When Stars Are Scattered Page 4

  Who had killed.

  He heard Adéla behind him. When she got close enough, he said “Any word?”

  “You can’t tell who was gone and who wasn’t last night,” she said. Two kites soared over the mosque, wheeling in the wind, into the cornfield, their cries rising. “I’m going to go have a few words with my husband.”

  “Are you going to ask him if he started a war?”

  She tightened up, wrapping her arms around herself. “What do you say when you already know the answer to a question like that?”

  They waited there in silence, watching the community. “I’m sure you wish you had never come,” Adéla said.

  “Interesting work for a virologist,” Ahmed said, for lack of anything else. When she didn’t respond, he said, “I won’t leave you.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Jose was washing his arm in the sink. The water tank creaked beneath the house as it ran over him. Water mixed with blood and ran pink into the depths of the sink.

  Adéla watched him until he looked up and saw her. “Hello, habibati.”

  “What did you do last night?”

  He waited too long to answer her. “Cut myself, for one.”

  “You weren’t here.”

  “I know.”

  How did you ask your husband if he was a murderer? How did you ask your bright, fierce husband, whom Adéla had loved for his courage in the classroom and his passion for learning, who was brave enough to take this assignment when Adéla feared they weren’t up to it, who always had an answer, whose surety had once given her such comfort, if he had murdered people in cold blood?

  He answered for her.

  “We can’t wait any longer. I know the homesteaders made the virus. They will know how to unmake it.”

  “Why?” Adéla said. “Why did you kill them? What message does that send?”

  Jose’s face went blank. “How … how did you know?”

  “The kites told me,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything.

  “You’ve put us all in danger,” she said. “Me, the children, the kites, the entire colony. How could you do that? Why would you just kill them?”

  “This wasn’t an easy decision,” he said. “I discussed this with the ummah, yesterday.”

  “Not everyone!”

  “I couldn’t put you and the children in danger!” His voice calmed, that sure tone she had once loved, that now terrified her. “We fasted upon it, studied jihad, spoke late into the night, and we could see no other way but to take action now. I fulfilled all the precepts, habibati. I spoke to that homestead, just last month, after we finished hunting. I told them we would trade food, medicine, I would get the kites to leave their crops alone if they could just stop the virus. You know what? They laughed in my face. I did what Islam decrees—”

  “You should tell me!”

  When she started to speak, he said, “It was justified, habibati! They were warned.”

  “How does this get us any closer to curing the disease”—she spat out the words— “oh wise imam?”

  His face went dark. “I’m tired of being afraid. It is their turn.”

  “This isn’t right!” she said. “Jose, this—this isn’t you!”

  “This is jihad!” he said. “Why would you not fight in the cause of God and oppressed men, women, and children?” He came closer to her. He reached out and touched her hair, and she realized that her hijab was gone. She’d left it on Ahmed’s floor.

  “Adéla, they were warned.” He put a hand at her neck, stroked her hair. After a moment, he grabbed a hijab she had left on the dresser and gently wrapped it around her hair, pinning it for her until it shrouded her head.

  She didn’t speak.

  “I’ll be in the mosque,” he said to her silence. “I haven’t said my morning prayers.”

  * * *

  Ahmed went back to the lab. Focus on work. Focus on work. He checked Ibrahim’s antibodies. They were thriving. The virus was not. Whatever Ibrahim had survived, it gave him immunity to this. It was as he’d thought.

  Ibrahim survived a similar disease sometime in his youth.

  And there was the answer. This was no man-made disease, just a very nasty new strain of old flu.

  Ahmed walked outside, into the storage shed for the medical complex. Past where he’d stored the chocolate, he found the heavy square of a genome-mapper, followed by a thick bundle that read FREEZE AFTER OPENING. There would be no final answer until he truly understood the virus and the antibodies and knew exactly how they worked. But the genome-mapper could mass-produce clones of Ibrahim’s antibodies, and Ahmed could inject them into other kites, to try and hold off the virus.

