To the Stars -- And Beyond

by Robert Reginald

  Valyu made a grab for the bandage. “Maybe, but he certainly doesn’t want you in here!” However, as Valyu’s hand closed on the material, Cheryl had begun to twist. Yone’s other hand came over to clamp firmly over Valyu’s fingers, keeping him from pulling the cloth. “Don’t. Valyu, she’s doing it right. It’s helping. Let her finish. Watch.”

  Valyu withdrew his hand obediently and watched, but although Cheryl let him see, she said, “He’ll never learn by watching, Yone. It’s something you have to know by experience. Look,” she said as she finished the wrapping and fished a chain from around her neck. Taking the chain over her head, she slipped a ring off of it and held the crest to the firelight.

  Livya choked back a gasp. The Distect outlaw had a Tecton ring, and not just any ordinary donor’s ring either, but one of the rare First Order Donor’s rings with the additional four stars, the very highest ranking of all the professional donors.

  Lunging across her lap, Valyu grabbed for the ring, “Thief!”

  With one hand, Yone caught Valyu’s shirt and pushed. The Gen staggered back a few paces and stayed there, shocked beyond words. “No,” said Yone. “Not thief. It’s hers. Traitor, perhaps, but not thief.”

  Cheryl put the ring on her finger. “It’s been years since I’ve worn this. And I won’t lie to you. I am a traitor to the Tecton oath I took. But there is still a great deal of that oath I keep. I came here tonight to finish what Brian started, to honor that part of my oath that I’ve never broken.”

  Valyu burst out, “Honor! What do you know of Tecton honor!”

  “Between us,” said Cheryl holding the Sime’s gaze, “he doesn’t count, Yone. This is between Firsts. You and me. I pledge to you by our common oath to attend one another in times of need, that I will not take advantage of your weakness, and that I will use nothing that would not be used in any Tecton Center.”

  Eyeing her carefully, Yone said, “No Distect tricks?”

  “No Distect tricks. It’s my life that’s at stake here, Yone, not just yours. If you go under, we all go with you. Your oath won’t allow you to refuse my help, even if it means sacrificing your own interests for the good of all of us. My word is good. You know that, and that’s all you need to know.”

  Yone nodded weakly. “Valyu, go and visit with your brother’s family until she tells you to come back. It will be all right.”

  As the Gen left the tent, Yone wilted back onto his blankets and lay gasping, wracked with spasms that brought tears to his eyes. Livya found herself holding her breath, her heart pounding with apprehension at each seizure. Their channel, their only Sime, was deathly ill—and she suspected she was the cause.

  For almost an hour, Livya watched Cheryl battle to keep the Sime breathing. Between compresses, she mixed a broth of powders and crushed tablets, and made Yone drink it between seizures. “What did you put in that?” he asked after one sip, leery of her.

  She told him, adding, “You’ll feel great when it hits bottom.” So he drank, and after a bit the spasms relented. She massaged his arms thoroughly from shoulder to wrist, and the cramps were soon gone, leaving him looking wasted and withered against the sleeping bag.

  “There,” said Cheryl finishing off, “that should teach you not to go tossing trees around the forest without so much as a warm-up exercise!”

  “It wasn’t all from that.”

  “I know. And you ought to be ashamed about that, too, getting yourself caught in a hyperbolic situation with that irresponsible...excuse me...non-Donor and right on top of a protracted tenth-level Augmentation, too! Honestly, you could get yourself fired from that nice cushy Astrogator’s berth for that.”

  “That’s all right. Was my last run anyway. They were only transshipping me to a new Tecton Center. I’m a channel, not an Astrogator.”

  She chuckled, moving to kneel at his head and knead his shoulders hard with a rocking motion as if giving artificial respiration. “There. You feel a lot better now.”

  “Great.”

  “Could you ever teach that little creep Alamain anything like this?”

  “No. But don’t expect me to praise your skills in public.”

  “That’s all right. You’re the only one around who needs them.”

  He opened his eyes, tilting his head back on her knees to look into her eyes, upside down. “You were right, Cheryl. It would have been deadly serious if you hadn’t come. I should have let Brian finish the job this morning.”

