The Magister (Earthkeep) (35 page)

"Will Yotoma come?"

Zude shook her head.  "We won't be able to lure Flossie away from that god-forsaken aerie in Sierra Leone.  Not even for Bosca."

"She's still communing with the great red condor and family?"

Zude laughed.  "Yes.  She's cold, she's high, and she's getting younger by the nanosecond."

They dodged a shyflyer who materialized in front of them with a baby in a hip sling.  He shrugged a quick apology and made off toward the main terminal.

"Reggie.  How's she doing?" asked Zude.

"Fine, as always."  Jez was angling them toward the restrooms.  "Living in the Yucatan with Bosca has been important for both of them."  She guided them and their trip-packs through the baño's door sphincter. 

Over the top of a multicolored comfort stall Zude commented.  "I haven't seen her for months.  She's probably shot up like a beanstalk."

"When you see her at Bosca's Last Circles you'll be looking up!"  Jez turned a refresher funnel on and basked in its cool air. 

Zude had to raise her voice to ask, "So how about Dicken?  Will she get there?"

"No chance.  She's pledged to a three-month deepsea expedition near the Tonga Trench.  She sent a new ballad for Bosca that the elders will sing."  Jez scratched her head vigorously with both hands and finger-combed her hair back into place.  "Dicken's performing for the whales now.  Drumming and singing.  They charm her, then she charms them, then they charm her, and so on.  I'm not sure we'll ever get her back."

Both women emerged from the baño in fresh clothes, and cooler by many degrees.  Jez straightened Zude's collar, then led the way back to the terminal proper.

"So, best beloved," Zude grinned, "your plans for me!  What are they?  We rocket up to Cancún right away?  We do Colón's games and races?  Sail the mighty Caribbean?"

"There's a learning neighborhood over in Cativá that I want you to see.  One of the teachers is especially noteworthy."  Jez spoke easily as they walked.  "They don't expect us at Bosca's until tomorrow night."  She shot a glance at Zude.  "And I figured Bosca wouldn't mind if we had a little vacation before we go to be with her." 

She halted them by a flatscreen monitor and faced Zude. 

"So, Zudie, will you spend the day with me, here in Panama?"

"Jezebel, I'd spend the day with you under the Arctic icecap if you asked me."

"Good!"  She swept Zude and the trip-packs toward the terminal's underwater restaurant.  "Food first, then Cativá, then some culture.  And in the meantime there's so much to tell you!"

"Food!" Zude replied.  "Now!"

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

They spent the morning in the festive ambience of Cativá, sampling lectures and demonstrations in the town's learning snugs, and strolling through the bustle of vending stalls and street performers.  They were laughingly attempting to grasp the basic steps of the tarantella when they were drawn to a sudden commotion that arose just beyond them. 

A small child was bawling her heartbreak to the heavens.  Her cries were enhanced by the squawks and whistles of a hundred or so disturbed grackles in the surrounding trees.  A thin boy was trying in vain to comfort the child.

"Lina-Lena," he cajoled, "you were a little too rough."

"She's gone!" wailed the child.  "She just went away!"

"Maybe you were hurting her," the boy suggested. 

"She wouldn't let me ride her!"

"Dogs don't like to be ridden, Lina, so she went shy."

Lina frowned.  "Will she come back?"

"Maybe.  Maybe not."

"Look, Lina," interrupted a nearby woman.  She held a grackle on her finger.  "Here's a bird."

A few people sat by, watching.  Jez and Zude rested under a tree within hearing distance.

The child, the boy, and the woman sat with their eyes closed while the grackle explored the woman's hair with its beak.

"I'm in it, Señora Casco," the boy whispered earnestly.  "I'm in the spacious awareness."

"Not if you're talking, you're not," laughed the woman.  "Hush."

Another moment of silence, then Lina wiggled and whined.  "I won't do it, señora!  I don't like to!"  She squirmed in the boy's arms.  He released her. 

"It's all right, Lina," said Señora Casco, "we can do this another time."  She smoothed the girl's hair back.  "You go along, now."  She gave her a pat on the behind.  "Raúl and I will be with the birds." 

Suddenly, Lina's hand shot out.  It grabbed the grackle.  The grackle screeched.

