Choices (14 page)

Matilda knew of my consternation as soon as I
did. That could be the advantage, as well as the hardship, of
crypta
. She held me at arm’s length, studying my face,
looking into my mind. “Beautiful Amalie,” she said, as Tomasz had,
and drawing the same conclusion. “You are not yet ready.”

Like Tomasz, Matilda took my refusal well.
She whispered one word into my mind:
Soon
, before gliding
back to the center of the hall, where the few remaining people
stood in a clump. One of the older women, as she passed me on the
way upstairs, I to my bed, she to the signal scope, thought
resentfully,
What a waste, that I must work while she leaves
the feast alone
. In my embarrassment I didn’t notice at the
time, but when I lay in bed later I was convinced that Tomasz had
left, not with Alicia, but with Cassandra, and that Alicia and
Matilda had climbed the stairs to the bedrooms, arms hugging each
other close.

In the morning, or rather midday, when I
awoke, I was dreading the first sight of everyone I had offended.
It seemed I could not manage Eclipsian sexuality properly, first
doing something I should not, then not doing what was expected of
me. But my worries were unfair. No one holds a grudge over festival
night. Everything, as I had only dreamed of, was back to normal,
give or take a few hangovers. As junior staff member, I had to take
the first signal shift after the meal, and I sat staring into the
void, glad to have such an undemanding activity for the next three
hours in which to regain my equanimity.

When Paolo came in to relieve me, he stood
hand on hip, looked me up and down and said, “So that’s what
everyone was fighting over last night.” He laughed, but the words
had an edge just the same.

I answered defensively, “Not everyone, just
Tomasz and Matilda. And nobody was fighting.”

Paolo grinned. He looked tired, and I felt
suddenly ashamed, thinking of him here with no other man for
company. Then I saw Paolo’s sleepy memories. He had not been alone.
He had spent the night with Raquel, and it had been an energetic
and mutually satisfying session. This was not like Terra, I knew
finally and irrevocably. If many of the women here were “making do”
with other women for lack of men, so was Paolo. But nobody thought
of it that way. The sexual categories of Terra don’t apply here.
Few people were all one or the other. The idea was laughable,
preposterous. To them I seemed naive, childish in my rejection of
the warmth and love of festival night.

For now Paolo was sympathetic. Like Tomasz
and Matilda, he assumed I would adapt. “It’s all right, Amalie,” he
said. “Once you’re a full member of the cell, you’ll see. You’ll be
one of us.”

That was what I wanted, I told myself, to be
one of them. I had never been a real Terran, cut off as I was from
other people by my
crypta
. Here my gift could provide a
bond, a way for me to be accepted. I couldn’t wait to really
participate in the cell. Then I could become Amalie for the rest of
my life. Amelia would not exactly die, but she would be a memory,
to be pitied like a teenage self once adulthood is reached.

Soon
, I told myself, as Tomasz and
Matilda, each for their own purposes, had intimated, as Paolo and
Alicia had encouraged.
Soon I would belong
.

A
week or two after
Midwinter, I entered the cell’s workroom, expecting to observe as
always. Instead, I was greeted with smiles and mental embraces. It
was like walking into the middle of some kind of strange therapy
session, the kind of intervention that’s tried on Terra as a last
resort when medications fail. Everybody was holding hands, and when
I opened the door, the love hit me like a warm, soft wave and
sucked me under, into the center.

I emerged with my inner eyelids descending,
surrounded by the group, my mind vibrating from the gentle touch of
my coworkers. “Today it begins,” Matilda said, looking deep into my
eyes, her silver shields reflecting mine into infinity. “We know
how much you want to be part of the cell, and we’ll do everything
we can to help you.”

When the sensations ebbed I took the chance
to speak. “What have I done to deserve such a welcome?” It was as
if I was being comforted after enduring a terrible ordeal, but,
difficult as some of my lessons had been, they hadn’t been that
bad. I tried not to think of the other possibility, that I was
being soothed now, in preparation for something painful.

