eleven
■ ■ ■
The Maker has created men and women to be different. They are of various material, like the stars and the planets, separate from one another.
—Thirtieth Homily, The Book of the Second Prophet
Zahra stood by the desk in the dispensary, looking into the bloodshot eyes of Leman Bezay and trying to contain her temper. Beneath her medicant’s coat, her left foot tapped and tapped. Her right hand was a fist in her pocket.
“Tell Kir Bezay Alekos will be fine,” she said to Asa. “The cuts were superficial. But he needs to talk to someone, someone he can trust. Punishment will not help him.” She felt Ishi’s and Lili’s veiled presence behind the desk, watching, listening.
“I know exactly what he needs,” Leman quavered. The veins in his neck were swollen, and a hard flush burned in his lined cheeks. “He needs to grow up. Be a man.” Asa repeated the words.
“He’s thirteen,” Zahra said. Her nails bit into her palm. She opened her hand and took it out of her pocket.
Camilla and her son were still in the surgery. Alekos’s wrists had required nothing more than cleaning and bandages. It had been a feeble attempt, in truth, but as all such things went, it was a cry for help. Camilla was distraught, Leman enraged.
Zahra linked her hands together before her in a gesture considerably more demure than her feeling. She pitched her voice low. Presuming on family friendship, she spoke directly to Leman. “Leman, may I make a suggestion?” Leman was silent, eyeing her. “Let Qadir take the boy on a tour with him, some time when he’s going to the mines. Let Alekos meet one of the squad leaders, see the workings, get a feel for what its like. That may ease his fears somewhat, particularly when he sees that other young men are proud of their work.”
Leman’s chin trembled. “And have people know that Leman Bezays son is afraid? No! Let Alekos do what I did! Why should it be different for him?”
“Perhaps he is different from you,” Zahra said. Her linked fingers were white with pressure. “I understand he wants to go offworld, to study. Have you considered the possibility?”
“You overstep your authority, Medicant!” Leman shouted. Ishi jumped. Behind Zahra, in the surgery, came a burst of sobbing. Zahra couldn’t tell if it was Camilla or Alekos crying. She felt a flush of her own creep up her neck beneath her drape.
“Kir Bezay,” she said icily. “My duty is to care for every patient on my list. I wouldn’t think of interfering with a fathers authority. My only concern is Alekos’s health.”
Before her Leman Bezay wavered on his legs. His color faded and rose again. She watched him, thinking, go ahead, you old fraud. Have a coronary right here, in your medicant’s office! From whom do you think your son inherited his frail nature?
But Leman’s sixty-five-year-old heart did not oblige. He turned away, grinding his heel on the tiles, and gestured to his man to open the door of the dispensary. Over his shoulder he snapped, “Tell my wife and son I’m waiting in the car.”
Zahra had no choice but to do as he said. Camilla and Alekos, both red-eyed and wan, moved slowly out of the surgery, through the dispensary, and out to the street. Camilla hugged Zahra briefly. “Thank you for trying,” she whispered.
Zahra squeezed her hand and turned back into the office. Asa, Ishi, and Lili stood watching, Asa with sympathy on his face, Lili silent behind her veil, and Ishi with her head bowed. Zahra slammed the outer door. “I could kill that man,” she muttered.
Lili gasped, “Medicant! You don’t mean it!”
“Of course she doesn’t mean it,” Asa said quickly. “It’s an expression.” He limped down the little hall to tidy the surgery.
Lili clicked her tongue and shook her head. “You shouldn’t say such things, Medicant,” she chided Zahra. “They’re an offense to the Maker. And in front of the child!”
“Sorry,” Zahra said without sincerity.“I’m not a child,” Ishi protested.
They finished their work in silence, and left the clinic.
The next day they were driven in a hired car to the Hilel household. Doma Day was always pleasant there. Samir Hilel granted Laila’s every wish, however slight, and extended his indulgence to her circle of friends. No escort followed them about, and the women and girls had free run of the house while the men were away at devotions. Samir and Laila were very content together, with three vigorous sons as testimony to their happiness. Zahra had noticed long before that Samir’s bedroom was very close to Laila’s. Laila sometimes smiled as she passed it, a secret little smile of pleasure.
