The Fifth Sacred Thing (84 page)

“The bees did that.” Madrone smiled at her. “I’m okay, really I am. Just a little weatherbeaten. And you?”

Maya’s head shook, so tightly it was barely more than a tremor. “I can’t stand this, Madrone. They’re hurting him, I know they’re hurting him. Worse than before. And I can’t do anything! I can’t help him.”

Madrone let out a long breath. “Can’t anybody help him?”

“They won’t try. They think he’s betrayed us.” Maya sounded almost like a child. She is really very old, Madrone thought. How long can she last? “I wanted to go haunt the General, but Sam won’t let me.” She sat up, then, and her voice recovered some of its usual tart humor. “Do you realize how long it’s been since I’ve let a man tell me what to do?”

Madrone smiled. “I’m happy about you and Sam. You need someone. Someone to keep you in line. But what do you mean, ‘haunt the General’?”

“It’s part of our strategy. One of Lily’s ideas. Whenever the soldiers kill somebody, the family dresses in white and follows him—the killer, I mean. They tell him stories about his victims, try to make them real. Mostly they just won’t go away, won’t leave the soldiers alone.”

“And this is effective?” Madrone asked.

“You’d be surprised. We’ve got a house full of ones who’ve come over to our side. They say the dead haunt them, too.”

“Trust the dead,” Madrone said. She stood up. “I’ve got to take care of a few things, but I wanted to see you first. Oh,
madrina
, I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Maya said.

Sam arranged for a neighbor boy to return to the boat with Isis. The plan was to ferry the others ashore, and then for Isis to take the boat across the bay. She would find a safe place to anchor, and someone would ferry her back the next night by dinghy.

“How badly do you need that sleep?” Sam asked Madrone.

“What are you asking?”

“There’s a couple of cases I’d love for you to see if you’re up to it.”

“Sure, Sam. And I’ve got something for you to look at too.”

“What’s that?”

“Printouts of some computer records I stole. Data slugs too, if we can read them. I’m not sure, but they might have some information relevant to the epidemics.”

“I’ll take a look, after I show you around.”

“Bill, here, was one of the first—that was, what, about two weeks ago?” Sam said. “He’s not doing too well, as you can see.”

There were six patients in Sage’s room, and Madrone knelt by the sickest of them.

“Two weeks? His immune system ought to be just beginning to recover.”

“He’s got the flu, though. We’ve kept him alive, but barely.”

“Let me look at him.”

She took a deep breath, let herself go into the bee mind. Would it work here, so far away from the hives? She bent her head and tasted a drop of his sweat.

“What’s that? What’s that you’re doing?” Sam asked nervously.

Madrone grinned. “New technique. Instant chemical analysis.” Then she closed herself to distractions and settled into the familiar work of healing.

She stopped when she began to feel the gray drag of exhaustion. Outside, the black night sky had taken on the azure luminosity of approaching day. Sam had already gone back to sleep, making Maya come to bed with him. Wearily, Madrone climbed the stairs to her own room and peeked in. The floor was covered with snoring bodies. She checked other rooms: every bed in the house seemed taken, but in one bed she recognized the dark froth of Nita’s hair. Madrone kicked off her shoes, contemplated undressing but decided it was too much trouble, and climbed in beside Nita.

“Who’zat?” Nita murmured in her sleep.

“Madrone. I’m back.”

“Mmm.” Nita rolled over and then sat up, awake. “Madrone?”

“It’s really me. You’re not dreaming.”

“Madrone!”

They hugged each other, laughing and crying.

“I can’t believe it’s really you,” Nita said.

“I know. I can’t believe I’m really here, in my own home. It seems so unlikely.”

“Tell me all about it.”

“Oh, Nita, I don’t have the strength right now. It was hard. But I’d rather hear what’s been happening to you.”

“Not much. Sage and Holy and I missed out on the worst of it; we had to protect our cell lines. Otherwise even if we win we could be set back decades. So we took them upriver before the troops arrived. Now we’ve got a lab established there, and things are relatively under control, so I came back to replenish our supplies. You heard about Bird?”

“Sam told me.”

“They torture prisoners, I’ve heard.”

“I know.”

They sat together, holding each other until Madrone began to shiver.

“You’re cold,
querida,”
Nita said. “Get under the blankets.”

“Just tired,” Madrone said. “So tired. I wish I could sleep for a week.”

“I wish you could too, but I doubt you’ll be allowed to. Anyway, I’ll get up now and let you have the bed.
Diosa
, I’m glad you’re back!”

“Fourth day no boosters, man.”

