The Child Goddess

by Louise Marley

  “Isabel?” Oa said weakly.

  Isabel stood up, slowly, almost painfully, as if her bones hurt. She released Doctor Simon’s hand, laying it on the blanket with great care, and she crossed the room to Oa, putting out her arms, pulling her into a gentle embrace. Oa nestled against Isabel’s breast.

  “Doctor Simon died about an hour ago,” Isabel murmured. She let her cheek rest on top of Oa’s head. “There was nothing more we could do for him, sweetheart.”

  Oa clung to Isabel. She couldn’t take it in. She didn’t want to believe that Doctor Simon, so smart and strong and capable, could be gone. That the bright world of Earth, so powerful, so masterful, could crumble, no more in control of events than the world of the anchens. It didn’t seem possible that Doctor Simon could die. And if Doctor Simon could die . . . could Isabel? It was a terrifying thought. Oa didn’t know what to do, and so she held Isabel with her arms, feeling the sobs that shook her slender body, letting her tears soak her hair.

  They stood that way for a long time, until Isabel’s tears ceased. She released Oa, and stood wiping her cheeks with her fingers. “Simon was very dear to me,” she said softly.

  “Oa is sorry, Isabel.”

  Isabel traced Oa’s cheek with her fingers, and she managed a tremulous smile. “Thank you, sweetheart. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Oa gazed at Doctor Simon. He didn’t look injured, or ill. He looked as if he were sleeping, though his face was white, and no breath moved in his chest. It wasn’t like Micho, who had been so battered. Nor like Ufu, whose drowned and swollen body washed up on the beach the day after he swam after the canoe of the people. Oa’s nostrils flared. It was true, though. Doctor Simon, though he looked so peaceful, was dead.

  “Isabel. Mary Magdalene did not hear your prayers?”

  Isabel’s eyes welled once again. “I don’t know, Oa. Perhaps she heard, but she couldn’t change things.” She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It may take a very long time before I understand.”

  Isabel moved to the little sink to splash water on her face. She straightened, wiping her face with a disposable towel.

  “Isabel, what is re-versing?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Re-versing. What is re-versing?”

  Isabel blinked, and gave a little shuddering breath. “Oh, reversing . . . well, it means turning back. Or undoing, I suppose.” She tossed the towel away. “Now there are things I must do, Oa,” she said in a stronger voice. “I have to call Doctor Simon’s wife . . .”

  Oa didn’t hear the end of Isabel’s thought. The outer door of the infirmary banged open, and they both turned.

  Gretchen, her eyes reddened, her silver hair coming loose from its chignon, stood unsteadily in the reception area, swaying on her feet. “Paolo? Paolo!” she called. She clutched at her head with her shaking hands, her long nails glinting in the light. “Paolo, you have to help me—my head hurts—”

  Isabel reached Gretchen in three long steps, catching her before she crumpled to the floor.

  *

  JIN-LI HAD GONE to the barracks for a couple of hours of sleep. It had been hard to leave the infirmary, but it was clear Isabel wanted to be alone with Simon, and two nights of sleeplessness had begun to wear. At the first light of morning, Jin-Li hurried to the meal hall for a hasty breakfast, and then back to the infirmary.

  There had been little doubt of the night’s outcome. Jin-Li expected long faces, a pall of grief. The bustle in and out of the large surgery came as a surprise. Oa stood in the reception area as if nailed to the floor. Her eyes flicked up as Jin-Li entered, and then fixed again on the open door to the large surgery. The door to the smaller room, where Simon lay, was closed.

  “Oa. What’s on?” Jin-Li said brusquely.

  Oa looked up again. “Gretchen,” she said obscurely. She pointed to the half-open door.

  Jin-Li stepped to the door and looked in. Gretchen Boreson lay on the medicator bed, with Paolo Adetti bending over her. Isabel stood at the foot of her bed, her hands clasped before her. Boreson moaned. Her head and her right hand, all Jin-Li could properly see of her, twitched and jerked, fluttering the tubes of the syrinxes patched to her temple and her wrist.

  Isabel glanced over her shoulder at Jin-Li, and then came out of the surgery. Her skin was ashen, and her eyes hollow. “Jin-Li,” she said. “Thank God you’re here. Oa should go to the meal hall, eat something. Do you think you could take her?”

