LEARNING FEAR

Home > Science > LEARNING FEAR > Page 12
LEARNING FEAR Page 12

by B. A. Chepaitis


  "An eclectic library," she said to him.

  "I like to know everything," he said. "At least, everything I can know."

  He served her a delicate and well-planned dinner of veal Marsala and risotto with asparagus, good bread, and good wine. As they ate, they talked books, and food, and winter weather. Nothing important. Just the most pleasant surface items on the agenda. She was glad of that.

  They didn't even talk about school until they got to the after-dinner wine, and were seated in front of the fire.

  "Have your students been behaving for you?" he asked.

  "Behaving? None of my students behave. I don't encourage it."

  He laughed lightly. "I remember you said something about Steve being a pest. Is he still?"

  "Steven—he's different."

  "If he's a problem, I can talk to him. I have some influence," he said, pouring more wine into her glass.

  She swirled the wine around, watching the patterns that formed and dispersed along the sides of the iridescent glass. "And he'll listen?" she asked. "It doesn't seem to be his strong point."

  Ethan stopped pouring into his own glass and raised his eyebrows at her. "My dear, he quotes you so frequently I assume he's listening much more closely to you than he is to me."

  So. They had discussed her. Not much surprise there. "I can imagine what he says."

  He finished pouring his wine and joined her on the couch. She found couch conversations uncomfortable, because it was difficult to turn properly to see the full face of the person you were talking to. She had read somewhere that men preferred side-to-side talk, because face-to-face signaled confrontation to them. As she thought about this, she realized that the only man who ever asked for her full face was Alex. But then again, he was an empath.

  "Steven," Ethan was saying, looking ahead rather than at her, so that she could only see his classically sculpted profile, "would like to live in a totally rational world, based on a totally rational system of order."

  "I'm very rational," Jaguar interposed. "What I tell him is absolutely reasonable."

  He held a hand out, "No," he said. "You're integrated. Emotionally and intellectually, and I suppose you'd call it spiritually, too. That's rational, but it's more than rational, too. Steven wants the rational. That's all."

  "Is that why he's so invested in the antiempath movement?" she asked, keeping her voice neutral.

  "Probably." Ethan turned his face to her and smiled. "Emotions in general terrify him. That's one reason why he's so terrified of you."

  In the low lighting of the room, the shadows were soft and diffuse, merging with his eyes that had gone deep blue. She saw nothing of the empath in their surface or their depth. He was a very physical man, she thought, but not a man of passionate emotion. Always cool and self-possessed. Perhaps that's why Steven was drawn to him. Perhaps that's why she was, too.

  "I'm not sure I understand," she said.

  "You don't?"

  She shook her head.

  "Jaguar, he's got a crush on you. His physical desire terrifies him as much as his emotions. And I must say, for all his problems, Steven has a very good eye."

  Jaguar lifted her glass and took a long sip. Somehow, that hadn't occurred to her.

  Ethan chuckled. "I wish you could see yourself right now. I believe it's the first time I've ever seen you flustered. But now I've made you aware of it, and you've closed down again. You're very good at staying closed, aren't you?"

  Her hand jerked, and wine spilled onto her wrist. Ethan grabbed a napkin from the table and made a swipe at her wrist. She pulled back quickly, spilling more wine. She didn't want him to see the glass knife. Didn't want him to feel it under her sleeve. Suddenly felt unsafe.

  No contact. Stay closed. No contact.

  She stood and went over to the fire, wiping the wine from her wrist into it and watching it sizzle in response. Ethan stood and joined her.

  "Here," Ethan said, handing the napkin to her. "Please. I didn't mean to intrude in any way."

  She took it from him and mopped at her sleeve, then smiled apologetically. "Sorry," she said. "It's just—I didn't know how to take your question. There seems to be so much suspicion about someone who's from the Planetoids."

  Ethan grinned. "Would you be relieved if I told you my interests are merely and only lascivious?"

  She grinned back. "Probably. If that was the truth."

  He lifted a hand to her hair and stroked at it lightly. "I believe you'd rather go to bed with me than talk to me," he murmured. "How unusual for a woman."

  "Maybe," she said, "you've been hanging around with the wrong women."

  And then his doorbell rang.

  An expression very like rage passed over his face and was quickly traded in for his usual cool reserve. Talk about your closed books, she thought.

  "Aren't you going to answer that?" she asked.

  He scratched at his head. "To be honest, I think I know who it is, and I'd rather not."

  A face appeared in the living-room window, then disappeared.

  The doorbell rang again. Oh well, she thought. Oh well.

  She walked over to her coat, put it on. "You go ahead," she said. "I'll just let myself out the back way."

  Planetoid Three, Toronto Replica

  There was something wrong with his bed, Alex decided. He turned onto his back, and his neck tensed. Rolled onto his stomach, and felt knots. Tried his side, and got pressure in his shoulders.

  "Dammit," he said, and pushed himself to sitting. No more.

  He swung his legs down off the bed and made his way to the light switch. No more dreams, thank you. He'd go get some work done.

