Unto Zeor, Forever

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “I’ve never been witless in my life,” said Digen. The rasp of his own clogged vocal cords grated on his nerves. He coughed at the phlegm.

  With all the air out of his lungs, abruptly, the sounds, sights, smells, and nageric textures burst in on him, amplified beyond endurance. His muscles locked against themselves, relaxed slightly, then locked again, harder, and again. He could not draw breath. Im’ran hissed, “Ilyana! Link!”

  Im’ran had been doing his best to remain aloof from Digen, but now he brought Digen neatly under his control—off true, but solid and so close to Tecton standard that Digen sensed no difference. Ilyana dropped into link, hunting a bit, then steadying. Im’ran’s quantized solidity held Digen firmly to one specific selyn consumption pattern, and, through Digen, it held Ilyana from drifting.

  Over his shoulder, Im’ran said, “Are we doing it, Skip?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  The thrum and throb of the two Donors locked into Digen’s system, shielding him from wild sensory inputs, collimating his inner flows, until the locked muscles began to melt loose and he drew a shuddering breath.

  But, though he could breathe, his whole body shook with a palsied vibration he could not control. Saliva and oral selyn conductors poured into his mouth from aching jaws, his lateral orifices were bathed in ronaplin, and his breath came in little shivering gasps. But worst of all was the feeling of being torn, stretched, shredded between the two powerful Gens whose basal selyn production rates were close enough to his own consumption rate that they each could be called matchmate to him—but Ilyana’s was a hair’s breadth high while Im’ran’s was now an increment low.

  It was like sitting between two violinists who are supposed to be playing in unison but aren’t quite. Each ear heard a different note, and the notes met somewhere behind the eyeballs and sent a jangling cacophony down the whole body, shaking the teeth, grating under the fingernails, curling the toes.

  “Stop it!” Digen gasped. “I can’t stand it!”

  “His sensitivity’s way up,” said Skip.

  Digen tried to pull away from the Gens, and it was only then that he realized they had each taken an arm and forcibly extended his laterals to make a contact.

  “Hang on, Digen,” said Im’ran in that neutral voice of the therapist. “We’re going to have to block for you, or you’ll never survive this. Joel, get going, if you’re going to.”

  A knife floated into view. Digen recognized it as Hogan’s favorite one, scrounged from the school’s art department. It held the best edge, and was made all in one piece, so it could easily be sterilized. The blunt-nailed Gen hand around the knife was Hogan’s as was the whisper that screamed along Digen’s nerves. “Flex his head back.”

  “No, no, I can’t,” Digen whimpered as Ilyana’s hand came under his head. At the contact of her skin on his, Digen twisted, crying out, “Please, stop!”

  Skip came behind Digen’s head, spreading hands and tentacles on either side of his skull. “Hurry. Somehow, you two are causing the shaking. It’s killing him.”

  Hogan brought the alcohol swab over with his other hand. His nager was steady, calm, and totally disconnected from the events taking place under his hands. “No. It’s unpleasant, maybe, but he’s breathing. And he wouldn’t be without them.”

  A drop of alcohol fell on Digen’s bare skin, burning cold. The shock of it died quickly, damped by the steady Gen nager.

  “Ready?” asked Hogan.

  Im’ran locked eyes with Skip, who nodded.

  “Hang on,” said Hogan, as he applied the alcohol wash to the base of Digen’s neck. The two Gens, despite the nerve-racking dissonance, fielded the flooding shock of that cold wash, and Digen suddenly understood what they were trying to do for him and why it was necessary.

  “Wait!” he gasped, and with all that was in him he worked to damp the palsied shaking, to still every vestige of resistance that had been causing it.

  To Ilyana he gave control of his primary system, and to Im’ran he entrusted his secondary system. Cutting himself, thus, in half, utterly incapable now of imposing his own will on either system, Digen found the inner dissonance stilled, the muscular palsy dying down. Im’ran held his selyn consumption dead even, while Ilyana drifted off a hair and then came back under an increment, but limited in her wandering by Im’ran’s steady pulse.

