The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 7 —CAG— “… fragile ecologies.”

It was the voice of authority vexed, carrying down the corridor of Syncretics’ suite and through the open door of the small counselors’ lounge.

“Malena? Is Gregory here yet?”

Inside the lounge, Malena Graham looked up from her book. She was not pretty, but art and artifice had made her attractive. A spill of chestnut hair framed a young, mannish face. Her blue flower-print dress was long enough to hide her useless legs.

“I haven’t seen him,” she called in reply.

The owner of the unhappy voice appeared in the doorway. “Didn’t he say he was coming in this morning?”

“I don’t know,” Malena said. “I ran late with my three o’clock regression, and he was already gone when we were done.”

A petulant look crossed the facilitator’s face. “I swear he said he was going to resculpt Mr. Barton’s cues.” She shook her head and gestured past where Malena sat in her airchair. “When you get a chance, try the Normandy water—I swear it tastes sweet this time.”

“I did,” Malena said. “It tastes like they didn’t flush the line. Or like what they used to flush it.”

The facilitator made a face and disappeared.

Malena returned to the book that she had been reading—a fantasy about the vengeful return of the Inca gods. Reading was the best way to forget where she was, to absorb the minutes remaining before her first appointment. Reading demanded her full attention. At times, it was hard work. Unlike with dyna-books and vids, she had to build all her own pictures from the author’s sketchy words. Sometimes it seemed more like her book than theirs. Distractions from life, Mother Caroline called them.

But Malena thought that she had every right to her distractions. Twenty years old, and no part of her life was what she wanted it to be. She was still a prisoner of both the airchair and her family’s solicitude, and the continuing lesson of her employment seemed to be that, in the real world, excellence was not always rewarded.

She had excelled in the personal development track, then chosen the thirty-month intensive at Adrian College (over the five-year relationship technology program at Virginia Technical) as the best and fastest route to employment and independence. At Adrian she learned that she could use her differently abled body as a wedge to crack open her clients’ emotional windows. At Syncretics, she often succeeded with those whom other counselors had pronounced truth-deaf.

I’m good. The largest regulars list on the staff, in just three years—so many that she could rarely take any walk-ins. She had no knack for channeling, but she was the best spiritual motivator in the branch, better even than Kirella. She could find the spark inside them and blow it into flame. They leave me better than they came to me.

And yet she was still here, in the smallest Syncretics franchise in the South Bay area. The counselor’s lounge itself said everything that needed to be said. It was no bigger than one of the five little encounter rooms at the front of the suite, half the size of the therapy rooms at the back—and six of them had to share it.

Nor did the lounge earn points for luxury. Its appointments consisted of a few soft chairs arranged around the periphery and a drink tap with waters, juices, and one choice from a rotating selection of caffeinates. That was the price of working for a franchise branch. The price of working for Syncretics, the McDonald’s of mind and body training.

At the company-owned Virginia Beach office, on the other hand, each counselor had his own Network cube, the charge pool was reserved for their use from eight to ten every morning, the sense therapy room from four to six every evening. But one Syncretics branch wouldn’t hire a counselor away from another—professional courtesy. (Bondage by conspiracy.) And the facilities at Interdynamics—she could only dream. You had to be a full R.T. to even think about working there.

That would come, three or four years down the road. It always took longer to catch up when you’d taken a wrong turn.

Kirella breezed into the lounge. “Hi, Malena,” she said, dropping a bulging armbag and herself into adjacent chairs. “How did things go Thursday?”

“Like death. Like slow poison,” she said, tucking the slate into a side pocket on the airchair.

Kirella laughed. “They didn’t like him.”

“They never gave him a chance,” Malena complained. “None of my fathers can think straight on the subject. It’s so obvious. They’re so used to protecting me from the health Nazis and self-pity that they automatically extended the coverage to my virginity.”

“A little late for that, aren’t they?”

Malena smiled mischievously. “Just a little—not that I can tell them that. Not that they’d listen. They won’t listen when I try to explain to them why they’re being such asses. Father Jack even had the nerve to ask to see Ron’s medical record.”

“I hope he refused.”

“He did—which is when open warfare broke out.” She shook her head. “Ever since I met Ron on the net, the family’s been delighted that I finally had a flick friend worth locking them out for. It’d be too much for them if I was sexually repressed on top of everything else. But let him show up in person, flesh and blood instead of shimmers in the cube, and suddenly it’s bar-the-door Katie. Fear and loathing.”

“My old roommate had pet rats named Fear and Loathing,” Kirella said, chewing idly on a stick of strawberry.

“Your old roommate was a mutant.”

“No argument.”

