The Terrorists of Irustan (22 page)

Zahra had learned about prostitution very early. It was something of an open secret that Nura, her teacher, was always available to the unveiled ones and their children. As Nura’s apprentice, Zahra had met these patients, helped to care for them, heard their stories. Nura had paid dearly for her kindness, and Zahra had learned from that too. Now, standing with her heart pounding and her back chafed by the sandrite of the wall behind her, she was using what she had learned. She was taking a terrible risk, the same risk the unveiled ones took every time they came to the square. They came unescorted, their veils undone, both violations for which they could be prosecuted. Yet every man knew they were here, counted on their presence, relied on their services. And could turn on them as quickly as the heart could beat.

Other men came, and women approached them. Zahra watched, her breath coming quickly, her mouth dry. Her fear gave way to an aggressive, reckless energy. She was breaking every law, challenging every convention by which her life was ruled. Qadir would be speechless with fury if he knew. Diya would be white with outrage. The Simah would . . .

She saw him. His thickset form was unmistakable, his gray hair bushy beneath his flat cap. Other men approached the whores furtively, with wary glances over their shoulders. Not this one.

Binya Maris strode boldly into the dark alleys to the south of the square. He walked straight toward the women, his bulk giving him a rolling stride. He moved, in fact, with the direction and ease of long habit. Zahra hesitated for only a moment, seeing that Eva was stepping from her own niche on the opposite side of the street. Did Eva not know who this was, how dangerous he was? Well,-all the better.

Zahra moved out of her alcove. Maris startled as she appeared as if from nowhere on his right.

“Didn’t see you there!” he said with a bark of a laugh.

Zahra moved close to him and spoke from deep in her throat. “Are you looking for someone, kir?”

*   *   *

Zahra fumbled in the darkness, searching for the doorknob. For a terrible moment, she couldn’t find it at all, was not even sure she had found the door. Then, to her relief, her fingers slid across the knob’s scratched metal surface, and it turned in her hand. She pushed the door open, and moved to the stairs Eva said were there, checking once to be certain he was following.

Zahra knew Binya Maris, but he hadn’t a chance of recognizing her. They may have met several times, as Qadir claimed, but Maris had never seen Zahra unveiled. A feral smile curved her lips as she hurried up the stairs. She found the room without difficulty, taking in with one glance its battered furniture, its mussed and undoubtedly filthy bed, the cracked fixtures of the sink. As soon as Maris came in behind her, she found the light switch and pressed it. The bulbs were dirty, and in their hazy light, Zahra and Binya Maris looked at each other.

She was half a head taller than he, though he was twice her weight. Fie laughed up. at her. “So that’s the way it is,” he said. His voice was deep and coarse. She remembered now hearing it at a dinner party, contrasting it with Qadir’s smooth, resonant speaking voice. Maris’s voice alone was probably enough to keep him from a directors post. But then he had no shortage of faults to prevent his receiving such a promotion.

She said easily, “That’s the way it is,” and marveled at herself. Maybe, she thought, I should have been a whore.

Zahra pulled her little purse from her waist and reached into it for the bottle of nab’t. “A drink, kir?” she murmured. She had no glasses, but it didn’t matter. Her special concoction would be perfect straight from the bottle’s mouth.

“What is it?” he asked, taking the bottle in his hand.

“Nab’t,” she answered. “I have a special source.”

A special source, all right—the CA cabinet, the medicator. The little bottle held a tasty blend of nab’t, a strong sedative, a protease inhibitor to counteract the effects of inhalation therapy, a general accelerant, and a highly refined puree of leptokis brain. Trembling with an alien ambition, Zahra had measured and mixed the ingredients. And here she was.

And here he was. Binya Maris squinted at her in the gloom, and eyed the bottle. “Really? That’s nab’t in there?”

She pulled the bottle back. “You don’t like it, kir? It’s all I have.”

“No, no, 1 like it,” he said. “I’m just surprised by the—shall we call it a bonus? It’s Doma Day!”

“Well,” Zahra ventured. “Sometimes a little extra means a bonus for me.” “Maybe,” he laughed. “Depends how good you are!” He twisted the cork from the little bottle. Zahra almost reached out to right it, to make sure not a drop fell to the floor. Several beads of nab’t ran down the dark glass, but Maris saw them, scooped them up, and licked them off his finger.

