The
Kanshou
Book One
of
Earthkeep
Sally Miller Gearhart
The Kanshou © 2002 by Sally Miller Gearhart
All rights reserved
First edition published May 2002
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,
it’s sine qua non.
Contents
Acknowledgements 6
PROLOGUE - [2087 C.E.] 9
1 - Asir-By-The-Sea - [2087 C.E.] 11
2 - Los Angeles - [2087 C.E.] 35
3 – Meeting - [2041-2069 C.E.] 58
4 - Parting – [2069-2087 C.E.] 85
5 - Bosca - [2087 C.E.] 101
6 - Dicken - [2087 C.E.] 111
7 – Bombay - [2087 C.E.] 122
8 - Stone - [2087 C.E.] 133
9 – Storm - (2087 C.E.) 153
10 – Bucharest - [2087 C.E.] 170
11 - Peace Room - [2087 C.E.] 195
EARTHKEEP CHRONOLOGY 217
EARTHKEEP TERMINOLOGY 221
EARTHKEEP GOVERNANCE 229
Acknowledgements
In the years since 1987, the EARTHKEEP books, The Kanshou and The Magister, 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 Jane Gurko and Dorothy A. Haecker, 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.
I've had the good fortune to work with two fine editors. The first was my Intrepid Vicki P. McConnell, marvellously astute and skilled, who 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. More recently I have been grateful for the guidance of Paulette Whitcomb, whose insight and keen sensitivities have enhanced the clarity, the exactness, and the spirit of The Magister. 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, Mary Anderson, 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 EARTHKEEP books has its best articulation in the teachings of Abraham. 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 - [2087 C.E.]
Four dynamic circumstances shaped the initial decades of the new millennium on the planet, Little Blue.
First, within a single forty-eight-hour period in 2021 of the Common Era (C.E.), every non-human animal on the planet died.
Humans handled the practical effects of this dramatic disinheritance with comparative ease: their loss of a source of food, fuel, and fertilizer; their need for marine-oil substitutes and for alternate methods of seed and pollen transportation. At a deeper emotional level, however, the human species suffered a profound and apparently incurable despair. Animals had provided many humans with the rare experience of unconditional love and, for the more globally-minded, animals had been the model for a life of harmony with the rest of Nature which humans had been unable to sustain.
Second, an escalating wave of natural disasters spiked global warming, drought, and other weather cataclysms.
Third, a global vaccination campaign against recurring epidemic diseases resulted -– by 2040 -- in women's reduced fertility as well as in the suppression of the Y chromosome in men. This plunged the human population to one sixth of its 1999 size and fixed the ratio of females to males at 12-to-1.
Fourth, a global spiral of social unrest sparked food riots and street wars, as well as disruptions in global systems of electrical power, transport, and communication.
As social, economic, military, and governmental power shifted from men to women, new values, structures, and processes emerged. By mid-century, nuclear families were comparatively rare. The most common living pattern was still that of the extended family, honoring traditional kinship bonds. Women in such families usually embraced men as full partners in the human experience.
Almost as common were the tribes, nations, or communities of women-only citizens who used ovular merging to produce girl-children among themselves or, alternatively, used men or semen banks for reproduction. Sexually, such women partnered with other women, sought solitary sexual gratification, or lived asexually. Some of them held to the belief that womanhood or manhood is self-identified, while others of them claimed biology as an immutable physical condition.
By 2060, the ascendancy of women had become 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, were almost entirely female. Each Kanshou peacekeeper followed a code of conduct delineated in The Labrys Manual, and a large part of her responsibility was the confining of violent offenders ("habitantes") to the planet's 780 prisons ("bailiwicks").
Now, in 2087, a global movement has arisen in support of a law that would require the testing of habitantes in a
neurological sea
rch 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. The controversy rages throughout Little Blue over Habitante Testing and the Anti-Violence Protocols.
Despite the Animal Exodus, the ecocide, the reduced human population, the decline in human males, and continuing social unrest, a miracle has occurred.
Without the aid of wings or motors, women can learn to fly.
1 - Asir-By-The-Sea - [2087 C.E.]
Violence is that physical act which is
done against another's will.
Harm is the physical result of violence.
Harm is harm, regardless of the intent
of the harmer, as when the boy throws
the stone in fun,
but the frog dies in earnest.
