RenSime

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  She saw those energies weaving down a Jacob’s ladder of twined pylons that supported manifest reality, a brilliant gold current, a flood of pure undifferentiated energy that poked through the mirror-screen that surrounded reality and emerged as the tiny zone of phase conversion at the core of every soul, Sime and Gen alike.

  She saw how channels were able to dam up this energy, refusing to let the polar opposite Sime and Gen come into direct contact, to let the essence of life flow forth and celebrate the full unifying force of the Will of Nature.

  But renSimes were unable to do this. The renSime would always succumb to the will to live, no matter the cost. The renSime could be the Force of Nature.

  The Gens could choose to oppose that force, and die, or acknowledge their oneness with it, and celebrate life.

  Each could choose, each was Actor and Reactor, each personally responsible, but none totally responsible. To change, they must change as a group. Yet to change as a group, they must each change first separately. Reflections within reflections, where all opposites were identical.

  The dripping beast jaw that protruded from her face began to dissolve. She pulled herself up to her full height and, back straight, head high, she turned without haste and calmly walked away toward her new destiny, free at last of the fear that had made her flee.

  She came to where the invisible barriers had always stopped her. The sea of reflected faces dimmed, thinned, and evaporated, smiling calmly back at her as they died away.

  The barrier they had formed turned to gossamer and parted before her until she came to a reflection that had no reflection of its own, as if it existed in the instant of its own creation, before reflections could be bounced back.

  Shanlun and Azevedo. More than just faces. Whole and complete bodies. Whole, complete nager, joined into Shanlun’s scintillating pyrotechnic display.

  They were dressed in emerald green ankle length robes that enveloped their bodies. Azevedo wore a headdress of three tiers piled on top of each other making him very tall, with folds of white cloth shrouding his neck and hair, exposing only his face to her view. Their sleeves were elbow length, cut full and loose, exposing forearms.

  Each wore a jeweled starred cross emblem on his breast, and the emblems glowed preternaturally.

  I never found anyone who required me for an enemy, Shanlun had once said.

  Oh, yes you have, Shanlun. And it was me. But I don’t want that to be anymore.

  Let us change together, offered Shanlun, as always answering her unspoken thoughts.

  Choices precipitate consequences, thought Azevedo. If you would return to the real world with us, you must return as someone. You cannot be everyone when you dwell on the other side of the mirror. You must become only one of the people within you. You must choose which one.

  How?

  By choosing the source of your life, replied Shanlun. His headdress was a simple glowing green cloth draped about his head and down around his shoulders, fastened under the chin. He shook it back now, as a woman shakes back her long hair. I’ve come to be that source to you, if you choose me. And with the same shaking gesture of his head, he disengaged his nager from Azevedo’s and stood resplendent, though pale beside the channel.

  Azevedo added, And I am your other choice. His nager sparkled with the scintillating effect she had come to associate only with Shanlun.

  Though separate now, the two of them blurred together. They had transfer, she thought.

  Do I want to return to the real world and live without what they’ve had? For that bliss was not only forbidden to every renSime, that peculiar perfection Azevedo and Shanlun shared was slilbliss, unattainable by any renSime.

  But then her new perspective took hold. There was no way she could evoke any trace of any sort of bliss in Shanlun. But Azevedo was like her father, a channel needing to function as a Gen, wanting very much to give.

  She moved toward Azevedo. She zlinned no blocking or damming up of the life force within him. He was open inside, all the way to infinity. And at infinity, within Azevedo, whirled the vitality of Shanlun.

  Remembering her years taking transfer from Tecton channels, Laneff knew that they’d be horrified at Azevedo. The Tecton channel presented the renSime with the pleasure his Donor had experienced at his previous transfer, modulated by the channel’s Sime sense of relief from need. But there was no way any renSime could discern via the channel which Gen had provided for the channel that month. Selyn was anonymous in the Tecton.

  The disgust that rose in Laneff was identical to the disgust she had felt when confronted with her own junctedness. That anonymity creates and perpetuates junctedness.

  But Azevedo was offering her Shanlun in his full glory, plus all the Sime’s own satisfaction modulating that glory.

  She went for it, a decision that came from the very center of her new being. Perception and action were one.

