The boy’s eyes slid to him, and then back to his plate. His father jolted him with an elbow. “Yes, Director,” Alekos said. His voice was high, too, not yet dropped. His father frowned, and elbowed him again. Alekos pulled away from him.
The other men at the table, Samir and Aidar, looked away, embarrassed. Zahra was acutely aware of the silent Kalen on her right, whose head was turned to Leman Bezay, eyes fixed on him through her veil. Qadir, tactfully, tried to draw Alekos out.
“1 hear great things about your new team,” he said. “There’s a rich vein in the northwest arm that Delta Team opened up. You’ll have a lot to be proud of.”
Leman nodded, wisps of thin white hair trembling. “Yes, yes, son. The director is right. You’ll be a credit to your family.” He looked around the table. “If you act as a man, you will be a man," he quoted. “It is enough for today that we have the mines, the Doma, and our sons!"
Alekos, who had eaten almost nothing throughout the meal, looked up at his elderly father, and on his beardless face was an expression of utter loathing. Camilla looked at neither of them. Through the pale pink gauze of her rill, her eyes fastened on Zahra with an intensity that seemed to burn through the silk.
After the sweet, a rich cake of honey and ground nuts, the servants brought coffee cups to everyone, with small ones for the children. At the very end of the meal, a tiny tumbler of nab’t, the lightly fermented juice of the grape, was served to each of the men, and a glass of scented water to the women and children. Qadir rose then, and lifted his tumbler toward the side table.
“We’re here to congratulate my wife’s apprentice, Ishi IbSada. She has passed her first examinations with wonderful scores. I’m told very few students do as well. My wife and I thank you all, all of our friends, for celebrating with us.”
The men spoke their congratulations to Qadir. The women, and Ishi herself, sat silent and still.
Qadir lifted his tumbler of nab’t once again. “And let us add our good wishes to Leman, and to Alekos, who will bring his father honor by his labor in the mines.” He indicated the men at the table with an elegant sweep of his hand. “We have all served, and you will, too, Alekos—serve with distinction!”
There was an awkward moment. Alekos looked up at Qadir, but it was clear to Zahra he could not speak, whether he would or not. Leman spoke quickly, filling the silence. “Thank you, Chief Director. You’re most kind.”
Qadir paused a moment, smiling down at Alekos. “Remember, Alekos,” he said quietly, “the darkness of the mines is lightened with the hope of love and home.” He looked around at the colorful room, the silent women in their pastel silks, the children watching from the side table. “We, your elder brothers, have demonstrated to you how great the rewards can be.”
Samir Hilel put in, “Well said, Director.”
Aidar Abdel nodded and murmured agreement.
Leman put his spotted and wrinkled hand on his son’s shoulder. Alekos seemed to shrink, almost to slide out from beneath his father’s hand. Camilla stared at Zahra.
The end of the meal came as a relief to the women and children. They escaped to the dayroom as the men took their refilled tumblers and strolled around the evening room, admiring Qadir’s collection of sculpture and mosaics. In the dayroom, the friends and their daughters dropped their rills and verges with alacrity. The anahs came after them, bearing trays of leftovers from the kitchen—cake, fruit, olives, and bread. Cook brought napkins, small plates, and pitchers of cider.
“Thank the Maker!” Idora exclaimed when she saw the trays. “Your Cook is sent straight from Paradise, Zahra! I thought I would starve, all that lovely food, and only able to eat a morsel at a time.”
The children fell on the leftovers with cries of pleasure, and were soon sprawled on cushions near the table, happily munching, manners forgotten, veils and skirts disheveled. Their anahs, only slightly less abandoned, repaired to their own chairs to gossip, their drapes thrown back over their shoulders. The circle sat down together, Idora with a full plate in her lap, Kalen and Laila each with a few morsels. Zahra took a few slices of veriko on a napkin. Camilla ate nothing but sat stiffly, her hands twisted together and her face pale, eyes flitting restlessly around the circle.
“I just love these little pastries,” Idora was saying. Laila offered her one from her own plate, and Idora took it.
Kalen smiled at all of them. “It’s so good to see you all,” she said.
“Tell us everything,” Idora demanded. “Rabi looks happy, and so do you. Do you mind living with your mother?”
