Digen gave himself up to it, knowing that this emotional upsurge was part of the channel’s stock in trade, that he had to experience it fully in order to produce it in the Simes he treated. And it had been so long, so very long, since he could savor this to the full. He was only dimly aware of Im’ran leaving him, of the shower running in the other room, of Im’ran coming back in a fresh coverall. The Gen sat by him for some moments, and finally, when Digen showed no signs of calming, he reached out to touch his arm.
“Digen. Don’t talk, just try to listen to me. I don’t have much time, and there’s no easy way to say this. I wish—oh, God, I wish I didn’t have to do this to you!”
Digen didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to do anything but abandon himself to the luxury of posttransfer syndrome. The real thing, this time, after so many months of stunted reflexes and incomplete reactions.
But Im’ran—instead of encouraging the catharsis—kept on talking in that neutral, therapist’s tone, which Digen began to hate. “I have to tell you now, Hajene Farris, exactly what’s been bothering me all day. But I want you to understand first that I had to keep it from you or it would have ruined the transfer.”
Digen let go of his tenuous hold on the postsyndrome and sat up slowly. “What are you talking about?”
The cool therapist melted before his eyes. “Digen, you’re going to hate me worse than you hate Hajene Hayashi. I don’t know how I’ll live with that.”
Digen frowned, reaching for Im’ran’s hands, the ronaplin still active on the Gen’s skin, giving him deep contact. Im’ran slid his fingers up Digen’s arms, savoring the contact, and then, as if relinquishing forever something infinitely precious, he slid away and stood.
“Digen, this morning I found some doctor from the hospital in Mickland’s office. With a three Gen escort, no less. He told Mickland you had examined that little girl they operated on before the surgery…that you knew she was in changeover and anyhow you left her to be—cut open. Is that true, Digen?”
“Yes. It’s true. She would have died in changeover, Im’.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do,” said Im’ran bleakly. “The law is very specific. The minute you know a child is in changeover, it is your duty to have them brought in-Territory. That’s Tecton law, and it’s binding on you even when you’re out-Territory. There’s no way to contest Mickland’s reprimand. I knew there wouldn’t be.”
“Reprimand?”
Im’ran handed Digen a yellow card. “This was in your box this morning, with your mail. By Controller’s edict, your special transfer privileges have been withdrawn, including your extra month on my therapy list. Since I’m not required here now to treat you, they’re sending me to the islands. I—I can’t—even sit out this postreaction with you. I have a train to catch, right now.”
He backed toward the door a pace or two, but his attention was wholly on Digen, waiting for the concepts to sink in and register.
Digen rose, blankly, stunned and then shook his head in disbelief. “No…no! Mickland can’t do this. Nobody can.” Backing away from Im’ran as if to block his rising hysteria, he said, “You’re sensing fields now, you’re a qualified four-plus. There are maybe three others in the world who can do what you’ve learned to do today! One in a thousand—a hundred thousand—one in a million! I did it, I did that, and now they have no right—You’re mine, God damn it all, mine!”
In that colorless, neutral tone, Im’ran said, “I’m sorry, Digen.” But the mask slipped and his nager shattered on the last syllable. He turned away, face twisted in unformed sobs. He made for the door, but Digen seized him by the shoulders and spun him around. “You lied to me. You deliberately lied to me.”
“No, Digen. I helped you lie to yourself, that’s all. It had to be that way. At least—at least this much we have. I’m one of those few now, and we’re bound to meet again—someday. If you’ll have me.”
Digen picked him up bodily and shook him until the Gen’s teeth rattled. He shook and shook, and his voice rose to a cry, “What kind of Companion are you that you could do this to me?” He was augmenting slightly, taking out all the frustrated impotence on the limp Gen, until finally Im’ran cuffed him roundly on the ears.
