Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “Why not?” I don’t know how I’ll survive two weeks without the ’net. At least I have my travel-tab and some language flashes. How can they live like this?

  “It’s partly due to their limited resources and partly it’s philosophical. They prefer their isolation and independence. They have a city-wide com system but no interstellar communications. They don’t need automated transportation, they live so close together it’s not necessary.”

  “Obviously the Malemese diamonds are a myth,” I say in disgust, staring around the bare, cold rooms.

  “They’re real,” our host says. “I’ve seen them. But they can’t be taken off-world, or holo’d, so there’s no proof of their existence outside of Malem. The Malemese guard their secret. But those diamonds...You’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “What makes them different from any other diamond?” I ask, trying to sound like it’s not that important. I feel Agatha looking at me and pretend not to notice.

  “Some geological occurrence millions of years ago caused “phantom” growth layers—interruptions in the growth of the crystals—which caused inclusions of another mineral. The diamond crystals continued to form around it. They mine them with the inclusion at the center, a type of melanite shot with silver peculiar to this planet, and use an enhanced “brilliant cut”, only possible because the stones are so large. The effect is beautiful beyond imagination.”

  He’s described my father’s diamond exactly! If you translate the geological stuff into plain words, that is. There’s a pause while I feel him staring at me. I dare not look up for fear he’ll see my excitement. Instead, I hug myself and shiver. It’s not a hard act to put on. “Why don’t they sell them and warm up this planet? It’s a dump here. Or aren’t they valuable?”

  “Valuable? The Malemese could be rich, selling those gems. But they have a cultural taboo on trade. Besides, Terra-forming is risky, especially on a low-g planet with a thin atmosphere. It’s also illegal if the planet is already habitable.”

  I give a snort and mutter, “habitable?”

  There’s another pause. “What are you not telling us?” he asks quietly.

  I have to look up now. To continue looking away is as good as a confession. Either way, he’ll know he’s right.

  “Don’t be so disdainful of the way others choose to live,” Agatha interrupts. She looks at him as if to say, teenagers, and I can look at her instead, and frown as though I’m ticked. Which I am, because who likes having their attitude commented on?

  “I just don’t buy it,” I say. “If the diamonds are real, and are valuable, who’d choose to live like this? I’ll bet someone’s selling them.”

  “Why would you think that?” he asks. I realize I’ve gone too far. I should have let it go, let him think me “disdainful” as Agatha put it. She saves me again.

  “She comes from a trader family. I imagine she was raised to be interested in buying and selling.”

  “Don’t get interested in these,” he warns. “The gems are part of their religion. The priests themselves mine and cut them. They bless them in a sacred ceremony and give them where they are needed. It would be the highest sacrilege for a foreigner to own one.”

  I shrug, trying not to look as sick as I feel. There’s no doubt, then: my father stole it.

  We eat lunch prepared by the Malemese woman who cleans and cooks for the Select. She answers our questions in soft monosyllables and offers no comments herself. After lunch Agatha gives the Select a letter from the Adept. He’ll only be nastier after he reads that he’s dismissed, so I excuse myself to go unpack the few things I’ll need while I’m here.

  “You have not come as my assistant,” I overhear him say from the bedroom where I’m setting out my toiletries on the small table. There’s no expression in his voice at all. “You are my replacement. They need me elsewhere.”

  He must be dying to get away from here, I think. No cyber-mail; no outside news at all, except every year or so when a ship comes in. But still, he doesn’t want to have failed, which obviously he has, since Malem isn’t in the Alliance. I’m glad I’m not in the same room as them.

  “Have you arranged for me to meet their Majesties, the King and Queen?” I hear Agatha ask Select Hamza—she’s told me his name, though I’m not allowed to call him by it.

  There’s a pause that’s heavy with whatever opinion Hamza isn’t offering, then his calm voice: “I’ll send word. The King might grant you an audience in a month or two. That will give you time to learn enough Malemese to speak to him.”

  “But not the Queen?”

