First Channel s-3

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Veritt looked away. “I think we both must pray.”

  The emotional intensity must have made Mrs. Veritt more curious than she could resist, for she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands and inspecting them. Veritt told her the news, and then swept them all outside to ring the bell and announce to everyone that his son had learned one of Rimon’s key techniques.

  Drust Fenell and Vee Lassiter found one another in the crowd. As Veritt made his announcement, Vee’s face lit, and she whispered something to Drust.

  As the crowd adjourned to the chapel for prayers of thanksgiving and petitions that everyone might learn the healing mode as easily as Jord, Rimon worried about those two young people, so much as he and Kadi had been just a year ago.

  Chapter Thirteen

  YEAR’S TURNING

  Although plans were made for Rimon to work with the most sensitive of Fort Freedom’s younger Simes, he was unable to get back again for the meeting because another blizzard struck, trapping them in their house for two days. Their front door was blocked by a drift of snow up to the roof; the only way in and out was through the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the hill, where the wind through the wide pass kept the snow from piling deep. “It’s a good thing the Wild Gens can’t travel in this weather,” said Rimon. “That trail in the snow tells the whole world exactly where we are.”

  The trail didn’t remain for long, however; storm after storm came out of the mountains, piling new snow on the old. Days became weeks, and it was as if Rimon, Kadi, and Willa were the only people in the world.

  Rimon’s second transfer with Willa went easily, though again Kadi had to help him balance his fields afterwards. “Next month, I’ll see if I can use Willa to complete the job,” he said.

  “I don’t mind helping you, Rimon,” Kadi said. “I miss being able to give you transfer.”

  “Kadi—there was a flow again—and you can’t afford to lose any selyn later—in the last months of pregnancy. So by then, I must learn to do it without your help—for the baby.”

  After that, it seemed Kadi made less effort to control him, and Rimon felt much better. When the snow let up, he congratulated himself—in the whole time he’d been confined with Kadi and Willa, he’d managed not to lash out irrationally at either one of them.

  The clearing roads made him wonder what was happening at Fort Freedom—would he find that Jord, too, had managed transfer without killing? In hopes of finding progress had been made without him, Rimon decided to ride over there. Kadi wanted to go, but he didn’t want her riding horseback as her pregnancy advanced, and Willa hadn’t yet learned to ride.

  He was glad he’d gone alone when he found both Abel and Jord haggard and upset. Jord had tried a healing-mode transfer and failed; Abel was still failing to achieve healing mode at all. Rimon didn’t stay long; although, the Veritts were polite, he sensed they were holding back from him, trying to cover something—probably the same resentment he felt from everyone else in Fort Freedom.

  As he rode home, he wondered if he should ever go back. All he’d done was cause misery. Depressed, he yearned for Kadi’s sweet, comforting field.

  As he approached their house, however, he sensed something wrong in a strange tangle of fields within the house. Without conscious intent, he slipped into hunting mode, every sense alert. He tethered his horse and approached on foot.

  There were three fields in the house. Willa’s he recognized, alone, neither frightened nor concerned. The fearsome anomaly was Kadi’s field, inextricably twined with that of another Sime, a bottomless black need—

  He’s going to take her!

  In full killmode rage, he flung open the door. Hyperconscious, he felt as if the other Sime was pulling selyn from Rimon through his touch on Kadi. He had to stop it —do anything to stop it.

  Rimon attacked, the world slowing around him as he leaped across the table at the other Sime. But the other eluded his grasp. Gen fear soared all around him, goading him to hunting frenzy.

  He drove the Sime back against the wall—and suddenly found himself staring into the brown eyes of Del Erick. And Del, also abruptly duoconscious, was staring back, poised on the edge of the irrevocable act.

  Their fields joined intimately, Rimon felt the other’s activated killust focused deep in his own body. One flicker would unleash Sime violence upon them both.

  Rimon knew he had to do something, hut all he could think to do was go into healing mode. It was hard—harder than it had ever been, but when his systems were re-aligned, Del shuddered, and said, barely breathing, “Don’t move, Rimon, or I’ll—”

  He’s fixed on me as if I were a Gen!

