The Child Goddess

by Louise Marley

  Oa’s eyes came up to her, wide, shining with intelligence. “Goddess. Raimu-ke is goddess, to the anchens. Raimu-ke. God that is female, but is anchen. A child. Like Christ child.”

  “Child Goddess, perhaps,” Isabel said. “You could say Child Goddess, to translate Raimu-ke.”

  For the first time since Simon’s death, Oa flashed her wide white smile. “Raimu-ke is the Child Goddess!” she said triumphantly. “The Child Goddess hears the prayers of the anchens!”

  *

  ISABEL AND OA unpacked the things they had brought with them, some food to offer the anchens, clothes, a small kit of medicines and other things Isabel thought might be useful. They stood in the long yellow grass with their jumble of cartons and cases around them, and Boyer reluctantly lifted the flyer to return to the power park. He had at least persuaded Isabel to carry a wavephone, and a backup in case anything should happen to it. Jin-Li would join them in a week. Isabel took a deep breath, relieved to be alone with the anchens at last. She could make a much-delayed start on the work she had come to Virimund to do.

  They sat down on a nearby rock to wait. An hour passed before the anchens began to come out of the forest. Po came first, alone, bravely. He wore the rusty knife at his braided belt, and stood before Oa, firing questions at her. Oa answered, and then turned to Isabel. “Po is wanting—wants to know what happened to Doctor Simon. Oa is explaining.” The two anchens chattered at each other a little longer, and Oa said, “Isabel, Po is being very sorry that Doctor Simon died.”

  “Thank him for me.”

  “Yes. And Oa is explaining antiviral, and re-versing e-ffect.”

  The exchange went on, Oa talking, translating, gesturing. It was hard to believe that Po could understand all that she had to say, but it seemed Oa was making progress.

  Little, quick Bibi appeared next, trotting up through the scattered boulders. She was followed by Ette and Likaki and Kwima. Bibi grinned at Isabel, and made a stroking gesture over her matted tangle of hair. Isabel smiled back, and mirrored the gesture, passing her palm over her naked scalp. The rest came then, dropping down from the canopy, dashing up through the meadow. They stood in a semicircle around Isabel and Oa, talking with each other, with Oa, the whites of their eyes flashing at Isabel. It was Bibi who touched one of the cartons, and directed a question to Oa.

  “Isabel, anchens are wanting to know what is in boxes. If there is being something to eat.”

  “Is this a good time, Oa, to share the food we brought?”

  Oa’s smile flashed, and she laughed, beautiful in her joy. “There are being no bad times for food, Isabel!”

  Transfigured indeed, Isabel thought. Even to making jokes.

  *

  BY THE TIME Isabel’s tent had bloomed on the sandy beach, to the awe of the anchens, and her cartons had been arranged inside, the light was beginning to fade over the eastern sea. Bibi and Ette were already trying out English words for things, brush, pot, fish, bread. Po stood watching everything with a fierce eye, as if daring Isabel to make a mistake, but when she offered him entrance to the tent, and a chair to sit on, he accepted. Oa stood by, translating a stilted conversation between Po and Isabel. The others poured in after a time, tumbling through the entrance in twos and threes, filling the tent with their unwashed body scents and their high, quick prattle.

  The nest, Isabel had known, would not be possible for her to sleep in. The tent was large enough to admit as many of the anchens who wanted to come inside. As night fell, the old children were still there, exclaiming over her things, watching the blinking lights of her portable and reader and computer with avid interest. Isabel heard or saw no signal, but when the darkness was complete, the anchens stood as one and filed out of the tent.

  “Are they going to the nest, Oa?”

  Oa shook her head. “No. Is time for the remembering.”

  “Remembering?”

  “Yes. Come now, Isabel. Come with the anchens.”

  Isabel gathered up her portable, and a light jacket, and followed Oa out of the tent and onto the beach path. The stars, and their light reflected from Mother Ocean, made the path easy to see. Oa stayed beside her as the others walked ahead in an uneven line. The air was cool and fragrant, and Isabel treasured the odd moment, the alien surroundings, her strange companions.

