Unto Zeor, Forever

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Im’ran tilted his head back at Ilyana and said, “Now I know why you kept saying you’d rather be dead.”

  “Im’,” said Digen, “once normalized, you won’t feel this way. Your governors are functioning beautifully. Given time, your production rate will equal your diffusion loss rate and you’ll feel completely normal.”

  “I haven’t missed a transfer since I established,” said Im’ran forlornly.

  “You may find a hole in your life, but physically you won’t suffer from it.”

  Hogan crossed the room to kneel beside Im’ran’s shoulder. “Im’, we can try to make a run for it. Get you back to civilization…”

  “I’m not leaving without Digen,” said Im’ran. “And Ilyana too. Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind making a run for it. I might get a transfer out of it, anyway.”

  “All right,” said Digen, “I can see you running around here seducing every Sime in sight and getting some transfer mate to kill you for it. Ilyana, you can sympathize with how he feels.”

  “Digen,” said Im’ran, “do you have to be insulting?”

  “Sorry,” said Digen. “It seems my manners are in transition or something.”

  Ilyana asked, “What do you have in mind?”

  “I can’t strip him,” said Digen. “That would only stimulate production and he’d have to go through it all over again.”

  Im’ran, who had surged with hope, collapsed again. “I don’t care about tomorrow. It’s now I’ve got to get through. Digen, if you’re worried about entran, I can handle anything that might develop from this.”

  He probably could, Digen thought. Ilyana was a natural but wholly untutored talent, and though she had put him neatly into secondary dormancy, she really didn’t have Im’ran’s exacting and meticulous discipline.

  “No,” said Digen, “stripping would just aggravate your problem. What we should do is tap your GN levels, just to relieve the immediate pressure but not to stimulate production. Now, to do that, we have to maneuver so that no selyn disturbance propagates down into your TN levels. Follow?”

  Im’ran nodded. It would be a low-level functional for Digen and probably would not aggravate the entran he’d already invited by serving Roshi’s need. It would make Im’ran feel better immediately and still not slow his progress toward transfer dormancy. With no selyn movement in the TN levels, there would be no sensation of transfer, and, incidentally, no sense of satisfaction either.

  “It’s all you can offer me,” he said. “It’s all I deserve.”

  Digen wanted to say, “Self-pity is unbecoming to a Companion in Imil.” But nothing would be accomplished by chastising him for an underdraw-induced mood. At the same time, he also realized that Im’ran was expressing a deeply held conviction—one that he might otherwise be too proud to voice.

  “Im’ran, I’m going to give you the sole responsibility of holding your TN barriers.”

  “No, Digen, you do it.”

  “No, I won’t let you be lazy. Besides, if you do it, it will strengthen you. You’ll attain dormancy a lot faster--and there’s less chance of accidentally stirring your deeper levels.”

  “I don’t trust myself. I’ll take you if I’m tempted.”

  “I trust you,” said Digen, taking Im’ran’s overheated forearms in his hands and laying his handling tentacles along them. To Hogan, Digen said, “If this is going to disturb you, why don’t you step out on the porch for a moment?”

  “I’ll stay,” the Gen said. “I’ve grown up a little in the last few months. I can behave myself.”

  “All right. Just give us a little room.”

  Hogan and Ilyana moved away as Digen narrowed his concentration to the job before him. A Donor was not ordinarily adept at flattening the GN barriers while holding the TN barriers tight. Digen had to coach Im’ran for two or three minutes before he finally got it right, but by then Im’ran had become so wrapped up in the learning of a new technique that he forgot his apprehensions. He’s a therapist, thought Digen.

  Then Digen made lateral and lip contact, fields balanced to a gentle flow, the kind he would use on an out-Territory volunteer Donor. He carefully drained off the superficial selyn storage—gleaning about four times what an out-Territory volunteer would have provided. Then he dismantled the contact.

  Im’ran went limp. “Shenoni, Digen, you’re good. I didn’t feel a thing. How can a channel like you stay in a place like this?”

