The Terrorists of Irustan (6 page)

six

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Allow your wives their freedoms; the bearing and raising of your sons is honorable work.

—Ninth Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

I
shi, it’s
Circle Day,” Lili urged. “Put away the reader, now, and let’s get you ready.”

Ishi was sprawled on her cot, her legs dangling, her head bent over her screen. Zahra chuckled. “She doesn’t hear a thing when she’s reading, Lili,” she said.

Ishi looked up. “I do!” she protested. “But look, Zahra—look at these!” She held out the reader for Zahra to see.

Bright illustrations rolled slowly across the screen, twining clusters of red and yellow and green. Lili leaned to catch a glimpse. “What are those things?” she asked.

“Chromosome models, with gene loci,” Zahra said. She added with a touch of malice, “You have all of these in your own body.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Lili exclaimed, flapping a wrinkled hand. “Turn it off, Ishi. Your hair needs brushing.”

Again Ishi behaved as if Lili had not spoken. “Look at this one, Zahra,” she said, scrambling to her knees on the bed to point out an attenuated violet shape, long and thin.

“That’s an important one,” Zahra said. “Do you know why?”

“It’s the gene affected by rhodium,” Ishi said. With confidence, she pointed to another locus on the chain, illuminated in livid green. “And that one.”

“And what is this, exactly?” Zahra pressed her, tracing the long string that linked the colored shapes.

Ishi frowned, screwing up her small features as she thought. “It’s letters . . . D something. Oh, I know, DNA!”

“That’s right,” Zahra said, with a sharp nod of satisfaction. “Those loci, those genes, are like little jewels on a necklace, and the necklace is made of DNA. Do you know what the genes do?”

Ishi put one finger in her mouth as she searched for the answer. “Some say what our babies will be like, and some work in our bodies like—like chemicals. And if the miners don’t take their treatments, that one, and that one there, they change.”

“Yes,” Zahra told her. “Those are prion genes. The rhodium on Irustan has an unstable isotope, and it modifies the prion genes, fairly quickly, too. In less than three years, if a miner breathes the rhodium dust and doesn’t come for his therapy, then he—or anyone who breathes enough of the dust—is susceptible to the disease the leptokis carries.”

Lili shuddered and said, “Ugh. I hate those little beasts!”

“Have you ever seen one, Lili?” Zahra asked mildly.

“Yes, in cages! They sell them in the market stalls!”

“Some people keep them as pets,” Zahra teased. “Wouldn’t you like one, Lili? We could send Asa down to buy it.”

Lili rolled her eyes and tossed her head.

Ishi was not to be distracted. “What do we do for them, Zahra? I mean, if they breathe the dust.”

Zahra sat down beside Ishi to look at the illustration. It revolved slowly, exposing the loci, revealing the delicate structures of the genetic code. They were as lovely to her as any sculpture. They were as clear a call from the Maker as anything she could imagine, a little map, a tiny blueprint for the miracle of creation. She smiled at Ishi and caressed her smooth cheek with one finger.

“Well, first,” she said, “we scold the miner for not wearing his mask. And we remind him of how his ancestors died! Then we give him inhalation therapy.”

“I know what that is! It’s the little syrinx on the top, isn’t it?”

“On the top left of the medicator, yes, and we give him a mask to seal over his mouth and nose. But do you know what it administers?”

Ishi pouted and shook her head.

Zahra laughed. “Never mind, Ishi. You will.” She stood again, andreached for her own veil. “It’s oxygen, mostly, with an inhalable regen mixture, and an expectorant. To make our patient cough out the dust. And the accelerated protease that inhibits the prion—” She stopped. “It’s too soon for this, Ishi! When you’re ready, we’ll go into it.”

“But what about the genes? If they get mo—mo—’’

“Modified.” Zahra reached to turn off Ishi’s reader. “It means changed, altered. Come now, enough. Lili’s waiting.”

“But what about it, Zahra?”

Zahra was pulling on her veil, buttoning the verge. From behind the silk panel, she said softly, “We can’t do anything about it, Ishi, not here.”

“But on Earth?” Ishi demanded.

Zahra shook her head. “It doesn’t happen on Earth, my Ishi. The little bit of rhodium Earth had is long gone, and it was different, anyway. This is a problem unique to Irustan.”

Lili was already buttoning her verge. “If you two don’t hurry up!” she complained. “We only get to visit once in fifteen days, and 1 don’t want to be late!”

