The Magister (Earthkeep) (24 page)

The Amah Magister lowered her eyes.  "I assigned her to immediate rest and recuperation.  I accepted her resignation and granted her transfer."  She spoke despondently.  "I have lost an able Vice-Magister.  And a friend."

The visage of such pain astonished Zude.  In her experience, Lin-ci Win had rarely confided internal crises, and never had she exhibited personal feelings of this kind. 

"A loss beyond measure," Yotoma said simply.

Lin-ci looked up.  Quietly, she observed, "Nighthawk, Hong Kong's municipal tapestry artist, says that to live well one needs to embrace only two rules: Be nice, and make pretty things."  She smiled ruefully.  "Perhaps Nighthawk is right."

Zude also spoke quietly.  "If everyone believed so, that would be a world worth living in."  More pointedly but still gently, she added, "We wouldn't need bailiwicks."

"And we could all retire," added Yotoma.  "We wouldn't even need the. . ."  The Femmedarme Magister's words slowed, then ceased.  Yotoma dared a look at Zude.  Her friend's dark eyes  were full of laughter and love.  "Adverb!" Yotoma whispered.

Lin-ci Win's voice sundered the moment.  "Colleagues!  What secret do you share now?"

Yotoma unclasped her cloak.  "Get set, Lin-ci," she said, still looking at Zude.  "I think we're about to address the subject of this hastily called conference."  She began removing her cloak, keeping her eyes on Zude.

"By my oath as a Kanshou," Zude said to Lin-ci, "I have not breathed a word to Magister Lutu about the substance of this meeting."  She straightened to an upright position and said with unaccustomed formality, "Magister Win, Magister Lutu, the three of us are the titular heads of government on Little Blue.  We are also the Commanders-In-Chief of the planet's peacekeeping forces.  I submit to you that at this time in human history the only conscionable action open to us is not only to close down the bailiwicks but, as well, to initiate and carry out the complete and irrevocable abolition of the Amahrery, the Femmedarmery and the Vigilancia — the abolition of the global Kanshoubu."

Amah Magister Lin-ci Win stared at Zude with no visible reaction.  Flossie Yotoma Lutu frowned and began barely shaking her head.

"I have not yet put together even a full prima facie case," Zude continued, still formally, "for I came to my present understanding only a few hours ago.  Still, I am acutely aware that there is no time to lose.  I would like to begin moving toward our consensus on the matter as soon and as rapidly as possible, with the hope that in the next few weeks we can present to Kanshou world-wide a plan for their discharge, their relocation and, if necessary, their re-education.  The Heart Of All Kanshou must approve the measure, and I suggest that we set our case before the Heart no later than a month from today." 

Lin-ci Win moved not a muscle, but her eyes blazed.  "You are mad!" she whispered.  Suddenly, she ignited like tinder.  "You would throw away all we have worked for, all we have gained of peace!"  Her flushed face looked ready to explode.

"Magister. . ." Yotoma soothed.

"And you, Flossie!  You stand with her!"

"Negative, Lin-ci!  I don't know where I stand.  I haven't heard Adverb out yet.  And neither have you!"

"I've heard her propose the destruction of the Kanshoubu!"  The Amah Magister seemed almost to dodder in her fury.  "It will never work, Zella Adverb!  You forget the women you are talking about.  These are Kanshou!  They would never allow their own destruction!  Their total identity is committed to fighting violence.  That is their reason for existence!"

Yotoma's Hausa oath split the air.  "Lin-ci," she boomed, "
you
forget who the Kanshou are!  You talk like they'd wither and die if they couldn't be fighting violence!"  She drew back deliberately to a more moderate demeanor.  "The Kanshou wouldn't want for jobs, Lin-ci.  Kanshou are tailor-made to deliver the discipline and the integrity that are needed in a world that has been turned upside down, whether they're in uniform or in mufti.  They'd take the lead, they'd be the role models, and they'd empower with knowledge and know-how anybody who wanted to learn.  You know that as well as I do!"

Lin-ci Win listened to Yotoma with increasingly narrowed eyes.  "You misunderstand me entirely.  I do not say that Kanshou would be incapable of living as civilians.  I do say that they would not allow the abolition of the Kanshoubu."  She looked at Zude and then back to Yotoma.  "Astute women, both of you," she mused, shaking her head, "and yet you misjudge so appallingly the true meaning of a Kanshou's commitment."

Zude was visibly taken aback. 

"What do you mean, Magister?" 

