Jenna Starborn (21 page)

“We shall draw lots, then,” Mr. Ravenbeck decreed. “It is the only truly fair arrangement.”

Accordingly, he tore up sheets of paper, numbered them, folded them, and scooped them all up in the palm of his hand. “No one is to glance at his number until we have all drawn papers,” he ordered, and he offered his hand to Bianca.

“Thank you, Everett,” she said with a warm smile, as if certain he had positioned the number one scrap on the top of the pile just for her. He smiled back, and moved to her sister, and then to Ameletta.

“Oh! I am number two! I am number two!” the little girl squealed.

Her guardian frowned at her. “You were not supposed to look until all the pieces had been distributed,” he scolded.

Her face fell; she looked as if she might cry. “Must I give it back?” she asked.

He could not keep from smiling at her; indeed, none of us could. “No, you may remain number two—though you are really number one in my heart,” he added in a loud whisper. “Just try to be good next time.”

“I will. So good.”

After Mr. Ravenbeck had allowed the society women to pick from his palm, he approached Janet Ayerson where she sat quietly typing into a handheld monitor. She looked up in confusion when he held his palm out.

“Miss Ayerson,” he said. “Surely you would like to know what your future holds.”

“I have a fair guess,” she said, recovering her composure.

“Perhaps you will be surprised. Come! I already paid the subscription price. We should all enjoy the novelty.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ravenbeck,” she said, and selected a number.

After this exchange, I could hardly be astonished when he came my way next, and I did not bother to protest. “This should be instructive,” I remarked. “I will be interested indeed to learn how such a program assesses my life and its possibilities.”

“Perhaps you will share with me what the psychic predicts for you,” he said in a low voice.

“It depends upon her commentary. If she foresees a life of ignominy and wretchedness, I don't believe I shall tell you. If, however, she sees me raised to some high station, mistress of some vast establishment and doing good works—why, yes, I will be happy to convey the news.”

He tried to discipline a smile. “I can see you do not have much faith in my electronic mystic.”

“More faith in my own analytic powers, that is true,” I said. “But I will reserve judgment until I see this program in action.”

After this exchange, he moved on to hand out slips of paper to the men. Then, upon his signal, we all unfolded our numbers at once. Mine was eight-which, since I had noticed Mr. Ravenbeck did not reserve a piece of paper for himself, meant I would be the last in the group to be summoned.

“Ah, I am first,” Bianca said, making no attempt to disguise her pleasure. “I wish Mother would hurry.”

The others called out their numbers as well, and there was a great deal of good-natured grumbling when they realized that Mr. Ravenbeck did not plan to submit himself to the clairvoyant's powers.

“I would rather be surprised by my future,” he said. “For I remain continually surprised by my past.”

This caused everyone to laugh and forgive him for his omission. In a few minutes, Mrs. Ingersoll returned to the room, looking thoughtful but not unhappy. Bianca immediately jumped to her feet.

“My turn!” she exclaimed. “Everett, should you escort me to show me what I must do?”

“Happily,” he said, and took her arm to lead her from the room.

“Well, Mother? What did you learn?” Melanie demanded.

Mrs. Ingersoll seated herself in her customary chair and took up her book again, though her eyes retained a faraway look that made me think she might have trouble concentrating on the pages. “Many interesting things,” she replied regally. “I don't think we are supposed to discuss them.”

“Takes some of the fun out of it,” Mr. Fulsome observed. “Think I might be inclined to talk about it, myself.”

“You,” Mrs. Ingersoll said, bending her head to read, “may do as you choose.”

Not unexpectedly, this put something of a damper on general conversation for a few minutes, though Melanie managed to move her chair next to Joseph Luxton's and engage him in a quiet discussion. Mr. Taff and Mr. Fulsome took out a board game and argued halfheartedly over the rules, and Janet returned to her monitor. Ameletta skipped over to my side.

“Oh, Miss Starborn, what do you think I should ask the sidekick?” she inquired.

