Unto Zeor, Forever

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

“I don’t want to sleep—I’m through being sick. I want to run and dance in the sun.”

  Digen nodded. “But first…” he said, and drew her toward the door. Turning his attention back to the world, he suddenly noticed the low level turmoil in the other room, realizing it had been going on for some time. Hayashi shouldn’t be exposed to anything like that!

  Digen grabbed up his coverall and stepped into it. The underlining had been torn, somehow, in their struggles, and the zipper jammed on the edge of the torn fabric. He worked it loose while stepping into his shoes and walking toward the door. Still zipping the coverall, he opened the door with two tentacles and stepped into the outer room, Ilyana also dressing at his side.

  The first thing Digen noticed was that Hayashi, still unconscious, had been moved to the bed. But Digen’s alarm at this evaporated when he saw Mora and Joel working with the IV setup and the more ordinary bonemarrow stimulants and transcutaneous nutriment packs, panspectrum antibiotics, and precision field management.

  With that worry off his mind, Digen’s attention went to the tight knot of arguing people in the middle of the room. Phrases had come to him as he opened the door. “…Doesn’t matter what he’s done, you don’t shen a channel….” “…No question he’s guilty, problem is he’s the Sectuib….” “…When this gets out, if we don’t take immediate action.…” “…But even if we do, they’ll crucify us.…”

  The last was from Controller Mickland, his nager shredded between conflicting anxieties, his voice tight. Cloris Agar and Controller Hume of Eastfield District were also there, along with a channel Digen recognized only from newspaper photographs, Regional Controller Flemis Beccard, one of the most powerful women in the Tecton, and Mickland’s immediate superior.

  She was stately rather than pretty, austere in a provocatively sexual way—or, wondered Digen, did he see that merely because of his condition?

  As Digen and Ilyana took in the scene, the other channels quieted in growing astonishment. At last Flemis Beccard advanced on Digen, focusing minutely on his field. Digen knew he was presenting an entirely new aspect to the world, knew the consummated lortuen was clearly visible in his entwinement with Ilyana’s field—as well as the spectacular improvement in her condition—but he was entirely unprepared for Beccard’s shocked accusation: “The Sectuib has gone junct!”

  They had been prepared for the illegal transfer, the lortuen, and the violation of the Controller’s injunction on doing surgery. They had not been prepared for a junct channel.

  Mickland, Agar, and Hume edged closer to Digen, probing cautiously. Agar and Hume were mumbling their confirmation of Beccard’s observation, when Mickland said loudly, “I knew it! I knew it would happen all along! This is why I issued that injunction. I wanted to protect him, and the Tecton, from this. You see what happens when you allow people to worship hereditary aristocracy? You see what happens when one person is allowed too much power? There’s only one way for the Tecton to survive this. We must show that even the Sectuib in Zeor is not above the law! Seize him!”

  Drawing Ilyana with him, Digen evaded their encirclement and faced them again, still not quite able to believe that this was happening. “You can see,” said Digen, “I have not harmed anyone.” His hands on Ilyana’s shoulders, displaying her glowing health and their indissoluble link, Digen said, “I don’t glory in Gen pain. I’ve not suddenly become evil.”

  Beccard turned to Mickland. “I’m sorry, I didn’t believe you. But I’ll back you now. He’ll have to be incarcerated and displayed to as many as can file by—so that people will not accuse us of any antihouseholding sentiment. If they see it with their own senses, they’ll know—the Sectuib in Zeor is a Distect outlaw!”

  The other channels spread out again, trying to ensnare Digen in their fields, neutralize him for capture. Digen skinned free, knowing that if they once got a grip on him he would never get another transfer but would die on public display—in attrition—his cries for mercy broadcast as an object lesson to every part of the world.

  “What is the matter with you?” shouted Digen. “Don’t you realize what we’ve done? At a price, sure, but it was worth it. We’ve saved Rindaleo Hayashi’s life, saved the Tecton with Gen surgical techniques. We can halve the death rate in-Territory among Simes and Gens. It’s a small step, but a real one—to eradicate the fear that keeps Sime and Gen apart, to reunite mankind. What else is Faith Day all about?”

