by Jean Lorrah
“Risa, I’ve hardly seen you,” Kreg accused. “You don’t look so good.” Then he turned to Sergi. “You’re supposed to take better care of my sister.”
“She is approaching disjunction, Kreg. As soon as she passes the crisis, she’ll be healthier than ever.”
But as the days passed, Risa’s health deteriorated.
Not that she complained. She took the donations Nedd assigned her, practiced diligently at channel’s functions—and on her turnover day, at the very moment her system had used up half its selyn and started the downward plunge toward Need, she fainted dead away.
Released from work for the day, Risa and Sergi and Kreg had bundled up in heavy sweaters and gone up to the high hill overlooking the household complex to fly airship models. All about them, the hills burned with autumn coloring. Sergi’s dogs ran about, as red-gold as the maple leaves.
“It’s so beautiful here!” Risa exclaimed. “We never had anything like this down south.”
Kreg laughed as the brisk wind carried the models to the treetops before dropping them down the hill. Feathers ran after them, barking madly, while Leader chased Kreg. Sergi remembered being that age, feeling the same delight—
Then an updraft caught one of the models, and Kreg began chasing it, shouting, “Look! It’s flying away! Maybe all the way to town!”
The boy was looking up at the airship as he ran. Risa cried, “Look out!” as he neared the edge of an outcropping—too late. Kreg tumbled over—Risa gasped with the boy’s pain.
Before she could get away from Sergi, Kreg reappeared, only his dignity hurt. Leader ran to sniff at him, but he laughed and called, “I’m all right,” pushing the dog away—and that was when Risa collapsed.
Sergi barely caught her, but lowered her to the ground without injury. Kreg came running. “What happened? Risa!”
“She fainted,” said Sergi, feeling the cause in his increased response to her. “Turnover. I’ll carry her, Kreg. You run ahead and get a channel.”
Risa was already coming to. “What happened?”
“You fainted.”
“I’ve never fainted in my life,” she insisted, shaking her head and immediately wincing. “Let me up!”
“No, I’m going to carry you down the hill—and no arguments. Kreg’s gone for a channel.”
“Don’t be such a—Companion! It’s nothing but turnover.”
“And after turnover, you must defer to your Companion, remember?”
Loid met them at the bottom of the hill, a very anxious Kreg hovering as he examined Risa. “I don’t zlin anything seriously wrong,” the channel reported. “Rest this afternoon, Risa. Nedd will check in on you later.”
But despite Risa’s insistence that she was perfectly all right, she grew steadily worse. From that day, she could not keep food down, although she dutifully swallowed the soup Sergi brought. Finally he and Nedd decided that what little nourishment she might get from it was wasted in vomiting it up, and they stopped giving her anything but tea and fosebine.
She was too jittery to rest, too weak to walk far, and totally miserable. The weather didn’t help; brisk winds brought freezing rain. The leaves fell, turning to a slippery mess underfoot. Sleet turned back to cold, dismal rain.
Verla came daily, and Risa would insist Sergi take a break, not knowing that every moment he was not with her was spent in fear of some crisis that only he could handle.
And in the midst of it all, Kreg established as a Gen.
The boy was ambivalent at first, then angry when he was kept from Risa’s side. “You wouldn’t keep me away from her if I’d turned Sime.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” Nedd explained, “because if you were Sime you would not have the power to hurt her. Sergi, this boy feels as you did when you first established. You’re going to have a rival.”
“Then teach me how to handle Risa!” Kreg insisted. “Please, Nedd, Sergi—let me help her!”
“You can’t learn it that quickly,” Sergi explained. “No—don’t let the Simes give you any nonsense about Gens not having First Year learning powers. A Companion can get all his training in a few months, just as a channel can. But a few months, Kreg, not a few days.”
“I want to see her. Let me donate—then I won’t be able to hurt her.”
