The Blending 07 - Deceptions, page 38
“Certainly,” Corb answered in the most pleasant tone of voice Kail had ever heard from him. Kail and Ren and the others exchanged glances, all of them obviously worried that the man would revert to his original feelings and attitudes as soon as he was out of the corner, but it didn’t happen.
“Yes, that was exactly what I’d hoped it would be,” Corb said after opening his eyes and taking three steps away from the corner. “I know somehow that my original feelings will return at some time, but that’s nothing to worry about. When I do start to feel sour again, I’ll just come back to this corner.”
No one was able to hold back on their congratulations after that, and the words were spoken to the talents who had developed the corner first and then, not surprisingly, to Corb. It was Corb who had turned a personal problem into a solution for more people than himself, and Corb joined in everyone’s delight with no trace of his sourness left.
After that everyone had to try the corner, Effella being the one who was urged in first. The small, shy woman emerged glowing, and when it became Kail’s turn he understood completely why everyone was responding so well and so completely. The corner assured Kail that he was a perfectly decent and useful human being, and that everything he attempted would turn out well. The tiredness he’d been feeling was also soothed away, and if Kail had lain down to sleep he knew he would have been able to do so without any difficulty. But there was also a small but definite insistence that he leave the corner, otherwise he might have forgotten to walk out again …
“Good,” that same Spirit magic High said when Kail stepped out of the corner. “Apparently everyone is responding properly to the buried command not to stay in the corner indefinitely, including the gentleman with Spirit magic. Now the only things we don’t yet know is how long the effects last, and how long before the corner needs to be … refreshed.”
“Now, that’s a good point,” Ren said with raised brows, apparently understanding the comment more fully than Kail did. “The implanted … ‘auras’ probably will weaken over time, but how long a time they’ll remain effective is something we don’t yet know. We also don’t know if the use of a large number of people will weaken the auras more quickly than use by only one or two folk. It seems our experiments are not yet done.”
“We can get the rest of the people in this residence to try the corner,” Kail suggested, now understanding the problem. “At the same time, we might want to have a second corner ‘prepared’ elsewhere for the use of only one or two people. That arrangement would give us more answers than having only the one corner to use.”
Everyone considered that an excellent suggestion, so another corner in the meeting room was “prepared.” This time Kail sat down in a chair instead of joining the others in watching the process. He felt absolutely marvelous, and couldn’t wait until Asri got home. Things were going so well that this was probably the best time to ask her to be his wife. Not to mention the fact that Kail knew well enough that he might lose his nerve once the “treatment” in the corner wore off.
“So my best bet is to act as quickly as possible,” Kail murmured to himself happily. Life was really becoming worth the living, and would be even better once he and Asri were really together …
Twenty-eight
Kail felt tempted to wait for Asri at the front door to tell her how his day had gone, but then he realized that she would be tired and first had to feed and settle her child before she herself could sit down to eat. For that reason he waited for her at the table as usual, but when she took the chair beside his, he gave her a smile that was warmer than usual.
“Today was really incredible for me, and I’ll tell you all about it later,” Kail said, putting his hand on hers. “I just hope your own day was as good.”
“My day,” she echoed, oddly asking nothing about his first comment. “My day was … only to be expected, I suppose. Do you mind if we do talk later? I’m really very tired right now, and would rather just eat my food without any conversation.”
“Of course I don’t mind if we talk later rather than now,” Kail agreed at once, belatedly noticing how drawn Asri looked. “You just enjoy your meal and don’t worry about anything else.”
The smile Asri gave him was on the wan side, and that worried Kail. She was always so alive and cheerful and full of hope for the future … Right now she looked as though she expected the roof to fall in on them at any minute and didn’t expect to be able to avoid the fate. Kail very much wanted to ask her what was wrong, but he’d agreed to save all conversation until after dinner.
So Kail spent the time while he ate his meal watching Asri out of the corner of his eye. She took just as much food as she usually did, but she ate mechanically as though eating were a somewhat distasteful duty that she performed only because it was necessary. Everyone else at the table excitedly discussed what the group had accomplished today, but Asri never noticed. She had sunk down into her own thoughts, a place she seemed to be held despite the apparent unpleasantness of the location.
