What would I do without her? he wondered as she left him to go back to her duties at the house. She was almost sixteen natal years old—few who changed over after fifteen survived, and those who did were left weak, unable to withstand the first illness, the first bodily strain that came along. And he wanted Kadi to marry him, to bear his children.
Again he thrust morbid thoughts from his mind. Going about his work, though, he found need forcing itself into his consciousness again. The soothing effects of the trin tea and Kadi’s company wore off as he repaired a broken fence, instructed one of the Sime supervisors to take his Gens in early because he had driven them to exhaustion —his father would hear about that—and inspected several more groups that were working efficiently. That was the norm and the expectation on the Farris Genfarm; it was surprising that Rimon had found even one instance of poor work practices.
Toward late afternoon, though, Rimon was seeing everything as shifting field gradients, his Sime senses at their keenest peak. Fighting for self-control, he rode slowly up to the last work detail, supervised by an old friend, Del Erick.
As Rimon dismounted, Erick turned from watching two Gens open an irrigation gate. “Ah… Rimon!” Erick hesitated. “Shuven, Rimon, I know I said I’d repay you by yesterday, but I just couldn’t get the money together… and… look, I’ll have it by payday or you can take it out of my salary.”
Rimon made a sweeping gesture, tentacles flying. Erick, poised on the balls of his feet, flicked back a step or two, startling his horse. As his friend brought the animal back under control, Rimon swore silently. Even my best friend is still afraid of me!
Rimon put a hand, tentacles carefully sheathed, to the bridle of Del’s horse, and across the silken nose of the animal, said, “I know how hard it is sometimes, to raise cash. I can give you more time. I have all the money I can use.”
Zlinning Rimon more closely, Del said, “You’re—in need again—early.”
“Dad has always been very generous with me. Don’t worry about it. Pay me when you can. What are friends for, anyway?”
“I won’t forget this.”
“No obligation,” said Rimon, holding up his closed fist, ventral tentacles extended. Del returned the gesture, twining his own ventrals around Rimon’s for just an instant– aware how his high field struck through Rimon’s aching body.
Rimon smiled, flicked a cursory glance at the working Gens, and swung himself into his saddle. With an airy wave, he rode back to the big house and went straight to his father’s office, determined to press his case. When even his closest friends were leery of him, it was time for something drastic.
Syrus Farris was an imposing man. He had the normal wiry Sime build, but stood unusually tall—a good three inches taller than his son. There was no doubt of their relationship, though. Both had the same black eyes and straight black hair, the same mobile, expressive lips, and characteristic chin.
Farris was busy with accounts when his son approached him, so Rimon had to sit down and wait, as he had done so often in this familiar room. It was a room for working, with solid, businesslike furniture, and undisguised files and other paraphernalia. The only nonutilitarian object was the portrait of Rimon’s mother over the fireplace. It was hard to imagine his father loving that ethereal woman with her halo of soft blond hair, blue eyes looking calmly out at the world. Rimon had never known his mother, for she had died giving birth to him. Occasionally, since he had grown up, he wondered if his father had ever completely forgiven him for that.
But no, his father had always seen to it that Rimon had everything he wanted. Marna often said his father spoiled him. If that were true, though, why was he so hesitant now to ask his father for something that he obviously had to have?
Farris looked up from his accounts at last. “Again, Rimon?”
“I am in need, Father.”
“I can tell that. The question is, why are you in need? Marna says you’ve been augmenting unnecessarily.”
“I understand why Marna thinks so, but it’s not true. I have not augmented once this month.” Rimon made no effort to control his selyn fields, letting his father read the truth directly from them. His father was exceptionally sensitive about such things. Nobody ever got a lie by him.
Farris studied his son. “Yes,” he said, “you are telling the truth. Now… what can be done about it?”
“I don’t know, Father. I seem to require more selyn than most people just to live. I will… simply have to work harder to afford the cost.”
“It’s not the cost that concerns me. Rimon, you’re a grown man. Have you ever had a fully satisfactory kill? Have you ever—wanted to take a woman afterward?”
