by Jean Lorrah
But it was Jonmair he wanted, not any of the women at Milily’s. So he slipped out into the night, humming to himself as he hurried home.
* * * *
JONMAIR’S DUTIES WERE OVER FOR THE DAY. She was in the sewing room, making a new skirt for her uniform, when Baird came in. He took the cloth from her hands, saying, “That can wait until tomorrow.” Then he drew her into his arms.
She had gotten used to the fact that he would not kiss her, so she laid her head on his shoulder and just enjoyed being held. Then he led the way down the stairs. With The Post so empty, they encountered no one—not that the entire staff didn’t know she slept in Baird’s bed every night. What they didn’t know was that nothing ever happened except sleep.
Until tonight.
Jonmair abandoned herself to Baird’s desire, boldly stripping him even as his fingers and tentacles undid her buttons. What she had learned he liked in their one night of lovemaking quickly came back, and she gently sucked one of his lateral tentacles, making him gasp with pleasure.
He was as generous a lover as he had been the first time, seeing to her pleasure as much as his own. Afterward, she snuggled against him despite the warmth of the night—it felt so good to have someone not find her a useless nuisance.
“What?” Baird asked, and she realized he had picked up her feelings from her nager.
“It’s just...nice to be appreciated,” she said, not wanting to spoil the mood.
“Something is bothering you,” he insisted. “What is it?”
“One of the customers yelled at me today, and your Dad got mad at me for provoking her.”
“Did you?”
“Not intentionally. I could tell she wasn’t feeling well, and I guess it showed in my field when I brought her wine. She said she didn’t want pity from a Gen.”
“Ah.” He threaded fingers and tentacles through her hair, just the way she liked. “She could have mistaken sympathy for pity. Or....“
“Or, I might have felt pity?” Jonmair thought about it. “Why would I feel pity for a Sime? You have everything. I’m not even considered a person.”
“I consider you a person,” said Baird. “So do the Simes and Gens at Carre. You’ve been spending a good deal of time there. What have they taught you about disjunction?”
“That it won’t be easy. Baird, I know some Simes don’t like channel’s transfer—that it doesn’t make them post.” The Householders were concerned that the dissatisfied Simes, although a minority, were influential people either by virtue of age or because they were wealthy and accustomed to Choice Kills. “What happened to you tonight, by the way? Or don’t you want to tell me?”
“I’ll show you,” he told her, “but you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Don’t change the subject. Should I recommend that Dad keep you behind the scenes till you learn to deal with Sime mood swings?”
“Then how will I learn?” she asked. “Baird, tell me why a Gen would pity Simes.”
“Because any Gen who can control her field can wrap a Sime around her little finger,” he replied.
“How?”
He gave a chuckle that reverberated in his chest as she rested her head there. “Look at what you just did to me.”
“You came home post,” she reminded him.
“True—but if my Dad knew I came to you—”
She dared not reply to that, and concentrated on not allowing her hope to show. The uncertainty of her future kept her solidly rooted in the present—she would simply enjoy the fact that Baird wanted her tonight.
In the morning, Baird was gone as usual before Jonmair woke up. But that afternoon he found her back at her sewing, for only the gambling hall had customers at this time of day. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” he told her.
They took his buggy, with the fine gray mare, and drove away from the center of town toward the dock area, then off on an unpaved side road lined with tumble-down shacks. Baird pulled up at a gate that was off its hinges, resting against the fence, while a young man worked at reconnecting those loose hinges with a rusty screwdriver.
The young man was Gen!
“Hello, Tonyo!” Baird greeted him.
“It’s Tony, Mr. Axton,” the Gen replied, “though I can’t seem to get Zhag to pronounce it right. I’d invite you in, but Zhag’s still asleep.” He spoke with a peculiar accent.
“Jonmair, this is, uh, Tony Logan,” Baird told her. “The Gen I wanted you to meet. Tony, this is Jonmair.”
