The Terrorists of Irustan (32 page)

thirty-seven

*   *   *

If a piece of fruit is rotten, do you leave it in the barrel to infect the rest? It is the nature of decay to spread, and so it is with sin. The sinful one must be removed from the community, prevented from tainting the innocent. There must be no hesitation, but only resolution. We are the chosen ones. It falls to us to keep Irustan pure.

—Fourteenth Homily,
The Book of the Second Prophet

Z
ahra rose
early the next morning. Ishi still slept, and Zahra smiled down at her flushed cheeks and tumbled hair. Zahra showered and dressed quickly, waking Ishi when she was done.

“Oh, you let me sleep too late!” Ishi protested.

“It’s all right. Qadir has an early appointment, and I’m going to have coffee with him. Come down when you’re ready.”

Zahra felt as if she might float down the stairs to the dayroom. When had she last felt such energy? The blackness of the past months had vanished in the night. It seemed to her dazzled eyes that the star shone brighter today than it had in a long time. The tiles of the floor, the clean white walls, and the whitewood surfaces of the house glowed with reflected light.

Qadir smiled and rose to kiss her cheek when she came into the dayroom. “This is a pleasant surprise, my dear,” he said. Diya came in a moment later, carrying Qadir’s case. He missed a step when he saw Zahra, and his face darkened.

Qadir poured coffee. “Here, Zahra, share my breakfast. Cook sent in more than I can eat.” He pushed forward the plate of flatbread. She took some and poured oil into a saucer, feeling thoroughly and delightfully hungry.

Diya and Qadir were on their way a short time later. Ishi ate breakfast with Lili while Zahra went on to the clinic. Their schedule for the day was light, and she planned to clean out the CA cabinet. In particular, she planned to dispose of one remaining small brown vial, labelled
dikeh.

She put on her medicant’s coat and went to the CA cabinet in the large surgery. She opened the door and cleared a path to reach for the little bottle. A voice behind her caused a premonitory chill to prickle her skin.

“Medicant?”

Slowly, Zahra drew her hand out of the CA cabinet. Almost without realizing it, she had picked up the brown bottle. The little vial was in her palm, hidden by her curled fingers.

She said, “Diya? I thought you went with Qadir.”

Diya spoke from the hall. “I dropped him at Water Supply, and I’m going on to the office. I came by to speak with you.”

Zahra got to her feet, careful with the bottle in her hand. The brightness of the morning had grown harsh. The brilliance of the light burned her eyes. She closed the CA cabinet with a small click. “What is it, Diya?” she asked. “Are you ill?”

She heard him take a step. “No, Medicant. I’m not ill.”

“You can come into the surgery. I’ve closed the cabinet.”

“I’d rather speak to you in your office.”

Zahra hesitated. Diya shouldn’t be here. She had clearly heard his and Qadir’s plans for the day, and they did not include Diya’s presence in the clinic. She said, “Very well.” But she didn’t leave the surgery just yet. She turned and looked at the counter, trying to remember where it was.

A small drawer under the counter opened at her touch without making a sound. An old-fashioned syringe, predecessor to the syrinxes of the medicator, lay in the back of the drawer, encased in antiseptic plastic. The syringe was small and slender, a clear plastic tube with a short metal needle that winked in the light. She slit the plastic and shook it out. She drew up the contents of the little bottle in her hand, and then capped the needle. She put the empty vial into the wave box and started the cycle. The syringe she dropped into a pocket of her coat.

She didn’t look at Diya as she passed him in the hall. She went into her office and took her chair, regarding Diya above her verge. What happened now was up to him.

He violated courtesy by closing the office door behind him. She acknowledged the offense with only the lifting of one eyebrow. “Diya?” she said, her voice throaty.

“Medicant,” he said. He sat down in the chair across from her. His skin was shiny. His narrow features were tense, and his eyes flickered from side to side. “Medicant,” he repeated, and cleared his throat. “You’re going to tell the chief director you’ve changed your mind. About Ishi.”

It was out. Zahra knew he had always wanted to give her an order, to assert his natural authority over her. A man of the household had precedence over a woman of the household. But he had never had an opportunity. He had steeled himself to this, worked himself up to it. And she knew he could not have done it unless he felt he had a weapon, something that gave him power over her.

She kept her eyes fixed on his. “Changed my mind?”

He fidgeted slightly in his chair, then stilled the motion abruptly. He sat straight. “Oh, yes,” he hissed. “Yes.”

