The Terrorists of Irustan

by Louise Marley

  Zahra said, staring now at the brown hills, “How, Kalen? How can I possibly help you?”

  Kalen spoke to Zahras back. “You can give me something,” she hissed. “Give me something for Gadil.”

  Laila gasped. “Kalen!” she wailed. “You can’t mean it!”

  Kalen turned to face Laila, head high, breath coming fast. All three women had undone both rill and verge, and Kalen had tossed the folds of her drape over her shoulders, out of her way. Zahra turned from the window. Absurdly, she noticed how gaunt her friend looked. She really must advise her to eat better.

  “I do,” Kalen said to Laila. “I’m not letting Rabi end up like Binya Maris’s wives. It’s bad enough ending up like me.”

  “What do you mean?” Laila cried, stepping forward to her tall friend, holding out her small hands in a plea for some sort of concurrence, some kind of understanding. “Has your life with Gadil been so bad? He isn’t cruel to you, he doesn’t beat you!”

  Kalen seized Laila’s hands and pushed them down, away from her. “You don’t know what its like!” she snarled. “Samir is nothing like Gadil. Can you imagine? I was sixteen, and Gadil was forty-seven. He was wrinkled, and foul, and he forced himself into me as if I were one of those street women down in the Medah! All he wanted was to get it over, get it done with.”

  Laila sucked in her breath noisily. She went white.

  Kalen’s voice rose. “You can be shocked, Laila, you should be! I don’t think Gadil even likes women!”

  “Kalen!” Zahra said. “Laila doesn’t need to hear this.”

  Kalen looked like a cornered fithi, her head wavering on her neck, her eyes glassy with panic. “No?” she asked. White patches circled her eyes, and a flush burned her freckled cheeks. Zahra came to grip her arms with both hands. “Kalen, calm yourself. Let me give you something, a sedative . . .” Kalen shook free. Laila’s cheeks were wet now with tears, but Kalen was oblivious, veering out of control. “I bled,” she cried, her voice thin and high. “I bled so badly Medicant Issim had to stitch me up. Zahra was there, and she knows it’s true! I won’t have Rabi going through that! 1 won’t!”

  Laila sobbed. “Oh, Prophet, that’s so awful. Kalen, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I had no idea ...” She took two quick steps and put her arms around her friend before Kalen could escape. Zahra stretched her arms around both of them. They stood for a moment locked in a tight embrace, Laila weeping softly, Kalen trembling. Zahra closed her eyes in despair.

  When the moment passed, the three women went to Laila’s bed and sat on it. Laila, still sniffling, cradled one of the many small pillows in her lap. Zahra folded her long legs beneath her. Kalen looked at them both with eyes of pale blue ice.

  “I’m sorry I burst out like that, Laila,” she said. “You’re right about Gadil. He’s never beat me, nor ever hit Rabi. But he’s never kissed Rabi either. And I mean it, Zahra,” she repeated. “If you don’t help me, I’m going to find a way. I’ve never loved anyone in the world except Rabi. No one’s ever loved me the way she does. She’s all I live for. I have to choose between Rabi and Gadil, and he made it this way!”

  Zahra shook her head helplessly. “Kalen, I’m a medicant. I’ve spent my life healing people. I can’t deliberately hurt anyone. It’s my calling to protect the people under my care.”

  “Isn’t Rabi under your care?” Kalen asked.

  Zahra felt the flare of tension in her shoulders and her head began to ache violently. She rubbed her temples with shaking fingers. “Yes, of course she is,” she said. She understood Kalen’s misery, her fear. But what could she do? Zahra had not forgotten the morning Kalen had come to Nura’s clinic, the very morning after her cession to Gadil. Zahra had not even put away the dress and veil she had worn for the ceremony. Kalen was carried into the surgery by her anah and Gadil’s houseboy. Gadil had left his wounded young bride in the hands of her anah and gone off to his office.

  Zahra remembered the rigid lines of Nura’s face as she sedated Kalen and went to work on her. Nura never spoke about it, not that day, not ever.

  Afterward, Kalen begged Nura not to send her back to Gadil. Nura even sent her own escort to speak to Kalen’s father, but the man had brought back the expected answer. Kalen was now a woman, her father said. She was Gadil’s responsibility, in his charge. Zahra watched her friend comprehend, with bitter finality, that her life was no longer her own.

