stood naked in Onani’s office, no uniform, no breast band, only her portable in her hand. She was completely exposed to Onani’s dark gaze.

The star was high in the sky when Jin-Li startled awake from her nightmare. She lay trying to think through a cloud of fatigue. She climbed stiffly out of bed. Her face in the bathroom mirror was lined, dry from lack of sleep. She showered briefly, rubbed her brush of hair dry, and put on a fresh uniform. There was one other friendly face among her Irustani connections, one man who had been kind. Perhaps Director Hilel, Samir Hilel, might have some bit of intelligence she could use.

It was worth trying. Anything would be better than sitting uselessly in the little apartment, waiting for Onani to steal her last options.

*   *   *

Jin-Li waited by the sculpture in the lobby of the port director’s offices until Samir Hilel, smiling, came down the curving stairs. Jin-Li touched hand to heart. Samir Hilel responded in kind, and extended his hand to shake. It was cool and firm, an offer of friendship—an offer Jin-Li couldn’t accept.

“An unexpected pleasure, Kir Chung,” Director Hilel said.

Jin-Li had a manifest in hand, the little flat portable used for deliveries. Its screen showed only two entries, one for Medicant Iris B’Hallet and another for Delta Team.

“There’s been a mix-up in my deliveries,” Jin-Li said. “Would you mind checking your records? Perhaps they show what Delta Team and Medicant B’Hallet were each supposed to receive.”

The port director smiled and indicated the stairs. Jin-Li followed him up the stairs beneath the glass ceiling. The building was far warmer than the Port Force offices, but the men who worked here appeared unaffected. They all wore loose Irustani shirts and trousers in pale colors, even the director. Samir Hilel waved Jin-Li to a chair. “Kir Chung, you’re not ill, are you?” “No, Director, I’m not ill,” Jin-Li said hastily. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”

Hilel made a sympathetic noise. “Coffee, then, perhaps?”

Jin-Li leaned against the back of the chair and nodded. “Coffee would be wonderful. It’s kind of you.”

The director took his own chair behind a polished whitewood desk. A wavephone was on one corner, a large reader set into the other, but the desk was otherwise bare. After asking his secretary for coffee, Hilel called up his own records of the two deliveries and compared them with Jin-Li’s little reader.

“These look all right to me,” he said. “What’s the problem, do you think?” The secretary came in with a tray, and served Jin-Li a cup of coffee with a friendly smile. Jin-Li murmured thanks. “I found a box of . . .” In her fatigue, Jin-Li almost forgot that Director Hilel wouldn’t want to hear medical details. It was no doubt distasteful for him even to read the manifests. In this case, the taboo was helpful. “Well, a carton of supplies. Behind the wheel well of my cart. I don’t know which medicant needed it, but I’m fairly certain it was one of these two,”

“Ah,” Hilel said. He turned the reader so Jin-Li could see it. “Why don’t you check these manifests, see if you can identify it? No doubt it’s faster for you to do it yourself.”

Jin-Li pulled the chair closer and tapped on the keypad of the big reader. It wasn’t true, of course. No undelivered box lay forgotten in the cart. But here was the record for Delta Team’s clinic, and with a little luck, some sign of Alekos Bezay. Jin-Li squinted at the screen through burning eyes. Hilel poured more coffee and took a call while Jin-Li scrolled through the Delta Team records, trying to hurry, to keep it simple. No Bezay at all, not Alekos, not any other name. Strange, but interesting. Maybe interesting enough to report to Onani.

A strange silence made Jin-Li look up. Hilel gripped his wavephone with a white-knuckled hand, speechless. He held the phone over its cradle and then dropped it in with a small clatter. “Prophet,” he whispered, entirely to himself.

Jin-Li turned off the reader with a tap of a button and watched, unsure what to do. Hilel had obviously had a shock.

“Director Hilel? Is there ... are you ...”

Hilel’s brows drew together, and his fine eyes were full of alarm. “Forgive me, Kir Chung,” he said hoarsely, and then cleared his throat. “Forgive me,” he repeated. “But there’s been another one. Another death.”

“Director! Not from the prion disease?”

Even in his shock, Hilel winced with distaste. His color began to return, and he reached for the phone again. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he told Jin-Li. “I’m sorry, but I have work to do. The chief director needs to know, and Administrator Onani.” He spoke swiftly and sharply into the phone, giving orders.

Jin-Li stood up, dropping the little portable into a pocket. “I’ll leave you to it, Director, and I’m very sorry. Thanks for your help.”

Hilel nodded, his eyes narrow now, distracted.

Jin-Li took a step toward the door, then hesitated. “Director—who was it? Who died?”

Hilel shook his head. “Someone from the Medah, a clerk. I don’t have a name yet.”

“Not a miner, then?”

“No.” Hilel rose. “I’m sorry, Kir Chung, but . . .”

“No, of course, Director,” Jin-Li said quickly, backing out the door. Hilel’s secretary came in at the same moment, and they brushed each other in the doorway.

The secretary closed the door, but not before Jin-Li heard Hilel speaking again into the wavephone. “Chief Director? Have you heard? Yes. Yes. Then you heard—sorry about this, Qadir—but you realize he’s on Zahras list?”

Jin-Li stumbled away from Hilel’s office and down the stairs, muscles sloppy from fatigue, head whirling with questions. Another man had died, which meant Onani would be calling Jin-Li again. Worse, a second one from Zahra’s clinic list. And what had become of Alekos Bezay? And how could any of it relate to the wife-killer, Binya Maris?

