* * * * * * * *
Amah Jing-Cha Longleaf's comfortsuit usually adjusted easily to extraordinary climate or weather changes, guaranteeing that her body's optimum temperature was never disturbed. But tonight she was freezing. Last week's hops across the Pacific, gerting with Rhoda from ship to ship, had given her a quick chill or two, but nothing quite equalled this night's trip through that unexpected cold desert air.
She was following Bosca and Rhoda now, and their Vigilante escort, down into the Nueva Tierra's Shrievalty Building. One by one they stepped into a downchuteand floated to a floor far below, emerging into a large multi-levelled rest area for Vigilancia personnel and their families. Singly, in pairs or in groups, women and children read, ate, drank, played, talked, viewed flatfilms. Longleaf could see the head of one smiling woman protruding from the end of a robomassager.
The Vigilante who greeted them was square-faced and pale, even for a white woman. "You have quarters here at the Shrievalty," she said, "with food and hot baths after you see the Magister." She handed them cups of hempbrew and tea, then disappeared. Longleaf sank down onto a thick couch beside Rhoda. Bosca, sensing her chill, placed a gigantic shawl over her shoulders.
Of the three of them, Bosca was clearly the native of this continent, a woman as aptly prepared for the cold desert nights as she was for the dry heat of its days. She had insisted on making the flight between the two Gerting Amahs in a cotton robe that hooded and gloved her, keeping her warm all the way from the Mexican heartlandnorthwest to the city she had longed to see since childhood.
Rhoda's voice broke into her reverie. "Bosca, here's Captain Edge." The three visitors forsook their cups and fell into step behind their imperious Vigilante guide. Rhoda adjusted her belt and checked her uniform for impeccable presentation, smoothing the tekla of her neck cowl as she blessed again that extraordinary synthetic textile -- if in fact it was synthetic, since nobody knew for sure.
Before they stepped into the upchute, Rhoda asked, "Captain, I forfeited a 'weapon' to the roof-keepers. Can you tell me where it is?" Edge withdrew a cotton pouch from the back of her sleeve, feeling the objects inside it. "That's it," Rhoda nodded.
"I'll check them out," said the Captain, "and have them ready for the Magister." Then she added, "Is there a name for these items?"
"They're called 'ballbakers.'" Rhoda replied, with a small shrug.
The upchute deposited them in a bare hallway. To the surprise of the visitors, no door sighed open, no iris widened. Instead, the small wall facing them simply began to disappear, gradually revealing a low-lit room. Beyond it, a giant window hugged a vast pattern of lights. Zella Terremoto Adverb stood in silhouette between them and her city, tonight bare of harbor fog. She stepped forward from the shadows.
On an almost tangible level, the first twenty seconds of the encounter would determine the course of the entire meeting. It would set the tone and establish the myriad psychic and psychological parameters that would couch the exchanges that were to follow.
For her part, Bosca saw the fog-naked city, stretching for miles behind the Magister's imposing figure. "I'm the City Of Angels," something sang from a gentle congestion in her throat. Quietly, she sang back to it, "Sprawl and fester all you please. You're still beautiful."
Jing-Cha Longleaf was thrust unexpectedly inside a silver-grey room where green plants hung in lush pockets of life. When she saw the long-haired calico cat in the lighted desk inset, she involuntarily touched Rhoda's arm and expelled a low exclamation. The Magister had preserved a reality from another era. Zude's face was still shadowed beyond Longleaf's capacity to be sure, but she felt a kind of assurance from that part of the room and decided to trade some of her apprehension for a shade of trust.
Rhoda registered surprise that the Magister was not seven feet tall, reassured Longleaf by leaning toward her, and turned slightly in the direction of the Vigilante behind them so as to hold that formidable figure in her peripheral field of vision.
Captain Edge kept her first level attention on the woman whose rank pips designated her as a Matrix Major. She prepared to move toward the transmogrifier as soon as opening formalities among the visitors were accomplished.
In the beginning seconds, Zella Terremoto Adverb saw before her two well-conditioned but wary Anglo women and a darker woman impossible to describe . . . except, Zude marveled to herself, except that she loves my city! Zude raised both hands just above her head, extending to the visitors the womb formed by her thumbs and forefingers. Her guests were one beat behind her in returning the high formal Kanshou salute.