  “What’s happened?”

  Isabel rubbed her face with her fingers. She spoke slowly, as if reluctant to say the words. Jin-Li understood that. Speaking something aloud gave it power. “Simon passed away early this morning.”

  Isabel’s eyes were the color of gunmetal, the whites reddened, the lids swollen. Her lips trembled, and Jin-Li felt a surge of pity. “Isabel, I’m so very sorry. You look exhausted. Why don’t you take Oa to the meal hall? You need to eat, too, and to sleep. I’ll stay here.”

  Isabel hesitated, and then nodded. “You’re right, of course. There are things that will need doing. Hard things.” She took an uncertain step, and then stopped. Half to herself, she murmured, “Someone has to call Anna. Simon’s wife.”

  “I can do that. Or Jacob can.”

  Isabel looked out the window into the clear morning sky. “I suppose that would be best,” she mused. “I’m the last person Anna will want to hear this news from.” She stood still, staring into nothingness.

  Oa looked up. “Jin-Li,” she said. “Oa takes Isabel to breakfast.”

  “Yes,” Jin-Li said, patting the girl’s shoulder. “You do that, Oa. Take care of her.”

  Oa nodded solemnly. “Oa takes care of Isabel. Yes.”

  Isabel’s smile was wan. “Thank you both. I’ll eat, and rest a bit.”

  “Is Ms. Boreson ill again?” Jin-Li asked.

  Isabel put a hand to her throat. “Oh, my lord, Jin-Li. Of course you didn’t know.”

  Jin-Li waited, eyebrows lifted.

  “Gretchen . . .” Isabel shook her head. “Gretchen—while Simon was with us, on the anchens’ island—she infected herself.”

  “Infected—you mean, with the virus? From the forest spider?”

  “Yes. Apparently she went into the room where he was doing his work—there—” She pointed to the closet Simon had used as a lab. “She’s a smart woman. She figured out what he was working with, and injected herself. She showed up here with the migraine, and now she’s running a high fever and she’s been vomiting.”

  Jin-Li looked into the large surgery. Paolo Adetti was working beside the medicator, tapping the screen, muttering orders.

  “Simon kept working on the serum right up until . . .” The muscles of Isabel’s slender throat flexed as she swallowed. “Oh, lord . . . I’m so tired.”

  “Go. You and Oa. Eat, and sleep. I’ll stay with Dr. Adetti.”

  “Yes, please do. He’s giving Gretchen the serum. It was too late for Simon, but maybe for Gretchen . . . Well, it’s something to hope for.”

  She turned to Oa, and the girl shepherded Isabel out of the infirmary, one small dark arm circling her waist protectively. Jin-Li watched them go, thinking that Oa would be a great comfort to Isabel just now. A great blessing.

  *

  ISABEL FEARED SHE wouldn’t be able to eat anything, but Oa’s watchful eyes on her made her put a few bites in her mouth, toast and eggs. Oa ate, too, and drank a glass of juice. Then, together, they made their way to their barracks room, and both fell into a heavy sleep until noon. Gradually, Isabel came to consciousness, wishing she didn’t have to return to reality. When she opened her eyes, the bright Virimund day seemed colorless and empty.

  Oa lay on her cot, facing Isabel, waiting for her to wake.

  Isabel tried to smile. “Did you sleep, Oa?”

  “Oa sleeps. Slept.”

  “That’s right, sweetheart. Slept.” Isabel sat up, and swung her legs over the edge of the cot. She still wore the same shirt and shorts
she had put on two days before. She looked down at her dirty feet, her scratched calves. “I need a shower,” she said, wondering at the prosaic necessity on this day of tragedy.

  “Oa, too.” The girl tugged on her half-undone braids. She was even dirtier than Isabel, her face smudged, her clothes tattered.

  Isabel roused herself, for Oa’s sake. “Come on, then. We’ll have a nice long shower, and put on fresh clothes. We’ll feel better afterward.”

  They showered, and brought fresh clothes out of their valises. Isabel sat on her cot, and Oa stood with her back to her while she worked at the tangles and knots in Oa’s hair, combing and smoothing it before she rebraided it. The ritual was soothing, somehow, requiring a coordination of mind and fingers that kept sorrow at bay for the moment.

