by Jean Lorrah
And her father had lived while her mother had died when Kreg was three years old. Risa had been eight, and had not then understood the whispered words not meant for her ears: “miscarriage,” “selyn drain,” “hemorrhage,” “attrition.”
What Sergi had told her was fact: women died in childbearing. Not just her own mother. Three school friends had lost their mothers as they were growing up.
All the other factors—accident, disease, raids—caused equal numbers of men and women to die...but within a few years after changeover there was an imbalance in the sexes. Supply and demand; hence Verla.
* * * * * * *
WHEN THEY REACHED THE GATES OF CARRE, Sergi was waiting, and Risa’s morbid meditations ceased. Her Need receded to a distant echo. When he placed his giant hands around her waist, she let him lift her down from her horse without protest, although it was absurd for a Gen to help a Sime.
She became duoconscious without effort, her Sime senses and her other senses operating simultaneously. The urgency of her Need was distanced. She had no desire to attack Sergi on the spot, as she had half-feared she might, to her disgrace.
Someone lifted the Pen Gen down. It was a male, pale, expressionless as all such Gens were. The boy was as clean as Kreg had been able to scrub him, but there was a grayness of ground-in dirt on his hands, feet, knees, and elbows. His nose was running. Not an attractive specimen—but Risa had had to take what she was assigned.
The man who took charge of the Gen was Sime...and yet Risa had the disturbing sense that he zlinned like another Gen. She stared, lifting her hands toward him so her laterals could sense his field.
“This is Yorn, Sectuib in Carre,” said Sergi. “He is a channel, like you, Risa. You’ll learn to do what he’s doing.”
Yorn was projecting a pleasantly Genlike field that soothed without competing with Sergi’s. “I’m pleased to meet you, Risa,” he said, his smile extending to his nager. “And you, too, Kreg,” he said to the boy, who still sat on his horse. “Come in, both of you. I’ll get someone to take care of this boy.” He unfastened the collar from the Pen Gen’s neck, broke the tags off and pocketed them, and tossed collar and chain into a barrel near the wall.
“You’re throwing away good money,” Risa said automatically—and was immediately sorry. If the householders wanted to waste precious metal, that was their business.
Yorn laughed heartily. “Oh, you are a Tigue all right! Many’s the hard bargain your father has driven with me! Don’t worry—we recycle the metal.” He urged the Pen Gen along.
“Um...I didn’t know if I should bring the Gen here,” Risa said. “If you can’t use it—”
“You did the right thing,” Sergi quickly assured her. “He will be safe here. If nothing else, his selyn will give a Sime life every month—but chances are that he will become self-aware and useful both to Carre and to himself.”
Risa seemed to be enclosed in a nageric sphere beyond which nothing captured her attention. At one point she realized that they had left the horses behind, but she didn’t care. Then they were in a building. The Pen Gen was gone. Kreg took Guest from Risa’s arms. Yorn turned to her, saying, “I think you and Sergi had better—” He broke off as he zlinned her deeply. “You rode across town in this condition? And didn’t attack that Gen? Sergi, she is in hard Need.”
“I know. I have it under control.”
“But she’s junct,” said Yorn. “She should have had transfer hours ago. You’re treating her like a working channel. Take her off and give her transfer—immediately!”
Although she felt none of the urgency Yorn seemed to expect, Risa followed Sergi without protest. Soon they were alone in a small room, walls and windows draped with heavy fabric. He had her lie down on a couch, and sat facing her, sliding his hands under her forearms, his field beckoning—
There was no violence this time. When his lips met hers, selyn flowed as fast as she could take it, warming her, filling her emptiness, casting out the fear of death. It was breathtakingly beautiful, singing-sweet...and when she sought some sharper satisfaction, she was rewarded not with killbliss but with his peaking pleasure through depths no one else reached—the wrung-out bliss of Gen satisfaction. It was not what she had reached for, but it fulfilled her Need.
As her body adjusted to life renewed, Risa’s other senses returned, intensified. The couch she lay on was covered in soft pile fabric, and contoured to support her comfortably. She could smell Sergi—soap, a medicinal tang in his clothing, and his own individual scent beneath, tingling along her memory from a month ago.
