The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (8 page)

Using her carefully saved credits, Zude travelled the planet by rocket, hovercraft, ship, and spoon to visit bailiwicks all over Little Blue.  In 2067 C.E., along with 800 other women who had reached the age of 25 or older, she entered the Kanshou Cadet academy  in Hong Kong, intent upon making its training her second nature. 

* * * * * * * *

When, on that cloud-covered midwinter Hong Kong day, Third-Form Amah Cadet Zella Terremoto Adverb laid her dark brown eyes on the tilted head and lean body of the oldest of the entering chelas, Fourth-Form Cadet Jezebel Dolalicia, some sleeping animal awoke and uncoiled just below her navel.  When on that same day, Amah Cadet Dolalicia turned from the transmog with her cup of tea and saw outlined against the grey face of Victoria Peak the transfixed form of Cadet Adverb, she straightened her head and heard the whisper of her Source Self, "
She's the one."

Amah cadets, including chelas, had three nights monthly when they could use their credits away from the Amah Academy, free at last of the rows of cots in the dossrooms.  During the nearly two years that Jez was at the academy, she and Zude spent those nights together in one or another of the city's rooming houses or under the stars on the banks of the Xi Jiang's waters.  They flew together over placid lakes and turbulent seas, touching Celebes mountaintops and the reefs of the old Philippines.  They danced in Taipei's botanical gardens and hung their drenched uniforms on the struts of Jakarta's drawbridges.  Wherever  they placed their bodies into the spoon of afterlove sleep, they trusted willow and plum tree, orchid and hibiscus, to hold the memory inviolable.

As their passion grew into legend, they endured the day-by-day rigors of the Amahrery's training.  They molded their bodies and minds into weapons of authority and order, Jez with hesitation then determination, Zude from the outset with exhilaration and keen satisfaction.  They vied with each other, and together against others; they ran, climbed, swam, flew, shot, slashed, crawled, dived, and leapt; they calculated, measured, memorized, analyzed, conjugated, recited, formulated, discussed, negotiated, strategized, and argued.  And, like all Amah cadets, they celebrated at every opportunity.

The rational, practical Zude despaired over her lover's active fantasy life, even once going so far as to insist to Jezebel that unicorns were not real.  Jez succeeded in convincing her that unicorns might, with the proper open-heartedness, become real, and to that end she presented Zude with a custom-cast pair of silver earrings, each in the form of a rampant unicorn, mane-flared and horn held high.  They always had pride of place among the tasteful piercings that decorated Zude's ears.

* * * * * * * *

One idyllic evening by the South China Sea, Zude stood in the academy's weaponsyardafter target-and-evasion drills.  Sweating from her exertion, she pushed a cleaning rod through her dartsleeveand watched the falling sun drench the top of the hardwood fencing.  All along the fencetop were mounted the warrior weapons of the thousand-armed Durga, Invincible Hindu Warrior Goddess -- sword, ax, kukri, arrow, javelin, katar, spear, trident, noose, discus, mesh, and pike.  Just to her left and topping the archway that led to the Contemplation Garden beyond, blazed the Sumerian Eye Goddess, flanked by statues of man-eating Valkyries whose raven feathers merged into the bodies of mares.  The idiography across the arch came from the early women of Hong Kong, themselves saviors of their nation's culture.  In Zude's rough translation it said, "Humanity can do better, and women will lead the way."

Zude squinted one eye and peered down her dartsleevewith the other.  "And what a polyglot we are," she mused aloud, "study and philosophize in English, shop and do laundry in Mandarin, make love and quarrel in Spanish."  She wiped her brow, automatically checking her earlobes for her unicorns. 

Jezebel was leaning against the upper gatepost, one of her far-away looks immobilizing her face.  If she hadn't just observed her lover laying in rank after rank of dead-center blowdarts, each one with an exclamation of triumph, Zude would have sworn that Jez was crying.  

"Hail, Intrepid Markswoman!" she called.

Jez turned.  She
was
crying.  Zude gathered her sweat tunic, her darts, their quiver, her cleaning rods, and the sleeve.  She joined her lover, sitting on the bench just below her.  She reached up and took Jez's hand.  They were silent for half a minute.

"Good match this morning," Zude said casually.  "With Ciab."

Jez looked askance at her lover.  "How did you know?"

"How . . . ?  I didn't," Zude confessed.  "I was just commenting."