Today, though, Laila stood by the door of her bedroom, her pretty mouth pinched with worry, her arms wrapped tightly around her petite body. Zahra stood by the window, searching the Akros skyline as if answers waited somewhere in the city. Kalen paced, unable to be still. The bedroom was soft and feminine, like Laila herself, with lacy curtains, fat colorful cushions everywhere, and a little fountain gurgling softly in a corner like a happy baby.
Kalen’s shrill voice drowned out the sound of the flowing water. “Zahra, if you won’t help me, I’m going to do something myself! I swear I will!” Through the closed door they heard laughter from the dayroom, but it seemed very far away.
Zahra said, staring now at the brown hills, “How, Kalen? How can I possibly help you?”
Kalen spoke to Zahras back. “You can give me something,” she hissed. “Give me something for Gadil.”
Laila gasped. “Kalen!” she wailed. “You can’t mean it!”
Kalen turned to face Laila, head high, breath coming fast. All three women had undone both rill and verge, and Kalen had tossed the folds of her drape over her shoulders, out of her way. Zahra turned from the window. Absurdly, she noticed how gaunt her friend looked. She really must advise her to eat better.
“I do,” Kalen said to Laila. “I’m not letting Rabi end up like Binya Maris’s wives. It’s bad enough ending up like me.”
“What do you mean?” Laila cried, stepping forward to her tall friend, holding out her small hands in a plea for some sort of concurrence, some kind of understanding. “Has your life with Gadil been so bad? He isn’t cruel to you, he doesn’t beat you!”
Kalen seized Laila’s hands and pushed them down, away from her. “You don’t know what its like!” she snarled. “Samir is nothing like Gadil. Can you imagine? I was sixteen, and Gadil was forty-seven. He was wrinkled, and foul, and he forced himself into me as if I were one of those street women down in the Medah! All he wanted was to get it over, get it done with.”
Laila sucked in her breath noisily. She went white.
Kalen’s voice rose. “You can be shocked, Laila, you should be! I don’t think Gadil even likes women!”
“Kalen!” Zahra said. “Laila doesn’t need to hear this.”
Kalen looked like a cornered fithi, her head wavering on her neck, her eyes glassy with panic. “No?” she asked. White patches circled her eyes, and a flush burned her freckled cheeks. Zahra came to grip her arms with both hands. “Kalen, calm yourself. Let me give you something, a sedative . . .” Kalen shook free. Laila’s cheeks were wet now with tears, but Kalen was oblivious, veering out of control. “I bled,” she cried, her voice thin and high. “I bled so badly Medicant Issim had to stitch me up. Zahra was there, and she knows it’s true! I won’t have Rabi going through that! 1 won’t!”
Laila sobbed. “Oh, Prophet, that’s so awful. Kalen, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I had no idea ...” She took two quick steps and put her arms around her friend before Kalen could escape. Zahra stretched her arms around both of them. They stood for a moment locked in a tight embrace, Laila weeping softly, Kalen trembling. Zahra closed her eyes in despair.
When the moment passed, the three women went to Laila’s bed and sat on it. Laila, still sniffling, cradled one of the many small pillows in her lap. Zahra folded her long legs beneath her. Kalen looked at them both with eyes of pale blue ice.
“I’m sorry I burst out like that, Laila,” she said. “You’re right about Gadil. He’s never beat me, nor ever hit Rabi. But he’s never kissed Rabi either. And I mean it, Zahra,” she repeated. “If you don’t help me, I’m going to find a way. I’ve never loved anyone in the world except Rabi. No one’s ever loved me the way she does. She’s all I live for. I have to choose between Rabi and Gadil, and he made it this way!”
Zahra shook her head helplessly. “Kalen, I’m a medicant. I’ve spent my life healing people. I can’t deliberately hurt anyone. It’s my calling to protect the people under my care.”
“Isn’t Rabi under your care?” Kalen asked.
