CHAPTER SEVEN
※ BLAISE ※
Wrapping up the Life Capture recording, Blaise came back to the library to check on Gala. To his surprise, he saw her lying on the floor unconscious, in the middle of a huge pile of books.
Worried, he ran to her and crouched down to take a closer look. To his relief, he saw that she looked quite peaceful, her breathing slow and even. She was simply sleeping.
Without thinking too much about it, Blaise picked her up and carried her to one of the guest bedrooms. She was light in his arms, her body soft and feminine, and he found himself enjoying the experience. Reaching the room, he gently placed her on the bed, and as he was covering her with a blanket, she opened her eyes.
For a moment, she seemed confused, then her gaze cleared. “I think I fell asleep,” she said in astonishment.
Blaise smiled. “I would’ve thought you wouldn’t know what sleep was like.”
“I didn’t before, but I learned quite a bit from your books.”
He studied her with fascination, wondering if she’d read all those hundreds of books that were lying on the library floor. “How many books did you get through?” he asked.
She sat up in bed, brushing a few strands of long blond hair off her face. “Three hundred and forty nine.”
Blaise blinked. “That’s very precise. Are you sure it wasn’t three hundred and forty eight?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said seriously, then smiled. “In fact, it was 138,902 pages and 32,453,383 words.”
“Are those the exact figures?” He could hardly believe his ears.
Gala nodded, still smiling. In a flash of intuition, Blaise realized that she knew just how much she had impressed him—and that she was enjoying his reaction tremendously.
“All right,” Blaise said slowly. “How do you know this?”
She shrugged. “I just know. As soon as I wanted to tell you, the numbers came to me. I guess I must’ve counted as I was reading, but I don’t remember doing it.”
“I see,” Blaise said, watching her closely. On a hunch, he asked, “What is 2,682 times 5?”
“13,410,” Gala said without hesitation.
Blaise concentrated for a few seconds, doing the calculations in his head. She was right. He was one of the few people he knew who could do this kind of multiplication quickly, but Gala had known the answer almost instantaneously.
“How did you do this so quickly?” he asked, curious about the way her mind worked.
“I took 2,682, halved it to get 1,341, and then multiplied it by 10.”
Blaise thought about it for a second and realized that her method was indeed the easiest way to solve the problem. He was surprised he hadn’t come up with it himself. He would definitely use this shortcut the next time he needed to do some quick calculations for a spell.
Given the purpose of her creation, Gala’s analytical and math skills shouldn’t have surprised him, but still, Blaise was amazed. He couldn’t wait any longer to see what she was capable of. “Gala, can you try to do some magic for me?” he asked, staring at her beautiful face.
She looked surprised by his request. “You mean, like you did earlier, in the gardens?”
“Yes, like that,” Blaise confirmed.
“But I don’t know how you did what you did.” She seemed a little bewildered. “I don’t know all those spells you used.”
“You don’t have to know them,” Blaise explained. “You should be able to do magic directly, without having to learn our methods. Magic should come as easily and naturally to you as breathing does to me.”
She appeared to consider that for a second. “I also breathe,” she said, as though reaching that conclusion after examining herself.
“Of course you do.” Amused, Blaise smiled at her. “I didn’t mean to imply that you don’t.”
Her soft lips curved in an answering smile. “All right,” she murmured, “let me try doing magic.” She closed her eyes, and Blaise could see a look of intense concentration on her face.
He held his breath, waiting, but nothing happened. After a minute, she opened her eyes, looking at Blaise expectantly.
He shook his head regretfully. “I don’t think it worked. What did you try to do?”
“I wanted to make my own version of that beautiful flower you created in the garden.”
“I see. And how did you go about doing it?”
She lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. “I don’t know. I replayed the memory of you doing it earlier in my mind and tried to picture myself in your place, but I don’t think it works like that.”
“No, you’re right, that’s probably not how it would work for you.” Frustrated, Blaise ran his fingers through his hair. “The problem is I don’t know exactly how it would work for you. I was hoping you would simply be able to do it, just like you did the math problem earlier.”
Gala closed her eyes again, and that same look of concentration appeared on her face.
Again nothing happened.
“I failed,” she said, opening her eyes. She didn’t seem particularly concerned about that fact.
“What did you try to do?”
“I wanted to raise the temperature in this room by a couple of degrees, but I could feel that it didn’t work.”
Blaise lifted his eyebrows. Her unusual temperature sensitivity aside, it seemed that Gala did have a good intuition for sorcery. Changing the temperature of an object was a very basic spell, something that Blaise could do just by saying a few sentences in the old magical language.
While he was pondering this, Gala jumped off the bed and came up to one of the windows. “I want to go out there,” she said, turning her head to look at him. “I want to see more of this world.”
Blaise tried to hide his disappointment. “You don’t want to try any more magic?”
“No,” Gala said stubbornly. “I don’t. I want to go out and explore.”
Blaise took a deep breath. “Maybe just one more try?”
Her expression darkened, a crease appearing on her smooth forehead. “Blaise,” she said quietly, “you’re making me feel bad right now.”
“What?” Blaise couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice. “Why?”
“Because you’re making me feel used, like that object that you intended me to be,” she said, sounding upset. “What do you want from me? Am I to be some tool that people use to do magic? Is that my purpose in life?”
“No, of course not!” Blaise protested, pushing away an unwelcome tendril of guilt. In a way, that had been exactly what he had originally intended for Gala, but she wasn’t supposed to be a person, with the feelings and emotions of a human being. He had been trying to build an intelligence, yes, but it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. It was to be a means to an end, a way to address the worst of the inequality in their society. All he had thought about was getting the object to understand regular human language, and he hadn’t considered the fact that anything with that level of intelligence might have its—or her—own thoughts and opinions.
And now he was a victim of his own success. Gala could certainly understand language—maybe even better than Blaise, given her reading prowess. However, she was no more an object to be used than he was. His original plan of creating enough intelligent magical objects for everyone was sheer folly; if successful, it would just transfer the burden of inequality from one group of thinking beings to another—provided that Gala or others of her kind would even go along with something like that.
Besides, it wasn’t like she could even do magic at this point. Or maybe she just didn’t want to, Blaise thought wryly. He would certainly be hesitant to display any kind of magical ability in her situation.
She was still looking upset, so he tried to reassure her, “Gala, listen to me, I didn’t mean to make you feel like an object. What I told you about my original intentions for you is obviously out of the question now. I know you’re not a thing to be used. I’m sorry. It was thoughtless of me not to realize how you felt.” He hoped she could see the truth of his words; the last thing he wanted was for Gala to be afraid of him or to resent him.
She looked away for a second, then turned to meet his gaze. “Well, now you know,” she said softly. “All I want to do right now is learn more about this world. I want to experience everything about it. I want to see for myself what I just read about in your books, and I want to witness those injustices you’re trying to fix. I want to live like a human being, Blaise. Can you understand that?”