The Magister (Earthkeep) (23 page)

The satrapy's children preferred burial at sea above any other disposal of their bodies, for they said that in the depths of the Pacific where no one can see, the fish had returned, lovingly to consume their human shells.  The Sea-Shrieves had rowed many such ceremonial voyages over the past six months and knew they would row many more.

On that day, seventeen small bodies would be consigned to the deeps.  Regina's was one of them.  The huge, high-railed forward deck was crowded with families and friends.

Magister Zella Terremoto Adverb was clad shoulder to ankle in the cobalt blue and silver cloak of the Vigilancia.  To her right, Magister Flossie Yotoma Lutu was similarly cloaked, but in Femmedarme green and black.  To Adverb's left, Bosca stood draped in her woodswarmth cape.  Clustered in front of them were Kayita, Eva, Ria and Enrique.  Surrounding them were aunts, uncles, cousins.  Behind them, covering the after deck, a group of Vigilancia Oarswomen stood at parade rest. 

Friends, parents, family members, learn-togethers, playmates, priestesses, shamans, ministers — all had just offered stories, images and expressions of love and loss.  The barque drifted in a silence of memories, recent and short.  Softly, an adult chorus hummed the minor intervals of the most haunting of the children's melodies, now famous the world over: the Song Of The Lumari. 

With other parents and family members, Ria and Enrique stepped forward to balance the flower-laden wooden pallet that held Regina's body over the edge of the barque's railing.  As the wordless song gathered power, the braces that secured the fulcrums of the seventeen rectangular frames were released, allowing those who guarded them to lift or lower their ends of the litters.  The melody was crowned by a flood of sustained harmonies, and each survivor, in her or his own time, raised high the pallet’s end and felt its precious burden slip into the sea. 

Ria waited until the music rode its way downward toward completion before she nodded to Enrique.  She steadied the wooden frame while he stood on tiptoe and pushed up with his arms, giving over Regina's body to the waters below.  When the last litter had been tipped, silence fell again upon the crowd, broken once by a cry, once by a loud enduring wail.

The tune rose once more, the whole assemblage chanting the strange Lumari syllables and calling out goodbyes.  The melody repeated, again and again, as if the crowd could not let it go, as if it still held within it the voices of those who had first brought it to their ears.  A zither player stood forward to solo and then to lead the singing.  She was followed by other musicians of all levels of accomplishment on flutes, guitars, a horn, a harp, an accordion.  A group of drummers kept the rhythms until they became aware that another musician waited her turn to play. 

Zella Terremoto Adverb had thrown off her cloak and stood among the crowd, anticipating the song's next point of entry.  When it approached, she shouldered a violin and began translating the melody into yet another language.  The Magister played imperfectly but with scrupulous care, gaining a measure of aptitude and sureness as she moved into a repetition of the song. 

Faintly, then more assertively, the ambience altered.  The tune awakened and the tempo quickened.  For a split second the musician faltered, her eyes wide with consternation and resistance.  Then she rallied, raising the instrument high, playing to the heavens and to the sparkling ocean.  Crowd voices united with their violinist; the notes became fuller; other instruments joined in.

As if buoyed by the wishes of the group, Magister Adverb modulated into a companion key and raised the tension and the complexity of her rendition.  Her eyes were closed.  Her body swayed with mingled rhythms.  Voices and instruments followed her lead, blending with and supporting her escalating recital.

In the crowd, Magister Lutu was suddenly charged with an uneasy sense of the irregular.  She stared at the performer.  Without moving her eyes, she whispered to the woman beside her.  "Bosca!  In the name of All That's Given And Blessed, what is she doing?" 

Bosca's eyes were alternately fixed on Zude's tour de force and upon a bank of thunderheads far beyond the barque.  "I'm not sure, Magister," she breathed, "I'm not sure!"

Magister Adverb's hand hastened as never before over the fingerboard of her violin.  She played with perfection and exhilaration, texturing the melody with mixed cadences and crafty embellishments.  Another modulation.  Another acceleration. The music drove inexorably to a fulfillment and its final measures, a paean to freedom and hope.

The barque exploded with jubilation and release, every voice enlivened, every heart aloft.  The last full note of the Lumari tune lingered, dying only when clouds, sky and sea carried it to realms beyond the ears of those who had launched its elegant flight.

The chaos of cheers and embraces hid the fact that the violinist staggered slightly before she was supported by two friends and guided to a resting place.  "Bosca," she kept muttering to one of them as they wended their way through a grateful and astonished crowd, "Bosca, I didn't. . .something else, somebody else. . ."

