The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (17 page)

The activity of subdued hums, clicks, and beeps vibrated from the computer.  It sang a plaintive solo for many long seconds.  Dhamni took her own deep breath.  "Unthinkable, of course," she said.  Another short electronic solo of clicks from the terminals.  She closed her eyes and pressed her hands together against her chin.  A long moment later, her eyes snapped open and her warm laughter broke over their work area.  "If no violence center is discovered," she announced, "then we're wrong, Jezebel!  We're wrong, and relieved of a tremendous burden!" 

For a fleeting instant Jez caught a glimpse of a longer, broader view of their efforts.  "Yes," she whispered, joining Dhamni's laughter.  "Yes!" 

They resumed their work for hours more, late into the afternoon, assessing each tri-satrapy's five Websters -- their personalities, their histories, their interactions with each other, their public and/or private statements regarding the Testing or the Protocols.  At last they called up a wide screen from the large table's center to display the results of their work, and they began to take heart once more.

It was widely acknowledged that, for whatever reasons, the Asia-China-Insula Tri-Satrapy constituted the solid block of Testing and Protocol proponents.  The tri-satrapy's only elected member and its at-large Webster was R. Mountainfire Laanolua (Kea, Hawaii).  She had actually been swept into office because of her effective advocacy of the Protocols and Habitante Testing.  Jez decided that there were five strong advocates for their cause from the Asia-China-Insula Tri-Satrapy.

Laanolua's most powerful adversary, if power and adversaries could be mentioned in regard to the Central Web, was Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy's at-large Webster, María Albizú Sotomayor (San Juan, Puerto Rico), who had not actually campaigned against Testing or the Protocols but whose admiration of and loyalty to Zella Terremoto Adverb was well known.  She would unquestionably oppose Habitante Testing -- and the Protocols as well.  Nueva Tierra's two "vigorous" members, Francesca Carolina Love (San Francisco) and Anita Eugenia Mondales (Buenos Aires) had both taken refuge behind a wall of silence on both issues. 

Nueva Tierra's two "wise" members, Jacqueline Ortiz (Panama City) and Harriet Woodswoman (Sternville, British Columbia) had also declined public comment.  Both had family members who were Kanshou and thus were probably influenced by protofobe ideology, but Jez also reported that Ortiz's Vigilante niece regularly challenged her aunt in loud argument -- to the entertainment of their neighbors -- about Ortiz's "fascism" on the matter of Habitante Testing.  And Woodswoman, Jez told Dhamni, had once announced at a small social gathering that she herself would submit to scientific experimentation if there were a chance that some physical source of violence could be discovered.  On the question of Testing, Jez assessed the Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy Websters as one "no," one "yes," two "maybes," and one "step aside."

Vigorous Waltha Brentana of New Berlin, for reasons Jez and Dhamni speculated about at length, adamantly opposed any suggestion of Protocols or Habitante Testing.  Wise Exikia Sappho Mamadiamtis (Salonika, Greece) was equally as adamant in support of both Protocols and the Testing.  At-Large Farabi Dasutu (Bissau, Guinea Bissau) was not willing to talk with Jez; Dhamni feared that her refusal bespoke pressure from Tri-Satrapy Magister Lutu, whose rumored support of Dasutu had secured her at-large election to the Central Web.  The other two Websters of the Africa-Europe-Mideast Tri-Satrapy could not be counted either protofobe or protofile: Vigorous Thurlanki (Tabora, Tanzania) was reportedly in an agony of moral indecision; and information about Wise Rashida Bekir-Ghazi (Mosul, Iraq) was contradictory.  Jez figured for the entire tri-satrapy one "yes," two "nos," and two "maybes."

Dhamni and Jez scanned the screen.  No pattern apparent on the Protocols, but on Habitante Testing there were seven clear yeas and three clear nays, with four unknown and one that would stand aside.

"Not as bad as I thought," murmured Dhamni, deactivating screens and terminals.  "Consensus may be possible."  She pursed her lips.  "I am eased."

Jez leaned back against her cushions and called a glolobe to her.  It ignited with her touch.  She held it with both hands, letting it warm them.  "Dham, we can get the consensus.  We have months."

"Months to do what, Jezebel Stronglaces?"

Jez hugged her host.  "To inquire, Dhamni, to inquire and to speak our passion.  Months to create an atmosphere in which change can occur."

