The Magister (Earthkeep)
Read The Magister (Earthkeep) Online
Authors: Sally Miller Gearhart
The Magister
Sally Miller Gearhart
The Magister © 2003 Sally Miller Gearhart
All rights reserved
First Edition published March 2003
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gearhart, Sally Miller, 1931 –
The Kanshou / Sally Miller Gearhart – 1
ed.
p. cm – (Earthkeep; bk. 1)
ISBN 1-883523-44-3
I Women – Fiction. I title.
PS3557.E2 K36 2002
813’.52—dc21
The Earthkeep Series is dedicated to
Dorothy A. Haecker and Jane Gurko
its sine qua non.
Contents
2 – Chimney Corner – [2008 C.E.]
25
3. – New Druid Trench – [2088 C.E.]
35
4. – West Virginia – [2088 C.E.]
59
6 - BELO HORIZONTE - [2088] C. E.]
86
9. BURIAL BARQUE – [12088 C.E.]
126
10. HEART’S DESIRE – [2088 C.E.]
141
11. SHIFTING SCENE – [ - [2088 C.E.]
157
13. LIN-CI WIN – [2089 C.E.]
177
14 - JOURNEY, MATRIX, STREAM – [2094 C.E.]
185
Acknowledgements
In the years since 1987,
The Kanshou
and other
EARTHKEEP
books have been given both substance and form within the network of my friends, enemies, lovers, colleagues, comrades, teachers, students, chance acquaintances, and animal companions. In addition to Dorothy A. Haecker and Jane Gurko, who shepherded the
EARTHKEEP
material through its most major transformations, a number of people have generously blessed the books with their special abilities and their time.
My Intrepid Editor, Vicki P. McConnell, marvellously astute and skilled, endowed the bulky manuscript with one of its first professional affirmations, and then streamlined it -- and my writing habits -- with a devotion far beyond any duty set upon her by Spinsters Ink. Elizabeth Saria, Karla McDermid, and Carla Blumberg educated me in crucial aspects of chemistry, zoology, medicine, virology, technology, and marine biology. I called upon Vivian Power for aid in Spanish, enhancement of my understanding of science, and audacious challenges to my utopian vision. Adrian Tinsley, ardent aficionada of fantasy and science fiction, refreshed both my memory and my imagination in her analysis of the manuscript. Moreover, I have been companioned throughout this literary journey by a task force of metaphysical gadflies, led at different times by Tamara Diaghilev, Mara, Ari Lacelle, Cynthia Secor, and Helen Stewart.
Frequently I have needed rescue from computer panic, and I've often lacked expertise in specific areas such as astrology, firearms, the geography of Los Angeles, how to play the violin, how to survive in the publishing world, Judaism, the Koran, Mandarin, medical terminology, police practices, and the scope of human sexuality. I thank the following people for coming to my aid in one or more of these matters: Bryce Travis, Carlin Diamond, Nancy Ellis, Esther Faber, Susan Feldman, Emmy Good, Dick Graham, Maggie Graham, Matthew Holtz, Tony King, Joann Lee, Lyndall MacCowan, Marilyn McNair, Jack Power, Teri Rogers, Sam Sapoznick, and Susan Smith.
As well, I offer a special thanks to all the anarchists, animal rights activists, capitalists, developers, environmentalists, hunters, loggers, militarists, pacifists, political radicals, ranchers, religious fundamentalists, and vegetarians who, in my ongoing dialogues with them, have toughened up my thought processes and deepened my appreciation of diversity.
I have lived surrounded by a community of women -- Peggy Cleveland, Morgaine Colston, Jean Crosby, Esther Faber, Bonnie Gordon, Jane Gurko, Susan Leo, Ana Mahoney, Carol Orton, Penny Sablove, and Diane Syrcle – which has provided the atmosphere of support and patient understanding that these books have required in order, at last, to be born.
The metaphysics ultimately embraced by the protagonists of
The Kanshou
and other
EARTHKEEP
books has its best articulation in the teachings of Abraham, available at Abraham-Hicks Publications, P.O. Box 690070, San Antonio, Texas, 78269 (830-755-2299). Abraham teaches joy, and it is the gift of joy that I wish for all whom I here finally acknowledge with gratitude: the
readers
of
EARTHKEEP
, in Aristotle's terms the "final cause of" or "that for the sake of which" these books have been written.
“. . .
such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence
with such restraint, with such a grasp
of the range and limits of violence
that violence ever after would be obsolete.”
--Adrienne Rich
Twenty-One Love Poems, VI
PROLOGUE
In
The Kanshou,
Book One of EARTHKEEP, the citizens of Little Blue find themselves faced with 1) the disappearance from the planet of all non-human animals, 2) the effects of widespread natural disasters and weather cataclysms, 3) the reduction of their population to one sixth of its 1999 size, 4) a ratio in the human population of twelve women to every man, and 5) the global effects of decades of social and political unrest.
As Little Blue's social, economic, military, and governmental power has shifted from men to women, new values, structures, and processes have emerged. By 2087, when action of
The Kanshou
takes place, nuclear families are rare, and the most common living pattern is still that of the extended family, honoring traditional kinship bonds. Women in such families usually embrace men as full partners in the human experience.
