The Magister (Earthkeep) (17 page)

"They wait for God?  Tola!"  Camila spat.
Tui shook her head.  "Not for God."  She worked with new threads of many colors, setting them swiftly between her fingers.

Camila pursed her lips and rested her eyes on the child near her feet.  "We die," she announced.

"'Baboseira!'"  Gala imitated Camila.  "'Always we have known we will die!'"  The others laughed as Gala put her arm around the grim figure beside her.

Camila looked at the hand on her shoulder.  She looked at Gala, then at the others.  "Death is one thing," she snorted.  "An end to birth is another." 

The faces around her sobered.  In the silence Camila began a smaller cantlet with her unraveled threads.

Chia paused in her brushing, her hand on Fidela's shoulder.  "There is the heart of it," she said.  "No babies coming."  She brushed.  "They are cloning humans now, the scientists."

"They have not been successful, Chia," Gala interposed.  "They only hope."

"They are crazed," Tui added, her colored threads flying.  "Madwomen, trying to save the race." 

Roma, the visitor, listened and wove her threads.

The sun blazed.  The many swift fingers made no sound.

Gala wiped one sleeve over her sweating face.  "In the cities they freeze people," she observed.  "Cryosleep, they call it.  They will wake up in a hundred years."

"They will wake up alone," Camila scoffed.

"I heard," said Tui, "that in Beijing they have frozen a girl child and a boy child."  She made a sound that registered her disgust.  "They think they can make Adam and Eve."  She wove all the faster.

Chia brushed on.  "We never imagined this before.  The earth without people."

"The Earth will be happy without us."  Tui wove without looking at her work.

"Will She?" asked Gala.

Tui waved a hand.  "Of course.  Then She can bring forth something different.  Already She is gestating.  The Earth is our only expectant mother."

Gala watched a pair of women set up a flimsy stall on the far corner of the square.  "Long Life Guaranteed!" shouted the sign, "Twenty Credits Per!"  Gala spliced two strings.

"We may not all die," said Chia.  She spoke through the two barrettes she held between her teeth, one hand still parting Fidela's hair, one still brushing.

"Ha!" growled Camila.  She wound a curly thread into a broadening ball.

"It may not happen, avoa," Chia insisted, keeping the barrettes dry with small sucking sounds.  In the silence she inserted one of the clamps over Fidela's left ear, snapping it closed.  She looked around the circle of women.  "Hope is a choice," she said, a shade too heartily.  She drew the brush again and again through the hair over the child's right ear.  The women wove their strings.

"You don't fear that death, Ti Gala?"  Roma spoke in the silence.

"Of the whole race?"

"Yes."  Roma bit a string.

"The Imandade, the Sisters, ask the same question," answered Gala.  "No.  We do not fear it."

Chia set the last clasp through the child's hair.

"Only the men fear it," said Tui, standing and bending forward.  She handed a multicolored clump of strings to Fidela, who grinned her thanks and sank to the dust in a focus of unscrambling.  Before she reseated herself, Tui let her hand rest a moment on the child's shining hair.

Chia still brandished the brush.  "Tui, you're a sourpuss.  Men?  Why do they fear it more than women?"

"Because they are not women," Tui said, impelled by Chia's shrug and upward-rolling eyes to complete an intricate knot over her thumb with a wide flourish.  "Death, like birth, is female," she went on.  "We all know that."

"I know that," said Gala.

"Certainly."  Tui resumed her work.  "Men think of themselves as unique and separate.  They fear losing that separateness in death."  She cut her eyes from Camila to Chia, then to Roma.  "Do you fear it?" she challenged.

Roma met her eyes.  "Not for myself.  Not even for the race."  She looked away.  "I only fear it for those I love."

Camila grunted.  The other women nodded.  Chia hugged her legs closer around Fidela.                     

Roma corrected herself.  "No, that's not it."  She drew her knees together and leaned on them, her weaving dangling.  "I fear my own loneliness." 

In the long silence Camila did not grunt.

"Some say the habitantes will now go free," said Chia brightly.

"Lies," said Camila.  She picked up a snarl of Fidela's hair cast aside by Chia and examined it carefully.  "They want to make them docile."

"You mean the Testing?  Wake up, Ti!"  Gala punched Camila with a playful elbow.  "Nobody's about to get experimented on.  Central Web canceled consideration of the Testing and the Protocols.  Indefinitely."