--The Labrys Manual
At Asir-By-The-Sea in the mountainous boot-heel of the Arabian Peninsula, Jezebel Stronglaces -- healer, seer, witch, and in the tales of Tibetan Yagri, a sacred shape-shifter -- woke to the touch of Bess Dicken, her lover. She laughed, then slipped one hand to the back of the big woman's neck, sending her fingers upward through the wiry hair. With a twist, she fitted their long bodies to the dimensions of the hard pallet, her other hand pressing intimacy into Dicken's back.
"Breath Of Astarte!" Dicken gasped. "Jezebel, thirty girls and three boys are waiting for us this minute, and you come along lighting these sacred flames--"
Jezebel smiled and melted into her lover's lax embrace, pulling Dicken to her. "Guess we'd better get to that class, then." She closed her eyes and began smoothing the heavy caftan that covered Dicken's torso.
Jez's unicorn earring caught Dicken's eye. It was tangled in her lover's brown hair. Dicken freed it. "Aba says that coming this time last week would sure enough have been a problem." She wrapped a lock of the shoulder-length hair around her forefinger. "One of the children died. Real sudden. Whole school was upset." She pushed the curled hair to the end of her finger where she willed it to spring off into a corkscrew. "But they’re back to normal now. So our visit is timed just right." The hair defied her efforts, falling back into a loose straight strand. Dicken sighed, conceding victory to the hair.
Reluctantly, Jez opened her eyes. She drew Dicken into a last long, voluptuous embrace. "So," she sighed, lightly slapping Dicken's back, "to work! Can these children handle the Standards?"
Dicken's lips had fallen into a concentrated grazing of Jez's collarbone. "All three," she mumbled. She frowned and cocked her head momentarily. "Well, English and Spanish at least." She began to nuzzle the hollow of Jez's throat.
"Dicken--"
Dicken's voice softened to a sensuous whisper. "The Mandarin's harder," she breathed, invitingly.
"Dicken!" Jez laughed. She took her lover's shoulders and held her at arm's length. "Bess Dicken, what language will we be speaking in this schoolroom today?"
Dicken looked hurt. "None of the Standards, my ladylove. Today we get to practice our Arabic!" She swept under Jez's arms and fell again to feasting on her lover's ear.
"Good!" As Jez lifted Dicken from her erotic concerns, her hand encountered the silver bangles circling the big woman's neck. "Look at this!" she teased, fingering the necklace. You've gone native! My Dicken will dance the nuba and pluck her pubic hair!"
"No time soon!" Dicken sighed, at last abandoning her amorous efforts and drawing Jezebel to a sitting position. "Asir's a wonderful place, no doubt about it. But just to visit," she added. "You notice? Everything is either real sticky, real sweet, or both."
Jez stretched. "So today's lesson is on 'sensing imbalance?'"
Dicken struggled to her feet. "That's it. And Aba says they have their hearts set on watching you demonstrate the belly antennae." She kissed a wisp of grey by Jez's temple and moved to the doorway where harsh sunlight framed her substantial body. "The schoolroom's a big pavilion, straight north," she said. Then she blew another kiss and disappeared.
"Tell them I'm on my way," her lover called after her, leaning back against the mud wall of the small hut. She sat motionless within a long intake of breath. Exhaling, she lay on her stomach in prone posture, arms to her side. She breathed deep, her eyes closed.
Imperceptibly at first and then more swiftly, her body forsook the pallet and rose a few inches into the air, then a foot higher. She extended her arms over her head in imitation of a diver and sustained this position, her mind feasting on the image of hovering hummingbirds. In slow motion, she reached for her trews and softshirt. Still suspended above the pallet, she drew the shirt and pants over her body, spinning to supine position to secure the drawstring.
Now fully clothed, she doubled her knees to her chest in a quick motion and became upright just a foot above the floor. She exhaled and descended until her feet slipped into her sandals. Then she closed her eyes and briskly followed the scent of Dicken's presence out into the brightness of the Arabian afternoon. She did not open her eyes until she reached the pavilion.
