Starfire Saga, page 7
The MIs provided information for many judgments, for decisions that needed to be made to keep the processes of life running smoothly, and kept records—the great demographic machine, with which I never interacted, was said to have data on every living being. And the MIs had been created by human beings, none of whom had been as talented as I was. Everything I set out to do—and I was careful what I chose to try—I managed to do. There seemed no reason to believe in any kind of plan grander than the ones I saw the MIs hatching in their strategic forecasting models. There was certainly no reason to conjecture about a being greater than myself. I always thought somehow that people needed to believe because they didn’t have talent. Mortel John never disabused me of it, but, then, I never spoke to him about it.
Once and only once—much, much later, just before graduation, in fact—I asked Coney, “Do you still play around with Epicyclism?”
He hesitated few a long while. “I am an Epicyclist. I’ve been one for years.”
“What do you get out of it?” I asked him then. To me, that was a key question, because I couldn’t think there was anything religion could provide that couldn’t also be attained in another way.
He thought about that even longer. “Two things, mostly, Ronnie. I get a sense of proportion, and I get something to hold on to—a direct line into someplace else.”
“Why do you need it?”
“Because I’m human.”
It was a strange catechism. I loved him, and so I didn’t question any further. It’s possible I never accepted my own humanity. I did not have a people. I didn’t know I needed one.
The four of us ate the dinner Variel had prepared and drank the ale, which was nutty and flavorful. Gundever was an expansive host, happy to have us there, as proud of Variel as she obviously was of him. The conversation among the three of them was of the elevation to cadre of a warrior named Palenti and the approaching womanhood of a girl named Shefta. Every so often either Variel or Gundever would turn and give me a little background so I could make more sense of the conversation.
I tried to listen as a distraction, but I grew more and more nervous as the evening wore on. The final tankard of ale shook in my hands, and I had to gather and steady it.
“Ronica, are you all right?” Jemeret asked.
We were still sitting across the remains of our meal, crosslegged on the tent floor. Gundever and Variel fell silent, looking at me. I looked back at each of them for a few moments. “You’ve been nicer to me than I ever expected,” I said. “But—” There was no way I could go on in front of their steady gazes, and I looked down into the remainder of the ale in my tankard.
“But what do we expect from you in return?” Jemeret asked. “Is that a fair guess?”
Without looking up, I nodded and corrected, “You. What do you expect?”
He answered at once. “You’ve entered my tent, and for the time being I expect you to live there. It is my hope—” he stressed that word—”that before Convalee begins you will join the Boru, become part of this tribe.”
I looked up at him. “Venacrona said you wanted me to bear your child,” I said flatly.
He didn’t smile, but there was a sense of amusement in him. “Priests think in destinations because they feel they already know all the paths,” he said. “The rest of us think in terms of process. I’d prefer to talk about this in our own tent, not in a tent where we are guests.” He got to his feet in a single, graceful movement and held out his right hand to me, gesturing with his left that Variel and Gundever should remain seated.
I hesitated a long time, for I recognized this as a test. At last, nodding a little, with the understanding that it would be to my advantage to be seen as cooperative as long as possible—my eventual escape would be easier—I put the tankard down, put my hand in his, and stood up. His touch was firm, warm, and almost deliberately impersonal. I was far too aware of it as he thanked Gundever and Variel for their hospitality and led me out of their tent into the circle of firelight from the central fire that all of these tents fronted on.
My interior trembling increased and I gathered and pushed it back. “I have to see the guards about their duties tonight,” Jemeret said. “You can come with me, if you like, or you can wait in the tent.” It was now quite dark, and the stars were out. I wanted a chance to study them, for this was the first time I’d been outside of roofs, trees, or canvas at night.
But there was an issue here that I wanted to confront directly. “If I say I’ll wait in the tent, how do you know I won’t ran away? It’s after sundown.”
“You can try it,” he said easily. “You tried it once before. I’d hate to see you get that tired again.” The smile broke through at last. “I’d hate to get that tired again myself.”
The truth about my flight from the stonehouse suddenly became clear. “You were the one who caught me! But you weren’t there.”
“Not in the stonehouse. I’d never go into a stonehouse!” His sudden vehemence surprised me. It was the first strong emotion I’d seen come through his iron control. “I was in the trees, watching the stonehouse. I saw you run across the clearing between the wall and the forest.”
“So I ran straight toward you,” I said.
He shook his head. “I was at the side of the stonehouse, not at the back. I wanted to be able to see both front and back gates. You ran ninety degrees from me.”
He was very fast—fast and silent. I pressed my lips together briefly and looked up at his once again impassive face. “I’ll wait in the tent.”
Jemeret almost smiled. I saw it at the corners of his mouth, and then he let go of my hand and walked toward the edges of the encampment. He didn’t look back to see if I was indeed going to his tent, and I guessed that he would not. When he was out of sight, I looked up. What a dearth of stars. I was used to a night sky thick with the suns of the galactic center. This was a fringe world, somewhere far from the center, far from the life I’d known, far from everyone I had ever met. The greatness of the distance, of the gap, was depressing.
