The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk

  “Fourth day no boosters, man.”

  “This is the shits.”

  “Shit’s what we got to look forward to, ’less they get the trains through.”

  “You shit, man.”

  “Eat shit!”

  They broke into loud laughter. Bird was lying on his bunk, listening to the voices around him, his eyes closed, falling through empty space. At times he thought he was chasing someone, Cleis who turned into Madrone who turned into Rosa.

  “I loved you,” he said, but she turned away and fled, and he was still falling.

  “A unit ain’t nothing without its commander. What we do now Ohnine’s gone?”

  “Pick a new commander.”

  “Who, you? Commander Asshole?”

  “Fuck you!”

  Bird rolled over and covered his head with the blanket. The dark was comforting. He wished he could crawl in deeper and disappear.

  “You can’t disappear, you got responsibilities.”

  It was Johanna’s voice in his head. Although he couldn’t see her face, he imagined it disapproving.

  “I am failing them all,” he told her. “I don’t trust myself.”

  “Nonetheless, this is something you’ve got to see through, from beginning to end.”

  “Then let it end now. I want it to end,” Bird cried out, but he was still falling and now he was past her.

  “Maybe we shoulda followed Ohnine. He the commander.”

  “Followed him outa the army?”

  “Man, you leave the army, you die.”

  “We dying here, without the boosters.”

  “They get the boosters, you wait. Don’t you worry.”

  “The unit ought to stick together. We ought to stick behind the commander.”

  Rio was an old, bearded white man, like the Millennialists’ God. Bird wanted to confess to him.

  “I just stood there and let them be killed. I didn’t try to stop them. I should have thrown my body in between them, saved them or died. Ohnine wouldn’t have shot me.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  “And if he had, that would’ve been better.”

  “Oh, stop it, Bird. Stop trying to make me into an agent of your punishment.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stop pitying yourself and start thinking.”

  “I don’t pity myself, I’m just afraid, Rio. Weren’t you ever afraid?”

  “I’ve been afraid,” Rio said, and now Bird imagined a note of compassion into his voice. “Fear and shame and guilt and humiliation. Believe me, I’ve felt them all—worse than you, because I actually had something to feel guilty about. You’ve simply encountered a system of force that’s stronger than you are. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I am ashamed.”

  “Of course you are, that’s what force does to us all. But it’s a useless emotion for you, right now. It’s stopping you from thinking and noticing what’s around you. Listen! Listen to what they’re saying. They’re on the verge of rebellion. You’re possibly on the knife edge of victory, and you talk about wanting to die! Get out of that bed and do something useful.”

  “What happen to Ohnine, anyway?”

  “Witches took him.”

  “What they do to him?”

  Bird sat up.

  “Hey, Bird, you tell us, what they gonna do to Ohnine?”

  “They’ll try to heal him,” Bird said.

  “What you mean?”

  “They’ll try to heal his mind, to keep him from killing like that again.”

  “But the dead gonna haunt him?”

  “Right. But if he joins the Witches, they’ll try to heal him.”

  “But he’ll die without the boosters.”

  “Maybe not. I know of deserters who’ve survived. And the Witches will try to keep him alive.”

  “Why? He killed a whole family of them.”

  “Still, they’ll try to keep him alive. We don’t believe in revenge.”

  “Why not?”

  “We let the dead take their own revenge.”

  “If they heal him, then what?”

  “Then he’ll live like the rest of them, if they win. Free and equal. Or die with the rest of them.”

  “What you mean, free and equal?”

  “I mean nobody telling you what to do or wear or think. I mean your color doesn’t matter and your ancestors get respect. I mean having enough to eat and drink, and a place to live you can call your own, and work to do that you feel good about.”

  “Ohnine gonna have all that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean, color don’t matter?”

  “Look at me,” Bird said. “I’m as dark as the rest of you, and I was on the Council. I was a musician once—I went to the university. I could be anything I wanted to be.”

  “No shit, man?”

  “That for real?”

