Ambrov Keon

by Jean Lorrah

  But Kreg was not so helpless. Over the junct’s shoulder, he spotted the two channels approaching. His field suddenly flicked with a painful shock! Sentell released him with a yelp, and he fled into Risa’s arms.

  The two channels, Rikki and Nedd, hit the junct, one high and one low. They went down in a heap, arms, legs, tentacles thrashing—Sentell still held the knife. Nedd reached for his arm—and in a flash of terror, the junct threw all his augmented strength into wresting it free—and plunging the knife into the channel’s heart!

  Risa screamed.

  Everything but the flickering flames came to a frozen halt.

  Sentell leaped to his feet. “That’ll teach ya to try yer pervert’s tricks on me!” he shouted into the silence. “You shedoni-doomed lorshes pack up and get out of here! This town don’t allow no perverts no more.”

  He turned and stalked off. Other town and farm Simes abandoned the field. Keon Simes ran to where Nedd had fallen. Gens, seeing the crowd gathering, came to see why. Risa and Rikki knelt over him, searching for signs of life.

  Then the crowd parted, and Litith came through the ranks. She knelt, zlinned her husband, and sat back on her heels, her field ringing with grief as she looked up at the assembled householders. Then, her calm voice belying the chaos in her nager, she announced into the crystalline silence, “The Sectuib in Keon is dead.”

  * * * * * * *

  “IT’S MY FAULT!” KREG SOBBED. “Gevron taught me that trick days ago, but I didn’t remember it!”

  “No, Kreg,” said Rikki. “That junct murdered Nedd. Come now—there’s healing to do. Pleth—Liana—get those fires out. Risa—start treating the burn victims. Sergi—no, you’re in no shape to work. Go to bed. Where’s Gevron?”

  The young channel assigned tasks, just as he did daily on the schedule board. Each person turned away as his name was called, until Litith knelt alone beside the body of her husband, now able to express her grief without an audience.

  Risa turned her mind to healing the wounded. Never before had she faced the agony of burns. Gevron put aside his grief as they moved the victims into the infirmary. The old Companion didn’t have Sergi’s strength, but he had many years of experience.

  Snow was falling by the time the last of the injured were indoors, and it was gloomy gray daylight when an exhausted Risa emerged from the infirmary. The snow was up to her ankles and falling steadily, its purity covering the scars of the night’s raid. But snow could not cover Risa’s guilt.

  For hours she had worked without rest, Rikki and Loid using their breaks to instruct her—driving home how incomplete her training was. Two people had died in her care. Despite the dozen they had saved, the negative thoughts forced aside during the night assaulted her tired mind.

  In her room, Sergi slept in the second bed. He woke when she entered, took one look at her, and said, “To bed with you right now—no arguments.”

  “I won’t argue,” she replied, “but I can’t sleep.”

  “I’ll put you to sleep, and stay to see that you don’t have nightmares. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been with you—”

  “You can’t work with that head injury.” She zlinned him. He still had a slight headache—and he wasn’t hungry. It was the first time she had ever known Sergi not to wake up practically starving. “Will you please make us some tea?” she asked. “I think there are biscuits in the kitchen.”

  The guest quarters had a small communal kitchen. Sergi returned with steaming glasses and a plate of biscuits. By unspoken consent, neither mentioned Nedd’s death. They had a day to get through before they could use the energy in sorrow—for Risa was back on the schedule at noon.

  Just as Sergi was carrying the tray back to the kitchen, the bell at Keon’s front gate began to ring. Fear lanced through Risa. Eviction notice? So fast?

  They pulled on boots and threw capes over their pajamas.

  The guard atop the gate flared astonishment. She turned as Risa approached. “Hajene Risa—I don’t know what to do!”

  Risa leaped up to the platform, and looked out at a dozen people—townspeople and farmers loaded down with bundles. And children! What in the world—?

  Verla and Tannen Darley rode forward. “Risa—we heard what happened. We’re here to help.”

