The Child Goddess

by Louise Marley

  Now Boreson’s eyes did drop, and her cheek began to jerk in an arrythmic spasm. “The provision has expired . . .” she began.

  “I’ve been in touch with Madame Mahmoud, and she’s spoken to the other regents. They’ve agreed to extend my guardianship of Oa indefinitely.”

  Boreson pressed her hand to her cheek. “No one informed me.”

  “I will ask Madame Mahmoud to send you a transcript of the meeting.”

  A quiver shook Gretchen Boreson’s body. She dropped her hand to the desk, where her tapering fingers twitched against the surface. “It was a waste,” she said. The flatness of her tone had a bitter edge to it. “A total waste. We came all this way for a virus that’s useless.”

  “Gretchen,” Isabel said gently. “We came all this way to save the anchens. To restore these children to their birthright.”

  Boreson’s eyes glittered with a little of their old, cold fire as she lifted her head. “That’s why you came, Mother Burke,” she said. The corners of her lips curved upward in a mirthless smile. “I came to find a cure for my disease. To find Paolo’s delayed senescence factor. I came for my own purposes, and I failed.”

  Isabel sat back in her chair, stunned by Boreson’s pragmatism, her naked honesty. In a way, Boreson had made a confession, but it was a confession marred by a complete lack of penitence. If she was unburdening her soul, it didn’t seem to be a burden that troubled her.

  Isabel didn’t respond. She could hardly offer absolution to someone who neither asked for it nor believed in it. It would have been gratifying to see Boreson exhibit some sort of regret. But it would not have been in character.

  As she left the little office, Isabel felt weighed down by the coldness, the utter selfishness, that drove Gretchen Boreson. It was terrifying to think what Boreson might have achieved, how she might have used the anchens, without Simon Edwards to thwart her. It was disturbing to think of what she still might accomplish, once she had resumed her seat of power at the Multiplex. At least the anchens of Virimund would be beyond her reach. Simon had seen to that.

  *

  ON THEIR LAST night with the anchens, Oa looked around at the faces of her old companions, marveling at how they had changed in only six months. Their skin was soft and shining, their hair painstakingly trimmed and untangled under Isabel’s ministrations. The myriad cuts and bruises and rashes they so often carried about with them had been bandaged and soothed. But more importantly, their eyes had begun to lose the haunted look that Oa had always taken for granted. The anchens had grieved over the disappearance of the people, but they blossomed under the constant attention of Isabel and Jin-Li. And Oa.

  Oa watched her own body for changes, wishing for them with all her might. Was she perhaps a little bit taller, her fingers a little longer? She couldn’t say for certain. And of course it could simply be that she was eating good food every day, instead of starving most of the time. Po was still the tallest of the anchens. Oa knew the number of the tattoos she bore on her arms and neck. One hundred two. Add to that two years in space, and how many years more since the last tatwaj of the people? Eventually, ExtraSolar would figure that out, and Oa might know exactly how old she really was. Certainly, the number was a great one, and during all those years, she had lived with only the faintest hope, a ghost of hope. Now her hope was a tangible thing, a constant presence. She felt, on most days, as if she could walk on air. She closed her eyes against the sweetness of it, the beguiling power of anticipation. She tried not ever to think of Doctor Simon’s serum failing her.

  Isabel sat a little apart from her tonight, with Bibi on one side and Ette on the other. Likaki curled as close to Isabel’s feet as possible. Jin-Li, too, sat in the midst of the anchens as they looked out over the darkening face of Mother Ocean and remembered.

  Bibi told the story of the night her little sister was born, a younger sister who had grown to be a woman, who was now long dead. Likaki remembered the accident that blinded Ette, the bleeding of her eye, the screams of pain, and how the anchens gathered around her, holding her, crying together, not knowing how to help.

  Po recited the story of Doctor Simon and the forest spider, and spoke of the sadness of Isabel and Oa at the death of their friend.

  Darkness fell. Oa looked up into the blanket of stars, knowing that the stars of Earth would never be so brilliant. She felt sadness at leaving Virimund again, but it had been her own choice. She would go to Earth with Isabel, and she would grow, and learn, and then she would come back. The Child Goddess had told her so.

