The Child Goddess Read online

  Isabel, with Oa beside her, stepped through the portal and into another world, a holographic projection so convincing that even the air felt different. An indoor scene shimmered into existence around her, a large bright room with a tiled floor, white walls, and a windowed skyroof. Just like an oculus dei, Isabel thought. Except that in this case, the eye of God looked down from an alien heaven.

  Jin-Li pointed to a free-form sculpture. “That’s a classic example of Irustani nonrepresentational art. Notice the flow of the stone. It’s meant to lift the eye, or the hand, upward to the Maker.”

  “The Maker?”

  “The Maker, or the One. From the Book of the Second Prophet. And that tree is a met-olive, a biotransform of a Cretan variety. Thrives on Irustan. The shrub with the floppy flowers they call a mock rose. Also a biotransform. Untransformed Earth plants only live a couple of seasons on Irustan. Interesting, too—Port Forcemen can’t digest the fish, at least not for the first couple of years, but the Irustani do. So adaptation has taken place.”

  A recorded lecture droned in one corner. “Would you like to hear that?” Jin-Li asked.

  “No,” Isabel said with a smile. “I prefer your version.”

  They moved, and found themselves on a hill with a view of the rhodium mines. Huge machines rolled over distant red-brown hills, and masked miners walked in the foreground. Jin-Li said, “The miners wear masks to protect them from the unstable isotope of the rhodium dust.”

  When they took another step, the scene shifted again. People in colorful clothes strolled past vending booths shaded by striped canopies. “This is the Medah,” Jin-Li said. “They sell fish, cloth, jewelry . . . wonderful things.”

  “And the women are veiled.”

  “Yes. They’re not allowed outside of their homes unveiled.” Jin-Li spoke of the religious life of Irustan, the economic structure, the social strata, the interaction with offworlders. By the time they left the exhibit, Isabel knew that Jin-Li Chung should probably have been an anthropologist. And at the very least, would make an excellent archivist.

  They moved on to the other exhibits, gazing in wonder at the soaring ice structures of Crescent, the mountain meadows of Nuova Italia. They goggled at a life-size model of an Udachan monolith, listening to the recorded lecture. Oa tugged at her braids and frowned.

  “Do you still think these are like the kburi?” Isabel asked.

  Oa shook her head. “No,” she said flatly. “Not kburi. Too high.” She stretched her arms as far as they would go, not more than a third the height of the monolith. “Anchens not high.”

  As they approached the last door, Jin-Li touched Isabel’s arm, murmuring, “That’s Virimund. It’s not much, but . . . do you think it might upset her?”

  Oa had already read the sign that flashed across the entrance. She tugged at Isabel’s hand, whispering, “Isabel! Isabel! Oa sees Virimund!”

  Isabel, with a little flutter of nervousness in her stomach, followed Oa through the portal.

  They stood on a beach looking out over waters of vivid emerald. The sand beneath their feet sparkled with subtle color, pink and violet and beige and ocher. Behind them was dense rainforest, heavy-trunked trees buttressed with vertical roots, a canopy hung with vines. A few birds flew here and there, splashes of scarlet and blue and gold, and the waves rippled, but otherwise it was as static a display as Udacha or Crescent. Oa looked up, and around, turning in a circle, tugging on her braids.

  “Is it like Virimund, Oa?” Jin-Li asked.

  The girl released her braids and stood still, staring into the image of sea and sky. “Not,” she said in a small voice.

  “Not even Mother Ocean?” Isabel said.

  “Yes, Isabel. Mother Ocean. But no shahto. No people. No . . .” Her voice trailed off, so that Isabel could only just hear, “No anchens.”

  Isabel put a hand on her shoulder. “Oa,” she said softly. The girl turned her face up, her eyes liquid and vulnerable. “When this exhibit was made, Port Force didn’t know anyone lived on your planet.”

  “Are not finding the people.”

  “Is that what’s worrying you?”

  Oa turned her back on the vista of water. “People are—” She made a sad, small gesture with her hand. “People are being losed.”

  “Lost.”

  “Lost. People are being lost, and Oa is—worrying—that anchens are being lost.”