Zahra felt the flare of tension in her shoulders and her head began to ache violently. She rubbed her temples with shaking fingers. “Yes, of course she is,” she said. She understood Kalen’s misery, her fear. But what could she do? Zahra had not forgotten the morning Kalen had come to Nura’s clinic, the very morning after her cession to Gadil. Zahra had not even put away the dress and veil she had worn for the ceremony. Kalen was carried into the surgery by her anah and Gadil’s houseboy. Gadil had left his wounded young bride in the hands of her anah and gone off to his office.
Zahra remembered the rigid lines of Nura’s face as she sedated Kalen and went to work on her. Nura never spoke about it, not that day, not ever.
Afterward, Kalen begged Nura not to send her back to Gadil. Nura even sent her own escort to speak to Kalen’s father, but the man had brought back the expected answer. Kalen was now a woman, her father said. She was Gadil’s responsibility, in his charge. Zahra watched her friend comprehend, with bitter finality, that her life was no longer her own.
Kalens bright blue eyes, merry, mischievous—like Rabi’s—had begun to pale before her seventeenth birthday. Her bubbling laugh vanished as if it had never been. Zahra had been there, indeed. She had seen the torn flesh, the bruises on Kalen’s thin white thighs. And in the months that followed, she had seen her friend’s personality twist and harden like one of the ancient trees growing into tortuous shapes in the olive groves. Zahra thought of slender Rabi, and Ishi, so bright and innocent. They were as tender as saplings just beginning to grow.
The old impotence weighed on Zahra. She felt as if she carried them all in her two hands: Ishi, Rabi, Maya B’Neeli, the unveiled Eva, hauling them all about with her as she tried to go on with her work. She whispered, “I can’t, Kalen.” But a thought was born in her mind.
She could, actually. She could make something if she chose. She could create a weapon out of her skill, her knowledge. She had done it before.
Before her cession to Qadir, she had viewed one of the many tutorials in Nura’s disc library, and had made herself an implant like the ones they used on Earth. After her exam, she had put it in herself, late one night in Nura’s surgery, burying it in the skin of her flank where no one could see. Every few years she replaced it, according to the instructions of the tutorial. It was a weapon. She had planned and ensured her barrenness.
She could see to it that Gadil had no more power over her friend, over Rabi. It would not be a small weapon, like an implant. But it wouldn’t be hard. It was possible.
Kalen tossed her head. She got off the bed and stood looking down at the others. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m going to do it myself.”
“But they’ll send you to the cells!” Laila moaned, clutching the cushion to her breast.
“Yes,” Kalen answered. “They’ll send me to the cells. But they won’t cede Rabi to Binya Maris. No one but Gadil would give that animal another young girl—anyway, Maris won’t want the daughter of a convict. It would ruin his career.” She chuckled, a chilling rattle that raised the hairs on Zahra’s arms.
Laila protested. “You have to tell Gadil! Beg him ...”
Kalen folded her arms and looked down at her ingenuous friend. “You still don’t understand, Laila. Gadil won’t talk to me. He doesn’t talk to his daughter. The day he knew I was going to have a baby was the last time he ever touched me.” She laughed again. “1 was relieved, can you imagine? He didn’t even come to see her when she was born. Only a girl child, after all! And I was glad—I thought all the hard times were over!”
Laila cried, “But if something happens to you—Rabi would have no mother, no father ...”
Kalen replied, “No father, no mother. But she’ll have her life.”
■ ■ ■
Zahra was exhausted by the time she, Asa, Lili, and Ishi climbed out of the hired powercar in their own driveway. The others chattered during the ride from Laila’s house, but Zahra was silent, and the conversation around her eventually died away. Lili watched her, and Ishi grew anxious. Asa met her eyes once in the car, and then looked away, but not before she caught the flash of understanding. He knew, she thought. Even though he had not read the discs he had brought from Medicant B’Hallet, he knew about Binya Maris. About T. Maris and A. Maris, deceased. And Asa, though he was a man, was almost as powerless as she.
Home at last, Zahra dragged herself up to her room, as if even climbing stairs required more energy than she possessed. Lili and Ishi hovered close, worrying over her.
“Zahra, you look ill,” Lili frowned. “Here, give me your veil. Ishi, run down to Cook and tell her Zahra needs broth for supper, needs to have a tray in bed.”