  “Isabel,” Oa said, as Isabel tugged on a particularly dense tangle.

  “Yes?”

  “Anchens are having the virus? Doctor Simon’s virus?”

  “Yes. It’s the same. The forest spider carries the virus, and its bite can infect someone.”

  “But anchens are not being. . .” Oa’s hand grasped air until she found the words. “Are not being ill. Anchens are not dying.”

  “No, that’s right. The virus has a different effect on children.”

  “Oa is not understanding.”

  “I don’t understand completely, either. Not yet. But Doctor Simon thinks—thought—it had something to do with being young when you were infected. Not being grown up.”

  “Not being a person,” Oa said.

  Isabel put down the comb, and turned the girl to face her. “Oa. Listen to me. Doctor Simon believed that the virus, from the bite of the forest spider, makes anchens. It’s the virus that made you, and Po, and Bibi and Ette and the others, into anchens. You are people, all of you. Human beings. But the virus arrested your growth—stopped you from becoming an adult.”

  Oa listened, but her face didn’t change. She would never accept it, Isabel thought. No matter what she said, what arguments she put forward. The cultural bias went too deep. She had believed something about herself, and the other anchens, for more than a hundred years. It was, for the anchens, a kind of faith, and it was unshakable.

  *

  SIMON EDWARDS’S FUNERAL took place on the Memorial of St. Mary Magdalene, a day of glorious light. The ocean shone the viridescent green that had given the planet its name. The little cemetery was bright with flowers and waving yellow grass. The grave had been prepared beside the others, facing south, swept by the ocean winds.

  Isabel wore her black stole and chasuble, and followed the procession from the infirmary, where Simon had lain until all was ready. She walked carefully. Her bones felt like glass. Her mind was frozen, focused on the task ahead, refusing to deal yet with the fact of her loss. Oa stayed close beside her, watching her as if she might fall.

  “I’m all right, Oa,” she said, trying to smile. “You don’t have to worry.”

  Oa didn’t answer. She adjusted her steps to Isabel’s as they walked up the sandy path.

  Isabel paused at the top of the little rise, looking down on the gathered Port Forcemen and women, on Jacob Boyer’s lanky, stooped figure, on Jin-Li Chung, who stood with arms folded, a little apart from the others.

  And there was Gretchen Boreson, weak, unable to walk without a cane, but recovering from her bout with the virus. She had said little when Isabel went to visit her in the infirmary. She seemed to have aged a decade in their brief time on Virimund, the lines on her face deepening into dry furrows beside her mouth, wrinkles pulling at her eyelids, folding her neck beneath her jaw. Isabel tried to draw her out, but she had little success. Boreson had lost hope.

  Simon’s coffin rested on the little patch of trimmed grass. It was the simplest of containers, put together of unused construction materials, gray and dull. Its plainness, its anonymity, moved Isabel in a way that most elaborate hardwood coffin could not have done.

  She laid her hand on it. There was no feeling in her palm, no emotion that made her skin tingle or her bones ache. Simon was no longer there. She looked around at the gathering.

  “In the midst of our sorrow,” she began, “there is pride in a life well-lived. There is gratitute for the gift Simon Edwards was to those of us who knew him, and for the gift he left behind for all of those who will go on working on Virimund. Let us remember, as we say farewell to a fine man . . .” Her throat closed suddenly. She swallowed, and felt Oa move closer to her. The child’s warmth strengthened and sustained her. The lump in her throat dissolved, and a feeling of calm overtook her. “As we say our farewells, let us remember the privilege it was to have known Simon Edwards.”

  She lifted her hand from the coffin, and made the sign of the cross. A few in the gathering followed her example. Others bowed their heads, and one or two wiped their eyes. “Not all of you knew Simon,” Isabel said. “But those of us who did are grateful for your presence and support. It’s one of the great mysteries of being human that in times such as these—difficult times, sad times, challenging times—we see the face of God.”

  And as she said it, she understood with all her heart that it was true.

  *

  JIN-LI WAS AMAZED by Isabel’s composure throughout the funeral ceremony. Isabel stood, a slender, erect figure in black, as the coffin was lowered into the ground and covered. The day was relentlessly bright. Birds twittered in the one tree that had been left standing near the cemetery, and the breeze teased at Isabel’s robes. Paolo Adetti helped Gretchen Boreson back up the path, Boreson leaning on her cane, tremors rippling through her body. Oa never moved from Isabel’s side.