“Kadi and I have an understanding.”
“No evasions, Son! Are you controlling the impulse, or is it that you’ve never felt it?” He paused at a new thought. “Or—no. Kadi’s just a child. You couldn’t…”
“I wouldn’t!” Rimon found himself on his feet, tensed. He made himself sit down again.
“I’m sorry,” said Farris, and Rimon felt his furious embarrassment. “But I had to ask. I had to know. You’ve always had so much trouble. I’d hoped—well, it’s been four years.”
“It will be all right, Father, when Kadi’s grown. I wouldn’t—want—anyone else. Only—it seems I’m always in need, and I ache for the freedom of augmentation.”
Rimon’s misery communicated to his father. Farris picked up a ledger. “Ran told me you put your mark on one of the new catch of Wild Gens this morning.”
“Yes, Father, a big male with a strong field. I want him. Now.”
“You chose a Wild Gen with a strong field last time, and it didn’t help. I think it’s time you had a domestic Gen.”
“No!” Nerob! The image choked him. “I’m sorry, Father, but you know why I don’t want someone who knows me, who can talk to me—”
“Someone? Haven’t you learned yet that Gens are not people, Rimon?”
“Please, Father. Your domestic Gens are valuable. I’ll take one of the culls from this morning’s shipment—”
“It’s all arranged, Rimon. Gens who have lived among Simes understand more of what is happening. The emotions are more satisfying than the blind terror of the Wild Gens. Expense is nothing where my son’s health is concerned. Not to mention… grandchildren.”
Rimon was shaking his head bleakly. “Father, please, I can’t. Not a Gen I know.”
His father’s expressive lips formed a hard line of annoyance. “Nobody ever takes a Gen he knows on this Genfarm. You know that, Rimon.”
“Yes, Father. Forgive me.” How could I have thought… ? Farris was a compassionate man. He kept as many established children of his friends as he could afford to, as breeding stock, giving them the chance to live as comfortably and securely as any Gen could hope to. When he could not afford to keep one—and of course there was no way he could afford to keep many males—he saw to it that such Gens were shipped far away, so their parents never had the slightest chance of hearing what finally became of them.
“This male came in today’s shipment,” Farris was explaining. “The raiders caught him at the border. It’s not one you know, Rimon, but he’s from in-Territory—and spirited. He’s been waiting for you all afternoon. This should do it for you, Son.”
“Thank you, Father,” said Rimon quietly. As he left, he steeled himself inwardly. It wouldn’t be Nerob. It was just another Gen, and he would do what he had to do before he disgraced himself by taking an unauthorized Gen—or worse.
He put it all aside. The boy who awaited him was perhaps fourteen years old, stocky, with bronze-colored hair and expressive hazel eyes. He wore only the yawal, the clean white smock of the killroom, and a collar and chain. The chain was fastened high on the wall, so that although his arms and legs were free he could not move very far from the couch on which he sat—crouched, rather, like a frightened animal.
His fear burned into Rimon’s strained nerves. Ravenous need sang through every
cell of Rimon’s body as he approached. The boy cowered for a moment. Then determination sprang to his eyes as he sat up straight and watched Rimon come nearer, glancing from Rimon’s face to his wrists, where the laterals were now beyond any control, extended, drinking in the Gen’s blazing field, dripping ronaplin.
When Rimon put out a hand to release the chain from the boy’s collar, the boy flinched, then held still, his nager flaring hope along with his deep fear as fingers and tentacles hit the eight points on each side of the collar to release the lock. When the chain fell free, the huge hazel eyes looked up at Rimon. “Are you letting me go?”
Simelan. He realized he had been hoping the boy would remain silent, making it possible to regard him as an animal, like the Wild Gens. Coherent speech was an unfair tactic. He jerked the boy to his feet. “You shut up!”
“Please, let me go. I’ll do anything!” As the boy continued to plead, his words disappeared into the swirling selyn fields. Rimon’s Sime senses took over. No longer did his strong hands hold a physical body, but a bright field of pulsing energy. His emptiness screamed to be filled.
