Recognition (8 page)

Dominic showed me to a bathroom, waited for
me to emerge, then led me to a straight chair and a small table in
a side room. “I will order dinner for you,” he said, “but I regret
that I may not share the meal.” It would be seen as undue influence
for him to spend time alone with me, and he would do nothing more
to prejudice the Assembly.

A tall, gruff-looking man entered the room.
“Ranulf,” Dominic greeted him with an unusually sweet smile, “Ms.
Herzog will take dinner alone, by order of ‘Graven Assembly.” The
man was almost as tall as his master, older and with a hard, craggy
face. His instinctive distaste at my short hair and Terran clothes
was as strong as Dominic’s would have been had it not been tempered
by communion. “Ranulf,” Dominic’s voice was mellifluous with
reproach, like honey in hot tea, “the lady, as you can perceive
from her eyes, is gifted, and she has the hunger of the
first
time
.” He draped a long arm across the man’s broad shoulders,
most unusual for a telepath. “Surely you would not wish to add to a
lady’s discomfort.”

The man’s face relaxed at Dominic’s strangely
intimate way of talking. Ranulf’s smile was in some ways more
terrifying than his stern disapproval, but I sensed his
unquestioning trust in his master’s judgment. He bowed curtly to me
as he departed at Dominic’s request, returning soon, followed by
serving women carrying trays of food and drink. I was presented
with an array of cold and hot dishes, a pitcher of water, and a pot
of steaming liquid. The covers were lifted to show me the contents,
then, in fulfillment of the terms Dominic had agreed to, I was left
completely alone. I lifted the lid of the pot and sniffed it. It
smelled like a cross between burned coffee and turpentine. I
decided to stick with the water.

There was far more here than one person could
eat—stews and casseroles, bread and deep-fried morsels, vegetables
and fruits—spicy and savory, or bland and comforting. It all
smelled delicious, and my first bites had the feel in the mouth of
real fat, not substitutes; I supposed the butter and cheese on the
side plates were genuine also. I ate hurriedly, not knowing how
much time I had, tasting some of everything and drinking the entire
pitcher of water.

Just as I decided I must be finished, unable
to fit one more bite in, Dominic came back, having sensed the
moment. “Take your time,” he assured me, seeing me still dithering
over the paper-thin slices of smoked meat. “It is poor hospitality
that forces a guest to rush through a meal.” He noted approvingly
the vast quantity I had ingested. “I see you do not share the usual
Terran antipathy to eating,” he said with admiration.

“I’m always hungry,” I admitted.

You burn it up
, he said,
deliberately touching my mind despite the prohibition.
You are
a bright flame of
crypta. His own fiery gift smoldered between
us until we backed away from the heat.

The guards escorted me again to the Sanctum
for the second part of the test. They were becoming familiar faces
to me now, old friends. I exchanged a careful nod with the gifted
one, not wanting to get him in more trouble. Dominic turned in
suspicion, staring icily from me to the nervous man, before
deciding he had nothing to worry about.

Ensconced once more in my place on the dais,
I prepared to face another ordeal. “Forgive me, young lady,”
Viceroy Zichmni said, “I must ask you some impertinent questions,
and you must answer them aloud.”

A clerk had set up a folding table and chair
near Lord Zichmni’s bench, had supplied himself with paper and ink,
and sat pen in hand, waiting to transcribe the forthcoming dialogue
by hand. With no holographic equipment, without even a personal
cube, it was the only way to record the proceedings. The clerk was
doing the job I had been assigned at yesterday’s meeting, I
thought, smiling at him. He stared through me, trained, I suppose,
to act as if he were invisible.

Only now did it occur to me that I had been
hearing and understanding Eclipsian all day, from the moment
Dominic arrived at my apartment. He had used a mix of languages
with me, as seemed best to express his meaning, but here in ‘Graven
Assembly the only language had been Eclipsian.

Had I been speaking Eclipsian?
I
must have been, I decided, or someone would have objected.
Surrounded by the unimpeded thoughts from the audience, with
Dominic’s constant low-level presence in my mind, and with the help
of the earlier communion, it seemed I could converse in the
language the others were speaking.

