Dicken staggered up from the pallet. "So what, I should take my memory back to the place it all happened and fix it!"
"Dicken--"
"Witch-woman, I just been there! I just been there and seen it all over again!" She held her belly. "And this is what it gets me!" Dicken threw her arms high. "So what you gonna do for me, Jezebel? What's your cure? You go round fixing the whole world, and now you gonna fix your own love-together!" She paced. "You gonna tell me like my Hoonah that it's all my doing? That I brought this sucker into my world with my own negative vibes? That if only I'd-a been in synch with my Source Self the whole unfortunate incident would never have happened? That my virginity would-a been intact and Wundu would not-a got away scott-free and my Momah would not-a spent the rest of her days wandering up and down the plateau in a nightshirteating tree bark and singing hymns?"
Jez shook her head.
"Or maybe you're going to tell me to get inside old Wundu's experience and understand why he had to go round raping little girls and why I got to forgive him!" She laid both hands against the hard-mud wall, then rested her bent forehead between them. Cunning flashed over her countenance. "I know what you got up your sleeve! You gonna say, 'Why Dicken, you got to purely love that poor soul putting it to you with his big dick! You gotta love him while he tears your insides out, so he can hallelujah see his sin and come on back home, come on back to Jesus!'"
Jez pushed herself up from the pallet. She put her naked body squarely against Dicken's. "Look--" she began.
Dicken wasn't finished. Her mouth was a sneer. "You never been raped, Jezebel. It was the most demeaning, humiliating, enraging thing I ever felt! It was hell, pure burning hell! That violation is forever!"
"Not so, Dicken!" Jez levelled at her. "It's only for as long as you want to carry it!" Jez whirled away from her. "Dicken, you've got to stop carrying it. You've got to dump it out!"
Dicken's words came in a steely monotone. "Don't you go therapeutic on me, girlfriend!" As she jerked away in frustration, Dicken struck her hand against the wall. She howled, cradling the injury with her other arm and her bent body. Suddenly, her face contorted and she began sobbing.
Jez watched the big body heave and gasp. Without moving, she extended a broad carecurl. It enveloped the awkward figure, shaping its contours to receive pain and offer ease. Slowly Jez reached out and drew Dicken down to the pallet.
The stars shifted another inch in the doorway. Still Jez massaged and chanted. Closing her eyes, she breathed in a measured tempo, trying to feel herself into separate parts of her lover's body, making a scan of the organs and systems.
Immediately she was assailed by heat, heaviness, and unthinkable pain. Her softself was inside her lover, inside the empty shell of the child that Dicken's softself had abandoned. And Wundu was on her, grunting and puffing as his hardness drove into every sacred corner of her body, retreated and drove in again, deeper and rougher, a relentless ravaging of her softest tissues, her most cloistered secrets, her most shrouded altars.
On the rough pallet in the starlight, Jezebel Stronglaces screamed as she had never done before, a scream of rage and revelation. She hushed it only when she reined in her softselfand regained her identity.
Still Wundu assaulted her. Jez knew now what was happening, knew that she was feeling the cells of Dicken's child-body, living Dicken's memory while at the same time she had removed herself from from the experience. Unlike the departed Dicken, Jez was still able to feel the pain and rage of the rape. She rode with the feelings, and Wundu's defilement, amazed and incredulous.
Beside her, Dicken's uninhabited body lay rigid. Inside Dicken's body, Jez's softself lay rigid. Nowhere could she find a hint that Dicken's softself, too, had made the switch. This was not their usual exchange.
In a haze of disbelief, Jezebel began moving her softself back and forth between Dicken's body and her own. In Dicken's body, she urged the return of Dicken's softself from its detachment. Even as Wundu's plungings continued, she implored Dicken's spirit to come back to her own body -- or to Jez's body. "Just come back, Dicken," she sent, "come back!"
Then her softselfwas again in her own body, as she held and soothed the forsaken form beside her. When Dicken slowly unclenched her jaw, hope stirred in Jezebel. She kissed the softening countenance even as it drew itself into an acknowledgement of pain. "Dicken!" she whispered from her hardself. "Dicken, switch to me, switch to my body!" She shifted her softselfback into Dicken's body and implored the returning spirit, "Dicken, find the Crystal Gate! Find it! Come to me, to your Jezebel!"
