The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (5 page)

"A what?"

"Do you find your anger escalating with successive minor irritations until at last you cross over from restraint to full-blown violence?"

"You bet," said the long-legged woman, savoring a familiar satisfaction.  She smiled.  "Where I come from nothing, not even tribal law, stops a Crossover.  How about you, Captain?" she inquired conversationally.

Zude was silent.  Then she said, "Yes, I've felt that."

"Then why aren't you sitting here, and me in your chair?"

Zude studied the woman.  "I don't know, habitante.  Just luck, I guess." 

A voice in the present filled the office.  "Magister?"

"Ah, Flora."  Zude straightened, shaking off the memory. 

"They've just landed on the roof.  Two Flying Daggers from Sydney: Amah Matrix Major Rhoda Densmore and Amah Jing-Cha Longleaf.  They brought with them in their gert a woman from Mexico.  She's called Bosca.  All three are waiting in the down-room."

"Fine, Flora.  Have Captain Edge bring them to me with whatever they want to drink.  And stand by."

She looked over the room, then crossed to a wallpocket, removing from it a box of cigarillos.  She hesitated, then placed the cigarillos on the circular table together with an ashtray.  She dimmed the lights and activated the depaque control for a full wall view of the vast twinkling city below. 

* * * * * * * *

Amah Jing-Cha Longleaf's comfortsuit usually adjusted easily to extraordinary climate or weather changes, guaranteeing that her body's optimum temperature was never disturbed.  But tonight she was freezing.  Last week's hops across the Pacific, gerting with Rhoda from ship to ship, had given her a quick chill or two, but nothing quite equalled this night's trip through that unexpected cold desert air.

She was following Bosca and Rhoda now, and their Vigilante escort, down into the Nueva Tierra's Shrievalty Building.  One by one they stepped into a downchuteand floated to a floor far below, emerging into a large multi-levelled rest area for Vigilancia personnel and their families.  Singly, in pairs or in groups, women and children read, ate, drank, played, talked, viewed flatfilms.  Longleaf could see the head of one smiling woman protruding from the end of a robomassager.   

The Vigilante who greeted them was square-faced and pale, even for a white woman.  "You have quarters here at the Shrievalty," she said, "with food and hot baths after you see the Magister."  She handed them cups of hempbrew and tea, then disappeared.  Longleaf sank down onto a thick couch beside Rhoda.  Bosca, sensing her chill, placed a gigantic shawl over her shoulders. 

Of the three of them, Bosca was clearly the native of this continent, a woman as aptly prepared for the cold desert nights as she was for the dry heat of its days.  She had insisted on making the flight between the two Gerting Amahs in a cotton robe that hooded and gloved her, keeping her warm all the way from the Mexican heartlandnorthwest to the city she had longed to see since childhood. 

Rhoda's voice broke into her reverie.  "Bosca, here's Captain Edge."  The three visitors forsook their cups and fell into step behind their imperious Vigilante guide.  Rhoda adjusted her belt and checked her uniform for impeccable presentation, smoothing the tekla of her neck cowl as she blessed again that extraordinary synthetic textile -- if in fact it
was
synthetic, since nobody knew for sure. 

Before they stepped into the upchute, Rhoda asked, "Captain, I forfeited a 'weapon' to the roof-keepers.  Can you tell me where it is?"  Edge withdrew a cotton pouch from the back of her sleeve, feeling the objects inside it.  "That's it," Rhoda nodded. 

"I'll check them out," said the Captain, "and have them ready for the Magister."  Then she added, "Is there a name for these items?"

"They're called 'ballbakers.'" Rhoda replied, with a small shrug. 

The upchute deposited them in a bare hallway.  To the surprise of the visitors, no door sighed open, no iris widened.  Instead, the small wall facing them simply began to disappear, gradually revealing a low-lit room.  Beyond it, a giant window hugged a vast pattern of lights.  Zella Terremoto Adverb stood in silhouette between them and her city, tonight bare of harbor fog.  She stepped forward from the shadows. 

On an almost tangible level, the first twenty seconds of the encounter would determine the course of the entire meeting.  It would set the tone and establish the myriad psychic and psychological parameters that would couch the exchanges that were to follow. 

For her part, Bosca saw the fog-naked city, stretching for miles behind the Magister's imposing figure.  "I'm the City Of Angels," something sang from a gentle congestion in her throat.  Quietly, she sang back to it, "Sprawl and fester all you please.  You're still beautiful." 