By the time the meal was over, Kail had completely changed his plans. He’d meant to take Asri on that walk they’d agreed to the night before, even though he hadn’t remembered to ask for a “ribbon” place to be established outside that linked to Asri’s room. Instead Kail wordlessly guided Asri to the meeting room, where members of the group were demonstrating how easy it was to speak to others still in the dining room. Asri continued to be too distracted to notice what was going on around her, and so she stepped into the “soothing” corner without a protest. Kail let her stand there for a moment, and then he touched her arm.
“Are you feeling any better now?” he asked in a soft and gentle voice. “If you need to stay in the corner a bit longer, that’s perfectly all right.”
“No, I want to come out now,” she answered with a bit of confusion as she stepped out to rejoin him. “What was that, and where did it come from? And while I’m asking, what are those people doing over there near that ribbon?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you about earlier,” Kail replied with something of a smile. “Our group was more than a little successful today, and now we have things in this house that everyone can use. What you just tried was what we decided to call a ‘comfort corner,’ but it doesn’t seem to have worked as well with you as it did with the rest of us.”
Kail had added that last observation because of the clear signs of disturbance that had returned to Asri’s expression. The comfort she’d gotten had turned out to be only momentary, and when she shook her head to dismiss Kail’s unspoken question about what was bothering her, Kail suddenly decided to broach a topic he hadn’t meant to cover until much later.
I ever expected them to,” he said, taking her hand as he groped for the best words possible. “For that reason I’ve reached the point that I’ve wanted to reach ever since the day we first met. If you’ll have me, I’d like to be your husband and Dereth’s father.”
Kail expected his proposal to give Asri’ some kind of pleasure, even if she just smiled and said she wasn’t ready to marry again. Instead Asri stared at him for a moment with tragedy in her gaze, and then she hurried out of the meeting room without looking back.
“Well, that answer’s clear enough,” Kail muttered to himself as he watched her go. Asri obviously felt horrified at the thought of marrying him, and had been so upset that she hadn’t even been able to voice a refusal. Kail was so disappointed and downright miserable that he couldn’t stand being in the same room with anyone else. The fact that the others were enjoying themselves was completely unbearable, so he quickly headed for the stairs and the solitude of his own bedchamber. He felt as though he were carved out of pain; knowing that the woman he loved detested him was enough to bring him thoughts of ending it all.
Closing the door to his bedchamber severed Kail’s connection to the rest of the world, but it did nothing to calm the turmoil of his thoughts. Asri couldn’t possibly love him, otherwise she would never have acted the way she had. And he’d been foolish enough to think that she might want to share his bed when she agreed to share his life. What a joke that had turned out to be.
Kail wanted to laugh bitterly at dreams that were now dead, but laughter of any sort was beyond him. Instead, he walked slowly to the side of the bed that would have been Asri’s, and sank down on the bed to put his hand to the quilt. To have had her there, to have had her love, would have been his life’s greatest gift. Now, though …
For a long moment Kail sat unmoving and almost unliving, but then he became aware of an odd sound. At first he couldn’t identify it, but then he realized that it was muffled crying. Where crying could be coming from he couldn’t imagine, but just as he remembered the connection he’d had established with Asri’s bedchamber, he also heard her voice.
“Oh, Dereth, I wish you were old enough for me to really talk to you,” Asri said in a whisper, the soft words coming out ragged in between sobs. “Kail asked me to marry him, the very thing I’ve been dreaming about ever since I met him, but all I could do was run away to cry. After what they told me today, you and I will have to leave. But Kail is happy here and finally as successful as he deserves to be, so how can I ask him to go with us? I can’t ask him, and now we’ll never see him again.”
The sobbing finally overwhelmed Asri’s words, but all Kail could do was sit very still from the aftereffects of shock. Asri did love him as much as he loved her, but for some reason she felt she couldn’t say so. And she meant to leave, all alone except for Dereth …
For a very long moment Kail was filled with nothing but conflict, all of it centering on the very thought of leaving. Kail’s entire life had been spent searching for acceptance and success on his own terms, and he’d finally found both precious things in Astinda. They’d given him the chance to prove his capability, and soon would offer him full acceptance. How could he possibly walk away from that?
An odd numbness had taken hold of Kail, and for a short time his mind was held in cold motionlessness. Then it slowly came through to him that he hadn’t been asked to leave what he’d earned, in fact the exact opposite had been done. Asri loved him so much that she was prepared to leave him with what she knew he needed so desperately, but it suddenly came to Kail that she was wrong.