  Isabel put her arm around Oa, and drew her a little closer. She pressed her cheek to her hair, feeling its soft texture against her skin, breathing its fragrance. “Oa, sweetheart. We will be there as soon as possible, and we will look for the anchens.”

  As they left the exhibit, Oa stumbled, as if her feet had grown suddenly heavier. Isabel supported her with her arm, her heart aching for the lonely child. What a terrible burden she bore on her thin shoulders.

  How awful to fear you might be alone in the universe, the last of your kind. Isabel prayed it wasn’t so.

  *

  ISABEL STARED AT Simon over the table, unbelieving. “They’re coming?” she demanded. The roast salmon, garnished with bright spring vegetables, lay untouched before her. “How could the regents agree to that?”

  “Try to enjoy your dinner, Isabel.” She didn’t move. He said, gesturing helplessly with his fork, “The regents have a vested interest in the power park. Adetti and Boreson convinced them they needed to be there to ensure the charter provisions are observed.”

  “But they were the ones to violate them in the first place!” Isabel exclaimed. She felt Oa’s anxious gaze on her, and she sat back, striving for calm. “Simon, I need to be alone with the children to get to know them, to understand them. We don’t want to frighten them. Oa will translate, of course, and you will support the two of us. It will be like it was in the Victoria project. It’s more than enough!”

  “Isabel, we’ll need somone to help with the equipment. And the provisions require an archivist as well.”

  “Two more, plus Boreson and Adetti?” She twisted her fingers in her lap. “It’s too many, Simon. Can’t we oppose this?”

  He pleated his napkin with his fingers. “I’m afraid not,” he said, not meeting her eyes.

  A chill crept over her scalp. He was keeping something from her. “Simon—what is it?”

  He cleared his throat. “Never mind. They obtained clearance, and I couldn’t stop them.”

  “Good lord. It’s outrageous!”

  “We’re stuck with it.”

  Isabel looked across the table, where Oa sat watching and listening, not touching her meal. Isabel forced a smile. “Come on, Oa, let’s eat this lovely fish before it gets cold.” Still the girl wouldn’t pick up her fork until Isabel did. The salmon was moist and rich, fresh from Puget Sound. To Isabel, it may as well have been grass for all that she could taste it, but she forced herself to eat so that Oa would, and her brain churned.

  After dinner, when Oa had settled herself with a book and the dinner things had been picked up, Isabel sat again at the table next to Simon. He had his wavephone transmitter on, but he wasn’t speaking at the moment. He was going over a list of supplies and checking them off.

  “Simon,” Isabel said quietly. “I have an idea.” He raised his eyebrows, waiting. “Let’s take our own Port Forceman with us to Virimund. Our own choice. I know someone who can serve double duty, and reduce the number of people by one at least. They owe us that much.”

  “It’s short notice.”

  “It’s one less person on the shuttle, one less on the transport. They should like that.”

  “Who do you have in mind, Isabel?”

  “Jin-Li Chung.” At Simon’s raised eyebrows, Isabel hastened to say, “It’s a perfect choice, Simon, truly. Jin-Li is strong, and honest, and observant. We all know each other. And it will be good to have an objective view.”

  “I suppose I could request it. But be certain, first, that Jin-Li wants to go. Ask.”

  Isabel folded her arms, sure of her ground. “I will ask,
of course, but I already know the answer. I’m positive.”

  “Because of your little talent, you mean?”

  Isabel laughed. “No, not that, Simon. Because we talked. And I’m absolutely certain.’

  He gave her a tired smile. “Yes. I’ll bet you are, Mother Burke.”

  *

  SIMON, ONCE AGAIN, handled the change of archivists with apparent ease. When the day came, the sun rising in a clear sky on the Octave of Easter, Jin-Li Chung was an official member of the mission to Virimund.

  Isabel’s jittery nerves, now that the day was at hand, had calmed. The night before, a call had come from a representative of St. Teresa of Calcutta, promising the prayers of the congregation for Mother Burke and her mission to Virimund. Marian Alexander had called as well, and offered the blessing for pilgrims via r-wave. Isabel had gratefully accepted all these good wishes, and now that the day of departure was at hand, she was eager to be off, to go in search of the answers they all needed, and to take Oa home.