"I know, I know," Bosca whispered back, still nodding to well-wishers.  "I saw him.  He was playing." 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

"Captain Maggie?  Good."  Flossie Yotoma Lutu spoke to her aide in Tripoli.  A very British voice spoke back to her through the flatfield.  "Yes," responded Yotoma, "yes, it was. . .it was fine.  Maggie, I'm going to be delayed.  Maybe by as much as six hours."  She looked at her tacto-time.  "Magister Adverb and I are arranging a three-way conference with Amah Magister Win.  By secure channel holo hook-up from here at the Shrievalty Building.  As soon as we can reach her.  You shouldn't look for me before ten tomorrow morning, your time." 

On the other side of her office, Zude could hear Yotoma as she and her aide continued to readjust schedules.  She was back in her long cloak, standing motionless by the empty recessed wall panel that customarily housed her violin.  Finally she lifted a case from beneath her cloak, opened it and removed the violin and its bow.  She put them in their proper place on the display rack under the alcove's tiny spotlight, arranging their positions with slow delicate touches.

She studied the instrument.  It seemed to rest happily and proudly from its recent exertion.  It was old and even valuable.  Certainly it carried precious memories.  Nevertheless, it was a normal violin.  It did not glow with enchanted light.  There was no hint of sorcery or sortilege on its dark brown body.  Its bow smelled only of resin, not of sulfur or of angel dust. 

"I said, Zudie!"  Yotoma's voice was brusque.  Zude turned to see her friend waiting, two cups in hand, by the transmog. 

"Coffee, please, Flossie.  Strong and black."  She threw off her cloak and sank to a sofa, smiling as she stared at the ceiling. 

Yotoma placed the hot drinks on a low table, settled herself across from Zude, tested the temperature of her tea.  "You sure you don't want to tell me about this?  Before we talk to Lin-ci?"

"About?"

"About whatever it is you have made a decision about." She took a full swallow of tea, her countenance barely masking her concern.

Zude sighed and stretched.  Her eyes brightened, and she shot a quick grin at Yotoma.  "I wanted to weigh it all out with you on Thursday when you visited Regina, but it didn't seem appropriate then."

"And then I took off for Denver."

"And it's a good thing it happened that way."  Zude picked up her cup.  Her face was relaxed.  "I thought at first you could help me decide, Floss.  But now I know it's better that I tell you and Lin-ci together."

"So whatever it is, you've decided."

"I've decided." 

She looks about twenty years old, Yotoma thought.  Maybe twenty-one.  Her eyes squinted.  "I'll lay you eight-to-three I can tell you the exact moment you decided."

"You're on!  When?"  Zude sat up, set down her cup. 

"You decided standing on that boat, with that violin, about twenty seconds into your first repeat, right after the music got away from you.  You decided when your whole body started playing, when you lit up like a dervish gone to glory and began performing like a maestro."

Zude shot up from the sofa, her arms wide.  "Yes!"  She spun a full circle.  "Flossie, was there ever such a moment!  I can't tell you even now what happened!  It was like I turned it all over to another part of me.  I let go and let something else move my fingers!  And Bosca, Bosca said she saw him, a violinist . . . in the clouds. . ."  She stopped herself and frowned at the far wall.  "Actually, Floss, that wasn't exactly the moment.  I didn't decide until the ending, when everything lifted up into another world, and sorrow turned into. . . into joy!  When all the emptiness was filled up with life again!"  Zude looked at Yotoma.

"You are touched, Adverb."

Zude pushed her fingers through her hair.  "I know.  Sounds dippy as a dinghy on a choppy sea. . ."

Yotoma cut her off.  "No."  She wasn't smiling.  "I mean you're touched.  By the Wings Of The Dove."

Zude stared at her.  Then she sank down onto the arm of the sofa.  "I am, Flossie.  I guess I am."  She shook her head gently.  "But we've been calling it wrong.  It wasn't a decision.  It was more like . . . a knowing.  I just knew what I have to do."  She held Yotoma's eyes.

The chromatics of the intercom interrupted them.  Zude opened its flow to the voice of Captain Edge.  "Word from Magister Lin-ci Win, Magister.  She can confer in five minutes.  We're ready and waiting in the Peace Room."

"Good.  We're on our way."  Zude closed the circuit.  She took in a deep breath.  "Well.  This is it, Flossie."

