Everfair (36 page)

“Really, it was a relief when she asked to go back to the capital. I hear she has left the country.”

“For a while, she did go,” Josina said. “But she has returned.” And had given valuable reports.

Mrs. Albin screwed her eyes shut as if she'd rather not see something ugly. “I pray for her. God grant her peace.”

That would be something good for everyone to have.

They ate dinner and went to bed. Sifa removed Josina's pretty outfit and they slept. They rose before the sun did so that
Wheatley
might rise into the sky with it.

Once over the Kasai River they turned south. North would have been easier and more direct, but that was enemy territory.
Wheatley
anchored for two nights in river valleys as far from any village as they could get, though Angola, a colony of Portugal, was supposedly neutral.

Lying between Sifa and Lembe, Queen Josina silently rehearsed the speeches she would make. Over and over she imagined conversations, interviews, approaches. The Five Yellow Silk Scarves would ensure favorable responses, if she could correctly target the charm. Some officials she knew of through Alonzo; some had been introduced to her by her father. Yet there would always be new faces.

At last they came to the city. Luanda was a long-established seaport, and the equipment necessary to service the transporting of goods stayed concentrated near its waterfront. By the great blue sea, aircanoe tethers beckoned to them like slender fingers. Both cranes for
Wheatley
's freight of metals and hemp and wheeled stairs for the passengers were provided. Her father's servants greeted her with parasols and a white burro. Lembe and Sifa had to walk behind her in a cloud of the animal's dust and stink.

Away from the seaside the heat grew. Her father's servants led the burro up a slight hill and under an arched gateway through a good, thick wall. On its other side, a fountain's song came to her between blooming shrubs. Assisted down from the burro's back, Josina stood a moment on the grey flagstones, orienting herself. Then she walked forward. The softly splashing water was only a few steps further on.

Hamad bin Mu
ḥ
ammad bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Mu
ḥ
ammad, king of the Niassa, sat in quiet contemplation on the fountain's lip. His silk headdress shimmered with reflected light. His white beard was as full as ever, but below his smiling eyes, black smudges marred his dark brown skin.

“My daughter. Be welcome to my home.”

“Is this truly your home now, father? So far from Pemba and the Madagascar trade routes?”

“It's where I do my work lately. Some of it. Having a home here is convenient.” He looked past her. “Tell your people to ask my steward which rooms will be yours to use. While they arrange your things, we'll talk.”

Her father was shrewd. The fountain's noise masked their exchange. Josina shared what her spies had learned about the Entente's lack of commitment to prolonged African campaigns. Nothing she said would weaken her in the coming negotiations. Portugal risked little by turning a blind eye to its colonies' military activity.

“But Macao? The Chinese won't want to be part of this,” King Hamad objected.

“They don't,” she agreed. “And it's not necessary, because, like Africa, China is of less concern to whites than Europe. Whites want Macao's wealth just as they want ours, but they want to take it home with them. The Portuguese would rather not have to stay there. Or here.

“If the Niassa and Angola are persuaded to join our side, that will be enough.”

“Enough? No, my child, no. Nothing will ever be enough.” Though king, her father had always acted as if he ruled his people for someone else.

To convince him they could win, she had to tell him about the machine-gun factory at Manono. “We are making twenty-five of them from market day to market day. And building a new place where we can make them faster and make more.” And better. Tink had improved the stolen plans.

“Ah.” One short word her father said. As he said it, though, she saw the fear flow off of him like water pouring off a leaf.

That was how she knew he would help.

 

Bookerville to Manono, Everfair, May 1916

Martha didn't want to believe it. But it was true. She stared at the mercury of their only decent clinical thermometer. George's fever had pushed it up to 101.1. That must be due to more than the heat of the day. She was justified in making him quit his work early. She'd been right to bring him here.

“Lie down,” she told him. He grinned but obeyed her. She drew the back of her hand across his forehead. It was damp. And under his tan, did she discern a flush?

