Choices (20 page)

“How can you look me in the eye and say
that?” Alicia screamed. “What have I done to you, what has Tomasz
done, that you should treat us like this?” She was crying, her
cheeks red and blotchy, her eyes screwed up in misery. “I know
you’re Terran, but you have
crypta
. You may be stupid, but
you’re not ungifted.”

I was trapped at the signal scope, unable to
defend myself or escape, and she took advantage of it. She hurled
more abuse at me while I tried to ignore her, focusing on the
nothingness, wishing for a message so that she would have to be
quiet or leave the room. My wish, for once, was granted. The
telltale shimmering began at the edges of my vision, the rippling
echoes of a transmission, and I shook my head at her.
Shut
up
, I said into her mind.
There’s a message
coming
.

It was too much for her. The combination of
Alicia’s fury and resentment, with my ordering her about on her own
turf, made something in her snap. She struck me hard on the side of
my face so that I saw, if not stars, at least some very bright
meteors, and without forethought or awareness I had my
prism-handled dagger out of its sheath and was bending the light
leaking down from the telescope’s roof aperture into my tired eyes.
I didn’t have to lift a finger as I sent her flying backwards
across the room where she hit the wall, bounced off, and landed
flat on her stomach on the floor.

The message was coming through now, and it
was all I could manage to sheathe my dagger, put my eyes back to
the scope, take in the words, confirm that I had received all of it
and pass it on. It was a strange communication, from Lord Roger
Zichmni to Landgrave Andrade, about a dangerous entity named
“Eris.” Apparently there was a disturbance in Lord Andrade’s
territory, and this Eris was suspected of causing it. I had to ask
the sender to repeat herself once or twice, but she was patient
with me, agreeing that it was a complicated message, and urgent,
and that it was essential to have it all correct before forwarding
it to the next station.

When the message had been dealt with I
slumped with exhaustion. After a few minutes I remembered Alicia.
She was lying unmoving, still sprawled face down. I tried to turn
her over, my fear at what I might already have done to her
overcoming my rational sense that I should leave her as she lay
until I could get help. Her face was bloody; she had a chipped
tooth and her nose wasn’t quite straight anymore, but there was
something worse. She was bleeding heavily below, her skirt showing
dark-red patches even through the thick wool and the several
petticoats.

I knelt beside her, resting my hand on her
abdomen, using my
crypta
to examine her through her
clothes. With the skills I had learned for overseeing the cell, I
was able to determine one fact. She had lied to me just now. She
had been pregnant, and she was having a miscarriage.

Whether or not it was negligent to leave the
signal scope, I already had. And I called telepathically for help,
so that in a moment or two Tomasz and others came running. Under
their accusing glares, I told the truth, or most of it. “We argued.
Alicia hit me, and I fought back. I’m sorry,” I added, as Tomasz
looked ready to hit me himself. Gods, I was sick of saying “I’m
sorry.” I was sick of doing things, always unintentionally, to be
sorry for.

Cassandra was a healer, and she tended
Alicia. There was no serious damage done, Cassandra said, other
than the miscarriage. Later she told me that, regardless of the
rights and wrongs of the conflict, I need not blame myself too
harshly. “Alicia was going to lose that child no matter what.”

When I apologized again, Cassandra stopped
me. “No, Amalie. Alicia was two months pregnant.” She waited to see
if I understood the significance of that fact. When she saw I did
not, Cassandra tried to prod my memory. “You remember what you’ve
been told? That when a woman becomes pregnant in a seminary she
must leave immediately? That the radiation and electric forces are
dangerous for the baby?” She watched for my reaction, wondering,
like the others, if my slow brain was capable of retaining even the
most basic information.

Finally I recalled that lesson. “How could
Alicia stay here all that time?” I asked, before thinking of an
explanation. “Sometimes women don’t know they’re pregnant.”

Cassandra’s pitying look was enough. She
didn’t have to think words to me. Not in a seminary. Even if the
usual signs of pregnancy are not there, the
crypta
allows
a woman to examine herself. Alicia had to have known, from early
on.