She dismantled her grip on his arms, and Sergi sat back. A part of the couch moved with him—it was designed to support the person giving transfer so his muscles would not cramp. Now he smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“...what?”
“No one else satisfies me the way you do,” he explained. “You waited the full twenty-eight days. I’ve been expecting you for the past week.”
“How did you know I’d come?”
“You’re too intelligent not to.”
“And you are too smart for a Gen!” she replied. “Yes, I see that it makes sense not to kill Gens, to let them produce more selyn every month. There’d have been no panic in Norlea if everybody had his own tame Gen.”
Sergi laughed, deep masculine laughter. “I’ll teach you about tame Gens, little channel! Now stay put while I make us some tea. It’s right here—I’m not leaving you—”
Risa sat up. “Why are you hovering over me? I’ve got your selyn now. I don’t Need you again for four weeks.”
He frowned, then resumed a bland expression. “I forget that you’re used to having nothing but a corpse to dispose of at this point. That’s another reason juncts are unhealthy. The Kill is a shock to the nervous system, and afterward there is no Gen or channel to aid in recovery.”
“You don’t have to lecture me about my health. I’ve already made up my mind to disjunct.”
“That is the first step,” he replied. “The hard part is making up your heart.”
* * * * * * *
SERGI FELT SO GOOD AFTER HIS TRANSFER WITH RISA that it was easy to forget the difficulties ahead. As they rode northward, he controlled his urge to tell Risa everything at once, to paint a glowing picture of his home in the rugged foothills of the Misty Mountains.
Instead he tried to draw Kreg out, sensing that the boy was uneasy about his sister’s decision. Once out of the swampy lowlands, the eyeway stretched broad and straight. “Do you know why it’s called an eyeway, Kreg?”
“Sure. Everybody knows that. The Ancients laid out their roads straight ahead, as far as the eye could see—put them straight through mountains.”
“Not quite,” said Sergi. “We’ll go over a mountain where the road curves quite a lot. But you will see places where the Ancients cut the road through solid rock.”
“I know. I’ve been this way before.” Then she challenged, “I suppose you think the Ancients were Gens?”
“No, indeed,” Sergi responded positively.
“Why not?” Kreg asked. “All their pictures and statues look like Gens.”
“The Ancients were neither Sime nor Gen,” said Sergi. “Nature doesn’t make mistakes like that—only people do.”
Risa joined in the conversation. “If you’re right that Simes could kill off all the Gens and die of attrition, then the division into Sime and Gen was a mistake of nature.”
“No, Risa—fear was the mistake, not the Sime/Gen mutation. We are supposed to be a symbiosis, not a threat to one another. Any Gen without fear is safe among Simes.”
“Maybe you’re a new mutation,” Risa suggested.
Sergi laughed. “You seem to think I’m unique. I should have introduced you to some of the Companions in Carre—but my Sectuib wanted me to come home at once.” He didn’t add that the message had arrived over a week ago.
“You haven’t said why you think the Ancients weren’t Gens,” Kreg persisted.
�
�What would they have done with their selyn?” he replied.
“Build eyeways?” Risa suggested.
“No—they used machinery for heavy work. If they produced selyn, they couldn’t utilize it as a Sime does.”
“That doesn’t prove they weren’t Gens,” Kreg said.
“Kreg, if you turn out to be Gen, and you ever once give transfer, you will know why Gens Need—yes, Need—Simes. The Ancients could not have been Gens. There would have been no way for them to complete their existence without Simes.”
“But out-Territory Gens live without Simes,” Kreg protested.
“And they’re not much healthier than junct Simes. They live in terror of each other—of their own children. Juncts live in terror of Need—of themselves. Separately, what have we achieved? Where are either Simes or Gens building eyeways today? Where are wagons that run without horses? Where are the flying machines?”
“Flying machines?” Kreg asked, wide-eyed.
“Sergi, don’t confuse Kreg with fairy tales,” said Risa.
“They’re not fairy tales. This is history, Risa.” He told them of the models he had built as a boy, from diagrams in Ancient books.
“If the Ancients invented such things,” asked Risa, “why can’t we?”
