by Eric Thomson
“Understood. I’ll keep Stearn here once he returns, then call Katarin and decide on the next steps.”
“Thank you. We’ve never seen a male with a fully opened third eye and can’t predict what a lack of restraint may bring, but it won’t be good. Especially not with Stearn’s grueling life experiences and almost fatal injuries on Yotai. Our records tell us how women in similar situations end up, and it’s not pretty.”
“The corruption of power, Void style,” Gwenneth murmured.
Marta nodded. “Exactly.”
“I’m sure it’ll be okay in the end. Between us, Katarin and I will ensure Stearn’s welfare.”
“Good. Keep me aware of developments. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
“And you the rest of your night.”
Marta’s image faded away, leaving a thoughtful Gwenneth to stare at the black display.
“Landry?”
The friar’s face reappeared in the doorway.
“When Stearn returns from Lannion, please see he comes to my office right away.”
“Yes, Abbess.”
**
“You look tired,” Loxias remarked once their ground car left the Chamber of Commerce in its wake. The low, late afternoon sun was casting long shadows into the streets, proof the meeting lasted well beyond its allotted time. “Still can’t channel those energies efficiently?”
“No. I’m a rank beginner.” Loxias’ breezy tone irked Stearn.
“Tell me about the people I named.”
He recounted suitably edited versions of his observations, both overt and via his third eye. All the while, Loxias nodded, as if Stearn was proving him right in every detail.
“I did as you asked. What is the value of this information?”
Loxias chuckled.
“Leverage, my friend. The more I know about the people who both help and oppose our efforts, the better I can advance the Order’s interests. So, you think Gerson Hecht is devoid of any human feelings. Not surprising. He always struck me as a block of ice. I daresay he’s using us as much as we’re using him. How Gerson tolerates Downes is a mystery.”
“Two sides of the same coin,” Stearn replied without thought.
“Pardon?” Loxias gave Stearn a surprised look. “That’s quite a profound conclusion.
“Hecht is cold and calculating, without emotions. Downes hides it well, but he overflows with feelings of anger, rejection, envy, and hate. Separately, they’re each half a man. Together they form a whole, albeit a dark one.”
“How did you come to this conclusion? Not that I think you’re wrong, but I’m curious.”
Stearn half closed his eyes in thought.
“It simply came to me. Perhaps my time in the Windy Isles, sitting in on counseling sessions with the worst humans on the planet, gave me a subconscious insight into the human psyche.”
“Am I correct in assuming you touched their minds as a sister would?” When Stearn remained silent, Loxias chuckled. “Come now. A student of Marta’s can only be exceptional.”
“It was wrong for me to reach out.”
Loxias made a dismissive hand gesture.
“Would the Almighty give you a great talent if you weren’t meant to use it? You did well today, and you can do more for the Order and the Almighty in the future. Did you follow any of the discussion?”
Stearn shook his head. “I didn’t understand much of it, and I was rather busy with the task you set me.”
“Our principal ally, Gerson Hecht, supports several senatorial candidates who favor us. Between them, they can raise our profile on government committees and commissions.”
“And make sure Hecht Industries keeps getting lucrative government contracts.”
“As a wise sage from the dark ages before spaceflight noted, there’s no such thing as a free meal. Quid, meet the pro quo.” Loxias chuckled at his own wit. “You and I will think of ways we can support those senatorial candidates in the upcoming election. Perhaps through them, we might even get a say in who becomes the next president. Charis Sandino, though a decent vice president, is, at best, indifferent to the Order of the Void. She has ambitions, but nothing says a vice president automatically becomes president once the incumbent’s second term ends. There are suitable candidates for the presidency who are more favorably disposed and wouldn’t mind seeing us assume a bigger role in the republic’s affairs.”
“You would interfere in secular elections?”
“Supporting the best candidate is hardly interference. No, I simply want the best outcome for everyone.”
Stearn let out a calculated snort. “With all due respect, how can you or I decide what the best outcome looks like?”
Loxias took no visible offense at the younger man’s skepticism.
“If it strengthens the Order’s place within the republic, it strengthens the republic itself. In any case, well done with your study of the Chamber’s principal members. What we need now is for you to continue training so you can become our leading influencer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Surely, you’re aware the sisters who work as counselors aren’t just listeners, they’re influencers. They can nudge people or strengthen them without their knowledge.”
“I was told such things are forbidden outside a clinical setting.”
Loxias made a disparaging sound. “Our esteemed sisters can be hypocrites if they believe it necessary, Abbess Gwenneth included. Did you think Jonas Morane convinced the Lyonesse Estates-General to build the Knowledge Vault and sever ties with the empire on his own? Of course not. Sure, he has a certain charisma, but convincing a colony at the hind end of human space that radically changing course was a splendid idea takes more. Granted, I wasn’t here at the time, but enough of my Lindisfarne Brethren lived through those events, and they figure Gwenneth helped Morane without the latter’s knowledge.”
“You’re saying I should do as she did and help certain senatorial candidates?”
“Now you’re getting it.”
