The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (26 page)

The figure of the Femmedarme Magister faded and then returned, together with an escalation of background voices and electronic activity.  Yotoma explained that the habitantes inside the Bucharest shul had begun firing upon the hostages.  Zude looked at the ceiling to see the surge of green-clad Femmedarmes pouring into the building through doors and windows, and rappelling from the roof.  The Sub-Aga's voice was announcing that three of the habitantes had been apprehended and the fourth was dead.  The toll of free citizens: one dead, ten wounded and under healing care.

Flossie shook her head.  When she leaned back into her contour chair, she did so with a masked pain.  I never saw her look so weary, Zude observed silently.  She blinked and tightened her lips.

The Magisters watched as Kanshou in all three tri-satrapies went about the task of restoring order in three of Little Blue's large cities.  Now's the hard part, thought Zude.  The glory's over.  And who does the cleaning up, the salving of hurts, the calming of fears?  The Amahs.  And the Femmedarmes and the Vigilantes.  That's who does it.  She let herself feel a burst of pride at the way the Kanshou had conducted themselves, at the obvious gratitude and respect that the people showed to them.  Just plain decent, she thought.  Decent.

Lin-ci's voice broke her reverie.  "Kanshoumates, we have fortunately not needed this meeting.  If you will excuse me I will get back to my duties."

Yotoma held up her hand.  "I'd like to get back, too.  But we need to confer on another matter.  Just before everything broke loose this morning I was about to call us together in emergency session."

Lin-ci Win sighed patiently.  "I can think of no duty so compelling right now as that of re-establishing a secure and orderly daily life in each of our respective precincts."

"I also have a matter of concern," Zude said.  "To all of us.  If we don't talk now, we'll have to do it before another day passes."

Lin-ci Win studied her Co-Magisters with a mild curiosity. "Very well."  She twisted from the waist in her Greatchair and spoke to her staff in Hong Kong.  "Send my congratulations to every Amah who participated in quelling the Hanoi riot and indicate that I shall be speaking with them shortly.  We are shifting our conference to confidential priority status."

She continued to delegate and refer tasks to her aides even as Zude spoke to Captain Edge.  "Slip us into a restricted sub-channel, Edge, but stand by.  You coming, Magister Lutu?"

"Lo, I am with you," responded Yotoma.  She spoke briefly to the Femmedarmes below and behind her before she joined her Co-Magisters.

Lights lowered, the ceiling paqued out, and the Peace Room dropped away.  As invisible walls rose around her, Zude felt her contour chair physically elevated to another dimension.  The figures of Yotoma and Lin-ci Win were raised with her.  Zude smiled, knowing that each of the Magisters was perceiving herself as in-flesh and the other two full figures as holoprojections.

Yotoma spoke to the air behind and below her.  "Are we secure, Maggie?"  She turned back to the others.  "We are alone but on confidential record.  Satisfactory?"  Both her colleagues nodded.

"Let me begin, Magister Lutu."  Zude removed her cloak and withdrew from her tunic a small cloth bag.  She shook its contents into her hand for the other women to see.

Yotoma shed her cloak entirely and leaned forward as if to pick up the tiny objects.  "The ballbakers?"

"Yes."  Zude looked at Lin-ci Win.

Magister Win nodded.  "Crystals used to destroy testicles.    They must be tuned electronically, but since they are contraband that is not often done."

"Then how are they tuned?" Yotoma asked.

"By a witch who can contain and direct the energy.  The crystals themselves are not rare, but the women who can make them into weapons are."  The Amah Magister looked at Zude.  "They are common in our provinces.  Uprisings there, perhaps even the one in Hanoi today, are a clear protest against their increasing use by independent groups of women."

"So your Amahs told me," replied Zude thoughtfully.  "But surely the riots protest Habitante Testing and the Anti-Violence Protocols?"

"That too," shrugged Lin-ci Win.

Zude reached again into her tunic.  She pulled out another cotton bag and emptied into her hand an identical set of the crystals.  "This first set came to me by way of your Amahs, Magister Win.  This second was thrown out the window of an abandoned building here in Los Angeles night before last.  The Japanese woman who had been carrying them is called Noyoko Oraki, presently released from custody.  We're tracking her.  We think she is distributing the crystals in this country.  Or perhaps she's an itinerant tuner of such crystals." 

