The Kanshou (Earthkeep)

by Sally Miller Gearhart

  Stone caught a movement from behind them. He drew Gabe aside so a suntruck full of Femmedarmes could pass them. The driver nodded brief thanks. He felt Gabe's eyes on him as they resumed their walking. He waited until the suncart had cleared the far patch of trees. "Here it is," he said. "I just can't be a part of that violence."

  Girardon flared. "'That violence!' Who's doing the violence, Stone? Not me or you or Ángel or any habitante! The violence is the Testing. We are simply resisting it!"

  "Resisting it is the same as the violence." Stone's arms tingled with delight.

  "The same--!" Gabe sputtered. "So, Baldy, are you going to let them cut on you?"

  "I didn't say that!"

  "That's what you mean!"

  "No!"

  Girardon snapped to a halt. "What else can you mean?" he roared.

  "They won't do it!" Stone roared back.

  "They won't . . . ! Man--"

  Stone overrode him. "Gabe, I know it! I know they won't do the Testing! I don't know how I know it, but I promise you it's true!" From his arms surged an ongoing explosion of yeses; he rubbed them gently.

  Girardon stared at him, incredulous. "Man, you have lost it," he said gently. He pointed to Stone's arms. "Your animal buddies, are they telling you that?"

  Stone smiled. "Maybe," he said. He tried to urge Girardon forward again.

  "Wait." Gabriel was earnest. "Baldy, I hear you saying you don't want to be part of it." As Stone nodded, Gabe nodded, too. "But I do not hear you saying you'll try to stop us."

  Stone sent Eagle and Snake an assurance. "I can't stop you," he said. "I may keep yelling at you, trying to make you see it my way. But I can't stop you." He paused. "Look, Gabe, you know I got no reason to snitch or tip off anybody. You can trust me on that."

  "I trust you, Baldy. But listen up," Gabriel went on, still holding Stone's eyes, "don't say anything to Ángel yet."

  "Why not?"

  "Just lay off telling him. A day. Two days. This is between you and me. Okay?"

  "I got to tell him, Gabe."

  "I know, I know. Just not right now. Okay?"

  Stone quieted the objections on his arms. "I can wait until tomorrow, Gabe," he said, "no more than that. He's got to know."

  Both men scanned the open valley to see who might possibly have heard their altercation. They were alone, and the bailiwick's buildings lay now just below them. The two men sealed their habitante fatigues chin-high against a rising wind and set out walking again, now in silence, down to the mess hall.

  As they approached the common buildings, Gabe slowed their progress. "Baldy, you want to know a secret?" He smiled toward the dawning day as he spoke.

  "Sure."

  "I've never said this to anybody, man." Girardon cut his eyes toward Stone. "So repeat it and you're dead."

  Stone pointed to his chest with his thumb. "It stops here."

  "Baldy, the happiest I ever been in my life is in a bailiwick."

  Stone slowed to a stop, looking at him.

  Gabe held up both hands. "No. Rock-bottom truth. I realized it when I finished my term up at Oslo. Stone, I been looking for men all my life. Strong men, interesting men. Looking for men in a world of girls. And what's mostly in a bailiwick?"

  "Come on, monsieur, you're not--"

  "No, I don't mean gay. I tried that, but no cigar. I don't need bedfellows, just buddies." They walked again, encountering two Femmedarmes. The women greeted them, and passed on. Gabe continued. "So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've found good men in bailiwicks, Stone. You're one of them."

  Eagle and Snake were swelling with pride and appreciation. Stone flushed. "Well, I'm glad, monsieur," he said.

  They were in the midst of 'Darmes and habitantes now, coming and going with the start of the bailiwick day. Gabe stopped them at the door of the food rotunda, speaking in his habitual hearty voice. "I hope you'll change your mind, Big Stone, and stay on the team."

  "I don't think I'll change on this one, Monsieur Girardon. Your no-rest rugby is too much for me."

  "At least think about it," Girardon urged.

  Stone smiled. "Sure, Gabe. I'll do that. I'll think about it." They went into the mess hall, slapping each other's shoulders.

  * * * * * * * *

  Five hours later, Habitante Lucio Baragiali left early from his regular morning shift at the bailiwick's Weather Monitoring Comcenter and rode in a humming suncart along a raised roadway through the sediment fields. His head was spinning, his heart was thundering, and the tattooed friends on his arms unceasingly broadcast their presence with surges of alert attention and concern.

