The Child Goddess (5 page)

5

OA DIDN’T LIKE
sleeping alone. The anchens had slept in a comforting tangle of arms and legs, hearing the murmurs of the others die away as forgetful sleep stole over their nest, and the buzzing of insects and the faint chirping of night birds filled the darkness. On the ship, and here in the infirmary, Oa often lay awake for hours, listening to the alien sounds around her. But the presence of Isabel, this lady of the shining bare scalp and soft, weary smile, soothed her. Isabel’s eyes shone like sunshine through clouds, and her scent was transparent as a mountain breeze.

On this night, moments after Isabel went into her room, leaving the door neither wide open nor fully closed, Oa slept.

She dreamed of the island. She knew it was a dream, because Nwa and Micho were still alive. Nwa, who they called Nah-nah because he was so small, and Bibi, and one-eyed Ette, tall Micho, and the others knelt around the kburi, chanting the song of the ancestors, begging Raimu-ke to help them. To work a miracle.

Oa woke, and lay wondering for the thousandth time if Raimu-ke could hear her over such a great distance. Or if she was even listening.

But sometimes Raimu-ke listened. She had listened to Lili.

Oa remembered the day Lili returned to the people. The tide was receding, and the anchens had been digging for pishi in the shining wet sand. Oa opened one and shucked out the tender meat with a bit of stone. She was just about to put it in her mouth when Lili came running out of the forest, shouting, holding up the end of her ragged skirt to show the blood markings. Lili danced and cried and waved the bloody flag of her triumph. Oa’s fingers went limp, and she dropped the meat of the pishi into the sand. Like everyone else, she stared at Lili in stunned silence, hardly believing in the miracle.

Only Micho, who always knew what to do, remembered to start the signal fire. While Lili pranced along the beach, celebrating, the anchens scattered into the forest to find the green wood and wide fronds of nuchi leaves to make thick smoke. When it billowed above the beach, a wavering white column against the blue sky, the anchens slipped into the trees. They left Lili alone on the beach, weeping with joy and relief, watching the horizon.

Lili had not been on the island long. She had not acquired one of the crude marks they inked on each other at their private tatwaj, the one they held before Raimu-ke. When the canoe came, Lili splashed out through the surf, calling to the elders. She never looked back at the island, and none of the anchens called a farewell to her. Lili was a person now. She would not have answered.

*

WHEN THE LIGHTS
brightened in the Multiplex, Isabel opened her eyes to the depressing sterility of the small room, with its generic white walls, beige plastic sink in the corner, only a padded, wheeled stool for furniture.

Her equipment was where she had stacked it, her two modest valises waiting in a corner. She sat up, yawning and rubbing her scalp with her fingers. Someone would be coming in soon, no doubt, with breakfast, and perhaps with plans for the day. Adetti would come, and Gretchen Boreson. She needed to decide what to do.

She rummaged in a valise for her toothbrush, and then bent over the sink to wash her face and brush her teeth. She tried not to be aware of the camera set into the ceiling, its amber light winking at regular intervals. There was no sound from the outer room. She would say her prayers first, and afterward, she could set about organizing a work space.

From the second valise she took out her little foam kneeling pad, and a crucifix on a stand. She wheeled the stool to an empty corner, and covered it with a white embroidered cloth. She set the crucifix on the cloth, and the pad on the floor beside the stool. She found her box of miniature candles, blessed for her by Marian, and lit one. She flicked on her portable reader, and keyed it to the liturgical calendar. She smiled to see that it was the memorial day for St. John Bosco, the great educator. Perhaps it was a good omen.

She knelt on the foam pad, made the sign of the cross, and began the devotions with which she had started every day since her novitiate.

SAINT MARY OF MAGDALA,

PATRONESS OF THOSE WHO ASK,

AND WHO STRIVE TO FOLLOW IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS,

GUIDE ME, YOUR UNWORTHY ACCOLYTE, TO SHINE LIGHT IN THE DARK PLACES.

HELP ME TO REVEAL THE TRUTHS THAT ARE HIDDEN BY LIES.

IMBUE ME WITH YOUR STRENGTH, YOUR WISDOM, AND YOUR PATIENCE.

DISPERSE THE SHADOWS OF DECEPTION,

AND LET RIGHTOUSNESS AND PEACE SHINE OVER YOUR PEOPLE.

