Personal Recognizance (Sime~Gen, Book 9)

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Joran sat down at the desk and brought up a display where he could enter his notes on Vret’s condition. As he filled in the form, he asked, “So, Vret, are you planning on taking any courses in computer architecture? Over the next ten years, we’ll be bringing all the Centers worldwide onto the Controller’s net. Most of that work will be done by the Thirds, you know. You could make a career of it.”

  “I don’t intend to remain a Third.”

  “So I’ve been told, but why? It’s the best position if you want to work with computers.”

  Vret gave his now standard answer to that. “Well, life is no fun when you’re so tired all the time.” He suspected he might have understood more of the tour of the computer center if he hadn’t been in recovery at the time. “And frankly, I’m not sure computers are so interesting. Is that your specialty?”

  “Just a hobby. But it’s turned out to be a useful one. I originally graduated from the Vashol First Year Camp as a Third. But after I made Second, I decided I wanted Farris training, and Rialite is the place for that. But there were no openings.” He spun the chair around and got up, gesturing for Vret to take his place. “So I got in because I could work on the mainframe staff—and they wanted staffers and instructors more than another late Qualifying First.”

  “So you’re here as a student too?” Vret sat.

  “But I spend more time in the hole than instructing students. Still, I wouldn’t be here if not for that hobby. I recommend it to you as a career move.”

  “In the hole?” asked Vret as he filled in his own part of the form.

  “The high field area under the computer center where the whole network is powered.”

  “With selyn batteries and all?” Vret left off with the form and focused entirely on Joran. The mysteries of selyn batteries held an endless fascination for him.

  “Yes. And I get to work with the Firsts who keep the batteries charged, as well as with students like yourself. When I graduate Rialite, I’ll probably be able to pick where I want to settle down. Like I said, as a career—”

  Vret felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. Joran was racing across the three strides of blue carpet that separated them, but seemed to be stuck in mid-air. The windows faded to darkness. An unreasoning, visceral panic flashed through his veins and seized his mind.

  In the depths of that moment of stark terror, when all was lost and he knew he was dying, a sudden cloud of warm gold strength caught him on a pillow of pine and rosemary scented safety.

  He came to himself once again, gasping. Striving for a sophistication he didn’t feel, he spread hands and tentacles, summoned a smile and inserted it in his showfield to convince himself it was genuine. “I’m fine. Just turnover.”

  “So I noticed,” agreed Joran. “Sorry, I should have stayed closer. In the future, be sure you inform your Donor when you’ve been through something that will exacerbate turnover like that.”

  Exacerbate? “It wasn’t all that bad.” But when Joran stepped back a few inches, he felt the howling cold winds of Need, and the yammering insistent cry of every cell in his body for the warmth of that selyn. And he was sure it was worse this month than last. Even now, only minutes past turnover, he could barely keep his laterals sheathed.

  The Gen didn’t say anything, just watched.

  “All right, it was that bad. I don’t know why, though.” Oh, yes I do. The one thing he had been doing this month that could sharpen the impact of Need was reading Blissdrip’s Secret Killroom. But he wasn’t doing that any more, and would not...ever again.

  Tentacles and fingers shaking, he made a big show of confidently filling out the form and then relinquishing the seat again to Joran, who filled out his half. When they were done, the screen presented them with their meeting schedule for the next fourteen days leading into Vret’s eighth transfer.

  As Vret raced to his next class, he wondered how he could exploit Joran’s knowledge without giving any hint of why he wanted to understand such arcane things as computer security when he had no intention of pursuing a career in mainframe administration.

  As the pessimism of Need clamped down, he began to wonder about the real reason Joran had been assigned to him. Did the Rialite administration suspect something? If so, what did they suspect?

  And now, every moment, every breath, every step he took, every thought he generated was punctuated by—and enshrouded in—the recurrent, insistent throb of Need. He wasn’t used to it after only seven months as a Sime. Every time he’d had transfer, he’d forgotten what the sharp claws of Need did to him.

  All he could think about was his next transfer. Several times a day he spent time with Joran Nah, and Nah attended his sessions with Kwotiin Lake as well as his Collectorium and Dispensary labs. Need became the predominate schedule dictator of his life.

  And with that expanded awareness came a renewed focus on locating Blissdrip. Relying on the technique that had led him to Bilateral’s identity, he redoubled his efforts to chat up other students before and after every class. He hung out at the library and watched for anyone requisitioning stacks of books on Unity, the Secret Pens, or junctedness. He garnered dozens of leads, too many to be useful without the clue that had led him to Bilateral—comments she had posted from which he had inferred what she had been reading most recently.

  She, however, had Halarcy, her roommate, requisition the volumes she had wanted to study.

  Classes at Rialite were expected to be only a small part of the unique education here. Students were expected to investigate and master a wide range of subjects, and pass tests in those subjects to gain a variety of certifications. Vret himself had already achieved 3 full certifications just from what he did for fun and relaxation.

  Rialite had been founded to handle the Farrises. The First Year Farrises often spiked a learning rate in excess of nine times Vret’s own. They’d die of boredom with only classes to attend. Hence the library provided access to everything any student channel might be curious about.

