The Magister (Earthkeep) Read online

  The Magister

  Sally Miller Gearhart

  The Magister © 2003 Sally Miller Gearhart

  All rights reserved

  First Edition published March 2003

  10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gearhart, Sally Miller, 1931 –

  The Kanshou / Sally Miller Gearhart – 1 ed.

  p. cm – (Earthkeep; bk. 1)

  ISBN 1-883523-44-3

  I Women – Fiction. I title.

  PS3557.E2 K36 2002

  813’.52—dc21

  The Earthkeep Series is dedicated to

  Dorothy A. Haecker and Jane Gurko

  its sine qua non.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements 5

  PROLOGUE 7

  1 – Firebroom – [2088 C.E.] 8

  2 – Chimney Corner – [2008 C.E.] 25

  3. – New Druid Trench – [2088 C.E.] 35

  4. – West Virginia – [2088 C.E.] 59

  5. - MAD BECKY – [2088] 69

  6 - BELO HORIZONTE - [2088] C. E.] 86

  7 – Regina - [2O88 C.E.] 98

  8. NEW NAGASAKI - [2088] 112

  9. BURIAL BARQUE – [12088 C.E.] 126

  10. HEART’S DESIRE – [2088 C.E.] 141

  11. SHIFTING SCENE – [ - [2088 C.E.] 157

  12. TUTEA - [2088 C.E.] 168

  13. LIN-CI WIN – [2089 C.E.] 177

  14 - JOURNEY, MATRIX, STREAM – [2094 C.E.] 185

  EARTHKEEP CHRONOLOGY 196

  EARTHKEEP TERMINOLOGY 200

  Acknowledgements

  In the years since 1987, The Kanshou and other EARTHKEEP books have been given both substance and form within the network of my friends, enemies, lovers, colleagues, comrades, teachers, students, chance acquaintances, and animal companions. In addition to Dorothy A. Haecker and Jane Gurko, who shepherded the EARTHKEEP material through its most major transformations, a number of people have generously blessed the books with their special abilities and their time.

  My Intrepid Editor, Vicki P. McConnell, marvellously astute and skilled, endowed the bulky manuscript with one of its first professional affirmations, and then streamlined it -- and my writing habits -- with a devotion far beyond any duty set upon her by Spinsters Ink. Elizabeth Saria, Karla McDermid, and Carla Blumberg educated me in crucial aspects of chemistry, zoology, medicine, virology, technology, and marine biology. I called upon Vivian Power for aid in Spanish, enhancement of my understanding of science, and audacious challenges to my utopian vision. Adrian Tinsley, ardent aficionada of fantasy and science fiction, refreshed both my memory and my imagination in her analysis of the manuscript. Moreover, I have been companioned throughout this literary journey by a task force of metaphysical gadflies, led at different times by Tamara Diaghilev, Mara, Ari Lacelle, Cynthia Secor, and Helen Stewart.

  Frequently I have needed rescue from computer panic, and I've often lacked expertise in specific areas such as astrology, firearms, the geography of Los Angeles, how to play the violin, how to survive in the publishing world, Judaism, the Koran, Mandarin, medical terminology, police practices, and the scope of human sexuality. I thank the following people for coming to my aid in one or more of these matters: Bryce Travis, Carlin Diamond, Nancy Ellis, Esther Faber, Susan Feldman, Emmy Good, Dick Graham, Maggie Graham, Matthew Holtz, Tony King, Joann Lee, Lyndall MacCowan, Marilyn McNair, Jack Power, Teri Rogers, Sam Sapoznick, and Susan Smith.

  As well, I offer a special thanks to all the anarchists, animal rights activists, capitalists, developers, environmentalists, hunters, loggers, militarists, pacifists, political radicals, ranchers, religious fundamentalists, and vegetarians who, in my ongoing dialogues with them, have toughened up my thought processes and deepened my appreciation of diversity.

  I have lived surrounded by a community of women -- Peggy Cleveland, Morgaine Colston, Jean Crosby, Esther Faber, Bonnie Gordon, Jane Gurko, Susan Leo, Ana Mahoney, Carol Orton, Penny Sablove, and Diane Syrcle – which has provided the atmosphere of support and patient understanding that these books have required in order, at last, to be born.