Shocked, Digen came to his senses, staring at the Donor. He’d never attacked a Gen before in his life. He wanted to fall on his knees and beg forgiveness. But he couldn’t move. He just stared through a veil of dulled horror until Im’ran, running fingers through his hair, said, “You want me to behave like a Companion in Zeor. But I’m Imil. You and I work together only under the Tecton—and the Tecton doesn’t recognize—personal loyalties except within a House. I’m not in your House, Digen. What shall we do? Disband the Tecton? Run away to the Distect?”
With bitter irony he picked up his jacket and dusted it off in three vicious slaps. “Would you accept the pledge of an oath breaker, Sectuib?”
Digen found it in himself to turn away, to stand stiff and tall, locked against himself, showing only an impassive mask. Then, with unexpected gentleness, Im’ran said, “I was sure that if I didn’t do the transfer this way, you’d die in abort trauma or eventually have an even messier death because of coital deprivation. At least you’re alive. So maybe someday you can find a way to forgive me.”
Forgive me. Digen had begged for trautholo. He had been so sure that he would gladly have paid whatever price was asked of him. He made himself say steadily, “I got one decent transfer, anyway. It was—worth it.”
His own words came back to mock him: At least there’s no danger of orhuen. Oh no, no danger at all. Just an ordinary dependency to be cold-ripped out of him. If it had been orhuen, he’d have a legal claim on Im’ran. They wouldn’t be able to do this to him, disciplinary action or no.
He could feel the Gen behind him, wanting desperately to say something more. The Gen was deep into his own first posttransfer syndrome. It’s our qualification! We have a right to this time. Digen felt about to break down, plead, cry, scream, kill himself—if Im’ran said another word. Without turning, he snarled savagely, “Get out, damn you! Get out while you can!”
He held himself very stiff, eyes closed, until he heard the door close.
Then he flung himself down full length on the lounge, but he could not even weep. Everything inside him was hard, dead, destroyed, and the wall within him was back, as if it had never been breached—as if the transfer had never happened.
Why didn’t he just let me die?
PART II
THE DEPARTURE
What Is a Sime?
When life first came forth, there were one-celled creatures, and then colonies of cells cooperating.
The next big step was the polarization into male and female, adding adaptability, mutability, flexibility, and, above all, an explosive vitality to the biosphere.
The further differentiation into Gen and Sime—energy producers and energy users—is an evolutionary step of the same magnitude as sexual specialization, so far appearing only at the end of the evolutionary chain—humanity.
The vitalizing effect of sexual polarity can function only when male and female join. The value of the Sime~Gen mutation will be evident only when mankind is reunified.
“OUT OF DEATH WAS I BORN—
UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER!”
Muryin Alur Farris
Sectuib in Zeor
CHAPTER SEVEN
DR. LANKH WINS
For hours after Im’ran left, Digen wandered aimlessly through the halls of the Sime Center. When he came to a stairway, he went down because that was easier. When he came to a turn, he went left, for no particular reason. Eventually he came to the second subbasement level, under the cafeteria and above the selyn battery packing plant.
There was only one room on this level, the Memorial to the One Billion. Every Householding had been built around such a room—a remembrance of the countless millions who had died during the fall of the civilization of the Ancients, during the ensuing Sime~Gen wars, during the tho
usand years of chaos and darkness of the human spirit.
Digen found himself in the memorial hall, standing on the inlaid spiral of names, feeling the emptiness of the place. He didn’t bother to turn on the light. There wasn’t much selyn field to see by, but he didn’t want to look at anything anyway.
Here were inscribed the names of the martyrs of all the Householdings, of the Tecton, and those of Westfield, too. He stood on that floor of long dead martyrs and said the words that had been meant to express the responsibility so heavy it claimed his life whether he consented or not. “Out of Death Was I Born….”
He was Sime. He lived because so many Gens—a billion or more—had died under the tentacles of his ancestors. Always before, when he lost his sense of purpose in life, he’d been able to turn to the memorial and its pledge, “Out of Death Was I Born—Unto Zeor, Forever!” When all else failed him, there was always that. The fact of his existence invested him with a certain inalienable responsibility.
