Ambrov Keon

by Jean Lorrah

  Risa turned to him, anger outweighing relief. “Why did you risk riding out here alone? You were safe with Verla. Shen it, Sergi—I’d just changed my whole perception of you—I forgot you were in danger without an escort.”

  “I found my own escort,” he replied as Tannen Darley entered. Then he had the pleasure of watching their growing amazement, followed by the amusement of watching Risa and Darley run roughshod over Nedd to make him agree to their plan. All in all a scene worth a few nervous moments in town.

  Within the hour it was settled—as soon as the special implements could be brought from Lanta, they would go prospecting in Gen territory.

  * * * * * * *

  RISA ENJOYED THE EXCITEMENT OF PLANNING, even though it overloaded her schedule. Nedd balked at her assumption that she would lead the expedition, and had to be reminded daily that she was the one who knew where the metal deposits were.

  Those more affluent put up money or supplies; many other town and farm Simes contributed labor. The juncts grumbled at the condition that no one be close to Need—and that there would be no raiding of out-Territory Gens. Companions were the only Gens going from Keon. Sergi would accompany Risa, of course. Sintha, whom Risa had gotten to know only slightly before, drilled everyone, Sime and Gen, in English.

  “If you can shout to someone in unaccented English,” she told the Simes, “you have more than doubled the chances that he won’t come close enough to see that you’re Sime.”

  Kreg insisted on going. When Risa objected, he said, “I know I’m not completely grown up yet. If the Gens see kids in our party, we’ll look even less suspicious.”

  “But your English—”

  “Has improved considerably,” Sintha put in. “Kreg can pretend to be a Gen recently escaped from Sime Territory. Get Sergi to carve you a starred-cross, Kreg. Many escapees wear them all their lives for good luck.”

  Sintha was a woman of middle age, her skin creased, her hair streaked with gray. She had the robust good health of everyone at Keon, and a motherly air compounded by her role as teacher. Risa asked her, “Won’t you be tempted to stay on the other side of the border, once you’re home?”

  “No. There’s nothing for me there but terrible memories. The raiders who captured me killed my husband and his parents, and murdered our two children. That was all the family I had. I suppose I could have gone back, and claimed that burnt-out house on forty acres—but I didn’t want to live with ghosts. Keon is alive, Risa, and you’ve made it even more so. I don’t understand why you still refuse to pledge.”

  The question came up time and again, from Kreg, from Sergi—only Nedd never asked it, and the junct Simes who assumed that Risa was ambrov Keon already. But something held her back from pledging—and from marrying Sergi.

  She could no longer deny that she found him attractive. If she would not admit it in her waking hours, her dreams made it very clear. But they had resumed their post-transfer schedule, and with preparations for the mining expedition they hardly saw one another except when they were working.

  Finally the day came. Before dawn, the party from Keon rode into Laveen. It was their last chance for such a journey this year. Another month, and snow would keep the wagons from getting through. With the first expedition only begun, there was already talk of making it an annual event.

  There was another reason to make their expedition now: if the Gens didn’t know the reasons, they knew the patterns of Sime raids. Harvest brought work, and tax money for the fall quarter. At the beginning of the new year, though, many were without funds—and the year’s worst weather found Simes raiding in desperation, one by one.

  “It’s the most frightening time of year,” Sintha recalled. “In summer, between planting and harvest, licensed raiders strike—but they can be seen. People get guns and fight back. The winter Sime strikes in the dark, without warning. My father died that way.

  “The first months of the new year,” she continued, “the border patrol is doubled. If we’re there and back before Year’s Turning, chances are we won’t be noticed.”

  Risa zlinned the people gathered at Verla’s—and found three men and two women within a week of hard Need. “You were supposed to take early Kills,” she reminded them. “We won’t be back in time. Go over to the Pen—”

  “Nikka won’t give us no Gens,” protested Tripp Sentell.

  “She can’t refuse when you’re in Need.” The law said any Sime past turnover could claim his Gen for the month—although he could have no more than twelve government-supplied Gens per year. In winter people took them as early as possible.

