Convergence (16 page)

"All right, here you are," the man behind the table said, recapturing my attention. "This is your identification as an applicant, and you must wear it at all times. You have a number of stops to make throughout this building, and then you'll be taken to the place you have to go. Don't lose these papers, since you'll need to show them at all the stops."

By then I'd slipped the chain attached to the card over my head, so I accepted the set of papers as a woman came up to the table. I'd seen the man gesture the woman over, so she had to be the one who would show me where to go. She touched my arm before heading toward a stairway, proving my theory, so I quickly followed along.

The stairs were made of the same stone as the building, and we climbed quite a few of them before reaching the second floor. I would have asked my guide about where we were going and how long the stop would take, but she moved just far enough ahead of me to make conversation awkward. She also had no trouble using both hands to raise her skirt high enough to avoid stepping on it, but one of my hands was full of papers. Also using it to hold up my skirt took concentration, which worked even more against getting involved in talk.

At the top of the stairs the woman turned left, walked a short distance to a door also on the left, then opened it and went through. When I followed I found myself in a small room with a man behind a table, a row of plain wooden chairs, and two closed doors behind the man and his table. My guide waited until I was inside,
then
silently left, closing the door behind herself.

"Please have a seat," the man behind the table said with no more than a glance for me. "Someone will be with you as quickly as possible."

After that he went back to being engrossed in whatever work he was doing, so I had no choice but to do as he'd said. I chose a chair and sat in it, but it had to be one of the most uncomfortable chairs I'd ever experienced. It had none of the padding it so badly needed, its seat slanted at an odd angle, and its height was wrong for a chair. I didn't know how long a wait I had in front of me, but even five minutes would have been too long in that chair.

A lot more than five minutes went past, during which time I tried two others of the line of chairs. Each of them turned out to be uncomfortable in a different way, and that fact upset me more than it should have. I had just about worked myself up to asking how much longer it would be, when a man came in the same door I'd used to enter. He also wore an identity card on a chain around his neck, and the man behind the table looked up at him.

"Please have a seat," he said in exactly the same tone he'd used earlier. "Someone will be with you as quickly as possible. And you may now follow me, ma'am."

The relief was exquisite when I rose to my feet and followed the man to the righthand door behind his table. He opened it to allow me through,
then
closed it behind me without entering the room. It was smaller than the first, and had only another man behind another table without any other chairs in sight.

"Good morning, ma'am," this new man said with another of those pleasant but neutral smiles.
"Your papers, please."

I handed over the set of papers,
then
stood there while the man read every word written on them. When he was through, he looked up with the same sort of smile.

"Everything appears to be in order," he said, handing the papers back. "You may now go through that door to room twenty-two, which is your next stop."

The thought that my next stop might well be the test itself kept me silent until I'd walked out the indicated door, and then I was occupied with finding room twenty-two. It turned out to be on the other side of the building, but when I opened its door I saw an exact copy of the outer room I'd so recently left.

"Please have a seat," the woman behind the table said to me. "Someone will be with you as soon as possible. And now you may follow me, sir."

The man with the applicant's identity card got immediately to his feet and followed the woman, then went through the door she opened. Once he was through she closed the door, went back to sit behind her table, and was immediately immersed in her work again.

"All right, tell me the truth," I said from where I stood,
knowing
the line of chairs would be just like the first group. "How long will I have to keep doing this, and
why
do I have to do it? You can't tell me it isn't pointless."

I knew the woman heard every word I'd said, but she let a moment go by before she looked up from her "work."

"Please have a seat," she said in exactly the way she'd said it before. "Someone will be with you as soon as possible."

Meaning she wasn't going to tell me a thing. My temper stirred at that, making me want to do something outrageous, but I simply didn't dare. I couldn't do anything at all that might jeopardize my chance to be tested, not even raise my voice to protest. I'd have to continue on with the pointless, and put up with it for as long as necessary.

"As long as necessary" turned into hours, most of it spent in one or another of those horrible chairs. At one point I just had to get up and walk around a bit, but the current man-behind-a-table looked at me in a way that quickly sent me back to a torture chair. I had to do things
their
way, his stare said, and it still wasn't possible for me to argue.

When the time finally came for it to be over, it took a moment before I realized it. I'd had nothing to do all that time but think, and it occurred to me that the government wanted the tests to be as equitable as possible. That way fewer mistakes in evaluation would be made, since it was far easier to come in for testing from one of the city's neighborhoods than it was to come in from one of the provinces. Some people spent a week in a coach before reaching Gan Garee, and their strength would necessarily be less than that of someone who came from the other side of the city.

So they'd developed a method of wearing down city residents to the point of
feeling
as if they'd spent a week in a coach.
All that endless waiting in incredibly uncomfortable chairs, of being sent from one side of the building to the other for no reason other than being told to do it.
After countless hours I felt as wearily impatient as it was possible to be, and that was why it took a moment before I noticed the first deviation from what had become the norm: when I was shown into an inner room, there were two men in it rather than one.

"Good morning, ma'am," the man behind the table said in the prescribed way.
"Your papers, please."

