LEARNING FEAR

by B. A. Chepaitis

  "Try file 75@HP.Univer," Rachel said.

  Jaguar punched in the numbers, waited for the scroll to end, and stared at it.

  "Rat fuck," she said. "Rat fuck rat fuck rat fucked."

  "What? What?"

  Rachel scooted around behind her and looked over her shoulder. Then she blinked up at Jaguar. Even she couldn't find anything placating to say about what she'd read.

  "They've got me listed on mandatory home leave, Rachel," Jaguar whispered.

  "You have to tell Alex," Rachel replied. "He should—"

  "What Alex should do is—never mind."

  She fumbled with her bag, slipped the notebook back in. Then she performed an internal move that Rachel always referred to as Jaguar slipping into her catskin.

  All signs of anger left her, fire blown out by a chilling wind. She became perfectly cool and still.

  "Tell Alex I'm glad he's relieved me of the necessity of filing reports while I'm away. Tell him I hope he enjoys my rest leave as much as I will."

  Then she picked up her bag and walked out, not even slamming the door behind her.

  Rachel walked to the window and saw her walk fast down the street, three floors below.

  Mandatory home leave. That wasn't good. When Teachers were given that, it made a nasty and large dark mark on their permanent files. It was used for Teachers who broke down, burned out, lost it under the pressure of their work. And that's what they'd named this assignment.

  Rachel drummed her fingers on the window and tried to figure out why, but she couldn't. Tried to figure out if Alex had anything to do with it, but she couldn't imagine him doing such a thing to Jaguar.

  She shrugged, and realized that trying to figure it was stupid. Unlike Jaguar, she found research more helpful than hypothesizing. She walked over to the telecom and punched the code for Alex's office.

  "Supervisor Dzarny," she requested.

  "Busy," the computer told her.

  "Interrupt," she replied. "Code 5."

  It was the emergency code, but what the hell. She felt a crisis coming on.

  Alex's face appeared, looking surprised when he saw Rachel.

  "What is it?" he asked. "Is Jaguar—"

  "Jaguar's on mandatory home rest leave," Rachel said. "Sorry to code you, by the way, but I thought you should know before she comes over and kills you. Which is what I'd do if you did that to me."

  Alex's brow creased. "What?" he asked.

  "Jaguar's job. It's filed as a mandatory home rest leave."

  "No, it's not. It's a research assignment."

  "Check," Rachel suggested. "Got the file code?"

  He nodded, and turned half away from the screen, worked his computer for a minute, then stared, the creases on his forehead growing deeper.

  "Son of a bitch," he said.

  "She said worse than that," Rachel noted.

  He turned back to the screen, his face paler than it had been when she'd first seen it. "Rachel, I didn't do this. You know that. I wouldn't do this."

  "You didn't stop it, either," Rachel noted.

  She normally stuck up for Alex, especially when Jaguar was in one of her moods about him. But she wasn't letting him off the hook for this one.

  Alex scowled. "What did she say?"

  "She said rat fuck. A lot. Then she said to thank you for saving her the trouble of filing any reports. Then she said have a nice day."

  "She didn't."

  "No. She didn't. She said she hoped you enjoyed her absence."

  He winced.

  Rachel nodded. "I thought I should let you know. She left a few minutes ago, so if she's gunning for you, you've got some time to leave the planet."

  "She's not. She'll leave me alone to feel my feelings. Dammit, Rachel, she thought I set her up before this happened."

  "And did you?" Rachel asked.

  "Jesus, not you, too. I swear I didn't—"

  "Well," Rachel conceded, "maybe not. But you always stuck by her, and you know the Board. You're usually smarter than this."

  He submerged his face into the palms of his hands briefly. When he reemerged, he looked tired. "Okay. I'll do what I can. Thanks for letting me know."

  And then he was gone.

  Rachel shook her head at the blank screen, then shook a finger at it. "You should be nice to each other," she said to Alex's disappeared face.

  And she wondered if they would ever begin to know how.

  IN A BASEMENT, UNDER DEEP EARTH THAT LED to tunnels going anywhere on campus, a candle burst into flame under a careful hand.

  "Woman of fire," he chanted, "call fire to fire and begin again."

  She had arrived.

  He sensed her palpable presence, shining flesh and blood walking the halls of disembodied theory. It had begun.

  The planning and negotiation that brought her here was challenging and took a great deal of time and energy, but he was a patient man. He knew what he wanted, what and who she would bring to him, how valuable it would be. Now she was here, and the rest would follow if he continued to be patient. And he would, with her to amuse him.

  He had started this project with a specific goal in mind, and he fully expected to realize it. But the more he knew about her, the more he realized that the journey could easily be as enjoyable as the goal. He would have the pleasure of knowing her, as well as the rewards of what she would bring his way.

  He raised his hand over the candle, and the flame followed, flickering and dancing in the cool, damp basement air. This hand would find her, and she would follow it as surely as the flame did. He would see to that.

  He looked to his left, at the wooden door marked with the traditional glyphs for closure. Not that he believed in those old ways, but they could have a powerful psychological effect, particularly with impressionable students. Katia had been impressed. So had the others.