  “Nikka is claiming a shortage,” Tannen Darley explained. “She’s trying to undermine our plans, Risa. She doesn’t approve of the cooperation between the town, the farmers, and the householding.”

  “A few days ago she claimed to have extras.”

  “She’s sold them. I checked. She can’t be hiding any extras in that place. She’s invoked the two-day rule.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday,” Sentell replied.

  “Well, come on,” said Risa, “you know what to do.”

  The man bristled. “If you mean take selyn from you, that’s goin’ too bloody-shen far!”

  “No, of course not! All of you close to Need—go load up the wagons. Augment, while the rest of us conserve. Get yourselves down to a two-day supply of selyn, and then claim your Kills. Hurry, now—we don’t want to be late starting!”

  The five looked at one another. The Sentells and one of the other men were farmers; the others worked as hired hands. None were ever in a position to waste selyn, lest they have to buy an extra kill they couldn’t afford. But augmentation was fun, and the expedition promised money—

  Five augmenting Simes easily rearranged the supplies brought by the three groups of people in the time it would have taken if everyone had worked at a conservative pace.

  All five were in Nikka’s killrooms by the time the wagon train passed the Pen. Nikka was outside, her resentment an ugly smear on the ambient. Several other Simes were with her, three of whom had been refused a part in the expedition because Tannen Darley said they could not be trusted not to run off to raid Gens.

  “You’ll be sorry, Tan,” Nikka shouted, “takin’ up with them perverts! All a you—you just wait! It ain’t smart to insult yer Gendealer.”

  There was some nervous reaction to her words—the Gendealer held the power of life and death in a small community like this one—but as the train moved on, soon joined by the five stragglers now post and in high spirits, the excitement of expectation returned.

  They proceeded northward to their first obstacle: the small river, a tributary of the Mizipi, which formed the border here. It was easy enough for a rider, but the wagons had to be pushed and hauled, their wheels bogging down even now. Their greatest challenge would be getting those same wagons back across the river laden with metal.

  By the time they were across, it was growing dark, but they went on for several hours before making camp. If they hadn’t had Gens with them, they probably would not have stopped at all—but even the juncts knew that those Gens were their safeguard against recognition and capture.

  They made only a small fire to prepare tea and soup. People doubled up to keep warm, Risa and Sergi snuggled up together for the first time since that fateful night at Verla’s. In heavy winter garments, they could hardly feel romantic, but Risa enjoyed the feel of Sergi’s arms about her, his nager warming her very soul.

  When it was Risa’s turn to stand guard, Sergi accompanied her, as silent as a Sime while she zlinned in every direction and reported no one within her considerable range. Then, for the first time since the shiltpron party, he asked, “Risa—I believe you when you say you refuse to marry me because I’m a householder, and not because I’m Gen. But I still don’t understand why you refuse a householder.”

  “I won’t be chained,” she replied for what seemed the thousandth time. “Sergi, Keon claims its virtue
is freedom, yet your symbol shows clearly that it isn’t so. I don’t understand why the Simes don’t see it. You, I can understand. You are free from fear at Keon—”

  “I am at Keon because I am free from fear,” he replied. “You’ve got it backwards.”

  “No, I haven’t. Outside the householding some Sime would slit your throat just for existing. Keon is the only place you can live. No wonder you feel a false freedom there.”

  “Risa—I am as free as you are,” he told her. “I’m young and strong, I know the Gen language, I have skills. Why—I could ride off today, find a Gen community without a blacksmith, work at that until I made enough to start silversmithing—in five years I’d be rich as Tannen Darley.”

  “Why didn’t you do that years ago?”

  “Ask Kreg,” he replied, his nager a strange combination of satisfaction and frustration. “There’s no life for a Companion away from Simes. Would you want to stop channeling?”

  “Not entirely,” she admitted. “I just don’t see why I can’t trade services with Keon.”