  The metaphysics ultimately embraced by the protagonists of The Kanshou and other EARTHKEEP books has its best articulation in the teachings of Abraham, available at Abraham-Hicks Publications, P.O. Box 690070, San Antonio, Texas, 78269 (830-755-2299). Abraham teaches joy, and it is the gift of joy that I wish for all whom I here finally acknowledge with gratitude: the readers of EARTHKEEP, in Aristotle's terms the "final cause of" or "that for the sake of which" these books have been written.

  “. . . such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence

  with such restraint, with such a grasp

  of the range and limits of violence

  that violence ever after would be obsolete.”

  --Adrienne Rich

  Twenty-One Love Poems, VI

  PROLOGUE

  In The Kanshou, Book One of EARTHKEEP, the citizens of Little Blue find themselves faced with 1) the disappearance from the planet of all non-human animals, 2) the effects of widespread natural disasters and weather cataclysms, 3) the reduction of their population to one sixth of its 1999 size, 4) a ratio in the human population of twelve women to every man, and 5) the global effects of decades of social and political unrest.

  As Little Blue's social, economic, military, and governmental power has shifted from men to women, new values, structures, and processes have emerged. By 2087, when action of The Kanshou takes place, nuclear families are rare, and the most common living pattern is still that of the extended family, honoring traditional kinship bonds. Women in such families usually embrace men as full partners in the human experience.

  Almost as common are the tribes, nations, or communities of women-only citizens who use ovular merging to produce girl-children among themselves or, alternatively, use men or semen banks for reproduction. Sexually, such women partner with other women, seek solitary sexual gratification, or live asexually. Some of them hold to the belief that womanhood or manhood is self-identified, while others of them claim biology as an immutable physical condition.

  By 2087 the ascendancy of women is the norm in all three of Little Blue's tri-satrapies or geo-political territories. Land, sea, and air divisions of the global peacekeeping force, called the Kanshoubu, are almost entirely female. Each Kanshou peacekeeper -- whether she is an Amah, a Femmedarme, or a Vigilante --- follows a code of conduct delineated in the Kanshoubu's Labrys Manual, and a large part of a Kanshou's responsibility is the confining of violent offenders (habitantes) to the planet's 780 prisons (bailiwicks).

  By the end of The Kanshou, a global movement has gained strength in support of a proposal that would require the testing of habitantes in a neurological search for the organic cause of human violence. If such a cause is found, protocols can then be initiated for the surgical removal of that cause. Zude, one of the Kanshoubu's three Magisters, fervently opposes both the Testing and the Protocols. Her old lover, charismatic witch Jezebel Stronglaces, leads the grassroots global forces in fighting for the approval of the Testing and the Protocols. Their struggle as adversaries has escalated with the eruption into violence of bailiwick habitantes who are protesting both of the proposals.

  The Magister, Book Two of EARTHKEEP, opens a year later, in 2088. Though the controversy over the Testing and the Protocols still rages, an unforseen event now warns of the whole race's possible extinction.

  1 – Firebroom – [2088 C.E.]

  There is a land beyond kindred and stranger,

  a place beyond here and there,

  a time beyond past and future,

  a mind beyond yes and no.

  Welcome.

&nb
sp; Weaves From The Matrix

  In the director's office of the Dolly Ruark Athletic Center, Jez’s and Dicken's immersion in a flatfilm was interrupted by the Urgent signal of Beabenet's comunit. Bea paused the film and opened her channel.

  "A message for Jezebel Stronglaces," said the curly-haired woman on the screen.

  Jez moved into the viewfield. "I'm Jezebel."

  The woman smiled. "A tribesman by the name of Donal Jain from out beyond the Badlands needs to talk with you. He heard you were going to be in St. Paul, and he contracted with a spoon to fly him to the Ruark Center. He’ll be here. . ." she glanced at her chronometer, "within the hour, at eleven."

  "Do you know what he wants?"

  "The woman who called said the spooners said he said it had something to do with children — he called them youngs. The message just got here and there wasn't a chance for response. They've been airborne for hours."