  In a few gasped words, Digen tried to tell Im’ran what he was doing, but since it had never been done or even conceived of before, there was no vocabulary. Digen had no idea if he’d gotten his point across, but he knew the condition was unstable and could disintegrate at any moment.

  He locked gazes with Joel. The Gen stood poised, nager totally detached, all emotion firmly distanced, awaiting Im’ran’s signal. He’s only doing what I told him he had to learn to do to be a good surgeon.

  With all his courage, Digen said, “I trust you, Doctor.” And he arched his head back, exposing his throat fully to Hogan’s keen knife.

  He saw surgery in a new light. It was a terrible insult, a violence done to the body to prevent the body from destroying itself, and it was acceptable only because it was temporary. In a few days, there will be hardly a mark left and all functions will be restored.

  Each arm outstretched from his shoulders, his head pinioned back, his vriamic node itself beyond his control, his will floated free, unable to affect his destiny. He felt, for the first time in his life, in direct contact with the creative power flowing through the universe, and he simply submitted himself to it without whimper or protest.

  Suddenly it was as if an intense white light had been turned on behind his head, above his line of sight—or no, somewhere above his eyeballs. It was so brilliant that it could not be seen by but only seen, for it swamped out all other sensory input. A living power touched him, and he knew the trembling fear that goes beyond awe into a kind of exquisite terror—the power no mortal can face and live.

  For one flick of time he felt himself absorbed into that brightness, a part of it—a blinding expansion to infinity and beyond.

  Then his sense of identity possessed him, and he squirmed away. It’s too much!

  Joel: He fainted.

  Im’ran: His chest muscles are hard as stone.

  Joel: Keep ventilating him.

  Ilyana: He’s dead.

  Skip: No.

  Joel: He’s coming around.

  Im’ran: Digen, can you hear me?

  A wordless cry of relief from Ilyana:

  His eyelids flickered.

  Im’ran: We almost killed him.

  Ilyana: Stay out of phase. I’ve got it now.

  Im’ran: Come on, Skip, let’s leave Ilyana alone with him. I’ll take the next shift.

  Joel: Right. He’s breathing on his own again. You know what to do, Ilyana.

  Ilyana: Thank God.

  Digen: If you only knew.

  Some intellectual part of his mind told Digen that the big black gaps in his awareness were the times he went into convulsions. Once, he felt Hogan’s nager as the breathing tube was sucked clear, his throat swabbed out. Occasionally there would be a barely perceptible shift as Im’ran and Ilyana replaced each other. He thought of praying again—that they wouldn’t catch the plague from tending him. But he was afraid to pray for something so trivial as life. Are we not all immortal?

  Pearlescent gray fog swirled about him. A distant voice intoned a roll call. It had been going on, Digen realized, for quite some time. His feet hurt as he stood to attention, listening to the names. One flew out at him, recognized from a particularly lurid lesson—Feleho ambrov Zeor, inscribed by the hand of Klyd Farris, Sectuib in Zeor.

  And on and on the roll went. He knew what it was now: the names of martyrs enshrined in Zeor’s Memorial to the One Billion, the martyrs who gave their lives for the Zeor dream. And the voice reading off that honor roll was Orim Farris, Sectuib in Zeor—his very own father.

  On Digen’s right towered the slender form of his brother Wyner Liu, and on
Digen’s left stood Vira and Nigel. His mother hovered behind them. All around him, in a huge, invisible circle, were all the members of Zeor who had ever pledged, and every Sectuib who had ever stood for Zeor.

  In wonderment, Digen whispered, “Wyn? Is that really you?”

  The tall form, a bright ghost in the fog, said, “Yes, little brother. Be still now, this is the most important day of your existence.

  “I died?”

  “No, silly brother,” said Wyn, and Digen flushed with a mixture of tingling nostalgia and embarrassment to be again Wyn’s “silly but beloved brother.” “Digen, today you are to Receive Zeor.”