There! Dicken was there! Miraculously, the exchange had happened. With her softself still in Dicken's child body, Jez continued to endure Wundu's thrusts. But now Dicken's softself, barely awake and aware, inhabited Jez's body. It spoke through Jez's lips. "Jez! What gives? What--"
"Love me, Dicken!" Dicken's lips pronounced. "Love me now!"
* * * * * * * *
"I didn't forgive him!" Dicken was adamant.
"What, then?" Jez countered.
"I didn't forgive him," she repeated. "It's just . . . I just feel okay." She grinned feebly under a stream of water.
The two women stood in the Single Bucket, Asir-By-The-Sea's version of a shower. Jez alternately dried herself and poured stingy dollops of rinse water into the sieve over Dicken's head.
Dicken opened her mouth to capture and spit out a few drops. She shook herself and reached for the towel. She dried her arms, then collapsed on the wooden bench. "That whole scene's got no charge for me anymore," she said, through streaming tears and a soft smile. "It's like I'll never have to remember all that again. Never."
Jez sank beside her. She wiped beads of water from Dicken's back. "Lover, we changed it. We changed the energy." She towelled the dark face.
Dicken stared at her.
Jez continued, "From rape into something else."
"No." Dicken was suddenly vehement. "No. No! My body did not come to sexual climax from rape!"
"I said we changed it, love, changed the energy of that memory within you! Your body, even with my softselfin it, was healed by the loving of my body, which had your softselfin it--and the physical actions of Wundu."
Dicken anger diffused. She shook her head. "Too much," she whispered, tiredly. She found Jez's eyes. "I just know I feel released. Like I'm getting out of a bailiwick after serving a long sentence." She studied her lover's face. "You're knocked out by it," she breathed. "Aren't you?"
"I am knocked out by it," Jez agreed, "beyond what I'm able to understand." She wrapped the big towel around Dicken's shoulders. "So let's don't try to process it now."
Dicken stood and held out her hand. They spoke in whispers as they made their way over the starlit sand back to their quarters. On the narrow pallet they folded themselves into spoon position, Jezebel behind Dicken, holding her loosely. They spoke the incantation in Arabic and fell at once into sleep.
7 – Bombay - [2087 C.E.]
In the words of Mother Monique, "There was a time when
you were not a slave." In the words of Mother
Bhodrapona, "There will come a time when you are no
longer a slave." And in the words of Mother Babette,
"The reign of men is a no between two yeses,
a death between two lives, an unfortunate pause
in the course of Love."
--The Mother Right Manifesto, circa 1978
"Jezebel, I have broken bread with those whose insight is most clear. They offer little hope. They say the Testing and the Protocols are doomed, that neither will ever make the Central Web's consensus." Dhamni Diu Pradesh, Rememorante Afortunada and Central Webster from the Asia Satrapy, was massaging her guest's feet. "The Websters I have heard from feel that their constituencies are against us," she continued, as her strong hands worked their magic, "or at least that they lean toward protofobia. Flossie Yotoma Lutu and your old classmate, Zella Terremoto Adverb, are a formidable pair. They stand as a bulwark against the Pro
tocols and have the staunch support of all the individual rights groups -- at least in their two tri-satrapies."
Jez put her hands behind her head, trying to relax into Dhamni's healing pressures. "You'll have more hope after I share some of Dicken's and my information. But," she observed equably, "you're right about Zude, at least. She would never countenance a world that came to peace through violent means."
"Violent means," Dhamni mused, shaking her head. "Like the Protocols. Or the Testing."
"Exactly."
There was a long silence. "You know," the older woman said calmly, "we may just have to let it go."
Jez's eyes flew open. "Let it go!" She relaxed once more, still trying for ease. "Dhamni, old friend, you amaze me. How can you talk so blithely about letting it go? After all your work!"
Her host smiled, her strong hands still hard at their task. "Because I make a distinction between wanting to change things and wanting things to change." She concentrated on the big toe. "Jezebel, you know I want the Testing and the Protocols to be made into law. But our way of trying to make it happen may not be appropriate. Wanting to change things," she mused, "is also violence. It's just a little less violent than persuasion, which is just a little less violent than physical force."
