by Jean Lorrah
Rikki smiled. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll send Triffin for you in an hour.”
Susi rose when Risa entered. “He finally fell asleep,” she reported. “I didn’t notice any other changes.”
She hovered anxiously as Risa zlinned her patient. “Everything’s fine, Susi. Thank you.”
When the girl had gone, Risa sat down and gave in to her Need. Immediately Sergi’s field responded, his cells increasing their selyn production, speeding healing.
He looked horrible, his face purple and swollen, yet the moment her Need washed over him he awoke, forcing open swollen eyelids to peer at her owlishly.
“Go back to sleep,” she said automatically, and felt sharply his moment’s fear when he did not hear her.
Sergi quelled the fear, and held out his hand. “Are you all right?” he managed.
She wrapped handling tentacles about his hand, for it was too big for her to envelop even in both of hers. Squeezing, to offer comfort, she nodded and told him, “You’ll be all right, too.”
His swollen lips curved slightly in what was meant to be a reassuring smile, but it was not reflected in his nager. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated on Risa; her Need subsided as Sergi’s field enveloped her.
By the time Triffin arrived, Sergi had fallen back to sleep, but his body was healing steadily. Risa let her show-field rise slowly to mask her Need. She had hoped not to wake him, but his eyes struggled open again and went from Risa to Triffin. “Go on,” he said, quelling his own Need to give. “You need a transfer, and I can’t give it to you, Risa. Next month—I promise.”
Risa’s transfer with Triffin was bittersweet. The girl gave with all her natural Companion’s desire and skill—but both women were acutely aware that this transfer was supposed to have been between Risa and Kreg.
Afterward, Risa wept with Triffin, who had loved Kreg as much as Risa did, if in a different way.
When they finally washed their faces and re-entered the world, Triffin went back to the infirmary and Risa met with Tannen Darley and his daughter in the Sectuib’s office.
Darley told her, “Susi and I rode over to the mill.” They had obviously ridden into town, too, as Susi was now dressed in a neat riding outfit.
The girl said, “There’s really not much damage, Risa.”
“One of the shops was destroyed, and one of the bunkhouses,” Darley added. “People are rebuilding them. The furnace foundation is cracked—but we’ll build a new one and set the furnace back on it. Maybe two extra weeks of work. As far as I can tell, the furnace wasn’t harmed. Risa—they didn’t get anything we can’t replace with a few days of work.”
“I don’t care about the mill,” Risa said glumly.
“Of course you do!” Darley exclaimed. “It’s not just buildings and machines. Look what it’s done for this community already!”
“Turned family against family, husband against wife.”
“Tripp Sentell? He was mistreating his wife long before you got here.”
“And now he’s dead,” she said bitterly, “and look what’s happened to Sergi. And Kreg—” Her voice broke.
Susi jumped at the opening. “Where is Kreg? I didn’t see him all night. Risa...what did they do to him?”
Risa looked into the young channel’s anxious blue eyes, zlinned that Susi suspected the truth but didn’t want to know it. But she had to be told. “Kreg is dead. Tripp Sentell and his men murdered him.”
“It’s my fault. He was protecting me!”
“Susi, what happened in town?” Risa demanded.
“After you and Daddy left, I fell asleep. When I woke up people were yelling in the parlor. Kreg was at the door of my room.” The girl’s eyes were focused far away. “He locked the door—but someone started pounding on it. Kreg told me to go out the window—go to Verla’s and get Daddy.”
“Everyone at Verla’s came,” Darley took up the story. “Those lorshes set my house on fire. We got it out pretty quickly—it didn’t even get to the back of the house.”
“But whoever did it was gone,” Susi added. “I looked for Kreg. The door to my room was smashed in, but there was no one in the house except—” She choked.
“Except Fivvik,” Darley said bitterly. “They murdered him.” He paused, then added, “People started helping clean up the mess—and then we heard the first explosion at the steel mill. You know the rest.”