He seized the boy’s forearms with hands and handling tentacles, seating the hungry laterals. As he contacted Gen skin, Rimon felt the long-ignored ache in his chest loosen, and instinct drove him to seek the fifth contact point with his lips. The Gen was a writhing mass of energy, charged with the fear that made it impossible for Rimon to resist. Energy poured from the Gen to him, satisfying his need, pulsing new life into every nerve, driven by the ecstatic force of the Gen’s fear, completing, fulfilling, to burst into a brilliant rapture and a blissful moment’s loss of physical awareness.
Rimon was brought back to reality by the tug of a dead weight on his arms. The Gen’s eyes were still open, staring up at him accusingly. Like Zeth’s. With a strangled cry, he dropped the corpse—no different in death than a Sime. It crumpled to the floor, still staring at him. Those dead eyes glaring from fear-contorted features held him, hypnotized.
With a groan, Rimon knelt and closed them, then lifted the body onto the couch. It was still warm, as if pretending to life—but there was no life there now. Every spark had been transferred to Rimon, so that he could go on with his existence. Why? Why do I deserve to live?
Why did he have to die?
There was no trace of the post-kill syndrome his rather had predicted. He didn’t want a woman, he wanted to vomit. With shaking hands, he pulled a coverlet over the body and yanked at the signal cord for the attendant.
This is what Gens are for. This is what Gens are for. It is what Gens are for!
He turned and fled from the killroom.
After his kill, sick and shaking, Rimon sought the only haven he had ever found since his changeover—Kadi’s presence. Unaware of anything else, he headed out to where she had promised to wait for him, in the swing under the big tree in the back yard.
He dropped into the swing, staring at his arms. The tentacles were retracted tightly, painfully—but there was pleasure in the pain for a moment, until Kadi put one arm around his shoulders and the other hand over his clenched hands in his lap. In her soothing presence, he began to relax a little… almost to be a child again, one of the four Krazy Kids.
All within a three-year span in age, the four of them had shared adventures, projects, and pranks. Zeth had been the oldest, the leader until Rimon began to challenge him. Then the two had developed a spirited rivalry for Kadi’s approval—and Yahn, the youngest, had entered in, even though he could never keep up with the older boys.
But the two Farrises could not help admiring the way both Yahn and Kadi refused to give up—hence the vow the four of them made never to separate. “And Kadi can be wife to all of us!” Zeth had joked—the only one of them at that moment old enough to comprehend the joke. Rimon, sensing that there was more to it than friendship, had had to conceal his jealousy under camaraderie—but soon there was to be no more rivalry for her affections. Time intervened to tear the Krazy Kids apart.
Ze.th had changed over three or four months before Rimon did, and soon drifted away from the group, outdistancing them as he took on a man’s duties, learning to use his new abilities as a Sime. Nonetheless, Zeth had tried to keep up their lifelong ties, including their childish vow of loyalty. So, when Yahn Keslic established selyn production, Zeth told him and encouraged him to run for the border. Rimon had been away with his father that day, and when Zeth told him on his return, he was furious. “You call that friendship? Why didn’t you take him to the border, Zeth? You’re Sime—you could guide him. Come on—let’s find him and help him across.”
When Syrus Farris’ son was willing to brave his wrath, his nephew became more willing to lend his aid. All night Rimon and Zeth searched for Yahn, but couldn’t find him. Toward morning they decided it was useless, and started back toward home—only to have Rimon begin changeover. Zeth made a fire, tended Rimon until he’d stopped vomiting, and then decided the best thing to do, as Rimon was drifting in and out of consciousness, was to go home and bring back a Gen for Rimon’s first kill.
An augmenting Sime should have had no trouble, but Zeth had not taken into account the fact that the first stages of Rimon’s changeover had been exceptionally rapid, and so was the last. Within half an hour, Rimon’s tentacles broke free, and he was a full-fledged Sime in first need—the hardest and most terrifying need most Simes ever know. He set out blindly after Zeth. With the speed of desperation, he overtook his cousin when they were still more than an hour’s journey from home—from the nearest Gen. To Rimon, Zeth’s field seemed the source of all salvation.