That was what I used to need, Kail thought, knowing it was the truth. I had to prove myself to myself, but now that I’ve done it I don’t have anything left to prove. Except, possibly, that Asri’s love isn’t being wasted on a self-centered fool…
Relief flooded Kail as he got to his feet and headed for the door to the hall. Now that he’d shown himself that he could be part of a successful effort, he knew he could find that success again anywhere. What he would not be able to find was a woman who loved him as much as he loved her, a woman who might even love him more than he loved her. It was now up to him to show that his own love was just as great, otherwise he didn’t deserve to have her.
Kail almost knocked on Asri’s door, but remembering that Dereth slept inside kept him from doing it. And Asri might even ignore a knock, especially if she guessed that it was Kail at the door. With that in mind Kail simply turned the knob and walked in as quietly as possible, and Asri was still too deeply absorbed in crying to notice.
“I’m going with you, Asri,” Kail said softly once the door was closed again, the only thing he could think of to say. “Wherever it is you feel you have to go, I’m going with you.”
Asri’s head had jerked up in shock at the first of Kail’s words, and it took a moment for her to understand what he’d said. After the moment her face paled, and she hurried over to hold him as he held her.
“Kail, you can’t do that,” she objected, her voice still ragged from the crying she’d done. “You don’t understand what’s involved, and you can’t leave what your talent and ability have earned you.”
“Asri, what I’ve earned is the knowledge that my talent and ability will work anywhere,” Kail disagreed gently as he delighted in the feel of her in his arms. “What I can’t and won’t give up is the woman I love, even if I don’t know what’s troubling her. Do you think you can tell me about it now?”
“I was about to refuse, but refusing isn’t very bright,” Asri said with a sigh, looking away from him even as she stepped out of his arms. “You deserve to know the whole story, and then you’ll have the chance to change your mind. If you do, I certainly won’t blame you … Come and sit down.”
Asri led the way to the two small chairs standing on the opposite side of the room from where Dereth lay sleeping. Kail felt disturbed over what Asri had said, but it didn’t seem to be the time to argue with her. Once he heard what she had to tell him, he would then know what to argue against.
“I … don’t really know where to start, so I suppose I might as well work backward,” Asri said, her words now coming out with a great deal of reluctance as she continued to avoid Kail’s gaze. “My job here has been in a child-care residence, a place where people leave their young children during the workday when there’s no one else to look after the children. There are so many jobs to be done and so few people to do them that women are encouraged to leave their homes if they have even the smallest amount of ability …”
“Yes, I know about the shortage of workers,” Kail put in, just to be encouraging and supportive. His brief statement seemed to do the job, as Asri took a breath and continued.
“I really loved working with the children, especially since it was possible to keep Dereth near me at all times,” Asri said. “The other people in the residence were really nice—but today a small group of strangers came through the house. We all thought that they were there to see if we were doing a good job, but when I was taken aside by one of the women I found out differently.
“The woman told me that they were there to do an unofficial assessment of what talents the children have. The official assessment would come when the children reached five years of age, but a preliminary examination would tell the Astindan leaders what sort of diversity and strength would eventually be available. That was why the woman wanted to speak to me privately, to give me the bad news before I heard it from an official source when Dereth got to be five.”
Asri’s voice had been getting lower and lower, until Kail could barely hear her. He felt a chill when she mentioned bad news, and couldn’t bring himself to interrupt with a question. He had a feeling he knew what she would say and couldn’t bear to rush the time when he would have to hear the truth.
“The woman told me that Dereth … showed no signs of talent whatsoever,” Asri went on in the same whisper, confirming Kail’s worst fears. “I’d had the feeling that I ought to stay home from work today, and I wish I’d listened to that feeling. The woman also told me that I would have to … give up Dereth at the age of five so that he could be trained for some menial job where he would come in the least amount of contact with normal people, so I might want to think about giving him up now, when it would be easier on both of us.”
“Easier!” Kail echoed with a sound of scorn, no longer able to stay silent. “How easy would it be for her to give up her own child? But maybe for her it would be easy, so I withdraw the question. I hope you told her what to do with her advice.”
“I … couldn’t quite do that,” Asri said, still avoiding Kail’s gaze even after she knew how he felt. “You see, she was angry with me and had a right to be angry. As she put it, I should have known that my own complete lack of talent could well be inherited by any children I had, and so I should have remained childless. It didn’t matter that my former peer group dismissed my lacks as unimportant in light of my social position. I should have known better, and now I had no right to complain.”