"Maybe," said Camila.  She tucked the ball of hair into the deep cleavage between her breasts.  "Maybe."

Chia began the small stirrings of impending departure.  "And the rules are getting looser," she assured the others, motioning Fidela to gather her strings.  "Antero will stay again tonight with Fidela and me.  He was with us twice last week, too."

"Before you go, Ti Chia," said Roma, "tell me something."  Chia halted her movements.  "Tell me what you think things would be like if it were true, if the rumor were true."

"What rumor?"

"That the habitantes will now be freed," answered Roma, fanning her green skirt against the increasing heat of the sun.

"Ah, what a blessing!  And why not, I ask, why not. . ."
Chia's response was cut off by the group's shift of attention.  Two uniformed figures approached them from across the square.  The taller of the Flying Daggers said, "Senhoras, excuse us.  We are Vigilantes Truza and Satores.  We need to ask if you know one of the men fighting.  Pombal Tranco."

No one spoke for a moment.  Roma was rummaging in her string bag.

Then Gala said, "Diniz, a young habitante from Sabara.  He told us he knew him."

"Is Diniz family?" asked Satores. "We need someone to accompany Pombal to Rio.  He must have extensive care."

"I know Diniz," Chia said, rising and taking Fidela's hand.  "And he knows the man's friends.  Diniz will be in the hemp shop."  She pointed.

"Good," said Satores, making a sign to her partner and setting off alone for the shop.

"May I ask you questions about Diogo?"  Vigilante Truza scanned the faces of the group.

Chia called suddenly to Satores.  "Kanshou!  Over there!  It's around the corner!"  Then she looked at the tall officer.  "We're going that way.  I'll show her."  Anticipating Truza's nod of approval, she said short farewells to the women.

"I must leave, too," said Roma, standing and holding Chia back for a moment.  "I am a visitor, Vigilante Truza, and know none of the parties involved."

The Vigilante studied Roma's face.  "Of course," she said, her brow furrowed.  "Of course.  Your name, though, senhora?"

"Roma Alves Nabuco.  I registered at Northgate Two last night and I visit Brag Callo, trusty of third district."  Roma's voice was soft but she looked directly at the Kanshou.

"I see," said the officer slowly.  Then she nodded and smiled a dismissal.  As she turned back to the other members of the group, she cast a puzzled look over her shoulder toward the two departing women, Chia and Roma.  They each held one of the little girl's hands.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Senhora Roma Nabuco said affectionate farewells to Chia and Fidela before they caught up with Vigilante Satores.  She waved an abrupt goodbye to the young Kanshou and then made her way slowly down a long street lined with trees.  No one saw her turn into an alley and quicken her step.  She assured herself that no eyes watched the alley, then raised her green skirt and vaulted over a chest-high fence with the agility of a teenager. 

In the privacy of a banho cubicle, Roma Nabuco sat upright on the waste stool, her eyes closed.  She breathed slowly, evenly.  She invoked an inner companion.

"Swallower," she whispered, "I'm frayed and frazzled."

"Breathe," came the response.

Roma breathed.  Questions, duties and fears swirled inside her brain.

"Empty," said the voice.

Minutes later, the chaos in Roma's spinning head was gathered and ordered into discrete enclosures, and her mindspace glowed with a welcome serenity.  She forsook the worries of that inner territory and hung above it in a bubble of nothingness.  She held the balance there, breathing delicately.  She was content.

"Now remember joy."

Joy, she thought, like at the acme of a stick dance, her body swooping and bending to the escalating beat, the delight of her duet with the flashing stick, the bright high leap and the twirl into ecstasy.  She laughed aloud.

"And now to work!"

Roma Nabuco emerged from the restroom on the back of a new-found energy.  A tiny light flickered around her, dipping and dancing as it led her back to the responsibilities of her day in the Belo Horizonte Bailiwick.  Before sesta, Roma Nabuco had visited two electronic assembly lines, talking to three habitantes who worked there; dallied at dice on a short break with habitante employees at the solar conversion plant; and washed dishes with free citizens at a bailiwick common kitchen.  By dusk she had changed clothes and hairfalls twice — and had made the acquaintance of trade liaisons, free citizen roustabouts, crematorium grips, habitante rights advocates, and extra-bailiwick communication clerks.

