To Kiss or To Kill

by Jean Lorrah

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jonmair replied. “I know I can give my selyn to him if he’ll let me.”

  Thea smiled at her. “I know it, too—and you may be the only person who can get him through disjunction crisis.”

  “What do you mean?” Jonmair asked.

  “I don’t have time now to tell you everything, but try to work with Baird. He has never wanted to kill—so he has the will to survive, with your help. After what he did tonight, you know how strong his determination is, even in Need.”

  Never trust a Sime in Need. It was a commonplace. Yet Thea was right: Baird had gone against his own instincts and his father’s goading to keep himself from killing Jonmair.

  “Now,” Thea continued, “I am going to take selyn from you, so you can safely be around Simes.”

  “But what will happen when Tuib Baird needs my selyn?” Jonmair asked.

  “By the time he’s in Need again, you’ll have plenty,” Ronmat, the Companion, told her. “Simes and Gens were meant to be together, not divided into separate territories, and not killing and murdering one another. Every Gen produces enough selyn every month to support a Sime for a month.”

  “Then why the Kill?” Jonmair asked.

  “Because of fear,” Thea told her. “You don’t have far to go, Jonmair, especially with Baird. If you don’t fear, you will be able to give him transfer.”

  “Then I could have done it just now!” she protested. “Why didn’t you let me?”

  “We couldn’t take that chance,” said Ronmat. “But it won’t be long before you can.”

  Jonmair’s donation, though, was a major letdown. Thea gently took her arms, wrapped handling tentacles about them, and then allowed warm, tingly laterals to touch her skin. The channel leaned forward and touched lips for a moment. When she leaned back, Jonmair asked, “Why didn’t you do it?”

  “I did,” Thea said with a smile. It was a lovely smile, Jonmair noticed—in her loose-fitting coveralls, with her hair pulled back in a long braid, she seemed very plain until she smiled.

  “That’s all?” Jonmair asked. “But—why would anybody be afraid of that?”

  Ronmat laughed. “No—that’s not all in a real transfer. Believe me, transfer is...one of life’s major pleasures. What you just experienced is called donation. Gens are often startled the first time they feel selyn movement. Even just that little fear causes resistance, so the channels make sure Gens don’t feel anything in donation. That way there is nothing to be afraid of.”

  Treavor Axton knocked at the door just then, demanding, “What’s taking so shenned long?” and Jonmair had to leave, her burning curiosity unsatisfied.

  She didn’t mind the stares, nor feel exposed in the blue garment that barely covered her nakedness—it was heavenly just to be outside the Pen. As they walked along, Treavor Axton demanded, “Do you understand your situation, Gen?”

  “Her name is Jonmair, Dad,” said Baird, and Jonmair wanted desperately to hug him for his kindness.

  “It’s got no name till it earns one, and then I’ll give it a name,” said Baird’s father. “For tonight it’s my property, and from tomorrow it’s my ward.” He paused. “Shen. It’ll have to have a name to register it. Jenni. That’s your name now. You understand? Jenni the Gen.”

  Knowing that being low-field did not protect her from being murdered, and not knowing what rights she would have tomorrow except a right to life that she did not have tonight, Jonmair decided to be very cautious now and weigh options when she had more information. “Yes, Tuib Axton,” she replied.

  “You know what will happen to you if you try to run away?”

  “No, Tuib Axton,” she replied honestly.

  “You’re a Gen in a city full of Simes. How far do you think you would get?”

  She curbed her tongue and her field—it was better for him not to know she could draw a curtain of privacy around her field and become virtually invisible to zlinning Simes. Besides, she had no intention of running away from Treavor Axton...although only because it would mean running away from Baird.

  “I won’t run away,” she said, letting the truth of her statement show in her field.

  “Good. We’ll find a way for you to earn your keep—understand that even if I can’t kill you after tonight, I can still lock you up, I can beat you—anything I have to do to make you obey. You’re my ward, like all Gens except those Companion lorshes in the Householdings. They get to be Free Gens tomorrow—but you don’t, Jenni, and don’t you even think about it.”

