“Of course. What kind? I can pull them from the stores.”
While Oriana stammered out her requests, I opened my saddlebag and examined the contents. One thing that Willa hadn’t mentioned was that they had included feminine hygiene in their welcome kit, and—surprisingly—a pack of condoms. I took it out, examining it, and held it up to show Willa. She laughed.
“We’re not prudes,” she said. “And we’re not crazy. Our rules are against people getting hurt, that’s all. If you meet someone special here, you should be able to enjoy that.”
Curious.
I dropped the condoms back into the saddlebag, closed it, and draped it at the end of the bed, fiddling until it matched the others in the room. Then, when Oriana turned away, I said, “So what do we do now?”
Willa was making a note on a clipboard, but she glanced up to say, “What do you want to do?”
“Sleep,” I said, and yawned to prove it.
“Then you should go ahead. You can always start your orientation tomorrow, if you’d like. I’ll wake you up for dinner.”
Willa did not seem the harsh taskmistress I’d expected. Oriana tentatively said that she, also, would like to rest, and Willa readily agreed to that as well. I took off my shirt and pants and shoes, and climbed up on the bunk. It was comfortable enough—better than I’d expected. The blankets were thick and warm, and the pillow soft, and to my surprise, I was almost immediately sleepy. It had, in fact, been a hard few days, and here, despite that low-level tingle of power, I felt ... peaceful. There was none of the ever-present noise that I’d come to associate with the modern human world; here, there was silence, except for Willa’s footsteps and the creak of metal as Oriana climbed up to her own rest. I heard the wind against the roof, and the sighing of trees. The distant murmur of voices, and laughter.
Before I slipped off into the darkness, I reached out and located Agent Rostow. It was more difficult connecting with an ungifted human at this distance, but I’d taken care to memorize his aetheric signature. I didn’t waste a lot on the report. Arrived, I vibrated the tiny bones in his ear to say. No trouble. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. If he had questions—and I was sure he would—I wouldn’t be able to hear them in any case.
After that I fell asleep without any hesitation.
I woke to the sound of murmurs and a gentle hand shaking my shoulder. “Time to wake up,” a voice said. Willa, coming to wake me as she’d promised. “Dinner.”
“Thank you,” I said, and sat up. The air was cool now, and I shivered as I put on my shirt and pants and slipped on the canvas shoes. Willa had draped a sweater over the end of the bed, of nubby gray material, and I put it on to cut the chill. I smelled spices, meats, fresh breads, and it made my stomach rumble in frustration. Willa had moved on to rousing Oriana, and as I hopped down from the bunk, she said, “Go on out. The food hall is next door; just follow your nose.”
I stepped outside. While I’d been sleeping, the day had slipped into twilight, and the sky was a translucent dark blue, with the black shapes of trees outlined against it. More surprising, though, were the streams of people moving past the lodge—gray-dressed men and women of all ages, all races, laughing and talking as they headed for their dinner break. I had expected a certain paranoia, a pervasive atmosphere of oppression, but it wasn’t so, not at all. Somehow, these people seemed ... happy.
I stood there for a moment, an outsider to the general feeling of community, and my gaze fixed on a man walking with a small group. Like all of them, they were animatedly talking, but there was something about him that caught my attention. A nice, mobile face, a little too firm in the jaw, and piercing gray eyes as he glanced my way. He had shaggy brown hair, and he was tall, with strength in the broad shoulders. I couldn’t guess his age immediately—anything between thirty and fifty, though I guessed closer to forty, based on the slender strands of gray in his hair.
He slowed, and indicated me to his friends, then broke off to walk toward me. I was standing on a step that led up to the lodge, but even so, we were almost at eye level. “Welcome,” he said. He had a deep, warm voice, and his smile had a sweetness I didn’t expect. He held out a hand to me. “I’m Will. Very pleased to meet you ...”
I was surprised by the warmth of his grip, and it took a moment before I could order my thoughts enough to say, “Laura Rose.”
“Laura,” he repeated, and somehow, he gave my name a beauty that I didn’t think it should have possessed. “On your way to dinner, Laura?”
“I suppose.”
“Great, join us.” He beckoned to his friends, who came over, smiling. “Becca, Aiyana, Karl, Desmond—this is Laura.” A blur of faces—all dramatically different but somehow similar in their friendly welcome—wished me well. “We’ll show you the ropes. I know how strange the first day can be.”
I felt a bizarre gratitude for the warmth with which they surrounded me; I hadn’t realized how tense I had been until the muscles knotted inside me began to relax. Laura, I felt, would have been quiet and shy, so I said little as we walked to the food hall, but I listened to the others. They talked brightly about the day’s work, about trivial things, but the affection between them seemed almost to shimmer like flakes of gold in the air.
I was included, although I didn’t contribute; they glanced at me, shared smiles, touched me gently on the shoulders to guide me when I hesitated. I had never been a younger child in a family, but I imagined that was what it must have felt like.
When Will glanced my way, I felt a telltale illicit shiver, and wondered at my own odd behavior. Yes, I was lonely; yes, I missed Luis. But was it so easy for me to respond to another man’s looks, his light and casual touches? If it was, what worrying thing did it say about my character?
“The food’s good,” Will said, steering me with one hand on my shoulder blade toward the line of people forming near a buffet. “We all take our turns in the kitchen, but thankfully, most people are better at it than I am. I can chop a mean carrot, but seasoning’s best left up to the experts.”
The food was, indeed, fresh and colorful, and it smelled delicious, from the vegetables and crisp breads to the thin slices of meats. I took a modest-sized plate and followed Will to a long wooden table, with the others. As I sat down, I asked, “Do you raise your own animals, too?”
“Some,” Becca said, and nodded down at the slices of pork on her plate. “We’ve got some pigs, some sheep, chickens and some cows, but the chickens are for eggs, and the cows are mostly for milk. Horses, too, but not for eating, obviously.”
“Rabbits,” Desmond put in, mumbling around a mouthful of green vegetables I didn’t recognize. “Love them rabbits.”
“I hate to see them on the dinner list.” Aiyana sighed. “They’re so beautiful.”
“Aiyana’s vegetarian,” Will said, and passed her some bread. She had only greens and potatoes on her plate, I realized, and blushed a little as Will pointed it out. “She’d starve rather than kill a chicken.”
“That’s only because she doesn’t have to clean up after them,” Karl said. He had a distinct European accent, though I wasn’t sure if it came of German origin, or another neighboring country. “Right, Aiyana?”
She blushed further, and looked down at her plate. “I like the fields,” she said. “It’s peaceful.”
I cleared my throat and said, “Do we get a choice of what to do?”
“Not at first,” Will said. “You’ll rotate around, find what you’re good at doing. I work with the animals, and sometimes in the fields; I also do the doctoring, when it’s needed. Becca teaches the kids, but she does real good with cows, so she gets up early for the milking before class.”
Cows. I shook my head, wondering what I’d expected from this—certainly not this homespun rustic conversation about milking cows and cleaning up after chickens. Pearl’s followers were fanatics, and they were dangerous.