Because this was a world with no way to bridge that distance—no ships, and certainly none capable of the superspeed rolls; no eftel, the indispensable real-time comlink between the worlds; and no concept of either. Perhaps that was the greatest distance, greater than the spaces between suns: the inconceivable chasm that created an unbridgeable dissonance between the remote past and the present. Had I been closer in, had the stars more comfortably surrounded this world—
I cut off that line of reasoning and went back into the tent of the Lord of the Boru, where I paced restlessly, clenching and unclenching my fists, until he came in. Then I fell quite still as he sealed the tent flap.
“Should I lie down now?” My voice came out harsh and ragged. I half expected him to be surprised by it, but he was not.
He went to the table and poured two goblets of a liquid I suspected was clogny. “Ronica, it would help if you believed you were beautiful.”
“Help which of us?” I asked.
He laughed, which was one of the last reactions I expected. “Here, take this,” he said, holding out a goblet. “Lie down if you’re tired. If you’re not, come over here and learn something.” He pointed at one of the scrolls on the table. Out of curiosity, and calming, I took the goblet and looked down at the scroll.
It was a map, drawn in a very old style, so that trees looked like trees and houses like houses. There was a segment of forest, a large plain below it, and two rivers, the small one running along the left-hand edge of the map from the forest, down past the plain, and the larger one running partly across the bottom of the map.
Jemeret tapped the house in the forest closest to the smaller river. “This is the stonehouse of the Lewannees,” he said, “and we are presently camped here.” He made a small arc with his finger where the forest met the plain, against a rough rendering of the cliffs I’d seen that morning. “This is the Plain of Convalee, from the Palier Cliffs to the Modria River.”
“Where’s Stronghome?” I asked. “Variel told me your permanent place was called Stronghome.”
“A long way northeast of here, in the mountains. Some other time I’ll show you that map.”
I sipped the clogny, and it was like fire going down. “It looks like you have a good strategic position here,” I said. “Do you think you’ll need it?”
“It’s possible. The fact that we came so early to Convalee won’t escape some of the neighboring tribes. I expect the Genda and the Ilto to be the most likely to come first. Sabaran of the Genda is an old friend of mine. Evesti of the Ilto is an old enemy.”
“Have they talent? I mean, power?” The clogny had stopped burning, and I drained the goblet.
“Some,” Jemeret said. “Not enough. Sabaran tries to make up for it with wit, but I forgive him for it. Evesti tries to make it up with brute force.” He tapped a place on the map to the left of the Boru encampment. “If Sabaran comes next, he’ll camp here and ask for conference. I’d like you to come with me when I meet him.” He refilled my goblet.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it does me no harm,” he said frankly, “to have a woman of power with me. It elevates me, and that which elevates me, elevates the Boru.”
I set the goblet down and moved away down the table to say what I wanted to say. “Why should I have an interest in elevating you?”
“You could do far worse without finding a way to do better,” he said evenly. “I want you to think about that.”
The clogny had made me a little dizzy and a little sleepy, but I gathered it away. “You need my help?”
“I’d like your help,” he corrected. “I will not be ungrateful for it. We can probably strike some mutually beneficial bargains.”
I decided to take a chance. “My price would be that you leave me alone,” I said in a rush. I sat down in the chair at the far end of the table.
“You share my tent and exist as my claim,” he said. “It should be very clear that I cannot leave you entirely alone. State your terms more specifically.” He waited, tapping the base of his goblet lightly against the edge of the map, his gray eyes disconcertingly fixed on my face, challenging me not to look away from him.
Each word was a burden and seemed to take an entire breath as I spoke it. “I—don’t—want—to—be—raped.” I panted a little when it was all out and hanging in the air between us.
His expression did not change at all, but he set his goblet aside and stood up. I must have jumped a little, and he saw it and didn’t move toward me. “Ronica,” he said deliberately, “I want you to listen to me and believe what I say. I am not lying to you, because I have no reason to lie to you. We both know that I’m stronger than you are. We proved that when I brought you back to the stonehouse.” He spaced his next words carefully, utterly serious. “Rape is a game for the weak. I am not an unkind man. Do not make the mistake of thinking that makes me a weak one. Is that clear?”
Slowly, I nodded. It was rational. Had he wanted to take me by force, he could have done so several times over. “I will help you,” I said. “As long as I believe you will not physically force me, I will help you.”
“Accepted,” he said. “I will not physically force you. Now undress, and let’s go to bed.”
Before I could control it, my entire body jerked as if I’d been lashed. He didn’t move, nor did his expression change. I realized it was either a test or a trap, and in any case, I really did have very little choice.
When he saw me infinitesimally relax, he stripped off his tunic and tossed it onto one of the trunks. His upper body was clear of scars or marks, and the hair on his chest was not heavy or matted, but he suddenly seemed bigger as he bent to fold down his boots. He glanced over at me as I sat, still frozen, in my chair.