  As the genome-mapper worked, he noticed the vials of blood Sofia had left on the counter. Her own blood. Ahmed dripped some onto an examination disc, slid it under the microscope.

  It was hard to tell at this stage, but there was something in her blood that could have been a virus. It could have been any virus. She might have had a cold, or a flu coming on. But just in case, Ahmed added a packet of Ibrahim’s cloned antibodies to the dish.

  Adéla came in the door, the call to prayer echoing after her.

  “Are you all right? Did Jose say … anything?”

  She didn’t answer. Her face was bleak, and she stared past Ahmed. Ahmed picked up the cloned antibodies. “Help me get these into vials,” he said. “We have to hurry on this.”

  “What is it?” She eyed the genome-mapper. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

  “I isolated some of Ibrahim’s antibodies. If I’m right, this is a new form of an old disease, one that Ibrahim survived years ago. It’s come back in a particularly virulent way, but he’s still resistant to it.”

  “You found a cure?” she asked. “You—it’s an old disease? It’s not man-made?”

  “I found something that might help. I will have to study the nature of the antibodies to really figure out a vaccine, but no, it’s a natural pathogen.”

  Adéla broke into choking sobs.

  “Are you crying?”

  “Of course,” she said, and threw her arms around him. “God must have surely sent you, Doctor.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Let me have my faith,” she said. “Now more than ever.”

  Ahmed gave up and hugged her back.

  “Mom?” asked Sofia from the doorway. Adéla pushed away from Ahmed.

  “Sofia,” she said, exhaling, straightening her hijab. “Ahmed found a cure.”

  “Really? Really?” She jumped up. “I have to find—I have to find Papí, and I have to tell everyone, and—”

  “First,” Adéla said, “find your brother. I haven’t seen him all morning.” She took Sofia by the shoulders and pushed her toward the door. “But yes, please…” Both mother and daughter were shedding tears. “Do tell your papí.”

  Adéla turned back around. “Well. Lots of work to—”

  A loud, concussive boom cut through the air, shaking the walls.

  Ahmed and Adéla rushed outside. Everyone had turned their heads. Human heads looked up from the stand of corn, and kites rose into the air with the wind.

  Jose ran from the mosque, looking in the direction of the sound. A number of men spilled into the street behind him.

  The only people who hadn’t looked up were a group of children, running through the dusty common area.

  Something flew through the air—a kite? Too fast to be a kite, Ahmed realized, and falling. Toward the common area. A high whistle cut the air. Whatever it was, it gleamed in the light for a moment, the gleam of metal and plastic. “What’s—”

  The missile hit the mosque.

  Concussion smacked Ahmed’s body, drove breath out of his lungs, burst blood vessels in his nose. Pieces of sand-colored stone went whirling overhead, screaming through the air, obscuring where Adéla had been standing. Warm blood leaked from Ahmed’s ears and his nose. Ahmed ran for her.
He became aware that he was shouting something, “Find the wounded! Help me out!” He looked around, but the smoke and the dust were too thick to see; he heard crying and screaming and he felt screaming, felt heat toss kites into the sky, rents through their skin, heads and hands gone, ripping like paper.

  “Find me Adéla!” Ahmed called.

  But he found her. She knelt on the ground, holding her son in her arms. Her son, who was missing half his head.

  * * *

  “I couldn’t keep you safe,” she whispered. “I couldn’t keep you safe.” She huddled in a corner of the clinic. His little body was so still, and growing so cold. His little body that had held a spaceship and stared at her bright-eyed and kissed her cheek and cried at bedtime and it was cold. It was wrong.

  “I’m so sorry, Adéla,” Ahmed’s voice said, from far away. “I need a nurse, or we’ll lose more people.”

  “My sweet boy,” she whispered. “My Pablo.”

  “Please, Adéla,” Ahmed said. He was next to her, but she didn’t listen. “I need your help.”

  “No!” Adéla’s voice felt raw, cutting like a saw. “No! I’m not going to wrap him—put him in the death, in the cold, I’m not…”

  Someone else was there. His nose brushed her hijab, pushed it back, let the hair spill onto her son’s body. His breath was warm on her ear. “Oh friend,” Ibrahim said. “Oh, friend.” The little kite keened, weeping and clinging to her, his enormous flap of skin covering Pablo like a shroud. “Salaam.”