“We can. It’s happening in the householdings. Have you seen pictures in Ancient books—pictures so real that no one could possibly draw or paint them?”
“Yes,” both Risa and Kreg responded.
“They weren’t drawn or painted,” Sergi explained. “They’re called photographs—writing with light. Householding Zeor has revived the process—I’ve seen some of the pictures.
“Such things are happening in the householdings because there people are not constantly occupied with fear or Need. And we are together, Sime and Gen, two halves of one whole.”
* * * * * * *
MAYBE SIMES AND GENS WERE MEANT TO LIVE TOGETHER, but not this close together, Risa thought as she surveyed the room they were assigned at Prather Heydon’s inn. There was one double bed, and a short, narrow bed by the window.
“No, this won’t do.” she told the Sime who showed them upstairs. “If the Gen cannot have a separate room, then at least—”
Sergi stepped between her and the Sime’s shocked surprise. “This will be just fine.” He dropped a coin into the outstretched palm, and the man hurried out.
“Sergi, I was thinking of you!” Risa said. “You can’t sleep on that thing!” She gestured toward the narrow bed.
“I,” he said, tossing saddlebags on a chair and sitting down on the double bed, “intend to sleep here. You two can argue over the rest of the accommodations.”
“Why you arrogant—!”
“We are traveling as channel and Companion. We are expected to share a bed.”
“How dare you!” she flared.
He grinned, putting his feet up and leaning back against the pillows with his hands behind his head. “What are you afraid of? Kreg is here to chaperone.”
“Well, then, Kreg can sleep with you! The other bed is plenty big enough for me.”
“I will, Sis,” said Kreg, very much her protector.
At the boy’s tone, Sergi stopped laughing. “Risa, you will have to get used to it. When householders travel, they stick together, Sime and Gen—a public declaration of unity. Prather gave us a room with an extra bed for Kreg, not you.”
“Who is this Prather Heydon, that he can decide our sleeping arrangements?”
“Prather ambrov Carre. He’s nonjunct—has never killed. He grew up in Carre, changed over there...but as a renSime he didn’t have a channel’s duties, or a Companion’s. He likes taking care of people. You may have noticed.”
“Does Carre own this inn?”
“No—Prather does. It’s a kind of experiment, nonjuncts living outside a householding.”
“More than one?” Risa asked.
“Prather’s wife and son. Their daughter established and has to live at Carre because of the law that they can’t keep their own Gen child—but they see her each month when they go to Carre for transfer.”
“Now this is interesting,” Risa told him. “The experiment is obviously working. The place seems prosperous. Dad would never stop here because it caters to...householders. I wonder if he knew the whole story?”
“I doubt it. There have been enough incidents without that—in fact, vandals burnt the whole place down five or six years ago, when there was a Gen shortage. But Prather insisted on rebuilding, and he seems to be doing fine.”
“Fine indeed,” said Risa. “An inspiration.”
* * * * * * *
DESPITE SERGI’S PROTESTS, RISA SLEPT ON THE SINGLE BED. The next morning they started out at dawn, and camped that night in the rolling hills west of Lanta.
By the fourth day on the road they were wending their way up Eagle Mountain, where they came upon a caravan of Gendealers urging their teams of horses up the steady incline.
The wagons were laden with Pen Gens, sitting in their usual stupor, staring blankly at the passing scene. Standing out from the dull fields of the Pen Gens, though, was a vibrant nager, alive and growing.
In the last wagon, a young girl sat pressed against the bars, her legs dangling out the back. The Pen Gens all wore gray knee-length smocks; this girl wore denim trousers and sturdy boots, a faded checked shirt, and a heavy wool sweater draped loosely over her shoulders in the day’s warmth.
As they came closer, Risa felt a shock from Sergi. Did he know the girl? Then she realized what had caught his attention: on the girl’s chest dangled the starred-cross he had carved and left in the shrine. She had faith in it, thought Risa, and look where it got her!
Nonetheless, Risa’s hand went to the starred-cross Sergi had given her, lying warm against her skin beneath her shirt.
I should have given it to Alis, she thought for the thousandth time. But it had never crossed her mind in those panicked moments of trying to help the girl escape—and truly, would it have protected against Brovan’s ravenous Need?