“If your field is anything like mine,” Sergi replied, “you are a walking menace to Simes until you learn to control it. Even low-field, Kreg. Nedd can tell you how I went around disrupting the ambient when I established—”
“Yes,” Nedd agreed. “I was ready to carry him to the border myself, and pitch him over.”
“Why?” Kreg asked. “Didn’t you want to be a Companion?”
“No,” Sergi replied, “I wanted to be a channel.”
“You?” Kreg’s adolescent voice squeaked in amazement.
“Oh, I was a skinny little kid when I established—I did all my growing afterward. Kreg, my whole family were channels. Both my parents, my brother—and my sister would have been, but she died in changeover. I expected to be a channel, too.
“Then my brother went to Householding Imil, over in Nivet Territory. I see him at the Arensti. My parents—” he swallowed hard, forced himself to go on, “were coming back from trading with Carre, about eleven years ago. They were ambushed by Freeband Raiders where the eyeway winds around Eagle Mountain. Everybody in the party was murdered.”
“Well, I’ve got nobody but Risa,” Kreg said defensively. “My mom and dad are dead, too.”
“That isn’t the point,” Sergi told him. “Keon lost my parents and another channel. From having had so many channels the year before that we could trade Georg to Imil, we suddenly had too few—and that situation has obtained ever since.
“I was old enough to change over at the time of the ambush. I thought I was supposed to take my parents’ place as a channel...and then I established.”
Kreg said, “I know how you felt. Like you were...rejected. The way I can’t help Risa—not even talk to her.”
“Yes,” Sergi agreed. “When Nedd told me I’d established—I ran. You know that cave up on the hillside? I hid there for two days, until I realized that no one had come after me because everyone—all the Simes, anyway—knew where I was. They let me come back of my own accord. After a while, in an adolescent boy, hunger wins out.”
“Yeah,” said Kreg, sharing the faint humiliation of Sime taunts about hungry Gens. “But you became a Companion.”
“If I hadn’t been able to serve a channel’s Need—I don’t know what I’d have done. But Nedd is not always subtle.”
The channel grinned. “Neither were you, with that field. And you had to find out what you could do.” He sobered. “It was a decision made in Need, and to my advantage.”
“But you were right,” said Sergi, locking eyes with his mentor in a moment of shared memory.
“What happened?” Kreg asked.
“Nedd ignored me, and everyone else acted as if I’d never been away. The tragedy of my life—and no one cared!”
Kreg nodded in sympathy. “I know.”
“Come on, Kreg—I was wallowing in self-pity. I realized that Nedd was going to make me ask for Companion’s training—at least that’s what I thought. But when I went to his office— Have you felt it yet, Kreg? The Need that wakens all your hope, your desire, your pride that you can serve—?”
“No,” the boy replied.
“You will. And the moment you do, you will stop feeling sorry to be Gen. When I went to Nedd’s office that day, he was alone...and in Need.”
“It didn’t frighten you?” Kreg asked, eyes wide.
“All I wanted was to ease his Need. The fact that I could was the greatest joy I had ever known. Nedd just said, ‘Don’t you think it’s time we qualified you?’ And he did.”
“And you think I can—?” Kreg looked from Sergi to Nedd.
“I know you can,” the channel replied. “Let me watch you, and choose the right time. I must ask for your trust.”
>
Kreg nodded. “You have it. But if I give transfer then can I see Risa?”
“Although the answer is yes, you cannot give transfer for that reason.” Sergi knew Nedd was deeply worried about Risa—yet after he had sent Kreg off in Gevron’s care to move his things into the Gen dormitory, he began to talk as if Risa’s disjunction were assured.
“Once she is past crisis, she’ll recover in a day or two. She’s tough and smart, Sergi; all she’ll really have to do is hone her skills, learn some subtlety.” He rubbed his hands over his eyes, handling tentacles through the hair at the sides of his head. “I’m tired, and so are Rikki and Loid. Another channel—especially one of Risa’s capacity—will mean a more normal life for all of us. But the responsibility rests with you. None of Keon’s channels can handle an uncooperative Risa.”
“I will disjunct her,” Sergi replied.
