The Magister (Earthkeep)

by Sally Miller Gearhart

  Jez had found herself exhilarated by the scene and enveloped by the laughter of the girls at its close. Now in her trundle bed by Dicken, she shook her head in wonder at the power that the little drama had held for her. She pointed the itinerary of her mind toward the Tall Towers Of Gratitude. At last she reached out to lay her hand on Dicken's and dropped into sleep.

  * * * * * * *

  In the days that followed, Jez visited with and worked beside the bereaved people of Chimney Corner. Over and over she told them what little she had learned from the children: that they loved their families very deeply, that nothing could prevent their dying, that for them their dying would be joyful and absolutely safe. She listened to the people of the covenant as they bore unbearable loss and, with their eyes and ears and fingers, made memories of their children.

  When Dicken was able, she wove her own modest strand of presence and love into the texture of the covenant's life. Both visitors knew that they must leave Chimney Corner a day or two before the time of the children's dying. By then they would have done all they could of hearing and holding, all they could of understanding and learning. The covenant would say goodbye to its children without the attendance of outsiders.

  With white-haired little ones, and often with other children as well, the visitors flew in low spoon over the greening hills. Or they walked to the edges of the mountain stream where the melting of cold snows was swelling the waters into loud babblings. Taína, Breden and Chassel sometimes tantalized them with cryptic glimpses of new realities that they clearly took for granted.

  Once when Dicken asked Breden where she would be after she had left them, the child swung Dicken's hand and announced simply, "We go with our friends." And once when they were speaking aloud, Taína told Jez about the beings who guard Little Blue.

  "Their home is the Great Ear," she said, "which hears us all into Being. And they call us Her Cherished Vividity."

  "Us?" Jez frowned.

  "Well, I mean, that's what they call Little Blue. The Planet Being. Her Cherished Vividity."

  "So she really is alive. . .a being. Little Blue? Gaia?"

  Taína was aghast at the doubt. "Oh, Calica, of course! And she's very busy, trying to get well."

  "I see," said Jez.

  One evening Donal Jain awaited them, standing like a solitary oak on the side of a steep hill.

  "With respect, Jezebel," he said, looking to the sky, "I dare to hope that I may fly again." He turned to her. "When I learn more of what our flight together meant. And when there is a wise woman who will help me to the task."

  There was an uneasy moment, for Jez had stalwartly set aside the memory of that desperate night and the magic that had followed, choosing not to think about it or its ramifications.

  It was Dicken who banished the tension.

  "Donal Jain," she said, "you can borrow fire from my hearth anytime." She shot Jez a glance. "I don't know what it means that you and my Jezebel did what you did. But I'm the one standing here because of it. That makes you family to me, mister."

  She held out her arms. Donal Jain welcomed that embrace. He and Dicken drew Jezebel to them, and the three of them swayed together.

  * * * * * * *

  When at last Jez and Dicken flew out of Chimney Corner, Dicken had her life and her health. Jez carried with her a deep gratitude for Dicken's recovery and a swatch of white hair that Taína had given her in a small ceramic box. Both of them bore the memories of extraordinary days and sturdy new friendships. Both of them basked in the love of a score of children, eight of whom they would never see again.

  3 – New Druid Trench – [2088 C.E.]

  When the mind is melted and used like water,

  it can be sent wherever one wants to send it.

  Wisdom Of The Ancients

  Sky Captain Lila Monteflores, one of the Vigilancia's low solar rocket engineers, turned her eyes from the bright wide Pacific flying beneath her to the pantomime of fierce competition that raged beyond her transparent sound block. Below and behind her an old-fashioned game of spoons was escalating to its inescapable conclusion: Magister Adverb, Commander-In-Chief of the Vigilancia, was just about to realize that she had been outwitted by a very round little boy named Enrique, Regina his raven-haired sister, and Ria their mother.

  "Whoa!" shouted Zude, when she discovered that all the spoons had disappeared. Enrique and Regina cast away their cards and shrieked their jubilation. With taunts and whoops they threw themselves upon the defeated one, pummeling her unmercifully with the very trophies of their victory.

  Monteflores spun half-circle in her pilot's cup, scanned the ocean again, and noted that their destination was less than ten minutes away. The sound block puffed open and closed again to admit a much-scathed Zude, hauling with her the accoutrements of her full-dress uniform. "Captain," she said, "may I put myself together in here?"

  "Indeed, Magister."

  "Better question: If we behave, may I bring Reggie and Enrique up here to watch the landing?"

  "Of course, Magister. No problem."

  "Good."

  Zude sank into the secondary cup just below Monteflores and began snapping on the belts and scarf loops of a visiting Tri-Satrapy Magister.

  Minutes later the pilot spoke over her shoulder. "We're beginning landing preparations, Magister. Shall I open a line to the children?"

  "Please," answered Zude. She was about to speak her summons into the comchannel when Monteflores held up her hand. Zude listened. From the bowels of the fore-suite below them came a sound incomparably sweet. Piping childish voices sang in soft tones, with Ria, mother of the voices, sometimes helping:

  "¿Dónde estás pelícano?

  ¿Dónde estás cordero?

  ¿Dónde estás elefante?

  ¿Dónde estás salmón?" sang Enrique.

  "Sólo, sólo, sólo,

  Sólo en mi corazón," answered Regina and Ria.

  Then Regina sang:

  "Te ruego, salmón lindo,

  Y a ti elefante grande,

  Y a ti cordero inocente,

  Y a ti blanco pelícano."

  And all three sang:

  "Te ruego, te ruego, te ruego:

  Que algún día estés a la mano."

  The song ended with a flourish. At Monteflores’s invitation, two animated children tumbled loudly onto the bridge of the rocket. They plastered themselves immediately against the transparent walls, the better to exclaim at the ocean passing beneath them.

  In the back of the craft, other Kanshou and civilians were listening to an interactive audio-commentary: "We're slowing to ground speed as we approach the topmost and largest of the Bathsheba Islands. We'll land on Punto, the smaller island just beyond Bougainville, to allow Magister Adverb and her party to disembark. Then we'll depart immediately for Manila and your destinations.

  "Just below you and to your upper left are seaweed operations up and down the archipelago. With no animals to curb it, all the phytoplankton — all the plant life, in fact — blocks out its own sunlight with its heavy bloom. If it's not constantly monitored, it literally dies of its own self-shading. You can still note the differences in the color of the seas surrounding the islands. No coral anymore, of course, but you can see the shallow shelf extending some 20 miles from the beach before it drops off far to the west into the New Druid Trench. That trench is 150 miles in length, northwest to southeast."

  "How deep?" asked one of the passengers.

  "About 9,200 meters to the bottom," answered the computer. "Less than 500 meters down into it, the wreck of a World War II destroyer has settled onto a wide shelf. The Amahrery's Sea-Shrieves maintain a small fleet of phaetons or underwater jitneys for island undersea watch. They are similar to the old submersibles and available at a hefty credit outlay for tourists who want to see the wreck or explore the upper regions of the trench.

  "On the southwestern tip of Punto are three facilities. The first one you see, there, is the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion tower. The second is
Labine Village, the experimental underwater community."

  "Is that where they do ovular merging?"

  "No, that's the work of the third facility, the McClintock-Saria complex, whose buildings you can see almost below us now on the eastern shore. McClintock-Saria was one of the centers established in the hope that animals might be cloned back into existence. The equatorial conditions seemed the best chance for sustaining the lives of clones if viable subjects were ever produced. As long as frozen embryonic animal cells were available, the work continued. When those efforts met with no success, centers like this one were converted into human ovular merging facilities."

  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.