— 37 —
Gwenneth, who’d been staring out at the quadrangle, turned around when Stearn gently rapped his knuckles on the doorjamb.
“Landry said you wished to see me.”
“I did. Please come in and sit.” She gestured at a chair in front of her desk. “You were in Lannion with Loxias this afternoon?”
“Yes, Abbess.” Stearn took a seat and looked her straight in the eyes. “We attended the quarterly Chamber of Commerce meeting.”
“Was it interesting?”
“Not particularly. A large part of the discussion centered on whether the Chamber would endorse candidates for the senate in the upcoming elections. Since I know nothing about politics in this star system, the debate was rather academic, though I met a few well-known people and can finally put faces to names.”
Gwenneth arched an eyebrow. “Such as?”
“Defense Secretary DeCarde for one.”
“And what did you think of her?”
“The words self-possessed, open, and honest came to mind.”
“A fair assessment. She was an exceptional Chief of the Defense Staff and is a fine leader. Who else?”
Stearn gave her a few names beginning with Gerson Hecht and Severin Downes.
“What did you think of Hecht?” Seeing a potential trap hidden within her question, his mind raced to figure out what a trained friar or a sister on receive only would deduce.
“As self-possessed as DeCarde but rather inscrutable.” Stearn hoped Gwenneth didn’t notice his moment of hesitation. “I looked for a soul but saw nothing.”
“I see. And Downes?”
Stearn hesitated again for a fraction of a second.
“A man disappointed by life.”
“Astute observations, all of them. Well done.”
Stearn inclined his head. “Thank you.”
“That being said, you will not leave the abbey again until you take the oath and either Marta, Katarin, or I implant the prohib
itions. This is for your safety, the good of the Order, and the safety of the public.” When Stearn made to speak, she raised a hand. “I know. You can’t see any reasons why at the moment, but they will become clear as your training progresses. Believe me when I say an unschooled talent as strong as yours can be dangerous, hence the need for prudence until we know you’ve mastered it and internalized the restrictions on its use.”
“Understood, Abbess.”
“Good. You may go.”
**
“Thank you for taking my call, Katarin.” Gwenneth gave her friend a tight smile. “There may be a problem with Stearn.”
She recounted her conversation with him and Marta’s fears.
“Do you think he peered into minds unbidden?”
“Possibly. Stearn wasn’t lying, but I sensed momentary equivocation, as if he were carefully selecting his words lest they betray him.”
“Not good. Do you think Loxias put him up to it?”
Gwenneth let out an unclerical snort.
“Almost certainly. Loxias is the sort who’ll bend the Rule and arm himself with insider knowledge if it helps reach his goals. But no more. I forbade Stearn from leaving the abbey until further notice.”
“It would be better if you forbid him from speaking with Loxias.”
“I know. However, Loxias is the head friar, and that makes him responsible for Stearn’s employment. When our predecessors amended the Rule and allowed men into the Order, they didn’t foresee a friar with a sixth sense so strong it puts most sisters to shame.”
“Alas.”
“How is your patient?”
“She’s doing as well as can be hoped. I should be able to come home by Monday. Will you work with Stearn in the meantime?”
Gwenneth shook her head. “No. I’d rather not interpose myself for a few days when what he really needs is continuity. Besides, you’re a better teacher than I am.”
“And you’re a better leader than I, but I’ll take the compliment. Don’t worry too much about Stearn. You should remember how keen we were to use our talent as young sisters when it blossomed. He’s no different. Keep him in the abbey, and it’ll be fine. A week from now, he’ll be bound by the same inhibitions against mind-meddling as the rest of us.”
**
Stearn didn’t quite know what he should think of his brief conversation with Gwenneth. Did she suspect something, and if so, how? Was there more to this sixth sense and the third eye than Marta let on? Were the sisters truly mind readers, and did the abbess sift through his guilty thoughts?
That Gwenneth influenced Lyonesse’s leaders as a group into supporting Jonas Morane’s plan decades earlier seemed both mildly terrifying and strangely exhilarating. If only he’d possessed that ability during his time in Antelope.
He could have kept Captain Barnett and his favorites in check, thereby avoiding the horrors they’d inflicted and endured. He might even have returned home instead of ending up a broken man on a Yotai spaceport landing strip, staring imminent death in the face. Not that permanent exile on Lyonesse as a friar of the Void was an awful fate, although he knew he could never become a committed monastic, never mind a believer. And once his training ended, then what?
He looked up from his mug of tea when he spotted someone coming toward his table in a refectory still mostly deserted since supper was over an hour away. Loxias. He dropped into a chair across from Stearn.
“What did Gwenneth want?”
“She asked me about the Chamber of Commerce meeting and what I thought of the principal participants, like DeCarde and Hecht. Then she forbade me from leaving the abbey until further notice because of my arrested training regimen.”
Loxias scratched his beard. “I see. Does she believe you overstepped the bounds Marta set?”
“Probably, though she didn’t mention it.”
“Any idea how long until your confinement ends?”
“No. Why do you ask? Is there an event I should attend in the next few weeks?”
