Shanlun’s nager melted into a tenderness toward her that made Laneff shiver. She hadn’t done it to please Shanlun; she’d done it for Digen. But she suddenly realized she couldn’t have found a more direct way to Shanlun’s heart. Digen, suffering through the woes of turnover, hitched himself a bit higher in the bed and gestured with two dry, wrinkled tentacles. “Shanlun, see if it will go on the wall over there. Just what we ought to have to brighten this room!”
Shanlun hesitated, about to argue as second thoughts brought an odd tension to his nager. In this moment of alertness, Digen glanced from her to his Companion, and said, “Shanlun, you mustn’t be too cautious—especially in matters of the heart.”
With severe reluctance, Shanlun hung her creation, but she knew then that something was very wrong—very odd in that room. It wasn’t until two weeks later that she found out what it was. That day, Digen had demanded that she join him and Shanlun for lunch, and she did, though she was at turnover and lacked appetite.
Digen was approaching need on a twenty-eight-day cycle, while they kept her on a twenty-five-day cycle like most renSimes, so that she’d never experience the true depths of hard need. And she was glad of that, for even at turnover, the first cold inklings of need brought reminders of her disjunction crisis. Shanlun had little patience with her now, for as Digen approached need, his nager became monumentally unwieldy and he experienced the high-order Donor’s equivalent of need. His appetite fell off, and his interest in sex declined. With Digen’s precarious condition, Shanlun’s anxiety about his Sectuib grew to dominate his conversation again. It had become central to her life, too, and she was glad of the chance to observe him in person again.
When she arrived at Digen’s room, Shanlun was bending over the bed, preparing to help the old Sectuib into the chair where he was lately permitted to sit up for meals. “No, wait,” fretted Digen. “I don’t feel right.”
Immediately, Shanlun’s fluorescent particolored confetti nager flared to an even, brilliant gold, fastened wholly on Digen. Laneff was drawn hyperconscious by that unexpectedly alluring promise of every pleasure her body now craved. Never before had she zlinned Shanlun working as a Donor, and never had she zlinned any Donor so enticing. Sternly, she shook herself out of it. She wasn’t really in need. She only felt that way. But it scared her.
Duoconscious, she heard Shanlun mutter, “Tertiary entran, again, Digen.” He added some even less intelligible instruction. Entran was a disorder of the channel’s secondary selyn-storage system, the system used to draw selyn from untrained Gens at controlled speeds so they felt no pain or fear, and then to give that selyn to renSimes in need. She’d read in Digen’s charts that he’d once experienced an episode of a bizarre malady dubbed primary entran, where his own personal selyn-using system had been involved. But there was no such thing as a tertiary selyn system.
Telling herself it was professional curiosity, she floated hyperconscious again, zlinning the blurring and shifting fields between the channel and his vibrant young Donor. Her scientific detachment vanished at the impact of Shanlun’s fully unleashed field.
The Donor’s concentration on his patient never wavered, but he produced a brown vial of medication from an inside pocket of his smock and coaxed Digen to swallow. Slowly, the golden aura of the Gen became brighter and paler, intensifying until Laneff was drawn despite herself.
She reached out to caress the core of the Gen promise, as it tugged at her memory of the one total satisfaction she’d ever had in her life —the kill in First Need.
Chaos erupted.
Tongues of flame seemed to shoot from Digen’s inner fields, white-gold flame. A moment, and she thought she herself would be engulfed in jagged spikes of whirling selyn, solid selyn! It was as if zlinning and seeing had become one and the same thing, a nightmare vision. Unreal. Yet she knew the touch of that selyn bolt was death.
Suddenly, the lances of searing energies converged on a spot just past her right shoulder. She flung herself left, falling to the floor as she went duoconscious, the world fading into view solidly about her, her shoulder bruised where she hit the floor, and Shanlun’s voice, deep and commanding, shouting, “Digen, no!”
The sound of his voice reverberated into that plane of nightmare where the flashing bolts of solid selyn lashed all around her, and she saw the voice etching cracks in the bolts.