“Come on, Ishi,” Zahra said. “I’ll look at it with you tonight. Poor Lili! And Asa’s waiting, too.”

Ishi climbed off the cot and went to stand before the anah. Lili brushed her straight brown hair smooth and tied it back with a bit of ribbon before she drew the veil over Ishi’s head.

“My goodness, I think you’ve grown another inch!” she grumbled. She tugged at the drape, trying to get it to reach Ishi’s waist.

“I’ll be ten and a half next week,” Ishi said proudly. “I’ve been an apprentice almost three whole years.”

“Well, you need new clothes,” Lili said.

Asa tapped on the door. Ishi and Zahra followed Lili and Asa down the corridor to the front stairs. Ishi skipped ahead, doing pirouettes on the cool tiles, reaching with her palms to pat the sculptures set in niches in the plastered walls.

“Be careful, now!” Lili warned, but Ishi went on dancing until they reached the top of the curving staircase. There they heard Qadir’s voice rising from the foyer below. Ishi abruptly ceased her dance, and stood very still, waiting for Zahra. In silence, side by side, they walked down the stairs.

Qadir looked up and saw them, the three women shrouded in pastel silks, Asa in tunic and trousers, leaning on his cane.

“Ah, good,” Qadir said. “We’re off to the Doma now. I’ll see you at dinner. You’re going to Kalen’s?”

Asa answered for them. “Yes, Director.”

“Good, good,” Qadir said absently. Diya was holding the double doors open. In the wide drive, two cars waited in the glare of the star, one gleaming a metallic bronze, the other larger, a dull unglazed black. Diya bent to the window of one, the larger one, to give instructions to its driver. The hired drivers hated speaking with Asa. There had been some awkward moments, Asa trying to give directions, the driver ignoring him, Zahra helpless and furious behind her veil.

The heat hit them like an openhanded blow as they left the coolness of the foyer and crossed to the hired car. The driver stood with the doors open and ready, nodding respectfully and silently to Zahra. They stepped out of the furnace of the morning into the cooled and roomy passenger compartment. They took places facing one another, Lili fanning herself with her hand as if even the brief walk through the heat had tired her. Asa leaned in to put his cane against the seat, and then maneuvered his body into the car with a lurch of the muscle of his good leg. The driver turned his head away from the sight.

Qadir stood watching until the women and Asa were safely enclosed, and then he took the driver’s seat of his own car. His vehicle was low and streamlined, sparkling in the brilliant light. It was one of only very few private cars on Irustan, and it was fast and agile. Its door shut with a deep-throated click of plastic and metal alloy that no hired car could emulate.

Zahra watched with her arms folded as it spun away. She envied Qadir only this, only this one great thing. If he wanted, Qadir could set out in the morning in his fast car and go to the mines. He could tour the outside of the city on any day he liked, see the glittering blue reservoir dotted with the fishing boats of the Port Forcemen on holiday, or stop at the met-olive groves and stroll in their dappled shadows. He could drop in at the marketplace on impulse, and haggle with a merchant over silk or oil or fish. At will, and without a reason, he could drive to the port, meet the arriving shuttle, or watch the rhodium being loaded into its gaping belly. It was not that he did such things, but that he
could
do such things, that he possessed such glorious freedom—she envied him that.

In Zahra’s wildest imaginings, she could not dream of a way to have such liberty. She could go out, but never alone. She could go about the city with her husband, if he wanted to take her. She could attend a patient, with Asa or Diya as escort. She could go out on Doma Day to visit with her circle offriends, or to the market, if Qadir allowed it, and if an escort was available. She could attend funerals and cessions, with the permission and the escort of her husband. A rich life, she supposed. But not a free one.

The hired car drove deliberately and cautiously down the avenue to the house of Gadil IhMullah, director of Water Supply. The car swept ponderously up the drive to join a short line of other, similar cars. The driver jumped out to hold the door for Zahra, inclining his head to her once again. Ishi fairly leaped out of the car and trotted up the walk to the front door where several other small veiled figures bobbed impatiently, touching each other, squeaking with the effort of keeping silent until they were indoors. Zahra and Lili waited for Asa to retrieve his cane and follow them. Again Lili sighed with the heat as they walked between the car and the door. Zahra didn’t mind it. She suppressed a mad impulse to toss off her veil and feel the brilliance of the star directly on her face.