  “He’s insane!” cried Beccard. “Get him before he hurts someone!”

  Digen eluded them again and jumped up on the makeshift operating table to get above their fields. All at once he saw the unbreachable wall in their minds, their hearts, and, like comparing a picture with its negative, he saw through the Tecton as it was today. If Klyd Farris could see this, he knew, his esteemed ancestor would cry tears of blood for this perversion of his ideals made in his name.

  The whole argument between Tecton and Distect had originally hinged on Hugh Valleroy’s prediction that just exactly this would come to pass—that the Tecton, which Klyd had designed and enacted into law, would come to victimize the sincere channels and reward those who sought only personal glory and power. And with the power of the channels inherent in the Tecton structure concentrated among the glory seekers of humanity, the grip of the Tecton could never be broken. No slavery in the history of mankind had ever been so unbreakable.

  Ilyana—and all her people—have been right all along! Klyd Farris himself was wrong—wrongwrongwrong! He meant well, but he was wrong!

  On a rising crest of manic rage powered by the postsyndrome still in him, Digen screamed, “The Tecton is dead! Your Tecton is nothing but a travesty of the human spirit, and Zeor will have none of it!”

  He ripped the double-crested ring from his hand and flung it down on the marble bench top, stamping it flat with his heel. “The Tecton is dead! The House of Zeor is dead! And may you all know what you have done before you die!”

  The anguished rage beating from Digen, powered by the selyn he had taken from Ilyana, drove the channels to their knees. The nageric resonance between him and Ilyana caught up the beating anguish and amplified it until the channels were groaning helplessly on the floor.

  Digen leaped down from the countertop, caught up Ilyana, and swept out of the room without a backward glance.

  Out on the streets of Westfield, Digen made Ilyana stop for a moment. “Where can we go now? What are we going to do?”

  She took his arm over her shoulder, giving him all the strength of her nager. “You just leave that to me. The train station is right here. We’re going—home.”

  “Rior?”

  “Where else? Who else would have us—now? At least there we can live in peace.”

  PART III

  THE RETURN

  What Is the Distect?

  The Distect is an idea. You can not kill an idea by killing the people who hold it.

  “OUT OF DEATH WAS I BORN—

  UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER!”

  Orim Farris

  Sectuib in Zeor

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SHILTPRON PARTY

  It was a holiday in the Distect, the anniversary of the founding of the House of Rior. The sky was scoured clean and the russet and gold leaves of fall were sprinkled among the evergreens of the high mountains.

  Digen had been in Rior for six months.

  Yet, on this day he could not join in the festive mood. Instead, he walked the paths between the little fields of shoulder-high wheat that surrounded each house of the mountain settlement, listening to the clink of utensils against sinks and dishes as the holiday meals were prepared. He watched the swarms of children playing tag up the mountainsides to the berry patches. He savored the ambient nager of the whole settlement, steeped in a vibrant contentment he could only envy from the outside.

  Life here in the House of Rior was very different from anything he’d ever known before. It seemed as if there were no rules governing transfer. People did as they pleased, and they see
med—happy, in a way Digen hadn’t ever seen before in a group of people. There was a deeply committed family life, usually with four adults who were mated in transfer and separately in sex. And they raised their children without regard to whose natural children they were. Nobody seemed to care whether a child would become Sime or Gen. And changeover or establishment was hardly even an occasion.

  In fact, Digen hadn’t seen a single case of pathology in changeover since he’d arrived, though he knew they happened. Rior had no channels because Rior had precious little use for channels. Overall, it was a tough life, a frontier existence, but it was a healthy one.

  In his own little house, surrounded by his own little field of ripe wheat, which he’d planted so joyfully with his own hands, Ilyana was singing to herself, putting the finishing touches on a new dress she would wear to the party that night. She had made him a cape of Zeor blue adorned with the Rior crest—and he had rashly promised that to please her he would wear it to the party.

  But he dreaded the moment when the sun would set and he would have to put it on.

