First Channel s-3

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Veritt was saying, “I was honestly mistaken. Behold the miracle God has sent to show us His true intentions!”

  Whelan shouted, “Keep the Devil’s spawn away from us! Cast out this sorcerer from our midst—they have defiled our chapel!”

  Somebody back in the crowd yelled, “Purify it with fire!”

  Whelan shouted, “If we must do that—we will! But Abel Veritt can cast this evil out by a turn of heart. We must purify our hearts before we can cleanse our grounds Abel,” he continued, turning toward the veranda where Rimon and Jord flanked Veritt. “Seek God’s help in casting out Rimon Farris and the cursed succubi he has brought among us!”

  Other people were coming from their homes and gathering in a semicircle around the band of protesters, listening curiously.

  Veritt held up his hands, tentacles sheathed. “Rimon Farris is a Sime who does not kill, who brings that hope to all of us, and he has shown us that we must all learn not to kill, because all Gens have souls.”

  There were angry shouts, quieted by Dan Whelan. “Abel, do you know who this misbegotten son of the Devil really is?” He pulled from under his coat a scroll of paper, and dramatically unrolled it into a poster, holding it up for all to see.

  AUCTION

  PRIME FARRIS GENS FINEST WILD GENS MOST SATISFYING DOMESTIC STOCK PRIME KILLS!

  The name “Farris” had been circled in red.

  Rimon blanched. Abel and Jord merely looked puzzled.

  Whelan, after displaying the poster, took a step toward Rimon. “Will you deny it? Gendealer! Raider! Will you deny you hunt across the border?”

  “Where did you get that?” asked Abel.

  “From Slina. She had it on her desk yesterday—said she couldn’t afford to attend that auction—the prices would be right off the map. Said only once in a while can she pick up one or two Gens of Farris stock. Farris stock, mind you!”

  “Rimon Farris?” Abel challenged.

  “She didn’t say,” Whelan admitted.

  “It’s a common enough name,” said Veritt. “Let me see that!” Picking the poster out of Whelan’s hands, Abel scanned it briefly and pointed to the fine print at the bottom. “Syrus Farris! What makes you think there’s any connection?”

  Sara Fenell stepped forward, half-facing the crowd so her voice would carry. “This Syrus Farris—Slina says he’s so famous because he consorts with gypsies. He must use magic to produce these”—she spat out the words—“prime Farris Gens!”

  “And if that were so—what is that to us?” asked Abel. “Rimon is no Gendealer. He doesn’t even kill.”

  “But look what he’s done to those two Gens—he’s given them souls, Abel, souls. Isn’t that what people call ‘prime kill’—Gens who are real people! If that’s how this Syrus Farris does it, then that’s where Rimon Farris learned it! And all he’s done for us has been to gain our confidence.” She added defiantly, “Ask him, Abel. Ask him right here in front of all of us and see if he can lie. Zlin him and ask!”

  As many of the Simes allowed themselves to become duoconscious, their eyes flicked first toward the spot where Kadi and Willa stood listening. Rimon felt Willa’s vague anxiety, and Kadi’s steady support.

  “There is no necessity for you to answer this man’s insults,” said Abel. “We all know you, Rimon.”

  Bracing himself, knowing this time Abel would surely be repelled, and that it would hurt as badly as his own father’s rejection, he said, “Abel, the truth is going to come out sometime, and better now than later. I grew up on a Genfarm. Syrus Farris is my father.”

  A gasp rose from the assembled Simes, not just the protesters in the center, but all those who had supported Abel Veritt and Rimon. Even Jord took a step away from Rimon, too shocked for words. Only Abel kept his composure and calmly imposed silence on his people again. That calm acceptance allowed Rimon to continue.

  “I didn’t mention it because I didn’t think it was important. There’s no magic involved. Any Gen, well treated and not drugged, develops rudimentary abilities. And apparently—if you treat them like people, they respond like people because they are people.”

  Veritt prompted, “You have left the life of a Gendealer behind you?”

  “Forever!” Rimon said fervently.

  “And your father?”

  “He—wouldn’t listen to me when I discovered I could live without killing. He—he threw me out.”