  Po’s eyes were fixed on her, reflecting the starlight in their dark pupils. She knew what he wanted. She nodded to him, and then she turned to Isabel.

  “Isabel,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “The anchens want to take the serum. For reversing effect.”

  Isabel’s eyes glowed in the darkness as if they were the stars themselves. “Have you explained, Oa? That we don’t know yet if it will work?”

  “Yes. Oa has explained.”

  Jin-Li said, “She did. I think they understand.”

  Isabel sighed. “Jin-Li, I don’t know how you’ve learned the language so quickly.”

  “I already speak several. Each one gets easier.”

  “So I understand.” Isabel passed her hand over bare scalp, and turned her face out to the ocean once again. “Oa, I’ll talk to World Health about it. I don’t know what they’ll say.”

  “But Oa took the serum.”

  “Yes, but that was different.”

  “The anchens do not think it was different,” Oa said stubbornly.

  “No, I suppose they don’t.” Isabel propped her chin on one hand, elbow on knee. “Jin-Li, this is all so hard to think through. An anthropologist is supposed to study new cultures, not interfere with them. Not change them. If we inoculate these children . . .”

  “If the antiviral works,” Jin-Li said.

  “Right. If it works. But there are no others like them. No other anchens in the universe.”

  “But can we withhold this from them, if they want it?”

  “No. I don’t think so. But I’m not certain it’s our decision to make.”

  Oa said quietly, “Whose decision is it?” She saw Isabel and Jin-Li look at each other, and Jin-Li began to grin. In a moment, Isabel, too, was laughing. Oa lifted her hands, bewildered. “Oa is not being funny,” she said.

  Isabel smiled, her lamplight smile that could light even the darkest night. “No, sweetheart, of course not. It’s just that you’re right. You’re so right, and we both see it. The decision belongs to you, to each of you. There’s no point in my troubling myself over it!”

  *

  THEY LEFT VIRIMUND on the first day of Advent. A departure, Isabel thought, rather than an arrival. An ending, but charged with possibilities.

  Two volunteers from Port Force, a man and a woman, had gone to the island of the anchens to assist Jin-Li in building a proper shelter for the children, and to acclimate them to more people. Isabel had a long conversation via r-wave with Madame Mahmoud, and it had been decided that inoculation of the anchens should wait until they knew how Oa’s body reacted. Oa and Jin-Li explained to Po and the others that the serum would be theirs, if they still wanted it, after that time.

  Boyer was busy overseeing the loading of the shuttle, the hydrogen containers in the cargo bay, Isabel’s and Oa’s things in the passenger cabin. Isabel was carrying copies of all Jin-Li’s work, pictures of the anchens for the regents, and recordings for linguists to study. Simon’s things had been carefully packed to be returned to Geneva. To Anna.

  Before the flight, Isabel took a last walk to the cemetery. The biotransformed rhododendron had grown quickly. By spring there would certainly be flowers on it. It stretched its branches over Simon’s grave, its glossy leaves brushing his headstone. Isabel stood looking down on it, holding her cross in her fingers.

  “Dear Simon,” she said softly. “I suppose if I hadn’t asked for your help, you wo
uldn’t be lying here.” She lifted her head to feel the caress of the breeze on her scalp. “But I have confused feelings about that, my sweet friend, because if you hadn’t come to Virimund, there would be no antiviral for the anchens. And they want it so very much.”

  She knelt beside the grave, her knees settling into the pastel sand. The mound of the grave was covered now with a swiftly growing moss in the shade of the rhododendron. She touched the headstone, and it was warm under her palm.

  Suddenly she longed for the touch of Simon’s hand so much she almost cried out. She pressed the cross against her breast as if to soothe the pain. “Oh, my lord, Simon, I miss you. I will always miss you. I’m sure you would have been quick to point out that we weren’t going to be together in any case . . . But I would have known you were there, to call, to think of, to wonder about. I have so much to be grateful for, and yet the world seems empty without you.”

  She knelt there for many minutes, her head bowed, her hand against the warm stone.

  “Isabel?”