She spoke the ritual with her eyes closed, her hands linked. For so long, these words, their intention and their rhythm, had carried her to a perfect haven of peace and contemplation, a level of mind and spirit no temporal trouble could disturb. Since Simon, that sanctuary seemed beyond her reach. But she kept trying.

The prayer finished, she knelt on, concentrating on the cross, on the sacrifice it represented, on the beat of her heart, on the flicker of the tiny candle that represented her calling. Nothing. She felt nothing. The voice of her soul, which had commanded her since she was fifteen years old, had fallen silent.

The slight squeak of the door broke her concentration. She glanced up, and saw the dark face of the child from Virimund peering around the doorjamb. At her movement, the girl jumped back, out of sight.

“Oa! It’s all right. Would you like to come in?”

No answer.

Isabel made the sign of the cross, silently repeating her petition for patience and wisdom. Then she rose, tucked her traveling kneeler beneath the bed, snuffed the candle between her thumb and forefinger. She went to the door, and looked out into the larger room.

The child stood before the mirrored window, one hand on the shining glass. Her narrow shoulders, covered in the awful pink wool sweater, hunched as if she were cold.

“You didn’t know it was a window, did you?” Isabel said lightly.

Oa dropped her hand from the mirror, and held it behind her back.

Isabel strolled up to stand before the glass. “It’s a trick, I’m afraid. A trick so people can look in at us without being seen themselves.” She looked down and saw the flaring of the girl’s nostrils. They were delicately formed, little dark wings with pink undersides. “Do I smell different to you, Oa?”

Oa considered this. “Isabel—” she began. One hand waved slightly in the air, as if grasping for the right word. “Isabel is smelling like—like air.”

“Air.” Isabel smiled. “I think I like that. Air.” She left the mirror and moved to the table, saying easily, “And what do you smell like, then?”

A long pause. Oa followed her at a little distance. Her feet were bare, and they whispered against the gray tiles of the floor. “Oa smells—” She turned one palm up, a cup of shell-pink with a tracing of dark lines. “Empty.”

“Empty?”

“Empty. Nothing inside.”

Isabel sat down. Empty. What a sad choice. She hoped the answer meant only that Oa didn’t understand the word, but there was a sadness in the great dark eyes—indeed, an emptiness—that oppressed her. Her eye fell on the portable reader that lay on the other chair. She picked it up and held it out. “Oa. Will you show me your reader?”

That sudden white smile blazed, lighting the girl’s face. Apparently the child felt on certain ground over the reader. She accepted the instrument, and flicked it on with a deft touch.

“Who gave it to you?” Isabel asked.

Oa grinned again. “Ship lady,” she said. She thought for a minute, one finger pressing into her cheek. “A gift,” she finally added.

Isabel smiled back at her. “How nice, Oa. The ship lady gave you a gift.”

The reader came to life, and began to reel off a series of pictures. A clear voice read the text beneath them. Oa held the screen so that Isabel could see it, and recited with the voice while the book played. “Dog,” she said. “Cat. Child. Mother. Father. House.”

It was a reading primer, and she had memorized it.

“The child plays with the dog. The dog runs after the cat.” Oa spoke every accent and emphasis in perfect imitation of the narrator. Isabel listened. Her heart sank when Oa recited, “No one is inside the house. The house is empty.”

For ten minutes, Oa spoke in unison with the narrator, right to the final sentence. “. . . after school, the children are hungry. Mother gives them milk and cookies.” She flashed her white smile once more, and laid the reader down.

“Thank you,” Isabel said. “I enjoyed the book.”

“Oa has two more books,” the girl said.

Isabel was about to ask to see those as well, but she was interrupted by the opening of the infirmary door. Oa retreated to her bed as a quarantine-suited guard brought in two trays of eggs and rice and juice that he set on the table in front of the row of toys. Isabel asked, “Could I get some coffee?”

The guard hesitated at the door to the sterile bubble. Again Isabel heard the hiss of the airflow, and wondered whom Adetti was trying to protect. It wasn’t Oa, certainly, not with a reverse quarantine. In any case, the medicator would have inoculated her against any diseases she lacked antibodies for.

The guard said, “I could ask—all I know is they gave me the trays. Someone brought them over from the cafeteria.”

“Oh, never mind, then. I understand. Jin-Li said I should ask—”

“Jin—you mean Johnnie? Oh, sure, Mother Burke. Listen, I’ll tell Johnnie.”