  Jacob Boyer came up to Jin-Li when everything was finished, and they walked back toward the power park together. Jin-Li looked back once, seeing that Isabel and Oa still stood, watching the hydros covering the coffin with dirt and sand.

  “You were there with Dr. Edwards,” Boyer said.

  “I was. Almost until the end.”

  “And the antiviral is good, the one he designed?”

  “Yes. It worked for Ms. Boreson. Dr. Edwards wanted everyone to be inoculated.”

  Boyer walked slowly, one hand on his long chin. “Did Dr. Edwards say why the virus wasn’t fatal for . . .” He glanced over his shoulder. Oa and Isabel now knelt by the finished grave, and they were planting something in the fresh dirt. “For the girl, and for the others?”

  “He had a theory. Dr. Adetti is going to carry all his research back to World Health.”

  “The theory is?”

  “Simon thought that the telomerase produced by the pituitary tumor stops the reproductive system from maturing. But if the person who contracts the virus is already mature, then the telomerase disrupts the adrenal and nervous systems, and they break down.”

  They reached the tarmac, and crossed it on the way to the terminal. “We still don’t know what happened to the colony,” Boyer said.

  “No. Mother Burke wants us to go back to the island of the anchens, and then to try to find the islands of the people—that is, the islands of the Sikassa colony.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find much,” Boyer said. They stood before the door to the terminal, squinting against the light. The work of the power park had resumed. Carts rolled back and forth between the solar collectors and the storage facility, and machinery hummed in the distance. “The forest pretty much takes over anything left untended.” He gestured with his long arm at the few trees left standing behind the barracks. “We have to go out there and cut back vines and those damned roots almost every week.”

  “Right. Well, we’ll have a look. Let you know.”

  “Of course. I’ll give you a pilot and a flyer.”

  “I’ll tell Mother Burke I’m going.” Jin-Li looked back in the direction of the cemetery, the view blocked by the rise of the hill. “But maybe not today.”

  32

  CONTEMPLATING THE TRANQUIL face of Virimund was, Jin-Li thought, like a meditation. Shallow waves, like idle thoughts,
foamed on the pale sand underfoot. The blue arch of the sky deepened to violet and then to indigo, a mood change. The stars flickered to life, one, then two, then a swirl of them, mirrored in the smooth face of the sea. Jin-Li sat crosslegged on the cool sand, and gazed out over Mother Ocean.

  Loneliness was a familiar part of Jin-Li’s life, a habit. But Isabel Burke’s courage in the face of her loss was an inspiration. And here, on Virimund, Jin-Li thought that perhaps a new beginning was possible. Isabel would return to Earth, in time, to make her report to World Health, to advocate for the anchens. And the anchens would have need of a protector, someone present, someone informed. World Health would need someone to archive the changes that were certain to come. Jin-Li Chung could be that person.

  The wind from the sea grew cooler. Jin-Li rose, and turned from the peaceful view to go back to the barracks. Tomorrow would be soon enough to propose the idea of being permanently assigned to Virimund. To put down roots, at last.

  All the barracks rooms were dark. Most of the hydros were in the habit of going to bed early, with work beginning at first light. The table had been cleared of cards and glasses and readers, the chairs neatly stowed. Jin-Li crossed the room carefully, shoes in hand, trying not to disturb the silence.

  “Jin-Li?” It was Oa’s small voice. She stood in the door to the room she shared with Isabel, her sleepshift ghost-white in the gloom, her hair a cloud of black around her shoulders.

  “Oa,” Jin-Li answered in a whisper. “I thought everyone was asleep.”

  “Oa is not sleeping. Not asleep.”

  Jin-Li smiled. “Do you want to talk?”

  The girl looked over her shoulder, and then back to Jin-Li. She moistened her lips with her tongue, and then, as if it took courage to do it, she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her. “Isabel sleeps. Is asleep.”

  “You can’t sleep?”

  Oa shook her head. “No. Oa is thinking.”

  “Ah. Yes, that will do it every time.” Jin-Li set the shoes down, and pulled two chairs out from under the table. “Come on. Sit here with me, and tell me what you’re thinking about.”