  Digen pulled a coverlet over the Gen, saying wearily, “It’s late. Why don’t we all get some sleep and talk about it again in the morning.”

  But, inside, he was wondering the same thing. Working with Im’ran had suddenly brought back all the key satisfactions of functioning at the channel’s craft. The joy of saving a life or easing suffering. The purely personal, physical gratification of using his body as it was meant to be used. The distant echoes of all his oldest and dearest ideals.

  The channel is the medium through which the human race can be reunited. How can I sit here in Rior with Ilyana and all the satisfaction she gives me and never again lift my hand to share that satisfaction with the isolated Simes and Gens of the world?

  I cannot go back, and I cannot stay here like this. What am I going to do? I wish they hadn’t come.

  Then he saw that the coverlet he had drawn over Im’ran was the Zeor blue cloak with the Rior crest embroidery. He wanted to laugh or cry or both—but he dared not make a sound. Exhausted, Im’ran had fallen asleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HARVEST

  The morning dawned brisk with mountain chill. Before the sun had cleared the eastern peaks of the valley, grain harvest crews had set to work in all the ripest fields—including Digen’s. As the first wagonload was sent to be threshed, the field foreman came pounding on Digen’s door.

  In the back bedroom, Digen disentangled himself from Ilyana and padded barefoot to the door, worried that the commotion would wake Im’ran, who was still asleep on the couch. Hogan, bleary-eyed, came shuffling from the side bedroom, struggling into a robe, as Digen opened the door to the cold morning air.

  Without greeting, the Sime woman who ran the harvest for Rior said, “Well, you want it to rot on the stalk?” Then she turned her back and swept down the steps, two Gens and a Sime following her. At the bottom of the steps she turned and said, “I hear you got two new hands last night. Let’s have a full turnout.”

  Digen gave her a tentacle-to-finger gesture of agreement and shut the door. Im’ran had come to his feet, shaking himself awake. Ilyana was poking up the fire, saying, “Hot cereal and sweet buns in five minutes. It’s going to be a long day.”

  Digen explained the Rior custom of trading field labor while he dragged out coveralls for the two Gens. “If, as it seems, you may stay here awhile, it’s expected that you’ll work for your keep. Personally,” said Digen, “I consider it a crime for such top professionals to have to do field labor.”

  Hogan slipped his shoulder straps into place over the rough shirt Ilyana had found for him and said, “I was raised on a farm. And harvest is harvest. Be fun, I expect.”

  Over hot cereal and trin tea, Im’ran said, “I’ve never done anything like this before. But I’m willing to learn.”

  When they came out onto the porch, a row of Simes wielding scythes was already far into the stand of ripe grain. Behind them, a line of Gens was gathering the felled stalks and bundling them onto flatbed wagons, all under the watchful eye of the Sime woman foreman, labeling every wagonload.

  Digen joined the scythe wielders, working between a woman he knew only slightly and, at his left, Skip Ozik. Skip had made his way to Rior with the help of some underground sympathizers to whom Ilyana had directed him. He was now a provisionary member of the House, under the protection of Roshi’s family—which made him an unofficial member of Digen’s own little family, and unconsciously Digen had come to think of him as a son. Skip had not yet noticed Im’ran and Hogan working some yards behind them. Skip said, “I heard about what you did
last night with the shiltpron.”

  “You weren’t there?” No, of course not, he hasn’t had transfer, not recently.

  “I’m here on probation, Digen. I wouldn’t dare go against Roshi’s orders—where else do I have to go?”

  Digen looked at the boy. He had grown two hands taller in the few months since his changeover and had begun to fill out with a mature Sime build. But it was more than that. His whole nager was aglow with pure health now, whereas the Tecton would surely have killed him—despite all Digen could do—trying to disjunct him. Yet here he hadn’t actually harmed anyone, and he was happy. “You do have a point.”

