Then the bird disappeared. And the grackles in the trees hushed their cries, moving from branch to branch in silence.
Lina stared at her empty hands. Her face contorted into an agony of disappointment and betrayal. She tuned up from a barely audible whimper into an escalating scream. She screamed again and again, gasping with each intake of breath.
With only a glance between them, Señora Casco and Raúl closed their eyes again and sat calmly. Some others nearby did the same. Lina continued to scream.
"Find the presencing place, Raúl," the señora directed, softly. "Make it empty, no thoughts."
Raúl nodded.
Lina howled.
Then another grackle, or perhaps the same one, landed on Señora Casco's head. The child hushed, galvanized by the bird.
"You can presence with us if you want to, Lina," said the woman without opening her eyes. "Just make yourself very calm and watch how you breathe."
The little girl collapsed to the ground, staring at the grackle. She closed her eyes.
"When a thought or a feeling or a sensation comes, say hello to it, and then watch your breath again."
They sat for long minutes — the child, the boy, and the woman with a bird in her hair — interrupted now and then by words from the señora.
"To play with birds, or with dogs or other animals, human beings have to be present with them. They must go to the quiet place inside and invite the animal to join them there."
A few moments later she said, "This is the place where we let the animals teach us. The animals always know what they are doing, but we have a different kind of mind, and it often makes us forget what we are doing. And who we are."
A little later she said, "When the inside of your head is very big and empty, that's when you're in the Matrix, and that's when you can invite the animal into your quiet place."
While Zude watched the enduring silence, Jez closed her eyes, seeking her own place of welcome for the grackles. Suddenly, Zude gripped her wrist. Jez's eyes flew open. Zude was staring at the little group and grinning.
With effort, Jez focused her eyes. Only one thing had changed in the picture that had been before her: The grackle had abandoned Señora Casco's head and now stood immobile on the head of the relaxed and smiling little girl. Her eyes still closed, Lina raised her hand and extended a forefinger. Immediately the bird leapt to the perch and settled there, its head close to the child's happy face.
The tableau remained for minutes more, the only sounds an occasional whistle or squawk from the trees. Finally, people opened their eyes and stretched. Life resumed its regular pace.
"And that," Zude observed, as she and Jez headed toward the lake where Maestra Kathleen would be holding classes, "is why we don't need Kanshou anymore."
"That's a little overstated, Steward," Jez suggested. "Plenty of people still can't do what the grackle did."
"Ah, but we're learning, Bella-Belle."
"And you aren't bored, Zudie? You don't miss all the blood and thunder?"
Zude was thoughtful. "I was afraid I would," she replied, "but no. No, I don't miss it." Speaking in mindreach, she sent haltingly, "I've missed you, Jezebel."
"I've missed you too, Zudie," Jez sent back.
"We're both so busy, I know," the words tumbled out of Steward Adverb's mouth, "I mean, I'm supposed to be running a tri-satrapy, and you, you're still pushing frontiers, not even sleeping much. It's like we have a thousand more commitments than we ever did before, and we're doing more and more things and getting higher and faster and . . . but maybe we could--"
"Zudie."
Zude stopped. She blinked, and deliberately slowed her breath.
"Zudie," Jez said aloud, her eyes crinkling, "there's no end to the things we can do, or be, or have. We can do together whatever we both want to do together."
Zude blinked again.
"Well," she croaked. "Well." She cleared her throat and steered them into motion again. There was an added lilt to her steps.
The day scorched well into afternoon before they found Maestra Kathleen and her students. Atop a slope of lake grass, Zude stood watching sixteen children below in a stand of trees, intently busy at a group task.
Maestra Kathleen sat on one of several high-backed benches, leaning forward, observing the group. She wore a plain ankle-length dress of smooth cotton that protected her ample body from the sun. Her long brown hair was held back with a scarf. Suddenly, her voice rose above the low murmur of the children's activity.
"Aurelia! Lift up Luka so she can see better! Good. Thank you!"
