The Scholomance Read Online Free PDF Page B

not prone to panic. Neither did she
joke.
    At this point in
her life, slipping into the Panic Room, which had once come damned close to
putting Mara in a child-sized coffin, had become as casual and as essential an
act as slipping on a pair of eyeglasses. There, she could look up the memory of
a phone number from a decade past as easily as another woman might glance in a
mirror, or shield herself against a Christmas Sale Mindstorm as if she were
shrugging into an overcoat. Without it, riding in a car on a busy highway was
torture; driving one, impossible. Beyond that, it permitted Mara to make a tidy
living around the poker tables, counting cards and studying her opponents’
hands without the distracting babble of the rest of the casino bleeding in.
    A very tidy
living.
    It did not
surprise her to discover psychics like herself plying the same trade on her
frequent trips to Nevada’s copious casinos (or employed there), but it astonished
her that they had no Panic Rooms of their own. The human mind was, to Mara’s
unimaginative way of thinking, like a room filled with loose sheets of paper
blowing wildly about. The other telepaths she’d come across could put those
papers in neat stacks or perhaps in labeled filing cabinets, but not one of
them had put those files in a computer like Mara, or locked that computer away
behind walls.
    Even as a child,
she had never believed herself to be unique, she’d just assumed that she was
one of a very few. As an adult, her discovery that other telepaths had no Panic
Rooms had been heavily stained by the suspicion that they were just better at
hiding them. And so, not knowing whether she were retaliating or laying in a
pre-emptive strike, Mara had developed an almost schizophrenic way of thinking:
She had surface thoughts, floating around in the Panic Room for those
presumably sneaky psychics to see, and hidden thoughts, hidden even deeper and
shut up even tighter, in the Panic Room’s Basement, so to speak. Likewise, she
could not simply listen to someone talk without also feeling at his thoughts,
and she had become quite adept at stealing in and out again undetected, even
from those minds who believed they were defended.
    None of this had
ever seemed important enough for Mara to think about, any more than a person
ordinarily invested thought in the formation of her thumb, although it is
undeniable that a human thumb is absolutely essential to one’s function and
quality of life. As she rode in the Romanian’s cab, safely shut away from the
shrapnel of other motorists’ thoughts, Mara enjoyed the Panic Room’s protection
without dwelling on its origins or the skills its use had allowed her to hone. At
no point in the coming days would it occur to her to marvel at the power of her
Panic Room, although she was certainly grateful for it. It had become a tool—her
eyeglasses, her overcoat, her mirror, her thumb—and tools existed to be used
without wonder.
    And it was just
as well, for wonder surely would have been detected and followed to its source,
but Mara’s indifference could only be to her benefit. Being unimaginative did
have its advantages. One could not think of purple-haired fairies, perhaps, but
one was surprisingly well-equipped to deal with them.

 
    *           *           *

 
    The
town of Altenmunster was ten streets, twelve bars, two churches, and one
fountain. The cabbie let her out at one of the taverns, fancifully named La
Dansul Capra , The Dancing Goat. He accepted her generous tip, then began to
drive away, braked, sat idle for nearly two minutes, and finally came back. He
thrust his fist through the open window. His little silver cross dangled,
catching what grey light the sky had to offer and turning it into a hopeful
sort of gleam. “God go with you,” he grumbled when she took it, and then drove
rapidly away. He believed he would not see her again. Coming from a man who
never saw any of his tourist fares again and never thought