The Child Goddess (17 page)

18

PAOLO ADETTI AND
Simon Edwards glared at each other across Gretchen Boreson’s office. The administrator sat with her hands on her desk, her linked fingers trembling even in repose.

“If you use this to hurt Isabel,” Simon grated, “I will do everything in my power to discredit you.”

Adetti glowered. “You’re the one in trouble here, Doctor. Not me.”

“Now, Paolo,” Boreson said hastily. “Let’s not talk that way. Surely, Dr. Edwards, we can reach some sort of understanding.”

“Understanding? About your prying into my private life, and Isabel’s?”

“Well,” Boreson faltered. “Of course we only have the child’s interests . . .”

“Rot,” Simon said through stiff lips. “You may have beguiled the regents with talk of your ‘delayed senescence factor,’ but the media will be another question.”

Boreson’s pale cheeks grew even paler. “Please, Dr. Edwards, Paolo. If all of this reaches the press, we’ll have a circus on our hands.”

“Exactly.” Simon folded his arms, and leaned one shoulder against the wall, trying to let the tension out of his body. “Administrator, this entire incident was motivated by greed, pure and simple. You know it’s true.”

Adetti bristled. “You want Mother Burke’s reputation ruined in the press?”

“You want your own ruined. Doctor? I can see that you lose your license.”

“Wait, wait.” Gretchen Boreson stood up. “Please, just a moment, Dr. Edwards. I have a compromise in mind.”

He lifted one eyebrow.

“We—Paolo and I—we want to come with you. To Virimund. As observers.”

Simon straightened. “Administrator, surely you’re not well enough for a space voyage.”

Her ice-blue eyes were bleak, and for the moment, the muscles of her face were still. “I won’t get better staying here.”

“But your physician must—”

Adetti interrupted. “We already have the clearance. We’re going, Edwards.”

“You’re not,” Simon said flatly. “I’ll oppose it with the board.”

“Dr. Edwards,” Boreson began.

Adetti blurted, triumphantly, “I called your wife. We know all about it. The whole story.”

Gretchen Boreson groaned, ever so slightly. Simon stared at Adetti, appalled and speechless. He thought of Anna, poor Anna, standing in the door of the house in Geneva, watching him drive away from her. None of this was her fault, not any part of it. How it must have hurt her to have this boorish man asking her personal, painful questions. Anna was as naive as she was honest. She would never have been able to deal with Paolo Adetti.

“Paolo,” Boreson said. “Leave me alone with Dr. Edwards.”

Adetti started to object, but the administrator gave him a frigid look, and he subsided. Simon watched, bemused by the power Boreson wielded, by the shallow stupidity that was Adetti’s weakness. The ESC physician shot Simon an angry glance as he left. Simon would have laughed if he were not still reeling.

“I’m so sorry. Dr. Edwards,” Boreson said. She sounded as if she meant it. “Please, come and sit down with me, and let’s see if we can smooth things over.”

“I want an apology,” Simon said grimly. “From Adetti. And I want him to apologize to my wife as well.”

“I’ll see to it. You know, I didn’t condone—”

“But you did,” Simon said. Suddenly he felt weary beyond bearing. He crossed the room and took the offered chair, lowering himself into it slowly, as if his muscles hurt. “You condoned it by encouraging his greed.”

Boreson met his gaze without flinching. “Well, yes. That may be true. We all want something, after all.” She paused, and then added softly, “I expect what you want is to be with Isabel Burke.”

*

SIMON HAD BEEN
right. He so often was, Isabel reflected. It was all too easy to let him shoulder responsibility for making arrangements, filing reports. She watched him now, seated with his computer, a wavephone transmitter curling beneath his chin, his lean face intent. He had refused to discuss his meeting with Boreson and Adetti. As he reached to touch the computer screen, she thought how graceful his fingers were, deft and sensitive.

Her fingers tingled with the desire to touch his hand, to feel once again the rush of emotion that would surge from his skin to hers. That rush had been her undoing. Their first touch had been inadvertent and powerful. Irresistible.

Her cheeks burned at the memory. She forced herself to rise from the table, and go in search of Oa.

The regents had, at last, ordered ESC to lift the guard. Matty Phipps no longer shadowed them, nor did another guard stand outside the suite at night. They had three weeks of relative freedom before the transport departed for Virimund with Isabel, Simon, and Oa, an archivist, and a couple of Port Force technicians.

