Choices (9 page)

“You’ll be part of a cell soon,” Drusilla
said, looking on in admiration while I made the heavy wooden chairs
skate around on the stone floor as easily as if they had wheels.
“When you’re a sibyl, I can boast I was once in the same class with
you.”

It was the rejection that had rankled with
everyone, I realized. My evenings with Dominic—not just the last,
uninhibited one, but all of his visits—had indicated a turning away
from the others. During the earlier visits my unpolished but
serviceable shielding skills had kept the details of our
conversations secret, but everyone had known I was having some kind
of unauthorized communication. Success as a seminarian requires
wholehearted devotion to one’s classmates and coworkers. Our group
would live together more closely than a married couple, sharing
every thought and emotion, our minds open, withholding nothing. To
squander intimacy on an outsider was betrayal. I had been treated
like the straying spouse I was, and I was being welcomed back to
the conjugal bed accordingly.

After dinner and the siesta I was scheduled
to begin training for the signal station, the practical application
of the theory I had been studying. I had been told only that the
signal station was like a “radio antenna,” which left me as
ignorant as before. As I climbed the narrow spiral staircase to the
top of the annex that housed the station, I was expecting something
mysterious and grand. Instead, I saw Julian Vazquez, Edwige’s
deputy, sitting at a console, his face resting on the padded
binocular eyepiece of a large telescope that angled up and poked
through an aperture in the roof.

Julian greeted me warmly, unlike his usual
distant politeness, but without taking his eyes from the scope or
moving from his place. “We’ll all be grateful when you can take a
shift. Alicia is a good teacher. You’ll catch on fast.”

Alicia Molyneux was already here to show me
what to do. The minute that Julian stood up, Alicia hustled me to
the seat. “Rest your face on the mask,” she said, “and look through
the scope. Lower your shields and use both eyes.”

I had thought telescopes were used for
stargazing at night. At this hour it was still daylight, with a
clear blue sky, some wispy high clouds, and the sun hanging over
the trees at the western edge of the mountains. When I looked, I
saw—nothing. Nothing at all. No light, no color, not even
blackness.

“Now focus your attention,” Alicia said, “as
if it were a mind.”

I tried, but there was nobody there. It was
just a set of large prisms encased in a tube and looking out
into—nowhere. Connecting with it was like trying to read a mind
that had no personality. Like a computer, it was empty of all
thoughts except those put there by a human being. I pulled my face
away. “There’s nothing—”

Alicia pushed my head back to the eyepieces.
“Never take your face away from the scope,” she said. “While your
shift lasts, you are the only connection with the other
stations.”

For two hours I sat, staring at nothing, my
eyes going unfocused and my thoughts wandering, as Alicia told me
what a signal station is, and how it works.

I was grateful for the company and the
lecture. Alicia talked about how, in the early days of Eclipsis,
before any kind of telepathic technology had been developed, the
only way for the Realms to communicate with each other was through
handwritten messages carried on foot. Without roads or vehicles,
messages could take weeks to arrive. In winter, with storms and
heavy snowfall, some messages never made it at all.

Not to mention the messengers
, I
thought.

“Please, Amalie,” Alicia said. “Don’t think
out loud. You must concentrate on the scope.”

As the ‘Graven developed their gifts, Alicia
continued, and began to understand how they were triggered by
light, they tried to recreate the technology that the first
settlers had known on Terra. “They had no industries to make wire,
let alone satellites. But they discovered that a message could be
sent along light waves, and could be received, one telepathic mind
to another, over long distances, by using large prismatic
telescopes to amplify the signal. And that’s how signal stations
began.”

I could hear the pride in Alicia’s voice at
the ingenuity of her ancestors. She was what was called an
operator
, skilled at these simple telepathic tasks, but
without the aptitude that would allow her to become a sibyl. When
the time was right, she and Tomasz Liang would marry. In the
meantime she headed the team that staffed the signal station and
trained newcomers, freeing Edwige and Matilda from the demands of
supervision.