“Who broke the gates in?” Susi asked suddenly. “Did they come here—?”
“Yes,” Risa replied, “to deliver Kreg’s body.” Then she softened as the girl wept. “Susi, Kreg died as a Companion protecting a channel. When you come to understand what that means, you will know it is the death any Companion would ask.”
Risa’s words became Kreg’s epitaph, carved into the stone memorial along with those of other Keon members who had given their lives for the frail dream of Simes and Gens living together in peace. “Kreg ambrov Keon—Companion.”
Keon’s stone memorial, a householding tradition, housed books with the names of the martyrs from all the householdings over the centuries. Their own members’ names were carved into the stone walls—as all those other names were carved in stone in other places, eternally remembered.
Keon’s cemetery was high on the hillside, overlooking the householding—and now the steel mill beyond. Clearing the trees had brought the town into view, and as she stood alone beside Kreg’s grave, driving in the trefoil marker, Risa thought, You look out over unity, little brother...as much unity, I fear, as this world will ever see.
Each mourner walked alone and in silence along the path back to the householding complex. Risa had wept out her tears earlier. Now she doffed her funeral cape and set to work—to set Keon free of her.
It meant training Susi. It meant training a bookkeeper. But most of all it meant separating herself from Sergi.
He was on his feet for the funeral, in pain but moving. But for his size and his nager, he was unrecognizable, his face still swollen and discolored, his bright hair hidden under bandages. He could not shave, and in a few days golden stubble covered the lower part of his face. But he healed steadily. If his nose always showed that it had been broken, it would not detract much from his rugged handsomeness.
But Sergi’s appearance was not Risa’s worry: his hearing was. When three days had passed after the funeral, he found her at the collectorium and said, “I’m going back on duty.”
“You can’t,” she said, shaking her head.
“I have to,” he insisted. “Risa—if I’m permanently deaf, the sooner I start coping with it the better. I can’t abide sitting in silence, doing nothing!”
Reluctantly, she allowed him to join her in her work. There were times when he didn’t understand, but other times when he refused to understand what he didn’t want to.
On her turnover day, after she had snapped at Susi, Sergi, and Gevron, Rikki took Risa off the schedule, saying, “Go do something else—anything!”
Sergi said, “Let’s check the steel mill,” and started toward the stable before she could refuse. Bundled up against the frosty autumn air, they rode in bright sunshine, the leaves dancing in brilliant colors along the roadside.
The buildings at the mill had been rebuilt, and rugged scaffolding surrounded the blast furnace. The metal bell of the furnace had been hoisted up with sturdy winches while the foundation was restored.
When Sergi rode in, a cheer went up—Simes, mostly junct, cheering a Gen’s recovery.
Once it would have warmed Risa’s heart. Now it ate at her insides...it was so futile, so fragile—once those Simes came into hard Need, Sergi would be prey, not friend.
Against her will, she was drawn into the consultation between Sergi and the Simes repairing the furnace, for he understood her better than anyone else. She was becoming accustomed to compensating for Sergi’s deafness when they were alone together; now she was reminded that he was suffering because she had gotten him into this crazy project. The enthusiasm of the wor
k crew only served to dampen Risa’s spirits further.
She was glad when they finally left the mill, but she did not look forward to what she had to do: tell Sergi at once, write it out and make him read it, that she was leaving Keon as soon as the householding could operate without her.
But as they rode through the opening the gates had formerly filled, the guard—What are we guarding now, with no gates to close? Risa wondered—called down to them, “Everyone’s looking for you! Litith is having her baby!”
Nedd’s widow was in one of the insulated rooms in the infirmary, Dina and Sintha with her. The child was drawing far too much selyn from its mother’s system in a last-moment demand for the life substance it could not produce or obtain again until puberty.
Dina’s field rang with relief as Risa entered. “I was afraid to give her selyn,” she said. “She needs your touch, Risa—her nerves are raw.”
