Personal Recognizance (Sime~Gen, Book 9)

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Each touch sparked fires deep within, kindled fires in her that erupted within him. Her hands moved between them, tentacles guiding him, urging him.

  Without hunting or trying they found their rhythm, so perfect, so natural, effortless as it had never been before with anyone. The bright, beautiful, perfect moment flowed over them, engulfing them in concentrated privacy—just the two of them—a rare treasure shared.

  The sweet warmth of that moment was cinnamon scented.

  Forever afterward that hint of cinnamon would always arouse him.

  He was aware of time again. And far too much of it had passed though he wished they could do it all over again.

  “Vret, we really shouldn’t have...“

  “Oh, we really should have!”

  “I just want to do that every day now.”

  “Me too.”

  “We’ll never see each other again after this afternoon,” she repeated with throbbing regret even greater than it had been earlier.

  “Likely not. But you know the life of a channel working for the Tecton. Our transfers are in phase here at Rialite, but when we’re working—even if we worked in the same Center we wouldn’t stay in phase, wouldn’t have many chances like this.”

  She nodded silently, but there was a tear in her nager that didn’t quite surface into her eyes. “You’re right. But I’m afraid that we’ve just established a benchmark that nobody else will be able to meet for either of us.”

  “I’ll treasure it.”

  “Me, too.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  WORKING THE PLAN

  They met Morry in the very welcome afternoon shadow of the colossal statue of Rimon Farris that stood before the administration building steps. He looked just like Saelul Farris. But then all Farrises had that look.

  The moment they walked up, hand in hand, Morry grinned at them. He tossed his brown hair back with a shake of his head, and gave them a tentacle gesture of triumph.

  “We should get this over with,” said Ilin. Guilt and resignation suffused her nager.

  “I don’t know why we can’t just close down the boards, erase everything, and forget it ever happened,” said Morry. “Do we really have to do this?”

  Vret explained that it’s no solution if they get out of it and leave trouble behind. “The people who have been attracted into this by Blissdrip are in serious trouble. Some of them could become time bombs that could blow up, under stress, years from now because of this experience during First Year.”

  Vret explained he had learned that from the reading assigned by his therapy group leader, then had to explain what he’d seen Iric Chez do. What would be harmless for a full adult could be devastating to a First Year Sime. And channels were peculiarly more vulnerable even than renSimes to certain types of stress while being nearly impervious to things that would destroy a renSime’s equilibrium.

  Morry paced around in a circle rubbing the back of his neck, then faced them. “So Iric has this mark on his record now?”

  “But most of the others on the boards don’t,” said Vret. “We can’t abandon the ones who need help to avoid that fate or worse. You don’t have to go in there with us if you can’t help the administration solve this problem.”

  Morry didn’t understand how some amateur stories could have such an effect, so Vret and Ilin took turns filling him in on some of the postings to the comment board as a few people had come to espouse the junct philosophy of life that Iric had been toying with. “So you see, there are two kinds of people here, and we owe both of them equally. We can’t let this—” Vret broke off a bright sizzling idea flashing out of the depths of his mind.

  “What?” asked Ilin.

  Several passers-by stopped to zlin them. Vret reined in his nager and waved cheerily until onlookers lost interest.

  “Two kinds of people,” repeated Vret. “—innocent ones being dragged into trouble and ones who are opting to head into trouble and lure others with them.”

  Morry’s eyes fixed on Vret, head cocked to one side as he zlinned. “But the innocent ones are in trouble too, you said, conditioning being undermined almost as it forms.”

  “I think there’s a dividing line,” said Vret. “Those who find raising intil reading about the Kill to be just fun, denying the danger they will put their Gen friends into by doing this to themselves during First Year and undermining the stability they’ll one day depend on. And those like us who were involved in the secret boards when it was just historical puzzle stories with a bit more frank description of the Kill than allowed on the regular public story boards.”

  “Yes, I see your point,” said Morry. “The former should be brought to the administration’s attention. They must have more help than we could give them. And we’re not equipped to judge who needs what kind of help. But the latter, the original members of the boards, they’ll—we’ll—be punished for what these new people have been doing. We’ll all be lumped together, and we shouldn’t be.”

  “That’s my idea,” said Vret. “If we could get a message to the original people, and anyone who has spoken up on the comment board against Blissdrip’s endless dwelling on Killbliss as if it were a great mythical grace denied to us modern citizens—we could separate out the innocent and let the administration find the boards, and deal with those who have to get help.”

  Ilin shook her head. “Morry’s right, you and I don’t have what it takes to judge people, to decide who really has been adversely affected all on our own recognizance.”

  Vret thought about that. “Have you been? Adversely affected?”

  “I think so.”

  “Have you ever said so on the comment boards?”

  “Well, I’ve posted a few times that Killroom didn’t seem healthy to me because it raises intil just reading it. A few people agreed, but more said I was jealous of a better writer, and that it was all just good clean innocent fun and that I take everything too seriously.”

  “And,” said Vret, “there have been a number of posters who explained and supported the junct attitudes. What do you think of their ideas?”