  “No, Tuib Axton,” she replied, eyes downcast, absorbing the knowledge that she had no hope of freedom. Only the perverted Householders allowed their Gens that.

  But...she was alive and would stay that way. And she was with Baird. For now, that was enough—a thousand times better than when she woke up this morning.

  Treavor Axton must have zlinned her gratitude, for he said, “Good. Now go with Baird. If you can get a post reaction out of him, I’ll give you a special treat tomorrow.”

  They were in the entertainment district now, jostled by crowds of desperately celebrating Simes. Music of various kinds competed for the attention of passers-by, and barkers on the pavement tried to entice them into already-overflowing clubs and parlors.

  At the entry to The Post, Treavor Axton handed over the white-painted chain to his son, and disappeared into the gambling parlor to the left of the entry hall. Jonmair had never been in one of the expensive entertainment establishments that Norlea was famous for, although one time she and her little sister had been left with a neighbor while her parents spent a night at The Post, celebrating some extra money her father had made that month. Nine months later, her little brother Wawkeen had been born.

  The Post was crowded and noisy. Everybody was high-field, and most seemed to be drunk. Cigar smoke mingling with the smell of wine and porstan made her cough as Baird led her between the two big parlors off the front entry, and toward the carved oak staircase. Piano music and off-key singing filled the air, while shouts of gamblers echoed from a room full of brightly-colored tables crowded with players.

  As they approached the stairs, a Sime woman came out of a room behind the staircase. It was strange to see a Sime dressed very much like a Gen for a Choice Auction. She wore a short tomato-red dress, low-cut to reveal her chest and back, shoes with heels so high it was a wonder even a Sime could balance on them, and red feathers in her black hair.

  The woman stopped, zlinned Jonmair, and then said, “As I live and zlin, Baird, yer gonna be as good a businessman as yer father. Shenned clever buyin’ a Gen bitch afore they can’t be sold no more!” And she lurched forward as if to take Jonmair’s chain out of Baird’s hand.

  He snatched it back. “She’s not to be one of your girls, Emlu!”

  “Well, don’t tell me you finally got a post reaction!” the woman said with a drunken laugh. “Never figured Treavor Axton’s boy fer a Gen-lover—but hey—whatever extends yer laterals!”

  Emlu sidled past them, into the parlor with the music. The last glimpse Jonmair had of her, she was putting her arm around a handsome man at the near end of the bar and whispering in his ear.

  The second story of The Post contained post reaction suites, Jonmair surmised from the closed doors, as well as some open rooms with food laid out. As good smells assailed her nostrils, she remembered that she had had nothing to eat since that morning’s gruel. Baird turned to her with an audible gasp. “Oh, my! You are hungry, aren’t you? Come on—let’s get something to eat.”

  First, though, he unclipped the chain from Jonmair’s collar. Then he opened the collar, took it off her neck, and snapped it in two. Removing and pocketing the tags that hung from it, Baird dropped the broken pieces and the chain into a trash receptacle as Jonmair fought back tears of gratitude.

  The room he led her into had two people in Post livery, and a handful of Simes sampling delicacies laid out on a buffet table. This food was far more elegant than what had been served to them that night at the
Pen. Jonmair stared, not even knowing what some of it was.

  A couple of Simes, male and female, bristled at the approach of a Gen—but then Jonmair saw the woman look at Baird and murmur something to the man. He chuckled, and spoke softly, but she heard his words, “Apparently it’s true then. Poor Treavor.”

  “Poor us!” responded the woman. “That’s what they want all of us to be: Gen lovers!”

  That couple rather pointedly left the room, but the others just gawked as Baird led Jonmair to the table and helped her choose from the array. “These casseroles are delicious, but I don’t know which mushrooms they’re made with. I’ll get a list from Carre of which ones Gens can eat. Here—this cheese is good, and the bread and fruit—”

  Jonmair was too hungry to worry about anything else just then. The food was so good! Tender young asparagus shoots. Citrus compote. Crusty bread with nut butter. She ate like a Gen, for that moment not caring what even Baird thought of her unladylike appetite.

