Fervor (10 page)

“
That’s why the fact that you hold such contempt for them could get in the way,”
Sam said, touching her mind with a little more focus and intensity than he had before.

She eyed him warily. She didn’t like it when he talked like a teacher, especially considering how much younger he was than her, but Sam found that he couldn’t help but look for the perfect words to try to describe what he was thinking, even if it made him sound far older than he was.

“
If we want to get more out of them, then we have to pry it out of them, and you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. You say that you have ways of dealing with them because you are a girl? Well maybe you should use that to your advantage. We don’t have to get a lot out of them, just enough to point us in the right direction. Instead of pushing them away because you hold them at fault for this, use them instead. I can’t get anything out of Royce. He hates me, and I can’t even talk to him without someone’s help, but I’ll see what I can get out of Francis for you. That being said, I think you’ll have better luck than I would, if you can somehow mask your true intentions. Better yet, when it comes to Francis, we might want to get Sarah on board, too. Sometimes, she can still manage to see past his walls, and catch things that he doesn’t want the rest of us to know. That’s how come I know as much as I already do.”

“
Be nicer to Royce and Francis you mean? I don’t know if I can do that,”
she sighed.
“I’ve tried to, but I keep thinking about how they were a part of setting us up for this, and I get a bad taste in my mouth every time.”

Fiona laughed at this thought, realizing it wasn’t a very good description in her case, considering that she couldn’t taste anything anymore.

“
Okay, so it’s more like a bad smell, I guess, but you catch my drift. They make my skin crawl – especially Francis because he tries so hard to make me like him, and sometimes I almost do, when he gets really sad and quiet. I kind of feel sorry for him on those days.”

“
I would think he would be the most vulnerable when he gets like that, and now you have extra incentive,”
Sam pointed out.
“Maybe next time, you can act friendly towards him, show a little kindness, and then dig a little, but don’t be obvious about it. If you can do that with Sarah around and listening in through the connection, maybe we’ll get something really meaningful to work with.”

Fiona looked away, and was obviously going over the idea in her head, although Sam made no attempt to peer in past her walls and find out for sure.

“
You sure are smart,”
she said, after thinking things over for a couple of minutes. She gave him another smile.
“You know Sam, I really like you. I’m sorry I was sort of mean to you when we first met, but I wasn’t happy with the way things were, and I didn’t know what to expect. I don’t feel that way anymore. I’ll try what you said, and maybe you can put a good word in for me with Sarah. If the three
of us work together, we might even figure a way to get
around these Directives and even get ourselves off of Fervor.”

With that thought, she got to her feet, and started heading for the storehouse again.

Sam watched her go, walking slowly along the hover path through the trees, and gave her some space before following after her. He was not sure if he actually wanted to leave Fervor, but he did want answers to all of the questions that he had asked her, and he was going to figure out a way to find them. After all, finding things was in his nature.

Deeper

Sarah was happy to agree with Sam and Fiona’s plans, and the three spent the next few months trying to draw out more information from Royce and Francis. Royce stonewalled Fiona’s attempts to befriend him completely, making it clear that he did not trust her any more than he did any of the other Connected. In fact, he treated her approach with suspicion, and began avoiding her even more than he did everyone else.

Francis, on the other hand, appeared to be extremely grateful that Fiona was finally warming up to him. He gladly spoke with her at every opportunity, trying to encourage any positive feelings towards him. He would even break through his shell on the days when he was clearly feeling somewhat melancholic, and would open up to her when he was resistant to share with the others. She could not get anything out of him regarding the first or second exodus from Fervor, nor anything regarding his Teller training, but she did manage to drag a couple of interesting tidbits of information out of him, with Sarah’s help.

The first item was something that Sarah had picked up on when Fiona had mentioned in passing about some of her memories of the adults other than the minders or teachers. Francis had seemed startled when she had spoken of the scholars and technicians, and had thought anxiously,
How much does she know? I know that Keepers are supposed to remember, but there are some things that they aren’t supposed to be aware of in the first place. Does she know about the Trials? Does she know how this is going to work? Does she know what it is, exactly, that is expected of us? They’ll never get the results that they need from this if she suspects too much.

It was fairly obvious that Fiona’s comments had caught him completely off guard that day, enough that he had let his walls slip a little, and enough that he had given away much more than he had intended.

There were only two other less significant incidents where a single thought had escaped past his walls, and had been picked up by Sarah. The first time was when Francis had been contemplating the fact that he had not been able to test Fiona and Nathan properly as of yet, but that he had something in mind for Nathan. Sam was fairly certain that he knew what this meant, having been tested himself, and having played the pawn in Sarah’s test.