  “You should have seen Roshi’s face this morning when he heard what you’d done! It’s got to turn into a hundred-year legend, for sure—imagine, everyone in transfer at the same moment! Roshi heard Shurban and Aliase snickering in the dining room--you know how those girls are at their age. He called them in and gave them the stern-father routine and made them tell what was so funny. Then he went all stony and said, ‘That’s an example of what happens when you turn a Tecton channel loose in Rior! Consider yourselves fortunate you weren’t there.’ So they pulled long faces and went outside to snicker some more, this time over what you did to Roshi. Before I left, they made me tell them all about what channel’s transfer feels like!”

  Digen enjoyed Skip’s oh-so-grown-up amusement, while at the same time thinking, He’s just a kid himself yet. First Year can be the best year of your life. They worked in silence for a while, then Digen caught a glimpse of a moving nager over Skip’s shoulder. “It seems,” he said, “that we are going to find out how Roshi feels about it all, right now.”

  At about the same time, the others became aware of the approaching horsemen and stilled their scythes. The Gens caught up with them, and they all stood in a group, awaiting Roshi. Suddenly Skip whirled and shouted, “Dr. Hogan!” Arms wide in eager greeting, Skip went toward Hogan.

  Not recognizing the boy, Hogan stepped backward, his fear plain to every Sime. The Gens around him melted away, leaving him to face Skip alone. In English, Skip said, “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Skip!”

  Hogan’s face lit with a smile and most of the fear vanished. Most, but not all. Digen moved between them, saying hastily to Skip, “Joel isn’t used to being around Simes.” At about the same time, Im’ran worked his way through the crowd toward Hogan and took charge of the fields. Digen stepped clear to give him room to work.

  Hogan, still in the grip of surprise, said, “I see you—made it, Skip. We all wondered, you know.”

  “Well, I couldn’t very well send a telegram home,” said Skip facetiously.

  Digen saw the boy’s emotional hunger for contact with home, with his old life. It was normal for changeover victims from out-Territory. Hogan’s fear had given way to his usual curiosity. For him, too, this meeting was a touch of a past so distant that it had already become nostalgia.

  At that point Roshi arrived on his roan stallion, kicking up dust and spooking the wagon mules. Staying mounted, he said, “Digen Farris!”

  Digen stepped out before him. He’s afraid of me. But he’s not admitting that even to himself. None of the other Simes had the acuity or training to read Roshi’s nager in such fine detail. They saw only his righteous anger whipped up over the preceding hours.

  “You are a houseless man,” said Roshi, “come among us on sufferance. But you have betrayed our trust—subverting my sister—and then, last night, using your physical endowments to manipulate my members, exposing them all, shamelessly, to the part of you that has been made into an abomination.

  “Leaving aside the atrocity you committed upon me, I have sufficient reason to demand your banishment or execution.”

  Ilyana, mouth agape in stunned amazement, finally pulled herself together enough to believe her ears. She stepped out in front of Digen. “Roshi! Subvert me? Betray trust? Digen? He’s been a model guest in this House. I gave the order for the celebration—you never said why there shouldn’t be one and I got Digen to play the shiltpron.” She gestured at the crowd around them. “As far as I can see, nobody’s complaining about the results!”

  There was a general murmur of agreement, which only provoked Roshi’s anger to greater heights. “Well, you ought to complain!” He focused on Digen. “I have to protect my people. We’ve sheltered you in good faith. Now I think it’s time you returned that. Pledge Rior, now, to me, with the understanding that your life is forfeit should you use that—body—of yours again on any of us, and your—indiscretion of last night will be considered an accident of drunkenness, a fluke never to be repeated.”

  Pledge Rior?

  Ilyana stood, lips compressed, hands clenched together. Digen guessed she was thinking that if any pledge was to be given, it should be to her, not Roshi. Roshi had not, to Digen’s knowledge, ever been called upon to accept a pledge. For Digen to offer his pledge to Rior unto Roshi would be to acknowledge—with all the weight of the traditional position of the Sectuib in Zeor, parent house to Rior whether or not he was acknowledged here as such—Roshi’s right to head the House of Rior and the Distect.

  But, by custom, Rior was always headed by a Gen, and by right the position was Ilyana’s. She had never revealed that during her stay in the Tecton.