Dhamni let Jez hold her only for a moment.  "We actually have more time than that," she said, slowly stirring her long body into action.  "Once the Testing is proposed, we will have to move for extended consideration so all parts of Little Blue can be given a hearing.  There is so much work to be done!  Formal forums and referendums on the satrapy level, on the half-trap and quarter-trap levels, on demesne and sub-demesne levels.  Matters this vast and deep require a full year's deliberation.  This one could require even more.  And as always with that blessed process, the yeas and nays can change.  Time may work against us."

"I refuse to believe that." 

The cookery was totally quiet now except for one hungry sough from the old drain.  "Dhamni."  Jez spoke carefully.  "Shall we go for it?  Do we ask the Asia-China-Insula Websters to present the Testing proposal?"

Dhamni tapped her screen-lume against her teeth.  "Let us sleep on it.  I need another day to ponder."  She smiled, holding her hand over her heart.  "And to curb my own excitement!"

Jez straightened.  "And I need to reach Dicken.  Lay out the crunchies, Dham."  She stood up.  "I'll toss you a wild salad and top it with a sauce straight from the Mayans.  You will cry for more when you taste it."  She was half-out the door.  "Flatfone in the anteroom?"

Dhamni nodded.  Jez was gone. 

Dhamni gathered the comcubes and readers.  She closed her eyes and carefully planned her next series of movements.  With a long puff of breath, she rose to her feet and swept the work materials into her arms.  She sang softly while she packed them into her portacase. 

She was hauling crisp lettuce leaves from the coldcube unit when Jezebel appeared and leaned against the archway.

"Dhamni!"

"What. . .?"

"Dhamni, three bailiwicks have erupted!  Hanoi, Bucharest, Caracas.  One in each tri-satrapy!  Simultaneously!"

Dhamni crumpled the lettuce.  "No!"

"Vigilantes have the one in Caracas under control but Bucharest habitantes have escaped into the city.  Dicken says no one has heard from Hanoi since Amahs began evacuating free citizens at two, Bombay time.  Dicken says she's been fidgety all day.  Then when the news broke this afternoon, she . . ."  Jez stepped toward her friend.  "Dham--"  She faltered visibly and reached for a chair.  Dhamni rushed to her side.

"Sit down, Jezebel."  She put her arm around Jez's shivering body and slid the chair beneath her. 

"Dhamni.  Dhamni, it's the Testing.  The habitantes are protesting the Testing." 

"Ah-h-h-h."  Dhamni's voice was low.  She closed her eyes and knelt to hold Jez close to her.  "Shake, child," she murmured.  "It is worth shaking over." 

Dicken and Sulankisha found them a half-hour later, still holding each other. 

8 - Stone - [2087 C.E.]

"Habitantes are being punished for crimes against their fellow citizens.  They belong in cells or at least in restraints.  To allow them to roam freely is a mockery of justice.  Who knows what mischief they might conceive of under such permissive circumstances?   Matrix-Major Adverb is, frankly, insane." 

--Femmedarme Hedwoman Alka Hussein

Mideast Satrapy Commissioner

--Proceedings Of Global Bailiwick Commission

August 18, 2076

The close-range blast of a shotgun shattered and scattered the face of Femmedarme Ippolita Kemel.  She flew backward just as the bailiwick's sequencing station exploded behind her.  Her attacker, thrown against a deactivated hurtfield, staggered and reloaded for another assault with his antique weapon.

"Stop!"  Stone shouted to the man.  "Wait!"  His voice was a whisper against the chaos of alarm coils and phaserfire.  "Fucking stop!" he cried again, scrambling toward the fallen woman.  Kemel was one of his jailers, a hard-driving bitch with a voice like raw brake-shoes.  But she had her decent moments.

Two Flying Daggers dropped from the sky.  They overpowered Kemel's attacker.  Together with him and with Kemel they were blown skyward again, in pieces this time, by a trinimbric grenade cluster. 

Screams and howls, klaxons and sirens.  Then the rattle of an automatic weapon.  Stone saw Ángel, African print boxcap askew, spraying with his uzi the lifeless bodies of two more Femmedarmes.  Up and down and up, left to right and left again, bullets in a circle to the left, bullets in a circle to the right, up and down and up again, his wild laughter escalating with the splatter of soft flesh, the sting of fast blood.

Stone's distress turned to anger and began a slow rise from the base of his spine.  "Ángel!" he screamed, propelling himself into an arching lunge.  He brought the little man down to the dirt and split his grinning face with a single blow.  Yes!

