The Spell-Bound Scholar

Chapter 20

Finny and Orly managed to melt into the shadows while Papa and Mama were dividing up the family, letting each of the three groups think they were with the other. They hid until all three wagons had driven out onto the road. Then, secure in the knowledge that they were the only people on the farm that afternoon and evening, they crept out of their hiding places and ran toward the barn.

Finny reached the haymow first. She paced, waiting nervously and fretting, then heard boots on the ladder rungs. She turned and saw Orly stepping off the ladder, silhouetted against the light from the window, big and handsome and muscular and impossibly attractive. He stepped forward, lifting his arms, and the yearning swept from him to engulf her, to sweep her into his arms and wash her up against his chest, his mouth to hers.

The older foster children were well used to blocking out the amorous feelings of the villagers at the midsummer festival, for as the evening darkened and the bonfire was lit, there was dancing and drinking, and many of the young people disappeared from the firelight two by two. The young psis were even used to blocking out the erotic impulses of their foster siblings, which, coming from telepaths, were far stronger than those of the villagers—so even at that festival, when the musky aura of coupling seemed to permeate the atmosphere, they had rarely been aware of one another's misbehavior.

They were stunned when they did feel the aftershocks of orgasm.

The teenagers looked at one another in surprise, then with desire and longing, for the erotic feelings they had sensed aroused their own yearnings.

Mama might not have been a telepath, but she had eyes, and knowledge enough to draw her own conclusions. "Orma—what is it?"

"Someone has just been having a very good time," Orma gasped, "someone telepathic and projective. If they aren't part of our family, they should be."

"I suspect they are," Mama said darkly. "You and Jason round up the children and take special care of the little ones. Papa and I will see what has been going on." Off she went into the merrymaking crowd, searching for her husband.

When she found him, she said, "We seem to have succeeded better than we knew, Papa."

"We, and they," Papa agreed. "I think we had better go back to the farm at once, Mama, before they decide to have too much of a good thing."

"Or decide that it is indeed a good thing," Mama agreed. "It would never do to have two of our brood desert the Cause to start a family of their own."

Papa winced. "What a waste of time and effort that would be! Well, we'll go quickly, but I don't think there's much to worry about. We've done this often enough before, after all."

They left, driving the wagon through a cloud of hormones, for even the nontelepaths, without knowing why, had begun to feel more amorous toward one another than was usual, even at that festival. It was a midsummer that would become a legend in the village.

They drove up as Orly and Finny were coming out of the barn, still starry-eyed and holding hands. They stopped in the moonlight to kiss.

Papa leaped down from the wagon and strode toward them, seeming to swell with anger. "And just what have you two been doing, I wonder?"

"And out in public, or as good as!" Mama scolded, clutching her skirts and hurrying to catch up. "Your brothers and sisters could feel your lust all the way into town! You might as well have told them all what you were doing before they left!"

Finny blanched and shrank from Mama's anger. Orly tried to stand his ground but turned pale.

"I've never heard of such a thing!" Mama scolded. "You're as bad as your birth parents! Really!"

"You could have controlled yourself, Orly," Papa snapped. "Now you've dragged Finny down with you! Couldn't you think of anything but your own pleasure?"

"But. . .but we only—"

"No excuses!" Papa thundered. "We've told you how disgusting your parents were! The monks have told you how vile such an act is, in church every Sunday! Don't try to tell me you didn't know it was wrong!"

"Selfish! Depraved! Disgusting!" Mama ranted, and the two of them went on and on, Papa starting in just as Mama had to pause for breath, then Mama again when he ran out of wind. On and on they went for half an hour without pause, denouncing their errant wards for horribly ungrateful children, born of lustful and morally depraved parents and destined by that birth to be promiscuous themselves. Both were gratified to see Orly drop Finny's hand and to see her bury her fingers in her skirt. Finally Finny's sobs became so deep that she nearly fell. Orly reached out to support her, but she flinched away from him. Mama stopped ranting and gathered Finny in to sob against her bosom. "All right, now, it's done, and there's no undoing it. But never again with another telepath, you hear?" She glared at her foster son. "Go away, Orly, and don't make her look at you again for a month!"

Orly finally bowed his head, shoulders slumping in defeat, and turned away. Papa clasped his shoulder and steered him off toward the creek to wash, and Mama comforted Finny, then took her inside and filled the brass tub with hot water for her.

Finny wept into the soapy water.

"Ashamed, and very right to be," Mama told her. Then, generously, "Well, what's done is done, and the spilt milk cannot be poured back into the jug. We'll promise not to tell your brothers and sisters about this, Finny, as long as you swear never to do it again with one of your own kind!"

"Oh, I swear, Mama," Finny said fervently, and meant it with every drop of blood in her heart.