  “If I were to offer any pledge to Rior,” said Digen, “I would offer it to Ilyana—as Sosectu ambrov Rior under Rior’s charter from my great-great-grandfather, Klyd Farris. No Sime may be more than Regent in Rior.”

  There was a stirring that gathered into a firm, bright approval among the onlookers. But there were others who supported Roshi in place of the slender, often ill, sometimes temperamental Ilyana.

  Roshi noted the crowd’s approval. “This is not the time or the place to discuss the succession in Rior. It’s your crime that’s being considered, not Rior’s politics.”

  Digen was beginning to feel a sense of desperation. He had not yet fully assimilated the news that he could leave Rior and go back to the Tecton. He could not—now—confront the idea of pledging Rior and leaving behind him forever the life of the Tecton. To him, a pledge was far too sacred a thing to be entered with any quiver of uncertainty.

  Digen turned to the group around them, tentacles spread in open appeal.

  “What I did to you all was wrong,” he said. “By everything I believe about the dignity of the individual, the right of consent, and the ethical use of the power I carry in this Tecton-molded body—what I did was truly an atrocity. I—am—sorry. I didn’t know it would happen like that. I’d never played in a mixed crowd before. I didn’t know any such thing was even possible. Had I known, I would not have entered that hall—even to please Ilyana. But I did go, and I did play, of my own free will. I accept full responsibility for the consequences of my choice. If there is anyone in all of Rior who would have my life for this—then my life is forfeit without argument.”

  He stood before them, wholly open, his nager in true contrition and repentance. Im’ran gasped, then turned aside and translated to Hogan. A murmur rose as the Simes told the Gens how they read Digen’s nager. Some thought he might be using Tecton tricks to present a false reading to them. Over the sound of argument, Digen said, “I have nothing to offer as bond but my bare word that I will never touch the shiltpron again. But—Rior seems willing to accept my pledge, which is tacit endorsement of my word. Forgive me. Please forgive me, and accept my word.”

  As Roshi saw that Digen had gained a consensus, manipulating Roshi’s own members against him, his anger rose another notch. “Your word is not good here unless you pledge Rior!”

  The general discussion among the onlookers surged in another direction, and someone suggested that a houseless man had no honor and thus no word to offer on anything. It was an attitude that had been valid before Klyd Farris had founded the modern Tecton.

  Pledge Rior? No! I can’t! But—not to pledge—to take Ilyana into exile? If they’d let us go? To leave—all this, which has been so good, and go back to�
��the old life. I can’t.

  Turning back to Roshi, hands falling lifelessly to his sides, Digen was torn beyond endurance. But as his eyes came to the man on horseback, something Im’ran had said the night before floated to the top of his mind and locked into place within his sense of reality.

  “Roshi, I can’t pledge Rior. Zeor is not disbanded, as I thought it had been when I came here. It lives. And as long as it lives, I am not a houseless man and am not free to give my pledge!”

  Roshi backed his horse a few steps. Around Digen the murmured conversations burst into a roar. Roshi brought his stallion into the crowd in little, mincing, sideways steps. He faced Digen and said, for all to hear, “You came to us as a houseless refugee, and we sheltered you in good faith, only to be betrayed, as I have said, and now—now you admit that you gained entrance here under false colors!”

  “He didn’t know until Im’ran told us last night!” said Ilyana. “But he’s laid down his office in Zeor, and last night he refused to go back with them and take it up again. If Roshi won’t validate his pledge to Rior—I will be proud to accept it! Dual allegiance between parent and daughter houses must have some kind of legal precedent—and if not—well, what does Rior stand for if not establishing new precedents for others to follow?”

  She was right. The word “rior” itself meant forepoint, the prow of a ship, or the leading edge—the cutting edge of a flying object—the vanguard of a movement. Audacious leadership had always been the hallmark of Zeor. What could be more fitting than the reuniting of Rior and Zeor? But—he had not truly refused to go back. He had merely put off making a decision that he simply could not make yet.