The Magister (Earthkeep) (2 page)

"We have this information only because staff members here knew and loved those children.  We have no authority to carry out any kind of investigation.  And Demesne Services apparently see nothing out of the ordinary in the deaths.  'Nothing to be concerned about,' they say."  She snorted, then blurted, "Jez, am I crazy?  Is this all just coincidence?"  She looked questioningly at Dicken, then went on. 

"The death of one child in one of our programs, okay.  Not unusual.  Might happen even once a year.  Two?  Well, maybe even two.  But four?  Four children in the last six months?  All between the ages of three and eleven?  Like I told you on the flatfone, that's more than coincidence."

Dicken stood by the sculptured fountain in the corner, staring at the trickling water dropping into the small rock-bottomed pool.  "You're not crazy," she said finally.  "Just waking up."  She pulled herself away from the soothing water sounds.  "And if you want to get wide awake, then start watching Size Central's population trends.  Not much public attention to what's happening yet, but give it another month — maybe just a week — and the gathering energy of this mysterious phenomenon will push the Testing and the Protocols right off the front page."

Bea's eyes narrowed.  "You're telling me other children are dying?"

"Yes.  Little girls and boys just tipping their hats and leaving."  Dicken reached out to let the water course over her long fingers.

"Why?"  Beabenet sat, frowning.

Dicken shrugged.  "No reason.  No consistency.  All arbitrary."

Jez's voice startled them both.  "That's not totally true.  One common factor stands out over everything."  They looked at her, waiting. "All of these children go willingly, even happily.  Nowhere is there any hint that they resist.  Or that they’re victims of any illness or injury.  They simply decide to die."

Bea stared at her.  Slowly her eyes widened and her lips parted.  Her head jerked up, then sank.  "Like the animals," she whispered.

Jez watched realization sink into Beabenet's cells. "Like the animals," she whispered back.

The director suddenly sprang to her feet.  "Look," she said heartily, "we're probably over-reacting.  This whole thing might be a fluke.  Or just the normal population fluctuation that happens all the time while we don't notice."  She searched Dicken's face.  Then Jez's.  "Listen, if it really were a global phenomenon, wouldn't the world be on its ear?  The statistics have been available on a daily basis.  Anyone can see them.  And some people's only job is to interpret figures like this."

"That's true," Dicken agreed. 

"And there would have been stories, individual stories that would have made the news."  Bea's arms were outspread, pleading.

"They have made the news," said Jez.  "Even as far back as nine months ago, isolated instances of children's dying unexpectedly were reported in quarter-traps and half-traps, though not in full satrapies.  The incidence of such reports is increasing.  All over Little Blue."

"So then the whole world is in a state of denial?" 

Jez looked out the window.  Spring was about to come to the Land of Lakes. 

"Well, denial's an appropriate reaction, isn't it?"  She turned to Bea.  "If a whole species sees on the holocast that it is losing its children, it might very well close down the switch and look the other way."

Her arms slowly falling to her sides, Bea stared at Jez.

A musical question, the announcement of an arrival, interrupted the silence.  Beabenet let the arpeggio sound a second time before she straightened her shoulders and went to the door.

"Director Beabenet?"  The man's near-black eyes looked slightly downward in order to meet hers.  "I am Donal Jain."

Bea shook the stranger's hand.  "Come in.  You made good time.  Donal Jain, here are Bess Dicken and Jezebel Stronglaces."

Dicken liked the man immediately.  She smiled her greeting and dropped into one of the low comfortable chairs. 

As she took his hand, Jezebel read her senses' first-line assessment.  He was young, agitated, controlled, anxious, intent, hopeful, moderately open and of good will.  "Hello, Donal Jain."

Beabenet gestured to the chairs and made a move to leave.  The man stopped her.  "This is not private, director."

With a glance at Jez, Bea started to take a seat in the small circle.  She paused, "Can I get you tea or. . ."

Jain held up his hand.  "Diane and Elizabeth, the spooners who brought me, kept me warm with tea as we flew."  He almost smiled.  Beabenet sank into a chair between Jez and Dicken.

A short silence as Jain sat.  "They had to be on their way but asked me to give you greeting.  Elizabeth Gael met you some years ago."

"Ah, yes," said the director.

"It's cold spooning this time of year."  Dicken was lubricating the conversational wheels. 