"Amahs, we welcome you to the Vigilancia," Zude said, "I'm Zella Terremoto Adverb, Magister Of The Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy."
"Thank you, Magister," Rhoda replied. "We are Amah Matrix Major Rhoda Densmore and Jing-Cha Longleaf, or Rhoda-Gert-Longleaf, from the Asia-China-Insula Tri-Satrapy. We've come not as emissaries of Magister Lin-ci Win, but with her support. And this is Bosca, who sheltered us in her Mexico home."
Bosca came to her unnecessary salute belatedly but vigorously. She spoke as she lowered her arms. "I'm a visitor, Magister, and not a part of these negotiations unless you want me here."
Zude was abrupt. "Would you like a tour of the city?" To Rhoda, that voice still belonged to a larger-than-life presence.
"Is there time?" Bosca asked.
"With our monitors, there's always time." Zude smiled warmly. With a touch of her hand she raised the room's general illumination and the circle of light over the round table. "We can show you any public part of this city, ride above it or underneath it, move you through it as slowly as the Earth turns or as fast as a rocket."
"Are there flowers?"
"Fields of them, for as far as the eye can see. Bluebells, pansies, exotics."
"And the ocean. Can a visitor see the ocean?"
"The beach is one place you should go in person, particularly the part we've begun reclaiming. You won't find a structure for miles. No souvenir vendors or food kiosks."
"Then I'd like to accept your offer."
"Fine. Edge, take Bosca to L-9 and have Lieutenant Nan give her the whole show." The Captain nodded. Zude continued, "and arrange a hovercraftfor a beach trip tomorrow."
Edge nodded again. She had placed full cups from the transmogrifier on the round table. She turned now to gesture Bosca toward the wall where they had entered. The wall dissolved once more, and Bosca nodded a quick thank-youto Zude before she disappeared into the hallway by the downchute. The Vigilante started to follow her.
"And Edge," the Magister's voice stopped her. "Check my schedule. Find out when I am free so I can pilot the hovercraftand conduct Bosca's tour of the beaches."
As the wall reconstituted itself behind Bosca and Captain Edge, Longleaf shot her lover a covert glance of astonishment. Rhoda widened her eyes almost imperceptibly and shrugged ever so slightly. They watched the Magister who stood smiling at the repaqued wall.
Zude turned and glided toward the table, her extended arm inviting Rhoda and Longleaf to sit. Longleaf physically felt a shift in the air as the Magister moved. Zude seemed more to conquer space than merely to walk through it.
The window had repaqued itself, replacing the vista of lights with a holo perfectly matched to the room's cushion-like walls and ceiling panels. Zude stood between her visitors as they sat at the table.
Rhoda broke the silence. "You are a violinist, Magister?"
Zude glanced toward the instrument in its display nook and smiled briefly. "A fiddler, Major. And that a very long time ago." Without pause, she declared, "It's always good to see Amahs," she said. "I miss Hong Kong sometimes more even than my birthplace." She adjusted the remaining chair. "Are we in a rush? Or may we share a such-and-such?"
"We've no time limit, Magister," said Longleaf.
"Then by all means," Zude replied. She sat and noncommitally offered them cigarillos. Predictably, both women declined.
Longleaf spoke. "Before we begin, I must tell you that Matrix Majo
r Densmore is the official spokeswoman here. I have the kind of mind that will be able to reproduce this meeting verbatim, and with paralanguage and nonverbal counter- and sub-texts if requested. That's my function."
Zude nodded. "Our parallel to your talents is a flatfilm recording which at this moment is immortalizing us all on micropiezoplates. I assume you do not object?" Neither did. All three women settled, significantly more comfortable now and ready for the such-and-such. There was another silence. "Your choice, visitors," Zude said.
"Let's acknowledge our mothers," Rhoda decided, catching Longleaf's eye and subsequent nod.
"Very well," said Zude.