But this time it didn’t work.
He stood alone in the dark cavern beneath the Sime Center, a duplicate of the Memorial of Zeor, and stubbornly said the words over and over, trying to flog their magic to life within him. “Out of Death Was I Born—Unto Zeor, Forever!” But they didn’t rekindle the spark of vitality in him.
Only one thought came to him: No wonder it doesn’t work. I’m only an imitation Sectuib. I’ve never properly received Zeor. I don’t even know what it means to receive Zeor. And under it all, like a litany: Why didn’t he just let me die—die—die.
He hadn’t felt like this since he’d come out of his injury to be told that his family had died.
After a time, the huge double doors opened a crack. A Sime registered startlement. The door opened wider to admit—Jesse Elkar.
“Digen?” He came into the hall, his nager coruscating off the walls, then moderating in deference. “Digen? I’m sorry—you didn’t have the ‘occupied’ light on. I didn’t know there was anybody in here—Digen?”
Digen tried to ignore him, knowing custom would force him to go away. But, perversely, his concentration was shattered, his meditation ended spontaneously. You see, he thought, I can’t even hold a simple focus.
“I guess I didn’t turn the sign on. It’s not your fault, Jesse.”
“They’ve been paging you all over the building for hours. There’s somebody in your office—from out-Territory, something-or-other-unpronounceable Hogan—terribly anxious because you’re overdue at the hospital.”
At Elkar’s urging, Digen let himself be put on the service elevator that came out near the back door of his office. He found Joel Hogan pacing restlessly.
“Digen! Where have you been? Branoff and Thornton are about ready to can you! Come—” He broke off, frowning. “What-what’s the matter?”
Digen became aware that he’d been staring at the Gen listlessly.
“Didn’t you get your transfer?” asked Hogan.
“Oh.” Digen felt obliged to reassure his friend. “Sure. I’m fine.”
“Well then, what’s the matter?”
Digen’s will, paralyzed since the moment Im’ran had walked out on him, finally came to life, flooded by the pain of conscience.
“Nothing,” he said dully. Then, shaking himself, he repeated, “Nothing at all.” He wiped his sweaty hands on his coverall, suddenly noticing he was dressed in Sime Center uniform. “Ten minutes while I shower and change—can’t turn up for work all grubby and used. Who’s covering for us? I owe them some time.”
In the days that followed Im’ran’s departure, Digen avoided the little glade on the hill. He used the front doors to go from building to building, telling himself that winter was coming and the back way would soon be impassable with snow and ice.
But he didn’t like parading through the Sime Center’s front door every morning wearing hospital whites and retainers. There was always a crowd of out-Territory Gens waiting to donate selyn to the channels or waiting at the accounting windows for their donation payments. He found himself more and more reluctant to return to the Center after a night’s work on the emergency ward.
Then one day Mora Dyen cornered him in his office, and, remembering his promise to Im’ran, he talked with her, a discussion that went on for hours, and then, in disjointed snatches, for days.
Mora took to making sure Digen consumed enough basic nutrients to replace worn-out cells and keep his electrolyte balances just right. She also made sure he got a good sleep at least every other day. And bit by bit his system rebounded to normal function. He began to believe he had merely suffered a perfectly normal posttransfer depression.
Soon he was walking through the Sime Center’s front doors on the balls of his feet, bidding a cheery good morning to the lines of waiting Gens, many of them with lunchboxes in hand, on their way to work.
It was bravado and he knew it. One day he caught himself ostentatiously stripping off retainers in front of a group of nervous Gens waiting their turn. The lines were moving—Gens coming and going in a steady stream—and he was causing an eddy in the traffic.
Disgusted with himself, the next morning he made himself use the back trail to the little glade where he and Im’ran had spent so many restorative hours. He sat against his favorite rock and let the sun creep over his toes, summoning one of the Zeor exercises he’d learned even before changeover.
