Choices (19 page)

His words were so like theirs, the opposite
of what I had hoped to hear from him, so different from my romantic
expectations, that I erupted with misery. I screamed at him, still
shielding my words from other minds, but blasting into his.
I
thought you loved me! I thought you cared for me. I thought I was
more to you than just a body. Here I was, trying to protect you
from any unnecessary worries, any jealousy, not wanting to trouble
you with the fact that two people were pursuing me when you were
not here to defend me. Why I wasted all that effort I don’t
know
. The feeling of betrayal made me alternate between bitter
sobs and hysterical laughter, the
crypta
spiking strangely
between us at each burst of emotion.

I forgot that I existed there only in
Dominic’s mind, in communion, and I behaved as though I were
physically in his room. Dominic reached for me but I rolled away
from him, leaped off the bed and ran to stand sniffling in a
corner. My body was in my room at La Sapienza, and I think it was
there that I stood, barefoot on the cold floor, wedged into the
corner near the bathroom.

Dominic was confused at first, but he
maintained the mental contact, so that our thoughts flowed between
us without gaps. I could sense his mind swirling around, taking in
all my unfamiliar Terran emotions, all the different ways we saw
things, adapting as rapidly as he could to the chasm of conflicting
customs that separated us.
Amalie
, he said.
Beloved.
You must know how I feel about you
.

Yes
, I said.
I do know, now. You
don’t care who I sleep with. What I thought was something special
was just amusement to you. I guess you wanted to know what it’s
like to fuck a Terran woman. And you found out it’s nothing much,
no reason Tomasz Liang, and Matilda Stranyak and anyone else who
wants to can’t share the discovery
.

I thought dejectedly of my ideas, straight
out of romance novels, of what Dominic would do when he learned
what was going on. The clichéd scenes played out in my head:
Dominic drawing his sword, threatening to fight anyone, man or
woman, who dared to lay a finger on me, swearing no one should even
think of me improperly if I did not wish it.

An image of Dominic, a threatening smile on
his face, his hand twitching over the hilt of his sword, while
Tomasz backed away in fear, dissolved into smoke as Dominic’s
thoughts came through. His “voice” had a strangled, tortured
quality.
Amalie
, he said,
you don’t understand. If you
were my betrothed—
He used a formal, archaic word, because any
ordinary Eclipsian word that means “lover” is always derogatory to
the woman.
If you were my betrothed, I would do everything you
dream of and more. I would have to; I would want to. But you are in
a seminary. I have no claim on you. I would only make you, and me,
ridiculous, by “defending” you from what is required among
seminarians and cell members
.

The anguish in his mind stopped me from what
I had been about to say. And one word stood out in my mind.
Required?
I asked.

Yes, my love
, he said.
You are
obligated in a seminary, telepath to telepath, to ease each other’s
pain, soothe all discomforts. Your beauty disturbs Matilda and
Tomasz, breaks their concentration, and makes it difficult or
impossible for the cell to operate as a unit.
I “heard” his
voice crack under the strain of having to say this, but he
swallowed and continued.
As an empath, you should feel their
need, respond to it naturally. Soon enough you will all become
friends again, not lovers, once the disrupting sexual frustration
is eliminated
.

Dominic had followed me during our mental
conversation, had stayed in my mind that was inside his, layer
within layer of
crypta
. He, too, began to act as if my
body were there, moving around in his room. He located the corner
where I had retreated, huddled and teary, and approached me slowly.
When he was near enough to touch, he blocked me in on either side,
hands against the wall, not letting me escape, although I didn’t
try very hard. The visual element of communion is vague, but I was
aware of his physical presence: naked, tall and slim, heat
radiating from his exposed skin, augmenting the mental bonds that
held me there. As I didn’t resist, he wrapped me in his arms, and
in both our minds the image took over, of him holding me tight, my
head reaching only low on his chest.