Asri’s comment was made in so even a voice that Kail should have missed what she said, but his immediate inner turmoil proved that he hadn’t missed it. Asri wasn’t a Low talent, she was a null. That had to be why she’d reacted so strongly when Kail had tried to talk her into joining his group. She didn’t have the ability to join his group, but the shock of that realization came and went surprisingly fast. With or without talent, Asri was still the same woman he’d fallen in love with.
“So instead of complaining, you’ve decided to take Dereth and leave,” Kail said when it became clear that Asri had nothing further to add. “Since I agree completely, where do you think we ought to go?”
“Somehow I knew you were going to say that, but don’t you understand that you mustn’t?” Asri all but begged as she finally looked up at him again. “If you leave with me you’ll be throwing away everything you’ve always wanted, and eventually you could come to hate me for making it necessary that you do that. I’d rather leave you behind than see you come to hate me.”
“Since I’ll never come to hate you, I don’t see the problem,” Kail returned with all the lighthearted relief he actually did feel. “Being part of a successful group and having Astindan citizenship means nothing to me if I can’t share those things with you, so leaving them behind is no real hardship. Now that we have that settled, tell me where you’d like to go.”
“I … really have no idea,” Asri answered, her gaze now filled with all the love Kail himself felt for her. “Where do you think we ought to go?”
“At the moment I have no idea either, but I fully expect that to change,” Kail assured her. “Since we don’t have to leave this very instant, I’m going to take a day or so to think about the matter. But I don’t expect to take very long with my thinking, so please be ready to leave at any time. And make sure you don’t let anyone know what we mean to do. We may not be working in the fields any longer, but we still haven’t earned the citizenship we were promised.”
“Which means that technically we’re still slaves,” Asri agreed with a nod, understanding the point at once. “I’ll have to pretend that I’m still depressed when I go to my job, which shouldn’t be too hard. I was really looking forward to making a new life here, but now …”
Kail nodded to show that he understood, but instead of saying anything else he stood and drew Asri up from her chair by one hand. Once Kail had his arms around her Asri was the one who initiated the kiss, and they shared each other’s essences for a wonderfully timeless time. Kail had wanted to lie with Asri, but something told him it was the wrong time for that. They had the rest of their lives to share their bodies, and once they were on their way to the new lives waiting for them, Kail knew Asri would feel a good deal better about the matter.
“Yes, that was exactly what I’d hoped it would be,” Corb said after opening his eyes and taking three steps away from the corner. “I know somehow that my original feelings will return at some time, but that’s nothing to worry about. When I do start to feel sour again, I’ll just come back to this corner.”
No one was able to hold back on their congratulations after that, and the words were spoken to the talents who had developed the corner first and then, not surprisingly, to Corb. It was Corb who had turned a personal problem into a solution for more people than himself, and Corb joined in everyone’s delight with no trace of his sourness left.
After that everyone had to try the corner, Effella being the one who was urged in first. The small, shy woman emerged glowing, and when it became Kail’s turn he understood completely why everyone was responding so well and so completely. The corner assured Kail that he was a perfectly decent and useful human being, and that everything he attempted would turn out well. The tiredness he’d been feeling was also soothed away, and if Kail had lain down to sleep he knew he would have been able to do so without any difficulty. But there was also a small but definite insistence that he leave the corner, otherwise he might have forgotten to walk out again …
“Good,” that same Spirit magic High said when Kail stepped out of the corner. “Apparently everyone is responding properly to the buried command not to stay in the corner indefinitely, including the gentleman with Spirit magic. Now the only things we don’t yet know is how long the effects last, and how long before the corner needs to be … refreshed.”
“Now, that’s a good point,” Ren said with raised brows, apparently understanding the comment more fully than Kail did. “The implanted … ‘auras’ probably will weaken over time, but how long a time they’ll remain effective is something we don’t yet know. We also don’t know if the use of a large number of people will weaken the auras more quickly than use by only one or two folk. It seems our experiments are not yet done.”
“We can get the rest of the people in this residence to try the corner,” Kail suggested, now understanding the problem. “At the same time, we might want to have a second corner ‘prepared’ elsewhere for the use of only one or two people. That arrangement would give us more answers than having only the one corner to use.”
