6
SIMON EDWARDS SAW the pictures of Isabel with Cole Markham, taken outside the office of the General Administrator of Earth Multiplex. They flashed across the networks with a brief statement about ExtraSolar sparing no effort or expense in meeting the requirements of its charters. The info-bite said nothing about what the Magdalene was to be researching, but it went on for a full three sentences about the role of the Magdalenes as Enquirers, the variety of their studies, their reputation for honesty. Simon smiled at that. He knew how Marian Alexander chafed under the disdain of the older orders, the male orders. Especially the Jesuits. Marian must have leaped at the chance for Isabel to pursue a high-profile commission. He wondered what it entailed. A brief search on the networks turned up nothing more, which meant no one was talking. Perhaps no one had yet asked. But then why was the photo being offered?
Simon thumbed off his reader and left his desk to stand by the wide picture window, looking out over the gardens of the World Health and Welfare offices. The networks reported rain in Seattle. Here in Geneva, a fragile sunshine glistened on the icy lake and set last night’s fresh snowfall sparkling on the roofs and gardens of the city. The long sunbaked days he and Isabel had spent together in the Victoria Desert seemed to belong to another life.
Simon felt Isabel’s absence as a physical loss, even now. It was as if, he thought with dark humor, someone had taken a rib and left a great gap in his chest. His work couldn’t fill it. His wife Anna, though she was willing to try, couldn’t fill it.
He didn’t know how to reach Isabel. She refused to have her own wavephone number, and rarely carried one even in the field. It didn’t matter in any case. She had made it clear she didn’t want to see him. She had vanished without a farewell, leaving no doubt that she meant their separation to be final. He had tried, and failed, to understand the compulsion that ruled her life. Now he struggled simply with acceptance.
Poor suffering Anna, mystified in her own way as he was in his, hovered on the edge of his awareness, there whenever he opened his eyes to see her, eager to repair their marriage. Distantly, he understood he was being cruel to her. He didn’t mean to be, and he didn’t want to be, but he couldn’t help it.
He turned away from the window. He was due at a meeting of the directors that couldn’t start without him. He left his office, nodding to his secretary and his aide as he passed their desks, and turned down the broad corridor to the boardroom, trying to fix his mind on the discussion ahead. There were a number of crises demanding his attention, all more serious than his personal troubles. Months had passed since he left Australia, since the morning he woke to find Isabel gone. But then, Simon reflected, like stubbing your toe or scorching your tongue, pain was often disproportionate to the gravity of the injury.
He managed a silent laugh at his own expense before he turned into the boardroom.
*
OA TREMBLED EACH time Doctor appeared in the window that she now understood was not a mirror. She made herself small in her corner, and listened to Doctor argue with Isabel.
Three days in a row, Isabel won the battle, and Doctor went away with the strange pale woman whose face jerked and crawled as if insects wriggled beneath her skin. Since Isabel came, Oa had not once had to submit to the spider machine. The second day, Isabel went into the central surgery where the medicator lurked, and she did something to the machine, something bad. Oa sniffed a complex perfume of anger and triumph as Isabel came out.
“There, Oa,” Isabel said. “That will need some repair.”
Oa crept to the little room and peered in. The machine’s looping wires and tubes now hung free, trailing to the floor.
Isabel came to stand beside her. “I broke it. They can fix it, but it will take time.”
“Fix?” Oa’s lips and tongue struggled with the new word.
“Yes, fix. Repair. Do you know what a wavephone is, Oa?”
Oa pointed to the wavephone on the wall.
“That’s right.” Isabel’s smile made Oa think of sunlight flashing on the face of Mother Ocean, or the glow from the nuchi shell lamps of the people. “That wavephone doesn’t work. Someone broke it so I couldn’t use it.” Isabel’s smile faded, and she looked tired again. “And I don’t need the medicator. What I need to know, only you can tell me.”
“No more spider machine?” A surge of hope washed over Oa. If there was no more spider machine, maybe Isabel wouldn’t find out.
“Not for now.”
“Oa is not liking it.”
“I know.” Isabel sat down in one of the not-wood chairs. It was too small for her, and her knees poked up beside the low table. “Do you know, Oa, I have dozens and dozens of medicator reports. They tell me a great deal about your body, but they don’t tell me very much about you.”
The brief flare of hope died in Oa’s breast. She wished Isabel wouldn’t go on.
Isabel rubbed her hand over her scalp. “Do you think you could tell me some things, Oa? Some things about your home, or your parents. About the island, and the other children.”