  Abel turned to the crowd. “There you have it. Can a man help what family he’s born to? What more can you ask of him than that he change his ways when God reveals the right path? You accept me, although you know I’ve been a Freeband Raider. If you can accept my past, you can accept Rimon’s past. Judge him for what he is today.”

  “My son died because he believed Rimon Farris,” said Sara Fenell. “I pray Drust is in heaven, but I know Vee, whom he loved, whom I loved almost as if she were my own daughter, is in hell! Rimon Farris destroyed her soul! Will you let him destroy yours as well?”

  Abel replied, “I can’t think that God would condemn her for the result of her attempt to live without killing. The will of God is only slowly being revealed to us. Only in the past few weeks has He seen fit to reveal that I was wrong in one of my early teachings. Willa, please come out here!”

  When Willa appeared, silence fell. Abel led her forward. “You all saw this girl among us at the Year’s Turning. Rimon took her from Slina’s Pens—if i necessary, to convince you, he can bring her papers. I was witness the first time he took selyn from her—and did not hurt her at all! I’ve seen what it’s cost him to learn to do this, yet he has never hurt her. Willa, you tell them. Has Rimon ever hurt you?”

  “No,” she answered. “Rimon never hurt me. He never will.”

  The onlookers were staring, openmouthed. Then Dan Whelan said, “She is possessed! He’s conjured up a demon to possess the body of this soulless Gen!”

  “Gypsy sorcery!” cried Sara Fenell.

  “Nonsense!” snapped Abel. “Willa is an innocent child, learning to talk only now because she’s been drugged all her life. Willa,” he asked, “do you believe in God?”

  “God made the world,” she replied—the way Rimon had defined God for her when she had insisted on knowing the meaning of the word she heard so often at Fort Freedom.

  “You see?” said Veritt. “Already she understands that much. Come, speak with her. See for yourselves she’s no demon!”

  “She’s a puppet, made to speak by that sorcerer!” cried Sara Fenell, real fear in her nager. “I’ll not come near her!”

  Whelan added, “Look at what’s happening. This man arrives among us, promising to teach us not to kill—but how many have learned? Not one! He has lulled us with promises, yet no one except Rimon Farris—supposedly– can keep from killing. How do we know he doesn’t hunt across the border—perhaps among our children? And what has he really taught us with his changeover classes? Just how to keep more Simes alive to kill and kill, and kill again!”

  Abel Veritt, in a voice of calmest vanity, said, “Are you through?”

  “Yes,” replied Whelan, “through with these lies and sorcerer’s tricks. These people stand with me. Who’ll join us to drive this Farris and his demons from our midst!”

  There was a tense moment during which no one stirred. Then Mr. and Mrs. Lassiter, Vee’s parents, moved from the back of the crowd. Rimon’s heart sank and Dan Whelan grinned in triumph as it appeared they would join the group of protesters. But they kept walking, on up onto the veranda, to stand beside Abel and Willa. Others followed, until there wasn’t room on the porch and they lined up before it, facing the accusers.

  It was Jord Veritt who broke the silence. “We stand for the hope of life against capitulation to superstition and death. We admit our mistakes, and we’re going on to a better way of life, as my father once did, as Rimon did, as I’m prepared to do. Will you go to your death one day, knowing that you never even tried not to kill?”

  “I’ll go to my death knowin
g I followed God’s true way, Jord Veritt,” replied Sara Fenell. “I for one, can’t live where God’s Law is thrown aside at the word of a conniving Gendealer who begets children on his own stock. When you can tell me you’ve stopped killing, Jord—you come talk to me then about standing for life!”

  Again, she turned and led the group of dissenters from their midst, but it was a smaller group than before. Rimon saw that one family, a man and woman with two adolescent boys, had dropped back to join the group by the porch. They were welcomed with open arms. Then Abel led a prayer, and the crowd dispersed.

  As they went back inside, Rimon said, “I should have told you earlier who I am, Abel.”

  Kadi said, “He just didn’t want to ride on his father’s fame, Abel; please believe that.” Rimon was too ashamed to stop Kadi from making excuses for him. “If we had known what people would think, we’d have told you who we are.”

