by Jean Lorrah
Doors at The Post were sturdy oak. Three augmenting Simes launched themselves repeatedly at this one before it came off its hinges—only to reveal screaming, fighting people, crashing noises, and more of the acrid smell.
Jonmair couldn’t breathe. Someone was dragging her—
Simes reached for her! Her heart beat so fast it hurt.
Frantically screaming, she pulled away from grasping tentacles, knowing that the Sime who caught her was going to kill her!
* * * *
BAIRD WAS ON HIS WAY TO THE GAMBLING SALON when he heard a crash in the kafi shop. Hardly anyone was in there at this time of night—but when he entered he saw the window shattered and a canister lying in the midst of the shards, giving off a hissing noise and odd smell.
Through the broken window came screams and swearing from the square—then screeching Gen fear, followed by the unmistakable jolt of the Kill.
Jonmair!
He had to get to her. He had to think—and to be able to think, he needed Jonmair!
He ran toward the main salon, past the door of the gambling hall. Shouts and crashes erupted, and people came barreling out.
“Fear gas!” someone shouted. “Get the Gens outside!”
“No!” Baird replied. “There’s more gas out there!”
The stuff burned his eyes and lungs.
Gen fear sliced through the ambient from the gambling hall. Sime fear accompanied it—fury—rising Need.
Baird forced himself to focus. He needed Jonmair, needed her now. She was in the main salon—
Killbliss erupted from the gambling hall.
Baird’s knees gave way. Mustn’t zlin. Find Jonmair. Lean on her field.
He fought for sanity, and pushed his way down the crowded hallway just as the stage door to the main salon opened and Tonyo Logan was hauled through by two renSimes, one of them a Post staff member named Gus.
Gus zlinned, and gasped, “It’s everywhere! Where can we put the Gens?”
“Where’s Jonmair!” Baird demanded, trying to push past and through the door. He saw and zlinned her, on the far side of the stage, Simes converging—to help her or to kill her?
Zhag knelt on the stage, covering something with his jacket—one of the canisters, Baird realized—but even as he thought it, another one clunked down, hissing, and a woman launched herself through the door and slammed it shut behind her, blocking his view.
Baird leaped forward, only to see the door handle fall off as the door was shaken from the other side.
Sabotage!
As he prepared to batter the door from his side, though, he heard and zlinned augmenting Simes hitting it from the other. The sturdy door finally gave way, and three Simes barreled into the hallway, followed by two Simes dragging Jonmair—
Who screamed in abject terror!
Tonyo rushed from one side and Zhag from the other to try to shield her—but she was as terrified of them as of everyone else, including Baird.
Her fear, carried on her perfect field, triggered Baird’s Need as he had never felt it before.
People shouted at him, but he could not hear them, using only Sime senses to stalk his perfect prey. Jonmair. Jonmair! Jonmair!
She cringed, whimpering in the purest fear he had ever zlinned, his for the taking. He would strip that exquisite selyn from her nerves in the best Kill ever!
NO!
Baird stumbled back, tearing himself away from the temptation. He wanted her selyn, not her life!
Fire seared every nerve as Baird tried to move away from Jonmair. He was paralyzed, supported by nothing but pain, unable to kill Jonmair, unable not to.
Somewhere, he found his voice. “Zhag,” he croaked. “You’re...a channel. Help me!”
“Go on!” he heard Tonyo say, and then his old friend was there, entwining their tentacles, ready to give him the transfer he needed.
But he didn’t want channel’s transfer, even from Zhag. He wanted Jonmair!
He turned his face away before Zhag could touch lips, strength he had not known he had coming from somewhere. “No—protect her. Get the Gens...to safety!”
But there was no safety. Tonyo’s powerful field, shielding Baird from Jonmair’s terror, vibrated with anxiety as he could not help breathing in that foul stuff.
Zhag interposed his channel’s field, but had no protection himself from his Companion’s increasing anxiousness. If Tonyo panicked, they were all doomed!
Baird staggered and would have fallen were it not for Zhag’s support—but with the channel managing the ambient he found himself capable of thought.
