House of Zeor

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  They glared at each other belligerently while the hailstones smashed into the mountainside. The fire crackled between them, shooting a cascade of sparks that made both jump back in surprise. As suddenly as it had arisen, the mutual anger broke into laughter, ebbing into chuckles.

  “I’m sorry,” said Valleroy, “I can’t very well help...how I feel!”

  “And I am more sensitive than usual to the nager of your emotions.”

  “You feel need already?”

  “No. The anticipation of need...a ghost of the reality. But you are the only Gen within miles. And we have established...a closeness. I have no defenses against you.”

  Valleroy dropped his eyes, embarrassed. It seemed somehow incongruous for the quick, competent, powerful man across from him to have weaknesses. “I...guess we’d better get some sleep.”

  “With luck, we may be able to get an early start tomorrow morning.” Klyd spread his bedroll over a heap of pine needles well away from the fire. Valleroy did the same.

  There was no need to keep a watch. Nothing could move in that driving rain/snow/ice mixture. Curled up with his back to the fire, Valleroy concentrated on going to sleep.

  That was a mistake, he thought, about an hour later. Sleep flees before concentration. The scent of the pine needles had reminded him of Aisha and the hopes he’d had for their life together. His mind conjured up visions of the little house they’d have, a small ranch, a steady income...just enough so that he could devote himself to the real art that comes from the soul.

  It was an old dream, which he found himself questioning piece by piece. He wasn’t sure he wanted Aisha unless she’d grown as much as he had. And he wasn’t sure he wanted just that small ranch. He still wanted to paint...but not just for himself. The dream seemed shallow, without content, or meaning, or purpose. But he couldn’t see what was missing.

  Heaving a sigh he rolled over. The quilted jacket wasn’t enough against the cold that filtered in around the fire. He was shivering.

  “Hugh?”

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I told you, I’ve given up sleeping. It’s a dangerous habit. But you require your rest.” The channel moved to bend over Valleroy, touching Gen hands and face. “You’re freezing!”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Come over here next to me. We’ll pool our warmth under both blankets.”

  “No, really....”

  “Naztehr.” Klyd’s voice crackled with the impatience of one accustomed to being obeyed.

  “Coming, Sectuib.” Valleroy knew it was irrational, but he was extremely reluctant to make that move. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny that his teeth were chattering. When they’d piled both blankets on top of them, he was almost comfortable.

  But then he found Klyd’s tentacles seeking his skin, gently caressing his neck. He couldn’t help stiffening against that touch.

  “Relax. This will only take a moment, and then you’ll feel warmer.”

  “What are you doing!”

  “I will only help you tap the resources of your own body. Then you will sleep.”

  Valleroy tried to do as he was told, but the moist laterals left tingling trails on his skin. He almost screamed.

  “Easy, Hugh. I’m not attempting transfer.” Klyd went on talking in that infinitely persuasive tone that soaked into Valleroy’s mind, loosening all the knotted fears.

  “Now, I’m going to put you to sleep. When you wake up, it will be dawn.”

  Valleroy lay quietly as the Sime’s tentacles gripped his arms and the unyielding, impersonal lips touched his mouth in the kiss that was not a kiss.

  It seemed as if he only blinked his eyes and the pale gloom of a sodden day was etching Klyd’s silhouette against the cave entrance.

  The instant Valleroy realized it was morning, the Sime turned. “You’re finally awake. I’ve been debating whether we should try to move out this morning. It looks as if it’s going to snow some more.”

  “We wouldn’t want to, get caught out in it.” Valleroy pushed the blankets aside and went to join in the weather inspection. To the west, as far as they could see, black clouds massed as if for an attack on some giant mountain stronghold. To the east, a tattered piece of blue sky floated red-rimmed by the sunrise over the mountain peaks. Rocks and trees were encased in sparkling clear sheaths of ice. Sticky blobs of snow spattered the windward side of every surface.

  Valleroy shook his head. “We have to have sun to melt this ice before we can climb.”

