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.
“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.
Ishi didn’t know what to do. She clung to the high desk, listening, not wanting to listen, thinking desperately, not wanting to think. She heard a couple of sharp commands from Zahra, short responses from Asa. There was a scuffling sound as they came down the hall, and the inner door to the house opened and shut. Then there was silence. Ishi leaned against the desk and listened to her heart pound.
Marry Diya? O Maker, surely not! Surely not Diya—and if Diya were ill, the medicator—but where had Lili gone? And why?
Everything seemed to happen all at once after that. Lili appeared from the inner door, a black, silent, terrifying figure, seizing Ishi’s arm. Qadir’s powerful car screeched to a halt at the corner where the avenue met the narrow street, and Qadir and Marcus (Marcus! Lili must have sent Marcus for Qadir!) came running up the short sidewalk. Samir Hilel appeared right behind them, with two strange men. Lili tugged on Ishi’s arm, and Ishi snatched it away from her with a cry of rage.
“Leave me alone! Where’s Zahra? What’s happened? Let go, Lili!” This was a shriek, uttered just as Qadir burst in.
Qadir ignored them both. He strode through the clinic, and finding both surgeries and Zahra’s office empty, he fairly ran through the inner door. Ishi, ignoring Samir and the other men, screamed at Marcus. “Marcus, what is it? What’s happening?”
Samir and his men followed Qadir. Lili took Ishi’s arm again and Ishi whirled on her, her fist raised. “Don’t touch me! Tell me what’s going on!” Lili, alone with Marcus and Ishi now, broke her silence. “They’re killing Diya, that’s what’s going on,” she snapped. “Poisoning him, like those others! Or did you already know?”
Ishi was struck dumb. Poisoning? Others? She stared at Lili’s black-veiled face, then at Marcus’s red, miserable one. She put her hands to her cheeks and found that her rill was open. Samir and the others had seen her half-veiled.
Qadir came back through the surgery, much more slowly, Samir close behind him. The other two men were not with them, and Samir had one hand firmly on Qadir’s shoulder. The gesture looked strange, but everything about the situation was strange. Qadir seemed to have lost his usual air of command. His lips were white, his hands trembling. It seemed to Ishi that Samir Hilel was holding Qadir up, as if he would fall without support. She forgot about her veil again. She ran to Qadir.
“Qadir, please,” she cried, suddenly choking with sobs. “Please tell me what’s happening! Please, won’t you tell me?”
Qadir took a long step forward and seized her arms with a painful grip. “Ishi, my dear,” he said hoarsely. “I wish I knew. You don’t know where Zahra’s gone, do you? Do you know where I can find her? Where I can find my wife?”
thirty-eight
* * *
Irustan is our test of fire and rock, set for us by the One. We meet the challenge through faith, but it is by our actions that we are judged.
—Second Homily, The Book of the Second Prophet
The opiate Zahra had ordered for Diya made him weak and mute. He stumbled and leaned on her, his eyelids fluttering. On his other side Asa provided balance, but Zahra had to take most of Diya’s weight on herself. She pulled his arm around her neck and held him upright with all her strength, her veil tangling under his arm and adding more stress to her already straining muscles. His eyes rolled at her, showing white. She felt a fleeting pang, but it was done now. There was no undoing it.
Their labored progress would never have conquered stairs, but Diya’s room was next to Qadir’s, on the first floor. Asa pushed the door open with his cane and the awkward trio staggered through. Asa and Zahra poured the near-nerveless man onto his bed. Asa leaned against the wall, sweat running down his cheeks.
Zahra’s own muscles trembled, and perspiration wet her neck and her ribs. She looked across Diya’s still form into Asa’s tormented eyes, and her pang became a knife that twisted in her breast. “He forced me to it,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Asa.”
No reproach crossed Asa’s face. “What do we do now?”
She shook her head. “You don’t do anything. I want to keep you out of this.”
He answered with a small smile. “Even you can’t manage that, Zahra. I’m in it as much as you are.”
“Not this. Not Diya. You had nothing to do with Diya.”
