by Dakota Rusk
“That never works.”
“Not ever, no.” He erupted into his massive grin again. “So it’s basically international superstardom for the likes of us.” Then his face contorted into a very theatrical frown. “I just wish I weren’t actin’ such a great blusterin’ wanker at the moment of my global celebrity.”
“Never mind. Global celebrity doesn’t usually last very long. One of my friends could probably draw you a chart showing an inverse ratio of scope to duration. It’s like the wider you go, the shorter your run.”
“That suits me.” He took a plastic straw from the dispenser at the table’s center, stripped off its paper wrapper, and started twisting it into random geometric shapes. “I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life dodgin’ dirty looks.”
I clicked my tongue. “Surely no one’s given you dirty looks. Other than Dr. Bernstein.”
He hooted a laugh at this, then said, “You’d be surprised. It’s not so much that I physically threatened a member of the faculty—in fact I’ll bet I was just actin’ out everybody’s secret fantasy. It’s my blabberin’ away about addin’ magic to the curriculum. Basically just advocating handin’ the university over to the witch brigade before the referendum’s even held.” He raised a wary eyebrow. “And doin’ it right in front of one of the chief sentinels of pure science on campus. That doesn’t win me any smart points.” He let go of the straw, and it popped back into its original shape again.
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. “You mean me? A ‘sentinel of pure science’?” I waved my hands in dismissal. “Oh, no. I’m not qualified to live up to that.”
“Well, you’re friends with that lot of brainiacs who oppose the referendum.”
“Yes, and they generally know what they’re talking about. I have a whole lot of reasons to trust them—my life, for instance. Not to mention your life. Everybody’s around us—everybody’s everywhere.”
He looked momentarily humbled. Then he gave me a wry glance and said, “But.”
I shook my head. “No ‘but’.”
“Oh, I distinctly heard a stillborn ‘but’.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.” His grin was beginning to wear down my resistance. “I took a look at that video, and I noticed somethin’ that hadn’t occurred to me when it was all happenin’.”
I knit my brow. I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. “What?”
“You never actually came out and said anythin’ against magic.” He folded his arms and adopted the satisfied look of a prosecuting attorney who’d just presented a piece of unassailable evidence.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t there to argue the merits of science versus magic. I was there to prevent two idiot males from goading each other into a fight.”
He winced. “Ouch. All right. Deserved that one. But my observation still stands. I think just maybe, Fabia Terentia, you’re more conflicted about this issue than you let on.”
“I’m not conflicted,” I said immediately—in fact, too quickly, so that it tripped over my tongue and came out garbled: I’m not conflincted. Nothing I could have done would have made him more certain he was right about me.
I was afraid to say anything more lest I give myself away even further. Because of course he was right: I was conflicted…deeply, maddeningly so.
He seemed to sense this, because he said nothing; it was like he was waiting for me to speak again, knowing that whatever I said would give the game away.
Fortunately, only a few seconds into this stalemate Gerrid showed up—just appeared by the table, like he’d solidified out of mist. Donald MacDúngail actually jumped in his chair.
“Oh, Gerrid,” I said, probably happier to see him than I’d ever been to see anyone. “This is Donald. Donald, this is—”
“I know,” he said, rising. He seemed utterly spooked by Gerrid; I kept forgetting that most people reacted that way, on meeting for the first time. “Sorry to have taken so much of your time. I’ll let you and your friend catch up.”
And then he bolted.
Gerrid sat in the chair Donald had just vacated and gave me an inquisitive look. “So you and he have made up?”
I had to laugh. It was like everyone was conspiring to say things I couldn’t understand today. “What?”
“I saw the video,” he said. “Everybody’s seen the video. That’s the thug you stared down in Bernstein’s class, right?”
I nodded. “It’s really getting that much play?”
“Absolutely. And you’re getting good reviews for it, by the way. If you weren’t already a campus hero…”
I made a little scoffing noise and threw my balled-up napkin at him.
“No, really. Go on and have a look. You should see it. You come off like an avenging Amazon or something.”
I made a derisive snort. “Merri would say that’s how I come off when I’m brushing my teeth.”
He smiled wanly, and I was suddenly sorry I’d mentioned Merri. We’d have to talk about her now, and I was still feeling a little touchy about where I’d left things with her this morning.
So to stall for time I reached into my backpack and pulled out my tablet. “Fine, since you insist, I’ll watch the stupid video.”
But when I flicked on my screen there were a couple of incoming email alerts waiting. One of them was from the president, asking me to come to his office at two-thirty.
I looked at the time. It was two-thirty-five.I burst through his door exactly eight minutes later.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I gasped. “I didn’t see your email till just a few minutes ago. I was”—I paused to gulp down another mouthful of air—“all the way across campus.”
Valery Kravstopkin rose up from his desk in alarm. “For God’s sake,” he said, coming around the desk to greet me, “you didn’t have to kill yourself to get here! It was just a request that you come by.” He took me gently by the elbow and led me to a leather chair, then took the chair opposite. There was a small coffee table between us, and he pushed a pitcher of water across it. I poured myself a glass, and drank it down while he waited.