Behind her, the wall hanging she’d made burst into flame, sending sparks flying outward in a shower of real flame, hot air searing her face.
Shanlun grabbed the yellow fire extinguisher off the wall beside the door and sprayed the flames, his whole manner bespeaking a routine bedside drill. His attitude seemed to be the same as hers might be at dropping a beaker and causing a fire in a lab. That, more than anything, convinced her that what had happened was in fact real.
When the loud rush of the extinguisher subsided, char-stained foam ran down the immaculate wall. Shanlun turned to Laneff. “Are you all right?”
She forced her muscles to gather her legs under her. “I’m not hurt.”
Without another glance at her, he set the extinguisher aside and returned to his patient. She saw the dark-brown vial discarded on the white blanket. Digen was limp against the pillows, panting, an expression of anguish on his face to match the sore throb in his nager.
Pocketing the vial, Shanlun sat beside the channel. “It’s over now, Digen. Let me—”
“No.” His head rolled against the pillow as if he was trying to escape. “No, it’ll just happen again—”
“No. I just didn’t realize she was there—”
But Digen’s eyes focused on Laneff. “I knew I shouldn’t have accepted your gift—”
“Actually,” contradicted Shanlun, “I think it saved her life. You had another target associated with her to—”
Digen turned back to his Companion. “Yes—go on. She has a right to know—now. And she is Farris.”
Shanlun sighed, glancing from Digen to Laneff, his nager once again neutralized by the particolored effect. He went to snap a lock on the door and flip on the privacy light. “You’re a Farris—and daughter of a Sectuib. All the others who know of this are First Order channels and Donors, all sworn by their Oath of Firsts not to reveal it to anyone not so sworn.”
“The secret originated with my daughter,” said Digen, “and I was the first one sworn. I’ll accept your oath, Laneff, if you make it Unto Sat’htine.” He glanced at Shanlun with a knowing significance as he added, “Her children may be involved. It’s dangerous for her not to know.”
Amid the firm nageric presence of the working Donor, Laneff could detect no response to that. But she knew Shanlun was thinking
of her children as his own, and at war with himself because Zeor does not marry out of Zeor. His commitment to Zeor gave him an understanding of her feeling for Sat’htine. He could not believe she could leave Sat’htine for him, any more than he could leave Zeor for her. Shanlun said, “In the last few weeks, I’ve come to know the strength she brings to her dedications. I would trust her with more than my life.” From inside his shirt, he fished a tiny silver medallion in the form of a starred cross, which he wore on a gold chain. Looping the chain over his head, he held the medallion out to her. “Hold this, and remember the Monument to the Last Berserker, swear Unto Sat’htine, and I will accept that seal as binding as my own.”
The warmth of his body made the emblem seem to tingle against her palm, and she was transported back to that moment when she’d watched her name going onto the Monument plate, and the feeling that had never wholly left her: I can’t rest while others are lost in suffering. The pain and anguish of each and every berserker was her own pain. She had explained that to Shanlun, and he had understood instantly—as no other ever had—how that moment at the Monument was the most sacred moment in her life, rivaling her Householding Pledge.
“I swear to keep this confidence sealed and hold it only for my children, Unto Sat’htine, Forever.”
Digen sank ba
ck into his pillows with a sigh. Then he pulled himself together. “Laneff, you’ve always been taught that ‘junct’ means ‘joined to the kill’—a Sime addicted to killing Gens for selyn. But for the second time in my life, I’m junct, Laneff, yet Ihave never killed– or even badly harmed—a Gen. Being junct and killing are really two completely different things. They are related in that being junct makes life—brighter, more keenly experienced, more beautiful even in its ugly moments, and thus ever so much more worth fighting for. A junct will go after the selyn necessary to live, regardless of the Gen’s opinion in the matter. If the wrong Gen gets in the way, the result is a dead Gen.”
