First Channel Part 10

Veritt fixed him with a cold stare. "I have not that right. However, for the time being, I must forbid my people to experiment with your attempts to avoid killing Gens. I have two reasons for this. The first is practical: you have not proven that you can teach your method to others. Your friend Mr. Erick is in great distress, Mrs. Lodge tells me, because he killed someone who had become his friend."

"True," answered Rimon. "So we're not trying to teach anyone else until we're sure we can do it You have my word."

"My other reservation is more serious, because I can see no way of proving what you are. There are legends of Simes and Gens living together among the gypsies, practicing sorcery. I have never seen this. We drove the gypsies away from our town when I was a child, but there were no Simes among them. On this side of the border I've seen Sime gypsies, never Gens. Yet it's known they indulge in secret practices-and if they do, so may others.

"You don't seem like a sorcerer, Mr. Farris-but the Devil works most effectively through those who seem innocent. G.o.d revealed to me many years ago, when I recognized the soulless state of the Gens grown here, that Simes have souls. I amended my life from that day, and have, with G.o.d's help, brought hope to the people of Fort Freedom.

"Now you bring a new hope-that it may not be necessary for Simes to kill at all. Is this a new revelation from G.o.d? Or is it a false temptation to lead us into the practice of witchcraft? Because I don't know, I'll not forbid your welcome in Fort Freedom. Yet I can't ask you to join our community."

Rimon smiled. "I think you'll soon see we're not sorcerers."

"I shall pray and meditate that G.o.d may let me see this matter clearly. Meanwhile, go join your friends."

Del and Carlana were waiting for them at Carlana's home. The Sime woman was delighted with Veritt's decision. As it was very warm, they joined the children in the neatly fenced yard. At one end was a patch of strawberries, a few late berries still ripening. "Why do you let these grow?" asked Kadi. "They're poisonous."

"Not to the children," Carlana replied. "They love them. They're not poisonous to you, either, Kadi. Try some." At Kadi's hesitation, she laughed. "Really-when I was a child, strawberry season was a great time at home. Everybody in the family ate them. I'd no idea they were poisonous to Simes until the people here warned me not to eat them. It seems a lot of new Simes make that mistake and some of them die from it."

"Yes," Kadi recalled. "One time that Charlie Horvan poisoned himself, it was with strawberries. I guess n.o.body thought to tell him what everybody knows!"

"And here you have no one to tell you what you can eat, have you, Kadi? There are, oh, certain mushrooms, for instance. Someday we'll go out gathering some, and I'll show you which ones my parents taught me to pick."

Just then Carlana's little boy, Owen, began to cry. His mother darted to his side and picked him up, discovering at once that he was merely frightened at having fallen. He was only two, and his sister Jana, a year younger, was crying in sympathy and tugging at her mother's skirts. Carlana spoke soothingly to the children, but Rimon didn't understand what she said.

When Owen quieted, and Carlana kissed both her children and sent them off to play again, Rimon asked, "You're teaching your children the Gen language?"

"Yes-both languages," Carlana replied. "It's a difficult fact: I want my children to be real people-Gens. But if they are, they will cross the border, and I'll never see them again. If they change over, though, they'll have to kill to survive. I don't want that for my children!"

"Carlana," said Kadi, "by that time, surely we'll have learned how all Simes and Gens can live as Rimon and I do. And then it won't matter. It simply won't matter anymore if a child changes over or establishes."

Carlana studied Rimon and Kadi, hope and despair fighting in her nager. "I shall pray, Kadi. Every day, when I pray for my children, I shall pray that you are right!"

Chapter Eight.

WILD GEN RAID.

That first summer on the homestead was a happy, carefree time. Their crops thrived, and they developed friends.h.i.+ps at Fort Freedom. Not everyone was willing to accept them-especially the younger Simes who had been born this side of the border and had changed over here. Chief leader of the group was Jord Veritt.

