The Child Goddess

by Louise Marley

  The anchens had their own scent as well. Oa, soap-washed and dressed in synthetic fabric, no long smelled that way. But Isabel could smell the bodies of the anchens, the scent of salt water on their skin, the acrid tang of their scraps of clothing. Po stroked Isabel’s bare scalp with his palm, and said something to Oa. Isabel caught the words “priest” and “Mary Magdalene” in her answer.

  “Do you have a word for ‘priest,’ Oa?”

  “No. Po is not understanding.”

  “Ah. It will take time, I think.”

  “Yes. Oa thinks, too.”

  A few minutes later, the anchens stirred, and rose as one, like a school of fish, or a flock of wide-eyed birds. Isabel knew she would have to work to see them as discrete individuals. For now, they were almost interchangeable, one body with many parts. They were the answer to her prayers, and they were a puzzle to be solved. And it seemed, as several of them glanced back to make certain she and Jin-Li were following, that she had passed her first test.

  She rose from her makeshift seat and followed as the anchens started up a path into the forest. She touched her cross, and breathed thanks to her patroness. She had been right to come.

  *

  OA COULD ALMOST believe her long months of captivity had never happened. She was one with the anchens again, her bare feet treading the familiar paths of the island, digging into the warm sands of Mother Ocean. Only Isabel’s presence proved that her newest memories, of the ship, of the Multiplex, of the cool rainy place called Seattle, were true rememberings. Isabel’s hand in Oa’s was real. Jin-Li, walking behind them, was real. And Isabel understood now what an anchen was, and still she did not repudiate them. It was not the blessing Oa had spent so many years begging of Raimu-ke, but it was almost as great a thing, in its way.

  And now they would lead Isabel, and Jin-Li, to their hidden place. They had changed it only once in all of Oa’s years on the island of anchens, only after the time the young men of the people discovered them sleeping, and killed Micho. The memory rose in Oa’s mind, but she pushed it away to remember another time. Now was a time for showing Isabel the nest. And Doctor Simon would come, and there would be more showing. This could not happen without Oa to translate, to explain, to intercede.

  Oa watched the anchens walking ahead of her on the path, their long-toed feet fitting into the old, old grooves, their hands and arms touching, their bony backs moving in and out of the dappled shadows. They seemed strange to her somehow. She had not remembered how thin they were, how dirty, how ragged their clothing, how tangled their hair. But of course, it was not Po and Bibi and Usa and Likaki who had changed. It was Oa.

  Despite the reassurances of Jin-Li and Isabel, it was true that she did not quite fit in either world. She was an anchen of Virimund, but no longer like them. She was of Earth because of her ancestors, but she was an anchen.

  She sighed a little. Changes could not be unchanged. And it seemed change could not be controlled. She supposed she must give up yearning for the change that never came.

  29

  OA HAD CHOSEN the right word, Isabel thought. It was a nest. A covert.

  Buttress roots, some horizontal, some vertical, formed an irregular bowl, a rough circle through which the anchens had woven vines, patches of moss, the broad dark nuchi leaves. Rags were dropped here and there, and wooden and stone tools. The forest canopy hung close, making a sort of low ceiling that held in warmth and the miasma of bodies and breath and decomposing vegetation. In other circumstances Isabel might have found the smell repellent. But she saw how the anchens clambered in, how they curled together in the noisome space like kittens in a basket, and she gave thanks that they had at least this, and each other. They had little enough else.

  She and Jin-Li did not fit so easily, nor their bodies bend so lissomely as the old children’s, but they tried. They moved on their knees, finding places to settle where they could lean their backs against some support, where they could see the anchens, and each other.

  “We’ll hear the flyer,” Jin-Li assured Isabel.

  She nodded. She wondered what Simon would make of this place. She had never seen anything like it, not in her experience nor in her studies. But then, there was nothing in the universe like the anchens of Virimund.

  *

  SIMON HAD BEEN shocked by Gretchen Boreson’s appearance when Adetti brought her back to the power park. By the time she reached the infirmary, the medication had worn off, and she was babbling again, her limbs jerking and writhing spasmodically. Adetti and Simon, between them, laid her gently under the medicator. She twisted and fought, and they had to strap her down before they could apply the syrinxes.

