The Magister (Earthkeep) (7 page)

The lecture continued even as the rocket floated to its cushioned pad on the island.

To Zude's immense relief, Punto's welcome of the Magister was relaxed and only minimally official.  While Ria and the children were swept off to breakfast at the underwater village, Zude spent the morning in the company of Dr. Jasper Egarber, widely known as Jass, the stocky rosy-cheeked director of the McClintock-Saria Center, and Dr. Hadra Row, his dark-haired partner and the woman who headed up Little Blue's controversial Antaeus Project.  With the easy hospitality for which islanders were renowned, the two scientists guided their guest through the egg-merging facilities and the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion tower, beaming with delight as Zude admired the resources and charmed the technicians with her curiosity. 

It was early afternoon by the time they strolled over the pathways crisscrossing the island, bound for the museum.  Regina, Enrique and Ria would be emerging there from a holojaunt, the simulation of a deepsea ride. 

"You know, Magister," Hadra noted, laughing, "the holojaunt is designed to lure tourists into the real thing."

"I figured as much. Your submersible trip down into the trench?" 

"That's it!  It was the holojaunt that finally cured me of my claustrophobia and convinced me that the submersibles are absolutely safe.  I at last got to make the excursion to the sunken destroyer.  And that I wouldn't have missed for the world!"

"You should do it, Magister," Jass urged, "you and your family.  Only this week the Sea-Shrieves have completed a total upgrade of the meridian resonances in all the phaetons.  Brand new computer codes and all tests passed with flying colors.  They'd be delighted to take you on the excursion!" 

"Actually, Reggie and Enrique are set on doing it and Ria is tempted.  I don't think I can avoid it."  Zude grinned.  "Nor do I want to." 

"Wonderful," Jass exclaimed.  "And if you will allow me, I'd like to pilot your phaeton myself."

"He's an excellent pilot, Magister," Hadra assured her.  "One of the best.  And the phaetons are his passion."

They moved as they talked through dozens of mini-environments — cool groves, multicolored gardens, copses and glens — up hills, by fields, over paths that crunched under their feet in testimony to the island's volcanic history.

"Tell me about Antaeus, doctor," Zude said to Hadra Row, "before we get to the museum.  You must be excited that the cloning moratorium is lifted at last." 

Hadra linked her arm with Jass's. 

"We're not out of the woods yet, Magister, but yes, yes, it is exciting.  The leading edge of our work will be the attempt to clone from human prenatal tissue, perhaps catching an embryo at the two-cell stage where functions are undifferentiated and the potential for success is exponentially increased. 

"Of course," she continued, her bright eyes sparkling, "our morpho-electronic patterning and our micro-instrumentation still need extensive development.  But we'll never develop them until we're pushed by the need."

They were passing a thicket of what looked like ivory nut plants when Hadra interrupted herself. 

"There!  Do you hear that?"

Both Jass and Hadra were poised like frozen statues.  "It's the high lilies," Jass said, "playing in F sharp today." 

"A little lower, I think," Hadra observed.  She touched Jass's arm.  "There they go!"  The scientists stood rapt, in a listening attitude, their faces glowing in the sunlight, their bodies tapping together to some rhythm totally inaudible to Zude.  Hadra turned to her. 

"Do you hear them, Magister?  It's those clusters of white flowers there, singing."

Zude had her eyes closed, opening to hear whatever would present itself.  She shook her head.  "Afraid not."  Then she hastened to add, "But I believe you when you say they are singing."  In a burst of candor she explained, "It's just the sort of thing I've been practicing for some months now.  Central sensing, my teacher calls it."  She closed her eyes again, made a silent obeisance to the gentle Bosca, and tried again.  Finally she sighed, "No.  I fear that magic is not my strength.  I hear only the sea."

"It takes practice," Jass offered, kindly. 

Without guile or apology, Hadra flung her arm around Magister Zella Terremoto Adverb.  "Believing is seeing," she urged, giving the Magister a small hug.  "And if you truly want it, it will come." 

They walked for a moment in comfortable silence.

"I've been in touch with Magister Lin-ci Win," Jass said after a while.  "She told us you'd be coming and directed us to give you full access to any and all information."

Hadra's voice had a hard edge now.  "She is withholding approval of the pre-natal research, Magister." 

