The Magister (Earthkeep) (20 page)

"I know."

Without warning Zude's eyes filled and overflowed.  She took the handkerchief Bosca offered and wiped her eyes.  The tears did not stop.  "I'm not sad," Zude insisted, still unable to keep her cheeks dry, "I'm not sad, Bosca."  A short laugh escaped her lips.  "In fact," she stammered, "I felt. . . I mean. . . I think. . .I think I know what peace is.  For maybe the first time ever in my life."

"You're a Peacekeeper."

"I am now."

They sat in a long silence.

"Bosca."

"Here."

"We have to close down the bailiwicks."

Bosca nodded. "You're sure?"

"Very sure."  Zude set her tea on the end table by the taxidermed cat.  "It's so obvious."  She took Bosca's hand. "Regina's Source Self told me.  It said, 'What you are proudest of you must destroy.'  I don't think it could be any plainer."

The chime of the intercom sounded at regular intervals on the far side of the room.  It grew gradually louder.  Zude started to consult her tacto-time.  Instead she closed her eyes and tried to sink into the ambience of all that had just occurred. 

"I get 1:40," she said.

"Close," Bosca replied.  "It's 1:33."

Zude smiled.  She rose unsteadily.  "I know I can handle this," she said, and made her way to the desk console. 

Edge's voice was subdued but clear.  "Magister.  Sorry to disturb you."

"No problem, Edge.  What is it at this hour?"

"Two spooners from Denver just landed and insist on seeing you.  In person.  They say they have a message for you.  They, along with a package that they bring to you, have cleared all security checks."  There was a pause.  "I informed them that you are officially not here.  They informed me that the matter is of the greatest urgency."

Zude looked at Bosca, who started to rise.  Zude stopped her with a shake of her head.  "Give me one minute.  Then you can bring them in, Captain."  She spoke to Bosca.  "Stay, if you don't mind, will you?  This can only take a moment or two."
"Of course."  Bosca began arranging the furniture more formally.  She folded the Magister's cloak, then respread her long skirt and settled back into the deep sofa.

Zude brought up the lights and depaqued the broad window, letting the night's cityscape in again.  She was smoothing her softshirt into a proper uniform when Edge ushered in the visitors and left.

The spooners introduced themselves as Margarita and Viva, explaining they were to deliver to the Magister a small bag that came from the Alleghenies via three other spoons.

Zude took the pouch that Margarita extended.

"There is a note enclosed in the bag," said Viva, the designated spokeswoman.

"So I'm to open it now?"

"Yes.  The sender is anxious for your reply and wants us to wait."

"Oh?"  Zude let her puzzlement show.

"Magister, I'm not sure why it has to be this way," Viva said, shifting her weight left and then right again.  "We understand that there's a comspot code for you indicated on the enclosed note if you wish to make your response yourself.  But we are to remain here until you send that answer.  Or you can give us your answer, and we'll get it to the sender at once.  If you decline altogether to respond immediately, then we are to inform the sender that your answer is, No."

The speaker relaxed momentarily.  "The sender just wants to be sure there's no delay to your response." 

"I see," said Zude.  She glanced at the cotton bag and then at the messengers.  "Please sit," she said.  "This is Bosca, a heartsinger and dancer.  Spooners Margarita, Viva." 

Nods of acknowledgement, glances around the office, and the two women collapsed gratefully into their chairs.

With a look of apology to Bosca, Zude retreated to a lamp near her desk.  She studied the pouch and then addressed its intricately braided drawstrings.  The braiding was of a texture that quickened her heart.  It would fall open in an instant, she recalled, if she tugged the right string. . . yes.

Bosca, watching Zude in the periphery of her vision, saw the Magister close her eyes.  To the visitors she said, "Would you like tea or hempbrew?  Or coffee?"

"No, thank you," Margarita smiled back.  "We're fine."

"We had a good meal before we left.  And we flew fast," Viva added.  "We're looking forward to staying the night with friends as soon as we've finished here." 

Zude had undone the drawstrings, Bosca noted.  "I admire spooners," she said, deliberately shifting her attention from Zude.  Then, as the glances of both women invited her to say more, she added, "I've been carried by a spoon but haven't flown myself.  Yet.  I mean I haven't . . . that is, I'm not . . ."  She felt suddenly very vulnerable.  Against her will, her eyes were drawn back to Zude.  The Magister was staring at something she had withdrawn from the pouch.  Around her pulsed an intense field of multicolored and agitated luminescence.