She had reasoned that it would not—but nevertheless her Need nightmares had taken the form of Alis, accusing her, “You wanted the starred-cross for Kreg, and you don’t even know he’ll be Gen!” The dream continued with Risa helplessly attacking Alis—killing—but the corpse that fell afterward would be Kreg. And once, the last time she allowed herself to sleep before going to Carre...it had been Sergi.
Now, still a week or more from turnover, the dreams were distant echoes, ludicrous. But when Need ruled a Sime’s existence such nightmares were horrifyingly real.
The girl in the wagon was blond, like Alis, but paler. Her hair was almost white, her eyes so pale a blue that they seemed unnatural, as did her nager.
For she did not fear. She was angry. She was frustrated. She was stiff and sore from the Gendealer’s treatment—but her field rang with defiance.
As Risa, Sergi, and Kreg approached, the girl looked them over—and hope soared through her field.
“Householders! Hey—come over here!” she called.
Risa felt pain flare in Sergi’s nager as he rode close to the wagon. What was the matter with him? Here was a chance to rescue a self-aware Gen from the Kill.
“Yes, we are householders,” Sergi told the girl.
Before he could continue, she interrupted, “Buy me! I was running to Carre when they caught me. Honest!”
“She’s telling the truth,” Risa assured Sergi. “Of course we’ll—”
“We can’t,” Sergi interrupted. “Risa, it’s not allowed.”
“Not allowed? Not allowed?! What kind of lorshes are you? You think I’m junct? What are you?”
“Frustrated. The law prevents the householdings from taking all the Choice Kills—as if we could afford it. Go ahead. Try to buy this girl and see what happens.”
Risa rode to the front of the wagon. “You the dealer?” she asked the driver.
“Yup. And the Choice Kill ain’t for sale,” the woman
replied. “You perverts want her, you git over to the Nashul Choice Auction an’ bid like everybody else.”
“I’m not a householder,” said Risa.
The woman laughed. “I suppose that fancy Gen just got neglected for years, while he got that big? You freaks make me laugh—too good t’kill like the rest of us, treatin’ Gens like people, usin’ Simes t’—” She shuddered, unable even to speak of...Risa found her own mind rejecting the idea. A Sime giving selyn to another Sime? It was perverted!
Risa forced the thought away, as the Gendealer zlinned her curiously. She wanted to say she wasn’t with Sergi, but then they could confiscate him as an unescorted Gen.
Defeated and upset, she rejoined Sergi and Kreg, who had ridden forward to where the girl they were discussing couldn’t hear. “Can we buy her at the auction?” she asked.
“I’ll ask Nedd—but it’s seldom we can afford the price of the kind of Gen who would make a great Companion.”
Zlinning the girl, then Sergi, Risa observed, “You’re not unique, are you?”
“No. I told you, any Gen who doesn’t fear—”
“Then why channels? Why not a Gen for every Sime in the householding?”
As they picked their way around the heavily loaded wagons, Sergi explained, “Not all Gens can learn not to fear—and most require time after establishment to learn to behave safely around Simes. Otherwise a Gen might provoke a Sime he’s not equal to, and be stripped even if he doesn’t fear.”
“Stripped?”
“Gens do require small amounts of selyn to live. It is possible to kill a Gen not by burning out his system, as in the junct Kill, but by taking every bit of his selyn. Unlikely, as the Gen will resist and be burned, but theoretically possible. I believe there is a documented case among the Farrises. There’s a documented case of almost any hypothetical situation you care to name among the Farrises.”
“I’ve never heard of them,” said Risa.
“You will,” Sergi promised, then returned to his explanation. “In such a situation, one or both parties will be badly hurt—the Gen burned, the Sime shenned—if they can be stopped in time. If it goes to termination, the Gen dies—and chances are the Sime is still shenned at the Gen’s death because there wasn’t enough selyn for him. And while any Gen has the potential for selyn development to handle any renSime, not every Gen is able to realize that potential. You get the standard cycle: a startling situation, a provoked Sime, a frightened Gen, an attack...a dead Gen and a junct Sime.”