I thought over his words while I stood
leaning against him. He had said the same things Matilda had said,
and Tomasz. They had not spoken out of opportunism or selfishness,
attempting to persuade me by pretending that this was the custom.
It was the custom. Dominic, like them, had suggested that, as an
empath, I should feel their sexual frustration. I had sensed
something, had been conscious of it for weeks. But it wasn’t
Tomasz’s or Matilda’s desire that had been bothering me. It was my
own pent-up longing, and Dominic’s, and this late-night “visit” had
unleashed it.

My mood of despair, combined with Dominic’s
desire and my own craving, had produced a strange situation, one I
have never experienced since and would be afraid to attempt. We
were both working hard at sustaining my false physicality, so
caught up in creating the details for each other’s mind to perceive
that we felt I was truly standing there in Dominic’s room in the
barracks of the ‘Graven Military Academy. In our shared illusion we
were pressed together, both of us naked, my nightgown discarded
somewhere along the way, and our lower bodies fused of their own
accord. Dominic lifted me easily, my weight nothing to his
strength, and, hands grasping my buttocks, backing me up against
the wall, entered me as I eagerly and automatically spread my legs
at his touch.

I clung to him, my arms around his neck, my
legs wrapped around his waist, my breath coming in hiccupping,
shaky gulps, until the first furious assault of his passion was
spent. Then he carried me back to the bed, and, whispering to me,
thinking his words and actions into my mind, he made love to me
slowly and deliberately, until I reached a shuddering climax of
cries and convulsions.

But when we had energy to speak again I was
still angry.
Are you bored yet?
I asked.
Are we
friends now?
I quoted his own words back to him, and the words
I had reported from my conversations with Tomasz and Matilda.

Dominic’s torment hit me like an explosion.
How can you think such a thing, much less say it to me? How do
you think it has been for me, knowing where you are, and what must
be happening, and powerless to do or say anything?
In a vivid
flash of communion I saw that he had experienced all the possessive
emotions I had wanted him to have, and that the exertion of
containing and concealing them had nearly unhinged him.

You knew?

I guessed. You are beautiful and gifted
and in a seminary. It was only logical that this would follow
.
He had felt every pang of jealousy I had hoped for, every impulse
to fight whoever approached me, but had restrained himself, with
difficulty, because he had to. He had agreed, and had convinced me,
that I must try to work in the cell, that it would be a good thing
for me, all the while knowing what I faced.

But why didn’t you warn me?
I
asked.

I thought it would come naturally to
you
, Dominic said after a pause,
as it does for us. And
you are an empath, so that I expected you would receive enough
feelings on your own, without the burden of anything else I might
put in your head
.

But I didn’t have those feelings
, I
said.
Or at least, not for others. Only for you
.

That’s why I should not have visited
you
. He wouldn’t say it, but I knew he was thinking now that I
should not have visited him either.

Are you sorry?
I asked.

He groaned.
Oh, Amalie, how I can I be
sorry for this?
He moved restlessly on the bed, put his hand
on me and quickly withdrew it.
Sometimes I wish—
he began,
and suppressed the thought.

But I had glimpsed it in his mind. He wished
I would fail, that I could not become a sibyl, and that I would
leave La Sapienza to be with him.
As what?
I wondered. As
some kind of unmarried companion, I supposed. Every Terran
term—mistress, kept woman—was outdated, expressing a concept that
was meaningless there. But here? Here I didn’t know.

Eclipsis had turned out to be much more
sophisticated than I had at first imagined, although their concept
of marriage had all the rigidity and complexity of a traditional
and hierarchical society. And the ‘Graven were bound by the most
uncompromising of the nuptial laws. Whatever Dominic wished, as
‘Graven he could not marry a Terran. And although I didn’t want it,
was terrified of what Eclipsian, especially ‘Graven, marriage
required of a wife, I felt illogically resentful.

The thought strengthened my resolve. I had
turned to Dominic for comfort, and unknowingly, despite his worst
efforts and mine, he had made me determined to succeed.
What do
you wish?
I asked.
That I’ll quit La Sapienza?
I
stared out into the formless ether in which we were lying,
experiencing Dominic’s hard barrack-room bed but not completely
inhabiting it.
Well, I’m not going to quit
.

