Omega's Folly

Chapter Three
 

Arion Adams sighed. Few people realized her computer progrmming aspirationswere nil, and that what she did was actually all hobby. Hard to tell nowadays.It had proved impossibly expensive and complicated to do the required softwarelicensing and get the stuff in the main language they needed, which wasthe curious language linguists in the rest of the world were falling overthemselves to ! study. The most they could agree on was that it was nonIndo-European,it sounded nothing like Finnish or Hungarian, and seemed to sort of fitEtruscan. Arion snorted at the thought. They made it sound as if languagewas a piece of clothing, and if only you tried it out on enough peopleit would fit.

She rewrote a few lines of code which finally removed the unfortunatehexadecimal print queue. And then there was the archaic Greek dialect theyused when dealing with the Greeks, in which Lesbos was still pronouncedLesbos... not Lesvos. And Turkish with such heavy accents sometimes theTurks gently suggested switching to another language for negotiating, becauselistening to an Amazon speak Turkish was like trying to read a thicklycalligraphied mosque wall after only just becoming fluent in the languageit was written in... when speaking.

Arion paused, rubbing at her right hand, which was cramping uncomfortably.Shutting down the program she had been using, she returned to! her firsttask, which was working on a bit of slight of hand in the fiscal department.Picking up the phone and making triumphant use of speed dial, she waitedpatiently through five rings before someone picked it up.

"A. Adams Corporation."

"So formal, Waldbilling. I have a little job for you."

"Yes, Doctor Adams... as always. Only a little job, ma'am?"

"Definitely. How's year end going?"

"Excellently, and you'll be pleased to know I have managed to put thevarious government authorities through the wringer. For awhile they seemedto think they could grab the Amazon Nation in general by the conjones,let alone us."

"Conjones... is that the right word?"

"It sounds fairly correct."

"Mmhmmm... and you pointed out, no doubt, that we don't have conjonesto grab."

"Precisely."

"Ah, Waldbilling, you make me happy. How about the other thing?"

"A sizable cheque to allow the addition, with comfortable salary ofBenton Basilas to the Academy faculty has! been sent, together with a bitof funding for paper chasing and the rest. X. Adams was quite generous...has she seen the young Basilas?"

"Oh yes."

"And is she smitten, or some other ridiculous thing? So much money ona completely untried person who is popularly denounced as a maverick."

"Oh, I doubt it. X. Adams is such a cold calculator." Arion's voicetightened with sarcasm. "She knows a good investment when she sees one."

Sensing the rebuke, Waldbilling backpedalled gently. "I meant no offense,Doctor Adams. It is just an unusual action in response to a highly unorthodoxsituation."

"Waldbilling, we're Amazons, we have no idea how to be orthodox." Arionreplied drily. "Anyway, I'm glad things have been going well. Do you needanything from me?"

"Just some idea where to send your papers, Doctor Adams."

"My office, as per usual, Waldbilling. That will do." Arion hung upcrisply, then turned back to her paper on the results of soil testing ata strange d! ump site everybody in Southern Europe denied existed. Of course,that had nothing to do with the fact it was radioactive enough to makethe Incredible Hulk glow in the dark.

******

"Mmmm... do that again."

"Can't, too tired."

"Since when?"

"Since I spent eight hours fixing the brakes on my car."

"Well... I guess I can live with that this time. Now the contraptionyou call a car stops on a dime, and I can stop reaching for heart medicationevery time you get behind the wheel."

"This from the woman who thinks speed limits tell you the minimum requiredspeed."

"No I don't... I just drive a little faster than most people."

"A little?!"

"Yeah... no other way to drive during the war."

"Hmmm... I suppose. We didn't have vehicles most of the time, and whenwe did we had no petrol."

"You were lucky. You know why I got nicknamed Angelos?"

"Tell me." Chris had heard the whole story a thousand times, and thisabbreviated version ab! out five hundred. These were among the very few typesof reruns she could tolerate. Always.

"Because I had to drive the only jeep, and I carried the messages...hey, didn't you just say you were tired?"

"Hush... you were just complaining."

"Sure, but, I don't want you to wipe yourself out... and if you're reallytired..."

"Not that tired."

******

Benny shifted in her seat again, looking at her watch impatiently. Thechair was straight backed, made of some hardwood and painted a terribleshade of brown. A small case sat beside her, just big enough to hold anotebook, pad of paper, a few pens, and any papers she found herself stuckwith at the end of the day. Yesterday there had been no chance to do anything,between her adventures in navigating the house and completing repairs onthe two cars in the garage. Halliday had the brakes and the shocks working,to Benny's relief, but today they would be using the hearse, since it wasraining again ! as if it intended to produce a new sea around Mount Ararat.

