3 – Meeting - [2041-2069 C.E.]
Said Caterpillar to Maria, "How do you manage with only two legs?
Isn't it tiring, bouncing back and forth like that?"
"Yes," answered Maria, "but alas, it is my human condition."
Question: What does this mean?
Response: I both abhor violence and practice it daily, for I physically restrain the freedom of those who would harm others. I thus live with this human contradiction, consoling myself with the reminder of the Precepts Of The Kanshoubu: that as Kanshou I serve a Greater Good by protecting others with my own violent acts; that as Kanshou I at least practice the Principle Of Least Necessary Restraint in the violence that I do commit; and that if my Kanshoumates and I do our jobs well, we may ultimately bring about a nonviolent world, a world in which Kanshou will not be necessary.
-- The Labrys Manual
Jezebel Stronglaces was born Jezebel ("Bella") Engracia Dolalicia in 2041 C.E., near the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. The bearing mother for the ovarian transplant was Alicia Tuatha Sands, one of the revered far-seers of the Spooner Ensconcement called Lakemir. The nucleus donor was Ola Adelia Nariño of Cozumel, whose duties as a Vigilante Sea-Shrieve kept her from full participation in the affairs of that community.
Though a female separatist society, the Lakemir Spooners did not embrace the rigid strictures of Mother Right colonies who saw men as dangerous and to be protected against. The Spooners maintained commercial relations with surrounding towns and regularly elected their representative to the demesne web. As Bella would learn, the Lakemir women did not think of men at all. Within the meadows and forests of their ensconcement, men simply did not exist.
With Lakemir's other villagedaughters, Bella Dolalicia worked the ensconcement's orchards and began an early political education in the company of the older women responsible for governance. Her deep commitment to the female culture surrounding her helped her through the early loss of both her mothers and the frequent mild-to-severe seizures which began when she was four and continued until she was thirteen -- at which time they disappeared altogether. She lived with her mothers's co-madres until at 13 she became Jezebel Dolalicia, an independent minor.
In all her endeavors Jezebel Dolalicia sought a mental and spiritual discipline that would enable her to control not only her voracious mind but the unorthodox psychic gifts that frequently emerged without her bidding. Her seeking led her to the Yucatan where she mastered languages and transmogrifier manufacture, and where she apprenticed to a Mayan herbalist. When the daughter that she and her lover, Myrtha, had so carefully planned for died shortly after Jez gave birth to her, Jezebel dedicated herself for two years to the austere practices of a Tsangpo convent. She subsequently took up the formal study of physics in Beijing where she also worked to make transmog technology available to rural areas. In 2068 C.E., Jezebel Dolalicia sought the discipline of Hong Kong's Kanshou Cadet academy , preparatory to a peacekeeping career as an Amah of the Asia-China-Insula Tri-Satrapy.
* * * * * * * *
Though the child of a heterosexual union, Zella Terremoto Adverb never learned her father's identity. She was born in midsummer of 2042 C.E., in Barranquilla, Colombia, to Sylvia Isabel Romero, and was raised with her brother's children in Barrio Santín of that city.
Even before she started to blockschool, she began to learn everything she could about Vigilantes, Amahs, and Femmedarmes, and what it meant to follow the Kanshou Code. When she was eight, she watched two Vigilantes subdue a crowd of drunken rowdies with nothing but their persuasive voices and the judicious use of their batons. "Principle Of Least Necessary Restraint," she reminded herself, as if the Shrieves themselves had left their voices inside her.
Innately endowed with a finely-tuned sense of justice, enthralled by the women who in her eyes were the keepers of justice, and utterly convinced that she would someday be one of those women, Zella Terremoto Adverb consciously molded her young life. By the time she was 14, she had organized broad-based grassroots resistance to the interference of outside commercial interests in Colombia's demesne affairs, and had turned down an appointment as teen representative to the newly forming Barranquilla Demesne Legislative Web. That same year she left home and headed north for the Reclaimed Territory Of Aztlán where she worked in bailiwicks and pursued her studies in Kitchen Table tribunals. It was there that she began her lifelong efforts to change bailiwicks from explosive ghettos into places where habitantes's survival, security, and social needs were met.