I nodded my readiness to Lord Zichmni.
Here it comes
, I thought,
the reason Dominic hadn’t
wanted me to be tested
. The communion and the physical testing
had been straightforward enough. It was these personal inquiries
that would offend my sensibilities, Dominic had warned.
Remember
, he had said,
we all go through it. Everyone
knows everyone else’s history
.

The first question was an anticlimax. “How
old are you?” The clerk’s pen made faint scratching noises and fell
silent.

“Thirty-five. And a half,” I added as I
sensed incredulity around me, heard muttering, a combination of
grumbling thoughts and low-voiced discussion. Understanding
penetrated slowly. Eclipsians are legally adults at sixteen,
considered middle-aged in their thirties. I had been taken to be
younger than my real age, not for any flattering assessment of my
appearance, but merely because I was being tested for my gift, a
ritual of adolescence. Hearing the truth, no matter that they may
already have seen it for themselves, people felt like the victims
of a calculated deception.

Lord Zichmni called for silence and continued
his questioning. “Are you now, or have you ever been married?” When
I answered negatively he followed up, “Betrothed?”

What a quaint notion
. “No,” I
answered, smiling but otherwise restraining myself from showing
what was almost disappointment at how overblown my fears had been.
My relief was premature.

The Viceroy cleared his throat. “Young
mistress,” he began, discomfort audible in his voice at the
incongruous honorific the language required, “I must ask you now to
answer honestly, as you have answered the other questions, no
matter if you find it offensive or distasteful.”

Again I nodded, seeing the question in his
mind before he spoke, hating to have to stand there waiting for the
words to emerge and be copied down by the clerk.

“Have you ever had carnal relations with a
man?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. My voice shook and I felt
myself blushing. There was no reason to be ashamed, yet it seemed
barbaric to be announcing this in front of a roomful of people.

Lord Zichmni nodded in satisfaction at my
answer. He stared doubtfully at my waistline, clearly defined in
the stretch fabric of my suit. “Well then,” he said, “how many
children do you have, born of your body?” That was exactly how he
phrased it: “Born of your body.” There was silence as everyone
awaited my answer to this question.

“None,” I answered, delighted to have reached
the end of this bizarre interrogation.

The audience erupted with noise at my answer.
“How many times?” a man shouted, and nobody shushed him. “How many
men?” another asked, and was backed up by a third. The almost
all-male Assembly seemed to have become a bloodthirsty mob out for
some kind of revenge, for a crime I didn’t understand or know I had
committed.

Lord Zichmni rose to his feet, shouting for
order. The clerk was not writing any of this down, as he was
restricted to recording only the Viceroy’s questions and my
responses. He stared straight ahead, laying his pen down beside the
paper.

Gradually the room quieted as Lord Zichmni
continued to stand. When he could be heard without straining, he
smiled grimly at me. “Well, young mistress,” he said, “the others
have taken the words out of my mouth, but I must ask you formally.
With how many men have you been intimate?”

I literally gaped at him, my jaw dropping
until I almost choked from the mouth-breathing dryness.

“Take your time,” he said, “but you must tell
us the truth, you know, if you wish to continue with this
test.”

I looked out over the heads of the audience
that seemed to hate me so. They were all a blur, tears of
humiliation obscuring my vision.
Why am I doing this?
I
wondered.
Why subject myself to this shit? Why don’t I just
turn around and leave?

Beloved
, Dominic’s voice was in my
mind.
It is not what you think. Speak the truth and get it over
with. No one thinks shame of you
.

I shut my mouth with a snap. “Four,” I
answered. A pathetic total for twenty years of adulthood. And that
was counting the one time with a stranger, after a drinking party
in my first year of college. “That’s all,” I added. “Four.” The
clerk wrote my answer exactly as I spoke it. I heard his pen stop
after the first “four,” then pick up again when I said, “That’s
all.”