Oa’s vocabulary and pronunciation improved rapidly with the books Isabel found for her. Isabel worried she was memorizing the pages of the books, but when she tested her on the computer or on flexcopies, Oa recognized the printed words. She had learned some simple math, a bit of Earth history, and what little was known of her people. But Oa was most interested in Isabel herself.

When Isabel knelt each morning before her traveling altar, Oa joined her, listening to the prayers, watching the ritual with her wide-eyed gaze. One morning, as Isabel bent to blow out the little candle, Oa asked diffidently, “Isabel? Mary Magdalene is an anchen?”

“Was,” Isabel said automatically. “You mean to say, was Mary Magdalene an anchen?”

“Was.” Oa repeated the correction. “Was Mary Magdalene an anchen?”

Isabel sat back on her heels, the crucifix still in her hand. “Oa, your word—anchen—it’s a difficult one for me. I don’t truly understand what it means.”

The child looked up into Isabel’s face with a trust that melted her heart. “Oa is an anchen.” Only a week ago this very confession had caused the girl deep distress. Now she offered it almost eagerly.

“Yes,” Isabel said gently, taking Oa’s hand. “Yes, I understand that. But if you are an anchen—by which I think you mean a child who has lived many years—then Mary Magdalene was not. She lived to be very old, we think, but she was not a child.”

“Mary Magdalene is—was—a person?” Oa’s pronunciation charmed Isabel, the consonants slightly nasal, word endings lifting, almost vanishing.

“Yes, she was. As I am a person.” Oa sighed. “As you are a person, Oa.”

The child shook her head. “No.” Her eyes were clear and dark, and Isabel imagined she could see the weight of years in their depths. “No,” she repeated with an air of patience. “Oa is not a person, Isabel. Oa is an anchen. Raimu-ke is—was—an anchen. Not a person.”

“Raimu-ke was an anchen?”

“Yes. Raimu-ke was—” The fingers of Oa’s free hand grasped the air, searching for the word. “One,” she finally said. “One—no, first. First anchen.”

Sadness flowed through her small hand into Isabel’s, an emotion as vast as space. Isabel tightened her grip on the slender fingers. “Oa. You know what a person is. Why can’t an anchen be a person?”

The girl answered simply, “Because an anchen is an anchen. Oa is an anchen.”

Isabel bit her lip. How was she ever to understand what the child meant? And how was she to help Oa, and the other old children, until she did?

*

ISABEL GREW WEARY
of worrying, of wrestling with the mystery. She thought an afternoon away would give them both some relief. After consulting with Jin-Li, she took Oa to the waterfront to wander through the tourist shops, looking at the trinkets and souvenirs they sold. One store offered toys representing the expansion worlds. There were miniature replicas of the ice castles of Crescent, tiny robotic models of the long-boned, flop-eared vaccone of Nuova Italia, a row of veiled dolls from Irustan. Isabel turned one of the dolls over in her hand, its wisps of pastel silk falling over her fingers. Its base was printed with the circled star of ExtraSolar. She held the little veiled figure out to Oa. “Did you have toys on Virimund, Oa? A doll, perhaps?”

Oa looked at the Irustani doll for a moment, and then shook her head. She glanced around the cluttered shelves until she spied a wooden puppet, and pointed to it. “Wood. Wood of nuchi.”

“A wooden doll, then.” Isabel put her hand on Oa’s shoulder to guide her closer to the puppet display. Oa took a step, and then stopped, her eye caught by an assortment of dull gray shapes of grainplastic. They were miniatures of the monoliths of Udacha. Oa stroked one with her fingertip and glanced up at Isabel. “Kburi?”

Isabel stood at her shoulder, looking at the little uneven thing. The molding had been poorly done. It looked like something made out of modeling clay by a rather clumsy child. “Is that what a kburi looks like?” she asked. “What is a kburi, Oa?”

She watched the child struggle for words. “Kburi is for Raimu-ke,” she said after a moment. Isabel held her breath, not wanting to press her. “In kburi—no, under.” She touched it again, reverently.

Isabel sighed. Somehow, she was not asking the right questions.

The next day, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, they hiked up the steep hill from the Multiplex to the old cathedral, guided by glimpses of its modest rectangular towers holding their ground among the soaring geometric shapes of more recent architecture. They had to make a complete circuit of the building before they found an unlocked entrance that led into a small chapel. It was chilly inside, but Isabel, used to the marble floors of old churches, had brought coats. She helped Oa to put one on, and she pulled hers over her shoulders as they went down the steps to the main sanctuary.