Zahra knew then that it had all slipped away. Her chance was gone. She had known it, really, the moment she heard Diya’s voice outside the surgery. Just now, with Diya pinned under her icy gaze, she didn’t care. The syringe filled with poison waited in her pocket. And she, filled with the power of knowledge, the strength of resolve, had only to wait for Diya to finish this. “I don’t know how you did it,” Diya began.

Zahra almost laughed aloud. How could he know? He, and all the rest of them, the fools! They wouldn’t discuss the simplest medical treatment, wouldn’t deal with any frailties of the body. How could Diya, or any Irustani man, understand what she could do? They were as shrouded by fear and ignorance as she was by her veil!

Diya went on. “You, and your circle, you’re responsible! For all these deaths, every one of them! And I can prove it.”

Zahra waited.

“I can!” he said again, as if she had denied it. “I saw you all arguing. And I talked to Binya Maris’s man, and he told me what Maris said before he died. Some prostitute, he said, told him to remember Teresa, and Adara—his wives! And B’Neeli—I know you had it in for him. It was all you, wasn’t it? They helped you, those women, your friends, but you were the one! I can convince Onani, and Sullivan, too! Director Hilel suspects, but not Qadir, oh, no. You’ve blinded him, you with your blue eyes and clever ways. But I know better, and I’m not going to be fooled just because my wife is a medicant. 1 know the ways of the Prophet. I know how an Irustani is supposed to live!” “Diya, you’re imagining things.” Zahra’s tone was icy. She felt no fear, only a sort of detached curiosity. Where would this lead? How far would Diya drive it?

“There’s more!” Diya cried. “I think every one of the circle is involved!

Kalen—isn’t it strange how Kalen came to the clinic, and then Gadil got the disease? And Camilla—you went to her house two days before Binya Maris died, didn’t you? That will be in the records. Who helped you? You needed help, didn’t you, and I know just who it must have been.”

Diya’s voice had grown shrill, his face suffused with blood. A vein beat in his temple. “Asa!” he shouted now. “That cripple! He helped you, didn’t he? I’ll take him down, too, him with his soft ways and easy life. Not even a man!” “Diya, you must calm yourself,” Zahra said coldly. “You’ll give yourself a stroke.”

“What?” he said, distracted from his tirade. His skin paled suddenly, leaving red patches outlined on his cheekbones.

“A stroke,” she said again. “Do you know what that is? A blood vessel, in your head, it swells and breaks, and blood leaks out all over your brain, all the gray matter goes red—”

“Oh, no!” he cried then. “You just shut up, shut your mouth! You can’t pull your tricks on me.” He stood up, staggering, and his chair tipped over.

Zahra saw her moment. She was on her feet and around the desk in a heartbeat.

Diya caught himself with one hand on the desk, the other reaching for the fallen chair. He was off balance, one foot lifted, his arms stretched wide. Zahra caught his other foot with her own, one swift and unhesitating sweep that brought him crashing to the floor. He grunted in pain, and his eyes went wide with terror as he looked up to see her standing over him, a glinting needle in her hand.

“Zahra? Zahra, what happened? What was that?”

It was Ishi, calling out from the hallway.

“It’s Diya, he’s fallen,” Zahra called. “I think he’s hurt. Come help me get him to the surgery.”

“No,” Diya gasped. He scrabbled backward across the floor, away from her. She leaned over him.

“It’s all right, Diya,” she said. “Let me help you.”

“No!” he cried, frantic now. “Help! Ishi, help!”

Ishi came into the office with an exclamation. She bent to help Zahra lift Diya to his feet. They put their hands under his arms, Zahra on his left, Ishi on his right, to help him out of the office and down the hall.

“Ow!” he shrieked, pulling roughly away from them, stumbling as he backed into the dispensary. He thrust his hand under his shirt, into his left armpit. He drew it out again with a look of utter horror. His fingers had found one small, vivid drop of blood. His face was ashen.

“What did you do?” he whispered to Zahra. She lifted her shoulders, keeping her hands buried in her coat pockets. Diya turned absolutely white, and collapsed in an untidy mass on the floor. Zahra watched him fall, and wondered at the cool beating of her own heart, the icy calm with which she answered Lili’s cries of alarm.

*   *   *

Zahra and Ishi together managed to coax Diya to his feet and into the large surgery. Zahra sent Ishi to calm Lili, and as soon as the girl left the room, she stuffed the emptied syringe into the wave box. The medicator was treating Diya according to Zahra’s special instructions by the time Ishi returned.