  In a moment’s insane inspiration, he thought, Then I’ll be Gen for him! Summoning all his memories of Kadi’s soothing need-to-give, he imagined that he was Kadi. He felt his own fields expand, pulsing outward in gradually increasing intensity like a Gen’s, masking his own personal selyn consumption.

  Del’s eyes closed, tension lines smoothed out of his face, and then he slumped against Rimon. Rimon caught him and scooped him into a chair, collapsing wearily beside him, his fields returning to normal. He felt as exhausted as he had the first time he’d tried healing mode.

  Gradually, it came to him that he’d done it again—only this time he’d nearly killed a close friend—poor Del, who had lived with this nightmare since Rimon’s changeover. Dropping his head into his hands, Rimon said, “What’s wrong with me! Can’t I trust anyone?”

  Del, still gasping and shuddering, said, “Rimon, maybe nothing’s wrong with you. I might have tried to take her– I wanted to.”

  “I wouldn’t have let you,” protested Kadi.

  “Maybe,” said Del, “but I couldn’t feel that. Rimon, don’t you see, you’ve been behaving just as if you were fixed on Kadi for a kill, permanently fixed on her, not just when you’re in hard need. You’ve never had to face down another Sime trying to cut you out of a kill, or you’d recognize the feeling. But we should have understood. I’m sorry…”

  Rimon examined Kadi’s nager. “Abel says I’m just acting as if I’m in need all the time. But I think you’ve got it.”

  “If everyone understands that,” said Del, “especially Kadi, you won’t have any more trouble.” ,

  The short winter day was drawing into night, and Del took his leave—still in need, Rimon noted, and facing his next kill with the same agony Rimon had lived with for four years until Kadi had delivered him from it.

  Alone with his two Gens, Rimon felt himself relaxing almost against his will. His Gens made him feel safe somehow—safe from all the horrors only a Sime could know. But I’m paying for it, he thought. I’m more and more in her power every day. But I’ll get used to it. I’ve got to.

  Over dinner, he told Kadi about Abel and Jord’s problems. “What have we started, Kadi? We’re making all our friends sick, and nobody’s any better off for it.”

  “Is that all Abel told you?” she asked, obviously not wanting to pursue that dead-end argument again.

  “That’s about all, except that Fort Freedom is preparing for some kind of annual celebration. I didn’t quite understand it all, but I gather it’s some out-Territory custom. Simes would never think of celebrating by eating—feasting, they call it. Eating with religious connotations. We’re invited.”

  “Hmmm,” said Kadi. “Following his own customs, Abel has kept his people on a regimen very like your father’s. And look at him—despite having been a Raider, he’s strong and healthy for his age.”

  That week there was no snow, just cold, crisp days and clear starlit nights. Rimon, Kadi, and Willa bundled up warmly and drove over to Fort Freedom the day before the festivities began. They stayed in Carlana’s house, which had remained empty since she’d married Del.

  Rimon had protested at first that Del and Carlana would want to use the house, but they insisted they lived close enough to ride in each day. It was a major project for Rimon and Kadi to move—Rimon drove their spare horses over to join Del
’s herd, while the goat was installed in the back yard, happily cropping the remains of the garden.

  Kadi laughed. “You think it’s bad now? In a few years– if we want to go away for a few days, we’ll have to pack up not only horses and a goat, and Willa, but three or four kids, some cows, a dog and some cats—and maybe Willa’s husband and children!”

  They were sitting on a bench by the fire. Willa was lying on the hearth rug, staring into the flames. “I don’t think Willa will ever grow up enough to have a husband and children,” said Rimon. “Pen-grown Simes rarely achieve normal lives—even those that were never drugged as heavily as Willa was.”

  “Give her time, Rimon,” said Kadi. “She can’t grow up overnight. Look at the progress she’s made in the short time we’ve had her.”