Tony smiled at her, and offered a hand to help her down from the buggy. He was cute, in a coltish way, with curly blond hair and big blue eyes that were his best feature. His hands were calloused, his fair skin tanned from the harsh Gulf sun that had bleached the top layer of his hair to a tow color. He was dressed in shabby, ill-mended denims and a faded shirt that had been high quality when new, and his sandals were of fine out-Territory leathercraft, made for endurance and support.
At a second glance, she realized that the design of his clothing was also out-Territory. A Wild Gen.
“Did someone save you from the Choice Auction, too?” she asked.
“Choice Auction?” He looked blank for a moment, and then said, “Oh! Is that what happened to you?” He looked beyond her to Baird with a big grin. “I’m glad for you. But no, I came into Gulf Territory when the border opened.”
Tony led them to a faded wooden table under a tree outside the house. It felt good to get into the shade. The table was warped, the benches uneven, but they had obviously just been swept clean of oak leaves and other debris. “I didn’t have any place to go last night, so Zhag took me in. I’m trying to repay him by fixing the place up a little.”
“Why did you come in-Territory?” Jonmair asked in wonder.
“I’m a singer,” Tony replied. “Mr. Axton, I can’t thank you enough for introducing me to Zhag. I suppose I’m no judge, as I never heard anyone play shiltpron before, but Zhag’s really the best, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is—but what you do is equally amazing.”
The boy grinned again. “I didn’t know I was doing anything but singing till last night!”
“Maybe not while you were performing, but you had to know what you were doing with your field the rest of the time. You said you came all the way from Keon alone.”
Jonmair was amazed. “Why would you do that?” she asked.
“My mom came from Norlea,” Tony explained. “She established and escaped.... Well, actually, her parents helped get her across the border.”
Jonmair’s throat tightened. Parents who loved their daughter so much they broke the law and helped her to escape instead of selling her into the Pens for the price of a Choice Kill.
When Baird looked sharply at her, Jonmair realized her dismay had shown in her field, and returned her focus to what Tony was saying. “My mom sings the songs she heard in Norlea—I grew up hearing them and loving them. It’s such different music from what you hear in Heartland—and it seemed to draw me here. For a while, I thought it was a sign that I was going to change over. I guess Mom thought so, too, because she made sure I knew Simelan, even if Dad was angry that she taught me.”
“Tony,” Baird interrupted, “Jonmair has been going to Carre for lessons in conduct around Simes. Where did you learn?”
“Some of it I learned at Keon,” he replied, “but they wanted me to stay and be a Companion. I wanted to come to Norlea and be a musician, so I just went out and mingled with Simes. Of course it was safer to do that in Laveen than here, because most of the Simes there are not junct.”
He smiled at Jonmair. “But juncts aren’t really that different, Jonmair. I mean, look at what they’re doing—disjuncting to keep the Unity Treaty.”
“Most people aren’t doing it for themselves,” Baird said. “They’re doing it for their children. The collapse of Norwest Territory highlighted the weaknesses in our own selyn delivery system.”
Tony nodded. “I know. Even Gulf Territory was less than a week’s supply of
Gens away from Zelerod’s Doom, and Gulf was better off than Nivet. In the Gen Territories we didn’t know how bad things were—luckily, or the war would have been right here instead of out west.”
Jonmair, protected as a child and then kept ignorant as a Gen, had not known how bad it was, other than grumblings about delayed Gen shipments and late pickups. “By the time of the Unity Treaty,” she realized, “it was too late for anything but mass disjunction. Still, I don’t know how you have the courage to come here, Tony, when no one knows whether it’s going to work.”
“It will work,” said Baird, “because it has to. I suppose some people won’t believe that, hence the strict laws and harsh punishments. But if the vast majority of Simes are not convinced that disjunction is the only right path to take, no punishments will be harsh enough to stop the Kill.”
Tony looked from Baird to Jonmair. “I guess you and I can’t really understand what Simes are going through, but you really have to admire them, don’t you? And help them.”
