Choices (21 page)

“I’ve made my whole ‘family’ hate me,” I
said. “But I will try to make up for my past failures.” I had no
comprehension of the Eclipsian concept of “restitution,” and
supposed that good intentions and a will toward improved
performance were all that it entailed.

“Amalie,” Edwige said, “I think you have
chosen already, without knowing it.”

Apparently I had lost the thread of the
conversation. I waited in silence.

“Remember, Amalie?” Edwige said, like
everyone speaking as if to a child. “I told you that you must
choose between Dominic Aranyi and La Sapienza.”

“Of course I remember.” It had been all I had
thought about. “And you’re right. I have chosen. But I do know it.
I choose to stay here.” I recalled my last conversation with
anybody, the horrible, cutting words of Tomasz. It no longer seemed
strange to talk about intimate or private things, even with Edwige.
“I tried to tell Tomasz, but he—”

Edwige raised her hand in her commanding way,
cutting off my whining words. “No, Amalie. You have not chosen to
stay here.” I felt her sadness behind the words. It was not a
reaction to my emotion; more a feeling, as Paolo had suggested,
that she saw me as her own daughter, one who could not follow the
path her mother wanted for her. “You have been with Lord Aranyi,
haven’t you?”

I was too dulled to deny it, or to care. “I
thought I had shielded myself well enough, that no one knew.”

Edwige approached me and did something she
had not done since our shouting match over Dominic in my first week
here: she laid her hand lightly on my shoulder. “It’s all right,
Amalie,” she said as I jumped. “No one did know, not even me. But I
am a sibyl. I can sense unusual telepathic activity. And I
suspected it. I saw your change of heart, about Tomasz at least,
and your new resolve to stay at La Sapienza. I thought it came from
outside, not from you.”

“If you knew about Tomasz, and Matilda,” I
said, angry that I had been laboring under delusions for so long,
“why did you say nothing?”

Edwige returned to her customary mocking
manner. It was somehow comforting. “What could I say that the
others did not? Matilda handled it all as well as I could have,
maybe better. She will be a good sibyl after I am gone.” Her eyes
lost their focus as she peered into the far-off future, to the time
few of us can imagine, when we no longer exist. “I said nothing
because whatever I said would be useless. I cannot order you to
feel what is not within you. If your own empathy did not bring you
to care for Tomasz and Matilda, I cannot give you the ability.”

We were both struck by the same thought. “How
come?” I asked. “If I’m an empath, as everyone says, why didn’t I
feel Tomasz’s and Matilda’s desire as my own?”

There was a long pause as Edwige considered
the problem. “I can only guess,” she said. “Your life on Terra,
where you were assaulted by everyone’s thoughts and feelings, with
no way to shield yourself, may have forced you to create a barrier
of some kind, something of your own making, not like the ones we’ve
taught you.” She used her gift to explore in my mind. “I can sense
it occasionally, a wall that blocks out all the unwelcome emotions
you can’t cope with and don’t want to receive. As an empath, the
pain would have been unbearable if you had not done that. But now
that you’ve tried to open up, I think it’s too late to undo what
you built.”

I nodded. It seemed logical.

“And there’s another factor,” Edwige said.
“What I told you months ago is still true. I don’t know what this
telepathic love between you and Dominic Aranyi entails. I suspect
your love for him overrides any other emotion you may feel, from
any other source.” She stared into my eyes with the penetrating
intimacy she was entitled to use. “He’s the one who made you want
to stay at La Sapienza, isn’t that so?”

I didn’t answer her in words; I didn’t have
to. Edwige was sorting through it all with me, as the others had in
our communion sessions: my love for Dominic; the desire for
motherhood that had surfaced in me so surprisingly; the strictness
of ‘Graven marriage customs; and what it meant to live in a society
where family was everything and I had nothing, despite a
respectable portfolio of credits and the skills to earn more.

“Amalie,” she said, after the dual odyssey
had come to an end, “I think you will be happier in the outside
world, not in a seminary. The combination of your personality and
your experiences—on Terra, and here, and with Margrave Aranyi—has
made you unsuitable for life in the academy, or for substantive
cell work.”