“Not bad,” he said. “Where does someone like you get nab’t?”

Zahra tilted her head. “We have secrets,” she said.

He reached out a thick arm and caught her around the waist. “Come here, sweetheart,” he rasped. “I’ll figure out all your secrets.” His hand was hard against her ribs, and it moved up to untenderly squeeze her breast.

Bile suddenly filled her throat. She swallowed hard. This was the hard part. She was prepared to do it, if she must. But surely, surely, as she had told herself a thousand times, surely she was smarter than Binya Maris. She could stall him, get him to drink the nab’t, avoid the worst part.

“Let’s have a drink first,” she said.

“Maybe we’ll drink in the middle,” he grumbled. He pulled her close and nuzzled her neck through the veil. “You smell good,” he said with a slight surprise. “Better than usual.”

“I am better than usual,” Zahra said swiftly. “And you’re going to find that out. But we do it my way.”

He pulled back to look at her. “You’re a strange one,” he said. Then he laughed. “That’s good—something new! Your way is slow, with a drink— what else?”

“I told you,” Zahra said softly. “You’re going to find out. Now hand me the bottle.”

After a moment, he did hand it to her, still grinning. She put her finger over the mouth of it and lifted it to her face, beneath her verge, as if drinking. Then she passed it back to him. As he took it, she went around the bed to the other side and leaned against it. “Go ahead,” she murmured. “Have a drink. Then come and see me.”

Maris laughed aloud. He tipped the bottle up and drank. She heard him swallow once, twice, three times. Then he pushed the cork back in and tossedthe bottle on the bed. Chuckling, he came toward her with steps that made the floorboards creak. “Let’s get on with it,” he said.

Binya Maris was heavily muscled, his legs and arms thick, his chest barrel-shaped and wide. Zahra supposed he must weigh a hundred kilos at least. At her slight movement away from him, he took hold of her arm. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he growled. He fell on his back, grunting, and pulled her on top of him with an iron hand. Without preamble, he reached beneath her skirt.

Zahra forced herself to go limp, to be passive. She let her head fall forward against his wide chest, let the acrid odor of his sweat and whatever meal he had last eaten invade her nostrils. She knew, distantly, that she should be afraid, should be horrified, disgusted. She felt only a bitter triumph. It didn’t matter what happened now. He was already poisoned. He could only have drunk a third of the nab’t, but it would be enough. If she had to pay this price for her revenge—for the widow Thanos, for A. Maris, for T. Maris— then pay she would.

He pushed her roughly onto her back, one thick hand driving between her thighs, the other grasping at her breasts. No emotion disturbed her. He was bestial, crude. He bent over her as the master, but she knew herself to be the predator. She was the huntress, and her prey was in sight. She had only to wait.

Truly, she thought irrelevantly, Qadir was the most gentle and considerate of men. He deserved a better wife.

Her skirts were around her waist now. “What’s this?” he growled when his fingers found her lingerie. Perhaps whores never bothered with it. He ripped it easily in one swift motion, and then pulled back slightly to tear open his own clothes.

Zahra closed her eyes. She had hoped, had believed, she could get enough of her serum into him that it wouldn’t come to this. But she had known it was possible, and if needs must . . .

She felt his weight on her, a gust of sour breath over her face, the rubbery thickness of him pressed against her bare leg. He made a noise far down in his throat, a sort of snarl, and she thought again how like an animal he seemed, like one of those that Ishi had seen on her screen, like the leptokis itself as it snuffled against the bars of its cage. The noise came again, a slight gagging, and a gasp.

“What . . . what’s . . .” he stammered. He fell on his back, away from her. “Hellfire! My throat! It burns!”

“What’s wrong, kir?” Zahra said swiftly.

He shook his head, trying to cough.

She sat up, and scrabbled through the muddled blankets around them till she found the small blue bottle. “Your throat? Are you ill? Here, drink.” And she held the bottle to his lips.

twenty-five

*   *   *

All gifts come from the One.