Steward Adverb had a frown on her face. "Jez," she said, peering down the incline, "Jez, that woman looks a little like . . . and her voice, her stance, she's . . ."
Jez stood beside her, an innocent smile on her face. "She's what?"
At that moment the teacher shielded her eyes from the sun and gestured to the figures on the hill. "Welcome!" she called to the visitors. One or two of the children followed her gaze.
Zude did not take her eyes off the woman below her. "Jez, is that. . .Edge!" she shouted, "Captain Edge, is that you?"
She burst down the hill in a run.
"Magister!" the woman exclaimed in astonishment. She rose and moved toward Zude. The two women met in a large, loud, back-slapping embrace, laughing and talking. Lest they lapse into a marathon of old-times-at-the-Shrievalty-Building, Jez drew the three of them toward the benches. "What are the children so engrossed in?" she asked the maestra.
"They're learning how to construct a holocosm." Kathleen smiled. "That technology is actually way beyond anything they could do from scratch, but we have a young cosmotech to show how it's done. He brought his holo and splining generators with him and carried everything he needed here in his pockets!"
Jez and Zude looked over at the group of children, who were focused with rapt attention on a dark young man.
"May we watch?" asked Zude.
"Of course," answered Kathleen.
But Jez was already on her feet, pulled by a tremor of familiarity, a tug of memory, toward the lesson-place. The instructor's back was toward her. "Now," he was saying, "once you have the silver orb at low-spin, you start on the white one. It represents the Stream, so the Matrix orb has to revolve in that direction, and intersect with it. . .like. . .so."
The young man's deep voice, where had she heard it before?
"Once you have these two set," he appeared to be weaving a third globe now, "you produce the golden orb, the Journey, and. . .set it spinning. . .that way. . .into the first orb, the Matrix."
The children held their collective breath as he ever so delicately maneuvered the three glowing spheres into their interlocking rotation. He turned his head slightly, and Jez caught her own breath. Another circle of children, another time . . . . She was back in a schoolroom in Arabia. Shaheed!
"Now all we have to do is en-cube it with the crystal-lumer, like this. . ." He straightened and set aloft the completed holocosm.
"Ahhh!" the children breathed out.
The wondrous artwork shimmered, its vivid colors dancing as the spheres turned each into the other, suspended and revolving, stillness and motion all together.
"Wonderful, Shaheed!" exclaimed Maestra Kathleen, moving around the clutch of children and gazing at the holocosm floating just above their heads. "Matrix," she said, speaking to the group and reaching toward each globe as she spoke, "our source and home, delivering us into the Stream, our realm of active force and creativity, which births us into the Journey, our physical life, and then back again to Home!"
Zude, who had come up next to Jez, was awed. "What a dazzlingly simple demonstration of it all," she observed.
Shaheed looked then from his creation to the two guests. His reply stopped at his lips when he saw Jezebel. His dark eyes widened, then his face burst into a radiant smile. Jez grinned back. He gestured with mock-futility at the small wall of children between them. She gestured an I'll-wait-for-you-here reply, and he turned back
to wrap up his demonstration. He presented Maestra Kathleen with the holocosm, which she accepted with a little gasp of appreciation, then they both answered a cascade of eager questions from the youngsters.
One child in particular wanted to know about the jet-black pyramid in the center of the holocosm, the place where all three orbs intersected. "There's no light at all there!" she said.
Kathleen laughed. "Good for you, Yolie! That part is hard to explain. It's called the Realm Of All Possibility, where everything that we can't yet imagine, is imagined."
"Then it's all empty?" Yolie persisted.
"Yes," answered Shaheed, "all empty. And. . .all full!"
Yolie laughed and rolled her eyes.
Jez and Zude stood to one side, enjoying the cosmological pedagogy. When it began to subside, Kathleen said in her carrying voice, "Let's finish up today by showing our guests what we've been practicing all week!"
"Yes!" "Let's!" "Good!" came the piping voices.
