The Magister (Earthkeep) (10 page)

"Relax
," Bosca's voice suddenly echoed.  "
Get to a feeling-good place.  Think of sunsets.  Making love
. 
Find joy!" 
Zude sloughed off her panic and envisioned their rescue.  Her heart lifted.  She upped the feeling.

Maiz's console beeped and whistled.  Ria's fear pulsed in little ripples beside her.  The children stirred now and again, struggling to be brave.

Zude kept herself feeling easy, even light.  She watched herself breathe, belly moving slowly up and down, rhyndon bodysuit glowing softly in dimmed light, glowing like a. . .

Holy Hound of Hera!  She was watching herself breathe!  And she was up, up here!  Above her body, watching herself breathe!  There, there was Ria with a huge tekla-covered belly that housed humps of small children, and Maiz doggedly calling up options for codes.  She saw all of it clearly, as if brightly lit, from her position on the ceiling of the phaeton. 

Zude swallowed.  And the scene pulled further away.  She was outside the phaeton now, viewing the whole vessel, watching everyone inside, even Zella Terremoto Adverb.  There was the Magister, holding onto the toe of her compañera's boot.

Slowly Zude tried moving her arms and legs.  The body of the Magister below her lay completely still.  Then her perspective changed, and she floated across and under the phaeton, up by the propeller of the old destroyer.  Experimentally, she slowed down.  Speeded up.  She turned her observer-body in different directions. 

By Persephone's Pajamas, she said very calmly to herself, I'm having an out-of-body experience!  She was watching the interesting manner in which she breathed ocean water in and out of her lungs when she was visited by a tiny flash of brightness.  It swept past her, then back over her again, beckoning to her.

Zude followed it, moving her arms and legs effortlessly.  Her direction seemed to be determined just as in swimming, by the placement of the top of her head.  Yet it was not, she found, any swimming motion that propelled her, but rather her intent to chase the little light.  Up and away she soared, away from the phaeton and her friends, up and above the destroyer, up the vertical path they had followed into the trench.

With a start Zude recognized her guide.  It was the tiny light-gobbler, the Swallower, that had hung so compellingly on the cliff wall.  She was just below the top of the cliff when the little being swooped back toward her, passing quickly over and around her again and again, wrapping her in golden cords of light.

And then it happened: an explosion of cacophonous echoing sounds, a blast of vigorous colorful life!  A surging of a thousand tails turning and ten thousand fins finning — schools of dolphins, pods of whales, diving sharks, sailing turtles, dancing squid, bass, mackerel, salmon, seals, shrimp, sardines, sea horses, rays, molluscs, and all of their friends and families.  Delegations from all the creatures that ever roamed the deeps or the shallows of the Great Pacific flowed around her, singing to her soul and magnifying her joy.

She heard the Swallower calling to her.  "Come on!  There's no time to lose!"  She tore herself apart from the vision, but not before she heard a sweet promise falling on her ears.  She paused deliberately, as if to acknowledge the promise.  Then she arched upward after the Swallower, following rapidly, smoothly, exuberantly, up to the top of the cliff and over the ocean floor toward the Seadrome.

In the control room, a purling stream of Sea-Shrieves went about their tasks.  Commander Kiang Tung-Po sat in her desk, surrounded by exhibit panels.  She spoke to Mariner First Class  Tahang Nauru, across the room at her station. 

"Let me know the second
they are back in contact, Tiny." 

"Acknowledged.  Commander, I'm willing to bet that they will be out of range longer than 10 minutes.  Apparently they have an accomplished holocorder operator aboard who will want a variety of angles." 

Tiny kept her eyes on the three show-screens, any one of which could herald the return of
Sojourner
to communication with the Seadrome.

Zude floated through the wall of the control room precisely at the moment of Kiang Tung-Po's emergence from her desk.  Magnopad in her hand, Tung-Po made for the array of screens by the far viewport, there to examine ambience panels for Seadrome maintenance.  One utility station displayed a screenful of long numbers, useless now.

That's it! thought Zude, propelling her weightless self toward the viewport station for a better look.  Yes!  It was still there!  That was exactly the list she'd seen before the comcube was delivered to Jass.

Tung-Po was reaching for the Clear tab.

"Stop!" shouted Zude at the top of her lungs.  "Don't change that screen!" 

