To Kiss or To Kill

by Jean Lorrah

  “I’m beginning to think the Companions are right,” said Baird. “Simes ought to have Gens with them all the time.”

  But it wasn’t that simple, as they found when they returned to town. The direct route to The Post would have taken them through the busy weekly market, but Baird knew better than to take Jonmair through a crowd of junct Simes today. They detoured onto a narrow side street where people had left horses and wagons awaiting their owners. Baird rode ahead of Jonmair, charting their way around the obstacles.

  It was early afternoon, the peak of market day just over, although the stands would be open for another hour. The occasional shopper came out to their street with packages, and rode away. A family with two young children began loading a wagon, the children tired and whining in a way that reminded Jonmair painfully of her own younger brother and sister. The parents, irritable with turnover, snapped at them, causing the younger child, a girl, to start to wail.

  Over the child’s screaming, though, Jonmair heard something else: shouts, the cracking of whips—

  Baird’s gray mare suddenly reared, backing against Jonmair’s bay gelding. Although well exercised, her horse had enough spirit to nip at the gray’s hindquarters.

  Jonmair pulled on the reins and her mount’s head came up, but he danced sideways in the narrow street. As she was trying to bring him around to move forward again, the noise in the marketplace increased—screams, more angry shouting, and crashing sounds of tables and tents being overturned.

  Baird shouted, “Hurry! We have to get away—there’s been a Kill!”

  Even as he spoke, Simes poured out of the alleys between the buildings, fleeing the riot in the marketplace. The narrow street was soon choked with horses, wagons, and people on foot trying to get away—followed by those who wanted nothing more than a good fight!

  Jonmair struggled to control her horse and her fear as people came between her and Baird.Children screamed as their parents dragged them away.

  People attacked one another at random, and folks who a moment before had wanted nothing but to get away turned and fought back. Untended horses reared and kicked.

  Somehow, Jonmair found that curtain she could draw around herself—thank goodness for the months of practice!

  But when she did so, Baird cried out in panic, “Jonmair!” and redoubled his efforts to reach her.

  “Go ahead!” she shouted. “I’ll follow you!”

  But he wasn’t listening! In an emergency, he was zlinning—and that left him vulnerable to everything in the ambient nager! Jonmair kicked out of her stirrups, slipped off her horse, and wormed through the crowd on foot.

  “Gen!” somebody shouted.

  “Where?” someone else asked in confusion. Her shield was working—the problem was, while she shielded herself, she could not shield Baird. Where had he gone?

  Jonmair struggled toward where she had last seen him—when suddenly a hand grasped her arm and tentacles wrapped about her wrist. “Mine!” exclaimed her Sime captor—a conservatively-dressed woman who on any other day might have been teaching school or keeping accounts for a business.

  It took Jonmair only a moment to realize that her shield would not get her away, although it might prevent the woman from trying to kill her. The woman was not in Need, any more than Baird was—her laterals were out, ronaplin smearing them with desire, but it was a false desire. The glands were not swollen. She had a good two weeks of selyn left.

  What had Zhag and Tony said? She should be able to use her field to calm this woman down if only she didn’t let the wrong emotion show. No fear. And no pity. Just....

  She let go of her shield and said, “It’s all right. I won’t deny you—but you don’t really need me right now, do you?”

  The woman gasped, and her grip tightened bruisingly.

  Gritting her teeth, Jonmair tried to ignore the pain as from the woman’s unfocused eyes she realized her captor was hyperconscious—only zlinning, not using her other senses. She was reacting to Jonmair’s field, not hearing her words.

  How to get her to hear, so she could reason with her?

  Even as she thought it, though, the woman’s eyes focused on her, widened—and then the woman dropped Jonmair’s wrist as if it had burned her! “Wer-Gen!” she gasped.

  That was what the juncts called the Companions in the Householdings—the Gens who could not be killed.

  But they could be murdered!

  The woman lunged for Jonmair’s throat.

