The Spell-Bound Scholar

Chapter 21

Something of her misgivings must have shown in her face because the Chief Agent's voice softened, becoming sympathetic. "Of course you're frightened. Agent Finister—anybody would be. There is some risk involved in killing a nobleman, after all—but very few of our agents have been caught. You're nervous, too. as nervous as a hunter before he shoots his very first deer. But think of it as slaughtering a pig. In some ways that's exactly what you'll be doing. You may be sure he deserves it."

"Oh. I don't doubt that, sir." Finister said. "I've read about the droit de seigneur and I was thoroughly disgusted."

"So you're equally disgusted by this nobleman and quite ready to stick a knife between his ribs."

"Yes. sir!" Finister nurtured her anger, nurtured the reserve of rage and bitterness that seemed always to be there now at the core of her being.

"Righteous anger. Good, good." The Chief Agent nodded. "But a knife between the ribs would be very likely to see you arrested and executed. Agent Finister. and we'd rather not lose you. It would be much less suspicious if the Marquis's heart simply stopped beating."

She nodded and tried to keep her stomach from turning over. It was. as he had said, very much like slaughtering a pig. and she remembered how frightened and sick she had been the first time she'd had to do that. She knew she would feel the same way again, her first time killing a man—but she knew she would get used to it.

She carried off the assignment quite well, obtaining a position as chambermaid in the Marquis's household, then blushing prettily at his flatten. He was only middle-aged fortunately, and still rather good-looking, though with an edge of cruelty that made her quite sure of the lightness of what she was doing. She projected pure sexuality whenever he came near, and sure enough, his flattery became dalliance, furtive kisses and caresses on the back stairs, during which she drank in all the information about the Privy Council's doings. After only two weeks he summoned her to his bedchamber. It was mortifying, but she knew she wasn't worth anything more; she gritted her teeth and went through with it. That made it all the more satisfying when he yawned and went to sleep—and she reached out for his heart with her thoughts and stopped its beating. Then she dressed and slipped out of his room, letting her humiliation and disgust show in response to the guards' ribald remarks. No one would be surprised if she disappeared from the house that night; the Marquis had a reputation for dismissing women as soon as he'd had his way with them. She wasn't there when they discovered that the Marquis had died in his sleep. Instead, she hurried back to headquarters, unnerved and trembling, for her first experience with human death at close quarters had been as shocking as she had known it would be.

The Chief Agent was sympathetic, assigning her light duties again and assuring her she would grow accustomed to the experience.

She did.

A melange of similar assignments followed, some lethal, some not, some only for the gathering of information. There were continual attempts to penetrate the royal castle, but the Queen's telepaths soon detected any agents of their own kind; she barely escaped capture twice. By and large, though, her career blossomed, taking her from one assignment to another, each more important than the last.

She met Orly years later, in the line of duty, but they never talked about their past. Some months after that, she met Sukey, and when they talked about the farm, feelings leaked through Sukey's shield—resentment and anger at Mama for having excoriated her so thoroughly when she'd caught her in the barn with one of the boys. Shocked, Finny made a point of finding Dory and holding a similar conversation—with similar results. She simmered with anger toward Mama and Papa after that—they had made it sound so horrible, as though she and Orly were the two most deplorable people in the world, when it was really something that happened every year! But she couldn't find them and scold them, of course. She didn't dare. After all, they were Mama and Papa, and if they didn't love her, no one did.

Then followed a catalog of atrocities and disillusionment as Finister began to realize that her SPITE superiors were trying to feather their own nests and competing for promotion and rank with all its perquisites, one of which turned out to be her, and several other of the prettiest female agents. Worse, though they still believed in the rightness of their cause, they had lost faith in its eventual triumph.

Finister had not. She resolved to gain both vengeance for her own exploitation and renewed zeal for the Cause by assassinating her superiors and becoming Chief Agent herself. But she had become cynical enough to strive for material luxuries, just as her bosses did, and finally realized that the perfect revenge on the nontelepaths who had persecuted her and her foster siblings, and on the bosses who had betrayed her by their cynicism and exploitation, would be to marry into the nobility, becoming a Duchess or perhaps even Queen (since the Crown Prince was her own age). Besides, in that way she could work to destroy the aristocracy and the government from inside as well as outside.

So when her boss assigned her to either assassinate Magnus Gallowglass or make sure he would not reproduce, she was fired with zeal to achieve both his plans and her own.