According to her watch, they should have left for the Academy nearlytwenty minutes ago. At one point Benny had considered trying to raise them.Then she had sat down and thought very hard for a few moments, and cometo the conclusion such an act would be unwise. After all, they were lovers.They adored each other. They were supposed to be washing up and gettingdressed to leave. They were running unexpectedly late. The implicationswere obvious. Benny knew herself to be as luckless in the sex departmentas she had in the employment department the past few years. But she hadtwo eyes and a penchant for thinking too much which often kept her buttout of embarrassing situations, like walking in on people doing intimatethings to each other, or overhearing, or something.

Sighing again, Benny pulled off her hat and turned it about slowly inher hands, gazing at the faint chalk marks still remaining after yearsof we! ar. '$50' the marks sketched out. It had a rich red lining, and aneatly embroidered label reading 'Long John's Hat Emporium.' The storemascot had been a tiny pirate, complete with parrot and wire cutlass. AtChristmas time the store's owner wound a few little coloured lights aroundit, and perched a bigger, insulated outdoor bulb on the crown of his hat,and played a piratical version of 'Merry Christmas.' The silliness of itall had appealed to Benny. Halloween had been even more impressive.

Her musings were interrupted by the arrival of her cotenants, both neatlydressed and quite flushed. "Shall we?" Jed boomed merrily, and with thatthey piled into the hearse and made their way out of the garage. This timethe gate was wide open when they got to it, and after a moment or two ofdebate, Halliday clambered out of the hearse and closed it. The padlockwas huge, old, and rusty, and she ultimately got it shut by beating itwith a pitted and scarred cricket bat she dug out ! of the trunk. The rainwas steady and pounding now, and whenever the hearse slowed it drummedlike heavy fingertips on the car roof. It was noisy, but not too unpleasant,Benny thought. Until she looked over at Jed from her position in the backseat. 

The tall woman looked pale and sweaty, and was gripping the steeringwheel with white knuckles. Halliday had slid over and wrapped both armsaround her, whispering something in her ear. Benny was bewildered for afew moments, and then a quiet clue tapped her on the forehead. Sometimesin the nasty, smelly apartment building she had lived in in Canada, theelevator had gotten stuck. No big deal. The main reason Benny even knewwas the position of her door, which was right in front of the elevatordoors. When the elevator had gotten stuck in the middle of the night, tennantswere often forced to resort to activating the fire alarm, as the caretakerrefused to get up otherwise. The fire alarm wasn't a bell, but an awful,wail! ing siren like the ones signalling the armourers enemy fire was incoming,and their guns had better be loaded. The first time it had gone off, Bennyhad been out of bed and standing in the middle of her flat in confusion,so disoriented by her sudden wakening she was looking for an antiaircraftgun in her living room. After that, she had reacted much the same way everytime it went off as Jed was now.

It was lousy feeling, but Benny did see a bit of gentle goodness init. During the war, it had saved her life. In that dingy building, it haddone the same.

Someone had accidentally set their carpet on fire on the floor abovehers one night... fell asleep and dropped a cigarette, she found out later.The carpet was thin and old, and there were openings the peripheral heatingpipes went through between each room. Within twenty minutes, half the roomswere in flame. The wailing fire alarm had jerked Benny awake, and the smokehad been indescribable. Not even stopping to grab ! her house coat, she haddashed out of the room in her ragged t-shirt and regulation army greenboxers. She had nearly fallen back into the room when she collided witha wall of thick, chemically sharp smoke. Nipping back into the room forher manuscripts, always neatly kept in order of completeness in her storagebox before she went to bed each night, Benny had taken the stairs downall but two at a time, trying to breathe as shallowly as possible. Theunpleasant smoke brought back all the lectures she had ever sat throughabout gas attacks.

Three floors down, and she had been startled to hear someone bellowingvigourously for help. The man was pounding on something too, from the soundof it. Popping open the floor door and sticking the box in it to hold itopen, Benny had located the man's room almost immediately. It was on thesame side as the fire four floors above, all of which were now aflame,if the yellow tongues licking at some of the open doorways were any indicati! on.Most people had already gotten out, but for whatever reason this guy hadn't.The air was stunningly hot, and Benny soon discovered one reason the mancouldn't get out. The walls and his door handle were impossible to touch.