  Kalens bright blue eyes, merry, mischievous—like Rabi’s—had begun to pale before her seventeenth birthday. Her bubbling laugh vanished as if it had never been. Zahra had been there, indeed. She had seen the torn flesh, the bruises on Kalen’s thin white thighs. And in the months that followed, she had seen her friend’s personality twist and harden like one of the ancient trees growing into tortuous shapes in the olive groves. Zahra thought of slender Rabi, and Ishi, so bright and innocent. They were as tender as saplings just beginning to grow.

  The old impotence weighed on Zahra. She felt as if she carried them all in her two hands: Ishi, Rabi, Maya B’Neeli, the unveiled Eva, hauling them all about with her as she tried to go on with her work. She whispered, “I can’t, Kalen.” But a thought was born in her mind.

  She could, actually. She could make something if she chose. She could create a weapon out of her skill, her knowledge. She had done it before.

  Before her cession to Qadir, she had viewed one of the many tutorials in Nura’s disc library, and had made herself an implant like the ones they used on Earth. After her exam, she had put it in herself, late one night in Nura’s surgery, burying it in the skin of her flank where no one could see. Every few years she replaced it, according to the instructions of the tutorial. It was a weapon. She had planned and ensured her barrenness.

  She could see to it that Gadil had no more power over her friend, over Rabi. It would not be a small weapon, like an implant. But it wouldn’t be hard. It was possible.

  Kalen tossed her head. She got off the bed and stood looking down at the others. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m going to do it myself.”

  “But they’ll send you to the cells!” Laila moaned, clutching the cushion to her breast.

  “Yes,” Kalen answered. “They’ll send me to the cells. But they won’t cede Rabi to Binya Maris. No one but Gadil would give that animal another young girl—anyway, Maris won’t want the daughter of a convict. It would ruin his career.” She chuckled, a chilling rattle that raised the hairs on Zahra’s arms.

  Laila protested. “You have to tell Gadil! Beg him ...”

  Kalen folded her arms and looked down at her ingenuous friend. “You still don’t understand, Laila. Gadil won’t talk to me. He doesn’t talk to his daughter. The day he knew I was going to have a baby was the last time he ever touched me.” She laughed again. “1 was relieved, can you imagine? He didn’t even come to see her when she was born. Only a girl child, after all! And I was glad—I thought all the hard times were over!”

  Laila cried, “But if something happens to you—Rabi would have no mother, no father ...”

  Kalen replied, “No father, no mother. But she’ll have her life.”

  * * *

  Zahra was exhausted by the time she, Asa, Lili, and Ishi climbed out of the hired powercar in their own driveway. The others chattered during the ride from Laila’s house, but Zahra was silent, and the conversation around her eventually died away. Lili watched her, and Ishi grew anxious. Asa met her eyes once in the car, and then looked away, but not before she caught the flash of understanding. He knew, she thought. Even though he had not read the discs he had brought from Medicant B’Hallet, he knew about Binya Maris. About T. Maris and A. Maris, deceased. And Asa, though he was a man, was almost as powerless as she.

  Home at last, Zahra dragged herself up to her room, as if even climbing stairs required more energy than she possessed. Lili and Ishi hovered close, worrying over her.

  “Zahra, you look ill,” Lili frowned. “Here, give me your veil. Ishi, run down to Cook and tell her Zahra needs bro
th for supper, needs to have a tray in bed.”

  Zahra didn’t resist. She stepped out of her dress and left it in a puddle of silk on the floor. Lili pulled a nightgown over her head. Ishi came back from the kitchen by the time she was crawling between the sheets, every limb heavy, her body chilled and stiff. Ishi bent over her, feeling her forehead and her wrists in a very passable imitation of a certified medicant.

  “Zahra, are you all right?” Ishi asked. Her smooth brow furrowed, and her hair, free of its cap, swung across the pillow.

  Zahra put up her hand to touch the child’s cheek. Ishi was eleven now, almost a year younger than Rabi. How smooth her skin was, how unbelievably soft. Zahra let her hand trail down the brown silk fall of her hair before it dropped against the quilt. “I’m fine, Ishi,” she said. “Only tired.”

  “You look more than tired,” Ishi murmured, tucking the blanket around Zahra as if she were the child.