—Third Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

“H
ere, take
my hand,” Zahra said, helping Binya Maris to stand. His trousers were falling about his knees, and she pulled them up enough so they wouldn’t trip him. “We’d better get you some help, kir.” She adjusted her own skirts so she was covered, and buttoned her rill quickly, not forgetting to drop the empty bottle back into her purse and retie it around her waist.

Maris’s head lolled and he groaned. Saliva dripped from his mouth and wet her shoulder, but his legs still worked, for which she was grateful. It was essential that she get him out, at least to the hallway, but even better into the street. She had carefully calculated the effect of the accelerant on the sedative as well as the serum. The only number she had had to guess at was his weight, and she thought she had come close. It strained her arms as she coaxed him out of Eva’s room and down the hall.

“Come on, kir,” she grunted. “A few more steps. You must be ill, you need help. Come on, one more. Now one more.”

Maris moaned, and gagged, and she thought for one awful moment he might vomit up the nab’t, but he didn’t. “Prophet,” he muttered. “I feel awful. My throat—maybe the nab’t was bad?”

He leaned even more heavily on her as they approached the stairs, and she began to fear he might fall before they were out of the building. “Not the nab’t,” she said. “I drank some, remember?” He grunted in response. She looked back up the dim hallway, hearing voices but seeing no one. She hoped to have five minutes until Maris was completely unconscious. It could be less, though. He staggered and almost fell on the first step.

“Kir!” she whispered, as loud as she dared. “Open your eyes, look at the stairs. Watch your step! Don’t fall!”

It was very like falling. Maris lurched from stair to stair, his body swaying violently. He made it to the bottom step before he fell to his knees. “Hellfire,” he muttered. “Can’t feel my legs. Throat . . .” He clawed at his neck with thick, uncoordinated fingers, and toppled forward onto his face.

Zahra let him fall. She stood over him as he rolled to one side, his eyelids fluttering. “Help me . . .” he moaned.

“No,” she said.

At her sharp tone, the flat denial, he managed to open his eyes briefly, look up at her. She crouched beside him, and looked into his fleshy face, saw the wet lips, the jowls, the sag of skin beneath his eyes. “What—what do you mean?”

“I mean I won’t help you,” she said, without expression.

His eyes closed, and though the lids trembled, he couldn’t open them again. “Why ...” The word was barely audible.

“Because of Adara. Because of Teresa. Because of the widow Thanos.” He sucked in his breath, but he couldn’t answer. Saying the names made a ferocious energy flow through Zahra’s limbs. She felt a bitter smile curve her lips.

Maris’s body convulsed as he tried to force his limbs to move, to straighten. He couldn’t do it. He had lost almost all capacity for movement. Zahra measured the distance to the door with her eyes. She’d better hurry, or someone would find them. She’d have to drag him, but he outweighed her by forty kilos.

He was lying in a fetal curl at the foot of the stairs. His eyelids twitched and his throat worked, but he was otherwise limp. She wriggled her hands under his shoulders and rolled him onto his back. She tugged the dead weight of him toward the door, her back aching, her arms burning.

A door opened on the floor above. Zahra dropped Maris where he was, and hurried to the street door. It opened inward, and stayed open, hanging crookedly on its hinges, when she let go of it. She went back to Maris and painfully worked his body over the threshold and into the darkness of the street. Her ears were filled with the pounding of her blood, but she had done it. A man and a woman came down the stairs and out through the door, turning away from her, toward the square. She froze where she was, in the darkness just past the doorway, hardly breathing. Neither of them looked in her direction.

When they had gone, she struggled to prop Maris against the side of the building. His head fell to one side. She could have underestimated the accelerant, she thought. The sedative had put him out, and he wouldn’t wake until tomorrow. The serum, of course, the prion poison, would take between thirty-six and forty-eight hours to incubate, the transformation of the abnormal prions sped by the accelerant. The neurons in Maris’s brain would begin to die almost immediately, forming the spongy holes that characterized the disease. Loss of coordination would follow. By the time his illness began, he should be safely home. Whoever found him then would be scared halfway to Paradise.

She crouched to take one last look at him, seeing that he was sitting in deep shadow. No one would spot him before morning. A scant night fog was drifting through the Medah, chilling the air, slicking the street. As she stood to leave, she heard Maris make one small sound. She bent over him.

“What? What was that?” she whispered.

