The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (23 page)

She looked neither down at the ground nor forward to her goal, concentrating instead on the how to's: how to pray, how to fold the shawl, how to bake challah, how to find the next fingerhold.  Then, there was the scaffolding, one of its planks extending beyond the corner, just at the height of her shoulder.    Less than a foot distant.

But the scaffolding might as well have been a mile away.  Between it and her hand the boards met exactly with no convenient overlap and no holding point.  Yukana wanted to cry.  "So close and yet so far," she reported to Captain Aru Boko.  "Sorry Ma'am, I just can't reach it."

"Can't reach it!  Nonsense.  Since when did a Femmedarme Foot-Shrieve give up?"  Captain Aru Boko's strong deep voice chided her.  "You have to try, tyrotrooper.  For the Sisterband, you have to try!"

Suddenly infused with determination, Yukana replied, "I can do it, Captain!"  Without giving herself time to doubt, she gathered her strength and launched her whole body toward the scaffold board, reaching out with both hands, reaching for the glory of the Sisterband, for the rescue of her people!  To her amazement, she grasped the extended plank, and it held!  She swung from it, victorious! 

The Sisterband cheered.  Yukana heaved with all the strength of her eleven-year-old biceps, bracing her feet against the building and vaulting onto the scaffold.  She returned Captain Aru Boko's salute.

She could hear more shouting now, and crowd noises in the distance.  The alleyway was still deserted, and the scaffolding rose above her, right to the top of the shul.  She was climbing now, just as she had done dozens of times over these last weeks, may Marguerite never look this way, scrambling up one level after the other until she reached the roof.  Quietly now, she moved up the steeply pitched roof section, just over the prayer hall itself.  She headed for the raised portion of the building, toward the flat roof of the old fly space over the area that had once been a stage.  The opening she sought was just below its eaves. 

As she topped the ridgepole, a loud part of the street beyond came into view.  Red lights blinked, shouts filled the air, bells and buzzers tapped out constant coded messages to bright-green-and-black-clad Femmedarmes who were urging citizens off the streets, back into buildings.  Two Kanshou flex-cars hovered at second story level, humming quietly.  Other flex-cars blocked off the street while 'Darmes in twos and threes deployed themselves to the sides of the shul, probably surrounding it.  Sure enough, Yukana could hear them now: noises from the back alley. 

She knelt there, caught up in the activity.  She had never seen so many Femmedarmes in one place, and with so many weapons!    Usually she had seen 'Darmes in pairs, walking up and down the neighborhood, talking to citizens.  Many of them didn't even wear their dart guns or stunners.  But always she knew that, in spite of their smiles and the casual way they moved, they were ready for instant action!  They were wonderful, highly trained and--

Suddenly, behind her and from the scaffold, bullets whizzed and ricocheted again.  Yukana plastered herself to the pitched roof, genuinely terrified.  A man's voice shouted from inside the shul, followed by another burst of automatic gunfire.  She heard  women's voices.  One said, "Back, Band!  Back!" 

"Hurry tyrotrooper!"

Yukana pulled herself over the top of the roof and then began scrambling toward the safety of the loft. 

At that moment, the most extraordinary experience of her young life took place: someone grabbed her and lifted her up.  She saw the roof of the shul drop from under her.  She started to cry out.

"Hush, kit!"  The voice enfolded her.  And so did the arms of two women who were carrying her between them.  Flying Daggers!  The Flying Daggers Of The Femmedarmery!  She was flying!

Yukana looked down, and again almost bellowed her fear.  Instead she clinched her eyes shut and offered to God the most fervent prayer she had ever uttered.  As if in answer, her fear drained from her and she found herself laughing and looking all around and sailing high over Bunch Park on a sun-warmed Shabbos morning with two green-and-black-garbed women holding her securely between them.

One of the Daggers, the larger one, was talking into the  comunit on her wrist.  "--out of range now.  Let's take--"

"There," interrupted the smaller woman, pointing to the park's bell tower just beyond and below them.  They began dropping fast.

"Hold on," said the larger woman.

They swooped around the top of the tower and landed on the far side of its high observation platform.  Yukana hardly felt the impact.

"Now," said the smaller Kanshou.  "How are you?  Are you hurt?"  She was bending so as to be on Yukana's level.

"No.  I'm fine."

"And your name?"

"Yukana."

"Yukana," said the smaller 'Darme, "I'm Bukhari and this is Absod.  Tell us, what were you doing on the roof?"  She brushed Yukana's hair from her brow.