“Only if it’s no trouble. You must be Jay.”

“Right. Jay Appleton. I’ll look up Johnnie for you.”

“Thank you, Jay.”

The guard withdrew, and Isabel drew her chair closer to the table. It was too small for comfort, but it was all she had. “Are you hungry, Oa?”

Oa took a step toward the table, glancing at Isabel with a little furrow between her brows.

“You know the word, don’t you?” Isabel urged. “It was in your book. Hungry. Wanting food.” She touched her stomach and smiled. “I’m hungry.”

“Yes,” the girl said. “Yes—Oa is hungry.”

Isabel hesitated, and then said, as gently as she could, “Can you say, ‘I’m hungry’?”

The girl dropped her eyes. Her head drooped. The fragrance of hot rice and scrambled eggs filled the room, and the muscles in Oa’s slender throat worked as she swallowed saliva.

“Never mind,” Isabel said. “It doesn’t matter. Oa and Isabel are both hungry. Let’s have our breakfast together.”

*

ISABEL WAS IMMERSED
in the medicator reports when Paolo Adetti and Gretchen Boreson arrived. She had set up her reader on the low table, with a chair in front of it, and she slid the boxes of disks beneath it. Her computer she parked on the smooth plastic surface of the exam bed in the empty surgery, pushing the medicator to one side. Periodically she left her reader and went to the computer to make notes or look up a reference file. With her things unpacked and her equipment set up, the little infirmary seemed more like a home. Isabel brought out a sweater of her own, black, but a smooth Italian merino. She laid it out to give to Oa. The girl sat on her bed, the teddy bear in her arms, her eyes gazing at something Isabel couldn’t see.

When the mirror cleared, the change in light made Isabel look up. Gretchen Boreson stood in the corridor. She wore a black suit that made her skin look pale as milk, and her lips were painted scarlet. Earrings of some red stone hung from her earlobes, trembling, catching the light. Even through the glass, Isabel could see the tic that marred the administrator’s tight features, and she felt a swell of sympathy. She rose from her chair and went to the window.

“Good morning,” she said.

Boreson held a black silk scarf in her hand, and she pulled it through her fingers, pleating it, smoothing it, pleating it again. “Good morning. Mother Burke.” The speaker made her tone thin. “I’m so sorry about—” She gestured at the space beyond the glass. “About this situation.”

“I have most of what I need.” Isabel smiled. “Oa and I are getting to know one another.”

“But, you know, there were lovely rooms all ready for you at the guest suites. I’m sure you’d rather be—”

Paolo Adetti came to stand at Boreson’s shoulder. Without the mask, Isabel saw that his complexion had the charcoal undertones of Sicily, and his black eyes were stony. “I see you got your equipment,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Fine. Well, I’m coming in now to run a medicator test on the girl.”

Isabel’s back stiffened, but she made an effort to keep her voice level and her face noncommittal. “Not now, I think. Dr. Adetti.”

“I have work to do, Mother Burke. I won’t interrupt you. It won’t take long.”

Isabel pursed her lips, as if considering. Then she said calmly, “No, I think not, Dr. Adetti. I’ll finish these existing reports first.”

“You can go right ahead. But I need some readings today,” he insisted.

“There’s not a great deal of time . . .”

Isabel looked away from him deliberately, turning her face to Boreson.

“Administrator, as Oa’s guardian, I prefer not to have her disturbed until I’ve completed my preliminary evaluation.”

Boreson’s tic worsened, tugging at her cheek and distorting her eyelid. “Ah, Mother Burke, I’m sure Dr. Adetti’s presence won’t interfere—”

Isabel was shaking her head. “No,” she said, letting her voice sharpen. “Not today. Probably not tomorrow.” She gave them both a cool glance. “I’m sure you don’t want to endanger the extraordinary empowerment provision—or have a report reach the press that ESC officials put their own interests ahead of this child’s.”

She saw the fire blaze in Adetti’s black eyes, and his chin jutted. Boreson put her white, sharp-nailed fingers on his arm, and murmured something Isabel couldn’t catch.

Isabel nodded. “I’ll let you know, shall I? And I do appreciate your patience until then.”

She turned away from the window and walked with deliberate steps into the small surgery where her computer waited. She spoke to Oa from the doorway.

“Oa. Come here, will you? I want to show you a book I have on my computer.”