Jing-Cha Longleaf was thrust unexpectedly inside a silver-grey room where green plants hung in lush pockets of life.  When she saw the long-haired calico cat in the lighted desk inset, she involuntarily touched Rhoda's arm and expelled a low exclamation.  The Magister had preserved a reality from another era.  Zude's face was still shadowed beyond Longleaf's capacity to be sure, but she felt a kind of assurance from that part of the room and decided to trade some of her apprehension for a shade of trust.

Rhoda registered surprise that the Magister was not seven feet tall, reassured Longleaf by leaning toward her, and turned slightly in the direction of the Vigilante behind them so as to hold that formidable figure in her peripheral field of vision.

Captain Edge kept her first level attention on the woman whose rank pips designated her as a Matrix Major.  She prepared to move toward the transmogrifier as soon as opening formalities among the visitors were accomplished.

In the beginning seconds, Zella Terremoto Adverb saw before her two well-conditioned but wary Anglo women and a darker woman impossible to describe . . . except, Zude marveled to herself, except that she loves my city!  Zude raised both hands just above her head, extending to the visitors the womb formed by her thumbs and forefingers.  Her guests were one beat behind her in returning the high formal Kanshou salute.

"Amahs, we welcome you to the Vigilancia," Zude said, "I'm Zella Terremoto Adverb, Magister Of The Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy."

"Thank you, Magister," Rhoda replied.  "We are Amah Matrix Major Rhoda Densmore and Jing-Cha Longleaf, or Rhoda-Gert-Longleaf, from the Asia-China-Insula Tri-Satrapy.  We've come not as emissaries of Magister Lin-ci Win, but with her support.  And this is Bosca, who sheltered us in her Mexico home."

Bosca came to her unnecessary salute belatedly but vigorously.  She spoke as she lowered her arms.  "I'm a visitor, Magister, and not a part of these negotiations unless you want me here."

Zude was abrupt.  "Would you like a tour of the city?"  To Rhoda, that voice still belonged to a larger-than-life presence.

"Is there time?" Bosca asked.

"With our monitors, there's always time."  Zude smiled warmly.  With a touch of her hand she raised the room's general illumination and the circle of light over the round table.  "We can show you any public part of this city, ride above it or underneath it, move you through it as slowly as the Earth turns or as fast as a rocket."

"Are there flowers?"

"Fields of them, for as far as the eye can see.  Bluebells, pansies, exotics."

"And the ocean.  Can a visitor see the ocean?"

"The beach is one place you should go in person, particularly the part we've begun reclaiming.  You won't find a structure for miles.  No souvenir vendors or food kiosks."

"Then I'd like to accept your offer."

"Fine.  Edge, take Bosca to L-9 and have Lieutenant Nan give her the whole show."  The Captain nodded.  Zude continued, "and arrange a hovercraftfor a beach trip tomorrow." 

Edge nodded again.  She had placed full cups from the transmogrifier on the round table.  She turned now to gesture Bosca toward the wall where they had entered.  The wall dissolved once more, and Bosca nodded a quick thank-youto Zude before she disappeared into the hallway by the downchute.  The Vigilante started to follow her. 

"And Edge," the Magister's voice stopped her.  "Check my schedule.  Find out when I am free so I can pilot the hovercraftand conduct Bosca's tour of the beaches." 

As the wall reconstituted itself behind Bosca and Captain Edge, Longleaf shot her lover a covert glance of astonishment.  Rhoda widened her eyes almost imperceptibly and shrugged ever so slightly.  They watched the Magister who stood smiling at the repaqued wall.

Zude turned and glided toward the table, her extended arm inviting Rhoda and Longleaf to sit.  Longleaf physically felt a shift in the air as the Magister moved.  Zude seemed more to conquer space than merely to walk through it.

The window had repaqued itself, replacing the vista of lights with a holo perfectly matched to the room's cushion-like walls and ceiling panels.  Zude stood between her visitors as they sat at the table.

Rhoda broke the silence.  "You are a violinist, Magister?"

Zude glanced toward the instrument in its display nook and smiled briefly.  "A fiddler, Major.  And that a very long time ago."  Without pause, she declared, "It's always good to see Amahs," she said.  "I miss Hong Kong sometimes more even than my birthplace."  She adjusted the remaining chair.  "Are we in a rush?  Or may we share a such-and-such?"

"We've no time limit, Magister," said Longleaf.

"Then by all means," Zude replied.  She sat and noncommitally offered them cigarillos.  Predictably, both women declined. 