  The weather was changing rapidly, with the high-noon sun disappearing behind a bank of dark clouds. The coming rain had been unpredicted.

  As the suncart sped along, Stone looked south, deliberately seeking out the sludge dam in the distance. Its massive headwork loomed over the valley, above the ranks of conduits fanning out over the hillsides. There, tons of preliminarily treated wastes rested against a grandly structured poratac bulwark. Poratac, Stone thought, the cement that breathes! The entire sewage enterprise depended on poratac's strength and efficiency, its unique permeable/nonpermeable properties.

  Stone's grinning companion, Habitante Victor Cuza, drummed on the suncart, barely controlling a wild excitement. They were headed toward their culvert assignment deep in the bailiwick's filterlands. Behind them rolled a batchbarrow of gelatinous poratac cement. For the third time in almost as many minutes, Stone pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from the headband of his light green broad-billed cap.

  Femmedarme Nyosa d'Soninke's loose black pants, draped at midcalf by knee elastic, covered the tops of her plastiped boots. She drove with vigilant eyes and minimum conversation. When she leaned in their progress around one corner, her large breasts moved visibly under the green cotton of her tabard.

  Cuza punched Stone with his elbow, his mouth a leer and his eyes glued to the breasts. Stone ignored the gesture and wiped his headband free of sweat. Then he wiped his smooth head. And his hands. The weight of the cement behind them seemed like a feather compared to the load of information he had been carrying for the past half-hour. He folded his forearms together and held his elbows steady against the jogging suncart. He watched the leaden clouds, more certain than anyone, even Cuza, of the storm that was coming.

  9 – Storm - (2087 C.E.)

  The careful Kanshou

  tastes danger's spark before it

  crosses into flame.

  --The Labrys Manual

  Femmedarme d'Soninke deposited Stone and Cuza at the culvert where Habitante Ángel Espartero was already at work squaring the forms. She briefly discussed with the three men the capacity of the poratac to quick-set before the storm descended, gave them the go-ahead for making the pour, and then hastily departed.

  "Ángel, it's on! From Caracas!" Stone called out, quickly positioning the batchbarrow. He cast his eyes to the threatening sky.

  "Another false alarm," Ángel muttered. He pushed his African print boxcap more firmly to his head.

  "No," Cuza joined in. He pushed on his black beret in emulation of Ángel's motion. "Stone says this time, it's all three of the code words!"

  Ángel involuntarily paused in his adjusting of the chute. He looked at Stone, then swung the chute over the largest of the forms. "'Sidewinder' and 'lush'?"

  Stone nodded. "Yes."

  The poratac rolled. Cuza punched up and down in the filling forms with a long pole. "And 'Burnt Ground,'" said Stone, diminishing the flow. "All three."

  "Show me!" Ángel moved the chute to the next set of forms.

  Stone handed him a magnopad.

  Ángel frowned as he studied the message. "Update at 0416 hours," it said. "High pressure system stabilizing over Burnt Ground in the Bahamas with monox readings at 8.9, well into the green but should be monitored, particularly if sidewinder winds replace lush fogs over Himalayan concourses."

  The frown faded. "Ande, ande!
It happens!" Ángel whispered fiercely, his dancing eyes on the sky. "And the rain! It comes right now, from God!" As if in confirmation, a sharp thunderclap sounded.

  Stone began, "Ángel--" The hardest edge of a wind gust stopped him.

  Cuza struggled to smooth the poratac on the filled form. "More here," he intoned. "It's setting up fast." The wind was becoming a gale.

  Stone filled a floater from the batchbarrow and handed it to Cuza. "We can finish," he said. He maneuvered the batchbarrow for the second run of cement, adjusting the balance as Ángel steered the flow down the chute.

  "Rolling Brown. Operation Rolling Brown," Ángel asked urgently. "Did you initiate it?"

  "No," Stone answered. He shut off the pour, directing Cuza and his tools toward the center form.

  Ángel exploded. "I told you, I ordered you--"

  "I didn't," Stone repeated. "But Hejaz did." He jockeyed the batchbarrow toward the last of the forms.

  "You're sure?"

  "Watch. Any minute."

