Papa was awake, lying on his back in bed, his hands clutching the sheet that covered him. I ran to him, and his eyes followed my every movement. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He raised one hand feebly. I didn’t have time for whatever he was trying to communicate. I just threw back the covers and scooped him up as if he’d been a child. He was not a tall man, but he’d put on a moderate amount of weight since the days of his athletic prime. It didn’t matter; I carried him out of the bedroom with a maniac strength that I knew wouldn’t last very long. “Fire!” I shouted as I crossed the parlor jain. “Fire! Fire!” The Stones That Speak had their rooms adjoining Papa’s. I didn’t dare set him down to rouse the Stones. I had to keep fighting my way through the flames toward safety.
Just as I reached the far end of the corridor, the two huge men came up behind me. Neither said a word. They were both as naked as the day they’d been born, but that didn’t seem to bother them. One of them took Fried-lander Bey from me. The other picked me up and carried me the rest of the way, down the stairs and out into the clean, fresh air.
The Stone must have realized how badly I was hurt, how exhausted I was, and how close to collapse I’d come. I was terrifically grateful to him, but I didn’t have the strength to thank him. I promised myself that I’d do something for the Stones as soon as I was able — maybe buy them a few infidels to torture. I mean, what do you get the Gog and Magog who have everything?
The firemen were already setting up their equipment when Kmuzu came to see how I was. “Your mother is safe,” he said. “There was no fire in the east wing.”
“Thank you, Kmuzu,” I said. The inside of my nose was raw and painful, and my throat hurt.
One of the firemen rinsed me with sterile water, then wrapped me in a sheet and rinsed me again. “Here,” he said, handing me a glass of water. “This’ll make your mouth and throat feel better. You’re gonna have to go to the hospital.”
“Why?” I asked. I hadn’t yet realized how badly I was burned.
“I will go with you, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu.
“Papa?” I said.
“He also needs immediate medical attention,” said Kmuzu.
“We’ll go together then,” I said.
The firemen led me to an ambulance. Friedlander Bey had already been put on a stretcher and lifted inside. Kmuzu helped me up into the vehicle. He beckoned toward me, and I leaned down toward him. “While you’re recuperating in the hospital,” he said softly, “I will see if I can learn who set this fire.”
I looked at him for a moment, trying to collect my thoughts. I blinked and realized that all my eyelashes had been burned off. “You think it’s arson?” I said.
The ambulance driver closed one of the rear doors. “I have proof,” said Kmuzu. Then the driver closed the second door. A moment later, Papa and I were speeding through the constricted streets, siren screaming. Papa didn’t move on his stretcher. He looked pitifully frail. I didn’t feel so well myself. I suppose it was my punishment for laughing at Hexagram Six.
My mother had brought me pistachio nuts and fresh figs, but I was still having some trouble swallowing. “Then have some of this,” she said. “I even brought a spoon.” She took the lid from a plastic bowl and set it on the hospital tray table. She was very self-conscious about this visit.
I was sedated, but not as sedated as I could have been. Still, a mild dose of Sonneine from a perfusor is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Of course, I own an experimental daddy that blocks pain, and I could have chipped it in and stayed completely clearheaded and lucid. I just didn’t want to use it. I hadn’t told my doctors and nurses about it, because I’d rather have the drug. Hospitals are too tedious to endure sober.
I lifted my head from the pillow. “What is it?” I asked in a hoarse voice. I leaned forward and took the plastic bowl.
“Curdled camel’s milk,” said my mother. “You used to love that when you were sick. When you were little.” I thought I detected an uncharacteristic softness in her voice.
Curdled camel’s milk doesn’t sound like something that could get you to jump out of bed with glee. It isn’t, and I didn’t. I picked up the spoon, however, and made a show of enjoying it just to please her. Maybe if I ate some of the stuff, she’d be satisfied and leave. Then I could call for another shot of Sonneine and take a nice nap. That’s what was worst about being in the hospitaclass="underline" reassuring all the visitors and listening to the histories of their own illnesses and accidents, which were always of far more traumatic proportions than yours.
“You were really worried about me, Marid?” she asked.
“Course I was,” I said, letting my head fall back to the pillow. “That’s why I sent Kmuzu to make sure you were safe.”
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “Maybe you’d be happier if I’d burned up in the fire. Then you wouldn’t be embarrassed about me no more.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom.”
“Okay, honey,” she said. She looked at me in silence for a long moment. “How are your burns?”
I shrugged, and that made me wince. “They still hurt. The nurses come in and slather this white gunk on me a couple of times a day.”
“Well, I suppose it’s good for you. You just let ’em do what they want.”
“Right, Mom.”
There was another awkward silence. “I suppose there’s things I ought to tell you,” she said at last. “I ain’t been completely honest with you.”
“Oh?” This wasn’t any surprise, but I thought I’d swallow the sarcastic comments that came to mind, and let her tell her story her own way.
She stared down at her hands, which were twisting a frayed linen handkerchief in her lap. “I know a lot more about Friedlander Bey and Reda Abu Adil than I told you.”
“Ah,” I said.
She glanced up at me. “I known both of ’em from before. From even before you was born, when I was a young girl. I was a lot better looking in those days. I wanted to get out of Sidi-bel-Abbes, maybe go someplace like Cairo or Jerusalem, be a holoshow star. Maybe get wired and make some moddies, not sex moddies like Honey Pilar, but something classy and respectable.”
“So did Papa or Abu Adil promise to make you a star?”
She looked back down at her hands. “I came here, to the city. I didn’t have no money when I got here, and I went hungry for a while. Then I met somebody who took care of me for a while, and he introduced me to Abu Adil.”
“And what did Abu Adil do for you?”
Again she looked up, but now tears were slipping down her cheeks. “What do you think?” she said in a bitter voice.
“He promise to marry you?” She just shook her head. “He get you pregnant?”
“No. In the end, he just laughed at me and handed me this bus ticket back to Sidi-bel-Abbes.” Her expression grew fierce. “I hate him, Marid.”
I nodded. I was sorry now that she’d begun this confession. “So you’re not telling me that Abu Adil is my father, right? What about Friedlander Bey?”
“Papa was always good to me when I first came to the city. That’s why even though I was so mad at you for finding me in Algiers, I was glad to hear that Papa was taking care of you.”
“Some people hate him, you know,” I said.
She stared at me, then shrugged. “I went back to Sidi-bel-Abbes, after all, and then after a few years I met your father. It was like my life was passing so fast. You were born, and then you got older and left Algiers. Then more years went by. Finally, right after you came to see me, I got a message from Abu Adil. He said he’d been thinking about me and wanted to see me again.”