Benny looked up and down the hall, and cursed when she saw the fireextinguisher was gone. Calling to the man she'd be back for him, she hadhauled in the bigger extinguisher from the stairwell. Later she would beunable to explain how she had lifted it at all, let alone swung it hardenough to break open the trapped man's door. He had come flying out ofthe room, the other fire extinguisher still gripped in his hands, its bottomscarred from pounding it on the concrete inner wall. He had stared at herin sheer wonder.

"How'd you do that?" he had blurted. "You're a bloody smurf!"

Benny hadn't bothered to answer, just pushed him towards the stairwell.Soon they were almost at the groundfloor, along with Benny's precious manuscripts.

"Wouldn't! it be easier to dump that?" the man had asked.

"Would you dump a life's work?" Benny had shot back.

"Ummm..."

"Would you leave your balls behind?" Benny had snapped at him, rathermore bluntly and coarsely than she usually would have done.

"No!" the man had squawked in shock.

"Then you shut up while I keep the things I care about the most fromgetting toasted."

Benny tipped her head to the side. Her apartment had been half gutted.On the upside, she had saved someone's life, and her manuscripts. Her picturehad also wound up in the paper, more because she was standing outside ona cool fall night with a box of papers and nothing on but a t-shirt andboxers. It had mortified her to see it the next morning, but an ex-officerhad recognized her from the serial number printed on her underpants, andsent the best help he could think of. Three boxes of clothes from stores.

Hence her clothes today: black jeans, black vest, olive drab shirt andtie, and olive dra! b socks. Benny blinked. No wonder Halliday and Adamsthought she was colour blind. Pretty much the only colour she wore besidesblack was green.

"Hello? Hello? Ms. Basilas, are you all right?" Halliday was lookingat her with concern now. "You're not having bad memories of a creepingbarrage of popping shells, are you?"

"No, no..." Benny smiled a little. "I was remembering a fire in thebuilding I used to live in actually... because of the fire alarm. Soundedlike a raid siren... that used to give me trouble."

Jed took a deep breath and let it out. "I don't get rattled by my memoriestoo often any more, but every now and again something will get my number."she turned to look at Benny. "You're not having too much trouble with thatsort of thing are you?"

"No. I got lucky." Benny smiled a little, and unconsciously ran a thumbover a tiny hematite carving of a bear she wore on a leather thong aroundher neck. Her companions nodded quietly.

The rest of the drive to! the Academy was quiet, all three women lostin their thoughts. Benny's attention turned back to the road and the buildingson either side of it as they drove past the laboratory buildings and deeperinto the campus. They were approaching a large stone building, its facadeornamented with spiralling snakes and swooping birds. A large statue carvedfrom mottled black marble stood in front, depicting a tall woman, a bowgripped in one hand, the fingers of the other tangled in the fur of a wolf.A sinewy mountain cat was pressed up against her other leg. Eeerily enough,the statue had been carved with a faint smile on her face, and her gazeseemed to follow them as they drove past the little montage.

"Where are we?" Benny asked, still staring back at the unnerving statue.

"Administration." Jed jerked the car to a stop and turned to look atthe younger woman. "Or, as we tend to refer to it, Paperwork Hell."

The inside of the building was painted with bright murals, numero! uslittle offices opening off the hallways. Busy Amazons worked over spreadsheets,or carried on phone conversations for much needed supplies at somethingresembling a reasonable cost. Still others typed up course notes, printedthem, or collated them before tying them up expertly with twine and tossingthem on a cart which would be wheeled over to the binding house acrossthe road when full. "Nobody likes paperwork," Halliday commented. "Butyou have to keep track of bills and students and employees somehow. Mosttimes I just use a notebook, but apparently using twenty thousand odd notebooksfor various tasks isn't quite practical." They were standing in front ofa large desk presided over by a tiny, weedy Amazon with iron grey hair.Slapping two sheets down she barked, "Fill 'em out, then sign this one."she threw another sheet on the desk.

Benny shuffled up hesitantly, then dug a pen out of her pocket and beganfilling in the various demands for name, address, and age. A! demand fordetails she kept in her C.V. forced her to dig a rumpled copy of it fromher jacket pocket. The various copies of it in her possession never seemedto help her find work, although they had been vetted and deemed excellentby various career and placement officers, so she used them all for scrappaper. This one bore a short grocery list, a calculation determining thecorrected date from a carbon-14 reading, and a series of scribbled phonenumbers.

