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8

DOCTOR’S EYES BLAZED with fury over the broken spider machine.

Oa trembled, but Isabel faced Doctor through the not-mirror without fear. Her slight shoulders were squared. She even smiled, not her lovely, lamplight smile, but a cool curving of the lips.

Oa had started to tell Isabel things, things she remembered. Then Isabel told Oa things, about her home, about her prayers, about her work. It was a trading of memories, like the trading of mats and pots and blankets among the three islands, or of cutting stones and baskets among the anchens.

It started when Oa knelt beside Isabel’s bed in the night. The faint light shone softly on Isabel’s bare scalp, and her clear gray eyes were bright in the darkness, reflective, like the shimmery flanks of fish in Mother Ocean. Her hand was warm, and strong, though it was so slender. Oa clung to it, so grateful for the touch of skin that tears burned in her eyes, and she tried not to worry that it was a person’s skin, and not an anchen’s.

She started with “parents.”

“Parents live on people’s island,” she whispered. She could feel Isabel listening. “Papi is making shahto.” It was a relief to speak of Papi again. The anchens had always spoken of their papis and mamahs, sitting at night around their fire. “Papi is taking nuchi vines to Mamah. Mamah soaks vines in Mother Ocean and stretches them on sand—so.” Oa stretched out her free arm to demonstrate. “Then Papi—” Again she demonstrated, weaving her hand back and forth to show the braiding, though she didn’t have a word in English to express it. “Is making vines together. Is making big knots. Knots is against forest spiders.” She sighed. “Anchens are not making shahto.”

Isabel lay quietly for long moments. Oa let her eyes drift up to her face, to see if perhaps she had fallen asleep, as the anchens so often did while they were remembering. But Isabel’s eyes were open, glistening with reflected light. Finally, she said, “Why, Oa? Why do the anchens not make shahto?” She didn’t sound angry, or shocked, or anything other than curious.

Oa sighed. “Hands too small,” she said. “Vines too hard. And—” She swallowed, the memory making her shiver. “Forest spiders are coming,” she finished in a whisper.

“Oh,” Isabel said, as if she understood.

But could she? These people lived in ships, or in rooms like this, with floors that were slick and objects that were made by machines. And except for the spider machine, Oa had seen nothing like a forest spider, or any creatures at all, since she left the world of Mother Ocean.

“Isabel is making shahto?” she breathed, daring to ask a question.

Isabel seemed to think for a time before she answered. “I don’t know your word,” she said finally. “I live in a house, with other women priests, and with girls who want to be priests.”

“Oh,” Oa said, in imitation.

Isabel squeezed her fingers gently. “I’m going to tell you all about my house, Oa. But suppose we get you back into your bed first, and I will sit beside you while you fall asleep.”

Oa’s breast filled with gratitude. It was almost as if Isabel were an anchen. She must not think that, must not allow herself to hope. One day Isabel would understand, and then everything could change. But it would be so easy . . . and it had been so long . . .

*

WHEN OA SLEPT at last, Isabel still sat beside the bed, her legs crossed at the ankles, her back against the wall, pondering. She watched the child’s slender chest rise and fall, long lashes fluttering gently as she dreamed. What did Oa of Virimund dream, Isabel wondered. Of the shahto made by her father? Of the forest spiders that, in her mind, had given their name to the medicator? Or would she dream of something she longed for, something she yearned to have or to do? Isabel’s heart ached with pity.

She had worked with many children in Australia, and among the refugees from the east who crowded into Italy. Some were starving, or orphaned, or abused. They could be withdrawn, frightened, clinging, rebellious. But Oa mystified her, with her flashes of intelligence, of laughter, her retreats into silence, her refusal to speak of herself in the first person. And Isabel sensed that Oa was keeping some deep secret, something of desperate importance, at least to her. Isabel had framed her questions carefully, trying not to provoke the fearful reaction she had seen before. What, she wondered, did the child mean by the word “anchen” ? She struggled with it as she went to her own bed, yawning. When her eyes closed, she still had no answer.

She woke late the next morning, and hurried to set out the crucifix, arrange her foam pad, light her candle. Just as she was kneeling, ready to begin her devotions, she heard Oa’s soft step at her door. She glanced over her shoulder.

“Oa? Would you like to come in?”

The child’s hair was tangled from sleep, and she had pulled Isabel’s black sweater on over her pajamas. She stepped inside the small room, and stood looking at the little crucifix.

“You can touch that, if you like,” Isabel said. She held it out. Oa took it in her hand, frowning over the carved figure on the cross, tracing the thorny crown with one dark finger.