"It was awful."  Tears welled up again in Jez's eyes.  "Zudie, I came close to hurting her.  Really hurting her, I mean."  She wiped her face with her sleeve.

Zude rested against the bench's back.  "But you
didn't
-- "

"I don't mean physically," Jez insisted.  "I mean I could have stripped her mind, levelled her intention!"  She struck the fence pillar.  "I wasn't in control, I almost . . . ."  She pushed off from the post and paced.  "What if that had been some man I was trying to restrain?  I managed not to hurt Ciab, but how do I know I wouldn't use my .  .  . my weapons if I were restraining a
man
?  If I were an Amah?" 

As always, Zude avoided any direct discussion of Jezebel's psychic powers.  "Bella-Belle," she said softly, "you wouln't hurt an offender, not beyond Least Necessary-- "

"You don't know that!"

"Look, you didn't hurt Ciab.  All of us-- "

"She's a woman!"

Zude blinked.  "Even if she'd been a man-- "

"If she'd been a man I might have wiped him out for sure!  I could have done him irreparable harm!  Oh Zudie," she slumped onto the bench, "that's exactly the trouble, don't you see?  Ciab's a woman, a
temporary harmer
.  That's why I didn't hurt her.  Any violence in a woman is
conditioned
violence, and the deepest part of me knew that.  A woman can be helped because she's not violent by nature.  It's
men
who've got violence in their genes!"

"Jezebel that's-- "

"I know, I know!  '
Any
offender is only a temporary harmer,' says the holy Kanshou Code.  But if I don't believe that, how can I be a Kanshou?  And I
don't
believe it about men, Zudie.  Men are totally at the mercy of their biology!  Look at wars and crime.  Look at who is in the bailiwicks.  It's
men
!"

Zude's lips tightened.  She focused on the toe of her boot.

Jezebel waved her dartsleeve.  "They can't help it," she shrugged.  "It's hard-wired into them.  At rock bottom they love cruelty and dominance."  Jez paused, her eyes like cold stone.  "They're killers," she said slowly.  "Maybe we ought to just drain the testosterone out of them the minute they hit puberty!"

"Jez!"  Zude stood and flung her arms into the air.

"Why not, Zudie?"  Jez was calm now.  She pulled the sweatband from her head. 

"Because we don't know that's true, Jezebel," Zude roared as she paced, "because there's not a shred of scientific evidence to support that crazy idea, because-- "

"Then let's find it, Zude.  Let's find that scientific evidence!"  Jez catapuled off the bench and stood toe-to-toe with her lover.  "Let's do some hormone control on the men in the bailiwicks, on the killers and the rapists and the abusers, like they used to do on alpha males in the baboon colonies.  Let's find that little spot in the male anatomy that secretes the testosterone and-- "

"You won't find it, Jez!  You won't find anything in the male anatomy any different from-- "

"We'll find it, Zude," Jez shouted, "and when we do we can damp it out in all men!"

"Jez!" Zude's voice topped her lover's.

The volume of the confrontation brought two concerned cadets to the edge of the weaponsyard.  When they identified the scene and its familiar participants, they moved on, shaking their heads and smiling.

Zude was incredulous.  "What an act of violence, Jezebel!  You want to invade the very identity of a human being and force him into being like you, maybe even making a zombie of him!  Don't talk to me about men's history of cruelty and violence!  Look to yourself, Jezebel!"

"Wrong!  It would be violence maybe, yes!"  Her voice softened.  "But only once, only for right now, until the chain of violence is broken!  Zudie, it may be the only way.  We're women, and we'd do it with love and with full understanding of what we're doing!  We'd be forcing men to give up their violence only until we get the initial cause eradicated.  After that, social conditioning could take care of it all.  It would be worth it, Zudie!  One act of violence that ends violence forevermore!" 

"Never, Jez, never."  Zude stepped away from her lover.  She ran a hand through her hair.  "The whole idea is wrong from the start, wrong all along the way." 

"Violence for a Greater Good, Zude," Jez said quietly.  "Like the Kanshou are violent when they restrain an offender.  Violence for a Greater Good." 

Zude turned.  "Touché." 

Jez sank to the bench again.  "I feel better."

Zude let her breath settle.  "That's good," she whispered, dropping to the bench beside her lover.  She pulled out a cigarillo, reconsidered, then folded it back into her pocket.  They sat, again in silence.  "We'll never agree on that one, Bella-Belle," Zude said.