“But why?” Two months.
She must have
known since Midwinter,
I thought.

Cassandra was thinking, too. “Tomasz asked
you at Midwinter,” she said, as if making casual conversation. “And
you refused him.”

I nodded, still uncomfortable at how much was
common knowledge, and common talk, at La Sapienza. Cassandra had
been Tomasz’s second choice that night, I remembered, after I
turned him down. And Cassandra had not refused him. Yet Alicia was
angry only with me.

“May I see Alicia?” I asked. I had to explain
to her, to assuage my own feelings of guilt, but also to put her
mind at rest. She had been through so much, all her worry about
Tomasz, and now losing her child. It was her own fault, in a way.
She could have told Tomasz; they would have left La Sapienza right
after Midwinter. By now they would have been married, happily
awaiting the birth of a longed-for first child. Instead she had
kept silent, her child absorbing all the radiation, until it was a
blessing she had lost it.

“I think you’d better,” Cassandra said. “You
two must come to terms, learn to accept each other, so that Alicia
can leave here eventually and not torment herself with worry.”

I entered Alicia’s room on tiptoe. Her face
was pale, with deep purple circles giving her light blue eyes the
faded, washed-out look of a heavy drinker twice her age. She was
bruised but healed, her nose fixed, the tooth bonded, its lost chip
retrieved and restored. When she saw me she shut her eyes tightly
and turned away. I sent thoughts to her, compassionate attempts to
share her burden of grief. The feelings were not forced; I could
imagine little worse than what she had endured, and I was sure now
that I knew what had made her behave in such a crazy way. My
empathy had some effect, for she relented and let me sit near her
and talk.

“Alicia,” I said, “you must believe me. I
would never want to hurt you.” I didn’t like to put all the blame
on Tomasz, and I tried to find a diplomatic way to phrase things.
“Tomasz loves you,” I said. “This infatuation with me, it’s
nothing—”

Alicia raised an impatient hand, as if trying
to resume the fight. “Why don’t you leave La Sapienza?” she said.
There was desperation in her voice, a defeat that was not only from
the loss of blood, or even of her child.

“But why?” I asked. “If you and Tomasz marry,
he’ll be away from La Sapienza, for a while. He’ll stay with you,
until—”

“Yes,” she said. “Until I can conceive again.
And then what? He’ll come back to work, and you’ll be here, just as
hard and cold and stupid and uncaring as ever. And Tomasz will be
as frustrated as he is now, only I won’t be here for him.”
Pink-tinted tears trickled down her cheeks.

I finally saw it, but too late. “You wanted
me to be with Tomasz?”

“Yes, Amalie,” she said. “Would it really
have been so disagreeable for you? He’s young, and handsome, and
kind. Any other woman would have been honored. I saw how he desired
you, and I was happy to be able to choose you for him. I thought
you would like to be his companion, since you could not be with
your own man. I thought it would help you feel less like an
outsider.” More tears rolled down, onto the pillow, tears she was
too tired to brush away. “We thought, Tomasz and I, that we were
offering you a gift, a family to belong to.” She turned her head
away again and closed her eyes.

“I didn’t understand,” I said.

Alicia was way ahead of me. “No,” she said,
telling my fortune without looking at me, like the blind sibyl I
had dreaded becoming at my
crypta
test. “But I don’t think
you tried to understand. And I don’t think it would have made any
difference.” She turned her head back in my direction and opened
her eyes. “You were never warm. You looked at Tomasz as if he were
not a man, as if he were nothing. I think that’s all you’re capable
of. Maybe that’s why Dominic Aranyi wants you, because you’re cold,
and being with you is like forcing you every time. He’d enjoy that,
and it saves him the trouble of trying to please you, the way he’d
have to with a normal woman.” She closed her eyes again, lay as if
asleep.

At another time I would have been at least a
little entertained at her analysis. But now I felt only despair as
I found out just how slow and naive and shallow I had been, and
was. I had assumed that I knew what had been bothering Alicia. I
had been so certain, I had never exerted myself to find out whether
I was right, or what had really been troubling her.