  “Your instincts were sound, though. Brian’s not Tecton trained, he couldn’t have done it this way. And if he’d done it our way, well, you wouldn’t be Tecton any more. He knew you wouldn’t let that happen, so that’s why he sent me.”

  She smiled quickly then and bent down to kiss him. “My first husband was a Tecton Farris channel. Do you think I’m qualified to finish this job?”

  He looked up at her for a long time before answering. “I told Livya Jeter that I’m utterly against prostitution.”

  “So am I. You know that. You know what I am.”

  “A very extraordinary Donor.”

  “No. Ordinary Distect.”

  “I find the Distect philosophy disgusting.”

  “I can’t condemn you for an opinion founded on false information.”

  “As I couldn’t condemn Livya for her ignorance.”

  “But I’m not ignorant. I used to be a Donor. I know what I’m offering you and what it means. It is not a demeaning prostitution for me, not even by Distect custom, because I know myself and I know what you’ve chosen to be.”

  “Tecton. Your enemy. That’s what I am by choice.”

  “Not my enemy. Myself operating on different postulates. I learned my error and changed; you would also. Knowing that about you, I can offer this without compromise, without any Distect tricks.”

  She kissed him again and he kissed back. Then she moved down to lie beside him, “I promise we’ll do this Tecton style. If you want the truth about us, you’ll have to come and ask later when you’re stronger.”

  She kissed him again and Livya blushed hotly, but her eyes refused to blink as she watched what Cheryl’s free hand was doing. Just when Livya was about to turn away, embarrassed, Yone shuddered and rolled free.

  Cheryl propped herself up on one hand. “Yone, I said Tecton style. Don’t you trust me?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Yone, you have to do this. I’ve seen Coital Deprivation eating away at your efficiency. In this condition, the next time you try to charge a battery, the cramps will start up all over again. I might not be able to stop them with what we’ve got on hand. Get it over with...with me!”

  “I wish it were that simple,” he said from his stance before the fire.

  Something in his tone drew Cheryl to her feet and across the little open space. “Yone? Oh, no! No! You couldn’t have!”

  “She was the first woman near me after Valyu performed that first donation on the hillside by the lifeboat. He didn’t know much about Imprintation and didn’t take precautions.”

  “Oh, that incompetent fool!”

  “It probably would have happened eventually anyway. It’s a permanent Imprintation.”

  “Yone, she’s no match for you! A non-Donor, a—”

  “The girl is not so bad, it’s the mother. I’d lay odds Livya would have been in here to donate two months ago if her mother would have allowed it. But she’s underage where she comes from, so it would be a violation of oath for me even to talk to her about donating, let alone about...this other problem. So you can’t help me, and there’s nothing I can do about it either. You may as well go back and get some sleep before dawn. I’ll cope with the battery-charging when and how I can.”

  “Damn the Tecton and its unholy rules!”

  “Not in my hearing!”

  “I’m sorry. Yone, what if I talk to her?”

  Livya found her lips compressed, a frown scoring her smooth forehead, and her body tensed as if to jump in there and yell something like,
“You’ll have to talk to me yourself, Mister Channel, if you want anything from me!” The protest roared so loudly in her ears that she almost missed Yone’s answer.

  “I can’t let you do that. If there’s any talking to be done, I’ll do it myself. Understood?”

  “Yes, Hajene.” Livya was sure she meant it. Cheryl was a woman who kept promises too, and that was so rare in Livya’s sheltered world she had learned to recognize the “different ones.” She had walked and lived with these two for months not knowing they existed. But now she felt a dawning kinship with them.

  “Look, Cheryl, you don’t seem to realize that the Jeters are genuine Sime-phobes.” He paced up and down before the fire, his silhouette rippling across the shiny surface of the porta-tent, “Sime-phobia is a disease, like some people are terrified of house cats, and some people can’t stand heights. You can’t blame a blind man for not being able to see, and you can’t blame a Sime-phobe for not donating.”

  “Was Livya pathologically terrified when you had her in your arms?” It was a rhetorical question.