But it was not all. Once again the room
exploded into uproar. “Four!” someone shouted. “That finishes it.”
“No hope,” another man agreed. “I’d take a chance even on two, but
four!” The women I could see shook their heads sadly, and from the
back, where the rest of the women sat behind their partition, there
came a wailing as if someone had died.

The Viceroy was not willing to give up. “We
will find out everything,” he assured his unhappy audience. “It may
be there are facts we do not yet know.” Despite the obvious
derision of the men, he persevered, waiting patiently for quiet.
“Young mistress.” His voice was sad and gentle. “Did you ever seek
treatment for your infertility? Is it perhaps something that could
be cured?” I read the thoughts behind the sympathetic words, the
gloomy certainty that if the renowned Terran treatments for
infertility had failed, I was indeed a hopeless case.

I stared blankly for a long couple of
minutes. “I used birth control,” I said, laughing with hysterical
relief at the misunderstanding. “Contraception.” I supplied the
Terran term, finding no Eclipsian equivalent in my limited
vocabulary. The clerk looked up, for the first time in his entire
career, I was sure, hearing a word he didn’t know and couldn’t
spell.

The ‘Graven were equally mystified.
Contra what? How do you ‘control’ birth?
Only the women
grasped the basic principle, but they were just as confused by the
larger implications.

Lord Zichmni’s face turned bright red, and
for a moment all eyes were on him as people worried he was going to
faint or have a stroke. He waved away the offers of help, but
accepted the glass of water that a guard brought. When he could
speak, Lord Zichmni was both stern and more at ease. “Young
mistress,” he said, “for the benefit of those like me, and for our
poor clerk here, please explain in simple language what this
‘contracept’ is, and how you ‘control’ birth.”

I turned to Dominic, hoping that he would get
me out of this, but he was waiting like the rest. I sensed a
certain curiosity in him, admiration and even a kind of envy. There
was no help to be had from him. My tongue stumbled over the words,
but eventually I got the idea across, the chemicals that prevent
ovulation, the freedom from the monthly periods, the opportunity to
enjoy sexual relationships with men without fear of pregnancy.

There was silence as I finished. Most people
had followed the straightforward science; as Dominic had told me,
the ‘Graven have studied the biology of reproduction out of
necessity. “But why?” a man shouted. A woman began to explain, but
the man cut her off. “Yes,” he said, “I understand if she had a
dozen already, but she has none. I’ve never heard of a woman not
wanting
any
children.”

It was Lord Zichmni who finally got to the
heart of it. “So it is this contraception that has made you
sterile?” he asked.

“Not sterile,” I answered. “It only works
while you use it. Once you stop using it you can try to conceive.”
Of course I had no idea if I was fertile to begin with, never
having wanted to be.

The Assembly’s disposition improved
radically. Here was something people could understand. “It’s as if
she’s a virgin,” they told each other. “She’s only had sex with
this potion to keep her womb empty.”

My uneasiness only increased along with the
rising elation of the Assembly as I heard the speculative thoughts
around me, all from men, sizing me up as a potential breeder.

Still a few years left
. One man put
forth a generous opinion.
My aunt gave birth at
forty-seven
. Another contributed a fact in my favor.
Yes,
but not her first
, a third argued.
No
, the nephew
answered.
Her tenth. Was it healthy? Gifted?
others wanted
to know.
Oh yes
, the nephew assured them.
Big and
strong, and handy with the prisms—you know my cousin
Arturo
—
she died birthing him
.

I spun around, glaring at the callous men and
their unspeakable thoughts. A group of them turned away, hastily
closing off their minds from me.

Dominic’s reassuring presence was with me.
They are pigs
, he said.
Barbarians. Don’t let them
frighten you. I will make sure they keep their distance
. He
stood up, his hand moving toward the weapon at his hip.

One of the men glanced over his shoulder, saw
Dominic and signaled the others. They fell into an uneasy silence,
although one was bold or careless enough to let a dangerous thought
escape him.
It’s all right for you
, he groused at Dominic,
with your adopted heir and your natural son
.