The Terrorists of Irustan (17 page)

Zahra felt her heart plummet as if someone had dropped a stone through her body. She had almost felt it coming, this moment. “Camilla, why not ask me now? What is it?”

Camilla shook her head, hard. “No, not now. In the clinic. I’ll come tomorrow!”

Zahra wanted to refuse, wanted to turn this away, but she couldn’t do it. Camilla, Leman, and Alekos were all on her clinic list. She couldn’t say no to any of them if they needed a medicant.

“Can’t it wait, Camilla? Alekos has to come anyway, before he joins his team. Can we talk then?”

“I’ll bring him tomorrow,” Camilla whispered. “Please, Zahra. Please say it’s all right.” The blaze of her eyes dissolved in a tearful sheen. She stood very close to Zahra, their two veils drifting together, touching.

“All right,” Zahra said slowly, tiredly. “I’ll see Alekos in the morning. And you.” She followed Camilla to the foyer, the pleasures of the evening fading into darkness. The men were waiting, the doors open.

Zahra stood silently at Qadir’s side as he bid each of their guests good night. Ishi stood behind them, and Diya. The formal good-byes took a long time. It was late when the doors shut behind the last guest. Zahra, weary and worried, turned toward her bedroom, but Qadir caught her back, smiling, and whispered to her.

“Zahra, it’s been too long! Change quickly and come to my room. I’ll be waiting for you.”

eighteen

*   *   *

Men are tempted by nature, but discipline is in the One. Cast away anything that diverts you from the path to Paradise.

—Eleventh Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

“A
lekos is
perfectly healthy, Camilla.”

Camilla, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, stared stubbornly at Zahra through her veil.

Zahra searched for something else to say. “He’s a bit underweight, and small for his age—but then you’re small.” Zahra’s eyes burned with lack of sleep and worry, and she knew it showed. Ishi had said so this morning. “He doesn’t want to go,” Camilla repeated. “He’s afraid.”

Zahra sighed, and the silk of her verge brushed her lips. Impatiently, she undid the button and let it drop. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Many young men are afraid at first.”

“Boys,” Camilla said harshly. “They’re only boys.”

“I know.” Zahra pressed her fingertips to her burning eyes. Even one more hour of sleep would have helped, but Qadir . . . O
Maker,
she thought. The journey was long sometimes.

“It’s the darkness that scares him—the dark, and the leptokis, and being closed in!” Camilla unbuttoned her rill. Her eyes were bloodshot, lines of strain pulling at her eyelids. Her voice rose. “Zahra, he wakes up screaming at night!”

“He doesn’t need to worry about the leptokis, at least,” Zahra said. “He’s taking the treatment now, from the medicator.”

Camilla’s eyes flooded. “It seems I held him in my arms just yesterday, Zahra, so little and sweet! And all he wants is to go offworld and study. He could build bridges, invent machines, fly a shuttle! A hundred other things!” “Leman still won’t consider it?”

Camilla gave a derisive laugh through the tears. “Leman! Leman was so proud to produce a son! It almost didn’t happen. He was so old. Then when Alekos was born, all he ever talked about was having a son in the mines, following in his footsteps'.” She wiped her eyes with a fold of her drape. “Do you know,” she said bleakly, “Leman didn’t leave the mines until he was fifty? Thirty-three years he spent in those tunnels, in the darkness. And he hated it. He won’t admit it, but I know he did. But never mind that—he wants his boy to do the same!”

Zahra reached across the desk for Camilla’s hand. “I’m sorry. I find no medical obstacle. If I invent one, the mine medicant will challenge it.” “What if he tries to hurt himself?” Camilla sobbed.

Zahra tightened her grip. “I don’t think he will.”

“Help me, Zahra.”

“Camilla. There’s nothing 1 can do.”

Camilla’s tears ceased. She fixed Zahra with a wet, unwavering gaze. “But there is something,” she said.

Zahra leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes.

“You helped Kalen,” Camilla breathed. “Help me!”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

With an effort, Zahra opened her eyes. Camilla’s tears were gone, and she leaned over the desk, close to Zahra, her grip on Zahra’s hand steely. With her other hand she pulled her verge free with a rip of fabric. Her lips were white. “Zahra, help me! Give me what you gave to Kalen!”

“You don’t understand,” Zahra answered. “Rabi’s life was in danger. We were saving Rabi’s life.”

Camilla said flatly, “And you won’t save Alekos, because he’s a boy.” Zahra took a shocked breath. “Camilla, no! That has nothing to do with it!”

“Then why?”