  "Thank you. . .Tracey," Jez said, sensing her name.

  "Thank you," beamed the woman. She nodded to Beabenet and disappeared.

  "Well, that's appropriate enough," Dicken observed.

  "I'll say," Bea agreed. She looked at Jezebel, who still stared at the screen.

  "Let's finish watching," Jez said. "Do we have time?"

  "Plenty," Bea replied. "We're near the end." She de-paused the flatfilm.

  A dark-skinned child picked up a fuzzy tiger and rubbed her face against it. She kissed the toy and started to set it back on its stool. She stopped, held it at arm's length and cocked her head, as if listening. Then she clasped the tiger to her. She walked toward the mikcam and into the arms of the bewildered woman who sat on the bed.

  "Jula," she told her mother, "we're just going to play with our friends." The round little face was earnest. "They're waiting for us." She looked at the tiger and gave it a squeeze. She then curled up in the woman's lap and laid her hand on the woman's bosom. "You can come too, Jula," she said. Then, flashing a brilliant smile, Mary Frances Safful closed her eyes and slipped into an apparently blissful sleep.

  Beabenet cleared the flatfield. "And. . ."

  "And she never woke up," finished Dicken.

  "That's right."

  Dicken fingered the heaviness of her dankee silver necklace. Jez sat utterly still in one of the office's big chairs. Bea closed down the flatfilm casing and activated a tab on her chairarm panel. Skylights and windows came alive again with light.

  "That's the only film we've got," she said. "And we wouldn't have had that if Fanny's big sister, Lyn, hadn't had the instincts of a historian. As you saw, she made it almost a daily game with Fanny, getting her to talk on camera about sleeping so much. Lyn let me borrow the flatfilm chip. She said Jula couldn't stand to look at it, anyway."

  She picked up a strip of audio chipnests and a flatcopy report. "Here." She set them on the desk. "You can hear or read about the other three. Pretty much the same story. All in good health except that, according to two of the families, their hair changed color. Only one of them had been sleeping more than usual. The others died completely unexpectedly, yet apparently very peacefully. Just didn't wake up one morning. Only one of them had any history of disease or injury — an anti-grav tumble years before."

  Bea sighed. She pressed two fingers against one temple. "One of the mothers went wild. Swore her daughter was just comatose, still alive. She kept her lying in state for over a week, refusing to embalm, bury or cremate her." Bea looked from Dicken to Jez, then continued.

  "We have this information only because staff members here knew and loved those children. We have no authority to carry out any kind of investigation. And Demesne Services apparently see nothing out of the ordinary in the deaths. 'Nothing to be concerned about,' they say." She snorted, then blurted, "Jez, am I crazy? Is this all just coincidence?" She looked questioningly at Dicken, then went on.

  "The death of one child in one of our programs, okay. Not unusual. Might happen even once a year. Two? Well, maybe even two. But four? Four children in the last six months? All between the ages of three and eleven? Like I told you on the flatfone, that's more than coincidence."

  Dicken stood by the sculptured fountain in the corner, staring at the trickling water dropping into the small rock-bottomed pool. "You're not crazy," she said finally. "Just waking up." She pulled herself away from the soothing water sounds. "And if you want to get wide awake, then start watching Size Central's population trends. Not much public attention to what's happening yet, but give it another month — maybe just a week — and the gathering energy of this mysterious phenomenon will push the Testing and the Protocols right off the front page."

  Bea's eyes narrowed. "You're telling me other children are dying?"

  "Yes. Little girls and boys just tipping their hats and leaving." Dicken reached out to let the water course over her long fingers.

  "Why?" Beabenet sat, frowning.

  Dicken shrugged. "No reason. No consistency. All arbitrary."

  Jez's voice startled them both. "That's not totally true. One common factor stands out over everything." They looked at her, waiting. "All of these children go willingly, even happily. Nowhere is there any hint that they resist. Or that they’re victims of any illness or injury. They simply decide to die."

  Bea stared at her. Slowly her eyes widened and her lips parted. Her head jerked up, then sank. "Like the animals," she whispered.