  She looked up to see Oa standing at the head of the path. The teddy bear was in her arms, but she held it differently now, propped on one hip in a maternal fashion. Isabel felt her lips tremble as she tried to smile. “Is it time, Oa?”

  “Mr. Boyer asked Oa to find you.”

  “All right. I’m coming.” Reluctantly, she lifted her hand from the stone, letting her fingers trail over the mossy surface of the mound.

  Oa came to stand beside her. “Are you saying good-bye, Isabel?” she asked quietly.

  Isabel stood up, dusting the bright sand from her bare knees. “It’s silly,” she said slowly. “Simon isn’t in there, of course. I know that better than anyone. Only his body is there. But the grave is a symbol, like . . .”

  “Like the crucifix?”

  “Yes. And like the kburi.” Isabel put her arm around Oa’s shoulders, and they turned together to walk back up the path. “But Simon’s soul will always be with us, Oa, with you and with me. As long as we remember.”

  35

  ON THEIR RETURN to Earth, Isabel and Oa spent only one night at the Multiplex. They boarded the sonic cruiser to Geneva the next morning, on the Feast of St. Blase. Paolo Adetti saw them off. There was no sign of Gretchen Boreson.

  Isabel entertained Oa with the various stories regarding St. Blase, a physician from the fourth century. He was purported to have been protected by wild animals, and to have been martyred in various unpleasant ways. The story Oa liked best was about Blase saving a boy from choking on a fish bone, and becoming, in that roundabout way, the patron saint of singers. She made Isabel tell it twice, before her eyelids began to droop, and she slept.

  Isabel drowsed, too, still feeling the effects of twilight sleep. Both of them woke just as the craft soared to its smooth landing in Geneva.

  Isabel wore her usual black, with her Roman collar, and her blackovercoat. Oa wore a jumpsuit of cream polysilk, her hair collected into a long ponytail that hung to her waist. Isabel glanced at her with pride, and gave her a coat to put on before they descended the metal stair of the cruiser. The air was cold, and heavy with snowclouds. Hilda Kronin, ExtraSolar’s liaison to World Health, met them on the tarmac, and shepherded them into a long black car, a perfect copy of the one that had carried Isabel away from the Mother House.

  “Mrs. Edwards is expecting you. Mother Burke,” she said when they were settled in the car. Nothing in her demeanor indicated that she found this visit out of the ordinary. Possibly Boreson and Adetti had managed to keep their own counsel in the matter of troubling Anna.

  “This is a sad duty,” Isabel said carefully. “I thought Mrs. Edwards would prefer to receive her husband’s effects from someone who knew him.”

  “You’ve never met her?”

  Isabel turned her face to the street scene beyond the window, hiding the emotion that must show in her face. “No, we’ve never met. But Simon spoke of her to me.”

  “She’s a quiet woman,” Kronin said, and then fell silent herself.

  The house was modest and solid. Isabel stood on the sidewalk outside, with Oa beside her, and looked up at the brick facade, the green-painted door. The tiny lawn was covered with a pristine blanket of white from the last snowfall. No footprints, large or small, disturbed it. Somehow the sight saddened Isabel. She bowed her head briefly, asking for inspiration and guidance, and then she led Oa through the little iron gate and up the walk to Anna Edwards’s door. Hilda Kronin came behind with the driver, the two of them carrying the cartons of Simon’s things.

  The door opened at a murmured command, and Simon’s wife appeared.

  Isabel stood on the step, uncertain whether to offer her hand.

  “You must be Isabel Burke,” Anna said. Her voice was light, almost childish, at odds with her graying hair and slightly stocky figure. She wore no cosmetics, and shadows marked the sagging skin beneath her eyes and lips.

  “I am,” Isabel said quietly. “Are you Anna?”

  “Yes.” Anna Edwards stepped back to allow Isabel and Oa and the others inside. She closed the door, and gestured to a little sitting room off the hall. “Please.”

  Hilda Kronin and the driver set their burdens down in the hall, and Hilda stood back while Isabel and Oa went into the sitting room. “Anna,” she said. “I think I’ll wait in the car. Give you and Mother Burke a chance . . .”

  Anna didn’t look back. Her eyes assessed Isabel, shifted to Oa, and back to Isabel. “There’s coffee in the kitchen, Hilda.”