"Let it go, Lina!" exploded the boy.  "Let it go!"  He tried to pry open the child's hands.  The grackle struggled and squawked.  Lina squeezed the bird tighter, pulling away from Raúl.  She and the grackle were shrieking together. 

Then the bird disappeared.  And the grackles in the trees hushed their cries, moving from branch to branch in silence.

Lina stared at her empty hands.  Her face contorted into an agony of disappointment and betrayal.  She tuned up from a barely audible whimper into an escalating scream.  She screamed again and again, gasping with each intake of breath. 

With only a glance between them, Señora Casco and Raúl closed their eyes again and sat calmly.  Some others nearby did the same.  Lina continued to scream.

"Find the presencing place, Raúl," the señora directed, softly.  "Make it empty, no thoughts."

Raúl nodded.

Lina howled.

Then another grackle, or perhaps the same one, landed on Señora Casco's head.  The child hushed, galvanized by the bird.

"You can presence with us if you want to, Lina," said the woman without opening her eyes.  "Just make yourself very calm and watch how you breathe."

The little girl collapsed to the ground, staring at the grackle.  She closed her eyes.

"When a thought or a feeling or a sensation comes, say hello to it, and then watch your breath again."

They sat for long minutes — the child, the boy, and the woman with a bird in her hair — interrupted now and then by words from the señora. 

"To play with birds, or with dogs or other animals, human beings have to be present with them.  They must go to the quiet place inside and invite the animal to join them there." 

A few moments later she said, "This is the place where we let the animals teach us.  The animals always know what they are doing, but we have a different kind of mind, and it often makes us forget what we are doing.  And who we are." 

A little later she said, "When the inside of your head is very big and empty, that's when you're in the Matrix, and that's when you can invite the animal into your quiet place."

While Zude watched the enduring silence, Jez closed her eyes, seeking her own place of welcome for the grackles.  Suddenly, Zude gripped her wrist.  Jez's eyes flew open.  Zude was staring at the little group and grinning.

With effort, Jez focused her eyes.  Only one thing had changed in the picture that had been before her: The grackle had abandoned Señora Casco's head and now stood immobile on the head of the relaxed and smiling little girl.  Her eyes still closed, Lina raised her hand and extended a forefinger.  Immediately the bird leapt to the perch and settled there, its head close to the child's happy face.

The tableau remained for minutes more, the only sounds an occasional whistle or squawk from the trees.  Finally, people opened their eyes and stretched.  Life resumed its regular pace. 

"And that," Zude observed, as she and Jez headed toward the lake where Maestra Kathleen would be holding classes, "is why we don't need Kanshou anymore."

"That's a little overstated, Steward," Jez suggested.  "Plenty of people still can't do what the grackle did."

"Ah, but we're learning, Bella-Belle."

"And you aren't bored, Zudie?  You don't miss all the blood and thunder?"

Zude was thoughtful.  "I was afraid I would," she replied, "but no.  No, I don't miss it."  Speaking in mindreach, she sent haltingly, "I've missed you, Jezebel."

"I've missed you too, Zudie," Jez sent back.

"We're both so busy, I know," the words tumbled out of Steward Adverb's mouth, "I mean, I'm supposed to be running a tri-satrapy, and you, you're still pushing frontiers, not even sleeping much.  It's like we have a thousand more commitments than we ever did before, and we're doing more and more things and getting higher and faster and . . . but maybe we could--"

"Zudie."   

Zude stopped.  She blinked, and deliberately slowed her breath.

"Zudie," Jez said aloud, her eyes crinkling, "there's no end to the things we can do, or be, or have.  We can do together whatever we both want to do together."

Zude blinked again. 

"Well," she croaked.  "Well."  She cleared her throat and steered them into motion again.  There was an added lilt to her steps.

The day scorched well into afternoon before they found Maestra Kathleen and her students.  Atop a slope of lake grass, Zude stood watching sixteen children below in a stand of trees, intently busy at a group task.

Maestra Kathleen sat on one of several high-backed benches,  leaning forward, observing the group.  She wore a plain ankle-length dress of smooth cotton that protected her ample body from the sun.  Her long brown hair was held back with a scarf.  Suddenly, her voice rose above the low murmur of the children's activity. 

"Aurelia!  Lift up Luka so she can see better!  Good.  Thank you!"