But, like the other visitors, she walked sedately into Director IhMullah’s house, ushered in by a man of his household who then immediately hurried away to the Doma for prayers. Once he was gone, the only men left in the house were Asa and a houseboy. They went to the kitchen to while away the time, while the women, with their daughters and sons too young for the Doma, hastened to the dayroom, chattering gaily.

The room was beautiful, with a pale tiled floor and white walls. Several large pieces of lacquered pottery adorned one end of Kalen’s dayroom, forming a backdrop for the circle of chairs already set for her friends. A small piece, a shining bowl with the elongated petals of mock roses floating in it, rested on a little inlaid table in the center of the circle.

In the doorway, Zahra unbuttoned her rill and stood for a moment to savor the scene. The women gathered here had been her closest friends since her girlhood, and their daughters, pastel veils floating, fluttered together like patapats through the met-olive groves.

“Zahra, come in, come in!” Idora called. She was plump, cheerful, and talkative. Safe from the eyes of any men, Idora had already unbuttoned both rill and verge, and they dangled beside her round cheeks. “And Ishi, sweetheart, it’s so good to see you. You’ve gained some weight, it looks wonderful on you!” Idora embraced Ishi and kissed her cheek, then hugged Zahra.

Zahra unfastened her own verge to smile down at her old friend. Already seated, Camilla called her name and waved. Ishi dashed off with the other girls to the far side of the room, where bowls of olives and plates of small sandwiches and sweet cakes were arranged on a narrow whitewood table. Games and toys were laid out near a pile of floor cushions. The children squealed and laughed together, and the women breathed sighs of release. The anahs gathered at the other side of the room, whispering together. Soon all the friends—Zahra, Idora, Camilla, and petite Laila—were seated in their customary circle. Zahra lifted an eyebrow to Kalen, who had not spoken. Kalen, strands of unruly red hair curling as always out of her cap, only shook her head as she served coffee, and Zahra forebore to ask.

Idora was less tactful. “What’s wrong, Kalen? You’ve got your funeral face on.”

Kalen frowned, her pale eyebrows making a reddish furrow across her brow. “I can’t talk about it, Idora—not now.” She glanced significantly over her shoulder at the cluster of girls.

Camilla was always quiet, neat, not a strand of brown hair showing. Her gray eyes were mild and intelligent. She touched Kalen’s hand as Kalen served her coffee, and her eyes darkened.

Both Kalen and Camilla had married much older men, far older than Idora’s Aidar, or Laila’s Samir. Gadil IhMullah, in fact, was now sixty-seven years old. When Kalen, a thin, frightened girl of sixteen, had been ceded, Gadil had been forty-nine. Kalen’s father had been director of Water Supply. Gadil now held that post.

Camilla’s husband, dour Leman, had been forty-six at their marriage. She clucked her tongue, and whispered, “They’re so old now. Sometimes they’re more demanding than the children. They’ve forgotten what it is to be young.”

Kalen put the coffeepot on the side table and came to sit beside Zahra in the circle. She was pale, and blue shadows dragged beneath her eyes.

Zahra looked at her with concern. “Haven’t you slept well?” she asked. She held Kalen’s wrist in her hand, and then laid her fingers against her friend’s forehead.

The gentle touch made Kalen’s eyes fill, and her pale, freckled cheeks flushed an angry red. “1 haven’t slept at all,” she grated. “But really, I can’t talk about it now. Rabi ...” She looked over her shoulder at her daughter laughing with the other girls. The women’s eyes followed hers.

Laila pressed her small hands to her face. “Not Rabi!” she moaned. “She’s not more than eleven, is she?”

Kalen spoke through gritted teeth. “She’ll be twelve in two weeks,” she hissed. “Twelve! A baby still!”

“Her menses?” Zahra asked softly.Kalen nodded. Zahra put out her hand to Kalen’s and found that it was knotted in a fist under the silk of her drape.

Camilla said, “It’s terrible to see them growing up. I miss my Alekos so much! He’s thirteen—but still a little boy, just the same. He’s so small! But Leman insists on him going to the Doma. And there’s nothing I can do about it.” Tears welled in her eyes, too. “He still calls for me at night, can’t stand the dark. Leman makes him sleep in his own room just the same, and screams at me if I go to him.” She dabbed at her tears with the hem of her drape.

The girls, playing at the side of the room, grew quiet, sensing the change of mood. They cast uneasy glances at the circle where the women sat. Rabi was tall and thin, like her mother, her hair the bright red of youth. Idora waved to the children, calling with forced gaiety, “Anything good to eat over there, rascals? Save some for me!”