  There was nothing unusual in ten, even twenty students a day ordering up books on Unity or Disjunction Crisis, or Berserker behavior. Watching for the research going into Blissdrip’s writings wouldn’t be fast enough.

  Disappointed and frustrated, he stopped Ilin on the path again as they were both late for their lunch appointments. “Joran is waiting for me, Ilin, but I have to tell you I’m not making any progress on this search at all.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been thinking. I’m not going to post any more installments,” she replied. “This whole thing is just getting to me. The techs say the board readership has doubled in the last four days and the new people are not reading my stuff, they’re reading Blissdrip’s. They haven’t made any progress identifying him either.”

  She doesn’t look well at all. Vret asked, “You’ve been posting more installments?”

  “And Blissdrip has too—long ones. The board usage is spiking because of that, and someone’s bound to notice us soon.”

  “I haven’t been reading our boards.”

  “Don’t read them. We’re going to have to bring this whole thing to the administration.”

  “Give me until after transfer. I might think of something when I can get my head clear.” But now he knew there was even less time to solve this than he had thought.

  That night he woke up dreaming an installment in Bilateral’s Aunser D’zehn saga, even though he hadn’t read any of her postings in five days. He had made no headway questioning Joran about how mainframes identified users, and by all reports, their own people were doing everything that could be done. But Joran’s responses to his queries convinced him that the Second Order Donor had been assigned to Vret to investigate him—either because of the Secret Boards or to determine if he was a candidate for Qualification. Maybe both.

  Barely twenty-four hours later, with his whole life riding on impressing Joran, Vret lied to the Donor to get away from him during the precious two hours when his roommate would be gone. He told himself the onl
y way he would ever have of catching up with Blissdrip would be to lure him into some kind of personal correspondence on the discussion board.

  Vret spent the stolen time skimming at his fastest reading speed, absorbing the episodes of both Bilateral’s novel and Blissdrip’s perversion of it that he had missed. Though Aunser was deeply absorbing, it was Killroom that had him panting with intil and aching with the stern effort to suppress that inappropriate, but oddly real, surge of raw Need.

  He had to break away from the desk and pace to bring himself under control. Twice, he had to admit to himself that just reading this stuff brought him close to the edge of being dangerous—but thankfully there were no untrained Gens allowed onto the Rialite campus. Still, Vret didn’t want Nah to see him in this condition.

  He fought himself back under control and went back to work telling himself the intil would subside once he finished reading.

  Chapter Nine

  DISPENSARY LAB

  But he didn’t finish all the reading fast enough, and he was late leaving his room.

  Then he augmented his selyn consumption rate to race to his Dispensary lab session. By using selyn at a faster rate than normal, he not only moved faster, but he cleared the headache his fight with intil had given him. And he made it by a split second as the instructor was closing the insulated door—that would not open again until every scheduled transfer had been administered.

  The lab room contained fourteen transfer lounges spread in rows, each shrouded in extremely efficient insulating draperies forming tents with doors which still hung open, facing the instructors at the front of the lab.

  The instructors today were two Farris channels and their Donors, none of whom were known to Vret. The impenetrable insulating drapes, even after being closed, would be gossamer thin to those channels. Every single nuance of his nageric management, his vriamic control, his selyn flow management would be scrutinized and evaluated as he worked with his client. And all he could think about was The Kill and death by Attrition after aborting away from channel’s transfer.

  “You’re late, Hajene McClintock,” accused Joran as Vret slid into position beside him trying to look as if he’d studied this material and knew what he was supposed to do.

  The module next to him held his good friend Iric Chez who had recently made Second, sternly trying not to notice Vret’s tardiness. His Donor was also a Second Vret had seen around. Vret had gotten Iric onto the Secret Boards, but he didn’t know his nickname. Still, he couldn’t be Blissdrip. Iric had too vast a sense of humor. He was more likely author of the insanely funny but prurient Tecton Times gossip column articles about the doings of the Householdings before Unity.

  “Almost late,” agreed Vret to Joran’s accusation. He took up the field management for his renSime client who sat on the transfer lounge, feet dangling, hands gripping the edge of the lounge.

  Joran handed him the client’s file. She was Banda Muoin. Vret quickly read her medical history and transfer particulars in a series of charts, graphs and tables. Each day of this course they were to master the art of interpreting one more part of the standard Tecton file on a renSime’s transfer characteristics. Today’s section included the effect of sub-mutation variant on disease histories with age.

  Banda Muoin was twenty three years past changeover, had three healthy children and suffered from the aftermath of a bout of Shaking Plague during First Year. The table they were studying today was highlighted in green but he hadn’t had time to read up on the details.

  As Vret studied the sections of the chart he’d already mastered, the young woman heaved a sign of relief at his field management, then cracked a smile. “Actually, Sosu Joran, Hajene McClintock arrived ten seconds before the hour, so he’s not really late—”

  She broke off as suddenly, there was a huge, rock-solid, massive silence in the ambient. Vret didn’t have to turn to know that one of the Farris instructors was behind him. He swiveled his stool around, summoned a smile into his showfield and waited attentively, thoughts of telepathy dancing through his consciousness.

