House of Zeor

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “You are not in a position to insist on anything.”

  “Now, don’t get upset! I only meant you ought to trust my judgment.”

  “Uh...,” hazarded Valleroy. “I don’t relish this any more than you do, but I did volunteer. You’ll never find one girl among thousands with nothing more to go on than a few sketches. By the time you find her, she may have lost weight...changed.”

  “It would be too dangerous,” said Klyd.

  “You can protect him,” said Hawkins. “You could adopt him into your Householding.”

  “Under what cover story? It would be more dangerous for me than for him. There may be spies even within Zeor.”

  “You know your people better than I do. You devise the cover.”

  The rain finally slackened, letting the moon through a crack in the clouds. Valleroy could make out the Sime’s figure, like a gaunt-winged vampire. He dismissed the impression. Simes were only human mutants who wore riding capes for comfort.

  At length, the Sime bit out an oath in Simelan and rounded on the Gens. “There is only one way. I’ll have to take you in as a victim of transfer shock...and it will have to be genuine!”

  “Don’t try to scare him off! There’s got to be another way.”

  Valleroy shuddered. This he hadn’t bargained for!

  “There is no other way. If I’d rescued him, and he was uninjured, I’d simply turn him loose as an advertisement that all Simes don’t kill. The only reason I’d bring a Gen home would be to have his life. I can’t imagine what excuse I could use to keep him more than a week.”

  “What would happen if I refused to leave?”

  The Sime stopped splashing mud and stared toward Valleroy as if he could see him through the darkness. “I don’t know. I suppose Grandfather would have to decide.”

  “How long would that take?” asked Hawkins.

  “Hmmm. Maybe long enough.”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” said Valleroy. “I thought you were head of your Householding.”

  “Mr. Valleroy. I feel your fear of me...and fear brings out the beast in a Sime. There are ordinary Simes in Zeor. You’d have to learn not to fear them or be constantly in danger of attack...unless you were rendered low-field by transfer.”

  “You are trying to scare me off!”

  “Frankly, yes. If it’s ever discovered that I’m working with you, I would be executed...unpleasantly.”

  “I’ve never blown a cover yet, and I don’t intend to start now! You may need me to identify—” Valleroy had to swallow convulsively before he could get it out—”her body.”

  Suddenly, the Sime stepped close to Valleroy and peered down at him, revelation in his tone. “You love her!”

  “No. She’s just a friend. That’s all.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Don’t read my mind!”

  “I can’t read your mind, only your emotions! But never lie to me again. It’s no foundation for a partnership.”

  “Then you’ll take him?”

  “It appears I have no choice since he loves her.”

  Unseen in the darkness, Hawkins smirked. He’d known all along that Klyd would accept only someone who had a personal reason to find her, and he’d long suspected Valleroy’s interest in her to be more than casual.

  Valleroy moved to lean against the rock face. To him, Sime ethics were sometimes more confusing than Sime temperament.

  Approaching swiftly through the dark. Klyd spoke rapid words, “Mr. Valleroy, you were attacked by a Sime berserk with need. You drove him off with this.” He snatched Hawkins’ knife from its sheath and presented it, hilt first. “But you did not succeed before he drew selyn and burned you deeply. Here, take it.”

  Valleroy plucked the weapon from the Sime’s grip and forced himself to breathe.

  “Now.” Klyd splashed restively back and forth as he spoke, his voice tense but coldly deliberate. “The fluctuating fields attracted my attention as I rode by on my way home. I found you unconscious and brought you in for treatment. When you are fully recovered, I will offer you freedom. If I don’t have a good lead on the girl by then, you’ll have to refuse to leave. Give me a good reason you wouldn’t want to return!”

  “Uh...I’m wanted by the law for...say, a murder I didn’t commit?”

  “Very well, then.” The Sime came toward Valleroy with that disturbing swiftness so characteristic of his race. “This is going to hurt. But worse than that, it is going to frighten you senseless. Are you certain you still want to go?”

  “Are you certain there’s no other way to get there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do to him?” asked Hawkins.