  “No shit.”

  “Man, we in the wrong fuckin’ army, then,” Threetwo said, and raucous laughter rang through the barracks. But there was an edge to it, an undertone of thought.

  They moved him out of the barracks the next morning and locked him in a dark underground storage room where they let him wait for a very long time. He lay on a bare cold floor, shaking, trying to contain his fear. He had to fight to breathe, not to pant like a dog with his tongue lolling out. Slow. Take a long breath, in and out, count it: one, two, three, four, five.… His heart was racing. And they haven’t even done anything to me yet. Stop, don’t think about it. The fear is worse than the thing feared; Rio used to say that, and I wish I could believe it. Where there’s fear, there is power. Maya said that, but you had it wrong, abuelita. Where there’s power, there is fear.

  What scared him most was Rio’s suggestion that victory might be possible. The supply lines were down, soldiers were deserting every day—not many, but others were thinking about it. Maybe Lily’s strategy was starting to work. If that were true, his resistance or compliance might still make a difference. The situation called for qualities he no longer possessed: courage, stamina, obstinacy. Diosa, he had no more left. How could he hold out against them when he knew that they could always hold out longer? It cost them nothing to inflict pain; it cost him everything to resist. And if they worked on Rosa? How long could he bear that?

  But, Goddess help him, he would have to try again. Even if he were already on the road that would lead him to do abominations in the end, there was some honor left in prolonging the journey. Maybe even some dangerous, seductive hope.

  But when they brought him to the General, it was not for questioning but for punishment.

  “You’ve been lying to us,” the General told him. “You’ve been holding out on us. That’s not a wise thing to do, boy. You’re not our only informant, you know. We have many ways of gathering information.”

  Bird said nothing. The guards that flanked the General were not from his own unit but from the Private Guard, and their white faces turned red and shiny under the hot lights they shone in Bird’s eyes.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about the cisterns?” the General asked. “All that time you sat out in the Plaza, laughing at us, knowing damn well that nobody would sign on for rations as long as they had a full store of water sitting in the basement. Why did we have to discover this ourselves during a search?”

  “You didn’t ask,” Bird said.

  Then his punishment began.

  33

  “Lou!”

  “Hey, Madrone!” They hugged fiercely, and Aviva, coming into the kitchen, threw her arms around them both.

  “Madrone! Goddess, it’s good to see you alive!”

  “I never realized how much I’d miss you, till you were gone,” Lou admitted.

  “Me neither,” Madrone said. “I wished for you both a thousand times down south, if only to have someone to bitch to.”

  “Well, it’s just like old times around here,” Aviva said. “Chaos, death, inadequate staff, business as
usual. And you look exhausted, also as usual.”

  “Because I got my usual three hours of sleep,” Madrone said. “We got back last night and Sam put me straight to work.”

  “War is hell,” Lou said cheerfully.

  All morning Madrone moved in and out of trance, in and out of the bee mind that let her taste the chemistry at work in the feverish bodies she encountered. Around midday she looked up to see Sara observing her.

  “Mary Ellen sent me to tell you lunch is ready and to make you come and eat it whether you want to or not.”

  “Make me, huh? Just how are you going to do that?”

  “Force of personality. Come on.”

  Mary Ellen looked at home behind the stove, as if she had always lived at Black Dragon House, helping Maya dish up stew for platoons of sick soldiers. Sara, dressed in a simple shirt and jeans, her blond hair pulled plainly back from her face and braided, nevertheless looked out of place awkwardly balancing trays of food and returning with dirty dishes.

  Lou, Aviva, and Madrone were settled around the big table, at work on their second round of stew when Sam came in.

  “How goes it?” he asked. “Get any sleep, Madrone?”

  “Not enough. So just to prove to you what a reformed character I am, after I eat I am going to take a nap.”

  “A nap!” Lou raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

  “When can we get a readout on those data slugs?” Madrone asked Sam.