Commander Tung-Po was deaf to the cries of the Magister of the Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy.  Her hand did not falter but continued its irrevocable progress toward the numbers' annihilation.

"No!" barked Zude in her best command voice.  "Commander, attention!"

Tung-Po halted, not because she heard the command but because a young Amah suddenly stood beside her handing her a magnopad for approval.  The Commander tucked her own magnopad under her arm and stepped toward the Sea-Shrieve to scan the proffered magnopad.

Zude's hungry eyes turned to the first two lines of figures on the screen. 

"LS 2416 7463082 AN 480.TUX 3840\303," said line one to her, glowing calmly, as if its very existence were not being threatened.  Out of the corner of her eye, Zude saw Tung-Po, now nodding as she signed the magnopad.  Zude set her mind into memorize mode, quickly zapping each of line one's number groups into a place of secure recall in her mind.  She was just focusing on line two when Tung-Po dismissed the Sea-Shrieve and turned back to the utility screen, her hand vaguely reaching again for the Clear button.

"Not yet!" shouted Zude.  She pushed her whole buoyant body toward the numbers, trying to see around the bulk of Tung-Po's shoulders.  The Commander's hand continued to advance.  Zude shouted louder, frantically insinuating herself into a standing position between Tung-Po and the screen.  To her horror, Tung-Po's arm moved through Zude's own substance, still on its path to the clearing tab.

Zude gathered all the intensity her diaphanous body would allow her.  As the Commander's arm moved forward through her, Zude ducked her head and raised it again carefully, thus placing her eyes firmly on a level with those of the Chinese woman. 

Remarkably, Tung-Po stopped.  Both hands dropped and she frowned.  Slowly she widened her eyes, as if taking in the hues of a stupendous sunset.

"Kiang Tung-Po," Zude whispered, looking deeply into the soft brown eyes, "I want you to rest a moment before you continue your work."  Her hands framed the Commander's head, caressing her black hair.  "Just rest," she cooed.  "You've been working far too hard, and you're righteously tired."  Zude began blowing sensuously around the woman's hairline, her ears.  "Take a deep breath and relax now.  Just for a moment."

Mariner First Class Tiny Nauru heard a small clatter as something dropped to the floor of the Seadrome.  Casually she looked up from the monitoring of her three show-screens.  Over at the north viewport Commander Tung-Po stood like a statue, a magnopad at her feet and both arms outstretched as if embracing someone.  Tiny craned her neck to see if the Commander's companion would retrieve the dropped magnopad.  And to determine, if she could, the other’s identity.

To her consternation, Tiny then saw that the Commander was alone and was in fact staggering and turning backwards to brace herself against a convenient console.  She was leaning there as if in some shock, her right hand on her chest and her left still cupped as if holding another's chin.  Her lips curved in a warm smile.

"Commander!" called Tiny.  Torn between her duty and what seemed to her to be Tung-Po's distress, she then addressed an Amah retreating through the control room door, the same officer who had obtained the Commander's signature. 

"Sea-Shrieve, front and center!" she shouted.  "Look to the Commander!"  She pointed to Tung-Po, who acknowledged the eruption of noise with a slow turning of her head.  The Amah sprinted across the room to Tung-Po, taking her by the arm. 

Tung-Po patted the young woman's hand.  "I'm fine, thank you.  Just fine."

None of the preoccupied officers noted the bundle of energy that hovered over the utility station, carefully absorbing the sequence of numbers that constituted line two of the screen.

Grinning with satisfaction, Zude floated again toward the ocean outside the control room where the bright Swallower awaited her.  As she passed over the cluster of Sea-Shrieves surrounding Tung-Po, she dropped to a delicate head-first hover and brushed the Commander's cheek with her lips.  Then she was gone. 

Hand to cheek, Commander Kiang Tung-Po turned her head quickly toward the wall of the Seadrome.  When at last she gathered herself again into the proper conduct of her duty, she dismissed with thanks those so concerned for her health.

Only Mariner First Class Tiny Nauru puzzled about the deep flush that adorned her Commander's cheeks.

The Swallower sped out and downward through the ocean.  Zude sped with it, focusing as she went upon holding the number sequences in her mind.  She knew without consulting her tacto-time that less than two minutes had passed since she had left the Sojourner.  Still she must hurry.