Using her carefully saved credits, Zude travelled the planet by rocket, hovercraft, ship, and spoon to visit bailiwicks all over Little Blue. In 2067 C.E., along with 800 other women who had reached the age of 25 or older, she entered the Kanshou Cadet academy in Hong Kong, intent upon making its training her second nature.
* * * * * * * *
When, on that cloud-covered midwinter Hong Kong day, Third-Form Amah Cadet Zella Terremoto Adverb laid her dark brown eyes on the tilted head and lean body of the oldest of the entering chelas, Fourth-Form Cadet Jezebel Dolalicia, some sleeping animal awoke and uncoiled just below her navel. When on that same day, Amah Cadet Dolalicia turned from the transmog with her cup of tea and saw outlined against the grey face of Victoria Peak the transfixed form of Cadet Adverb, she straightened her head and heard the whisper of her Source Self, "She's the one."
Amah cadets, including chelas, had three nights monthly when they could use their credits away from the Amah Academy, free at last of the rows of cots in the dossrooms. During the nearly two years that Jez was at the academy, she and Zude spent those nights together in one or another of the city's rooming houses or under the stars on the banks of the Xi Jiang's waters. They flew together over placid lakes and turbulent seas, touching Celebes mountaintops and the reefs of the old Philippines. They danced in Taipei's botanical gardens and hung their drenched uniforms on the struts of Jakarta's drawbridges. Wherever they placed their bodies into the spoon of afterlove sleep, they trusted willow and plum tree, orchid and hibiscus, to hold the memory inviolable.
As their passion grew into legend, they endured the day-by-day rigors of the Amahrery's training. They molded their bodies and minds into weapons of authority and order, Jez with hesitation then determination, Zude from the outset with exhilaration and keen satisfaction. They vied with each other, and together against others; they ran, climbed, swam, flew, shot, slashed, crawled, dived, and leapt; they calculated, measured, memorized, analyzed, conjugated, recited, formulated, discussed, negotiated, strategized, and argued. And, like all Amah cadets, they celebrated at every opportunity.
The rational, practical Zude despaired over her lover's active fantasy life, even once going so far as to insist to Jezebel that unicorns were not real. Jez succeeded in convincing her that unicorns might, with the proper open-heartedness, become real, and to that end she presented Zude with a custom-cast pair of silver earrings, each in the form of a rampant unicorn, mane-flared and horn held high. They always had pride of place among the tasteful piercings that decorated Zude's ears.
* * * * * * * *
One idyllic evening by the South China Sea, Zude stood in the academy's weaponsyardafter target-and-evasion drills. Sweating from her exertion, she pushed a cleaning rod through her dartsleeveand watched the falling sun drench the top of the hardwood fencing. All along the fencetop were mounted the warrior weapons of the thousand-armed Durga, Invincible Hindu Warrior Goddess -- sword, ax, kukri, arrow, javelin, katar, spear, trident, noose, discus, mesh, and pike. Just to her left and topping the archway that led to the Contemplation Garden beyond, blazed the Sumerian Eye Goddess, flanked by statues of man-eating Valkyries whose raven feathers merged into the bodies of mares. The idiography across the arch came from the early women of Hong Kong, themselves saviors of their nation's culture. In Zude's rough translation it said, "Humanity can do better, and women will lead the way."
Zude squinted one eye and peered down her dartsleevewith the other. "And what a polyglot w
e are," she mused aloud, "study and philosophize in English, shop and do laundry in Mandarin, make love and quarrel in Spanish." She wiped her brow, automatically checking her earlobes for her unicorns.
Jezebel was leaning against the upper gatepost, one of her far-away looks immobilizing her face. If she hadn't just observed her lover laying in rank after rank of dead-center blowdarts, each one with an exclamation of triumph, Zude would have sworn that Jez was crying.
"Hail, Intrepid Markswoman!" she called.
Jez turned. She was crying. Zude gathered her sweat tunic, her darts, their quiver, her cleaning rods, and the sleeve. She joined her lover, sitting on the bench just below her. She reached up and took Jez's hand. They were silent for half a minute.
"Good match this morning," Zude said casually. "With Ciab."
Jez looked askance at her lover. "How did you know?"
"How . . . ? I didn't," Zude confessed. "I was just commenting."