  “I know who you are,” the older man replied. “It makes no difference who your father was, Rimon—” He broke off, astonished at his own words. “God chose to show me today how very wrong my teaching was on that point! Clearly, you are not what you are because of anything your father did.”

  “Abel—you do know I don’t hunt across the border?”

  “Son, I’ve been with you. I’ve zlinned your field, and Kadi’s and Willa’s. You’ve never been high-field, for no reason. Everybody in Fort Freedom knew that accusation was nonsense.”

  “And—you know I don’t practice sorcery?”

  “Sorcery?” He laughed. “Forgive me, but if you had magic at your command, you’d never have built a house to be burned down, and you’d not be struggling to pay your taxes. You’d harness a demon to—”

  “What’s a demon,” asked Willa, interrupting. “An evil being,” Abel told her. “You’re not evil, Willa. You’re good.”

  She nodded, smiling. “Yes. I’m a good girl. I’m learning to count. Do you want to hear me?”

  Abel listened patiently while Willa counted to five on the fingers of one hand.

  “Very good,” he said, and began to turn away from her.

  “Can I count more when I get tentacles?” she asked.

  It was the first time she’d spoken of noticing the difference between Simes and Gens. Kadi said, “Willa, you’re a Gen, like me. You won’t get tentacles.”

  “Why can’t I have tentacles? Carlana has tentacles.”

  Well, thought Rimon, she finally has male and female straight. “Good question,” said Rimon. “But you’re a Gen, so you have no use for tentacles.”

  “I could do more.”

  “You do enough,” Abel said. “You don’t understand how much you do for us that you couldn’t do if you had tentacles.”

  “I help,” she agreed, and did not pursue the matter. Rimon was relieved that Willa accepted “because you’re Gen” for the moment, but knew that he and Kadi would soon have to explain the difference between Sime and Gen to her—and transfer, too.

  As Rimon considered the difficulty of explaining to Willa, he remembered his own introduction to the knowledge of the kill. Krazy Kids already at four years old, Rimon and Kadi had been caught by Syrus Farris in the loft of the holding barn, trying to see what went on in there when Wild Gens were brought in. Turning Kadi over to her own father, Farris had taken Rimon off with him for a lengthy but somewhat vague lecture. Rimon and Kadi, comparing notes afterward, found they’d been told the same story. “Well, Gens are just animals!” said Rimon.

  “We don’t kill animals,” said Kadi. “Would you kill Kitty? Or one of the horses? I’m not going to do it.”

  “Kadi, we’ll have to do it. Dad says you can’t help it– it’s the only way you grow up.”

  “Well,” said Kadi, “maybe I won’t grow up!”

  Although their parents had spoken as if Rimon and Kadi were assured of growing up Sime, it had slowly come through to them that some children don’t. Rimon was nine when that fact emerged from his subconscious in agonized nightmares—pale previews of those that tortured him after changeover.

  But our son won’t have nightmares! He hugged Kadi, sensing their growing child. She returned a flood of warm happiness, and again he wondered how closely she could follow his thoughts.

  When they got home that evening, and Willa took off her coat, Kadi noticed blood on the back of the girl’s skirt Rimon busied himself on the other side of the room, glad to leave that problem to Kadi.

  “Willa, you’re growing up so fast,” she began, trying to pass the event off as a good sign of normal maturity. “Let me show you what to do about—”

  But when Willa saw the blood and realized where she was bleeding, she started to scream. Rimon dashed to help, but pulled himself to a halt as Kadi flung herself between him and the terrified girl.

  “Willa, it’s all right!” Kadi said. “It’s normal. You’re just growing up.”

  “Baby,” sobbed Willa.

  “No, no, Willa—it’s because you’re not having a baby.” She looked up at Rimon, who was recovering from the discovery that Willa’s terror had provoked nothing but sympathy in him. “What she saw, with Carlana,” she explained.

  “Of course,” said Rimon. “Yes, Willa, you saw Carlana lose a baby. But it hurt her, remember? You don’t hurt, do you?”

  “No.”