  As they watched, a dense curtain of snowflakes drove in from the west, blotting out the scenery. Frigid gusts invaded their cave, sending them both scurrying for the fire.

  “We’ll just have to wait,” Valleroy said, rationing out the few tubers and berries left. That, together with the broth powder they carried, would last another day. But it would be a hungry day.

  Valleroy shoved that thought out of his mind. He’d been eating well lately. Several days fasting wouldn’t hurt him. “Come on and eat, Klyd. Nothing else to do.”

  “No. Save it. You may require it later.”

  “You have to eat.”

  “The Sime body operates on selyn, not calories. You require calories, not selyn.”

  Valleroy sipped his hot broth. He knew Simes ate only to replace body-building materials, but still he felt guilty. “Zeor must he wondering where we are. We might be rescued.”

  “No. Runzi controls the valley. It’s up to us to get home. But we can’t do it today, so I’m going to sleep.”

  “I thought you’d given up sleeping as a bad habit.”

  “Menar sleep, it reduces the basal selyn-consumption rate. With luck, it may stave off full need for a few extra hours. That might make all the difference.”

  “Is that safe, in this cold?”

  “No. If I go too deep, I might never wake.”

  “I suppose a real Companion would know how to guard against that?”

  “Since you’re high-field now, you should have no problem waking me. Any intimate contact will bring me around if I don’t come out of it at dawn tomorrow. Meanwhile, just keep the fire going.” He went to the mouth of the cave to search the sky once again, but the snow was thick and heavy, showing no sign of stopping.

  Valleroy shelled a nut. He didn’t like the idea. Before he had time to frame any objection, Klyd had resumed his place under the blankets, instantly asleep. Valleroy resigned himself to being cold, lonely, and hungry. It wasn’t the first time he’d spent a miserable day...and he hoped it wouldn’t be the last. He sighed and stretched out his legs.

  All in all, he’d been lucky. Growing up in Gen Territory, he didn’t have to worry if he’d mature into a relatively helpless Gen—and since his mother and father were both Gens, that had been the highest probability.

  He tried to imagine what a childhood would be like on the Sime side of the border. To children who had seen the kill many times, who had seen the madness of need and the overwhelming strength of the Sime, becoming Gen would be the worst possible horror they could imagine. Their neighbors, their parents, their sisters and brothers, their schoolmates, all would suddenly consider them a Choice Kill.

  The uncertainty, the insecurity would be as black a cloud to them as it was to the child in Gen Territory. Only on the Gen side of the border, one feared the changeover into a Sime adult—hunted, despised, hated by relatives and friends. How many adolescents finding themselves helpless in the grip of changeover had sought to hide from their parents and, failing, had been beaten to death by those who had once professed love for them.

  And how much of a parent’s love was warped by the fear that this child might change over and attack them while they slept? It was a wonder, thought Valleroy, that there were any sane adults on either side of the border!

  But maybe that was the crux of the problem. Andle’s Simes had grown up in dread of becoming Gen. They accepted without question that the natural Sime instinct was for the kill—and that his instinct was even more pow
erful than parental love. If it was so powerful, then it must be moral. They had to rationalize Gens into a subhuman category in order to be able to kill. They weren’t quite sane on that subject.

  On the other hand, Gens had to convince themselves that Simes were the evil spawn of the devil sent to destroy the integrity of the unmutated form of the Ancients. The Gen’s mission in life was to keep the race pure. That way, killing Simes was all right because Simes weren’t really people, just totally vile beings who looked like people when they were children. Gens weren’t quite sane on that subject.

  Valleroy poked a new stick into the fire and watched the soot collect on the roof. He’d never realized until now just how different his own childhood had been. His mother had loved him—unreservedly, wholeheartedly, without the slightest qualification. And he loved and trusted her because he knew she’d have loved him just as much as a Sime or as a Gen. Many times she’d rehearsed with him what he had to do if he found himself in changeover. She’d taken him over the trail to the border and told him how to find the green pennants of the pens. “You can take with you nothing but my love for you. But you must not forget to take that.”

