“If you’re a bad boy, the Dragon will have you for breakfast,” parents told their children. In the schoolyard, the children shouted,” Kill the dragon!” beating a defenseless tree with their sticks, vying to outdo each other in the shrillness of their screams. He was the best, always, because he hated the Dragon, because dragon hating was the only passion allowed full expression, and because he already knew he would be the leader of the people.
The wrongness of Janzi’s diseased mind made him want to vomit. With supreme effort, he turned his back on the still-smiling beast and ran out of the swamp. Once safe, he gathered together his mental powers and imagined an impenetrable hedge bristling with the thorns of reason and logic to separate Janzi from her thoughts about the monster. Having completed that work, he slowly pulled himself out of her mind.
Because of the arduous nature of his labors, he found it necessary to allow himself a brief period of unconsciousness. When he opened his eyes, Romala was looking at him with concern.
“Are you all right, Guardian?”
“Drained. If I had to do a healing right now, I probably couldn’t.”
She glanced at Janzi, whose eyes were closed. “I don’t know if it would help. She’s gone into a coma.”
Phileas suppressed the guilt and relief he felt at that news. Logically, the coma helped. “It may be that the Chief Healer was over-zealous in her work and didn’t allow herself necessary periods of recuperation. That will be the official statement. However, only the most trusted Healers can be allowed to attend her, and they are to let you know the moment she speaks. And you are to send word to me.”
Romala nodded. “May I ask you something? Could there be any truth to what she said about Zena?”
“Zena? Mother of Mind?”
She flinched, but didn’t retreat. “It was logical to ask.”
He erased his brief guilt for frightening her by apologizing. “Forgive my descent into emotion. We must always ask. To rest in the feathery comfort of certainty represents mental sloth of the worst kind. However, you surely saw the disarray of my mother’s mind and the dragon.”
“I didn’t see the dragon. I saw ponds choked with weeds and slime.”
“Probably the swamp,” Phileas said.
“Perhaps, for I also saw trees whose roots and trunks rotted in stagnant water. I breathed foul, damp air. The images I saw, though, were of a mother sick with grief over her alienation from her son. I saw her heart bleeding with the unhealed wound that was the loss of him when he was so young.”
He was glad he’d only seen the dragon. Even a second-hand vision of Janzi’s suffering threatened his mental self-control. “Leave me,” he said. “I must think about this.”
But he couldn’t think about his mother. Instead, he thought about Zena. Discreet as Romala was, Phileas wasn’t about to tell her what was known only to Guardians: that Zena, too, had gone off the deep end during her last days. There’d always been suspicions about a manuscript. Earlier Guardians had ordered searches of every library in the land, but nothing had shown up.
He’d uncovered no traces of the manuscript in Janzi’s mind. Still, she could have hidden an entire library in all that disorder. And, though he loathed the idea that dread, one of the lowest forms of emotion, was tarnishing his mind, he found it impossible to shake the belief that everything that could go wrong would go wrong under his regime, that in years to come—if, indeed, there were years to come—he would be known as Phileas the Failure.
Chapter 4
Serazina sat on her bed and stared out the window, watching a hawk soar through the sky. “I wish I were a bird or a cat or a fish—anything but a human.”
Berto, leaning against her dresser, quoted the Oasis creed in a bored voice. “‘I am proud to be a human, superior to the creeping and flying beasts. I value my ability to rise above base animal feelings and sensations. I pledge to break the shackles of emotion and reach ever higher into the pure realm of intellect.’”
“I said that, every day for twelve years of school, but I never believed it.”
“Of course not. You wanted to feel. You have an excellent mind, but you’re so determined to protect your feelings that you won’t admit it.”
He’d never before made feelings sound so slimy, like rolling in worms. “No, I won’t let them change who I am, and my feelings are the best thing about me. They make me alive, instead of half-dead, like a lot of people in Oasis. Maybe you’d rather I was like them. Maybe you’d rather have a full-blooded Etrenzian girlfriend who doesn’t start crying at the sight of a kitten or puppy. Are you tired of me?”
