Choices (18 page)

It was so much like Tomasz’s reaction that I
was frightened; far more troubling to hear the same idea this
second time around than when it could be dismissed as one person’s
self-justifying fit of pique. I felt for Matilda’s mind, to see
what had prompted this appraisal, to see if perhaps Tomasz was
colluding with her, hidden in her mind as Dominic had been in mine
at the dressmaker’s shop. But she had closed to me now, retreating
from an unexpected failure that was new to her.

I answered the one part of her words I could.
“Surely I’m not so beautiful. You don’t need to flatter me in that
way.” I meant only that. No one on Terra had ever called me
beautiful. “Cute” was the best I had heard, more often
“interesting” or “unconventional.” Most of the time my unusual
appearance had been avoided as a topic of conversation.

“Flatter you?” Matilda said with a harsh
laugh. “Why should I? You can see you’re beautiful—it’s a fact. And
it hasn’t made you happy, or clever, or sensible, or even very
nice.” She sat up. “Think about it. Forget your clothes, and your
little mirror, and think about what you must find in yourself if
you wish to stay at La Sapienza after your six months are up.”

There was that same threat that I had
received from Tomasz. I had somehow expected Matilda, as sibyl, to
be more objective, not to express a vindictive or personal
response.

Matilda read my thoughts and saw that despite
her heroic efforts I was still convinced I was being manipulated.
“Amalie,” she said, her warm alto at odds with the admonishing tone
of her words, “beauty does not give you the right to ignore
people’s feelings. If you want to become a useful member of the
cell, you must first become a responsible adult.”

She stood up and moved to the door, while I
remained leaning on one elbow on the bed. She felt the cringe in my
mind, but it only increased her impatience. Like Edwige and Tomasz,
she was exasperated by my adolescent behavior. “You are like a
child in a woman’s body,” she said. “Your mind will have to mature
eventually, whether or not you work in a seminary. You can’t live
on Eclipsis with a slow mind and no family to care for you. Maybe
Terra would be a better place for you after all.” She was out, the
door shut behind her, before I had absorbed the meaning of her
words.

The threat was real. I had never had a job
that depended on sex for success. In a way, this job didn’t either.
For the other people here sex was a simple bodily function, like
eating and sleeping. It was done at the appropriate time, in the
right amount. A sibyl, or the nucleus of a cell must go without,
but she would be generously rewarded for her abstinence on her rare
nights of freedom. Except by me.

I had made my first serious mistake, the only
thing that could truly jeopardize my chances here. And the terrible
thing was I could not control it. I had tried to accept Matilda.
She could have taken me, as a man takes a woman, while I simply lay
back and spread my legs and did nothing. But that was not what she
wanted; the idea disgusted her. She had looked for reciprocal
kindness, what I had with Dominic. I knew that I could feel that
only for Dominic, a limitation that was not understood by the
others, who did not share it.

I got up and rummaged through the clothes
chest, found my old pack, long since abandoned, with the “little
mirror” Matilda had scornfully referred to, and studied my
reflection. It was difficult for me to recognize this “beautiful
Amalie” I kept hearing about. My face looked like my own, no
different than ever, maybe a little flushed from my recent
harrowing conversation.

In my entire life the one thing I had counted
on was my mind. I had been quick to learn, to go through school and
advance at jobs. My looks had been against me on Terra, but I had
done well because of my intelligence. Here there were no tests like
those in a Terran school, no reading to do, certainly no writing.
Yet surely everybody could see, more clearly than from a writing
sample or a correctly filled-in answer screen, simply by looking
into my mind, that I was smart.

But they did not see it. Tomasz, then
Matilda, had called me
empty
, Tomasz with the word itself,
Matilda by implication, by naming every quality I lacked. And I
knew the others saw me as naive. I was considered slow, as having
reached my mid-thirties while attaining a mental age of less than
half that.

It was a problem of emotions, as I was
beginning to understand. “Mind” and “emotions” are not seen as
separate here, where the work of telepathy requires the application
of all areas of the brain. No one at La Sapienza doubted that I had
a large vocabulary or had read widely with good comprehension. No
one questioned whether I could write a thesis on Shakespeare or
solve quadratic equations, or use the holonet to do research. None
of them could; none of them needed to. I was slow emotionally,
because that part of me had been held back by the trauma of growing
up isolated and gifted on Terra. My intelligence in such
specialized things counted for little if it was not complemented by
an equal aptitude in the rest of my mind.

I thought of how my love for Dominic had
seemed like a normal first love, coming twenty years late, and how
grateful I was not to have missed out, to have finally achieved it.
This new thing was like a permanent condition, a disability. I
didn’t think my mind could catch up to the other Eclipsians in this
respect. It’s like language. If you learn several languages as a
child, the pathways in the brain are just being formed. You can
think in any language, become fluent in all. If you study a new
language as an adult, it will never be completely natural, but will
always be “foreign.”

My life on Eclipsis was like learning a
second language too late. The test I had failed wasn’t simply
rejecting Matilda and Tomasz. It was my lack of understanding of
the need for it, my body’s inability to respond with passion to
match theirs.
That
was the failure. And I could not learn
that lesson now. I would have had to grow up here, among telepaths
from the time of my crypta’s first manifestation, to be able to do
it.

I went through the rest of the day in a daze.
Other people kept their distance out of sympathy, sensing more or
less what was bothering me. Only when the early moonrise prayers
were done, and I was at last lying beneath the comforters in my
snug bed, did the freedom to feel despair hit me like a breaking
wave in that ocean I had boasted about to Raquel. I cried silent
flowing tears, my nose running, like the child I had been
called.

There’s no help for it
, I moaned to
myself,
nothing I can do, no one to turn to. Except
Dominic
. And he was not here, not permitted.