  But just then a strong arm came around her, and she was lifted safely up before Baird on his gray mare. “You belong to me!” he said through gritted teeth—and fought his way through the packed street, using his horse as a weapon. Jonmair clung to him, horrified to see two people go down under the flying hoofs—but Baird guided the horse through, bursting out of the narrow street into Norlea’s square, where he recklessly bludgeoned his way through the traffic with the beautiful animal.

  It was only a short distance to The Post, however, and although the groom tsk-tsked when he took the mare after Baird slid down, still holding Jonmair, he dared not say anything.

  The bells of police wagons rang in the square as Treavor Axton came out into the courtyard. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  Baird continued to hold onto Jonmair as he replied, “There’s a riot on Third Street—it started in the market.”

  “We got caught in it by accident,” Jonmair added. “A Sime woman tried to capture me, but Baird rescued me.”

  “Where’s the horse you were riding?” Baird’s father asked.

  “Don’t send anyone into that fighting!” Baird said, finally starting to sound like himself again. “We had to leave Diamond behind. If he doesn’t find his way home I’ll go get him later.”

  Within an hour the city was abuzz with news: the inevitable had happened, less than two months into the grand attempt to disjunct the Sime population. A public Kill in the Norlea marketplace, followed by a riot. Over fifty people had been arrested before it was over, and while most would only pay a fine for destruction of property, one man was in jail, awaiting trial over an illegal Kill.

  Treavor Axton grilled Baird and Jonmair as to why she had required rescuing. “Why did you go into the middle of a riot?”

  “The riot came to us,” Jonmair explained. “We were just riding down Third Street and were caught when people started pouring out of the market. Baird zlinned the Kill, and helped me get away.”

  Baird’s father both zlinned her and looked her over, noting the bruises on her right arm where the woman’s tentacles had held her. “How did you manage not to get killed?”

  “The woman wasn’t in Need. It was just turnover, and then the riot. I was able to calm her down—but then,” she admitted, “she wanted to murder me for being able to do that. That’s when Baird rescued me.”

  Treavor Axton shook his head. “You are a dangerous little bitch, aren’t you? If we lose a perfectly good horse over you, I’ll take it out of your hide.”

  But they didn’t lose Diamond—in fact, a police detective named Kerrk recognized the animal and the logo of The Post carved into his saddle, and brought him back that evening.

  Another Sime of Treavor Axton’s generation, Jonmair recalled seeing Kerrk once or twice at the poker table with Baird’s father. He must have been handsome in his youth, for his worn face was still attractive. Deep lines surrounded his mouth and haunted eyes as large and blue as Tony’s. He questioned Baird, all the while zlinning Jonmair curiously.

  Kerrk was clearly suffering from a bad turnover, and when he zlinned her Jonmair had to strongly resist trying to soothe his jangled nerves. His presence was so strong—

  “You’re a channel,” she said. “You can zlin that Baird is telling you the truth.”

  Hooded blue eyes bored into her and his laterals moved restlessly in her direction as he suddenly focused all his senses on the Gen who had dared speak to him. “I am not a Householder,” he said.

  “You’re at the sam
e stage of your cycle as Baird,” Jonmair explained, “but I feel your discomfort more than his. The only cause I know for that is that you are a channel. You should have a Companion.”

  “Is that what you are?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Not yet,” she admitted, not daring to speak publicly her plan to become Baird’s transfer mate.

  Kerrk shook his head. “My partner has been telling me for years that the Householders could make my life easier. But I don’t want a Gen in my way.”

  Jonmair promptly shut her nager off from the ambient, even though it made Baird wince.

  “Yes, I see,” said Kerrk, “a little wer-Gen in training.” Only a man taller than Baird, Jonmair thought, would call her “little.”

  But the detective could not read the amusement in her field while she was damping it, so he continued, “Don’t stop protecting Baird. You’re right: I am a channel, although I don’t use my secondary selyn system to—” a slight shudder, “—give transfer. The Tecton lorshes decided I’m too old to be dragooned into doling out fake Kills.”

  Jonmair recognized another conflicted Sime, this one entrusted with enforcing the law, even when the law suddenly changed. She carefully suppressed her sympathy while he completed questioning Baird. Then she allowed her field to support Baird once more.