  Risa’s tears broke loose despite the fact that she was past turnover. Sergi climbed the ladder and took her in his arms. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “They—they’ve come to help us!” Risa sobbed.

  “Well—let them in,” Sergi told the guard.

  “What if it’s—?”

  “Our enemies don’t come to the gate and ask politely to be let in.”

  Miz Frader rode in, saying, “These here’s my granchilder. ’Bout time I got ’em in yer school.”

  “And my children,” Melli Raft said softly.

  Susi Darley hung back until Triffin came out—then she ran to the Gen girl to hug her excitedly. “I’m coming to school here every day—I’ll see you all the time!”

  Darley sniffed the sour smell of smoke. “Risa—I didn’t know it was happening. Please believe me! I went home to Susi. I never dreamed—I’m sorry,” he finished lamely.

  “Oh, I am, too,” said Verla. “Tripp Sentell got to drinking with some of Nikka’s cohorts last night—and I threw them out when they got rowdy. If I’d let them stay, I’d have heard what they were planning—”

  “And they were wrong!” Darley added angrily. “Those Wild Gens were set on us!”

  “What?!”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, “but first, we brought medicine, clothes, blankets, bandages. What did they destroy? We’ll help replace it. But we can’t do anything about...people. Only what you told me, Risa—make the future better.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Risa called some of Keon’s renSimes over. “These people have come to help us rebuild. Put them to work.”

  Among the townspeople and farmers, Risa saw—could it be?—Joi Sentell! The woman’s face was bruised—half-healed injuries, possibly from last night, and a very fresh black eye. Miz Frader leaned toward Risa conspiratorially. “Joi finally stood up to that brute she married. He beat her last night when she tried to stop him, but when he come home braggin’ he’d murdered ol’ Nedd—that done it. Hear tell she busted his nose, which is a whole lot less than he deserves!”

  Darley and Verla accompanied Risa and Sergi to Nedd’s office—that was where conferences were always held. The desk was its usual mess; Risa had not been there for days to bring the books up to date.

  Risa would not sit in Nedd’s chair, so she sat on the edge of the desk and listened to Darley. “Nikka left town early this morning. You may have noticed that she didn’t come out here—just set her henchmen to stir up the folks who lost their horses and wagons. She stayed at Zabrina’s until they came back, bragging about what they’d done.

  “Zabrina says she zlinned something funny—Nikka was just too pleased with herself. Zabrina tried to open her up with whiskey, but Nikka just passed out.”

  “Then why do you think Nikka set the Gens on us?” Risa asked.

  “Because when she came to, she ran. She’s afraid she let something slip,” said Darley.

  “And that means she had something to let slip,” Verla affirmed.

  “By the time Zabrina sent for me, the Pen was locked up and Nikka was gone,” Darley told them.

  “So all of us there in town appointed Tan sheriff right quick,” said Verla, “so he could break in.”

  “Her office was a shambles,” the banker said. “The safe was standing open, empty. Papers were burning on the floor—she must have meant the whole Pen to burn down, but it was so damp they were still smoldering. It’s obvious she was keeping double books—but they’re burned too badly to lead us to her source of extra Gens.”

  “I think she was dealing with Genrunners,” Verla said positively.

  “Genrunners?” Risa asked blankly.

  Sergi supplied the definition. “
Wild Gens who...sell their own people across the border. Orphans, drifters, tramps—they promise them some kind of work, maybe driving a herd of cattle to market. Only when they get to where the cattle are supposed to be, licensed raiders are waiting instead—and it’s the people who are herded off to market.”

  “The raiders pay in gold,” said Darley. “The Genrunner takes the risks. We suspect that Nikka alerted her contact across the border, and he diverted suspicion from his own activities by reporting us to the border patrol as a raiding party. They knew we’d move quickly and be back to ford the river at that one shallow point. We were ambushed.”

  “It’s all speculation,” said Risa.

  “Then why did Nikka run?” asked Verla. “She’s gone, and so’s that gang of no-goods used to hang around the Pen.”

  “And Laveen is left without a Gendealer,” said Risa.

