Eventually, however, Digen found himself pausing in the same living room with Ilyana, and quite deliberately left alone. All the need, sidetracked and ignored for days, surged upward to claim him as she sagged under the weight of underdraw.
He never remembered physically moving across that room, taking her up in transfer, joining and drawing and giving and becoming alive. The soaring ecstasy of dizzy satisfaction, awakening, vitalizing his whole body and centering at the vriamic node with a delicious warmth also thawed his long-frozen mind, jolting him out of the deadening fog of not thinking.
Like a stroke of lightning, her selyn raced into those secret, long-denied passages in himself, touching off a cascade that awakened simultaneously all the levels and depths of his secondary and primary systems. Suddenly all the intimate sensations possible only to a developed channel swept through Digen.
It was a concrete touching of the essence of his soul. It was the tone of voice in which he had always said, “I am a channel. Let me through. I can help.”
Help? No, destroy! Destroy. Destroy.
All at once he slammed hypoconscious, thrown into pure shen for the first time since Ilyana had taken him.
The wrenching shock flung him back to duoconsciousness, limp and hurting, his laterals hard knots drawn far up into the lateral sheaths, pressing torturously on his swollen ronaplin glands.
Ilyana had never had such a thing happen to her before. She hesitated, bewildered and off balance. Digen could see the blanched lips hovering over him as he lay on the couch. He could feel her heart beating counterpoint to his own. “Digen?” she said, hesitantly touching his ronaplin slicked wrists, and stroking the tensed lateral orifices.
Need was still aching in him. She could feel it, and, in herself, the answering fullness. She sought his arms, probing the traumatized laterals, kneading them to pliability again. Little by little she coaxed them down to the orifices, operating on instinct and gossip she had heard concerning Digen’s transfer problems.
Slowly and carefully Ilyana brought Digen back into transfer, letting the selyn flow build from the faintest trickle to the full, rushing draw that was so essential to Digen’s well-being. Digen slid hyperconscious, letting it happen. He felt easy and secure in her grip, and was in no condition to help himself.
But as the selyn flow speed peaked again, it drove into the junct passages, hitting again the strange secondary/primary awakening, and again Digen felt himself repelled by that secondary half of himself, repelled and disgusted to such a degree that he could not endure the full sensory impact of selyn motion in his secondary system.
He fought the abort, knowing he had to complete the transfer, knowing that the only way to do that was to let Ilyana do it for him. But at the peak flow, what he was doing jumped out at him in stark relief. He was letting her drive the transfer—as if she were a therapist, like Im’ran—as if it were possible to let a Gen dominate.
Face to face with this stubborn residue of his Tecton outlook, immersed in all the purest channel’s sensations, it came to him: I’ll never be able to change!
And again, without warning, he recoiled into abort, this time his whole body going rigid, locked as if in the throes of the shaking plague.
As Ilyana brought the slamming shen under control for him again, Digen gasped and said, “It’s no use. I don’t—I—just don’t want to live anymore.”
“I know what that’s like,” said Ilyana. “But you can’t give up now. You wouldn’t let me give up—I won’t let you give up.” She bent to kiss one lateral orifice and then to touch her ronaplin smeared lips to Digen’s, drawing all her skill into a fine wedge into his being.
Digen twisted aside, breaking the contact. “Don’t. I can’t take any more.”
“You’ve withdrawn from Im’ran,” said Ilyana. “But you can’t withdraw from me.”
Digen said nothing.
“If you die,” she added, “I die with you. That’s the way it is in lortuen.”
“Most of the time,” agreed Digen.
“Always,” said Ilyana.
“If you insist, always.” But not in Zeor, not in the Tecton—not always. And maybe that’s worse. His life without her would be without light. He summoned himself. “But I’m not dying, at least now right now. I’ve survived on worse transfers. Let’s just drop it.”
“I can’t just drop it. I have to understand what’s going on in you. Those terrible frights you won’t talk about—this aborting—I didn’t unbalance on you, I know I didn’t….”