Nedd dropped his hands abruptly. “I didn’t expect a Gen reaction at this late date. She has to disjunct herself, Sergi. You cannot do it to her.”
“I meant that I can serve her Need, even at disjunction crisis.”
“That I know. What concerns me is how to force a choice on her. There is no reason for her to choose anyone but you.”
* * * * * * *
RISA WAS IN HER OWN ROOM, having refused to go to the infirmary. Triffin and Dreela sat on either side of the bed where Risa lay listlessly, Guest curled up at her side.
The Companions moved carefully, allowing no abrupt shifts in the ambient. Triffin, who had insisted on helping as best she could, lost control as soon as Sergi was between her and Risa. Dreela put an arm around her to lead her out.
Controlling his own feelings, Sergi sat down next to Risa, between her and the wall her room shared with Kreg’s. She tried to smile, her eyes huge in her drawn face.
“Think you can drink a little tea?” Sergi asked.
“Yes,” Risa whispered obediently. Dehydration was complicating her condition. She managed only a couple of swallows, though, before pushing Sergi’s hand away.
Guest awoke and stretched, then put his paws up on Risa’s chest and licked her chin. She allowed it for moment, then murmured, “Your tongue’s scratchy,” and pulled the cat down. He curled up on her other side and began to purr.
Sergi said, “I’ve got something to show you,” and brought out a ring, the new design he was working on: a Keon pledge ring with the brilliant ruby already in place, but small, designed for slender Sime hands.
Risa looked at it politely, murmuring, “Pretty.”
“It’s only roughed out,” Sergi explained. “The crest will be carved in the stone, and the chain will be carved and enameled around it.”
“You could make enameled pots and pans,” Risa said out of the blue. “No poison.”
He smiled at her. “Always business. We’ll try it as soon as you’re back on your feet. But here, try the ring on. I want to see if it’s right for Sime hands.”
It slid too easily over her shrunken finger, but Sergi judged that it would fit right when she was back to normal. Her pledge party would have to wait a day or two after her disjunction. He would have time to finish the ring, and carve her name inside
Risa studied the ring with real interest. Her hand went to the starred-cross at her breast. “Why isn’t the starred-cross on the ring?”
“There isn’t room for everything—not even on a big ring like mine,” he replied, holding out his hand for comparison.
Risa focused on the design, touched it with a tentacle tip, and suddenly shuddered. “I hate that chain!”
“You told Nedd you understood, remember? The only true freedom is the freedom to choose one’s chains.”
“I don’t want to be chained.” She pulled the ring from her finger viciously, and threw it at Sergi. It stung when it hit his shoulder, but he caught it. Risa held the starred-cross in both her hands. “This is freedom,” she said. “No killing. No owning. No chains.” She looked up at him, hollow-eyed. “How can you make something this beautiful, and also make symbols of bondage?”
“Risa, that’s Need talking—you did understand, and you will again. Concentrate on the starred-cross. Have faith, Risa—do not fear your Need. Trust me. I will always be here when you need me.”
He managed to soothe her to sleep, let Guest out when the cat jumped down from the bed and went to the door, then felt his own weariness overtake him and lay down on the other bed.
* * * * * * *
RISA WOKE SCREAMING.
She was augmenting wildly, and Sergi could not calm her. She hit at him, and his best projection of calm only left her gasping for breath as she writhed on the bed.
Nedd came with his wife, Litith, who sprayed something into Risa’s face. She passed out. Litith zlinned her, and said, “It will be safe to move her in about half an hour—Sergi, you stay with me.” She assured him, “You did everything right—but now she must be moved to the infirmary. It’s good, Sergi—she’s progressing through stages, just as in changeover. She has to reach her crisis before she runs out of selyn, exactly the way a changeover victim has to reach the breakout of tentacles. The sooner Risa reaches crisis, the more reserves she will have. Understand?”
“Yes,” whispered Sergi, who had attended many changeovers. It was always good when the stages went quickly. “How long?”