He moved to the bed and hugged her. “Don’t even think that. No one is like you. Why are you so depressed? Are you worried about the final exams?”
Her shoulders slumped. “I’m terrified, even though I’ve used my excellent mind to protect myself. I had enough control to pass the school tests that identified the Feelies, and I’ve been smart enough to act stupid all these years.”
“Why don’t you trust it to get you over this last hurdle?”
“Because of my dreams. It’s the final interview, but instead of an examiner, the Guardian is conducting it, and his black Etrenzian eyes see right through me. He says, ‘Girl, you’re a fraud,’ because I’ve failed to convince him I’m stupid. In some versions, he sends me to the department that hooks people up to the machines that measure emotional activity. I break them. As punishment for bypassing the holy laws of reason and logic, they send me to a rehabilitation center, and the techs shock that filthy knowing out of me. Sometimes they cut it out.”
“No!” Berto made a fist. “I won’t let that happen. I know it’s illogical, but that dream frightens me. We can leave Oasis. We’ll go to Tamaras, where minds are impure and people indulge their senses and enjoy life. You’ve got to live in a place where no one denounces passion, where you can cry without people staring at you and maybe taking you off to the House of Healing for rewiring.”
The birds sang to her, the trees in the forest bent their leafy heads, and the dancing blades of grass whispered, Stay. How could she move to a place where the air reeked of garbage and too many humans, their feelings and sensations as rank to her awareness as rotting food?
“Serazina, listen. The more I think about leaving, the better I like the idea. I’ll never be able to paint the way I want to here. And they might not let us get married if we stay.”
When she looked into him more deeply, she was flooded with his fear and desperation to convince her. “But Tamaras?”
His eyes blazed with anger. “You say you won’t let them change who you are, but you let them fill you with prejudice. We’ve been trained to believe Tamaras is awful. The people eat fried food, listen to loud music, and like sex. What animals. I’m Tamaran, do I qualify?”
Berto’s rage burned her cheeks. “You like sex,” she said, trying to divert him.
“Sorry,” he said, “but even if you weren’t in danger, and I weren’t worried about painting the way I feel, I’d be ready to leave because I hate those racial stereotypes. Etrenzians have the best minds. That’s why they run the place. Dolocairners are so waterlogged with emotions that they’re incapable of mental labor, and don’t they worship dragons? Those crafty Tamarans are tricksters. Never mind that we’ve all been living here for five hundred years.”
“I know. Do you think it’s fun to be a mixture of waterlogged Dolocairn and supposedly smart Etrenzian, a hybrid?”
Berto lowered his head. “And you face a danger bigger than mind modification or surgical alternation. What if you get sent to examiners who realize that you have the sensing gift?”
She held him tight. “That’s in my dreams, too, but I managed to get disqualified last year. If I hadn’t had a brilliant older sister, I wouldn’t have been tested at all. They rarely test hybrids. Our Etrenzian blood is polluted beyond salvation.”
“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, but the Guardian will soon be forty years old, without an heir in si
ght. The people are getting nervous. I admit that the odds of your being found out are small, but do you want to take that chance?”
“I’d die first,” Serazina said.
He hugged her. “No, we’ll leave first.”
The circle of his arms comforted her. If they were together, nothing could hurt her. “But why Tamaras? And I don’t mean that as a racial slur.”
“Would you prefer the baking heat of Etrenzia? Or maybe you have a fondness for the ice and snow of Dolocairn.”
“No one does. Only Godlies who really want to suffer go to Dolocairn. You’re right, but I don’t know.”
Berto stroked her hair in a way guaranteed to soften her resistance. “We don’t have to leave tomorrow. We’ll plan and prepare; we’ll save our nats and zenas until we have enough money to hold us while we look for work. You have time to get used to the idea.”
But she wouldn’t. Ever.
“Serazina?” her mother called from downstairs. “If you and Berto are going to see that play, you need to leave soon.”