  “I think they’re wrong. I think they’re dangerous. I think the older ones are infecting younger channels here with some very bad ideas. But it’s not the ideas that are the real problem. It’s the emotional lure powering those warped ideas. Older people wouldn’t be so—susceptible.”

  A few hours ago Vret would not have dared ask his next question point-blank. But now he felt he knew her ever so much better. “Do you find your intil rising when you read the Killroom episodes?”

  “Yes, of course, don’t you?” she returned astonished.

  “And what do you think of that?”

  “I think it’s horrible that reading about torture of Gens can do that to me. I hate it.”

  “But you read more of it anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t offer any excuses—no ‘but I have to because I’m writing this stuff’ and no ‘I’m responsible for the boards.’ Just plain yes. Vret admired her for that. He wasn’t that strong.

  “And that’s why you think it’s bad?” asked Vret, pursuing his original thought.

  “Yes.”

  “There! You see? That’s the dividing line. That’s how we tell ‘us’ from ‘them’.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Morry.

  “We all read this stuff. We all get an intil charge out of it. Some of us think that’s a good thing. Some of us think that’s a bad thing. We’re all having the same experience, but we have different opinions of that experience. I think that whether this stuff is doing us any harm depends on just that one thing—whether we approve or disapprove of our own reactions to it.”

  “Who could disapprove of satisfying Need? You’d have to be suicidal to think like that,” argued Morry.

  Vret explained, “It isn’t reading about The Kill or striving to understand the old junct lifestyle that’s bad. It isn’t raising intil while reading a story that’s bad. The problem
comes from what you’re willing to do to assuage that intil. The problem comes from what you are willing to do to survive. What personal satisfaction will you give up to safeguard others from your Kill reflexes? What will you do to avoid being pushed over the edge like Iric was?”

  “People don’t think that what a single person does for fun changes the course of history,” said Ilin, paraphrasing herself from earlier. “But it does.”

  “Yes, exactly. That’s where I got this idea. We’re willing to give up our fun, the Secret Boards, simply because others might have their conditioning compromised by these stories.”

  “So tell us the idea!” demanded Morry.

  Vret gestured with three tentacles, listen, “First, Bilateral posts that question, ‘What are you willing to do to survive? What price do you put on your own life?’—maybe in an Aunser installment and on the comment boards, ‘Does what you do for pleasure, and to sustain your life, matter to the course of history? And does the course of history matter to you?’ and discuss how Killroom causes us to raise intil, and whether that might be contributing to the intil accidents being investigated around campus.

  “Second, we make a list of who responds and how. Yes, I know some people don’t read the comment boards—I don’t think Blissdrip does. People who’ve never posted any stories or comments—well, I hate to say it, but I think we just have to pick out those who were on the boards before Blissdrip signed on, and let the latecomers be lumped in with those who need help.

  “Third, and this is where Morry has to tell us if this can work—we create a board post that will appear on both the story and the comment boards, that can be seen only by those we have chosen. When they log in they’ll see not the usual boards, but just our post. And we tell them admin is onto us and they should sign off and security-erase anything they have from the boards.

  “Fourth, once everyone is off, Morry stops trying to prevent administration from finding the boards. Then just let them handle it.”

  “I don’t like it,” chorused Ilin and Morry.

  Vret’s shoulders slumped. “I just thought of it. It probably needs some fine-tuning.”

  Ilin said, “It seems to be you’re saying anyone who agrees with us is virtuous and guiltless, but anyone who disagrees with us is trash not worth saving. Their careers are on the line here, too, you know. What makes us better than them? I think it would be better to just shut the boards down than to set ourselves up as judges.”

  Morry added, “A given user might have more than one nickname registered. Digging around, I’ve found a couple who do, or so it seems.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that,” said Vret.

  “You can, and so some people you might want to spare the full force of Tecton censure might not get your message if they logged on with only one identity that day and it was the identity we didn’t send the message to. Of course, if they logged on with both identities, they’d get the message twice.”

  “So it is possible to make a message like that? That can be seen only by selected individuals when they log on?”

  “Yes, or rather it’ll be seen by selected nicknames if you can give me a list. It’ll be touchy, but I should be able to do it without anyone noticing—but just this once.” He zlinned each of them in turn, catching their worry. “And yes, there are a lot of people who are better with a mainframe than I am. And the admins have tools I don’t. Maybe they can trace the users on the secret boards. But maybe not. Maybe these people you’re about to hand over should be identified—and won’t be. I just don’t know.”

  “Neither do I,” admitted Vret.

  “I’d be a lot more confident,” said Ilin, “if I could meet these people in person. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person...“

  “Not,” interrupted Vret, “if you’re a Third and they’re a Second or First. You know we’ve probably got a good number of Seconds and Firsts reading these stories.”

  “There could be Gens, too,” said Morry.

  They both turned to him in shock.

  “Well, if the renSimes have gotten in, who’s to say the Donor-trainees haven’t? I don’t have any indication in our logs, but I can’t rule it out.”