“One on one, you mean?” Jonmair asked, renewing her determination to learn to give transfer to Baird.
“Yes, but also a Gen can make things easier for any Sime, at any time. I suppose you’ve gotten beyond the lessons I took at Keon, because after my second donation I left for Norlea.”
“Mostly they’ve tried to teach me how to control my field if I get frightened or startled, so I won’t provoke anyone, or if I’m angry or sad, so I won’t make Simes feel the same feelings.”
“Well, yes,” said Tony, “but that’s all just protection. Haven’t they taught you how to make Simes feel good?”
“I think only the Companions are supposed to learn those techniques,” said Jonmair.
“Why?” asked Tony.
“Because,” Baird answered him, “Simes don’t care to be manipulated by Gens.”
“Is it manipulation to make somebody feel good?” Tony asked. “Zhag and I made a lot of Simes feel good with our music last night.”
So that was what happened to Baird, Jonmair realized.
“Look—” Tony continued, “if your dog dies, you should feel sad. It would be wrong for a Gen to try to stop you.”
He’s so young, thought Jonmair, that having his dog die is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. But still, Baird had brought her here to learn something from this Gen. “I don’t think a Gen could stop a Sime from feeling something like that,” she said.
“Yes,” he said solemnly, “you could. Except maybe for a channel, but then you and I don’t have anything to do with channels, do we?”
“Zhag is a channel,” said Baird.
Tony blinked. “He is? He didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t suppose you had much time for talking last night.”
Tony blushed. “Uh...no, we didn’t. I’ve never drunk that much porstan before—Zhag says he didn’t know porstan and shiltpron music could make a Gen as drunk as a Sime. I’ve never had a hangover like the one I woke up with this morning. Good thing Zhag keeps fosebine on hand.”
That was medicine for Simes. “I didn’t know fosebine worked on Gens, either,” said Jonmair.
“Most awful-tasting stuff,” said Tony, screwing up his face, “but I went back to sleep for a couple of hours and woke up feeling fine. Except for being hungry again. I ate the last of Zhag’s bread and fruit, and that’s when I decided I should do something to earn my keep.”
“You’ll soon be earning it by performing,” said Baird.
“But you were telling me about making Simes feel good,” Jonmair began, just as Zhag made his appearance from inside the shack, blinking at the sunshine. Jonmair recognized him: the shiltpron player who had been with Baird on that day in the town square, when Baird had Genjacked her mother’s Gen! How long ago that seemed now.
Zhag was about as opposite in appearance to Tony as it was possible to be—not merely Sime to the boy’s Gen, but with dark hair, squinting eyes, and the pale skin of someone who only went out at night. He was also still obviously ill, unSimelike in the way he moved. “Tonyo makes me feel good just by being around,” said Zhag, although Jonmair had to wonder if anyone who looked as sick as Zhag was capable of feeling “good” under any circumstances.
“Tony,” the Gen corrected.
Zhag ignored it. “Hello,” he said to Jonmair. Then to Baird, “Is this the woman you told me about?”
“Yes, this is Jonmair.”
“Well, if you can do for Baird what Tonyo has already done for me, he will be a lucky man.”
“But what do you do?” Jonmair asked Tony.
“It’s the other half of what they’ve already taught you,” Tony explained, moving off the bench and onto the table to allow Zhag to have the place where he had been sitting. The Sime sat cautiously, as if every move hurt—little wonder, as he seemed to have hardly any flesh on his bones. Jonmair shifted closer to Baird.
Zhag chuckled. “Oh, you’ll do fine,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Jonmair asked, puzzled.
“You don’t know what you did just then?” asked Zhag.
“You moved to balance the fields,” said Tony. “I didn’t know I was doing it either, until the channels at Keon pointed it out to me.”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you did,” said Tony, pulling his legs up to sit tailor-fashion on the table. “It’s instinctive among Gens who live with Simes. We move so that our fields blend most comfortably for the Simes. There are two Simes and two Gens here, so we can achieve a perfect balance. Last night, I wanted to drift all over the saloon, trying to balance it all alone.”
