Ambrov Keon

by Jean Lorrah

  Risa said bleakly, “The tax inspector will show up when the weather breaks. If we’re still thirty-three Gens high—”

  “That’s the least of our problems,” said Darley. “They can hide out in the Pen. It’s easy enough to fool government flunkies—but there’s no fooling thirty-three Simes in Need.”

  “Hide Gens...in a Pen?” Risa was surprised, but too deep into Need to appreciate the humor.

  “And I’ll put through an emergency order citing weather-caused augmentation,” said Darley.

  “Isn’t that illegal?” Risa asked dubiously. “You’re operating on a temporary license; they’ll be watching you.”

  “As carefully as they watched Nikka. I can tell whose tentacles require a bit of gold to keep them off the books.” He gave her a strange, sad smile. “You’re just a little too honest, Risa—which is why you’re well off instead of rich.”

  “That’s what got us into this predicament,” added Sergi.

  “What?”

  “Risa, if you had consulted me, I’d have told you not to report that we were Gen-high. By the time an inspector gets here, we won’t be. Carre will take some of our Gens or send us some Simes to put the ratio back to normal. Just a couple of changeovers would do it, without outside help.”

  “You want me to...cheat on tax forms!” Risa’s round-eyed astonishment set both men chuckling.

  Then, “It’s not cheating,” said Darley. “You just don’t tell the government what it doesn’t have to know.”

  “It’s not as if we would keep an illegal Sime/Gen ratio,” Sergi added. “It never occurred to me that you’d report it.”

  “Oh?” Her dark eyes flashed in anger. “Because I was junct when I learned bookkeeping, I must have learned to do it dishonestly?”

  “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “My father was the most honest businessman in Gulf Territory. As long as I’m keeping Keon’s books they will be kept honestly and accurately.”

  * * * * * * *

  KEON’S BOOKKEEPER SEEMED TO BE RISA’S IMAGE OF HERSELF that winter. She worked long, hard hours without complaint, but she did not participate in any of the householding’s ceremonies. Her first refusal had been the Year’s Turning celebration, this year including a memorial to those who had died in the attack on Keon. Nothing Sergi could say would persuade her to participate, or even attend. She had spent the time on the household accounts. And, Sergi now knew, that fatal tax report.

  Risa’s reluctance to accept Keon frustrated Sergi. It seemed the more donations she took, the more transfers she gave, the more sick and injured she healed...the more aloof she remained.

  Nor did their next transfer put her in a friendlier mood. She would not make love again, asking, “Do you want me pregnant just when I have to be at peak performance?”

  “Risa, there are precautions—”

  “All of which can be totally forgotten in a moment of passion. And afterward, my routine would risk the child’s life. No, Sergi, I will not chance it.”

  So she left him frustrated, and not only sexually. Whenever he tried to broach the topic of Risa’s future at Keon, she changed the subject at once. That was easy in the work-packed days of late winter—she could legitimately bring up schedules and illnesses and the progress they were making in turning the salvaged Gen metal into salable goods.

  Then one day Melli Raft’s stepson, Prence, gave his fellow students a graphic lesson by going into changeover in the middle of the training class! His parents were sent for. Melli pleaded with her husband for the boy to be left at Keon. “Hal—you know they’ve got the best skills to help him here...if anything should go wrong.”

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong,” the man insisted.

  Sergi assured him, “Everything is normal. But if he reaches breakout here, he will receive channel’s transfer.”

  “Hal—please!” Melli was more forceful than Sergi had ever seen her. “Prence doesn’t want to kill—we’ve talked and talked about it. Please don’t make him leave, Hal.”

  It was clear that the man desperately wanted to humor his wife, but he said, “Melli, what am I going to do without Prence’s help on the farm if he lives at Keon?”

  Risa, emerging from the insulated room where she had been checking the boy’s progress, gave the answer. “Prence doesn’t have to live here. He can just come to Keon for transfer.”

  Horrified, Sergi said, “Risa, we can’t—!”

  “You’d turn away a nonjunct Sime and force him to kill?”