  Ilin stared at Vret. Vret stared at Morry. Finally Ilin breathed, “What a ghastly thought. I’ve always been writing just for student channels. There are some things you just don’t discuss with Gens.”

  “Like what it feels like to read about The Kill when it’s written so...realistically,” agreed Vret swallowing hard in a suddenly dry throat.

  After a long silence, Morry said, “I doubt there are any Gens in favor of the junct attitudes being espoused on the boards.”

  “Distect Gens might be,” said Vret worrying. The ambient among the three of them chilled markedly. None of them had ever thought of that. Throughout modern history, the shady underworld organization that called itself the Distect espoused a lifestyle of direct Gen transfer for every renSime on the theory that the result of any Sime/Gen interaction was entirely the Gen’s responsibility. If a Gen died under a Sime’s tentacles, it was the Gen’s fault, and the Sime was held blameless.

  But about thirteen years ago when Laneff Farris ambrov Sat’htine had discovered how to tell Sime from Gen before birth, events had conspired to bring the Distect out into the open and they were no longer the menace they once had been.

  Ilin decided, “If there’s any clandestine Distect involvement behind Blissdrip’s supporters, then we definitely have to hand this over to the administration. Now wouldn’t be too soon.” She eyed the building behind them.

  “Yes, it would be,” said Vret, “because there are a lot of people involved here who don’t deserve to have their careers ruined.”

  Morry asked, “How do you know the Tecton would treat everyone involved the same? Surely they...?”

  Vret laughed. Ilin joined him.

  Morry thought about it. “I see your point. Despite all the progress toward dissolving the Territory borders recently, the Tecton is still a very conservative bureaucracy with almost no flexibility in its rules. You don’t get an out-Territory license with any blemish on your record at all.”

  Without an out-Territory license, you don’t get into the Troubleshooter’s training either.

  Ilin added, “And your Tecton service record is more important than you as a person.” She turned to Vret. “What if we make a mistake? What if we let someone go who should be in a medical facility? Or someone who’s involved in some renewed Distect conspiracy and invading our little hobby space to recruit for them?”

  “Do we know anyone,” asked Morry thoughtfully, “who can be trusted...who’s a First?”

  “Any student who’s a First already would probably be a Farris,” said Vret glumly.

  “Or maybe a Tigue,” added Ilin. “What are you thinking, Morry?”

  “In our targeted message, instead of telling people to sign off the boards and hide, maybe we should call a meeting, zlin and test the ones who respond, at least try to be sure there are no obviously unstable people we are turning loose to become a problem later. Yes, that would be setting ourselves up as judges, but this mess is our problem and we have to take some responsibility.”

  Vret looked at Ilin and she gazed back somberly.

  Morry added, “It’s too bad I couldn’t get us the transfer assignment records. If we couldn’t find Blissdrip from them, we might have been able to figure out who on the boards are Firsts.”

  “And if there are any Gens among us,” added Ilin.

  “But it can’t be done at my level of clearance,” said Morry. “Private medical records are just that, private. They are open only to those who are involved.”

  “Here’s an idea,” offered Vret. “Suppose we post this secret message to our selected people and tell them to come to a meeting. A few people who should be there will have classes or something, but we’ll make the meeting long enough that everyone can get there for a while. And we’ll talk to people until we find a First we can trust
who can help evaluate the Seconds and other Firsts.”

  “That’s pretty thin, as plans go,” said Ilin.

  “I know.”

  “It could work,” said Morry. “The only First you could trust would be one who’s on the boards.”

  “So how long do we have?” Vret asked Morry. “You said they’re probably onto us and we should shut down tonight. But this is a complicated plan. It’ll take days to get ready.”

  Morry scrubbed his face with his hands and turned to pace away from them, thinking. He stared up at the granite statue of Rimon Farris, the founder of the House of Zeor, and the First channel. He sighed a few times. Then he walked back to them. “You’re asking for a month, maybe a month and a half, aren’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t think it would take that long,” protested Vret. “Ten days, maybe?”

  Morry countered, “Where are you going to hold this meeting for several dozen people—and administration won’t be curious?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.” He pointed to the colonnaded open space around them. “The rotunda?”

  “No,” Ilin said. “Morry’s right. To get away with this, we need a cover story—a gathering we could normally sponsor for some ordinary purpose, but that we could keep to invitation only. And it’ll take time to set that up.”

  Vret shook his head. “This whole thing is too elaborate. It’ll never work.”

  “Vret,” said Ilin, “do you believe that each and every individual is important to the course of history? Do you believe that some of the people we’re trying to save could eventually contribute something crucial to the Tecton? Do you believe in the Tecton and all it stands for?”

  She’d thrown Vret’s own words back at him and he knew he deserved it. But the whole situation unnerved him, and he tried to articulate his worry. “We’re standing here trying to out-fox the Tecton, to subvert the rules and escape its penalties.” He looked up at the statue of Rimon, wondering if there ever really had existed such a person. “What a place we chose for that!” But his mind replayed Saelul Farris quietly scolding him for not breaking a rule when circumstances called for it.