Everyone considered that an excellent suggestion, so another corner in the meeting room was “prepared.” This time Kail sat down in a chair instead of joining the others in watching the process. He felt absolutely marvelous, and couldn’t wait until Asri got home. Things were going so well that this was probably the best time to ask her to be his wife. Not to mention the fact that Kail knew well enough that he might lose his nerve once the “treatment” in the corner wore off.
“So my best bet is to act as quickly as possible,” Kail murmured to himself happily. Life was really becoming worth the living, and would be even better once he and Asri were really together …
Twenty-eight
Kail felt tempted to wait for Asri at the front door to tell her how his day had gone, but then he realized that she would be tired and first had to feed and settle her child before she herself could sit down to eat. For that reason he waited for her at the table as usual, but when she took the chair beside his, he gave her a smile that was warmer than usual.
“Today was really incredible for me, and I’ll tell you all about it later,” Kail said, putting his hand on hers. “I just hope your own day was as good.”
“My day,” she echoed, oddly asking nothing about his first comment. “My day was … only to be expected, I suppose. Do you mind if we do talk later? I’m really very tired right now, and would rather just eat my food without any conversation.”
“Of course I don’t mind if we talk later rather than now,” Kail agreed at once, belatedly noticing how drawn Asri looked. “You just enjoy your meal and don’t worry about anything else.”
The smile Asri gave him was on the wan side, and that worried Kail. She was always so alive and cheerful and full of hope for the future … Right now she looked as though she expected the roof to fall in on them at any minute and didn’t expect to be able to avoid the fate. Kail very much wanted to ask her what was wrong, but he’d agreed to save all conversation until after dinner.
So Kail spent the time while he ate his meal watching Asri out of the corner of his eye. She took just as much food as she usually did, but she ate mechanically as though eating were a somewhat distasteful duty that she performed only because it was necessary. Everyone else at the table excitedly discussed what the group had accomplished today, but Asri never noticed. She had sunk down into her own thoughts, a place she seemed to be held despite the apparent unpleasantness of the location.
By the time the meal was over, Kail had completely changed his plans. He’d meant to take Asri on that walk they’d agreed to the night before, even though he hadn’t remembered to ask for a “ribbon” place to be established outside that linked to Asri’s room. Instead Kail wordlessly guided Asri to the meeting room, where members of the group were demonstrating how easy it was to speak to others still in the dining room. Asri continued to be too distracted to notice what was going on around her, and so she stepped into the “soothing” corner without a protest. Kail let her stand there for a moment, and then he touched her arm.
“Are you feeling any better now?” he asked in a soft and gentle voice. “If you need to stay in the corner a bit longer, that’s perfectly all right.”
“No, I want to come out now,” she answered with a bit of confusion as she stepped out to rejoin him. “What was that, and where did it come from? And while I’m asking, what are those people doing over there near that ribbon?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you about earlier,” Kail replied with something of a smile. “Our group was more than a little successful today, and now we have things in this house that everyone can use. What you just tried was what we decided to call a ‘comfort corner,’ but it doesn’t seem to have worked as well with you as it did with the rest of us.”
Kail had added that last observation because of the clear signs of disturbance that had returned to Asri’s expression. The comfort she’d gotten had turned out to be only momentary, and when she shook her head to dismiss Kail’s unspoken question about what was bothering her, Kail suddenly decided to broach a topic he hadn’t meant to cover until much later.
I ever expected them to,” he said, taking her hand as he groped for the best words possible. “For that reason I’ve reached the point that I’ve wanted to reach ever since the day we first met. If you’ll have me, I’d like to be your husband and Dereth’s father.”
Kail expected his proposal to give Asri’ some kind of pleasure, even if she just smiled and said she wasn’t ready to marry again. Instead Asri stared at him for a moment with tragedy in her gaze, and then she hurried out of the meeting room without looking back.
“Well, that answer’s clear enough,” Kail muttered to himself as he watched her go. Asri obviously felt horrified at the thought of marrying him, and had been so upset that she hadn’t even been able to voice a refusal. Kail was so disappointed and downright miserable that he couldn’t stand being in the same room with anyone else. The fact that the others were enjoying themselves was completely unbearable, so he quickly headed for the stairs and the solitude of his own bedchamber. He felt as though he were carved out of pain; knowing that the woman he loved detested him was enough to bring him thoughts of ending it all.
Closing the door to his bedchamber severed Kail’s connection to the rest of the world, but it did nothing to calm the turmoil of his thoughts. Asri couldn’t possibly love him, otherwise she would never have acted the way she had. And he’d been foolish enough to think that she might want to share his bed when she agreed to share his life. What a joke that had turned out to be.