I handed over the papers quickly,
then
spent the waiting time staring at the second man. He stood beside the table with his hands clasped behind him, staring at nothing and remaining silent. But he was there, which hadn't happened before, leading me to hope with all my heart that the time of torture might be over.

"Everything seems to be in order," the man behind the table said far more quickly than any of his predecessors had done, holding out the papers toward me. "If you'll follow this gentleman, he'll take you to your next stop."

His mentioning another "stop" made my heart lurch with disappointment, but that reaction turned out to be premature. Instead of being led to yet another room in that building, my guide found a staircase and began to descend.

Going down a staircase in long skirts can often be worse than going up, but that time I think I discovered the secret of flying. The man I followed walked too fast for me to take my time without also taking the chance of losing him, so flying was the only way to keep up. I reached the bottom of the stairs without remembering anything of how I got there, and then I nearly ran to keep my guide in sight. If I lost him I'd probably kill myself, and I really didn't want to die.

I was led outside to the back of the building, and was shocked to discover it was only somewhere around noon. I'd been ready to swear I'd spent a long enough time on the second floor for it to be past sundown, but obviously I'd been mistaken. There were a lot more people around now than
earlier,
and some of them were moving as close to a run as I was. But I noticed that only in passing, since most of my attention was on the man I followed.

That man led me to one of the very large resin buildings standing in a circle beyond the testing center's main building, to a doorway with the Fire symbol hanging beside it. Rather than continue on in he stopped to one side with his hand out, so I automatically offered the papers I'd handed over so often today. Rather than take them he gave them back with a sigh, then began to retrace his steps while shaking his head and muttering. I didn't know what his problem was, but I also didn't care. I was already on the way into the resin building, trying to ignore the renewed thudding of my heart.

Inside the doorway was a rather large room, and once again there was a man behind a table. This one was slightly older than the others had been, and his smile looked a bit more real.

"Good morning, young lady," he said, holding out his hand. "And how are you today?"

"I'm not sure," I answered cautiously, giving him the papers. "I suppose it depends on how many more rooms I'll need to sit and wait in."

"Ah, yes, you're from here in the city," he said, glancing through the well-worn papers. At one point I'd tried to read them
myself
just to have something to do, but had quickly discovered it wasn't possible. They were filled with jargon of some sort as well as meaningless abbreviations and referenceless numbers, and therefore were as informative as a child's scribblings.

"Well, I have some moderately good news then," he said, looking up after putting the papers aside rather than returning them to me. "There's only one more room you'll need to sit in, and that for only a short while. There are some final questions we need answers to, and once we have them everything will be finished. Just go through that doorway all the way to your right, and you'll be shown where to go from there."

There was a rather loud-patterned hanging over the doorway he'd directed me to, and I gave him something of an answering smile and then quickly went toward it. I couldn't quite believe there was only one more session of waiting ahead of me, but the hope of finding an end to that terrible day was enough to keep me from hanging back. I stepped through to see a long hall ahead and three men in an alcove to the left, and as soon as I appeared the three men rose to their feet.

"Please follow me," one of them said as he stepped forward, and then he led the way a short distance up the hall to the first door on the left, which he opened. "If you'll just wait inside, someone will be with you very shortly."

The other two men had followed along behind me, but I was alone when I stepped through the doorway. Or at least I thought I was alone. The room was too
pitch
black to see anything in it.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, some fool has turned down all the lamps," the first man said from behind me where I'd stopped, only half a pace into the room. "If you'll just step forward a bit more, ma'am, I'll be able to reach the lamp right beside the door."

The request was perfectly reasonable, but despite my eagerness to see that experience over and done with, I suddenly found myself suspicious. Even in the perpetual dimness of the main building, none of the rooms had been
this
dark.

"If you'll point to the lamp, I'll be glad to light it," I said, wondering if the man could possibly have forgotten what my talent was. "There's no need for you to—"

I'd been turning as I spoke, but that was as far as I got. The man's hand came to my shoulder with a shove, and I was sent stumbling away from the door. Terror hit me then, the sort my husband had taught me so well, and I responded so quickly it would have been frightening at another place and time. I reached toward the man with one hand and all my ability, and a raging inferno roared toward him where he stood beyond the now-closing door. I could feel him trying to raise and hold a barrier with his own Fire talent, but his strength seemed only a small fraction of mine. I would reach him and keep that door from closing, and then I would—
And
then I would run into a heavy sheet of rain produced by Water magic! The curtain of rain appeared right in front of the man my flames were about to reach, and the resulting steam made everyone flinch back. That included the other two men, who now stood behind the first, and it was obvious that they were the source of the Water magic. Not a very strong source even working together, and not one that could have stopped my flames for long, but they'd stopped them for just long enough. The resin door finished closing between us, and by the light of the fire raging uselessly against it, I was able to see that there was nothing I could use to open it again.

I slumped in defeat where I stood, the chill of fear spreading through my bones, and let all but a slender flame of fire die. Once resin hardens it refuses to burn, and even melting it takes hours and hours of effort by a team of Middles. I had no idea why I'd been locked into that room, but it couldn't have been for anything good. I'd learned that lesson from my husband as well, a thought which made me sick to my stomach.