When she handed it back to Isabel, she said, “Raimu?”

“Raimu?” Isabel repeated. “I don’t know that word, Oa.”

Oa took another step, and then knelt beside Isabel, with a nod to the crucifix and the burning candle. “Raimu,” she repeated. She shrugged, and spread her hands.

Isabel smiled at her. “Perhaps later you can make me understand, Oa. Right now I’m going to say my prayers. Thank you for joining me.”

She turned to the cross and the candle, and began, speaking slowly and clearly, hoping the child could understand some of the words.


SAINT MARY OF MAGDALA,

PATRONESS OF THOSE WHO ASK . . .


Isabel paused at the end of her devotions, eyes closed, searching in the silence for the source of her inspiration. It was not there, or she couldn’t find it. She sighed, and snuffed out the candle. “We had better get you dressed, Oa,” she said. “I think they’re coming today to fix the medicator.” She rose to replace the crucifix and the kneeler. As she turned to the door, she glanced up at the little camera in the corner, its light blinking at her like an unfocused eye. She murmured, “Do you suppose they enjoy my prayers?”

Oa’s eyes moved from Isabel to the camera and back. Isabel wasn’t sure she understood. But as they left the room, she saw that Oa glanced once more up at the camera. Isabel was sure she saw a quick, defiant blaze in Oa’s dark eyes. She hoped they—whoever was watching—had seen it, too.

*

WHEN JIN-LI CHUNG spoke a cheerful greeting over the comm system, Isabel and Oa hurried out into the central room. The longshoreman was at the window, a wrapped package in one hand. A big redheaded woman was there as well, wearing a huge grin as she looked through the glass.

Oa exclaimed, “Ship lady!”

Isabel turned to see Oa’s flashing white smile, a hand lifted in greeting to the redheaded woman. Isabel nodded to their visitors. laughing. “Good morning, Jin-Li,” she said. “I gather Oa knows your companion.”

The redheaded woman leaned closer to the glass. “Hey, kiddo,” she said in a deep voice. “It’s good to see you.” She turned her eyes to Isabel. “Mother Burke. I’m Matty Phipps. I was crew on the transport from Virimund.”

“So I understand,” Isabel said. “You were kind to Oa.”

“Mother Burke—” Jin-Li began, and glanced to the left, where Appleton stood, arms crossed, eyes watching the corridor.

“I think you should call me Isabel, Jin-Li.”

Jin-Li’s long eyes gleamed briefly. “Thank you. Isabel. Matty tells me the doctor kept Oa awake the whole journey.”

Isabel felt the smile fade from her lips, and her skin went cold. “He kept her awake? You mean, all those months, alone in quarantine . . .”

“Right,” Phipps said. Isabel saw the anger in the big woman’s eyes, in the set of her long jaw. “Whole ship in twilight sleep except crew, Adetti, and the little girl.”

A chill fury tightened Isabel’s cheeks and prickled across her scalp. She gripped her cross. “Fourteen months,” she breathed. She turned and gazed at Oa.

The child had taken her customary place, scrunched on her bed, the teddy bear in her arms. Her eyes searched Isabel’s for reassurance. Isabel tried to smile at her, but her lips were stiff with anger. Fourteen months, alone, with only Adetti for company, and occasional visits from the ship lady. And still the child had not broken.

She turned back to the window, and her voice dropped. “Jin-Li. Do you have it?”

Jin-Li Chung held up the wrapped package. “I can send it in with your breakfast.”

“Adetti?”

“Hasn’t arrived at the Multiplex yet. But soon.”

“Better not wait for breakfast then. Please ask Jay if he would bring the package in now, Jin-Li. I don’t want this child to spend another day as a prisoner.”

*

“ISABEL?” SIMON COULD hardly believe his ears. When his secretary had announced the call, he had been certain she was mistaken. “Isabel, aren’t you in Seattle?”

“I am,” she said. He heard the deep note in her voice. She was angry.

“Tell me,” he said. He saw her in memory, the smooth scalp, the clear gray eyes, the set of her jaw when she lost her temper. He wished she had used a video phone.

“I have to be quick,” she said. “They’ll cut off the call if they know I’m making it.”

“You mean—ExtraSolar? They’re not letting you—”

“Simon. I can explain all that later. For now, listen, all right? You have to hear this.”

She spoke swiftly, and Simon listened. He soon understood why she was angry, and why she had called. It wasn’t for him, not a change of heart, but for the child. Still, foolishly, his heart lifted.

