The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (24 page)

Up in the loft, Femmedarme Bukhari lay with a stunner poised at a small concealed opening in the ceiling.  Absod and Yukana lay a few inches away by another hole, a second stunner resting beside them.  When someone spoke aloud down in the gathering room, Absod would repeat the words a split-second later into the sub-vocal transmitter on her wrist, even as she continued to listen.  When there was no one speaking in the room below, Yukana would take up her soundless whispering into Absod's ear, and Absod would repeat those words into the transmitter. 

"The one with the prayer book is Naomi Isachs," Yukana breathed.  "She's a postal worker.  And a writer.  Nicolai is beside her, her daughter.  Bela is her husband.  He's with their other daughter, Silvie, over there, in front of the man at the street door."

Absod moved her lips against Yukana's ear.  "That's Dobruja." 

Yukana watched Dobruja with his big gun striding stolidly back and forth across the entranceway, covering both the front doors and the gathered people.  His boots marked a sharp rhythm on the wooden floor.  Occasionally a slap to the side of his weapon coincided with one of his steps, escalating the room's uneasiness.

Across from him on the bimah and almost under the Femmedarmes in the loft, Cuza was shifting from one foot to the other, watching the crowd, occasionally glancing at the end of the shotgun which nestled behind Hasora Nelavrancea's ear.

"What's your name?"  Hasora's voice was even, almost conversational. 

He looked at her.  "Cuza.  I'm Cuza," he stammered.

"Cuza.  My name is Hasora."  She held her shawl easily around her shoulders. 

Cuza nodded sharply.  Hasora nodded back.  Mild panic crossed Cuza's countenance.  He pushed the gun tighter against the woman's neck, placed a deliberate scowl on his face, and looked out over the crowd.

Rebbe Sarah Bas Miriam was imbued with cool intention.  She stood calmly against the muzzle of Ángel's uzi.  Ángel leaned a little upon the west wall, breathing shallowly.  At every opportunity, Rebbe Sarah spoke.  She spoke to give strength to her people, she spoke to disturb her captor.  Each time she spoke, Ángel would jerk to attention and command her silence, pushing the uzi harder under her ribs.

When Rebbe Sarah was not speaking, others were, to each other and to the habitantes.  They quoted Moshe, the Talmud, obscure and even spurious texts.  They told stories.  They questioned, challenged, cajoled, admonished, and in every possible way agitated politely, testing and pushing the limits of their captors' endurance until one or another of the four men exploded again into invectives and threats.  After a lull, someone else in the assemblage would dare to speak.

Gabriel Girardon was not in good shape.  His big body sweated and ached and itched.  He had replaced the Weatherby rifle's four-shot magazine and stood now letting it drift from one figure to another in the crowd, sometimes drawing a careful bead over the iron sights, more often simply pointing the weapon and watching his targets shift nervously.  He risked letting go of the trigger long enough to rub his arm.  Jesus, his flesh crawled.

We're all on the edge, he thought to himself.  No sleep in the last eighteen hours, and then pulling off a number like that, a prison revolt unparalleled in history.  He had to hand it to Ángel.  Their plan had gone like clockwork, right up to the big hitch, when they lost their chance for Femmedarme hostages and had to improvise. 

He figured civilian hostages were even better.  And this bunch was fascinating -- for all their curls and costumes, they were high-spirited and downright brazen.  He shouldered the Weatherby and settled the sights on the older woman fanning herself and hugging a small boy.  Then on two men with their arms around each other.  Everybody, in fact, was holding somebody.  He played the rifle in a slow figure-eight over the crowd.

His mind flashed back to the Depot, to Big Stone lying in his own blood, smiling and talking about the animals with his last breath.  Gabe pursed his lips and pushed down the pressure that rose behind his eyes.  Such a good man.  Baldy, you were such a good man.  Then there was Ángel with his thin little smile, Ángel stroking the hot shotgun.  Fucking fool.

Well, Ángel was having his problems today, across the room there with the rebbe.  Now that was a piece of work, he thought, the rebbe.  She was faintly familiar, like maybe he'd seen her on space westerns or holofests.  He relaxed his vigilance a moment to work his neck in a circular stretch and wipe his face on his sleeve.   

She had acted up again, that woman, calling out to the  other people and reassuring them of their ultimate safety.  She was giving Ángel too much lip.  He'd blow her into the middle of next week without batting an eye.  This time, he noticed, Ángel had responded by seizing the rebbe's sash, jerking it from her body with his free hand and slipping it under both of her upper arms so he could hold her arms behind her.  Gabe scratched his wrist against the rifle stock.