As he relaxed each set of muscles in turn, clearing his mind of all the distracting chatter of worded thoughts, he became more and more aware of one central emotion—like a steady clarinet tone hidden within the voices of a symphony orchestra, emerging as each instrument fell silent around it.
He knew he had been playing the orchestra of his daily thoughts louder and louder to drown out that steady emotional note. In the quiet of the glade. where he had come closest to Im’ran, he knew it for what it was. I miss him.
But there was more to it than that. Hundreds of Donors had passed through Digen’s life, there one month, gone the next. That was the Tecton way, to prevent deep personal ties from forming between channel and Donor, to prevent any shadow of dependency that would keep them from working smoothly with whoever was available. That was the best way, the only way, to run the Tecton.
But there in the little glade on the path from the hospital to the Sime Center, Digen found himself rebelling, for the first time in his life. It’s wrong.
Next transfer—without Im’, without any Gen capable of breaking a dependency for me….
He knew what was in store for him. They were setting up to double monitor—Mora Dyen and Cloris Agar. They’d get the selyn into him, over or through his reflexes, this time, next time, the time after, however long it took for the dependency to simply fade away. It wasn’t an orhuen. It would fade. But Digen still couldn’t help feeling that it was wrong. Im’ran should not have been sent away.
Digen had done his best for Thornton’s niece, and as punishment for that the Tecton had taken away the one and only source of strength in his life. Is it so much to ask, an hour or two of his time every couple of months? Haven’t I earned that?
But Digen knew he’d violated Tecton law with the girl. The punishment, by Tecton scales, was just. Discipline had to be maintained. Society could not tolerate anarchy. It had to be that way. Better a few should suffer—even die—because of inflexible laws than that all should die for lack of law.
It had been many years since Digen had been punished. It was almost a new experience for him. But he came out of it with new insights, rededicated to his oaths and vows. Follow the law scrupulously and the Tecton will never let you down.
One afternoon shortly after coming to terms with the loss of Im’ran and his bleak prospects for the future, he went to the hospital to find Hogan in their room, wrapping a present in gay ribbons. Digen closed the door behind him and set down the bundle of laundry and the package of ronaplin culture dishes from the center’s shaking plague screening lab.
Because of an isolated case of shaking plague th
at Digen had found at the hospital, the Center screening lab had doubled its routine culturing of all channels’ ronaplin secretions to four times daily—so Digen had to do one each night at the hospital.
Shaking plague was one of the rare diseases vectored from Sime to Gen and Gen to Sime only. A Sime could catch it only from a Gen’s skin. A Gen could catch it only from a Sime’s lateral tentacles. Thus, the Tecton was wide open to epidemics of the killer disease via the hundreds of Gens a channel could infect every day.
Stripping off his retainers, Digen separated the laundry, asking Hogan, “Whose birthday?”
“Little girl over in pediatrics. Lankh’s got his clutches on the parents and the poor kid doesn’t get any visitors because of it. Dr. Muskar diagnosed kidney disease, but Lankh says it’s a prechangeover syndrome, so they’re not even treating the kidney disease. Damn all internists!”
Hogan finished tying the bow with a flourish, and said, absently gathering things into his pockets, “I’m glad you’re back. I’ve only got a few minutes, so if I’m late you can cover for me, all right?”
“You going to take that over right now?”
“Well, a birthday present is best when it’s your birthday—or don’t they celebrate birthdays in-Territory?”
“Hmm,” said Digen. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just come along with you.” He snapped his retainers shut and gathered a few things he’d have to have on duty.
Hogan paused by the door. “Lankh lays eyes on you, and you’ll be in big trouble.”
“He forbade me to follow Skip, not this one.” Digen grabbed a clean jacket and followed Hogan. “And I check on Skip every day anyhow.”
“True,” said Hogan. “All right. But we have to hurry.”
In the farflung pediatrics building, they threaded their way through the back corridors to an isolated wing. “This is Lankh’s territory. His lab is back down that way. You sure you want to come?”
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