  He climbed a little hill and sat on a sun-warmed rock overlooking the small settlement. He counted thirty little houses like his own and the huge main hall at the center of the valley. To one side of that was the laboratory building, with Roshi’s lab, the one place Digen was forbidden to go. On the other side of the settlement valley, over a ridge of hills, a cliff fell off nearly a thousand feet straight down. In the hazy distance Digen could just make out the descent of the mountain peaks to the foothills where Zeor and Rior had both been born.

  But Zeor is dead. It could not survive in a world where fear ruled supreme. Zeor was dead. It was all over and done, a closed phase of life. Rior lived, and somehow so did he.

  Digen didn’t recall much after he had stormed out of Westfield’s Sime Center with Ilyana. A merciful fog shrouded those weeks, binding up his mental wounds until, somehow, in Rior, he had healed and emerged.

  The turning point had been the day that they had planted their own wheat field near the house. He had plowed and sown the field with his own hands. Day by day, as the little green shoots emerged and grew, he too emerged and grew. And now the wheat was almost ripe for harvest.

  All summer he had lived each day as it came, noting with contentment how his physical condition had improved. Under constant exposure to Ilyana’s field, his bouts of entran had become less and less severe, need was never more than a passing sensation, his allergies became dormant, and his strength seemed boundless. Physically he had never in his entire life been so strong and healthy.

  Mentally, though, he still shied away from thinking about the past. He kept his mind quietly in the present, never ranging far into tomorrow or yesterday. Yet, as his general vitality increased, he knew such stillness of mind would no longer satisfy him.

  Behind him, the sun dipped below the highest peaks sending afternoon shadow lapping across the valley. He experienced a sensuous delight in the sunset, and the glow of happiness emanating from the houses about him bathed him with contentment. Could anyone ask more out of life?

  Just a little longer, he thought. Let me hold on to this just a little longer.

  Off to one side, a little jagged peak of shadow touched the windows of his own house. Ilyana, a tiny figure in the distance, came out on the porch, disturbed that she couldn’t see him anywhere.

  He didn’t like to see her disturbed. He gathered himself and ran down the mountainside toward home, striding full out for the sheer joy of the movement. He would wear the cape for her and her happiness would be enough for them both.

  As Digen arrived home, all over the settlement families were already emerging from their houses, singing together as they walked the winding pathways to the main building where they assembled for the official celebration.

  Ilyana made Digen wait until the last of the singing had died away before they started out of their house. “Roshi isn’t due back until the day after tomorrow,” she told Digen. “So this year I’ll have to lead the sing.”

  Roshi, Ilyana’s older brother, and Head of the House of Rior, had been acting strangely ever since Digen had begun to recover. “Odd,” said Digen, “that he’d be away on such an important occasion.”

  “I don’t understand it myself,” she replied. “Not only is he deliberately staying away with about a third of our men, he’s actually forbidden the celebration.”

  “Then why are we having it?”

  “Digen! What would happen if you tried to forbid the celebration of—oh, Union Day in the Tecton? Instant demoralization, right? Just what we require to face a long hard winter?” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s become of Roshi lately. He’s all wrapped up in something and he won’t even talk to me about it.”

  “Maybe it’s just what people have been saying—that he’s having trouble with his Donor—I mean transfer mate. If Fenris were to leave him, where would Roshi turn for transfer?”

  “Fen wouldn’t do that. He’s been Roshi’s transfer mate since they were kids. They’re practically in orhuen. And their spouses are in orhuen. It’s a perfect Distect marriage.”

  There was just a tinge of bitterness in her voice, which she managed to keep from her nager. The main reason she had left Rior to try for a life in the Tecton was the powerful attraction Roshi had for her as a transfer partner. She had almost broken up that “perfect” Distect marriage by taking Roshi away from Fenris. She’d bear the scars of a nearly fatal fight with Dula, Roshi’s Sime wife, for the rest of her life.

  “Look,” said Ilyana. “It’s time for us to go down.”

  They walked hand in hand along the pathways to the central hall. Emerging from a stand of trees, they approached the huge double-sized barn doors, which stood open. Inside, the hall had been decorated with gay paper hangings and parti-colored lights. At one end, a buffet table was heaped with elaborate but edible artistic creations, beautiful enough to make even a Sime’s mouth water. The Simes and Gens stood in segregated groups, Simes to the right, Gens to the left, along both sides of the hall, leaving an aisle for Digen and Ilyana to walk along to the stage.