The large telescope, with its many prisms,
allows a telepath in one station to project her thoughts over a
long distance, to be received by a telepath in another station, who
sends them in turn to the next station, until the message reaches
its destination. Because of the amplifying effect of the multiple
prisms, our power is made strong enough that it takes no more
energy than sending our individual thoughts to someone in the same
room, something I had been doing automatically, with sometimes
disastrous consequences, since coming to Eclipsis.

And that’s when it all became clear to me.
Cells
, I thought.
As in cell phones
. But this
time I kept the thought shielded.
That’s why they’re always
talking about
cells
.
Dear gods! We—the
inhabitants of La Sapienza—were using our gifted and creative minds
like the circuits on a microchip
. I was using my brain and my
thoughts, my educated, sophisticated brain, to do the rote,
repetitive tasks of a
computer
.

Someone must be on duty at all times, Alicia
was saying, in case a message comes through. It was our job to
ensure that the station was always staffed with a trained telepath,
so that, in the event of an emergency, there would be immediate and
instant communication throughout the entire ‘Graven Realms.

That was the one good thing. At least here,
because the technology is only for the ‘Graven, for political
crises or weather advisories, there could be no idle chitchat, no
texting or sexting or constant yakking. If it required the
full-time services of the educated elite to work, the system
couldn’t be squandered on trivia.

The work was tedious, Alicia was
saying—
No shit
, I thought—as days could go by with nothing
coming through, the staff struggling to stay focused, looking
through the scope, knowing that an urgent message could arrive at
any time and not wanting to be the one who causes the system to
fail through inattention.

“You’ll practice with a backup person,” she
said, “until you’re capable of receiving and sending a message
without making a mistake or having to ask the sender to repeat.”
Then I would take my turns in the rotating schedule, providing the
welcome additional body that would give us all that many fewer
turns on the late night and early morning shifts, or give us
shorter shifts or fewer times on duty.

By this time, and despite my best efforts, I
had zoned out, wandering on my own mental pathways with no
awareness of the transition, like dropping off to sleep.
I
wonder if Dominic ever got together with that handsome
cadet
…

“Focus, Amalie,” Alicia said. She knew I had
stopped concentrating and didn’t want to listen to any more
intimate thoughts. “You have to focus on the scope. It’s hard in
the beginning, but once you learn, it will come more easily.”

Toward the end of our shift I saw it—a
shimmering in the void, like the heat that rises from desert
floors, or the wiggle that sometimes distorts the opening frames on
an old holonet display. It was more like eyestrain than anything
visible, like those peripheral vision tests where you sense
something moving at the edges of the screen and you’re supposed to
push a button when it enters your field of vision. I leaned into
the mask that cushioned my face from the eyepieces, as if that
would make it clear.

Alicia laughed. “Everyone does that at first.
But it really doesn’t help. Just sit still,” she said, as the
strange sensation continued and grew sharper by infinitesimal
degrees. “It means there’s a message coming through. You’re seeing
‘echoes’ of the earlier transmissions, like the rings when you drop
a stone into a pond. Our minds always create an image for us when
we pick up thoughts, usually the voice of the person who’s
‘speaking.’ Here, where the message is being passed from mind to
mind, we just see these ripples. It gives you a chance to wake up
if you’ve been nodding off.”

I assumed she was accusing me of negligence,
but she was simply honest. “We’ve all done it,” Alicia said,
“especially on the early morning shift. But we always snap awake
when we see those waves.” She smiled, pleased that she had never
faltered or missed a message. She was an earnest, deliberate
person, content with her modest abilities, untroubled that she
would rise no higher than operator, happy that she would soon be
marrying a husband of her own choosing. Until then, the signal
station of La Sapienza was in her charge, and she took her
responsibilities seriously.