The second time was when Francis had been watching Fiona fuss over Nathan when he returned looking particularly ragged. Behind the Teller’s green-eyed stare, Sarah had definitely picked up an unpleasant feeling and a thankfulness that the stasis was firmly in place and working, or that there would be problems.

The next time Francis went away for a meeting of the Tellers, and both Nathan and Royce had left the house, Fiona and the two Littles had gathered in their kitchen to discuss their findings. Fiona was the first to speak.

“
What do you think he meant by Trials?”
she asked the two smaller children.

“
Well, he has already tested some of us,”
Sam offered.
“And all of this is new to us...the connection, and the gifts. Maybe the people who were here, the ones that left, set things up so that these ‘abilities’ or ‘talents’ would show themselves after they were gone.”

“
You don’t mean like some sort of experiment, do you? If they were going to do that wouldn’t they stick around to watch what was going on? The whole point to an experiment is to record observations, isn’t it? And how could they compare things to normal people, if everyone else went away. Why would they do this to children?”
Fiona demanded in frustration.

“
Compare things?”
Sarah piped up.
“That’s why you have a control, when you do an experiment. To compare the changes and the results to something that hasn’t been exposed to the same effects. You remember that from what the teachers showed us, right?”

Fiona looked a little embarrassed
. “I always found experimental magic boring, so I didn’t pay that much attention. I never realized how important it might be someday. They mostly talked about theory, and we rarely did anything hands on. That was what I found interesting.”

Sam was still lost in thought, considering what Fiona had said initially.

“
Controls, like Royce,”
he finally said, sharing his thoughts with the two girls.
“They aren’t Connected, and they have no talents. It would make sense. Maybe they thought that if we knew all of this, that it might skew their results. They had to let someone who was going to stay behind know what was going on, though, someone to police things in their stead, someone who could keep things on track if they started to slide. That’s why they have the Tellers, and I think
that’s why they let the Controls in on it, too.”

“
That’s really creepy,”
Fiona moaned.
“Francis is keeping tabs on everything that we do, and making sure that we stick to the plan...”

“
Making sure that we follow the Directives,”
Sam corrected
. “But apparently, that’s what they are for. I don’t think that he is necessarily keeping track of us though. There are days that he purposefully avoids us, and times when he is gone for stretches. It would more likely be someone who is here regularly. Maybe, someone who didn’t forget what they saw, so that information could be retrieved later.”

Fiona blinked at him, as it took a few moments for what he was suggesting to sink in.
“Me? I’m the creepy one? Oh that’s not fair. I had no idea...”

“
Well, you can congratulate yourself then,”
Sarah interrupted.
“As soon as they find out what exactly it is that we’ve figured out, they may consider our part in their little experiment a failure. Francis might be in the middle of warning them of our suspicions right now, if he still reports to them somehow
.”

She paused, looking somewhat puzzled
.

“
If he is still in touch with them, you would think that he would have given that away somehow, when all of this first started and his walls were fairly weak. I never got that feeling. In some ways, he was as disoriented as the rest of us. The connection had been small and fragile with just the Tellers. When the rest of us were added, many of us much stronger than the Tellers, it was as much a shock to them as it was to us. I got the feeling that in some ways it was worse for them. They had come to depend on a certain level of calm from the connection, and that had been yanked away. They had to get used to things all over again.”

“
So they aren’t using Francis that way? He’s just some sort of rules-monger, to make sure things don’t go off course. You don’t honestly think they would just leave us to sort ourselves out and hope that the Keepers’ memories would capture everything that they needed know. What if they missed something?”
Fiona protested.
“Or what if something went terribly wrong? We’re just children after all.”

She sat back, staring at Sam and Sarah with a disconcerted look.
“In some cases exceptionally smart children, but children nonetheless. How irresponsible would that be?”

“
Well, maybe there is more to it than that,”
Sam stated. He was enjoying this. Every time they seemed to get a step closer to some answers, he felt a satisfying wave of accomplishment wash over him.
“It looks like we have our talents for a reason. There are Fixers to make sure we can handle injuries or any problems with any of our equipment, and they saw to it that we had Finders, to address our needs. The Tellers are to enforce the Directives, and the Keepers are to record things. That leaves the Watchers...”

“
Of course,”
Sarah said quietly
. “The Watchers. And here I was thinking that Nathan was here to keep an eye out for our safety, to protect us, when all this time he has just been their eyes. That’s why he patrols a circuit. That’s why he never strays too far from home.”

“
No, no, no,”
Fiona objected, jumping to the older boy’s defence.
“He has no idea what’s going on either. I’m sure of it. Don’t blame him for any of this. If anything, he’s the least guilty of the lot of us. Francis and Royce were in on it from the get go, and we haven’t shared any of our findings with him. He is completely oblivious. He just follows that compulsion of his.”