“Psychic,” I corrected, though inwardly I was laughing. “You might ask if you will grow up to be a good, happy woman who makes others around her happy as well.”

“I think I shall ask if I will marry a handsome man. Or a rich one,” she said. “And if I will be very beautiful when I grow up.”

She was vain and ridiculous, but she was eight years old, and I stroked her pretty blonde curls. “How could you not be a beautiful woman?” I murmured. “You are such a lovely child.”

I noticed that Mr. Ravenbeck did not return while Bianca was out of the room, and concluded that he was helping her frame her questions or interpret the replies she was given. I wondered if he would be quite so assiduous with all the rest of his guests. Ameletta, plainly, would need some guidance, but I fancied most of the rest of the party could handle the computer interface on our own.

When Bianca returned, some twenty minutes later, she looked pensive and not entirely pleased. She was not clinging to Mr. Ravenbeck's arm, as she usually did, though he stepped into the room right behind her looking remarkably cheerful. In fact, she did not spare him another glance as she crossed the room to draw up a chair beside her mother and began whispering in the older lady's ear.

If he noticed this rather ominous turn of events, the host gave no sign. “Ameletta, I believe you are the next one to consult the fortune-teller,” he said. “Do you have your questions ready?”

She hurled herself across the room and fairly towed him out the door. “Yes, I have so many questions! Do let us hurry!”

The rest of the evening continued in this fashion, Mr. Ravenbeck escorting his guests to the study, the rest of us continuing our own quiet pursuits while we waited for our turns. From my place on the sidelines, I observed the face of each supplicant as he or she returned from a visit to the oracle, and I was surprised to note that none of them looked ecstatic. None showed the same degree of instant unhappiness that Bianca had displayed, but all the others looked pensive, uncertain, or worried when they came back into the room. I began to wonder what sort of bad news our medium was handing out, and if I would be offered a similarly unpalatable forecast.

I questioned those I thought I had some right to interrogate, beginning with Ameletta, who dropped back to my chair looking positively woeful. “Why,
chiya,
what is wrong?” I asked as she came dragging back to my chair, for I had adopted Mr. Ravenbeck's pet name for her. “What did the psychic tell you?”

“She said I must study very hard and learn all my mathematics, for someday I would be the mistress of a large holding, and I would have to know how to do my accounts.”

“But that is hardly bad news! Mistress of your own property-why, many young girls would be thrilled to know that was their fate!”

“Yes, but I don't
want
to learn my mathematics! I don't want to know my accounts. I want to marry a rich man, and wear pretty dresses, and eat pastries whenever I wish.”

I hid a smile. “Well, perhaps you will marry a rich man, and it will be his estates you will be looking over.”

Ameletta heaved a sigh. “She didn't think so.”

“You asked her whom you were to marry?”

“Yes, and I asked if he would be rich and handsome, and she said that she was unable to foretell, but that he would most assuredly be kind and considerate.”

“But those are excellent qualities! Why are you so depressed?”

“Because he sounds so boring! I did not want to marry a boring man!”

This time I could not smother my laugh, though I did think, even at eight, a girl should have some respect for kindness and consideration. I gave her a little hug and said, “Well, you never know. The mystic could be wrong. You may yet marry a handsome devil who will treat you very badly.”

She eyed me suspiciously at that. “Miss Starborn, are you trying to be funny?”

I laughed again. “All I am saying is that you should not put too much stock in the words of a fortune-teller. They are notorious for being wrong, you know. And you have within you the power to make your own fate, no matter what it seems the universe has assigned you.”

This speech was clearly over her head; besides, she was beginning to lose interest. She picked up one of her little handheld games and, in a few moments, was absorbed in sending her virtual heroine off on a quest for treasure.

Miss Ayerson's turn came perhaps forty-five minutes later, and she also reentered the room looking slightly shaken. When she saw my eyes lift to her face as she came through the door, she immediately crossed the room to my side.