“No, you didn’t.” He rolled back and took her hands overcome with inexpressible tenderness. “You’re perfect. Too perfect for the likes of me.”
“That’s ridiculous—we’re matchmates.”
“I’ve been warped, though, warped by the Tecton into something ugly and evil, warped before I was old enough to have a choice in the matter.”
“It has to be that way,” said Ilyana. “Channels can’t be fully developed after their first year.”
“Are you defending the Tecton?”
“No,” she answered. “No, just the human struggle to survive—at any cost. We can’t be blamed for our will to live.”
There was a bleak, subdued tone to her nager. He took her hands and found them cold to his touch. “What’s wrong, Yanami?”
She shook her head, putting all her feelings aside.
He kissed her gently. There was no sexual passion in him, after the beating his system had just taken, but it was a kiss of love nevertheless. She broke into helpless tears, falling into his arms, head against his shoulder.
Crying, she told him, “It’s just that—after all the ghastly things we’ve done—the cutting and sewing, the submitting to your field control of the seizures, the sheer surviving of it all—Digen, Rior is dying.”
“I don’t think so. We’re going to make it, I know….”
She pushed away, shaking aside tears. “No. More of the Gens have been dying than the Simes. Lots of families are without a single Gen. And now…” She broke down crying helplessly again.
He rocked her back and forth, trying to will comfort into her, feeling distantly the frustrated sexual hunger in her, and aching because he felt no response to it. Perhaps the crying would ease her a bit.
Between sobs she blurted it all out. “You can’t even take transfer from me—you don’t even want to live—and Im’ran’s dying too, after all he’s done for Rior, without thought of himself—he’s dying too!”
He sat up, still holding her tightly, and said over her head, “Im’ran’s dying? What is it? What happened?”
“Oh, he keeps asking, begging, for you, and demanding that we don’t tell you he’s come down with the plague. But he won’t let Joel near him. He’s going to die, I can feel it.”
“It’s not just underdraw? The symptoms….”
“We’ve all seen enough of the plague to know the difference!”
“Im’ran.” Oh, what he must think of me! “Where is he?”
“Just down that hall there,” she said, pointing to a doorway across the living room.
It was a strange house Digen couldn’t recall ever being in before. The rugs were purple, the walls hung with amateur oil paintings, the curtains hand-woven. Some family had put a lot of love into the house.
“Whose house is this?”
“The Stord place,” answered Ilyana. “They’re all dead.”
Digen just stared at her.
“Im’ and I were trying to save their last Gen. We sent the children to the central nursery. Their mother died giving birth this morning—she had the plague, too, and refused Im’s offer of transfer. It wouldn’t have endangered him, though—turned out he was already sick, but wouldn’t tell anyone until he collapsed.”
Digen struggled to assimilate it all.
Ilyana added, “I think that was this morning.”
Now that his attention was drawn to it, he could sense Im’ran’s distinctive nager through the triple-insulated walls. He went to
ward the back bedroom where so many had already died.
The first thing Digen noticed was the smell—not the smell of neglect, but of the hopeless struggle to keep terminal patients clean. Im’ran lay on the bed, wan and much thinner than Digen had ever seen him. Gaunt, like a Sime—in fact, “emaciated” would be medically correct. No Gen should be so thin.
Under the deep, outdoors tan Im’ran had acquired in his mountain trek lay a pallor of desperate illness, and over it all, fever cast an unhealthy flush. It had been over two weeks since Im’ran’s transfer with Skip, and the Gen was solidly mid-field but not so high that he was feeling underdraw.
Digen approached the bed, steeling himself against that awful sensation of being soiled, which the Gen’s nager had once given him. But, curiously, it wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t a symbol of anything. He was just Im’ran again. He was trying to kill himself. I should never have rejected him like that.
He spread his hands over the Gen to catch every diagnostic nuance. Im’ran opened his eyes. “Digen?” His voice was a mere rasp in his throat, barely articulated.