  “I don’t know. Flore is having to work completely undercover, and she had a hell of a time convincing the crystals on her palmtop to work, even for her. But she’s running up the stats, and we’re checking through the printouts. To put it very simply, it seems the boosters work not by upping the T-cell count but by subtly shifting the cytokine balance, so they produce more antibodies. Sudden withdrawal causes the T-cells to go on strike for a period that might last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. After that, they seem to kick back in slowly if the patient hasn’t already contracted something deadly.”

  “What does that mean in English?” Maya asked from the sink, where she was washing a stack of dishes in a frugal potful of water.

  “If your immune system were an army,” Sam explained, “it would be like feeding each of the soldiers a high that could keep him going day and night, without sleep. He’d be a much more efficient killer. But take the drug away, and he’d collapse. Maybe he’d die; maybe he’d just need a month or two of rest to recover.”

  “That’s about what we figured empirically,” Madrone said. “Down south, we kept them in isolation as much as possible and used herbs and pressure points to stimulate the immune system.”

  “Successfully?” Aviva asked.

  “Not entirely. About sixty or seventy percent survived.”

  “That’s a good rate, medically, but not quite a recruiting point,” Lou said. “We can’t bring in deserters with those odds.”

  “We can do better. We have resources here I didn’t have down there.”

  “Then you must have been pretty bad off.”

  “In the hills, Lou, I didn’t even have water to wash the shit off my patients’ asses. And that’s the literal truth.”

  There was silence around the table. Madrone broke it.

  “Speaking of resources, Sam, do we have any available stocks of AL-431?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got some down in the garage. Why?”

  “Mary Ellen’s granddaughter—who’s Sara’s niece—it’s a long story. She’s next door with the Sisters.”

  “I’ll bring some up.”

  “Good. I’ll stop by there this afternoon, after I have a little sleep.”

  Madrone had just closed her eyes when someone came in and perched on the end of her bed.

  “Madrone? Are you asleep yet?”

  She groaned, opening her eyes. “Not anymore.” Sara was looking at her, her smile slight and hesitant.

  “I just wanted to talk for a minute. I won’t bother you long, I know you’re tired.”

  “Sure,” Madrone said, propping herself up on Maya’s big pillows. “What is it?”

  “I wanted to thank you—thank you for bringing me here.”

  “Uh, sure. Thank you for helping me rescue Katy. Sara, what is it you really want to talk about?”

  “Us.” Sara moved closer and took Madrone’s hand. “Is there still an us to talk about?”

  “Aren’t you and Isis …?”

  “That’s very powerful,” Sara admitted. “But I thought you people weren’t jealous.”

  “I’m not. But I’ll bet Isis is. Look, Sara, I’m happy for you if you’re happy. I’m frankly too exhausted right now to even think about sex or love.”

  “I didn’t want you to feel—”

  “Seduced and abandoned?” Madrone grinned.

  “Something like that.”

  “Don’t worry, Sara. Like I said, right now I barely have energy to keep on top of the work here without collapsing. If this war is ever over, who knows?”

  “Can I help you in some way? Can I do anything for you?”

  “You have been helping, you and Mary Ellen. Taking over the cooking and feeding and general nursing. It’s far too much for Maya, but she’d never admit it. How is it for you, to be doing all this work? I know it’s not what you’re used to.”

  “I kind of like it,” Sara admitted. “I’ve never been useful before.”

  “If the war ends—no, when the war ends, if you stay here, you can do any kind of work you want, you know. You could train for something, anything that interests you. Have you thought about that?”

  “No,” Sara admitted. “I never have.”

  “Well, think about it,” Madrone said. “And now, I’m sorry, but I’ve really got to get some rest.”

  “I’ll leave you,” Sara said, bending over and kissing her lightly on the cheek. The imprint of her lips felt warm long after she had tiptoed out, closing the door behind her.

  Katy was sitting in the sun in the back garden at the Sisters’ house. The beds were ragged and weedy but still filled with flowers, pink and purple cosmos and red geraniums and scented herbs. With her dark hair hanging long and loose on her shoulders and her baby cradled in her arms, Katy mirrored the statue of Virgin and Child that nestled under the plum tree.