Kadi and Rimon seemed to grow closer, if that were possible. Each transfer was as ecstatic as if it were the first time, and the lovemaking that followed as joyful and fulfilling. Rimon no longer had difficulty zlinning immediately after transfer, so they could indulge themselves as they pleased, with no fear of interruption without warning.

The talk of Fort Freedom was the successful rout of a small group of Freehand Raiders. Rimon and Kadi had been visiting Carlana when the alarm had rung, and Rimon had joined the men who rode out to challenge them. None of the women with small children had joined them.

"They escaped across the border," Rimon reported when he returned. "I suppose they'll find plenty of prey over there... but what could we do?"

Abel Veritt, who had ridden up beside him, said, "Nothing. We can't ride into Gen Territory, even after Raiders. People would shoot us on sight as quickly as they would the Raiders. I just hope they don't do much damage."

"I hope they're shot down at the border!" Rimon said. "For the first time in my life, I actually, wished today that I had a Gen gun and knew how to use it!"

"Rimon!" Kadi exclaimed, moving quickly to his side.

"Kadi, you haven't seen them in action," he said, remembering all too keenly the time he'd thought Kadi snared by such a band. "They don't just kill-they torture."

"He's right, Mrs. Farris," said Veritt. "The Freehand Raiders are an abomination upon the face of the Earth and yet, we must not judge even them to be irredeemable. I speak from personal experience. I was once one of them." Rimon and Kadi were the only ones shocked by this statement Apparently, Veritt hid nothing about his past from his people.

"I lived that way for nearly six months," he told them, "if you can call it living. It was more a flight from life. We killed... people, self-aware Gens who understood what was happening. I didn't know there was any other way to live as a Sime. When our band fell upon hard times, we raided Pens, and I discovered that here there are soulless creatures in Gen bodies. They provide the selyn we must have to live, yet killing them is no more than slaughtering a steer for the meat."

Rimon felt Kadi's gorge rise at the thought. Then she controlled her disgust. Veritt continued as if he hadn't noticed.

With his "revelation," he had left the Freehand Raiders. Penniless and in poor health, he'd been fortunate to find a woman who owned a stable and gave him work, letting him sleep in one of the stalls. With her help, he regained his health, perfected his knowledge of Simelan, and discovered that most Simes were honest, hard-working people like those he'd grown up among.

As he learned to zlin subtleties, he perceived what to him seemed a second revelation: there was something in common in the nager of both Sime and Gen grown up as "people," the element that was missing in the nager of the Gens from the government Pens. Veritt perceived that element as the soul, and determined to return to the border and teach his new doctrine to other new Simes fleeing in despair into Sime Territory.

"He's saved most of us from suicide," Carlana said when Veritt had gone, "or maybe from joining the Raiders. Most of us killed a friend or relative in First Need, you know. But the marvelous thing is, we can all see for ourselves that what he teaches is the truth. There is such a difference between Kadi, or one of our own children who establishes, and one of the Gens raised for our need. They're just animals."

Rimon and Kadi said nothing. They were afraid to shake the faith of either Veritt or Carlana. It would be unnecessarily cruel to question beliefs that allowed these people to accept the necessities of their existence. So they quietly went home.

And then harvesting began around Fort Freedom, and every hand or tentacle was welcome. Rimon agreed to work in order to make the money to buy the things their homestead couldn't produce. And the tax on Kadi, he thought, anger clouding his mind every time he thought of it. Even out here where the government was no protection, the tax collector had come around-and the date on Kadi's tags told him how much Rimon owed-almost wiping out the little cash they had left.

He was working in the fields, happy at the sound of coins jingling in his pocket, when the alarm bell from Fort Freedom sounded. At first he didn't recognize it as an alarm, but by the second peal he was anxiously scanning the horizon for the source of the danger. The other Simes were frantically gathering the children, forming a phalanx. Then Rimon spotted a band of Simes riding from town toward the Fort and pointed.

