- "I am a distinguished physician with full training and experience. Your people just destroyed a facility that could have helped thousands of patients. Does that mean nothing to you?"
- ―Zhoma's disgust at the actions of the Butlerians
Dr. Ori Zhoma [d. 4 BG] was a Suk doctor who ran the flagship Suk school on Salusa Secundus.
Biography[]
Zhoma trained in the Sisterhood of Rossak for two years, and great talent was seen in her by Mother Superior Raquella Berto-Anirul. Zhoma was interested in the potential of various Rossak drugs to increase strength, speed, endurance, mental acuity. But - a fact that was not discovered until much later - she also saw the profit potential, and she had started supplying black-market merchants with rare ex¬ tracts and intensely potent drugs, selling them at exorbitant prices, until she was caught. When facing Raquella, Zhoma tried to rationalize the extracurricular activities by asserting that her actions benefited the Sisterhood, but the voices in the Reverend Mother's head had been skeptical. Zhoma claimed that she had added all the profits to the school’s coffers, which she had, but that did not excuse her primary transgression and the Mother Superior had no choice but to send Zhoma away, though as a courtesy she did made the reasons public. Because the woman had such potential, Raquella had allowed her to keep her reputation, and Zhoma’s career had not been affected. She applied to the Suk Medical School, excelled there, and made herself an important and influential person.
Seeing the corruption of Dr. Elo Bando, the leader of the leader of the flagship school on Salusa Secundus, at which Zhoma trained, she decided to take matters into her own hands, as she believed that Bando's actions would ultimately destroy the School. Because of this, she took to inject him with dozens of lethal chemicals in his office, then used her position to cover up her crime and rule the death a suicide. As Zhoma was the most accomplished and important member of the School after Bando's death, she was appointed leader.
In the years after killing Bando and taking over his position, Zhoma spent very little time serving as a physician; instead, she constantly sought funding and promoted the cause of the Suk School. In effect, she had become a solicitor rather than a doctor, but such work was necessary for the survival of the institution, which was widely acknowledged as the best humanity had to offer.
While visiting Rossak forty years after her banishment from the Sisterhood, Zhoma was recruited by Raquella to make Emperor Salvador Corrino, who had chosen Zhoma as his new personal Suk doctor, sterile, as they feared he would give birth to a potentially disasterous tyrant. While Zhoma achieved these ends, she was killed by Roderick Corrino under the guise of Toure Bomoko, and the Crown Prince pretented that the DNA showed that it was the real Bomoko, both ending the riots over the Orange Catholic Bible and killings and getting rid of Zhoma.