  She hadn’t lived long enough to find out which way his life would go. But she hadn’t really cared that much. He was her son, one way or the other. After his father had died, her attitude permeated his childhood homelife. It had been the same feeling he’d found anew at Zeor. Acceptance as a person, not a body.

  For a brief moment, he remembered Yenava’s science class in the school garden. They had nothing to fear, she’d said, one way or the other. It had been later that same day when a young Gen recently adopted from outside the Householdings had confided to Valleroy the secret of the Companions’ ability. From infancy, they know that as Sime or Gen they have a secure place in the adult world. Perhaps that was the quality that Klyd had sensed in him during that moment among the greenhouses.

  But it took more than childhood security to make a Companion, thought Valleroy. It took training and education that he’d never have. For example, it was widely accepted among Simes that both Simes and Gens were mutants...neither one being closer to the Ancients.

  The juncts used this to prove that Gens weren’t human. But Valleroy felt that the truth was seen only by the Householdings. He recalled the way Klyd had gripped his hand. “Look and tell me they don’t belong together!” It took a Sime and a Gen to be the equivalent of an Ancient.

  Maybe.

  Another thought struck him. Perhaps Zelerod’s Doom would be a blessing, a way of leaving only Simes who could live with Gens and Gens who could live with Simes...channels and Companions. The Householdings were obstructing evolution. But then, thought Valleroy, the avoidance of human misery had always obstructed evolution. It would just take longer to get wherever they were going. Valleroy was in no hurry.

  He stirred the fire, and toured the cave restlessly.

  Gens looked exactly like the Ancients. How could it ever be proved whether the Ancients produced selyn? By the time the Simes had begun to record history, there weren’t any Ancients left alive. So all the Simes had was a vague tradition that in the time of chaos there were a few people who looked like Gens but who didn’t have any selyn field potential. Adults who were as selyn-neutral as children...

  But this was only a Sime tradition. The notion had never penetrated Gen Territory. It would never be accepted by Gens except as crude propaganda meant to undermine the sacredness of the Ancients. That was a sacredness Valleroy had been taught to respect. Now he found that respect turning into revulsion for modern Gen beliefs.

  If Andle and his self-righteous followers were the villains among the Simes, then the Church of the Purity was the villain among the Gens. Both were pretending the union that was the only chance for racial survival.

  Despite the wind-driven snow that skirled about the cave entrance, Valleroy could see the stars as Klyd had pointed them out. Once again he felt a new dedication to the Householder’s ideal of a Sime-Gen Union. It was a goal more important than any single person’s life.

  Suddenly, it seemed to Valleroy that until this moment he’d been a child scrambling for the larger piece of candy. From his newfound pinnacle of maturity, he wondered what it was that had been driving him all these years. What did his art really matter, if Zelerod’s Doom was inevitable? What could he do with his talent that would be of any significance forty years from now?

  That question echoed and re-echoed in his brain as the silent snow slanted downward in anechoic profusion. He fed another log to the fire and stood up to stretch. His body was as numb with the cold as his mind was numb with the shock of realization that everything he’d ever wanted was incredibly petty. But he had nothing to fill the sudden vacuum except Klyd’s idealism. It was a burning reality for the channel, but it remained abstract to Valleroy.

  Chilled to the bone, he crawled under the blankets next to the Sime. Klyd didn’t even stir, and before very long Valleroy fell into a fitful slumber interspersed with hours of listless daydreaming. The thick snow curtain kept danger at bay while the heavy waiting blunted the urgency that might soon condemn them both to death...or worse.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHRINE OF THE STARRED-CROSS

  The crisp blue dawn turned the wind-molded snowfield to scintillating dazzle piercing Valleroy’s eyes, skewering his thoughts on shafts of pain. But the brilliance didn’t seem to bother the channel, who trudged the snowdrifts ahead with dogged determination.