  “No—no, of course not, but— We’ve never done anything like that.”

  “Carre has. Remember your friend Prather Heydon, who runs the inn on the eyeway? If he can be nonjunct and live outside a householding, so can Prence.”

  Sergi didn’t dare argue, for Melli Raft was saying, “Oh, yes! Hal, you can’t object, since it’s what Prence wants!”

  “I’ll ask him,” the man replied. “If it’s not just something you’ve talked him into—”

  The boy was certain. Even as he descended into First Need he insisted he wanted channel’s transfer. His father left the room immediately after the breakout of Prence’s tentacles, but Melli stayed, her stepson shielded from her joy/guilt/pain by Sergi’s nager. Risa whispered, “Congratulations, Prence,” entwined their laterals, and pressed her lips to his.

  Risa had never before given First Transfer. Her eyes met Sergi’s with the first spontaneous smile she had given him since the night of the raid.

  But if Risa was more content as a channel, she showed no inclination to take on any more formal role. Tannen Darley appeared as promised, to take transfer as Verla had done a few days before. Kreg was scheduled to relieve Sergi, who walked Darley outside afterward.

  The banker said nothing until they reached the point on the muddy pathway where he would go toward the stable for his horse while Sergi went on to the metal shop.

  “Would you like to see our latest progress?” Sergi invited. “We’ll have the last shipment ready to go to Nashul in a few days. We’ll be able to pay everyone back.”

  “What?” Darley dragged his attention back from somewhere far away, then said, “I know you’re working day and night. So am I. I finagled an emergency shipment of fifteen extra Gens, but they’re a sorry lot.” He added, “I almost couldn’t make myself come here today. If I had not given my word—”

  Never trust a Sime in Need, Sergi had always been taught, but he was learning that there were Simes who kept their word even under that duress. Even juncts. “You didn’t expect to be satisfied?” he asked.

  “Satisfied? Oh, it was satisfying even that first time, when Risa forced me. But this time it was much more!”

  Sergi chuckled. “I know. My nager is having no effect on you at all—now that is post-syndrome.”

  Darley smiled in response, his post-transfer emotional high making him more congenial than usual. But there was sympathy in his voice as he said, “You love her—and you can never know what she can give, because you’re Gen.”

  “No, Tan, you’re wrong. I have transfer with Risa every month—I do know.”

  Just as he knew that Risa was holding back at their next transfer. Even though she was out of First Year, her systems were growing with her increased workload. Still she would not let herself go in transfer, controlling the flow so that although it was as wonderful as ever, it was only “as ever,” the promise of something more held tantalizingly out of reach.

  Sergi could have overcontrolled her, grasped that elusive joy and shared it with her—but he feared that Risa would perceive it as forcing rather than sharing. So he endured the piquant frustration of the best transfers of his life, knowing they could be so much better.

  But the problems not only remained, they grew. Rain fell incessantly. It penetrated every kind of clothing, making it harder to keep warm now than in the snowy weather.

  Keon’s Gens sniffled and sneezed. Under householding regimen simple colds went away in a few days, but it seemed that every
Gen at Keon was coughing or aching—and working in spite of it.

  The Gens in Tannen Darley’s Pen fared worse. Despite new stoves, the old buildings remained drafty. Leaks sprang through the roofs with every rain. The Gens fell ill—and, having been raised as drugged animals, had no will to live.

  When Risa received Darley’s message that his Gens were sick, she pounded her fist against the desk in frustration.

  “Don’t!” Sergi said, taking her hand. “Jolting your laterals won’t solve anything.”

  “But I can’t help!” she said angrily. “I can’t be spared, and neither can Rikki or Loid.”

  “Tan will understand.”

  Her huge dark eyes studied his face. “I got the town involved with Keon. We owe them, Sergi—and we can’t pay!”

  “Life doesn’t operate like mortgage payments.”

  “Doesn’t it?” she asked grimly. “If you miss your mortgage payments you lose your property. If we miss this payment, Sergi, we’ll lose everything—and we can’t ask for an extension, because the juncts need those kills now. If the Pen Gens die, or can’t provide adequate selyn—”

  He knew the consequences: more raids. Or Darley might execute his confiscation order. “Very well,” he said. “Since we cannot send a channel to heal the Pen Gens, and most of the juncts will not come to Keon for transfer—what do we do?”