“Yes.”
“You came. I knew you would. As One First, All Firsts.”
He had to stop to breathe, weakened so much that even that was a chore.
“As One First, All Firsts,” Digen heard himself answer. They had qualified each other. There was more between them than just an oath. It was a bond—forever.
“Digen, whatever I’ve done to you—forgive me. I never meant to hurt. Never.”
“You didn’t do anything. Only I changed.” Didn’t I? Doubts churned and tore at him. Oh, will it never end!
From the doorway, Ilyana said, “Im’ran has fought valiantly to save Rior—because it was what you wanted.”
Just behind her, Hogan said, “He won’t let us help him, Digen.”
“Im’,” said Digen, “Ilyana tells me this strain seems more virulent to Gens. You must let them treat you.”
“I can’t….”
“But….”
“I thought I could. I’ve been helping do it to so many. But—Digen, remember once I said I’d always trust a channel, not—a—surgeon. I—was too right about myself. I—can’t.”
Digen understood. Im’ran was the product of the Sime culture. He’d absorbed Sime phobias deep into his subconscious—and now he had crossed the four-plus barrier and was terribly sensitive to fields.
“Digen, promise me—don’t let them do it. I’d rather die naturally. Promise me, by the bond between us if nothing else.”
Digen could not say what he had to say. He could not tell Im’ran that the bond so sacred to him was the very symbol of all that Digen now loathed. In fact, Digen felt within himself the stirrings of that bond, a loyalty that was not just words or promises but an act, an experience shared and unique between them. And in that stirring, Digen knew again that he was a Tecton tool, molded in early life and unable to change, no matter how he came to understand and loathe himself.
Another bond, Im’ and I both tools forged by the same hand to the same ghastly end.
He sat on the edge of the bed and took up Im’ran’s hands in his own, scarcely knowing what moved him but afraid to think it through. He made a quick, violent lateral contact. “You have my promise.”
Ilyana charged halfway into the room and stopped. Hogan said, “Digen!” But it was too late. He had exposed himself to the disease, and even Im’ran’s shuddering attempt to pull away came too late.
“Get him a pitcher of water,” said Digen. “Then go help whoever else you can. I’ll be here awhile.”
Their strangled and futile protests died unspoken. Water and other necessities were arranged for Digen—even, over protests, a trach set—all sterilized and ready. But even as the two Gens busied themselves with this job, Digen sensed that they had no intention of leaving. However, later on, a runner came to the door with the message that Fen and Ora were both sick again—and Roshi and Dula were frantic. This strain of the disease conferred little if any temporary immunity on its victims. Many Gens had survived the first bout only to die with the second. Hogan and Ilyana grabbed their coats and went.
It was just luck that Roshi had not unleashed the plague on the Tecton, thought Digen. Or was it? Digen no longer knew his own mind or his own motives. All his life he had been so sure of himself, so shidoni sure he had all the answers.
There are no answers, he thought. Only questions.
He was so weary, he envied Im’ran the exhausted slumber he had fallen into. He told himself that the fatigue was just the aftermath of the uncompleted transfer with Ilyana. He wasn’t in need, but he wasn’t post- either. He’d lived that way for years and never minded. But he wasn’t used to it anymore. Living death, that’s what it is.
He thought of the crystal clear health he had enjoyed here, and he wanted to cry. He knew that if he could cry he’d feel much better. But he couldn’t. The brown numbness went too deep.
As he sat beside Im’ran, the fanir’s nager penetrated, locking to him and bringing him into the Tecton standard mode. It drew Digen into a state of waking sleep somewhat akin to that which Im’ran had induced in him during their extended trautholo. His mind roamed free within itself while his body came to rest, and yet his systems kept vigil.
