The Fifth Sacred Thing (64 page)

“If she survived with her womb intact, she’d go to be a breeder for the Angels. If she lost her womb, she’d be sent off as entertainment for the troops.”

“Have you examined her?”

“Her womb seems to be intact.”

“Gracias a la Diosa.”

Beth drew in her breath, shocked, then let it out with a sigh.

Madrone smiled. “A few words of Spanish scare you more than blood?”

“Reflex. I’m sorry. Anyway, I think the abortion was incomplete. There’s tissue still in there, causing the bleeding and the infection.”

Madrone rocked back on her heels, considering.

“She’ll probably expel it. Or we could go in and scrape her out, if we had the instruments and a sterile room.”

“I have instruments. I saved mine. They’ve been boiled, and they’re ready if we want them. But this is the only room we can work in safely. Upstairs it’s too public; the women come in and out all day from their classes and their work shifts. Some of them would sympathize, but not all.”

“This room worries me,” Madrone said.

“It’s impossible to get it really clean, let alone sterile,” Beth agreed.

“I can work with her
ch’i
, lower her fever, but I can’t cure her if there’s an ongoing source of infection. She’ll relapse as soon as I’m gone. What herbs do you have in the house? A good uterine stimulant might help. Do you have pennyroyal or golden seal?”

“Nothing,” Beth admitted. “It’s too dangerous.”

“And I don’t suppose we can get our hands on any antibacterials or antivirals or boosters?”

“Not unless you have some from the black market. All those things are so strictly regulated.”

Madrone considered what she had in her bag. The drugs from the raid on the pharmacy were long gone, and while she had a standing order in with the hillboys for anti-infectins, they got used up as fast as they could be supplied.
Diosa
, if she ever got back home to her well-stocked shelves of drugs and herbs, black and blue cohosh, shepherd’s purse, rue.… Well, she had some dried mugwort in her bag; maybe that would help.

“I’ve got something for tea. Do you have any parsley? That’s common enough. And garlic—garlic might help her immune system.”

“We can get those.”

“Here.” Madrone rummaged through her bag and gave Beth the packet of mugwort. “Make some tea from that, and another tea of fresh parsley
steeped in boiling water, and then crush in a few cloves of garlic. Maybe add a little honey to sweeten it and give her some strength. And if you bring down a cloth and some cool water, I’ll sponge her off, try to lower her fever a bit. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do with her
ch’i.”

“Her what?”

“Her vital energy.”

“I’d like to watch.”

“There won’t be much to see.”

Beth left the room, and Madrone settled into her healing trance, matching her breath to the woman’s shallow respiration, opening her bee senses and her inner sight. With the back of her nail she lifted a bead of sweat from the woman’s brow, brought it to her lips, and tasted it. Her bee mind learned what was fermenting in the woman’s belly and brewing in her veins; her human mind had names for these things and slowly, slowly, she was bringing them together, matching tastes and smells and names and the play of colors and energies and forms, not yet shifting anything, just watching.

Beth returned. Madrone could smell the steeped herbs, the sweet honey. They filled the room with the scent of life. She murmured names to put against tastes and smells and the chemical tang on her awakened tongue. Suddenly she knew what she could do for the woman.

“Honey,” she said to Beth. “Bring me honey.”

When Beth returned with a bowl of honey and a spoon, Madrone took it in her hands, cradling it like a ritual vessel. Contractions, she thought, and visualized a womb rippling and opening and cleansing itself. She strengthened the image until she could feel it begin in her own body. Breathing deep, she concentrated. Time stopped; nothing existed but the image she created, which was also a feeling, a smell, a taste in the back of her throat. She held it until her own blood changed, until the image became a taste in her saliva, a tang in her own sweat that welled up from the scar in the center of her forehead. A drop of that sweat fell into the honey, a catalyst that altered its energy patterns. Madrone breathed
ch’i
into the golden liquid, feeding the change, waiting until it was complete, until the honey itself became the brew she needed.