Everybody knew my thoughts. They were all
deliberately unshielded, projecting to me and exploring inside my
mind, gently, but with none of the usual polite shying away from
certain areas. Paolo, as empath, spoke for the group. “Amalie,” he
said, “it’s not about your training, but about you.”

My immediate reaction was to worry about
Midwinter night, that my rejection of Tomasz and Matilda was having
unexpected consequences. Before my imagining could become too
lurid, Paolo broke in. “That’s a symptom, not the cause.” He
meditated, waiting for the right words, but Cassandra was ahead of
him.

Cassandra thought directly to me, so that
with no conscious choice I was staring into her silvered eyes, into
her mind, as she was doing to me. She penetrated the outer layers
of my thoughts and burrowed deep into my memories of Terra, when I
was fourteen and fifteen, after my
crypta
had made normal
human friendship impossible for me. She cried silently in
compassion as she took on the burden of my past, recalling the
experiences as if they were her own.

Each person in the group took a turn, weeping
openly, men and women alike, and I felt the different personalities
as I was passed along from one to the next: Cassandra’s maternal
kindness gave way to Paolo’s empathy, so that I relived some of it
with him as a companion undergoing the same thing in a parallel
universe; Matilda’s fierce anger on my behalf, as if she wanted to
fight some of my Terran acquaintances from twenty years ago;
Tomasz’s protective feelings, trying to shield me from the worst of
it; and finally Raquel’s more detached sympathy, a practical desire
to teach me some skill of
crypta
that would allow me go
through it again with less suffering.

When all five had finished, I was lying on
the stone floor of the workroom, still in the center of this
strange cell of affection, the others sitting around me. I sat up
as if from a faint. I, too, had been crying, the pain of merely
remembering it all in such detail something I would never have
chosen; reliving it had been torment.

“No, Amalie,” Paolo said. “That’s the
problem. You keep it all to yourself. That’s why we decided to do
this, to help you open up.”

I looked around at everyone. They were
smiling through their tears. “We understand, now,” Matilda said.
“You are very strong to have endured that for so long, and still be
so—” She couldn’t think of a word that wasn’t more of an insult
than a compliment.

“So competent,” Raquel said. “Many telepaths
would have gone mad in such an environment.” Everyone nodded
solemnly in agreement.

I had thought some of this myself sometimes.
“But why?” I asked. “Why did I have to go through it again?” I was
still shaky from the experience, unclear what benefits were
supposed to come from dredging up all the miserable past. I looked
at each of them, unsure if it had been Matilda’s idea, as nucleus
of the cell, or Paolo’s as empath, or some sort of unanimous
telepathic decision of the group. “And what does it have to do with
my joining the cell?”

“That should be obvious,” Cassandra said. She
searched my mind, wondering why I didn’t see it.

Tomasz put a mental hand on mine, without
actually touching me. “Amalie,” he said, “you know what we do here,
don’t you?”

“You use your
crypta
, your combined
crypta
, to explore ways of handling nuclear energy
safely,” I said, thinking I must be missing something, that in
observing people’s physiology I had overlooked the key to the
actual work of the cell.

“That’s right,” Tomasz said, leading me like
a slow child. “You said it yourself. Our combined
crypta
.
And how do you think we combine our
crypta
?”

I thought, remembering how each session had
begun. “You form communion with each other.”

Paolo took over. “Yes, Amalie,” he said. “We
form communion. With each other. Do you think that’s something you
can do?”

“Of course!” I said. “I’ve formed communion
many times, with Dom—” I saw the trap, but not in time, a hot flush
spreading up from my chest and neck as I realized I was going to be
taken to task, finally and harshly, for my indiscretion with
Dominic.

“With Dominic Aranyi,” Cassandra finished for
me.

I stared back, defiant. “Yes,” I said. “With
Dominic Aranyi. You all know that. Why do you have to shame me by
bringing it up again?”

“It’s no shame,” Matilda said, impatient now.
“It’s over, forgiven. But it proves you can form communion. That’s
the essential skill in a cell—full communion, total openness. In a
cell, you must achieve that communion with all the members, not
just one person outside the group. But because of what you went
through on Terra, you’ve been closing yourself off from us without
being aware of it.”