  Ángel shot a look southward toward the sludge dam. "Any minute!" he intoned ecstatically.

  It was actually five minutes before an accelerating excitement began to break over the filtration field, plenty of time for the men to complete the pours and clean the batchbarrow, to cover the freshly-filled forms with heavy plastic, and to park the tools and the batchbarrow at a safe location. Ángel ordered Stone to duck out of the emergency action as soon as possible and to meet him and Cuza at the Depot. They would hole up there until all contacts reported in.

  "Ángel," Big Stone blurted, "I got to talk to you."

  "Later," Ángel answered, "when we've--"

  Suddenly, two Flying Daggers hovered in gert above them, directing them toward an approaching suntruck. "The dam," one of them shouted, "it's about to break!" The gert soared again, joining the hasty relocation of cushcars toward the south. Another gust of wind scooped Stone's cap from his head. Simultaneously the squawk of the general alarm burst upon his ears.

  The valley and hillsides came alive. Green-and-black-clad Femmedarmes suddenly swarmed everywhere -- in cushcars and suncarts, on foot and dropping from the sky in pairs, shouting over wind gusts and occasional thunder. They gathered habitantes into suntrucks and deployed them at silos where sandbag teams and terreforming equipment had swung into desperate action. Every eye strained southward, drawn by the magnet of the sludge dam, and below it the conduits that would soon be too full too fast.

  Stone barely retrieved his cap in time to protect his exposed head from the splatter of plump drops of rain. He saw Ángel and Cuza turning up their coverall collars. Another roll of thunder. More raindrops, this time on his neck.

  The Kanshou Captain who was driving the suntruck ordered them into it without coming to a full halt. The rain had begun a hard steady tapping now as she gathered work parties onto the vehicle and deposited them at different sites. She did not see Ángel and Cuza drop off with a large group and head by a circuitous route for one of the old water pumping units.

  "Take it, Big Stone!" Without warning, the Captain turned the truck controls over to him. She stood on the suntruck's seat and braced herself on the tiny dash, spilling out orders to all sides, directing Stone's driving, calling habitantes by name as she herded them on and off the truck. The comunit around her head blared reports from cushcars and dispatch centers.

  Stone never knew when the sludge dam broke. Its rumble coincided with a roll of thunder. He was aware only of an endless succession of stops and starts, turns and swerves. He drove in heavy rain for the better part of an hour, merging with the chaos, with the urgent redirection of huge accumulations of sludge into diversion ditches. With a curious mix of dismay and satisfaction he watched the overflowing conduits as they began to cover the pristine filtration berths with a massive counterpane of excrement, inches in thickness, acres in breadth.

  At a change of assignments he disappeared into a quartermaster station, fortunately deserted by its occasionally presiding Femmedarme, and hauled double armfuls of light green jumpsuits, caps, and underduds from the shelf. In the adjoining toilet he loosened the rear floor panel in one stall and dropped into the blackness beneath, pulling the clothes after him, the panels back into place.

  Stone stood for a moment, leaning on the dirt wall. "So fast," he said to his inner companions. Snake and Eagle filled his head, slowing his heart, soothing his breathing. "It's okay, guys," he whispered. "I'm okay."

  He checked his direction by touch, then hurried in total darkness through the tunnel. Just beyond a cross-passageway juncture a dim shaft of light shone from above, delineating the trapdoor of the Depot. Stone emerged upward into the candlelit activity of Ángel, Cuza, and Gabe, together lifting and opening long boxes. Along the sides of the room they unpacked an assortment of personal weaponry: old issue M-16's, pistols, knives, and garottes; grenades, disrupter snares, and even a phaser-rod, unfortunately useless for its lack of matrix enabler.

  "Stone here," he sang out as the men turned toward him, Gabriel with a bright white smile.

  "Bravissimo!" Ángel hissed, taking warm dry clothes from Stone's upthrust arms.

  It was Ángel who, on salvage detail almost a year ago, had studied the strange architecture of the old water plant pumping post. He later discovered this hidden Depot in the center of the building, storage place of cast-off accumulators, valves, winches, and other equipment. The room was sealed away from the plant's larger areas and from the storage ports that had been added on around them. Generations of unsuspecting Femmedarmes had forgotten or had never known of it; nor did they suspect the existence of the utility tunnel through which the room was exclusively accessed. Guarded only in regular nightwatch, this secret Depot served as headquarters for Ángel's grand plan and as a resting place now while the last pieces of that plan fell into place throughout the bailiwick.

