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29. Hell Hath No Fury...LIKE A MOTHER'S IRE: The White Road.
Turomay = Appeal.

"All I want is a simple life!" I heard the girl in the tattoo parlor in Portsmouth, Ohio tell the boy who was bloodying her arm with a tattoo device.

I heard her tell him what the tattoo would say, "Follow your bliss!"

Life is never that simple, is it? We aspire to simplicity. We live simply when it is our choice. We aspire to bliss. We can clutter life with ambitions and desire, things we want, things we want to do, things imposed on us by circumstances beyond our control. Bliss is elusive, an unspecified 'condition' we don't know until we experience it.

The Koobs made it short and sweet. They were referring my case, as Soda 'knew' they would, my case presented eloquently by Sodaensus, in a brief that took about thirty minutes, now referred, as an appeal, turomay, to the higher authority who could authorize my immigration, as a minor technicality, and discussion, but no decision, about the hard currency exchange of my pay from the D. L. A. that was their real motivation. When Soda mentioned renegotiating the rate of exchange I perceived the main Koob's desire to move on, off that issue. It's not uncommon for Leadership Decision-Makers to be more interested in the money angle than the lives of real people. We threw it out there, bait. They made a ruling, not so much against me, explained as just necessary to then refer the case for appeal to a higher authority.

So... we're going to... what the hell is the name of it? Costaramannh? Garibe. A city.

"Entemannh is a... a village... by comparison," Eenunh tells me. "We... lived there for four years. Tinunh was born here, and lived her first year here, and then my husband took us to Costaramannh, where he lived before, fleeing violence from armies of the north. We lived there, Costaramannh, three years before violence came up from southern terrorists, armies of them, mercenaries, prisoners forced to come out of prison and wage terrorist war, door to door, in the city. After... my husband's death, I brought Tinunh... home... hoping for security. I figured it couldn't be any worse than Costaramannh. They wouldn't let anyone leave until that night I just happened to stumble into the transports. They just wanted to get rid of us, the... terrorists who were trying to run Costaramannh.

On the patio, stacked with other bodies, I saw, and recognized, my mother's leg, a scar. I assumed my father was somewhere in the piles too. I wanted to get her out of the piles! To find my father and get him... But it was winter. The bodies were frozen. No one knew how long they had lain there. One day they were gone. I wondered where they buried them, a mass grave somewhere, but I never asked."

I'm not happy about this. I... don't like the uncertainty of security. In a world where terror can come, in force, armed like a nation's military, but... barbaric... not... under military control, discipline, even the horrors military commanders can order, but the barbarities, atrocities an armed mob can inflict, at any time, from the north or the south, but... is that so different from times and places on planet Earth? The Human Phenomenon has a history of madmen and madwomen, ascending to wield Government authority, commanding the economic resources of a nation, waging industrial war, commanding the military, the common man, the children of the poor, to go into the fields, the jungles, the deserts on some pretense of right and might over some dispute. It often turned out to be a financed tactics to depopulate a region, so companies could raid natural resources; Resource Wars the honest journalists called them. 'For the women and children, victims', the perpetrators propagandized, to 'justify' in the 'hearts and minds' of the naive. And the women and children suffered for the offense and defense of the two sides, caught in pincers of those whose Leadership Decision-Makers came home richer on both sides, when they were... done... with their... Terror Wars.

Briggs will fly the contingent from here, south to Costa... marannh... Costa... ramannh? What... what is it? I have to ask Eenunh to repeat it more than once.

Briggs and Angelo, the three-Koobahbahnnh panel, Sodaensus, me, and Eenunh, who insists Tinunh will go with us.

"I'm not leaving my daughter here, going far away in a country where you can not guarantee her safety or mine!" she spoke, out of turn, in the Courtroom.

The prosecutor had blandly said, "The child can stay with friends!" as a solution. Eenunh was on her feet then, paraphrasing his words with,

"No! 'The Child'," she says, coldly, menacingly, rising suddenly, leaning on both hands on the table, "can NOT stay here with friends! Your Government can not guarantee 'The Child's' security."

She makes the words, 'The Child' stand out stronger in every sentence. "Armies of the north or the south could overwhelm Entemannh Garibe at will any day or night! This is how we live every day and night! If 'the child'... my child... is to be murdered it will be in my arms with the murderer's blood in my eyes, on my hands!"

Her outburst, her graphic words, silence the Courtroom! The Koobs sit, mouths agape, each of them.