Longleaf spoke.  "Before we begin, I must tell you that  Matrix Major Densmore is the official spokeswoman here.  I have the kind of mind that will be able to reproduce this meeting verbatim, and with paralanguage and nonverbal counter- and sub-texts if requested.  That's my function."

Zude nodded.  "Our parallel to your talents is a flatfilm recording which at this moment is immortalizing us all on micropiezoplates.  I assume you do not object?"  Neither did.  All three women settled, significantly more comfortable now and ready for the such-and-such.  There was another silence.  "Your choice, visitors," Zude said.

"Let's acknowledge our mothers," Rhoda decided, catching Longleaf's eye and subsequent nod.

"Very well," said Zude.

"My mother was Rowena Densmore," Rhoda began.  "I remember her as pretty and strong, with lots of friends.  She took care of me and my brother in Nueva Tierra Norte until she died of radiation poisoning from the Warrenton waste storage site that took so many lives.  We lived in Lower Eastern Corridor, just below old D.C. in a complex of over a hundred families.

"I remember her best in the crisp white uniform she wore with her seniors in the nursing home.  She ironed those uniforms herself with an old electric because she didn't trust the cleaning service, and the regulation permapress fabrics were too limber for her.  She insisted that a limp uniform did not show enough respect for the old people.  Every night I'd stand beside her on a styrostiff chairand squirt the starch for her while she ironed."  Rhoda paused. 

"I remember . . . just before she left for work that last time.  She was feeling ill, but struggled to keep her spirits high.  Her starched collar scratched my face when she hugged me and adjusted our mom-calls.  Even after our aunt took us half way around the world to Sydney, I still kept that little mom-monitor to remember her by."  Rhoda closed her hands in the gesture of completion.

Zude activated her exhaust chute and lit a cigarillo.  She smiled through a puff of smoke.  "My mother. . . Sylvia Isabel Romero, called 'Queta.'  From a Tuyan tribe in the selvas, Eastern Colombia.  After their village was appropriated for soybean production, her family moved by rail, river, and muletrail to Barranquilla.  She and her husband and my brothers worked for a cocoa company.  Cutting, drying, roasting, skinning the nibs.  Packing and loading boats.

"She lived with my youngest half-brother and his family.  Was almost fifty when she had me.  She never said who my father was, but she told me stories of the animals, which she remembered very well.  Those stories fed my spirit.  They still do."  Zude's eyes shifted to the calico cat in her desk unit.  Then she resumed her narrative.  "She joined the Church so I could go to school.  I taught her to read.  When I was fourteen, I left home and worked my way up the Caribbean side of the isthmus to Mexico City."  Zude smothered the cigarillo against the bottom of the ashtray.  Longleaf and Rhoda sat without moving.

"I had dreams of sending for her when I made a fortune, but things didn't work out that way."  Zude leaned forward on the table.  "It was my mother who first told me about spooning.  I was eight.  I used to crawl onto her cot with her.  She would turn me away from her and then fit herself to me, holding me from the back.  I remember once wondering how her holding me so close could feel so good on such a hot night.  She laughed like she did whenever she read my thoughts.  Then she said, 'The Motherkin say that if you truly love a woman and then sleep with her in this way, in a spoon, you can walk in her dreams and fly with her to the stars.'"

"No!" exclaimed Rhoda.

"Your mother!" Longleaf said.

Zude nodded.  "So I wanted to fly with her right then.  She told me we couldn't do that but that I might find such a love one day."  There was a silence.  Then Zude resumed.  "I carried her words with me.  Right into the arms of my first lover."  All three women laughed softly.  Zude folded her hands and turned to Longleaf.  "And to complete our circle . . . ."

Longleaf shook her head.  "I can't feature my mother ever telling me anything of that sort.  She still lives just outside of Sydney in the Blue Hills.  Her name is Florence Scarborough, and she was taught to be a European lady -- formal dinners and fancy dress balls.  My most vivid memory is of a scene on our patio when I was about seven.  My father had been dead more than a year, and my mother was constantly crying to my aunt about what a horrid place the world had become because now there were no men for her daughters to marry.

"That day she went on a real rampage.  She blamed the navies of every country in the world for bringing the epidemics to Australia.  Then she blamed the prostitutes, the Mafia, the gays, and the government.  I made it all worse by running up to her and tugging at her hand and telling her that she should stop crying because Sissy and I didn't want to get married anyway, men just gave you diseases, and Sissy and I were going to love only each other and live to be two hundred.