"Zudie, you make me nervous, talking like that.  Like it's the end of the world."

"Al contrario, mi amiga.  It's maybe the beginning."

Yotoma grunted.  "Don't get cryptic with me."  She finished off her tea as she stood.

Zude swept her Vigilante cloak around her body, chuckling as she adjusted its clasp.  Yotoma's voice made her turn.

"Zudie," said the formidable figure in front of her, "tell the truth and shame the devil."  Zude looked back evenly as   Yotoma's eyes hunted down and demolished every possible camouflage.  "Are you figuring on quitting?"

"Quitting?"

"Spit it out.  No gilding the pill."

Zude's eyes were laughing again.  "Flossie, I am no more going to quit than you are."  She took the green and black Magister cloak from Yotoma's hand, shook it and held it up so she could step under it.  She settled the cloak around Yotoma's lean shoulders.  Then she hugged the taller woman from behind, resting her cheek for a long moment against her friend's back.  She de-paqued the wall of the office, and the two women set off together.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

"If you have called this conference to discuss the closing of the bailiwicks, Magisters, I congratulate you on the shrewdness of your timing."  Beneath her red cowl and over her red and silver cloak, Lin-ci Win's face was drawn and her eyes were sunk in gray circles.

Circles of fatigue, wondered Yotoma, or of grief?  She studied her Co-Magister.  Circles of torment?  Yotoma set her elbow on her chair and her fist to her cheek.  She watched.

Lin-ci's holo-image leaned without animation on the arm of her mobile Greatchair.  Zude and Yotoma sat elevated in restricted sub-channel ambience, holo-projected to their colleague in Hong Kong.  Below them, the sounds of the Shrievalty's Peace Room hummed with technological activity.

"How so, Magister?"  Zude, too, was disturbed by Lin-ci's devitalized countenance.

The Amah Magister allowed herself a rueful smile.  "In this moment, I am ready to fling wide every bailiwick gate and never incarcerate another soul, just to be relieved of the responsibility."  She held up a warning hand.  "I won't be held to that!"  She leaned back in her chair, almost relaxed.  "It's a moment of weakness only.  I shall recuperate."

"Lin-ci," said Yotoma, risking much on the informality, "you look like soaproots after a hard day's washing."

The Amah stared a moment, then reluctantly nodded.

"If you wish, please tell us," Zude urged.  "It can serve as a such-and-such."
Lin-ci sighed.  "Here is one item, the most recent.  Vice-Magister Khtum Veng Sanh has asked to be relieved of her duties and to be transferred to some remote post commandership."  She raised one eyebrow before she continued.  "That I share this with you is a measure of my distress." 

Then she spoke rapidly.  "Amahs had just quelled a routine and minor outburst of hostility inside Sambor Bailiwick, on the Mekong in Cambodia.  At the same time, hundreds of habitantes were beginning to gather for what Sambor's Post Commander took to be further violence.  She immediately began standard response procedures.  That is, she ordered a blanketing of the entire bailiwick with slumber vaporose — with Amahs masked against it, of course.  From Hanoi, Vice-Magister Veng countermanded that order and informed the Commander that the habitante gathering was not related to the hostility but was instead a part of a peaceful assembly for the purpose of prayer for the children, and why-had-the-Post-Commander-not-remembered-that? 

"Unfortunately, by this time some vaporose fumes had already been released.  The habitantes responded with outrage, chaos ensued, and a pipe bomb was thrown.  Two Amahs were badly wounded, one of them probably fatally.  The Commander then overrode Veng's countermand, filled the bailiwick with the complete allotment of vaporose, and thus restored order."

"It was to have been a peaceful gathering?" Yotoma asked.

"Who knows?  Facts, motives and responsibilities are hopelessly entangled.  It did not end peacefully."  Lin-ci's powerful arms braced on those of the mobile Greatchair and lifted the inanimate lower half of her body into a variation of her sitting position.  She looked at her colleagues.  "Veng challenged me.  Without any request to speak freely, she exploded into a tirade in which, among other things, she catalogued the symptoms of my fascist behavior and informed me that citizens in all three satrapies believe me to be completely out of touch with their needs and their reality.  She justified her action at Sambor by blaming me for the incident.  The violence of habitantes throughout the tri-satrapy, she informed me, is the residue of my own anger.  She had the grace to add that other angry or disgruntled people, herself included, might also be contributing to the emotional stockpile that fuels such violence.  I countenanced Veng's behavior only because she had clearly taken leave of her senses."