The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (28 page)
Read The Kanshou (Earthkeep) Online
Authors: Sally Miller Gearhart
At that moment, a ripple of light caught her eye. The crystal ballbakers lying uncovered on her desk were pulsing, perhaps stirred to life by the ambient light of the city -- or perhaps roused by a sinister resistance to her own thoughts. She moved toward them and bent close in order to observe their palpitation. "You beauties," she told them with reluctant admiration, "between you and the Protocols, men are righteously scared these days."
Carefully, she picked up the crystals by their tiny wooden handles and held them high at arm's length. They continued to quiver, forming a glowing vortex that encased her hands and drew her seductively toward a less substantial realm. She stood fascinated, watching their rhythm. "Somewhere on Little Blue," she murmured hazily, "there's a boy who sooner or later could turn your power to a far better use than burning off men's balls." She spoke as in a dream. "But we may never see his genius because we'll cripple him before he's able to grow up.
He may be out there right now," she added, looking toward the sprawling city, "somewhere in Los Angeles--"
"He's out there, all right,"
came a familiar voice, as if from her gleaming hands,
"but not in Los Angeles. He's in Arabia."
"Jezebel!" Zude called frantically, "Where are you?" She responded not so much to the strange words as to the voice that spoke them.
"I just found him day before yesterday,"
the voice continued, calmly,
"and I must still believe, Zude, that he will discover his creative genius
only because
he will no longer be violent. He will have had the surgery."
Zude was speechless. Unwittingly, she dropped the crystals onto her desk -- and broke their thrall.
"Jezebel!" she whispered. When Jez's voice spoke no more, Zude snatched up the crystals again, willing the return of her past lover's presence. Yet the ballbakers too were dark and inert. Ruefully, she thought of Bosca -- if she had some of the training that Bosca promised her, she might be able to reignite the ballbakers and retrieve the sound of Jezebel's voice.
Zude lowered herself into her chair, pushing the crystals aside, trying hard to recall the words that Jezebel had said in those surreal moments. "Where are you tonight," she cried, "Jezebel, my witch?"
Still no answer.
Zude's fingers clasped the unpartnered unicorn earring. Unbidden tears rolled down her cheeks. The love and anger, the kinship and the betrayal -- all the buried memories welled up from years past and rained their desolation upon her.
In that moment she opened the gates to more than her longing for Jezebel, letting a sea of conflicts and crises flood into her awareness. She burned with rage against habitantes willing to take worshipping citizens hostage in a shul, raged equally against protofiles who would deliberately cripple such habitantes. She despised any women who would use the ballbakers to wreak vengeance upon men. She despaired anew of any answer to the violence from both sexes that assailed her world.
She rose and paced, clutching fistsful of her hair tight against her scalp, attempting to relieve the growing pressures there. She tried to invoke a thing that would lift her heart, her chosen family: "Ria, Kayita, Regina, Enrique!" but their names as she spoke them fell lifeless upon the air. Her pride in the Kanshoubu, her respect for her Kanshoumates -- all burst into fleeting flame and fell to Earth in ashes. Her anguish drained the joy from every corner of her life.
And now, she noted wryly, even the lights of her city's homes were going out . . . steadily . . . one-by-one, leaving dark places especially deep and ominous tonight.
Zella Terremoto Adverb stood, cynical and immobile, inwardly spiralling down into a place she had rarely allowed to overtake her sensibilities, into deepening desolation, into barren plains devoid of meaning where no hope could dawn. She sank again into her chair. She had never before uttered the words that crossed her lips.
"I give up," she whispered, and stared into space.
The ballbakers began pulsing again. Listlessly, Zude picked them up, then held them as before. She wondered, wretchedly, if those tiny crystals could kill. Her hands began glowing again, in that vortex of flickering brightness. She swallowed hard.
"That's good,"
she heard in the light that enfolded her hands. The voice was high and lilting, almost frivolous. This was not Jezebel.
Zude's fingers, holding the ballbakers tightly, began to tremble. "Who are you?" she rasped, belligerently.
"You will name me 'Swallower.'"
"Swallower?"
"Bosca will explain."
The voice had a tinkle to it. Groping for some assurance of control, Zude raised the crystals higher.