The slate chirped from its pouch. “Malena—your nine o’clock Buddhist is here.”

“ ’kay,” she said, and the airchair lifted off the floor. “My favorite,” she said cynically. “Koan flakes for breakfast.”

Kirella grimaced and looked for something to throw. ” You’re the mutant,” she said pointedly.

“No argument,” Malena said with cheerful insouciance. “Later, love.”

The encounter room was dark save for the single candle on the floor between Malena and the young man seated cross-legged and bare-chested facing her. His eyes were closed, his head tipped slightly back, his arms floating as though weightless a few inches above the floor, his hands palm up and open, fingers loosely curled.

Pretty, she thought. Pretty. If only he was willing to try a few more of the eight Paths— “The negative energy is black and heavy,” she continued in a low, warm, patient voice. “Look inside and find the dark places, the heaviness. The pain of your guilt. The sadness of your loss. It is only your choice that holds them there. Release them. Choose not to keep them, and they will drain from your body. Choose to keep them and they will become part of you. Find the dark places and open them to light. Find the weight and release it. Feel it leaving your body, discharging into the Earth. Feel your body become light. Feel the light within.”

As she spoke, the young man’s hands dipped slowly toward the floor. When his knuckles brushed the wood planking, it was as though a static charge had grounded. A hundred muscles in his body relaxed, and his face at last looked peaceful. She felt him floating, freed, and floated with him. She heard his silent half-sobbing laughter of release, knew the moment that he achieved ephemeral egoless being and the moment it was permissible to call him back.

“Jeremy,” she said.

He opened his eyes and sought hers.

“We’re finished for today.”

A deep breath left him smaller and sadder. “Thank you, Malena,” he said, skirting the candle and coming to hug her.

Unwanted hugs were an occupational risk for counselors, and all the more so for her, a prisoner in the chair. This hug was not unwanted, and yet it made her uncomfortable all the same, for she had to wonder if she had projected her earlier thought. She accepted the embrace self-consciously and kept her contribution as chaste as possible, considering that the object of the hug was nude.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” she said finally, and the air-chair lifted. Way to go, bozo. Let him know that you noticed he was naked. Very professional—

The counselor’s lounge was empty, and she shut the door behind her in the hopes of keeping it that way. Hormones from hell, she fussed at herself as she drew a glass of hot cinnamon tea. Ron, you’d better be there tonight, or I’m going to end up drooling on Father Brett again—

It was not until several minutes later, when she retrieved her slate to resume reading, that she saw the V-mail marker blinking. The message was from Karin Oker, Supervisor of Selection, Diaspora Project, Allied Transcon.

She watched the message once, then immediately watched it again. For a long moment, she sat in her chair clutching the slate against her breasts, eyes glittering, hands trembling. Then she let out a whoop and sent the airchair into a dizzying spin.

The door flew open, and Kirella, the branch chiropractor, and the branch manager piled up in the doorway. “What’s the matter?” Kirella demanded, approaching. “Are you okay?”

Smiling beatifically, Malena tipped her head back against the rest and closed her eyes. “Cancel my appointments,” she said dreamily.

“What?”

“Cancel my appointments,” she said, opening her eyes to let the tears run free. “They picked me. They picked me, Kirella. I’m going to Tau Ceti.”

Ten thousand for Tau Ceti.

However euphonious it might be, the unofficial motto of the Selection Section was not quite accurate. Counting the core crew of roughly five hundred, drawn equally from Allied and Takara, plus between one and three hundred “discretionaries,” split between paying passengers and other payoffs, plus a handful of creative stowaways, the final outbound head count would be closer to eleven thousand.

And that was only if you discounted the quarter million frozen eggs (five per donor) and five myriad frozen sperm samples which would also make the trip—consolation prizes in the star-bound sweepstakes. In all, Karin Oker would get to say “Congratulations” not ten thousand, but a hundred and ten thousand times. (Lesser Selection officials would say “Sorry” to more than ten million.)

But it was the ten thousand pioneers who were the focus of most of the energy, most of the urgency, most of the romance, most of the anger. They were the elect, the chosen. They were the ones who would pass, knowingly and willingly, through what one popular commentator dubbed “the one-way door.” To those who would stay behind, the pioneers were humanity’s hope, or its arrogance; its idealism, or its idiocy; but most often, all of that and more.

It was different in Houston and Munich and Tokyo, in Brazil and Kenya, on Takara, on Memphis herself. To Karin Oker and the rest of Selection, to Hiroko Sasaki and the whole of Allied, the pioneers were the moving pieces in a complex ballet too serious to be a game. Ten thousand to pluck from homes and families across six continents. Ten thousand to process through the training and transshipment centers. Ten thousand to lift skyward a hundred at a time and ferry to the great sky city which would be their new and possibly last home. Ten thousand to meld into a working community that could survive fifty years in the crucible of interstellar flight.