Horror raged in the crowded corridor. Jonmair cringed, her field a beacon no Sime could resist—
Except that on every side, Simes were resisting, high-field Simes placing themselves to protect their low-field friends.
Gus and Emlu, both post, took Jonmair’s arms on either side, refusing to zlin her terror.
Baird wanted to tear his Gen from the other Simes—but Zhag grasped his bicep, and from somewhere the voice of reason told him, You don’t want to kill Jonmair!
The ambient rang with postkill mingled with Gen terror—not just Jonmair’s. The brave resistance of nearby Simes could not last—did not last. Behind Baird, another flare of Killbliss shattered the ambient.
Two soldiers came running up. “It’s worse out in the square! They’ve attacked the dispensary—the Old Pen—with that stuff. It’s chaos! No one knows where to take Gens to protect them.”
“I know,” said Baird, teeth gritted so hard his jaw ached. “Get them into the Killroom!”
Zhag winced, but then agreed. “Pass the word,” he told the soldiers. “Killrooms are insulated. Come on, Tonyo,” he said.
“Huh?” his Companion said. “I’m okay.”
“You’re running on nothing but courage,” Zhag told the young Gen, who didn’t seem to realize that he was trembling with the effort to remain superficially calm. Everyone could zlin his increasing fear. “Stay out here, and you’ll breathe even more—can you imagine pure fear carried on your field?”
Jonmair had to be dragged, as did most other Gens lucky enough not to have been killed.
Yet.
The Post’s Killroom was designed to accommodate half a dozen Gens in the little comfort they had ever been afforded before Unity. Tonight, by the time they had saved as many Gens as they could, it held fifteen, all in panic except Tonyo, who reeked of free-floating anxiety by the time they pushed him in and shut the door.
When the tempting fear was at last shut away, Baird almost collapsed. He wanted to tear the door open, pull a Gen out, and kill—
But he didn’t.
Somehow, he didn’t, just as the other Simes didn’t...although those precipitated into hard Need converged on Zhag, the only channel available. Baird, though, pulled himself together. He was not due for transfer until tomorrow. Tomorrow Jonmair would be recovered. He could do this—he had waited out the last hours before his transfer every month of his life since his changeover.
He left Zhag and the Simes rigging up a transfer room, and went to see to his guests.
There were ten Gen corpses in various rooms of The Post, and more than ten Simes grieving over them.
The main salon and the gambling hall looked like the aftermath of a battle, where Simes had fought to protect Gens against those determined to kill them. But most of the Kills had not been made by those who had smuggled in the fear gas. The poison had served its purpose: many Simes had killed Gen friends.
When Baird found Conta weeping uncontrollably over Robert’s body, he at first thought she had killed the man she loved. But she looked up at him and told him, “I couldn’t save him! It wasn’t Jaik’s fault—I know it wasn’t! But—”
“Jaik?” Baird asked.
Conta nodded at another corpse, this one Sime, an army-issue utility knife protruding from his chest. “I was at the bar, getting drinks. The gas was released, and everyone started fighting. I couldn’t reach the table. I tried—�
��
“Of course you did,” said Baird. “It wasn’t your fault, or Robert’s.”
“Or Jaik’s,” she said in anguish. “Jaik killed Robert. And I...I murdered Jaik.”
Baird thought, You saved him from execution, but he didn’t say it. Such Kills would probably be ruled the fault of those who released the fear gas. And Conta was in enough pain.
She zlinned him. “Jonmair?” she asked.
“She’s safe. I—I couldn’t kill her, but I couldn’t let her go, either. I had to ask Zhag to help me. Then he and Tonyo shielded her.”
Awe broke momentarily through Conta’s grief. “You asked?”
“It was the only thing I could think of,” he admitted.
“You thought? Oh, Baird, then something good came out of this horrible night. Don’t you realize? Your matchmate was in terror under your tentacles, and you resisted killing her. You could only do that if...you’re disjunct.”
But her moment’s thought for him could not last, and she turned back to the dead men, weeping once more.
