Welcome to Welton

by Marie Brennan

  Even with the breeze, it was tempting to nod off in the warm sunlight. But near the end, Dean Seong made an announcement that woke everybody up.

  “And this year,” she said, speakers carrying her voice across the ranks of folding chairs, “Welton will again lead the way in psychic sciences education, by opening the student body to new diversity. We have made arrangements with the Bureau for Special Psychic Affairs to admit a wilder as part of the freshman class.”

  I didn’t hear what she said after that. It was lost in the sudden murmurs around me, a chorus of “What did she just say?,” and then repetitions as dozing students sat up and got the story from their neighbors. Liesel and I exchanged startled looks. She whispered, “Aren’t they raised by the government here?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back, confused. “Same as in Germany.” It was part of the Cairo Accords. Dealing with an adolescent during manifestation was chaotic enough; gifts were always out of control at first, before the initial rush faded. That was why First Manifestation had been so bad. But at least adolescents understood what was going on, and could try to manage it. An infant with gifts — powerful ones — was a hazard to himself and everybody around him. Ergo, government responsibility, until he became a legal adult.

  He. I’d caught that much, that this wilder was a guy. If Seong had given his name, though, I missed it. Why the hell would one of them come to a school like Welton? No matter how tough the curriculum here was, it would be like sending a Navy SEAL to aerobics class. I didn’t know much about wilder training, but it was hard-core enough that most of them hit the age of majority and became Guardians on the spot, without the usual advanced education.

  Maybe they were sending a ten-year-old. Or was he really a teenager, like the rest of us? Was he a guinea pig, a test attempt at mainstreaming wilders?

  If so, it was going to be an interesting ride. The rest of the Dean’s speech was half-buried beneath other conversations, and students twisted this way and that in their seats, as if we could have somehow missed a wilder among us. He clearly wasn’t at orientation — probably on purpose, I thought. In his shoes, I wouldn’t want to be stared at by the entire freshman class, either.

  We scattered when the Dean’s speech ended, most people heading for dinner. Liesel and I walked in silence for a while. Then she asked, “Have you ever met one?”

  “A couple,” I admitted. “Through my mother’s work.” Not that wilders got invited to society parties. But sometimes her Ring dealt with Guardians.

  “What are they like?”

  My steps slowed across the grass. “Pretty much like the stories.” Which was a polite way of saying, weird . Baselines — people without gifts — often found bloods like us a little off-putting. Not because of anything we said or did, but just because of what we were . Wilders had that effect, magnified.

  And yet the BSPA had decided to stick a wilder here. In college . Was he going to be in a dorm? With a roommate and everything?

  It would be easy enough to find out. My port was in my back pocket; I could call up the student directory. He’d be listed under Fiain, the Irish word for “wild,” the last name specified by the Accords.

  I stopped abruptly and flung my hands up in an emphatic gesture. “No. I am not going to do this.”

  Liesel hadn’t known me for long, but she could already read me well enough to translate my words. “You mean, act like the zoo has come to Welton?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “I’m not going to look up where he lives, or try to find out his class schedule, or lurk around hoping to catch sight of him. He’ll have half the student body doing that anyway; he doesn’t need one more. The guy deserves some privacy.” Which the other half of the student body would be only too glad to give him, in spades. But I’d rather join them than the crowd of stalkers.

  Judging by Liesel’s expression, she’d gone through the same arc I had: curiosity squashed by virtuous determination. She offered her hand to me. “Me neither. And that’s a promise. If we come across him in class or wherever, that’s fine, but no snooping.”

  “No snooping,” I agreed, shaking her hand. “No gossip. We’ll give the guy his space.”

  Robert

  The chaotic arrangement of boxes — “arrangement” was too kind a word for it, really — made pacing damnably hard. Every time Robert went to shift them into a more useful formation, though, he was halted by doubts. It made no sense to pile them along the wall next to the window; what if they ended up putting a desk there? It all depended on the furniture. And that depended on how this suite was to be divided.

  He’d been waiting since yesterday, which didn’t help. All the freshmen were moved in, and the upperclassmen — those not helping with the process — would arrive tomorrow; everyone other than Robert himself was at orientation or supper. They’d timed it well, he had to allow: the grand arrival would occur when no one was looking.

  All the better to postpone the inevitable.

  Two rooms. Two options for configuration. Friendly roommates, Robert imagined, would place both beds in the inner chamber, the smaller chamber, so that if one were to go to sleep early, the other could stay up and work, or stumble in drunken from a party, without disturbing his fellow’s rest. But only if they were friendly, and could abide such closeness.

  In his case, it was likely to be the other option: one roommate in the inner room, bed, desk, and all; and the other in the outer. Which likely meant him in the outer room, since it was the less private of the two. Little as Robert knew of his companion for the next nine months, he could at least guess one thing: privacy would be important.