  When the medicator began its assessment, Simon glanced up at the readout, and shook his head. “She’s in bad shape,” he said. “Not just the Crosgrove’s. She’s made herself ill with exposure and stress. Did you know she was this close to the edge?”

  “No, of course not. I would have . . .” Adetti’s voice trailed off, and he made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know what I would have done, Edwards. Look, I’m sorry. I’m over my head here. And nobody can tell Gretchen anything when she’s made up her mind.”

  “I suppose, to be the General Administrator of the Multiplex, requires a strong will. And more than a little arrogance, I expect.”

  “She was good at the job.”

  “So I understand.”

  Boreson began to breathe more evenly, and the twitching of her body subsided. Adetti, with a gesture that surprised Simon, put his hand on hers, careful of the syrinx now attached to her thin white wrist. “Doesn’t seem fair,” he said gruffly.

  “You mean, that she should be ill.”

  “Yes.” Adetti looked up at Simon, his chin jutting in the old way, but his eyes bleak. “She didn’t have anything but her work,” he said. “Like me. No family, no home to return to . . . only ExtraSolar Corporation.”

  Simon thought of Anna, his own home, a place he had no desire to go. “You should talk to Isabel about that,” he said wryly. “She’s better at the really hard questions.”

  Adetti glanced up at the readout, and then down at Boreson’s form. Still now, her eyes closed. A faint pulse beat in her neck, just below the jaw. “You think there’s something wrong with people like that?” he said unexpectedly.

  “Sorry?”

  “I mean . . . people who have faith. Who believe in something better.”

  Simon leaned against the wall, watching Adetti with bemusement. He didn’t know if he was being naive, or insulting. “I know there’s nothing wrong with Isabel,” he finally said in answer. “She puts her faith to the test, and she does good work in its name.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” Adetti pulled a light blanket over Boreson, and tapped the screen to order a fresh dose of dimenasphin. “But I don’t understand it.”

  Simon had said the same words, too many times. Hearing them in Adetti’s mouth made him wish he had never spoken them.

  When Jin-Li called the next day, Simon was again in the infirmary. Boreson was stable, and she seemed rational, but Simon had assigned the medtech to stay with her. He and Adetti were both in the surgery when his wavephone buzzed. He spoke cautiously, eager to know what they had found, wary of giving away too much. He would have liked to warn Jin-Li, warn Isabel, but he hesitated. He glanced down at Boreson. Her pale face was a mask, eyes closed, lips folded, but he had the distinct sense she was listening to everything he said. He made his promises with no mention of his discovery of the night before. When he broke the connection, Adetti pounced.

  “They found them,” he said.

  “Yes. Oa found them.”

  “Can we go now, then?”

  “Look, Adetti—” Simon began.

  “Don’t tell me!” Adetti snapped. “They want you, and not me.”

  Simon shrugged. “Not my decision. Isabel’s. And Oa’s.”

  “I’m not going to stand for it!” Adetti strode from the surgery, out into the tiny reception area. His lips wer
e pressed thin, and his eyes, so bleak before, blazed with fury. “I came all this way to see those—those creatures—and I mean to do it!”

  “You will,” Simon said mildly. He stepped out of the surgery, and closed the door gently. “But not now. Isabel wants time, and Oa says they’re afraid.”

  “I don’t give a damn what Isabel wants,” Adetti said. “So they’re afraid! They’ll get over it. No one’s going to hurt them.”

  “Someone has already hurt them,” Simon reminded him.

  Adetti slammed a fist against a doorjamb. It made a dull thud, and his mouth twisted. “Damn it, Edwards, this is too important for such posturing!”

  “Posturing?”

  “You know what I mean. We need that virus, need to get started.”

  Simon forbore to lie to him, and he let the “we” pass. There would be time, later, to explain the work he had done, the vaccine that was almost ready to be tested. “I have to go alone. This is Isabel’s request, as guardian. I promise, Paolo, after I’ve seen the anchens—”

  Adetti made a sour face.