And that was it for paperwork. This left Benny astonished. "Why is thisbuilding called Paperwork Hell, if that's all the paperwork I have to do?"she asked in confusion.

"Because if you have no courses to teach in a semester and no researchor lab work to keep you occupied, that's where you work until the nextone. It's boring and awful to the non-administratively inclined. Hencethe saying when a professor learns they haven't any courses, and didn'tset up enough research in time, 'Damn, now I have to go to Paperwor! k Hell.'"Jed explained as they clambered into the hearse again. "Let's go see youroffice."

******

The office... an office which Jed and Chris had both referred to aslittle, was in fact, huge by Benny's standards. It had two windows on wallsperpendicular to each other, with a couch under one. "Folds out into acot, in case you're working late and it's too hard to get home." A sinkand bit of counter was tucked into another corner.

"Or if the road gets blocked off or the bridge goes out. The formertends to happen more often in winter, nowadays." Halliday added, floppingonto the couch in question. A fridge was tucked into one corner, poweredby a solar panel, a ubiquitous arrangement... so much so the gleaming darkpanels of various sizes could be picked out around practically every doorand window. Benny peered in the back of the gently swishing machine, andpicked out its battery which charged all day and did duty while the Sunwas down. The de! sk was a roll top with shrieking drawers, indicating theneed for some work with a dry bar of soap. The walls were bare but forwhite wallpaper with brown pinstripes. "Feel free to strip off this terriblepaper and put on something else." suggested Halliday, who had thrown anarm over her eyes.

"In fact, barring knocking big holes in the walls or something elseequally violent, feel free to make yourself completely at home. Go ahead,decorate, add furniture, whatever. Around here, we figure you might aswell like where you are. The wiring will be hooked up by tomorrow afternoon,then you'll have electricity for the ceiling light." A knock at the doordrew Jed's attention, and she flung it open. "Oh, excellent, bring it allin."

A burly Amazon carried in a wheeled desk chair first, and Benny watchedin confusion as the woman positioned it behind the desk. What was the bigdeal? Then the others began to come in, carrying stack after stack of books,and piles of scrolls. Th! e sixty history books came first, then a bunchof others Benny wasn't sure of yet. Many of the scrolls were brought inspecial trays that built up into shelves, preventing them from having weighton them. Cloth covers were quickly hung around them to keep off directsunlight. A group of thirty or so others arrived in plastic bags, witha set of rubber gloves and tweezers. "These ones are terribly fragile.If you could concentrate on copying them onto something else first, thenpassing these back to the preservers, that would be great." one of themovers told Benny with a gentle smile.

They finished by leaving behind shelves and curtains and curtain rodsfor the bare windows. Benny looked at the piles of stuff in some trepidation."When do I actually start?" she asked.

Jed pulled a battered notebook from a pocket and consulted it, thena little leatherbound datebook. "In two weeks. No need to worry about anything.If you need it, you've got it. Food, lodging, all of that.! Just focus ongetting settled." she smiled. "There'll be time enough to borrow troublelater."

Which was certainly true, Benny reflected later as a portable radioblared Beethoven's fifth symphony around her office. She wore an old batteredtee shirt and jeans, a crumpled baseball cap jammed backwards on her head.Shifting her feet, squeaking a little in grey tennis shoes, she grabbeda sponge from a bucket of warm water and patiently applied it to the wallpaper.It sucked up water easily, and then peeled away in delightfully large strips,leaving Benny with a bit of wall wiping afterwards. The colour underneathwas a decent pale blue, not that Benny was going to leave it that colour,and there seemed to be a border stretching from the ceiling to about ahandsbreadth down the wall. The floor was covered in waterproof tiles.A strange flooring choice for an office, but an infinite mercy comparedto the usual brown carpet from the dusty back of the carpet warehouse.

The y! oung historian had gotten started on the last wall when a knockon the door stopped her with both hands gripping the sponge as she stretchedthem as far above her head as she could. "Come in." she shouted, bringingher hands down. Arion Adams pulled open the door and slipped in, lookinga little embarrassed.

"Hello... I would have come down earlier, but I had no idea it was you.Thought it was Chev messing around again." Arion smiled, waving arounda battered circuit board for emphasis. "Anyway, welcome... my office isright above yours, so if you need anything, borrow the hall broom and givethe ceiling a thump."

"I'll keep that in mind." Benny replied, smiling in turn. "Thank you.My music isn't bothering you, is it?"

"What? No, no... I love Beethoven, actually. Movement six of symphonyeight... one of my favourite pieces."