Kalen shrugged. “It’s all right. My father’s not as strict as he used to be—he’s not very strong. Mother really runs things. There’s a lot of work to do, though.” She laughed. “I had forgotten what it was like to have to clean your own bathroom!”
Idora and Laila chuckled, and Zahra smiled. Camilla looked down at her hands twisted in her lap.
Marcus came to announce that the men had finished their nab’t and the cars were coming round. The women and girls stood, buttoning rills and verges. The anahs fussed over the children, brushing their clothes clean, straightening folds of drape and skirt.
At the point of leaving the dayroom, Camilla seized Zahra’s hand and held her back, letting the others pass. Zahra could just see Camilla’s eyes through her rill, and they glittered strangely.
“1 have to talk to you,” Camilla whispered. “And soon!”
Zahra felt her heart plummet as if someone had dropped a stone through her body. She had almost felt it coming, this moment. “Camilla, why not ask me now? What is it?”
Camilla shook her head, hard. “No, not now. In the clinic. I’ll come tomorrow!”
Zahra wanted to refuse, wanted to turn this away, but she couldn’t do it. Camilla, Leman, and Alekos were all on her clinic list. She couldn’t say no to any of them if they needed a medicant.
“Can’t it wait, Camilla? Alekos has to come anyway, before he joins his team. Can we talk then?”
“I’ll bring him tomorrow,” Camilla whispered. “Please, Zahra. Please say it’s all right.” The blaze of her eyes dissolved in a tearful sheen. She stood very close to Zahra, their two veils drifting together, touching.
“All right,” Zahra said slowly, tiredly. “I’ll see Alekos in the morning. And you.” She followed Camilla to the foyer, the pleasures of the evening fading into darkness. The men were waiting, the doors open.
Zahra stood silently at Qadir’s side as he bid each of their guests good night. Ishi stood behind them, and Diya. The formal good-byes took a long time. It was late when the doors shut behind the last guest. Zahra, weary and worried, turned toward her bedroom, but Qadir caught her back, smiling, and whispered to her.
“Zahra, it’s been too long! Change quickly and come to my room. I’ll be waiting for you.”
eighteen
* * *
Men are tempted by nature, but discipline is in the One. Cast away anything that diverts you from the path to Paradise.
—Eleventh Homily, The Book of the Second Prophet
“Alekos is perfectly healthy, Camilla.”
Camilla, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, stared stubbornly at Zahra through her veil.
Zahra searched for something else to say. “He’s a bit underweight, and small for his age—but then you’re small.” Zahra’s eyes burned with lack of sleep and worry, and she knew it showed. Ishi had said so this morning. “He doesn’t want to go,” Camilla repeated. “He’s afraid.”
Zahra sighed, and the silk of her verge brushed her lips. Impatiently, she undid the button and let it drop. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “Many young men are afraid at first.”
“Boys,” Camilla said harshly. “They’re only boys.”
“I know.” Zahra pressed her fingertips to her burning eyes. Even one more hour of sleep would have helped, but Qadir . . . O Maker, she thought. The journey was long sometimes.
“It’s the darkness that scares him—the dark,
and the leptokis, and being closed in!” Camilla unbuttoned her rill. Her eyes were bloodshot, lines of strain pulling at her eyelids. Her voice rose. “Zahra, he wakes up screaming at night!”
“He doesn’t need to worry about the leptokis, at least,” Zahra said. “He’s taking the treatment now, from the medicator.”
Camilla’s eyes flooded. “It seems I held him in my arms just yesterday, Zahra, so little and sweet! And all he wants is to go offworld and study. He could build bridges, invent machines, fly a shuttle! A hundred other things!” “Leman still won’t consider it?”
Camilla gave a derisive laugh through the tears. “Leman! Leman was so proud to produce a son! It almost didn’t happen. He was so old. Then when Alekos was born, all he ever talked about was having a son in the mines, following in his footsteps'.” She wiped her eyes with a fold of her drape. “Do you know,” she said bleakly, “Leman didn’t leave the mines until he was fifty? Thirty-three years he spent in those tunnels, in the darkness. And he hated it. He won’t admit it, but I know he did. But never mind that—he wants his boy to do the same!”