Steward Adverb had a frown on her face.  "Jez," she said, peering down the incline, "Jez, that woman looks a little like . . . and her voice, her stance, she's . . ."

Jez stood beside her, an innocent smile on her face.  "She's what?"

At that moment the teacher shielded her eyes from the sun and gestured to the figures on the hill.  "Welcome!" she called to the visitors.  One or two of the children followed her gaze. 

Zude did not take her eyes off the woman below her.  "Jez, is that. . .Edge!" she shouted, "Captain Edge, is that you?"

She burst down the hill in a run.

"Magister!" the woman exclaimed in astonishment.  She rose and moved toward Zude.  The two women met in a large, loud, back-slapping embrace, laughing and talking.  Lest they lapse into a marathon of old-times-at-the-Shrievalty-Building, Jez drew the three of them toward the benches.  "What are the children so engrossed in?" she asked the maestra.

"They're learning how to construct a holocosm."  Kathleen smiled.  "That technology is actually way beyond anything they could do from scratch, but we have a young cosmotech to show how it's done.  He brought his holo and splining generators with him and carried everything he needed here in his pockets!"

Jez and Zude looked over at the group of children, who were focused with rapt attention on a dark young man.

"May we watch?" asked Zude.

"Of course," answered Kathleen.

But Jez was already on her feet, pulled by a tremor of familiarity, a tug of memory, toward the lesson-place.  The instructor's back was toward her.  "Now," he was saying,  "once you have the silver orb at low-spin, you start on the white one.  It represents the Stream, so the Matrix orb has to revolve in that direction, and intersect with it. . .like. . .so."

The young man's deep voice, where had she heard it before?

"Once you have these two set," he appeared to be weaving a third globe now, "you produce the golden orb, the Journey, and. . .set it spinning. . .that way. . .into the first orb, the Matrix."

The children held their collective breath as he ever so delicately maneuvered the three glowing spheres into their interlocking rotation.  He turned his head slightly, and Jez caught her own breath.  Another circle of children, another time . . . . She was back in a schoolroom in Arabia.  Shaheed!

"Now all we have to do is en-cube it with the crystal-lumer, like this. . ."  He straightened and set aloft the completed holocosm. 

"Ahhh!" the children breathed out.

The wondrous artwork shimmered, its vivid colors dancing as the spheres turned each into the other, suspended and revolving, stillness and motion all together.

"Wonderful, Shaheed!" exclaimed Maestra Kathleen, moving around the clutch of children and gazing at the holocosm floating just above their heads.  "Matrix," she said, speaking to the group and reaching toward each globe as she spoke, "our source and home, delivering us into the Stream, our realm of active force and creativity, which births us into the Journey, our physical life, and then back again to Home!"

Zude, who had come up next to Jez, was awed.  "What a dazzlingly simple demonstration of it all," she observed.

Shaheed looked then from his creation to the two guests.  His reply stopped at his lips when he saw Jezebel.  His dark eyes widened, then his face burst into a radiant smile.  Jez grinned back.  He gestured with mock-futility at the small wall of children between them.  She gestured an I'll-wait-for-you-here reply, and he turned back to wrap up his demonstration.  He presented Maestra Kathleen with the holocosm, which she accepted with a little gasp of appreciation, then they both answered a cascade of eager questions from the youngsters. 

One child in particular wanted to know about the jet-black pyramid in the center of the holocosm, the place where all three orbs intersected.  "There's no light at all there!" she said.

Kathleen laughed.  "Good for you, Yolie!  That part is hard to explain.  It's called the Realm Of All Possibility, where everything that we can't yet imagine, is imagined."

"Then it's all empty?" Yolie persisted.

"Yes," answered Shaheed, "all empty.  And. . .all full!"

Yolie laughed and rolled her eyes.

Jez and Zude stood to one side, enjoying the cosmological pedagogy.  When it began to subside, Kathleen said in her carrying voice, "Let's finish up today by showing our guests what we've been practicing all week!"

"Yes!"  "Let's!"  "Good!"  came the piping voices.

"They're learning how to shyfly in a group," the maestra told Jez and Zude.  "All right," she called.  "Here!"

Immediately the scattered students poured over her, forming at her feet a mound of human flesh.  The maestra hugged or stroked each one as they clung to her.  Satisfied that all her brood was accounted for, she kept her voice in command timbre.