  Ibrahim’s own grief doubled hers, and broke the dam. Tears like she had never shed fell onto her son, dark tears from the bleeding bottom of her soul, and she sobbed like a wounded animal.

  “Adéla, I need you,” Ahmed said.

  “Please, Ibrahim,” she whispered between sobs. She pressed her son’s body inside that flap of skin. “Shroud him for me.”

  Ibrahim’s arms, like God’s, enfolded Pablo, wrapping her son in the only life he could feel. “Salaam,” he squeaked, either to her or to her son, she could not tell.

  * * *

  Ahmed walked to the half-wrecked mosque. His hands ached from sewing, from bandaging, from shots. His eyes were blurred and throbbing.

  Most of the structure had held, but the entrance had been blown apart, scattering rock and mortar everywhere. One of the Arabic hangings, on woven grass, had blown into the square, torn right through the swooping characters invoking the name of God, tearing Bismillah in half.

  Ahmed ignored the shouts of his name. He ignored everything; the clinic behind him, the wounded. The chirping of the kites. He ignored the people on their knees praising God for the kites’ lives.

  Jose was crying and praying, facing the mihrab. Sofia held on to her dad’s shoulders. She sobbed, her thin body wracked and shaking.

  Adéla was with Pablo’s body in the clinic. They had come here, and she had gone there.

  Ahmed found the ladder easily enough, and climbed.

  He reached the top of the mosque, stood bracing his legs against two logs. A hole had opened up in the minaret, giving him a perfect view over the settlement.

  The same thing he had seen yesterday. A few green squares for crops. Kites scattered in the wind, overhead. The smoky, rubble-strewn square, now a scar on the land. Beyond them, the emptiness, and somewhere beyond there, a homesteader community now burying its dead, and planning perhaps another act of retaliation.

  A microphone hung from the tower overhead. Ahmed found the switch, flipped it, and tapped the microphone. It worked; a loud thud resonated through the speakers.

  “Attention,” Ahmed said. “Attention.” He exhaled heavily. Jose would hear every word as loud as the voice of God. “The virus is not man-made. The kites are dying of a typical disease cycle, and it should pass once we administer the antibodies from older kites who survived the last cycle. The virus is not man-made.”

  He stopped. He couldn’t think of any more to say. So he threw the microphone against the bricks and dropped down the stairs.

  He crossed the carpets, woven with fine patterns in Arabic, praising the name of God. He walked across blessings of mercy, praise for He who had made the universe, made man from a blood clot. He walked by the nave that pointed up, toward the place in the sky where Earth and Mecca looked upon them. He walked past the praise and over the poetry, until Jose seized his arm.

  “What are you doing?” Jose slammed him against the wall. “What are you thinking? You liar!”

  “I’m not lying,” Ahmed said. It was strange. He wasn’t angry. He had been, atop the mosque. And now, as he looked into Jose’s face, red and torn by tears, he couldn’t summon the rage. “Sofia will confirm it.”

  “Liar!” Jose slammed him into the wall again. The man was strong. “Let me go,” Ahmed said.

  “Liar! I know what I know!” His hands tightened on Ahmed’s arms. “Do you think—do you think—who would do what I’ve done without knowing?” Fresh tears began to stream from Jose’s face. “What father would do what I’ve done?”

  Ahmed had no words for Jose.

  He went around the rubble, past the bloodstains on the dirt. He had thought to go back to the clinic. Adéla would want help preparing her son’s body; the generators would need refueling to fill another morgue, and he couldn’t leave her alone, not now—

  But instead he walked into the thigh-high grass, past the scrubby, white-barked trees, into the mud of the river. River water rippled, black in its valleys, red in its crests, against the round reeds of Isach. He waded into the water. Green figure-eight insects buzzed around his head. Ahmed thought of his conversation with Adéla. The kites. The food we eat! Love. Children. She would take this as evidence of God’s existence.