Yotoma looked at the Amah Magister.  "Zude and I talked earlier today, Magister Win, and I immediately made some cursory investigations.  There's no indication as yet of the use of these ballbakers in my Africa-Europe-Mideast satrapies."  Then she looked at Adverb.  "It's time to get it all on the table, Zude."

Lin-ci Win's eyes moved from Yotoma to Zude.

Zude cleared her throat.  "It's only hearsay, but among the three of us we've got to be clear.  Magister Win, the tale-tellers and undercover populace sources from your tri-satrapy insist that Mother Righters are inciting the bailiwick riots in order to demonstrate the need for research and, ultimately, for the Anti-Violence Protocols.  They escalate rumors in the bailiwicks that habitantes will be the first victims -- non-consenting adults -- of Habitante Testing.  And later of the Protocols.  Then the response of the bailiwicks becomes in itself a demonstration of the violence that the Protocols would prevent.

"Moreover, these crystals are apparently being produced in large quantities and distributed there not just to take vengeance on men but to create an atmosphere of threat as well.  Their very existence stirs up sentiment for the Testing and the Protocols.  Along with their use goes the message, 'If you had your head properly fixed, we would not have to castrate you.'"

Zude took a deep breath, then continued.  "Magister, the word on the street, at least in Gorakhpur and Shandong Province,  is that some Amahs are complicit in this agitation.  And even in the distribution of the ballbakers."

Beneath her red head covering, Lin-ci Win's immobile face began to flush.  She held Zude's eyes for a long moment.  "That is a very serious charge, Magister Adverb."

Zude counted a heartbeat before replying.  "These are very serious times, Magister Win."

The Amah Magister waited.  When Zude said no more, Lin-ci Win's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.  "Do you imply," she inquired in a velvet-over-steel voice, "that along with the Amahs I myself am alleged to be involved in the agitation of the bailiwicks and the distribution of the crystals?"

Zude's response was immediate and fierce.  "No!  I--"Yotoma interrupted, addressing Lin-ci Win.  "Magister, you have made no secret of your strong support of the Testing and the Protocols.  Citizens all over Little Blue are aware of your efforts to right the wrongs that men have committed against women -- citizens not just in your own Asia, China, and Island satrapies, but in Nueva Tierra as well -- Sur, Central, and Norte.  Certainly citizens throughout my own jurisdiction are aware of your position.  The answer to your question is 'yes.'  The rumors we refer to in fact do suggest that in your heart you might actually want to praise the women who castrate violent men, and to thank them for taking the law into their own hands.  The most vehement of them have even labelled you a Mother Righter." 

Zude's heart sank.  In the profound silence that surrounded the three of them, she mentally replayed all that she knew of Magister Win: her sterling record at the Amah Academy; the bullet in her spine which had only temporarily halted her brilliant career rise but which had nevertheless consigned her everafter to a wheelchair.  Lin-ci Win had then moved to the civilian sector, where she transformed the China Satrapy's Size Bureau into an efficient mega-organization that had become the model for commerce, agriculture, and population limits over the whole of Little Blue.  She had made a determined comeback to the Amahrery as an active Kanshou, a Vice-Magister, and ultimately Magister.  She had early-on taken a thoughtful and public stand as a protofile, one of those in favor of Habitante Testing and the Protocols.  She had been personally committed for thirty years to the woman whose tiger sculptures guarded public buildings all over China, and even Kanshou in other tri-satrapies had heard of her skill at 3-D Go and all-dimension chess.  She had a predilection for smoothies and ancient silks.  The rumor of a certain tattoo called a blush to many cheeks.

Once in Buenos Aires at a light weapons policy revision conference, when Zude was only a Matrix Major, she had worked in person with the visiting Magister Lin-ci Win.  Their mutual esteem had been immediate.  Their exchanges now that Zude was her ranking equal had always been cordial if more formal than Zude would have wished.  Recently, with the escalation of the Protocols controversy, Lin-ci had become more taciturn, her demeanor often formal and impenetrable, her emotional antennae more sensitive to potential insult.  And now Flossie Yotoma Lutu's expression of candor had brought them all to the brink of diplomatic peril by landing squarely in the middle of Lin-ci Win's sense of personal integrity. 