  At least the girl was a help to Kadi, taking over all of the cleaning and much of the cooking. She had learned proper table manners, too—she wouldn’t embarrass anyone at the feast.

  If she never developed beyond where she was now, she’d probably never be unhappy with her lot. But if Willa came to understand herself as a woman and wanted a husband– where was she to find him?

  “Perhaps we should get a male companion for Willa.”

  “Rimon, what are you thinking of? A male you brought from the Pens could only react as an animal—and a year from now there’d be a baby. They’d be stuck with one another even if they didn’t like each other once they both grew up. Honestly, Rimon, sometimes you still think of Gens the way your father does.”

  He stared at her, his Kadi, so beautiful in the flickering firelight. Her blue eyes sparkled with animation. Duoconscious, he admired the way her pregnancy filled out her childish figure into womanly curves, while on the nageric level her field still outshone Willa’s.

  “Hey,” he took her hand, “I’m still learning. Forgive me if I slip up sometimes?”

  “Of course. I forget—it’s only two months since you proved you could take transfer from any Gen without killing. It’s only now you can drop your own defense against seeing Pen-grown Gens as people.”

  “You’re saying I’ve been doing the same thing Abel does, only without the theological explanations?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  He nodded. “There are Simes, and there are Gens… and there is Kadi. Abel and the others see their established children as I see you. But they must have their defenses until they learn—if they can learn—”

  Kadi’s nager became a soothing blank, her eyes suddenly sad.

  “Kadi, what’s wrong?”

  “There’s something I must tell you, Rimon—or you’ll find out about it without preparation.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her nager gripped him.

  “The day Del came to visit, when you were away. Del was so depressed. You see, during the snow, when no one could travel, Drust Fenell established.”

  He couldn’t wait for her to say it. “Vee killed him.”

  Kadi nodded. “And herself.”

  Rimon was numb, suffocating. “Why did they let them try?”

  “Nobody let them. They managed to get off alone– and—”

  “Oh, Kadi, what have we done?” Rimon forced the words out in a harsh whisper. He felt as if he were struggling against an oppressive weight. “Kadi! Let me grieve!”

  She gasped, and he felt her control slip away. Grief flooded through him then, but he was able to cry it out. She held him, crying too. Willa came over to them, worried, touching them, beginning to cry herself without understanding.

  The feast was a difficult experience. Fort Freedom was divided into those who still saw Rimon and Kadi as hope for the future, and those who had become fearful of the pain they had brought.

  Abel Veritt was showing his age more and more, and Jord was haggard. Mrs. Veritt hovered worriedly over them. Both the Lassiters and Sara Fenell avoided the Farrises, and Rimon felt too guilty to go up to them and offer condolences. Kadi, however, insisted, and so they made the attempt. The responses were cold, but Rimon felt better for trying.

  Rimon helped to bring the trestle tables out of storage. There would be a prayer ceremony tonight, and then the chapel would be cleared of benches and the tables set up for the feast tomorrow. As he worked, Rimon felt resentment from some people, while others refused to come near him. Clearly, he and Kadi were no longer welcome.

  But Abel said, “Tonight, in the chapel, I will make my vision clear to everyone. Be there, Rimon, with Kadi. Then,

  if you still feel you do not belong here, leave before the feast tomorrow.”

  In the chapel that evening, sitting with Del and Carlana, Rimon felt the tension all around them. First there were prayers of thanks that the small community had survived another year, that the crops had been good, and that five babies had been born and had survived.

  When he lifted his head at the end of the prayer, Rimon felt the ambient nager shift toward indignation. After a moment, he realized they had expected thanks for all who had established.

  Veritt stepped out from behind the lectern, and called, “Carlana Erick.” Carlana left them, and at the front, Jord seated her on one of four chairs. “Miral Coyne.” Another woman, heavily pregnant, moved forward and was seated beside Carlana. A third woman, also obviously pregnant, was called forth, and so Rimon was not at all surprised when Veritt called, “Kadi Farris.”

  Kadi stopped before him. “Abel, I will be pleased to have your blessing and your prayers for the health and safety of my child. But, if you’re going to pray he’ll be Gen, I can’t participate.”