  Suddenly Risa’s expression changed. “But the juncts will come to Keon,” she said, “if their Gens are here.”

  “What?” Sergi asked in amazement.

  “We’ve got an infirmary better than anything in town—and warm, dry quarters to keep the healthy Gens well.”

  “We don’t have enough channels to care for the sick Gens and our own people,” Sergi protested.

  “We have something the town doesn’t: nonjunct renSimes. Gens will respond to any Sime in Need. Don’t look so horrified,” she added. “I won’t put anyone in hard Need in with them—but all post-turnover Simes will take turns in the infirmary. I’ll tell Rikki. You go into town and tell Tan.”

  “You know I can’t go into town alone.”

  Exasperation firmed her lips into a thin line. “Will you stop acting like a Pen Gen? Go round up some renSimes, ride into town, and help Tan move his Pen!”

  In the next few days, the Gen dormitory was cleared out, the healthy Pen Gens housed there in brief comfort. Sick Gens filled the infirmary, but responded quickly to warmth, medication, and the ambient of Need. Only one Gen, far gone into pneumonia, died soon after being transported to Keon. The rest survived, then thrived.

  But their numbers dwindled as juncts claimed their Kills. Keon’s members tried not to watch the green pennant flapping soggily over the main gate, but no one could forget it. Tannen Darley respected Keon’s rule that there would be no Kills on the grounds, delivering them to the gate so that no junct Simes in hard Need set foot inside the householding. Unless they came for transfer.

  Melli Raft refused her Kill, and so did Miz Frader. Joi Sentell told her husband she would claim her Gen, but instead took transfer in angry defiance. Several of Darley’s employees sheepishly explained that they’d rather not kill the ones they’d cared for—they’d accept channel’s transfer now and wait for a new shipment.

  As a result, the community squeaked through the month with barely enough Kills. “But only because some people went raiding across the river,” Darley observed.

  A new shipment filled the dormitory—but there were still not enough to go around. And then the river flooded. There was no crossing that raging torrent—every Sime on Darley’s list would have to be supplied with selyn...somehow.

  A windstorm demolished a temporary storage building. The next day Sergi was on his way to meet Risa as her brother Kreg came out of the infirmary, yawning mightily. “You on duty with Risa now?” the younger man asked.

  “That’s right,” Sergi told him.

  “Say hello for me. Rikki’s got me scheduled with him for the next few days—and you know what he did?”

  “No, what?”

  “Scheduled Triffin and me on opposite shifts. We never get any time together!”

  “Rikki is simply rotating the Companions for efficient use of their time,” Sergi explained. “He hasn’t arranged your transfers to put you off-schedule from each other, has he?”

  “No, and I guess he’ll put us back together at the end of the—” He broke off, blushing. “How did you know?”

  “As you are learning, Gens are as perceptive as Simes.”

  “Yeah...but you’re lucky, Sergi. You get to be with Risa all the time.”

  If Kreg only knew! But Sergi murmured something sympathetic and was about to move on when one of Darley’s men, Fivvik, approached. “Hey—Sergi. The boss told us to help rebuild that barn. But the Keon Simes’re augmenting like crazy. We got no extra Kills if we waste selyn like them.”

  “You can have transfers,” Kreg spoke up.

  “Huh?”

  Sergi looked from Fivvik to the group of Simes lagging behind him. Kreg was right. “We have plenty of selyn. You can have all you want, as long as you take it from channels. If you’re willing to do that, go ahead and augment.”

  The juncts looked at one another uncertainly. Under augmentation, work did not feel like work, but like joyful play. Denied that experience for two months, they could not resist. Sergi saw the look pass from one to another, the grins break out—as one they turned and darted for the construction site on a burst of joyous release.