"My mother was Rowena Densmore," Rhoda began. "I remember her as pretty and strong, with lots of friends. She took care of me and my brother in Nueva Tierra Norte until she died of radiation poisoning from the Warrenton waste storage site that took so many lives. We lived in Lower Eastern Corridor, just below old D.C. in a complex of over a hundred families.
"I remember her best in the crisp white uniform she wore with her seniors in the nursing home. She ironed those uniforms herself with an old electric because she didn't trust the cleaning service, and the regulation permapress fabrics were too limber for her. She insisted that a limp uniform did not show enough respect for the old people. Every night I'd stand beside her on a styrostiff chairand squirt the starch for her while she ironed." Rhoda paused.
"I remember . . . just before she left for work that last time. She was feeling ill, but struggled to keep her spirits high. Her starched collar scratched my face when she hugged me and adjusted our mom-calls. Even after our aunt took us half way around the world to Sydney, I still kept that little mom-monitor to remember her by." Rhoda closed her hands in the gesture of completion.
Zude activated her exhaust chute and lit a cigarillo. She smiled through a puff of smoke. "My mother. . . Sylvia Isabel Romero, called 'Queta.' From a Tuyan tribe in the selvas, Eastern Colombia. After their village was appropriated for soybean production, her family moved by rail, river, and muletrail to Barranquilla. She and her husband and my brothers worked for a cocoa company. Cutting, drying, roasting, skinning the nibs. Packing and loading boats.
"She lived with my youngest half-brother and his family. Was almost fifty when she had me. She never said who my father was, but she told me stories of the animals, which she remembered very well. Those stories fed my spirit. They still do." Zude's eyes shifted to the calico cat in her desk unit. Then she resumed her narrative. "She joined the Church so I could go to school. I taught her to read. When I was fourteen, I left home and worked my way up the Caribbean side of the isthmus to Mexico City." Zude smothered the cigarillo against the bottom of the ashtray. Longleaf and Rhoda sat without moving.
"I had dreams of sending for her when I made a fortune, but things didn't work out that way." Zude leaned forward on the table. "It was my mother who first told me about spooning. I was eight. I used to crawl onto her cot with her. She would turn me away from her and then fit herself to me, holding me from the back. I remember once wondering how her holding me so close could feel so good on such a hot night. She laughed like she did whenever she read my thoughts. Then she said, 'The Motherkin say that if you truly love a woman and then sleep with her in this way, in a spoon, you can walk in her dreams and fly with her to the stars.'"
"No!" exclaimed Rhoda.
"Your mother!" Longleaf said.
Zude nodded. "So I wanted to fly with her right then. She told me we couldn't do that but that I might find such a love one day." There was a silence. Then Zude resumed. "I carried her words with me. Right into the arms of my first lover." All three women laughed softly. Zude folded her hands and turned to Longleaf. "And to complete our circle . . . ."
Longleaf shook her head. "I can't feature my mother ever telling me anything of that sort. She still lives just outside of Sydney in the Blue Hills. Her name is Florence Scarborough, and she was taught to be a European lady -- formal dinners and fancy dress balls. My most vivid memory is of a scene on our patio when I was about seven. My father had been dead more than a year, and my mother was constantly crying to my aunt about what a horrid place the world had become because now there were no men for her daughters to marry.
"That day she went on a real rampage. She blamed the navies of every country in the world for bringing the epidemics to Australia. Then she blamed the prostitutes, the Mafia, the gays, and the government. I made it all worse by running up to her and tugging at her hand and telling her that she should stop crying because Sissy and I didn't want to get married anyway, men just gave you diseases, and Sissy and I were going to love only each other and live to be two hundred.
"There she was, with her greatest fears materializing before her eyes: no wedding parties for me or Sissy, no grandchildren for her. Sissy and I have further distressed Mother since then, Sissy by choosing to live with the yurt people instead of with our mother and aunt, I by entering the Kanshou Amah Academy."
After a moment, Rhoda sighed. "My mother, clean and crisp," she said.
"Mi madre," said Zude, "Rememorante Afortunada."
"My mother, the perfect lady," said Longleaf.
No one broke the long silence that followed until Rhoda sighed again. "Well," she said, "that's the such-and-such."
"That's the such-and-such." Longleaf and Zude repeated, almost in unison.