She fed the woman a spoonful, placed her hand again on the swollen belly, and waited. Moaning, the woman closed her eyes. Madrone focused on the honey again, strengthening its power to contract the womb. A wave shuddered through the woman’s belly and she began to gush blood, introducing an iron taste to the air. Madrone was ready with the right elixir to bring the womb clamping down and stanch the flow.

She called for more honey, honey with garlic steeping in it, and visualized blood cleansing itself, white cells surrounding the alien organisms, as she called up the taste of healing drugs. Once again she turned her own sweat into the homeopathic drop that changed and cured.

“Keep feeding her this,” Madrone said. “A spoonful every hour. I think she’ll be okay.”

“What did you do?”

“I wish I could explain it to you. I’m not sure I even know myself. And I’m too tired, now.”

“You’ve been sitting here for hours, no wonder. Come out, let her sleep, and eat something.”

They emerged again, into the room where Hijohn was waiting.

“I’ll bring you some food,” Beth said.

“How’d it go?” Hijohn asked.

“Okay. I learned I could do something I didn’t know I could do. A bee thing,” Madrone said. “But I’m drained.”

“Can you travel? We could cover a lot of ground before dawn.”

“Do we have to?”

“Or stay the day here. Not too safe.”

“If I can eat first.…”

Beth brought soup and potatoes and bread, and Madrone ate ravenously. Hijohn had had one dinner, but he did not decline a second.

“Must you go?” Beth said. “You could sleep the day here—you need some rest after that.”

“Not safe,” Hijohn said. “Not for us, not for you.”

Beth looked distressed. “Isn’t there anything else I can offer you?”

“A bath,” Madrone said. “Just a quick one.” They had plenty of water to drink at Katy’s, and she kept herself clean with sponge baths, but full immersion was an undreamed-of luxury.

Beth hesitated. “That’s a little awkward.”

“That’s okay,” Madrone said politely, concealing her disappointment. “Don’t worry about it.” Had she ever really lived in a place where she had taken for granted her right to shower daily?

“We’re not rich, like Sara and her friends,” Beth explained. “The students here come from the rapidly vanishing middle class. Nursing is one of the few jobs still open to women, and the girls I take in expect to work rather than marry. Oftentimes their fathers won’t support them, or they begrudge them every penny. So we try to keep costs down. That means we’re very sparing with water.”

“It’s really okay,” Madrone said again, sorry now that she’d asked. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“It’s just that we keep a strict water log, and if I drew a bath for you I’d have to explain it. Baths are for special occasions, like birthdays or graduation. A shower, now … you could take a quick shower.”

“I’d love that.”

Beth looked questioningly at Hijohn, who shook his head.

“I washed in the sink. That’s wet enough for me.”

“I’ll set the meter for you, and get you a towel,” Beth said to Madrone. “It’s late, so the women should be in their beds, but let me scout the hallway for you in case someone’s coming back from a late shift.”

“The noise of the shower won’t wake them?”

“They’re used to it. They all work night hours from time to time.”

The bathroom was white and clean, with old-fashioned fixtures, including a toilet that flushed with water. It appeared, however, to be flushed as seldom as possible. Beth closed the lid and showed Madrone how to work the shower.

“You press this button here, and it holds back the water. So you can wet down, and then stop the water while you soap up, and then you should have enough time to rinse clean. The water shuts off after five minutes.”

“I’m an expert at short showers,” Madrone assured her. “My grandmother considered a long shower to be a sin akin to leaving food on your plate.”

“Leave the stopper in, if you don’t mind,” Beth said. “We catch the waste water, use it to scrub the floors. But be careful, it makes for slippery footing.”

“I’ll be fine.”

The water was hot, and Madrone let her fatigue wash away with the spray that played over her body as she counted sixty seconds. Then she turned off the water and soaped herself, scrubbing at the ingrained dirt on her elbows and knees, and rinsed. At home they showered carefully and conserved water voluntarily because it was sacred. Here they did the same, because it was expensive, and the meter cut you off if you transgressed. Perhaps it was just as well. If she’d had unlimited access to water, she might stay in the shower all the remaining night, ruining their chance to escape before dawn.

She dried and dressed, wishing she could wash her ragged shirt and threadbare pants. They had a tear in one knee. Maybe Beth would lend her thread and a needle and something to wear while she mended them.