  Footsteps on the stairs; voices in the hall. Robert fidgeted next to a stack of boxes, staring at the door — but it proved to be two girls, arguing about the bookshelf they carried. Sophomores, he presumed, whose luck had not given them better than Earle, where the suites did not allow for the privacy of both. What sadist had chosen this as a suitable location for their experiment, when there were more congenial options, he did not know. Robert began pacing again. When would his roommate arrive?

  Now, it seemed. Robert heard no sound, but the hackles on the back of his neck rose. He turned, and found a young man hesitating on the threshold.

  Though braced for the reaction, Robert still found himself shivering. That hair-raising presence, an unsettling breath of Otherworldly air. The entryway light gave the stranger a faint nimbus, gilding his pale hair, casting his eyes into shadow. Robert instinctively looked away from them.

  But no, this would never do. For the love of little fairies, the two of them were to live together. Summoning up a friendly smile, Robert came forward with one hand outstretched. “Greetings! I am Robert Ó Conchúir. You, I presume, are Julian?”

  And then he halted, as the stranger looked blankly at the proffered hand.

  I, Robert thought, am a gods-damned ass.

  “Yes,” Julian said, as Robert dropped his arm. “I’m Julian Fiain.”

  A test? To see if Robert would flinch? Gods knew he did not need to provide his surname, and not only because it was included in the housing information sent to Robert a month ago. Welton University had been in touch well before that, in their desperate search for someone who would agree to share his living quarters with a wilder. Upon being asked how many had refused before they called Robert, the housing representative had admitted to five. Five students who could not endure the thought of co-existing with a wilder in such close quarters. But Welton was determined to treat this one like any other freshman, and so they persisted. They tried Robert on the hope that, being Irish, he might have more tolerance. The same laws governed the Fiain in Ireland as elsewhere, but the high population of bloods there mitigated some of the tension — some.

  Julian turned and picked up the two suitcases that sat in the hall, carrying them into the room. Robert jumped out of the way and nearly tripped over a box. He also nearly tripped over his tongue, rushing to fill the silence. “The boxes not yet claimed have been moved to th
e gymnasium, but it should still be open. If you’d like, I can help you carry your things over.”

  “Thank you, but I can manage,” Julian said. The courtesy had the sound of a foreign language, long practiced, little used. But no, that was not fair; surely wilders said “please” and “thank you” amongst themselves. Assuming they spoke at all, and didn’t just exist in a state of constant telepathic communion.

  Behind Julian’s back, Robert let his face collapse into a grimace at his own continuing idiocy. I was the best they could find for him? “It’s no problem, really. With two people, it will go twice as fast.”

  Julian shook his head. “There’s only one box.”

  One box. Robert’s eyes went to the suitcases. One crate — books, perhaps, if Julian was the sort who liked to read an object that could retain psychic traces; likely also his screen and such — and two suitcases, for clothes and toiletries. Either they would be shipping more soon, or his roommate lived the most spartan existence known to man.

  He feared it was the latter. “This will never do,” Robert said, and gestured at his own crates. “My things will drown you; I’m a terrible packrat. If I promise to maintain a clear path to the bathroom, will you be all right with the second room? It’s smaller, but then you’ll be able to arrange it your own liking.”

  Julian nodded. “That makes sense. I don’t mind a small room.”

  And then another awkward silence. If this continued, Robert was going to plant his foot so firmly in his mouth, it would leave a shoeprint on his liver. He elected to head that off at the pass. “Look,” he said, and whatever Julian heard in that word, it made the young man put down his suitcases inside the bedroom door and turn to face him.

  Now the pitiless dorm light caught his face, highlighting all the wilder strangeness. It was nothing easy to pinpoint; they looked human. They were human — just less so than the average person. But even that slight difference was enough to stand one’s nerves on end.

  “Look,” Robert said again, trying to remember what he had been going to say. Ah, yes. “I am not renowned for my social agility. It is entirely probable that during the months we live together — presuming I don’t give you cause to murder me — I will say one or more boneheaded things regarding your nature. I beg you, not to forgive me for them in advance, but to smack me as I deserve when they occur. Like a daft but well-intentioned dog, I can be taught, and I will do my best to learn. Should I fail . . . well, on average, slightly less than three percent of the freshman class drops out of Welton in the first semester. If I become intolerable to you, say so, and I will move into the place vacated by one of the fallen; and you may have this suite to yourself.”

  The most unnerving thing about wilders, he decided while his mouth delivered these words, was not their inhuman air. It was the control they had been taught: control that extended to everything about them, including their facial expressions. Throughout Robert’s speech, Julian stood — not blankly, for that would imply a lack of intelligence or understanding — intently would be a better description. Listening, but showing nothing of what he thought.

  Julian’s reply wasn’t much more informative. “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he said. Then he seemed to consider this and find it wanting. “I’m not easily offended.”

  Or at least not easily provoked into showing offense. None of them were. Otherwise there would be more buildings lacking in roofs, and more people hopping about as toads. If anyone could actually transform a human into a toad, Robert thought, it would be Julian Fiain.

  “I promise not to take that as a challenge,” he said, and then tugged his shirt straight. “Well. Let us float the furniture into position, so that you may unpack as you choose, and then I for one will be seeking out dinner. You are welcome to join me if you wish.”