  “She’ll be there, but she won’t speak to you. She despises the O.U.B. It has to do with the death of her child, fifteen years ago.”

  Fifteen years ago? When my father was here? I dump the clothes I’ve unpacked on the bed and move to the door to hear better.

  “How did the child die?” Agatha asks.

  “The epidemic. In four years it cut the population in half. I assume you know of it? Yes, well the Queen blames the Order for bringing the virus. She had the Select who was here at the time thrown in jail. Of course she was exonerated later, and left as soon as a ship could be sent to get her. That was fifteen years ago, at the height of the epidemic. The Order sent in doctors, medicine, sterilization units, ventilators—but it was too late for the little princess.”

  “Poor woman,” Agatha murmurs. “Has she had any children since then?”

  “You won’t say ‘poor woman’ after you meet her. But no, the Queen hasn’t conceived again. There will be no heir to the throne until she does, and perhaps that’s why the King indulges her humors.”

  “Have they cured it?”

  I grip the door, waiting for his answer.

  “The epidemic is over, but that’s not the same as a cure. It was a new strain of coronavirus—a viral respiratory illness which spreads by person-to-person contact. CoVir, they call it. In this damp climate where everyone lives close together it spread rapidly. A vaccine was developed but the virus underwent mutation—”

  “It’s over now, though,” Agatha says, louder than necessary.

  “Yes, of course. The people are still terrified of it, however. When someone comes down with it they completely isolate him, and quarantine the entire family for double the incubation period.”

  “But there’s no danger? They can cure the patient in the hospital?” she says clearly. She knows I’m listening.

  “The hospital? No. They’re too afraid of another outbreak. They take the infected person to an old pavilion at the edge of the swamp. When it was first built dozens of people were sent there at a time and left to die. Now, as I said, the disease is rare. It may no longer, in itself, be fatal. But they still leave them there to die or get well on their own. That’s the theory. I’ve never heard of anyone surviving a stay in what they call ‘the fever house’.”

  “They just leave them there?” She has forgotten her reassuring tone, her voice rising in shock.

  I have a grisly image of a house full of skeletons and rotting bodies. I run into the room.

  “We have to get away from here!” I can’t believe he’s discussing it so calmly. Does he have some kind of death wish?

  “It is under control,” he says. Unlike you, his eyes say.

  “I’m leaving.” I turn to get my things and get out, but he says, “Where will you go?” as if it’s simply an interesting question. I don’t have an answer.

  “Kia—” Agatha says.

  I glare her to silence. For all I know, that vision the Adept mentioned showed me dying of the plague down here. They’d still send me, if they thought I’d further their plan before dying.

  Hamza looks from me to Agatha and back to me. He says, with infuriating calm, “You have nothing to fear. They brought it under control over a decade ago through isolation and sterilization, and the strain has since weakened. There hasn’t been a new case in nearly a year. And you’ve been vaccinated, I assume?”

  “How horribl
e, sending them away like that,” Agatha murmurs.

  “Yes. And these people are not cruel—not when you know them. When the victim is a child there’s a pall over the entire city. Sometimes the mother goes with the child—and usually dies with him, too, after living in the fever house for six days. It’s one of the worst things I’ve lived through. Yet they still do it.”

  I’m so angry my voice goes quiet. “I guess the Adept forgot to mention this,” I say, looking at Agatha.

  “It’s not something anyone would know unless they lived here a while,” Hamza says, defending his Order. “You have nothing to fear. The virus has stopped mutating now.”

  “Kia’s father was here during the epidemic,” Agatha says. “He died years later from a recurring fever.”

  “I am sorry to hear that. This must be hard for you, then. It was brave of you to come.” His tone makes it sound more like an assessment than praise. Or a reassessment.

  “I’ve heard of that,” he continues. “The fevers are not a recurrence of the illness, but a rare side effect. They are not contagious. That’s what I have heard. I have never seen it myself.”

  I have. I look away. Did my father come down with the virus while he was on the planet, or did he make it to his ship and suffer alone on the long trip through space? Maybe his fevers were because he hadn’t had medicine or proper care. Because he had stolen the diamond and had to get away quickly?

