LEARNING FEAR

by B. A. Chepaitis

  Her song would wind through the room all night, and it would start with the greeting to grandmother moon, who had somehow heard the whispering questions of her heart, and sent her what she needed.

  7

  BRAD SAT IN EMILY RAINER'S OFFICE, AS nervous as he was in first grade when he was called up to the board to do math. Something about this woman reminded him of his first-grade teacher, come to think of it. She smiled nice enough, but her eyes seemed ready to see any mistake almost before it happened.

  He cleared his throat. "I was wondering," he said, "if you could tell me about your course."

  "Undergraduate, I assume?" she asked. "I'm teaching two."

  "Well," he said in his most friendly way, "why don't you tell me about both?"

  She handed him two pieces of paper. "These are the syllabi," she said, and leaned back in her chair, eyeing him like he was a lab specimen. As he read the syllabi, Brad was relieved that this was all for show. All for report. That he didn't really have to take a class with her under any circumstances. Most of the words he read looked like English, but they didn't read like it. English didn't normally have so many hyphens and slashes, and what was a "culturally (de)constructed/rehypothesized norm" anyway?

  He had come to see her at Steve's advice, who had declared her trustworthy. In Steve's terminology, that meant she was against the empathic arts course. In fact, at the Private Sanctions meeting Brad attended, he'd handed out a list of faculty names divided according to where each professor stood on the issue, along with a shorter list of faculty who were believed to be practicing empaths. The list was in alphabetical order, which is why, Brad supposed, Jaguar's name was at the top.

  Other than that, the meeting was a lot of hooey, Brad thought. Kids trying to act big. He'd like to put them on the Planetoid for a week and see if they felt so big after that. Or felt so sure they knew what was right. It was one thing to pump up your ego sending anonymous memos and plastering walls with rude graffiti, and another to really look at the way something worked, where it was working.

  But he'd gotten some useful information out of it. He already had a good report for Alex, and if this meeting went well, he'd have an excellent one. He'd insinuated to Steve that he had a friend who needed help. Someone getting involved in that mind stuff, and where could you go for advice on that. That was when Steve told him to see Emily. She might be able to guide him.

  Brad handed her back the syllabi. "This is very interesting," he said.

  "Three-forty is closed," she noted, "and besides, that's for people who're interested in doing some real research. Upper-level students." Not, her words implied, snot-nosed puppies like him. If this went on, he thought, he could see getting angry about it, even if it was for show. "And 240 is a required course for majors. It fills up fast." She smiled at him in a friendly way.

  Okay. She didn't want him nohow. So, move on. He assumed an expression of proper humility. "That's too bad," he said. "I heard it was a great course. Do you keep a waiting list?"

  She relented under flattery and handed him a pen, pointed toward the wall behind him. "Put your name and ID there. Show up the first day of class, and I'll see what I can do."

  He stood and did so. "That's great. I hope I can get in. I mean, I'm new here, but everyone tells me how much they love your course. And there's another one they keep talking about. Intro to world religions. Dr. Addams teaches it. Do you know her?"

  Her expression consolidated itself briefly into anger and was quickly recontained.

  "I know her," Professor Rainer said, not friendly, but not unfriendly. Just informational. "She's temporary. She won't be here in the spring."

  "Oh," Brad said. "Urn, Professor, I have another question, but it doesn't have to do with class. Another student—Steve Haigue—he said you'd be able to help me out."

  Her attention shifted at Steve's name. She put on her listening face. Brad sat back down, put his hands on his knees, and stared at them. "It's about Private Sanction. Steve said if I wanted a—um—deeper involvement in the issue, you'd be able to steer me right."

  "As a faculty member, I'm not personally involved in student organizations, though I'm aware of the issues surrounding something like Private Sanctions, and do my own work as I see fit."

  "Sure," Brad said. "Sure."

  She breathed in and out deeply. "How deep an involvement do you want, and of what nature?" she asked.

  "It's—for a friend," he said.

  "A friend?"

  "That's right. I'm worried about—her. She's been doing things. Trying things. With her mind. I think she needs help. Steve said you know someone around here who can help."

