Channel's Destiny s-5

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Clammy with sweat, he let Owen's field soothe him while he racked his brains for an idea. He had been using his very best imitation of Genfear, enticing Abel with the promise of killbliss. Perhaps Jord . . . ?

  But when Jord moved forward, Abel twisted away, curling himself into fetal position, rejecting them all.

  "Wait!" said Zeth, motioning Jord back and gripping the fields around Abel again so that all the old man would sense would be Zeth's Gen field. He said, "Owen, pretend you're going to give me transfer!"

  Owen nodded, closed his eyes, and instantly the strong bond between them activated. Zeth resisted the temptation, to melt into Owen's control and remained in healing mode, taking his texture from Owen now, instead of doing his rotten imitation of fear. He offered that field to Abel, and the Sime responded, coming willingly back into transfer grip.

  And then something shifted, leaving Zeth gasping in duoconsciousness. The searing tension of need was gone. Abel had not taken transfer, but he was not dead. He was euphoric. "Get Maddok Bron."

  "No!" Zeth cried as if wounded.

  Abel found the strength to move his head in a negative. "He must be shown the truth. God has granted my prayers." He closed his .eyes, resting for a moment. Then he opened them, saying, "God bless you, son." His blissful peace indeed felt like a blessing.

  When Bron entered, Abel let go of Zeth's left arm and held his hand out to the Gen. "Come, Maddok," he said. "See that there is no demon."

  Bron knelt, taking Abel's hand in both of his, looking at the bulging ronaplin glands and dripping wrist orifices with understanding. Then he met Abel's eyes and saw what Zeth and everyone else perceived—peace beyond need. Zeth had never seen death by attrition, but he knew it was never like this. And so did Bron.

  Abel smiled; his eyes crinkled with joy. "You see? God

  would not let me die forsworn, my friend. Forgive my angry words."

  "I forgive you. But, now you must let me—"

  Zeth, holding his show-field in Owen's pattern, felt the moment when Bron also began to entice Abel. Suddenly, he was at war with the Gen for Abel's attention. It lasted only a moment. Abel released Bron's arm and pulled away from his grip, seeking Zeth's tentacles.

  "I choose my channel."

  Zeth bent to make lip contact, expecting now that Abel would draw smoothly to completion. But no sooner had selyn begun to flow than the old reflex clamped down, catching Zeth wholly unprepared. He was shenned out of the contact again, reeling back into Owen's grip.

  When his senses cleared, lord was holding Bron back and Abel was saying, "No, Maddok. I will not risk losing what I have gained. Your prayers must guide you now. Help the channels, Maddok, and let them help you. But most of all, help those who have killed to find out what it is to have no need to kill. It is in ourselves—but it is not in me any longer. Witness, Maddok."

  His laterals, dripping selyn-conducting fluids and trembling of their own eager accord, caressed the minister's fingers as purest joy engulfed Abel's field. The room rang with triumph, echoed and reechoed in every Sime field, and penetrating the Gen nager.

  And then it was gone. Abel was dead. And somehow, Fort Freedom must continue.

  Chapter 11

  Abel Veritt had left his affairs in perfect order, and he had left his community a legacy of ritual to get them through any crisis. The one thing Zeth could not cope with though, was that Abel's will left Fort Freedom's Gens to Zeth, not Rimon. It was a mere technicality—but Zeth could not bring himself to have Slina complete the paperwork.

  The year's turning ceremony, only a few days away, became the memorial service.-Jord Veritt, who always carved the names of martyrs into the Monument in the chapel, began bringing it up to date. Sessly Bron spent hours watching him work—and one day Zeth, hoping that Jord had worked off his emotions in physical labor and could go back to the overcrowded schedule, found Sessly holding Jord while he shook with guilt and sorrow. The last name on the Monument– Abel's—was incomplete, the last letter he had been working on shaky.

  Sessly frowned at Zeth over Jord's shoulder, and continued ' with what she was saying to him. "You'll do it, too, Jord– but you won't die. You're young, and you're a channel. I'll help you. I know you can do it."

  Zeth went quietly away—and within the hour, Jord resumed his duties as a channel, without comment.