He grabbed for her hand, missed, and closed his eyes tight, wincing. “How are you feeling, dear?” she asked.

“Rotten.” Again, he grinned. More of a grimace. “I don't mind lying down in the middle of the day. Alla work for you…” He trailed off into stertorous breathing. Worsening so quickly.

She must drink this cup.

All the pallets in this wing were full, now. Young men—she refused to house the women in the same facilities, even if they
were
soldiers—groaned and sweated and muttered and yelled all around her. Not quite the same symptoms as typhus—there was very little vomiting, and no diarrhea to speak of once the intestinal tract had been voided. George had admitted to aching pains, but, when questioned, said these were general and not situated in his joints.

This was a new affliction.

Resolutely ignoring the hand her aide offered, Martha stood with as much grace as a fifty-seven-year-old woman could expect to muster. She shook out her skirts as a cover for the time it took to regain her composure. George's eyes were shut. “I'll be back in time for tea, dearest,” she said, hoping he'd hear her, and walked calmly away.

It was best to maintain an air of imperturbability in front of the patients. Also in front of staff. Her one-walled office afforded no refuge. Sitting on the stool George had carved for her, at the desk he had built, she sorted papers into stacks as if they mattered. As if anything mattered.

She'd better get a grip on herself. Make another mark on the sheet tallying those who suffered from the new disease. George was number thirty-six. Move that page to the side. Try to finish her latest letter urging more churches to add their voices to hers in the matter of America's participation in the war. That
did
matter. Faith could move mountains. With the aid of the American government, Everfair would triumph over her latest enemies in practically no time. Surely the Lord would lift the scales from the eyes of congressmen blind to the sacredness and manifest inevitability of Everfair's mission. Though no other member of the Grand Mote agreed, Martha knew that making this request was the country's best and shortest path to victory.

But after staring sightlessly at her earlier words for what must have been five minutes—possibly more—she threw down the half-written epistle in disgust. Nothing would do but to find a cure for George's illness. It was a pity that she couldn't fool herself out of the conviction that she knew whose assistance to seek. When Queen Josina had shared her people's unchristian treatment for malaria—which, alas, had proved effective—she'd named other healers to consult on other matters. Pagans, all of them. Currently, one of them worked here in Bookerville.

In a last, vain effort, Martha took up her Bible and held it above the cross on her breast: her shields against the constant barrage of heathenism this land hurled against her. That did no good. Through the dappled light of the early afternoon, she saw Yoka approaching.

He climbed the three steps to the office's raised wooden floor. He knocked on the doorpost and waited for her to invite him “in.” She found herself nodding; God must mean for Martha to abandon her pride, or he would not have made this so easy. God was using the pagan priest for his own ends. As he used everyone. With a silent plea to her Lord that she be allowed to understand and implement his will, she told the man their problem.

“Yes. Of course we have been hearing about this infection. We trace its origin to contact with birds and beasts of the air.” He turned down her offer of her stool and stood, clasping his flesh and prosthetic hands behind his back. “There are a number of treatments to prevent our patients from getting worse—especially in their lungs. But the main idea is just to let each sick person get well on their own. Most will recover.”

Most. “Why? Why won't you even attempt to heal him—them?”

Yoka's shoulders rose. “We don't know how. We asked—prayed—for God to tell us. He said a surrender to this illness would protect us from something much worse, and—”

“God will never speak to you! Devil-worshippers! Filthy, lying, blaspheming savages—get out! Get out!” Martha collapsed to her knees and hid her face in her hands. She sobbed with tearless rage. How dare they pretend to have God's ear? How dare they?

How had she become so scared and weak?

Lowering her hands, she saw no one in the immediate vicinity. Yoka had gone. Her aides were all absent on their rounds—or, perhaps, taking meals at the canteen. She used the desk's edge to pull herself erect.