  Ilyana took Digen’s arm firmly and began the march up that aisle, saying aside to him, “You sing like a lead bell, so you’re going to play the shiltpron for me, and keep your mouth shut.”

  That was the first Digen had heard of this plan. “I can’t play….”

  “Don’t argue,” she said. “I heard you playing out by the waterfall yesterday.”

  He whispered, aware of the people staring at them, “Only on audio range. And I haven’t played in public since the injury.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Ilyana. “If the scar gives you any trouble, I’m here.”

  And then they were on the stage and Ilyana was handing him the shiltpron.

  “It will do you good, Digen. Trust me.”

  The instrument fitted neatly into the curve of his arm, his fingers resting lightly on the strings. He kept his tentacles away from the resonating pipes and prongs that would pick up the audio resonances of the strings and translate them into selyn field harmonics. The shiltpron, an ugly instrument at best, looked like a cross between a harp and a bagpipe, but was played by finger plucking, or with mallet or bow—or all three at once. It was the first truly Sime instrument invented.

  This particular one was made of antique rosewood, polished by long decades of use. It came against his shoulder with a soft, gracious feel. And when he sounded an experimental chord, it filled the room with rich, warm tones perfectly attuned.

  Before the chord had died, Ilyana raised her voice and sang out a joyful note. Then all the gathering was singing and Digen concentrated on following the tune. It was a simple tune, somehow distantly familiar to him, but with verses that told of the founding of Rior. Soon Digen was embroidering around the melody with more confidence, thinking that Ilyana had been right. There was a definite healing quality to this, and he was enjoying it.

  As they finished the last verse, re
counting the names of the charter members of Rior, the aisle dividing the Simes from the Gens disappeared in a whirl and suddenly the company mixed and then re-separated out in family groups.

  “Come,” said Ilyana, “dance with me, Digen!”

  A Sime woman took the shiltpron from Digen as Ilyana drew him down onto the dance floor. A chord rang out audibly, and then as the shiltpron player exposed her laterals to the vibrating tines of the instrument, an exquisite shiver brightened the ambient nager. Every Sime in the room groaned a little with it. Even Digen gasped. In three expert strokes, the shiltpron player struck up a cadence to which Ilyana began to move.

  Modulating the throb of the shiltpron field with her own body, Ilyana wove through it, casting streamers of pure sensation out over the Sime dancers. Digen found himself slipping into hyperconsciousness, entranced by the beauty of it.

  He had never seen anything like it before. In the Tecton it would be considered obscene for a shiltpron to be played in that manner in the presence of both Simes and Gens. No Tecton Gen would use his body to stir a Sime to need. It would not be pleasure to the Sime but torture, and there was always the risk of sparking a kill-mode attack.

  But here, the stirring of need was a joy to be shared, not a torment to be feared. No Sime in that room, himself included, harbored one thread of repressed need. Until that moment Digen hadn’t realized just how much of a residue even the best Tecton transfers left.

  The entire room danced with Ilyana and Digen as if they all were extensions of their own bodies. There wasn’t a person not in perfect tune with the rhythms of the shiltpron. It’s like living without effort, thought Digen. And for him, that moment became the very definition of being alive.

  That was the last clear memory Digen had of the next few hours. Ilyana became a pinwheel of modulated colors, focused and projecting through his own body field. Digen let it happen. He felt beautiful inside and he wanted to share it with everyone in the world.

  At some time the family groups broke up and people began dancing with anyone and everyone, changing partners with or without reason. Ilyana was whirled away and replaced by a high field Gen boy flushed with peaking selyn production and eager for Digen’s tentacles. To his own surprise, Digen enjoyed the attention, letting it stir his need, and he was vaguely disappointed when the boy was snatched away by a Sime girl. He knew the boy was not the transfer mate of that girl, and he watched, strangely fascinated, as they completed a transfer right on the edge of the dance floor.