  Zeth was too deep into need to feel true grief—he wondered distantly whether he would collapse again as he had when his mother's death hit him after his second transfer. His need nightmares took the form of reliving Abel's death—but they ended in that transcendent joy Abel had known when he found his desire to kill gone. Zeth would wake, clinging to the ecstatic feeling, only to have it burned off by encroaching need.

  His fear of the kill was not nearly so strong—knowing that

  Abel had overcome it made it less the unconquerable creature that he dared not let touch him, lest he be forever contaminated. As a consequence, he began to approach Uel's ability to simulate killbliss.

  His distaste at being around Margid also disappeared—but he didn't know how to let her know it. An apology would hurt her again, when she had enough grief to bear.

  Then on the day he was to have transfer, Zeth woke hours before dawn. He zlinned the house, and found Margid alone in the kitchen. Determined to try to make amends, he got up and went out to the kitchen. She was seated at the table, staring at the china tea container. When Zeth entered, she said, "I was just about to make tea."

  Pouring for Zeth and herself, she sat down, putting the tea container back on the table. "Abel brought me this from Summer Fair," she said, "the year he registered the deed on Fort Freedom. I was pregnant with Hope, we had very few people here, and the town Simes hated us. We could barely scrape together the taxes—and he spent money we couldn't afford to bring me something beautiful."

  She gave Zeth a sad smile. "It was so ugly here. Oh, the hills were just as beautiful as now, but the Fort was a mud hole. The houses were unpainted—it was dreary, and so were we. I tried to accept Abel's teaching that I was still human in spite of being Sime—but I couldn't accept that anyone could really love me. Abel . . . well, he never was very good at saying that with words, no matter how eloquently he spoke about anything else."

  She extended her handling tentacles, protecting the delicate container as she turned it over and over. "Then he brought me this . . . totally frivolous object. A way of saying, if you appreciate beauty, you're human." She sighed, got up, and emptied the tea into the wooden box. Then she carefully washed the china container, dried it, and replaced it on the shelf where it had always stood.

  As Margid stood staring at the container, Zeth came to her, putting his arms around her. She turned, buried her face against his shoulder, and sobbed. "Oh, God, Zeth, I loved him so. What am I going to do?"

  "You'll go on," he said numbly, wondering himself. "We all have to. It's what Abel always did, isn't it?" And he held her until she had let out her grief.

  It was fortunate that Abel's family found other outlets for

  their grief, for the memorial service could not be the healing time that Abel had always made it. When the snow clogged the passes once more, so Maddok Bron could not get home to conduct his own year's turning ceremony, everyone assumed that he would conduct the one in Fort Freedom. Bron himself certainly assumed it—until he let slip that he had not given up his demon theory.

  It was Owen to whom he said it, obviously thinking a fellow Gen would understand. Zeth and Owen had had transfer that morning, and shared their own grief. Then Owen went to the chapel to pray—and encountered Bron.

  Zeth was in Rimon's room, trying to get his father to understand that Abel was dead. If he would only grieve, and realize how much now depended on him, perhaps he would recover. But although Rimon's field made its automatic response to Zeth's, he remained suspended in emotionlessness. Owen entered, closed the door, and leaned against it. Even low-field, he projected a burning frustration too strong for Zeth to bloc
k.

  "What's wrong?" asked Zeth.

  "Maddok Bron," Owen replied. "Zeth, we can't let him conduct the year's turning. He's going to preach about demons again! Why did you ever let him give transfer?"

  "You think I should have let him run around high-field, tempting the juncts?" Actually, that had not been Zeth's motivation at all. After Abel's death, by way of a combined apology for his threats in the chapel hallway and confirming lesson on what transfer really was, he had carefully chosen one of their nonjunct Simes and let Bron give transfer. The strictly supervised session had gone very well. Bron had not bothered Zeth again, and he had thought the problem solved.

  Owen sighed. "No–but you should just have taken his field down. Now he's ready to start exorcising demons."

  "How did he get back onto that again? Surely even a Gen could see that Abel died at peace."