Discipline. The Lord would help her as long as she helped herself. In an hour, she would take George his tea. No one would wonder at that or think she feared unduly for her husband. Till then, she would work.

She returned to her unfinished letter. “Sisters and Brothers,” she read, “our most Blessed nation must move to end this terrible, tragic War! It is a Scourge which threatens to engulf every continent of the Globe in wicked, pointless conflict. Let the brave example set by the missionaries of Everfair lead—” There the text broke off abruptly.

A horn of ink lay on the desk's broad surface, and a brass-nibbed pen in the open basket beside it. She took them up like they were blade and shongun, but thought furiously as she filled the rest of the page with yet another urgent call to arms. This was her sixth such in half as many years. If only she could go herself—but in America, her marriage was a crime. If only Winthrop could act as her ambassador—or Chester—

Yes. She would fly to Manono and ask her godson there to travel to America on her behalf—on behalf of all the colony's Christians.

At the canteen, she obtained a gourd of tea and four sweet plantain balls. Though George seemed asleep when she sat on the floor mat beside him, she saved the tea for him. Soon after her arrival, she was rewarded. First his slow breaths—already more regular than when she'd put him to bed—quickened. Then his long lashes lifted to reveal his brilliant eyes, like blue gemstones. His hectic flush had receded. In fact, at the sight of the food, his color ebbed further. That was all right; she folded the leaf back around the remains. A temporary loss of appetite was normal, judging by his fellow sufferers.

The tea, he accepted gratefully. The news of her plan to depart for Manono next market day didn't please him in the least. He thought she should leave in the morning.

Martha objected. “But you're ill!”

“But I'm improving, aren't I? Fast as all the others?” So far, the lengthiest instances of this sort of indisposition had lasted two markets. One market was more typical, as she had, to her regret, said to him while he lay in bed with her last night.

Couldn't she unsay it now? “As far as we know, though its symptoms are severe, the disease is of short duration.
As far as we know.
That doesn't mean your case will follow the same course…”

It was no use. No complications developed overnight, and at dawn she mounted to
Okondo
's gondola. Two uncomfortable days en route. One day of pointless argument with Chester, who refused to see reason. “Why can't you go to America yourself?” he asked. “Or, barring that, send someone who truly
wants
to go? Like Miss Bailey—she's already headed there, I'm told. Handy, don't you think?” What Martha thought was that Rima Bailey was a shameless tribade.

One more day waiting for
Okondo
's return from Kisangani. Two more in transit back to Bookerville. One and a half markets, six days, wasted. Absolutely wasted. “Lost: Two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.”

At last, at last, she descended to stand on the same ground as her beloved. As he gathered her into his young arms she swore never to leave him again.

 

Ponce, Puerto Rico, to Harlem, United States of America, May 1916

Maybe Rima should have flown out of Cuba, but that was too damn close to Florida, which she wanted to forget forever. And the U.S. government claimed Porto Rico was part of America, which meant its routes were better: more dirigibles more times a week.

Shame the Germans had shot at that English boat with all them American passengers. At least they'd missed. Cut back on the sailing schedules, though.

Since the next dirigible north didn't leave out till morning, she decided to take in a show at the Pearl. From her hotel it was a short walk—a couple minutes if she'd gone direct, but she cruised around the square first for the glitter of its fountains, the cool rise of the evening shadows up its soft-colored walls, the noise of its birds cackling and scolding each other as they settled into the treetops for the night. She thought she could almost understand what they said.

Turning her back on all that, she marched along Cristina Street. It was a straight shot. Then she climbed six marble steps, slipped into the crowd threading through six tall columns and into three doors in walls painted a delicate yellow. Once inside, she squeezed between round-bottomed women in tight skirts; portly gentlemen in linen suits; thin, spinsterish-looking white ladies fanning themselves; smooth-haired youths and wrinkle-necked ticket-takers. An usher handed her a printed program and showed her to the third-row seat she'd purchased, maybe a little too close to the pit.