Dominic had seen some of my thoughts too, but
he didn’t react as I might have anticipated.
I don’t want you
to quit
, he said. He was sincere, almost happy, at peace.
I want you to choose, to have a choice, not be forced into
anything
.

He had found a kind of hopefulness. I could
feel it, filling him up in the void, almost as if my taunting,
accusing words had caused it. I was stumped. But I could not stay
angry with him when he seemed so pleased with me. And I remembered
how he had made a promise, to leave me alone at La Sapienza, and
had kept his word until now, and that it was I, not he, who had
broken the promise. So I found his hand where it lay near me on the
bed, kissed it, and prepared to return to La Sapienza.

Good luck
, he whispered as I pushed
my mind into the threatening miasma of the mental ether. I whirled
away from him, back to my room at La Sapienza, and his last thought
followed me, penetrating my disembodied consciousness, as if he had
not dared say it until I was almost out of reach.
I love you,
Amalie
.

W
hat felt like
minutes later, I awoke to the tingling touch of my aide’s paw-like
hand, claw tips extended, lightly stroking my face.
Oh,
gods!
I was scheduled for the worst of the signal scope
shifts, the early morning one that began before the sunrise
ceremony, the one we all hated, stuck staring into another kind of
nothingness while the rest of La Sapienza slept an extra hour or
two, rose, bathed and ate breakfast.

I dragged myself out of bed, shivering with
fatigue and the predawn cold, my aide’s look of surprise reminding
me I was naked. My nightgown lay in the corner where I had thrown
it off in the frenzy of communion with Dominic, and my back felt
sore, as if I had indeed been pressed against the wall. I reached
my hand up between my shoulder blades, feeling for abrasions.
Wondering what had caused my strange behavior, my aide patted my
back also, claws sheathed.
Heat
, he decided.
She is in
heat
. He growled in sympathy and pushed me gently toward the
bathroom.

Last night’s perverse resolve to succeed in
joining the cell was daunting in the thin light of a winter
morning. But as I straggled into the signal station after a quick,
solitary breakfast, I told myself that if even Dominic expected me
to have sexual relations with Tomasz and Matilda, I would have to
try, would become used to it.

Alicia had had the graveyard shift, and
seeing her reminded me that there was one person here who didn’t
want me to be with Tomasz, who disliked the idea as much as I did.
In the past weeks, ever since Midwinter, I had often caught her
looking at me with what I guessed was anger or reproach. Her
crypta
was not as strong as ours in the cell; whatever
emotion she had been directing at me had been easy to block out. In
my embarrassment over Tomasz’s pursuit, I had not wanted to add her
feelings to my own unnecessary guilt, and had been glad I didn’t
have to.

Something about her bland, innocent face made
me rethink the situation. Maybe the standard way wasn’t the only
way. Perhaps, occasionally, people’s desires simply subsided on
their own. Suppose Tomasz could just get over this obsession with
me. When Alicia became pregnant they would leave La Sapienza, and
while Tomasz would eventually return, he might not find me so
appealing by then. As for Matilda, she was going to be married soon
also. All I had to do was hold them off for a while.

It was an open secret that Alicia was trying
to conceive, so I had no qualms in asking, as I sat down on the
bench she had just vacated, “Any good news yet?”

To my surprise she glowered at me. “If you
mean am I pregnant,” she said, “no, I am not.” As I continued to
look up into her face, my mouth agape, she added, “And if you think
that would make things better, you have a lot to learn about life
here.”

“Alicia,” I said, “please believe me, I have
no desire to come between you and Tomasz in any way. None of this
trouble is what I wanted—”

I reached my hand to her in an impulsive
gesture of friendship. She pushed it away, and a stabbing,
crypta
-induced pain, the physical manifestation of her
rage, ran up the nerve from my hand into my chest and neck. I
recoiled in shock.