The Tecton—based on a vile perversion though it was—still held many, many people possessed of an intricate and sublime goodness. Im’ran was one. Joel, despite all he’d lived through, had made himself another. Jesse Elkar, Mora Dyen, Inez Tregaskio, Ben Seloyan, little Enette, the receptionist, Dane Rizdel, and Chanet, Asquith, and Rin, and—and—yes, Bett, a Farris Gen, God help her, and the best sister anyone ever had.
And Im’ran—whose nager had made Digen feel filthy and sick. Imrahan ambrov Imil, the living pulse of the Tecton and all it stood for; Im’ran, who wished nothing more from life than to serve those who sacrificed so much so that the world could survive. Im’ran, whose highest and most secret ambition was to be good enough to pledge Zeor, who wanted most of all to give First Transfer to a Farris channel, whose integrity remained unbreached even when it meant walking out on his own four-plus qualification and leaving the Sectuib in Zeor hysterical with postsyndrome.
Slowly, over a period of some hours, Im’ran’s sleeping nager began to fragment and weaken, becoming chaotic under the attack of the nerve toxin. Digen was able to impose an order on the Gen’s system via his own secondary system, which had become firmly set in the fanir’s pattern.
As Im’ran’s chemistry became progressively more disturbed, Digen had to exert a conscious control until, at some indistinct point, he began functioning in the channel’s mode. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the concern that, as with Ilyana’s transfer, he might suddenly become unable to function. But he knew that that had been psychosomatic. Physically he was in better shape than he had been in over ten years. And this job wasn’t even a prime functional.
But it did take a certain concentration. It was all too easy to let the selyn field pulsing drift—and in the case of a fanir, that could be deadly to both of them.
Altogether, Digen found himself working to the limits of his own sensitivity, control, and concentration. Before the sun rose the second day, Im’ran came into crisis. Digen let the Gen’s temperature climb to near Sime normal, knowing that this virtually guaranteed he would catch the disease himself, but knowing also that it was the best way to control the Gen’s infection before it killed him.
Once, during a sunrise, the fields got away from Digen, and Im’ran went rigid, muscle locked against muscle, throat tightly closed.
Digen looked at the trach set so near his hand. With a savage jerk of a tentacle he knocked it to the floor, and plunged himself into deeper touch with Im’ran’s inner flows. His own body went stiff, his throat clutching at his breath, and his heart faltering even as Im’ran’s did. In a kind of frigid calm more suited to defusing a bomb than to any medical procedure, Digen brought all his Tecton and Zeor discipline to bear, and
fought back, bit by bit, to control of the regular field pulse.
But he had lost the fanir’s basal beat and could only approximate it from memory, engraving it on them both.
He felt again the creeping tingle along his left outer lateral. But he refused to look to his left, knowing that there was nobody there.
Alone in that darkened sickroom for four days and nights with Im’ran, as the Gen slowly regained his senses, beating off the infection, cleansing his system of the toxin, and fighting his way back to life, Digen found himself battling his way back to his own sense of life, self-worth, and even a flicker of hope to rebuild his integrity. It had to be possible. Somehow, it had to be.
He remembered the day when he was ten years old, standing on a windy hilltop, watching his dog chase rabbits as he came to the resolve to become the world’s first Sime surgeon. It was the day his changeover had begun. And if he’d been given free choice, he would have taken the channel’s training—and the conditioning—to become physician and surgeon.
On the fourth dawn, Digen raised the shades and opened the shutters on the starlit night, letting the natural progression of sunrise lighten the room gradually to accustom the Gen’s nerves to outside stimuli again. And while the sun came up they talked, quietly, nostalgically, and randomly, in a kind of communion possible only between old friends.
Later on that afternoon, Ilyana and Hogan joined them for a meal. They were bedraggled and uncommunicative until Digen said, “How are things going out there?”
Ilyana just shook her head, but Hogan said, “We lost our last three patients. That assistant you trained—can’t remember her unpronounceable name—has been doing a lot better with the Simes than we have. And their reinfection rate seems lower. Nobody has any real statistics, though. This place is disintegrating around us.”
Unto Zeor, Forever Page 30