"My purpose was wholesome," Dihya replied, "but neither you nor any woman here would believe that. You think I'm crazy."
"But you don't." Umina's voice, soft and professional, broke the tension in the room. Her talent for projecting calm was what had made her a good psychologist back on Earth. That she had expertise in ancient texts as well made her the obvious choice as the colony's replacement imam.
Dihya smiled again. "No, I don't believe I'm crazy. But then, are the truly mad ever aware of their own madness?"
"Surprisingly often, yes," Umina replied. She focused on Ayan. "I'd like to observe, if I you don't object."
Privately Ayan did object, but pragmatism warned her not to refuse. She had not missed the fact that Dihya seemed more relaxed in the imam's presence. "No objection," she said to Umina, but then to Zamra she added, "Search the facility again."
Zamra scowled. "I tell you, there was nothing in the place but dust, the monitoring computers, and a closet full of cleaning supplies. I've had the doctor scan an outflow sample for toxins and known biohazards, but the indicators are all green."
"We must be sure, Zamra. None of us will sleep well tonight unless someone double-checks and triple-checks and then checks again. Please."
Zamra sighed. "Fine. Should we issue an alert?"
It would start a panic, Ayan knew. All for the sake of a madwoman who might've done nothing. They'd caught her only moments after the administrative system had registered the hack. And Zamra had said the scans were green.
"Not yet," Ayan said. "Do it at the first hint of any problem."
Zamra nodded and led the other policewomen out. Umina took the other chair in front of Ayan's desk, sitting quietly with her hands in her lap.
Dihya gazed after Zamra for a moment. "That one is a sinner. She lies with other women."
Umina said nothing for a moment, but then nodded. "Many in the colony have committed that particular sin."
"How can you permit it? You are responsible for the order of our community. They should get the hundred lashes."
"Sometimes allowances must be made for circumstances," Umina replied. She gestured around them — at the colony and the world beyond it, Ayan gathered, but it was the walls of the tempbuilding that caught her own eyes. In the early days, Ayan had encouraged the colonists to replace their temphomes with permanent structures of wood or stone, but in the end even she could not bring herself to move into one of the new buildings. The tempbuildings were ugly, but at least their bland, uniform walls held the promise of eventual replacement. Real walls implied a false permanence in the case of Illiyin. Real walls echoed despair.
To take her mind off that, Ayan said to Umina, "Dihya has appointed herself our savior."
"God, most gracious and merciful, has appointed me," Dihya snapped.
"All things are possible through Him," Umina said, throwing Ayan a quelling look. "But for we mortals to verify such a thing, Dihya, we must hear the full account."
With a last sullen glare at Ayan, Dihya resumed speaking.
The light in the grove was gray-white through the filter of the spindly trees' canopy. In that light the pool's surface was still, cloudy translucence a-swirl with an oily sheen of color. Dihya knelt beside the liquid but did not touch it, some part of her mind retaining enough cold scientist's rationality to keep her cautious. The rest of her was enraptured. A tendril of mist hung above the liquid's surface, curling slowly in the still air as if to beckon her. Such was the aura of the place that it seemed wholly natural to whisper aloud, "Hello?" And even more natural to wait for an answer.
So she was not surprised when the surface of the pool rippled. The motion had no discernible start-point — no concentric ripples or splash. Just a faint shiver of surface tension, flicker and then still. Before Dihya could decide whether the ripple had been chance or imagination, the surface suddenly heaved upward. A rounded peak formed, gradually lengthening and attenuating until a small sphere, like a bubble, cohered and rolled off to one side. As she watched in amazement more bubbles formed, the edges of the pool rapidly growing thick with them. And she caught her breath when, as new bubbles rolled down, those already at the edge moved aside to make room.
In the space of perhaps ten seconds the pool transformed, becoming a basin of shimmmering marbles in constant, hectic motion. Then the motion stopped. Dihya tensed, her cold rational self ready to flee. The rest of her hungered to lean closer. She had no doubt that what she was witnessing was a special, perhaps holy, thing. Humankind had discovered a cruel truth in the centuries of space exploration: sentience, not life, was the true rarity of the universe. Life appeared on hundreds of worlds — nearly every one they'd found with liquid water. But never once had another species been found which possessed any sort of measurable intelligence. God had spread His children to a thousand new worlds, and on every one they were alone.
Yet did that not confirm what the Qu'ran, and even the holy books of other faiths, had long ago suggested? God had made Adam, and by extension Adam's species, in His image. Therefore, intelligent or not, the pool could only be a gift from God, placed on Illiyin to aid His human creations. It would be millennia before new colonists arrived from Earth, if ever. She could not believe God would leave them to die alone on this planet.
So when dark spots like nuclei — or eyes, since they shifted to follow Dihya's movements — formed within each of the little spheres, she took that as a sign. It was her duty to study this phenomenon; to bear witness and carry word back to her sisters in the colony. More importantly, if the pool was what she thought it might be, what she hoped it might be, then it promised the salvation of them all.
"I'm hungry," Dihya said abruptly. "May I have food?"
"In a few moments," Ayan said. "Tell me more about this pool."
Umina gave Ayan a mild look of reproach. "She should have food, Ayan. And water, and rest. For that matter, she should also be examined medically, in case she was injured during her capture."
What was the point, Ayan wondered, of making sure Dihya was healthy when the penalty for sabotaging the colony was death?
As if reading Ayan's thoughts — or more likely, her silence — Umina's expression hardened. "Are we barbarians now?"
With a sigh, Ayan touched the intercom and called for someone to bring food and drink, then for the doctor to come when she had completed the tests at the purification facility.
"Our governor has already condemned me, I think," Dihya said to Umina. She was still smiling.
"Your actions have condemned you," Ayan said. She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. "But you're right in that I've run out of patience. I've had enough of this fairy tale about a magic pool. I was willing to take extenuating circumstances into account, but if you won't tell us why you did this, I have no choice but to render my judgment based on the evidence at hand."
"Extenuating circumstances?" Dihya's eyes gleamed. Ayan could not read the look in those eyes — anticipation? Fervor? She would have to find some way to take Dihya's madness into account when she pronounced sentence. If only they had psychotropic drugs, spare personnel to guard a mental ward... but they had neither. A quick death was the only mercy the colony could offer.
But Dihya said, "What of divine inspiration, Ayan? Is there no room in your justice for that?"
"What are you talking about, woman?"