The Child Goddess (13 page)

14

SIMON CAUGHT ISABEL
just as her knees gave way, and she collapsed in his arms with a little gasping breath. Her pupils swelled with shock, and her face turned ashen. He lifted her, cradling her head on his shoulder, and laid her down as gently as he could on the couch. He tucked a pillow beneath her ankles, and patted her cheek gently.

“Isabel?” Her eyelids fluttered, and she groaned. Her fingers reached for her cross. “Isabel. It’s all right. Take your time.”

He knelt beside the couch, cursing himself for not finding a gentler way to tell her. He chafed her wrist between his hands until she sighed, and her eyes opened.

“Oh, Simon. Good lord. I fainted!”

He smiled at her. “Indeed, Mother Burke. You fainted.”

She struggled to sit upright. “Good lord,” she repeated. “I’ve never fainted in my life!”

“Well, it’s a shock. And I didn’t say it very well.”

She shook her head. “There’s no good way to say such a thing. Did I hear you right, Simon?” Her eyes on him were cloudy. “Did you say one hundred years old? Oh, my God. Poor Oa. Poor child.”

Simon brought a glass of water from the little kitchen. He sat down beside her, watching to see that her color returned, that she drank the water, that her pupils contracted to their normal size. “Some would say she was lucky, Isabel. Eternal youth.”

Her eyes widened again, but she was stable now. “Eternal? God forbid!”

He relaxed. She was herself again. “Why God forbid, Isabel? Doesn’t everyone want to stay young?”

She shook her head. “Only the old, Simon. Children want more than anything to grow up. Can’t you remember?”

He chuckled. “I’m very far from being a child now. And there are things about being young that I miss.”

“But . . .” She paused, searching for words, touching her cross. “But it was so—satisfying—so right—to become a woman. And you, Simon. How could you do the work you do if you remained a child? You saw Oa, you saw how she is! It doesn’t matter if she’s lived a thousand years, she’s still a child!”

“I agree with you. She has a child’s body, and a child’s mind.”

Isabel pushed herself to her feet and moved unsteadily to the window, her slender shoulders bowed. “Do you know what they’ll do to her? How they’ll use her?” she choked.

“It’s why Adetti brought her here, Isabel.”

“And Boreson allowed it.”

“I have an idea about that, too.”

She turned. The soft light from the window haloed her bare head. “Her illness?”

He shrugged. “I hate to guess at diagnoses, but she obviously has some sort of chorea. If it’s degenerative, then it’s age-related.”

“So Adetti wants—”

“What humans have wanted for eons. The fountain of youth.”

“It’s appalling.”

“Why, Isabel? Not everyone has your faith.”

“Simon, it’s not about faith. It’s about morality! Ethics! Who among us is entitled to live forever? The rich? The powerful?”

“I agree with you, of course, but I doubt the likes of Adetti would. Or even, I’m sorry to say, the regents.”

Her voice was strained. “We have to do something. We have to protect Oa.”

“It won’t be easy. We have to start by finding out what is keeping her from aging. What keeps her a child.” He rose, and walked to her side. “That’s what Adetti’s been looking for, of course. Why he kept running scans, though he isn’t clever enough to work it out. I’m going to need to do a scan of my own.”

“Oh, Simon, those other children.” She pressed her palms to her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Those poor abandoned children. Are they all like Oa?”

“The deceased one was. And I’m concerned about the hydro workers at the power park.”

“You think they’re in danger of infection after all?”

He shook his head. “I just don’t know. We know Oa’s not a carrier, but we still need to discover the source of the virus. We don’t know what its effects might be on a different population. We have to know what we’re dealing with.”

A sound came from the second bedroom, the creak of a bed, a sighing yawn as Oa woke. Simon watched in wonder as Isabel looked away, rearranged her face, prepared herself. This, he thought, is what it is to be a parent. The parent wears a mask, puts the child’s needs before her own. She makes whatever sacrifices are necessary, for the child’s sake.

Oa appeared in the doorway, sleepily rubbing her eyes, her mass of curling hair falling around her shoulders, and Isabel, somehow, smiled a peaceful and affectionate morning greeting.

Yes, Simon thought. Oh, yes. This is what it is to be a parent. Even if the child is a hundred years old.

