To Kiss or To Kill

by Jean Lorrah

  A gasp went up from the crowd. This could not be real! Wild Gens agreeing to give their selyn to Simes? In return for what? Sime Territories didn’t grow enough food to support the huge population of Gens—the Gen population had to outnumber the Sime population many times over, or else—

  —or else the Simes would kill all the Gens, and die in the agony of attrition. Those Freeband Raiders who had caused such havoc were the result of NorWest Sime Territory running out of Gens, and desperate Simes banding together to raid across neighboring territories. The largest band of Raiders ever known had caused the war that had taken Elendra’s life.

  Baird looked around. Did anyone else in this crowd understand that? Had anyone else’s brother or sister, son or daughter, written home about their experiences?

  Again the crowd fell expectantly silent. The crier proceeded to the next section of the proclamation.

  “In return, the governments of the Sime Territories known as Gulf, Lakeland, East Nivet, West Nivet—” again a long list as the crowd waited impatiently to hear what new taxes they would have to pay for peace with their Gen neighbors—and for the reassurance that Gulf Territory would never experience a selyn shortfall such as had destroyed NorWest. Even someone as set in his ways as Treavor Axton, Baird was sure, would accept occasional transfer of selyn from a channel if that were the only way to live for another month.

  And then came the unbelievable words that would become the most famous in the proclamation: “these Sime Territories, joining as one entity under Tecton law, agree to disjunct all Simes and put an end to the Kill.”

  Even Baird, who had wanted so desperately to end the Kill in his own life, could not believe what the crier read. Put an end to the Kill? For all Simes? It wasn’t possible!

  There was stunned silence. Then a woman said, “You mean when my son changes over, I have to take him to the perverts? That he won’t be allowed to kill, like a normal Sime?”

  Of course, Baird realized. That had to be it: all new Simes would be given First Transfer, as he had wanted, not a First Kill. In one generation, there would be no more killing.

  The crier, though, cringed as he looked down at the document he held, the whole top section now rolled up, already read—only one brief section to go. Baird could zlin his fear as he looked around, sweating in the heat and humidity.

  Only then did Baird notice the platoon of Home Guard soldiers that had quietly drawn up around the crowd while they listened to the proclamation. They think there’s going to be a riot! he realized. What could the proclamation say? It couldn’t possibly—

  The crier swallowed hard, and plowed into the final sentences of the proclamation. “In compliance with the terms of the Unity Treaty, the Legislature of Gulf Sime Territory hereby declares that twenty-eight days from today shall be the day of the Last Kill. During this month’s transition period the Pen system shall be replaced by a new selyn distribution system whereby every adult Sime shall receive a month’s selyn ration from a channel, the distribution of selyn being managed under the supervision of the Tecton. In order to achieve a smooth transition and maintain distribution of selyn in a safe and timely manner, the Tecton is now a branch of the Gulf Territory government, under the supervision and protection of the Office of Selyn Management.”

  There were a few more sentences of legal complications, but no one was paying attention. The blow had fallen: the entire population of Gulf Territory were, by government decree, to be turned into what almost every Sime in the territory considered the worst of perverts!

  * * * *

  JONMAIR NOTICED A BUSTLE IN THE PENS, but could not find out the cause. She and the other Choice Kills were brought out more often, and the Simes who looked them over had a nervy anxiety that could not be accounted for by mere Need. In fact, many of them were not in Need at all, purchasing early for future use. Not wanting to be used sexually, or possibly tortured before she was killed, Jonmair only allowed her field to show when the customer was in hard Need. Then she knew she would get a quick and clean death. Otherwise she drew her imaginary curtain of privacy, and was ignored.

  Finally, Chance told her, “All right, Gen—you want to be saved for the Final Auction? You got it. But if I have to beat you to heighten your field and bring the price I need, I ain’t gonna hesitate that day!” And he locked her back in her cell to ponder his words.

  Final Auction? She had never heard of a Choice Auction called the Final Auction. And Chance had used the term “Need” for money instead of selyn. Using the term associated with the very biologic energy of life in some other context indicated utter desperation. Why would Old Chance be desperate for money? Everybody thought he had tons of it, considering all the bribes he had taken over the years. But then, who knew how many bribes he had had to pay?

  Each day as usual Jonmair was taken into the exercise yard with the other Choice Kills—and as the days passed, their numbers dwindled. Almost no new Gens replaced those sold. How could fewer children in Norlea suddenly be establishing as Gens? Where were the new Choice Kills going?

  The Pen smelled of newly sawn wood, fresh paint, and antiseptic. Sometimes Jonmair heard hammering. Repairs and remodeling—but Chance was not supervising. He avoided the areas where the work was taking place. Had he sold the Pen? That must be it. Old Chance must be retiring—that was why he wanted to make every bit of money out of his final sales.

  Then one morning at exercise time, Jonmair was led past open doors of what had been other holding cells. The area had been remodeled into rooms each the size of two cells, lined with new cabinets. In one of the rooms two women were putting vials and bottles in the cabinets, laughing and talking as they worked. But—one of the women was Sime and one was Gen!