  He went over to his computer and opened it, looking for something to do. There were the monthly expenditure reports to file. And he needed to update some yearly reviews. But his mailbox was flashing at him. Message from the home planet. Must be Brad, he thought, and opened that.

  Alex read, noting that Brad had already managed to get to a meeting of the antiempath group, who were busy plaguing all suspect teachers with anonymous e-mail, articles on empath bashers, and other equally mature responses to their fear. They'd be stuffing office doors with memos soon, and from what Brad said, their prose was as dense as their reasoning.

  "Sounds like fun for Jaguar," Alex murmured, and felt guilt well up. He'd sent her there. Hadn't lifted a finger to stop the assignment. No wonder he couldn't sleep, and was plagued by dreams of cellars filled with angry cats, ready to scratch his eyes out.

  He scrolled through Brad's report, and saw that he'd also been following Jaguar to see if he could tag the people she spent the most time with. She seemed to be on very friendly terms with the dean, Ethan Davis. He'd watched her leave campus with him, seen them laughing together in the halls while he was waiting to speak with an adviser. That was the good thing about this campus, he said. You always had to wait, which gave you a lot of time for watching.

  Alex drummed his fingers on his desk and scowled. Ethan Davis. Okay. One for the list of lookups.

  Brad also saw her spending time with Leonard Peltier, temporary faculty from Lakota country.

  "Leonard Peltier," he mused. "Must be related." That would bear looking up too.

  She also recently had lunch with George Norton, seen a movie with Harold Smith, gone to a lecture with Samitu Laki.

  "Aren't there any women faculty?" Alex muttered at the screen.

  Apparently, there was one. Emily Rainer, whom Brad had consulted about a course for the spring semester. Alex read on and learned that Emily was definitely involved in the antiempath movement, that Brad's opinion of her was that she was doing drugs or something, by the look of her eyes, and that she didn't like Jaguar.

  "Great," Alex said. "Thanks a lot."

  The report went on, and Alex grew a little concerned when he realized the game Brad was playing, trying to get Emily to contact someone to help him "cure" an empath. That could be dangerous, especially if they bothered to trace Brad back to the
Planetoid. He made a mental note to get Rachel first thing in the morning and make sure she coded all of Brad's records.

  He had a brief moment of speculation as to whether the Board sent Jaguar to the home planet to be cured of her empathic itch, but dismissed it pretty quickly. They knew better than that. He hoped. Still, what Brad had turned up was valuable, and he'd taken risks to get it. "Good for you," Alex muttered at his computer. "Compensation will be forthcoming."

  The report ended by Brad giving his opinion that the student group was largely harmless, but he included a list of names of students involved. There was one—Katia Stone—Brad wasn't sure of. He couldn't tell if she was in the group, or just there because Steve Haigue, the Private Sanctions guru, was her boyfriend. She was a slippery one, he said. Had something she was sitting on pretty hard, he thought.

  Alex sent back a message advising Brad to go slow and careful with Emily, and asking him to stick as close as he could to Jaguar without letting her know. Great job, he told him. Keep it up.

  Then he worked his profile catcher on Leonard Peltier. The first thing he noted was that Leonard, born Thomas Bear Hand, was ex-army. He'd spent two years as a soldier in the Killing Times, and another two years in the psychological research unit. That, Alex knew, was a euphemism for psi work.

  He requested a more complete record.

  His computer worked it for a full minute, and then told him the information was not available.

  "State reason for data unavailability," Alex requested.

  The screen flashed back at him, "Information Classified."

  Okay, he thought. That was interesting.

  "Organization code for classified information," he said.

  "Coded Red." Pretty heavy, but not impossible, Alex thought. Classified information was not necessarily unavailable if you knew how to work the system. Red was a mid-level code, signifying research that was hot, but not about to get anyone killed. And Peltier's involvement was more than twenty years ago, so it could mean nothing at all.

  He leaned back from his computer and turned this over in his mind. Then he moved on to Emily Rainer, whose history was what he might have expected. Smith educated. Dissertation blameless and dull. Spent many years in the Middle East researching texts before she came back Stateside to teach again. Nothing to write home about.

  He worked his way through the other faculty members and found more of the same. Lives that followed expected tracks from birth to tenure to emeritus status and probably to grave. The only blip that turned up was an absence more than a presence. The dean, Ethan Davis, had two years practically unaccounted for in his file. Listed only as work abroad.

  He thought this one through and shook his head. Could mean anything, or nothing. Missing information. Lines that didn't get filled in between that country and this. He poked around it some, trying to establish a connection between that time and army work, intelligence work, sick time, anything. Nothing much came of it.

  "Okay," he said. "Let's try the university itself."

  Since he had at least one known ex-army here, and the faculty had the same, maybe those dots would connect. He went to a board that collated information from unrelated sources, and hooked in the University's code, which was public property, and the code for Pentagon psi work, which was not. The computer worked it for a while, then blipped out the names of the officials who approved the grant for the empathic-arts course.

  He knew that already, and it was no help. He needed to know what wasn't made public. He needed to know something he didn't even know how to ask about yet. His hand twitched. Something. There was something here, he knew. Jaguar was in the middle of something, with a man who used to work for the army, and a University that was linked with the army, and faculty that wanted to cure empaths.