"I was trying to get in the loft so I could see."

Absod knelt.  "The loft of the shul?"

"Yes."  Yukana thought Absod was probably the most beautiful woman in the world. 

The two women looked at each other.  Then Absod said, "Is it easy to get into the loft?"

"Well, yes.  But it's hard to find the door."

"Could I get in?" Bukhari asked.  "Could Absod?  Could we all three?"

"Sure.  But they'd hear us if we were loud."

Bukhari took a deep breath.  "We would be very quiet, Yukana.  We need your help.  Will you take us there?"

Yukana grinned.  "We get to fly back?"

Absod smiled an assent, then said to her partner, "I'll report."  She stepped aside, pressed the back of her wrist to her mouth, and began whispering rapidly into the subvocal sound field.

Bukhari sat on the platform and pulled Yukana to her lap.  She shook open a green-lined cape and wrapped Yukana in it, then began rubbing her cold feet.  "Were you in the shul, Yukana?"

Yukana nodded.  "I got out when the shooting started.  Please tell me what's happening."

"Well, you're the only one who got out, kit.  Four habitantes invaded your Shabbos service.  They have escaped from the bailiwick, and they're holding as hostages all the people in the shul."

"Hostages?"

"They're going to keep your friends there threatening them with their guns until they get what they want."

"They're going to kill them?"

"I hope not.  No one has been hurt, at least so far."

Yukana released her breath.  "What do they want?"

"That's complicated.  Mostly they want the government to promise that they will never be operated on without their consent."

"But why--?"

"Yukana, this is no time to explain.  I'll tell you later.  Right now you and Absod and I have work to do.  Are you strong?"

"She got up to that roof, Buke."  Absod had finished her report.  "And we've got the okay to take our position in the loft.  Flex-cars will back off and the fogging unit will hold, too.  But they'll both cover the scaffold, keep the habitantes from coming up onto the roof in case they get that notion.  The men know now that the scaffold is there."  She looked at Yukana.  "How big is the hole you can see through from the loft?"

"Not very big.  Nobody can see it unless they're really looking hard.  But we could take out another panel.  Are we going to jump them from up there?"  Yukana's Sisterband identity began to re-emerge.

"No, but we might want to use tanglestick.  That's--"

"That's a spray that drops down over a criminal and captures and freezes him, like a spider's web," finished Yukana.  "It doesn't hurt them, though."

"Right," smiled Absod.  "Well, we'll have to see when we get there.  Will you help us get your folks out of this?"

"Yes, Ma'am, Captain!"  She held up her hand in the half-womb salute.

Absod grinned, fitting her own thumb and forefinger to Yukana's to make the full-womb salute.  "Good, tyrotrooper!  Let's go!"  She nodded to Bukhari and the two Daggers stepped into their spooning position, placing Yukana in front of them.  They uttered an incantation barely audible to Yukana, and then the three of them pushed upward into the sky, and swooped down toward the shul.

And thus it was that Tyrotrooper Yukana Asachi secured a leave from Captain Aru Boko's Lowland Foot-Shrieves and the Fighting Sisterband in order to carry out a high priority mission with the Flying Daggers.

* * * * * * * * *

Sub-Aga Dimitria Iorga laid open the flatscreen for Marshal Alexa Litulescu, miles away at Bucharest's western dispatch center where she faced her transmitted image of Iorga's flatscreen diagram.  The projection showed not only the exact location and capability of all flex-cars and Foot-Shrieves, but also a plot of the shul itself, including the two Flying Daggers who crouched with their young guide above the gathering room of the building.  A dotted line circumscribed the area occupied by the hundred or so hostages, and depth swipes demonstrated the relative layout of benches, steps, bimah, and lighting fixtures.  Four red triangles blinked at points approximately equidistant from each other on the perimeter of the dotted line.  As Iorga made her report, brief whistles accompanied the occasional shifting of the squares that represented Femmedarmes or flex-cars outside the building.

"What you see," Iorga told her superior, "is projections from sonar-Kurlian units combined with sub-vocal descriptions from Bukhari-Gert-Absod as they observe from above."  The Femmedarme's voice faded momentarily as she leaned back to check the elevation and location of her own parked flex-car.  "The two 'Darmes are in constant verbal flow, reporting everything said or done in the room below.  Their guide is able to identify every one of the hostages.  We are recording all we get from them for reference.  And we're working to define the positions of individual hostages inside the dotted line." 