"They're learning how to shyfly in a group," the maestra told Jez and Zude. "All right," she called. "Here!"
Immediately the scattered students poured over her, forming at her feet a mound of human flesh. The maestra hugged or stroked each one as they clung to her. Satisfied that all her brood was accounted for, she kept her voice in command timbre.
"What is the most important thing in the world?" she sang out.
The excited unison shouting was accompanied by many tiny waving hands: "Nothing is more important than that I feel Good!"
"And how do you feel when you feel Good?"
A litany of answers from different students: "I feel whole!" "I feel glad!" "I feel love!" "I feel free!"
"And do you feel Good?"
"Yes!" Clapping and cheers.
"And what does it mean when you don't feel Good?"
"It means I'm not in vibration!" one child said.
"I'm not in synch!" said another.
"And how do you get back into vibration?"
"I imagine happy things!" came the chorus. "I imagine!" they shouted again.
"Let me see how you feel Good!" sang out the maestra, and sixteen pairs of eyes squinted in concentration.
Strong, bright striations of light sprang from the group and glistened in the air. The guests nodded awe and approval.
The maestra spoke again. "Now, this will be our goodbye exercise. We four bigs won't be going with you, so Sol Serrano will be your center." She pointed to an older boy.
There were shouts and whispers of goodbye to the teacher and the visitors as the little group drew eagerly together.
"All of you be sure you are touching Sol somewhere on his body, or touching someone who is touching him. And hold each other, touch as many other people as you can."
She drew back from the group, standing at its edge. In a chaos of grunts and squeals and giggles, the mass of children shifted and squeezed more tightly together.
"Sol, you are also nonce monitor, so you get to make the count when you arrive. You'll signal if anyone's missing, right?"
The boy nodded and scrunched into his classmates, eager and waiting.
Kathleen turned to Jez. "Doña Jezebel, would you do us the honor of articulating our shyflight incantation? I've been sending them off in a simple group transport, shy-and-reflesh."
"Delighted," said Jez. She hunkered down, close to the children and touching several of them. She raised her voice. "Can you all see the bicycles on the broad path by the lone rubber tree?" she asked, pointing about 80 meters beyond a nearby grassy knoll. The children shifted so everyone could clearly see the destination, and then all heads nodded in fervent affirmation.
"In front of the bicycles, that's where you want to be, where you'll reflesh. Look at the place, see yourselves there, in exactly your present position. All of you got it?" Again, excited endorsements. Jez's glance at Kathleen asked if the specified distance was an appropriate maneuver for her crew. Kathleen pointed upward with her thumb.
"Do you feel Good?" asked Jezebel.
It was a chorus: "Yes!" followed by individual assurances: "I feel wonderful!" "I'm flying already, maestra!" "I'm going, I'm going! Hold me down!" The vibrations rose, shimmering in the air, tugging at the group; everyone hugged harder in an intensifying anticipation, trying to stay grounded a few more moments.
Jez's voice took on a louder, firmer quality. "Good. Study your destination carefully and set the image of it in your mind. Now close your eyes! Hold that image steady." She paused. "Now raise those vibrations higher! Even higher!" Delight rode every face. The group was quivering. "Keep the image! Don't let it waver! You're about to go now! Up the vibes! Keep the image! Here is your incantation!" Then Jezebel Stronglaces sang, strong and clear:
"Sister-Brother, in an instant,
in the twinkling of an eye,
we shall course the Stream together,
for we are go-ing shy!
So touch my spirit lightly
and hold the image true.
(We'll put on immortality for just a moment, too!)
I love my separate body,
its sweet delights I know,
but I place it in your keeping now,
and off. . .with you. . . I go!"
The children were gone! Zude, Jez, Kathleen and Shaheed sat alone. In the next moment, the entire cluster of children reappeared down the path by the big rubber tree.