  He needed to make contact with her, just as a check-in. A brief brush against her consciousness, polite and unobtrusive.

  He settled himself into her signals, using the surface contact considered courteous when one empath was seeking another, and waited for a response, even if it was get the hell out of here.

  "Damn," he said, when the static nipped at his brain. "Now, that's new."

  It wasn't the rippling, unseeable lines of a mind that was cloaking itself, or the hard feel of a closure. This was static.

  He tried it again, and got the same feeling. Static. A sort of interference. Perhaps having to do with her location on the home planet? Satellite energy? He didn't think so.

  It was too highly charged and complicated, circling the outskirts of her thoughts. Was it something that sought a way in, as he did? Or did it merely seek to keep him out? Maybe she'd come up with a method of blocking he didn't know. She could be so resourceful with blocking.

  His hand rested over the side of his chair, and felt fur. He petted it absentmindedly, thoughtfully, and was rewarded with a purr of contentment.

  It took him a full minute of petting to remember that he didn't have a cat. And if he did, it wouldn't be that large.

  When his eyes followed to where his hand rested, he stopped its motion.

  She was powerful, beautiful, and cryptic. She could take his hand off in one bite, and finish off the rest of him before he had a chance to cry out. If she was going to kill him, she'd go for the back of his skull and crack it with her teeth. If she wasn't—what was she doing here?

  She turned her eyes up to him, light from an unknown source reflected in gold pierced with black slits that gazed serenely into the center of his mind.

  I choose you. I choose you I choose you.

  Then she stood and stalked from the room, through the door, and into the night. From somewhere far away, laughter reached him, human and knowing.

  "Jesus, what are you?" he whispered after her.

  No answer communicated itself to him.

  BREATH.

  It felt like breath to her.

  Being breathed into the night. Being breathed in, and the night your skin and the moon your eyes.

  The trees, all the branches were coated with a diamond sheath of frost that caught the glow of the full moon and cast it back in phosphorescent blue. Mist rolled across the earth like laughing silk. She glided across the grass soundlessly, and the feel of her legs moving was pure pleasure.

  The scent of the moon. The scent of the moon was sweet as hibiscus blooming out orange curved into white at the center. The scent of the moon was a liquid prism. Quartz running liquid and heated to molecular dispersion. She stopped, glanced up, breathed in.

  This is what chant-shaping was like.

  Being breathed in to the heart of radiant sun. Breathed in to the source. Breathed in.

  Like finding the absolute center of the universe, and kissing it. Like having it kiss you back.

  She rested, breathing in what breathed her.

  Then she considered her hand. The scent of the moon was on her hands, and she brought her mouth down to taste.

  Enough.

  Enough pleasure. There was work to do.

  Her feet down on the earth now. Moving now. Going. Going faster for delight. For the feel of it, muscles that would never stop and legs that never knew fatigue and going for delight. For the feel of it.

  She raced the speed of the turning earth, every muscle an invocation to grace. She raced like fire coursing the hair of a sorceress. She was water. She was liquid fire burned into her own core and racing her heart to nowhere.

  Liquid fire. Fire, singing her this song.

  Like kissing the center of the universe. Like having it kiss you back.

  She glided to herself. Breathed out.

  Breathed out.

  She breathed out to herself, and let go with a long sigh.

  She tilted her head back and sang her song, let it begin in her, singing her where she needed to go next. The skin of the night would take her and she would let it.

  Show him.

  Words left her and she fell into this beauty, this ecstasy, this opening of time and space. Fell into the skin that was
slippery as daylight on water, elusive as the shadow of moon on snow. She breathed out. She breathed in. There, where space curled into corridors of time, she ran like light.

  Show him. Like kissing the center of the universe, and having it kiss you back.

  Motion brought her into darkness, through thought and dreaming, through the pupils of an eye, and into the corners of a heart. Motion brought her forward, where she needed to go.

  Energy skipped a beat in its natural flow. She licked the air, and let the energy she tasted become a river she could ride.

  A sweet river. A way from here to there. Into dreaming. Into time and space.

  Where he waits. Show him.

  She let it carry her through dark places, through stars, through no air, through air again, and into the room where he sat, waiting. Waiting for her.

  His hand brushed her back and encased her like fire. Her breath brushed his hand, like kissing the center of the universe.

  Thought like motion filling her. Her breath rolled over his hand. She drew a rough tongue across his skin.

  Chosen, marked, and mine.

  That was all.

  She slipped back down the river, back through the tunnels she'd crossed, and into a more familiar skin.

  When Jaguar saw that she was drinking tequila, she assumed she wasn't at Cutters, which only served beer. She took the shot, licked the salt, and sucked the lime. Then she looked around.

  This was a downtown bar, and pretty deserted except for an old man who sat down the way from her. When he turned a grin to her, she noticed the distinct absence of teeth in his mouth. But as she checked the state of her clothes, which were uniformly bedraggled and wet, she didn't blame him for thinking she was someone who'd like to spend time with him. In the large mirror that hung behind the bar, she saw that her face was streaked with mud. There was something wild in her eyes, and her hair had a mind of its own.

 

‹ Prev