  Lili pulled Ishi away. “Come on, little sister, let her sleep a bit. We’ll bring her supper up when it’s ready.”

  “No, Lili, I’m going to sit with her!” Ishi said.

  Zahra felt almost too weary to speak. “Ishi,” she whispered, “please go and keep Qadir company at supper. I’m all right. Really. I just need to rest.” Ishi’s eyes glinted stubbornly but she gave in to the pressure of Lili’s hand on her arm. “I’ll be back, though,” she warned Zahra, her childish voice stern. “You sleep, and then I’ll be back with your broth.”

  Zahra closed her eyes before they had even left the room, but sleep felt very far away. She tried to think about Rabi, about what she could do for her, but the ghastly picture of Kalen, bleeding on the white sheets of Nura’s surgical bed, would not leave her mind. The memory was twenty years old, but it was as fresh and painful as if it had happened this very morning. She was tired beyond bearing.

  Some time later Ishi came upstairs with her broth, tapping gently on the door before opening it. Zahra lifted her head at the knock to see that Qadir had followed Ishi up. “Zahra, our young medicant here is quite worried about you,” he said from the doorway. He wouldn’t come in if there was a chance she was ill.

  Ishi puffed pillows with her hands and Zahra sat up with her back against them. Ishi arranged the tray on her lap, and pulled the chair closer to the bed so she could watch Zahra eat.

  Qadir lingered in the doorway. “Do you need a medicant?” he finally asked.

  Zahra shook her head. “No, I’m not ill. You can come in.”

  She saw his hesitation do battle with his concern. He moved as if to step into the room, one hand on the doorframe, but then he smiled ruefully and stepped back. “No, no, I think I’ll go get some work done. Ishi can come for me if you need anything.”

  Zahra paused, a spoonful of broth in her hand, and looked into her husband’s face. His eyes were shadowed, his brow creased with a mixture of shame and affection—and anxiety. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want torecognize it. He was afraid—Qadir, who never had doubts about anything. He was afraid for her. She mattered to him.

  “I’m all right, Qadir,” she told him softly. “Only very tired.”

  He nodded. “Good, good. Well, I’ll leave you in Ishi’s hands. Rest well. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Thank you for coming up,” she said, only just able to keep the wryness from her tone.

  On another night, he would have come to kiss her forehead before going to his own room, but not tonight. The taboo was too strong. “Good night,” he said, and was gone.

  * * *

  It was that same night, perhaps even at the same time, that Maya B’Neeli suffered her last injuries. The clinic alarm sounded an hour after midnight, and Asa answered it to find B’Neeli on the step with his wife’s limp body in his arms.

  Zahra hurried to the surgery. She patched the tube of the master syrinx to Maya’s arm and snapped swift orders into the medicator. She engaged the respirator and she tried to stabilize the woman’s fluttering heartbeat. She labored over Maya B’Neeli for the remainder of the night hours while Asa prayed on his side of the dividing screen.

  When morning came, and the star rose above the white city, Zahra stripped off her gloves, scrubbed her hands, and buttoned her veil. She left Maya lying on the exam bed and walked into the dispensary where B’Neeli had waited the night through on the long couch. Asa came after her, hobbling quickly to keep up.

  Zahra took a deep ragged breath and stared through her veil at B’Neeli’s unshaven face and reddened eyes. “Asa,” she said.

  “Yes, Medicant.”

  “Tell this man that he has finally done it. He has killed his wife.”

  twelve

  * * *

  The ExtraSolar Corporation recognizes that its offworld employees have made great sacrifices. Every effort will be made to provide all Port Force and Port Authority workers with all they require for their comfort, their safety, and their health.

  —Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment

  Jin-Li joined the line of Port Forcemen and women straggling past the steam tables. The meal hall was full this morning. No shuttle was expected for days, and the longshoremen came late to breakfast and lingered at their tables, talking and laughing. Local news and videos flickered on a large reader in one corner.

  Jin-Li selected citrus fruits and a sprig of olives. One of the cooks, a young man with an elaborate tribal scar on his face, gave Jin-Li a mug of tea made with a splash of steaming water and a net of fragrant tea leaves. These were local foods Earthers could eat. Jin-Li had tested the recommendation against eating Irustani native fish, and had found that Port Force was right; Earth stomachs didn’t have the right enzymes. A day of misery had ensured no more experiments.