  “For my ‘services,’ you mean?” he asked indignantly.

  “Why do you always act as if that would be a form of prostitution? I don’t see anything wrong with your being paid for your talent as a Companion. You expect to be paid for your talent as a jeweler.”

  He hunched up against the cold, sinking his hands deep into the pockets of his heavy Gen-style jacket. “We’re back to symbols—and perhaps I do react as irrationally to that one as you do to Keon’s chain. Risa, do you remember reading about the first Sime/Gen community, before householdings?”

  “Freedom Township? Yes—but it’s mostly legends.”

  “It’s still a good example of choosing one’s chains. Before Zeor was founded, when Simes and Gens first started living together without killing, they just lived in a town like any other in-Territory. That is history, not legend.”

  “So?”

  “The Gens of Freedom Township had to wear tags identifying them as Sime property. On the other hand, they traveled freely, not requiring Sime escort. But neither Simes nor Gens in that early community had protection under the law. The government labeled it a Genfarm, called all children with at least one Gen parent preGens subject to property laws and taxes—and to escape those chains, the first householders had to choose other chains of their own making. To choose, Risa. They chose to separate themselves from junct society, so that within their walls Gens could have equality. Eventually they won rights for us outside the walls, too. I have no tags, no papers saying I am property.”

  “You’re taxed like property,” Risa pointed out. “I know—I keep Keon’s books.”

  “Look up the law,” Sergi told her. “A householding is not a Genfarm, nor are its Gens property—we are taxable people. It’s a compromise. The government still gets its money—but householding Gens get their dignity.”

  “Symbols,” said Risa.

  “The householdings gained more than mere symbols. All householding children have the same rights as children of Simes; none are labeled preGen, and cannot be counted as property. To gain those freedoms for their children, householders accept other restrictions—chains, if you will.”

  “I see what you mean,” Risa admitted. “None of us is completely free; we can only choose some of the restrictions on our lives.”

  “Exactly!” Sergi’s nager rang with relief and joy.

  The first pale gray of dawn was lighting the sky. The Simes were all up, breaking camp. Risa looked at Sergi’s face, so eager and hopeful...yet she had to tell him the truth. “I am not sure I want Keon’s restrictions. I don’t like being shut in, Sergi. Let’s dissolve the barriers between Keon and Laveen—and maybe someday, if we can’t get rid of Keon’s walls, at least the gates can be open!”

  The barriers dropped steadily. The farther from the border, the more farms they passed, although they carefully avoided settlements. Late that morning they met a couple of boys herding cows along the road. The Simes huddled in the wagons or rode in the middle of the group, hoping their thick winter clothing would disguise them. The Gens moved to the edges, waving cheerfully to the boys and exchanging guesses as to when the first “sticking snow” would fall.

  If Gens could zlin, thought Risa as the ambient pulsed with nervous tension, we’d be caught in no time.

  But when boys and cattle were left safely behind, tension eased. The fear that the Gens would betray them was assuaged. Halting conversations began, first between the juncts and the householding Simes, then between juncts and Gens.

  At their destination, the barriers dropped even further. It was a treasure trove! Gens stripped frozen vines away, and Simes dug into the mounds, peeling away dirt, rotted wood, ancient brick, and pulling out rusty beams, green copper wire, whole sheets of metal encrusted with crazed enameling. They even found cooking utensils of the strange Ancient metal that did not decompose—a thorough scrubbing, and those items would pay half the cost of the expedition!

  High spirits and good fellowship prevailed as they loaded the wagons, and covered the traces of their digging. If no one came here before the kudzu grew back next spring, all signs of their excavation would be covered over.

  Risa’s patrol encompassed a wide perimeter, prepared to sound a warning if anyone came near. Of course no one did—what would Gens be doing in the frozen woods at this time of year? Sintha had assured them that the deer hunting season was over. All they had to worry about was someone following the path they had cut for the wagons—but that hadn’t happened yet.