  Julian refused, of course. But the politeness of the refusal was less stiff than it might have been, and Robert dared hope this might work out after all.

  Kim

  “There are three kinds of lies,” Professor Madison said on the first day of class, right after introducing herself and making sure everyone was in the correct lecture hall. “Lies, damned lies, and prophecy.”

  My eyebrows rose. That wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to hear out of the woman teaching your intro divination course.

  “Prophecy seems popular,” she went on, drifting across the hall’s stage. Clearly this was a performance she’d given countless times, but she still seemed to enjoy it. “Even before First Manifestation, people went to palm-readers and card-readers and crystal ball-gazers, newspaper horoscopes — you name it. But most of them didn’t do it because they wanted to know what the future really held. They did it because they wanted to be told that the future was going to be all right. Or to have someone read, not their stars, but the unspoken cues they were giving off, and tell them what they couldn’t quite tell themselves. Divination as therapy.

  “For many of them, it worked just fine. But First Manifestation came and went, and suddenly the world had an abundance of psychics with scientifically-verifiable abilities. One woman — she went by the name Madame Blavatsky, but legally she was Melinda Blake — assumed the fortune-telling industry was about to take off in an enormous way, and made quite a clever bid to be its impresario. But what happened?”

  I’d done a book report on Madame Blavatsky 2.0 for a biography project in sixth grade. I was already grinning before Professor Madison said, “The bottom fell out — and how. Oh, charlatans could stay in business; they went on as they always had. But either there’s some truth to the theory that Krauss rating and a talent for lying are inversely related, or these new seers, still overwhelmed by their abilities, didn’t want to lie. They told what they saw — which was not what people wanted to hear — and Ms. Blake’s grand scheme crashed before it went anywhere.”

  That led Madison into the ethics of professional divinatory work, and from there to an overview of the different categories within the field. I didn’t bother taking notes. Divination had always been my strongest gift, ever since my own manifestation, and I’d devoured everything I could read or watch on the subject. I was only in this class because it was a requirement, and Welton didn’t let people test out of it. The real meat was going to be in the upper-level courses, the ones for which this was a prerequisite — and in the work I did on my own time.

  Madison apparently had the same thought on her mind. Near the end of class, she unclipped the microphone from her collar and beckoned a student forward to take it. I recognized the girl: it was Akila, the one who’d given me my key when I arrived at Shushunova. She’d slipped into the lecture hall while I wasn’t looking.

  “Thanks, professor,” Akila said, and faced the room. “I just wanted to take a moment to let you all know about the Divination Club. It’s one of a few student organizations sponsored by the various departments, to give you a safe space to practice your skills outside of class.” She grinned. “Well, we’re not as dangerous as the pyros, but it’s still a fun social group. We run demos of divination systems you may not be familiar with, and if you’re interested, you can get somebody to show you the basics. So it’s a good way to test the waters before you decide to take a whole class on the subject. And it’s great for finding somebody to do a reading for you. Our intro meeting is tomorrow night, 8 p.m. in Linwood; I hope to see a lot of you there. I’ll stick around for a few minutes after class, if you have any questions.”

  Professor Madison took the microphone back and nodded her thanks to Akila. “Whether you intend to go on in this field or not, I recommend taking advantage of the Divination Club’s readers for any question that touches on matters personal to you. Even an experienced psychic has difficulty reading clearly for herself; your own feelings and preconceptions cloud your interpretation.

  “And that brings us back to the words I said at the beginning of class. Lies, damned lies, and prophecy. Who can tell me why I said that?”

  So it hadn’t just been a clever line, something me
morable to get our attention in the first lecture. Several of raised our hands. Madison pointed at someone behind me. “Because we might be wrong about the meaning of what we’ve seen,” a guy said.

  “True, but incomplete. What else?”

  Some of the hands went down. I kept mine up. A girl off to my left was called on, and said, “Because there are still fakers out there.”

  “Also true, but not what I meant — and we’ll be discussing ways to minimize that danger.” Madison scanned the room. “Any more guesses?”

  Was I the only person here who recognized the line, and knew what it meant? She was paraphrasing Mark Twain, who supposedly was quoting Benjamin Disraeli. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

  Madison pointed at me. I cleared my throat and said, “Because prophecy is rarely specific, so you can twist it around to support lots of different arguments — just like statistics. Whether you’re doing it on purpose or not. And besides, nothing’s carved in stone. Just because you see it doesn’t mean it will happen.”

  The professor nodded. “Contrary to what most non-specialists think, the point of divination is not to find some fixed truth. The point is to open your eyes to possibility, and to help yourself think ahead. Think on that, and I’ll see you Wednesday.”

  I was sitting near the middle of the row, and had to wait for the flood to clear before I could get out and head for the doors at the top of the lecture hall. Akila was still there, fielding one last question. I caught her eye and smiled. By her return grin, she remembered me. “8 p.m. in Linwood?” I said. “I’ll see you there. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for me this year.”