Lutu and Lin-ci Win sat deathly still, regarding each other on a level that Zude could not fathom.  She had no doubt that a whole internal drama surged now in the silence between them.  They were the planet's most sophisticated diplomats, two old hands seasoned to the operation of vast bureaucracies, and to the bargaining for what each understood to be justice and peace.  Each had been tempered by fires that Zude could only imagine in her own future, and not for the first time she felt like a seedling sprouting between two sequoias.

It was not Lin-ci Win but Magister Lutu who broke the silence.  "I say these things only to answer you truthfully, and to remind you that it would be strange if such rumors did not attempt to malign and indict you, given your strong and courageous stand in favor of the Protocols."  She caught Zude's eye, then addressed Lin-ci Win again.  "The suggestion that you could be complicit in such intrigue is of course too absurd to be entertained by any who know your history.  Never, not even for the sake of one of her bedrock beliefs, would Magister Lin-ci Win misuse the power of her office or fail to protect the rights of any person in her tri-satrapy.  I believe Magister Adverb agrees with me in this."  She paused, looking at Zude, who nodded emphatically.

Lin-ci Win sat perilously still.  Then her eyes fastened on Zude's.  "Magister Adverb, you have told me that Amahs are rumored to be actively agitating for the Protocols and even distributing the crystals.  You did that simply to inform me of the rumors?"

"Precisely that," answered Zude.

"And you in no way suggest that I might be involved in their actions, or that, knowing of their behavior, I might look aside and neglect to discipline them?"

"Never," Zude said.  "I expected and still expect that you will meticulously and extensively investigate the rumors, and that you will discipline with earnestness and dispatch any Amahs found responsible for any such behavior."

Lin-ci Win turned to Yotoma, and waited.

"Magister, I repeat," said Yotoma, "you would never allow wrongdoing to go unpunished.  Not even if you were in sympathy with the wrongdoer."

Lin-ci Win looked at Yotoma.  "Your candor is actually refreshing, Magister Lutu, and my present concern is not so much with the sullying of my name by the slander of the streets as with the intentions of my Co-Magisters."  With the bare shadow of a nod the Amah Magister addressed them both.  "I consider your words to be of good intent, if perhaps indiscreet.  I take no offense."

Zude's sigh was audible.  Yotoma's shoulders relaxed by a barely perceptible centimeter.Lin-ci Win sat silent. 

None of the three women stirred.

Then the Amah Magister moved her torso slightly back.  "We have just negotiated a very narrow strait," she announced.  She looked at her colleagues.  "I am eager to sail again on the open sea."

Zude felt at last easy in her chair.  "Sail on, Magister," she said.

"Thank you, Magister Win," said Yotoma.

Another silence, blessedly softer in texture. 

Then Yotoma spoke once more, her voice taking on an oratorical timbre.  "Today the three of us and the Kanshou who work with us have quelled some extensive riots.  We have returned Little Blue to a state of peace -- uneasy peace it may be, but peace."

Lin-ci Win cast a glance at Zude, who at that moment was casting a glance at her.

The Femmedarme Magister held up a hand.  "Hear me out," she said, still in her most formal mode.  "Yet nothing in what we have accomplished today as chief executive officers has been more important than what we have just done together in negotiating what you, Magister Win, call our very narrow strait.  I am genuinely grateful for that process."

Zude resisted an impulse to reach out and place the back of an inquiring hand on her friend's brow.  "Floss," she said slowly, never taking her eyes off Yotoma, "Floss, this sudden homage to process -- you sound like the worst kind of purist."  Her smile was a question.

"She sounds like a wise woman," Lin-ci Win observed.  Then she breached her own formality with a rich laugh.

Suddenly, Yotoma and Zude broke through their own tensions, eager to join Lin-ci's altered mood.  The three world leaders sat in a vibrating holofield, laughing together, laughing loud and long, into the universe, into some country that no one of them could have named but in which they stood together clasping each other's hands.

The Femmedarme Magister was the first to sober herself into speech.  "Thank you again, Lin-ci.  This makes it easier for me to bring up the matter that has obsessed me for some days now.  Can we continue?"

"The Lakota say that after laughter, all is lighter," Zude observed.  "I suspect there could be no better time, Magister Lutu, for us to continue."

"It
is
a kind of lightness of being, Zella," Lin-ci Win agreed.  "All political conferences should be conducted in this state.  Please continue, Flossie."  She waved her hand lightly.  "The Amahs and the bailiwicks can wait."