  “Why does the Queen blame us for the epidemic?” Agatha asks.

  “Coronavirus was eliminated centuries ago on Earth, yet a new strain mysteriously arrived here. The Malemese believe it came on an O.U.B. ship from Iterria. The Queen insists they were deliberately infected to force them to join the Alliance in order to get the cure.”

  “But you said there is no cure,” I say.

  “That can’t be true!” Agatha cries at the same time.

  “I have never seen any evidence to prove it,” Hamza says to Agatha. “But the Iterrian captain was tried and beheaded and his ship was burned. Another ship had to be sent all the way from Seraffa to retrieve the Select. They would not let a ship from Iterria land. They still won’t.”

  He turns to me. “There was a vaccine. It worked on the first strain of the virus, until it mutated. Now there is an injection which alleviates the symptoms and enhances our natural immune system to fight the virus. But there’s always the possibility it could mutate again. They live constantly under that fear.”

  “What is the King’s attitude toward the Order?” Agatha asks.

  “He is grateful for our intervention and assistance during the plague. But he loves the Queen and humors her in most things, including her desire to have as little as possible to do with us. She may be influenced by the High Priest in this, but I have no clear evidence.”

  It’s a strange thing for a Select to say: no clear evidence. I wonder what he means, until I remember the aud-vid implant Agatha had removed this morning. They must feel lost without it.

  “Which of them still refuses to join the Alliance and supply Iterria with water?” Agatha asks.

  “The King and Queen hold court together. It is forbidden to mention Iterria in front of them.”

  His words swirl in my mind: forbidden to mention Iterria in front of them... forbidden to mention Malem in front of Owegbé... forbidden to speak Malemese in front of Father... ‘Forgiveness is the least reliable virtue,’ my mother used to say.

  “I wonder if the Iterrians would dare drink water sent by the Malemese?”

  They both turn and stare at me. I shrug. Surely someone has thought of that.

  “The Malemese are more direct,” Hamza says. “It is enough for them to deny the water.”

  “How are we ever going to convince them to help the Iterrians?” Agatha asks.

  “That is your problem now.”

  Agatha looks at me. I look away.

  Her problem, I tell myself. I’ll be leaving with the ship, too. I feel guilty, as though I’m abandoning her, but there’s no way I’m staying a single minute longer than I have to, not with even a ‘rare’ chance of catching CoVir.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The day is cold and overcast again, raining off and on in short, angry bursts. In the three days we’ve been here there’s been as much precipitation as we get in a year on Seraffa. I go out anyway, hoping to walk off the bad feeling I have, and trudge down the muddy road, flapping my arms to keep warm.

  I stop when I realize I must look like a duck in the rain. Too late. I’ve already emerged from Prophet’s Lane onto the cobble-stone street, and a guy about my age is staring at me as he walks past, his lips curved in a mocking half-smile. I stare back, partly because he’s being rude, and partly because he’s worth staring at: tall and slim, with high cheekbones and dark eyes framed with long, black lashes my college roommate would kill for.

  “Quack,” he says, laughs, and keeps walking. I stand there, trying to think of a clever reply to shout after him, but all my four-and-a-half languages fail me. I turn and walk in the opposite direction, feeling exactly like I must look: not just normal stupid, but major moronic.

  The sky matches my mood. Dark, brooding clouds lie over the city like the folds of a scowl. I’m getting used to the lower gravity, but I’ll never get used to these dull, dark days. The city is as dismal as its weather. It smells of dampness and of fish, which so far has been served at every meal I’ve eaten here. Everything is gray: the sky, the dirt, the cobble-stones, the bricks of the buildings huddled together in seamless rows as though clutching each other against the cold; even the groundcover and shrubs, gray on gray on gray.

  The clothes the people wear are gray. Perhaps they think color is frivolous, or else dye is hard to come by with so little natural color on Malem to make it from. The city and its people look washed-out, survivors of a tragedy that has left no joy or color in their world.