Serazina groaned quietly. As an early graduation gift, Fiola, her mother had given her two tickets to Part I of Zena Triumphant, an operatic version of the life of her Etrenzian ancestor, the one who had started all the trouble. “Coming,” she said.
They clattered down the stairs to the living room, where Fiola sat at a computer and her older sister clicked on the keyboard of her portalibrary.
“Reading something interesting, Elissia?” Serazina asked.
“Ten years of reports from the Water Commission,” Elissia said, rubbing her eyes. “I downloaded them from the Science Library, and I’m supposed to upload my comments before a meeting on Monday. We have to find a solution to the problem of drought.”
The heavy black hair coiled on Fiola’s head quivered slightly as she looked at Elissia, and the dimmest tinge of pride brightened her obsidian eyes. “And you the youngest member of the Water Commission. I hope your sister will follow your example.”
Although it would be a miracle if she did.
Serazina winced at the bitterness of her mother’s unguarded emotions.
“Maybe seeing the play will remind her about the honor of being Zena’s direct descendant.” Elissia’s face was solemn.
“A logical and desirable outcome,” Fiola said.
“And speaking of logic, I think Serazina should stay at my apartment tonight.”
Fiola nodded. “It’s too dangerous at night in the city these days. I intend to write a letter to the Supreme Council about the drug problem.”
“It’s a very serious issue,” Berto agreed.
Serazina, Berto, and Elissia left the house to take a high-speed train into the city, where they could buy drugs.
The train wasn’t crowded, and they were all able to sit together. “Don’t even think about not seeing the play,” Elissia warned Serazina, who squirmed with guilt.
“How did you know what I was thinking?”
“Not because I read minds, dear sister. It’s logical. No one under the age of thirty wants to hear actors shrieking for two hours about mind mastery. But she’ll quiz you when you get home tomorrow.”
“And you think I couldn’t answer any of Mother’s questions? ‘What was the play about?’ ‘How strong emotions rot the mind and why we should fight to suppress them in every waking moment.’”
Elissia frowned. “We should resist some. Do you want everyone to be greedy, despairing, and jealous?”
“Look around,” Berto said. “They are. And you didn’t mention lust, which is awfully popular. Sometimes I think that the more emotions are thwarted, the bigger they become. If the leaders of this country were really logical, they’d figure that out.”
Elissia kicked a pile of litter someone had illegally left on the train. “And you aren’t going to change them. Berto, if you love my sister, you’ve got to be worried that she’ll end up in a padded cell or with pieces of her brain missing.”
“Hello, I’m right here,” Serazina said, “and I know the dangers.” It was a big day for telling her about that. Had her dreams infected those who loved her with her worries?
“But did you know that the Breeding Board is having so much difficulty coming up with potential candidates to be mother of the Guardian’s heir that they’ve decided to retest all females descended from Zena, including hybrids, when they turn eighteen?”
“Just as I thought,” Berto said.
Serazina’s heart tightened. “No.”
“Yes,” Elissia said. “I’ll never know how you got yourself disqualified in the first go-round. They saw right away that I have only weak sensing skills, but how did they miss you?”
“I didn’t bathe for three days beforehand. I made my hair really messy. I acted as if I were totally wasted on drugs. I was like ‘Guardian who? Zena who?’ They didn’t even want to come near me.”
“But you might not succeed this time,” Berto said. “That settles it. We’ll leave before September.”
Elissia’s black eyes were fiery. “Do it.”
Before her stop came, Elissia handed Serazina a set of keys to her apartment. “I won’t be there. You’ll have the place to yourself.”
“Hot date?” Berto asked.
Her eyes softened. “Special guy.”
“Just make sure your genetic and mental profiles are guaranteed to create a crop of outstanding citizens. ‘Each generation must rise above the last.’”
“Oh, Berto, if you knew how I worry about that, and I’m not the only one. Someone started a dating service where everyone is screened for compatibility. You get a list of approved candidates from the Breeding Board. Can you imagine anything more deadly?”