Lin-ci Win had settled again into her Greatchair.  She studied her counterparts but did not answer. 

"I don't know what you're getting at, Lin-ci," said Yotoma.  She drew a green kerchief from a belt pocket and wiped her face.  "And Zude, don't count me into this lunatic scheme."  She scratched her short-cropped head and gave a kerchief swipe to her upper lip.  "Lin-ci may be right.  The Congress of Active Kanshou won't knuckle under to a notion like this.  What line to heaven have you suddenly got that says our peacekeeping forces will go belly up and agree to wipe out their own Kanshoubu?"

Zude sighed, but her eyes were bright again.  "I'd be disappointed if you two didn't fight me on this."  She sat up straighter.  "But I assure you, my sole purpose in life from now on is to persuade you and 600,000 other Kanshou that the Kanshoubu must cease to be.  I intend to stand with both of you before the Heart Of All Kanshou as we all three argue for its blessing on this enterprise.  If you don't join me, I'll be sad, but I will carry out the task alone." 

She paused.  "It is what must be done.  I have not the shadow of a doubt that it will be done."

Abruptly Lin-ci Win turned her head and looked over her shoulder.  Yotoma was certain in that moment that the Amah Magister was summoning those in her Hong Kong Peace Room who would physically and summarily remove her and her Greatchair from this conference.  Instead, Lin-ci spoke to an Amah behind and under her, then drew from the nebulous air beneath her a max-monitor magnopad.  She activated several control orbs, then held up for Zude and Yotoma's perusal a scrolling screenful of names.

"Are you responsible for this, Magister Adverb?" she asked as the names rolled slowly upward.

"Who are they?"  Zude peered at the list.  "Amahs?"

"Amahs indeed.  Two regiments of the Asia Satrapy's finest Kanshou."  The names scrolled on.  "From Sri Lanka and Lower India."  She sat back in her Greatchair still holding out for her Co-Magisters the seemingly endless list of names.

Zude draped her cloak over the back of her chair and sat forward to watch the movement on the screen.  Yotoma studied Lin-ci Win's face. 

"They have retired," said the Amah Magister.

"Re. . ." Zude began.

"They have left their offices and their careers.  They have laid down their capes.  Over 800 women."

"And some men," Yotoma added automatically.

"Only in your tri-satrapies," Lin-ci snapped, "not in this one.  I remind you that men have never been a part of the Amahrery."  She watched the scrolling screen again.  "This is a list of women."

"I don't understand," Zude murmured.

Lin-ci recited in an orator's voice, "'We will no longer fuel the violence,' their statement said.  'We will live now thinking of and believing in a world of lovingkindness.'"  Lin-ci paused.  "Answer my question, Magister Adverb."

"Magister," Zude answered, "I have in no way participated in this action on the part of the Amahs of Sri Lanka and Lower India.  That they have pre-empted my proposal, however, at least in regard to their own lives, testifies to the appropriateness of the Kanshoubu's abolition."

"It testifies to no such thing!"  If Lin-ci Win could have stood, her presence would have towered over her colleagues.  "It testifies to the panic that assails every township on Little Blue, and to the false spirituality and unctuous piety that have beset even the most rational of women in the face of that panic — Vice-Magister Khtum Veng Sanh its prime example.  And now, the Magister of Nueva Tierra its secondary one!"  The Amah's eyes were ablaze.

Yotoma's cool reason met Lin-ci's fire.  "The accusation is unjust, Magister.  Adverb speaks from exigency, from. . ."

"Enough, Flossie!" Lin-ci proclaimed.  The air shuddered  under the weight of her rage.  The red-cowled woman faltered a moment, then said earnestly to Yotoma, "Magister Lutu, you are my respected elder in both reason and political sagacity, but if you even consider endorsing Adverb's madness, you are no better than the perpetrators of violence who will rise up in self-vindication and triumph at the suggestion of this idea!  You are courting chaos!  Anarchy and pandemonium!  Both of you!"

"Magister."  Zude matched the energy with a steady composure.  "What will come is as yet unimaginable, but I'm certain it will not be chaos.  Or, if so, then not for long.  Will you open the ear of your ears to me for a moment?"

Zude proceeded as if Lin-ci's motionless countenance were an affirmation.  "In a public context this afternoon, I was challenged by an unfamiliar aspect of myself to surrender the most carefully cultivated part of my personality: my control.  I was dared to trust that my training, my preparation, my passion and my good intent would be sufficient for the difficult task at hand.  I resisted, fearing failure and humiliation.  In the same instant, I understood that it was my effort at control that was dooming me to failure." 

