Personal Recognizance (Sime~Gen, Book 9)

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “So it was a Killmode attack, wasn’t it?” Vret’s voice sounded hoarse in his own ears and he wasn’t sure he was hearing everything the Farris was saying.

  “Yes,” answered Saelul bluntly.

  “It was very—different.” It was very horrible.

  “Yes,” intoned Saelul Farris and the ambient throbbed with sadness.

  “I have a question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Can experiencing intil spikes or living constantly on the edge of intil, even when not in Need, undermine a channel’s internal stability?”

  “Yes, though the effect is negligible on the fully mature non-junct a year after the anti-kill conditioning transfer.”

  “Does undermined stability like that make a young channel more vulnerable to the Kill reflex?”

  “Yes.”

  Vret compressed his lips over the confession he wanted to blurt out.

  “I see where this is leading,” said the Farris, and Vret froze, once again resisting the certainty that his mind was being read.

  “Vret, everything we do for you here at Rialite, every rule and every frustrating bit of tedium, is specifically designed to bring you to your own inner strength and stability. We inculcate the strongest possible inner defense against that kill reflex—which isn’t a “Kill” reflex at all, but a personal survival reflex.

  “As you can’t suffocate by voluntarily holding your breath—you will breathe when you pass out—you can’t deny yourself selyn until you die of attrition—you will take it regardless of the consequences to anyone. There can be no guilt in that, except the failure to avoid the situation.

  “We design each student’s schedule to provide opportunities to encounter intil stimulating conditions interspersed with points of rest from such stimulation. That’s why you are required to spend time alone in your room each day, resting from such stimulation.

  “Each student’s schedule is tailored to push their physical systems into the maximum development while seating and reinforcing the anti-kill conditioning.

  “The Accelerated Development track is carefully metered to each student’s abilities, stressing the developing systems to make them stronger, not to break them. What happened to Iric Chez was not his failure, but that of his escort. They did not protect him quickly enough from the shattered ambient.

  “You may rest assured that if you choose to continue in Accelerated Development, you will not be driven beyond your personal limits, and in your vulnerable moments, you will be protected, the more so from the lesson we’ve learned from the Chez incident. You will leave Rialite having attained your maximum resistance to Gen pain and fear.”

  So minds can be misread. But it was the information he’d wanted...dreaded. Just reading the Killroom stories could do serious damage to a First Year channel’s systems.

  The Farris zlinned him again, lightly, then cast a smile into the ambient dispelling the gloom. “I think you will come to assimilate this shock and move on quickly. However, there is an obligatory procedure in these cases.”

  Vret sat up straighter and waited anxiously.

  “For the next week, you will attend a therapy session daily. You will talk about your experience, and how it might be affecting your thinking and responses during the day, and dreams and sleep patterns at night. You will watch some films and discuss them. At the end of a week, I’ll assess the reports and we’ll see where you go from there.”

  At a shift in the ambient that seemed to dismiss him, Vret rose. “I’m sorry I disappointed you, Hajene Farris.”

  “Oh, you haven’t done that, Vret. Not yet. It’s nearly midnight, so I believe your Post Assignment appointment is waiting for you.” He checked with the other channels. “We did tell her midnight?”

  “Yes, Hajene,” said one of them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  POST TRANSFER

  Keeping his post assignment appointments, doing almost without augmentation, adding the therapy sessions to his schedule and catching up on his course work left Vret in a mad scramble for the next three days.

  Oddly, he caught up easily. There were times when it seemed like the world around him was standing still. He seemed to have plenty of time to read and think through what he was learning. And everything was interesting, even the therapy. Chez hadn’t mentioned that affect from the Development track exercise.

  But the more time he had, the more he tried to do. He kept dreaming up schemes to determine once and for all if Kwotiin had been reading his mind, or was just a good guesser.

  Either way, they couldn’t afford to let administration get a hint of Blissdrip’s activities. Unless we have to tell them. And he knew they’d be better off to tell them before they found out by themselves.

  In the therapy sessions, he never mentioned the Secret Boards, but somehow, as they covered the ground over and over again, probed and poked at how he felt about what had happened, he came to believe that if Chez had been driven over the edge by reading Killroom, it wasn’t Vret’s fault, but there might be some responsibility he carried, simply because he suspected the involvement.

  At any rate, Chez had been sent to a facility that could provide the closely supervised therapy he needed, and all anyone would tell him was that Chez was going to be fine, too. Joran Nah appeared on campus again, foot in a cast, and nager gleaming brighter than the sun though he was very low field indeed.

  Vret worked on ideas for finding Blissdrip via his transfer schedule and assuming he was in this Accelerated Development track. But reviewing the Killroom episodes by posting date, it just didn’t correlate, so he gave up that idea.

  Twice he saw Ilin in the distance, racing as fast in one direction as he was speeding in another. And once he saw her with a tall, stocky Gen who couldn’t keep his hands off her. He didn’t blame the Gen at all.

  The third time, he saw her she veered from her course and paused just long enough to pant, “There have been eight more intil incidents and administration is hushing it up. See you in the cactus garden tomorrow at noon!”