As the field workers began to gather, running toward the Fort, Rimon sensed a ma.s.sive Gen field closing in from another direction. He stopped, scanning the hills. Even as he was turning, it grew stronger, emerging from behind the insulating hills as a large band of Wild Gens galloped toward them.

"No, this way!" shouted Rimon, and simultaneously, the most sensitive Simes in the field were turning, yelling to their neighbors. The Simes closed ranks and, under full augmentation, charged at the Gen riders.

Shots rang out. The Wild Gens had rifles. The Simes ran zig-zag, weaving a complex pattern as they formed a crescent to engulf the Gens. To Rimon's left, one Sime fell, screaming in pain, but no one dared break formation to help him.

Sara Fenell and Herg Lol, who were approaching hard need, moved out in front, the Sime predator instinct roused to fever pitch by the high-field Gens. They selected their prey and grasped at the horses' reins. The Gen that Herg had chosen brought a shortened rifle around and fired. Herg Lol was caught full in the face, dead before he hit the ground. The Gen's horse reared, and two other Simes plucked the hapless Gen from the saddle, one wrestling the stump of a gun from his hands and bending the barrel so it would never shoot again.

The Gen screamed in utter panic, and Rimon, only six days fresh from a perfect transfer, felt his need awaken. On the other side of him, at the same time, Sara was pulling her frozen victim from his horse and killing with a savage glee. Then, all around them, Gens were unhorsed and killed.

Panic spread quickly among the Gens as every Sime past turnover was driven to a berserk l.u.s.t for the kill. The Gen hors.e.m.e.n broke ranks. Then the Simes from town rode into the melee, laying about them with whips. Each Gen lashed by a Sime whip flared nagerically with a promise of exquisite delights.

Caught up against his will, Rimon helped to pull three Gens off their horses, only to have each s.n.a.t.c.hed from his grasp and taken, as some feeble corner of his being fought to keep him from killing one himself. Augmentation was eating selyn, though he struggled to keep it to minimum, and the urge to kill grew stronger and stronger. Ifs only intil! he told himself. Can't be need! But it felt like need.

Later, he was never certain if self-restraint kept him from a kill, or if it was simply that all the Gens were dead before he managed to get one. With the death of the last Gen fighter, the provocative nager cooled, pain and panic faded beyond the power to disturb him, and, without having killed, he found himself coming down from augmentation to a still-life scene of carnage.

Dead Gens were scattered across the wheat stubble like broken dolls, drained of life, nagerically nonexistent but visible to the eye. Satisfied Simes, glowing with post-kill repletion, stood languorously among the dead.

Off to one side, a girl, one of the older children who had been helping with the harvest, was kneeling beside the body of Herg Lol, sobbing. His daughter, Rimon realized. Abel Veritt went to her, putting his arms around her-himself still resonating with post-kill. He shared her tears, offering words of comfort.

Behind Rimon, there was a dull sobbing, edging into gasped words. "Oh, G.o.d. What have I done? What have I done..." It was Carlana Lodge. Del knelt beside her, saying, "Protected the lives of your friends and your children -that's what."

"But I killed," she sobbed. "I wasn't in need-and I killed-I killed a real person-and-and I enjoyed it!"

Abel Veritt signaled to his wife, who came to take the sobbing girl from his arms. Then he turned to the Simes around him, those from Fort Freedom all beginning to realize that they had violated their beliefs.

"Listen to me!" he said firmly. "No one here sinned today. We killed, yes-I killed with you, in defense of our community. Gather now and let us pray together that we will never yield to the temptation of the kill for its own sake. Let us thank G.o.d that we were warned in time to prevent even more senseless slaughter. Let us not forget the people from town who came to aid us."

The Simes from town had stayed apart during all this. Now one of the men said, roughness covering his embarra.s.sment, "We only come to get them Gens..."

"Whatever your motives," Veritt replied, "we're grateful for your help in our time of trouble. I see you've lost three of your number. We shall pray for their souls."