Asa pushed away from the wall and hobbled toward the door. “A little late for such a fine distinction, I think,” he said. He paused in the doorway, watching her.
Zahra drew a quilt over Diya, arranged a pillow beneath his head. How strange it was, that she should try to make him comfortable now. This comfort wouldn’t last long. She turned to follow Asa, but she looked back once at Diya’s blank face, his closed eyes. No doubt, Diya, she thought bleakly, you and I shall meet again all too soon. We may burn together.
In the hall, Zahra said, “Go to the kitchen, Asa. Just say Diya was taken ill and we put him to bed. I must go to Ishi.”
“No, Zahra,” Asa said. He took her arm. “It’s too late.”
She pulled her arm free with an exasperated sound. “Asa, please!” she said. “I have to try to make Ishi understand. I have to talk to her, somehow explain all of this!”
She suddenly longed to see Ishi, had to see her. She picked up her skirts and began to run toward the clinic. Asa struggled after her, calling, “Zahra, wait! Listen to me!”
At the turning of the hall, she stopped abruptly. Ahead of her Lili, black veil flying, sailed in through the clinic door like a hunting hellbird. As the door opened, Zahra heard Ishi cry out. “Leave me alone! Where’s Zahra?” and, “Marcus! What’s happening?”
There were deep voices, men’s voices. Men in her clinic.
Zahra froze. Only Asa’s insistent hand on her sleeve made her move. “Come with me, Zahra!” he hissed. “This way, hurry!”
In a daze, she submitted, let herself be drawn away. The very pointlessness of it made her dumb and obedient. She whispered, “Ishi,” but she obeyed Asa’s commands.
Asa led her back, past the kitchen to the pantry, and into the dim, cool interior that smelled of citrus and olives. She followed him on numb feet up the stairs to the loft. She missed the top step and almost tripped on her skirts. With a kind of distant amazement she watched Asa push aside an empty bin and then, bent almost double, he disappeared into the wall.
A moment later, his head reappeared. “Zahra, come on!”
Slowly, hardly aware of doing so, she went to him. She stooped to fit into the irregular hole in the wall, coming out on the other side in
to a space less than a meter wide. Blankets padded the floor and threadbare cushions leaned against the walls. With a grunt of effort Asa settled himself on the floor, his back against a pillow. Zahra knelt on a blanket. Asa told her, “You have to pull the bin back, hide the opening.”
She slid the bin back into its place with some effort, then turned on her knees in the nest of blankets. “Asa, what is this place?”
Slivers of light came from somewhere above them, perhaps four meters up. As her eyes adapted to the darkness, Zahra saw that the space, though narrow, stretched long, no doubt as long as the outer wall of the pantry. The light came from the slots in the roof where the pv collectors were fitted to the walls.
“There’s a double wall here,” Asa said. “Ritsa found it.” At Zahra’s uncomprehending look, he explained, “Eva’s daughter.”
“Oh!” Zahra had forgotten. She had arranged for Eva’s daughter to join Qadir’s household. “But—what is it for?”
“It keeps the pantry cool.” Asa’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “And it gives us privacy. A place we can be alone.”
Us. Asa meant himself, and the girl. Zahra could think of nothing to say except, “Oh. Oh.”
He only smiled, rather sadly.
The two of them huddled, cramped and uncomfortable, in the space between the walls. The swiftness of unfolding events left Zahra stunned into a kind of paralysis. She was hardly aware of her physical discomfort. What must Ishi be thinking? How frightened she must be! And Diya—when his symptoms began, who would help Ishi? And would Ishi think being saved from marriage to Diya was worth all this?
Not until she had passed through these stages did Zahra begin to wonder what to do next. She opened her eyes, not knowing she had closed them. Asa lay flat on the layers of blankets. Her own thighs cramped as she tried to straighten her legs. As soon as she moved, Asa turned his face to her.
“Not too much longer,” he said softly.
“Until what?” she asked. She wriggled, trying to find an easier position. “Ritsa will come,” he said. “She’ll be looking for me.”
The Terrorists of Irustan Page 33