  Every detail of the day seemed carved in light. The car that carried them to the port gleamed in the sunshine, and the fuselage of the shuttle itself shone white. The open passenger door seemed an invitation to adventure. Isabel helped Oa with her seat restraints, and put on her own. Jin-Li, passing on the way to a rear seat, stopped briefly beside them.

  “Isabel, this is an opportunity I never hoped for. I hardly know how to thank you.”

  Isabel smiled up at the brand-new archivist, dressed for the first time in the cream-colored syncel tunic of a ranking Port Force officer. “It’s one you deserve, Jin-Li,” she said warmly. “And I’m so glad you’ll be with us.”

  Cole Markham helped Gretchen Boreson to her seat, fussing a little, returning twice to bring her something she thought she needed for the flight. On his way out, he, too, stopped to speak to Isabel. “Good luck, Mother Burke,” he said, and put out his hand. “I hope it all goes well.”

  She shook his hand, and thanked him. His gaze rested briefly on Oa, and then shifted back up the aisle to Boreson. Isabel thought he gave a slight shake of his head, but she couldn’t be sure. Paolo Adetti pushed past him in the narrow aisle, and Markham, with a last nod to Isabel, went down the little stairway to the tarmac.

  Simon grinned at Isabel from across the aisle. “Okay over there, Mother Burke?”

  She chuckled. “I’m fine, Dr. Edwards.”

  He gestured at the sleek aircraft furnishings. “Not exactly like the cruiser to Australia.”

  “No.”

  He sobered, holding her eyes with his. “I’m glad to be going with you, Isabel,” he said softly under the rising whine of the engines. “Very glad.”

  She let her head fall back against the padded seat as the shuttle began its long taxi, keeping her face turned to him as the engine noise grew louder. “I couldn’t have managed without you,” she said.

  *

  THE SHUTTLE TRIP to the transport passed in a rush of sensation for Oa. She lay in the padded seat, the webbing securely around her, her head cradled in a cushion that felt like a cloud. With Isabel beside her, the roar of the engines no longer terrified her. As they shot upward, the sky grew pale and gray, and then dissolved into a starry blackness, as if someone had put a giant finger into a cloudy pool and stirred until it cleared. Soon the transport swelled to fill her window. Its flanks sparkled with reflected light, and its great drive housing made the shuttle seem tiny. Its bridge canopy glittered as if it were embedded with jewels.

  It wouldn’t matter, this time, that the journey was long. Isabel had explained the twilight sleep that had been denied Oa on the trip to Earth. Doctor and Gretchen would be on the transport, but Oa didn’t care. She and Isabel would sleep side by side in their suspension cradles, watched over by the crew, rousing once in a while for mild exercise, then sleeping again. Her first space voyage had been an endless round of wakings and sleepings, an eon of solitude and tedium punctuated only by visits from Doctor in his quarantine suit, and sessions under the spider machine. Those memories were dark ones, and she didn’t want to relive them.

  Her first glimpse of the cradles shook her, but Isabel’s steady hand was on her shoulder.

  “It’s not a medicator,” Isabel said. “Come and look, Oa. It’s more like a bed.”

  Doctor Simon was with them. He led Oa to the cradle that was to be hers, and showed her the pillowed headrest, the sheath of material that looked metallic but was quilted and soft. Slender silver wires ran through it, to keep the sleeper warm.

  Doctor Simon explained all of that, and then pointed to the syrinxes that hung at the head of the cradle. “These will give you the medicine that will help you sleep, Oa. And they will monitor all the parts of your body, so that when you wake, not long before our arrival, you will be as strong and healthy as you are now.”

  Oa touched one of the tubes. It was not frightening, not when Doctor Simon explained it. She curled her fingers around it, and it folded in her hand. A machine. It was only a machine.

  A technician came to help Oa into her cradle, to adjust the sheath around her, to patch the syrinxes to her wrists and elbows. Doctor Simon and Isabel stood by, watching, and Oa wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t like the spider machine at all. When the technician stepped back, and nodded to Isabel, Doctor Simon said, “I guess it’s time.”

  “I’ll see you soon, Simon,” Isabel said softly.