Almost as common are the tribes, nations, or communities of women-only citizens who use ovular merging to produce girl-children among themselves or, alternatively, use men or semen banks for reproduction. Sexually, such women partner with other women, seek solitary sexual gratification, or live asexually. Some of them hold to the belief that womanhood or manhood is self-identified, while others of them claim biology as an immutable physical condition.
By 2087 the ascendancy of women is the norm in all three of Little Blue's tri-satrapies or geo-political territories. Land, sea, and air divisions of the global peacekeeping force, called the Kanshoubu, are almost entirely female. Each Kanshou peacekeeper -- whether she is an Amah, a Femmedarme, or a Vigilante --- follows a code of conduct delineated in the Kanshoubu's
Labrys Manual,
and a large part of a Kanshou's responsibility is the confining of violent offenders (
habitantes
) to the planet's 780 prisons (
bailiwicks
).
By the end of
The Kanshou, a
global movement has gained strength in support of a proposal that would require the testing of habitantes in a neurological search for the organic cause of human violence. If such a cause is found, protocols can then be initiated for the surgical removal of that cause. Zude, one of the Kanshoubu's three Magisters, fervently opposes both the Testing and the Protocols. Her old lover, charismatic witch Jezebel Stronglaces, leads the grassroots global forces in fighting for the approval of the Testing and the Protocols. Their struggle as adversaries has escalated with the eruption into violence of bailiwick habitantes who are protesting both of the proposals.
The Magister,
Book Two of EARTHKEEP, opens a year later, in 2088. Though the controversy over the Testing and the Protocols still rages, an unforseen event now warns of the whole race's possible extinction.
1 – Firebroom – [2088 C.E.]
There is a land beyond kindred and stranger,
a place beyond here and there,
a time beyond past and future,
a mind beyond yes and no.
Welcome.
Weaves From The Matrix
In the director's office of the Dolly Ruark Athletic Center, Jez’s and Dicken's immersion in a flatfilm was interrupted by the Urgent signal of Beabenet's comunit. Bea paused the film and opened her channel.
"A message for Jezebel Stronglaces," said the curly-haired woman on the screen.
Jez moved into the viewfield. "I'm Jezebel."
The woman smiled. "A tribesman by the name of Donal Jain from out beyond the Badlands needs to talk with you. He heard you were going to be in St. Paul, and he contracted with a spoon to fly him to the Ruark Center. He’ll be here. . ." she glanced at her chronometer, "within the hour, at eleven."
"Do you know what he wants?"
"The woman who called said the spooners said he said it had something to do with children — he called them youngs. The message just got here and there wasn't a chance for response. They've been airborne for hours."
"Thank you. . .Tracey," Jez said, sensing her name.
"Thank you," beamed the woman. She nodded to Beabenet and disappeared.
"Well, that's appropriate enough," Dicken observed.
"I'll say," Bea agreed. She looked at Jezebel, who still stared at the screen.
"Let's finish watching," Jez said. "Do we have time?"
"Plenty," Bea replied. "We're near the end." She de-paused the flatfilm.
A dark-skinned child picked up a fuzzy tiger and rubbed her face against it. She kissed the toy and started to set it back on its stool. She stopped, held it at arm's length and cocked her head, as if listening. Then she clasped the tiger to her. She walked toward the mikcam and into the arms of the bewildered woman who sat on the bed.
"Jula," she told her mother, "we're just going to play with our friends." The round little face was earnest. "They're waiting for us." She looked at the tiger and gave it a squeeze. She then curled up in the woman's lap and laid her hand on the woman's bosom. "You can come too, Jula," she said. Then, flashing a brilliant smile, Mary Frances Safful closed her eyes and slipped into an apparently blissful sleep.
Beabenet cleared the flatfield. "And. . ."
"And she never woke up," finished Dicken.
"That's right."
Dicken fingered the heaviness of her dankee silver necklace. Jez sat utterly still in one of the office's big chairs. Bea closed down the flatfilm casing and activated a tab on her chairarm panel. Skylights and windows came alive again with light.
"That's the only film we've got," she said. "And we wouldn't have had that if Fanny's big sister, Lyn, hadn't had the instincts of a historian. As you saw, she made it almost a daily game with Fanny, getting her to talk on camera about sleeping so much. Lyn let me borrow the flatfilm chip. She said Jula couldn't stand to look at it, anyway."
She picked up a strip of audio chipnests and a flatcopy report. "Here." She set them on the desk. "You can hear or read about the other three. Pretty much the same story. All in good health except that, according to two of the families, their hair changed color. Only one of them had been sleeping more than usual. The others died completely unexpectedly, yet apparently very peacefully. Just didn't wake up one morning. Only one of them had any history of disease or injury — an anti-grav tumble years before."
Bea sighed. She pressed two fingers against one temple. "One of the mothers went wild. Swore her daughter was just comatose, still alive. She kept her lying in state for over a week, refusing to embalm, bury or cremate her." Bea looked from Dicken to Jez, then continued.