  Thus profligate use of selyn solved the problem of the Gen shortfall. Word quickly spread that anyone helping at Keon could augment and receive extra selyn—and they were inundated with volunteers. Dozens of people went into a three-week Need cycle, persuading themselves that getting extra selyn between Kills wasn’t “really” transfer. The effect was to extend their Kill cycle to six weeks. As spring sunshine brought the daffodils to bloom, Tannen Darley reported the startling news that he now had surplus Gens!

  The Pen was moved back to town, into new, well-built quarters. The town was thriving again, spirits high because even those who would not go to Keon’s channels had the security of knowing a Gen was available every month, no matter what the weather. As the hard work of spring planting, cleaning, and rebuilding began, more juncts set aside principles for practicality. Keon could not find work for all who came seeking selyn, but they turned no one away, promising they would call for their help when the right time came.

  “The right time,” Darley observed, “is as soon as spring planting’s done.”

  “For what?” Risa asked. “Let them owe us until we have reason to call in their promises.”

  “You haven’t forgotten your plans to build a steel mill!”

  Sergi had long since forgotten—but Risa sat forward in sudden animation. “Tan—you’re right! People who work only at planting and harvest will be glad of steady jobs! Where are those plans? We have to figure costs, find backers—”

  “I’ll back you,” said Darley. “In fact, if I knew anything about making steel, I’d probably try to beat you to the punch. But Keon has the expertise.”

  With the diagrams in front of them, though, as they began figuring materials, labor, and a mining expedition, they quickly realized that Darley’s funds combined with Keon’s added up to barely half the estimated cost.

  “A loan?” Darley asked. “I have connections in Lanta—”

  “No,” said Risa and Sergi in unison.

  “That would make it your steel mill, Tan,” Sergi explained. “If I do this, it will be for Keon. No Lanta bank will lend money for a project sponsored by a householding.”

  “We’ll sell stock,” said Risa. “I’ll put my personal funds in. Verla’s making some profit now. I’ll bet lots of local people can afford a share or two. If Keon Steel Mill has hundreds of small stockholders, that’s hundreds of Simes with a motive to keep Keon safe from harm.”

  “No one will buy stock in a householding,” said Sergi—but he knew he
would be glad to be proved wrong.

  Their planning session was cut short, as Risa was due to take donations. Distributing selyn to the juncts added to the load on Keon’s already overburdened channels. Only the nearly empty infirmary let the schedule work at all.

  As Risa and Sergi hurried toward the collectorium, Risa looked up and stretched out her arms, extending her handling tentacles. Taking a deep breath of warm spring air, she said, “Oh, it’s such a beautiful day! I don’t want to go inside again. How am I going to stand missing springtime?”

  Four high-field Gens waited on the steps, Keon members but not Companions. A young woman named Bess said, “We don’t want to go inside, either. Why don’t we stay here, Hajene Risa? We’re just giving donations, not transfer.”

  The others nodded, and Risa laughed. “Why not?”

  Her good mood was improved even more by the arrival that day of Dina, a channel from Carre who would stay with them until they found another permanent channel or reduced their membership somehow. Rikki put Dina right to work, and for the first time in months Risa and Sergi had free time.

  They walked to the top of the hill to watch the sunset, then hand in hand to the dining hall—where Sergi noticed that the pinkness in Risa’s fair skin was not due entirely to the reflection of the sunset. She was slightly sunburned, and freckles were popping out across her nose.

  “Look—you even have freckles on your handling tentacles,” Sergi said as Risa picked up her tray.

  “And you are turning gold again,” Risa said in mock envy. “It isn’t fair. I’ve always wanted to tan the way you do.”

  Their banter could have turned into flirtation—but Litith came looking for them. “Hajene Dina wants to pay Carre’s respects to the Sectuib in Keon.”

  Sergi saw Risa pale, then set her jaw determinedly. He wished he could read her mind, or even zlin her—for she could not now avoid the issue of her rightful place here.

  Dina was waiting by the desk in the Sectuib’s office. She was tall, blonde, cool—looking as if she belonged in the frozen north, not the steamy south.

  She turned when they entered, and her glance grazed across Risa’s ringless hands. “Who speaks for Keon?”