  Emily looked over her shoulder at his name and ID number, written on her waiting list. "Brad," she said, "that's a very delicate situation, and it takes a great deal of experience and discretion to deal with it. You're aware of that?"

  He swallowed hard and nodded vigorously.

  Emily said nothing for a long while while her hard eyes nailed themselves to his face. He held eye contact with her, hoping he looked sincere and stalwart. Then she wheeled her chair away from him.

  "I'll see what I can find out for you," she said abruptly. "If it seems feasible, someone will contact you."

  Understanding that he'd been dismissed, Brad stood up, shook his pant legs down, and left.

  Jaguar drew up the collar of her wool coat, and wrapped her purple woolen scarf around her head as she walked down the line of stores and boutiques, carrying a bag that contained both her favorite material and some of her favorite colors. Loose-fitting sage-green pants and top, batiked with dancing salamanders in fiery orange. Tight black jeans, black turtleneck, and a pair of black leather boots. She was as content as a hunter hoisting a twelve-point buck, and didn't even care that the sage green would tag her as an empath.

  Halloween had turned the corner into November, with ice that might become snow, might become rain. Icy pellets bit at her face, and she felt them, but they didn't bother her either.

  The chant-shape was moving in and around her with a surge of energy. The feeling of it was better than drink. Better than sex. Well, better than any sex she'd had so far, at any rate.

  She lowered her head and walked on, bumping into a young woman and stopping to apologize.

  "Clumsy of me," she said, then looked at the face. "Oh. Hello, Katia. What brings you out walking on a day like this?"

  Katia" smiled nervously and stepped back. "Window-shopping," she said. "There's a really cool pair of boots in the window at that French boutique. I keep hoping the price'll go down."

  "The joys of the student budget." Jaguar smiled, remembering that herself. Then, on an impulse, "I was just about to get a cup of coffee. Want to join me?"

  Katia looked around nervously. As if she'd like to, but didn't want anyone to see her. "Sure," she said, "I guess. There's this little place right up a few stores. They have good waffles, too."

  They found seats easily since it was postlunch hour, and after they'd picked from the menu, they sat and sipped at their mugs of steaming coffee.

  "You're a junior, aren't you?" Jaguar asked.

  "Yes. I graduate next year. My friends from home thought I couldn't do it."

  "Are you from around here?"

  Katia shook her head, dark curly hair bouncing around the frame of her pretty face. "I'm from this really small town like right across the Canadian border. It's like— well, everyone was really shocked when I said I was going to college. Why not be a data coder? they said. There're lots of jobs in that." She laughed.

  "You know," Jaguar said, "what they're really saying is that they'll miss you if you go. They know that even if you come back, you'll be different, and that's frightening."

  Katia's expression darkened. "I always was different. That's why I left in the first place."

  Jaguar made her face inquisitive, in a detached and teacherly way. "Different?" she asked.

  "Oh, you know. Couldn't fit in. Just—I don't know. I had friends
, and we did lots of fun stuff together, but what they thought—" She broke off. Nervous again.

  Jaguar felt the motion of a song inside her, telling her things. Knowledge would come to her that way in the chant-shape, wordless and direct, unexpected. Katia was an unpracticed empath. Young and alone. Afraid of herself, with nobody to tell her that her gifts were natural and could be directed. Nobody to teach her how to use them.

  As the information moved through her, she saw that Katia was frowning at her. She took a good breath, and smiled. Try and stay in the world, she told herself. Give it your best shot.

  "You live very close to the Mohawk reservation?" she asked.

  "Oh yeah," Katia said, shrugging the moment off. "My mother was from there. She's part Mohawk. She had some relatives there, so we used to spend time, although my mother was kind of funny about it. I guess she couldn't decide where she lived. You know, like in her heart?"

  "I know," Jaguar said. "Not sure where you fit in. You must enjoy Professor Peltier's course."

  "Sure," Katia said, going underground. "He's teaching me a lot."

  Maybe she wasn't so unpracticed after all. Maybe she had practiced when young, then, as so often happened with girls in adolescence, had given it up. Too much power. Scary. Time to change the subject.

  "And way up north there," she asked, "did you ever see the northern lights?"