"Much good that'll do 'em!" said the woman from the store. Then, under the impact of Veritt's sincerity, she added, "I guess your prayin' for 'em can't hurt 'em none."

"Let us pray, then, for all the souls perished here today, and for our own." Rimon, feeling as out of place as the Simes from town, stood silently, as did Del. But he saw Carlana's anguish dissolve as she prayed. Whatever Veritt had, it was clearly good for the Simes who followed him. But Rimon wondered at the idea of the pleasure of the kill being the wrong rather than the kill itself. With Kadi, he had the pleasure-without the kill. Would Veritt consider that a sin?

After the prayer, as they began to clear away the bodies, Veritt came up to him. "I see that you have prayed with us, though you yourself resisted the temptation of a vain kill. Yes, I saw you twice surrender a Gen to one in true need. It is on the battlefield that one comes to know a man."

Rimon shook his head, restraining an impulse to gesture with a tentacle. "I can't take credit for..."

"And that, itself, is to your credit, young man."

Suddenly they heard a gasp. "Risko! He's still alive!"

The woman who ran the Pens in town was kneeling beside the still form of a Sime Rimon recalled seeing before -oh yes, one of the riders who had laughed at him for his choice of homestead. Well, they'd been right.

He went to the woman's side, and found that the man's body was not merely pluming off residual selyn as a dead body did, but pulsing slightly with escaping life. There was a gaping wound in his chest.

He must have taken a kill just before he was shot or he wouldn't have survived this long. Rimon zlinned him.

Abel Veritt said, "Can you help him, Mr. Farris?"

"I don't know." He'd helped Kadi, a Gen, overcome some aches and pains-but what did he know about healing a Sime of a mortal wound?

"If we can't stop the blood and selyn loss," said the woman, "he's a goner. I don't know no way to do that!"

"He's not in attrition yet," Rimon said, kneeling beside the man. "Let me try." But he had spoken on impulse. He had no idea how to go about it. He strove to make nageric contact with the Sime's wavering fields as he always had with Kadi. But she was Gen; she fitted neatly into his patterns. He fumbled and then-suddenly-he had it. Not stopping to wonder how he did it, Rimon found the man's weak but pulsating field with its gross anomaly at the point where cells were dying. But it felt as if the selyn were being drained out of him, drained and drained, and he was dying. He came up out of it fighting for breath, his nerves screaming attrition.

He was lying on his side, curled into a tight ball, shaking. Abel Veritt and the Sime woman from town sat him up, coaxed him back to life, watching him expectantly. Rimon felt closed in, claustrophobic-surrounded by Simes, the world empty of life. Simes replete from the kill but using selyn, consuming it irretrievably, draining away all the life in the world, with no way to replenish it...

"Kadi!" gasped Rimon, aching for her constantly rising field.

"Shall I send someone for your wife, Mr. Farris?" asked Veritt, deeply concerned.

"Yes!... No, wait..." Something-at the edge of consciousness... "She's here."

Rimon couldn't even wonder how she got there, couldn't question the miracle. "Help me, Kadi... this man... I'm trying to stop the selyn loss."

Coming to him, Kadi gasped as she saw Risko's wound. She put one hand on Rimon's shoulder as he knelt over the wounded man again, and her attention focused onto him. Calm again, he forgot himself and zlinned the dying man. The entire selyn field had darkened around the edges; all selyn was drawn to the dreadfully bright area of the wound.

In Kadi's Gen field, the anomalies were dark areas in which the cells did not produce a steady pulse of selyn, and he had eased her pain by inducing an increase to normal levels of production. In the Sime field before him, the cells about the wound were drawing too much selyn from Risko's body, both consuming and wasting it at an accelerated rate, death coming in a black wave from the farthest points of his body.

