Girl Takes The Oath (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 5) (7 page)

As strange as Aristotle’s notion of divinity seemed to her, Emily found the Plotinian idea of a sheltering horizon comforting, a sort of confirmation of her recurring feeling of the darkness lurking in her own heart.
The meaningfulness of things is not simply a matter of their intelligibility
, she mused. Other eyes watched her, and when she scanned the audience, she noticed no other midshipmen, no other uniforms. The attention of several young people, obviously students—uncombed hair, loose clothes, blue jeans and rumpled shirts—bent her way intermittently, though their interest hardly exceeded the most casual curiosity.

On the other hand, the whispers of the two Asian girls betrayed something steadier, deeper-rooted. It was hard not to let it distract her from the lecturer’s explanation of the tension between rationalism and mysticism in medieval theology. By the time he reached the modern era, and the German romantics, she could sense where his argument had to end up.

“ ‘For to the lost, she is holy, and to the dead, but herself stands firm, eternal, the freest spirit’,” he said, quoting from Hölderlin again. “But what sort of freedom is this? Surely not the freedom of modern political life, with its self-serving antitheses between constraint and individualism. The poet’s freedom speaks from the terror of spiritual isolation, and the distant call of a courage that may not have been seen for millennia.”

“Of course,” Emily thought. “Which means he has to call for some sort of return to the ancient gods, to Dionysus and Demeter. It’s easy to say, but what does it actually mean? How would one even live like that?”

Later, standing on the edge of the milling crowd in the lobby, alone by a large ficus tree spreading along the floor-to-ceiling windows that formed one wall of the building, Emily tipped her head to Ed Braswell and his partner, who lounged by the main entrance with studied non-chalance. He frowned and gave his head a subtle shake, as if signaling to discourage her from drawing attention to their presence. On the other side of the room, the two Asian girls caught her eye again, one timid, the other bold, both curious about her. When she smiled at them, they scurried over, one pulling the other by the hand.

After a moment of nervous giggles and ridiculous modesty, Emily decided to break the ice for them.

“Did you enjoy the lecture?”

“No,” the taller one replied, pulling her long, straight black hair over one shoulder in a bit of dramatic showiness. “It was too mystical for me.”

“I used to have hair like yours,” Emily said. “I miss it.”

“Did you have to cut it for the Navy?”

“I suppose I would have had to, but I’d already cut it before then,” she said, reflecting on the fraught circumstances of some of her haircuts. “I can guess from your accent that you’re not from around here.”

“No, you are right. I am from Nanjing.”

“If I may be permitted to inquire, how did you find your way to this obscure outpost of civilization?”

“It is not easy to get into university in China these days.”

“So I’ve heard,” Emily said. “But isn’t this place a peculiar choice? I mean, it’s so small, and so much about western things.”

“My father wants me to learn about the west,” the quieter girl said. “He says it might be useful for business.”

“My name is Diao Chan,” the taller girl said in a leading tone, nudging her friend with an elbow.

“Tenno Michiko,” Emily replied, extending a hand, though the gesture didn’t seem to make sense to either girl. Finally, the quiet one touched her hand lightly with very soft fingers.

“I’m Ma Ruochen. My family is in Shenzhen.” A shadow seemed to pass across her face as she said this, or so Emily thought. “Are you from around here?”

“I grew up in Virginia, a few hours drive south of here. It must be hard on you, being so far from home.”

“I miss my family.”

“I don’t,” Diao Chan said. “I like the adventure.”

“Are you upperclassmen here?” Emily asked.

“She is,” Diao Chan said. “It’s my first year.”

“I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you seem a bit old for a freshman.”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “I had to work for a couple of years before my family could put together enough money for college.”