Baird had no time to think about what Conta had said as he went back to assessing the results of the attack on The Post. Three attackers were dead, but two others had been captured by some of the soldiers, who now struggled to keep other Simes from murdering them.
But there had been more than five. Most had escaped in the panic—escaped to plot new attacks against Unity.
Before this night, many Simes had believed fear gas to be a myth. Baird had known it was real, both its manufacture and its possession capital offenses. Invented for use by the most jaded of Simes, its very existence was outlawed because of its potential to disrupt the always precarious selyn delivery system.
Someone had managed to manufacture enough fear gas to attack the Square, The Post, and the Old Pen. And, he learned as reports came in through the night, the attacks had reached Carre, and the neighborhood around the Householding where mixed Sime/Gen families lived.
It was a well-orchestrated, devastating attack on Unity itself.
Baird could not feel anything in his encroaching Need except increasing anxiety. What would happen to Jonmair now? How could he protect her against this kind of guerilla warfare? Even if she recovered physically, how could she recover emotionally from such an assault? Would she be able to give him transfer now?
And what about Norlea, or any city in Gulf? How many Simes suffering through disjunction would give up? Up to now, many had been willing to endure increasing agony so that they, or their children or grandchildren, could live without fear. What if these terrorists tipped the balance, made most Simes believe that the Sime killer instinct could never be quelled? Could a handful of determined criminals undo all the hard work accomplished toward Unity?
After the police and militia had carted the surviving attackers off for interrogation, Baird saw the last of their guests out of The Post and locked the doors. He turned to find his father standing in the hallway outside his office.
Treavor Axton had been nowhere to be seen through the attacks and their aftermath. He told the police that he had been in his office, working with his accountant on quarterly tax forms, and everything had happened so fast that by the time they realized there was an attack the worst was over.
Baird found that hard to believe. The accountant for The Post was Anbel Reevs, another of Treavor Axton’s card playing buddies. He supposed it was possible that she had joined him immediately after he and Jonmair had seen Treavor Axton go into his office—but how could they have ignored the noise?
Anbel and his father alibied one another. Old Chance and the rest of the gang had been playing poker in the gambling hall, witnessed by dozens of people at nearby tables. None of them had thrown a canister, and none of them had killed in the ensuing panic.
Baird felt his father zlin him. “So,” he said, “you are still in Need. You could have taken a Kill.”
“Broken the law and been punished with shedoni?”
“No one will be charged with taking an illegal Kill over what happened tonight.” His father looked around at the crew cleaning up the mess. “You showed unexpected strength, Baird.”
“Yes, I did,” Baird told him. “So did other people. Most of the Gens on the premises were not killed. We can be proud of the staff and the clientele of The Post.”
“Oh?” Baird felt his father again zlinning him, trying to read in his field what he was holding back. “Despite your Need, you zlin healthy.”
“As do you,” Baird replied. “Dad, there’s no way you could be in the shape you’re in after channel’s transfer.”
“Baird, I wouldn’t have held it against you if you had killed a Gen that belonged to me.”
“But I didn’t,” Baird told him. “Yes, Jonmair was panicked by the gas. I did what I had to do: turned away from her to a channel, so I wouldn’t take a life. I’m disjunct, Dad.” He said it proudly, beginning to believe it now as he had not when Conta had said it earlier.
He zlinned the way his father’s field went flat. “You didn’t kill her when you had the chance? But you didn’t take channel’s transfer, either.”
“My scheduled appointment is tomorrow. If Jonmair hasn’t recovered by then, I’ll be all right on channel’s transfer for another month. I’m certain now, Dad—if I didn’t kill tonight, I will never kill again.”
“Then you are quite simply a fool, Boy. The Unity Treaty won’t last the month.”
“You’d better be wrong, Dad,” Baird told him. “Because if you’re right, and we break our word of honor, then the Gen army will be on our doorstep in no time. We won’t have to wait to die in Zelerod’s Doom.”
CHAPTER TEN
AFTERMATH
BAIRD WAS STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT what felt odd about his father when there was a sharp rapping at the front door.