Kail wanted to laugh bitterly at dreams that were now dead, but laughter of any sort was beyond him. Instead, he walked slowly to the side of the bed that would have been Asri’s, and sank down on the bed to put his hand to the quilt. To have had her there, to have had her love, would have been his life’s greatest gift. Now, though …
For a long moment Kail sat unmoving and almost unliving, but then he became aware of an odd sound. At first he couldn’t identify it, but then he realized that it was muffled crying. Where crying could be coming from he couldn’t imagine, but just as he remembered the connection he’d had established with Asri’s bedchamber, he also heard her voice.
“Oh, Dereth, I wish you were old enough for me to really talk to you,” Asri said in a whisper, the soft words coming out ragged in between sobs. “Kail asked me to marry him, the very thing I’ve been dreaming about ever since I met him, but all I could do was run away to cry. After what they told me today, you and I will have to leave. But Kail is happy here and finally as successful as he deserves to be, so how can I ask him to go with us? I can’t ask him, and now we’ll never see him again.”
The sobbing finally overwhelmed Asri’s words, but all Kail could do was sit very still from the aftereffects of shock. Asri did love him as much as he loved her, but for some reason she felt she couldn’t say so. And she meant to leave, all alone except for Dereth …
For a very long moment Kail was filled with nothing but conflict, all of it centering on the very thought of leaving. Kail’s entire life had been spent searching for acceptance and success on his own terms, and he’d finally found both precious things in Astinda. They’d given him the chance to prove his capability, and soon would offer him full acceptance. How could he possibly walk away from that?
An odd numbness had taken hold of Kail, and for a short time his mind was held in cold motionlessness. Then it slowly came through to him that he hadn’t been asked to leave what he’d earned, in fact the exact opposite had been done. Asri loved him so much that she was prepared to leave him with what she knew he needed so desperately, but it suddenly came to Kail that she was wrong.
That was what I used to need, Kail thought, knowing it was the truth. I had to prove myself to myself, but now that I’ve done it I don’t have anything left to prove. Except, possibly, that Asri’s love isn’t being wasted on a self-centered fool…
Relief flooded Kail as he got to his feet and headed for the door to the hall. Now that he’d shown himself that he could be part of a successful effort, he knew he could find that success again anywhere. What he would not be able to find was a woman who loved him as much as he loved her, a woman who might even love him more than he loved her. It was now up to him to show that his own love was just as great, otherwise he didn’t deserve to have her.
Kail almost knocked on Asri’s door, but remembering that Dereth slept inside kept him from doing it. And Asri might even ignore a knock, especially if she guessed that it was Kail at the door. With that in mind Kail simply turned the knob and walked in as quietly as possible, and Asri was still too deeply absorbed in crying to notice.
“I’m going with you, Asri,” Kail said softly once the door was closed again, the only thing he could think of to say. “Wherever it is you feel you have to go, I’m going with you.”
Asri’s head had jerked up in shock at the first of Kail’s words, and it took a moment for her to understand what he’d said. After the moment her face paled, and she hurried over to hold him as he held her.
“Kail, you can’t do that,” she objected, her voice still ragged from the crying she’d done. “You don’t understand what’s involved, and you can’t leave what your talent and ability have earned you.”
“Asri, what I’ve earned is the knowledge that my talent and ability will work anywhere,” Kail disagreed gently as he delighted in the feel of her in his arms. “What I can’t and won’t give up is the woman I love, even if I don’t know what’s troubling her. Do you think you can tell me about it now?”
“I was about to refuse, but refusing isn’t very bright,” Asri said with a sigh, looking away from him even as she stepped out of his arms. “You deserve to know the whole story, and then you’ll have the chance to change your mind. If you do, I certainly won’t blame you … Come and sit down.”
Asri led the way to the two small chairs standing on the opposite side of the room from where Dereth lay sleeping. Kail felt disturbed over what Asri had said, but it didn’t seem to be the time to argue with her. Once he heard what she had to tell him, he would then know what to argue against.
“I … don’t really know where to start, so I suppose I might as well work backward,” Asri said, her words now coming out with a great deal of reluctance as she continued to avoid Kail’s gaze. “My job here has been in a child-care residence, a place where people leave their young children during the workday when there’s no one else to look after the children. There are so many jobs to be done and so few people to do them that women are encouraged to leave their homes if they have even the smallest amount of ability …”
“Yes, I know about the shortage of workers,” Kail put in, just to be encouraging and supportive. His brief statement seemed to do the job, as Asri took a breath and continued.