"There's nothing like flying," Margarita was saying, seeking to ease Bosca's discomfort and clearly unaware of the electromagnetic turmoil presently surrounding her Magister.

Bosca smiled her thanks at Margarita.  "I'm sure I'll . . . that I'll do it someday," she finished.  In her periphery, she saw Zude taking charge of renegade emotions, pulling in her turbulent energy rupa.  It was a controlled and calm Zude who now read whatever words comprised the urgent message.

"We passed over the de-desertification project," Viva was saying excitedly.  "It's very impressive from the air."  She was about to elaborate on the beauties of water reclamation when she realized that Magister Adverb was rejoining them.  Both she and Margarita stood.

Zude looked at each of them and then addressed Viva.  "Tell the sender that the answer is, Yes.  An unequivocal and immediate, Yes."  She held out her hand for the Earthclasp valedictory.  Viva and Margarita each in turn covered Zude's hand with both of theirs. 

"Will you allow us to treat you to a hot meal and lodgings?"  Zude asked.

"No, thank you," Viva replied.  "We only need the use of one of your comstations to send our message.  May we?"

"Of course," said Zude.  She dissolved the entry wall with a motion at the corner of her desk.  "Captain Edge will help you."

Margarita turned to Bosca.  "Here's to high adventures!" she said.  Her thumb subtly gestured to the sky.

"Thank you!" Bosca laughed.  She waved her farewell as both women passed into Edge's competent custody.

"High adventures?" Zude said, dropping to the sofa.

"Colloquial reference."  Bosca cast it all aside with a vague hand movement.  She was sitting forward again on the sofa.  Neither woman spoke for a long moment.

Zude fingered the object that had arrived in the pouch. She looked at Bosca.  "It's from Jezebel."

Bosca's head fell back in the first half of a long nod.  She pressed her tongue between her teeth.

Zude held up a small silver earring delicately shaped into a unicorn that rose majestically on its hind legs.  Bosca's head completed its nod.  Her eyes went to the unicorn's duplicate, the one dangling from Zude's ear. 

"She was to send this to me if ever she needed me," Zude said.

Bosca examined the figure without touching it. "So," she whispered.

Zude handed her the note. 

Hello, Zude.  Will you meet me Tuesday evening, sundown, on the roof of the Give Away Casino in New Nagasaki?  I hope you are well.  Jezebel.

1.36\earthkeep.4773.biz\lavona

Bosca searched Zude's face as she handed back the note.  "That's tomorrow.  No, today.  New Nagasaki is down in the old New Mexico desert."

"Yes. Isn't that the town that's grown up near White Sands?"

Bosca nodded.  "A healing town.  And a gift society."

Zude fingered the earring.  "I wonder. . ."

"You'll know soon enough."

"Indeed I shall," Zude agreed. 

8 - NEW NAGASAKI - [2088]

Love is a leap of faith, a leap off a cliff.

Are you ready for such joy?

Voices Of The Stream

Anarut, originally a Naga tribeswoman of the lower Himalayas, was now the manager of the Give Away.  She swept around the spacious rooftop garden in her elegant long-flowing gown, showing Jez the sumptuous upper dominion of the casino.

Near a fountain surrounded by hearty desert flora, she leaned over the chest-high protective wall. 

"There's a colony of Afortunadas there," she said, pointing.  "Visitors can hear animal stories for days at a time, if they're willing to camp out."  Then she looked to the far-off snow-capped mountains.  "See the timberline that cuts north?  And that bald escarpment?"  Jez nodded.  "Just to the right of it, a slightly lower peak?  There, that reflected light!  That's it.  That's our observatory, monitoring for extra-terrestrials."

A barely audible tinkle of chimes interrupted them.  Anarut touched her earlobe, silencing the sound.  She sighed.  "Well," she said, "the dome over there paques and depaques so you can see the action down on the promenade and in the main gaming hall.  You can even magnify any quadrant, with no danger of spying on the dealers or. . ."
"No necessity for that," Jez assured her.

"Sorry I have to leave you."  Anarut held out her arms.  "It is good to see you, Jezebel." 

Jez hugged her hard.  "You too, Anarut, you too."

"I'll have your friend sent up the minute she arrives."  She made for the drop shaft, waving her arms to encompass the roof as she went, calling, "It's all yours, my dear!  Enjoy!"