She opened the door a crack and checked the hallway. All clear. Quickly, she ran back to the basement room. Beth and Hijohn were deep in conversation.

“It’s the children,” Beth said. “So many of them aren’t on the Lists and can’t get so much as a painkiller if they need it. I try to help as many as I can. Some of the students here work with me. Sometimes they can get pills, prescriptions left over when somebody dies, supplies that a clerk gets careless with. But the danger to them is great. If they were caught, they’d go to the pens.”

“We can get you boosters, anti-infectins, anything you want if we know how to recognize it,” Hijohn said. “No problem. We pull raids all the time.”

“What would you want in return?” Beth asked.

“Some doctoring, from time to time. A place to hide out once in a while.
And you could let people know who’s helping you. Carefully. We want them to thank the Web for their kid’s life and support us.”

“I think we have a deal,” Beth said. She turned to Madrone and smiled. “You were right about wanting us to meet. We
can
help each other. Do you feel refreshed now?”

“Much better. If I could just have some sewing things, to mend these pants?”

“I’ll get them for you.”

She went up the stairs and returned with a needle and thread and a skirt for Madrone to wear while Beth herself repaired the rips. Madrone leaned back, closed her eyes. Soon, soon they should go; she shouldn’t fall asleep. Better to wake, talk, ask questions.

“Beth, while you were still in practice, you must have used the boosters. What are they? How do they work?”

Beth sighed. “My specialty was gynecology. Some of our patients were on boosters, but twenty years ago, that wasn’t yet the norm. Even then, the Corporation was very cagey about their precise chemical composition. Oh, we knew they worked by stimulating the immune system, possibly by encouraging the T-cells to reproduce more rapidly. They were a by-product of research on the immunodeficiency diseases, after all. And many of us suspected they might have adverse side effects or, at the very least, would produce dependency.”

“They do,” Madrone said.

“The Corporation was extremely reticent to divulge any of that information, except to its own doctors. Those of us who worked independently were left out in the cold.”

“What was it like for you to lose your license?” Madrone asked.

“Like a nightmare. Oh, we saw the reports of the law on the vidscreens, my partner and I, but we really couldn’t believe they could kick women out of medicine, that they could get away with it. I had a small practice with Mary, who was also my lover for fifteen years. Does that shock you?”

“Does what shock me?”

“That I had a woman lover.”

“Should that shock me? It’s quite normal back home. My grandmother had a woman lover for most of her life. And I’ve had a few myself.”

Beth threw a glance at Hijohn, but his face remained neutral. “The Web has no position on homosexuality,” he said.

“High time it got one, then,” Beth said. “You can’t tear this system down without destroying all forms of repression. But I was telling you about my license. We had a meeting of the Women’s Gynecology Association, and we all decided unanimously to ignore the new Family Purity laws and continue to practice. We figured they couldn’t prosecute us all. We were wrong.

“Things went along okay for about a month. And then one day, in the
middle of clinic, there came a loud knocking on the door. I was examining a young woman and I told her to dress quickly. By the time we got out into the waiting room, it was filled with a dozen police and an equal number of wailing women. Mary and I didn’t resist arrest; we let them handcuff us and march us out to their car and take us down to the station, where we expected to be booked and released. You see, we were still thinking like physicians, members of a powerful class, used to being treated with respect.”

Beth’s eyes were focused on her mending and her words followed the jerks of her needle as she pushed it roughly through the cloth.

“Instead, they stripped us naked and had us bend over so they could peer up the cracks in our asses. They dressed us in prison clothes and locked us up in separate cells, where we remained for a week. When our lawyer finally reached us, he advised us to sign a confession, take the Oath of Repudiation, recant. I took his advice. To this day I can’t say if I’m sorry or glad. They staged a huge public ceremony, a thousand women professionals paraded before the vidcams to parrot their oath and display their humiliation. They lit a huge bonfire, downtown it was, just outside the entrance to the Central Mall, and we each walked up and placed our licenses and diplomas in the fire. So we survived. Mary refused, and I never saw her again. I try not to speculate on her end.”