Litith, like any pregnant Sime woman, had had a shorter and shorter Need cycle for the past several months—but now her storage nerves were oversensitized by too-frequent selyn movement. The process of obtaining life became as painful as the process of giving birth.
Risa zlinned Litith. A contraction set her writhing, but then she smiled weakly as Sintha wiped her forehead. “Risa,” she whispered, “save Nedd’s child for Keon.”
Risa replied, “You and the baby are both going to be fine. Sergi—” she gestured to him “—come sit here opposite Sintha. Rest on the Companions’ fields, Litith.”
She zlinned the baby, strong and healthy and properly positioned. The only problem was Litith’s weakness—and Risa’s lack of experience. She had never helped to deliver any baby before, let alone a child who might be a channel. Dina had, though, and so had both Sintha and Sergi.
“Dina—how long yet?” she asked.
“Two or three hours,” the Carre channel replied. “First babies always take longer than later births.”
Risa had been hoping that delivery was only a few minutes away. Litith’s nerves could not take two transfers in rapid succession—but if Risa forced a full transfer into her now, she might be unable to resist augmenting in the contractions, crushing the life from the child. Yet if Risa waited too long, the baby could drain her so far into attrition that she would abort out of transfer—and die.
The Companions eased Litith’s Need. She was not suffering, but she was also not improving. “Dina,” said Risa, “have you ever given selyn directly to the unborn child?”
“No—have you?”
“Shen! Where are the transfer points on an infant?”
“Head, throat, heart, navel,” Litith said. “I know the theory, Risa—but I’ve never seen it done, either. Zlin for the nerve centers,” she continued, as calmly as if she were lecturing in a classroom, “The draw will be through the umbilical, but the other points are necessary, just as a fifth point is for an adult. Do it before the child starts to breathe—drawing air into his lungs starts his child’s metabolism, and his ability to assimilate selyn ends.”
Risa was astonished at the confidence Litith placed in her. It was as if once the procedure had been discussed it was given that Risa would use it—and the child would be safe.
The contractions came closer together. Because of the Companions, Litith did not sense her Need as acute, and relaxation delayed attrition. But the final contractions forced Litith to use selyn voraciously—and at the same time the child drew desperately as it entered the birth canal.
Risa reached for Litith’s arms.
“No!” the woman gasped. “Save my baby, Risa!”
She could zlin the child’s Need. If she provided it with selyn, it would stop draining Litith. She reached carefully into the birth canal, easing her handling tentacles around the baby, zlinning for the nerve centers Litith had mentioned—
One hand lay on the child’s belly, laterals drawn to the area over the heart and to the pulsing umbilical. The other hand cradled the child’s head, preventing it for the moment from emerging to breathe before she could give it the selyn it craved. Her laterals found the nerve centers—
Selyn flowed into its starved system—only an instant and it was brimming, squirming, ready to be born—it rode from its mother’s womb on Risa’s hands!
Risa handed the baby to Sergi and moved to grasp Litith’s forearms, pressing the lateral extensor nerves to force the small, weak tentacles to emerge. Shrieking pain brought Litith back to awareness as Risa forced selyn into her depleted system. Risa let the flow subside to a trickle, tantalizing—Litith found her pace and drew, painfully but surely, taking enough to last for several days.
The moment Risa raised her head, Litith whispered, “The baby!”
“It’s a boy,” Dina replied, joy in her voice and nager. “A fine, healthy boy!”
Joy swelled Risa’s heart, and a strange sense of her place in the universe. The thought of leaving Keon became unbearable. I’ll stay if they’ll have me, she decided. But will Keon want me after all the trouble I’ve caused?
Risa turned, and saw Sergi still holding the infant as Sintha wiped its tiny body clean. Little fists waved and feet kicked, and an angry wailing filled the room. Sergi stared, and tears started down his cheeks. He looked over the squirming child and met Risa’s eyes. “I hear it!” he said in utter astonishment. “I hear the baby crying!”