On the banks of the creek, Papa handed Orly a towel to dry himself, saying magnanimously, "We'll go on just as we always have, then. There's no reason for anybody to know about this except your mother and myself—and Finny, of course. Come now, back into town, or your siblings will count noses and know who wasn't there."

So back to town they went, Finny and Orly riding in the back of the wagon as far from one another as possible with downcast gazes, feeling so depraved that they couldn't even look at one another.

It was the longest ride of Finny's life.

Orly and Finny saw each other after that, of course, but quickly looked away, sheepish and guilty. They didn't speak much to their siblings, either, feeling accusing stares everywhere they went. Finny didn't stop to think that she was behaving just as Orma had two years before, or Rhea the year before that, and of course she had been too young to notice when Dory had gone through this same ordeal.

Finally they began to come out of it; finally Finny realized, from the comments about them, that their siblings hadn't counted up and compared the roll call of each of the separate parties. The boys exchanged coarse jokes and jibes that made Orly realize they weren't sure which of their number had done what to whom, and Finny began to understand that the other girls weren't even sure the psionic lovers had been of their family. She made up excuses for her bad mood and started laughing off their expressions of concern. Every now and again she would look up to find Orly gazing at her with yearning, but she quickly looked away, blushing with shame.

The worst of it was that she still wanted him, wanted another evening in the hayloft with him. That was how she knew how depraved and disgusting she really was.

She was so ashamed that she never even thought of talking about it with the older girls, or with Dory or any of the other alumnae who came back to visit from time to time. It was hard to talk with them after they had been away, anyway—they seemed harder somehow, bitter and weary. It made Finny afraid of leaving home—but she couldn't stop time, and she knew the rule well: When you turned eighteen, you had to go out into the world and earn your own living. Papa and Mama weren't rich, after all, and though the farm was productive, it couldn't support more than twenty children at a time. Besides, they were rare assets by the time they were grown—educated people in a land in which most were illiterate—educated, and espers.

Finny never thought to wonder why, if telepaths were so rare, all the children left on Mama's doorstep were espers.

Orly turned eighteen that winter, and his birthday was a mingling of rejoicing and sadness, for everyone knew that when spring came, Orly must go. It was a tortuous year for Finny, with Orly there but untouchable, with the thought of him being so compelling but still so disgusting. Spring did come, though, and when the mud had dried and the trees were in leaf, they held one more sad party and bade Orly goodbye. Off he trudged down the lane to the road. There he turned back, waving one last time, then went slogging away.

Finny couldn't forgive herself for imagining that he had been waving to her.

She didn't see him again, not at the farm, but Mama heard gossip from the alumnae. When Sukey, one of the first foster daughters—she had graduated twelve years before—had come to visit, then gone, Mama took Finny aside and told her, rather severely, what Orly had been doing since he had left. She made it clear that the Chief Agent had ordered him to find a position with the Baronet of Ruddigore's household and to cultivate acquaintance with one of the baroness's maids, but that didn't really excuse his having an affair with her—with several of them, in fact. "I knew he would be just as much of a womanizer as his father must have been," Mama said severely, then turned mournful. "But he was such a sweet little boy!"

For a moment, Finny was afraid that she was going to have to comfort Mama, but the older woman regained her composure and told Finny not to blame Orly too much. After all, once you left the farm, you had to put the past behind you.

Burning with anger and shame, Finny put the past behind her with a vengeance. When the next midsummer's festival came, she felt weighed down with grief as they rode the wagons into town, remembering what had happened the year before. It kindled desire in her at first, then grief, then shame as she remembered Mama shaking with anger and telling her and Orly that they were both no better than their profligate parents. If Mama had been right about Orly, she must have been right about Finny, too, which meant that profligacy was all she was good for. So Finny locked away any compunction or grief she might have felt and took four separate farm boys aside that night. On the way home, she felt horrible, soiled and filled with self-loathing—but she felt a strange satisfaction, too, because she knew she deserved it. And there hadn't been any great, soaring ecstasy, only some tickling and some evanescent, thrilling building to a climax that was only a release, wasn't even much of a pleasure. She never knew those rolling waves of sensation again, for she only coupled with nontelepaths, just as she had sworn to Mama—and just as the Chief Agent assigned her to do.

For her time at the farm was almost done. She turned eighteen in March, passed her final examinations in history, anarchist theory, and psionic manipulation, then applied to join SPITE, and was delighted and relieved when she was accepted. It showed how good Mama and Papa were as teachers, that none of their graduates was ever rejected; SPITE welcomed them all, giving their wastrel lives a purpose.

The family gave her a wonderful going-away party where all the girls cried and hugged her, and Mama wept a bit, too, and gave her one last embrace, then sent her off down the road with Rufus, a young man who had graduated when Finny was ten.