“This is true even of a nonjunct who has never killed.” “Yes, but it takes a whole lot more to push a nonjunct into disregarding the Gen’s opinion. My point is that junctedness and the kill are two opposite things. Junctedness enhances the quality of life; the kill ruins all of that enhancement and more. Junctedness is not a pathology, not an unnatural condition as most of my physicians seem to think. The kill, on the other hand, is unnatural.”
“There is a truth hidden by the word ‘kill,’ ” said Shanlun. “The kill isn’t something the Sime does. It’s something the Gen does. To himself, most of the time. Perhaps nature intended the Gen’s reflex to waken the Sime to the junct condition. But unfortunately, it only works in the rare instance where Sime and Gen are well and truly matched. A junct Sime can often be a dreadful danger to any other Gen but his own.”
“The great question,” said Digen heavily, “is whether it is worthwhile to humanity to unleash such a dreadful danger among us.”
“But it’s not a fruitless danger,” answered Shanlun. “Laneff, what you just witnessed here,” he said gesturing to the blackened foam oozing down the white wall, “was a full and proper functioning of a channel’s systems in what the Tecton terms the junct condition. You’re at turnover now. I must have seemed—irresistible. And Digen has been hurt so often he can’t tolerate any other Sime even zlinning his Donor at such moments.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand,” said Laneff,
Shanlun turned to Digen. “I think this may have been the first really positive sign we’ve had that you’ll recover. You were able to deflect your focus from Laneff to a symbol for Laneff. You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
Digen nodded. “No matter what—I won’t harm anyone.”
“But you’ve never had any directional control at all before Laneff’s presence made you find your own controls.”
For the first time since she’d come in, Laneff saw real hope in the old Sectuib’s eyes. “Ha! You’re right! I knew from the first she’d be important!”
Shanlun caught her eye with his. “A few of the First Order, four-plus channels like Digen have developed the ability to utilize selyn as energy that can do work at a distance—without any physical contact with the object being manipulated; to move objects, to kindle materials, to transform materials … but usually these talents show during the first year after changeover, and the Tecton has developed trust in these aberrant channels because so far they’re all Farrises—and they never kill. But Digen’s Endowment has only erupted now, too late in life for his body to adjust easily, and that is what’s causing the abort problems your compound alleviates.”
This supported her theory that K/A was produced naturally in the Sime body to control selyn transport rates. During First Year, the plasticity of the young body would allow glands to develop the capability of producing large amounts of K/A, and the governors to control that amount precisely. An endowed channel would require especially abundant K/A and very precise control of the levels of it. “Then what you’re saying is that even renSimes are endowed.”
“No, it’s not that simple,” said Shanlun. “We don’t fully understand the theory of junctedness or the Endowment, let alone the exact nature of their relationship. We simply have to live with the fact of all of this and struggle to develop a philosophy that can handle it. One of the facts is that we have never recorded the existence of an endowed renSime.”
At that point, Digen moaned, and simultaneously Laneff became aware of another channel’s presence—outside the heavily insulated door. A Farris? She moved closer to the door as Shanlun focused wholly on Digen, who seemed to be suffering hallucinations. She identified the channel. Mairis! At once she flipped off the privacy seal and opened the door.
Mairis glanced unsurprised at the charred wall and oozing foam, zlinned Digen and Shanlun, then commanded, “Laneff, go bring a hefty dose of your K/A. We’ve got to get a transfer into the Sectuib– now!”
She sped down the hall to her lab knowing that Mairis had not come expecting such a scene. His swift acceptance told her more about how routine it was than all of Shanlun’s theory. When she returned with her new supply, fresh from her drying oven, Mairis cupped the jar of white powder in one hand.
“That’s his third abort, Laneff. Shanlun can’t control it. We’re going to have to try your miracle drug again.”
“Here’s the analysis,” she answered, handing over a long sheet of graph paper on which a single tall peak was sketched with only a few tiny peaks to either side of it. “It’s the same stuff, and pure.”
Shanlun took the jar and rotated it while Mairis eyed the graph. Shanlun nodded, and Laneff handed him a folded envelope of the compound. “This is the same dosage we used last time.”