  “I’ll be there!”

  And she took a long pull on the bottle of water slung from her waist and was off at a mad dash just short of augmenting.

  He crashed down from his idyllic cloud back into the harsh reality that if he didn’t solve this problem soon, they would have to confess. His post-reaction was over. Blissdrip wasn’t just a distant intellectual threat anymore. He was an immediate and terrifying menace.

  Vret had grunted and groaned his way through the torture they called development clinging to the thought that this would get him into the Troubleshooters’ training program and into a really great and interesting career.

  But he’d lose it all if he couldn’t solve this problem. And he was out of ideas. Nothing he’d tried had worked.

  The following day he rushed through his Augmentation Lab work even though he hardly got to augment any other time. He had read the textbook material for the lab the previous night, but not carefully. He had squeezed out half an hour to catch up on six days of Blissdrip’s latest posts.

  As a result of not paying attention to his textbook reading, when he raced around the circular track tossing heavy objects this way and that, he barely managed to identify selyn consumption rates, and wasn’t always able to identify his own augmentation level. His trainer did seem to note each of his failures, too. Vret did a little better when observing the other students in the class, but not better enough. Still by the time class was over, he thought he was getting the hang of the nomenclature.

  He rushed through his shower and headed for the cactus garden at noon. He had a good ninety minutes until his lunch appointment, He didn’t want to be late because he would be meeting his next Donor there and wanted to make a good impression.

  Ilin was waiting as he jogged up to the bench where they always met. The sun was fierce, but the air so dry he wasn’t even sweaty as he dropped onto the bench beside her. “Oh, it’s good to see you!”

  Her nager fla
red rosy pleasure and she smiled. He’d lived to see that smile again. “I searched but couldn’t find any mention of the intil incidents you heard about.”

  She sobered. “I know. They’re keeping it very quiet but Vret, this morning the incidents spread to the First Year renSimes. According to Morry, the renSimes shouldn’t be able to get at our boards at all, even if someone gave them the sign-on password.”

  He hitched over a little closer to her, basking in her nager. “I’m all out of ideas. If we had a lot more time, maybe I could come up with something.” He told her about Chez’s incident, just hitting the high points despite her nageric spikes of concern and curiosity. “So he’s in therapy somewhere, and might just have to tell all at some point. So as it stands, I think we have to give ourselves up and ask for the administration’s help to put a stop to this. This isn’t the way I wanted to handle it, but there doesn’t seem to be much choice if the incidents are spreading, and somehow the First Year renSimes are reading these boards.”

  “We don’t even know for sure that Blissdrip’s—or my—postings are causing these intil incidents,” she countered. She outlined what he had told her had happened to Chez, point by point, arguing that he had no indication that the Secret Boards had actually been a causative factor.

  “But Morry passed on one more alarming bit of news this morning which makes me think Iric Chez may have had to discuss the Secret Boards in therapy already.”

  There was a long silence, and he felt her attention gathering and centering on him. His nager responded of its own accord, and Blissdrip was not what he wanted to discuss. But at last he had to ask, “What was that news?”

  “Oh.” She shook herself and slid a little closer to him. “There was an investigator touring the computer center last night. Well, Morry thinks it was an investigator. It was a Farris Gen who works at the Infirmary. Maybe you know her. Dosry Farris ambrov Inna. Morry says she asked for usage data and seemed to know what she was looking at. He thinks they suspect something about the secret boards. He wants to close them all down tonight. I told him I’d talk to you. Vret, he’s serious.”

  “We have to confess this afternoon then. Closing down the boards would just leave us with absolutely no way of identifying individuals who have been deeply disturbed—maybe even compromised—by all this. You’ve seen some of the comments on Killroom. Iric was talking just like that before this happened.”

  Her nager darkened to a bleak anguish. “Ever since Killroom started there’s been this huge schism developing among the readers and even the other writers. And most of the new people are blatantly in favor of Blissdrip’s approach. They view it as innocent and realistic—but it’s not at all innocent, even though it might be the most accurate and realistic account I’ve ever found.

  “The official historical record is such romanticized nonsense. But this—this exaltation of the Kill, this idea people have been discussing the last few days that somehow owning Gens satisfies Sime instinct...Vret, this is dangerous stuff....”

  “I haven’t read that discussion. I don’t think I want to! And neither do most of the people who were on the boards before Blissdrip.”

  “We really shouldn’t say that name out loud.”

  She always said that, either out loud or nagerically whenever he mentioned the name. “There’s nobody around.” And it was true. The paths were deserted.

  The ambient was still and peacefully silent—and private. He put his arm around her waist and waited to see how she’d react. His thoughts filled with the lessons taught him by his post-assignment instructors who had been channels. He knew just what to do with a channel. He let his showfield caress hers with just a slight fluttering like the beginnings of a kiss.