  Oa couldn’t see him, but she heard his step as he left their cubicle. Doctor Simon and Jin-Li Chung had their own cubicles. All of them would sleep, kept warm by the sheaths, protected by the cradles. Isabel came into Oa’s view again, bending to press a kiss on her forehead. Her lips were smooth and cool. She murmured, “Sleep well, Oa.”

  Oa repeated, “Sleep well, Isabel.”

  Isabel smiled down at her. “I will.” She turned away to her own cradle, and the technician went to help her.

  Around them the ship was alive with muted noise. The great drives sang a deep, bone-vibrating pitch. The many toned hum of machines melded into one bland noise, a quiet roar like the eternal song of Mother Ocean. Oa’s eyelids grew heavy. Her feet and hands felt distant somehow, as if they belonged to someone else.

  Oa turned her cheek into the soft fabric of the headrest, sweetly drowsy, warm, relaxed. Something tickled beneath her chin, and she reached a hand up, surprised. It was her toy, her fuzzy toy. Her teddy bear. The technician had found it in her bag, and tucked it under the sheath.

  Oa buried her fingers in the soft fur. She tried to mumble her thanks to the technician, but she was asleep before her lips could form the words.

  She began a long dream of Virimund, Mother Ocean, and the island of the anchens. In her dream the anchens were waiting for her on the southern shore of the island, gathered on the sand, waving and calling her name. Calling her home. She waved back to them from her cradle. She was on her way.

  20

  JIN-LI WOKE TWO weeks before the others to complete the studies barely begun on Earth. It was deeply satisfying to wear the cream-colored tunic and trousers of an officer, to access the transport’s library with only name and Port Force number, to be referred to as the archivist and treated with deference. There were long days of relative solitude to spend with the status reports from the power park, to walk the deserted corridors of the ship, to meet with the crew at meals before retiring again to the library. When the planet first became visible, Jin-Li joined the crew on the bridge to watch Virimund grow in the spacewindow.

  They were too far out to see the ring of equatorial islands, but the brilliant colors of the ocean world were stunning, even from space. The polar caps glimmered with ice, and the vast seas were deeply, vibrantly green. Jin-Li stood beside a crewman, gazing in wonder at the planet.

  “Bit different from Irustan, isn’t it?” the crewman said.

  Jin-Li nodded. “As different as it could possibly be.” The first view of Irustan had been like looking at an old bronze coin, a yellow disk against the blackness of space, its star blazing
beyond it. This was a world of abundant water, clean atmosphere, an old and temperate star. It lacked land, but ExtraSolar didn’t want land. The expansionist movement needed power, and Virimund had the resources to produce a great deal of it.

  “You know what it’s like down there?” the crewman asked.

  “I’ve read the reports. It’s rainforest, essentially. Moderate climate, lots of birds and insects and a few reptiles. No mammals, apparently. Not much landmass.”

  “Well, you’ll be planetside before you know it. Two more days, and we wake up your group. The doctor’s waking up now, though.”

  “Which one? Dr. Edwards? Waking early?”

  “That’s the schedule.”

  “Why?”

  The crewman raised his eyebrows. “Don’t ask me what the suits are up to, Johnnie. You’re the archivist.”

  “I am now, in any case.”

  The crewman smiled. “I thought your tunic looked new. Not always an officer, then?”

  “No. Longshoreman.” Jin-Li turned back to the spacewindow. “I got a break.”

  The crewman folded his arms, and came to stand beside Jin-Li at the window. “More power to you,” he said. “Not easy to move up in Port Force.”

  “No.”

  “Your doctor seems like a nice guy. He was awake for two weeks into the voyage, but we didn’t mind. You know how the suits can be, but this one was easy. No care and feeding.”

  “I suppose you don’t know why he stayed awake?”

  “Nope. But the r-waves were sure busy. Messages back and forth every day between the power park administrator and your doctor. And he called Geneva a few times.”

  “You never heard what that was about?”

  The crewman looked grave. “Nope. But we know one of our guys died out there.”

  “Dr. Edwards was probably trying to figure out why.”

  “That’s my guess. You know anything about it?”

  “Only what you do.”

  “None of us thought it was too smart to leave the power park without a physician.”

  “But they have medicators. And medtechs.”