  Simon chucked. “It’s a real word. You might as well accept it. This is an anthropological issue. We may face ethical challenges, and we certainly can’t afford more mistakes. We have to correct the ones already made, and we need to move slowly. You’ll get your chance at the virus, and your research, but you’ll have to wait.”

  The argument went on, Adetti dogging Simon’s steps as he sought out Jacob Boyer, made his arrangements, secured a flyer and a pilot, and assembled a medical kit. Not until he had set out across the airfield to meet the pilot did Adetti subside. He stood glowering next to Boyer while Simon shook hands with the pilot and climbed into the flyer.

  Simon couldn’t resist giving him a jaunty wave as the flyer lifted from the tarmac and banked to the southwest.

  *

  IT WAS NO wonder Oa was afraid of them, Isabel thought. This one was enormous, at least ten centimeters long, its arching legs furred and its eyes shining an iridescent black with layered depths of green and bronze. It sauntered up the path, straight toward the spot where Oa stood frozen, staring at it.

  They had heard the flyer as they were climbing out of the nest. Jin-Li spoke to Simon by wavephone and told him to wait beside the crashed flyer. The light was dimming, the sky darkening to a faint violet above the ocean. Oa said the forest path would be faster than the beach path. She led the way, with Isabel and Jin-Li behind her. The anchens came, too, but warily, touching each other’s hands, glancing at each other. They placed their bare feet cautiously, and lagged far behind.

  Isabel murmured to Oa, “Can we get out of the woods before it’s dark?”

  Oa walked faster, and Isabel had to hurry to keep up.

  It was steep going. Oa scrambled with monkey-agility, but Isabel often had to pull herself up banks and over tangled vegetation, using vines and roots, sometimes almost on her hands and knees. When they reached the edge of the meadow, she was perspiring and her sandals were full of grit. She stopped for a moment to pull stickers and burrs from her socks. Oa waited with her while Jin-Li went ahead to signal to Simon that they had arrived.

  The anchens hung back among the trees. Several took to the canopy, nestling among high branches where they could see the meadow. Only Po and Bibi held their ground. Po stood stiff-legged at the turning of the path, his rusty long knife hanging at his waist. Bibi shifted from foot to foot as if at any moment she might leap onto the nearest root and vanish above the canopy. Oa spoke to them, but they didn’t answer, only stared fixedly forward.

  Isabel put her socks and sandals back on, and straightened. “Shall we go to meet Doctor Simon, Oa?”

  Oa nodded, and they started out into the clearing. The long grass looked brown in the dusky light, and a few faint stars had begun to glisten. Jin-Li had reached the flyer, and stood talking with Simon and the pilot, gesturing back toward the forest.

  Po was following Oa, his hand on the long knife.

  Isabel stopped. “Oa. Can you ask Po to put the knife down?”

  Oa’s eyes rolled to Po, and back to Isabel. “Po is being afraid,” she said softly. “All the anchens are being afraid.”

  “I know, sweetheart.” Isabel looked up at the flyer, and saw that Jin-Li and Simon had started down through the scattered boulders of the meadow. “But look, Oa. Doctor Simon and Jin-Li are coming alone to meet the anchens. Doctor Simon would never carry a shock gun, or any other weapon.”

  Oa’s tongue touched her lips. She turned her head and spoke swiftly to Po. He gave a hard shake of the head, and clasped the hilt of the old knife.

  “Po is remembering,” Oa said quietly to Isabel. “The anchens are remembering the—the shock guns. They are remembering that Nwa is falling, and Oa. They are being afraid.”

  Isabel hesitated. She looked above Oa’s head to Po, the old child behaving like a man. Protecting his people, defending his territory. She lamented the incident that brought them to this. Had the hydros only come without weapons! “Violence begets violence,” she whispered.

  “Oa is not understanding.”

  “No, sweetheart, I know. Listen—” Simon and Jin-Li had almost reached them. Bibi’s courage was tested beyond its limit, and she swung herself neatly and swiftly up onto the nearest branch. The other anchens were already invisible, hidden by the darkness of the canopy.