  “Hajene,” said the Farris in a deep baritone, “you yourself are in Need. How would you feel if your Donor arrived only ten seconds before the appointment hour?”

  Vret wiped the smile away. The feeling of panic and even terror that he would feel if his Donor were late was overwhelming. He did his best to shield his client from his field spikes, though Joran moved to intercede his own nager, protecting her. Had that wash of Need-terror come from his own imagination, empathizing with his client, or had the Mysterious Farris Talent somehow planted it inside him?

  “Yes, precisely,” agreed the Farris, flicking an approving tentacle at Joran. “You would not appreciate it if Joran were almost late. Now tell me, what do you think of a channel who arrives at a transfer appointment, augmenting as if some emergency were in progress?”

  “Not reassuring,” Vret agreed with the implied criticism. It was perfectly just, and the Farris had refrained from zlinning him—or so it seemed. A student-Third might not actually know if a First had in fact zlinned him.

  The Farris consulted a roster he held crooked in his elbow, secured by one handling tentacle. “You’re up for eighth transfer. We expect more of our senior students than you have given us today. Your grade for today’s work will be reduced by one level and this will go on your record.”

  The Farris signalled Joran and turned away to check on Iric Chez and his client.

  The transfer clients were all carefully chosen and heavily trained to drill students in how to give a good transfer. They knew more about interpreting the charts than the students did. Some of these renSimes taught the academic subjects and some were administrators, librarians, or even kitchen staff. Banda Muoin knew more about what Vret should have been doing and saying than he did.

  Joran settled back behind Vret saying, “That was Saelul Farris. You know who he is?”

  “No, never heard of him.”

  “Well, he’s new here. If you want a chance to Qualify Second before you leave Rialite, he’s the one who will authorize it.”

  “Oh,” whispered Vret.

  Banda watched Vret absorb the shock. Then she reached out a hand to touch his knee. “Steady Hajene. Saelul isn’t an ogre. He wants every one of Rialite’s students to develop their full potential. If you have the ability, he’ll see to it you use it.”

  And he won’t be impressed if he finds my client reassuring me. Vret reawakened the smile in his showfield, and put personal concerns aside. This was real channel’s work he was doing, despite the fact his client was actually his teacher. She did need a transfer.

  After the brief augmentation, he felt refreshed, even renewed, just the way Blissdrip kept describing the joys of augmentation when in Need. Assuming his best professional demeanor, he pivoted on his stool to face front while the man who held the key to his future began the lecture.

  The lab proceeded through the detailed description of the chart entries, each client present an example of one or another medical situation. Then the student channels toured the room, zlinning each client and examining their charts. There was a question session, and then each of the Farris channels performed a demonstration transfer illustrating variations on the types of problems under consideration.

  Vret was suitably awed by Saelul’s diamond-hard, brilliant precision in transfer, but even more impressed with the Farris’s nearly instant recovery time from the intricate functional. Doing anything like that would have left Vret shaking with fatigue for hours.

  Then two at a time, each of the students gave their client transfer behind their closed curtains while the supervising Farrises stood outside and took notes then discussed errors with the class, using each other to demonstrate what the student had done, and then what the student should have done instead.

  By the time it was Vret’s turn, he was more nervous than he’d ever been in a transfer lab.

  But right on schedule for his client, Saelul Farris yanked the curtain clo
sed on Vret’s cubicle. Banda leaned back on the transfer lounge and held out her tentacles, laterals extended. Then she winked, quirking one corner of her mouth in confident and good humor despite her advanced state of Need.

  It broke the tension. Suddenly Vret just fell into sync with her nageric pulsing, and with an ease that surprised him, he slid his laterals around hers, smoothly bent to the fifth contact point, lip to lip, feeling his way into her system. The selyn he’d packed into his secondary system that morning in Collectorium Lab flowed easily into her, the speed regulated by her demand.

  In the time it takes to snap two fingers together, it was over. Vret straightened, dismantling the lateral contact and grinning at the expression of bliss permeating the older woman’s features. “Oh, Hajene, this is going to be a very good month for me. Thank you.”

  The vibrant tingling he always felt after giving a transfer was even more invigorating and reassuring than the after effects of augmentation had been. As he sagged back against Joran’s fields, feeling the post-functional fatigue headache start, he shoved the curtain aside.

  Saelul Farris’s expression and nager betrayed nothing as he jotted notations on Vret’s record. Vret wouldn’t be able to read those notes until he logged into his account later. For now, he braced himself for the dissection before the class. If everyone else here could endure being ripped apart while in recovery, so could he.

  “Excellent work, Hajene McClintock. It’s a pity you had to be docked a grade level.”

  Then without further comment, the Farris turned to watch Iric Chez who had performed at the same time, be dissected while Banda made her way out of the room. As a Second, Iric had been given a harder problem and as a new Second he’d made errors any Third might have. In a week or so more though, Iric would be shifted to classes with his new peers. So the instructor landed on him harder when he offered excuses.