Sister Rachael walked through the Lyceum Lodge, at a few minutes before three o’clock in the morning, and knocked on each door where a candidate was staying. At all but one door, she heard a groggy voice saying they were almost ready.
Ashley quickly dressed and washed her face, stepped into the corridor, and found Shawn emerging from his room. They slapped hands, then both yawned at once. A minute later, Liberty and Ilika approached, each from a different direction.
Liberty looked at Ilika with admiring eyes. “You look wide awake.”
“I’m used to it. On a ship, you can be called to the . . . bridge at any time of the day or night.”
Ashley smiled, noticing how Liberty’s gaze lingered on the mysterious young man.
As the group began to follow Sister Rachael, Shawn kept looking back toward the lodge. “Will the guy who didn’t wake up be kicked out?”
Sister Rachael squinted. “Of the evaluation group? Naa. Only extremely bad behavior would cause that.” The middle-aged lady poked into her little tin of tobacco as they walked.
“But . . . he won’t be accepted, will he?”
Rachael considered her answer as they crossed the main lobby. “Service doesn’t always happen at the convenience of the servant. If a person is sick or injured at one o’clock in the morning, would the healer go? If an eclipse was
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happening during the lunch hour, would the astronomer come out to watch?”
Shawn twisted his face in thought. “I see what you mean. It just doesn’t seem fair that sleeping in once would ruin someone’s chances.”
“I sleep in sometimes too. But not when people are counting on me.
Lyceum’s not for everyone.”
A hint of dawn light already colored the sky as they crossed the empty plaza and entered one of the gardens. Shawn kept looking back, but finally had to give up his concern, lest he too be left behind.
They followed the Lyceum member into an open area that contained a number of grotesque stone statues. It was Ashley’s first glimpse of this garden, and she felt quite small among the ten-foot-high stone faces.
Sister Rachael sat on a large stone block and began to roll a cigarette.
“Learn what you can in this place,” was her response when anyone asked why they were here. After hearing it twice, Shawn didn’t bother to ask.
The more Ashley saw of the stone carvings of strange gods and serpents, and murals of trade and warfare between primitive peoples, the more uneasy she became.
“Sister Rachael?” she asked, stepping up to the Lyceum member.
The older lady exhaled the smoke she was enjoying. “Yes?”
“Didn’t these people practice human sacrifice? Why would Lyceum create gardens and shrines to remember such evil?”
Rachael contemplated the glowing end of her cigarette for a moment.
“Very little is known about these people. Even the question of human sacrifice is not well established, but let’s assume it for the sake of discussion.”
Three others gathered to listen.
“It’s a fact that every religion has, at times and places, engaged in practices that today we would call evil. Sacrifice, war, torture, genocide, corruption . . .
you name it.” She glanced at Ashley.
The young gymnast was gazing off across the open area. “I guess I see what you mean. If we left out all religions with skeletons in the closet, we wouldn’t have any!”
“Exactly, but not entirely. The skeletons are part of our heritage, part of who we are. We cannot successfully move into the future without repeating
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our mistakes — our evils, if you will — unless we know where we’ve been, who we’ve been, and what mistakes we’ve made.”
Ashley thanked Sister Rachael, and took a deep breath before turning back to the grotesque stone faces.
Ilika, who had been discretely watching and listening, smiled slightly.
The sun rose shortly after five o’clock, and the group arrived at a picnic area at the same time as a food cart bearing a simple but hearty breakfast.
Sister Rachael said nothing when the sleepy man joined the group.
So many people entered into discussions with the lady who smoked that it was almost seven o’clock when she finally began to explain their next activity.
“It’s not easy, but we manage to let an odd corner of the campus get weedy for the use of each evaluation group. We even assign our young members to scatter some trash so it will look like an empty lot in whatever city you’d like to name.”
Several people chuckled.
As soon as they saw the space in question, the man who had slept in, and a woman, began to argue with Sister Rachael about this use of their time. She assured them that no one was forcing them to do anything.
Instead of listening to the argument, Ilika and Ashley set to work surveying the area of berry vines, weeds, and trash, and looking over the available tools and materials. Shawn and Liberty noticed and quickly joined.
“I think it should just be a berry-picking garden,” Ashley asserted. “Look at all this fruit that’s gonna ripen in a few weeks!”
“Yeah,” Shawn agreed, “we could trim all the long vines — they don’t have berries on them anyway.”
“We’ve got wood chips for the ground,” Liberty began, “and we can make benches out of these boards!”
“Good ideas,” Ilika said as he handed out work gloves.
Sapphire and Dario joined them and settled into the task. They were soon chatting about their favorite parts of the Lyceum campus as they worked. As noon approached, they stood back to admire the finished product.
“This is going to be the youngest group of new members we’ve ever had!”
Sister Rachael predicted.
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That afternoon, old Sister Rebecca passed out the first of six test booklets.
Liberty flew through the raw intelligence test, but could see that Ashley was sweating. The values clarification test was fun for Shawn, but Liberty was nearly in tears. The psychological profile had all three on edge, but Ashley thoroughly enjoyed the personality profile. The educational development test was familiar to all of them, but the vocational and career survey left the three young people feeling very inexperienced.
Ilika estimated that the questions he didn’t answer because of his limited vocabulary would make up for the fact that his education and training had been vastly superior.
Shortly after five o’clock, the entire group dragged themselves to the cafeteria, their brains fried by the effort they had put into all the tests.
You guys aren’t from around here, are you? nine-year-old Sarah asked with her mind as she, Rini, and Sata emerged from the petting zoo barn.
Rini froze and looked at Sarah with surprise, almost fear in his eyes. Um
. . . that’s right, he finally replied. How could you tell?
Sarah rolled her eyes. Um . . . let’s see . . . most of you don’t speak the language very well . . . none of you know our customs . . . and I keep getting glimpses of donkeys fighting off wolves, lizards wearing jewelry, spiders in space suits, and other weird animal stuff.
Rini turned to Sata and spoke in their native language. “She can read my thoughts, and is gonna figure us out pretty soon.”
Sarah smiled, then spoke aloud. “And because of your leaky thoughts, it doesn’t matter what language you use. Sister Rachael could teach you how to shield.”
Sata frowned under the weight of such an important decision. After a minute gazing at llamas in a pasture, she spoke in the local language. “I need to talk to my captain and Sister Rebecca.”
Sarah smiled and led them back toward the buildings.