"Magister Adverb," the Swallower lilted, "I am here to guide you in your coming changes. Or am I too early? Do you prefer to wallow further in your pain?"
Zude's whole body broke into a prickly sweat. "Whoever you are, I don’t want—"
"What
do
you want? That's the only question."
Zude let the sudden tears fall without inhibition. "I want . . . I want so much," she whispered helplessly. "I want to see animals every day . . . horses and dogs and snakes and birds and mosquitos! I want a solution to the Protocols, one that won't trample anybody's rights, but . . ." her voice broke, " . . . but one that
does
give us a more peaceful world!" She rested her elbows on the desk, balancing the glowing crystals. "And," she added softly, "I want to see her again . . . Jezebel."
The illumination around her hands intensified.
"Then your work," said the Swallower, "is to move toward joy. Your work is to visualize more peace with no one's rights denied. Your work is to live as if any day now you will see all the animals again . . . and Jezebel, too."
"My
work
, you genie," Zude snapped, trying to hold the ballbakers steady, "or whatever you are . . . my
work
is to protect this planet and its people, my
work
is to put my body in harm's way if necessary to stop anything that could hurt them! My
work
is to fight for justice and freedom—"
"Your
work
is far more difficult than fighting," interrupted the Swallower.
Zude felt on the verge of throwing the ballbakers to the floor. "I'm too busy," she roared, "to spend time in fantasies!"
"Then you are too busy to learn your true destiny!"
Zude froze.
The sphere of light that encased her hands burned with a low incandescent heat. "Here is your path of change, Zella Terremoto Adverb!" the Swallower announced. "You have been a woman of action. Now you will become a woman of vision."
Barely breathing, Zude waited for the Swallower to say more. Instead, she heard again from the dimming light of the crystals the one voice that would always lift her heart.
Jezebel's words were filled with truth and adoration. Zude took them with her into the night:
"To this, my love,"
Jez commanded,
"you must surrender."
EARTHKEEP
CHRONOLOGY
Common Era Date
2003 | World Health Organization announces that alternative and complementary health practices lend hope for long life to persons of HIV-positive status. Deaths from Virus I (HIV) balloon in Indonesia, Bengal Bay, and Hong Kong as a result of contaminated blood supplies from the 1990's. |
2004 | Pan-European medical establishment announces first truly effective vaccine (Vaccine I) against Virus I, to be available immediately. |
2005 | Flossie YotomaLutu |
2006 | Precipitous emergence of mutant virus (Virus II) from the Virus I vaccine. |
2007 | Beginning of decade of escalating natural cataclysms, such as spikes in global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, famine, malaria, rivers poisoned by acid rain. China, India, and southeast Asia are especially stricken. |
2008 | Effective vaccine (Vaccine II) against Virus II is announced. |
2010 | Emergence from Vaccine II of a new strain of drug-resistant virus (Virus III). |
2012 | Vaccine III against Virus III is announced. |
2014 | Emergence of new viral mutation (Virus IV) from Vaccine III. |
2015 | Global riots against medical establishment take hundreds of lives. |
2018 | Global crusade to inoculate every citizen against Virus IV with Vaccine IV, the "vaccine to end all vaccines," which has been tested extensively on cloned animals. |
2019 | Widespread drought resulting from ecocide and global warming sends masses of starving people northward from Central and South America into southwestern United States. The defensive response of the U.S. military includes releasing upon the invading people swarms of Culex tarsalis mosquitoes carrying an influenza virus against which its own troops are inoculated. Tens of thousands die. |
2020 | The international outcry against the U.S.'s use of biological weaponry deals the deathblow to the global power of the United States as it had existed and assures the inclusion within North American borders of the newly formed Reclaimed Territory Of Aztlán, extending from Los Angeles to the Mississippi River. |
2021 | "Empty Monday," April 12, the day of the Animal Exodus from Little Blue. The death or disappearance of all multi-cellular animals except Homo sapiens. All subsequent attempts fail to clone stored animal DNA. |