  Ignoring the implied slight, Owen said, "Oh, he saw that, all right. He agrees Abel is a martyr—but remember Abel wouldn't attempt transfer with Bron. Now Bron thinks Abel was still afraid of his demon, and had to die to dispossess himself of it! How many people are capable of making that sacrifice!"

  "If it weren't so serious, it'd be ridiculous," said Zeth.

  "Zeth—it's sacrilege!" objected Owen, and Zeth recalled his friend's deep faith.

  "It's desecration of Abel's memory," Zeth agreed. "Stay with Dad, Owen—I'll put a stop to this."

  Enlisting Uel's help, Zeth confronted Bron. There was no swaying him. "You know I'm right, Zeth. I saw even you almost succumb, remember? If Owen hadn't been there when you were in need, and worried and angry at the same time—"

  "And I suppose," said Hank Steers, who had accompanied Uel, "that you have never regretted words spoken in anger? I'm Gen, too, and I certainly know I have!"

  "I make no claim to perfection, Hank," Bron replied. "I simply act in accord with what God has revealed to me."

  "Well, you're not going to do it at Abel's memorial service!" Zeth said, tears choking his voice.

  "We won't have it," Uel took over. "Abel's wife, his son, his granddaughter will be there. All the people to whom he's been a father. You will not deny everything he stood for."

  "Then I will not conduct the service," Bron said firmly. "I cannot speak other than the truth."

  That left them with no one to conduct the service. Dan Whelan suggested that Hank should be the speaker, but Hank demurred, saying, "I'd just burst into tears and my field would have every Sime in the building in hysterics."

  Then Whelan looked to Owen. To Zeth's surprise, Owen said, "I think I could do it." He flashed Zeth a tight smile, and Zeth thought, I should have volunteered. But that form of leadership was not for him, just as it had not been for his father.

  The ceremony was simple and quiet, a candlelit ritual spanning midnight on the longest night of the year. Owen made no attempt to reproduce Abel's year's turning ceremony. Instead, he spoke of the love he had had for Abel, and why. He told of Abel's inspired decisions—how Owen had been made Zeth's punishment for disobedience, and how the tension thus set up between them had led to his becoming responsible for his own life despite his handicap.

  "Abel Veritt was a man so close to God that such inspirations were everyday occurrences. His steps were guided so that he could guide the steps of others—of Rimon Farris, for example. Abel knew him for what he was before Rimon did. Impossible as it might have seemed a year ago, we are now

  friends with out-Territory Gens. Zeth went to them for help when his home was in danger, and because some instinct drove him to seek me for his changeover. That couldn't have happened without the bond Abel had forged between us.

  "We no longer have Abel to guide us—but his spirit will be with us always. If we mourn now, we mourn for ourselves– for what we have lost with Abel's death. But let us not mourn for Abel Veritt. He taught us that our prayers are always answered, as was his most fervent prayer. All who were there will bear witness for the rest of their lives that Abel Veritt did not die a killer! More—I, a Gen, bear witness before you now that Abel Veritt died having left behind the need to kill!'

  After that, Zeth felt certain that no one could accept Maddok Bron's claims—but apparently there were those, especially among the older, semi-junct Simes left without a religious leader, who found it comforting not to be held responsible for killing. As his parents had always done, Zeth avoided the theological arguments. He got enough of it secondhand from Owen, who was appalled at the growing response to Bron's teachings.

  Furthermore, the junct Simes from town were coming up on their third and fourth transfers without killing—but those who had elected to stay had developed enough respect for Fort Freedom to shun the kill while guests there. They talked longingly of rebuilding their community—but when they came to the channels it would be "Oh, I can manage one more time."

  When Uel, lord, and Marji consulted Zeth, he replied, "But what can we do? Force them to kill?"

  "I don't know," said Jord, "but we'll have a cascade if one of them goes into disjunction crisis and sets off a bunch of the others."

  "What would your father do?" asked Marji.

  Zeth shrugged, and Uel answered, "Probably give them all the best transfers we can, and hope."

  The channels were constantly on the run, their Companions with them, but when Owen would try to make him eat or rest, or use his field to affect Zeth's emotions, Zeth would rebel. "Sometimes I think you really do think you're warding off demons!"