  He also ate, a bite of this, a mouthful of that—but it was good that he was eating at all. Even as she thought that, Baird laughed. “I already know one job you can do around here,” and he surreptitiously pointed a handling tentacle at the other Simes restocking their plates.

  When Jonmair had eaten her fill, Baird took her up two more flights of steps. “These are the staff quarters,” he told her. “The rooms are shielded. You can have one of them until...we determine exactly what you can and cannot do.”

  He stopped before one of the doors, and after a few moments an elderly Sime man opened it. “Mister Baird!” he exclaimed. “Is anything wrong? Someone not doing his job?”

  “No, no, Cord, everything is fine. All the guests I saw are having a good time. But we have a new resident.”

  Cord stared at Jonmair with bleary eyes, and then his laterals emerged from withered sheaths to zlin her. “A Gen? What are you doing, Mister Baird? Does your father know?”

  “Jonmair is Dad’s ward. She’ll require a room and some proper clothes, and then we’ll have to see how she can earn her keep.”

  Cord frowned, but led them to a room at the end of the hall. It was clean but tiny, one wall the slant of the roof, with a small window. There was nothing in the room but a shelf bed, a comfortable-looking chair covered with worn chintz, and an empty chest of drawers with an old, faded mirror over it—but to Jonmair it was heaven. A room of her own, with the lock on the inside. She was a servant, a ward—but those were terms that applied to people, not animals. She had hope now. She had the possibility of a future.

  Cord showed Jonmair where there were clean sheets and towels, and the bathroom she would share with the other servants. Everything was a bit shabby but sparkling clean—the staff apparently got furnishings that had once been used downstairs, still good, but too worn for the paying customers.

  It was easy enough to find a soft cotton nightgown in the wardrobe, but daytime clothes presented a problem. The livery of servants at The Post was form-fitting, black trousers or skirts, white tailored shirts, and vests in a variety of colors and patterns. And all of it made for Simes, cut wrong for Jonmair’s increasing Gen curves.

  Embarrassment burned her cheeks as skirt after skirt refused to go over her hips, or to close at the waist if she put it on over her head. The trousers were even worse. The shirts gaped open over her breasts. She began to feel clumsy and ugly, like a dairy cow.

  To make matters worse, Baird said, “Wait here,” and disappeared down the stairs, leaving her alone with the old butler, Cord.

  “I can sew,” Jonmair told Cord. She found a vest that fit at the waist, and turned the lining inside out. There was enough material in the seams of both the fabric and the lining to allow her to let it out to fit. “Do you have a sewing kit?”

  Instead he led her into another room, where there were two sewing machines, spools of thread of many colors on the wall, pins, needles, patterns, scissors, tape measures, irons. Jonmair smiled in delight as she found all the tools to allow her to sew again. How she had missed it!

  But although she had found a vest she could alter to fit, she had nothing to wear with it.

  Baird solved that problem, coming up the stairs with a pair of lightweight black trousers and a white shirt of the finest lawn. As she held them against her, she realized that they were his.

  The shirt fit well enough, the soft fabric accommodating to Jonmair’s breasts rather than Baird’s broad shoulders, and the trousers had enough seam to be let out at the hips. Then all she would have to do was shorten them.

  “Thank you, Tuib Baird,” she said. Then, to both men, “I can demonstrate my skills as a seamstress with these clothes. That’s one way I can earn my keep. If you have a room like this, there must be a great deal of sewing to be done.”

  “Good,” said Baird. Then he hesitated. “I suppose it’s best not to give Dad a reason to be upset with you in the morning. It’s still early. You fix those clothes to fit, and I will come up and see you in an hour or so.”

  * * * *

  BAIRD FOUND HIMSELF WONDERING, as he returned to the frenetic party below, why he had promised to go back to see Jonmair. He didn’t need her now—he had enough selyn for another month of life. And he certainly didn’t feel post.