*

“
I WILL BE
right beside you every moment,” Isabel assured Oa. The girl’s eyes were wide with anxiety, and she clung to Isabel’s hand. The day before she had watched Isabel lie under the medicator as Simon ran a scan, but today her fear had returned. She had put it aside briefly as they rode up the outside elevator, exclaiming over the view of Seattle, lifting her teddy bear to see the scattered domes and spires glittering in late winter sunshine, windows of every shape and size glowing gold and silver. But now, as they passed the office doors in the medical building, she grew silent again, and her hand in Isabel’s was cold. Isabel, glancing down at her, saw her reading the signs on the doors they passed, sounding out the names. Every one of them had “Doctor” before it.

Simon walked a little ahead, and the omnipresent guard, the pleasant Matty Phipps, came behind. Simon had located an old friend from medical school, and asked to borrow an exam room for an hour or two. Isabel had explained to Oa that Doctor Simon needed to do his own medicator scan. “But just once,” she said firmly. “Only once. And I will be with you.”

Oa had said she understood, but now the girl’s fear radiated through her hand and into Isabel’s. Isabel said, “Oa. Do you know what a machine is?”

“Ship,” Oa said in a small voice. “Car. Es-presso maker.”

“That’s right. Those are all machines. They do only what we want them to do. And the medicator is a machine. Not a spider. A machine.”

The girl’s great black eyes lifted to Isabel’s. “Doctor Simon needs to—”

“Yes. Doctor Simon needs to examine you.”

“Ex-amine.” Oa took a shallow breath. “Examine Oa.”

“That means to study. Simon wants to understand you, to know things about you. Is that all right, Oa?”

“Permission?”

Isabel smiled at the quickness of Oa’s mind, the alacrity of her memory. “That’s exactly right. Permission. Will you give Simon permission?”

They had reached the correct office, and Simon opened the door and stood back for them to enter. Oa stepped cautiously through it into an elegant reception room. As she passed Simon, she looked up into his face and said gravely, “Oa gives Doctor Simon permission.”

Simon nodded acknowledgment with the same gravity. “Thank you, Oa.”

*

THE EXAM ROOM
in this office was much warmer than the one on the ship, or even in the infirmary. Oa lay on the high bed, the paper sheet crinkled beneath her. An arrangement of miniature objects spun in the air above her head, a tiny girl in a scarlet dress, a four-legged beast with a silver horn, a bird with lavender feathers, a flat yellow fish with green eyes. They twirled in an intricate pattern, dodging each other, almost but not quite colliding. Oa decided they were some kind of toy she had not yet seen. She held tightly to Isabel’s hand, her teddy bear in her other hand, and she concentrated on the dance of the little toys. When Doctor Simon bent over her, she flinched, and then forced herself to lie still. She must lie still. She had given Doctor Simon permission.

His hands were warm on her skin. Doctor’s hands had been cold and dry, like the empty snakeskins the anchens found on the forest floor. Doctor—that other Doctor—had jostled her, pinched her, sometimes pulled her hair as he worked. He had treated her as if he understood exactly what she was.

Doctor Simon pressed the microneedles to her wrists with a motion so deft she had to glance down at her arm to see that they were really attached. When he fitted the syrinxes to her temples and to her ankles, he spoke to her. “Please tell me if there’s any discomfort, Oa. Do you feel this, here at your ankle? No? Good. And now I’m going to patch these to your temples, just so. Is that all right? Good girl. You’re a very good patient.”

Oa didn’t understand everything he said. When he moved her teddy bear to reach the inside of her arm, she gave Isabel an anxious glance. Isabel murmured, “Here, Oa.” She lifted her cross over her head, and laid it on Oa’s breast. “We will share it.”

It was the same spider machine, but it seemed different now. Isabel’s cross lay on Oa’s chest with a comforting weight, and the colorful creatures spun above her head. Isabel held her hand, and Doctor Simon chattered easily as he worked. The spider machine made its usual hissing and clicking noises, but Oa found if she listened to Doctor Simon’s voice, even though she didn’t understand most of what he said, the spider machine lost some of its power. She didn’t shudder, or shiver.

And soon it was over, with Isabel helping Oa down from the high bed. Doctor Simon restoring her teddy bear to her arms and turning to take disks from the spider machine. They were leaving the office, Doctor Simon saying good-bye to his old friend, Matty Phipps rejoining them as they came out of the exam room. The four of them walked down the corridor, free again. Oa felt like dancing herself, spinning and twirling like the tiny girl in the scarlet dress.