  Kerrk turned to her. “Tell me about the attack on you.”

  “I wasn’t hurt,” she said. “Baird rescued me from a woman who was angry that she couldn’t kill me.”

  Those hooded blue eyes tried to stare into her soul again. “A woman,” Kerrk said. “You don’t say a junct, or even a Sime.”

  “Obviously she was both,” said Jonmair, “but it wasn’t her fault. There was a Kill, and then a riot. Emotions got out of control, and just then she encountered me, right in her path. Inspector, I don’t know who she was, and I don’t think it would be right for you to arrest her.”

  Kerrk rubbed his eyes and then ran fingers and tentacles through his hair, which was thick and curly with just enough color left in the white strands to show that he had been blond. “It’s unnatural,” he said. “You don’t even know that woman, she would have killed you if she could, and here you are protecting her. All I want to do is question her. If you won’t press charges, I can’t arrest her.”

  “I won’t press charges,” Jonmair assured him. “What happened was as much my fault as hers. By next month I’ll have enough training not to provoke a Sime that way. Deal with the Kill that did happen, not the ones that didn’t.”

  Kerrk had also investigated the Kill, but gossip quickly outran any official report of the incident. By the next morning it seemed everyone knew the story, with only some differences in interpretation. The local Genfarm owner had brought a worker Gen to help sell the farm’s produce on Market Day. Something had spooked the untrained Gen, resulting in the Kill—and the Kill had started the riot.

  Of course at The Post everyone said the Kill was an accidental death—that the Sime had been provoked—but this would be the first test of the new laws in Norlea. Word was, in Lanta the Kill still occurred regularly—that Gen corpses were often found, faces frozen in the rictus of fear, but no one ever found out who was responsible.

  Norlea was surely more civilized than Lanta!

  “How could a Genfarmer, of all people, be stupid enough to take a Gen into the marketplace yesterday?” asked Baird, cutting to the heart of the matter. “That was criminal negligence.”

  Jonmair looked at him in admiration, although Treavor Axton scowled. They were seated at the breakfast table, drinking kafi while Jonmair ate.

  “Make up your mind, Boy,” said Baird’s father. “Do you want Gens living with Simes or not?”

  “Living with us, of course,” said Baird easily, refusing to respond to the older man’s irritation. Jonmair had soothed him through the night, and this morning he was himself again. “But they have to be given time to learn. And there have to be more of them, not fewer.”

  “Baird is right,” said Jonmair. “If there had been Companion Gens all over the marketplace, they could have controlled the ambient and prevented a riot.”

  Treavor Axton shuddered and spoke pointedly to his son. “You’re letting that Gen take over your life.”

  “And feeling all the better for it,” Baird countered. “Zlin me, Dad. You’re tense and jumpy, while I’m as stable as I was pre-turnover. If you had a Gen like Jonmair—”

  “I do have Jonny. It’s my ward, and I plan to get rid of it as soon as the legislature provides the procedure.”

  “My name is Jonmair,” she reminded him, pleased that he was as frustrated at the legislature’s delay as she was. She wondered if his trying to rename her was as hopeless as Tony Logan trying to get Zhag to use his right name. It was more important to her than to the Wild Gen, for Tony could go back where he came from and be a free citizen with all rights, any time he wanted to. All Jonmair possessed was her name, and so it had become a contest of wills with Baird’s father.

  Treavor Axton glared at her. He was in far worse shape than his son, the lines in his face carved deep by the stress of an unsatisfactory transfer followed yesterday by what she could only surmise was a bad turnover.

  Suddenly Jonmair was sorry for her annoyance. It wasn’t Treavor Axton’s fault that he had grown up junct. The older the Sime, the harder it was to disjunct—and she really didn’t want him to suffer. She remembered what she had learned yesterday, how he had secretly prepared his children with the knowledge to escape to Gen Territory had they established.

  “Stop that!” he snapped at her, and she saw his laterals retract tightly. “I won’t have Gens pushing me around with their nager!” He got up and stalked out.