My face must have shown my desolation. “It’s
not the end of the world,” Edwige said. “Some of the most gifted
telepaths have discovered the same thing. Your Dominic Aranyi had
the potential to become a seer, but failed. It happens to people,
like having third eyelids or being short, and there’s nothing one
can do to change it.”

“When do you want me to leave?” I was too
panic-stricken to maintain any poise, to accept defeat
gracefully.

Edwige shook her head. “You don’t have to
leave. If you want it, you will always have a place here. We need
people, to staff the signal scope and to oversee the cells. But I
don’t think that would satisfy you, would it?” She knew, of course,
that it would not. “Or you could learn to be a healer. But as an
empath who has already felt overwhelmed, you’d hardly wish to
experience pain and suffering directly for the rest of your working
life.” No reply was needed to that statement of the obvious.

“So what should I do?” I asked.

“Think about what I’ve said.” Edwige got a
wicked gleam in her eye. “And you might like to discuss it with
Margrave Aranyi. Yes, it’s all right,” she assured me as I stared
at her recommendation. “Now that you’re not going to be a sibyl,
and since we’re not doing any work of consequence, I think you
should ‘visit’ him.” She looked into my eyes again, holding the
contact well beyond the point of endurance. I acquiesced at first,
attempting to break away only as the invasion went uncomfortably
deep. When she let me go at last, her mood was somber. “How old are
you?”

I had to think. “Thirty-six.” My birthday had
come and gone unremarked a month ago. Except for one’s sixteenth,
the official start of adulthood, birthdays are not celebrated here.
I couldn’t follow Edwige’s thoughts. They seemed to range all over
the place, with no connecting logic.

“Think about this, also,” Edwige said.
“Should you wish to marry, there are many men who would be willing,
even eager to marry you.”

I recalled the day of my
crypta
test, almost five months ago now, when I had been sized up as
breeding stock by the ‘Graven Assembly, my looks and the evidence
of my gift giving me a value in the eyes of the ‘Graven lords and
their male relatives. But those men had not thought of marrying
me.

Edwige frowned with gruff sympathy at my
painful thoughts. “No, Amalie,” she said. “Not ‘Graven. But gentry
do not have to marry in the same strict rule. A widower from a
respectable gentry family, or a younger son, would be proud to have
you as his wife.”

The idea was chilling. “Why?” I asked. “Why
should I think about that? I’m not planning to marry. Who would I
marry?” It all made no sense, until I realized that she thought of
me as Eclipsian, a gifted woman, like Cassandra and Raquel and the
others, whose only option besides the seminary was marriage. It was
flattering in a way. Edwige had forgotten I was Terran, and thought
I must look for a husband now.

As Edwige started to answer me, I tried to
smile. “Don’t worry about me. Maybe you should send that message to
the Terrans, that Amelia Herzog has been ‘found.’ I can go back to
Eclipsia City, work at my old job, or something like it.” I choked
up, the words coming out between little coughs and
throat-clearings.

Edwige had heard me clearly enough. “You can.
But I don’t think you will.” She rose in dismissal and glanced out
the window, where a blizzard was raging. There had been storms on
and off, more often on, since Midwinter. “No one is going anywhere
until the spring thaw, so you have a month at least to think things
over. Talk to Margrave Aranyi,” she urged me again, until I began
to wonder what was behind this sudden benevolence. “And think for
yourself. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

I was grateful for that last piece of advice.
Even though I was old enough to know that, it was nice to have
someone else recognize it. And I agreed with it. In fact, I planned
to follow it immediately. I didn’t want to talk to Dominic. It was
too soon to admit defeat, to have my determination to stay at La
Sapienza and my defiant words shown up for the sham they were.

I had a month, while the weather finished up
with winter. I knew what I should do. I should work on my résumé,
find a way to connect to the holonet, scan the job listings,
determine whether my sudden departure from my old job had made me
unemployable, or more valuable with this unique experience.

It was the most depressing agenda I had faced
in five months. Better to have sex with Tomasz and Matilda, both,
for the rest of my life. Better to be the companion in Tomasz and
Alicia’s marriage. Better to marry the gentry equivalent of those
men in the ‘Graven Assembly who had looked at me the way they would
a mare in the marketplace, estimating how many foals I might
produce and my strength to endure the harsh climate and life
without Terran comforts.