Ishi’s sharp gaze checked the monitor. “That’s a sedative. Is that what Diya needs?”

“It must be,” Zahra answered her. “He certainly seemed hysterical, didn’t he?”

“But what happened? Why is he here?”

“He never finished telling me,” Zahra said. “He came into my office as if he wanted to say something, but he was making no sense. He doesn’t have a fever, but he was hysterical.”

They both looked up at the medicator. Ishi reached for the scanner wand and ran it up and down the length of Diya’s body. He was moaning slightly, moving his arms and legs as if he wanted to rise, but couldn’t find the strength. “Zahra,” Ishi said, her voice suddenly tight. “Do you see that? Look here.” She pointed at a reading. “There’s something wrong with Diya—he has an infection, or even a parasite—No! Zahra! It’s proteins, abnormal proteins! Look how the protease levels are spiking!” She turned wide and frightened eyes on Zahra. “O Maker, Zahra! That’s it, isn’t it? Diya has the prion disease!”

*   *   *

Ishi wanted to run from the surgery, but she gritted her teeth and held her ground. The disease wasn’t supposed to be transmissible by mere contact, but it terrified her just the same. No one seemed to know why the prion disease was flashing through the Irustani, but she knew-enough to understand that far too many of the victims had been involved with their own clinic. Something was terribly wrong. And the final blow, the worst, was Diya lying limply on the exam bed, his eyelids fluttering, his throat working uselessly.

Zahra bent over him, loosening his collar, his belt. She didn’t seem afraid, or even particularly upset. Ishi took a deep breath and tried to emulate her, but it was hard.

“Zahra,” she said. She pressed her hands together to stop their trembling, “What can we do?”

Zahra was pragmatic. “If it’s the prion disease, not much,” she said. “I’m not certain it is yet. It could be something else.” She separated the syrinx from Diya’s arm.

“But, Zahra,” Ishi protested in confusion. “Shouldn’t he stay on the medicator?”

Zahra’s eyes when they turned to look at her were a shocking color—a cold, dark blue. “I don’t think so,” Zahra said. “I think we should get him to his bed. Call Asa, will you?”

“He needs the medicator!” Ishi heard herself cry, and then stopped, shocked by her own temerity.

Zahra’s lips curved. Was that a smile? Or something else?

Zahra came around the exam bed to Ishi and took her hands. Zahra’s fingers were cool. “Perhaps you’re right, my Ishi,” Zahra said. “Perhaps Diya should have the medicator. I have a terrible decision to make. I didn’t want it this way, but it’s too late to change it. Ishi. I don’t want to medicate Diya.” Zahra patted Ishi’s cheek, then turned to the medicator and yanked the syrinx, tube and all, out of the machine and folded it into the small wave box on the counter.

Ishi couldn’t speak. Her mouth hung open with astonishment. She stared as Zahra started the cycle, then returned to her.

“My Ishi,” she said softly, standing close. She took Ishi’s hands and held them to her breast. “Would you want to be ceded in marriage—to Diya?” Ishi gasped. She gripped Zahra’s hands, and pleaded with her. “What are you talking about? You’re not making sense!”

“I’m afraid I am,” Zahra said. She released Ishi’s hands, and went back to the bed, and Diya. “Look at him, Ishi,” she said. “Understand. Diya wanted to be your husband, wanted to have charge of you—of your body, of your mind, of your work. This was the only way I could stop him.”

She lifted Diya’s body to a sitting position and called out sharply, “Asa! Asa, are you out there? I need you.” She held Diya upright, but his head lolled, and his eyes were closed.

“Zahra! What have you done?” Ishi heard her own voice go high, like a child’s. “We have to help Diya!”

Zahra’s face seemed to freeze in hard lines that circled her mouth, pulled at her eyes. “Am I wrong, then, Ishi? Tell me! Because if you want to marry Diya, I’ll put him back on the medicator.”

“Marry Diya? Prophet!” Ishi swore, revolted. “I can’t imagine anything worse! But why ...”

Zahra smiled that awful smile again. “Then find me Asa, and go sit with Lili. Let me take care of things, Ishi.”

Ishi backed out of the surgery, still staring. She bumped into Asa, who pushed past her with an exclamation. Feeling idiotic, utterly confused, stupidly afraid, Ishi stumbled to Lili’s desk, but Lili was gone.