Unto Zeor, Forever

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  The instant he contacted Hayashi’s vriamic, the three of them—Ilyana, Hayashi, and Digen—meshed into one extended system so perfectly that Digen could barely distinguish one from the other. The selyn he had summoned high into his secondary system poured into Hayashi’s primary without the usual resistances of lateral-contact transfer. Digen struggled to regulate the speed of that infusion feeling as if it were Ilyana herself who was delivering selyn into him.

  He wanted it to go on and on, but at the right moment he snapped off the delivery, holding the contact to damp the terminal transients. He felt Hayashi’s body beginning to vitalize the plasma that had already been run into his veins. “All right, Joel, the next unit of plasma—now!”

  Digen’s knees sagged and he found himself still clutching Hayashi’s vriamic node. Through that contact he could feel Ilyana’s selyn field across the lateral gash as if the gash were in his own right inner lateral. He could feel the throb of her—need to donate. Hayashi’s near attrition had sent her selyn production spiking upward again, and Digen—resonating much too sharply with the channel—was feeling both his physical and psychological need drowning out his conscience and his will.

  Dimly he heard Hogan say, “Want me to close?”

  Digen knew, as if it were superimposed on his awareness of Ilyana, that in a moment Hogan would reach out to take over from Digen. He shook his head and forced his laterals to retract, breaking the physical contact with Hayashi. But he was still part of Ilyana’s field; he still had to use her to maintain that pressure on Hayashi’s wound so that the selyn he had given would not all leak away

  “Suture,” said Digen, holding out one bloody palm.

  Hogan placed the threaded needle in Digen’s hand. “Suture.”

  Digen closed his eyes to concentrate on the tracery of deeply planted nerves lacing outward from the vriamic and then began to close the incision. At first he worked swiftly, fingers flying faster than the nerve pulses carrying the pain signals could travel from Hayashi through Ilyana and, magnified, come back to him through his linkage with her.

  But then those pulses began to arrive faster and sharper as he drove his needle through living cells—not selyn producing cells, but selyn enriched cells nonetheless. His own hands, soaked in Hayashi’s ronaplin, and ungloved, acted almost like exposed laterals at a skin contact. Every punctured cell was, to Digen, as if he were puncturing a cell of Ilyana’s own body.

  He realized distantly, that she was experiencing it just that way, and unconsciously transmitting that empathic experience via her nager to Digen. He found himself pausing to brace before each dip of the needle, relishing the pauses when Hogan would hand him a different needle. He had begun sweating and his hands were shaking. His own systems were still in secondary recovery, no condition to be taking this kind of abuse. But he dared not turn it over to Hogan yet. If the Gen should slip and hit a transport nerve with the suture needle, he could suffer a selyn flash burn that would be worse than transfer shock.

  He began to have more and more trouble maintaining hyperconsciousness. Every flick of the needle kicked him down to duoconsciousness, where the physical pain met the bursts of selyn—little bursts emitted by Ilyana in sympathetic linkage with the dying Sime cells. To her, this was a mixture of physical pain with the subliminal relief of tiny increments of selyn drained off her overcharged system.

  The last five stitches around the drain tube he was implanting kicked him all the way down to hypoconsciousness, and on the last one, he stood there dumbly staring at the operating field as if he’d never seen the like before—in fact, he hadn’t, not since Ditana Amanso’s first operation. This is what it looks like to a Gen. No wonder it’s so hard for them to learn.

  But that was a bemused thought in the back of his mind while his whole body resonated to harmonic mixtures of pleasure, pain, and the shrieking death of Hayashi’s selyn voiding.

  Hogan was working along behind Digen, tying off each suture where Digen had cut it, until his flying fingers caught up. He paused, watching Digen, seeing exactly what had to come next, knowing the clock was running out, even though he himself couldn’t see the plume of selyn issuing from Hayashi’s arm around Ilyana’s fingers. He said something, but Digen couldn’t resolve the English words.

  The Gen’s hands closed over the threaded needle. The instant Hogan’s skin touched him, Digen whipped into a transfer attack on Hogan, thrown hyperconscious by the reflex that had built and built with every stitch. For the first time in his life, he knew there was nothing—not one shred of conditioning—left to stop him from the kill.

  Suddenly, before he could make lip contact, a sheet of fire swept up his left arm. The three-way contact between them shattered, slamming Digen into a primary abort.

  Ilyana’s voice came through the dizzy fog. “Get over here, Digen, or Hayashi will die.”

  Digen reeled. His secondary system was still in recovery, he was knotted up with primary abort, and the pain—Gen pain—possessed him totally.

  “Digen!”