  The epidemic must have been terrifying, people dying all around. My father was never able to exorcise it, physically or emotionally. Now I understand why so many buildings are boarded up. Did some of these people take years to die, with each recurrence of the fever weakening them more, like my father? I imagine ghosts everywhere: in the boarded-up apartments, in the cold streets, in the way the people rarely smile and avoid touching one another. How am I to find one ghost amid so many?

  Itohan—his name means ‘mercy’. My father was Itohan Ugiagbe, I want to say to the Malemese hurrying about their business, ignoring me, a foreigner in their midst. He came here and suffered like you. I watched him die all the years of my childhood and I didn’t understand.

  Every time I pass another death house, empty and boarded-up, I understand a little better my father’s long despair. What would he have been like if he hadn’t come to Malem? I never really knew him. Already his image is fading in my memory. I look around the dirty streets as I walk. They stole him from me, but they might also be able to give a little of him back. If I can find out what happened to him here, I’ll know him in a way I never did. The Malemese diamond must be mixed up in it somehow.

  “Tell me,” I whisper to the cold, gray streets. “Tell me who my father was.”

  ***

  Agatha’s interest in learning Malemese has increased, perhaps because Select Hamza has impressed on her the importance of choosing her words carefully when she meets their Majesties. I overheard him mention she should have had a “more experienced” language teacher, as though Agatha’s inadequacy is my fault.

  “The Select do not find fault,” Agatha replied, neatly defending me without belittling herself. Now I only speak in Malemese, and every minute we’re together is a language lesson.

  “What’s this?” I ask Hamza at lunch, pointing to a long slice of purple. I’ve made a habit of asking Hamza questions about everything, on the pretext of learning local words that weren’t on the language discs. But really, I’m hoping the topic will stray onto diamonds or the fever, and give me more insight into my father’s time here. Hamza’s talk the fir
st day just brought up more questions than it answered.

  “A parza,” Hamza says. “It’s a local fruit, a type of melon. Very sweet.”

  “And last night’s vegetable?” I reach for a slice of parza and take a bite. It’s the best thing I’ve eaten since I left home.

  “A tuber. They call it ‘swamp potato’.”

  “Why haven’t we had these before?” I wave the rind of the parza, reaching for another.

  “The first spring crop is just coming into season. You’ll be tasting a lot of new foods soon.”

  “We should go to the market.” I finish the second slice of parza in three gulps and consider licking my fingers, but Hamza would disapprove.

  “It’s Friday,” Hamza says.

  “Isn’t the market open on Fridays?” Agatha asks.

  “Yes, in the afternoon. The farmers bring their produce in early, spend the morning in worship and the afternoon at the market.” He hesitates as though considering adding something.

  “The Select,” I avoid referring to Agatha by name in front of Hamza—why irritate him needlessly?—“and I need to learn the words for produce unique to Malem. We could go by ourselves and ask the market sellers, though.”

  “Don’t go alone,” Hamza says. “I’ll come with you. It will probably be alright.”

  Agatha looks at Hamza. I suspect his reluctance is only pride: he doesn’t want to be seen in public with us while we exclaim over fruits and vegetables and Agatha mispronounces the new words. He’d probably refuse if he didn’t feel it his duty to acclimatize Agatha before he leaves.

  The market is along a wide cobbled street not far from the city square. I don’t know why they don’t just have it in the square, a natural gathering place, but maybe that’s reserved for special events or announcements. It’s always empty, anyway.

  The street smells of the fish for sale in big carts, but there are also stalls with brightly-colored fruits and vegetables. It’s noisy and cheerful and full of people. I notice that while they talk animatedly to one another, they stand a little apart and never touch, and I remind Agatha not to brush against anyone. Hamza grows more and more ill-humored as we load him up with each new fruit or vegetable we find. Every time we add something to our basket I make Agatha repeat the name of each product we already have while Hamza stares stoically off into the distance ignoring the amused glances of the Malemese. The sun is shining for a change, and I’m determined not to let Hamza’s moodiness spoil it for me.