Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [258]
“Sunni-Shiite?” Maya asked.
“No. More conservative and liberal, with the liberals thought to be secular, and the conservatives religious, either Sunni or Shiite. And el-Hayil was a leader of the conservative Ahad. And he had been in the caravan Frank had traveled with that year. They had talked often, and Frank had asked him a lot of questions, really bored into him, in that way he had, until he felt that he understood you, or understood your party.”
Maya nodded, recognizing the description.
“So Frank knew him, and that night el-Hayil almost spoke at one point, and decided not to when Frank gave him a look. I saw this. Then Frank left, and el-Hayil left almost immediately after.”
Zeyk paused to sip coffee and think it over.
“That was the last I saw of either of them for the next couple of hours. It began to get ugly well before Boone was killed. Someone was cutting slogans on the windows of the medina, and the Ahad thought it was the Fetah, and some Ahad attacked a group of Fetah. After that they were fighting throughout the city, and fighting some American construction crews as well. Something happened. There were other fights going on as well. It was as if everyone had suddenly gone crazy.”
Maya nodded. “I remember that much.”
“So, well, we heard that Boone had disappeared, and we were down at the Syrian Gate checking the lock codes to see if he had gone out that way, and we found someone had gone out and hadn’t come back in, so we were on our way out when we heard the news about him. We couldn’t believe it. We went down to the medina and everyone was gathered there, and they all told us it was true. I got into the hospital after about a half hour of moving through the crowd. I saw him. You were there.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, you were, but Frank had already left. So I saw him, and went back out and told the others it was true. Even the Ahad were shocked, I am sure of that— Nasir, Ageyl, Abdullah. . . .”
“Yes,” Nazik said.
“But el-Hayil and Rashid Abou, and Buland Besseisso, were not there with us. And we were back at the residence facing Hajr el-kra Meshab when there was a very hard knocking at the door, and when we opened it el-Hayil fell into the room. He was already very sick, sweating and trying to vomit, and his skin all flushed and blotchy. His throat had swollen and he could barely talk. We helped him into the bathroom and saw he was choking on vomit. We called Yussuf in, and were trying to get Selim out to the clinic in our caravan when he stopped us. ‘They have killed me,’ he said. We asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘Chalmers.’ ”
“He said that?” Maya demanded.
“I said, ‘Who did this?’ and he said, ‘Chalmers.’ ”
As if from a great distance Maya heard Nazik say, “But there was more.”
Zeyk nodded. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Chalmers has killed me. Chalmers and Boone.’ He was choking it out word by word. He said, ‘We planned to kill Boone.’ Nazik and I groaned to hear this, and Selim seized me by the arm.” Zeyk reached out with both hands and clutched an invisible arm. “ ’He was going to kick us off Mars.’ He said this in such a way— I will never forget it. He truly believed it. That Boone was somehow going to kick us off Mars!” He shook his head, still incredulous.
“What happened then?”
“He—” Zeyk opened his hands. “He had a seizure. He held his throat first, then all his muscles—” He clenched his fists again. “He seized up and stopped breathing. We tried to get him breathing, but he never did. I didn’t know— tracheotomy? Artificial respiration? Antihistamines?” He shrugged. “He died in my arms.”
There was a long silence as Maya watched Zeyk remembering. It had been half a century since