* * * * * * * *
Aba-Nuwas, who would be fifty years old next fall, sat with her students near a scrawl-board inscribed with these words: Honesty, Respect, Responsibility, Service. She scanned the faces of her young charges. All of them were in the sitting-or-kneeling postures that their meditation cushions or stools allowed them, their eyes closed. To a child, they were absorbed in thoughts of animals.
Aba's eyes sought the path beyond the open walls of the pavilion for the arrival of the two flying women from the Nueva Tierra Tri-Satrapy. She herself had had no experience of flying yet, but most of the women she knew were spooning partners. All the children had seen pairs of flying women at one time or another, dipping in and out of the sunlight above Shuqaiq or the Port Of Newbirk. She knew that some of her students had secretly tried their hand at spooning and flying, none with any success -- except, perhaps, girls who had celebrated their first moon and who had found a deep bonding with another girl or woman.
Though she had never met the near-legendary Jezebel Stronglaces, Aba did not fear the fire that was rumored to leap from Jezebel's fingers or the sandstorms the Bedouins had seen her conjure. Both Jezebel and Dicken would be comfortable and welcome in Aba's schoolroom.
The exercise was approaching its limits for young minds. Aba reseated herself within the large double circle and eased her voice into the long holding of an Ending Sound. Without haste other voices joined hers until all the children were softly intoning an open-throated "ah" sound. Largely monodic, the sound nevertheless found a sweet harmony or two, flowed and complexified, wove in and out of a chorus of young voices and built at last to a full and formidable roar. Then abruptly, by the intangible common consent of all those participating, it ceased altogether.
The students burst into laughter, as did Aba, who then called for stretches and physical movement. The talking/shouting children were propelled by their high spirits, running and rolling over the planked flooring, bending in and out of the stools and pillows. They spilled loudly outward to the edges of the pavilion.
Gradually, Aba restored order, hustling students back to the circle and arranging writing boards for the more formal part of the afternoon. "Settle now," she urged them. Bibi, who steadfastly resisted peer pressure to remove her heavy kaffiyeh, even during play periods, pulled at Aba's sleeve. "What, Bibi? Yes, a promise. You can all write at the terminals before we dismiss today. Whatever you remember. But now, it's for all of us to listen." Even as she engineered them into a tight group, Aba kept her eye upon the path beyond the schoolroom. "What places did you go," she asked, "what animals did you talk to, what things did you learn?"
"I went with the elephants," said Zari, barely four and the youngest child there. "They took me all over the tri-satrapy."
"And you weren't afraid?" This from Shaheed, barely 15 and the class's oldest student.
"Nah," Zari told him. "Why did they leave, Aba, why?"
"We just aren't sure, Zari," Aba replied softly.
Qatalon
a, an older girl, rose to the occasion. "They went by their own decision, because they were tired of being hurt and humiliated and imprisoned and killed."
Students dropped their eyes and toyed with their sashes or studiously examined their writing boards.
"That's what most believe," Aba said. She took a quick inventory of the plummeting spirits around her. "But that's not why we do the meditation, to feel bad all over again about the Exodus. Many people even believe that if we talk to them in our memories and rituals, we may persuade the animals to return to Little Blue."
Kamasa, another older student, fingered the curl that wandered down her forehead from her booshi cloth. "Well," she said, "It makes me feel better to think of the animals. And not just feel better. I think I will be better. A better person, I mean." To her right Masudhe Ratuda rolled her eyes heavenward. Kamasa gave Masudhe an elbow in the shoulder. "It's true, Masudhe! You may not believe it, but the whole lesson we learned from the Exodus was that all of life is connected. A long time ago, we felt everything that every other being felt. But we got separated, and that's how it became so easy to misuse animals."
Masudhe put her head down on her writing board, sighing loudly. She raised it again with a wide grin when Kamasa shook her. "Listen to me, Masudhe! You know I'm telling the truth--"
"You are telling the truth, Kamasa," Aba assured her. "Every person has been deeply affected by our loss of the animals." She felt the hush fall again. "Anyway," she continued, in a thinly disguised attempt at enthusiasm, "we're all historians, too. We study the old films and holos so we can understand what this world was once like. And we study the animals because remembering them is so often joyful."
Amid the nods, Bibi asked, "Do you remember the animals, Aba?"
"I'm not that old, preshi!" her teacher laughed. "But if I could remember them, what would I be called?"
The Kanshou (Earthkeep) Page 1
