by Jean Lorrah
“We were scheduled for transfer a couple of days from now. Don’t worry—Kreg is plenty high-field. Rikki deliberately had him ahead of me.”
The man stared at Risa as if he had never seen her before. “Risa—I do not believe what I just zlinned. You relinquished your Gen to my daughter just like that!”
“Susi needs him. Stop worrying, Tan—you’re disturbing the ambient. Susi’s going to be fine.”
Under the impact of Kreg’s field, Susi regained consciousness—but when she saw a Gen by her bed she reached out, trying to push him away. “No!” she sobbed. “No—I won’t kill! Won’t kill! I want a channel, Daddy!”
“Susi!” Risa moved quickly to Kreg’s side. “Susi, you are a channel. Kreg is going to be your Companion—he’ll give you transfer. You can’t kill a Companion, remember?”
The girl stared at Risa, her lips trembling. Fear was devouring her last reserves of selyn. “Risa? Can’t you—?”
“We want you to be the best channel you can be. Think of it! You saved Triffin’s life—now you’ll save other lives, every day.”
Risa could zlin the moment Susi finally understood what she was being told. Excitement blossomed through her weak nager, and tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m a channel!”
“That’s right,” Kreg told her, letting his field entice her again. She turned toward him reflexively, and he took her hands. “Now relax. It’s not time for your breakout yet. Let’s try some breathing exercises, all right?”
Risa’s regret at not having Kreg for transfer this month was far overshadowed by her pride in her brother as he coached Susi through to breakout, then, with her new tentacles clutching his arms spasmodically, held her gently for the moment of penetrating realization before he whispered, “Congratulations, Susi,” and touched her lips with his.
Although Risa was shielding Darley, to keep his emotions from interfering with his daughter’s First Transfer, he zlinned enough to dissolve into tears of mingled joy and grief. Risa, too, felt the piercing delight of that transfer, echoing what she had with Sergi. But Susi would never, ever, have her transfers haunted by the specter of the Kill. If only I could have had that the first time!
But Risa had put the Kill behind her—her true first time was with Sergi in the Shrine of the Starred-cross. She pulled the symbol out from under her shirt and held it tightly, remembering. And thinking gleefully that soon she would know that pleasure with Sergi again.
Susi, meanwhile, laughed aloud in the pure innocence of the nonjunct, and threw her arms around Kreg, kissing his cheek. Then she held out her arms to her father, saying, “Daddy! Oh, Daddy, don’t cry! I’m all right!”
Darley wiped his eyes and went to hug his daughter. “Yes, baby, you’re all right. Congratulations, Susi!”
But when Risa and Darley went into the parlor, leaving Kreg to encourage Susi to rest until morning, Darley looked up at his wife’s portrait and asked, “Why did she have to be a channel? I had resigned myself to losing her to Keon only if she’d turned Gen.”
“Tan—Susi has to train at Keon, but after that she can live here in town. There should be a channel nearby, so children in changeover don’t have to be rushed to Keon.”
Darley shook his head. “People will never accept it. The newcomers already think Keon is too open about its...perversions.” He sighed. “I’m being ungrateful. You saved her life, and it’s not your fault she’s a channel. Do you have time to come over to Verla’s for a drink?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve already been away for hours. I’ll take it as a promise for another time.”
“All right. You go on back to Keon. In the morning I’ll escort Kreg—” He broke off with a grim smile. “Susi can escort him now, can’t she?”
“Yes—and let’s hope that once the mill is operating and the local population settles down to prosperity, it will be the way it was in the summer, when householding Gens could move freely without escorts.”
“I’m afraid that will take a long time. Too many people are afraid now to associate closely with the householders.”
Risa rode through deepening twilight, and met Sergi at the turnoff from the mill. “Where’s Kreg?” he asked her.
“You’re going to have to take his place, I’m afraid,” she said, and told him what had happened.
“Susi Darley a channel!” Sergi exclaimed. “Well, we certainly need another one. Risa, you sure know how to pick your friends.” He was cheerful. “I have news, too. As soon as we turn the water into the soaking pits—one more day’s work—we’ll fire up the blast furnace and try our first steel!”