When Zude showed surprise, the doctor continued.  "The Central Web may have approved a window in the moratorium on human cloning, but even so, Antaeus can't begin its work without an executive order.  Magister Win says she's delaying the order because she needs first to reassure some of her conservative constituencies that human life is not about to be sacrificed on the altar of
immoral science
, as they term it."

Jass gave a short laugh. "The irony is that human life may be sacrificed if we
don't
conduct such research."

Zude looked at him sharply. 

"Why do you say that, doctor?"

"I think you know, Magister."  Jass let a pause grow.  "Babies are just not being conceived."

"That's far too strong a statement, Jass," Hadra objected. 

Jass nodded to his lover and corrected himself. 

"Babies are not being conceived in numbers large enough to offset the death rate."

Zude slowed her step. 

"A decline, yes.  But experts are not calling it 'significant' yet."
"But they're arguing," Jass said.  "And more and more publicly."

"Indeed," Zude admitted. 

"At any rate," Jass continued, "Magister Win has assured us that she will let us know whether or not she will issue the executive order allowing work to begin.  We've been expecting news from her daily."

"Hourly."  This from Hadra.

"Any minute," said Jass.  "I've directed everyone on the island that I'm to be found and notified the moment any word comes from her."

As they resumed their pace, the talk turned to the occasional failures being reported in ovular merging centers. 

"We're pretty sure it's in the denucleating process," Hadra explained. "Something in the donor's egg nucleus is being rejected by the receptor egg.  Concern is limited to individual centers so far, but in the India Satrapy correlative data are being studied.  And the decline in egg unions is significant."

"Heterosexual unions?  Inseminations?"

"Same story," Jass said.  "A decline in egg and sperm alliance.  At least that's the news from hospitals and merging centers.  Very unofficial." 

Abruptly he came to a stop.

"Magister."  Zude and Hadra halted with him.  "Magister," he began again, "from your vantage point would you say that an inordinate number of children is actually dying?"

Zude resisted lighting up a cigarillo.  She looked carefully at the doctor. 

"The answer is yes." 

Jass and Hadra exchanged glances. 

"And from your vantage point?"

Hadra took up the gauntlet.  "Well, Magister, there are no deaths here, except for one child in the village, frail from birth, who died in her sleep a few weeks ago."

As they walked on, Hadra added, "There is a phenomenon my sister in Ho Chi Minh tells me of, however."  She paused.  "There's apparently a rash of child deaths there, Magister."

"The incidence?  Do you know?"

"No, but my sister is convinced that the end of the world is at hand." 

Hadra stopped them all again.  She sought Zude's eyes.

"She quotes the tradition of Nechung, an ancient lama who said that in the last days children will be wrinkled in countenance and walk with canes as symbols of the fact that they are grown old before their time."

Zude's dress uniform was hot and uncomfortable. 

"Well?" she barked.

"Well?"  Hadra was taken aback.

"Are children there wrinkled and do they walk with canes?"

"No, not that, my sister says.  But often, before children die, their hair turns white."

Zude's dress uniform was cold suddenly, and clammy.  She spun away from her companions and began walking toward the museum.  Then, regretting her rudeness, she stopped and waited for her hosts.  The three of them entered the museum in silence.

* * * * * * *

The holojaunt had worked its magic and the children's curiosity about the real trip was whetted to a fever pitch.  Moreover, Ria had lost any fear for their safety.  Now, from the deck of a large floating barge surrounded by miles of sky and ocean, they had descended over one hundred feet to the Seadrome, the underwater launch station.  They were about to embark upon an undersea excursion into the trench. 

"Show me again!" cried Reggie to Commander Raola Ark, chief engineer and presently the omnipotent manipulator of the Seadrome's tractor beam.  Obediently Commander Ark fixed the beam onto yet another of the huge cargo hoppers in the far distance and hauled it rapidly toward them, to within inches of the wide viewport.  Laughing, Reggie tried to touch the car as it hung there, inches beyond her grasp. 

"You're magic, Ark!  Could you tow the big pod back,
the, the. . ."

"The phaeton?  Indeed," nodded Ark, straightening her red tabard, "if it is in a line with us."  She turned to Jass.  "Will you be piloting, doctor?"