  “Isabel!” It was Simon’s voice, ringing across the meadow.

  Po pulled his knife out of his belt, and held it at the ready.

  “Just a moment, Simon,” Isabel called.

  Simon stopped, with Jin-Li beside him. “Something wrong?” He was still thirty yards away, a dark silhouette against the brightening stars.

  Oa chattered at Po, and Isabel caught, “Doctor Simon,” and her own name. Po spat something back at her. Oa and Isabel were just beyond the edge of the forest, where the grass shrank and died, leaving a flattened verge between the meadow and the first trees, an open space where the path widened into the open. Oa turned back to Po. He stood straddlelegged, fierce, eyes blazing with ancient fury in his youthful face.

  It was an impossible position for Oa. She hardly belonged to the anchens anymore, and yet she needed them. Isabel supposed her speech and her appearance made her old companions distrustful and suspicious. And the anchens had no reason to trust Isabel, or Jin-Li, or Simon. She felt their eyes on her from the gloom, and gooseflesh prickled her arms and her scalp.

  When the forest spider appeared, the poor light made it seem larger even than it was, marching out of the shadows of the forest and across the bare dirt of the verge.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. Later, grief-stricken, sifting through her memories and impressions to think what she might have done differently, how she might have prevented the tragedy, Isabel found she couldn’t put events in any sequence. Po’s lifting of the knife, Oa’s shriek at the sight of the forest spider, her own leap to put herself between the spider and Oa, and Simon’s lunge, swift steps that brought him to her side, his attempt to bat the spider away from her, all of it jumbled together in her recall so that the only person who truly saw what happened was Jin-Li Chung.

  *

  JIN-LI RECOGNIZED THE fear and determination, the sheer courage, it took for Po to stand, as he believed, between the anchens and danger. It was Po’s fear that made the situation explosive. It was at best an uneasy truce that had existed between the anchens and Isabel and Jin-Li—and even Oa—all day. The arrival of a third flyer, after the weird behavior of Gretchen Boreson, disrupted the precarious balance. Jin-Li saw Oa step forward, exhibiting her own brand of courage, trying to prevent a confrontation. Whether she could have defused the situation without any injury, no one would ever know.

  Jin-Li and Simon saw the knife raised above Po’s head, and they began to run. They were too far away, of course. If Po had decided to use his knife, they could not have stopped him.

  The forest spider appeared on the verge between the boulder, where Oa stood, an
d the edge of the forest, where Po stood ready to die for Bibi and Ette and Likaki and Malo and the rest.

  Oa screamed at the sight of the spider. Isabel misunderstood and cried, “No! Po, don’t!”

  Po whirled to face the imagined threat of Isabel, brandishing the knife above his head.

  Isabel’s leap was to shield Oa from Po. Isabel had not yet seen the spider.

  Running hard, Jin-Li and Simon saw the spider a moment after Isabel did.

  Simon called Isabel’s name. They were within a few strides of the verge, Oa cowering against the boulder, Po rigid with tension as he saw Simon and Jin-Li rushing toward him. It was nearly dark, and things were moving fast.

  The spider’s stately motion became a flash of long black legs and ovoid body. Isabel’s leap to protect Oa turned into a sprawl as she lost her footing and fell onto the verge, her arms outstretched, one sandal lost in the grass, the other dangling from her foot. And Simon, with a choking gasp of horror, bent to bat away the spider just as it reached Isabel’s exposed arm.

  When he straightened, he wore a look of incredulity on his narrow face. The black spider clung to his hand. Jin-Li strode forward to release it from him, and Simon pulled back, choking out, “No! Jin-Li, don’t touch it! It’s . . .” Even in the dusk, it was possible to see how his face paled.

  Po saw the spider now, too, and lowered the knife slowly. Oa burst into wild sobs. Isabel scrambled to her feet, crying Simon’s name, stepping forward to help him. He staggered away from her, crying again, “No! No!”

  He shook his hand, hard, and pushed at the forest spider with his other hand. The creature tumbled, at last, to the ground. Po used the rusting knife to spear it where it fell. But it was too late for Simon.