“Sergi! That’s wonderful! We’ll make it a big occasion. Invite everybody to come and see the first steel poured.”
But there was no time to plan that night. Risa’s defection had thrown Keon’s schedule into chaos, and there were Simes in Need waiting anxiously for Rikki, Loid, and Dina to get to them. Risa spent four hours straight giving transfers, insisting that she had had enough rest at Darley’s, with Kreg doing all the work. With Sergi by her side again, she did not feel at all tired, and shortly after midnight the schedule was in order again.
By that time she was feeling weary—or was being affected by Sergi’s tiredness, for he had worked at the mill dawn to dusk before taking up his role of Companion again. Just as they were walking back toward Risa’s room, they heard a distant noise—a chanting, rising rhythmically outside the gates, too distant for words to be made out.
Then the guard at the gate was shouting, “Attack! We’re being attacked!” and Risa could hear voices and hoofbeats on the other side, zlin people marching on the householding—
The voices coalesced into a chant, “Perverts! Perverts! Perverts!”
Something pounded on the gates, paused, and hit them again with a resounding crash. The guard clung precariously to his perch, then leaped to the ground as the gates crashed open and a mob of junct Simes heaved through them, dropping the tree trunk they had used as a battering ram.
Keon’s members came running from every side, and for one moment there was a pause, the two parties facing one another. Tripp Sentell stepped forward. “This is the end, perverts! Today ya brung yer filth inta town—right inta Tan Darley’s house. Well, we ain’t takin’ no more! We found that blastin’ powder.” He held up a sack of it. “We was gonna blow up the mill first, but then you might escape. So we’re gonna blow alla you up with the mill.”
The juncts fanned out, attempting to surround Keon’s Simes and Gens. Whips cracked, and fear and anger burst through the ambient. Sergi’s dogs, Leader and Feathers, snapped at the intruders, barking and growling.
Risa saw one of the juncts grab for Gevron. The old Companion gave him a nageric shock that made the man yelp and fall to his knees, then calmly kicked him in the throat and left him choking on his own blood.
Sergi grasped Risa by the upper arms. “Come on! Channels into the main building—”
“Shen it, Sergi—you want them to blow us up in there?” She shook him off and leaped for Tripp Sentell.
The junct was startled enough to let her wrench his whip out of his hand, and she slashed him, saying, “You sniveling coward! You beat your kids! You beat your wife! You pick on helpless people! Well, we’re not helpless, you lorsh!”
Sergi was at her side, trying to calm her rage with his nager, impossible because he was so thoroughly angry himself.
She squirmed in his grasp, only vaguely aware that the tide was turning about her—that the mob of juncts, not expecting Keon to fight back, were retreating toward the gates, shouting, “Blow up that mill!”
Keon’s Simes and Gens pounded after them, leaping over the tree trunk still lying by the gates with something tied to it—something large and tattered and limp—
A shriek of agonized grief ripped the air and the ambient, shocking Risa into stillness. It was Triffin kneeling, screaming in horror.
Sergi dropped Risa and ran to Triffin. Risa leaped after him, and he turned, catching her to himself, ch
oking, “No—don’t look!”
But Risa could not help looking—and zlinning the object the juncts had carried with them, tied to the tree trunk: the bloody, tattered, and very dead body of Kreg ambrov Keon.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SERGI HELD RISA, UNABLE TO COMFORT HER because of his own sorrow and outrage. Close to hard Need, Risa could not grieve—her emotions burst forth in rage.
“I’ll kill them!” she shouted, squirming out of his grip.
Risa’s berserk fury shocked Sergi. “No!” he cried as she eluded his grasp. His field was enough to make her pause for an instant—and Sentell ran like the coward he was, augmenting as he plunged through the gates and into the darkness.
Risa turned on Sergi. “Why didn’t you let me murder him?” she demanded, striking him with the whip she still held. “He murdered my brother!”