"Yes, if you'll authorize that."

"Always," she replied.

At the other side of the control room, Zude watched a monitor's display of the Seadrome's fleet of three phaetons, each waiting in its launching bay for activation by teams of sea-searchers or inquisitive tourists.  "That, Rique, is what we'll be in," she said, pointing to one of the pods.

"She’s the
Sojourner
," said Ria.

"Sojourner," Enrique repeated.  "Just like in the holojaunt."

"Exactly," said Ria.  "And here's a diagram of our trip, see?  Here's the drop-off of the ocean floor.  We'll go down into the trench. . ."

"How will we see?"

"Lights.  We'll have lights."  Ria pointed to the destroyer.  "Look how she hangs out over the shelf here.  We'll go all the way down beneath her and come up here on her other side." 

Enrique was galvanized. 

"Commander," Ria asked Raola Ark, "couldn't the control room monitor us by vidcorder, that is, see us the whole time we're away?"  Ria smoothed Enrique's hair over his ears.

"An enlightened question, señora.  But actually, no.  That technology is available, but the Kanshoubu has never authorized its use in vessels of any kind.  We can do both audio and onscreen communication at the will of both parties, but more than that is looked upon as . . . well, as a kind of spying."

"Five more minutes," Jass called to them from Mariner First Class Tiny Nauru's station, where Regina now charmed that exceedingly tall woman.

"Doctor!"  Ark called back.  "I have the new computer codes for you.  They just got proofed." 

Zude lazily watched the screen while the commander brought up a list of six codes and pushed a tab labeled Manifest. Jass joined the group in time to receive the comcube that catapulted from the slot below the screen. 

"They need to be plugged into the master display on
Sojourner
," Ark told him. 

"Done," said Jass, pocketing the comcube.  "Magister, I am proud to announce that we've got a mission.  A task for our expedition.  If we want it, that is."

"We haul the destroyer back with us," Ria said, trying to guess.

"Almost as good," said the doctor.  "We're to get holofilms of the destroyer.  Preparatory to adding the close-up experience of the ship to the holojaunt."

"Good," said Ria.  "That was the only thing missing."

"Magister."  Commander Ark stood by Zude.  "I am due at the shelf's drillsite to get our microresonators online.  I regret that I'll not be able to see you off."  She pointed to another Sea-Shrieve who stood examining a mission capsule by Tiny Nauru's station.  "That is Commander Kiang Tung-Po, who will be in charge of the Seadrome.  Mariner Nauru will be your communications contact.  She'll get you launched and will stand by to check in with you at short intervals during the excursion." 

Ark saluted smartly. 

"Bon voyage, Magister.  I shall see you tomorrow."

Zude returned the salute. 

"Thank you, Commander.  You've been very kind." 

With a wave to the children, Ark disappeared into the back corridor.  In her off ear, Zude heard Jass still speaking to Ria, who was nodding with his every sentence. 

"It's very preliminary work.  Won't take long.  We can almost do it as we explore the wreck ourselves.  Any hesitations on your part, Magister?" 

Jass was donning a subvention belt and stuffing its compartments with holocartridges.

"None of course, doctor." 

Zude had been ready for this excursion for hours.  She had shed her cape, folded it carefully and laid it at-rest in her subvention belt.  She hadn't had a cigarillo all day and didn't even want one.

At last the word came.  A strong voice overrode all other activity.  It pronounced the launch bay and
Sojourner
ready for departure. The mood of the control room altered: Voices heightened, movements accelerated.  Zude's excitement rose with that tide.  She picked up Enrique and looked about for Regina. 

Regina, as it happened, appeared on the arm of still another Sea-Shrieve.  "Zude, this is Maizie," Reggie burbled.  "She's a pilot, too, like Jass." 

Zude's dark eyes met the pale eyes of the whitest woman she had ever seen. 

"Lieutenant Commander Nicola Maiz, Magister," saluted the newcomer.  "I was told that Dr. Egarber might need an auxiliary pilot as he's handling a small holoproject."  Her skin shone, almost like alabaster, and her full shock of hair must have clearly defied Amahrery regulations.  Zude had seen pictures of horses whose manes were this white and this regal but never had she seen such hair on a human.