Cool sunlight fell through the oculus, the circular window high in the center of the roof, to glow on the cracked white stone of the altar. The north and south transepts were shadowed, the apses illumined only by red and blue tones of light filtered through stained glass. The cathedral was empty except for two people kneeling separately in the east apse, heads bent over their folded hands. Isabel knelt near the altar, with Oa beside her. She looked around at the ancient figures of the saints, of the Virgin, of a graceful Christ with supplicating hands. The sculptor had made those hands slender and long-fingered. They reminded Isabel of Simon.

She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine how it all must seem to Oa. She doubted her ability to explain the Roman Catholic Church to the child of Virimund, to help her grasp the essence of it, the centuries of tradition and fable and fact and faith all woven together in a grand tapestry that spanned two and a half millennia.

And if Oa could not understand her world, how would she comprehend Oa’s?

She tried to pray, but instead she found herself returning again and again to the questions that plagued her. Anchens who could not be persons. A child who had lived an entire century, and yet was still, beyond any doubt, a child. She pressed her hands to her face, trying to concentrate, asking her patroness for guidance, for patience, for a safe journey, for wisdom. She couldn’t clear her mind, and she found no peace.

She opened her eyes, and nodded to Oa. “I’m ready to go,” she whispered. Oa, patiently waiting beside her, stood up. Isabel restored the kneeler to its position and straightened.

The two other worshippers were waiting in a side aisle, standing at angles to each other in the awkward way of strangers. One was a middle-aged man, tall and stooped. The other, a woman with gray hair, leaned on a cane. When Isabel and Oa stepped out of the pew, the two moved forward to intercept them.

“We don’t mean to intrude, Mother,” the man said hesitantly.

“You are a priest, aren’t you?” the woman asked more boldly. “A Magdalene?”

“Yes,” Isabel said. She put out her hand. “I’m Isabel Burke.”

The woman shook her hand. “We want to ask you something.”

“Is that all right?” the man said anxiously. “We don’t want to be a bother.”

Isabel smiled. “Of course it’s no bother. What can I do for you?”

The woman said, “We saw your collar. I thought you must be the one on the news. Would you say Mass for us, Mother Burke? We only have a priest every few weeks, and none since Lent began.”

Isabel’s smile faded. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. Of course I would say Mass, except the cathedral doesn’t want me to. I couldn’t go against the bishop’s wishes, I’m afraid. Not everyone accepts us—the Magdalenes. Not yet,” she added.

“But we have another church,” the man said. “St. Teresa’s. It’s across the Sound, a ferry ride of about half an hour. Please, Mother Burke. You just don’t know what it would mean to our congregation.”

“Are you sure the others in your church would be amenable?”

The man said, “Yes, I’m sure. I’m positive.”

Oa moved under Isabel’s hand, stepping closer, as if to encourage her. Isabel stroked her hair. Grace often came from unexpected directions. Her smile returned. “I’ll be delighted to say Mass,” she said.

“How about this coming Sunday?”

“Oh, Mother Burke,” the tall man said with enthusiasm. “That’s wonderful. Here—” He handed her a printed card. “That’s my wavephone number. If you’ll call me tonight, we’ll make arrangements to meet your boat.” He gave one to the white-haired woman as well, and both of them bid Isabel a respectful farewell.

“Come, Oa,” Isabel said softly, pleased and touched. “Let’s walk around the church, and try to see everything.”

*

OA GAZED WITH
wonder at the multitude of images above her head, some set in colored glass, some carved of white stone. They made a circuit of the church, following the smoke-stained walls. She followed Isabel into an alcove that was as dark and narrow as a cave. Its walls had once been gold, but were now dingy and cracked. At its innermost end stood a painted statue of a woman holding a chubby baby. Oa tipped her head back to look up into the woman’s delicate face.

“This is the Blessed Mother,” Isabel said. “Holding the Christ child.”

Christ child. Child. Was this an anchen?

“What is your word for mother, Oa?”

“Mamah.”

“Mamah. Yes. It’s almost universal, that word,” Isabel said. Oa turned to her. “The child . . . ?”

“The Christ child?”

“The Christ child . . . is an anchen?” She held her breath, awaiting the answer.