  She entered a cloud of scintillating powdered gold that whirled and coalesced into a brilliant sunfire, a swirling, boiling locus where the primal life energy of creation surged through into reality.

  She was a dark aching void, frozen with need and aware that the need had passed into attrition. It was only a distant, dull aching that had nothing to do with herself. But the warm sun suffused her, melting her, surrounding her in gold dust fraught with happy rainbows of life.

  And need returned, a shrill knife of voracious pain.

  “She’s coming around!”

  Azevedo had a long handled, snub-nosed cutter with which he snapped through the cable binding her. Her body slumped but Shanlun’s hands caught and steadied her.

  The numb cold of attrition left weakness behind, but need drew strength back into her limbs. The Gen left her on her own two feet and backed away, his whole attention trained on her. The channel, likewise, backed away until the three of them occupied the corners of an equilateral triangle.

  But her choice was made. It remained only to force her numb body to stagger toward Azevedo, two, three steps, four; reaching out with her hands, tentacles spread, she let the brilliant, dancing gold draw her forward, seizing contact with his offering laterals, dragging herself upward as he bent to offer lip contact.

  Need became intense pleasure, transmuted to ecstasy as the warm pulses of selyn flowed into her system. Suddenly, she could sense her body using selyn in little pulses, in a very characteristic rhythm all her own, a thuttering like her own heartbeat. The incoming selyn harmonized perfectly to create a new, syncopated rhythm to dance the joy of life.

  Each pulse was formed of billions of tiny flecks of colored nager, sizzling with a thousand rainbows like the heart of a diamond reflected to infinity. She tasted and savored each one, letting it fill her whole being with delight. Each tiny little pulse expanded within her void and filled and fully satisfied her, only to be followed by a new pulse that filled her faster and satisfied a renewed and sharper need.

  Faster and faster the pulses came until it was one continuous stream of molten golden joy warming and renewing herself. The pulses rose simultaneously from within her own cells, as if she were Gen, and from outside herself, given freely and in love for the joy of causing joy. And the given was received for the joy of causing joy.

  Delight built upon delight, thrill upon thrill, not wearing out her nerves but leaving them more sensitive to the next surge of even more intense shared giving/receiving in the dance of life. It built and built to exquisite repletion that went on and on until she was wide open to her very core.

  She was Gen, full to overflowing with selyn, delighting in the filling of need. She was renSime, thrilled by Gen delight. And she was channel, living and reliving the most ineffable experience in creation—or out of it. Slilbliss.

  She was all of her Selves at once, dancing her love of life in syncopated harmony.

  She came up out of it laughing, gasping, reluctantly letting Azevedo dismantle the contacts.

  He shouted out a tremendous roaring laugh and picked her up and swung her full aro
und before setting her on her feet again and hugging her close. “Oh, Laneff,” he groaned. “Oh, dear God, you’ve learned to be renSime! That was so beautiful. Thank you, Laneff, thank you.”

  He was crying, almost as if he were post.

  And she was crying, too, genuinely post. I’ve never given a channel transfer before!

  Shanlun’s field and arms came around them both, and he was laughing, too. He kissed her. Then he kissed Azevedo on both cheeks. Then he kissed her full on the mouth and didn’t want to stop.

  She didn’t want him to. It helped her keep and store up the feeling Azevedo had given her, and she had given him. I am renSime!

  “Naztehr.” Mairis’ voice, Mairis’ nager.

  Shanlun relinquished the kiss, slowly, promising more later, and turned, cradling her in one arm while his other hand rested on Azevedo’s shoulder.

  “My Sectuib. May I present my wife. And my mentor.”

  Mairis zlinned her critically. Then he held out his hands to her, tentacles spread. “Step out of there for a moment and let me zlin you, Laneff. I can hardly believe what I sense here, though I witnessed it myself.”

  She stepped out, offering her hands confidently, for Mairis didn’t zlin like a Tecton channel now. He was like Azevedo. Endowed. What Azevedo did to me was a trick of the endowed channels.

  As Mairis examined her, she realized a dense crowd had formed around the plaza, newscameras mounted on trucks or newsmen’s shoulders, crowded the front rows, held back by dark clad security forces. A bank of microphones was already being set up right under the starred cross, the classic setting for a major news conference.