  As long as they stayed on the lee side of the boulders that lined the slopes, they avoided the worst of the ice, and the snow provided traction of sorts. Klyd had insisted they take time to dry out their socks over the fire before starting. Valleroy had understood how much will power that delay had cost the channel. Now he was grateful. The sun was high in the sky, and the day was warming up pleasantly, but the ground was still cold enough to frostbite.

  Valleroy could hardly wait to top the ridge and descend into the sunshine that bathed the valley ahead of them. But he was no longer so eager for that warmth that he forgot caution. When they finally reached the foot of Treadlow Pass and were about to start through it, he called out, “Klyd, wait a minute!”

  The Sime stopped, eyes fixed on the pass, which sloped gently upward before them. Scrambling over one last obstacle, Valleroy stamped snow from his feet and bent to retie his pants leg around his boot. “You said this is the only pass across this ridge. Stands to reason they’d be watching for us here. Let’s scout around before floundering into a trap.”

  “There’s nobody here. The Runzi detachment that flushed us out of the way station probably returned to Valzor to wait out the storm. It will take them almost a day to get back from there and start searching.”

  “You’re sure there’s nobody around?”

  “Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon caution.”

  Valleroy nodded. They’d heard the hunting screams of puma during the night. And a broken leg would be the end of them both. They might be alone, but they were still in danger and far from home.

  They waded into the pass using long branches to test the footing. The snow flowed ahead of them like smoothly undulating sand dunes. If only they’d had skis or snowshoes they could have flown through the pass instead of plodded!

  Grimly, Valleroy concentrated on finding solid footing. About halfway through the pass, he did discover a ridge that jutted up under the snow. It provided a fair walking surface compared to wallowing knee-deep in wet snow, so they took to it single file.

  At long last, they came out into the sunshine. It was like waking from a nightmare. There was still enough warmth left in the late autumn sun to melt the snow, leaving ragged patches of rock and grass showing on the hillside that fell away at their feet. Even though it was late afternoon, the air was still warming up. Valleroy was sure most of the snow would be gone by morning.

  They paused only long enough to catch their breath and then continued down the treacherous slope. There
was no path, but it was much easier picking their way down visible rock rather than up melting snowdrifts. Valleroy was wet to the skin and so cold it hurt, but his spirits soared. Even the raw patch of skin where his frozen pants leg had rubbed all day didn’t seem to hurt so much any more. They were going to make it, one way or another!

  Near the bottom of the hill, Klyd turned to look back. “What are you so happy about?”

  Grinning, Valleroy closed the gap to stand beside the channel. Shadows were lengthening into twilight already. “I think that’s the worst morning I ever...Klyd, look!”

  Following the Gen’s finger, Klyd spotted the apple tree with its load of rosy ripe apples. “Come on!” called Valleroy, sprinting. But even with his head start, Valleroy arrived only just in time to watch Klyd swarm up the tree trunk and shake it mightily. The ripe fruit showered down in a thundering cascade.

  Valleroy caught one that seemed least bird-pecked and bit into it. It was sour and frostbitten, but still the best apple he’d ever tasted. Before long, Klyd had joined him, seated amid heaps of fruit and selecting the best to pile onto his blanket. “We’ll dine tonight on nature’s bounteous gifts!”

  Valleroy laughed. “Sectuib Nashmar was right. Zeor has a poet for Sectuib!”

  “This poet is slightly frostbitten at the moment. Do you suppose you could perform one more miracle and find us some dry firewood?”

  Suddenly grave, Valleroy measured the angle of the descending sun and then surveyed the hillside. At first sight, it had looked so invitingly dry, but he could now see that every patch of soil was sodden from the melting snow. “Let’s find a cave. Maybe there’ll be some leaves or something inside.”

  “Maybe there won’t be a cave.”

  “This is the same sort of rock as on the other side of the ridge...and look over there. Holes. One of those must be deep enough....”

  Quizzically, the channel said, “I asked for a miracle. I better be careful, what I ask for next. Give me a hand with this blanket.”

  Together they knotted the corners together to form a crude sling, which they carried on a branch between them. The caves that Valleroy had spotted were several hundred yards west of them and a bit higher up the slope.