  Yone took a piece of firewood from the pile in the corner and struck it a few times against the boulder, then tossed it onto the flames, dusting off his hands. He faced her squarely, “No. She was frightened, but it was the ordinary Gen’s fear, not the all-consuming terror of a Sime-phobe. But it doesn’t matter, don’t you see? It’s her mother that counts.”

  “No, I don’t see. It’s not an inheritable disease, it’s an acquired trait. Livya Jeter has lived with it, but not acquired it. Doesn’t that tell you something about her?”

  “Yes, it does, almost more than I can stand to know!” His jaw muscles bunched visibly as he gritted between clenched teeth. “But she’s a minor!”

  “By Sime tradition,” said Cheryl, “she became an adult when her body started to produce selyn.”

  Livya’s breath caught in her throat. Yes. I am old enough!

  But Yone was shaking his head. “By the Tecton Principles of Action to which I am bound by oath, I am forbidden to approach her, because her mother is a Sime-phobe and she’s a minor by the laws of her planet of residence.”

  “Channel’s Exemption supersedes the Principles.”

  “Ha!” He let out one burst of what might have been laughter. “You may be a great Donor, Cheryl, but you’re no lawyer. I can’t use the Exemption, because it would be in violation of a higher Principle.”

  “Isn’t that a contradiction within the Tecton’s own rules?”

  “No!” But he said it far louder than necessary. “It’s not the letter of the law that prevents me, it’s the intent. The Exemption was not devised to sanction rape, though it’s been used to do that. It was meant to protect consenting adults from local laws that would interfere in their private affairs. She doesn’t know me at all, so even if she were adult, she’d have no basis on which to consent. And I can’t get to know her because of her mother.”

  “Look,” said Cheryl on a note of desperation. “By Sime tradition, she can give responsible consent; by Tecton law, she can’t. By Sime tradition, as the sole channel here, like the old Sectuib of a Householding, you have the right to take her; by Tecton Principles, you can’t.

  “Yone Farris, you must pass judgment on the Tecton Principles of Action. Do they serve the purpose for which they were devised? Are they right? Do they apply here? Will you be guilty of murder and suicide if you refuse to violate the letter of those laws? Is your interpretation of the intent of the law proper? Can rules of conduct which lead to such a dilemma be followed in the blissful certainty that they are always right?”

  Yone turned from her, and for a moment faced the spot where Livya stood, but apparently lost in such deep thought he was still unaware of her presence.

  After a heart-stopping moment, Livya figured that the selyn nager from Cheryl must be so strong as to obliterate her own relatively low selyn field. She would have to leave when Cheryl did or risk being caught.

  Suddenly, the Sime turned on Cheryl, suspicion drawing his clean-lined face into a new and fearsome countenance. “You! You can run back to your husband and tell him I won’t let Distect sedition get to me!”

  “Not Distect sedition, common sense! I could tell you all the answers instead of asking questions. I could show you the fundamental error in your assumptions, but I promised not to try and convert you just now. I haven’t, have I?”

  He regarded her silently.

  “Yone, to what kind of government are questions seditious? To what kind of government are they destructive? Is that what the Tecton is?”

  “No.” His voice was quieter now, thoughtful but still desperate. He went to the door of the tent, looked out into the night, and thought. She busied herself putting the pots away, and banking the fire as an excuse to outstay her welcome. At length, he sighed audibly and turned. “No. I would not associate with such an organization.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t work for just any Tecton channel, Yone.”

  “It may be,” he said quietly, “that the Tecton is ‘wrong’ in this immediate situation, but what happens when we get back and Evelyn Jeter starts screaming rape or seduction? The basis of the Sime~Gen Union is trust, trust in the channels and our absolute adherence to the Principles of Action. Maybe, just this once, it wouldn’t matter. But suppose all the channels, everywhere, started interpreting the Principles for their own convenience? The Union would crumble, and we’d be back to the Chaos again, where Simes killed Gens for selyn and Gens tried to exterminate Simes.”