The older man nodded. “Several, so we can help our favored senatorial candidates shine in front of the electors.”
“Then you’ll do so without me. I can’t disobey the abbess.”
“Of course not. Just get through your next phase of training as quickly as possible and remember the sisters with a powerful talent, like Gwenneth and Katarin, don’t follow the Rule when it suits their goals.”
Loxias rose and walked away without another word, leaving Stearn with an unexpected surge of irritation as he wondered whether the chief administrator saw him only as a means to an end and not as a valued colleague. He drained his mug and left the refectory as well but didn’t head for his assigned workstation in the mechanical building where a small fusion reactor generated the abbey’s electricity, and a stationary environmental system took care of water purification and sewage.
Instead, Stearn walked in the other direction, toward the farm complex that fed the Brethren and served as the Lyonesse University’s on-the-job training facility for students in veterinary medicine, agriculture, and animal husbandry-related disciplines. Between them, Gwenneth and Loxias had annoyed him enough that he wanted another unconstrained chance at opening his third eye on a civilian before Katarin meddled with his mind.
Stearn found just the right candidate walking one of the colony’s precious horses around the main paddock, a man in his early twenties with a fresh, open face tanned by the sun. He leaned on a wooden fence railing after giving the student a friendly wave of the hand and watched for a minute or two. The roan mare, visibly gravid, seemed placid as she trotted around in a circle, getting her daily dose of exercise. She was part of another project like the Knowledge Vault — preserving and breeding animals whose distant ancestors left Earth along with human colonists during the first faster-than-light diaspora fifteen hundred years earlier.
He shifted his eyes from the mare to her handler and briefly wondered how sisters directly affected another’s thoughts. Then he concentrated on his third eye, willing it to open so he could study the student’s inner self. Proving that practice makes perfect, the effort required seemed less than during the Chamber of Commerce meeting. He reached out and brushed against the student’s mind, sensing what could only be contentment at exercising the mare under a late afternoon sky. Compared to those Stearn studied earlier in the day, this one appeared more straightforward, without sharp delineations and few strong emotions.
The young man’s inner peace increased Stearn’s irritation, and he pictured his fingers flicking at it. To his complete and utter astonishment, the happiness vanished, replaced by confusion and even a bit of anger. He immediately withdrew and cut contact.
Halfway around the world, Marta’s eyes snapped open for the second time. The feeling of unease she’d experienced earlier was back and stronger than ever. Since the first hint of dawn was coloring the eastern sky, she climbed out of bed and began her morning yoga routine, wondering what Stearn was doing now and whether she should call Gwenneth again.
**
Stearn woke with a start in the middle of the night, bedclothes askew, skin soaked with sweat and heart beating a disjointed tattoo. Fear and loathing oozed through every part of his being while ghastly images haunted him like an out-of-control cinematic production. He’d not experienced a nightmare since boarding Dawn Hunter and couldn’t remember ever having one of this intensity. Stearn entered a meditative state so he could regain control over mind and body and realized his third eye had opened unbidden. He understood almost at once it was the source of his distress.
The sisters taught him dreams, including nightmares, were the mind’s way of processing emotions and consolidating memories. Perhaps those with open third eyes felt dreams more strongly than ordinary people who by and large possessed only a smidgen of the sixth sense that was so developed in the Brethren. But why did his eye open while he slept? Was repeatedly invading another’s mind unbidden the cause? Or was there a more sinister reason? His physical reaction
to the nightmare was so intense, Stearn could well believe it might have caused cardiac arrest in a weaker man. He reached for the water glass by his bed and found it knocked over, contents spreading on the stone floor.
The dormitory outside his room remained silent, a good indication his struggles were soundless. Although he worried about what the nightmare meant, he couldn’t discuss the matter with Gwenneth or Katarin, let alone Marta. They would quickly find out he’d overstepped his bounds and touched other minds without the inhibitions demanded by the Order’s Rule. He wasn’t that good a dissembler. Not when facing the most talented human lie detectors on the planet.
So far, none tried to violate his privacy — at least not by delving deeply into his mind — and would never know of the grim memories he kept well hidden since mastering the art of self-control. He climbed out of bed, rearranged his bedclothes, then took the water glass, and padded down the hallway to the washroom where he refilled it from the tap.
Once there, he slipped out of his underclothes for a quick rinse in the showers. He returned to his cell stark naked and dripping but met no one along the way. The rest of his night passed without incident. However, he felt bone-weary when the Prote Ora bells sounded at first light, calling the Brethren to rise and perform their morning devotions before another day of service to the community and the Almighty.
— 38 —
“Good morning, Stearn.” Katarin waved him into Marta’s workroom, now temporarily hers, the following Monday.
“Sister.” He inclined his head respectfully.
“I understand you went out into the community for the first time last Friday.” She pointed at the meditation mat. “Please sit.”
“Loxias took me with him to the Lyonesse Chamber of Commerce quarterly meeting.”
“And how was it?”
“Interesting. I met several big names.” He settled on the mat and adopted the lotus position. Katarin did the same, facing him.