  Night cast a rusty glow over the plain beyond the stream, red reflecting on red to eternity. Above the plain, ten healthy kites fell from the sky, spreading themselves wide at the last moment to land. Once on the ground, they humped up like tents in the wind, their claws keeping them rooted in the dirt.

  Two of them circled each other. They danced forward, then back like boxers, sniffing each other furiously. It was interesting. No talking; none of the humanlike chirping of Arabic; just sniffing.

  He waded into the river up to his chest, pushing against the current, letting himself be soaked by the cold water, swimming and stumbling through the thick mud of the other side. He pushed through more grass, clinging to his soaked scrubs. Ahmed came closer, and closer, until the kites’ emotions began to beat at him.

  It was clear they were in conflict; one thought the other was not fair with him. They sniffed furiously. They’re talking, Ahmed thought. Empathic talking. No wonder they aren’t profound in spoken language. Enormous nostrils flared and contracted. The vents on their chest, that second respiratory system, expanded and contracted. It was a different kind of language.

  The two circling kites came closer, touching noses.

  And suddenly, the animosity collapsed. The two kites in conflict let go of the ground and tumbled together into the sky, squealing with delight before they came down again. They muttered one word, a word like a victory. Jihad.

  Ahmed felt it, carried to him on the wind. Love, now. Pure, whole, embracing love. Sorrow for the fight. There was no conflict among kites. There couldn’t be, not when they could share this.

  This was their struggle.

  They had to live without violence, because it would poison their communication.

  He almost backed away. Back to the clinic. Back to samples and cells and what he could understand. After a long moment, Ahmed pushed himself forward.

  The kites turned toward him, their noses twitching furiously. Their love was molten metal in his veins. “Sadeaki?” Ahmed bent over, went on his hands and feet, until he stood with them, his back humped up like theirs. He stared right into ten pairs of tiny black eyes.

  “Sadeaki. Friend. Allahu akbar.”

  Ahmed closed his eyes and for the first time, emptied his mind. Anger left. Skepticism left.


  The kites came in.

  The vision returned.

  Above was sky, below ground, and between wind—wind that carried him between worlds, toward the light above. Cold wrenched him down, a rush of rain that soaked his body, made it heady, unwieldy. Warmth lifted him. Dark clouds drifted away, far below. The sun swallowed him, consumed him. He could hear the words. He could see them form in bright curls, Arabic all around him. Ribbons of light along the sky proclaimed the mercy of God. In the name of God, the great, the merciful…

  Ahmed faced the words, the Arabic that tore through the sky in bright beams.

  So you drive these people insane and make them fight? Ahmed said. This is part of your good, merciful plan? This is what you taught Jose?

  Something whispered No. You’ll teach them.

  The words parted like curtains and revealed a huge T cell, a shining version of the antibodies he had seen in Ibrahim’s blood.

  * * *

  He opened his eyes and he was alone. Dust blew in thick gusts over him. The kites were distant specks in the sky.

  He stumbled back to the river, washing the dust from his eyes frantically. He waded into the water, up the other side. He could still hardly see; it was as if the vision had half-burned those eyes. He began coughing, what felt like a dry, dusty cough, until he hacked a gob of pink-laced spit into his hand. He stared at it like it was a new star.

  He stumbled back to the colony.

  Adéla sat in the exam room. Ibrahim’s head was in her lap. The old kite keened softly.

  “I know,” Ahmed said to Ibrahim.

  The old kite’s chest expanded and contracted as he looked up at Ahmed.

  “It’s the virus. It changes us, modifies the cells in our nasal cavities. It makes us feel like you feel. All the humans on this planet are going to know eventually, aren’t they? What you feel.” He fell forward on his knees. “I’ve got the virus. So do Adéla and Sofia. And it’s airborne, so it won’t be just us.” He stared into Ibrahim’s eyes. “If I can cure it, will … will we still feel this way after the virus is gone?”

  Ibrahim sounded much older than he ever had. “We will change you forever.”