Sergi caught the whip and pulled Risa to him with it. “You said ‘kill,’ not ‘murder.’ Don’t you know that a channel could kill a renSime?”
Triffin, who had remained weeping beside Kreg’s body, came to life at Sergi’s words. “Oh, no!” she pleaded. “If you revenged Kreg by killing—what would his life mean?”
Risa jerked the whip from Sergi’s hand. “I won’t kill,” she said. “But my brother will be revenged!”
Just then the air shook with an explosion. Flames shot up over the treetops, and quickly died away.
“The mill!” Sergi exclaimed.
Risa ran for the gate with augmented speed, the two Gens racing after her as fast as they could go.
A supply shop burned ferociously, but Sergi saw people attacking the furnace and the rolling mill, machinery they could not afford to replace.
A brief explosion flared at the base of the furnace—but fizzled out without damage. The attackers were discovering that sprinkling the powder and lighting it caused flashes, not the destruction they intended.
Junct employees from the bunkhouses joined the fight, but those trying to save the mill were losing ground. A wooden bunkhouse went up in flames—and in the glare Tripp Sentell appeared from the direction of the distant explosives shed, arms laden with supremely dangerous blasting sticks.
“Here, boys!” he shouted, passing them out to his cohorts. “These’ll do the job!”
“You’ll blow yourselves up, you fools!” Sergi shouted—but no one was listening.
One of the metal shops exploded with a thunderous roar. Debris rained down on the fighters—debris that included pieces of human bodies.
Unable to find Risa, Sergi followed Tripp Sentell.
Sentell’s target was the blast furnace. His people surrounded it, parting to let him through. He grabbed a torch and leaped atop the foundation.
The junct shoved several blasting sticks between the foundation and the furnace itself. “Get ready to run, boys! I’ll blow this thing sky high—an’ them perverts with it!”
“Murderer!”
From the other side of the ring of juncts, Risa hurled herself toward Sentell—but she was stopped by six or eight juncts piling on top of her.
Sergi barreled toward the line—and through it with a flick of his nager.
As he reached the center of the circle he saw the blasting stick Sentell held aloft. The fuse was perhaps a double handspan long.
“Sentell!” Sergi shouted. “That’s a fast fuse!”
Sentell laughed, holding the torch in one hand, the blasting stick in the other. “Grab him, boys! Knock him out and leave him here—him and his pervert bitch!”
Sergi fought physically and nagerically, working toward where Risa had disappeared under a heap of bodies.
Sentell looked out over the struggle, peering into the distance. “Hurry up!” he shouted, stretching out the hand holding the blasting stick, extending his laterals to zlin.
Sergi grabbed the forearms of a Sime attempting to throttle him, and squeezed the laterals viciously. The man let go with a scream of pain. Sentell’s voice rose in pitch. “Leave them be and run! I’m gonna blow it now!”
“No!” Sergi shouted. “Don’t do it!”
But Sentell lit the fuse, waving the sputtering explosive with a howl of triumphant laughter.
The junct was not watching the fuse, did not see the spark racing faster than imagination. The others saw, and broke ranks to flee.
Sentell turned, meaning to place the sputtering stick atop the others—
His scream began as he tried to throw the stick from him—too late!
The world exploded!
The noise resounded off the furnace—sound and blast wave hit Sergi together, followed by the impact of something impossibly heavy in the middle of his back.
He was flung to the ground, and pain clawed up to pierce him. Total silence enveloped him in waves of fiery pain—and then even that ceased.
* * * * * * *
RISA WAS PINNED TO THE GROUND UNDER SIME BODIES. Her head seemed to explode. Her ears rang with shrieks and sirens as she fought her way out of the crush.
Two directly on top of her were unconscious. The other four were dead.
But Risa had no care for the juncts. She leaped to Sergi’s side, shouting his name, her voice hollow and distant.
Her Companion lay face down in a pool of blood.
She flung aside the thing that had knocked Sergi to the ground: the headless, armless body of Tripp Sentell.
Sergi was unconscious, bleeding from ears and crushed nose. The impact of Sentell’s body had broken three of his ribs, but had also protected him somewhat from the blast.