“This is the shits.”

“Shit’s what we got to look forward to, ’less they get the trains through.”

“You shit, man.”

“Eat shit!”

They broke into loud laughter. Bird was lying on his bunk, listening to the voices around him, his eyes closed, falling through empty space. At times he thought he was chasing someone, Cleis who turned into Madrone who turned into Rosa.

“I loved you,” he said, but she turned away and fled, and he was still falling.

“A unit ain’t nothing without its commander. What we do now Ohnine’s gone?”

“Pick a new commander.”

“Who, you? Commander Asshole?”

“Fuck you!”

Bird rolled over and covered his head with the blanket. The dark was comforting. He wished he could crawl in deeper and disappear.

“You can’t disappear, you got responsibilities.”

It was Johanna’s voice in his head. Although he couldn’t see her face, he imagined it disapproving.

“I am failing them all,” he told her. “I don’t trust myself.”

“Nonetheless, this is something you’ve got to see through, from beginning to end.”

“Then let it end now. I want it to end,” Bird cried out, but he was still falling and now he was past her.

“Maybe we shoulda followed Ohnine. He the commander.”

“Followed him outa the army?”

“Man, you leave the army, you die.”

“We dying here, without the boosters.”

“They get the boosters, you wait. Don’t you worry.”

“The unit ought to stick together. We ought to stick behind the commander.”

Rio was an old, bearded white man, like the Millennialists’ God. Bird wanted to confess to him.

“I just stood there and let them be killed. I didn’t try to stop them. I should have thrown my body in between them, saved them or died. Ohnine wouldn’t have shot me.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“And if he had, that would’ve been better.”

“Oh, stop it, Bird. Stop trying to make me into an agent of your punishment.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stop pitying yourself and start thinking.”

“I don’t pity myself, I’m just afraid, Rio. Weren’t you ever afraid?”

“I’ve been afraid,” Rio said, and now Bird imagined a note of compassion into his voice. “Fear and shame and guilt and humiliation. Believe me, I’ve felt them all—worse than you, because I actually had something to feel guilty about. You’ve simply encountered a system of force that’s stronger than you are. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I am ashamed.”

“Of course you are, that’s what force does to us all. But it’s a useless emotion for you, right now. It’s stopping you from thinking and noticing what’s around you. Listen! Listen to what they’re saying. They’re on the verge of rebellion. You’re possibly on the knife edge of victory, and you talk about wanting to die! Get out of that bed and do something useful.”

“What happen to Ohnine, anyway?”

“Witches took him.”

“What they do to him?”

Bird sat up.

“Hey, Bird, you tell us, what they gonna do to Ohnine?”

“They’ll try to heal him,” Bird said.

“What you mean?”

“They’ll try to heal his mind, to keep him from killing like that again.”

“But the dead gonna haunt him?”

“Right. But if he joins the Witches, they’ll try to heal him.”

“But he’ll die without the boosters.”

“Maybe not. I know of deserters who’ve survived. And the Witches will try to keep him alive.”

“Why? He killed a whole family of them.”

“Still, they’ll try to keep him alive. We don’t believe in revenge.”

“Why not?”

“We let the dead take their own revenge.”

“If they heal him, then what?”

“Then he’ll live like the rest of them, if they win. Free and equal. Or die with the rest of them.”

“What you mean, free and equal?”

“I mean nobody telling you what to do or wear or think. I mean your color doesn’t matter and your ancestors get respect. I mean having enough to eat and drink, and a place to live you can call your own, and work to do that you feel good about.”

“Ohnine gonna have all that?”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, color don’t matter?”

“Look at me,” Bird said. “I’m as dark as the rest of you, and I was on the Council. I was a musician once—I went to the university. I could be anything I wanted to be.”

“No shit, man?”

“That for real?”

“No shit.”

“Man, we in the wrong fuckin’ army, then,” Threetwo said, and raucous laughter rang through the barracks. But there was an edge to it, an undertone of thought.

They moved him out of the barracks the next morning and locked him in a dark underground storage room where they let him wait for a very long time. He lay on a bare cold floor, shaking, trying to contain his fear. He had to fight to breathe, not to pant like a dog with his tongue lolling out. Slow. Take a long breath, in and out, count it: one, two, three, four, five.… His heart was racing. And they haven’t even done anything to me yet. Stop, don’t think about it. The fear is worse than the thing feared; Rio used to say that, and I wish I could believe it. Where there’s fear, there is power. Maya said that, but you had it wrong,
abuelita
. Where there’s power, there is fear.