"The swine!" Gregory said, pale-faced and trembling. "To use the love of a child as an instrument to warp her soul!"

"Her foster parents will have much to answer for when this curing is finished," Geoffrey promised him grimly.

"The villains!" Cordelia cried. "The caitiff swine!"

"Worse," Gwen said, face contorted with disgust. "They bartered affection, they withheld approval, they bound her to servitude by her own heart and debased her self-esteem systematically."

"They reared her to be a prostitute and a killer!" Geoffrey exclaimed. "That business with teaching her to slaughter animals—'twas all done in such a way as to lead her to slaughtering people!"

"And to encourage her sexuality only to disable it, to twist it in such a way that they could use it, and her, as a weapon!" Cordelia's voice was harsh with bitterness.

"Not to mention the poisoning of her mind," Gwen said, "in teaching her history from only their own biased point of view and excluding all others, let alone facts that might contradict it!"

"People have done that from time immemorial, Mother," Cordelia said angrily.

"Yes, but not so consciously, not with so great an awareness of what they were doing! She has been reared to be a tool, nothing more, and has not been given the slightest chance to develop her own soul, to become an individual in her own right!"

They were all silent for a moment as the words sank in. Then Cordelia ventured, "But we now propose to do so ourselves, do we not? Can you truly cure her, Mother, or only remake her into the image of what we wish her to be?"

Gwen turned to her youngest son. "What say you, earnest lover? Do you wish the woman to become as you dream her to be, or do you wish her to become fully herself and take the risk that she will no longer find you attractive? Perhaps she will even become someone repugnant to you."

Gregory paled again but said firmly, "I wish her to be herself. Then let us discover if I appeal to her, or her to me."

"You might also discover that your great passion has been only illusion," Geoffrey cautioned.

"Then I must know that! I must know the truth so that I can see the world as it really is—and at this moment, she is the world to me! Cure her, Mother, if you can—make her to be her own person and none other's, not even mine!"

"Well said," Gwen told him, and his siblings murmured assent. "I am proud of the son I have reared," she said, then glanced at Geoffrey. "All of them, but never so proud of Gregory as at this moment. I must have done something right."

"More than you know," Cordelia said, then suddenly frowned and said reluctantly, "I suppose Finister's foster mother and father did a few things well, too."

"Oh, yes," Gwen said. "They reared her with love and devotion her first few years. Even after that, her home was always a secure refuge—until she was sixteen. But they did so only to assure that she would be able to love, for if she did not, she could not have become so loyal to their cause or have ached so for their approval and feared their censure. Truly the right thing for the wrong reason. They were quite clever in achieving their goals."

Cordelia eyed her with misgiving. "You do not mean they were virtuous people mistaken in their beliefs!"

"Mistaken, aye," Gwen said, "but there is little virtue in corrupting children in the name of a cause. We must confront lies with truth, though. Let me find these two and discover what was truly in their hearts."

Her eyes lost focus and her children were silent, careful not to distract her as her mind sped to the farmhouse Finister remembered—not difficult to find, since she also remembered the route from the farm to Runnymede. They knew Mama was sifting through the memories of the man and woman she found in that house. Cordelia, at least, hoped that her mother would not kill the couple in their sleep, though she did not doubt they deserved it.

Then Gwen's eyes focused again and a grimace of disgust crossed her face. "Their memories show that they lied deliberately and often. Worse, they knew what they were doing, and had even come to enjoy the humiliation and the despair they caused."

"Corrupted by their own goals?" Geoffrey asked.

"No, by the means of achieving those goals—and I cannot say which I deplore more, the means or the goals. Let us see if I can counter the one and overturn the other." She reached out to either side. "Join hands again, children. We have thus far only learned what we must confront; the true labor has yet to begin."

"But how can you cure her, Mother, rather than make her into another form of statue?" Cordelia asked.

"By freeing her from the bonds of her past, from the fetters her foster parents and her commanders placed upon her," Gwen said, "but not replacing them with manacles of my own choosing. I must allow her to remember her past without being enslaved by it, leave her free to decide her fate and her faith for herself. Lend me strength, children."

The three young people fell silent and joined hands, gazing upon the unconscious woman who lay in their midst.