It didn't frighten him now, with Kadi's field enveloping him. But he had to stop that selyn loss. He lowered his hands into the plume, his laterals extending. He had that funny wobbly trembling in his chest that Del used to complain about, but then it stopped, leaving a strange, intense clarity that was painful deep in his chest. But Rimon ignored that, concentrating on the selyn plume, willing it to diminish.

And, gradually, it did. He could zlin the stillness about the wound now, the flesh cooling-the blood clotting.

At last the wound was closing. Every time Rimon's attention wavered, small rivulets of blood and selyn would break free again. He concentrated, holding and holding, waiting until the healing was strong enough to hold by itself.

At last he took his hands away, and the wound held. There were soft gasps in the pure silence around him. He leaned back against Kadi, breathing in long, panting gasps as if he'd been running a race. He was more tired than he'd been from the battle itself. The world began to wobble again, but he blinked it away, drawing strength from somewhere.

The Sime woman was staring at him in astonishment, Rimon smiled at her. "You can move him now, if you're careful. He's not unconscious, just asleep. But he's going to need a kill again tomorrow-maybe the next day. I think it might do him good if you brought his kill to him as soon as you can."

"I can supply him with the best," said the Pen woman. "I owe him my life more times than I can count. But-" She ran her hand, tentacles extended, over the wound. "How did you do it? He was dyin'!"

"A miracle," murmured Abel Veritt.

"No," said Rimon. "I don't think so. He's so low-field even the selyn plume was weak. All I did was block it with my field-a kind of nageric tourniquet."

"I seen a gypsy do that once," said the Sime woman. "Over to Ardo Pa.s.s-man got mauled by a mountain cat. No way to stop the bleedin'. This gypsy man done what you done-or something like it."

Veritt now looked at Rimon in infinite sadness. "Is that where you learned to heal? Is it a gypsy trick, sorcery?"

"No," said Rimon, "I figured it out-just now. I wasn't even sure it would work-but what did he have to lose?" Rimon's mind felt sluggish. He didn't want to argue, yet he knew it was important for Veritt to understand.

"Mr. Veritt," said Kadi, "why are you so afraid of the gypsies? They're just people who wander around, keeping to themselves. I've never known them to hurt anyone."

"I was taught as a child that the gypsies still practice the Ancient sorcery that destroyed the world."

"You were also taught as a child," she said boldly, "that Simes don't have souls."

Veritt stared at her in shock for a moment-and then his face crinkled into one of his rare, warm smiles. "Kadi may I call you Kadi?-I think you may have the power to convince Simes that down is up!' But you're right; we shouldn't condemn without knowledge."

The Sime woman spat. "A Gen philosophizin' and a Sime listenin' to 'er!"

"I couldn't have healed your friend without Kadi's help," Rimon said very quietly. "You saw what happened when I tried."

She paused, then said to Veritt, " 'S right! And that there gypsy feller, he had no Gen. What Rimon here did-must be different." She turned to Rimon. "Risko's one of my best men-been with me for years. I owe you for this."

Rimon began to protest, but she cut him off. "No, listen here. End of the month, you come by my place and pick out the best I got-not the free ones, the choice stock."

To her bewilderment, Rimon, Kadi, and Veritt all broke into laughter. Rimon finally caught his breath and said, "Thank you. I appreciate your offer, but-I don't kill."

"I know you won't kill that one-but n.o.body don't kill."

"Do you remember last spring, when you and Risko and some others laughed at Kadi and me for homesteading where we were? I didn't have anyone but Kadi with me then, and I haven't been to your Pens in all these months, have I? What did you think I was doing?"

"Never thought about it."

"Kadi supplies me with all the selyn I need. Every month."

The woman stared from Rimon to Kadi and back again. "Weir, I'll be shenned," she said. "That's why she ain't scared."

"Miss Slina," said Abel Veritt, "we should get Risko indoors where it's warm and dry so we can bandage that wound. Bring him to Fort Freedom for the night. You can take him back to town tomorrow."