Oa knew the word “parents” because it had been in the books. She knew it meant “mother” and “father” together. She knew the word “children.” In fact, she understood almost everything Isabel said to her. Isabel spoke clearly, and not fast.
Oa dropped her eyes to her toes. She would have liked to tell Isabel, tell her everything. She had not talked to anyone in a very long time. But she was afraid.
Oa remembered a night when a boat had come from the people, not after the tatwaj, but just a night. Some men had been drinking beera, which the people made with fermented fruit. The men decided to come to the anchens’ island. The anchens’ nest was too close to the shore, and they were caught by surprise. They were sleeping, and the men found them.
The men were young and wild, in the first fire of their manhood. It was tabu for them to use girls of the people. But Bibi and Ette and Oa and Likaki were only anchens.
Micho tried to fight them off, because he was the tallest, but he was too thin and weak. The men hit Micho until he didn’t get up anymore. The men didn’t care if Micho ever got up again, because Micho was not a person. But afterward, Oa and the others grieved for Micho just as if he were a real person. She supposed that was because they were only anchens and didn’t know any better. They buried Micho’s body beneath the kburi, near Raimu-ke.
Oa cried for days afterward. She remembered how her throat hurt from sobbing and her eyelids burned with her salt tears. It was no comfort to her that Micho was not a person. Even though he was an anchen, he was brave and sweet and kind. It hurt more to lose Micho than it hurt when the men used her body.
“Do you understand my question?” Isabel pressed gently.
Oa whispered, “Yes. Oa understands.”
“But you don’t like to talk about it?”
Oa tugged at the ends of her hair.
“Suppose we start with something easy,” Isabel said. “Can you tell me how old you are?”
Oa trembled. Doctor hadn’t understood. Would Isabel understand? Oa wished she would not. But Isabel was a person, and Oa was an anchen. It was the way things were, the way the ancestors had made them both.
She shrugged out of the pink sweater and held up her arms.
*
ADETTI’S INITIAL EXAM notes mentioned tattoos on both subjects’ arms, the living child and the dead, but his chill description had not prepared Isabel. Oa’s slender arms, trembling as if with cold, were littered with tattoos, row upon ragged row. Columns of black symbols marched up her forearms, over her wiry biceps, her thin shoulders. They stretched beneath her cascade of curly hair, and down the other side, right to the wrist. There looked rather like the markings on playing cards, like the suit of diamonds. Some were evenly drawn, but some, Isabel saw, were crude, as if the materials were inferior, or the hand that drew them unskilled. And so many! Dozens, at least.
“Oa!” Isabel breathed. “What do they mean?”
Tears flooded the child’s eyes. She dropped her arms, and hung her head in a posture of humiliation. Of submission.
“Oa, what’s wrong? How have I upset you?”
But Oa couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer.
*
IT WAS AFTER she had reached the end of the reports that Isabel disabled the medicator.
The information changed very little from one scan to another, even less than one might expect from any single patient. She double-checked on her computer to be certain the medicators were estimating normal ranges correctly. She dug through her resource files for any hint of illness, of allergic reaction, of adrenal or other insufficiency, of low organic functions. Only two details of Oa’s medicator reports seemed curious. There was a bit of wear on her teeth, which Isabel supposed could be put down to the foods the Sikassa consumed on Virimund. The other was stranger, the charts of her hormone levels. Body chemistry was beyond Isabel’s scope, but it seemed to her that some fluctuation would be natural. If the medicator reports were correct, Oa’s hormone levels never varied, not from the very first scan to the most recent. Isabel had no idea what that might mean. There were other things, too, that she simply didn’t have the knowledge to puzzle out. Finally, frustrated. she went to the wavephone on the wall. She would have to call Simon. He could tell her what it all meant.
She discovered the wavephone’s rhodium antenna had been snapped in two. Sabotaged. She was cut off.
She stared at it for a long moment, shocked. Then she turned on her heel and marched straight into the surgery. She ripped the connections out of the medicator, broke the scan mechanism, pulled the connecting cord between the syrinxes and the screen. When she was done, she glared up into the ceiling camera.
And now, she couldn’t persuade Oa to explain the tattoos, and she couldn’t bear to see her hanging her head, tears slipping down her cheeks.
The girl’s passivity was part of the puzzle. The child had lived alone on an island with only a flock of other children for company. Would she not demonstrate more independence? That she had initiative was clear, since she had taught herself to read. That she had a good mind was obvious. But she wouldn’t answer the simplest personal question, and Isabel couldn’t think how to gain her trust.