When I heard my thoughts I was convinced I
was losing my mind. But there really was nothing constructive I
could do about it for a month. I could have Edwige send the
message, could become Amelia Herzog again. But why start that up, I
rationalized my inactivity, when I had no access to a computer or
the holonet, and my cube didn’t work? There was no way for me to
look for a job. And no way to look for a husband, either. I was
safe from my worst ideas and my best. But which was which?

A
s a week went by
after Alicia’s “accident,” then two weeks, people, like the
weather, began to thaw a little. First Paolo sat with me at dinner,
silent but friendly, then Raquel and Cassandra. Matilda took longer
to come around, but she had her dignity as sibyl to consider.
People said little; I knew they felt there was nothing to say. They
had attempted to integrate an outsider into a Protected World. The
experiment had failed. If most of the blame was mine, it was a
deficiency I could not help, and nothing I had done had been
deliberate.

At least the signal scope was active. Every
shift was busy, with messages going back and forth at all hours of
day and night. There were more references to the being called Eris
and warnings about unrest in Aldaran. We were all apprehensive,
wondering what was happening. It gave an excuse for conversation,
as people told me about the Eris uprising a few years ago, and
debated about who was behind this latest trouble. My isolation
diminished as my actions were forgotten in the general
excitement.

“Eris is a telepathic weapon, so powerful
that only a very large, well-trained cell can control it,” Raquel
explained one day at dinner. “Years ago there were many weapons
like her, and worse. We almost destroyed ourselves with them.
That’s why the Armaments Convention was drawn up, to limit weapons
to things like swords and knives, that a man uses with his own
power, face-to-face, not with
crypta
or from a
distance.”

“But why is it named, like a person?” I
asked.

“Because when it’s activated by
crypta
, it takes the form of a woman, a goddess of light,”
Cassandra said.

My skepticism, like all my strong emotions,
must have shown in my face. “Believe it,” Paolo said. “Last time
this happened, an entire city was demolished.”

“Eclipsia City?” I asked. “But most of it
looks old, not like something recently rebuilt.”

“Oh, no,” Paolo said. “We used to have other
cities, if you can call them that. Mountain strongholds, really.
Until all these firebrand rebels decided civilization wasn’t their
thing.” He sounded almost cheerful. His family were lowlanders, who
had fought the mountain Realms for generations.

I remained unconvinced. It sounded like
mythology, a story from the time when people understood
crypta
only as magic, the activity of sibyls and seers
invoking demons and powers of the paranormal. Yet the destruction
of the last city had occurred recently. “But what makes you think
the weapon is a goddess?” I asked.

“Because only a woman can cause that much
devastation,” Paolo said, laughing to show he meant nothing
personal. “And when she’s that powerful, a woman is by definition a
goddess.”

I was about to make some condescending
remark, until I remembered that I had been observing the daily
rituals of the pagan religion myself, like everyone else, for
months now. Even though the original settlers here had been
scientists—ecologists and biologists, mostly, with a few physicists
and chemists—life in such an austere, isolated world was too harsh
for people to be without faith of some kind. And as the telepathic
gifts developed over generations, while the Terran technology
languished without infrastructure to support it,
crypta
powers had been both venerated and feared as an occult art. I kept
my thoughts to myself, and remained silent.

Raquel shook her head at Paolo’s flippant
remarks. “You’ll see it too. If they actually use that thing, all
of us, every gifted person on Eclipsis, will see the image of
Eris.”

“It’s not just seeing.” Cassandra took up the
alarm. “If you’re within range when Eris is active, your
crypta
won’t protect you. It will become the hook for Eris
to pull you into her spell, bend you to her will.” She scowled at
my look of polite forbearance. “Eris is evil. She was supposed to
have been destroyed last time, but if she’s not, if she’s alive,
and active, then the safest place to be is here, in a seminary.”
She fixed her eyes on me, trying to get through to my scoffing,
incredulous mind. “Don’t leave, Amalie. Not until this danger is
over.”