The words of the message were becoming
readable, and Alicia motioned for me to move over. “Watch me, and
listen, but don’t interrupt,” she said. I caught the beginning of
the transmission,
From Lord Zichmni, Viceroy of the ‘Graven
Realms, to all margraves and landgraves and sibyls—
before
Alicia took over for the body of the message. Her face reddened as
she listened and she glanced over at me.

Because I was sitting right next to her, I
couldn’t help but overhear. The message was for me, or at least
about me:
Anyone who knows the whereabouts of a Terran woman
named Amelia Herzog, please reply immediately. Ms. Herzog was last
seen leaving her apartment in Eclipsia City twelve days ago,
accompanied by a contingent of Royal Guards. She is below average
height, with a small build, light skin and hazel eyes.
Distinguishing characteristics: third eyelids, also called
nictitating membranes, that respond to light
.” The message
went on to assure that all information would be kept confidential,
but should a tip lead to my return there would be a substantial
reward.

“Ask Edwige to come in,” Alicia said as soon
as she had communicated all this to the next station. She had to
look around the telescope to where I huddled in a corner, trying to
make my silhouette even narrower. Although the rational part of me
knew the scope didn’t pick up or send visual images, I had slid off
the bench and sidled behind Alicia as soon as I heard my Terran
name.

Edwige arrived in the room before I made it
to the doorway. “Well, Amalie, it seems your countrymen have
awakened to a sense of your worth after all, although it took them
long enough.” She crossed the floor to where I stood trembling.
“What’s the matter?” she asked more gently.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to go back!” I
said. “Please, don’t make me go back!”

Edwige raised an eyebrow. “Goodness! After
all the trouble we’ve taken to bring you here and help you settle
in, I promise we’re not about to lose you the way the Terrans did.”
She spoke softly to Alicia, telling her to continue to monitor the
scope, then led me to her study, where we would not disturb the
quiet of the signal room.

“Now,” Edwige said. “Tell me honestly. What
do you want?”

“I want to stay here,” I said. “I just told
you that this morning.” I thought about the vagaries of chance.
If that message had come through one day earlier, after
yesterday’s breakfast, I might have been in the city by now,
wearing Terran clothes again, defeated and chastened, fleeing from
a memory of humiliation, but secretly glad that at least I’d be
close to Dominic…

“Yes,” Edwige broke in on my thoughts. “I
wonder why they waited?” She pondered the situation from her own
perspective, arrived at her own answer. “Pride, I suppose. Not
wanting to admit they’d lost.”

“It could just be inefficiency,” I said,
needing to counterbalance some modesty, for sanity’s sake, against
Edwige’s continued, and surprising, high regard. “But what should I
do? I guess I should send a message myself.” I owned up at last to
an adult sense of responsibility. It also occurred to me with
relief that the system allowed me to speak only with other
telepaths—Eclipsians, not Terrans.
I could talk to kind old
Lord Zichmni himself. Well, not to him, but the message would be
directed at him. I could tell him I was safe at La Sapienza and
wished to stay. Apologize through him to the Terran Protectorate
staff for abandoning my job…

“He knows all that, Amalie,” Edwige again
interrupted, harshly this time. “You don’t think Lord Zichmni sent
that message for his own enlightenment, do you?”

I looked up, feeling so stupid. Every
seminary and signal station, every Realm that received the message
knew exactly who I was and where I was, had sent at least one
representative to that ‘Graven Assembly where I had been tested.
Lord Zichmni had presided over my test, had permitted Edwige to
offer me this place at La Sapienza. Where else did he think I was?
He had even left in, verbatim, the Terrans’ innocent reference to
my eyelids, a sly wink, a tongue-in-cheek aside to all the signal
stations.

“It’s a formula, a gesture of protocol,”
Edwige said. “You have truly made yourself hostage, as you
intended, although you are, in fact, free to go. But you can
communicate directly only with us, and the Terrans are limited in
the same way. Lord Zichmni had that message sent to alert us that
the Terrans are looking for you, and to make sure that we all give
the same answer.”

“And what is that answer?” I asked.