"Really? That's one of my favourites too. Have you got the Deutschewatchacall'em recordings, or something else?"

"Actually, I have a set ! of Canadian recordings, a compendium by a bunchof different orchestras. Can't get hold of Deutsche Grammophone just now."

And somehow, Benny had found herself talking to the rangy Arion Adamsuntil the Sun had disappeared from the sky, and her bucket of warm waterhad become frigid enough to make a polar bear squeal. It was one of thosepeculiar conversations, a wandering one over many subjects, with no realend in mind. They debated whether the fuss some of the newer arrivals weremaking over the lack of television really made any difference. They cameto the tentative conclusion that the current talks about some sort of armsagreement so the same countries could effectively go back to war in fiveyears was not merely daft, but one of the most irresponsible ideas in history.And then they somehow wandered into wondering why somebody sat down andfigured out a way to make green ketchup. As Benny would say later, ponderingthe hours she had spent talking to her gentle eyed ! giant of a companion,"A pleasing, brain tickling sort of conversation."

******

Chapter Six: A Question of Survival

The real question is, of course, howthe Nation survived under such adverse conditions. As a general rule, everymajor non-Amazon group engaged in some effort to exterminate any groupof Amazons they might find. There seems to be no obvious rhyme or reasonto this. Archaeology and Amazon history has yielded no evidence for continuousviolent campaigns, repeated raids or home wrecking and thieving that becamepart of a life pattern for many migrating patriarchal tribes among Amazontribes. Not widespread slavery of men or brutalization of non-Amazon women.Not invasion, not trade clash, none of the 'excepted' causes. Ultimately,this was one weak reason later historians of non-Amazon lands claimed therewere no Amazons, and never had been. Never mind that ! on the same basis,we can say Troy never existed, or since the only ones who tell of the warsand successes of the Hebrews seem to be the writers of the Bible, thatthere were no Hebrew tribes.

So, perhaps how the Nation survivedcan be understood by examining why it had become a target for such rageand violence. Sadly, it isn't so unusual, or a demonstration of strangeancient Greek psychopathology. (A theory that is astonishing in its positionof chauvinistic superiority.) Women in general have suffered in the sameway for over two millenia, and have only just begun to make serious inroadsagainst it outside of the Nation in the past fifty years.

Archaeological studies have showna massive shift in culture and religious bent around the time of the Bronzeage. Previously unfortified settlements and blooming cultures disappearabruptly amongst evidence of fire and war. Whethe! r we historians like toacknowledge it or not, the movements of Indo-European tribes annihalateda stunning amount of human progress, from building techniques and medicalknowledge to writing and astronomy. The process was repeated before themost recent Dark Age.

Note, human progress. Not the 'progressof man.' This is no semantic exercise. Not only did knowledge change, sodid religion. From the worship of a Great Goddess and a benign, uncle sortof god, to worship of a terrifying god who despite creating everythingand declaring it good, seemed to bear nothing but malice for his creations.There was no Goddess anymore, and the attempts to wipe out Goddess worshipwere hysterical and later systematic. Read the Bible. It will tell youall about the massacres perpetrated in the name of a god to wipe out thefollowers of the Goddess.

So what has this to do with the Nation?It t! ells you why the Nation was the target of such hostility. Woman hadbeen made over into a scapegoat, a being to be treated as poorly as possibleon the grounds she was the being that brought sin to the world... a backhandedacknowledgement that as badly as some men may wish they hatched from amysterious egg or grew up from a start in a test tube, every man is bornof a woman. The Goddess and the women's religion had to go too, these gavethem a sense of power and self worth, and in the new system of war andmight is right and the strong men rule and the rest cringe, power and selfworth wasn't for women to have. The Nation consists of powerful, self assured,Goddess worshipping women. Some come to stay, some stay for awhile, andgo back to the rest of the world. Some are born here, and live out theirlives here, never knowing a place where women aren't free. The way to crushresistance is to crush knowledge of alternatives, and destroy those thatlive differently.

The patriarchs knew as long as theAmazon Nation stood, in any way, there would always be resistance. Isn'tthis why the Communists ranted continuously for the destruction of Capitalismeverywhere and prevented the people living in Communist ruled countriesfrom travelling and controlled what they read and listened too? Isn't thiswhy the Capitalists do the same? That is why the violence and war on theNation has been almost continuous for over two thousand years. That isalso why it has survived. 

One thing about attempting to imprisonand destroy people does guarantee is resistance, and survival against allodds.

******

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