  “No thanks, Anna. I’ll call you tomorrow, make sure everything arrived safely.”

  Isabel waited until Anna came into the living room and took a seat before she sat down on the small divan beneath the front window. It was a pleasant room, unremarkable, but designed for comfort. In one corner a desk lamp illumined a stack of flexcopies. Books lined every available space, and a large reader was set unobtrusively into one wall, almost hidden by a vase with sprays of holly. Christmas, Isabel thought. She and Oa had slept through Christmas. Twice.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I call you Anna,” Isabel began. “I feel as if I know you, through Simon.”

  The shadowed eyes blinked once, slowly. “Really,” Anna said in a flat way. “I don’t feel as if I know you at all.”

  The air was charged with emotion. Oa sniffed audibly as she tried to identify it.

  “It’s only natural for you to feel antagonism toward me, Anna,” Isabel said quietly. “And I’m sorry. I’m deeply sorry for that, and for the sad circumstances that have led to our meeting.”

  “Why are you here?” Anna asked. She closed her eyes, and her lips trembled briefly. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “I have . . . resented you for a long time.”

  “I wanted you to know . . . to understand.”

  Anna’s jaw tightened. “What is there to understand?”

  “I want you to know that what happened in the Victoria Desert . . . Virimund was different. Nothing can compensate for the loss of your husband, I know—”

  “I had already lost him,” Anna said, leaning forward with a sudden energy. Oa took a sharp breath. “Long before he went to Virimund. He broke his vow to me. And you, I believe, broke yours.”

  Isabel nodded slowly. “You’re quite right, of course. And I have done—am still doing—penance for it.”

  “Taking Simon with you to Virimund was doing penance?” The words were so bitter, Anna’s mouth so tight as she said them, that Isabel felt a wash of sympathy.

  “No, Anna. That’s what I’m trying to explain. Why I came here.”

  Isabel turned to Oa, who sat stiffly, as if ready to spring to Isabel’s defense. “Oa,” Isabel said. “Oa is why Simon was needed on Virimund. Oa and fourteen other lonely, abandoned children.”

  “He told me about it,” Anna said. “He called me, from the transport, and from the power park. But I still don’t see why it had to be Simon. You must know other scientists.”

  “But Simon was the one,” Isabel s
aid. “Because of his political influence, because of his ability to be both scientist and diplomat. Because of his great heart.” She stood, and went to crouch beside Anna’s chair, to look up into her face. She tried to see what it was in this face that Simon had once loved, what had drawn him. “Anna. I’m so very sorry you were hurt. It shouldn’t have happened.”

  “The fault is not all yours.”

  “No, it’s not. But I accept my share of it.”

  Anna clenched her hands with a sudden fury, and leaned forward, toward Isabel. “What was the point of it all? Why did Simon have to be a hero? What could possibly make it worth his dying?”

  Isabel held her gaze. “That’s far too big a question for me to answer. But I can tell you—I came to tell you—that Simon performed a great service. His name will be remembered, here on Earth and especially on Virimund. Even at the end, when he knew the virus was going to win, he worked on the antiviral serum, worked right through the night, until his last breath. Who else had such courage? Only Simon. Only your husband.”

  “I loved him.” Anna seemed to wilt, the brief energy of her anger fading. Tears welled from her eyes, and she pulled a handkerchief from a pocket. “I loved him as a man—not a scientist, not a physician, not a diplomat—as my husband! It’s been two years, and I still grieve.”

  “Of course,” Isabel said. “You have every right to your grief.”

  Anna dropped her head, and sobbed silently into the white cloth. When her tears subsided, she sat on, her eyes covered, her head bent.

  Isabel stood, and signaled to Oa. “We should leave you alone. But thank you for seeing me, Anna,” she said softly. “I wish there were more I could do.”

  Anna lowered the handkerchief. She stood, too, straightening her dress, smoothing her hair. She lifted her head to gaze at Oa. “This girl . . .”

  “Oa.”

  “She’s had the antiviral? The one Simon created?”

  “Yes, she has.”

  “Is it working?”

  “We don’t know yet. Simon thought it could take quite some time.”