  But the ambient nager of the crowd was dark, disapproving, doubting, rejecting—yet openly curious, excited by portentous events. Her senses were ultra-keen, the world vivid in both sound and color as well as nagerically. She had no trouble spotting Yuan, inconspicuous while standing, gypsy-clad, just three arms lengths from the security cordon of the Tecton guards. As she watched, Yuan faded back into the crowd and was gone.

  Mairis grinned at Shanlun. “Your baby’s fine, and your wife is disjunct—again!” Then he turned to Laneff, flashing a grin toward Azevedo, “Will you stand with us now before all the world and show them what we can do united!”

  “Yes,” replied Laneff.

  Epilogue

  On the very first day of spring, Tansy Farris was born to Laneff Farris ambrov Zeor and Shanlun ambrov Zeor, First Companion in Zeor.

  By Householding custom, the wedding was held on the day of Laneff’s next transfer, just after she pledged to Zeor through Mairis. But in defiance of Householding custom, the officiating channel at the wedding, Azevedo, was not even a House member.

  The celebration lasted until dawn, when the small contingent of gypsies attending retired for their morning salutation.

  “Aren’t you going with them, Shanlun?” asked Mairis, watching as the buff-and-beige-clad forms left the pavilion that had been set up on the lawn at the World Controller’s residence.

  “With your permission,” replied Shanlun, “my place is at your side, my Sectuib.”

  In the months since her disjunction, Laneff had come to appreciate the difference between Mairis and Azevedo. The Rathor channel was just too much—too potent—for any mortal to accompany for long. But Mairis was real, a flesh-and-blood, mistake-making, advice-taking person. Shanlun worshiped Azevedo, but he could live with Mairis. And she felt the same way.

  “My permission for your presence is always granted. But I’ll never hold you away from him.”

  “I know,” grinned Shanlun, one arm around Laneff.

  The guests had all left now, and workmen were cleaning up the mess. Laneff looked around at the aftermath, the glow of another perfect slilbliss transfer still warming her, and making her eager for her husband’s bed now that she’d recovered from the birth. “Tomorrow, then, I can get back to the lab. I’ve only been away three weeks in all, and I’ll bet I won’t recognize a single report on my desk!”

  “Not so fast,” said Mairis. “You’ve got a series of personal appearances to make first. If we’re finding this hard to believe, imagine how those who’ve never zlinned you disjunct and healthy are taking it?”

  “But—” protested Laneff, having forgotten she’d agreed to travel. “Not yet—not now! There’s so much to do—”

  “Laneff,” replied Mairis, “do you remember how hostile that crowd was around the starred cross? Until you and I stood up there and showed them your disjunction, there wasn’t a single vote for me in that audience. And then there wasn’t a single vote against me. The lesson: a Sime has to zlin things for himself. We’re going to lose this chance at Unity and our funding if we don’t get you out on tour.”

  “We’ll take Tansy with us,” said Shanlun, glancing at Mairis.

  The World Controller said, “Of course you can go.”

  “You see?” said Shanlun to Laneff. “That way you can be sure we’ll be back for Mairis’ transfer, and then you can get to work.”

  She glanced from one to the other, sensing conspiracy, but there was nothing else she could do. Mairis would give her transfer—and Shanlun’s selyn—even if he had to chase them around the world to do it.

  There are no certainties in life. There never have been. There never will be.

  She wasn’t sure she was going to like her new life, but it was better than anything she’d ever dreamed; a good reflection of her current self.

  About the Author

  Jacqueline Lichtenberg is a life member of Science Fiction Writers of America. She is the creator of the Sime~Gen Universe with a vibrant fan following (www.simegen.com), primary author of the Bant7am paperback, Star Trek Lives! (which blew the lid on Star Trek fandom), founder of the Star Trek Welcommittee, creator of the genre term Intimate Adventure, winner of the Galaxy Award for Spirituality in Science Fiction with her second novel, Unto Zeor, Forever, and the first Romantic Times Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel with her later book, Dushau, now in Kindle. Her fiction has been in audio-dramatization on XM Satellite Radio. She has been the SF/F reviewer for a professional magazine since 1993. She teaches science fiction and fantasy writing online while turning to her first love, screenwriting, focused on selling to the feature film market. She can be found at her website,

  www.jacquelinelichtenberg.com

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