Em was an astronaut without a spaceship again. A sense of perfect calm washed over her. She felt her muscles relax one by one and sighed with the heady sweet pleasure of feeling loose and carefree.
Too bad that feeling was to be so fleeting. She deserved better. But she needed this meeting with me, needed answers.
She tensed when she sensed my presence. She knew too that my deep soothing voice would seduce her yet again. I wasn’t above being flattered that she thought of me that way. Seduce. Seduction. Seducer. Seducing.
“It’s not fair you know,” Em said before I could speak. “I have so many questions and you always cut me off. Why me?”
The same question I had asked when told I was to be a Power. Yes, I had excelled in my education and training but so had countless others. Why me? Why not Exelrud, my best friend, who always outdid me, and always lorded it over me, grinning and teasing and helping me to do better next time? Why not my sister, who was wiser and wittier? Why not one of the hundreds of eager candidates, all of whom came from more privileged backgrounds, some the offspring of Grand Council members?
“Why not?” I said. The same answer I’d been given—an offhanded dismissal. I knew now that the Guardians chose me as an experiment. They’d been accused of racism, choosing novices from the ranks of the elite only. I wasn’t just a Drone to them, I was their guinea pig.
“I’m serious, damn it. Don’t mock me. There are billions of people on Earth. Billions more intelligent, more qualified. I’m so ordinary. Why me?”
Why not you? I felt a pang of guilt at my flippancy. I’d give her a better answer than I’d been given, something she could hold on to. “You made three wishes. And once you developed those wishes you never wavered.”
“Pfft! Those were nothing more than childhood fantasies. I only played with them to put myself to sleep.”
Her wishes were much more than that. They were the desires of a profound soul. How to explain to a mere human, what we in the Guardian universe understood instinctively?
“Have there been others before me?”
“Yes,” I said. “And, like them, you too will be remembered.”
“Please not as a religious figure.”
“You don’t want to be a god? Sorry, goddess?”
“No! I just want to be me. Miracle Madame. Please.”
“Silly name they gave you. Sounds like you should be running a brothel in the Old West.”
“Hey, that’s my line.”
Em chuckled and relaxed a little as I’d hoped she would. If only I could do that for her all the time. If only I could tell her everything, how I really felt. “Em, my dear—”
“Please let me just be me,” she said.
I sighed. What would I have said if she hadn't interrupted? What could I have said with Mentor no doubt hovering? “If you insist,” I agreed. How could I deny her anything? “More like you will follow.”
“Unless people destroy the earth first.”
“That was a possibility.”
“Was?”
“Less likely now because of you.”
“I’ve been doing the right things then, stopping wars?” She should have sounded relieved.
I felt a shiver of alarm. “You still have doubts?”
“Lord yes,” Em said. “What if war is…? What if war…?”
I waited for her to say it.
“What if war is a good thing?” she blurted. “Maybe human beings aren’t doomed to kill each other. Maybe they are destined to.”
An eternity of hell in the question. I had to calm her. “Do not fear.”
“Don’t use that damn soothing tone with me. I’m not a child. And cut the crap. I have a right to worry. You should too. We’re messing with everything. Hell, fear is all I know.” She took a deep breath.
I held mine.
“I fight always, always to appear calm, to provide the assurance people need, to be perfect.”
She was perfect. She was doing everything exactly right. I knew it, but she didn’t. “My dear, my dear, don’t fuss so.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Don’t you see? There is no end, damn it, no way out. I’m trying to hold back the flood with one tiny finger in the dike. And, what if my interference only makes things worse?”
“You have acted as we expected and you have done well. Very well.” She’d done her work so well, in fact, that I was more confident than I had ever been about my review.
“I have done nothing that really matters. And if that is as you expected, then you haven’t expected nearly enough,” Em said. “We’re being tested, you know,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Tested! What did she know? Mentor? The Grand Council? The Guardians? In direct contact with a human? “Tested?” I felt sick.
“History, time, other worlds—they’ll all judge us and we’ll be found wanting, negligent, ridiculous.” She laughed, on rising hysteria.
Embracing the edges of madness. She knew it, but couldn’t stop. Perhaps welcomed it?
“You asked the questions,” I said.
“But you didn’t answer them. You with all your power and insight and wisdom, you didn’t answer.”
“No, even we don’t do that. Beings must find the answers themselves.”
“And if they don’t, you send someone else.”
“Eventually.”
“So I’m the colossal failure.”
My knees quivered and I felt the familiar chill of fear. She wouldn’t be able to finish her job with that mindset and where would that leave me? “You must never think that.”
“Then you’re the colossal failure.” Guardian, this was worse. “No!” I almost shouted. “Stop and think.” There was a pause so long I thought I had lost her.
Finally she spoke. “I’ve come to realize that everything is interrelated, a complex tangled mess of a web. The problems we’re dealing with must be seen in the global context.”
“And solved in the global context.”
“Yes. But how?” Another unbearably long pause. “One little step at a time, girl, one little step.”
I sagged with relief. She was thinking, theorizing, looking for solutions. She was back. “We’ll work it out together.”
“Thank you.”
“Why are you thanking us?” My voice rose alarmingly. “We made you do all the work, often left you to your own devices, put you through the agony of not knowing.”
“But you gave me a gift.” She sounded very much like a small child. “You let me make a movie. You helped me. That was okay? Making the movie I mean. It’s being seen around the world you know. What we did was right? Of course it was right, or you would have changed it. Your message is spreading just like you wanted.” She stumbled to a halt. “You’re okay with it?”
“Yes. Stop fussing. You have another question.”
“I don’t want to ask it.” Her voice trembled. “We did not make him love you,” I said softly, my voice almost a caress. “We did not control that. Your love is your true destiny.” Oh, oh, oh. I didn’t know I could be such a liar. But Ron had lied to her too. That’s what love did then, made liars of us all?
Her breath came out in a ragged rush that ended with a harsh sob. “But I don’t understand why. What did I ever do to deserve Ron’s love?”
I wanted to say it was my love, my love she deserved. I took a deep breath. “Keep it clinical.” Mentor’s voice sounded in my head. Hovering. Always hovering. The bitch. Yeah, right, Boss, that’s the way we operate. I took another breath.
“You are too modest. Because you go beyond yourself. How old were you, ten or eleven, when you began to wish for the magic to save the world? Even as a child you used your Aladdin wishes for others.”
“Those were wild imaginings of childhood, irrational dreams.”
“Not so irrational after all, eh?”
“But—”
“Stop! It’s all for you—no one else.” Pointless to argue. She must have realized that for she shifted gears.
“May I tell Ron about you?”
Oh, dear Guardian, the one question I dreaded. The question that forced me to tell her. I hesitated.
“Say it!” Mentor's voice hissed in my head. Still I hesitated. There must be a way out.
Surely the Guardians wouldn't force me to—
“Get on with it.” Mentor said. She was right beside me. There was no way out.
“There are some things you need to know about your future. Listen carefully.”
Mentor said I had to tell her the bad news. Tell what I had decided in my rage of jealousy. I pleaded and begged, down on my knees. Told Mentor I wasn’t myself when I said it. I didn’t really mean it. I was just venting. I didn’t mean for Em to pay the price. I implored Mentor, asked her to intercede with the Grand Council. Offered myself as sacrifice. I even cried. Real tears. To no avail. It was a done deal and now I had to tell Em.