Choices (11 page)

As time went on I had other things to think
about. The days passed in a whirl of activity, classes and practice
sessions, every spark of telepathic strength spent. Most nights my
aide had to undress me and put me to bed, then drag me out of the
bed again for moonrise and sunrise prayers. What had at first
seemed like a luxury had become a necessity.

Now that I had been chastised, had repented,
and had shown that my good intentions were genuine, no more unkind
thoughts came between me and my comrades. I concentrated on my
lessons, and the others maintained a friendly reserve. The Terrans’
search for me, and my emphatic rejection of the opportunity to
return to my old life, generated a new respect for me among La
Sapienza’s inhabitants. I had been serious in my quest, not just an
overextended Terran looking for a week’s vacation in a simpler,
primitive world.

At slow times, on the signal telescope, or
resting after dinner, I could not help thinking of Dominic. Once or
twice I felt such an aching desire for him, if only for a brief
word or two, a fusion with his mind that was so alien to mine, yet
so necessary and compatible, that I was tempted to communicate with
him as he had taught me. But I never succumbed to the urge, and it
always passed, like a craving for a food that is too rich or
expensive to indulge. I remembered what I had chosen and promised,
and I stuck to my resolve.

A
fter two months at
La Sapienza I was ready to begin work in a cell. I would not
actually participate, but I would observe and regulate the others’
physiology, ensuring that, in the demands of the task at hand, no
one forgot to breathe or to take care of other automatic bodily
functions. Every cell must have an overseer, for safety, and it’s
the ideal position for a beginner or someone with only low
telepathic ability.

High-school biology seemed a long time ago, I
thought, when informed of my new job. I would be like the
anesthesiologist during an operation, only with five patients
instead of just one, taking care of the involuntary
systems—respiration, circulation and digestion—and seeing that they
were not suspended while the body’s entire consciousness was
engaged elsewhere.

Matilda assured me I didn’t need to know the
mechanics. “None of us has had your ‘high school biology,’ either,
and nobody’s died yet.” All I had to do was identify the place in
the brain that would “remind” the body to work again—it’s the same
in everybody—and keep an eye on it. If for any reason the
crypta
work disrupted things, I could prevent people from
collapsing while the multiple telepathic communion was safely, and
slowly, disengaged.

I was assigned to work with the cell of young
people: Matilda, Tomasz, Paolo, Cassandra, and another woman close
to my age, Raquel Hattori. This cell, made up of the newest members
of La Sapienza, those with the least experience, was not doing
anything dangerous or difficult, so there was little likelihood of
their actually needing my services. It was a routine safety
precaution, a habit of sensible procedure.

Cassandra explained the specifics. “Matilda
is the nucleus of our cell,” she said, bending her head slightly in
Matilda’s direction, in deference to her position as leader. “She
will initiate communion with the four of us. Once we are all in
orbit around her, that will be your signal to join. Matilda will
reach out to you, but you must pay attention and be ready. After
that, just stay on the edge of the cell, keep your thoughts all on
your observations, and you’ll do fine.” She smiled in encouragement
and took her place in the group.

As I stood off to the side, I was optimistic,
happy to be doing something productive at last, thinking that this
job would be both interesting and manageable. Matilda had
unsheathed the prism that the cell would work with, one set in the
handle of a dagger like mine, but substantially larger. The four
others joined hands, forming a human membrane of
crypta
around her. When Matilda held the prism up to the sunlight and bent
the waves into her eyes, the combined energy had a charge like a
small explosive. Before Matilda could reach for me, the five-fold
consciousness, magnified many times by the power of the prism,
slammed me back against the wall of the room, knocking the breath
out of me. My head reeled and black spots shimmered in front of my
eyes. I sank down to sit on the floor.

Instantly the group broke communion and
turned around. Paolo was closest. “What is it, Amalie?” he asked,
bending over me. “Did we dazzle you with our stunning display?” His
concern was real; he always spoke like that.