Gwen was silent, too, a while, comparing the structure of Finny's brain to that of the healthy brain, which she had learned well from the computer. Synapses had grown wrongly, whether from birth or from learned responses she could not tell. She regenerated here, straightened a pathway there, lowered some resistances, and raised others until the brain was restored to its original functions.

Then she began to work on Finister's past.

Overcome with jealousy, five-year-old Finny reached out to the baby with her mind, to look inside it and see if there were some way she could make it go away. . . .

Sudden blinding pain racked her head and voices echoed there, stern and scolding, Rhea's voice with Beri's and Umi's behind it:

No, Finny! You must never hurt anyone unless they're trying to hurt you very badly!

Finny cried out in fright—then a bigger fright as a huge, horrible ogre stalked into her mind; she could see the hag very clearly, huge muscles bulging under dirty blouse and red plaid kilt, dark jowls and little piggy eyes under an unruly thatch of hair, a club upraised in her hand, mouth opening. . . .

Suddenly, though, the monster froze in midstride and a beautiful motherly face appeared beside it, a kindly-looking woman whose face showed the first lines of age and whose red hair was shot with silver. She spoke, and Finny heard her reassuring voice inside, where the hag was. Foolish, is it not? the lady asked. Only a bogie to frighten children — but far too much of a fright.

Suddenly, by some magic she couldn't understand, Finny was standing outside of the scene, the grown-up Finny watching the little girl she had been and the horrible creature inside her head. The hag began to move again, thundering her dire threat, but the motherly woman only smiled at it with amusement. Then Beri took the little girl in her arms, stroking her forehead and saying, "It's just a bad dream, Finny, but that's what you look like inside when you think about hurting one of us. Never even think about it again." And she crooned a lullaby, soothing the five-year-old to sleep.

The kind lady said, They frightened you far too much, but the rule they told you holds true — that you should not hurt others who are weaker than you.

The grown-up Finister, powerful now and able to hurt many people in her turn, bridled at the notion that she should hold back. Why should I not? They cannot hurt me now!

Someone can, the kind lady warned. There will always be someone stronger than you. That is why a law that protects the weak will someday also protect you.

So I must live by that law if I want its protection? Finister frowned. That is a strange notion. But she could see the sense in it, for she remembered with a shudder the burst of light in her mind when she had attacked Gregory Gallowglass.

There is that, the kind lady acknowledged, but look at the little girl you were. Would it be right for someone older and stronger to hurt her for their own amusement simply because they could?

Finister didn't even have to look—she knew in an instant that it was vile. You mean that if it was wrong to do it to me, then it was wrong to do it to anyone, she said slowly.

Even so, the kind lady agreed.

I do not hurt for amusement now, though, Finister protested. I hurt for revenge — revenge for myself, or for other people who have been injured by the strong.

Then you do know the rightness of the law.

I do not recognize the rightness of any law! Laws are tools of government, tools of the strong to oppress the weak!

There is no law that cannot be twisted against its original purpose, the kind lady agreed, no law that the powerful cannot corrupt to misuse — but that corruption can be purged, the twists unwound. Without the law, everyone is a victim sooner or later. If we defend the law, it will protect the weak more often than not.

A dozen answers sprang to mind but somehow none seemed adequate, for the kind lady was presenting ideas Fin-ister had not heard before. She wondered how Mama and Papa had missed this thought.

Unwilling to argue when she suddenly doubted all the old answers, she asked instead, Are you my mother?

Not the mother who bore you, no, the kind lady answered, only your guardian while we search your life for this little while, search for the hurts that were done you.

Why should we do that? Finister demanded, though she knew she had little choice—she recognized power when she saw it and could tell this woman had it, had far more power than she did.

Suddenly she saw the point of her law.

We must right the wrongs that were done you, the kind lady said, insofar as we may.

How can we do that?

Simply by seeing them with an adult's eyes and judging them with an adult's knowledge, the kind lady answered, and the tableau before them suddenly blurred into a whorl of colors, whirling, then steadying to show Finister herself, little Finny at seven, telling Mama how the big girls had pulled her hair and pinched her—without using their hands, of course. Mama, looking sad, uncovered Finny's guilt and lectured her on the need for taking orders from the big girls.

"The older you grow, the more people you can order," Papa agreed.

"I give orders to Rhea, and Rhea gives orders to Orma. Orma gives orders to Umi, Umi gives orders to Agnes, and so on down the line," Mama told her. "Any of them can give orders to you and I expect you to obey them. Do you understand?"