Zahra didn’t resist. She stepped out of her dress and left it in a puddle of silk on the floor. Lili pulled a nightgown over her head. Ishi came back from the kitchen by the time she was crawling between the sheets, every limb heavy, her body chilled and stiff. Ishi bent over her, feeling her forehead and her wrists in a very passable imitation of a certified medicant.
“Zahra, are you all right?” Ishi asked. Her smooth brow furrowed, and her hair, free of its cap, swung across the pillow.
Zahra put up her hand to touch the child’s cheek. Ishi was eleven now, almost a year younger than Rabi. How smooth her skin was, how unbelievably soft. Zahra let her hand trail down the brown silk fall of her hair before it dropped against the quilt. “I’m fine, Ishi,” she said. “Only tired.”
“You look more than tired,” Ishi murmured, tucking the blanket around Zahra as if she were the child.
Lili pulled Ishi away. “Come on, little sister, let her sleep a bit. We’ll bring her supper up when it’s ready.”
“No, Lili, I’m going to sit with her!” Ishi said.
Zahra felt almost too weary to speak. “Ishi,” she whispered, “please go and keep Qadir company at supper. I’m all right. Really. I just need to rest.” Ishi’s eyes glinted stubbornly but she gave in to the pressure of Lili’s hand on her arm. “I’ll be back, though,” she warned Zahra, her childish voice stern. “You sleep, and then I’ll be back with your broth.”
Zahra closed her eyes before they had even left the room, but sleep felt very far away. She tried to think about Rabi, about what she could do for her, but the ghastly picture of Kalen, bleeding on the white sheets of Nura’s surgical bed, would not leave her mind. The memory was twenty years old, but it was as fresh and painful as if it had happened this very morning. She was tired beyond bearing.
Some time later Ishi came upstairs with her broth, tapping gently on the door before opening it. Zahra lifted her head at the knock to see that Qadir had followed Ishi up. “Zahra, our young medicant here is quite worried about you,” he said from the doorway. He wouldn’t come in if there was a chance she was ill.
Ishi puffed pillows with her hands and Zahra sat up with her back against them. Ishi arranged the tray on her lap, and pulled the chair closer to the bed so she could watch Zahra eat.
Qadir lingered in the doorway. “Do you need a medicant?” he finally asked.
Zahra shook her head. “No, I’m not ill. You can come in.”
She saw his hesitation do battle with his concern. He moved as if to step into the room, one hand on the doorframe, but then he smiled ruefully and stepped back. “No, no, I think I’ll go get some work done. Ishi can come for me if you need anything.”
Zahra paused, a spoonful of broth in her hand, and looked into her husband’s face. His eyes were shadowed, his brow creased with a mixture of shame and affection—and anxiety. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want torecognize it. He was afraid—Qadir, who never had doubts about anything. He was afraid for her. She mattered to him.
“I’m all right, Qadir,” she told him softly. “Only very tired.”
He nodded. “Good, good. Well, I’ll leave you in Ishi’s hands. Rest well. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you for coming up,” she said, only just able to keep the wryness from her tone.
On another night, he would have come to kiss her forehead before going to his own room, but not tonight. The taboo was too strong. “Good night,” he said, and was gone.
■ ■ ■
It was that same night, perhaps even at the same time, that Maya B’Neeli suffered her last injuries. The clinic alarm sounded an hour after midnight, and Asa answered it to find B’Neeli on the step with his wife’s limp body in his arms.
Zahra hurried to the surgery. She patched the tube of the master syrinx to Maya’s arm and snapped swift orders into the medicator. She engaged the respirator and she tried to stabilize the woman’s fluttering heartbeat. She labored over Maya B’Neeli for the remainder of the night hours while Asa prayed on his side of the dividing screen.
When morning came, and the star rose above the white city, Zahra stripped off her gloves, scrubbed her hands, and buttoned her veil. She left Maya lying on the exam bed and walked into the dispensary where B’Neeli had waited the night through on the long couch. Asa came after her, hobbling quickly to keep up.
Zahra took a deep ragged breath and stared through her veil at B’Neeli’s unshaven face and reddened eyes. “Asa,” she said.
“Yes, Medicant.”
“Tell this man that he has finally done it. He has killed his wife.”