Within half an hour he had Hilda Kronin in his office again. Within an hour, he had invoked the authority of World Health and Welfare to demand an accounting from Paolo Adetti, Gretchen Boreson, and ExtraSolar Corporation over the treatment of an indigenous child from Virimund. Within two hours, Simon had a sample of medicator readouts from Adetti’s examinations of the girl. By afternoon he had sent a terse report of events as he understood them to Marian Alexander at the Magdalene Mother House in Tuscany, and his secretary had booked his overnight flight on the sonic cruiser from Geneva to Seattle. He left his office early, needing to explain the situation to Anna, and dreading it.

She asked, as he knew she would, “Why you, Simon? Why does it have to be you?” Her voice was high and light, and when she was upset, it tended to shrill. She pressed her fingers to her mouth as if she knew it.

Middle age was not dealing kindly with Anna. The gray in her once lustrous brown hair had faded it to a muddy color Simon had no name for. Her skin, once lustrous and smooth, had grown sallow. She worked too hard, of course. And Simon, though he was the same age as his wife, forty-two, had the sort of wiry body that changed only slowly with the passing of years. Sometimes he felt her eyes on him when he was dressing, a look of vague resentment that he stayed lean while her figure thickened. He touched her hand, filled with a pity that did nothing to restore the affection between them. He was deeply sorry to have hurt her, and filled with added compunction over the joy he felt, despite everything, at being called to Isabel’s side.

“Anna,” he said. “I’m the advisory physician. It’s my job to supervise disadvantaged populations. This girl falls into that category.”

“You have people who could go in your place.”

He hesitated. It was true, he could send someone else. But the medicator reports hinted at something very strange about the child, something that fired him with curiosity. “You know, Anna,” he said slowly. “I want to go. This is why I do this work, why I’ve always done it, because I think I have something important to offer.”

“I don’t know what else I can do, Simon.” Anna pushed aside the papers before her, and rested her head on her hands. She looked exhausted. He had come home to find her immersed in a stack of rewritable flexcopies, struggling with the school budget. Even in her unhappiness, she would return to the problem, would wrestle with the numbers far into the night. It was her nature to persevere, to grapple with a problem far past the point where a less stubborn person would have surrendered. It was both her strength and her weakness. When she woke tomorrow, her eyes would be shadowed with fatigue. He knew he was not helping, and he tried to speak gently.

“What do you mean? There’s nothing for you to do.”

She lifted her head and fixed him with a gaze full of misery. “You know what I mean, Simon. I can’t fight this. I can’t even understand it.”

He gazed down at her, wishing he could speak some words of comfort. He wished she didn’t look so—defeated, he decided, was the word. As if she had lost a battle.

“You don’t need to fight anything,” he said.

She gave a bitter laugh.

“I’m sorry about all of this, Anna. But whatever this ESC physician is up to—Adetti, his name is—it’s going to take someone with authority to take him in hand. To force ESC to an accounting.”

“It sounds as if you’ve already decided the case, Simon. Or she has.” She spoke the pronoun as if it burned her mouth.

He set his jaw. There was no time for an argument. “I’m trying to reserve judgment.” He bent to pick up his valise. “But they’ve been keeping Isabel—”

Anna winced at the name, and dropped her head again. He made himself put a hand on her shoulder.

Anna knew, of course. She had guessed, and he had admitted everything when she asked. She had listened to the recitation, her face drawn with pain and anger. She had asked a few questions. She had said nothing of her fury and resentment, but they had been plain in her clouded eyes and her tight voice. When she offered him forgiveness, he had said something, stumbled over some hollow expression of regret and shame. He had been in pain himself.

None of this could help Anna now. “I’m sorry, Anna. ExtraSolar has kept Isabel cut off from outside communication for almost a week. I need to find out why.”

The beep of a car horn sounded from the street, and Simon reached for the door handle.

“You could have at least let me drive you to the airport,” Anna said, her eyes bleak.

“It’s not necessary,” he said. “My aide is already here.”

“You did that purposely,” she grated. “To shut me out.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I didn’t. It was arranged for me.”

“Simon, wait—we should talk.”

He shook his head, and leaned to kiss her cheek. It felt cold and dry against his lips. “There’s no time now, Anna. I have to catch this flight. I’ll call you from Seattle.”

She leaned against the doorjamb to watch him climb into the car. She didn’t say anything further. “Get some rest,” he called before he closed the door. She just shook her head, her lips compressed. When the car turned the corner, she was still there, outlined by yellow light from the foyer, an unremarkable, solitary figure.