A knock sounded, quiet, efficient, on the closed door of the office. Camilla dropped Zahra’s hand. Lili put her veiled head into the room. “Ishi says Alekos has finished his therapy.”

Camilla did not look at Lili. When the door closed, Camilla said, in the grating voice of a stranger, “Why not, Zahra?”

Zahra looked away, at the tiny window, at the assortment of discs and files, the few and precious paper books that lined her office. Finally she rose and trudged around the desk to look down into Camillas ravaged face. “My old friend,” she said quietly. Camilla’s eyes, so full of pain and fear, burned straight into her heart. “What happened to Gadil was as much my doing as Kalen’s. I struggled with it—I didn’t want to do it. But I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Rabi, sweet Rabi, on my exam table the way I saw Maya B’Neeli. I was convinced it was a question of Rabi’s life. But I swore I would never do such a thing again. I’m a medicant! I try to heal people, to protect them. Rabi was under my care, and I protected her in the only way I could find. All my life has been about this. It’s all I ever cared about, until—”

“Until Ishi came,” Camilla said softly. They stared at each other, and Camilla made a slight, knowing gesture of her head.

Zahra straightened abruptly. “Can you imagine the uproar,” she said, “if another Irustani developed the leptokis disease?”

“But Leman was in the mines forever!” Camilla said. She stood, scraping her chair against the tiles, and brought her face very close to Zahra’s. “Please, Zahra. Help me. Please.”

Zahra stepped back. She lifted the panel of her verge and buttoned it over her nose and mouth. “I can’t, Camilla,” she said sadly. Her sorrow, her guilt, burned in her chest. “Forgive me. I can’t.”

nineteen

*   *   *

Some divisions of Offworld Port Force will be subject to restrictions affecting dress and comportment, specified in the following subsection. These restrictions are mandated by the customs of the native society of the planet, and are not intended to be a judgment on individual values. Any employee whose work takes him or her off Port Force grounds and into the indigenous communities will be required to adhere to the guidelines.

—
Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment

T
he call
from Onani found Jin-Li in the gym. The phys-tech came to the corner where Jin-Li sweated in the isocardio equipment. The phys-tech wore a pair of briefs little wider than a thong, and his eyes, lips, and nipples were painted bronze. Jin-Li kept up the rhythmic snick of the machine’s couplings, watching him mince across the room, flexing his pectoral muscles and triceps, admiring himself in the mirrored walls.

Jin-Li could have chosen a job like phys-tech, something genderless. But automatic restriction to port grounds would have been no improvement over life in Hong Kong. Women like Marie accepted the confinement, maybe even wanted it. Not Jin-Li.

“Johnnie,” the phys-tech said, leaning over the machine. “Hate to interrupt—you’re doing great.” He drew out the word with a little husky scrape of his vocal folds.

Jin-Li released the compression bars, sat up, reached for a towel. “What’s on, Peter?”

“Call for you. General’s office.” Peter rolled his eyes, creasing the bronze paint. “Hope it’s not trouble.”

“You sure?” Jin-Li asked, stepping out of the machine with a smooth roll of quadriceps. “Sure it’s me they want?”

“Come see for yourself.” Peter turned back to his desk, flashing impossibly rounded buttocks. Jin-Li followed, wiping sweat with the towel.

The reader on the desk was flashing.
Longshoreman Jin-Li Chung to the General Administrator
’
s Offices. Precedence.

The “precedence” part of the message meant now, immediately, disregard priors. And the message was broadcast, which meant the apartment, the cafeteria, the port terminal, the comm center. Jin-Li tapped in an acknowledgment to get it off the net, tossed the towel in a hamper, and left the gym at a brisk trot.

She always wore baggy shorts and a loose sweatshirt to work out in, and showered afterward in her apartment. She hurried to do that now, and put on a fresh uniform, cap straight on still-damp hair, boots shining. Moments later Jin-Li passed Marie’s desk in the terminal with barely a wave.

Marie stood as if to speak, then sat down in surprise, her lips a scarlet rosette. The free-form scarlet rouge was on her right cheek today. Jin-Li smiled, shrugged, and hurried on.

Tomas stood as soon as Jin-Li appeared. “Oh, what a relief, Johnnie. The general keeps asking.” His voice was high. “God, you’re still wet. Must have dashed right out of the shower!”

Tomas came around his desk to knock on the door of the inner office. There was a voice from inside, and Tomas opened the door. His voice dropped to a level tone. “Longshoreman Chung’s here.” When Jin-Li went in, Tomas closed the door firmly.