I began to relax. The fact that we weren’t sitting at his massive desk was a relief. I didn’t like the look of that giant oak monstrosity; there were still two bullet holes in its front panel, from the night that everything changed at Parallel U. I hadn’t even been here when those shots were fired, but I’d heard the whole story from Gerrid; it still chilled my blood to think of what almost happened in this room.
You’d think Valery would have got himself a new desk by now, or at least had this one repaired; but I suppose he had too many other, more urgent priorities—like, for instance, half the administration building being set on fire by Gunther. Valery’s office was one of the handful that hadn’t been completely torched in the ensuing blaze; even so the smell of cinder and ash was still heavy here. It would have driven me crazy, but Valery’s pipe smoking was so heavy he probably didn’t even notice it.
I didn’t know him very well—he’d been Merri’s guidance counselor during freshman year—but I got a sense that he’d become even more haphazard than usual. One of his collars was bent up, he’d missed a belt loop in his pants, and there was a big swipe of something greasy on the back of his jacket arm, where he couldn’t see it.
I couldn’t really blame him for being so distracted. He’d been thrust into this office; he hadn’t wanted it, had apparently resisted taking it. But after the previous president, Sharon Mason (Eddie’s mother), had been critically injured and then spirited away by her son to recuperate (with still no word on when she might return, either), a new chief executive was needed. And Valery was the only candidate in whom the various governments and watchdog agencies had any confidence, because he was the one—again on that terrible night when everything changed—who had pulled back the curtain on Parallel U., sending out massive amounts of material that revealed its existence and agenda to a world that previously hadn’t even known it existed.
As for
my own trust in him…well, Merri vouched for him—at least, the original Merri did; her journals were full of him, with entries ranging from her initial wariness of him (because of his having coming from a parallel where the planet was under Soviet rule), through many confidences and confrontations, to their final friendship and mutual respect. That was more than good enough for me.
I just didn’t know why he could possibly want to see me alone.
“Fabia,” he said, leaning in and placing his elbows on his knees, “I suppose you know by now that there’s a video of you going around, and it’s making quite a splash.”
I grimaced. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a spectacle of myself that way.”
He raised a hand to quiet me. “That’s very far from the way anyone took it. In fact, it’s earned you respect from a surprising number of quarters. Including this one; I want to personally thank you for so deftly defusing a rather combustible situation. The board of regents is grateful that you did so in a way that emphasized respect for the university’s protocols and curriculum. And, finally,” he said, drawing in a little exasperated breath, “the delegation from Parallel 17 appreciates that you didn’t use the opportunity to cast aspersions on their…branch of knowledge? Let’s just call it for now.”
I shook my head. “I was just explaining to someone,” I said, wondering why I seemed to be having the same conversations over and over again today, “I didn’t insert myself into that situation to take part in the argument. I intervened to keep it from degenerating into blows. And that’s all.”
“Be that as it may,” he said, removing his pipe and tobacco box from his jacket pocket, “the delegation is well aware that you and your friends are opposed to them, and that you’re very public about voting against the referendum. So the fact that you passed on a chance to emphasize that point is very reassuring to them. They simply want a fair hearing in a public forum, and your behavior during this incident was exactly the kind of thing they’d like—” He stopped himself as he was tamping tobacco into the mouth of his pipe, made a mental correction, and then resumed. “—that we’d all like to see more of.” He placed the tobacco box back into his pocket, then struck a match and sucked the flame into the pipe.
I waited until he’d taken a few puffs—and the pungent, citrus-smelling smoke had wafted around my head—to see if he had anything to add.
Did he ever.
“So, the thing is, they’d like to meet you.” A little blob of smoke the shape of a jellyfish swam out from his lips.
“Who?” I asked, having lost the thread.
“The delegation,” he said. I must have been staring at him uncomprehendingly, because he felt compelled to lean in closer and add, “Jocasta Foxglove and her colleagues.”
“But…I don’t understand. They’ve already invited us to meet them several times. We’ve always said no. We’ve been very firm about it.”
He sat back again and drew another lungful from his pipe stem. “This time the invitation isn’t extended to your friends,” he said as he released the smoke back into the air. “It’s for you alone.”“You can’t possibly accept,” said Darius.
“I can’t possibly decline,” I said. “The official request for the meeting is to thank me for having prevented a disagreement about their offer from escalating into a fistfight.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Merri. “There’s no need to personally meet with you for that. A public statement would cover it.”
We were seated on the lawn of the commons during a break between classes. I’d asked them all to meet for a few minutes so I could tell them the news. Now I was wishing I hadn’t. They were coming at me from all asides.
“They just want to use you,” Gerrid said. “They want to get some photos with you, a few quotes, and work that into a message that you’re sympathetic to their position.”
“But I’m not,” I said—while wondering whether that was really the case anymore.
“Then say so,” Merri said. “Make a public declaration. Decline the request and say exactly why: you don’t believe these people have any business on campus.”
I felt myself begin to hyperventilate. “Who am I to say who has business on this campus? When did we become…what’s the term, from this parallel’s history? A gestapo?”
“That’s a bit exaggerated,” Merri said with a frown.