Anointed by blood, Stone struck again, harder.  His adrenaline surged.  There, the cheekbone gave way!  He balled up his stinging knuckles and hurled them time and again into Ángel's skullbone, burying them deep into the softness of that fanatic brain.  He was omnipotent, invincible.  Right fist.  Left.  Harder!  His eyes were glazed, his cadence set for forever. 

At last he peaked and plunged, roaring into a sharp ecstasy.  He rode it downward, slowly, deliciously, until he was washed in a peace as vast as the ocean.  He rocked gently and let the frenzy leach from his bones.  His torso eased.  He smiled.

Silence.

Stone lay quiet, aware only of sticky wetness and throbbing fists.  The body below him whimpered.  He shook it.  It was not Ángel's body.  It was smaller and far more frail.  Stone felt tears mounting the hill behind his eyes.  "Petar!" he whispered.  Huge sobs rose and fell in his throat.  "Petar, I didn't mean it! I didn't mean--"

He could not fill his lungs.  He stroked the trembling form in his arms, rocking it, holding it close, resigned to never breathing again, chanting silent words: "Forgive me!  Please . . . Petar!"   

Petar's lips quivered.  Then his small hand reached upward and touched Stone's cheek.  Suddenly, and at last, the lock in Stone's windpipe gave way.  He gulped precious air, heaving it in and out, laughing and crying together the song of life again.

Lucio "Stone" Baragiali awoke to the squeak of his fold-down bunk bed, with tears and sweat soaking the bedclothes and chilling his bare arms.  With a recuperative gasp, he opened his eyes to the solid physical presence of his austere cell.  A shaft of sodium light from the window assured him that his habitante fatigues and cap still lay across the chair above his boots, that the books and papers on his otherwise bare table were undisturbed, that his latrine still sparkled with disinfected immaculateness. 

Petar was not there.  Petar had not been there since that day when Stone struck him.  Petar was with his mother in Kragujevac where he belonged.  Stone was in the Bucharest Bailiwick where he belonged.  And the habitante revolt had not yet taken place.

He snatched a clean undershirt from the cabinet at the end of the bed and pulled off the drenched one to dry the sweat from his bald head.  "Eagle," he muttered to one of his tattoos, "mullah, what am I doing wrong?" 

The eagle was the proud decoration of his right forearm, while the overlong copperhead on his left arm twined around the tall, bare body of a sensuous black-eyed woman, conveniently covering the three critical points of her erotic triangle.  Both drawings were positioned for Stone's eyes, not for those of other admirers.  He rubbed the shirt over the tattoos, scrutinizing them in the sodium light. 

By damn, they were for sure getting brighter.  He thought of his buddy, Gabriel, whose skin was too dark ever to take a tattoo and who razzed him about the animals on his arms.  It was the woman, though, who always fascinated Gabe.  She looked like Philipa, he said, his step-sister.  Gabe would lay a lithe black finger on the woman's navel and whisper, "Beautiful."

"You're just jealous, Monsieur Girardon," Big Stone would tell him, "because I can have her and you can't!"  But even Gabriel Girardon didn't know Stone's secret, that in his peripheral vision all of his tattoos would move, and then freeze into new positions.

When Eagle refused to answer him, Stone addressed the snake, looking at his fingertips instead of directly at her.  "You got any notions, Vivacious Viper?"  Unmistakably, the snake shivered and shot her tongue in and out.  "
This woman is a redeemer,"
Stone heard in his head.

"Who?  Tanya?  Well, she better be.  That's her job."  He chuckled.  "To redeem me."  The female form that Snake encircled, the body that so entranced Gabe, had originally been designed as Stone's ideal woman.  Then, when he needed a strong but gentle visage to go with the disembodied computer voice that guided him through his "em-vees," or Miller Violence Exploration Sequences, the tattoo woman had become Tanya, an intimate other self, his mentor, the persona he gave words to in the inner dialogue that now informed his every day.  Snake was right.  This woman could redeem him.

He wiped sweat from his chest.  Cooler now, he lay on his back and resolutely resisted the demanding behavior of his penis.  Instead, he placed his arms loosely at his sides and began a clearing ritual.  He relaxed and summoned the dark-eyed Tanya's smiling countenance.  "Come here, Puss."

"Not a good start, habitante," the image countered.

"Sorry.  Hello Tanya, my sweet, my beloved friend.  How's that?"

"Better.  Now," she seemed to say, "let's take it slow.  The bailiwick is exploding, right?  It's D-day, when you and Ángel and the rest will be blowing the place sky-high to protest the Testing and Protocols."