  Their destination was a great black rock, an outcrop of lava flow, Isabel guessed, on the north side of the little island. Its glossy surface rippled toward the sea, leaving a great flat place well back from the edge. Waves splashed halfway up the height of the rock, but the top was mostly dry. The anchens sat crosslegged, and Isabel did the same, finding the stone warm against her bare thighs. Oa sat close beside her.

  “Now the anchens are remembering,” she whispered to Isabel.

  “Remembering?”

  Oa nodded, solemn-faced. The starlight softened the old children’s thin faces, their bony arms and legs. The ocean murmured accompaniment for the anchens’ voices, a deep, monotonous note beneath their lilting tones. Isabel listened, fascinated, to the strange music they made, almost forgetting to follow Oa’s translation.

  “Likaki is remembering a day when the wind is being very strong and three nuchi trees are falling.”

  “A storm,” Isabel whispered.

  “A storm. Yes. A storm.”

  Another of the anchens began to speak. “Kwima is remembering Mamah, and making pang with Mamah in shahto.”

  How old that memory must be! Isabel could hardly take it in. The ritual went forward, oddly formal, almost hypnotic in its practiced drama. Another anchen spoke, and another, and Oa whispered the stories into Isabel’s ear. The anchens listened to each other with solemn and complete attention, neither wriggling nor coughing nor interrupting. Isabel began to feel as if she were dreaming, as if she would waken any moment and find she had imagined it all. The stories seemed to jump about in time, far back to the anchens’ infancy, then forward to events that had happened recently. If there was a pattern, Isabel couldn’t recognize it. She was startled when Oa said, “And now is the last, Isabel. Now Po is remembering the day Oa is coming back to the island. And the anchens are not knowing if Oa is Oa.”

  “What do you mean, Oa? They didn’t recognize you?”

  Oa’s whisper tickled Isabel’s ear. “The anchens are thinking Oa is dead,” she breathed. “Anchens are thinking Oa is—” In the half-dark, Isabel saw the familiar gesture, the little hand grasping in air for the word.

  “Ghost,” Isabel supplied. “Or spirit.”

  Oa nodded slowly. “Ghost,” she repeated. “Anchens are thinking Oa is ghost.”

  Clouds rolled in as they walked back over the beach path to Isabel’s tent. Isabel stumbled in the darkness, but the anchens walked surely, their bare feet fitting neatly into the worn track. Isabel struggled to accept that the anchens had walked the path for a century or even more. She hadn’t an idea, yet, who among these children was the oldest. She had not seen a single arm that was not littered with tattoos. In time, she hoped, they would trust her enough to let her count. And even then, she thought, it would take a scan to know for certain. Oa had said there had been no tatwaj for some time, and the children were vague about the passing of years. The white column of smoke, marking the tatwaj of the people, was all the calendar they had.

  To Isabel’s relief, Oa decided to stay with her in the tent, while the anchens set off through the forest to their nest. Isabel watched them go, feeling uneasy. She had to remind herself that they had slept in their nest every night for years, that they were not the defenseless children they appeared to be. They looked back at her, eyes shining in the darkness, and then melted into the forest.

  Isabel and Oa went into the tent, and sealed the opening. Isabel brushed Oa’s hair for her, wondering if the others would let her untangle their hair, if they would learn to bathe and brush their teeth, all the things Oa had learned to do. “We’ll need a place to replenish our water,” Isabel said.

  “Oa shows. Tomorrow.�
��

  Isabel tucked Oa into her cot, and stroked her forehead lightly. Such moments might be numbered. Oa might grow up after all. Isabel touched her cheek with the back of her fingers, and then went to her own cot. She lay listening to Oa’s light breathing, the slight creak and flutter of the tent’s panels, and the comforting chuckle of the waves washing the beach.

  “Isabel?”

  “Yes, Oa?”

  “Jin-Li looks for the people?”

  “Yes. Jin-Li will try. But you understand, Oa, we don’t think the people are there anymore.”

  “The anchens, too. The anchens are not thinking the people are there anymore.”

  *

  IN TIME, ISABEL would want to see this for herself, Jin-Li knew.

