Lawrence Watt-Evans - In the Empire of Shadow

Prossie had been slow; she had been almost four when she finally got a firm grip on which thoughts were her own and which came from outside. The key had been when she finally learned to close out other minds.

By then she had learned any number of things that normal children didn’t encounter until much later-she knew about sex, from several different viewpoints; she knew about death, and addiction, and lust, and grief; she knew about the dark, sick thoughts that lurked below so many minds.

And she had accepted all that as parts of herself, because she was part of all humanity, a link in the chain of telepaths that bound her species together. She knew that people didn’t speak about those darknesses, the raw lusts and searing pain, but it wasn’t until years later that she really understood why. She heard people thinking, over and over, that their thoughts were wrong, were different from everyone else, but she had known it wasn’t true.

It was so much easier to just accept it all, the foulness and shame and guilt, along with the joy and beauty and peace, and to not think about any of it, to not distinguish any of it as “good” or “bad.” It just was. It was in everyone, in varying degrees.

Except, of course, in herself, since she was a mere passive receiver, a relay, a servant of the Galactic Empire, not responsible for anything except performing her duty.

But now, thinking back, she knew that she had the darknesses in herself, too. That disgusting Bascombe, the Under-Secretary for Interdimensional Affairs, hadn’t had a second thought about sending his own people out to die, just to help his own reputation, and she had, somewhere in the back of her mind, thought she was better than that, that she would never have done such a thing-but hadn’t she left Lieutenant Dibbs and the others to die? Paul, who had raped her back on Zeta Leo III, had been awash in fantasies of power and abuse, and she had never done anything like that-but she had never had the chance, and hadn’t she deliberately lied to the people here, to manipulate them into doing what she wanted, and hadn’t she enjoyed the feeling of power it gave her?

And after all, hadn’t she betrayed her own family and her Empire?

But then, her family and Empire had virtually enslaved her from infancy, in their own way just as much as Paul had when he bought her at auction and took her to his home in chains.

Did that make her treason acceptable?

Perhaps it did, but it was still a betrayal. Certainly, her little crimes weren’t as bad as Bascombe’s or Paul’s or the Empire’s, but she was no pure little innocent.

And now that she was alone in her head, she could look at that, could take the time to consider her own motives and see just what was lurking down there in the back of her mind.

And she was discovering, as she walked across the Starlinshire Downs, that she had the same drives as anyone else-power and pride and sex and fear and anger, the need for love, the need for acceptance, all tangled together into her own individual mix.

She was thinking about her reasons for serving the Empire so willingly for so long, the fear of punishment, the acceptance by her family, the pride in her work, when she felt Carrie’s presence.

She blinked, almost stumbled on the latest upgrade.

“Are you all right, Prossie?” Carrie’s thoughts were tinged with worry-nothing serious, just concern for Prossie.

“I’m fine,” she thought back, “just fine.” To her own surprise as much as Carrie’s, her reply carried an edge of annoyance; she had already become accustomed to the mental isolation, the partial sensory deprivation, and she had been enjoying it. The sudden contact came as an intrusion on her own meditations.

“What about the others?”

Prossie looked around as she topped the rise. “Wilkins and Marks and Sawyer and Singer are all fine; the Earthpeople are alive, anyway, and seem to be functioning. Raven and Valadrakul are the only natives we still have with us.”

“What about Lieutenant Dibbs and the others?”

“How should I know?” The edge of anger was stronger and more obvious than ever, Carrie could hardly miss it, but Prossie didn’t care. “We left them back at the ship; you know that.”

“You haven’t heard anything more?”

“No.”

“What about that wizard who was going to send people home?”

“Didn’t work out,” Prossie replied. She wasn’t really paying very close attention any more; she had just looked out across the valley before them, and realized that this time they weren’t just going to pass more scattered, isolated farms.

This time, a town stood in the center of the valley. She couldn’t see very much; the afternoon air was hazy and humid, wavering in the heat, but the collection of stone and wood structures half a mile or so away was definitely a town.

“So what’s happening, then?” Carrie demanded. “Where are you going? You’re walking, I can sense that-where to?”

“We’re going to Shadow’s fortress,” Prossie said, studying the town. The highway widened out to form the main street; another road crossed at the center of town, and a few narrow back-streets filled in the rest.

For several seconds Carrie didn’t reply; when she did, she said, “Prossie, that’s crazy.”

“I know,” Prossie said, taking her first step down the slope. “But it should make General Hart happy, shouldn’t it?”

Amy smiled weakly at the sight of the town. She hadn’t smiled much lately; it felt surprisingly good.

It wasn’t much of a town; she doubted the whole thing covered more than about two dozen acres. Still, it was something more than a farm. The buildings lined the main street pretty solidly for a good two hundred yards, with more houses scattered across the surrounding area; she could see signboards hanging above doorways, which meant businesses, and there appeared to be a square at the crossroads, which seemed to imply some sort of local government. A platform was set up in the square, with people on it-Amy couldn’t make out any details, but that seemed a pleasantly homey feature.

She thought she caught the scent of wood smoke, but she wasn’t sure; and even if she did, she couldn’t be sure it came from the town.

It wasn’t Goshen, Maryland-but then, Goshen was just a spread-out bedroom community, a sort of annex to Gaithersburg and Rockville, themselves more or less suburbs of Washington. Amy couldn’t expect anything like that here. This town was probably the best she could reasonably hope for.

Besides, her feet hurt too much, and she was too tired, to go any farther.

Now she needed to decide just when to tell the others that she wanted to stay here, not to go on and beard Shadow in its lair.

She glanced around, at Raven and Pel and the others. Raven was frowning angrily, though Amy had no idea why; Pel was staring at the town like a baby studying a new toy, trying to see every bit of it at once. Susan had the wary look of a prowling cat; Prossie had on one of her distant expressions, and Amy wondered whether she was talking to someone back in the Galactic Empire, or whether she was just woolgathering.

The other Imperials weren’t paying much attention to the town at all, but simply walking on, chatting amongst themselves. Ted, as usual, wasn’t paying attention to anything at all, and Amy couldn’t see Valadrakul’s face from where she walked.

Nobody was saying anything, which suddenly struck Amy as somehow wrong. This was the first town that any of the Earthpeople or the Imperials had ever seen in this stupid world of Raven’s; didn’t it deserve some sort of comment?

“Raven,” she called, “what’s the town called? Is that whatsit, Starlinshire, that the Downs are named for?”