  Sergi and Sintha rode out to Risa, their Companions’ peculiar senses leading them straight to her. How fortunate out-Territory Gens, living away from Simes, never developed such sensitivity!

  Both Gens were rosy-cheeked with cold and excitement. “We’re almost ready,” Sergi told her. “Ride on ahead along the trail, to zlin that no one’s coming in from the road.”

  As Risa rode ahead of the Gens, her laterals extended for greatest sensitivity, she zlinned a strange metallic deposit beneath the woodland floor near the road. There were hundreds of such sites in Gulf Sime Territory, a frustration to the Simes who could zlin that they were composed of a thin, wide layer of precious metal, oxidized and intermixed with loam and debris. But there was no way to separate the powdered iron from the other material.

  Risa pointed it out to the Gens, who could of course see nothing but more forest. Sintha said, “Up in the northeast, Gens mine that material and turn it into steel.”

  “Yes,” Sergi replied casually, “with a blast furnace.”

  Risa pulled up her horse so abruptly that the two Gens almost ran into her. “What did you say?!” she demanded as she turned her horse on the narrow trail.

  “I said only a blast furnace can smelt metals out of that stuff,” Sergi answered, surprised by her vehemence.

  “Do you know how to build one?”

  “Well, I know the theory—” he said with a shrug.

  “Sergi ambrov Keon, you lorsh!” Risa gasped. “Here we are risking our lives for a few piddling wagonloads of metal, while you sit on the secret of making a fortune right at home. With stuff that’s free for the digging all over the territory! Shen and shid—just when I had started to believe that Gens had brains.”

  Sintha intervened. “Risa—Keon hasn’t the manpower to run a steel mill, let alone money for the equipment—”

  That was true. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course you’d do it if you could. Forgive me, Sergi.”

  “You’re forgiven. You didn’t understand,” Sergi replied. “It’s much too big a project for Keon.”

  “For the moment,” Risa agreed, but she was already planning. The metal they had gleaned on this trip would be worked by Keon’s metal shop, and sold at huge profits in metal-starved Gulf Territory. Keon’s share of the profits could buy equipment to build that furnace. At last householders could command economic power—

  Risa planned on as the party of Simes and Gens wended its much sl
ower way back toward the border with the heavily laden wagons. Wheels broke and wagons had to be unloaded, repaired, and loaded again. Mules and horses moved at a monotonously slow pace along the rutted road. Fortune frowned and smiled on them at once, in the form of freezing rain. While it slowed their progress, it kept other travelers off the road. The few they met were too eager to get to warm, dry destinations to investigate the plodding wagon train.

  The persistent downpour penetrated the thickest clothing. The Gens shivered and sneezed, and Risa had to exercise her new healing skills to prevent pneumonia. The Simes augmented to keep warm, expecting their share of the profits to buy extra selyn.

  The morning they finally reached the river, wearily contemplating their hardest task yet, the sun came out from behind the clouds as if to encourage them. Once across they would be safe—and soon home to warmth and riches! They began working the first wagon across the ford. It bogged down almost at once, and Simes waded into the water to free it.

  Kreg rode out to guide the horses while Simes steadied the wagon. “It’s too heavy,” he said as people and animals strained to no avail. “Here—hand me some of that stuff. Form a line across the river—we can hand the metal across piece by piece, and reload on the other side.”

  “Good thinking, boy,” said Tannen Darley, fighting the current to guide his horse up beside Kreg’s. Others joined them, and the first wagon’s goods were slowly but surely passed across. Unburdened, the wagon jolted through the mud.

  While two men began reloading that wagon, the second was drawn up, and the line of riders formed again. Risa watched, proud of her brother. She zlinned mechanically along the river bank—

  Gens!

  A whole mob of them, riding hard in their direction!

  “Take cover!” she shouted, flaring a nageric alarm.

  But most of the mining party were out in the cold water, up to their horses’ withers in the swift current—

  Shots rang out.

  Horses screamed and reared. Chunks of precious metal fell into the rushing water, but Risa zlinned no pain—no one was hit.