  "I'm only trying to make you take care of yourself," Owen would reply patiently, and Zeth would quell an angry retort. The fact was, only Bekka's artistic schedule juggling

  kept the Gens safe and the Simes satisfied in the close proximity dictated by the unremitting winter.

  The river that marked the border near Del Brick's property froze over for the first time in years—and in weather that in any other year would have kept people huddling in their homes, but was "mild" by this year's standards, Glian Lodge crossed the frozen river along with Eph Norton and his daughter Sue. "To see if we could do it," they explained. "The Border Patrol won't be watching that route and it'll be good for the rest of the winter."

  Owen wanted to spend time with his uncle, and as Zeth dimly understood, with Sue Norton. But only when Owen was too tired to work with Zeth could he leave the grueling schedule. Watching Owen stumble off toward his father's house as Wik joined Zeth in a quick-march to the Deevan house at dawn one day, Zeth determined that one of the buildings that had to have top priority in the spring was a center for channels' functions, such as the New Homestead had been. Then the channels wouldn't have to drag their Companions out in all sorts of beastly weather, going to people's homes.

  When Owen came down with a cold, Zeth mentioned his thoughts at one of the "council sessions," still held around the Veritt kitchen table.

  There was immediate agreement. Zeth realized that he had been accepted as spokesman for the channels, so he continued, "I wish we could find a way now to centralize our work. Every house is full of people, though. We really can't ask people to crowd in the way they did for those few days after the battle, just so we can take a house and—"

  "Zeth." Strangely enough, it was Slina who provided the solution. "Why don't you think what Abel would advise?"

  "Huh?"

  "Right now, he could be here, he'd be tellin' you—use the chapel. Abel'd never've stood for that big insulated room standin' empty all day, if it'd make it easier on people."

  Owen sneezed, and that settled it.

  Centralizing the channels' duties made life much easier. Zeth and Owen had time to spend with Del upon occasion, and Owen to be with Sue. He got over his cold quickly. One midnight, Owen was with Sue when Rimon had another of his hallucinatory seizures—the worst ever. Zeth, a week past turnover, had had to practically force Owen to leave him, and

  now Owen cursed himself for going as he met Zeth at the back of the chapel, where the other channels would not let Zeth into Rimon's room without his
Companion's protection. Del, much closer to need than Zeth, had gone right in, and Zeth was seething.

  Hank and Uel had been with Rimon, who was approaching hard need again, but Bekka had had to pull them out, and so they had left Trina, who had been working all day, to sleep in the room. The practice of alternating channels working with him with Companions sitting with him had become part of Bekka's routine.

  Trina had fallen so deeply asleep that she hadn't wakened until Rimon was out of bed and in the middle of the floor, where he had fallen, crying out for Zeth. By the time his son was allowed in, Uel had the attack under control, and he and Del were lifting Rimon onto the bed.

  Zeth had been hoping that Rimon's getting out of bed was a sign of returning strength—but the moment he came into the room he had the shock of seeing, for the first time in months, his father's hideously burned legs. The wounds, which had showed blackened muscle oozing blood when Zeth had first seen them, now dripped pus and were lined with a webbing of yellow infected tissue. Here and there he could see glistening bone. The skin stretched tightly over the rest of his badly swollen legs appeared dry, and hung loosely ready to fall off around the spreading area of the wounds. The room stank with putrefaction.

  Del carefully laid Rimon down, and helped Marji arrange clean bedclothes so they would not irritate him. "Uel, you've got to do something!"

  "What else can we do? We can't get transfer into him—"

  "When he was just through changeover, nobody could get him to kill, either. Shen it, he's fixated on that memory of killing his cousin! Try some of the techniques his father used on him then."

  "We can't make him kill someone—" Uel began.

  Hank put a hand on his arm. "Tell us, Del. Maybe we can rouse his intil so one of us can give him a good transfer."

  Rimon's field started vibrating again—Uel meshed and tried to stop the fluctuations, but it took Zeth's strength to bring them into line, leaving him dizzy, leaning on Owen. Del winced, saying, "That's an old symptom. Turnover used to bring it on—before Kadi. Why don't you rouse one of