I was startled into speechlessness. I had not
been aware. In fact, I had assumed that the purpose of learning to
shield one’s mind and thoughts had been to avoid too much
communion, to make it possible for so many telepaths to live
together in one place. “I thought I was supposed to,” I said in a
small voice.

Raquel sighed. “Yes, Amalie,” she said. “We
have to have some kind of control, give each other breathing room.
It’s simply good manners. But in a cell we are all intimate. When
we work together, it’s as if we’re naked, as if we inhabit each
other’s skin. There are no defenses. It’s the only way cells can
form.”

I thought of what Dominic had said, months
ago, in my Terran apartment:
Living without skin
. I had
known the thought did not originate with him. But I was confused.
“So which is it?” I asked. “Do I respect your privacy, and mine, or
do I go around with my ass hanging out all the time?” I was
purposely coarse, to make sure they understood my question, and so
that I would have a better chance of following the answer.

“It’s both,” Matilda said, laughing at the
words that sounded so peculiar in their Eclipsian translation.
“Most of the time we can be solitary, shielded individuals. But
while we work in the cell we must be naked, our defenses down, in
the kind of communion you have with Dominic Aranyi, only among all
six of us.”

“But I don’t feel that way about any of you,”
I said without thinking.

There was a shocked, deeply offended silence.
It was worse than the breakfast following my overheard night with
Dominic. After the love-fest they had given me, I had said the
worst possible thing.

I stood up. Whatever hope there had been that
a Terran could learn to think and behave like an Eclipsian, could
share their deepest mysteries of
crypta
and aspire to
their highest level of service, was shattered beyond repair. “I
will go back to the city,” I said, my voice quivering, “as soon as
I can arrange to travel. I am sorrier than you can know.”

“But that’s just it!” Paolo said. “We all
know.” He stood up and blocked my path to the door. “Don’t you see?
We knew you had a hard time on Terra, that living among the
ungifted had to leave scars, force you to build thick defenses.
That’s why we decided to help you open up now, to see if your
Terran life had spoiled your chances here or not.”

“And it didn’t,” Matilda said. “You opened up
completely, better than we had hoped. All you have to do now is
maintain that openness. Not constantly, but while you work with
us.”

“You don’t have to think of us as Dominic
Aranyi,” Raquel said.

“Apollo be thanked for that,” Tomasz
muttered.

“But being a member of a cell is like being
married,” Cassandra said.

“Like being married as ‘Graven,” Paolo said,
reminding me of my brooding thoughts on the subject. “At least
while the cell is functioning.”

“It’s like an arranged marriage,” Matilda
said, watching me closely, no smiles now. I remembered that she was
going into such a marriage soon. “You may not feel the passion
ahead of time that you would with a lover you chose, but you
develop it, by living and working together, starting from
friendship, taking it to intimacy, and then to love.”

I was nervous about where I saw this leading.
“Do you mean that I have to—” I stopped, ashamed at my thought,
afraid to articulate it.
Surely not
, I thought, and anyway
I couldn’t think of a way to say it that wouldn’t insult everybody.
And I’d already done that too many times in my stay at La
Sapienza.

“No, Amalie,” Raquel said. Like everyone, she
knew my thought that I had wished to hide. “You don’t ‘have to’
have sexual relations with us. You may wish to, eventually, with
one or two of us. She smiled ironically at Paolo, her lover of
Midwinter night. “In the cell, with our total communion, it’s more
likely that you will wish to. But you should never feel coercion.
The whole point of communion, as I’m sure you know, is that you
experience the other person’s emotions as your own. Forced
communion should be a contradiction in terms, although some of the
‘Graven have the ability to induce it.”

I was still feeling the effects of the
love-fest, a permeating, melting pleasure like the aftermath of
sexual release, but the words and the implications of what I had
learned were pricking me like needles. I understood intellectually
what I had been told, but I wasn’t sure I could do what was
expected of me. This job was much more complicated than learning to
answer reference questions or finding information on the
holonet.