They cheered loudly as they got to their feet and waved. "We did it!" "Goodbye!" "Hasta luego, maestra!" Sol Serrano did a hasty count and sent Kathleen an okay sign. One of the older girls rose in an awkward but finally successful solo skyflight. Then all of them were off, several on bicycles, but most walking or skipping. Two older children carried a smaller child in hand-saddle.
"Wondrous!" Zude exclaimed.
"Well-done, Doña Jezebel!" exclaimed Kathleen.
"Well-done, maestra," Jez replied, "well-done!"
She turned to the tall young man. "Shaheed," she said. "How wonderful to see you. And as a teacher, too!"
He smiled. "My life changed after that day, Jezebel Stronglaces."
"So did mine, Shaheed."
Jezebel held out her arms and Shaheed walked into them.
* * * * * * *
It was after midnight. Jez and Zude rested on a grassy promontory near Colón's cush-rocket terminal, watching the lights of the city. Jez leaned against a giant mahogany tree, Zude's head in her lap.
"It's been a magical day, Jezebel," Zude said, after long silence. "Actually," she added, "it's been a magical Journey."
"It's always a magical Journey," Jez agreed.
Into the silence Zude said lightly, "We don't have to go at dawn, you know. We could wait until noon and take a Belize rocket."
Jez looked at the dark face below her.
"And in the meantime," Zude continued, "we--"
Jez's voice covered hers.
"I know a hideaway in an old army town. Peace Point, just across the bay, there. Small rooms, bed-and-breakfast." She ran her fingers through Zude's thick hair. Her fingers touched the unicorn earring in Zude's left ear. Matter-of-factly, she pulled the hair away from Zude's right ear, took the matching unicorn from her own ear, and hung it on Zude's.
Zude lay motionless.
"So," said Jez, "the pair's no longer split." She smiled.
Zude searched Jez's face, then pressed Jez's hand to her lips.
It was moments later when Jez spoke again. "We could shyfly to Peace Point in an instant."
"Or we could spoon."
"Spoon! Zudie--"
"It's been a while, I know, but the stars are bright . . ."
She sat up and faced Jezebel.
Jez raised her hand to Zude's cheek. She laughed.
"You think we still could? Zudie, it's been . . . "
"We can do together whatever we both want to do together," Zude reminded her. "Come on." She rose quickly and pulled an unresisting Jezebel to her feet.
They swung their trip-packs into place
and stood face to face. Jez leaned forward and kissed Zude, just long enough.
"My pleasure, Cadet Lieutenant Adverb. I'll navigate."
She turned and placed herself squarely in front of Zude, facing north.
Zude drew the long body tight against her own. Then both women bent their knees and closed their eyes, breathing themselves into intimate alignment.
"By all the dreams we've walked together," whispered Zude.
"By all the love with which we've filled the vessels of our lives," whispered Jezebel.
They intoned a harmony, tumbled inward, touched familiar reaches of a vista that opened to the stars. They lifted Earth-free feet and leapt above the twinkling lights of Colón to sail rejoicing toward the Caribbean, then west again to Peace Point.
EARTHKEEP CHRONOLOGY
Common Era Date
2003
World Health Organization announces that alternative and complementary health practices lend hope for long life to persons of HIV-positive status. Deaths from Virus I (HIV) balloon in Indonesia, Bengal Bay, and Hong Kong as a result of contaminated blood supplies from the 1990's.
2004
Pan-European medical establishment announces first truly effective vaccine (Vaccine I) against Virus I, to be available immediately.
2005
Flossie YotomaLutu is born in the Sudan, fifty miles from the White Nile River.
2006
Precipitous emergence of mutant virus (Virus II) from the Virus I vaccine.
2007
Beginning of decade of escalating natural cataclysms, such as spikes in global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, famine, malaria, rivers poisoned by acid rain. China, India, and southeast Asia are especially stricken.
2008
Effective vaccine (Vaccine II) against Virus II is announced.
2010
Emergence from Vaccine II of a new strain of drug-resistant virus (Virus III).
2012
The Magister (Earthkeep) Page 27