  Jez watched realization sink into Beabenet's cells. "Like the animals," she whispered back.

  The director suddenly sprang to her feet. "Look," she said heartily, "we're probably over-reacting. This whole thing might be a fluke. Or just the normal population fluctuation that happens all the time while we don't notice." She searched Dicken's face. Then Jez's. "Listen, if it really were a global phenomenon, wouldn't the world be on its ear? The statistics have been available on a daily basis. Anyone can see them. And some people's only job is to interpret figures like this."

  "That's true," Dicken agreed.

  "And there would have been stories, individual stories that would have made the news." Bea's arms were outspread, pleading.

  "They have made the news," said Jez. "Even as far back as nine months ago, isolated instances of children's dying unexpectedly were reported in quarter-traps and half-traps, though not in full satrapies. The incidence of such reports is increasing. All over Little Blue."

  "So then the whole world is in a state of denial?"

  Jez looked out the window. Spring was about to come to the Land of Lakes.

  "Well, denial's an appropriate reaction, isn't it?" She turned to Bea. "If a whole species sees on the holocast that it is losing its children, it might very well close down the switch and look the other way."

  Her arms slowly falling to her sides, Bea stared at Jez.

  A musical question, the announcement of an arrival, interrupted the silence. Beabenet let the arpeggio sound a second time before she straightened her shoulders and went to the door.

  "Director Beabenet?" The man's near-black eyes looked slightly downward in order to meet hers. "I am Donal Jain."

  Bea shook the stranger's hand. "Come in. You made good time. Donal Jain, here are Bess Dicken and Jezebel Stronglaces."

  Dicken liked the man immediately. She smiled her greeting and dropped into one of the low comfortable chairs.

  As she took his hand, Jezebel read her senses' first-line assessment. He was young, agitated, controlled, anxious, intent, hopeful, moderately open and of good will. "Hello, Donal Jain."

  Beabenet gestured to the chairs and made a move to leave. The man stopped her. "This is not private, director."

  With a glance at Jez, Bea started to take a seat in the small circle. She paused, "Can I get you tea or. . ."

  Jain held up his hand. "Diane and Elizabeth, the spooners who brought me, kept me warm with tea as we flew." He almost smiled. Beabenet sank into a chair between Jez and Dicken.

  A short silence as Jain sat. "They had to be on their way but asked me to give you greeting. E
lizabeth Gael met you some years ago."

  "Ah, yes," said the director.

  "It's cold spooning this time of year." Dicken was lubricating the conversational wheels.

  Jain simply nodded. Silently he laid a backpack on the floor at his side, ran big hands through his shock of black hair, then shifted himself to the edge of his seat. His movements were smooth, almost dance-like. He sat motionless for several seconds, his eyes closed, hands on knees. Finally he looked at Jez. "Thank you for seeing me."

  By then Jezebel Stronglaces had conducted as much as she wished of a non-invasive energy evaluation. Clearly the man had regained his self-possession. She decided to speak warmly.

  “Thank you for coming. . . ah, what's appropriate? Donal?"

  "Donal is fine. And. . ."

  "Jezebel, of course," she assured him. "Please don't let my infamous reputation put you off."

  Donal's craggy face ignited into a relieved smile.

  "Oh. Oh right, right . . . Jezebel. But I'm more worried than intimidated." All three women relaxed. "I want to ask a great favor of you," he said, finally. Jez waited. Donal looked from Jez to Dicken and back to Jez. "I want to take you to a small village in the Black Hills. "Rather," he added, both hands opening, "I want you to take me there."

  The women shifted in surprise, Beabenet and Dicken starting to talk at once. Jezebel raised her voice above them.

  "You mean you want us to spoon you back?"

  Again Donal ran his hands through his hair. "I mean. . ."

  "Start at the beginning, Donal," Jez said mildly. "We've jumped into the middle of a longer story, I think."

  "Yes," agreed Donal. He gathered his thoughts. "I'm a teacher," he began. "In a settlement called Chimney Corner some miles north of the jeweled caves. It is deep in the mountains, deliberately rural and consciously tribal. Inaccessible except by spooning or cushcar. The people operate a hydroponic project powered by mica shims."