  “How are you, Katy?” Madrone sat down on the dry grass next to her. “I like your hair down. I like it up, too, for that matter. Somewhere in my room I’ve got a pair of tortoiseshell combs I want to give you. My hair’s too bushy for them, but they’ll make you look like a true Spanish noblewoman from some other century.”

  Katy smiled. “I’m fine.”

  “I just checked Angela, started her on a new drug regimen. The pills and instructions are inside.”

  “Thanks so much, Madrone.” Katy turned, shifting the sleeping baby. Her movement was unconsciously graceful, as if the child were still a part of her, and Madrone nodded approvingly. A sign of good bonding, that ease. Babies held like that would thrive.

  “I’m so happy to be able to do something for her, finally. Something as simple as prescribing a few pills, which we didn’t even have to raid a pharmacy for. Not yet, anyway, as long as our stores hold out.”

  Katy sighed. “It’s so peaceful here in the sun. I can’t think about raids or believe the war is really happening. I’ve never seen such a beautiful garden.”

  “You should see it in the spring, the way it was before the invasion, with all the fruit trees in bloom and plenty of water,” Madrone said. “But you’re really okay, everything right with the baby?”

  “Fine, really fine.”

  “Any problems? Questions?”

  “Madrone, I’m not unfamiliar with babies. I’ve tended dozens of them.”

  “I know. But your own can be different. And you had such an ordeal, those last days.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me now. How about you, Madrone—are you okay?”

  “I’m tired. I’m worried.
”

  “Your family?”

  “One of them’s a prisoner.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “They say Bird, my compa—my partner, I guess you’d say—they say he’s gone over to the enemy. Wears their uniform and works for them. Some people think he’s a traitor.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Your people here don’t know much about coercion. Have a little tolerance.”

  “I do.”

  The baby stirred and cried, and Katy offered her breast, looking down at her lovingly while she sucked. “I’m beginning to enjoy her.”

  “Named her yet?”

  “You should name her. Madrone, I’m sorry about that stupid fight we had. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. And I know that if it wasn’t for you—”

  “Don’t even think about it, Katy, you’ll curdle your milk. Do you miss Hijohn?”

  “I do. I wish he could see his daughter.”

  “Someday he will.”

  “I wish he knew we were both still alive.”

  “Beth’ll get word to him, somehow, that you escaped.”

  “The Southlands seem so far away, like another world. As if we really had died and gone to heaven.”

  “This is not heaven.”

  “It seems that way to me, if I close my eyes and don’t think about what’s happening.”

  “Anywhere can be heaven if you do that.”

  “No. Not anywhere.” Katy’s voice was sharp, pained, and Madrone fell silent.

  “So what are you going to name my baby?” Katy asked.

  Madrone thought for a moment. “Luz.”

  “Loose?”

  “Not loose,’ luz, for light and birth, as in dar a luz. Or Lucia, if you prefer.”

  “Lucia, I like that.”

  Madrone hesitated.

  “What is it?” Katy asked.

  “Would you name her Lucia Rachel? For my mother?”

  “I’d be proud to.”

  “It’s funny, Katy. She died such a long time ago, in Guadalupe, and all those years I could never remember her face or feel her close to me. Johanna, my grandmother, she was always hanging around with advice, living or dead. But not my own mother.

  “But then, that day with the Angels, when we found Poppy and saw what they’d done to her, I remembered. My mother was a healer too, a doctor. She ran a clinic for poor children out in the back of beyond; we lived next door. The death squads liked to attack clinics; they thought free medical care was subversive, ungodly. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew there was something my mother was worried about a lot. And then they came. She yelled at me to run away, and I hid in my own secret place, a little cubbyhole at the back of the closet. I think I heard her screaming. Then I waited and waited for her to come and get me and tell me it was safe. She didn’t come.”