Oa at least accepted the Italian sweater, so much softer and warmer than the one she had been wearing. She allowed Isabel to help her with her other clothes, too. There was a box of things, dresses, pants, a jumpsuit, a pair of soft pajamas. It seemed she had been sleeping in her clothes. Isabel persuaded her to exchange her too-short dress for a pair of fleecy trousers and shirt. She encouraged her to put aside the ill-fitting shoes for a pair of thick socks. When she gave her the sweater, she said, “This sweater was made in Italy, where my home is, Oa. It makes me think of my home, and my friends.”
She watched Oa pull the sweater over her arms, hiding the ragged rows of tattoos. The girl lifted the hem of the sweater to her nose and inhaled.
Isabel watched her, smiling. “What does the sweater smell like?”
Oa tipped her head to one side, considering for a moment. Finally she said, “Sweater is smelling like Isabel.”
Isabel laughed. “I suppose it must. I’ve worn it many times.”
Oa wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the black wool close to her body. With her eyes on the floor, she said, “Oa likes it. Is it—” Her eyes came up cautiously. “A gift?”
“Yes,” Isabel said, feeling a quiet triumph at this small sign of progress. “It certainly is. It’s a gift. A gift to Oa from Isabel.”
The white grin flashed. Oa’s fearful mood seemed to have fled. She made a little dancing circle of the room, fluid and graceful on her slender legs. When she twirled back to her bed, Isabel was glad to see she didn’t put her back to the corner, but sat on the edge, her legs dangling over the side, her long-toed feet just touching the floor. It was a small thing, but Isabel took it as an encouraging sign. She pulled her chair close, and leaned back in it, crossing her legs at the ankle.
“I have an idea, Oa. Suppose I tell you some things about myself.”
The girl’s eyes brightened. “Stories?”
Isabel chuckled. “I guess you could call them stories. True ones, though, not like in your books.” She paused, raising her eyebrows. “Is it all right for me to tell you how old I am?”
The child nodded. Isabel linked her hands together. Apparently there was nothing wrong with mentioning age if it was her own. “Well. I’m thirty-six years old. My mother and father lived in a lot of different places when I was young, so I grew up all over the world—France, and North America, and Egypt, and Italy. My father was a diplomat. He died a few years ago, and now my mother lives in a city called Rome. I have one brother and one sister.”
None of this seemed to bother the girl. “I’m a priest. Oa, do you know what that is?” Oa pointed at Isabel’s cross. “Yes, that’s the symbol of my priesthood. I took the vows of the Priestly Order of Mary Magdalene fourteen years ago.” She gave a short laugh. “My parents weren’t too happy about that. They didn’t think women should be priests.”
Still Oa watched her, head tilted to one side, tugging on strands of her hair. She didn’t appear to be disturbed by any of these confidences. Isabel ventured further, “I’m also a medical anthropologist. That means I ask a lot of questions. I study how people live.”
Oa dropped her hands. She went very still.
Isabel stopped talking. She barely breathed. Something had changed. She watched the child struggling with something, and wished with all her heart she knew what it was.
At last the girl said, her voice very faint, “Isabel is studying Oa?”
Isabel took her cross in her fingers before she answered. She looked directly into the girl’s liquid dark eyes. “Only,” she answered firmly, “only if it’s all right with Oa. Only if Oa gives her permission.”
*
ISABEL WOKE LATE that night when her door slid open, its rubber seal whispering on the tiles. She turned her head on her pillow. Oa stood in the doorway, framed by the dim glow of the night lighting, her eyes flashing white. She crept to Isabel’s bedside and crouched there, her arms around her knees.
For some moments Isabel thought she would say nothing, but then, in her high, slender voice, the child said, “Oa gives per-mission. Permission to Isabel.”
Isabel let her breath out in a long sigh. She drew her hand out from beneath the coverlet, and extended her open fingers toward Oa. The girl looked at her hand, pale in the darkness, and then, hesitantly, put her own dark fingers into it.
As gently as she could, Isabel closed her hand around the child’s.
An immense darkness swept over her at the touch, a bottomless grief that was almost unbearable. Isabel closed her eyes, letting it flow through her.
She found, in a moment, that it was not an absolute darkness that immersed her. A flicker of hope brightened the shadows of Oa’s mind. There was a sense of love, and faith, and tenderness. And underlying all, in the midnight sea that was Oa’s soul, was the bedrock of pure courage, the stuff of which great spirits are made.
Isabel murmured, “Thank you, Oa.” And she sent a private, silent thanks to her patroness for this small step forward.