“That was a strange experience,” she remarked, taking the seat beside me.

“In what manner? You look unnerved,” I replied.

She laughed slightly. “I'm not surprised. I went in expecting the usual array of pretty promises and sweeping generalities, the sorts of things that could be applied to any half-cit woman working to support herself. But this mystic's observations were uncannily accurate, and the predictions it made were so near the things I have been wishing for that I truly felt as if the machine had scanned my brain and read from the printed transcript.”

“That would be unsettling,” I agreed. “Do you wish to share with me any of the forecasts it made?”

She laughed again, with even less mirth. “Oh, the psychic warned me against following an inclination I would live to regret. I do not wish to be more specific, although
she
was. And I cannot help wondering: How could she know my heart so thoroughly-and how can she be sure I would regret it?”

From the staid Janet Ayerson, this was wild talk indeed, and I could not imagine what sort of radical behavior she would indulge in that would cause her a moment's distress in the future. She had always seemed too serene and contained for rashness. Too much like me.

“Of course she can be sure of nothing,” I said, almost mechanically. “She is a charlatan, and this is a highly sophisticated parlor game. Take none of it to heart.”

“I wish I had your unwearied good sense, Jenna,” she said, and rose hurriedly to her feet. “Ameletta! It is well past your bedtime. Come, you and I must go upstairs.” They were out the door a few minutes later, Ameletta uncharacteristically offering no protest. I realized that Janet's conndences, such as they were, were at an end.

To tell the truth, I was beginning to get a little tired myself, and had Mr. Ravenbeck not made such a point of including me in the event, I would have slipped away also and made my way to my room. But there was still Mr. Luxton to be returned and Mr. Taff to have his session before I would be called before the psychic. Sighing quietly, I returned to my reading, scarcely looking up when Mr. Ravenbeck brought back the one man and left again with the other.

Mr. Taff had not been gone five minutes when Mrs. Farraday came to the door, a look of perturbation on her amiable face. She cast a quick glance around the room, obviously seeking Mr. Ravenbeck, and then motioned for me to come over. I did.

“There is a visitor here for Mr. Ravenbeck,” she said in a whisper. “I offered to show him to this room, but he said he preferred to see Mr. Ravenbeck in private. Do you know where he is?”

“He is leading each guest by turn to the upstairs study—and then, apparently, staying to guide them through a complex computer program interface. I am scheduled to go in next—would you like me to alert him? Or would you like to go tell him now, yourself?”

“Oh, no, no, I hate to interrupt him when he is enjoying himself with his friends! Would you be willing to give him the news? The visitor said it was not urgent, but I cannot help thinking—if someone comes to call so late at night—well, perhaps it is not an
emergency,
but it is something one ought to address as soon as one can.”

“Certainly. What is the man's name? Why has he come?”

“I don't know why he's here—he wouldn't say. All he told me is that his name is Merrick and he comes from Wesleyan-Imrae.”

I knew very little about this exotic world on the far edges of the settled galaxy, except that it was famous for its export crops of spice and hallucinogenics. As far as I knew, Mr. Ravenbeck did not deal in either.

“Don't worry,” I said. “I shall inform him as soon as I see him.”

“You're so good, Jenna,” she said. “Tell him I have put Mr. Merrick in the breakfast room and given him a meal. I hope that was the right thing to do.”

“I'm sure it was. I shall tell him.”

She withdrew, and I found myself finally impatient for my turn to come. It seemed to take eons for Mr. Taff to hear his fortune, but at last he reentered the room. Whatever news he had been given seemed to sit fairly well with him, for a change, for he was smiling with great energy and he cast a benevolent look at his friends sitting around the library. But he did not pause to speak to any of them; he came directly to me.

“Your turn, I believe, Miss Starborn,” he said, and bent his arm as though to escort me from the room.

I stood. “Yes—but I was expecting Mr. Ravenbeck. I have rather important news to tell him.”