"It was awful." Tears welled up again in Jez's eyes. "Zudie, I came close to hurting her. Really hurting her, I mean." She wiped her face with her sleeve.
Zude rested against the bench's back. "But you didn't-- "
"I don't mean physically," Jez insisted. "I mean I could have stripped her mind, levelled her intention!" She struck the fence pillar. "I wasn't in control, I almost . . . ." She pushed off from the post and paced. "What if that had been some man I was trying to restrain? I managed not to hurt Ciab, but how do I know I wouldn't use my . . . my weapons if I were restraining a man? If I were an Amah?"
As always, Zude avoided any direct discussion of Jezebel's psychic powers. "Bella-Belle," she said softly, "you wouln't hurt an offender, not beyond Least Necessary-- "
"You don't know that!"
"Look, you didn't hurt Ciab. All of us-- "
"She's a woman!"
Zude blinked. "Even if she'd been a man-- "
"If she'd been a man I might have wiped him out for sure! I could have done him irreparable harm! Oh Zudie," she slumped onto the bench, "that's exactly the trouble, don't you see? Ciab's a woman, a temporary harmer. That's why I didn't hurt her. Any violence in a woman is conditioned violence, and the deepest part of me knew that. A woman can be helped because she's not violent by nature. It's men who've got violence in their genes!"
"Jezebel that's-- "
"I know, I know! 'Any offender is only a temporary harmer,' says the holy Kanshou Code. But if I don't believe that, how can I be a Kanshou? And I don't believe it about men, Zudie. Men are totally at the mercy of their biology! Look at wars and crime. Look at who is in the bailiwicks. It's men!"
Zude's lips tightened. She focused on the toe of her boot.
Jezebel waved her dartsleeve. "They can't help it," she shrugged. "It's hard-wired into them. At rock bottom they love cruelty and dominance." Jez paused, her eyes like cold stone. "They're killers," she said slowly. "Maybe we ought to just drain the testosterone out of them the minute they hit puberty!"
"Jez!" Zude stood and flung her arms into the air.
"Why not, Zudie?" Jez was calm now. She pulled the sweatband from her head.
"Because we don't know that's true, Jezebel," Zude roared as she paced, "because there's not a shred of scientific evidence to support that crazy idea, because-- "
"Then let's find it, Zude. Let's find that scientific evidence!" Jez catapuled off the bench and stood toe-to-toe with her lover. "Let's do some hormone control on the men in the bailiwicks, on the killers and the rapists and the abusers, like they used to do on alpha males in the baboon colonies. Let's find that little spot in the male anatomy that secretes the testosterone and-- "
"You won't find it, Jez! You won't find anything in the male anatomy any different from-- "
"We'll find it, Zude," Jez shouted, "and when we do we can damp it out in all men!"
"Jez!" Zude's voice topped her lover's.
The volume of the confrontation brought two concerned cadets to the edge of the weaponsyard. When they identified the scene and its familiar participants, they moved on, shaking their heads and smiling.
Zude was incredulous. "What an act of violence, Jezebel! You want to invade the very identity of a human being and force him into being like you, maybe even making a zombie of him! Don't talk to me about men's history of cruelty and violence! Look to yourself, Jezebel!"
"Wrong! It would be violence maybe, yes!" Her voice softened. "But only once, only for right now, until the chain of violence is broken! Zudie, it may be the only way. We're women, and we'd do it with love and with full understanding of what we're doing! We'd be forcing men to give up their violence only until we get the initial cause eradicated. After that, social conditioning could take care of it all. It would be worth it, Zudie! One act of violence that ends violence forevermore!"
"Never, Jez, never." Zude stepped away from her lover. She ran a hand through her hair. "The whole idea is wrong from the start, wrong all along the way."
"Violence for a Greater Good, Zude," Jez said quietly. "Like the Kanshou are violent when they restrain an offender. Violence for a Greater Good."
Zude turned. "Touché."
Jez sank to the bench again. "I feel better."
Zude let her breath settle. "That's good," she whispered, dropping to the bench beside her lover. She pulled out a cigarillo, reconsidered, then folded it back into her pocket. They sat, again in silence. "We'll never agree on that one, Bella-Belle," Zude said.