Binya Maris snarled, with the last of his strength, “Bitch.”

Zahra raised a clenched fist, but then she stopped. She opened her hand and smoothed her ragged dress with her fingers.

“Just remember,” she whispered, with a little laugh. “Remember Adara and Teresa and the widow. While you still can.”

There was nothing from Maris but a gurgling sigh. Even his spine went limp, and he slept.

He wasn’t dead, of course. It was important that he not be dead, not here in this street. No risk, no blame, must fall on the unveiled ones, or on the vendors, or on anyone except Maris himself. Zahra checked his pulse. It beat slowly, but strongly.

Zahra looked about to be sure she was not observed, then strode away down the narrow street. It was a long walk back.

*   *   *

Camilla had been watching, and her window was open, her hands extended, even before Zahra reached her.

“Oh, thank the Maker,” Camilla whispered urgently. “I’ve been so worried! You were gone so long! I was afraid someone saw you, attacked you—or reported you!”

Zahra climbed over the windowsill, much relieved to put both her feet safely on Camilla’s floor. Camilla closed and latched the window and drew the curtains, then threw her arms around Zahra. For a long moment they simply embraced, saying nothing. Then Zahra drew herself gently free, and pulled her ragged veil off. Camilla said, “Are you all right? What happened?”

Zahra looked at Camilla’s soft features, her clear, sad eyes. “I’m all right,” she told her. “I’ll tell you all about it. But could I shower first? I feel filthy.” Camilla’s hand flew to her mouth. “You didn’t have to—”

Zahra gave a sharp, short laugh. “No, I didn’t have to. But it was close.” “O Maker!”

Zahra shrugged out of her ragged dress. “The hardest part was getting back here without being seen. I’m surprised how many men are out at night. So many cars and cycles! I’m all scratched from stepping into mock roses every other minute.”

Camilla took Zahra’s dress out of her hands. “All right, you shower. I’ll get rid of this for you. And then we’d better call Mari. She’s come to the door three times.”

“What did you do?”

“I pretended I was you.”

“Camilla, you’re full of surprises.”

Zahra stood under the stream of Camilla’s shower for as long as she dared, washing the touch of Binya Maris from her skin. She kept her hair dry, but let the water run and run down her chest and legs, over her face. When she was done, she dried herself and stared into the tall mirror above the sink. She examined her face for signs of guilt, but she found only a great weariness. She wouldn’t bother to examine her soul. It was too late for that.

Zahra dressed and rejoined Camilla. “Here, I have something to make you sleep, so you’ll seem to be recovering from food poisoning. Get in bed, it works fast. I’ll explain it to Mari.”

Camilla obediently climbed into bed and Zahra applied a tiny flat capsule to the skin of her throat. By the time Zahra had buttoned her veil and was saying good-bye, Camilla’s eyes were already heavy, her limbs relaxed. “Sleep well, sister,” Zahra murmured. She patted Camilla’s leg through the bedclothes.

As she left the bedroom, Zahra saw Mari hovering at the end of the hallway. The anah ran to her, and Zahra left the door open so she could go in.

“Camilla’s fine,” she said. “Just very tired. She should sleep through the night now.”

“Then it’s not the leptokis disease?” Mari asked in a hushed voice. “1 wasso afraid—that was the way the director started, vomiting, shut up in his room!”

“No, of course it’s not the leptokis disease,” Zahra said brusquely. “When has Camilla ever been to the mines? Now, run, Mari, fetch Asa for me. I’m exhausted. Tell Asa to call a car.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Medicant,” Mari said. She trotted back down the hall. Over her shoulder she called, “Alekos will be so relieved!”

Zahra went to the little foyer and leaned against the wall, waiting, her eyes closed behind her veil. Her strength was spent. She had never walked so far, or done so much. When Asa came, it took all her remaining strength to walk out the door to the street, to climb in the car. She almost dropped her bag in her overwhelming fatigue, and Asa, seeing, took it from her. She knew he was full of questions, but they would have to wait. It would be hard enough to deal with Ishi’s questions when she reached her room. All she wanted now was to sleep, to empty her mind, to forget Eva’s tawdry room and Binya Maris’s ugly face. And, above all, not to have to face Qadir.