The Donor laughed gently, apparently oblivious to the gathering post-syndrome storm. “My name is Kuri Diza, a First, as you’ve guessed. I know your name and I’ve read your chart. Serving your Qualification Transfer was an honor and a privilege.”
“Qualifying—transfer?” Suddenly the storm of grief, remorse, loss, and failure just dissipated. “I Qualified Second?”
Kuri and the monitors filled the room with a joyous happiness that left no doubt he had. Kuri said, “Yes, definitely a Second. Saelul will have to evaluate you tomorrow to zlin what really happened, and why, and see what we can do for you next. There was nothing in the development session that could have triggered this. The program calls for at least one more transfer before you could reach this point. I guess talent always provides surprises.”
While Kuri spoke, he brought some trin tea over from the sideboard. Sometime during all this, the monitors had finished their work and departed, leaving Vret with another Post-assignment card that did not have Ilin Sumz designated as his partner.
Internally and externally pulverized, emotionally whipsawed from total failure to complete triumph, he didn’t think he could perform at all. But he’d underestimated what transfer with a First could do to him.
Chapter Eighteen
FARRIS SCREENING
The following day he began to emerge from the whirlwind of euphoria and disbelief.
The world had changed drastically. Everything was brighter, sharper edged, and people were more complex, hiding layers within layers. Everything around him seemed to move too slowly, to splash nageric noise in swirling fountains of emotion with jagged peaks of Need mixed with other people’s rich pungency of sexual attraction.
He broke a door knob and two tea glasses before he understood that the world had become a delicate place.
He arrived at Saelul Farris’s office in the administration building three minutes early for his appointment for his first Farris Screening as a Second. The building was insulated for the Farris sensitivity, the exterior walls opaque to Sime senses, and the interior partitions barely allowing a Farris to sense the existence of others in the building.
To his new Second Order senses, the Farris shielding was as solid and impenetrable as it had ever been to his Third Order awareness.
But he didn’t even have to touch the door signal before Saelul Farris opened the door to his office to greet him. “Hajene Vret McClintock. Come in. We have a great deal to accomplish this afternoon.”
The Farris nager still seemed like solid granite but now, just like granite the surface of the Farris showfield was decorated with perceptible structures, colors, details that Vret had never zlinned before. He fell into studying the effect without realizing it.
An inordinate amount of time passed, perhaps two and a half minutes, and Saelul had seated himself behind his desk, waiting until Vret emerged from fugue like a First Month student still playing with his brand new tentacles.
Embarrassed, Vret moved to the seat Saelul had gestured him toward. The office was huge, built in an L shape, with a small treatment room in the short arm of the L.
The carpet before the desk showed signs that chairs were sometimes ranked there, and perhaps another table for larger meetings. The window behind the desk looked out on a courtyard with a fountain and lush greenery such as one never saw in the desert. There were sliding doors to one side leading to that garden.
The Farris zlinned him. Once again, Vret felt that searching, soul-reaming, total invasion all the way to his bone marrow. It didn’t feel different than the first time, when he’d been a Third late for class. But this time, he zlinned back. It didn’t do him any good. He couldn’t get through the surface of the Farris showfield.
At length, Saelul sighed. “So tell me, Vret, how did you first get involved with the secret boards?”
Cold needles of utter dread washed over his skin and his vision went black around the edges. He had to force himself to draw a breath. “Secret...boards?”
“Yes, and posting a story too. I like the nickname you chose for yourself, Asymmetric. Nice ring to it. Good story you wrote, too.”
“Th-thank you.”
The failure Vret remembered feeling just as he had accepted death washed over him. It was all over. Now he’d never get an out-Territory license, never become a Troubleshooter.
“How did you get involved to begin with?”
“A friend who knew I was failing History told me a password. Said there was this terrific story I ought to be reading, but you have to sign a pledge of secrecy to get at it. If I’d known it was about history, I’d never have looked it up.”
“Says here you failed that exam several times.”
“Yes, I had to have a tutor.” Oh, why did I mention Ilin? “I thought history was boring.”
“So what have you learned from that experience?”
“Learned?” His mind was paralyzed by the whirlpool of emotions. “History isn’t boring. And it’s not irrelevant to the things happening today. It matters.”
“Good.” Saelul made a note on the form before him. “So what about history matters the most?”