2022 | Beginning of a decade of upward spiralling global unrest, exhibited in street wars, food riots, homeless rebellions, increased martial law, worldwide disruptions of power, communication, and transportation services. |
2023 | International Disarmament Accords end the possibility of biological, chemical, or nuclear war worldwide. |
2024 | Announcement that Vaccine IV has irrevocably suppressed the Y chromosome in men and reduced fertility in women by 80%. Estimates concur that by mid-century, global population will be just over one billion and that the ratio of women to men will be 12-to-1. |
2026 | Lin-ci Win |
2027 | Worldwide secession from their parent nations of religious fundamentalist sects whose precepts include enslavement of women and individualized strains of racist theology. Their staunch defense of their sovereign communities initiates the bloodiest decade of Little Blue's 21 Formation of Intenational Congress, representing nearly 75% of the nations of the world. |
2029 | Founding of the Amahrery's Kanshou Academy in Hong Kong, ushering in the era of women's peacekeeping principles and practices. |
2033 | Founding of the Femmedarmery's Kanshou Academy in Tripoli. |
2034 | Founding of the Vigilancia's Kanshou Academy in Los Angeles. |
2035 | Worldwide legal reforms begin the conversion of prison facilities into containment areas called "bailiwicks," whose inmates become "habitantes." Local police forces formally adopt Kanshou peacekeeping principles, practices, and ranks. |
2036 | Inchoate governance model based on values and practices familiar to women begins to emerge for Middle East geo-political territory, spearheaded by |
2038 | Transmogrifier technology is tentatively approved for worldwide distribution by International Congress. The profusion of world credit systems is standardized to accommodate the rapidly changing economy. (See |
2039 | Beginning of worldwide efforts to integrate and codify among nations economic and governmental relationships based upon values and practices familiar to women. Hearings, forums, and convocations in every major city explore the requirements of world government, delineating legislative, judicial, and implemental functions. |
2041 | Jezebel Stronglaces |
2042 | Zella Terremoto Adverb |
2043 | The Kitchen Table, international judicial body is formed, initially with five sitting Sifters. Half-trap, quarter-trap, and demesne tribunals are established upon the Kitchen Table Model. (See GLOBAL GOVERNANCE.) |
2044 | "Earthclasp," April 12, the day that citizens all over the world celebrate Earthkeep priorities. (See |
2046 | Centralizing of global peacekeeping policy by the formal merging of Amahrery, Femmedarmery, and Vigilancia into the Kanshoubu. First convening of the Heart Of All Kanshou, composed of Amahs, Femmedarmes, Vigilantes of all ranks and charged with the determining of the policies of the Kanshoubu. (See GLOBAL PEACEKEEPING.) |
2049 | Central Web, with 15 sitting Websters, is officially established to replace International Congress as world legislative body. Half-trap, quarter-trap, and demesne webs begin forming on the Central Web model. (See GLOBAL GOVERNANCE.) |
2050 | International census for the first time categorizes "satrapies" and "tri-satrapies" as geo-political entities. The global population is reported to be 1,242,000,000, of which female citizens are 92.3%, male citizens 7.7%. "Little Blue" is officially acknowledged as the most common popular reference to the planet Earth. |
2053 | The Year-Long Plenum in Tokyo formulates precepts of new global governance. The Plenary Constitution, a planet-wide governing document, takes shape. "Global" begins to replace "international" in the daily parlance of citizens. Newly formed bureaus and boards take up the regulation of economic affairs and the implementation of legislative decisions. |
2057 | Nueva Tierra Norte Satrapy, after long negotiation with its southeastern precincts, finally confirms both the spirit and letter of the Plenary Constitution, thus completing the ratification of that global document. |
2062 | Amah High Captain Lin-ci Win |
2066 | Flossie Yotoma Lutu |
2067 | Zella Terremoto Adverb (Zude) |
2078 | Lin-ci Win |
2080 | Zella Terremoto Adverb (Zude) |
2084 | Jezebel Stronglaces |
2085 | Zella Terremoto Adverb (Zude) |
2086 | Global Consorority Of Neurosurgeons reveals proposal to use bailiwick habitantes in "the search for a physiological violence center in the brain" (Habitante Testing) and the possible institution of Anti-Violence Protocols, surgeries to eliminate any such physiological center. |