I guided your body. We are experienced in controlling humans.
“And that tiger has the knife through his snoot!” she exclaimed, amazed. “I didn’t hurt the tree much, but that tiger would have had one hell of a surprise!”
I believe the knife will be an effective weapon for you.
That was the understatement of the day! Colene went to the tree and tugged at the knife. It wouldn’t come. She pushed up and pulled down on it, trying to wiggle it free, but the wood clung to it. Then Seqiro sent a thought, and she wrenched and twisted with special force and skill, and it came out. She had physical ability beyond what she had thought were her limits. Seqiro seemed to bypass her restraints and draw on her full potential.
Holding the knife, she proceeded with more confidence. Actually the chances of encountering a bear or tiger right up close by surprise were small; her episode with the bear might have been the only one that would happen.
You thought of cutting yourself, Seqiro thought. I do not understand this.
She laughed self-consciously. “I’m suicidal. It’s a secret, but I think I’ll have no secrets from you. I think about death a lot, and blood. Or I did, before I met Darius. Before I got on the Virtual Mode.”
I still do not understand. Why should you wish to die? You are a comely and intelligent young woman.
“Well, that gets complicated, and maybe I don’t know the whole answer myself. I don’t think you’d like me as well if you saw what’s down inside me.”
I read a wellspring of pain. This does not surprise me. You would not have undertaken the Virtual Mode if you had been satisfied with your situation. Think through your pain while we travel. Perhaps I will be able to help.
She laughed bitterly. “Only if you could make me forget!”
This I could do.
Startled, she realized that it was probably true. He could read her mind, and could make her body perform in a way it never had before. Why not block off a bad memory?
“Okay, Seqiro. But stop me if you get disgusted, because I don’t want to make you hate me. When I told Darius how I was suicidal, he—” The pain of that misunderstanding and separation cut her off. At least Darius had changed his mind, and set up the Virtual Mode so they could be together again. She knew there were still problems, because he had to marry a woman with a whole lot of joy, but if she could just be with him, things would work out somehow.
She turned her mind back to the times of special pain. There were several, and she didn’t know what related most directly to what, or how they tied in with how she felt later. Maybe they really didn’t mean much; maybe she had reacted the wrong way, or maybe they shouldn’t have bothered her. Would they have bothered her, if her folks’ marriage hadn’t become a shell, forcing her to seek elsewhere for emotional support—which she hadn’t found? Maybe the whole business was too dull to review, and she should have forgotten it long ago. Maybe worse had happened to others and they had shrugged it off, and Colene was peculiar to have failed to have done that.
“I don’t know. Maybe this is a bad idea. I would feel foolish just speaking some of this stuff, and—”
Then feel it. I am attuning to you and learning to read your nuances. I can read your memories, if you allow me.
He could do that? He could reach deep into her and see her most secret things, if she did not resist? That was scary! Yet she remembered lying with Darius, telling him he could maybe touch her breasts but not her genital region, and he had done neither. Then later she had offered it all to him, and he had not taken it. She had respected him for that, yet also been annoyed. It might have been better if he had been unable to control himself. That would have given the control to her, odd as that seemed considering that he would be having his will of her. He had not, and so she had not had her will of him, which wasn’t quite the same.
Spreading her legs for Darius. Spreading her mind for Seqiro. What was the difference? One was a secret of the body, the other a secret of the mind. Of the two, the mind was more private. Yet it was something she wanted to do, wanton as it might reveal her to be. She wanted to tell someone, just as she had wanted to show her body to someone. To lay the guilt bare, just because it was there.
“Okay.”
She laid open her mind. It traveled back two years.
SHE was twelve years old, and visiting Catholic relatives in Panama, in the Canal Zone. One parent was Catholic, so maybe that made her one too, but she wasn’t sure whether it did or whether she wanted it to. She went to mass on Sunday, undecided and really not caring a whole lot. She just loved visiting here, where everything was so much nicer than back at home. If church was part of it, well, it was worth it.
And it did make her feel very close to God. God loved the sparrow as He loved His Son. Surely He loved this whole region, and that was why it was so nice. The American enclave was beautiful, very like paradise, with lovely gardens and ultimate contemporary luxury. After a distance it faded to the natural landscape, which was not manicured but which remained interesting in its tropicality. Every palm tree was a novelty, to one raised in Oklahoma.
She walked to the nearby native village, curious how the Panamanians lived. Was it the same as the Americans, or different in some intriguing way? They must be very happy, living in a place like this.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for what she saw in that village. The houses were huts with thatched roofs and dirt floors. The people were filthy, their clothing odd. Naked children of both sexes ran wildly in the streets. Young mothers held soiled babies to their bare breasts, nursing them in public. There were sores on the children’s legs, scabbed over, with flies clinging to the crust. Insects gathered around their mouths, and no one even bothered to brush them away. It was horrible.
She rushed back to the enclave, back to the church. “A priest, a priest!” she cried. A priest came to her; perhaps this was confession.
Tearfully she expressed her feelings of shock and grievance. Suddenly she had seen the real world, right next to paradise. It wasn’t better than what she had known, it was worse! It had been hidden from her. Hurt and outraged, she wept bitteriy. She felt betrayed. She blamed the church, she blamed the priest, she blamed herself, and she blamed God. Everything was wrong, and she wanted this wrong to be corrected.
The good father was patient. When she wound down, he spoke softly and kindly to her. “My child, you have seen reality, and it is as uncomfortable for you as it is for all of us. You now have a decision to make. Whatever you have or will get in the future, you may give equally to each poor Panamanian. It is possible to give each one a good meal for one day. Then you will be just as poor as they are. You are allowed to do this, but you are not required to give up your birthright.”
It was her first real lesson in logic, and a giant one. She had thought herself a fast learner, but now she saw how slowly she was learning about reality. Even then, she did not appreciate how much more she had to learn.
She remained shaken when she returned home to the States. She had not been satisfied with her life, and was less satisfied now that the crevices in her parents’ marriage had opened into significant faults. Yet she had material things and good health, which was much more than what she had observed in the villagers. What good would it have been to have a unified family if she had to run naked and hungry in the streets, the flies eating at her open sores? She had too much, and she felt guilty for being dissatisfied.