  But there was something about just being in the same room with that Gen. She made him feel good...complete.

  Baird knew more than most Simes did about what would happen in the next few months. They expected to suffer physically—but they had no idea what the mental anguish would be like once they got to know Gens as people.

  Baird moved through the crowd, trying to control his nager so as not to disturb the ambient. His job was to see that everyone had a good time, that no one was without a drink, food, entertainment, or congenial company. Wandering through the rooms, he found everything running like a well-oiled machine, The Post living up to its reputation.

  The lack of a shiltpron player didn’t seem to matter—people were content with the dancers, the piano music, and the rare wine for those who could afford it. But they would probably run out of the wine before morning. They really had to get a new shiltpron player soon!

  Directing Chef to replenish the table that Jonmair had nearly decimated, Baird made a foray into Emlu’s territory, where the ambient told him a good time was being had by all. So he brushed off girls with hopes to gain points by pleasuring the owner’s son, and made his way to the gambling salon.

  He couldn’t look at the Gen caged at one end of the huge gambling salon, a boy who had grown up here in Norlea no doubt, expecting to change over and have a life. Now his despair tainted the ambient with the knowledge that he would be dead before midnight.

  Two hours before midnight the winning number would be drawn, allowing the losers time to claim a Gen before the Pen closed forever. There were black pockets of Need scattered throughout the room—people who could never afford a Choice Kill, hoping for a peak experience just once in their lives.

  Baird could zlin far fewer Simes in Need than had purchased lottery tickets. The Post had made much more money than the Gen had cost—but most of those who had bought tickets had already killed today, regular customers who either always took Choice Kills or who certainly would not risk their last chance to do so. If one of them won, the Gen would be auctioned right here. Baird didn’t want to be around for that eventuality.

  The Simes in Need added to the free-floating anxiety that tinged the lust and laughter of high-field Simes partying madly, trying to forget that they had just had their last Kills ever. The sensation triggered unwanted memories, not of Baird’s most recent Kills, but of the one he had so badly not wanted that day in the square. Only at his changeover had he ever been so helpless against Need.

  How was he to prevent it from happening again? And if he, who wanted never to kill again, could fail so badly, what was to prevent these juncts who resented what their government had decided for them from failing with far less provocation? What would happen to them when they did? The
re had so far been no announcements of punishments for breaking the new laws. It was almost as if the government expected no one to rebel.

  Almost.

  There were soldiers in the crowd at The Post, veterans recently returned from the war in the West. How many of them had killed today...and how many had gone to the channels as they had had to do in that final battle against the Freebanders?

  As he walked through the crowd, Baird deliberately zlinned the soldiers. Tears burned behind his eyes as he zlinned the first one—barely post, probably only a day or two from turnover. She had not killed today. Nor had the man sitting with his back to the bar, nursing a porstan and zlinning the crowd. He was about a week from hard Need.

  “Baird!” His name and a nageric call made him turn back to the first soldier he had zlinned. Now he recognized her.

  “Conta! Welcome home!” he said, holding out his arms and allowing the Sime in greater Need to decide whether or not she wanted a hug. She did, coming into his arms and giving him a fierce squeeze.

  She looked up at him, then, and exclaimed, “Oh, my—you have grown up! You were just a boy when we left.”

  Two years ago—yes, he had been a gangly child when Conta and his sister Elendra, best friends all their lives, had gone off with the Gulf army to fight Freeband Raiders half a continent away.

  He couldn’t help asking, “Were you with Elendra when...?”

  Her face and nager saddened. “We were in the same unit, but...I wasn’t close enough to save her, Baird. We were all strung out along a rock ledge.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Conta. It was war. But...can you come and talk with me in private?”

  She glanced around, then said, “For a few minutes.”

  “You’re on duty,” he deduced as he led her into his father’s office.

  “It’s just a precaution,” she said. “I’m sure lots of people realize why we’re here.”