"Yes'm," Finny muttered, still tracing circles with her toe. Inside, a rebellious voice shouted, it's not fair!

But the kind lady was watching and said, You are Chief Agent now. Do you still find it unfair?

Fair or not, it is the way of the world, Finny said bitterly. It is better to be the one who gives orders than to be the ones who have to take them.

Then you found nothing wrong with the system, only with your place in it?

Oh, I saw fault enough! Finny retorted. Wouldn't it be wonderful if no one had to take orders from anyone! But if they did, nothing would ever be done — there would be no way to coordinate groups.

It is government, the kind lady said.

Of course it is. Finny smiled, secure in her knowledge— the kind lady obviously wasn't the omniscient being she pretended to be. I have known this paradox for a long time, that only by government within SPITE will we manage to destroy the government of Gramarye. But when we have done that, SPITE's government will wither away.

Then Papa was patting her shoulder and saying, "Don't worry, little one. When you grow big, you can give orders, too. For a year, you'll even be the oldest girl in the house and able to give orders to any of the other girls!"

Do you truly think SPITE s chain of command will wither away? the kind lady asked. Before you answer, tell me — do you still work to abolish government because you believe it to be right and admire your leaders, or because you wish to please Mama?

Before Finny could answer, the scene dissolved into a whirlpool of colors again. When it steadied, she was little Finny once more, stringing beans and trying to do it exactly as Uma had said—but it was Mama sitting beside her, not Uma, Mama smiling and saying, 'That's very good, Finny. Break them up into sections an inch long, now. . . . No, you don't need to measure them, just make them about an inch— that one won't make three, so just break it in half. Yes, very good."

But that wasn't how it happened! Finny cried inside. It was Uma, not Mama, and she found a dozen faults with the way I was doing it! Then Mama came and told me Uma was right, that I was doing it wrong!

No more, the kind lady's voice said. The past may be set in stone, but your view of it is not. Were you doing the task as well as an eight-year-old could?

Well, yes, but that still wasn't anywhere nearly as well as a fifteen-year-old could. Finny stopped, amazed at her own words. Then anger began to grow, anger at Uma for her faultfinding and at Mama for hers.

A dozen vignettes of memory followed—washing dishes, darning a sock, practice stitches on a sampler, her first effort at baking tea cakes, tending the four-year-old, and every time, Mama or one of the older girls scolded or criticized or corrected. Finally Finny cried inside, Enough! I can't do it perfectly, you know! I'm only human — and only a child!

Then she waited, quaking, for Mama's severe scowl, Mama's tongue-lashing, Mama's anger.. ..

Instead, the kind lady's voice said, True. You were only a child — and only human. They should have applauded your accomplishments, then told you the largest ways in which you could improve.

But would I ever have learned to do things right?

Over the years? Yes. Of course you would have.

Then the vignettes happened again, only this time Mama supervised Finny herself and only encouraged, then gave advice to better her work. Little Finny glowed with the approval, felt happiness flowering within her, even though she knew this wasn't what had really happened. Still, she knew it was what should have happened, knew that she was a far better person than she had believed at the time, and that was what mattered.

Then the rainbow whirled her away again and she was sitting in the schoolroom, listening to Mama talk about all the horrible things the King and Queen did, such as taking people's money and making laws to keep them from doing what they wanted and starting wars. She told them about SPITE, even though Finister was sure the two lessons had been a year or more apart—SPITE, the selfless and virtuous organization that spanned all the colonized planets and all of civilized time trying to save the people from the tyranny of VETO.

Then the kind lady was there, asking, Do you still believe the anarchists of SPITE are virtuous and selfless?

Finny thought of her superiors in the organization whom she had originally admired but who had ordered her to warm their beds, then of the luxuries each had acquired, even the sumptuous quarters of the Chief Agent, of the mission on which she had been assigned to steal some famous paintings from a castle, famous paintings that were not sold but stayed in the house of one of the senior officers. . . . No. Then, before the lady could say anything else. But I most certainly do not believe that the totalitarian or royalists are any better!

Nor do I, the kind lady agreed. When ideals wane, self-interest rises. Let me show you pages from books you have not been allowed to see.