  Ignoring the Sime holding her chain, Jonmair stopped in her tracks and gawked. “You’re Householders!” she exclaimed.

  The two women turned, and their bright mood fell away, replaced by looks of pity. “What are you doing here?” Jonmair demanded, setting her feet as the young Sime leading her tried to drag her toward the exercise yard. “Has Old Chance sold the Pen to Carre?”

  The Gen woman put an arm protectively around the Sime woman’s shoulders, saying in a choked voice, “It’s not fair—but what can we do?”

  “Nothing,” the Sime woman said grimly. “Nothing but wait. Just another week, Janine, and it will be over.”

  “What will be over?” Jonmair tried to ask, but the Sime leading her set his own feet and yanked. The collar cut into her neck, and she had to follow him out into the hot sun.

  The exercise area was surrounded by Pen buildings so that Simes on the surrounding streets would not be irritated or tempted by Gen nager. Jonmair could not see or hear what was going on in Norlea outside the Pen...yet she had a feeling, somehow, of a pall over the city, a desperation she could sense, although she could not explain how.

  There were four other Gens in the exercise area. They were forbidden to talk to one another, but today Jonmair didn’t care if she was beaten, or if she was locked in her cell or even drugged—she had to find out what they knew.

  As soon as the chain was unclipped from her collar, she ran to the two men and two women, exclaiming, “What have you heard? What’s happening? Why are there Householders here, remodeling the Pens?”

  “Hey—you—shut up!” demanded the young Sime guarding them. He put a threatening hand on his whip, but the five Gens ignored him.

  “I don’t know,” said one of the males. He was already taller than most Simes, broad of shoulder, with powerful thighs. “I was moved out of my area into another.”

  “Me, too,” said the other male. “They tore down that whole row of cells. They’re turning the Pen into something else.”

  “But where will the Pen be?” asked a short female with curly black hair. “There has to be one near the center of town, and Norlea’s all built up.”

  Suddenly the other female, a pale girl with pimply skin, spoke angrily. “Won’t be no more Pens!”

  “
Shut up you!” their guard yelled, but it was too late. None of them would obey after what the girl had said. She was the newest addition to the Choice Kills.

  As the other four Gens urged her to tell what she knew, their guard ran off to get help.

  “We’re the Last Kills,” the girl said. “I dint hafta be kilt—my ma an’ pa coulda give me to the Householders, all legal—but they wanted the money for their own Last Kills!”

  “What are you talking about?” asked the shorter male.

  “The war!” the girl told them. “We won—but only because the Sime and Gen armies joined together against the Freebanders. The Gens traded selyn for the Simes’ food, so they could all keep fighting. And afterward they made a treaty to keep the peace. Out-Territory Gens—they agreed to keep giving us their selyn!”

  “What?” asked the other woman. “I don’t believe it! Let themselves be killed?”

  “No,” the girl replied. “Like the Householders. The channels will take selyn from the Gens, and give it to Simes. No Kills. No more Kills after the end of this month.”

  “That’s not possible,” Jonmair whispered, although the hope vying with fear in her heart almost overwhelmed her.

  “Don’t make no difference to us,” the girl said. “We’ll be sold at the Final Auction, and die in the Last Kill.”

  That was all Jonmair could find out, because the penkeepers arrived to herd the Gens back to their cells. They were not allowed out again, nor were they fed anything but gruel that day—but Old Chance dared not weaken them too much: the Final Auction was approaching, and he had to keep his stock in top condition.

  The news was simply too much to grasp. Simes and Gens were going to live together without killing. How could it be? Everyone hated the perverted Householders! How could people bring themselves to rely on the detested channels for life itself?

  Now she understood the two Householder women she had seen—the Sime must be one of those channels, the Gen a wer-Gen Companion. They had looked healthy, and were obviously friends.

  Was it possible? Could Simes and Gens really live together the way the Householders claimed to do?

  All her life, Jonmair had been taught that the only way for Simes to be healthy was to kill, that the Householders were sick and perverted.

  And yet...people went to the Householders for healing. How could they heal other people if they were sick themselves?

  The glimpse of those two healthy women, obviously friends, yet Sime and Gen, played over and over in her mind. Then, when she was so exhausted that she slept despite her excitement, other images took its place.

  Instead of the two Householder women in that cabinet-lined room, another Sime/Gen pair worked together side by side: Jonmair and Baird Axton. In the way of dreams, she could not tell exactly what they were doing, but it was together. Their hands touched. Their bodies touched. They looked into each other’s eyes.

  Then they were in the Post-Kill Suite again, and Baird laid Jonmair down on the soft, clean bed. He held her close, and she snuggled against his warm strength, knowing that now they would never have to part. The world had changed, and they could be together.

  The dream shifted again. Baird and Jonmair walked together down the corridor in the Pen, past the open doors of cells remodeled into rooms where lives would be saved instead of taken. She saw the two Householder women again, laughing as they worked until they turned and looked at her—a look of pity.

