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 welclass="underline" 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."