Jez drew a deep breath and looked at the sun, now flat- bottomed as it began its disappearance behind a southwestern ridge.  Zude would be prompt.  Always Zude was prompt. 

Carousel music from below drew her to the parapet.  She looked down upon a children's playground.  Two niñas hung from a bright yellow pipe-bridge, one by her legs, the other in a hand-over-hand progress across the bar.  A sudden irony struck Jez: the children were not so much playing as performing.  She herself was part of an audience that watched the niñas; her fellow voyeurs were a man and a woman on a bench by the pipe- bridge, three people just beyond them who stood by the empty carousel, and two young adults who had just halted in their cleaning of the shallow pool to observe the small acrobats. 

The only children on the playground.

Deliberately, Jez turned away from the scene and began exploring the rooftop.  She strolled over pathways and through occasional nooks, where cushioned chairs or lounges sat with tables and transmogs, all inviting human use and occupation.  She marveled at the hand-wind-water pollination that must have been required for this variety of vegetation.  There were at least twenty kinds of cactus.  And all over the garden, yuccas flowered vigorously as if, in spite of decades of disappointment, they still stubbornly expected the visitations of a dainty double-winged moth to propel them into fruition.

The wide dome rose out of the floor, holopaqued to resemble a serene pond, complete with water lilies and reflections of a blue sky.  Ripples and tiny expanding circles played across its surface, teasing the viewer into coolness and reminiscences of amphibian and insect life.

Jez touched the patchpad by the low wall that surrounded the dome, and the pond dissolved to reveal the casino below.  The teeming madness of gambling transactions was accompanied by a riot of sparkles, shimmers, brightly lit colors.  She decided not to activate the audio field, instead focusing her attention on the figure of Dicken at a blackjack table.  Jez leaned stiff-armed on the edge of the low wall and watched.

"Pardon, señora."  The voice was close behind her.  "But have you perchance lost a unicorn?"

Jez made herself turn slowly.

Nothing in all the annals of alchemy or the Craft could have kept down the swift sharp tears that rose at the sight before her: the proud Kanshou bearing, the uniform, the warm brown eyes, the long, slightly aquiline nose, the waves of salt-and-pepper hair.  Handsome.  Compelling.

"Zudie."  She held out her hands.

Zude took them, smoothly, with none of her old characteristic awkwardness, holding them firmly, with all of her old characteristic gentleness. 

"Jezebel," she said, matching the brightness of Jez's eyes with a fullness in her own.  The presence that faced her pulsed with vigor, from the crown of the shoulder-length hair to the high cheeks and long hands, from the strong easy shoulders down the lean body's flow to the brown sandaled feet.

They were blanketed by keen memories and barely contained longings, pervaded by such an intimacy that neither could speak further.  They stood transfixed, there on a rooftop in the last rays of a desert sun, daring neither breath nor movement.

"The unicorn is yours, Vigilante Magister," Jezebel said at last, with a small formal bow.  "In pair with its proper mate, it celebrates the rebirth of magic."

Zude took one earring from her ear and held it up.  "But the magic is not yet fully born, señora."  She pressed the tiny unicorn into Jez's hand and held it with both her own.  "And you may have need of it again."

"Then I shall take it, Vigilante Magister."  Jez placed her other hand on Zude's.

Long moments later, some handmaiden of impermanence broke the spell, catapulting them into self-consciousness.  They relinquished each other’s hands and attempted to laugh easily.  They made big gestures and spoke a little too loudly.

"So," Jez said.  It felt like a bark.  She tried again.  "So how did you get here?"  She pocketed the earring and busily repaqued the dome.  They began to walk.

"Low rocket to Albuquerque."  Zude cleared her throat.  "The Mat Rangers brought me from there."

"Mat Rangers?"

"A kind of flying carpet.  They carried me on it."  A pause.  "And how did you come?" Zude ventured.

"I came with Bess Dicken, my lover.  We flew."

"Ah, I see!"  Zude's smile did not achieve full-blown status.  She drew in a swift breath.  "Well, you should see the Mat Rangers, Jezebel.  They are sort of the passenger-and-cargo branch of the Flying Daggers, you know.  They come up to you and say, 'We are Vigilantes Crane and Mercedes, Magister, admiring your person and honoring your office.'"  She shot Jez a stiff grin in the midst of her impersonation.  "Well, I mean, they wouldn't come up to you and say that but they. . ."