Her guide led her under the destroyer and back to her precise spot of exit from the phaeton.  Zude barely thanked the strange little Swallower before dropping into the vessel.  She saw Ria motionless, her eyes closed, holding what Zude hoped were sleeping children; Lieutenant Commander Maiz sat like a statue of white ice, her eyes open but not seeing, her hands resting on the console bank.  "Oxygen at 6.6%," the compuvox intoned.

Zude's own body anxiously awaited her, drawing her like a magnet back into its confines.  This body was very cold.  And obviously it was not breathing.  Well, maybe twice a minute.  Slowly, Zude initiated short shallow breaths.  Then longer ones.  She could barely move her hands and feet.  What had been freedom was now a tomb.  And she was having trouble orienting herself.  Things recently bright and clear were now murky.  Urgently she made herself repeat the sequence of numbers.  Twice, to be sure this body had them in its cells.  Then, heavy and uncoordinated, she finally pulled herself to a standing position. 

"Maiz!" she called.  Her voice was a rasp. 

Maiz seemed not to be breathing, much less moving.

Zude saw Ria's chest rise and fall. 

"Ria!"

Ria nodded, trying to smile.  Zude reached out toward the children.  Ria stopped her with a grunt.  "They're okay," she mouthed.

Zude nodded.  She tried for a shout. 

"Lieutenant Commander Maiz!" 

Maiz jerked.  Her eyes flew open.  "Magister. . ." It was a whisper. 

Zude found a small swallow of air.  Her lungs hurt.  "Quick, enter these numbers."  She began reciting the first line. 

     Maiz's fingers started to move.

Zude put her mouth to Maizie's ear.  "Seven four six three zero eight. . .”  

She could barely whisper.  Maiz's fingers fumbled at the keys.  Zude pushed out the remaining figures of the codes between small intakes of breath.  Both lines.  Maiz's fingers struggled.

At last the Commander drew in a large precious batch of oxygen.  She expended it in one mighty whoop. 

"That's it!  Systems responding!"

Sojourner
came alive again as emergency systems moved online.  Air hissed.  Lights seeped into brightness.  The promise of warmth and comfort surged from reactivated ducts and boosters.  Zude and Maiz pushed themselves to the limp forms of Ria and the children, beginning the task of reviving them fully.

* * * * * * * *

They were drinking hot coffee and tea when the comunit burst into full presence with the arrival of two phaetons bearing a tractor beam.  They were dizzy with delight and relief as they were towed out of the abyss and back to the Seadrome.  And they rejoiced with a huge party of Sea-Shrieves as they clambered out of the launch bay and into the safety and comfort of the control room.

Magister Adverb's first act upon debarking was to speak with both Commanders Ark and Tung-Po, convincing them that no Kanshou could be held responsible for the consequences of the missing comcube.  In fact, the Kanshoubu's
Labrys Manual
immediately featured the incident as a dramatic testimony to the eternal imminence of disaster even in the face of procedures perfectly followed.

Lieutenant Commander Nicola Maiz could hardly wait to tell her Sister-Shrieves the remarkable tale of how Magister Adverb had gone into alpha state and emerged with one hundred percent accurate recall of figures she had only casually noted when she had first seen them. 

As they emerged from the Seadrome, Zude understood that her world had changed beyond telling.  Her sleep that night was deep. 

The next morning, when she and her family boarded the low rocket to Australia, Zude saw another whole dimension of change that was to come.  Buckling Regina into her seat cup, she froze at the sight, in the child’s black hair, of a single white curl.

4 – West Virginia – [2088 C.E.]

When madness beckons, go there.

When reason beckons, beware.

The paths of the Journey are not straight.

Vade Mecum For The Journey

Deep in the Brazilian jungle, a setting sun touched the headwaters of Río Itanhaua and the glassy surface of Lago Tefé.   The sounds of the village wafted through the damp afternoon, soft voices chattering together through tinkling chimes and rustling branches. 

Jezebel lay alone, on her back, in a treehouse.  She was seeking rest — and sleep, if it would only deign to come.  She was resisting an old familiar chill, her most reliable symptom of an impending loss of consciousness.  Her head ached.  She licked several bubbles of foam from her lips and swallowed a metallic saliva. 
"You can hold this off,"
a voice told her. 
"You used to do it all the time."