  “I’m taking the Pen,” said Darley. “I can get bonded and licensed faster than anyone else.” He looked into Risa’s eyes. “I don’t want it. But that’s how Nikka got the power of life and death: high principled citizens don’t want the hard, dirty work of running a Pen—we leave it to people like Nikka. Shen! We should have run her out of town years ago.”

  Darley went on to Nashul, leaving Susi at Keon. Risa watched the girl’s shyness dissolve. Susi could cook and sew, do fine embroidery, write with elegant penmanship—but she was more comfortable with adults than children at first.

  When Tannen Darley returned from Nashul, though, Susi ran to greet him with her hair mussed, her face dirty, and her child’s nager happier than Risa had ever zlinned it. She was dressed in borrowed denims and a flannel shirt, and said excitedly, “Daddy, I’m helping in the metal shop. Come see!”

  Susi and several other older children were making wire—bales that would go off to Nashul within the month to begin recouping the losses from the out-Territory expedition.

  Keon Simes and Gens took some of that wire at various stages and made spikes and nails...and chains. Artistic objects brought more money for less metal—but the scarce practical goods could be made more quickly and would sell much faster. “We’ll repay the farmers first,” said Risa, “so they can replace their wagons and animals. And those who have no other source of income, so they can pay their taxes—and won’t go raiding. Tan—did you get everything settled?”

  “I’ve got a temporary license, and there’s a shipment scheduled next week. If my people cleaned up that Pen as they were supposed to while I was gone—”

  “They did. Verla told me everything’s in fine shape.”

  “Good,” he said, but he was preoccupied, watching his daughter working. “Risa, what is Susi doing here? I thought you were going to teach the kids to read and write.”

  “Susi knows how,” she replied, as they left the shop. “You just happened to arrive when the older kids are in the shop. Did you ask her what she did all morning?”

  “No.”

  “English and mathematics. We didn’t know if you wanted her in our changeover or history class, so we’ve been having her help teach the farm kids to read during that time.”

  “She knows territory history,” said Darley.

  “It’s householding history, from the time of the first channel,” she told him as they entered Nedd’s office. Risa had gotten over her reluctance to sit behind Nedd’s desk; she sat there to do the accounts and fill out the endless tax forms—this time complicated by the deaths of Nedd and four other Simes, as well as two Gens. Litith sat there to write up her journal. It was just a desk, in the Sectuib’s office...although for the moment Keon had no Sectuib.

  Darley slumped into a chair. “I promised Susi,” he said. “You were there, Risa. If she decides to live here, she should know the history. It’s propaganda, I suppose—”

  “I’ll give you the books, and you can decide. What about changeover training? I’ve been worried about that, Tan, since you sheltered her from knowledge of the Kill—”

  “Do you think I’d risk her life? I was going to start her training on her birthday—but because of Triffin it got started a bit early. Put her in the class—the more practice she gets, the better off she’ll be when the time comes.”

  Susi went into the regular changeover class, as did Melli Raft’s oldest stepson, at her insistence. Other non-Keon parents, though, did not want their children taught about channel’s transfer. Most of them tried to consider those “perversions” the householders’ private business as long as they did not touch them or their children.

  So there was a separate changeover class, to be sure these children at least had the knowledge to prepare themselves. The Kill was not mentioned, but it was an unspoken assumption that their parents would provide them with Gens at that terrible-wonderful moment of First Need.

  * * * * * * *

  WINTER HAD SET IN.Although there was much more snow here than Risa had been used to in Norlea, it rarely accumulated more than ankle-deep around Keon and Laveen. The roads, though, turned to mud, then froze, melted into more bogs and ruts, then froze again.

  The Gen shipment from Nashul was three days late because of the bad roads, and its arrival eased tensions greatly. Nonetheless, half the people in Laveen still kept their distance when householders were in town, and many others were only coldly polite. Verla’s business suffered. The warm camaraderie of the shiltpron party seemed a dream now, a fleeting glimpse of what might have been, gone forever.