Soda lets the silence go on. I don't move. I'm afraid to move. I want to see Eenunh but I will not turn to her. I see her, from the corner of my eye. She stands, not moving. The only sound I hear is the prosecutor shuffling papers on his table, indifferent to the emotion. His casualness annoys me! I'm sure he's waiting for the main Koob to object, to... call for order.. to treat the mother of 'The Child' with cold disdain. The commannh don't move. The silence, the still, goes on. I stand up. At last, Soda, without having turned to look at Eenunh, addresses the Koobs, saying, "The mother of...", and singles out the words, 'The Child', "will not be separated from..." and she singles out the words, "her family. It must be so."

Eenunh stands up straight, her arms cross over her chest.

The Koobs begin murmuring, from the left, then the right to the main guy. He folds his hands, studies them.
.
"If..." he begins, his voice cracking... I can tell... then sternly... "the mother of the child insists on taking her daughter she will have to arrange her own transport."

He says it. It is a decision, done, not subject to discussion or appeal. No 'why', no reason why is given. No gavel falls. The main Koob arises, turns to go. The other two look surprised, the one on the left always a second slower than the other. They rise, the one on the right, then the other, and go out. The commannh open the doors behind us. We stand. We don't look at each other. I'm looking at them all, Soda, Eenunh, Thin Man. They don't look at me.

Soda explains, at her house, afterward, "My... source advises that he, the main man, and the others want to take along members of their families, which makes the D. L. A. passenger transport shuttle unable to transport more people than necessary. You saw how suddenly, with suddenness, the hearing ended, they walked out and we all, even the prosecutor and the commannh were left sitting there. That's unusual, an unusual departure from decorum. This is getting emotional, which means, less rational. That decision was made before that moment, before the hearing began."

The arbitrary wielding of the power... the authority... of Government, putting us out in the cold, gives me chills, literal chills, that we are on our own, that only Sodaensus stands between us as hapless, helpless victims and any semblance of respect for our being, our safety. I feel the 'family' argument at once denigrated and yet emphasized. The people... the people will... stand with us. Surely... the people will protest, stand... with us.

Eenunh rises with the suddenness I witnessed in the pub that night she brought me in. She is livid! She paces, arms crossed, rapidly. She talks fast! Her voice doesn't get shrill. She talks rapidly, rationally, decries the indifference of the Koobs to our hardship. Soda simply listens, watches her.

Just remembering the shrillness of her voice, from that night when she confronted the pack of males in the pub, and hearing the word by word delivery of her declaration in the courtroom, and now, the low pitch, deliberate comments, succinct, concisely on the points she makes, sends those chills over me. I quickly feel her... urgency, her distress and anger, her emotions, ranging far and wide. She weakens for moments, tears, and then resolve takes her face. Finally there is a stern and resolute expression on her face.

"We'll get there if we have to walk The White Road! I will tell the Costaramannh Koobahbahnnh of our journey, whatever befalls us, whatever the story is!" she says.

There is silence in the room, Soda, Thin Man, me, Eenunh. Thin Man breaks it.

"I will arrange for the militia to transport us," he says. "We will refit and take three water-trucks, my troops in front and behind, armed. We will be in the second truck, also armed. We will drive across the desert.. .to The White Road to Costaramannh."

And so it is. In the boathouse cavern I watch as Thimiannh directs three trucks to be fitted with tires, different tires from the water wheels that propel us in The Waters, tires suited for the desert, the White Road. The Greenboys discuss it with each other, with Thimiannh. They brush fingertips with him, each of them. I have a sense of The Emoilihn, The People, in support of us, on our side. This is not mere formality, obedience, commercial cooperation. This is a genuine alliance of... Emoilihn family allegiance to each other.

The water-truck tires are designed in two lobes, with a webbed 'slit' which, apparently, is what makes them suited for spinning in the water, propelling the vehicle in the wet season.

These tires they're installing now are treaded, like you might expect for rolling over the ground, or... getting traction down a road; The White Road.

At home, Eenunh's kiss is perfunctory, she receives mine with grace, but is obviously in no mood to 'make out'. She breaks from my embrace suddenly, goes to the bedroom, comes back before I can think to do anything else. She kneels on the floor by the coffee table, begins to make marks on yellow-orange sheets of paper. I sit in a lily-pad chair close to her. She is drawing lines, circles, 'fan-like' webbing between them. It looks like streets, curving streets that go from circle to circle, to a center. She is writing in letters. I see some numbers. She puts symbols, letters, at the top, the bottom, the left... It's a map! A map, of Costaramannh!