Overcome with loneliness and homesickness, Finny wanted the warmth of human contact very badly that first night and was sorely tempted to entice Rufus into sharing a blanket with her—but she remembered her vow to Mama, that she would never sleep with another telepath, and managed to resist the temptation. Rulus must have sworn such a vow, too, for he only told her ik good night'' and rolled up in his own bedroll.

Of course, it could have been that without her erotic projection, Finny wasn't very attractive. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became.

Rufus took her to the chapter house in Runnymede. She was amazed at the size of the city and the towering granite houses, most of all by the royal castle on top of the hill in the center of town. Thousands of people thronged the streets, there were stores that sold virtually anything she could want to buy and a great deal more besides, there were musicians who played on street corners and in the public squares where several streets met, musicians and acrobats and puppet showmen and even actors. There were theaters, too, where the actors were a great deal better than in the squares or the inn-yards.

There were also cutpurses and armed robbers and pimps with trains of prostitutes. She learned quickly to be very selective in regard to which thoughts to heed and which to block out.

The Chief Agent's lieutenant assigned her a room and told her when the common room would serve meals, then gave her a moderate amount of money and told her to explore the city, paying particular attention to the houses of the aristocrats, the guardhouses, and all the other government offices. Finister went a little wild exploring, with a young woman several years older who seemed rather cynical but was very friendly. After the first two weeks Finister was assigned marketing trips, then day jobs as a scullery maid—cover, of course, for an opportunity to spy by telepathy. She was surprised at the number of men, young and old, who made advances to her, for she did not consider herself to be at all pretty, and decided to keep a very firm hold on her erotic projections. She managed to deflect all her would-be suitors, though she might not have if any of them had been terribly handsome.

After a month, the Chief Agent himself summoned her. He seemed surprised at her appearance and, for a few seconds, gave her a thorough, searing inspection that made her feel she was being stripped naked. Then he managed to thrust his lust back into safekeeping and assumed an official demeanor as he scanned a paper on his desk. "Home Agent Finister. You're a telepath."

It was a statement of fact, though he could only have known from the paper he was reading. A single light, quick probe showed her that he wasn't a telepath himself. "Yes, sir, and a projective, too. And telekinetic, of course."

"Yes, most of you girls seem to be." The Chief looked up at her with impassive eyes. "I've had good reports of your first month here, Agent. You seem to have become acclimated to the city quickly and have already brought in several useful bits of information from three noble houses."

"Thank you, sir." Finister still felt rather guarded; certainly she had not yet done anything exceptional.

" 'Finister' is an odd name," the Chief Agent said. "Did your foster parents tell you what it meant?"

"Yes, sir—'land's end.' It was pinned to the basket in which they found me and they couldn't understand why my real mother would have given me such an odd name. They thought it might have been the name of my natural father, but there was no one by such a name in the county."

The Chief Agent nodded. "Possibly a sailor; there are families by that name on the coast, where you would expect it. Of course, you could also translate the name as meaning 'the end of the world.' "

Now Finny blushed. "They did give me a nickname that meant 'the end,' sir, but I'm sure that was only an accident."

"Accident or not, Agent Finister, we expect it to be an omen for the aristocrats and civil servants who cross your path," the Chief Agent said. "Destruction of government begins with destruction of governors, and with your particular gifts, you should be able to disable them emotionally even when you can't kill them physically."

His words gave Finny a frightening rush of elation, of a feeling of power—and of despair, because she knew this was all she was good for. Well, then, she would do it well, she vowed to herself—and she was sure her victims would deserve whatever she gave them.

"This is your first major assignment. M The Chief Agent took another piece of paper from his desk and handed it to her. "The Marquis of Cromcourt, currently a member of the Queen's Privy Council. He is also an unprincipled scoundrel who has exploited his peasants unmercifully—especially young and attractive women."

Finny stared down at the page, not seeing it, but holding it tightly in both hands, elbows pressed to her body to keep it from shaking. "Am I to assassinate him, sir?"

"First drain his mind of everything he knows about the government's current plans," the Chief Agent said. "Then assassinate him, yes. Revenge his peasants upon him—but leave no signs."

"Yes, sir." Now the paper did shake. Finny's studies had prepared her for this duty, so it did not shock her—but she understood that the only way she would be able to catch the Marquis at a sufficiently vulnerable moment would be to seduce him, or rather, to let him seduce her—which he would surely want to do, if she used her projective power well. She didn't doubt that she would have to submit to his embraces, or even his bed, but since that was all she was good for, what did it matter? It wasn't as though it would be her first time, after all. She felt no compunction about one more such foray. She just hoped he wouldn't be too old or too ugly.