Ten thousand for Tau Ceti.

There was no way of avoiding a Graham family conference on Malena’s news. And once the conference began, there was no way to avoid splitting the family into warring camps.

It had started tranquilly enough. Unflappable Mother Alicia, possessor of a wonderful matter-of-fact pragmatism which had made her the emotional keel of the family for as long as Malena could remember, was alone in the main house when Malena got home, and so was the first to know.

“We’ll need to talk about this as a family,” she said on hearing the news. “I think all of the adults will be home tonight, so no point in delaying. An advisory, of course, not a decision conference. You are twenty, after all. But this does affect all of us, so it’s only right that we talk about it together.”

As the other parents arrived home, Mother Alicia took them aside and informed them of the news, asking them to hold their thoughts until the conference. Malena hid in her room, reviewing the information files that had been attached to her selection notice. The only intrusion was by Father Brett, whom she had wanted to tell personally. It was Brett who had given her the chance, transferring his own option to her after he failed to make the cut for Ur. He responded to the news with an ecstatic, enthusiastic hug that did much to fortify Malena for the ordeal to come.

Several hours later, with the family’s three youngest children in bed and the other four asked to respect the closed door of the family room, the adults gathered, and the issue was joined. By then it was already clear that both her blood parents, Father Jack and Mother Caroline, and Father Michel were united in their shock and opposition. Only Mother Alicia’s thoughtful emphasis on the ground rules for an advisory conference as she opened discussion checked what might have been a summary execution.

“We can’t tell Malena what to do, of course, any more than if she had announced that she was moving out or marrying,” Alicia said, concluding. “Our place is to help her explore the dimensions of the decision, so that she can make the best possible decision. Malena, if you choose to accept their offer, what does that mean?”

“Mine is a staff selection,” she said. “I’ll be part of the counseling staff on the ship. That means I have to report sooner than the regular selections—in no more than thirty days.”

“Where will you go?” asked Alicia.

“To the center in Houston.”

“And how long will you stay there?”

“It’ll be in Houston for sixty days of ground training. Then they’ll give me ten days off for personal business—packing, good-byes—before I move up to the ship. From what I’ve been reading, we’ll only be on board for a few weeks before the first group of pioneers moves in.”

“Only ten days?” asked Michel. “Not very much to say goodbye to a whole world.”

“We’ll get another ten days closer to departure,” Malena said. “If we want them.”

Mother Caroline edged forward in her chair. “Malena—why do you want to do this?”

Malena turned the question on its head and fired it back at the source. “Wouldn’t you want to if you could? Wouldn’t you go if they wanted you?”

“Could I take Jack, and Michel, and you, and your brothers?” asked Caroline, knowing the answer was no. “Could I take this house, and my friends, and the Bay? And if I couldn’t, what would I be getting in return that could be worth giving all that up for? Nothing. No, I wouldn’t go. And I don’t understand why you want to.”

“We understand that you’re flattered,” Michel said, playing Tweedledum to her Tweedledee. “Anybody would be flattered to be picked out of such a large group. But this seems a little like winning a sweepstakes and then having to sell the prize to pay the taxes.”

“To you,” said Brett, coining to her defense. “But her life isn’t your life, or yours, Caroline. She’s still living in the world we created for ourselves. Of course we’re comfortable here. But she’s only just starting to make her own choices and shape her own world.”

“Why don’t you just shut up?” snapped Jack. “You’ve influenced her enough already. Everything you say is just an apology for yourself.”

It was an old wound, reopened by the blow of Malena’s news. Alicia stepped in to try to blunt the confrontation. “The issues here are present and future, not past. And everyone has a right to be heard, Jack.”

“I’d like him to hear me,” Jack retorted, jabbing a finger in Brett’s direction. “He made this happen. When we let him in ten years ago, he picked out Malena and tried to make her his daughter—”

“I am his daughter,” Malena said.

“You were happy enough about that when it was convenient for you,” Brett said at the same time.

“—because he didn’t have one of his own. And as for Malena living in the world we created, that’s him talking for himself again. You were the last one on the scene. And if you didn’t like what you were getting into, you shouldn’t have contracted with us.”

Brett refused to back down. “And if you didn’t want me, you shouldn’t have offered the contract. Or did you think that I would just take care of Alicia’s needs so you three could go on ignoring her?”

“What does any of this—” Malena began.