As I thought of him, my tears stopped. I sat
up, wiping my face with the bed sheet. Dominic had been forbidden
to me, by Edwige, by everybody, as a condition of my training. But
I was going to fail at my training, through no fault of his. I
needed him now, more than I had ever needed anything or anybody.
And I knew how to visit him.

I inhaled deeply, got my breathing under
control after the weeping and put a strong shield around my mind.
No one but Dominic would hear any of this conversation, I promised
myself, as I launched myself into the ether on a raft of my body’s
radiant heat and almost disappeared.

It was gray and formless here, with no
directions, not even the minimum of up and down, just a void in
which I spun helplessly.
If you’re so smart
, I told
myself,
you can find Dominic. He taught you how. You can learn,
so you claimed
.

I forced myself to come together, compressing
my consciousness, which had been evaporating like an expanding gas
in a vacuum, back into my mind. And I did what Dominic had shown me
and sent my mind to his. I even remembered to check that I was not
interrupting him as I had before.

He was in bed, alone, sound asleep for the
uninterrupted stretch of night enjoyed by those not subject to the
strange schedule of a seminary. I hated to disturb him, and I
entered his mind so unobtrusively, gliding in with a smooth
precision I would not have been capable of a month ago, that he
didn’t wake. He snorted a little and turned onto his side, and as
his brain moved from deep sleep into REM, I shared his dreams. They
were full of sword-fighting and chasing, of riding and hunting,
with a lot of killing, stabbing and bleeding. He woke up.

Amalie
, he said.
My love
.
His pleasure in my unexpected visit was so evident I nearly cried
again with relief.

Despite being half asleep he sensed my great
unhappiness.
What is it, cherie? What has happened to you?
He realized I would not have visited him except for a crisis, and
sat up with the professional soldier’s knack of coming fully awake
in an instant.

This time I plunged right in.
They called
me shallow
, I said.
And slow. They say I have a child’s
mind in a woman’s body
.

Dominic had expected a different kind of
problem.
Amalie
, he said,
that can’t be right. You
must have misunderstood. Maybe it’s the language. Tell me the exact
words they used
.

I had spoken all in Eclipsian.
Shallow
, I said again.
Slow. A child’s mind in a
woman’s body
. I repeated all the words. Telling him only the
end of the story without the background would make no sense, but I
hesitated to bring up the reason for this verdict. I was afraid of
his reaction, what he might feel, knowing the situation but unable
to do anything about it.

I know you’re not telling me
everything
, Dominic said.
But surely people at La Sapienza
are not so blind that they can’t see your depths, your
intelligence—although at least they see the womanly body
, he
added, hoping to make me smile.

No, Dominic
, I said,
they’re
right
. We were too intimate for me to keep this from him.
It started at Midwinter—

Yes?
Dominic said.
Many things
do
.

I could tell, in our communion, that he was
trying to make light of what was coming, that he was smiling, but
not with happiness. He was bracing himself for some kind of
rejection, and I was quick to set his mind at rest.

It was nothing—seemed like nothing
.
I didn’t know—
I stopped, wanting to minimize the sense of
panic I was projecting.
We don’t have festivals quite like
Midwinter on Terra. So I simply told Tomasz and Matilda that I was
sorry, that I didn’t return their feelings. They were very nice
about it; it was no big deal.
I could feel my “voice” starting
to wobble, even in the soundless world of communion.
But now
they’re saying—

Wait
, Dominic said.
You rejected
the young sibyl, Matilda Stranyak, and Tomasz Liang, both, on
Midwinter?
The surprise in his voice was so strong I was
touched, gratified by his needless fear.

Of course, my love
, I said.
How
can you doubt it?

And whom did you choose instead?
Dominic asked.

His question was unexpected. I had not
thought him so fragile that he would need this much reassurance.
Still, I had only comfort to give.
No one, silly
, I said.
I don’t want any of them. That’s the problem
.

But the impossible had happened, what a month
ago I would have bet my life’s savings against as a sure thing. One
of us had shocked the other. And it was I who had shocked
Dominic.

Amalie!
he exclaimed. I could feel
him moving around in agitation on the bed.
It was Midwinter.
And you spent the night alone?

My initial feeling of solace from being with
my lover was beginning to dissipate, but I held on, thinking he
would come through for me at last.
Yes, Dominic
, I said.
I went to bed alone on Midwinter. Forgive me for being so
foolish as to think you would be pleased to hear it
.

Oh, Amalie
, he said, laughing.
My poor love. It is our custom. I am sorry if you deprived
yourself of pleasure for my sake
.

But I didn’t
, I said.
I didn’t
deprive myself of anything
. I was silent, not knowing how to
proceed.

Dominic lay still also. Our communion was
more sophisticated now, with my level of control closer to his. It
felt so much like actually lying in bed next to him that I stopped
thinking about the reality, the miles that separated us. Finally
Dominic touched me gently on the arm.
Cherie
, he said,
if you are not unhappy about Midwinter night, then what is the
trouble?

I was worried now, but I had nowhere else to
look for help, and I still expected a masculine reaction of
possessiveness.
It didn’t end with the festival. Matilda and
Tomasz still want me. And I’m not able to work in a cell because of
it, or form full communion
. I caught myself starting to cry
again.
And that’s when they said I was shallow, and
slow
.

But you can form full communion
,
Dominic said, unconsciously speaking in the voice of patient
teacher with slow pupil that reminded me of Matilda and Tomasz.
We’re in it now
.

Yes
, I said,
with you
. I
went over it all again.
And it’s the way it is with us. They
both want me to have sex with them
.

Of course they do
, Dominic said.
You mustn’t act so outraged. You are so beautiful, how can they
help it? And they expect you to be kind, not to behave like a
frightened girl of twelve
.