  Most immediately, the Depot served as a change room for three men who stripped and dried themselves, spreading their drenched habitante coveralls and underduds on crates and an upturned trough. They picked over and chose whatever soft dry cotton could fit them best. Only Gabriel declined the clothes.

  "What's up, Monsieur Girardon?" Stone asked, trying to catch Gabe's eye. "You too good for these dry threads?"

  "Naw, Baldy. I'll just drench them again. I got to go back to watch." Gabe's short-cropped black hair still held beads of water. He paused at the trapdoor by Stone. "You okay?"

  "Fine," Stone held his eyes evenly. "You going to be back here soon?."

  Gabe glanced around the room. "When Dobruja relieves me," he said. He nodded imperceptibly. "Count on it, Baldy. I'll be back."

  Stone returned the nod and watched the broad figure drop down the trapdoor without a sound.

  Ángel was pulling on dry fatigues, Cuza rolling up the sleeves of an oversized jumpsuit. Stone stood in his t-shirt and dry boxers, hauling his own coveralls on only waist-high. He lit another candle and set a dry cap on the back of his head as he sank his long frame onto a crate by the table. With extra undershirts he began carefully wiping his arms -- wiping dry Eagle, Snake, and Tanya. They fidgeted for him, then lapsed into being normal, well-behaved -- and expectant -- tattoos. Stone drew in a determined breath.

  "Ángel--"

  "Ángel!" Hejaz's voice came from the trapdoor.

  "Hejaz, brother!" Ángel paused in his dressing to help Hejaz into the room. "This is it! It's a go, Hejaz, a veritable go!"

  Stone balled up an undershirt and threw it at Hejaz' boots. He swung off the crate and began a controlled pacing of the small room.

  "You pulled off the dam, Hejaz!" Cuza slapped the table with his black beret.

  Ángel added, admiringly, "The perfect distraction!"

  "Yeah! They're still trying to contain it." Hejaz picked up the shirt and began drying his neck.

  Cuza leaned toward Hejaz. "Blew the Green Pussies right off their feet, didn't it?"

  Hejaz grinned. "They're brown pussies now."

  Cuza's laugh
was a bark. "Hey, Big Stone! They're brown pussies now," he repeated, still laughing.

  "I saw our beloved Brenenz standing in malodorous feces up to her waist," Ángel announced. He reached into a large sack and painstakingly began unwrapping the padding from an automatic weapon.

  "You talking about the Sergeant?" Hejaz asked, rubbing his wet hair.

  "Cuntface Sergeant Brenenz, herself." Ángel admired the uzi. "What is it, Hejaz? You have business about her?"

  "Bet he does." Cuza stood now like an altar boy by Ángel, assisting in the unveiling of the sacred weapon. "I saw him scoping her pot at laundry detail, getting boney as a--"

  "Like hell!" Hejaz grinned and threw a damp shirt at Cuza. "I wouldn't piss up her butt if her guts was on fire!"

  Suddenly, Cuza shrieked his laughter, pounding the table in a drum roll. "Liquid shit rolling down the valley," he chanted, "like a volcano busting! Wow-eeeee!"

  Hejaz topped him with his own voice, pounding on Cuza's shoulder. "And they'll never know why it broke!" he chanted.

  Stone found his breath. "They'll suspect," he muttered under the din.

  Hejaz sobered. "Stone, you are such a goddam crape-hanger. Lighten up! The girls will spin their tight little asses into molly screws before they'll ever find any evidence." He addressed Ángel. "Smythe is on lookout here with Girardon. Dobruja will relieve Girardon any time now."

  Ángel nodded. He spread wide the fingers of his right hand, then drew them into a fist. He closed and extended them again and again, worshiping his hand with his eyes. He smiled into the glow of the candle, then returned his attention to the long-barrelled uzi. Beside him, Cuza sank onto one of the room's two chairs. Earnestly he began laying out the parts of a big-barrelled shotgun.

  Stone ran his hands over his smooth head, calling on support from his tattoos. He cleared his throat and moved toward the table. "Ángel, Hejaz--"