  Smug satisfaction filled the air around Rimon, then was shattered into disbelief and anger as Veritt replied, “No, Kadi, I shall not pray that any of these children be either Sime or Gen—only that they be born healthy.”

  A gasp went up, and then people began rising to leave, muttering indignantly. “Wait!” called Veritt, his powerful voice silencing the murmurs. “Hear me out before you condemn!”

  Reluctantly, the people reseated themselves. “I promise,” said Veritt, “if you cannot accept the new revelation God has granted me, I’ll step down as your spiritual leader.”

  He returned to the lectern, placed his hands on the sides, and extended his handling tentacles.

  This time the gasps of horror took the form of words: “Sacrilege!”

  “In God’s Own House!”

  “How dare he?”

  “I dare,” Veritt answered them, “because I am a Sime. God made me a Sime.” He lifted his right hand, tentacles spread. “God made my tentacles, as surely as He made the rest of me. I learned long ago not to question the will of God. If it is wrong to question His will, is it not equally wrong to deny His gifts?”

  “Gifts!” The exclamation stuttered from several points.

  Veritt was silent for a moment, allowing the heat of emotion to die, retracting his tentacles and becoming once more the calm and pious leader they were used to. “Every one of you has had to change the beliefs he grew up with, in order to survive. In Gen Territory, you were taught that Simes have no souls.”

  Rimon felt the first melting around the edges of cold indignation.

  “I have taught for twenty years that the Sime nature is a curse. But in this past year, God has seen fit to demonstrate to us that it’s not our nature that is a curse, but what we do with it. He has sent among us a man—a Sime—who lives entirely without killing. Look at the girl seated to his left, a Gen from Slina’s Pens—a Gen we would have taken for the kill had Rimon not chosen her—and here she sits, safe in the midst of Simes, not because she can protect herself, but because Rimon Farris protects her. Look at Rimon’s wife, a Gen, who will bear his child this year. Kadi Farris is a miracle in herself, for she was able to keep Rimon from the kill until he could learn to take selyn from any Gen without killing. Rimon Farris is our hope for the future—and you would have me banish him from Fort Freedom?”

  There was instant response from all sides. “He killed Drust and Vee!”

&nbs
p; “He’s a devil sent to mislead us!” Others, though, cried out, “Rimon wasn’t even here when Drust and Vee died!”

  “He’s a healer!”

  Veritt held up his hands—hands only—for silence. “Yes,” he said, “there are those who recognize what Rimon has done already. Since he began changeover training, two of our children have come through, if not easily, certainly with far less pain than most of us knew.” He added solemnly, “But it is true that two other young people died. We all loved Drust Fenell and Vee Lassiter. Yes, it was in my heart, as it was in all of yours, that they might have been the first among us to live as Rimon and Kadi Farris do. Had they waited, they might have succeeded. Do you think Rimon learned what he does at his changeover? No—it took him four years!”

  Another murmur—and the first hint of sympathy. Veritt seized upon it. “I have seen you looking at me, at my son, at Mr. Erick. I have heard you say that Rimon brings only death, pain, and illness to those who try to learn what he does. But it cannot be learned overnight—and is it not worth any amount of suffering to learn to live without killing?”

  Before anyone could shout him down, Verrit raced on. “I’ve called these four women before you for our traditional prayers for those with child. They know they face the pain of childbirth—yet each one rejoices that she will bring a new life into the world. There will be pain in our learning not to kill, pain as inevitable as the pangs of childbirth—but will the results not be as well worth the suffering?

  “Traditionally, we have prayed this night each year that the children in our midst establish, that the babies to be born grow up Gen. I submit we have blasphemed by asking for God to do our will, not His Own! Think. Count. God’s will has been to make two out of every three of our children Sime—and often we have allowed them to die! Rimon has taught us to save them. Will you go back to letting your children die horribly—or will you pray with me and with Rimon and Kadi Farris, that when these children grow up, it will not matter if they are Gen or Sime?”