Listening to Diao Chan, Emily wondered what she’d worked at. The air of confidence she exuded, together with her bearing, her posture and the strength visible in her hands and shoulders, all suggested military training. The more Emily looked at her, the more struck she was by the sheer physical beauty of the girl—the sort of beauty typical of people at the peak of physical training—her body lithe and athletic, a face framed in a soft oval by a mane of black hair, and a little bit of magic in her eyes.

Ruochen Ma, by contrast, had nothing of the soldier or the athlete about her. Softer and sweeter, with a fine nose and gentle eyes, she gave the impression of wounded innocence, as if the world oppressed her.

“You look like you’ve had some physical training,” Emily said.

“My father taught me
Qi Gong
,” Diao Chan said. “And I’ve been teaching it, too.”

“I’m not familiar with that style. Is it like
Tai Chi
?”

“Yes. They’re both about channeling vital spirit, but
Qi Gong
emphasizes more flowing movements.”

It sounded familiar to Emily, but she couldn’t help wondering how this girl could seem so restless inside, if she had really devoted herself to a study like that. Surely, it would have taught her to focus that energy better.

“I envy you, you know, being able to follow a career in the military,” Diao Chan added after a moment, then nudged her friend.

“I hope to see you again,” Ruochen Ma piped up, before Diao Chan pulled her away.

After a bell rang, the larger half of the crowd departed, filing past Ed Braswell and his partner by the main glass doors. Emily watched as Ruochen and Diao Chan left, and then, with a little smile tipped her head toward the Conversation Room, a sort of invitation to her DSS watchmen to join her in the Question Period. She found a seat on the edge of the main oval seating area, and felt the eyes of the students upon her.
Did midshipmen ever attend these things?
She didn’t feel unwelcome, though she was certainly an object of surprised curiosity.

The first few questions came from students, and Emily was impressed by the self-assurance with which they presented themselves. One young man, with a barrel chest and roman features asked about the role of philosophers in Hölderlin’s vision of spiritual life. “Wouldn’t they just be a distraction?” Emily thought, but the lecturer spent some time sketching out a philosophical method that seemed to have a poetic sensibility. “Plato may have announced a feud between poetry and philosophy,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we have to take him at his word.” He spoke at some length about Martin Heidegger and his notion of Being with a capital B, but it didn’t really register with her, seeming more like a word-game than a genuine insight.

When she eventually raised her hand, the room went silent in what seemed like an exaggerated deference to her, which she found a little annoying. Haven’t they ever seen anyone in a uniform before? Her irritation distracted her for a moment, but no one dared speak in the silence she left. “If Hölderlin thinks spiritual courage involves waiting and opening ourselves to the most ancient gods, does it matter which gods?” she asked. “I mean, does he think they’re all interchangeable?”

The lecturer took a moment to size her up as she stood off to one side of the room, ramrod straight, cover under one arm. “Hölderlin focuses mainly on Dionysus, as you probably noticed,” he began.

“Yes,” she interrupted. “And it isn’t clear to me how Dionysus can shelter our spiritual aspirations. He seems more like a god of forgetting than of memory.”

“That’s right, but perhaps forgetting is essential to remembering, not just as a precursor, but also as a structural component. Isn’t there a way in which memory operates in tension with forgetting?”

“You mean, I suppose, if something is present to the mind in memory, it must be present against the background of a forgetting.”

“Yes, exactly. And in those terms, Hölderlin might well think that Christian salvation shines so brightly in our imaginations because of a forgotten darkness, which it carries within itself in the form of the pagan rituals it has assimilated over the centuries.”

“That still leaves my question about whether the darkness is the same thing, something generic in all ancient cults. In Shinto, for example, Susanoo is the guardian of the night sky. But when Amaterasu refuses to come out of her cave, and plunges the world into a darkness beyond even his powers, he is forced to make peace with her. Shinto imagines a darkness behind the darkness of the night sky, deeper than it. Which one of those should I think of as the sheltering darkness? Or is that sort of talk even appropriate in such a context?”