Zahra reached across the desk for Camilla’s hand. “I’m sorry. I find no medical obstacle. If I invent one, the mine medicant will challenge it.” “What if he tries to hurt himself?” Camilla sobbed.
Zahra tightened her grip. “I don’t think he will.”
“Help me, Zahra.”
“Camilla. There’s nothing 1 can do.”
Camilla’s tears ceased. She fixed Zahra with a wet, unwavering gaze. “But there is something,” she said.
Zahra leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes.
“You helped Kalen,” Camilla breathed. “Help me!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
With an effort, Zahra opened her eyes. Camilla’s tears were gone, and she leaned over the desk, close to Zahra, her grip on Zahra’s hand steely. With her other hand she pulled her verge free with a rip of fabric. Her lips were white. “Zahra, help me! Give me what you gave to Kalen!”
“You don’t understand,” Zahra answered. “Rabi’s life was in danger. We were saving Rabi’s life.”
Camilla said flatly, “And you won’t save Alekos, because he’s a boy.” Zahra took a shocked breath. “Camilla, no! That has nothing to do with it!”
“Then why?”
A knock sounded, quiet, efficient, on the closed door of the office. Camilla dropped Zahra’s hand. Lili put her veiled head into the room. “Ishi says Alekos has finished his therapy.”
Camilla did not look at Lili. When the door closed, Camilla said, in the grating voice of a stranger, “Why not, Zahra?”
Zahra looked away, at the tiny window, at the assortment of discs and files, the few and precious paper books that lined her office. Finally she rose and trudged around the desk to look down into Camillas ravaged face. “My old friend,” she said quietly. Camilla’s eyes, so full of pain and fear, burned straight into her heart. “What happened to Gadil was as much my doing as Kalen’s. I struggled with it—I didn’t want to do it. But I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Rabi, sweet Rabi, on my exam table the way I saw Maya B’Neeli. I was convinced it was a question of Rabi’s life. But I swore I would never do such a thing again. I’m a medicant! I try to heal people, to protect them. Rabi was under my care, and I protected her in the only way I could find. All my life has been about this. It’s all I ever cared about, until—”
“Until Ishi came,” Camilla said softly. They stared at each other, and Camilla made a slight, knowing gesture of her head.
Zahra straightened abruptly. “Can you imagine the uproar,” she said, “if another Irustani developed the leptokis disease?”
“But Leman was in the mines forever!” Camilla said. She stood, scraping her chair against the tiles, and brought her face very close to Zahra’s. “Please, Zahra. Help me. Please.”
Zahra stepped back. She lifted the panel of her verge and buttoned it over her nose and mouth. “I can’t, Camilla,” she said sadly. Her sorrow, her guilt, burned in her chest. “Forgive me. I can’t.”
nineteen
* * *
Some divisions of Offworld Port Force will be subject to restrictions affecting dress and comportment, specified in the following subsection. These restrictions are mandated by the customs of the native society of the planet, and are not intended to be a judgment on individual values. Any employee whose work takes him or her off Port Force grounds and into the indigenous communities will be required to adhere to the guidelines.
—Offworld Port Force Terms of Employment
The call from Onani found Jin-Li in the gym. The phys-tech came to the corner where Jin-Li sweated in the isocardio equipment. The phys-tech wore a pair of briefs little wider than a thong, and his eyes, lips, and nipples were painted bronze. Jin-Li kept up the rhythmic snick of the machine’s couplings, watching him mince across the room, flexing his pectoral muscles and triceps, admiring himself in the mirrored walls.
Jin-Li could have chosen a job like phys-tech, something genderless. But automatic restriction to port grounds would have been no improvement over life in Hong Kong. Women like Marie accepted the confinement, maybe even wanted it. Not Jin-Li.
“Johnnie,” the phys-tech said, leaning over the machine. “Hate to interrupt—you’re doing great.” He drew out the word with a little husky scrape of his vocal folds.
Jin-Li released the compression bars, sat up, reached for a towel. “What’s on, Peter?”
“Call for you. General’s office.” Peter rolled his eyes, creasing the bronze paint. “Hope it’s not trouble.”