  But this one—woman of fire—it would take more than glyphs to impress her. More than smoke and mirrors to outwit her. He'd learned of her years ago, and had filed the information away because he didn't need it at the time. Then, in his attempt to capture the one art he lacked, he'd stumbled upon her name again, learned how intimately she was associated with what he wanted. In fact, her name came up as the primary stumbling block to his goal, and he knew he'd have to remove it. That would be a challenge. He couldn't reach around or through her. Instead, he would have to utilize her. Play her.

  He wondered what resistance she would use against his arts. He explored the possibilities, lingering over all he knew of her talents, her family ways, her gifts. He'd heard stories. About her red glass knife. About the mint she always carried with her and why. He'd heard she was an empath, a singer, something of a healer, and something of a killer. That she had the gift of clear sight. Not even the Pentagon had a list of her psi capacities because she'd avoided testing, but her history indicated all this, and more. Given what she did and who she was, he suspected she was also a chant-shaper.

  A chant-shaper. He knew as much about that as anyone with his experience and background, but that wasn't saying much. It was an elusive art. The art of the elusive.

  Highly visible, and almost impossible to grasp. Rare, and difficult of apprehension. Science wasn't ready to admit it existed, but there were too many years of stories about this art to ignore it. Her people were among those who laid claim to the ability to call on energies beyond themselves, assume those energies almost as a second skin, and walk within them.

  The Mertec said it came from the spirit world, and that the chant-shaper was working with the spirit they shared soul with. That, like the glyphs on his door, he thought was just a pretty way of describing those who could control the motion of esoteric energies. Not that it mattered how you described it. What mattered was what you did with it. He thought he'd be able to find a use for the art, if he could find a way to seduce—or induce—her toward his desires. It would be new territory, but he felt ready to explore it.

  He leaned forward and reached out a hand, pointing a
t the candle that stood flickering in the center of the largest table. The candle shivered, and the flame went out.

  He pulled his thoughts in and narrowed them. The candle slid silently across the surface, stopping just at the edge. It lifted off the table and shot across the room, shattering as if it were made of glass.

  A good warm-up. He'd achieved motion and molecular dispersion with the precision he wanted. Precision and speed. That was his value to the people he worked for, and they rewarded him well for it. In spite of their fears about his talents—or perhaps because of their fears—they'd give him anything he wanted, cover any indiscretion, help him set this project up, as long as he kept performing the rather mundane tasks they assigned.

  He would try a few more warm-ups and then take a minute to review some anatomy. He wanted to stay warm enough to work deeply, and serene enough to keep the pace slow.

  There was every reason in the world to go slowly. He'd known a few winters, but this was the first time he was looking forward to the long nights of the semester ahead.

  2

  JAGUAR SHOULDERED HER BAG AND WALKED, face to the wind, up the cement steps that led to the rectangle of buildings where classes were held. She'd seen her rooms on campus, which were on the third floor of a two-hundred-year-old rambling Victorian house used by visiting faculty, spent a few hours tracking down the right offices to fill out forms for pay and parking and airvan service and meals, and found her way across the wide expanse of campus from gym to auditorium to health clinic to this central conglomerate of higher education.

  She looked around at the buildings, which were white and arranged in perfect symmetry above and around a lower level of lecture centers and a central fountain. A wind circled the separate buildings—humanities, social sciences, business, fine arts, and more—each building exactly the same as every other, except for the small sign at the front.

  "Cold," she noted as the wind sucked breath out of her and she tried to tuck her chin farther down into the collar of her raincoat. She'd forgotten how cold a rainy wind could be in upstate New York, even in early September.

  But, as popular wisdom went on this part of the planet, if you didn't like the weather, stick around five minutes. It would change. The report she'd heard on the air shuttle said that the following day would be sunny and in the eighties.

  She kept her pace fast as she moved past the fountain, where she could imagine students would gather to tan in nice weather, the Campus Center with its bookstore and food shops and meeting rooms, toward the humanities building where her office was located, paying little attention to the students who scuttled by her in groups of threes and fours. She had to acclimate herself to the place before she could do the same with the people. Both would take some doing. Unless her job demanded, she didn't spend a lot of time on the home planet.

  She had gone last year with Alex, as they did every year, to look for the northern lights on the longest night of the year. Last year they found them pouring down magic over a snow-covered cornfield in Nebraska, where they stood and chanted the blessing for dreaming, and the gifts of darkness. She wondered what Alex would do this year, and whom he would do it with.

  She'd also made her annual trip to New Mexico to take part in the sun rituals with Jake and One Bird, who had taken her in after the Serials when the rest of her family was killed. They had taught her how to walk the strange land of herself after she left Manhattan, an adolescent orphan with no idea what to do except follow the direction of the setting sun and ask repeatedly for Thirteen Streams, which was the name of their village. Somehow she had made it to New Mexico alive, and somehow, when she walked into a diner in Gallup in search of a glass of water, Jake and One Bird had been there, waiting for her. They continued to wait for her every summer, expecting her presence at the solstice ritual. She had a responsibility to share her gifts with the people who nurtured her spirit.