  Katia smiled. "Aren't they the best? I took Steve out once, and he even liked them."

  "Now, that is truly amazing," Jaguar noted, grinning.

  "I guess—well, Steve's wonderful, but you see how he gets tense."

  "It happens," she said. "People get tense when they don't understand."

  "Yeah." Katia sighed, then ducked her head down to her coffee cup, took a sip, looked up at Jaguar with a mixture of apprehension and daring. "I was wondering. Do you have, you know, like, someone you're seeing. I mean, maybe I shouldn't ask, but I was—I guess we all wondered about that."

  Jaguar, not sure if Katia was referring to a ritual elder or a doctor or a lover, tilted her head quizzically. "It's okay. You can ask, Katia. Only, you have to use a few more nouns."

  Katia laughed and leaned back in her chair, keeping her coffee cup held protectively against her chin.

  "Like, a man you're seeing," she tried tentatively.

  "Not a woman?" Jaguar asked mischievously.

  "Well, we thought—I mean, you seem—well, it doesn't matter, either way. It's just that everyone sees how beautiful you are, and some of the kids think you're here, you know, getting away from someone. Like there was someone up there."

  Someone up there, Jaguar thought, forcing her lips to curl back on the smile they were trying to form. Alex appeared unbidden in her thoughts, his dark eyes blazing at her. She shook him away, and saw that Katia was regarding her with sympathy.

  "Is he handsome?" she asked.

  She opened her mouth to say no. It's not like that. But the words that fell out when she spoke weren't those at all.

  "Yes," she said, "Very handsome. Dark hair with silver in it. Dark eyes. Tall, and broad across the shoulders. His face—it's one of the oldest I've ever seen."

  "That's good?" Katia asked uncertainly.

  "I mean old as in from another time. From the beginning of time." Jaguar told herself to stop talking. Shut up, dammit. Just don't say anything if you can't make sense. But when she saw the look of supreme satisfaction on Katia's face, she felt relief. She'd given them all something else to talk about. Something to take their minds off empaths and Planetoid workers.

  "What do the other kids think, Katia? The ones who aren't writing romance novels."

  Katia returned from her reverie and shrugged off their opinion even before stating it. "Don't worry about them. They're just conservatives."

  Okay. That was pretty clear. "And you're not?"

  "I think people should just be who they are. As long as you're not hurting anyone, what does it matter, right?"

  This said with dark intensity. Jaguar waited, hoping silence would encourage her to say more. It did.

  "I mean, some people get all over me because I spend time with my professors. With—Professor Peltier or Professor Davis. But why shouldn't I?"

  "I don't know," Jaguar said. "Why shouldn't you?"

  "There's no reason. Just because they get this thing going about the Gone Girls. There's no evidence. Steve and I had this sort of argument about it. He thinks—"

  She broke off abruptly, and Jaguar waited for some time before she realized that the girl's words had stopped completely. Katia picked up a packet of sugar and ripped it open, dabbed her finger onto it, and licked.

  Jaguar reached across the table and stopped her hand. "Rot your teeth, girl," she said.

  And in the touch, she felt the fear. Fear of her own art. Empath and—something else. Some other energy moving in her. She feared it.

  Katia pulled her hand back. "Steve thinks Professor Peltier's a cloaked empath. I told Steve he was wrong," she said definitively. "Because he isn't hurting anyone. And empaths—it hurts, Dr. Addams. They hurt people."

  Jaguar marveled at the statement. "Who told you that?"

  Katia shrugged. "Lots of people. And there's Steve's dad—I guess his dad left. Went off with some guru and said he had to be himself. Said he could see things. Then, he killed himself."

  That went a long way to explaining Steve, Jaguar thought. And of course Katia, having her own fears, would be drawn to his, which were at least easily named. "But that doesn't mean he was an empath, Katia. Maybe he was ill, or just confused."

  Katia's face grew dark, and she leaned back into herself. "How do you know the difference?"

  Now, there was a question. Jaguar was so used to seeing the exotic as normal that she forgot what it meant to ask that question. Or maybe she had been taught her art at such an early age by people who knew how to do it so well that she had answered it long since. Katia didn't have that advantage.