“You sure?” Jin-Li asked, stepping out of the machine with a smooth roll of quadriceps. “Sure it’s me they want?”
“Come see for yourself.” Peter turned back to his desk, flashing impossibly rounded buttocks. Jin-Li followed, wiping sweat with the towel.
The reader on the desk was flashing. Longshoreman Jin-Li Chung to the General Administrator’s Offices. Precedence.
The “precedence” part of the message meant now, immediately, disregard priors. And the message was broadcast, which meant the apartment, the cafeteria, the port terminal, the comm center. Jin-Li tapped in an acknowledgment to get it off the net, tossed the towel in a hamper, and left the gym at a brisk trot.
She always wore baggy shorts and a loose sweatshirt to work out in, and showered afterward in her apartment. She hurried to do that now, and put on a fresh uniform, cap straight on still-damp hair, boots shining. Moments later Jin-Li passed Marie’s desk in the terminal with barely a wave.
Marie stood as if to speak, then sat down in surprise, her lips a scarlet rosette. The free-form scarlet rouge was on her right cheek today. Jin-Li smiled, shrugged, and hurried on.
Tomas stood as soon as Jin-Li appeared. “Oh, what a relief, Johnnie. The general keeps asking.” His voice was high. “God, you’re still wet. Must have dashed right out of the shower!”
Tomas came around his desk to knock on the door of the inner office. There was a voice from inside, and Tomas opened the door. His voice dropped to a level tone. “Longshoreman Chung’s here.” When Jin-Li went in, Tomas closed the door firmly.
Administrator Onani was alone, seated at his desk. Eyes on his reader, he extended one forefinger toward the chair opposite. Jin-Li sat down, both feet flat on the floor, the wood of the chair cool against hot skin, belly quivering with nerves. Not once, in two years on Irustan, had there been such a summons. Cap in hand, neck stiff, Jin-Li waited.
Onani flicked off the reader. His eyes, deep and black, assessed Jin-Li for a long moment. Jin-Li met his gaze, not knowing what else to do.
At last Onani said, “Your foreman—Rockford, I think it is?”
Jin-Li nodded.
“Yes. Rockford.” Onani leaned back, pressing his palms together, the fingers spread. Jin-Li stared at him, fascinated by the deep blue-black of his skin, his shining bald scalp.
Onani continued, “He tells me you know a lo
t about the Irustani for someone who’s not an archivist.”
With relief, Jin-Li thought, it’s about Irustan. Not me.
Onani tipped his head against the high back of his chair and stared down the wide ridge of his nose. “We need someone, Chung. Someone who moves easily among the Irustani, who’s not official. Not an archivist. Someone less—visible—less obvious.”
Jin-Li leaned forward slightly. “Mr. Onani. I’m just a longshoreman. What is it you want from me?”
Onani’s eyes were piercing, as if some miniscule scanner were implanted in them. Jin-Li concentrated, sitting still, features blank. The thrill of nerves returned.
“You’re Chinese,” Onani said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Kowloon Province, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Hong Kong.”
“Family there?”
Jin-Li shrugged one shoulder, wary. “My mother.”
Onani glanced down at his reader again, and Jin-Li realized it was the Port Force record he was studying, the Terms of Employment of Jin-Li Chung, Longshoreman.
“You have no brothers or sisters?”
“I had a brother. Killed in a street fight in Yau Ma Tei.” A short, cold sentence to describe a life lived hotly. “I had a sister who died of AIDS. She was sixteen.”
Onani frowned deeply. “Surely they have DNA vaccine in Kowloon Province?”
Jin-Li said in a flat voice, “There was vaccine. There was no money.” Onani’s features softened slightly, a moment of sympathy. He coughed gently. “Why did you come here, Chung? Why Irustan?”
Jin-Li hesitated, careful of the answer. Onani’s eyes were so acute, so knowing. Had he found something? Something that made him suspicious? Suppose that, in the jammed slum apartments on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, they found someone who cared enough to tell the Offworld Port Force that the Chung family had one boy, two girls? Impossible. There were a million Chungs in China, probably in Hong Kong alone. Not even ExtraSolar could have sorted them all out—and why would they bother?
The Terrorists of Irustan Page 17
