Eloa opened and then closed his mouth. His eyes shot up to the ceiling, then down to his hands folded awkwardly in his lap. He unclasped his hands and set them down again, one on each leg. “I, uh…” he stammered.
“I’m not making you nervous, am I?” Thrrivel asked. He was getting to this boy. That was a good sign.
“These aren’t the sort of questions I was expecting,” he said, looking up to meet Thrrivel’s eyes. Thrrivel stared coolly back.
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know. Something about our studies, I guess.”
“Have you been cheating on your exams?” Thrrivel asked. Keep him off balance. Keep him reaching.
Eloa sat straight up. “What? No! Of course not.”
“Then why would I ask about your studies? The tests show you’re clearly qualified. They didn’t send me here to find out what you know. I came to find out who you are.”
“But you already know that.”
“I know your name. Your history. But I don’t know you. What makes you tick, Eloa?”
“Same thing as everybody else, I would think.”
“You know that’s not true. Are you going to tell me about the dreams?” Thrrivel was doing all he could to keep from smiling. He hadn’t had this much fun in a long time.
Eloa fidgeted again. He looked up in a corner of the room, and his face visibly relaxed. Thrrivel waited. He could be patient if that was the game Eloa wanted to play.
Eloa finally spoke. “They’re just dreams. Just like anybody else has,” he began. “Only–”
“Only you see the future,” Thrrivel interrupted.
“No, not really the future. Not usually. I don’t think I can really explain it. I get a message, or a clue, or a symbol.”
“And the message tells you what to do?”
“Not directly. I usually have to figure it out.”
“You were the only student to earn a perfect score on last year’s finals,” Thrrivel said. Play the cheating card again. That seemed to get a response last time.
“That was one of the clearer dreams,” Eloa said, scooting his feet under his chair. “They’re not usually that clear.”
“But you get a direction from these dreams? A sense of what you have to do?”
“Yes.”
“And what if you get an incompatible message?”
“What?” Eloa looked truly puzzled.
“What if you have a dream that tells you to take a certain action, but everyone else says to take a different action?”
“I’d discuss it with them, of course.”
“And what if they say you’re crazy. You’re wrong. But you know deep in your heart that they just can’t see it? What if you’re on this ship, and you’re faced with two choices. One looks obvious to everyone, but you have a dream that tells you what will happen, and you know it means death?”
“I’d tell them. We’d figure it out,” Eloa said. “I know how to get along with people.”
Thrrivel wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “What if they didn’t go along with you? What if they said they were convinced that your dream was nothing more than a dream? That the direction you wanted to go was too dangerous, and they had to take the other choice?”
Eloa stared at him, saying nothing, his face expressionless. “I don’t see how it could come to that.”
“It comes to that all the time, Eloa. That’s the difference between real life and dreams. Real life has conflicts of opinion, difficult choices, unknowns, and plenty of surprises. Real life has risk. And the risks that you’re asking to take on, Eloa, the risks that you want the whole world to feel comfortable assigning to you, those risks can’t be brushed away with a flick of the hand and an idealistic hope that it won’t come to that.” He stopped himself then, realizing that his face had reddened and that he had leaned almost out of his chair.
Eloa had retreated into the back of his chair during the outburst. “We’d talk it over,” he started, slowly. “We’d make a decision as a group. Like we’re supposed to.”
Thrrivel pulled himself back into his seat. “So you’d sacrifice your life,” he said quietly, “and the lives of everyone who is dependent upon you, just so you could say you’re playing by the book?”
Eloa raised his eyebrows. “It’s my understanding that the rules are in place for a reason. So that no single person, on a whim, or a misunderstanding, or a wild hunch, can jeopardize the mission.”
“Let’s not talk about wild hunches. Let’s talk about your dreams. You get a vision, like for the test last year, and you just know it’s right. But everyone else disagrees. They’re wrong; you know it.”
Eloa glanced at his hands. “What can I do? If after we discuss it together, and I alone disagree, then I’m at the mercy of the others, just like anyone else would be.”
Thrrivel smiled. “You need more imagination.”