The Farris was zlinning again. Vret made an effort and dropped his showfield, feeling like he’d just stripped naked before an enemy. “Unity. How and why it came about, but mostly what it cost, why it’s so precious.”
“And what about the Secret Pens? That terrible blot on the honor of the Tecton?”
“It was the only way. And lying about it was the only way. The Secret Pens and the lie were the price of Unity that makes it so incredibly, irreplaceably precious. Those people lived in a hard world and they became hard. They could do it. But we could never do it again.”
Lacing fingers and tentacles together, Saelul rested his chin on his knuckles with all his attention focused on Vret. “You’ve heard of the rash of intil incidents across this campus?”
Vret assented with his nager, making no effort to hide his alarm at the question.
“Is there any connection between them and the stories you’ve been reading?”
“Could be. After you explained how riding waves of intil, using our programmed leisure time to arouse intil instead of resting from it, could actually damage the hardening of anti-kill conditioning, well, I took the whole problem a lot more seriously.”
“And knowing that, you concocted a plan to hide the involvement of several dozen people? On your own recognizance?”
“Who told you that?”
“I protect my sources, just as you protect yours.”
You’re not going to admit you’re a telepath, are you?
But the Farris merely blinked solemnly and went on. “You do realize that young channels in First Year are especially vulnerable, that the careful program of development here at Rialite has been undermined for these people, that many of them will never obtain an out-Territory license now because of these stories?”
Now he’s getting to his point. I’ve been blacklisted.
Since it was too late for him, Vret figured he’d have his say and take the consequences. “Yes, I know some readers were compromised. But I wanted to protect the careers of those channels who had been involved but not affected like that. I learned from those stories just how potent the lure of Killbliss can be, and I decided that because that lure is so gripping, so undeniable even to non-junct channels, the Tecton with all its harsh practices is the only way to Unity—and Unity is the only way for humankind to survive.”
The Farris made another long note on his form.
Vret couldn’t stand the silence. “The Tecton can’t afford to lose the full strength of a few dozen channels just because dozens of other channels had their anti-kill conditioning impaired.”
“And it’s your judgment to make—what the Tecton can and can’t afford?”
Well, all is lost anyway, why not? “If it’s not my judgment to make, then whose judgment is it? I learned from those stories that each and every one of us, Sime, Gen, renSime, channel—is p
ersonally responsible for the course of history, for the fate of all of us together. It’s not that it isn’t my place to decide what the Tecton can or can’t afford—it’s that it’s not my place to not make this choice.
“Hajene Farris, I dare not refuse to do what must be done, not with my knowledge of the price that has been paid by my ancestors so that I can live. I will accept the consequences of my decisions without protest.”
For a long time, for a very, very long time, the Farris just sat there staring at his notes, still as a granite statue both physically and nagerically. Vret again became convinced the Farris could hear him thinking.
“Hajene McClintock, why do you think you Qualified Second on this transfer?”
Suddenly worried, Vret answered, “Because Sosu Diza said so?”
A small smile flicked across the Farris lips. “Oh, you did Qualify. What caused that to happen prematurely? What caused your Second barrier to collapse?”
“The Accelerated Development program?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think like a channel. Analyze it. You’ve spent a lot of your time lately fighting intil spikes caused by reading those stories during what should have been your rest periods. For you, that has strengthened your vriamic control. You’ve spent a lot of your time imagining yourself living in the semi-junct world, facing the kinds of channel’s functionals the other students here won’t face until a year or two after they leave. Because of those stories, you’ve been exercising your systems in ways we—don’t recommend in First Year. As a result, your development ran about a month ahead of schedule.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re going to have to live with the consequences.”
“Yes.”
Saelul made another note on his form. “What do you think we should do with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what the options are. I’ve always had my sights set on a career as a Troubleshooter for the World Tecton. I never looked at what a channel with such a blemished record could expect.”
“Blemished record. You could put it that way. So you think we should consign you to an in-Territory Center in the back of nowhere and forget about you.”
The image of such a life sprang full blown into his mind. It was a horror he had been unable to contemplate for so long the reality of it was paralyzing. “You should put me where I can do the Tecton the most good with the least risk of damage.”
“Regardless of how you feel about the assignment?”
