He folded himself into a lotus position, took a few deep and slowly exhaled breaths, and opened the evening's session of meditation with a brief but carefully worded sermon on the necessity of discomfort on the road to Transformation. He then gave them the mantra, 'Great heat, great change.'
They chanted for a while and then came silent meditation, and Ana's mind wandered back from Steven's words to the earlier statement by Teresa, and beyond that to the things he had told her walking back from the red rocks. He had spoken of being put through the tempering fires during the search for enlightenment—what he called Transformation—but she had taken it for a metaphorical reference to inner struggles. If his community interpreted this as a command that they should welcome the pressures and irritations of meddling outsiders because it helped to build character, it explained a great deal. Surely the hair shirts of the early Christian monks, their fondness for mortification of the flesh and embracing of bodily torments and martyrdoms might find modern psychological equivalents in automated telephone systems and the barbs and torments of red tape?
It was actually quite funny, once she thought about it.
Teresa had not thought it amusing, though. Ana began to wonder what other forms of heat and pressure might be applied in the search for transformation. This was not, all in all, a comforting thought. Nor very amusing.
What else had Steven said, according to Teresa? It was something about the arduous building project. 'Sweat meditation,' she had called it.
Come to think of it, that had an uncomfortable sound to it as well.
The days passed, five of them, during which Ana saw Dulcie half a dozen times and Jason up close twice and three times at a distance, in the school or walking across the compound, and once she saw him setting out on a morning run. Steven she saw any number of times, but of the three, the only one she exchanged words with was Dulcie.
She lived in the community and she worked alongside the others, but Ana could feel that she was not a fully accepted member. She remained an assistant in the classrooms, people gave slight hesitations before some answers, as if considering her status, and polite demurrals when she offered to help with some project or other.
This clear sense of boundaries indicated a degree of suspicion that Ana could not afford to let stand, but she knew that not until Steven gave the word would she begin to be integrated into the Change community.
She knew why he was witholding his blessing, too. He had accused her at their early-morning interview of a lack of commitment, of flightiness and an unwillingness to dig in, and she had not denied it. He would be waiting for her to ask him for the next stage in her transformation.
Very well, she would ask. But not tonight. Tomorrow she would give her pledge to commit herself to Change—or, rather, give the nonexistent Ana's meaningless pledge. Tonight, though, was hers—not to drive into Sedona and gorge on meat and wine, not even if Steven hadn't already spoiled that pleasure. No, tonight she would take a solitary walk, playing hooky from the group meditation and wandering by herself through the near-empty compound.
The moon lay on the horizon, past full now but still large and heavy with gathered light. The night was cold and cloudless, the white stones lining the edges of the path luminous in the light. Ana left her flashlight in her pocket and wandered the compound by moonlight and the lights from the windows.
In and out the paths zigzagged, into the hub and back to the edges, each of the outside buildings connecting with each other and with the center. It would make a neat geometrical pattern from the air, she thought, a cat's cradle of pathways strung between the seven buildings. Why hadn't Glen's aerial photo showed it? Were the paths of crushed gravel too like the desert soil in color or the white stones too far apart to form a solid line? Or had she missed it? And if so, what else had she missed?
They were chanting in the meditation hall, not the 'I am change am I' rhythm or the 4/4 beat of 'Great hope, great change,' but something slower and choppier, four beats and a pause, four beats and a pause. She listened, and heard the word:
Into change in a big way, was Steven.
Ana continued on out to the bare site where the sixth and final building would go, back to the still-chanting hub, and up to the oldest of the surrounding structures, the dining hall.
Ana let herself in, thinking to look again at the lovely Indian pots she had seen the very first night and looked at with pleasure every time she had passed by. One in particular was stunning, a glossy black-on-black bowl worth more than Rocinante and all she contained.
She heard a sound, deep in the building. Not a kitchen noise, but a high, sharp squeak. She followed the hallway back to the dining hall, and soon the echoing thuds of a bouncing ball joined the squeaks: Someone was playing basketball.
Jason.
Chapter Fourteen
From the journal of Anne Waverly (aka Ana Wakefield)
The boy was practicing crossovers, dribbling the ball up the court for a few steps and then shifting his body and taking the ball in the other hand for the next few steps, dodging imaginary opponents. As he neared the end, he lowered his body and speeded up, springing up beside the basket for a lay-up shot. He veered outside the unmarked end line of the court to catch up the ball and started back up the other end again, alternating hands as he dribbled.
He was very beautiful, a young human male as he was meant to be, rejoicing in perfect strength before his body discovered that there were things it could not do. For some reason the phrase 'I sing the body electric' ran through her mind, and she refused to feel like a voyeur.
He traveled the court three or four times while Ana stood leaning in the doorway with her hands in her pockets. She knew that he was aware of her presence—she had seen the faint falter and sideways glance when he first turned to go back up the court—but he ignored her, concentrating on the rhythm and on the use of his left hand.
She could certainly sympathize. Privacy was a rare enough commodity in a communal enterprise, and it would be a gift of kindness if she were to back away and leave him to the echo of the ball and the squeal of his shoes on the polished floor. Instead, she hardened her heart and began to pluck off her outer garments until they lay in a pile on the bench and she stood in her jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and bare feet. She pushed her sleeves up to her elbows and went out onto the floor.
'It's very pretty,' she said to him without preliminary, 'but it's too slow. You get some kid out there with quick hands, you're going to lose the ball every time you go past him.'
Jason had stopped, and stood now with the ball balanced against his hip, his chest rising and falling beneath his sleeveless T-shirt, just watching her, expressionless.
'Here, I'll show you what I mean,' she said. Settling down as far as her knee would permit, she stretched out her arms in the guard's position and wiggled her fingers to indicate that he should come at her. He simply stood there. 'Yeah, yeah,' she said. 'I know old women like me don't play basketball, but there's nobody here to see you, and who knows? You might learn something. At the very least you'll embarrass me so that I go away and leave you in peace.'
She waited, so long that she was beginning to think that she had underestimated the depth of his need for dignity and credited him with more curiosity than he actually possessed. He waited until her knee was protesting and her doubt was building, and then he dropped the ball to the floor and came at her, driving fast straight down the court until the very last instant, when he shifted and went to the side.
But he did not take the ball with him. Instead, it was traveling back down the court in the hands of this woman with the almost-shaved head, who furthermore came to a halt well outside where the key would be and shot the ball toward the basket. It dropped neatly in. She trotted forward to retrieve the ball and turned back toward him, laughing.
'Now, there was a lucky shot,' she said. 'I haven't done that in years.' She tucked the ball under her left arm and put out her right hand. 'Call me Ana. The shortest member of the women's varsity team in high school, tied for second highest score for the season. Couldn't guard, never made a rebound, and slow on my feet, but I had a talent