My head cleared enough for me to whisper.
“Probably.” I tried to smile. “I didn’t realize—”

Matilda brushed Paolo aside. “Do you mind if
I touch you?” I nodded permission. She held my hand lightly in her
own, then laid a fingertip on the pulse in my neck. “It’s very
simple,” she said. “And it should have been obvious. Amalie, as we
all know by now, is highly gifted. Most overseers don’t have half
her ability or sensitivity. We should have thought more about this,
instead of wasting our energy on—” She paused. “—clothes,” she
finished anticlimactically. She had been about to say, “instead of
naked necks,” and I realized she was castigating herself as much as
Tomasz.

Paolo walked with me to my room, checking
subtly to see I had sustained no real damage. Like me, he was an
empath as well as a telepath, and he explained more fully as we
descended the stairs. “You pick up all telepathic activity easily,
and you feel the same emotion that is being projected at you, not
simply being aware of it, but undergoing it yourself—anger or
sadness, lust or disgust.” He mimed the various emotions and we
laughed as I translated into Terran, so he could hear the
rhyme.

We reached the door to my room and stood
outside. “Most observers are only one or two steps up from
ungifted,” Paolo continued, “lucky if a strong sibyl working in a
large cell makes even a slight impression. So we rarely have to
think about the effect of our little cell on the overseer. You
weren’t ready to receive so much telepathic energy all at once;
your mind has never had to make such an enormous accommodation.
You’ll have to increase your tolerance before you can observe.”

This was going to be tough
, I
thought, depressed by the obstacles in my way.

Paolo understood me at once and tried to
bolster my confidence. “It won’t be as difficult as you imagine,
although we’re all flattered that we made the earth move for—”
Again someone had been about to say something embarrassing. He had
been thinking,
for someone who has been with Dominic Aranyi by
choice
. I could sense his own thoughts that he could not quite
control, the little half-buried feelings of curiosity mixed with
fear, and a not fully repressed envy, remembering my relations with
Dominic.

I hung my head, my face reddening. My mistake
with Dominic would have to be regarded as over and done with
sometime. I could never put it behind me if nobody else did.
This whole situation sucks
.

Somehow it was comforting that Paolo flushed
too, his normally firm composure failing.
I’m sorry
, he
thought to me.
You’re right; it sucks
. He liked the silly
Terran expression he found in my mind.
It sucks elephant
dick
. We fell against the wall, laughing at the mental picture
I gave him, showing him what an elephant is, what the words mean
literally.

Paolo’s empathy helped. He didn’t even have
to ask permission. He simply put his arms around me and kissed me
once. I leaned against his bony chest, relaxing in an embrace that
had no hidden sexuality lurking in it.

The friendly embrace and the genuine laugh
eliminated any need for a formal apology. I knew Paolo regretted
bringing up the incident with Dominic, and I felt his own
frustration at the celibacy he was forced to endure in his quest to
become a seer, the deprivation not required for training, but
simply due to circumstance, with no male companionship for him at
La Sapienza.

He left me to rest in my room until
dinnertime. Once again I had been laid low by my mind. Once again I
would have to find more strength within me.

It wasn’t as bad as I feared. Paolo worked
with me, one empath to another, showing me how to combine a form of
partial shield, which I had already learned, with the openness
required for working in a cell. I could protect the sensitive part
of my mind from the energy level of the cell while leaving one
channel free for observing. “It’s like anything else taught in
school,” Paolo said. “By the time you master it, you’ll never need
to use it.” I would be a full member of the cell soon, it was
hoped, not wasting my talents on a job that any novice could
do.

Under Paolo’s amusing tutelage I made good
progress, and was able to begin observing in a week. This time I
was prepared, standing braced in a defensive posture, head held
low, shoulders hunched forward, like front-line soldiers in
pictures from old Terran wars. Matilda laughed as she took out the
large dagger with its prism. “We’re not planning to kill the
overseer,” she said.

I saw how I looked, glimpsing the image of me
in her mind, and straightened up. “If you say so,” I answered,
trying to appear confident. I forced myself to think about the
cell’s work, instead of my own. It was interesting what they were
going to do.