Administrator Onani was alone, seated at his desk. Eyes on his reader, he extended one forefinger toward the chair opposite. Jin-Li sat down, both feet flat on the floor, the wood of the chair cool against hot skin, belly quivering with nerves. Not once, in two years on Irustan, had there been such a summons. Cap in hand, neck stiff, Jin-Li waited.

Onani flicked off the reader. His eyes, deep and black, assessed Jin-Li for a long moment. Jin-Li met his gaze, not knowing what else to do.

At last Onani said, “Your foreman—Rockford, I think it is?”

Jin-Li nodded.

“Yes. Rockford.” Onani leaned back, pressing his palms together, the fingers spread. Jin-Li stared at him, fascinated by the deep blue-black of his skin, his shining bald scalp.

Onani continued, “He tells me you know a lot about the Irustani for someone who’s not an archivist.”

With relief, Jin-Li thought, it’s about Irustan. Not me.

Onani tipped his head against the high back of his chair and stared down the wide ridge of his nose. “We need someone, Chung. Someone who moves easily among the Irustani, who’s not official. Not an archivist. Someone less—visible—less obvious.”

Jin-Li leaned forward slightly. “Mr. Onani. I’m just a longshoreman. What is it you want from me?”

Onani’s eyes were piercing, as if some miniscule scanner were implanted in them. Jin-Li concentrated, sitting still, features blank. The thrill of nerves returned.

“You’re Chinese,” Onani said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Kowloon Province, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Hong Kong.”

“Family there?”

Jin-Li shrugged one shoulder, wary. “My mother.”

Onani glanced down at his reader again, and Jin-Li realized it was the Port Force record he was studying, the Terms of Employment of Jin-Li Chung, Longshoreman.

“You have no brothers or sisters?”

“I had a brother. Killed in a street fight in Yau Ma Tei.” A short, cold sentence to describe a life lived hotly. “I had a sister who died of AIDS. She was sixteen.”

Onani frowned deeply. “Surely they have DNA vaccine in Kowloon Province?”

Jin-Li said in a flat voice, “There was vaccine. There was no money.” Onani’s features softened slightly, a moment of sympathy. He coughed gently. “Why did you come here, Chung? Why Irustan?”

Jin-Li hesitated, careful of the answer. Onani’s eyes were so acute, so knowing. Had he found something? Something that made him suspicious? Suppose that, in the jammed slum apartments on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, they found someone who cared enough to tell the Offworld Port Force that the Chung family had one boy, two girls? Impossible. There were a million Chungs in China, probably in Hong Kong alone. Not even ExtraSolar could have sorted them all out—and why would they bother?

Jin-Li’s chin came up. “Mr. Onani, a lot of Port Force goes offworld just to have some room.”

He nodded. “I know. Elbow room, they called it in America. But I don’t know if that’s your reason.”

“It is, in part.”

“And the other part?” Onani suddenly smiled, showing small, even teeth very white against his black skin.

It wasn’t an easy smile to resist. Jin-Li almost returned it, but said instead, “The other part was curiosity.” Onani waited, brows lifted, remnants of the smile creasing his cheeks. Jin-Li’s long eyelids lowered. “I wanted to study offworld societies, be an archivist,” Jin-Li said. “But university wasn’t one of my options. Port Force was. And Irustan interested me.”

“Why not one of the other colonies? Nuova Italia, perhaps, or Crescent?”

“Irustan is the strangest,” Jin-Li answered.

Onani chuckled. The atmosphere in his office seemed to warm, to invite confidence, comfort. Jin-Li’s neck prickled.

“Will you help us, then, Johnnie?” Onani asked. “Help me, and help the Irustani?”

Jin-Li waited a long moment before saying, slowly, “I’m not a spy, Mr. Onani.”

His expression didn’t change. “Nor did I think so, Johnnie.” He stood, and gestured to Jin-Li to follow him to one wall, where ceiling-high shelves held rows and rows of discs, some in sleeves of plastic, others in thin, metal boxes. A small reader was already loaded and waiting.

Onani tapped in an instruction, and a page of names appeared. Jin-Li leaned to see them, read a few, tapped for a new page, read a few more. “Old.”

Onani nodded. He looked grave now, his dark lips straight, his brow furrowed. “Two hundred and fifty years old,” he said. “The names have changed a bit, haven’t they?” He tapped in a new page. “ExtraSolar lost sixty percent of the first colonists. Eighteen hundred miners died horribly, and some of their families did, too. They’d all had the broad-spectrum vaccine before shipping out, but this wasn’t a virus. It took two years to identify the altered gene, another to develop the accelerated protease that deactivates the prions. Three years in which men, and some women and their children, went on dying.”