  Taking part in the ceremonies was necessary for her as well. A time to renew her arts. A chance to sit in the sacred space of the mesas while the stones became a cauldron to cleanse her spirit and the heat a soundless pulse of rhythm to reset the beating of her heart. A place where who and what she was would be either taken for granted or valued, depending on the circumstances. Jake and One Bird's village was one of the places she could call home.

  The University was not.

  Learning itself was easy for her, but she was a strange and undomesticated animal sniffing the halls of academia, and she'd been glad enough to graduate and leave for the Planetoids, where everyone was a misfit or a criminal. A runaway or a throwaway. The place was almost as accepting as Thirteen Streams. And in spite of the Board of Governors, on the Planetoids she could even find people who understood what it meant to be empathic.

  Alex, for instance. She frowned. Dammit. Damn him. Mandatory rest leave. Even if she was right about the particular bug he had up his ass, he still should know better than that.

  If he wanted her to investigate an antiempath movement, he'd have to make it official. If he wanted to let the Board slap her wrist, she would act as if she was having her wrist slapped. Stay the hell out of it and teach her courses. Nothing more.

  She stopped in front of a building and read the sign: humanities. Her office was on the third floor.

  She walked up the stairs and down the hall, and pushed the code key in 325, where her name was already displayed. She went inside and put her bag down.

  It was a small space, long and narrow, but one wall had a bank of windows that looked out over the campus and toward the mountains. She went over to them and opened one, letting the cool air into the stuffy space.

  The Adirondacks were soft and distant under a veil of cloud and mist. Between the mountains and the campus, buildings rose and fell with the rolling land. Pretty. Quiet and unpretentious and restful to the eye. She turned her gaze skyward and saw a hawk surfing the thermals over the road that encircled the campus. They would like it here, she thought. Probably they nested on top of the dormitory towers that stood like sentinels along the perimeter of campus.

  She pulled the window shut and turned to her desk computer. The University kept their technology nailed down or built in to prevent theft, and she'd been told that any handheld equipment was her responsibility. She passed a hand over the sensor panel and watched the screen and keyboard elevate, listened to it beep on. It had been coded to recognize her hand. They were ready for her. She wasn't so sure if she was ready for them.

  It had been a long time since she'd been in a classroom. She'd taught as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and remembered liking it, feeling comfortable with the play of learning. She held authority in her hand loosely, as a ball of twine that unwound between her and the students, always prepared to slacken or tighten the thread in response to the way they tugged. She supposed she did the same thing on the Planetoids with prisoners.

  Prisoners. Students. Fears. Education. What differences would she find? And what, she wondered, would it be like to work in a place where she could not be who she really was?

  She smoothed down the lines of the gray skirt she was wearing. She'd gone out and bought herself suits for this job, and though she liked the look of them, she was not comfortable. She was used to clothes that fit as easily as skin and moved with her as she needed to in her job. Suits constrained her and heels made too much noise.

  She took off her jacket and sat down at her desk. The books were on her hard drive, and she flipped through the list, stopping to read lines here and there.

  "Pretty fucking cautious," she muttered as she read. None of her old standbys were there. Where was Post's Unparticular Magic? Rothenberg's Symposium of the Whole? Parrish's Imagining the Witch?

  "Shit," she said. "Why didn't they just let the kids take a compu-course?"

  When campuses reopened after the Serials, on-line courses were popular, and almost became the norm. Online classes meant no possibility of violence in the dorms or the classrooms. No housing problems. Access for
students who wouldn't otherwise have it. But once the fear wore off, students wanted to come back. They wanted to be social, learn to live in a community, with all its dissonances and harmonies. They wanted to be part of the eternal dynamic balance of the University, its astonishing mixture of rigid conservatism and radical progressivism. She supposed this year, with the empathic arts course, they'd have that in spades.

  The University was being very careful about how they presented the course. It was listed as history, not science or religion, and they chose one of the oldest and stodgiest white male members of the history department to teach it. Everyone knew he had a real talent for taking an exciting topic and making it rigorously boring.

  Still, the reaction of students, parents, and faculty had been immediate and explosive. An empathic arts course would promote activities and values we don't want our children exposed to, parents said angrily. Empath teachers can do things to our minds, students said suspiciously. Empathic arts are a fast slide into an anti-intellectual abyss, professors scoffed.

  The press got in on it, and some students got noisy for them. Private Sanctions, they called themselves, and said their mandate was protecting the privacy of the mind. They made speeches connecting the course with the disappearance of four women a few years before. They signed petitions and chanted in front of offices, but the president wouldn't cancel the course.

  It was the University's job to preserve old knowledge and generate the new, she told the press in a florid speech. She spoke of the need to overcome prejudice, mentioning the battles gays, blacks, and women had fought. Jaguar noticed she didn't mention the long history of denying Native Americans their religious rights, their sacred lands.

  Her words did little to allay the fears of students or parents. Jaguar wasn't surprised. Every era has its own brand of witch-hunt, and her ancestors had often been cast in the role of witch. She'd be doubly suspect here, since she was both Planetoid and from a culture that was still inherently suspect in their spiritual and ritual practice, but that was nothing new. She just didn't look forward to cheating the hangman here, in uncomfortable suits.