Alicia had been as upset as Tomasz by my
rejection—more so. She was marrying Tomasz in the same strict form
as ‘Graven use, and it was her duty to provide a female companion
for her husband, for the times when they were apart, or she could
not be with him as a wife. It was she who had chosen me as much as
Tomasz, had thought she was doing me a favor. And I had turned up
my nose at her offering, had treated it as a nuisance.

She had stayed at La Sapienza, pregnant and
wretched, for two months, while she hoped I would recognize my good
luck and accept Tomasz. She had hung on, week after week, thinking
that as I grew increasingly adept at communion I would see what I
should do. She had suppressed her anxiety at what was happening to
her baby, telling herself one more week wouldn’t hurt, perhaps
things would be settled by then and she could tell Tomasz the happy
news. Then they could leave to be married, knowing I would be here
to welcome Tomasz back. And two months had gone by until, sick with
apprehension, certain, despite her attempts at denial, that her
baby was destroyed, Alicia had cracked.

I was forced to admit that her opinion of me
was accurate, at least in one way. Even if I had known the truth of
the situation, I could not have responded as I was supposed to. The
more I learned about Eclipsian life, about marriage and relations
between men and women, the more I marveled that Dominic and I could
be together with so little conflict. That’s one duty I wouldn’t
have to worry about, I thought, sidetracked for a moment. I doubted
Dominic would want his wife to choose another woman for him. Again
I caught myself thinking of Dominic, about marrying him. I would
have to face reality soon.

I looked at this earnest young woman lying on
her bed, brought low by my selfishness and thoughtlessness.
“Alicia,” I said, “you’re right. I don’t think I would have behaved
any better, even if I had understood.” She heard me, I was sure,
but made no sign. “I think,” I continued softly, “you and Tomasz
should marry as soon as you are well enough, and don’t hesitate
because of me. I promise I will try to make progress here, in every
way, while you two are gone. When Tomasz is ready to return, let me
know. Either I will be a warm and comforting companion for him,
exactly what you wish, or I will leave.”

Alicia read my thoughts, saw that my words
were sincere, and relaxed at last. “I hope you will succeed,” she
said, “that you will be here to welcome Tomasz back.” A wan, sweet
smile lit her face for a moment, pointing up by the contrast how
weak she was. I thanked her for her forgiveness and encouragement,
and left her to sleep.

Outside the door I met Tomasz. I stared into
his eyes, imparting my thoughts to him—that I understood now, that
I was ready for him when he wanted me—and quailed before his
contempt.

He grimaced as he sensed my new
determination. “I wouldn’t want you now,” he said, a scornful smile
on his face, “if you were as beautiful as Amaterasu herself.” Now
that Alicia had been harmed, he had lost all desire for me. He
glanced at my neck, still, after four months, not completely
covered by my unruly growing curls. “You can cut your hair, or walk
around naked. I see nothing but a cold bitch who endangers
everything she touches. And I won’t let you touch Alicia again—or
me.”

Once again I was the outsider. In the days
that followed I sat alone at meals, and there was little work. We
suspended the cell, not that there was any risk to Alicia anymore,
but to free Tomasz to look after her. I took my shifts at the
signal scope, attended my classes, and spent the rest of the time
in my room. I had alienated all my friends. Even Paolo was
distant.

Edwige took pity on me. A few days after the
fight, when it was clear Alicia would recover, would be able to
marry and could expect to bear healthy children, Edwige called me
into her study. I steeled myself for punishment, expecting some
kind of ordeal of penance. But that is not the way of a
seminary.

“I had hoped we had taught you better than
that,” she said. “Using your gifts as a weapon.” Her voice was
harsh with disappointment.

I blushed and hung my head like a disobedient
child. “I acted without thinking,” I said, unable to come up with
any excuse, either to her or to myself. “I have pledged to change,
to do what is required of me, in the rest of my time here.”

“You must not promise the impossible,” Edwige
said. “And if you’re worried about paying restitution, we will
think of a way to help you meet your obligation. We will act for
you as your family would.” It seemed that what Paolo had joked
about earlier had come true, that Edwige had begun to accept me as
a kind of distant relative.