"I guess not."  A moment later Jez added, "Zude, did you wonder why Ciab forfeited when she had me pinned?"  Before Zude could reply she went on.  "I was so scared because I'd realized I could hurt her that I just I surrendered to her.  Gave up my power.  I mentally held out my arms to her."

"And she rushed into them."  Zude shifted and stretched. 

"She got off me.  Same difference."  Jez gave a wide pinch or two with her thumb and forefinger to Zude's trapezius.

Zude closed her eyes, dutifully practicing the unfamiliar art of receiving.  After a moment she managed to observe, "To make that work, you risk losing your whole identity.  Do you know how dangerous that is?"

"For you .  .  .  yes.  But does it occur to you that identity remains, even in surrender?"  Jez moved both her hands in deep strong movements on Zude's neck.  "Anyway," she added before Zude could reply, "that's not why you couldn't do it."

"No?"

"No.  You're just too
scared
to give over your power."  Jez gave Zude's muscles a parting squeeze and began to gather her gear. 

Zude was unruffled.  "Bullseye," she said.  "I'm not just scared.  I'm smart.  Power's not meant to be given over.  It's meant to be used."  She touched Jez's hair at the wet temple.  "And you know that too, my love.  I've seen you do it.  Even when you're empowering someone else you still hold back a wild card, in case she blows it and you have to rescue her."   

Jez's lips tightened and she lowered her gaze.  When she looked at Zude again her eyes were sad, but she smiled.  "Bullseye," she said.

Zude gave her head a short jerk of satisfaction.  Still, something remained unsaid.  Carefully, she took a deep breath, put her hands around her knee, and leaned back in a balance.  "So how can you hope to be a Kanshou, Bella-Belle, if you want to give away all your power?  You're a cadet in one of the three great Kanshou Academies of the world.  You've signed on for a four- or five-year lesson in how to win, how to disarm, how to overpower a violent offender."  She sat up straight and searched her lover's face.  "What are you doing here, Jezebel?"

Jez's eyes roamed the weapons along the fencetop.  "I've been asking myself that very question, Zudie," she whispered.  She stood up, kissed her stunned lover firmly on the lips, and wound her way down the path.

Zude's eyes followed her to the turn.  Then she lit the cigarillo and inhaled its poison.        

* * * * * * * * * *

Cadet Jezebel Dolalicia did not share with her lover the escalation within herself of knowledge that came unbidden to her, of unorthodox skills that she acquired effortlessly.  She didn't talk, for instance, about a particular encounter with Fourth-Form Amah Cadet Sarawak Ardis, The Banjar.

Ardis claimed a birthplace dead center on the equator in the high mountains of Borneo and an early education on the rubber plantations where her mothers flattened bulky latex slabs into thin sheets for export to Shanghai.  She boasted with a wide grin that her prognathous jaw was built for devouring white women and offered to prove that to Jezebel early in their acquaintance.  Jezebel declined the offer to be devoured, claiming that her brown blood disqualified her.  She and Ardis nevertheless sustained a flirtatious comaraderie and commiserated frequently over sore feet on parade weekends.

Then one day Jez was on the dentist's couch enduring the irritating but painless dislodging of a deeply impacted wisdom tooth.  The sonar waves were playing over her cheekbones and tantalizing the edge of her sinuses.  She felt the tooth break free.  Then, just as Captain Yuan lifted the offending molar out of the small incision she had made, Jez was suddenly blasted in her belly with a wave of panic and a sense of imminent danger.  When she began shaking involuntarily, the concerned Captain Yuan consigned her to an observed recovery room.  There Jez focused on the terror and found to her astonishment that she was in clear mental communication with Ardis The Banjar, three miles away. 

"Jezebel!"  The voice was ragged.  "Is that you?"

Jez formulated a silent question, "Where are you?"

"I'm for the Great Goddess's sake at the top of the practice 'scraper, on a construction girder.  Looking at Food Street 30  stories down.  I'm the last one up here and I'll be here until I faint."

"You won't faint, Ardis.  When you fly you don't . . ."  Jez caught herself.  "I forgot.  You don't fly."

"Right.  I'm a lowly Foot-Shrieve cadet."

Jez felt the stiffness of a tall figure clinging to upright steel.  She tried to send warmth, ease.  And practicality.  "Is the cable ladder there?" she asked.

Ardis's grunt became an affirmative.