The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (4 page)

"Masudhe, you are such a lickspitting toady!" Kamasa screamed.  "Come off it!"

Shaheed shot to his feet and squared off toward a livid Kamasa.  He sought an invective to shred his adversary once and for all.  Then, without warning, his tongue turned to jelly.

"Shaheed!  What are you doing?"
asked his Inner Self, a dazzling presence hovering behind his eyes.  Without hesitation he whispered back, "Something not worthy of my heart!"  In that moment, his Inner Self opened wide its arms.  The boy closed his eyes, turned, and stepped into the embrace. 

Jezebel had been riding the waves of anger from the two older girls.  When Shaheed stood, she made a decision, and pushed toward him an enfolding shield that thrust his anger back toward his own deep center.  She watched him charge toward Kamasa and then stagger.  In a protracted moment he drew himself up and stood galvanized in an unexpected silence.  His lips moved.  Then his shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes.

The class sat frozen.  Jez sent a blessing to the Goddess for Shaheed's powerful Inner Self.  Then Aba rose and stepped behind her student, her arms extended.  While the group watched, stunned, Shaheed turned and sank into her embrace.  He stood holding her, surrounded by his classmates's sighs and  exclamations. 

Jezebel Stronglaces looked from face to face.  She found concern among the students, and a healthy dose of respect for Shaheed.  Masudhe and Kamasa were still puzzled and uneasy.  When she saw Kamasa reach out to lay her hand on Masudhe's knee, Jez released a breath she hadn't known she was holding.  Masudhe did not quite smile, but extended her little finger.  Kamasa took it with her own, and with a mutual squeeze both the older girls subsided into a chastened armistice.

The class was recovering from the eruption.  One sweep told Jezebel that the curiosity was still high and the willingness unconcealed.  Dicken's short nod lent her a sweet assurance.  She drew a restorative breath.

"Well," she said, "so far we've talked of three ways to handle violent people.  First, we can execute them.  Second, we can confine them in bailiwicks where there may or may not be rehabilitated.  Third, we can put them in controlled placement programs.  We've missed only two alternatives, both pretty obvious--"

Qatalona preempted her.  "You can just send them away, Jezebel."

"Good.  Exile them," Jezebel nodded, "but to where?"

"The middle of the ocean."

"The moon colony!" 

"A satellite circling the globe!"

"That all takes too many guards.  How're you going to keep them from getting out?  And coming back to be violent again?"

"Maybe that's what the people from other galaxies think of us," mused a previously silent student.  "They're afraid we'll discover stardrive and escape our solar system, and that then we'll take over the universe and ruin it just like we almost did Little Blue."

"Well, we might," said Raka.  "To them we may be just like habitantes.  And Little Blue is our bailiwick!" 

Jez was keeping her extensors in light touch with Shaheed, Kamasa, and Masudhe.  The girls had entered another terrain, apart now from Shaheed.  They were not yet ready to participate again.  Two more conversational turns, she estimated, and they would be drawn in once more.  Shaheed was another matter. 

Jezebel Stronglaces, whose mistrust of the male biology was well known and understood over all nine satrapies, found herself struggling with an unfamiliar empathy for the dark beanpole of a young man whose eyes rose once more to meet her own.  Mingled with his rage, his shame, and his confusion, was the unmistakable pulse of good will.  That pulse rode straight to her heart.

He raised his hand.  The mildness of his manner startled her.  "And there's the last option, isn't there, Jezebel?  The one that proposes getting rid of all violence completely."

"Oh Shaheed," Qatalona objected, "nobody believes we could get rid of violence completely!"

"Jezebel Stronglaces believes it," he said softly, keeping his eyes on Jez.

"What, Shaheed?  Repeat."  Qatalona bent toward him.

"Jezebel Stronglaces believes it!" Shaheed placed each word like a cannon shot into the air.  Then, before anyone could respond, he rose to one knee.  "They're going to try to cripple or kill anybody who is still violent, aren't they?.  That's what the Testing and the Protocols are all about."  His voice, even softened, remained accusatory.  "And you want them to do it."

Jez found one long breath.  "What have you heard, Shaheed, about the Protocols?"

He sat back on his cushion.  "I've heard that scientists want to change violent people into peaceful ones.  By performing surgery on their brains." 