Zude took their cups to the transmog for refills. "And now to the business of the day."
"That's harder," Rhoda said.
"It always is." Zude set Longleaf's tea before her and Rhoda's hempbrew in front of her. Three auras pulled back to more formal but still cordial distances, and a field of mutual concern rested among the three.
Rhoda leaned toward Zude. "Magister, you've probably heard about the outbreaks of male violence in New Howrah and Greater Chendu, in the bailiwicks."
"I know about the bailiwick uprisings there. I don't assume that the violence is male." Zude sipped her coffee.
"Those circumscribed in the bailiwicks are overwhelmingly men."
"But not exclusively."
"No. Not exclusively." Rhoda exhaled audibly, trying to soften the brittle texture that began to surround them.
"But these outbreaks seem to be especially intense. And fairly well organized."
"Oh?" An exploding cushcar filled Zude's mind. She suppressed the image and focused upon Rhoda's words.
"I don't know if you know it . . . Magister Win kept it under close wraps. . . but riots in New Howrah and Greater Chendu were followed by even more severe uprisings in Kandy and Singapore."
"I did not know they were counted more severe."
Rhoda leaned toward her. "They are severe enough, Magister, that whole demesnes of women are demanding immediate Habitante Testing--"
"Double-damn," Zude muttered, not taking her eyes from Rhoda.
"--so that research on the Anti-Violence Protocols can get underway."
"They're so sure!"
"So sure, Magister?"
"So sure that research will reveal a physical, discernable center of violence!" Zude overarticulated the words.
Rhoda glanced at Longleaf. "Yes," she said to Zude, "they're of that persuasion."
Abruptly, Zude stood up. "Insanity!" she breathed. She strode toward her desk unit.
"They want a final ridding of violence, Magister," Rhoda declared, "and to them the solution is the use of neurological inhibitors on any man convicted of--"
The words shot out of Zude's mouth: "'Person,' Major Densmore, on any person convicted of a violent act!"
Rhoda flared, almost rising from her seat. "Magister, with respect, you are ostriching! Over 95 percent of violent acts are still perpetrated by men!"
"I don't care if it's 99.9999 percent, Major! The jury is still out on the question of female violence potential. Until we can determine without question the incompatibility of violence with the female psyche, then our language must reflect that reality!" The image of the coverall-clad habita
nte held up two thumbs. "Brava, Captain!" she cheered, her laughter filling Zude's head. Zude cleared the vision, and laid her gaze hard upon the Amah who confronted her.
Rhoda did not flinch. With her eyes still fixed on Zude she spoke evenly. "I stand corrected, Magister. Charge my language to the fact that my duties have been exclusively with women for over two years. That makes inflated statements about men easy utterances."
"I suppose so," Zude nodded, still discomfited. "Amahs," she said, walking toward them, "with rapidly increasing frequency I am besieged by organizations throughout this tri-satrapy who want Habitante Testing enacted immediately."
"Magister--" Rhoda began.
Zude reclaimed her chair, her hand raised in a gesture of deterrence. "I'm also besieged by those who feel that such testing would be a disaster, that the price in human freedom would be too great. Habitantes have rights, Amahs! And even if some organic basis for violence is proven, there still can be no excuse for any tampering with the brain of a violent offender. I daresay you already know my position on all this."
In the pause that followed, Zude studied her two Australian visitors. All three of them were carefully dodging the thousand volatile aspects of the planet's most controversial issue.
"Kanshoumates," she continued, letting her inchoate feelings guide her, "we've been drawing near a pointed and dangerous cusp in our talking. Magister Lin-ci Win and other protofiles would have us obliterate violence. But we cannot obliterate it if, in the process, we destroy the rights of any person. Both the Habitante Testing and the notion of violence inhibitors constitute for me an abrogation of individual rights. It's no wonder you find me touchy on this subject." She paused. "We need to be more direct with each other."
Rhoda and Longleaf exchanged a look, unprepared for the Magister's candor. Rhoda took a deep breath and asked, "Are you asking for true-talk, Magister?"
Zude's eyes opened a fraction of a centimeter wider. "I am."
The Kanshou (Earthkeep) Page 4