  A girl from the Port Force offices waved with a rattle of the metal bracelets covering her forearms. Jin-Li smiled at her, but went to an empty table near the news reader. Most longshoremen were interested solely in news of Earth, which they got on entertaining holos in the common room.

  A video on the reader showed a colorful, crowded scene, and Jin-Li recognized the interior of the Doma from other pictures, its arched ceiling, wide tiled floor, walls lined with mosaics and sculptures. One of the Port Force archivists had taken a palmcam to an Irustani funeral and was broadcasting live to the port. Scarlet-veiled women knelt around a central dais, and white-clad men stood in ranks behind them. On the dais rested a large and elaborate whitewood coffin. The beaky nose of the deceased was just visible to the palmcam, but nothing else showed above the edge of the coffin except a few threads of thin hair, gray wisps against a scarlet silk pillow.

  Jin-Li sat down, leaning close to the reader to say, “Sound on.” The volume rose and dipped, adjusting itself to compensate for the noise in the room.

  Rocky came to the table with a tray of muffins, eggs, meat, and coffee. He sat down, his tray bumping Jin-Li’s as he leaned to peer at the reader. “Watching that?” he asked.

  Jin-Li lifted a hand in greeting without turning away from the screen. “It’s an Irustani funeral. Big one.”

  Rocky took a forkful of eggs, eyes following as the palmcam panned the gathering. “Filled the Doma right up, didn’t he?” he said. “Some official? They got a million of ’em.”

  Jin-Li nodded. “Right.”

  At least a hundred Irustani women swayed on their knees around the dais. The men wore little scarlet rosettes pinned to their white shirts, and stood behind the women, as far as possible from the open coffin.

  “Really want to look at a dead body while you eat?” Rocky asked through a mouthful of food. Jin-Li chuckled.

  The palmcam swerved suddenly in a stomach-lurching arc, shifting from one side of the Doma to the other. A high-pitched sound rose from the kneeling women, swelling in a wave from one veiled figure to the next. It seemed random, but the wailing produced an odd sort of polyphony.

  “What’s that?” Rocky asked. He swallowed and pointed at the reader with his fork. “All that screaming?”

 
“Not screaming,” Jin-Li told him. “Keening.”

  “Keening? What’s keening?”

  “A kind of crying—a ritual mourning.”

  Rocky shook his head. “Wild. How d’you know all that?”

  Jin-Li shrugged. “Reading. Holos.”

  “Wild,” Rocky said again. He forked meat into his mouth. “Hey, Johnnie, is that all you eat back home? Tea and fruit?”

  “Different things. Rice. Fish.”

  “Fish for breakfast? Sounds awful.”

  Jin-Li said, “But there’s fish in that stuff you’re eating.”

  Rocky laughed and speared more meat. It wasn’t really meat, though it looked like it and tasted fairly close. Soy, fish, fat, and spices combined to make a meat substitute that approximated sausage. Oil dripped from it onto Rocky’s plate. “At least it’s Earth fish, and they hide it well enough for me. Put what you want for breakfast on a form, though, send it to the Comm Office. They’ll fix what you like, even fish and rice. Keep us happy!”

  Jin-Li shrugged again, and leaned to speak to the reader. “Louder.” The volume rose sharply.

  Whoever was holding the palmcam had found something to rest his arm on. The picture steadied and zoomed on a tall, balding man at one end of the Doma. “IbSada!” Jin-Li exclaimed.

  Rocky said, “Who? Who’s that?”

  Jin-Li pointed. “Chief director of Irustan. Qadir IbSada.” The medicant’s husband.

  The women on their knees around the coffin fell silent, silk-shrouded heads lifted to the podium. The tall man stood looking out across the crowd, waiting, poised. When all was quiet, he began to speak in a level voice, easily picked up by the palmcam’s mike. Jin-Li was transfixed, fascinated by the man who was Zahra’s husband.

  IbSada said, “The Maker teaches us through grief and loss.” His gray eyes scanned the assembly. It was evident why it was this man who had been selected, at a relatively young age, to administer the mines. He stood with one hand in the pocket of his trousers, the other resting lightly on the podium. His chin dropped slightly so that his gaze seemed to meet all the eyes below him. The chief director’s bearing was both simple and commanding, and in the Doma there was no sound except his voice.