Iorga paused.  "The habitantes are taking their orders from Ángel Espartero.  Ángel stands here now," she said, pointing to the triangle on the west side of the hall, "still with the short-barrel uzi in the rebbe's back."  She highlighted the blue circle by the triangle.  "Here's the sharpshooter, Gabriel Girardon, across from him in front of the Ark on the east wall.  Gabriel's nervous, keeps wiping sweat, rubbing his arms.

"Every now and then Ángel raves," the Sub-Aga continued.  "He apparently had Girardon make a little show of his marksmanship, then he and Cuza appeared at the street door holding the rebbe in front of them as they repeated their demands."

Marshal Litulescu pointed with her own lumerod to the shul's street door.  "That was here?" she asked. 

"Right," Iorga said, following the light, "south side."

"No chance to stun them?"

"Not with the rebbe in front of them."  Iorga then drew her own lumerod to another pairing of a triangle and a circle, this time at the building's north side.  "When Victor Cuza came back into the hall, he took up a position here at the bimah.  He has his gun in the neck of one of the women . . . ah, they say her name's Hasora, Hasora Nelavrancea.  Bukhari reports that it is not an automatic weapon as we first thought, but probably a single barrel shotgun, as best she can determine from right above him there at the bimah."  She moved her lumerod toward the foyer, across from Cuza. 

"Lucas Dobruja carries the big M-60.  He's guarding the street entrance.  Bukhari and Absod report that he had ripped up the ceiling with that thing."  She paused.  "Both Dobruja and Ángel are mass killers," she added.  "Either one of them could take a notion at any time to wipe out all of the hostages."

The Marshal drew in a long breath.  "No accident that they are the ones with the automatic fire-power."  Another pause.  "Looks like all four are fairly close to the big group."

"Yes," answered the Sub-Aga, "all four of them are approximately ten feet from the crowd."

"Close enough to scare everybody out of their pants," muttered Marshal Litulescu.

"Bukhari says they're plainly scared but very calm.  They've got a regular conversation going on, with lots of people from the group speaking up.  Every now and then Girardon or Dobruja will yell at them to shut up, or Ángel or Cuza will threaten to waste the rebbe or Hasora.  Then they do get quiet, but only for a little while.  They're trying now, if you can believe it, to reason with the habitantes."  Iorga paused.  "Ma'am, Ángel gave us half an hour.  That was. . . seventeen minutes ago.  We're holding for your orders."

"And you keep on holding.  I'll have Magister Lutu's go-ahead for negotiations as soon as she and Hedwoman Miaorescu complete their conference."

There was silence from the Sub-Aga.  Then, "Ma'am, with respect, I don't think they'll negotiate.  They aren't just trying to escape.  And they're not just demanding that they'll be protected from Habitante Testing.  They say that the whole proposal for the Testing and the Protocols is unconstitutional and inhumane.  They want assurance that no habitante will ever have to be subjected to such dictates."

"Sub-Aga Iorga," came the Marshal's chilly reply, "I am acquainted with those demands.  You yourself referred them to me, very clearly and efficiently.  But nobody, not I, not Hedwoman Miaorescu, not the Kitchen Table or the Central Web, not all three of the Magisters or the whole of the Kanshoubu, can guarantee those things."  Litulescu's voice was tinged with despair.  "The most they could do is grant these four men immunity to any future use of the Testing or the Protocols, and even that would encourage others to riot for the same favor."

The Marshal was brisk again.  "But yes, we negotiate.  We try everything and anything that might insure the well-being of the people in that building.  Is that understood?"

"'Stood, Marshal."

"Other questions or comments?"

"No, Ma'am."

"Good.  I'm out."  She broke the connection.

Sub-Aga Dimitria Iorga had seen Cuza's eager face as he held the shotgun to the rebbe's temple.  She'd heard the arrogance in Ángel's voice as he shouted out the unnegotiable demands.  She shook her head, looked at her chronometer, and returned to her monitoring duties.

* * * * * * * *

In the gathering room, small groups sat on the benches or stood holding each other, watching their four captors, encouraging each other with glances and barely perceptible nods. No longer focusing on the bimah, they faced in every direction, variously drawn or repelled by the threat that met them on all sides.  Girardon had forced Avrom and Livia from their protection of the Ark to seats on a bench.  Widow Sandvei sat fanning herself.  Vabili Tatosbuc stood with his arm around a taller man, his life partner, Eleazer Ben Asher.  The eyes of both of Yukana Asachi's mothers constantly roamed the room, still in search of their offspring.  Other children were holding close to adults or sitting with puzzled faces in conspicuous inactivity.