"I guess not." A moment later Jez added, "Zude, did you wonder why Ciab forfeited when she had me pinned?" Before Zude could reply she went on. "I was so scared because I'd realized I could hurt her that I just I surrendered to her. Gave up my power. I mentally held out my arms to her."
"And she rushed into them." Zude shifted and stretched.
"She got off me. Same difference." Jez gave a wide pinch or two with her thumb and forefinger to Zude's trapezius.
Zude closed her eyes, dutifully practicing the unfamiliar art of receiving. After a moment she managed to observe, "To make that work, you risk losing your whole identity. Do you know how dangerous that is?"
"For you . . . yes. But does it occur to you that identity remains, even in surrender?" Jez moved both her hands in deep strong movements on Zude's neck. "Anyway," she added before Zude could reply, "that's not why you couldn't do it."
"No?"
"No. You're just too scared to give over your power." Jez gave Zude's muscles a parting squeeze and began to gather her gear.
Zude was unruffled. "Bullseye," she said. "I'm not just scared. I'm smart. Power's not meant to be given over. It's meant to be used." She touched Jez's hair at the wet temple. "And you know that too, my love. I've seen you do it. Even when you're empowering someone else you still hold back a wild card, in case she blows it and you have to rescue her."
Jez's lips tightened and she lowered her gaze. When she looked at Zude again her eyes were sad, but she smiled. "Bullseye," she said.
Zude gave her head a short jerk of satisfaction. Still, something remained unsaid. Carefully, she took a deep breath, put her hands around her knee, and leaned back in a balance. "So how can you hope to be a Kanshou, Bella-Belle, if you want to give away all your power? You're a cadet in one of the three great Kanshou Academies of the world. You've signed on for a four- or five-year lesson in how to win, how to disarm, how to overpower a violent offender." She sat up straight and searched her lover's face. "What are you doing here, Jezebel?"
Jez's eyes roamed the weapons along the fencetop. "I've been asking myself that very question, Zudie," she whispered. She stood up, kissed her stunned lover firmly on the lips, and wound her way down the path.
Zude's eyes followed her to the turn. Then she lit the cigarillo and inhaled its poison.
* * * * * * * * * *
Cadet Jezebel Dolalicia did not share with her lover the escalation within herself of knowledge that came unbidden to her, of unorthodox skills that she acquired effortlessly. She didn't talk, for instance, about a particular enc
ounter with Fourth-Form Amah Cadet Sarawak Ardis, The Banjar.
Ardis claimed a birthplace dead center on the equator in the high mountains of Borneo and an early education on the rubber plantations where her mothers flattened bulky latex slabs into thin sheets for export to Shanghai. She boasted with a wide grin that her prognathous jaw was built for devouring white women and offered to prove that to Jezebel early in their acquaintance. Jezebel declined the offer to be devoured, claiming that her brown blood disqualified her. She and Ardis nevertheless sustained a flirtatious comaraderie and commiserated frequently over sore feet on parade weekends.
Then one day Jez was on the dentist's couch enduring the irritating but painless dislodging of a deeply impacted wisdom tooth. The sonar waves were playing over her cheekbones and tantalizing the edge of her sinuses. She felt the tooth break free. Then, just as Captain Yuan lifted the offending molar out of the small incision she had made, Jez was suddenly blasted in her belly with a wave of panic and a sense of imminent danger. When she began shaking involuntarily, the concerned Captain Yuan consigned her to an observed recovery room. There Jez focused on the terror and found to her astonishment that she was in clear mental communication with Ardis The Banjar, three miles away.
"Jezebel!" The voice was ragged. "Is that you?"
Jez formulated a silent question, "Where are you?"
"I'm for the Great Goddess's sake at the top of the practice 'scraper, on a construction girder. Looking at Food Street 30 stories down. I'm the last one up here and I'll be here until I faint."
"You won't faint, Ardis. When you fly you don't . . ." Jez caught herself. "I forgot. You don't fly."
"Right. I'm a lowly Foot-Shrieve cadet."
Jez felt the stiffness of a tall figure clinging to upright steel. She tried to send warmth, ease. And practicality. "Is the cable ladder there?" she asked.
Ardis's grunt became an affirmative.
The Kanshou (Earthkeep) Page 6