Sergi’s field weakened with loss of blood, selyn pluming from his wounds into the night air. Risa let her Need flow to him, and felt both bleeding and selyn loss slow.
She zlinned Simes running toward them and leaped up, prepared to defend Sergi.
Verla was hurrying toward her—and Susi Darley, in her nightdress with a cape thrown over it.
Zabrina appeared, torch in hand—and Jasteen, wielding a whip with practiced ease.
The town was converging on the mill.
Risa dared not leave Sergi. Her fury was burnt out, her whole attention on her Companion.
Her ears still rang from the explosion. When she zlinned Tannen Darley’s attention on her, she looked at him before she realized he was saying something.
“I can’t hear you,” she told him. “The explosion.”
He shouted, and she heard his voice as if through the whine of a metal polishing machine. “It’s all over. We’ll help you get the wounded back to Keon. Is Sergi all right?”
“He will be,” she shouted in return, then realized that she didn’t have to shout at Darley.
Risa’s hearing slowly improved as the night passed.
On the road, Sergi came to with an involuntary moan.
Risa quickly bent over the litter, saying, “You’re all right! Don’t try to move—you’ve got broken ribs.”
Sergi stared at her, startlement shattering his nager. At Risa’s wince, his nager calmed, but he said something she couldn’t hear. Then he put a hand to his ear and repeated it, and she knew he was saying, “I can’t hear.”
She nodded, trying to make him understand that she had the same problem, but that it was already getting better. She wasn’t sure he understood.
Even though his injuries had weakened Sergi’s selyn field, it still blazed out beyond bearing when they worked on his injuries. Every breath was searing agony when they bandaged his ribs—and that was the least of his problems.
Susi Darley, looking far out of place in her silk and lace gown and velvet cape, worked like a renSime, carrying the injured, running errands—until Risa remembered the girl was a channel, and put her to work balancing the fields.
Susi caught on quickly, and in the crowded infirmary gave Risa a bubble of privacy. Now she dared treat Sergi’s facial injuries. His nose was broken and his left cheekbone cracked. The swelling made it both painful and difficult to work—and fosebine seemed to have no effect on his pain at all.
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br /> What had both Sergi and Risa in a state of anxiety was not his broken bones; both knew those would heal. The trickle of fear Sergi fought down over and over stemmed from the fact that he could still hear nothing—nothing at all.
The fact that Risa’s hearing improved steadily only made her fear more that Sergi’s deafness was permanent. But she gritted her teeth while he was in pain, and tried to mold the cartilage of his nose to its proper shape. At least he began to breathe more easily, lessening the strain on his ribs.
When all the injured had finally been treated, Risa started through the crowded ward, sending home those who were both awake and well enough to be on their feet. Litith had to be chased off to bed in the middle of the night, when Risa caught her working just as if her baby were not due any moment.
Sergi had been moved into an insulated room, Susi with him, with instructions to report any change in his condition. Risa, feeling Need now that she had let her concentration lapse, started toward the doors.
Rikki, who had spent the night giving emergency transfers, had just joined the healers. He zlinned her sharply. “Why are you walking around in that condition?”
“What condition? I’m tired, that’s all.” And irritated, she might have added, from straining to understand through the ringing in her ears.
Rikki hurried to her side. “You were scheduled for transfer two hours ago—and last night you augmented and then worked all night. What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing!” she snapped. “So I’m in Need. I’m going to sit with Sergi for an hour—my Need will speed his healing. Meanwhile you can round me up a Companion, all right?”
His nager rang with astonishment. “Uh...all right,” he said reluctantly. “Triffin’s still in phase with you, and another hour’s sleep will do her good.” He shook his head. “You’re hours into hard Need and completely in control of yourself. Disjuncts are not supposed to be able to do that.”
“Nonsense!” she told him. “A person does what he has to do—Sime, Gen, junct, nonjunct, disjunct. There were no Kills last night, Rikki. We had junct Simes all over the place, and Gens in fear and pain—there were deaths, but no Kills.”