As they floated down to the street in the transparent elevator, Oa admired the great city around her with new eyes, and she smiled at Isabel as they got into the car. “Oa is hungry.”

Isabel laughed. “Oh, yes, Oa, Doctor Simon and Isabel are hungry, too.” And when Matty Phipps grinned and nodded, Isabel said, “So is Matty, I think. Let’s all have ice cream!”

And so they had another “outing,” all of them, with a strange cold food that tickled Oa’s tongue and made her head ache at first, but was so sweet and thick in her mouth that she had to eat it fast anyway. When she had finished hers, a pretty concoction of white and brown and red in a clear glass dish, she laid her spoon down with a clatter. “Oa likes it!” she cried.

Everyone laughed. Doctor Simon, Matty Phipps, and Isabel. Oa laughed, too, at first. But when she saw the affection in Isabel’s wonderful eyes, the easy trust on Doctor Simon’s face, her laugh died. She had to tell them the truth. It wasn’t right to pretend. She stared down at the shiny table, seeing her own dark face looking back at her.

Oa remembered a tatwaj on the people’s island. She remembered that a mother and father tried to hide their son, slip him away when it was time for the tatwaj so he could not be counted. There had been screaming and wailing. The elders sent the son to the anchens, and the mother and father were banished from the three islands. Oa’s papi had been very angry, and had made a speech before the people. Oa was little then, but she remembered how Papi had thundered, and how the mother and father clung to their son as he was pulled away, how the mother screamed as the elders rowed him away in their canoe.

The memory slipped away, and Oa came back to herself. She looked up into Doctor Simon’s lean, kind face, Matty Phipps’s ruddy smile, Isabel’s gentle eyes. They gazed back at her, trusting her, believing her to be something she was not.

Tears filled Oa’s eyes, and the others fell silent. She knew they were wondering what was wrong. Even through the rich, sugary smell of the ice cream shop, she caught the change in Isabel’s scent, the tinge of worry, of confusion.

She must tell her. And then what would Isabel do? Would she give her back to Doctor? Send her away? Perhaps she would feel she had no choice.

*

ISABEL LEFT SIMON
to pore over the medicator scans. She persuaded Matty to let her take Oa for a walk, allowing her to follow at a distance, promising she wouldn’t leave her sight. She wrapped Oa in the black sweater, and a thick coat that reached the girl’s ankles. She had found boots to fit Oa’s long-toed feet. She wore her own vest and coat, and they both wore knitted hats. They walked west from the guest suites, down a winding street toward the waterfront, leaving the cramped streets of the Multiplex to walk in the broader avenues of the city.

Oa had not spoken since the ice cream shop.

Isabel kept Oa’s hand in hers as they walked, not hurrying, but keeping a steady pace down the hill, following the glimpses of Elliott Bay between the buildings. The waters of Puget Sound sparkled a cool blue in the fading light, a color that reminded Isabel of the ancient fishing villages in northern Italy, where a handful of people still lived in the old way, close to the land, shaped by it, dependent upon it. Oa’s people must have lived that way, fishing, gathering, making clothes and implements from the materials the land gave them. She let her mind follow this thread, always ending up in the same place. The fisherpeople of northern Italy stayed bound to their homeland, all but inseparable from it. If the Sikassa followed that model, then where had they gone, and why? And how could they have left their children behind?

Isabel glanced down at Oa’s hand. One of her tattoos, just a little jagged corner, showed beneath her coat sleeve. Oa’s head drooped. Isabel felt the squeeze of pity in her heart, and she pressed her lips together, chastising herself. Pity would not help the child. Action would.

They came to a park, narrow tiers of winter-worn grass descending to a wide street below. There were foamcast benches facing the mountains and the water. Rhododendron bushes rose high enough on the southern edge to block the rising evening wind. “Come, Oa,” Isabel said. “Let’s sit down here. I want to talk to you.”

Obediently, Oa sat down, and Isabel sat beside her. “Will you look at me, Oa?”

Oa’s eyes came up to hers, as deep and empty as a dark sea.

“Oa, I know something is troubling you. I think you’re afraid to say what it is.”

Oa looked away. She whispered, “Yes. Oa is afraid.”

“Sometimes I’m afraid, too.”

The girl sighed, a tiny sound beneath the whine of the wind.