  "You know by the feel of it, Katia," she said. She put a hand to her temple and rubbed. "When something's wrong, you feel it, and you trust that even if it all looks good. And when something's right, you feel that, too, and you trust that even if it all looks a little off."

  Katia scanned her, looking hard, eyes glittering. "You mean you figure it out?"

  "No. It's like I said in class. You learn the difference between the smell of truth, and the smell of shit."

  Katia's hand twisted around her cup and held it hard. "What if you don't know? What if you can't tell? What if you're—confused?"

  Jaguar looked at her hard, saw her eyes glittering. She was confused and afraid. Jaguar instinctively reached out to soothe her, reached out with her mind to say it's okay. It takes practice and if you get it wrong you'll learn to put it right. Without thinking, she opened.

  No. Stay away. Stay back.

  Her vision turned double, blurred, went out entirely. She breathed in, pulled into herself. A flock of hands, reaching for her, fluttering around her. Tightness in her neck, around her eyes. Then, the soft feel of night falling into her, around her. Old friend, standing guard.

  "Dr. Addams?" Katia was saying, and Jaguar saw her. "You okay?"

  "Fine," she said quickly, recovering herself. Strong stuff here. Strong stuff in Katia. "I was just thinking about what you asked."

  "Oh. Oh. Well. I mean, it's nothing really."

  "No," Jaguar said. "It's an important question. I think if you're confused, the best you can do is wait for the confusion to clear."

  "What if it doesn't?" Katia asked.

  "Oh, it will," Jaguar assured her. "One way or another, because everything changes."

  "And what do you do in the meantime?"

  "Stay alive, and await further instructions."

  Katia turned her cup around in her hand, examining the motion of the liquid left in the cup. She wanted something more. Jaguar wished she had something more to offer—to Katia, and to herself. But she didn't.

  "I'd better get ba
ck to campus," she said. "There's a general faculty meeting tonight and I'm told I have to be there. You remember we're not meeting in the class this Thursday, right?"

  "Oh. Yes. I remember. We're meeting at Cutters Bar and Grill, at seven."

  "That's right." She wanted these kids to do some fieldwork. Connect their intellects to the world, starting with what they knew best. "Should be a nice break," she said.

  "It's—different," Katia agreed.

  "Just another ritual, Katia," Jaguar said, standing and putting her coat on. "Like faculty meetings, only a little more fun."

  And about that, she was right. The meeting was a boring recitation of budget issues and procedural emendations that meant nothing to anyone outside of administration. Jaguar noticed that Emily was conspicuous in her absence. She's ill, someone said. The flu.

  More like a sudden attack of wisdom, Jaguar thought.

  After the meeting, Ethan helped her on with her coat and slipped her wool scarf over her shoulders. "That was dull," he said. "Can I make it up to you with a good dinner?"

  He placed his hands under her hair and lifted it carefully from her coat collar, smoothing it across her shoulders. She kept her back to him and bit down on her lower lip to still the frisson that ran along her spine. Such a lovely gesture. Intimate and courteous at the same time.

  He would be a skilled bed partner, she thought, and her body was calling to her. Wanting touch. Wanting the kind of touch he promised—intellectual and cool and practiced, with a minimum of emotions that could slip like diamonds to the bottom of a wind-tossed lake.

  And why shouldn't she have what she wanted? There was nothing stopping her from that. No prisoners. No Board governors looking over her shoulder like old ladies. No disapproving glances or comments from ex-Supervisors.

  "That is," Ethan said, "if you're free."

  "I'm free," she said. "As always."

  Professor Davis's house was high-ceilinged, old, and filled with wood. That, at least, was Jaguar's first impression. The wood, she thought, made the house seem dark. A fireplace crackled in the living room, causing the soft shadows to leap about the room, but everything else seemed very still, as if it had been still for a long time. She noticed that alongside his shelf of modern disks, there were two shelves filled with books. Everything from Homer to Poe, Parrish and Maclean, Ramjerdi and Davidson for fiction and poetry. Then a large section of the philosophers, next to a wide array of scientific tomes. Gray's Anatomy. Phelps's Neuroanatomy. Oxford Unabridged Encyclopedia of Neurophysiology.