  “Kill him...almost. It is unfortunate you force this task on me tonight of all nights, but that can’t be helped. I shall do my best, and you, Mr. Valleroy, must aid me by restraining your fear. You may expect to be unconscious for about three hours, and when you awaken you will not feel well.”

  Valleroy tried to subdue the wild pounding of his heart. His hand found the starred-cross, the talisman that had protected his mother as she fled Sime Territory. Valleroy was empiricist enough not to doubt its power to protect him against Sime attack. While he had faith in the starred-cross, he couldn’t be hurt.

  Klyd held out one steady hand in a matter-of-fact gesture that lulled Valleroy’s distrust. An attacking Sime, hungry for a Gen’s selyn—the very biologic energy of life itself—didn’t ask consent before moving in for the kill.

  For a moment, Valleroy felt a strange confidence in the channel. Before that feeling could fade, the Sime’s rain-slicked hands gripped Valleroy’s wrists. Then hot tentacles twined around his forearms, pulled him forward until his lips met the hard-set Sime mouth.

  Valleroy felt himself being pulled inside out. His every nerve was afire with rushing sparks of pain that left blackness in their wake...as if his soul was being sucked from his body into a vast black void!

  He struggled to pull away, to bring up his knife. But any Sime can call up the strength of ten Gens. Valleroy was immobilized. Only his will could resist the forceful stripping of his vitality...surely to death.

  He did resist. With all that he could summon, he strove to master that frightful outpouring. For an instant, he thought he did breast that current and seize control of it. But then it burst loose once more, sweeping him on rising tide of sparkling terror.

  The last thing he remembered was Klyd’s voice anxiously calling his name...over...and over...and over....

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE ARENSTI COMPETITION

  Valleroy felt himself lying on something firm but warm and dry.

  A pungent sting in his nostrils. Hospital.

  Warm light played on his eyelids. Then a voice, low but insistent in a penetrating, almost hypnotic way. A special voice that seemed to soak into his mind carrying with it an undeniable truth. “You can wake up now. You’re safe. You’re with friends.”

  Klyd’s voice. It was Klyd’s voice—but, Valleroy reminded himself fuzzily, mustn’t recognize him.

  Carefully, he opened his eyes, squinting against the bright sunlight that streamed through an open window and caromed off polished cabinets. Sunlight? He must have been out more than ten hours instead of three!

  He thought of trying to get up, but he couldn’t move. His whole body was a mass of pain that left him weak.

  A slim girl moved to close the drapes, plunging the room into bearable dimness.

  Now, Valleroy saw there were other Simes among the Gens in the room. It was hard to tell the Simes from the Gens unless their forearms are bare like Klyd’s. His eyes fastened on Klyd’s arms and hands. He didn’t have to feign his reaction. He’d never actually seen Sime tentacles so close, and the reality sent his skin crawling.

  Six tentacles to each forearm, two “dorsal” along the top, two “ventral” along the bottom, and smaller ones, laterals, always sheathed except in selyn transfer, along each side. Retracted, they lay along the for
earms from the elbow to wrist like ropes of gnarled muscle. But when extended they were like pearly-gray snakes, supple, muscular, and hypnotically fascinating.

  As Valleroy stared, heart pounding faster and faster, Klyd sheathed his tentacles and shifted the glass he held to his fingers. Then he proffered the opalescent liquid. “Drink this. You’ll be feeling better soon, though you gave us a hard night.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Sectuib Klyd Farris of Householding Zeor. I found you unconscious in the mud and brought you here hoping we could save you. Please accept my hospitality.” He offered the glass again, softening the lines of his face with the barest hint of a smile.

  Valleroy hesitated once more before reaching out to take the glass. But even if it killed him, it would be a welcome relief, so he took the glass murmuring an appropriate gratitude in Simelan. This raised eyebrows all around the room, but didn’t keep the Sime girl who had closed the drapes from moving to help Valleroy sit up to drink.