Clad in the dark blue coveralls of a trusty, she delivered supper to habitantes confined to barracks rooms, assessing the words and looks, the sounds and textures of those who would chat with her.  In the evening, she unobtrusively attended meetings of habitantes where she would not be challenged, sitting with them in common rooms, listening to their interactions until the call to quarters was signaled. 

She spent the night with old friends and rose early the following day to talk with more habitantes: credit balancers, public cushcar operators, hospice counselors, food processors, musicians, dental technicians, fabric designers, bereaved lower-school teachers.  By late afternoon, when she said goodbye to road maintenance crews and water purification monitors, she felt satisfied that she had heard opinions from habitantes strictly confined as well as from those who participated in every working part of the infrastructure that supported the Belo Horizonte Bailiwick operations.

The only elements of bailiwick society she had assiduously avoided were the Vigilantes.  More than once she had skulked around a corner or waited impassively before proceeding when Kanshou passed close by.

But in the early evening she presented herself without disguise to a quiet room in the Bailiwick Vigilancia.  There she made three requests: The immediate use of a comstation for two brief calls, the good company of the Vigilancia's commanding officer over a light meal, and the gerting services of Vigilantes Truza and Satores, who, if they were willing and available, could fly her to Rio de Janeiro.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

"Ria."  The comchannel was occasionally distorted but the audio was clear.  "How are they?"

"Oh, Zudie!" Ria exclaimed.  "I'm so glad to hear from you.  She's fine.  Both of them are fine.  You can hear Enrique now, can't you?  He's banging around, making a fort out of the garden shed."

"A fort?"

"A fort.  I wonder how he got so inspired by the military?"  Ria's face was all innocence.

"But he's okay?"

"Fine.  And so is she."  There was a pause.  "Her hair is a little more white."  Ria's eyes filled up.  She smiled brightly.  "It's very pretty."  Then she pushed her palms into her eyes.  "Shit!"

"Ria."

Ria shook her head.  Her eyes had almost recovered.  "She insisted on going to classes today.  And their group . . . I mean, you know, the little group that. . ."

"I know."

"Well, the group went to a midcity hospice this afternoon and sat with several old people.  All of them, all of the hospice residents they visited. . . well, all of them were so delighted to see the children.  And then all of them, all of the residents, I mean, they all . . . Zude, they all. . . died.  Zudie, it was very strange.  The workers said that it was wonderful, that the whole room was filled with light.  One of them, they said, one of them died holding Regina in her arms, and laughing and singing a jazzy song.  Can you handle that?"

"Yes.  Yes, I can."

"You sound tired."

"A little.  But I'll be home in another day.  I'll take a rocket tonight to Bogotá.  That's my last stop.  Then home."

"Good."

"Eva?  Kayita?"

"All fine.  Kayita gives Regina a very funny look sometimes, like she. . ."

"Tell her I'm on my way, Ria.  Don't let her get any ideas."

"Oh, she wouldn't do that.  She may be old, but she still loves all this too much.  Besides, she wants to hear about Brazil.  Says you promised her a travelogue."

"Right." 

A pause.

"Bosca has been here every day," Ria said.

"She is good."

"Yes.  Yes, she is."  Ria was nodding, her eyes shut tight.

     "I'll try to call tomorrow night.  But no matter what, I will see you day after tomorrow."

"Right."  Ria smiled a little.

"Abrazos."

"Y besos.  Travel safe."

"I will."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

"Edge, are we on a secure channel?"

"Double damper, Magister.  But audio only."

"That's okay.  I want you to send a protected comcube to Yotoma and Lin-ci Win, if you can find her, saying the following: 'Phasing out bailiwicks must be an option, maybe a certainty.  Will call.'  Add anything you feel important, and tell them I'll be back day after tomorrow."

"Done."

"You okay?"

"Fine, Magister."

"Everything else okay?"

"Lots of things to interest you when you get back.  Nothing urgent."

"Thanks, Edge.  I'll check in tomorrow night."

"Indeed, Magister."

"Indeed, Captain."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

It was well after dark when two Flying Daggers lifted a precious cargo over Belo Horizonte, circled the city, then headed for Rio.  Before Vigilantes Truza and Satores landed, they were each privileged to own a square of marajó finger-weaving, a personal creation of their Magister.