“A university is a place of intellectual inquiry,” I continued. “No argument, no belief, no proposition should be dismissed on purely ideological grounds. We can’t go around refusing to hear people who want to say something we don’t like.”
“I’m perfectly willing to hear anything they had to say,” Darius said, waving his arms—one of the endearing human affectations he’d picked up recently; though I wasn’t so charmed by it right at this moment. “The problem is, they’re not saying anything! They’re offering a solution they refuse either to define or describe, and they’re using our current vulnerability to hold us hostage until we give our consent!”
“I agree,” said Gerrid. “There’s something predatory about the way they’re conducting themselves. And don’t think for a moment they won’t stoop to any underhand means to get what they want from you, Fabia. I wouldn’t put it past them to…I don’t know. Drug you, or something.”
I flashed back to the bowl of vapors I’d willingly submitted myself to just that morning and felt a spasm of sickening shame.
“It’s just screwy, somehow,” Darius said. “That video…I’ve seen it. You were just defusing a fight, not championing alternative philosophies. It makes no sense that it should trigger this sudden desire to meet with you.”
But that’s wasn’t what triggered it, and I knew it. That was just a convenient excuse I happened to give them. The real reason was that, after my experience that morning, they thought I was open to their ideas.
And, I concluded, maybe I was.
My friends all appeared to have exhausted themselves with their arguments. So I spoke up in my defense.
“It’s just as Valery says: if I refuse to meet them now, it will look petty and mean-spirited…like I’m spitting into a hand extended in courtesy. Whereas, if I meet with them and accept their gratitude, have a civil conversation and then walk away and then still oppose the referendum—well, that’s a much more powerful statement on behalf of the university’s autonomy and its curriculum. Or am I wrong?”
They all averted their eyes; no one could find anything to say.
“All right, then,” I said. “It’s settled.”
Merri, looking defeated, began plucking up random blades of grass. “When is this meeting supposed to take place?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. Around six.”
Gerrid raised an eyebrow. “Drinks will be involved?”
“Drinks will be offered, is my guess,” I said.
“Probably best not to accept any.”
I promised to take that under advisement. And then we all got up and went to our respective classes.That night Merri and I had dinner separately, which we almost never did. Then we put on a show of studying, but I couldn’t keep my mind on my texts and I’m guessing she couldn’t either.
Later, after lights-out, we lay in our beds in the dark, and I could tell by her breathing that she was still wide awake. Sure enough, after a few minutes she whispered to me from her side of the room. “Fabia?”
I turned my head as if I could see her; but of course I couldn’t. “Yes?”
“Please be careful.”
I’d expected her to say, Don’t let us down. But of course she wouldn’t say that; she’d never dream of me letting them down.
That was what I wanted to say to myself, I realized.
I wanted to grab myself by the shoulders and say it—loud and clear.
Don’t let them down.
6
The next day began with track-and-field training. It was a fine morning, very cool, with just a hint of mist, and it felt wonderful to literally run away from my
problems. This particular session I was in training for the hundred-yard dash, and when I achieved my full speed I could feel my thoughts rip away from me, like I was going so fast they couldn’t hold onto my brain. At the end of each sprint I was exhilarated; it was like all my energy was funneled into just breathing. I felt so thrillingly alive—so sure of everything. All I had to do was be faster than I was the time before. Life was reduced to a beautiful simplicity.
Because the university had been a well-kept secret for so long, the sports program was exclusively intramural; our athletes competed only against each other. Now that the existence of the school was well known, we were hoping we might begin to challenge other teams in nearby towns. At the very least there was the University of Greenwich—located in the English city on whose outskirts the university sat—but so far nothing had been arranged. It was another case of many, many higher priorities.
This was disappointing, because on campus I only had one serious rival. Her name was Ntombi and she was a genuine princess, from a parallel where her family ruled an empire that incorporated most of Africa and a good chunk of Arabia. Still, she claimed her title was no big deal. “There are nearly forty princesses in the Mthethwa Empire,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders, “and we aren’t allowed to inherit the throne, so we’re mainly just decorative. Not like princes. They’re in line for real power, so there tend to be fewer of them.”
“Why is that?” I asked with utter naiveté.
“Because they kill each other off,” she said as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
You’d think that she and I, being the two titans of the women’s track team, would have been better friends. But like I said, we were rivals for the top spot, and I think each of us took that more seriously than we let on. Certainly I did, and it bothered me when, on occasion, Ntombi would edge me out of first place and hold the title for a while. I don’t know why we cared so much; most of the student body was entirely uninterested in our meets, and hardly anyone came to see them. (Even Merri had only attended a few.)
There was also the more sensitive matter of Ntombi sort of looking down her nose at me. I thought at first we might have something in common, since both our families were from a ruling elite. But it seemed that from the point of view of the granddaughter of a king, my being the niece of a senator was pretty much nothing. I might as well have been the niece of an organ-grinder. Or better yet, his monkey. Ntombi may have pretended that her royalty meant nothing to her, but I felt her condescension every time she spoke to me. She was very polite, as befitted her breeding, but she said only as much as was required of her, and never invited any conversation to go on longer than it had to.