There they were, peasants struggling to guide plows through black earth. Their feet were bound in rags, their tunics were of rough cloth frequently patched, their plows clumsy, heavy constructs of timber and cast iron, their oxen fat and muscular but the people scrawny and malnourished. Their growth was stunted, their faces haggard with weariness, the sores of vitamin deficiencies abundant on their skin.

Finister felt vindication—this was how the peasants lived under the Kings!

But the picture rippled and changed. The peasants drove purring machines now. machines that pulled plows with six plowshares each. They were well dressed in blue garments of stout cloth, unpatched: the feet on the pedals of the machines wore hardy brogans. Their faces were ruddy with health.

The land and machines belong to the State, the kind lady said, but the people are well fed, well clothed, and healthy.

It is a lie! Finister cried, though she knew it was not. In feeble protest, she added. They have few luxuries!

They have books available, and they all can read, the lady explained. In their free hours they make their own decorations, cultivate their own gardens, and play music. Do they need more?

Finister thought of her own early willingness to live without pleasures for the good of the Cause and her disillusionment in seeing the fripperies her superiors had collected. Yes, they need morel Everyone wants more!

Like this? the kind lady asked, and the picture rippled again to show people in brightly colored clothing pushing machines over lawns in front of houses that stood all in a row, well apart, along a tree-shaded street. In front of each house sat a strange-looking machine; others passed on the street with people inside, so Finny knew they were carriages. Each house was painted in different colors. Children played with balls on patches of pavements and rode wheeled contrivances. Some of them glided along the pavement with wheeled boots strapped to their feet; others drew on those pavements with colored chalk.

Finister's mind whirled with the richness of it. Too much! Far too much! No one needs so much! Then the fault-finding that she had learned so early and so well came to her rescue. They have so little land!

True, but they own it themselves, the kind lady said, though many have borrowed heavily to buy it and must pay those loans back all their lives. They are the citizens of a democracy. There are many who are far more poor than these, but there are some who are even more rich.

They are enslaved by money, Finister grumbled, but she lacked conviction.

The lady was silent, showing her kindness, for which Finister was grateful. She did not need to have it said out loud that Mama and Papa had lied to her, that SPITE had lied— or at least that they had told her only partial truths and kept her from learning any facts that contradicted the ideas they wanted her to believe.

But if she did not have Mama and Papa, she had nothing at all.

She looked up and found she was still in the schoolroom, though she was much older now, and Mama was telling them that winning was very important, because they all had to try to win against the King and Queen, and that was very hard, because the King and Queen were very rich and had very, very many soldiers.

Winning is not the only goal in life, the kind lady countered.

What else is there, then? Finister asked in surprise. All life is struggle! Put two people in a room and you have a contest for dominance! If you do not win, you submit!

Competition is only one of the ways in which people interact, the kind lady contradicted. There is also cooperation. There are times to compete, surely, but there are times to help one another, too.

Finister was silent, considering the idea—but in the classroom of memory, Mama was still lecturing, telling them that the King and Queen even had mind readers like Finny and her foster brothers and sisters helping them. Finny hated those other mind readers; they should have all been on the same side. Mama taught her a nice word for those Crown's espers: "traitors."

Thus they sundered you from your fellows, the kind lady told her. They were not espers themselves, but needed psis to counter those who had accepted the Crown y s offer of sanctuary — so they reared you to be weapons.

Stung, Finister retorted, Do not the king and queen rear the royal mind readers thus?

We do not rear them at all, the kind lady said. We do not take them at birth, but invite them to join when they are grown, or nearly grown.

Finister noted the "we" with alarm—but listened intently nonetheless.

The royal witchfolk recruit grown espers who wish to be among their own kind and are already loyal to the Crown, the kind lady explained. Often we must rescue those recruits from the anger and jealousy of their neighbors, or welcome lonely ones who, shunned by the villagers, have gone to seek hermitage in the woods or mountains. These we may try to persuade, and some choose to join us — but we do not take babies and indoctrinate them as they grow.

Finister was silent, watching the tableau before her, trying to think of an objection. Finally she said, Then you do not give refuge to foundlings?

The Crown has many homes for foundlings, the kind lady protested, but none take only esper babies. It is not good for them to grow up completely isolated from their neighbors, after all, and there are not so many in any one parish.

There were always enough to fill Mama and Papa's house!

Did you truly think they discovered so many foundlings on their doorstep? the kind lady asked in surprise.