  Kadi gave him a thankful smile, and cast about frantically for the right thing to say. Rimon admired her calmness—he would have expected her to be dying of embarrassment.

  “Willa,” she said finally, “what’s happening to you is normal. It happens to every woman every month. It shows that you are not having a baby, Willa—but it shows that you can have one when you’re ready.”

  “I can have a baby?”

  “Yes, Willa, once you’re grown up yourself.”

  “I want to have a baby, like you, Kadi.”

  Kadi came up with an answer Rimon had heard her mother use. “You will have your own children, Willa, but first you have to practice and learn how to be a mother by helping me take care of my baby. You’ll help me, wont you?”

  For a moment, Rimon thought Willa was going to cry, having been denied what she wanted. Then, very solemnly, she nodded. “Willa helps.” Then she had another thought. “How did you get your baby?”

  Kadi said, “Rimon gave it to me.”

  Willa turned to Rimon, her eyes lit. “Will you give me a baby?”

  “I can’t, Willa.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m Kadi’s husband. Like Del is Carlana’s husband. One day you will have a husband, and he will give you babies.”

  Kadi gave him a warm smile of gratitude. He winked at her, and went off to finish caring for the horses.

  Later that night, however, after Willa was asleep, Rimon said to Kadi, “You realize that if I were on a normal schedule, today would be my turnover?”

  “Your turnover was three days ago.”

  “Yes, but it should have been today.”

  “So?”

  “Willa’s cycle had adapted to mine. If she were married to a Sime whose need did not exceed her selyn production, her fertility would come at their transfers, as yours does at ours.”

  “You think she’ll marry a Sime?”

  “To any Sime who could face the prospect of marrying a Gen, she’d be practically irresistible.”

  “And Fort Freedom is full of Simes who could easily face the prospect,” Kadi added. “Oh, Rimon—what hornet’s nest will we stir up next?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  WILLA’S DECISION

  As it turned out, the next Gen to come to live with Rimon and Kadi didn’t come from Slina’s Pens. He was Jon Forester, whose parents brought him from Fort Freedom at his insistence. They were horrified when Rimon immediately took him to Slina’s to have him tagged as a runaway he had “caught,” but he left Kadi to explain the law to them. Once they understood that Rimon would have to pay to keep their son, they gave her the tax money for Jon for the quarter.

/>   Alternating Jon and Willa, Rimon was able to get back to an almost normal cycle, although he still took all his transfers in healing mode, and afterward had to balance, his fields. Kadi could help him less and less, for she tired easily, and that made her irritable and often snappish.

  Rimon bore it all stoically, even when her lack of emotional stability set his teeth on edge. But he couldn’t blame her for what her body, chemistry did to her. He wondered, though, if her depression was the source of his own. He felt as if he were in chronic need from insufficient kills: restless, fretful, depressed and without much appetite. Yet be was getting enough selyn now.

  In the late winter, too early for plowing or planting, there was no way Rimon could earn extra money. One time Del asked him to take a consignment of horses over to Birmington, and he did it even though they all knew Del could just as easily have taken them himself. What Del paid him made it possible to pay the first-quarter tax on Kadi.

  With the spring, they learned another reason they had been laughed at for homesteading just here. Hoping to get work in the fields around Fort Freedom, Rimon plowed his own fields early, as soon as the ground could be worked. Thus he would be ready to plant as soon as the threat of frost was over—and if he were too busy, Jon and Willa could even do the planting.

  Out-of-doors, working off his tensions, his temper improved, and that made Kadi happier. But in the end, all his hard work went for naught: when the mountain snows melted, their little brook swelled to a raging torrent, overflowed its banks, and turned their fields into a lake. The place where they had built their first house was completely under water, the charred timbers scattered over the lake. At one point, the lower tunnel entrance was under water, and they had to move everything from the lowest storeroom where they’d huddled as the cabin burned.

  During those days, Rimon spent a lot of his time on the top of their hill, surveying his fields, wondering if nature were trying to tell him something.

  But when Abel Veritt arrived to survey the situation, he said, “It’s mud now, but it’s enriched soil that should give you the best crops in this whole area. Next year you’ll know better than to plow too soon.”