“We’re closed!” he called.
“Please—it’s Bran Coyt. My wife Penta works here.”
Realizing that the man didn’t know whether she was dead or alive, Baird hurried to open the door. “Penta’s safe—just scared. Come in! Stay here tonight—don’t try to take her home.”
“Thank you!” Coyt said, his field ringing with relief. “Where is she?”
“We put all the Gens in the Killroom because it’s the only room with the insulation to block their fields.”
Coyt winced, but nodded. “Good thinking. I got our son to Carre—Penta will want to know he’s safe.”
“What happened at the Householding?” Baird asked.
“Someone lobbed canisters of fear gas over the walls. It affected a few Gens, but the channels rushed them into insulated rooms. There were no Kills. The Dispensary’s another story, though. I heard it was pure shen there tonight.”
Treavor Axton trailed them as they skirted the kitchen and took the other passage to where the insulated Killroom stood at the end of the corridor. In front of it, the hallway was partly blocked by an impromptu dispensary, insulated curtains over a pair of ladders with a plank running between them. In the small tent thus created, Zhag Paget, the only channel on the premises, had given transfers to those Simes brought to desperation dragging terrified Gens to safety.
Zhag sat against the wall now, exhausted. When they approached, he looked up and zlinned them, saying, “Thank goodness none of you needs a transfer. I don’t know how the working channels do it!”
“Can I get you something?” Baird asked his friend.
“Tonyo,” Zhag replied. “Shen, but I’m cramping.” He gritted his teeth, but managed to stay hypoconscious until the spasm passed, so as not to broadcast his pain to the other Simes. Baird knew cramps in the selyn-conducting nerves were a problem channels sometimes experienced, and their Companions could somehow ease it.
“If you think it’s safe to let them out—” said Baird.
Zhag nodded. “No one’s screaming anymore, and none of us are in Need. They’re likely to be pretty shaky, though.”
The Gens were, quite literally, trembling—but
all were back in their right minds now. Jonmair looked up in startlement at the opening door, but the moment she saw Baird she jumped up and flung himself into his arms, clinging to him for dear life.
He could hardly move out of the way before Penta ran to her husband, sobbing, “You’re all right! But where is Kev?”
“He’s fine. I took him to Carre,” Coyt replied. “I was so worried about you!”
Tonyo hurried to kneel beside Zhag. “You’re hurt!” he gasped.
“It’s just vriamic fibrillation. Deep breaths, Tonyo. Get that stuff out of your system so you can calm down and help me.”
All the Gens radiated anxiety, and Baird could feel Jonmair’s body trembling as she tried to breathe deeply when her diaphragm was seized up with stress.
“Dad,” said Baird, “please go make sure the courtyard is clear of anyone in Need. We should take the Gens out in the fresh air.” He could smell the fear gas in Jonmair’s hair and clothing.
In a few moments they were out in the night air. Other Simes, hearing that the Gens had been released, came to receive the same reception Baird and Zhag and Bran Coyt had received. Soon every bench in the courtyard contained a Sime and a Gen reassuring one another.
The attacks were apparently over. The night breeze dissipated the gas, and Jonmair’s shivering subsided as she remained plastered against Baird, drawing warmth despite the warm night. He took her cold hands, and when she clasped his willingly, wrapped tentacles about them as well.
As Jonmair calmed, she asked, “Do you want to take transfer now, Baird?” Her field combined enticing residual anxiety with a powerful Need to Give. Oddly, it didn’t overwhelm his control.
“Tomorrow,” he promised, awash in delicious anticipation.
He watched Zhag calming Tonyo, who finally detached himself from the channel, stood, and shook himself like a puppy coming out of water. Then, with a smile no longer forced, he turned again to his partner, saying, “Let me help you now, Zhag.”
Roles reversed, the shiltpron player took Tonyo’s forearms in transfer position, but instead of touching lips he laid his head on the Gen’s shoulder and gave a sigh of pure relief. “Thank you,” he said softly, as he let go the shielding he had been holding over his painful field. His blessed relief poured over the Simes in the courtyard.