  Why pity? She was all right. The world was all right. The Kill was over! She and Baird could be together now, Sime and Gen—

  She looked to Baird, and it wasn’t Baird. Old Chance held the white-painted chain attached to the collar around Jonmair’s neck. She was being taken to auction, to the Final Auction!

  She woke with a start, tears streaming down her face. The barren holding cell was her reality. There would be no Unity for her, nor for any Choice Kill in Old Chance’s Pen.

  That brave new world would begin just one day after Jonmair’s death.

  * * * *

  AS THE DAY OF THE LAST KILL APPROACHED, Baird Axton tried to decide what to do. After the reading of the proclamation last month, he had allowed his father to take him to the Pen, where, his Need exacerbated by the threat of attrition—for that was how Simes felt what their government had done to them—he still refused to allow his father to buy him a Choice Kill, and instead took one of the mindless Pen Gens.

  It had not gone well. He had had to go nearly into attrition—physical, not merely emotional—before his body’s survival reflexes had kicked in and he had killed it. He had emerged, not post, but in a state of such guilt and anxiety that he wanted more than anything to get out of his own skin!

  Sime emotions other than fear of dying were suppressed in hard Need, so Baird had felt only that fear while first trying to absorb what the government in Lanta had done to Gulf Territory. After his system received enough selyn to live for another month—even without true satisfaction—he began to feel hope. Now I have to disjunct. There won’t be any chance to Genjack someone’s Kill, because there will be no more Kills, no more Pen Gens led through the streets.

  It was terrifying, but it was what he had wanted ever since he had spent that week of his childhood inside Householding Carre, cared for by the Simes and Gens who had saved his life. Gens who were people. Gens like that female—woman—who had finally awakened his sexual desire. Was she still alive, or had she long since been sold as a Choice Kill?

  He watched the Householders try to prove that transfer could be as satisfactory as the Kill, holding open demonstrations to which no one came until they offered tax rebates. Then many people were ready to try the channels, planning to use the extra money to buy a final Choice Kill.

  Many Simes were surprised to find channel’s transfer as satisfying as the Kill, and ended up indisputably post. The information passed in whispers, and over the first two weeks of the month—while there was plenty of time to augment into Need again for the Last Kill—increasing numbers of Simes availed themselves of free selyn.

  Baird recalled his own First Transfer. Yes, it had been good—as satisfying as his First Kill, and his post reaction unsullied by the guilt he had felt after his changeover Kill. But he had been only one month old as a Sime then, too young to have a sexual reaction or notice the lack. And each succeeding transfer had been less satisfying until his third transfer, which should have brought about the normal sexual awakening of Fourth Kill, failed to do so.

  So when Baird heard people talking more and more openly about their transfers, saying it wouldn’t be so bad to do that every month, he had to hold his tongue and remember that if the vast majority of Simes were not convinced it was the best way, if they broke the Treaty and returned to the Kill, then in a very few years first Nivet and then Gulf would face the same devastation that had destroyed NorWest Territory.

  The Numbers of Zelerod were discussed everywhere now. Newspapers carried a full explanation, and for those who could not read there were free lectures with the inexorable truth spelled out in the simplest of terms: if the current generation of Simes continued to kill twelve or thirteen Gens each year, their children would change over into a world of war and deprivation…and their children’s children would not survive to change over at all.

  So Baird suppressed his personal knowledge of how hard it was to disjunct, and just how sick these Simes currently enjoying transfer were going to get. Even if they successfully disjuncted, as Baird’s friend Zhag claimed he had, many would be as weak as the shiltpron player for the rest of their short lives.

  Unless they were supported by a Gen presence.

  Baird was determined to rescue the lovely Gen woman who had given him a single night of normalcy. Something told him that with her by his side he could survive enforced disjunction and come out healthy.

  Deliberately, Baird put on an uncaring air before his father. He waited a full two weeks, to be sure that Treavor Axton was no longer watching him like a hawk, before he went to the Pen and
asked after the girl. She was still alive, he learned, and tagged to be sold at the Final Auction. No, Chance would not sell her to Baird early—he was running out of Choice Kills since it had become legal for families to turn their newly established children over to the Householders instead of selling them into the Pens. For this one month it was still possible to do either one, but after the Last Kill it would no longer be legal to sell Gens, period.

  Or to kill them.

  Chance was predicting disaster, the collapse of the government in a revolution that would re-establish the old system—but in the meantime he was being put out of business, and was not about to go without making enough money to last the rest of his life. “The Final Auction should be quite an event,” he predicted. “Definitely not enough Choice Kills to go around, so be sure to bring plenty of money!”

  Baird had little cash of his own—he would inherit The Post one day, but that was far from a liquid asset. He never even considered asking his father, for he knew what the response would be: Treavor Axton would gladly buy his son a Choice Kill, but the one he would never buy him was the only one Baird wanted.

  And not to kill.

  Unfortunately, Baird’s father knew his son could not kill a Gen he had even talked with, let alone touched intimately.