I wanted a well-trained team, so I worked with them day by day, trying to shape us all together into a functioning circle which could work together, precisely tuned. As yet we were working with our small matrices; before we joined together to open and call forth the power of the big one, we must be absolutely attuned to one another, with no hidden weaknesses. I would have felt safer with a circle of six or eight, as at Arilinn. Five is a small circle, even with Beltran working outside as a psi monitor. But Thyra and Kadarin were stronger than most of us at Arilinn—I knew they were both stronger than I, though I had more skill and training—and Marjorie was fantastically talented. Even at Arilinn, they would have chosen her the first day as a potential Keeper.
Deep warmth and affection, even love, had sprung up among all of us with the gradual blending of our minds. It was always like this, in the building of a circle. It was closer than family intimacy, closer than sexual love. It was a sort of blending, as if we all melted into one another, each of us contributing something special, individual and unique, and somehow all of us together becoming more than the sum of us.
But the others were growing impatient. It was Thyra who finally voiced what they were all wanting to know.
“When do we begin to work with the Sharra matrix? We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”
I demurred. “I’d hoped to find others to work with us; I’m not sure we can operate a ninth-level matrix alone.” Rafe asked, “What’s a ninth-level matrix?” “In general,” I said dryly, “it’s a matrix not safe to handle with less than nine workers. And that’s with a good, fully trained Keeper.”
Kadarin said, “I told you we should have chosen Thyra.” “I won’t argue with you about it. Thyra is a very strong telepath; she is an excellent technician and mechanic. But no Keeper.”
Thyra asked, “Exactly how does a Keeper differ from any other telepath?”
I struggled to put it into language she could understand. “A Keeper is the central control in the circle; you’ve all seen that. She holds together the forces. Do you know what energons are?”
Only Rafe ventured to ask, “Are they the little wavy things that I can’t quite see when I look into the matrix?”
Actually that was a very good answer. I said, “They’re a purely theoretical name for something nobody’s sure really exists. It’s been postulated that the part of the brain which controls psi forces gives off a certain type of vibration which we call energons. We can describe what they do, though we can’t really describe them. These, when directed and focused through a matrix—I showed you—become immensely amplified, with the matrix acting as a transformer. It is the amplified energons which transform energy. Well, in a matrix circle, it is the Keeper who receives the flow of energons from all members of the circle and weaves them all into a single focused beam, and this, the focused beam, is what goes through the large matrix.”
“Why are Keepers always women?”
“They aren’t. There have been male Keepers, powerful ones, and other men who have taken a Keeper’s place. I can do it myself. But women have more positive energon flows, and they begin to generate them younger and keep them longer.”
“You explained why a Keeper has to be chaste,” Marjorie said, “but I still don’t understand it.”
Kadarin said, “That’s because it’s superstitious drivel There’s nothing to understand; it’s gibberish.”
“In the old days,” I said, “when the really enormous matrix screens were made, the big synthetic ones, the Keepers were virgins, trained from early childhood and conditioned in ways you wouldn’t believe. You know how close a matrix circle is.” I looked around at them, savoring the closeness. “In those days a Keeper had to learn to be part of the circle and yet completely, completely apart from it.”
Marjorie said, “I should think they’d have gone mad.”
“A good many of them did. Even now, most of the women who work as Keepers give it up after a year or two. It’s too difficult and frustrating. The Keepers at the towers aren’t required to be virgins any more. But while they are working as Keepers, they stay strictly chaste.”