"That's accurate," Jez told him.  "Anti-Violence Protocols would involve brain surgeries that would inhibit an individual's physiological tendency toward violence, and perhaps the violence of their children."  She searched the attentive faces around her.  "But physicians and researchers aren't even sure yet that there
is
such a violence center in the brain.  To discover that center, they have proposed surgical experiments upon bailiwick habitantes."

Aba-Nuwas silently explored the temper of her students.  They sat in unblinking concentration, sorting information, grasping for meanings, and absorbing the implications of Jez's words.  She spoke without disrupting the tension. 

"So there are two moral questions here.  First, is it right to use habitantes for experimentation in the search for a physical or organic cause of violence?  And second, if an organic cause is found, can we justify the use of the Anti-Violence Protocols on violent offenders against society?"

Jez scanned the room, noting Shaheed's rueful grin.  Some eyes met hers.  Some heads nodded solemnly.  "The fundamental question is that of the Protocols," she explained, "but the Central Web will probably take up the matter of Habitante Testing first, figuring that if some physical cause is found, violent people who want to change could choose the surgical procedures -- even if the Web decides that no one should be forced to have the operation.  After all, if we haven't looked for the cause, violent people who want to change won't have that option.  Does that make sense?"

"And that's what all the fighting's about," Laroos mused.

"That's the heart of the present controversy, yes.  Whether it's right to use habitantes for the studies."

Shaheed's spoke evenly.  "Whether it's right to use habitantes
against their will
."

Jezebel looked across the wide abyss that separated her from Shaheed.  "All our lives are going to be affected by this controversy," she said to him, "but you could be affected more than most."

His dark eyes regarded her without faltering.  "Because I think about taming horses." 

Jez nodded slowly.

"Never," he whispered.  Then louder he said, "I would
never
agree to let someone tinker with my brain!"  No one moved.  Or breathed.  "So would you force me to have the surgery, Jezebel?"  He waited.  "Would you?  Where is all your nonviolence then?"

Deliberately, and with Shaheed's tacit permission, Jezebel put long legs on hersoftself andunhesitatingly strode the narrow plank of tension between them.  She moved behind him and merged tentatively with his waiting softself.  She saw what he was saw, felt what he felt.  While a cold wind of doubt whipped around them both, she opened her mind and heart. 

She was a clean-cut, sharp-edged warrior whose self-knowledge and identity had been won at great cost.  She raised her sword of Selfhood against the sea of faceless uniformity that  rose inexorably on every side, luring her into its bottomless depths with promises of peace, harmony, and love.  She defied it, striking at it with her sword and crying, "I abhor your sameness!  I do not choose to be like you!  I stand apart from you, alone and free!"

Thus, on that bright mountain-desert afternoon, in the wraparound shoes of a lanky Yemen boy, Jezebel Stronglaces learned something of the fear, the loneliness, and the pride of Little Blue's male minority -- once its ruling force.  She took up residence again in her own body, ready at last to answer his question.  Around her, the class sat transfixed, watching a silent drama, the dimensions of which they could barely imagine.

"Shaheed," she began.

His chin moved upward.

"Shaheed, if you had proved yourself to be a violent man, and if we knew that through surgery you could be changed into a nonviolent man, I would insist for the sake of society -- and yourself -- that you be required to have the surgery.  Even against your will."

Nothing moved in the pavilion, neither breeze nor breath. 

Jez held the young man's gaze.

Then, ever so slightly, Shaheed nodded.  Once.

Jezebel spoke again.  "Because of who you are and because of what I have learned from you today, I find inside myself a wish that I could believe differently.  But I doubt that I ever will.  I would lie if I told you otherwise." 

Shaheed's countenance expressed neither guile nor rancor.  Jez held his eyes.

Someone's body rustled into movement.  Then, as if rising from a dream, many bodies began stirring softly.

Aba sighed aloud.  Zari was back in her lap again, now bright-eyed and smiling.  As the teacher straightened on her stool all eyes turned toward her, those of Shaheed and Jezebel among them.

"We have lots to think about," she said, capturing any still straying attention.  The circle of students drew more tightly together.  Aba spoke to their guests.  "Jezebel and Dicken, you've given us a great gift today.  We'll be doing the hard work you've laid out for us long after you have gone."  Her voice took on a formal tone.  "Our thanks to you both," she said.