  While gulping the vile-tasting potion, Valleroy noted how well arranged the scene was. Simes and Gens mixed freely as they went about the chorus of tidying up the treatment room. The message was graphically clear—these Simes didn’t kill Gens. There was very little else in the room he could understand. There were workbenches and glass-fronted cabinets filled with strange objects and weirdly shaped containers. He said, “I’ve heard about places like this, but I never really believed they existed. You people are—channels?”

  “Some of us, yes.” Klyd gestured, tentacles carefully sheathed. “Drink it all down, Mr...?”

  “Valleroy. Hugh Valleroy.”

  “May I call you Hugh?” Klyd hooked a knee over the corner of the wheeled table on which Valleroy lay.

  “You saved my life. Guess that entitles.”

  “The obligation is mine,” Klyd said gravely. “You speak Simelan?”

  “Only a little.” And that was true enough, thought Valleroy. Except for interrogating prisoners, he hadn’t spoken the language socially since his mother’s death. And before that, only in secret moments when they were alone.

  “Evahnee speaks a little of your language.” Klyd gestured to the Sime girl who had closed the draperies. “I will place her in charge of you until you are well enough to leave.”

  “Sectuib,” called one of the Gens approaching. He was a white-haired teddy bear of a man, ageless in the way Valleroy had always pictured his unknown grandfathers.

  “What is it, Charnye?”

  “Sectuib, you should go now. You should have gone hours ago!”

  “So you’ve been saying. All night. But I’m required here.”

  “Not any more. Denrau must be worried frantic by now. You’re more than nine hours overdue!”

  “Ten and a half. But I’m all right.”

  With a short bark of gentle derision, Charnye seized one of Klyd’s hands and pointed to the laterals...the tentacles along the sides of his arm. “Just look!”

  Valleroy could see nothing odd, but apparently the others could for it embarrassed Klyd. The channel repossessed his arm and buried it in the folds of his cloak. “I know, but....”

  “Go, Klyd. You had a bad time last month. You owe yourself. Next to me, Denrau is the best Companion in Zeor. You shouldn’t make him wait.”

  “You don’t give me orders, Naztehr.”

  “I do when you’re in need! Why are you still here? You’re acting as guilty as if you’d burned him yourself!”

  Valleroy saw Klyd stiffen at that, but the Sime covered it with a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous! Have I ever hurt anyone?”

  “I didn’t say you burned him. I said you’re acting as if you had. You can’t even hear straight any more. You ought to go.”

  Klyd rose as if aching in every joint. “Charnye, I feel responsible because it happened inside the borders of Zeor. Our situation is precarious enough as is. I don’t want to lose this Gen. He could be the key to preventing Gen raids from across the river. But if he dies....”

  “He’s not in danger any more...though it is a miracle.”

  “True.”

  “So, go. You’re responsible for the rest of us, too, remember. We’ll need your strength tomorrow.” He glanced at the window. “Today, I mean.”

  “Evahnee,” called Klyd. “Take good care of our guest.” To Valleroy, he smiled and said in English, “She is not a channel, but she is trustworthy. You will be very low-field during the next month, which means you couldn’t entice a Sime to attack you if you wanted to. Rest with us securely.” He strode away without a backward glance, obviously in a hurry now that he was free to go.

  So thought Valleroy, a bit surprised at his ability to follow the conversation, Klyd had been in need last night! No wonder he’d seemed nervous! Even the channels who could take selyn from a Gen without killing and then “channel” it to an ordinary Sime so that the Sime didn’t feel the need to kill...even a channel experienced a personal need for selyn, the energy of life that only the Gen body produced. And when in need, the channel was even more dangerous than the ordinary Sime—to everyone except the highly trained Companions. Valleroy felt lucky to be alive!

  On the third morning, they removed the safety rails and, for the first time, he took an interest in his surroundings.

  The room was about fifteen feet square, with ample closets and a private bath. In the corner near the window was a small, friendly radiator that worked night and day to keep the early autumn chill out of the air. The walls were lavishly adorned with hand-crafted needlework, some pieces large enough to be called tapestries. One, in particular, pheasants in an autumn meadow with the buildings of Zeor in the background, spoke to the artist in Valleroy.