After a bit of hemming and hawing, the lecturer admitted that he didn’t have a compelling insight to offer her. “My instinct is to say that the night sky shelters, because it’s the one with the stars. But the story of Susanoo and Amaterasu clearly points to a deeper darkness as the target of a different sort of courage. I suppose it’s not an accident that he coaxes his sister out of the cave with the gift of a sword.”

Other listeners intruded on the conversation, eventually pulling it in other directions that no longer interested Emily. At a suitable moment, she stood and tipped her head to the lecturer with a smile, and left the room. Outside, in the main lobby, she found Ed Braswell and his partner looking exceedingly bored. When they noticed her, they scraped themselves up off the vinyl-upholstered benches and snapped into full alert.

“Okay, boys,” she chirped at them. “Now it’s off to the Ram’s Head to meet my friends.”

“You mean those two Chinese girls you were talking with earlier?” Braswell asked, with just the hint of an insinuation in his voice.

“Nah. I’ve never seen them before this evening. I mean some mids from my company. You coming?”

“How long are we supposed to put up with this crap?” his partner growled, not quietly enough, under his breath.

“This is the duty, Neil. You knew that going in. Now suck it up.”

Just as they were about to leave, the door to the Conversation room creaked open again, and the barrel-chested young man stepped out. When he saw Emily, he hurried across the lobby, calling to her.

“Excuse me, Miss….”

The sight of her, flanked by two large men in dark suits gave him some pause, and his enthusiasm for whatever he had to say seemed to wane.

“Can you give us a minute, guys?” she said, and gestured to the glass door she meant them to wait on the other side of. Once they had complied, she turned to the young man. “I’m all ears.”

He shuffled his feet and looked very resolutely at the ceiling, perhaps seeking some misplaced courage up there. Finally, having found his voice again, he said, “I liked what you said in there. I’ve never seen you here before.”

She reached out her hand, a gesture he understood better than Diao Chan had. “I’m Michiko Tenno. And you are…?”

“Oh, sorry, Dave Bajo. It’s just that we don’t get a lot of midshipmen at lectures, and I’ve never seen one stay for the question period.”

“I guess it’s a topic that interests me, though I didn’t much care for the lecturer’s answer to my question. I mean, he just seemed to be playing with words.”

“I think I know what you mean. Listen, do you want to get a drink, or coffee or something?”

“I’m headed over to the Ram’s Head to meet some friends. You can come along, if you like.”

“You mean, like, other midshipmen?” he asked.

“Yeah, but don’t worry, you’ll be welcome as long as you like country music.”

“I think I can take it if you can. What about your bodyguards?”

“These two,” she said with a nod. “They’re not protecting me. I think they just want to see what sort of trouble I can get into.”

~~~~~~~

“You know this is bullshit, as much as I do, Ed,” Neil Padgett said. “I don’t know why you’re willing to take it from her.”

“And what exactly do you propose to do about it,” Braswell replied, watching the steering wheel vibrate sympathetically with the idling of the engine, and glancing periodically over the dashboard at Emily as she loitered, waiting to cross, at the corner of Calvert and Bladen. His partner’s complaint was of less interest to him than an intriguing speculation about her interest in the boy she just met in an apparently accidental encounter. The young man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, bashful and brave, just the way Braswell remembered feeling when he first met his wife almost two decades ago.
Did he have the nerve to touch her hand?
The light changed and they crossed over.

“Cuff her and bring her in,” Padgett said. “We’ll know what she knows soon enough.”

“What she knows?” Braswell snorted. “You’re lucky I wasn’t drinking coffee just then, or I might have sprayed it all over you. What on earth do you think she knows?”

“The Chinese must think she knows something.”

“So, you want to kidnap her off the street, just like that, on the basis of an uncorroborated allegation… not even an allegation, since it doesn’t exactly name her? But fine, let’s do that, let’s assume Kravitch gives us the go-ahead, don’t you remember what happened the other day?”