  “I can’t be dreaming this,” said Digen. “I don’t even know what’s done at a Receiving.”

  “That’s because you weren’t an heir. Now hush and pay attention. You’re about to find out.”

  Digen wanted to obey his brother. He had always obeyed Wyner. But he wanted the voice and the presence of his brother to continue.

  Digen caught his lip between his teeth, and, feeling like a small boy, he snuck his hand into the big fist of his elder brother. He was inordinately gratified when his fingers were gripped in return by the warm flesh and soft tentacles. Then a nageric interlink rippled through him via that slight touch, the distinctive fluttery caress of Wyner’s fields. It flooded him with all the aching loss he thought he’d buried somewhere during his teens. The raw grief, all new again, made this whole bizarre scene real to him in a tangible way.

  Off in the mist, Orim Farris was saying, “All of these have died for Zeor, but the power of their lives burns brightly still. Digen Ryan Farris, son of Orim Farris, Sectuib in Zeor, and Diuio Scott, his wife and consort, step forward and become the vessel through which the power of death will brighten and grace the world of men.”

  Wyner’s great hand propelled Digen out onto the featureless floor, misted in from all sides. Somewhere, he found a bubble of clearness, and there stood his father, as large as he had seemed to Digen as a boy. Orim was a lithe, beautiful Sime with all the classic Farris features, even to the stubborn cowlick of jet black hair draped across his tall forehead.

  As always, his father’s presence was overpowering to Digen, and though he wanted none of Zeor or its heritage, he stood quietly as his father asked, “What is Zeor?”

  “I haven’t been prepared to answer that here.”

  “Yes—I know.”

  The clenched sorrow in Orim Farris almost choked Digen, but he managed to say, “Wyn always says Zeor is the common human striving for excellence.”

  “Truly spoken. But there is more. Zeor is the fueling force of life, which will not let us rest short of becoming the best self we may be. Zeor is the knowledge of the vast gulf between what we are and what we can be, the humbling knowledge of how far we have yet to go and the inspiring knowledge of what it will be like when we get there.”

  Orim came closer, though he didn’t seem to move. “But there is much more to Zeor than that. To know Zeor, you must dive deep within yourself and come upon it within your own soul. It is a dangerous journey from which you may never return. And even if you do return, you will have gained nothing of value to you, but only to others. It is a journey which will change your soul as even death cannot change it. If you return, you will no longer be the same person you are now. Do you trust me to conduct you on this journey-of-no-return to Zeor and back?”

  “Where Wyn has gone with you, I do not fear to follow.”

  But he was afraid as he’d never been in his life before. His only strength lay in the unseen multitude around them. They were Zeor, and he would do anything for them.

  Orim Farris held out his hands, laterals extended. “Contact me,” he commanded.

  Gulping, Digen held out his hands, his own laterals twining about his father’s. “To the grave and beyond, in search of Zeor and forever.”

  Selyn coursed into him, down the junct pathways that only Ilyana had ever touched. The sensation rose and rose until it possessed him, blotting out all else. He found himself drifting down a vaulted hallway toward a bright mirror. When he reached it, he shed his outer garments of seeming reality and went on toward another mirror, and through it to another.

  At each station he met some new revelation, but in all that long journey downward and back he retained only three clear memories amid blurred impressions of the incomprehensible.

  In one mirror, he saw himself from a new perspective. All that he had ever done in life, all he had ever thought or felt, was designed to hide from himself knowledge of his basest fears: If I should ever really kill a Gen, I would relish his terror and pain. I would. I….

  He stood before that mirror, face turned aside, able to glimpse this self, this truest self of his own being, only from the corner of one eye. To pass through this mirror—to find what was behind this self—to search out and touch Zeor—he had to face this self and embrace it. It was the test.

  He never knew how long he stood there struggling to look himself in the eye, naked of all pretense. But at last he did manage it. He learned: I am afraid of what I would do if I held any real power. That’s why I ran away—from the Tecton, from Zeor, from myself.