  He read in it a deeply abiding reverence for Zeor’s place in nature’s scheme, and his eye returned to it again and again, searching deeper into its meaning. It seemed to Valleroy that the artist had loved Zeor with an intensity far too great to express...painfully great. When he asked about it, Evahnee told him that it was a picture of Zeor done by a woman who was dying of an incurable disease. Comparing the picture with the map Evahnee provided, Valleroy decided Zeor had grown since that artist’s time.

  On the fourth morning, he woke feeling strong enough to swing his legs off the bed, totter to the window, and peek out between the drapes. He was on the second floor of a four-storied building that overlooked a courtyard. On the far side of the court, a Gen was sweeping leaves into a pile while a Sime scooped them into a large sack.

  A group of children erupted from the doorway and scattered across the court, disappearing through other doorways. Some of them lugged musical instrument cases half their own size with an earnest determination. They bore these burdens as if they were illustrious status symbols untouchable by lesser mortals. The scene evoked memories of other autumns spent peering from other windows at well-scrubbed schoolchildren. The lucky ones. The silence that bloomed in their wake echoed louder and louder in Valleroy’s ears. And, suddenly, he knew he was going to faint.

  As his knees buckled, Evahnee’s arms took his weight. A moment later, he found himself back in bed, where he lay too exhausted to wonder how she happened to be there at just that moment.

  The next morning, the children’s voices drew him irresistibly to the window, but he made it back to bed under his own power. For reward, he was allowed to sit up in a chair for an hour after lunch.

  By the fifth day, he was making regular trips to the bathroom without any trouble as long as he took his medicine on time. And on the sixth morning, he woke feeling perfectly normal, but ravenously hungry. His door was ajar as usual, so he poked his head out into the corridor.

  The rich mosaic floor sparkled as if freshly scrubbed. A chemical tang hung in the air. At intervals between book-lined alcoves, showcases displayed everything from pre-Sime artifacts to models made by the schoolchildren. But there was nobody in sight.

  Valleroy slipped into the robe they’d given him and padded down the hallway. At the end, it widened into a t
urquoise-floored reception area facing a high wrought-iron gate very like the entrance to a mental ward. To his right, another corridor branched off, while to his left, tall deep-set window slits filtered sunlight onto the cheerful-looking mosaic floor.

  Halfway down the branching corridor, a door slid open. A wheeled stretcher surrounded by attendants emerged and glided past Valleroy. As the attendants opened the wrought-iron gate, Valleroy caught a glimpse of that patient: pale, semiconscious face, Sime arms carefully laced into restraining devices along the sides of the stretcher, pungent reek of a multitude of medications. Then the procession passed through the gate, and was gone.

  “Hugh!”

  “Evahnee!” In one glance, Valleroy took in the stained smock and disheveled hair. She must have been up all night with that poor fellow.

  “I apologize,” she said softly. “I know it’s late, but Hrel has had such a hard night.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve been fine.” There was so much more he wanted to say—to ask—but he just couldn’t find the words!

  “Go back to your room, and I’ll bring breakfast.”

  “Can I help?”

  “You can permit me to eat with you.”

  “Yes, please do.” Valleroy mulled that over. He’d meant could he help to prepare the food. He went back to his room and checked the notes he kept of their language sessions. By the time she arrived with the trays, he had found his error and constructed a speech that he rehearsed nervously while they ate.

  For some strange reason, he found himself acutely self-conscious before the girl. For the first time, he was aware of her as a woman, not just a nurse. It made him feel gross and clumsy next to her delicate, Sime grace.

  It was a new feeling for Valleroy, who was neither large nor awkward. He stood nearly six feet tall, weighing a hundred eighty pounds, mostly well-conditioned muscle. His skin was weathered to a light brown that almost matched his hair. He knew he was handsome in a rugged sort of way, and he could pass for a rancher or a Border Guard as long as he kept his long-fingered tapering hands out of sight.