In the loft, Yukana whispered, "Bela is talking now."  She leaned down to hear.

Bela Isachs had turned between two benches, directing his words to the whole group and to each of the habitantes.

". . . that many of us here, perhaps most of us, are in absolute sympathy with your demands.  We hold that no one has the right to tamper with the body of another, and that includes habitantes.  But what you ask for no one is able to grant at this time."  Bela started to walk with Silvie toward the rest of their family several yards away. 

"Hold it!" shouted Gabriel, waving his rifle.  "You don't move!"

Bela protested gently, "I am simply trying to--"

Gabriel fired a shot into the ceiling.  "Stop, I said!"

Bela froze in his steps. 

The shot pinged off a light fixture near the watchers in the loft.  Momentarily, Absod paused in her transmission.  Then she and her companions touched each other in reassurance that they were safe.

Cuza exploded at Ángel.  "Balls, Ángel!  Let's blast out of here!  These--"

"Shut up, Cuza!"  Ángel left off his attempt to immobilize the rebbe's hands behind her back.  He dug the gun under her ribs and scanned the room.  "Time, Lucas!"

Dobruja stopped his pacing and consulted his wrist watch.  "They got seven minutes."  He stood spread-legged and dropped the M-60 to his hip, waving it back and forth in a belligerent promise.

Ángel snatched at one of the rebbe's rebellious arms.  "What's happening in the street?"

Dobruja stepped back into the foyer and crouched, peering out the broken window.  "Flex-cars haven't moved.  Nothing's moving."

"Then we don't move.  Not yet."  Ángel scanned the room.

The wait went on.  Dobruja punctuated the silence with his resumed pacing.  Cuza swallowed.  And swallowed again.  Gabriel swiped his face with his sleeve and panned the rifle over the crowd.  Ángel tightened his one-handed hold on the rebbe's sash.

In the loft, Absod began transmitting again.  "Only a warning shot.  We are holding stunfire, as ordered, unless they  fire on one of the hostages.  Our range is doubtful anyway, except for Cuza directly below us."  She continued describing the scene, concentrating on Ángel now, who was fretting visibly because the rebbe's arms kept resisting his binding of them behind her back.

"Brother Gabriel!"  Ángel boomed suddenly  "Focus on this target!"  He pointed to the rebbe's forehead.  As Gabe shifted his rifle, Ángel very deliberately laid his uzi on the floor beside him and wrenched Rebbe Sarah's arms behind her.  He began securing them with a jerk that drew her body into an erect and strained posture.

The ambience of the gathering room had begun to shift.  Breaths got shorter.  Bodies grew rigid.  Eyes moved in quick glances and met other eyes.  Livia Radischev's hand found Avrom's and wrapped it in a slow strong squeeze.  Hasora, pushed against the podium on the platform, stretched her head to the side, as if to slip away from the muzzle at her neck.  Cuza responded to her gesture by expelling a rough expletive and pushing the barrel deeper under her jaw.

Widow Sandvei, no longer fanning herself, was drawing her nephew's small body closer to her on the bench and filling her other arm with two girlchildren.  She closed her eyes and listened to the rhythms in her head.  Then she let the rhythms touch her vocal cords and began gently to hum a little tune, a niggun.  One of her neighbors began humming softly with her and then brought the wordless melody into a full sound.

Livia and Avrom, across the room from Widow Sandvei, picked up the melody with their voices.  Others in different parts of the shul began to join in the open-mouthed humming, tentatively at first, and then more pointedly.

Dobruja stopped his pacing and looked around the shul, trying to locate the singers in a mass of slightly open-mouthed people.  "Shuddup!" he shouted, "Shuddup!"

Throughout the shul the volume rose.

"Shuddup, shuddup!" Dobruja yelled again.  "Stop the ya-ya-ing!" 

The ya-ya-ing grew perceptibly louder.

The instant after Ángel's command, Gabriel Girardon raised his rifle and found himself in a distorted world.  At the end of his aim stood Rebbe Sarah Bas Miriam.  Her face seemed huge, completely covering his field of vision.  The crosshairs of a telescopic sight rested on her brow, just as if he were sighting through a high-powered Leupold 1-4X.  He blinked both eyes and lowered the rifle. 

The whole scene was normal size again -- the rebbe resisting Ángel, Ángel behind her affixing her bondage, the scattered energies in the room beginning to coalesce into some dangerous pattern, the rifle sporting no scope at all but only its ordinary iron sights.  Gabe fought off a fuzziness in his head.  He wiped a wet hand on his thigh and re-shouldered the weapon.