"Live and let live," Jez sighed. "You're a purist, Dhamni, a real card-carrying, hands-off purist."
"Perhaps," said her host. "I state my case passionately. I earnestly listen to others as they state their cases with equal passion. I admit that they have their truth just as I have mine. I look for a bigger perspective. And without losing my passion or my vision, I stop beating my head against the wall. That's letting go."
"That's giving up!" Jez held up a second foot for its share of Dhamni's ministrations. "Dhamni, I confess that I sometimes find myself trying to persuade people, but you know me and you know that in all these years, in all our work for the Testing and the Protocols, I've tried always to find a way that coerces nobody, a way that hopes for change without pushing someone to change." She deliberately breathed deeply, still seeking ease. "But I can't argue passionately in one breath and in the next simply be indifferent about it all."
Dhamni kneaded and rubbed in silence. She shook her head. "It's not about indifference," she mused. Long moments later she added, "Letting go is more about you yourself being willing to change." She pressed ease into Jez's heel.
"I am willing, Dhamni," her guest said quietly. "I am willing to give and give and give, to change and change and change." She sat up straight. "There's only one thing that I think I'll will never change, one bedrock belief."
"Which is?" She sat very still, holding Jez's foot
Reluctantly Jez extricated her foot. She brushed her masseuse's cheek with a kiss, then stood up and stretched, moving slowly toward the courtyard. After a moment, she turned to her host. "The Protocols," she said at last, "and the Testing. In this case the end does justify the means. Just once, Dhamni, just this one time!"
Dhamni's eyes were closed, and she was frowning. Still she nodded her head. "The bomb to end all bombing, the war to end all wars, the violence . . . "
"To end all violence," Jez finished. She picked up a hand-sized statue of a nilgai and stroked its blue-grey belly. "Violence drove the animals away, and nearly destroyed every inch of the Earth. And it hasn't stopped." She slid her fingers across the tiny antelope horns, then set the statue down again. "Watch any three males, Dhamni -- any age, on any street corner, in any country. 'Oh, they're just having fun,' some twitter, or, 'boys will be boys!' But that tight feeling in your belly tells you that it's not just fun. They're hostile, and they'd like to do something to some person or to some thing that is weaker than they are. Their very stance suggests the kick they'll get out of blowing it up or torturing it or at least making some kind of mockery of it. They are a danger," she finished, "to all of life."
Before she stood, Dhamni spoke encouragingly to her hips and knees. Then slowly, she rose and stepped behind her guest. "You are forgetting," she whispered, "it's not all men. Not anymore. There has been some improvement."
Jez shrugged, nodding reluctantly.
Dhamni put her arms around Jez and looked over her shoulder into the green-filled courtyard. "I sometimes wonder how the women a century ago survived," she said, her breath brushing Jez's cheek. "Everywhere they turned it was men. Men's bodies, men's guns, men's wars, men's movies, men's needs, men's property, men's power. There was no escape from it. I cannot imagine having a man in my house, much less one who assumed he owned me, that I was his possession."
Jez sighed. They stood on the high-polish tiles in the morning sun, staring at intricately climbing ferns and mossed rocks. "I learned something in Asir," she said, "from a boy just moving into his manhood. Dhamni, men are terrified they will lose their individuality. They see women as a sameness that will obliterate their individual identity." The women stood, one behind the other, swaying lightly.
Out of the long silence a tangle bell sounded. And sounded again. The two women did not move. There was a bustle from the street side of the house, voices in formal conversation. A bamboo curtain rattled closed.
Sulankisha found her great-grandmother and the visitor apparently tranced out by the sight of a boontree root. She wiped her hands on her light raineralls and spoke. "Moet." Dhamni turned. "Moet, there was a runner at the door when I came in. She gave me a message for Jezebel Stronglaces."
"I'm Jezebel." She held out her hands. "And you're Sulan. I met you years ago. On the island."
Sulan stepped back hastily. "I have the wastes of Bombay all over me," she explained. "Garbage rotation. But I remember you. You taught us scrying."