“A day or two. You’ll stay with her. I’ll give her medication to keep her from augmenting away her reserves until she becomes coherent again—but when she does, she will have to make her choice. And you must be there.”
“I’ll be there.”
“We’ll put a bed for you in her room—and I want you to sleep for a few hours. You’re going to have to be ready when she comes out of it—at your best. One wrong word—”
“I understand,” he said, driving his fear away. It was the one emotion he dared not have. Courage would not do for the task ahead, only true fearlessness.
When Sergi woke in the infirmary, he found his charge asleep, pale, her hair disheveled—and her arms laced into restraints. Remembering her horror of chains—of restrictions—he wondered how he could stand it when she woke. The restraints were to prevent her from hurting herself. Nonetheless, he hated them as much as Risa would.
Nedd entered the room, zlinned Risa, and said, “She’ll sleep for a while yet. I’ll relieve you so you can eat and get cleaned up—but be as quick as you can.”
Sergi took the absolute minimum of time. When he returned, Kreg and Triffin were sitting outside the room. Risa wouldn’t know—her room was draped with the heaviest insulation—but they obviously felt they had to be there.
Triffin looked up at him. “I didn’t know,” she said. “I thought she was already one of you. Risa gave me courage to come here. Don’t let her die!”
“I don’t intend to,” he replied, glad they were Gen and could not zlin that his confidence was forced.
Kreg said, “Please take care of her. I’m learning, Sergi—someday I’ll be able to do what you’re doing for Risa.”
“Yes.” He smiled, wondering if it looked as false as it felt. “You will both be fine Companions one day.”
Nedd left Sergi alone with Risa. The whole room was shrouded; although it was day, a lamp was lit so that Sergi could see. Hours dragged by.
Finally Risa woke. “Sergi?” It was a harsh whisper.
“I’m here.” He wet her parched lips with the sponge Litith had supplied. “As soon as you’re ready—”
She tugged at the restraints, tried again with augmented strength. Then she lay still. “I’m ready,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Release me, Sergi.”
She was lying!
He could feel as plainly as a Sime ever zlinned that she did not want him! Never in his life had he understood a Sime’s motivations so plainly.
What she wanted was fear. For months her junct system had been denied the high of Gen terror, culminating in the Kill—and now it rebelled, demanding satisfaction.
Sergi offered his eag
er desire to ease her Need. Her emaciated body writhed, head thrashing on the pillow.
Then she forced herself to lie still. He could see her tentacles moving within the restraints. A grin of pure malediction drew her lips back from her teeth. It felt more like the hideous grimace of a Gen dying in terror than like the reassuring smile she intended.
“Come to me, Sergi,” she whispered. “Give me transfer. It will be beautiful—but you’ll have to let my arms free.”
The rejection beneath her coaxing words was worse than if she had attacked him. Did she think he couldn’t tell—?
Sergi put aside his hurt. That is junctness speaking, not Risa. She must reject the Kill. Then she will be mine.
“Risa—forget the idea of escaping from me and killing somebody. You don’t really want that—you know you don’t!”
She writhed again in fury, augmenting, the restraints bulging with her agonized efforts to free her arms. “You lorsh! You want me to die!”
“No,” he whispered, letting all his reassurance flow to her. Her Need was deepening. Sergi’s desire to serve her soared. He wanted to tear off the restraints and force his selyn upon her—and her response to his emotions was to struggle even more furiously, screaming incoherently.
Never since the day Nedd qualified him had Sergi been so helpless before a Sime in Need. No Sime before had failed to respond to his field—yet Risa rejected his love, his caring, his Need to give—
A junct must be tempted as a junct. Risa had to make a choice—had to reject fear and choose caring. He must entice her as he would any junct Sime he wanted to control. Let her attack—and if she did not reject the Kill of her own accord, he could control the transfer, not allow her to kill him. Then there would be next month—
She could not survive another month. Her body was wasting away, and an unsatisfactory transfer would not give her strength to face another crisis.