  And then on a miserably cold day, with snow blizzarding in sharp ice bits, Tannen Darley fought his way through the storm to Keon. Risa, overloaded since Nedd’s death, did not have time to see him for over two hours. It was one of the rare times when she could have used her rest break to rest, for she was approaching Need and had been working steadily since dawn. Beside her normal channel’s duties, she had spent a frustrating time in the infirmary, attempting to get a grip on the fields of four children down with fever and a rash. One boy was on the verge of pneumonia, and Risa had used every bit of her Need-sensitized strength to affect his field—but his child’s nager would not respond, and she had finally had to go on to her other duties, leaving him in Litith’s care.

  Nedd’s widow was bearing up well, but Risa worried that she exposed herself to the children’s illness while she was pregnant. Litith insisted Simes could not catch children’s diseases, and went on with her duties...and Risa had to recognize that the woman needed her work as much as she needed selyn. So she simply asked Rikki to assign her a Companion, since Keon had an oversupply of talented Gens.

  And that was why Tannen Darley had come. He was sitting by the fire, an empty tea glass beside him. But he was not drowsy, as might have been expected after waiting in a warm room after a cold ride. His nager was charged with worry and frustration. “Risa—Sergi—we’ve got bad trouble this time.”

  “What is it?” Risa asked.

  “My latest Gen shipment arrived this morning—thirty-three Gens short. The roads are closed over Eagle Mountain, so the supplier at Nashul can’t get his shipments from the big farm at Lanta. But...he says we’re lucky.” Darley’s voice and nager rang with angry sarcasm. “Look!”

  He held out an official document. Risa took it, and she and Sergi read it together.

  “Since Householding Keon now has an illegally high ratio of Gens to Simes, we are invoking ordinance GTS 56.318, reverting all Gens on said premises to the status of property until the balance is corrected. The director of the local Pen may confiscate thirty-three Gens from Householding Keon at his discretion. It is recommended that those Gens known as ‘Companions’ be avoided, as they do not make satisfactory Kills. The director of Householding Keon is hereby informed that once the illegal imbalance has been corrected by the removal of said thirty-three Gens, the Householding will revert to its previous status.”

  “They can’t do that!” Risa gasped.

  “Oh, yes they can,” Sergi said. “We’ve broken the law—and like any other criminals, we’ve lost our rights until we repay our debt
to society.”

  “Shen and shid!” Risa swore. “What are we going to do? Tan, do you intend—?”

  “I don’t know what to do!” the man replied in frustration. “People on my rolls are entitled to thirty-three more Gens than I’ve got. I can’t take Gens from Keon—but where else am I to get them? Even the Nashul Choice Auction has been closed. I can’t encourage people to raid across the border. They’re entitled to those Kills.” He sat down again, in total defeat. “You tell me Risa. What are we going to do?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SERGI HAD SEEN RISA FRUSTRATED BEFORE, and angry, and sorrowful. He had never seen her defeated.

  As she slumped in the big desk chair, she looked like a child again—a misperception he had long since forgotten in the face of her tireless strength. She looked tired now.

  Her helplessness reflected Sergi’s. Ever since Nedd’s death, he had been waiting for Risa to recognize her place as Sectuib in Keon. But she refused to confront her destiny.

  If Risa—the only channel with the strength to be Sectuib—let Keon be defeated by government regulations, the householding would die. Oh, Carre would absorb many of the members—but Keon’s members had left Carre a generation ago because they felt the call of freedom. The drive that, paradoxically, prevented Risa from pledging Keon. The same drive that would send Sergi to an empty, lonely life across the border rather than pledge to anyone but Risa.

  Tannen Darley was saying, “I can save one Keon Gen, Risa. If you will give me transfer again. And Verla—”

  “And where do we find thirty-one other people willing to endure perversion?” Risa asked hopelessly.

  “Will you give up without a fight?” Sergi asked.

  “How do we fight something like this?”

  “First we buy time,” he replied. “The weather will change. Tan, what will be your time shortfall?”

  “About five days.”

  “Then we have approximately three weeks to make up the Gen supply...or find another solution.”