Onani was going to want to know everything Jin-Li had learned. Jin-Li slumped in the cart for a moment, one fist heavy on the wheel. The leptokis, the dead women, the suicidal son. Iris B’Hallet, Zahra IbSada, Asa. The threads wound together, weaving a pattern, the pattern Onani was trying to make out.

Jin-Li struck the wheel, once, making it groan. No matter what Onani threatened, no matter the price he extracted—it would not be Jin-Li Chung who sorted it all out for him.

*   *   *

Zahra was in the clinic when the frantic call came from the B’Neeli household. Diya had gone to the office with Qadir, so Asa had to call for a hired car. While they waited he murmured to her, “Do you know what this is, Medicant?”

Grimly, she nodded. Asa’s eyes went wide but he asked nothing more.

“Ishi, you can handle the clinic,” Zahra said as the hired car, too wide for the street in front of the clinic door, rolled up to the corner and waited. “If there’s anything too difficult, reschedule it for tomorrow. Lili, you’ll stay with her? Call Marcus if you need an escort.”

Lili nodded. Ishi stood with hands clasped, rill open, watching Zahra. Zahra had her medical bag under one arm, and a clinic coat over the other. She touched Ishi’s shoulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said.

In the car, Asa gave instructions and the driver pulled away, turning east toward the Medah. Zahra leaned her head back against the seat, letting the layers of her veil fall against her face. Had she ever been so tired? And Ishi—Ishi knew something was going on. So sensitive, so empathetic. She’d be a wonderful medicant, was already wonderful with patients, within the scope of her knowledge. She was sixteen. In two years, she would take her final examinations, and there would be another Medicant IbSada. O Maker, Zahra prayed, let her be Medicant IbSada and not something, someone else. . . .

“Medicant?” Asa said softly. Zahra sat up quickly and blinked. “We’re here. The B’Neeli house.”

*   *   *

B’Neeli’s little house crouched too close to the narrow street, where scrawny met-olives had pushed their roots through the sidewalk. Zahra followed Asa to the door, and it was opened by Sofi’s grandmother. Sofi clung to her grandmother’s skirts. Both were veiled, though there was no sign of anyone else. If other people lived in this house, they had fled.

The smell was overpowering. Neither Zahra nor Asa needed directions to find B’Neeli.

The door to the small bedroom was closed. Zahra edged it open, and Asa gasped at the stench that roiled from the room.

Belen B’Neeli lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of excrement. His face was tipped far back, his eyes open. Zahra could imagine he had been gasping for air, and then, unconscious, had inhaled some of the vomitus puddled around his head. Zahra pulled gloves and masks out of her bag, passing some to Asa.

“Towels,” she said tersely.

Asa pulled on the gloves and mask, then tried other doors in the short corridor until he found one that opened on a bathroom. He was back in moments with a stack of worn towels. Zahra, gloved and masked, laid several on the fouled floor. She tied her skirts up around her thighs, under her medicant’s coat, then stepped on a path of towels to reach B’Neeli. His thick body was arched, limbs askew, one hand beneath his back. She bent to feel under his jaw for a pulse. His flesh was cold and still.

“He’s dead,” she said.

“So quickly?” Asa asked. Zahra shot him a glance. His voice shook slightly but he looked calm.

In an undertone, she said, “Straight into the bloodstream.”

“Ah.” Asa swallowed, watching. Zahra tried to mop up the mess, piling the sodden towels in one corner. She glanced up to see him standing, leaning forward as if he wanted to help but couldn’t make himself do it.

“Asa, are you all right?” He nodded, but he looked miserable. “Listen, go to the kitchen, find a bag of some kind, plastic, and a box. We’ll burn all these. Oh, and I brought disinfectant, but I need some sponges.” Asa turned, eager to leave the disgusting scene.

“And Asa ...” Zahra straightened, dropping the last towel on the pile, looking down at B’Neeli’s twisted body. “You might as well make the call now, if the B’Neelis have a wavephone. For transport for the body. Tell them to carry it to the clinic for a postmortem.”

Asa nodded again, and spoke through a dry mouth. “Medicant,” he said raspily, “it seems—it all seems different, seeing the real thing. Up close, like this. Does it bother you? Seeing how bad it was, how it must have been?”

Zahra replied, “No, Asa. I can see you’re upset, and I’m very sorry. But I knew, you see. I knew just how it would be for him.” And she added frankly, “For all of them.”

Asa’s eyes showed white. He shook his head with a jerking motion. “It’s terrible,” he whispered.

Zahra gestured at the body. “Do you know what I see here, Asa?” she asked in an even voice. “I see Maya B’Neeli, beaten to death by a man twice her size. I see Sofi, his little daughter, with welts and bruises on top of welts and bruises.” She looked into Asa’s gentle, troubled eyes. “I see a whore with a broken arm refused medical treatment because she’s not on any clinic list. I see a desperate mother raped and beaten in the very shade of the Doma.” “I know,” Asa said. “I’m sorry, Medicant. I thought I was stronger.” Zahra crossed the room in two swift strides. She couldn’t touch Asa with her soiled gloves, but she brought her face close to his. “Asa, you are strong. You’re as strong as any man I know, and you bear no responsibility for any of this. You are my good right arm, but you’re no more responsible for my actions than my arm is. It does as I ask it, and you have done the same, with loyalty and courage.”