The train stopped and Elissia kissed them quickly. “Have fun.”
Serazina and Berto got off at the next stop and hurried down the streets to the State Playhouse, a squat concrete building. Inside, it was no more beautiful. The walls were unfinished concrete blocks, and the space was dimly lit and crowded with uncomfortable chairs.
The play had already begun. Serazina studied the program notes and saw they’d missed the scene of Zena’s abduction from the desert oasis in Etrenzia where she’d been born. Now, having been sold into slavery, she was living in a Tam Town harem. Her master, Emperor of Tamaras and the villain of the piece, was suitably licentious, rubbing his big hands together and frequently flinging his slaves onto a bed, but nothing much happened. Oasis playwrights didn’t write about sex.
They didn’t write about passionate emotions, either, but it was necessary to show how Zena’s rage at being a concubine added mental enslavement to her physical bondage. Of course, it also led to the great awakening, the moment Zena realized that if she could master her destructive emotions, she could win her freedom.
Could I? Serazina wondered. If I could master the fear and guilt that enslave me, wouldn’t I be happier?
The trouble was that the official Oasis list of undesirable emotions also included passion, exhilaration, the love of nature, and tenderness for small animals. The most prohibited sense was the one most important to Serazina: the deep knowing that something was true, a sureness that needed neither reason nor logic. It went against everything for which Oasis stood, and in Oasis you either toed the line completely or your brains got scrambled.
She could never be as cold and deliberate as her ancestor. Zena, daughter of a snake charmer and sorcerer, transformed the skills she’d learned in order to charm people instead of snakes and to entrance them with visions of freedom. Her harem mates became disciples, and slaves who traveled the streets of the city on errands spread the word that a liberator had come to help those who could learn to free themselves of enslaving emotions.
Throughout the city, captives replaced despair and anger with fierce watchfulness. “We await the day,” sang the actors in one chorus that seemed to go on forever, but finally the day came, and the slaves arose. The uprising was violent, but Zena justified the sla
ughter by saying that sentiment over worthless human lives was the greatest enslavement of all.
Serazina thought a little romance might enter the story when Zena, stepping over the body of her former master, took the hand of Nathan, the messenger who’d coordinated much of the citywide uprising, but she was disappointed. Zena coolly examined the young man and said, “You may become my husband.”
“Ghastly,” Berto said when the play was finally over. “Let’s go to the Bazaar and get high.”
They walked a few blocks and plunged into bright colors and loud music. Serazina’s senses, dulled by the play, came alive again.
“I hear they talk about cleaning up this area,” she said.
Berto shook his head. “Never happen. Better to have all the degenerates in one area, where they can be watched. Everyone needs the Bazaar.”
Serazina knew she did. Unpleasant as it was to be in the city, she cherished the freedom she felt here. “I hope they don’t.”
“Even if they do, we’ll be gone.”
“Be gone, be gone, greed and lust and mind destruction through drugs.” A man wearing a black Godly robe shouted on the street corner, grabbing the arms of passersby. “Sinners, hear me, your fleshly indulgences weaken your minds. A weak people are a conquered people. In his filthy lair, the dragon rejoices over the surrender of the Oasis spirit. You do his work, sinners, traitors! Nathan curse you, blessed Zena curse you!”
The black heat of his wrath choked Serazina. “I can hardly breathe,” she whispered.
Berto guided her away. “Never call yourself to their attention. In the bars, people are saying the Godlies in the Bazaar are spies.”
They walked through the Dolocairn district on their way to the bar. On either side of the entrance to a cheese store stood big wooden tubs full of early spring flowers. The reds and yellows assaulted Serazina with their loveliness, and the thin membrane in which she tried to enclose her emotions burst.
A woman walked by, her hand on her belly, and all the sadness and tears of a miscarriage flooded Serazina’s heart. Before she had recovered from that, a drunk staggered past them, his heart stuffed with emotions too tattered to identify. Next passed a Godly whose mind whipped at tender feelings. Weakness! Blasphemy!