Eclipsis had been an ideal habitat for
colonization, its life evolved only up to rudimentary plants. The
first settlers were refugees from Earth’s climate catastrophe,
trained ecologists and scientists, who had worked slowly and
carefully to establish sustainable living in their new world. Even
the ancestors of the ‘Graven, as they discovered and refined their
telepathic abilities, had volunteered their services to maintain
this way of life: powering the signal stations, the plumbing and
recycling systems, and using solar and wind power whenever possible
to bring services to the distant villages.

But all this green technology was endangered
by Eclipsis’s “rediscovery,” and the arrival of new generations of
Terrans. As I had seen with the telepathy-powered “cell phones,”
Eclipsian technology, ecological and safe, was also
labor-intensive, benefitting the elite. The encroaching Terran
world was a constant threat, tempting the rest of the indigenous
population with cheap electricity and running water, central
heating and holographic entertainment. If the Terrans had to build
roads, dig up the mountains for metals and minerals and cut down
forests for lumber and paper, most people wouldn’t care about the
long-term damage so long as they could live more comfortably
now.

Creating a reliable, affordable system of
Eclipsian engineering that didn’t harm the environment would be the
best way to counteract this menace. The short time, geologically
speaking, that had elapsed since human settlement meant there were
no mass extinctions in Eclipsis’s past, no large deposits of
fossils to turn into fossil fuels. Instead, there was an ongoing
project to develop safe nuclear power.

Every seminary was engaged in some part of
this endeavor. “Since the ungifted think we’re radioactive to begin
with,” Paolo said, “we’re the logical ones to do it.”

Tomasz rolled his eyes at Paolo’s dramatics.
“We’re not working with nuclear energy—just practicing ways to
manage and contain it.”

“And if we can find a cleaner way to generate
heat than burning all this wood,” Raquel said, glowering at the
fire that blazed in any occupied room, “the Terrans couldn’t accuse
us of hypocrisy every time we complain about their pollution.”

Matilda signaled that she was ready, and I
made sure my shields were in place. She formed the cell as before,
bringing all four members in and settling the combined telepathic
forces into a steady pattern. Then she reached out to me. This time
I fell forward instead of backward; my anticipation of the great
wave of power about to strike me had led me to push too hard to
resist it. My shields held, so that I stumbled a few steps ahead
when the force failed to penetrate my defenses.

Luckily I recovered without slipping or
breaking contact. I checked for each individual in turn, most
importantly Matilda herself, making sure that everyone’s breathing
was normal, the heartbeat regular, not too fast or too slow and,
least likely but of crucial importance in any extended session,
that the digestive process was not obstructed. Everything was, as
expected, satisfactory. Matilda was strong. There was little chance
that the strain of acting as the cell’s nucleus would be too much
for her in this light work.

Now all I had to do was keep my mind on the
job, watching to see that everything continued to go smoothly. I
couldn’t quite get how they did it—I would have to wait until my
own debut as a real member of the cell—but they sent their
combined, amplified consciousness outside, up and over toward the
mountains, above the tree line and away from villages or any
inhabited areas. “If we miscalculate and go down in flames,” Raquel
said later with an evil grin, “we won’t hurt anybody else.”

I smiled back at her, pretending nonchalance.
I was only now beginning to understand how
crypta
worked.
Light waves and neurons: I knew what they were, from physics
classes and “high school biology,” but not how one could affect the
other, and certainly not how the combination could produce
telepathy and telekinesis. It all boiled down to a fundamental
problem of physics: light can be described as formed of waves or
particles, and the reality is that its behavior conforms with both
at once.

Terra had long ago gone the particle route.
Digital technology turns everything into either-or. One or zero; on
or off; yes or no. Early analog, wave-based technologies, from
clocks with hands to radios, tube televisions and vinyl recordings,
had been abandoned in favor of digital. Computers could process the
ones and zeroes faster and more accurately than they could
interpret waves.