  “You’re not afraid at all,” said Baird.

  “Of your dad? He’s not a bad man, Baird. The same pragmatism that made him take you to Carre to save your life will make him accept Gens when he sees what they can do for Simes.”

  Baird nodded. “But what about most people? I’m worried, Jonmair. When the rioting was in Lanta, I thought we’d be safe here. But now it’s come to Norlea—and yesterday was only the beginning.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ZHAG AND TONYO

  BAIRD WENT TO SEE ZHAG PAGET AGAIN two days later, after the shiltpron player’s next scheduled transfer...to see if he had survived. He had been to another performance at Milily’s a few days before, and almost not gotten in, the place was so crowded. Zhag and Tonyo were the talk of Norlea—but Zhag could hardly manage to play a full set despite the nageric support of his Gen. Fearing to find out that Zhag was dead, Baird did not take Jonmair with him that afternoon when he rode over to the shack his friend called home.

  His heart sank at what he saw: the yard was cleaned up, all the brush was cleared away, and a patch of mismatched shingles now covered the hole in the roof. The gate was back on its hinges, straight and oiled, and the old warped table and benches under the tree had been scrubbed down. His first thought was that the landlord was preparing for a new tenant.

  But then he heard music drifting from inside the house—a guitar chord, a shiltpron tone, a delicate harmony that drifted into jangled discord. A burst of laughter erupted into the ambient. Laughter from two men.

  But it was...disembodied, as if there were no people in the house—at least no people he could zlin as he walked up to the front steps, leaving his horse tethered to the fence.

  In the heat, all the doors and windows were open. “Hi, Baird! Come on in!” Zhag called. Suddenly the two men in the house “appeared” on the ambient as they turned their attention to their visitor. It was something Baird had only witnessed when a channel and Companion were focused on one another.

  Baird could hardly believe the evidence of his laterals. Gone was the sick, feeble man he had feared to find dead. In his place was Zhag Paget as Baird had first known him—healthy and brimming with energy.

  And Tonyo—

  The young Gen glowed with well-being. He was low-field now, alt
hough the power in his nager still outshone any Pen Gen Baird had ever encountered. He grinned and said, “Yes—we did it! I’m Zhag’s Companion now.”

  “That’s...just great,” Baird said inadequately.

  Zhag got up and poured Baird a cool glass of tea laced with fruit juice. He laughed again, saying, “I’ve never felt this good in my life—not even after my First—” He broke off in embarrassment.

  But “First Kill,” said Tonyo. “It’s all right, Zhag. You’re disjunct now. It doesn’t bother me that you used to kill.” He looked up at Baird very seriously. “Zhag almost died shenning himself to keep from hurting me.”

  “And then this young fool risked his life to save mine,” said Zhag. “So I suppose we’re even.”

  “What happened?” Baird asked.

  “We were in the marketplace when that Kill happened the other day,” said Tonyo. “I guess I had bought the party line: the Kill is outlawed, so it’s over. I’d never seen it happen, certainly wasn’t expecting it in the market in broad daylight, and I...reacted.”

  “You took Tonyo into the marketplace on that day?” Baird knew how fond Zhag was of the Gen boy—why had he taken him into danger?

  Zhag shook his head. “I was an idiot. I’m so far off from the Last Kill schedule that I never gave it a thought. And I forget that Tonyo’s been in-Territory only two months. Most of the time he zlins as if he’d been born in a Householding.”

  “It all worked out for the best,” said Tonyo. “Zhag needed a good transfer, I’m his match—it was inevitable. But if I hadn’t gotten scared when I witnessed the Kill, I wouldn’t have gained the trust in Zhag that I needed to be able to give him transfer.”

  Only his vocal accent now gave away Tonyo’s out-Territory origins—he had taken Zhag’s advice to allow his field to underscore his speech. He spoke like a Companion now, distinctively Gen, but pleasantly so. Thus Baird recognized that he was not misusing the word “Need.” He meant that he had needed to trust Zhag as much as Zhag had needed selyn.

  Baird looked at Zhag. “You attacked Tonyo?”