  There wasn’t much left to observe. It took two weeks for Jin-Li, with Jacob Boyer piloting the flyer, to find any remnant of human habitation. On a heavily forested island about forty kilometers south of the island of the anchens there was a wide sandy beach where they were able to put the flyer down. Jin-Li and Boyer, struggling through the thicket of tree trunks and buttress roots and hanging vines, finally found what they were looking for. Boyer stumbled over something that appeared to be a root. Jin-Li bent to give him a hand, and saw that he had tripped on an ancient and desiccated length of braided vine. Carefully wielding a laser cutter on the overgrowth, they uncovered an outline, little more than a memory, but enough to tell them they had found one of the structures Oa called shahto. A Sikassa dwelling.

  Jin-Li recorded what they found, while Boyer took a couple of samples and tucked them into vacuum envelopes. “If Mother Burke doesn’t come to see this soon,” he said dourly, “there won’t be anything left to look at.”

  It was true. Any artifacts there might have been had been devoured by the forest.

  If ExtraSolar wanted to underwrite the expense of underwater scanning and metal detectors on the island, searchers might find more evidence of the Sikassa colony. But the salient fact was that there were no Sikassa left. The old children were alone on the planet, the last of their people.

  “What I don’t get,” Boyer said, on their last flight back to the power park, “is why the girl—Oa—why she would want to take the antiviral. She already survived the virus, could live forever, apparently. Why change that?”

  “She’s convinced she’s not truly human. That the anchens are not human.”

  “Their people told them that?”

  “Mother Burke believes the Sikassa developed a myth to justify their rejection of the anchens. Because they needed offspring, they needed children, for the colony to survive.”

  Reflexively, Boyer looked back over his shoulder, but the island had already disappeared in the brightness of the water. “Guess they were right, in a way.”

  “Yes. In a way.”

  “But to send their children away . . . That doesn’t seem human, either.”

  “No.” Jin-Li gazed down at the bright water. “I suppose they felt they had to choose.”

  “It was cruel.”

  “Societies are often cruel to those who don’t fit in.”

  “I know.” Boyer fiddled with a control, and then leaned back, sighing. “So what’s going to happen now?”

  “Mother Burke will spend time with the anchens, complete her studies. Report to the regents.”

  “And we can go on with our work? Expand the power park?”

  Jin-Li shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  34

  ISABEL LIT HER little blessed candle and set out the crucifix on a flat stone before the kburi. The morning light paled the flame of her candle, and made the wood of the crucifix glow. Oa came to kneel beside her, and Isabel smiled at her. “Today is All Saints’ Day, Oa.”

  “All the saints? Saint Mary Magdalene, Saint Teresa?”

  “Yes, all of them, but especially the martyrs.”

  Oa frowned at the new word. “Mar-tyrs.”

  “A martyr is someone who gives her life for something she believes in. In my church, Christ is the first martyr. Here, on Virimund, we already have two.”

  Oa nodded. “Yes,” she said gravely. Were there changes in Oa’s face, a slight lengthening of her neck, perhaps a broadening of the shoulders? Or would that be her imagination? It had been almost six months since Oa received the serum.

  “Doctor Simon is a martyr,” Oa said “And Raimu-ke is a martyr.”

  “That’s right. Because Raimu-ke died trying to protect other anchens.” Isabel had heard this story from several of the anchens, sitting on the great boulder on the north side of the island. The tale varied depending on the teller, but the essence of it was always the same. Raimuke had been the first child to cease growing before her menses. Her people had not known what to do with her, Oa had said, translating, and had begun the tatwaj when Raimu-ke’s younger sister became a woman, and the people realized something was wrong.

  Isabel now had her own memory of Raimu-ke, as real to her as if she had witnessed the events herself. She pictured a slender dark child, rather like Oa, rejected by her parents and siblings, living out her days on the fringes of her community. When the tatwaj revealed a second old child, and a third, Raimu-ke stormed the village to destroy the inks and needles, to steal the drums that accompanied the ceremony, to try to stop the tatwaj itself.