Jain simply nodded.  Silently he laid a backpack on the floor at his side, ran big hands through his shock of black hair, then shifted himself to the edge of his seat.  His movements were smooth, almost dance-like.  He sat motionless for several seconds, his eyes closed, hands on knees.  Finally he looked at Jez.  "Thank you for seeing me."

By then Jezebel Stronglaces had conducted as much as she wished of a non-invasive energy evaluation.  Clearly the man had regained his self-possession. She decided to speak warmly.

“Thank you for coming. . . ah, what's appropriate?  Donal?"

"Donal is fine.  And. . ."

"Jezebel, of course," she assured him.  "Please don't let my infamous reputation put you off."

Donal's craggy face ignited into a relieved smile. 

"Oh.  Oh right, right . . . Jezebel.  But I'm more worried than intimidated."  All three women relaxed.  "I want to ask a great favor of you," he said, finally.  Jez waited.  Donal looked from Jez to Dicken and back to Jez.  "I want to take you to a small village in the Black Hills.  "Rather," he added, both hands opening, "I want you to take me there."

The women shifted in surprise, Beabenet and Dicken starting to talk at once.  Jezebel raised her voice above them. 

"You mean you want us to spoon you back?"

Again Donal ran his hands through his hair. "I mean. . ."

"Start at the beginning, Donal," Jez said mildly.  "We've jumped into the middle of a longer story, I think."

"Yes," agreed Donal.  He gathered his thoughts.  "I'm a teacher," he began. "In a settlement called Chimney Corner some miles north of the jeweled caves.  It is deep in the mountains, deliberately rural and consciously tribal.  Inaccessible except by spooning or cushcar.  The people operate a hydroponic project powered by mica shims."

Donal drew and released a big breath. 

"A group of my students, the most articulate of them a young named Taína Renananda Ko, have agreed, at my suggestion, to talk with you.  They are planning to die in less than two weeks, just after our Festival of the Returning Sun."

The room went absolutely still except for the smooth trickling of water over rocks.  Beabenet found her voice first. 

"Say that again, Donal."

"They are planning to die."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

The flight bubble was warm and comfortable, a tight fast-moving powerpod encasing three prone bodies: Jezebel and Dicken, with Donal Jain suspended between them.  As they sailed into midafternoon, the altitude kept them breathing lightly and talking little — a blessing for Jez, who was indulging in a luxurious reverie that her mind entitled
Forests.

No doubt about it: The forests were back.  The hills and valleys that flew below her bore woodlands in every stage of returning growth. 

Some difference of opinion existed as to why the great greening was taking place so spectacularly.  The loss of the animals, insisted some, allowed an over-burgeoning of leaves and blossoms that under natural circumstances would have been devoured by woods-dwellers.  Others minimized that cause, arguing that the loss of so much carbon dioxide would have had, in fact, a countereffect on growth; further, they contended, the disappearance of earthworms, beetles, millipedes and maggots would have retarded the functions of decay, thus contributing to the stultification of the wilderness.

Nonsense, would come the rejoinder, it was the fungi and bacteria that took care of the decay and, thankfully, the Exodus had spared the mushrooms and microbes.

Jez smiled.  Not only were there nearly five billion fewer people to use the land and the lumber and to pollute the air, but the billion who were left held a near-worshipful attitude toward trees.  Sylvan Renewal, with its centers in Belém and in the rejuvenating Black Forest, oversaw cutting, processing, planting and preservation through its growing network of woods stewards.  With its rituals conducted around every tree about to be cut, its tithings, its crusades and its hymnody, Sylvan Renewal constituted the closest thing to a global religion that Little Blue had seen since the decline of consumerism.

A voice broke into her reverie.  "Are you comfortable?" Dicken was asking their passenger.

Donal Jain loosened the collar of his thermal jumpsuit. 

"Very.  How do you keep it so warm?"

"It's part of the spoon energy," Dicken answered, "a function of the lonth and not of the focus."  Donal nodded. 

They were still chasing the sun, about two hours from their destination, when Jez suggested a rest.

"Can we wait until we reach the Black Hills?" Donal asked.  "We'll be seeing them near sunset, their most magical time."

"Fine," agreed Jez. 

Donal flashed her his boyish smile. 

"My people have always called the hills shapeshifters," he said, "because, according to some, in a certain light they take the forms of animals.  And of humans."