*

JIN-LI HAD FINISHED a class, had a brief meal in the cafeteria, and was getting ready for bed when the room comm buzzed. “Chung here.”

Matty Phipps’s voice sounded tinny over the speaker. “Johnnie? Not in bed, are you? Something’s on down at the infirmary—can you come down? And hurry.”

The Seattle night was cold and damp. Shreds of gray cloud filtered the moonlight and drifting patches of fog shrouded the waters of Puget Sound. Jin-Li pulled on a Port Force jacket and followed Phipps at a trot through the complex of barracks. Phipps had said only, “Adetti’s at the quarantine room,” as they dashed through the Multiplex. It was after eleven, and the Rec Fac was dark.

Phipps was right. A van was drawn up before the infirmary entrance, and inside, lights were on. The shuttered blinds on the external windows were closed, but the lights made silhouettes of people walking back and forth inside.

“Moving them,” Jin-Li muttered.

“That’s what I thought,” Phipps said. They slowed their steps as they approached the building. There was no one in the van that they could see. They strolled past the entrance, hands stuffed in their jacket pockets. “I don’t know what we can do,” Phipps said. “But I didn’t want that girl to just disappear.”

“Right.” Jin-Li scanned the street. Nothing moved. The sounds of the city filtered through the Multiplex, an occasional siren, motor noises, faint and distant bursts of music and laughter. There was no sound from the infirmary, but they could see three people outside the quarantine bubble. As they walked by, another light went on beyond the bubble. They supposed the priest and the girl had been awakened. They reached a corner, and leaned against a wall in a pool of shadow, watching the silhouettes moving against the light inside the building.

“What can we do, Johnnie?” Phipps asked in a low voice.

Jin-Li straightened, and took a last look at the infirmary. “Matty, you stay here. Keep an eye out, and don’t let them see you. I’m going to get a cart.”

*

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE evening meal, Isabel had felt unaccountably, irresistibly sleepy. She thought perhaps it was the excitement of speaking to Simon, after all the months of silence. He had sounded just as she remembered, his voice even, matter-of-fact, giving away none of his feelings. She had spoken as fast as she could, afraid the call would be ended at any moment. She had outlined the situation, told him of the mystery surrounding Oa, promised him copies of the medicator reports. They said good-bye without saying anything personal, but as she broke the connection, her heart hammered in her ribs. She passed three sheafs of hardcopies through the quarantine bubble to Jay Appleton, to be given to Jin-Li Chung, and she waved her thanks to the longshoreman through the window.

The rest of the day passed unremarkably. Adetti didn’t come. Gretchen Boreson stopped by to speak to Isabel through the window, but she didn’t press her, as she usually did, to allow the doctor to conduct more medicator tests. Cole Markham had been at her elbow, and he avoided Isabel’s eyes. She and Oa had eaten dinner together, and when she saw that Oa, like herself, was yawning, she decided they might as well both be in bed.

She helped Oa into the flannel pajamas and smoothed the covers over her. It seemed that Oa was asleep before she reached her own room. She left the door half-open, and fell into her own bed without even brushing her teeth. Sleep was a heavy hand pressing her down, blurring her thoughts. Simon, she thought. Simon will take care of it. Tomorrow.

When she woke, her mouth was fuzzy and dry, and her head ached. She blinked against the brightness of the lights. It seemed to take a long time to wash her face, brush her teeth, and pull on her clothes. There was no sound from the outer room, and she supposed Oa, like herself, had slept long and hard.

Isabel rolled the stool away from the wall, and took her kneeler out from beneath the bed. She was just setting the flame to the candle for her morning devotions when the thought struck her. She glanced at her reader.

It was the Memorial of the Japanese Martyrs. And it was ten in the morning. She had slept more than twelve hours.

A rush of adrenaline cleared her mind. She thrust herself to her feet, and threw open the door to her room.

The covers on Oa’s bed were thrown back, the pillow askew. The teddy bear lay on its plush tummy on the floor, its stub of a tail pointing at the ceihng.

“Oa?” Isabel cried. She ran to the central surgery, but it was empty except for the broken medicator. She took two steps to the little bathroom, and pulled that door open. Empty. She whirled, seeking someplace, anyplace, the child could be hiding, even looking under the bed, going back into her own room as if Oa might have slipped past her. Oa was not there.

Isabel strode to the door and banged on it, calling out, “Guard! Guard! Who’s there? What’s happened?” No one answered.


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Framed