Zude glanced at Yotoma, then said urgently to Lin-ci,  "Magister, it was a moment of supreme daring!  I did relinquish control, and I found to my astonishment that I was participating in a small miracle!"  She bent forward, toward her Co-Magister's uncompromising facial lines.  "We're at just such a juncture now on Little Blue, Lin-ci Win.  Our heart is whispering that we must give up our attempt to control violence because that attempt, that expectation, merely guarantee that violence will exist, and in fact thrive.  But if we listen to the promptings of our best selves, then in another moment of daring we may forever transform our understanding of violence!"

Zude hesitated.  "No human act means the same thing today that it meant a year ago.  Everything has been made extraordinary, and we must open ourselves to
the
vast changes."  She studied her hands for a moment.  "I know now that our beloved Kanshou, our peacekeepers, are part of what creates and sustains the violence that has been our most ancient and agonized birthright."  She looked up at the other women.  "Uncreate the Kanshoubu, and we at last begin to uncreate this most relentless legacy.  When we renounce our fear of becoming victims and our pride at protecting victims, then what we have known as violence will disappear."

"Ah!"  Lin-ci Win's interjection was edged with sharp sarcasm.  "We will slip into a parallel reality!  An alternative universe!  Is that it, Zella Adverb?  We shall simply deny the existence of violence — or, as you might say, we shall lift our eyes from the violence in this world and rest them on a nonviolent world instead."  She smiled derisively and dusted her hands one against the other.  "And, since only what we focus upon is real, the violence we have looked away from merely evaporates!"
Zude took the words seriously.  "I don't know.  But unless one person raises her eyes and thus emboldens a second and a third to do the same, then the collective lifting of eyes will never happen.  A change in our collective beliefs is what is required.  You may actually have stated the matter correctly: A hundredth monkey, a critical mass of people lifting their eyes, may make a qualitative difference in material reality."  Zude shrugged.  "We can't know what will happen when we abolish the Kanshoubu.  But we must find out."

Lin-ci's voice was matter-of-fact and uncompromising.  "You betray us all, Magister Adverb."

"You are out of line, Magister Win!"  Yotoma's equanimity was fraying beyond repair.  "'Betray' is hardly the word," she finished grimly.

"What then is the word?"  Lin-ci's voice suddenly approached stridency.  "We speak here of over 600,000 women, each of whom has sworn to the Kanshoubu her mind's finest functioning, her heart's best devotion, and her body's last ounce of strength.  Now a leader in whom these women have placed their trust, and for whom they would lay down their lives, announces that their gifts of mind, body and heart are no longer needed, that for no reason that this leader can articulate, the Kanshoubu is going out of business, and they will simply have to find some new thing to give their bodies, minds and hearts to."  Lin-ci was breathing hard.  "Instruct me, please, Magister Lutu.  What is the appropriate word for that leader's action?"

Yotoma sat withdrawn in her chair, distaste blanketing her features.  She folded her lips inward and clasped them there.  She looked at Lin-ci Win's irate countenance, then at Zude's composure. 

"Lin-ci," she finally said, "you have got sand in your craw from beaches that Adverb never stepped on.  And I have listened to your naysaying just one straw past my patience.  I walked into this Peace Room with no notion of what Zude had up her sleeve.  And if an hour ago you had told me we'd be considering wiping out the Kanshoubu, I'd have wrapped you in flax stems and sold you for homespun.  But I swear, Lin-ci, your contrariness, your mistrust and your blame-fixing are pushing me right into Zude's camp." 

The Amah Magister sat immobile, her eyes cast to one side, away from her colleagues.  The Vigilante Magister sat, watching and waiting.

Yotoma folded her kerchief, shaking her head in puzzlement.  "I said to Self I said, 'Self, how come I feel so good when Zude talks and so rotten when Lin-ci has the floor?'  And Self said to me, 'Because Zude's got a vision and a hope, Flossie, but Lin-ci's got nothing but pain and misery and fear.'  'But Self,' I say, 'Zude is talking pure craziness!'  Then Self says to me, 'Trust your feelings, Flossie, girl.  They are the only real guide you've ever had.'"  Yotoma glanced at each of her Co-Magisters.  "And if feelings were all there is to it, I'd have to say I'd rather go walking with Zude's hope, Lin-ci, no matter how crazy it is, than with your fear, no matter how sane it seems."