There was her head again, like on a huge screen, and the crosshairs, too, quivering on her temple.  As she yielded finally to Ángel's successful capture of both her arms, Rebbe Sarah tilted her chin further upward in defiance.  Gabriel began shaking.  He did know her!  He'd seen this woman before, the translucent skin, the strong jaw . . . Stone's doxy!  The vixen tattooed on Big Stone's arm!  At that moment, the rebbe turned her full face toward the rifle barrel and fixed Gabriel with flashing black eyes.  Philipa, his Wicked Step-Sister!

Gabriel uttered a low cry and stepped backward, struggling to keep the rifle on target.  And still her face filled his vision.  He blinked both eyes open again and looked around, drinking in with glad relief the reality of normal-sized people nodding their heads and singing, the truth of Dobruja's shaking the M-60 as he railed at the louder intonations, the sight of Ángel drawing the rebbe into a rigid stance as he tightened the sash into a knot at her back.  Thus heartened, Gabriel took his aim again . . . and stood galvanized, staring incredulous at the magnified target, at the black eyes that probed his own.

Across from him he heard Ángel's attempt to override the room's swelling sound by the sheer volume of his voice.  "You will be quiet!  You will stop the noise!"  He knew without looking that Ángel was trying to reach his uzi and hold the rebbe immobile at the same time.

"He will kill her!" Ángel shouted.  "You will stop or he will kill your leader!"  Gabe knew that Ángel was pointing at him.

The enlarged visage of his target shimmered.  Her eyes -- Philipa's eyes! -- still blazed at him.  Beautiful!  And treacherous.  An intoxicated vengeance rose in his gut.  He took his marksman's breath and settled the crosshairs in the precise center of the woman's forehead.  A triumphant shout was being born in his throat.

Abruptly, the rebbe ceased her singing of the niggun.  Her countenance rested in composure for an instant, the black eyes warm and soft upon her executioner.  Then her lips began the unfolding of a gift that Gabriel did not dare to receive. 

Rebbe Sarah Bas Miriam turned on Gabriel Girardon the complete and magnificent glory of her smile!

A torrent of gratitude engulfed Gabe.  He wanted to cry, to fling down his rifle and run to her, throwing himself at her feet!  He wanted to laugh and sing and dance.  And still she smiled at him.  Across the gathering of her people, the rebbe's black eyes commanded her assassin.

Gabe's vision split.  One part trembled on his target beneath the crosshairs.  The other beheld the whole gathering room, a scene that was about to shift from hesitation to action.

Cuzaignited it.  "I said shuddup!" he bellowed at the rising chant, swinging his weapon toward the hostages, at last committed to firing into their midst.  "Shuddup!"

Hasora, freed from the shotgun muzzle, leapt at Cuza and seized him by the neck.  She pulled him backward toward the side railing of the platform.  He faltered, then braced himself and pushed the stock of the gun hard into Hasora's stomach.  She fell from the platform, and immediately he raised the gun again.  With a howl, he drove its butt hard into her face.

At that instant the congregation's song became a roar.

From every part of the room, like an enormously mounting tide, the people began to move.  As one body they heaved upward from their center and surged outward in every direction toward their captors, gaining momentum as they rose.  An irresistible resolve drove them forward, and with them, from their collective throat, rolled the thunder of a profound justice.

Ángel shrieked.  "Kill her, Brother Gabriel!  Kill her now!"   

The sights of the rifle centered on the forehead of Rebbe Sarah Bas Miriam.  Gabe's finger automatically tightened on the trigger.  Then, with deliberate unimpassioned purpose, he shifted the rifle several inches to the right, capturing there the enhanced countenance of Ángel Espartero, his one arm barely controlling the rebbe, his other still straining toward his precious uzi on the floor.

Calmly, Gabe fixed the crosshairs at the top of the bridge of Ángel's nose, on the spot just above and equidistant from each of the eyes. 

He fired.

Ángel's head wrenched backward, and a round spot appeared between his eyebrows.  In frozen wide-eyed astonishment, he sagged out of the range of the crosshairs and onto the floor by the bound rebbe. 

Gabe lost his telescopic vision.  The rebbe was at a normal distance now, and so was the eruption of the congregants.  As he watched Ángel sinking to the floor Gabe marvelled at the pattern unfolding before him: women, men, and children, with their arms upraised, their voices afire, their wild purples flying, were rolling outward, relentlessly and irrevocably.