But Caroline trampled over her attempt to reenter the conversation. “You’ve never stopped trying to make us feel guilty over Michel and Alicia growing apart—”

“Growing apart? The way I hear it, you came to every little crisis between them like a shark to blood—”

Malena watched, first with astonishment, then with growing dismay, as the compromises and accommodations which held Raven House together dissolved in the acid of harsh words. Finally, her frustration turned to fury, she skidded the airchair into the middle of the circle and dropped it to the floor with an emphatic thump.

“Stop!” she demanded. “Stop, all of you! This isn’t about you. This is about me. Doesn’t anyone here want to talk to me?”

The display won a moment of awkward silence, brought an embarrassed look to Michel’s face, and elicited a pursed-lip nod of self-recrimination from Brett.

“I’m sorry, Malena,” Alicia said gently. “What did you want to say?”

She looked slowly from one face to the next, fixing finally on Father Jack. “I really hate the way you have to turn every conversation into a contest, and every conference into an excuse to drag out every old family argument and grudge. I’ve heard all of this until I’m sick of it. Michel neglected Alicia. Alicia drove Michel away. Caroline’s a bitch. Jack’s selfish. Brett’s the thief of hearts. This one neglected the kids. That one spoiled the kids. This one doesn’t pull his weight. That one’s always trying to take over. Did you ever talk to each other, or was it always yelling? Don’t any of you ever put anything away for good?”

“Listen, child,” Jack started threateningly. “You can’t talk to me like that—”

“Oh, no—I’m not going to let you shut me up by making me small,” she said warningly. “I hit my majority five years ago.”

“It’s true. Malena does not have to be here,” Alicia said. “It’s because she loves us that she’s willing to share this with us and listen—”

“Mother Alicia, I can speak for myself,” Malena said, irritated. “Father Jack, in case you haven’t noticed, I have three fathers and two mothers, and have had for quite some time. I can talk to any of you any way I have to, to make you understand. The fact that you and I are blood doesn’t give you any special right to say no to me, or to tell me who I can and can’t respect. Every one of you has helped me. Every one of you has influenced me. And every one of you has hurt me, too.”

Surely you don’t mean me, Caroline’s eyes said. Father Jack looked away and grunted.

“That goes with being family,” Brett said finally.

“Maybe it does,” Malena said. “I don’t really know, because this is the only family I’ve ever seen from the inside. I love you all, but it is your world, just like Brett said. I would have left it by now, if there’d been some place or way to go. I’ve been here too long.”

“Is that your answer, then?” asked Caroline accusingly. “You want to go because you want to get away from us?”

She did not shy from the accusation. “That’s not my best reason. But I have to admit it’s part of it, yes. It might be nice to be alone for a change.”

“What about Ron?” asked Alicia.

That was a jolt, and her face betrayed it. “I guess,” she said slowly, “I guess the fact that I didn’t think of him all day until just this moment tells me something.”

“It should tell you that you haven’t thought this through,” said Michel.

“Or maybe that whatever needs Ron answered will be answered as well or better by going to Tau Ceti,” said Brett. “Can you answer me this, Malena? Do you understand yourself? Do you know what this means to you?”

“Did you know, when you bought the option?”

His expression turned inward, reflective. “It seemed like the most exciting thing anyone could do,” he said. “Like if you didn’t want to, there must be something wrong with you.”

“Would you go now?”

He looked at Alicia before answering. “No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not important.”

“It is important. Is it because you grew up? Because you see things more clearly now? Do you look back and think you were silly, naive? Do you think I’m naive?”

“Too many questions,” he said, shaking his head. “No easy answers. Sometimes I think it’s because I grew old, inside. You have to travel light to get anywhere. The more you’re afraid to let go of, the fewer your choices—until your only choice is to stay right where you are. My luggage got too heavy somewhere along the road.”

He looked up, taking in both Malena and Alicia sitting side by side. “I’m not unhappy, you know.”

Alicia smiled a sweet, sad smile. “I know,” she said gently. “I also know that part of your heart broke when Ur left and you weren’t on it.” She turned to Malena. “If you know your heart, and your heart says go, I think you should listen to it and not to us. I think you should go.”

Bright tears spilled down Malena’s cheeks. “I don’t know why I want to go,” she said. “I only know that I do.”

“That’s enough, sometimes,” said Alicia, reaching out and taking Malena’s hand.

It was not enough for Caroline, who came to her feet and stood, indignant, looming over her daughter. “Do you really think life’s as easy as that? That you can leave everything and everyone behind and be happy?”

“I don’t know,” was Malena’s answer. “I don’t even know how happy I am now.”

“You’re going to tell them yes.” Father Jack’s words were a harsh accusation.

Malena nodded and blinked back a tear. “I already have.”