Reaching to cling to that field without thought, Rimon found his tentacles twining about Zeth’s arms in sheer reflex. He seized Zeth’s laterals with his own; even so, Zeth did not fear. Only when Rimon, driven, made lip contact, completing the circuit, drawing selyn voraciously from Zeth’s body—only then did Zeth panic, driving Rimon into the vicious stripping draw of a full-blown killmode attack.
Rimon did not remember much of what happened after that. In torment, he had wandered for hours, until suddenly there were people around him, and he was taken over by someone who let him collapse into a wagon, drove him somewhere—and then his father was bending over him, his concern flowing to Rimon through the new, confusing senses, saying, “Rimon? What idiot moved my son while he’s in changeover?”
“He’s through it,” insisted the driver. “He came into the Northwest unit on his own power, then collapsed. I don’t know what’s wrong, but he was conscious when I put him in the wagon.”
Farris smiled reassuringly at Rimon, reaching toward him, extending his laterals to read his field. “It’s all right. You just didn’t get a very good first kill. In a little while, after you rest, we’ll—”
“No!” Rimon cried in horror, his own tentacles retracting painfully at the sight of his father’s—organs of murder.
He felt annoyance beneath the genuine concern in his father’s field. “Rimon, it’s over. As soon as you get a decent kill, you’ll feel fine.”
“I killed him!”
Both concern and annoyance deepened, accompanied now by fear—and Rimon knew his father feared for his sanity. Well, so did he. But Farris said reassuringly, “Of course you killed. It’s perfectly natural. That’s what Gens are for.”
Rimon rolled away from his father’s touch, gathering in on himself, hating what he had become, what he had done. “No,” he groaned. “Not a Gen. Zeth! He was trying to help me, Father, and I—killed—Zeth!”
It was terrifying now to be able to see the discrepancy between what Syrus Farris felt—fear, revulsion—and the control he exercised before he spoke. Other feelings came flowing in—sorrow, disbelief, even love for his son. But Rimon had seen—no, for the first time in his life, he zlinned—that first unshielded burst of emotion, and he could not totally believe the reassuring tone in his father’s voice as he said, “If you did, you couldn’t help it. Just tell me where, and I’ll send someone. Then we’ll get
you to bed. You have to rest, Son. It’s all right.”
But it was not all right. Marna and Kadi put Rimon to bed, but nothing they could do would stop his shaking. The sight of Mama’s tentacles sickened him, and he hid his own under the covers, wanting to go back to yesterday, to be a child again.
He heard Marna and Kadi whispering. Zeth couldn’t be dead, Marna said. A Sime could not kill another Sime that way. Rimon grasped at the thread of hope—what did he know of it? His senses had been so confused. He had drawn—but not enough, his father said. Then maybe Zeth was unconscious. They’d find him and bring him home. He’d be all right. They’d all be together again, the Krazy Kids, Zeth and Rimon and Kadi and—
No. Never again. Yahn was Gen. But if they hadn’t found him, that had to mean he had escaped across the border. So Yahn would be all right, and Zeth…
He slept fitfully on and off through the afternoon and into the evening. It was after dark when a commotion outside drew his attention. They must have found Zeth! He raced to the window, and saw… Yahn, his father, and Syrus Farris. Farris was saying, his mouth thin with annoyance, “Keslic, you know I can’t keep every male…”
“Syrus, he came home of his own free will!”
Rimon couldn’t believe it! Why had Yahn come home? Here he had no chance at a life as a person—only across the border was there any hope at all for a Gen. Was that what being Gen meant—losing all courage?
After an eternity, Farris said to Yahn’s father, “All right, I’ll keep him for a year. If he earns his keep, then he can stay on permanently, but he’ll have to be a worker as well as a breeder.” He didn’t speak directly to Yahn, but to his father, as if Yahn could not understand.
“Thank you, Syrus,” Keslic said. “I know Yahn will work well for you.”
“No, not Yahn,” said Farris. “There is no Yahn Keslic anymore. You understand that.”
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