  And then he was through the mirror, stumbling down a long tunnel littered with the shattered remains of all he had ever been, sobbing the whole way, but never slowing.

  He fetched up in front of another mirror, too bright to look into. For a long time he stood there, squinting sideways at it until finally he forced his eyes open and faced the light.

  From what he saw there, he reeled backward in shock and lay senseless for uncounted time. His father’s voice urged him up to confrontation again, and meekly he went to embrace the figure—marbled darkness like a Sime in attrition etched around by searing Gen fire—and he knew it as his own death, though he didn’t know what that meant, except that this time it didn’t terrify him.

  He found himself kneeling in muck, a stinking sludge of foul waste. Digging in the muck with his hands, he uncovered a glittering, bejeweled chest in which he knew he would find Zeor, the thing he had come to touch.

  He drew the chest up out of the ooze, and it came away perfectly clean. His father’s voice said, “You will retain only what you are currently able to understand and benefit from. Nothing destructive will be brought back from this journey. But all of it—every bit—is now a part of you. It is not for yourself that you carry it, but for others. Open the box.”

  He opened it. Within, on black velvet, lay the Zeor crest ring he had stomped to shards beneath his heel in Westfield. He reached out to touch it, wondering what cruel trick was being played on him.

  The ring sucked him into the box, and the lid shut him away in darkness, velvet-clad darkness.

  He had scarcely begun to feel panic when he was caught up in Wyner’s arms, cradled and protected, strengthened and bathed in that peculiar, fluttery nager which was Wyner’s. “What is Zeor, little brother?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” cried Digen in despair.

  “Silly little brother—you have become Zeor.”

  “That doesn’t make sense!”

  “Zeor is the focal point of a lens that can burn holes in reality. Does that make more sense?”

  “No.”

  “Then take what you have become, and learn what it means to you.” The mists swirled in, lighter than the velvet black, thinning lighter and lighter. Fading quickly, Wyner whispered, “And take care of Bett for us, silly brother, and tell her we are all well.” Wyner’s arms tightened around him, became solid and real to the touch, cool, smooth flesh, nager firming up to a steady, compulsive beat—a Gen beat, a fanir’s beat.

  “Digen?” A quivering voice, no trace of therapist neutrality.

  His mouth felt stuffed with cotton and he hurt all over like one enormous bruise shot trough with the screaming pain of strained muscles. His head throbbed, his neck was stiff, and he could barely swallow. But when he tried to say “Yes” he found air whispering over his vocal cords, and a
sound did come out.

  Im’ran’s grip loosened, and suddenly he was the Tecton therapist again, distant, punctiliously proper, without a whisper of the emotional contact of Wyner/Im’ran, the confused dream image—fever hallucination—whatever it had been.

  The shift was so abrupt that Digen gasped. Wyn! And, after that brief twinge of the old grief, he laid it aside.

  Im’ran was holding a straw to Digen’s lips. “Drink, just a sip now. Then I’ll put you into your deepest sleep and you’ll heal quickly.”

  Under Im’ran’s deft ministrations, Digen plunged gratefully into the deep pit of real sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ILYANA ACTS

  There was a space of days in which Digen faded in and out of wakefulness, then he plunged back into the healing sleep, from which he finally emerged early one night.

  He was lying in a half doze when Ilyana came into the room, rousing Im’ran, who had fallen asleep in the chair.

  “Is he awake yet?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Ilyana came to the bed. “Digen?”

  She was very upset about something, Digen saw, but Im’ran’s field blocked almost everything else. He rolled onto his back and struggled to sit up. The shades were up, moonlight pooling on the bedspread. “Ilyana? What’s wrong?”

  She hesitated, and he reached for her hand, but she drew back. “No, you might catch it from me again.”

  She wasn’t showing any symptoms, so Digen said, “Maybe we’ll all be lucky. Maybe it’s all over.”

  “No, Digen,” she said, brushing that aside. “It’s Skip.”

  “He’s sick?” said Digen, throwing the spread aside.