“I really loved working with the children, especially since it was possible to keep Dereth near me at all times,” Asri said. “The other people in the residence were really nice—but today a small group of strangers came through the house. We all thought that they were there to see if we were doing a good job, but when I was taken aside by one of the women I found out differently.
“The woman told me that they were there to do an unofficial assessment of what talents the children have. The official assessment would come when the children reached five years of age, but a preliminary examination would tell the Astindan leaders what sort of diversity and strength would eventually be available. That was why the woman wanted to speak to me privately, to give me the bad news before I heard it from an official source when Dereth got to be five.”
Asri’s voice had been getting lower and lower, until Kail could barely hear her. He felt a chill when she mentioned bad news, and couldn’t bring himself to interrupt with a question. He had a feeling he knew what she would say and couldn’t bear to rush the time when he would have to hear the truth.
“The woman told me that Dereth … showed no signs of talent whatsoever,” Asri went on in the same whisper, confirming Kail’s worst fears. “I’d had the feeling that I ought to stay home from work today, and I wish I’d listened to that feeling. The woman also told me that I would have to … give up Dereth at the age of five so that he could be trained for some menial job where he would come in the least amount of contact with normal people, so I might want to think about giving him up now, when it would be easier on both of us.”
“Easier!” Kail echoed with a sound of scorn, no longer able to stay silent. “How easy would it be for her to give up her own child? But maybe for her it would be easy, so I withdraw the question. I hope you told her what to do with her advice.”
“I … couldn’t quite do that,” Asri said, still avoiding Kail’s gaze even after she knew how he felt. “You see, she was angry with me and had a right to be angry. As she put it, I should have known that my own complete lack of talent could well be inherited by any children I had, and so I should have remained childless. It didn’t matter that my former peer group dismissed my lacks as unimportant in light of my social position. I should have known better, and now I had no right to complain.”
Asri’s comment was made in so even a voice that Kail should have missed what she said, but his immediate inner turmoil proved that he hadn’t missed it. Asri wasn’t a Low talent, she was a null. That had to be why she’d reacted so strongly when Kail had tried to talk her into joining his group. She didn’t have the ability to join his group, but the shock of that realization came and went surprisingly fast. With or without talent, Asri was still the same woman he’d fallen in love with.
“So instead of complaining, you’ve decided to take Dereth and leave,” Kail said when it became clear that Asri had nothing further to add. “Since I agree completely, where do you think we ought to go?”
“Somehow I knew you were going to say that, but don’t you understand that you mustn’t?” Asri all but begged as she finally looked up at him again. “If you leave with me you’ll be throwing away everything you’ve always wanted, and eventually you could come to hate me for making it necessary that you do that. I’d rather leave you behind than see you come to hate me.”
“Since I’ll never come to hate you, I don’t see the problem,” Kail returned with all the lighthearted relief he actually did feel. “Being part of a successful group and having Astindan citizenship means nothing to me if I can’t share those things with you, so leaving them behind is no real hardship. Now that we have that settled, tell me where you’d like to go.”
“I … really have no idea,” Asri answered, her gaze now filled with all the love Kail himself felt for her. “Where do you think we ought to go?”
“At the moment I have no idea either, but I fully expect that to change,” Kail assured her. “Since we don’t have to leave this very instant, I’m going to take a day or so to think about the matter. But I don’t expect to take very long with my thinking, so please be ready to leave at any time. And make sure you don’t let anyone know what we mean to do. We may not be working in the fields any longer, but we still haven’t earned the citizenship we were promised.”
“Which means that technically we’re still slaves,” Asri agreed with a nod, understanding the point at once. “I’ll have to pretend that I’m still depressed when I go to my job, which shouldn’t be too hard. I was really looking forward to making a new life here, but now …”
Kail nodded to show that he understood, but instead of saying anything else he stood and drew Asri up from her chair by one hand. Once Kail had his arms around her Asri was the one who initiated the kiss, and they shared each other’s essences for a wonderfully timeless time. Kail had wanted to lie with Asri, but something told him it was the wrong time for that. They had the rest of their lives to share their bodies, and once they were on their way to the new lives waiting for them, Kail knew Asri would feel a good deal better about the matter.