“Undressing is a simple act,” he said. “I can help you with it if you like.”
I got rid of my boots and the talma and shift faster than I would have thought possible without acceleration, breathing in quick gasps and fighting to slow my lungs and diaphragm. He looked over at me, seeming not to notice my naked body, then took two steps around the table, reached up, and untied the silver cord in my hair, gently unbraiding it, his fingers never touching my skin. “Now go to bed,” he said.
I bolted for the rugs and drew them quickly up around me, almost afraid to look in his direction. There was a thud. He’d dropped the pile of furs on the other side of the curtain and now he was blowing out the stanchion lamps. I saw the fine lines of the muscles in his thighs and back before the tent was totally dark. I heard him roll himself into one of the furs. After a moment I widened the irises of my eyes to gather in every stray bit of light, and found him, a meter away, watching me.
“We have to learn to trust each other,” he said. “I want you to think that I’m on your side.”
“Thank you,” I said, half sarcastically, half seriously.
“I want you to think that I would rather you didn’t thank me for not touching you,” he said. “Quite the opposite. Are you virgin?”
Something in his eyes in the darkness compelled me to truth. “No.”
“I’ve said I won’t force you, and you’re not virgin,” he said thoughtfully. “Why are you still so terrified at the thought of my having you?” The question had been spoken so reasonably, seemed so natural, that I had no idea of its incredible importance.
I looked for an answer and ran directly into the wall that cut off part of my memory from me. “Something happened,” I said slowly, sitting up as if to better cope with the discovery. “Something happened that I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember?” He sat up to keep his face level with mine, but he did not move any nearer.
“Before I came to this world,” I said, feeling the truth of it as I spoke, “something happened, and it’s not in my mind at all. But my body remembers it.”
“Perhaps it will come back to you,” he said. He held his voice noncommittally detached, and his control was formidable. It always is.
Slowly I lay back down. “Perhaps,” I repeated.
We didn’t speak again that night, and eventually I tired of trying to find a way past the barrier to the part of my mind that was shut off from me, and willed myself to sleep. When I awoke in the morning, he was already gone, and I had somehow absorbed the idea that whatever had happened was the reason I had been sent here. The government had somehow taken away—destroyed, burnt out, eliminated—my Class A reflex and cast me out. There would be no going back to Mortel John, or Coney, or Kray, or Jasin Lebec. I would have to make a life here. And, as he wanted me to, I found myself thinking that there might be worse ways to make that life than as a Boru. Being me, however, it was also part of my nature to wonder if there might be better ways as well.
Kray was eighteen and Coney and I were still seventeen when we left Werd for Koldor to continue our studies. It was then that I met Jasin Lebec for the second time. The first time I had been just barely thirteen. Mortel John had taken the three of us to Orokell, to the seat of the government, home of the great Com councils, the bureaus that headed the huge bureaucracy, the central offices of the merchant fleet, the schools of standardization—linguistic, monetary, technological—and the Court of Planetary Justice.
Jasin Lebec was also visiting Orokell, and Mortel John immediately set up interviews for us. Jasin Lebec was the other Class A. He was probably in his nineties when I first met him, and dealing with the tricky negotiations for a trade alliance that would bring two more worlds into the Com. We sat in the spectators’ gallery and watched several hours of the negotiations. Coney and Kray asked Mortel John several questions based on the politics of the negotiation, but I only stared at Jasin Lebec. He was my kind. I was to be taught to do everything he could do, and the two of us were the only ones in the Com who could do it, the only ones who were alike. He fascinated me to the point where I stopped hearing anything being said and just watched him. He was an old man, but he did not seem to have begun shrinking back on himself the way some old men did. He seemed as big as Mortel John, and his shock of brown hair was just beginning to whiten, though his eyebrows had grizzled to gray-white. His eyes were dark and glistening, and the lines around them could not truly be regarded as wrinkles yet. He never spoke while I was watching, only listened and leaned on the actual negotiators.
Because I was wide open to receive with my Class A talent, I knew every time he used his. It was so subtle that I couldn’t call it stinging—my own use of the reflex was still very raw—but I could recognize and admire the delicacy with which he was working. He was exerting influence without appearing to do anything. I wanted to reach out along with him and feel the input from the minds and emotions he was touching, but I had sense enough to know that they would sense my presence, even if they were unaware of his. I knew that my own use of the sting could still create chaos; I wasn’t practiced enough for his level of control, though I vowed that I would be. I wanted to be the best ever, including him, and if that meant perfect control, then I would settle for no less.
Mortel John had to shake me to get between my gathering to the sting and Jasin Lebec’s projecting. When I realized he’d been trying to get my attention, I drew back to the gallery and fought my eyes into focus as I turned to him. He seemed a little surprised—I think it must have been at the unusual depth of my concentration—as he said, “Come on, Ronica. We have an appointment with him down on the ground floor.” I realized that Coney and Kray were already at the door of the gallery, looking back at me with puzzled expressions.