“But now the inhalation therapy takes care of it.”

“It should.” Onani switched off the reader. “There have been two deaths from the prion disease within the year.”

Jin-Li startled. “Two? There was only one!”

Onani was too close. No Irustani would have stood so close—a Chinese, yes, but not an Irustani. Jin-Li stepped back.

“You knew, then,” Onani said, his eyes hard.

“I heard.”

“Well, there’s been another. A man named Leman Bezay died yesterday. He was old, like the first one, retired from the mines years ago. No one knows how he got the disease, or why.”

Jin-Li could only stare at the black man. Ideas tumbled over and over themselves, questions, strange notions. And through it all, the suspicion that Onani knew something.

Onani strolled to his big desk, leaned a hip on it as he folded his arms and gazed down at his vivid African rug. “For the sake of the Irustani, Johnnie, I’m asking you to help.”

“How?” Jin-Li asked. “What do you think I can do?”

“Leman Bezay may have been infected accidentally. Could have been iatrogenic, from medical treatment. But the man hadn’t seen his medicant since leaving the mines. His widow says he hated going, wouldn’t go near the medicant if he were dying . . . which he did, of course.” Onani’s smile this time was cynical.

“You’re afraid of an epidemic?”

“It’s possible. You deliver to the medicants almost exclusively. We want to know anything strange, anything odd.”

“Mr. Onani, they sell leptokis down in the Medah. Anyone can buy one.” “I know. We’ll talk to the vendors, but they’re close-mouthed with Port Force. You, with your familiarity with Irustani customs—you might learn more. Find out if one of the medicants has bought a leptokis.”

Jin-Li said with a shake of the head, “That’s doubtful. Women buy them, but the medicants don’t go into the Medah themselves. They’re too precious. They’re hardly ever out of their houses, and always heavily escorted.”

“Find out for me, Chung,” Onani said. His voice had gone harsh. “Be my ears, my eyes. Something’s going on out there, I can smell it. I need to find out what it is without violating Irustani sovereignty.” He hesitated. “Do you understand?”

Jin-Li looked into his black eyes. “You mean do I know the word? Or understand what you want?”

Onani chuckled again. “Both, Chung. Both.”

Jin-Li sighed, turned away to the tinted glass of the window. The white buildings of the Akros gleamed with the morning light. The city was beautiful, its streets dipping and narrowing, leading to the heart, to the Medah. It was clean and spacious, the air sweet. It would be a terrible thing if its people should die. But if Jin-Li obeyed this command—couched as a request, but clearly an order—who would be betrayed?

“Bezay was on this medicant’s list,” Onani said, holding out a portable.

Slowly, Jin-Li returned to him and took the portable. Medicant Zahra IbSada.

“You want me to spy on her.”

Onani’s face was relaxed. He leaned back comfortably on the desk. “I don’t need to remind you, Chung,” he said, smiling, “that Port Force keeps a close eye on all its employees.”

Jin-Li’s belly went cold. Onani might be guessing, or he might really know something. But how to know? Options. Once again, even light-years from Hong Kong, there were no options.

Jin-Li said carefully, “I’ll try, Mr. Onani. But it would be better to do a formal investigation, examine the medical records, look around Bezay’s household.”

“We’ll do that,” Onani said calmly. “Don’t expect much.”

Jin-Li nodded. “I know.”

“This will mean extra pay, Chung,” Onani said.

Jin-Li pocketed the reader. “That won’t be my reason.”

“I know,” Onani said, smile at full force.

As Jin-Li left the office, Tomas handed over a tiny wavephone. “Here, Johnnie,” he said, his plump cheeks pinched with worry. “Clip it to your pocket on the inside.”

It was small and gray, and lacked the circled star that branded every other piece of Port Force equipment. Jin-Li pocketed it, fastened the clip, and turned to go down the hall. Tomas said, “No, Johnnie, this way.” He walked past Onani’s office to an unmarked door, and spoke to it. It opened, and Tomas led the way down a narrow plain stairwell. Another anonymous door opened to the outside. Tomas stood in the glare of light, his face a picture of indecision.

“Listen,” he said, abruptly. He leaned forward to touch the little phone through Jin-Li’s pocket. “There’s a tracker on that, a locator. He’ll know where you are. All the time.”

Jin-Li’s eyes were wide open, voice warm. “Thanks, Tomas.”

Tomas’s face pinched again and he straightened his rounded shoulders. He said, “See you.” Jin-Li went out into the blaze of afternoon heat.