  According to one version, Raimu-ke was felled by a single blow from one of the elders. In another version, several of the elders attacked her, striking her with their fists. In some versions, she died instantly, in others she lingered a few hours, murmuring words of comfort and wisdom to the other anchens. It was this version Isabel preferred, because it made her think of Simon. In all the stories, Raimu-ke was put into a canoe with the other two anchens, and banished forever. The two survivors buried Raimu-ke beneath stones at the top of the old volcanic island. It became tradition for each new arrival, each newly sorrowing anchen, to place a new stone. Some of them were far too heavy for one child to lift, but the others helped, and over the years the cairn grew. If an anchen died, the little body was also buried at the top of the hill, to stay close to Raimu-ke.

  The anchens squatted in an uneven circle around Isabel and Oa, waiting their turn. Together they had created a new ritual, one in which Isabel first made her morning devotions, and then the anchens made their own offerings. Isabel, too, made an offering to Raimu-ke. To the Child Goddess. She crumbled a bit of cereal in her fingers and laid it in the hollow votive stone. When she turned to look at the anchens, a rush of satisfaction filled her breast. A little miracle had been wrought here, on this tiny island. Six months of improved food, supplements designed and produced at the power park and flown to the island, a little basic medical care had brought a shine to the skin of the anchens, filled out their narrow bodies, strengthened their legs. There was more that needed doing, much more. Ette’s eye required more skill than the medtech possessed. Isabel, recalled now to the Mother House, hoped to find a physician who would make the journey to Virimund to heal Ette, and perhaps to do something for Usa’s crooked arm. Marian Alexander had already begun the search for a volunteer.

  Jin-Li squatted with the anchens, showing respect to Raimu-ke. Jin-Li would be staying on Virimund. ExtraSolar had deemed it worth the expenditure of one archivist as advocate for the remnants of an Earth colony. Isabel had no doubt that ExtraSolar’s motives were political, but they were useful. She was comforted by knowing Jin-Li would be here, that the mission would be in capable hands, and the work would go on.

  The issue of Oa, however, was still unresolved.

  *

  WHEN ISABEL RETURNED to the power park, she was shocked to see how much Gretchen Boreson’s chorea had worsened. They would travel together back to Earth. Boreson said she planned to be in twilight sleep the entire time. “No point in trying to exercise,” she said. The older woman spoke without inflection, without any sign of resentment or sadness. A cane leaned against her chair, and her hands trembled uncontrollably. Her lips were pale and her eyelashes
almost white. Isabel imagined her shaking hands could no longer manage to apply the artful cosmetics that had been such a part of her. Only her eyes were the same, ice-blue, still sharp.

  “I’m very sorry, Gretchen,” Isabel said. “I know you had hopes that the virus would provide a cure for you.”

  One of the trembling hands waved a dismissive gesture, and came to rest on the desk before her. Jacob Boyer had provided Boreson with a small office, outfitted with an r-wave installation and a computer, but Isabel doubted much work was being done. Gretchen no longer toyed with objects, as she had when they first met. She seemed to spend most of her energy trying to keep her body still.

  “I simply want to be home,” Boreson said. “Paolo tells me there’s nothing more to be done for my condition.”

  “I’m sure I would want the same,” Isabel said. “I’m eager to see my own home, now that my superior has recalled me. It’s been a long time.”

  “I don’t think I’ve had a chance to tell you how sorry I am about Dr. Edwards.”

  “Thank you. One of the things I’ll need to do is to visit his wife, in Geneva. Anna.”

  Even at this revelation, Boreson’s eyes did not swerve. No hint of compunction shone in her cool gaze. “That’s generous of you.”

  “I hope she’ll understand. There are some of his personal possessions to be returned, and I thought it would be better if they came from someone who cared about him.”

  “Paolo tells me you want to take the girl with you.”

  Isabel nodded. “Yes. I want to take Oa to the Magdalene Mother House, in Tuscany.”

  “I don’t see the point of that. We’re setting up facilities here, we’ll bring a physician out to the power park. The children will be cared for. They should stay together.”

  Isabel leaned forward. “I agree that the anchens should stay together. But Oa is changed. She’s different, because Paolo brought her to Earth, exposed her to all that Earth has to offer. How could she ever go back to living the way she did?”