"A version of it," Jez agreed, dropping her hands. "You have become very beautiful."
Sulan did not hide her pleasure or her blush. "Your message is from Bess Dicken. She says you can't reach her until after three. But then you must call her at the Trade Center. At Key 1765-8 L."
Jez frowned. "Did she indicate any urgency?"
"The runner just said to tell you that it is one of Dicken's premonitions." She smiled. "Moet says you will be with us a few days. I look forward to that."
"Thank you, Sulan."
"We are working until late afternoon," Dhamni added, "and I have set a privacy ward. But at dusk, will you eat with us?"
"I wouldn't miss it." Sulan waved as she left for the showerhouse.
The older woman picked up her teacup and the pot. She
made her way toward the cookery. "Before we get into our work I have some tell-all for you. Do you want to hear it?"
Jez followed her, relaxed at last. "What do you think?"
"I think you always want to know how you are perceived."
The cookery was an old-fashioned kitchen, with last-century freeze-and-heat units, and no transmog. Jez set her cup on a small round table and sank into a pillowed chair. She settled back. "So," she said, "the tell-all."
Dhamni rinsed her cup and spoon, spreading them on the solar tray for drying. "The word here on the streets and in the fields," she said, "is that Jezebel Stronglaces is a dedicated, charismatic witch whose integrity, on the whole, is intact." Jez raised her cup in salute to herself. Dhamni set a plate of snacks on the table. "And," she continued, "she's very eloquent, highly persuasive."
Jezebel reached for a celery stick filled with cashew nut spread. "Guilty," she said. "I probably spent too much time as an Amah cadet, Dhamni. The Kanshou believe in persuasion, you know, or at least their Labrys Manual recommends it as the best alternative to physical force." She grinned. "Actually, I think some Kanshou suspect that persuasion is violence, and feel guilty about using it."
"Still, it is a lesser evil."
Jez bit into the celery. "And fun," she added, chewing loudly. "Admit it, Dham. You can get plenty high on a good argumentative encounter. I may even have seen that happen . . ." She frowned and looked into the distance, as if trying to recall an instance.
Dhamni laughed, holding up a cellusponge
in protest. "It must have been a long time ago, Jezebel." She began wiping up drops of water in the ridges of the splashboard. "The worst that is said of you," she resumed, "and only a few say it -- is that your protofile stance on the Testing and the Protocols borders on the fanatic; they insist that you are a Mother Righter."
"That's not true!"
The older woman had her sponge hand on her hip. "Some think that anyone who supports the Testing and the Protocols must be a man-hater, ergo she is also a Mother Righter."
Jez laughed and finished off the celery stick. "Oh, my good friend, I have lived with Mother Righters, and much as I understand and respect them I can't accurately be labelled as one. Real Mother Righters, Dhamni, think the Testing and Protocols are a joke! They don't believe men can be cured of their violence, not even by the Protocols! The only way to get rid of violence, they would say, is to get rid of men completely. From their point of view, men are evolutionary blunders and must be bred out of existence as soon as possible."
"Ironic then," Dhamni observed softly, "that anyone should associate them at all with the Testing and Protocols."
"True," Jez agreed. "Anyway, I can't admit to the label. Men, slaves though they are to their unfortunate biology, do add some variety to the world, and heterosexual women should be able to choose them as mates. And the Protocols will take care of their violence." She drained her tea. "I guess the reason I can't be called a Mother Righter is that I have too much hope for men." She paused. "And too much hope in the Testing and Protocols."
Both women were seated now at the worktable. Jez drew the fabric of the noon hour into familiar pleats. "And now, old friend," she sighed loudly, scanning the settings on the compuboard, "is it true that the Big Web itself sometimes acts with less than consensus?"
Dhamni shuffled through comcubes and flatcopies. "Often," she answered. "Consensus is the Central Web's ideal, but if the agenda is full, or if the matters are more local than global, or if the particular policy will affect only a few, then yes, the Web can resort to majority decisions." She looked at Jez. "This decision will have to be consensus. Nothing more important than this has ever come before the Web."
The Kanshou (Earthkeep) Page 12