  “I’ve heard all that before,” she said, rising to face him. “Tell me, Yone, how can right lead to evil? Is that the kind of universe you live in? A place where wrong leads to good and right leads to evil?”

  “No. The Principles lead to right action, and that results in good, in survival for the whole human race.”

  “But I’m not the whole human race. And I want to survive. So do you. So does she. How long are you going to wait before you do what you know is right, until these rules which you know are wrong lead us all to disaster?”

  “The rules by which I guide myself are not wrong.”

  She sighed. “OK, I promised not to prove the Tecton wrong. Look. This time you weren’t paying attention and led us up under a falling tree. Next time you’ll walk us off a cliff, or lead us into an ambush because you didn’t notice a tribe of natives getting set to roll boulders down on us. Your condition is dangerous to the group, so by Tecton standards it’s unethical for you to allow it to continue no matter what the price to any one individual.”

  “The infringement of the sovereignty of any individual by any channel imperils a much larger group than this one. It may be hard on us, but we must do it for all humanity.”

  “Damn the...! No, all right, this way. You know the CD’s are no joke for a channel, especially a Farris. How long do you think it’s going to be before entran sets in, too? I’ve seen those seizures actually break bones, and you know what that would mean out here! Entran and the CD’s together! There’s just so much the human body can take before it starts to give up, and whether you like it or not, you’re only human and you can’t carry the whole human race on your back, at least not if you don’t take care of yourself!”

  There were tears on her cheeks glinting in the reflected firelight. “Shall I describe what a case of severe multiple deprivation looks like? Yone, I used to work on the frontier—I’ve seen it, and I never want to see it again. It starts with a niggling little infection, a kidney or bladder infection, nothing serious. Fever and chills, then pneumonia. Finally, the liver starts to give out, and from there it’s straight downhill to the grave, a very messy grave, Yone Farris!”

  “It’s only Coital Deprivation, nothing so bad as all that!”

  “I’m giving you my professional diagnosis. Acute multiple deprivation with an Imprintation complicating matters. If I have to, I’ll take you by the ear and march you over there and make you explain it to her sensibly!”

  “It’s not that simp
le, I told you. She’s a minor!”

  Cheryl sighed heavily, deflated but not defeated, weary but not vanquished. “It’s almost dawn. This is getting us nowhere.” She took off the Tecton ring and stowed it on the chain, tucking it beneath her clothing. “You better get a few hours’ sleep. Maybe your head will be clearer in the morning. I certainly hope so, because if you don’t do something for yourself soon, I’m going to do it for you.”

  She paused at the tent flap, and Livya, recalling her resolve to slip away unnoticed, scurried around behind the boulder where the mass of rock would insulate Yone from her, As she moved, she heard muttered goodnights from the tent, and then footsteps, a few words with a perimeter guard, and silence.

  She had wanted facts, and now she had them in blinding abundance. The Channel’s Exemption was not, as her mother said, legalized prostitution.

  If she was wrong, then she’d have to learn to live with it. But whatever happened, Yone Farris wasn’t a man she could abandon.

  She started around the boulder toward the tent door.

  Halfway there, Yone met her, and the graying dawn revealed his gentle smile, peaceful at last. “Livya, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “I know. I was listening to you and Cheryl in there all night.”

  “Yes, I felt you leaving. I couldn’t let you go.”

  He considered her intently, but didn’t reach out toward her yet. She said, “What are you going to do?”

  “We are going to do a lot of things, Livya. But first, it’s time we had a little talk about what it means to be grown up enough to love.”

  MY GUARDIAN

  by Gary Lovisi

  PART I: When I Was a Kid

  Mom and Dad said we were going to have a guest soon, from Earthside. My guardian, Joey, didn’t think too highly of the people down there. I don’t know why he didn’t like them very much, but I could tell.

  Joey and me were the best friends ever. Even though Joey looked like my twin brother—he looked my same age and size—he was really just my “andy,” my android guardian, and I could always tell when he was upset. They say andys don’t have emotions like real people, and I guess most don’t; but when you’re a kid and you’ve been matched to your guardian since before birth, the two of you can be a lot closer than any bio-brothers could ever be.