"One of those mountains has an amazing carving in the granite," Dicken interjected. "Two mothers and a babe."

Donal turned appreciative eyes on her. 

"Mount Moraga.  It's on the route of our monthly cushcar to Farmingdale, though it's best seen from below."

"Then we'll hold off resting until we get there," Jez decided.  "Can we still reach Chimney Corner by dark?"
"Or shortly after," Donal nodded.

"Those children. . ." Dicken said. "Shouldn't we hurry?"
Donal shook his head.  "We probably won't see them until tomorrow in any case."  His face became a mask as he stared rigidly into the distance.

The sun was still bright over the western peaks when Dicken pointed to an approaching hilltop.  "Look!"  Below them the face of a butte broke the pattern of brown hills.  A tall figure carved from the stone seemed to hail them.

"That's Morning Star Woman," Donal explained.  "And wait.  There, there on the north side, too, do you see?"  Another figure, smaller and kneeling, pressed against a large animal.  "Bear Woman.  Our healers now say that the Stone Spirits grow angry if they are brought from the rock by force.  They say that the figures are there without the carving if one has eyes to see."

"Of course," whispered Jez, because at that moment her astonished eyes were beholding a veritable menagerie below her.  One ridge was clearly a snake.  A high plateau became a turtle.  As she watched, the timberline dropped from one mountain's back to reveal a beaver.  No, it wasn't a beaver.  A rabbit.  Not a rabbit, for now it undulated with their flight above it and became a slow-moving porcupine.  She sought the lower peaks and valleys to her right.  Coyote, deer, buffalo, mountain lion, hawk.  Her head was swimming with the movement, the changes.

"Jez!"  Dicken's voice called her back.  "Your lonth!  We're losing altitude!"

Jez blinked, and then with effort captured her straying softself and dragged it away from the spectacle below her.  She refitted it to Dicken's softself, then called up the spooning incantation for a swift recitation.

Dicken's eyes were closed and she had her hand on her belly.  "Fine, now," she said.  "Back to lonth."  She put one arm around Donal's shoulders and gave him a quick hug.  "Relax.  She wigs out like that now and then.  It's one of the prerogatives of witch-hood."

Donal gave her a grateful smile.  Then he looked at Jez. 

"You saw them, didn't you?" 

Jez nodded.  Donal nodded, too.  They flew on in silence.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

"That baby's eyes.  They follow you," insisted Dicken, craning her neck and leaning dangerously toward the escarpment.  "Like a hologram."

"Now who's wigging out?" Jez called back.  She tied the drawstring of her trews and studied the stone portrait above her.  "That baby's eyes are hardly open, sisterlove," she teased.  "You can barely see them."

"Mothers' Martyrs, Jezebel!  I can see them here," Dicken retorted.  "And over there, too."  Dicken, her fists on her hips, peered at the carving while standing on tiptoe and then from other angles.

Jez stood wide and leaned toward the ground, stretching her legs.  She saw the upside-down figure of Donal Jain moving toward her through the horseweed.

"Donal!" Dicken called.  "Come help me set her straight.  Keep looking at the baby and move this way."

Donal obliged, zipping his jumpsuit against the late afternoon chill.

"Beware, Donal Jain," Jez warned him as he passed her.  She swung her chest right and left in spine-loosening torques.  "She's not above bribery."

"I heard that!" Dicken shouted.  "I ought to — whoa, hey, ooh!"

Jez saw the ground giving way beneath Dicken's feet, and Dicken herself tottering against the sky.  "Dicken!" she shrieked, watching her lover's outspread arms pump the air.

Donal hurled himself toward the precipice, grabbing for some part of Dicken's flailing body.  He clutched one pant leg, but it twisted from his grasp as Dicken, with an ever-distancing yell, disappeared completely over the edge of the cliff.  Jez heard loud thrashing sounds underriding Dicken's cries.  But as she reached Donal's side she heard only silence.

"Dicken!"  Flat on the cliff's edge, she searched that first steep drop of at least ten meters.  It ended in the layers of firebroom and berry fronds that hugged the side of the precipitous chasm below them.  "Dicken!"  Nowhere could she see any evidence of her lover's fall.  Unwitting stalks of scrub brush and chaparral stared back at her, unmoving in the shadows.