Slowly, tongue clicks and knee slaps from the whole group began escalating into a full-bodied applause.  The students clapped and clicked for half a minute before Aba found the sound she wanted.  She shifted her Zari-bundle to her other knee and began a sustained chanting of each word as it came to her.  "This has been a fine afternoon," she intoned, "filled with surprises."   

Jez took her turn immediately, chanting, "I give my thanks to you all."

Dicken shifted the rhythm to a singable beat and rallied the voices around the optimum pitch.  "Praise for the lessons of this bright day!" she sang.

"Praise for the lessons of this bright day!" the students  repeated.  They swung into a litany of gratitude for every event of the afternoon, particularly for the galloping of majestic wild horses across their sky.

Aba shifted the gratitude to a chanting of the name of each student, a ritual obviously so familiar that it brought forth a rich variety of rhythms and pacings, whirrs and buzzes.  When each student's name and that of Dicken and Aba had been sung
,
it was Shaheed who stood up and chanted above all the rest, "Jezebel!"  His voice -- and the laughs and clicks that followed -- ended the afternoon.

2 - Los Angeles - [2087 C.E.]

Midair explosion of R-18C bimodular cushcar just off ocean side of Ciudad Bolivar Hoverpath now attributed to combustive detonation of explosive cargo.  Firearms, cribs/canisters of ammunition, grenades; Grade 6 trinitrotoluene, pyroxylin, and solanas rockets, all proscribed by law.  Occupants instantly killed: two men, one woman. 

Report to Tri-Satrapy
Center. 

0125 10.13.87 ASBR.cog.sen 36.caracas.NTSur.]

On the other side of the world, a woman in uniform sat in an office twenty floors above the City And Bailiwick Of Los Angeles.  She had short, thick, salt-and-pepper hair that fell across her forehead in curls.  Her eyes were solid brown except when the sun struck her face, and then they revealed specks of light that brought summer fireworks to mind.  Her cheekbones rode high and a small silver ring suspended a rampant unicorn from her left earlobe.  Her skin was the color of a highly polishedpecan.Below her trim solid torso, smooth-muscled legs set her an inch shorter than most of the women in her charge.  When she smiled, people looked up in astonished joy.

Zella Terremoto Adverb, MagisterOf The Vigilancia and thus also the chief executive officer of the Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy, was called "Zude" by most and "Zudie" by a precious few.  She was one of the rare Kanshou (or Shrieves) on Little Blue privileged to wear the colors of any one of the planet's three peacekeeping forces.  As a graduate of the Hong Kong Amah Academy, she had worn the red tabard of the Asia-China-Insula Tri-Satrapy's Amahrery, and during her two-year service as a Femmedarme in the Africa-Europe-Mideast Tri-Satrapy, she had worn the green tabard of the Femmedarmery.  But her greatest dedication was ever to Nueva Tierra's Vigilancia, and her daily dress was thus in the cobalt blue of a Vigilante.

This night she wore the black rhyndon comfortsuit and the black breeks of every Kanshou, regardless of tri-satrapy.  For the occasion of her expected Amahrery visitors, and to acknowledge her own experience as an Amah, she wore over the comfortsuit a deep red open-throated smock, the semi-casual garment of the Amahs.

Here in Zude's office behind hanging plants, small murals of blue and silver accented the contoured walls of grey.  On one backlit panel, a hand-woven net of metal squares or fighting meshes seemed poised for combat, hanging three-dimensionally off gleaming steel rings.  In another recessed panel, a violin sat upright, its bow leaning lightly against its fingerboard.  A prominent inset of the complex desk unit was filled by the taxidermy of a crouching calico cat, curved neck slightly turned, yellow eyes flashing.  Draped over a chairback was the long cloak of tekla in Vigilancia blue, its clasp emblazoned with the Magistry insignia.

Zella Adverb sat within her desk unit staring at the report of the cushcar explosion.  "Outlaws," she muttered, "on their way to big trouble.  And one of them a woman." 

"And why not, Captain?" retorted a voice from her past.  The lanky habitante in light-green coveralls added a jeer to her voice.  "You think women are too pure to bust a man's head in?"

Femmedarme Captain Adverb shook her head.  "No."  Then she asked, "And you experience a Crossover?"