“Regardless of how I feel about the assignment, yes.”
“I see.”
Again the Farris zlinned him deeply. Vret did his best to keep his showfield dormant and his barriers quiescent.
“So, if you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?”
Vret hadn’t thought of it that way before. “Nothing. If I hadn’t signed onto the boards to read those stories, I wouldn’t know what I know now. If I hadn’t tried to help the innocent protect their careers with the Tecton, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. If I knew how you found out about it anyway, then maybe I’d know what I shouldn’t have done.”
Smiling, Saelul made another note. “Maybe someday you will know. So, then, I have your permission to use you for the good of the Tecton and ignore your personal wishes?”
“Yes.”
“And you still believe you must act on your own judgment for the good of the Tecton?”
“Yes.” Mentally he was already packing.
“And you do understand the content of this interview is not to be discussed with anyone, student or faculty.”
“Yes.” Well, nobody else ever discussed what went on in a Farris Screening. He’d always assumed it was just a deep zlinning.
The Farris pulled a folder out of the stack on his desk. He tapped it on the desk to align the papers within, and handed it over, thumping it with one tentacle. “Here’s your course schedule for the remainder of your year here.” He stood up, ushering Vret toward the door.
Stunned, Vret found himself out in the corridor with the door closing behind him. The door opened again, and the Farris said, “Oh, and I don’t ever want to hear about you being late for class again.”
Opening the folder to find a list of Second Order courses, three of them labeled for out-Territory License Requirements, and one on exercising of authority in the absence of a supervisor’s orders, he didn’t dare let himself be happy.
Chapter Nineteen
GRADUATION DAY
Two months later, Ilin Sumz graduated and left Rialite on the train that had just brought new students. As far as she knew—or admitted—there had been no repercussions from the secret boards to any of their chosen innocents. Vret wasn’t so sure, but as far as he knew all of them were going about their academic tracks in the most routine ways.
As much as he’d wanted to be there for her graduation, Vret could only pause on his way between classes to watch the brief ceremony on the concrete platform and wave as she boarded the train. He already missed her.
They had been assigned to each other for post-syndrome, and it had worked out beautifully—the best ever for Vret. As a Second while she was still a Third, he’d been able to prevent the kind of feedback they’d experienced before, even though both of them had been horribly torn over the inevitable parting.
“You’ll be graduating in another month. Maybe we can find a way to get together then.”
“That would be a rare accident,” Vret had replied while his heart was breaking. And they said goodbye again, all night long. It wasn’t enough.
Four weeks later, Vret stood with his class on that same concrete train platform, resplendent in his new working channel’s uniform, a small carry-bag at his feet and the sun twinkling on his new Tecton ring.
He hadn’t heard a word of the faculty speeches. In his hand was a folder with his first assignment for the Tecton, and it was an appointment to the Troubleshooters Training school in Heartland Territory—out-Territory. His out-Territory license nested in his pocket next to a letter from Ilin giving her new address as that same Troubleshooters school.
The ceremony broke up, and the class headed for the train but Vret circled around to corner Saelul Farris one more time. He waved the folder at the Farris. “Why? What did I do to deserve this?”
“I thought you weren’t going to complain about where the Tecton sent you.”
“I’m not complaining—just confused.”
The Farris relented, showfield softening. “You acted on your own recognizance to solve the problem created by Blissdrip’s postings to the secret boards. If you’re going to insist on behaving that way...the Tecton is going to use that predilection to maximum advantage.
“You will be trained to make such judgments when lives and careers depend on your being right. Once you have completed that training and gained a few years experience in the field, you will have the chance to attain the authority to act for the Tecton. In the meantime, the Tecton would be best served if you rein in your eagerness to protect the Tecton from itself—just temporarily, you understand.”
“Thank you,” said Vret not sure if he was thanking the Farris for the explanation or for sending him to training.
He gathered courage to ask Saelul if he was a telepath but just then the train began to move. He turned and ran, just catching the last car and swinging aboard as the door was closing. He was still unsure if he was being rewarded or punished. But he did know that Saelul Farris didn’t want him to change the way he did things.
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 Bantam 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
And can be followed on...
twitter.com/jlichtenberg
facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg
friendfeed.com as jlichtenberg
Personal Recognizance (Sime~Gen, Book 9) Page 14