The Gen conferred with Mairis, and then introduced the entire contents of the envelope into the intravenous bottle they had prepared, feeding into Digen’s ankle.
The old man now seemed frail and withered, unconscious against the smooth linens. His skin was pale, and the animated presence had disappeared. But still he breathed.
They waited while the drips rolled down the tubing. Mairis held the shape of the selyn fields around Digen so steady that Laneff knew she could stay and watch without danger of her causing another of Digen’s fits. She leaned against the medications cart, duoconscious, and waited.
Presently, Mairis said, “Try it again. He’s weakening.” “I’d rather wait for Yanine,” said Shanlun. “You said she’d be right along.”
“I can work without my Companion,” argued Mairis. “We don’t have time.”
As if to verify that, Digen tossed restlessly as he came to partial consciousness. He was in hard need, but Laneff couldn’t tell how close to attrition. A renSime couldn’t zlin such detail in a channel’s nager.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Shanlun captured Digen’s hands in his own—Gen muscles straining even against the enfeebled old channel. Once again, the Gen’s field flowered into a peculiarly compelling gold—blunted for Laneff by Mairis.
As Shanlun made the fifth contact point, Laneff was sure it would work this time. And then, with a surge of thrashing, Digen sent Shanlun flying across the room to crash into the wall and slump senseless to the floor.
Mairis closed on his great grandfather, twisting and distorting the fields so oddly that Laneff fled to hypoconsciousness to avoid it. Able only to see, hear, feel, but not to zlin, she dashed across the room to Shanlun. What if his neck is broken?
She had to go duoconscious to check for broken bones before moving him, and the fields once more compelled her.
Digen, also a channel of supreme capacity, was fighting Mairis for control of the field gradients. The effect was a stomach-wrenching distortion of space about the two men. And then something changed.
Mairis grew still. Digen sat up, arms reaching out, tentacles extended, even the sensitive laterals out and searching. His face took on a glow of ecstasy, sloughing off decades. His nager twanged with an odd—killbliss?
Whatever it was Digen was experiencing, it spoke to Laneff. It was what she’d sought in the kill and never found. She’d trade her soul for one moment of it.
One word escaped Digen’s lips. “Ilyana!”
And then the selyn fields collapsed in on themselves to a pinpoint black vortex. Attrition.
Transfixed by t
he gut-chilling horror, she stared as the limp old body sank into Mairis’s arms.
CHAPTER 5
COMPASSION
As she finished the story, Laneff couldn’t suppress the tears she hadn’t been able to shed at Digen’s death. She grabbed a tissue from her lab coat pocket, and then Jarmi was hugging her, sniffling in sympathy. There was no reason to fight the upwelling emotions.
In seconds, Laneff was crying openly, her arms around the Gen woman’s shoulders, her face cradled against her neck. She wasn’t sure if she was crying for the valiant Sectuib of the last century, for the ineffable beauty his death had let her glimpse set forever beyond her reach this side of the grave, or for the cruel parting from Shanlun, who was as good as dead to her now because she could never—ever– return to the Tecton. The sobs renewed themselves when she thought it would be kinder for Shanlun if he thought her dead now, because in mere months she’d be dead anyway.
Jarmi cried with Laneff, resonating with the same texture of emotion. It wasn’t at all like Yuan. He had been a tower of strength supporting her in weakness. Jarmi understood that weakness and shared it. Together, they overcame it.
At last, Jarmi searched out a box of tissues, and over a clenched wad of them she said, “No wonder Mairis accepted the alliance with us. Digen understood junctedness as a totally separate thing from the kill. In Digen’s vision of Unity, any Sime could be junct and walk the streets safely because every Gen would understand what he was. Any Sime could have that experience you had when he died.”
Laneff had only told her that they’d once discussed the theory of junctedness, not why it had been brought up. “Maybe it was that forbidden glimpse that weakened my conditioning. Maybe if I hadn’t been in that room then, I wouldn’t have killed.”
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