“Just don’t think about it,” said Zhag, “unless you’re also planning to be a performer?”
“No—but I know what you mean, Tony,” said Jonmair, realizing now what had happened with the woman yesterday. “When I’m serving, I feel as if every Sime is somehow calling to me, and I should try to do something for all of them.”
“Well, until enough Gens mingle with the Sime population in Gulf, it’s going to be that way for all of us,” said Tony. “In some situations it’s best to try not to be noticed.”
“That one I figured out for myself while I was in the Pen,” said Jonmair.
Tony shuddered. “It’s amazing that you can be so comfortable with Simes after that experience.”
“I grew up among Simes,” Jonmair explained. “All the adults were Sime, except for the occasional Pen Gen in the street.” She remembered the feel of her mother’s tentacles braiding her hair—then shielded her emotions as the sense of betrayal overwhelmed her once again.
“Jonmair,” Zhag said gently, “you don’t have to shield to that extent. In fact, both of you could use more nageric inflection in your speech. You sound like children.”
“Nageric inflection?” asked Tony.
“You do it when you sing, Tonyo. Just do the same thing when you talk—don’t hide the feelings that go with your words. Simes aren’t as delicate as you think we are!”
“After all,” said Baird, “we zlin one another’s feelings all the time. The only feelings likely to get a Gen into trouble are pain or fear. You don’t have to shield anything else.”
“It makes me feel good to zlin Tonyo’s simple good health,” added Zhag. “Go ahead and be yourself, Jonmair. It’s quite a lovely self, as I’m sure Baird will agree.”
* * * *
JONMAIR TOOK THE LESSONS TO HEART, and found them increasingly useful. Still, on the day that would mean turnover for most Simes in Norlea, Baird insisted on taking Jonmair away from The Post and the city in general, on the pretext of visiting the local porstan brewery. There was no real reason for Baird to take Jonmair on such an errand, except that he wanted her with him. That made her feel good.
Along the way, he corrected her riding, as well as pointing out landmarks by which a Gen could follow the road back to Norlea, eastward to Lanta, or northward to Nashul and Laveen. “Dad took Elendra or me on all his trips when we were kids,�
� said Baird. “He used to make us choose the road at each crossroads, and figure out the direction by the sun.”
Tears choked Jonmair’s throat and blurred her vision. “What’s wrong?” Baird asked.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Jonmair managed to get out. “Your dad loved his children, that’s all.”
“What?”
“If you had established, and had to run for the border, he prepared you as much as he possibly could. My parents never taught me anything like that—they never even took us kids outside of town if they could help it.”
Baird shook his head in puzzlement. “I never realized it...but you’re right.”
“He couldn’t tell you what he was doing, Baird,” Jonmair told him. “Kids talk. If parents explained what those lessons were for, children might say something in school, and get their parents into trouble. But you don’t know how lucky you are. Your dad may be hard to please, but he loves you.”
“I just wish I weren’t such a disappointment to him,” said Baird, and Jonmair rode beside him in silence, wishing there were more she could do.
Baird reached turnover—the point at which he used up half the selyn in his system and began the long descent toward Need—sometime during that morning, but he showed no reaction other than that same worry about disappointing his father that he had on every other day. When they finished at the brewery, they rode back by a road where Baird knew of a blackberry patch perfectly ripe at this time of year. They gathered a basket full, scratching their hands and purpling their fingers with the luscious fruit. Then they found a spot to spread a blanket while the horses cropped the soft grass.
Jonmair spread out the berries, bread, apples, and cheese, but Baird had no appetite. Unbothered, he smiled at her. “You made me forget all about turnover. Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Jonmair, letting her own hunger show so that she could get him to consume a thin slice of cheese and two berries.