  She snuggled into the curve of his arm. With effort, she said, “I have a class at two, but I’ll be free at four this afternoon. You shouldn’t have to go confess this. You didn’t start the secret boards, I did. You didn’t write Aunser, I did. I’ll go and—”

  “I’ll go with you. I bet Morry will want to come too.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that? They’ll send us all away from Rialite—probably to separate places—to finish training. If they’ll even license us at all after this.”

  “It’s the end of what would have been lovely careers. But if they’re already suspicious, or if Iric has told them anything to make them suspect the boards exist, we’re better off getting it all out in the open now. And you’re not going into this alone. Until Blissdrip came along, the Secret Boards really were innocent good fun with some historical facts neglected in the textbooks. It was only a little bit beyond what the rules allowed for student boards.”

  “The facts on the Secret Pens are varnished over for a good reason, you know. All the information is in the historical record—it’s just made so dry, factual and impersonal it’s too boring to learn. I tried to bring it to life. But to do that I had to get into The Kill and what it meant to people, and how they coped with Killing their own children. That’s not stuff to study during First Year—that’s obvious to me now. Iric has to be an exception. He just has to be.”

  “You were only exploring how it might really have happened.”

  In a very small voice, she said, “No, I think Blissdrip is telling it like it really did happen. Vret, the Tecton is such an accident. It should never have happened—logically, it should never have survived—couldn’t survive. When you understand how accidents created it, you see how fragile it was—and still is. If it really did happen the way Blissdrip tells it,—what if people start yearning for the good old days? For real.”

  “That couldn’t happen!”

  “Oh yes it could. People don’t consider that getting what they want out of life just for themselves, personally, could affect the course of history. But it does. It has. And it will. I should never have started this!”

  “History has always been your favorite thing. This isn’t your fault. Someone let Blissdrip onto the secret boards—and that is the person to blame. Or maybe Blissdrip himself. But this isn’t about blame, this is about preventing a Kill on this campus. I’ll meet you at four at Rimon’s statue. Tell Morry to meet us there.”

  “Morry’s in a class now. I’ll talk to him before my class.” She turned to him. “What I regret the most is—not seeing you again. Not zlinning you again. They’ll separate us this afternoon. I know they will.”

  He dropped his showfield and let his primary field engulf her, gradually focusing his attention here...then there...then all the way down there...and murmured the invitation that had been sizzling in his veins for three days, “We have a little time now.”

  Her eyes closed and he felt her relaxing and accepting his attention, felt the wash of pleasure that reached out to capture him. It was better than he’d ever dreamed.

  Laughing, she broke off, and leaped up. “Lelange Hall Private Lounges three or four, whatever’s open.” And she raced off under lowest augmentation, calling, “Hurry!”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he was after her, laughing as he ran but careful not to augment, saving his ration for later. The Lelange Hall private lounges were where couples went to be alone. As they wound through campus, only a few people took notice, and they all pretty much figured what the two running channels were up to.

  Ilin kept tossing little glances over her shoulder while zlinning her footing, then zlinning him while she watched her step. Vret zlinned the path and watched her body move.

  He could have caught her, he realized. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to watch her run. It was embarrassing how much he wanted to watch her run—and how precisely everyone who passed knew that.

  They plunged into the corner door of Lelange Hall and raced around the corridors, up the stairs to the mezzanine, and around to the private lounges. It was cool in the building and pleasant in the lounges. Number three was vacant, and they shut the door behind them.

  There was plenty of space, a nice wide bed, a shelf full of clean sheets. He didn’t notice w
hat all else. Books, clothes, everything went into a heap on a bench and he brought her down onto the bed feeling like the most important man who had ever lived.

  Distantly, he knew that he was feeling her regard for him, possibly even something she’d learned to do for men. He gave her something he’d learned, that she had redefined the concept beauty for him.

  She writhed beneath him. “Oh, that’s wonderful! But let’s just do this—you and me.”

  And she did something he knew she hadn’t learned in post training. Her nager, showfield and primary, erupted into a burbling foam of bubbles of joy. Here and there he zlinned a touch of dark dread lurking at the edges. But she shoved all that aside and gave him her joy.

  He let it kindle a grin in his nager, turning the cells of his body into happiness. He sank down around her, investigating every curve, worshipping her hair, her eyebrows, her ears and finding her lips waiting for him.

  In perfect sync, they plunged hypoconscious.

  All at once, there existed only touch, her skin a silken caress against his thighs, her tongue moist and smooth—hot within his mouth, her breath scented with cinnamon.

  He slid down to explore her breasts, now taking his cues from her breathing. He knew he was hypoconscious. He knew he was not zlinning. Yet some cells deep in his body were wide open to what she was feeling. When she felt it, he felt it. When she didn’t, he didn’t.

  He ran his hands up her sides, around her back, kneading the hard muscles between her shoulders and at the base of her neck with his handling tentacles.

  She moaned, and leaned back into his grip, moving her handling tentacles on his lower back probing at the tense spots, then lower still, urging him closer.

  He moved up to kiss her closed eyelids ever so gently. He followed his inner urging, caressing her shoulders with his lips, finding the hollow at the base of her neck, the peak of her chin, and her lips.