* * * * * * *
SERGI’S HEARING IMPROVED DRAMATICALLY in the next few hours, as Keon celebrated the birth. The channels theorized that as his facial injuries healed and the swelling went down, perhaps aided by his ride in the cold air, the pressure on the delicate inner-ear mechanism eased. After that day, though, there was little change. It appeared that he would always suffer impairment—but he was able to participate in conversation, and was grateful for that.
He even joked to Risa, “If it’s something unpleasant, I don’t want to hear it anyway.”
His face healed as the days passed, too. Each time Risa saw him he looked more like himself—but he could not spend much time with her as she approached Need again.
Two days before her transfer day the blast furnace was fired. Both the town and the householding turned out to watch the steel being poured, white-hot, sparks flying. A cheer rose, householders and townspeople celebrating together the results of their long, hard effort.
There were minor problems, of course—and Sergi stayed at the mill all night instead of returning with Risa to Keon as planned. But when he did return, late that afternoon, he was grinning in triumph.
Not stopping to wash off the grime, he tracked Risa down at the dispensary to announce, “Everything’s working perfectly—and now I’m all yours!”
“Not until you get that soot off you!” she protested, short-tempered with approaching Need.
“The steel mill was your idea, Risa. You’ll have to live with the consequences!”
But he did leave her, to reappear an hour later scrubbed clean, his hair a shining golden cap, his blue eyes sparkling in anticipation of their transfer. And he had shaved off his beard. He looked like himself once more.
Like Risa, Sergi had been denied proper transfers for the past two months—in fact, because of his injury he had skipped one month entirely.
When their last duties were completed, they left the transfer room they’d been working in—but when Risa started toward the better insulated one where channel’s transfer took place, Sergi steered her away.
“Where are we going?” Risa asked.
“My room.”
“Your room? Sergi, what—?”
“No more excuses, Risa. I want you for transfer...and afterwards. It’s been too long, for both of us.”
She didn’t care. She just wanted to be alone with him.
He led her past the Sectuib’s office and up the stairs. Risa had never been above the ground floor of the main building, although she knew the channels and Companions had living quarters there.
On the top floor, Sergi opened the door to a large, beautiful room with
windows looking out over the center of the householding complex, and beyond to the autumn hills.
But Sergi lit the lamp and drew the curtains closed. The room was as well-insulated as a transfer room, Risa noticed—but of course, Sergi had to have a place where he didn’t have to be in constant control of his nager.
His field throbbed with infectious joy. When he touched her, they resonated in such perfect pitch that it seemed her Need disappeared, so filled was she with his nager.
She leaned against his hard chest, feeling as if she could sink right through his skin, to be one with him.
“Sergi...what are you doing?”
“I’m not trying to control at all—just loving you.”
He kissed her. To Risa it was merely a pleasant closeness; she could feel no sexual desire, or even response, until after transfer.
“Let’s lie down,” Sergi said, unbuttoning her shirt.
“Before transfer?” she asked bemusedly, letting him strip her.
“For transfer. We might as well be comfortable.” He placed her in the bed, shrugged out of his own clothes, and lay down in the big double bed, sliding an arm under her.
She cuddled contentedly against him, trying to avoid lateral contact, for the eager, moist tentacles were unsheathed despite her lack of intil. But Sergi lifted her arms and put them around his neck.
“Be careful!” she said. “You’re getting ronaplin all over you.”
“I’ll only feel more,” he replied.
“You’re outrageous.”
“You expect me to be sober and solemn when I have everything I need right here in my arms?”
Risa laughed, recognizing how incredible it was to feel amusement at the depth of hard Need, a Need not properly satisfied for months. She drew him close, unmindful of the selyn-conducting fluid smearing him everywhere her laterals touched.
Sergi held her, waiting for the right moment. Then his hands slid caressingly over her forearms, knowing the touch that brought exquisite pleasure on the heart-stopping edge of pain. Her tentacles instinctively sought the proper grip. Sergi studied her, laughter dancing in his eyes. “Care to try for a different fifth transfer point?”