  Ilyana’s dominant field rose around him. She was there, but she didn’t touch him. He felt the strength of her fields soothing his shen-shattered nerves. His vision cleared. “Digen! You’ve got to finish what you started.”

  Digen looked at her, shaking his head to clear it. There was a long abrasion on her left arm, just where he felt the pain. She held the bloody scalpel in her right hand. She had scraped her arm with it to break him out of the attack.

  Across the table, Hogan flexed shaking fingers and steadied down to finish with the chest incision.

  Ilyana said, “Sectuib Farris, one of your members is dying!”

  Digen moved then, his feet like sodden weights. But once he was in position over Hayashi’s arm, he became once again a physician working against time. Second after second, all the selyn Digen had infused was spewing out of the gashed lateral. He took up the suture needle, forced the selyn fields to an unstable neutrality, damming up the selyn in Hayashi’s system, and began to repair the rent.

  He matched the edges of the gash, nerve fiber to nerve fiber. He had seen this done by Thornton once on a leg that had nearly been severed. He had read how the Ancients could take a big toe and graft it to a hand to replace a lost thumb. Now he was doing it—in a context they had never envisioned—inventing the techniques as he went along.

  It was the last, finishing stage of the long, complex operation, and that thought was the only thing that kept Digen on his feet those final few moments. He didn’t dare think or feel anything. He was an automaton completing a program, nothing more.

  By the time Digen finished, Hayashi had faded from the deep suspension into true unconsciousness, and Digen was again working almost blind. Even so, the repair was masterful compared to the butcher job that had been done on his own lateral.

  As Digen finished, Hogan had applied the last dressing to the chest and was looking with bewilderment at the Sime arm. “Can I bandage that?”

  Digen stepped back, seeing the plume of voided selyn now reduced to a mere haze that faded almost perceptibly (Or is that wishful thinking?) as he watched. He shook his head, waving away Hogan’s bandages.

  Hogan mumbled something about it not mattering. The patient was septic as hell anyhow. And Digen drew forth words, saying, “He has a better chance against infection than against death by attrition.”

  And then Ilyana touched him.

  The thin crust over his blazing need melted away. Dropping the last suture needle on the floor, not even missing the droning voice of a nurse counting needles, sponges, and clamps, Digen seized her wrist just below the long, bloody scrape she’d inflicted on herself. “We did it!” he said. Then, not sure he’d spoken in Simelan, he repeated, “We did it. Whatever happens now, we’ve brought surgery in-Territory. On Faith Day. And the world will never be the same again.”

  It was his goal. His life’s purpose. And he gloried in it. She came close to him, wiping his sweating face with the towel she held in her other
hand.

  Trautholo.

  Just like that, it was there between them, as easy as slipping into a surgical glove. “Don’t move!” said Digen.

  “I know. You didn’t want me to let you attack me—the way you attacked the doctor? You—we—don’t approve of kill-mode transfers—do we?”

  “We?”

  “We. Digen, I’m sorry I ever called you a coward. You’re not like Mickland—not even like Rin. Digen, you’re—I see it now, what you’ve been trying to do with surgery. You’ve known all along what’s wrong with the Tecton. However misguided, you’ve been trying to fix it. I don’t think it will work—they don’t have your vision—but, Digen, if it does, I’ll pledge and qualify and never look back. Unto—Unto Zeor, Forever, Sectuib, if you’ll permit it.”

  Digen scooped her off her wobbly legs, realizing now for the first time that in his desperation over Hayashi he had let her selyn production rate run wild, burning into her last reserves.

  “Joel,” he said over his shoulder, heading for the adjacent sitting room, “keep an eye on Hayashi. Give us an hour—maybe two—I don’t think anything will happen with him in that time.”

  Hogan said something, but it faded from Digen’s consciousness before he could make sense of the English words. In the sitting room, Digen kicked the door shut, and, seeing by Ilyana’s nager, found a large padded divan among the bookshelves. He put her down and settled wearily beside her, on his back, letting her field soak through and through his battered systems.

  She too was tired beyond her endurance. Digen cradled her in one arm, saying, “Rest a moment, let me damp your production a bit. There’s no hurry.”

  But she was already asleep, holding the trautholo by some subconscious mechanism. It reminded Digen sharply that she was a very sick woman. His need drew strength into her, but it came from her very substance, from her flesh. She seemed pounds lighter to him than she had earlier. He wanted to put her aside, to take himself elsewhere to recover, trautholo or no, but of course he couldn’t. And he too was tired beyond measure. He contented himself by planting a conscious command in himself—like a fist clenched over some valuable—to keep down her selyn production rate. And then he too drifted into slumber.

  Their systems were locked from the deepest rhythms layer by layer outward to the most fleeting and superficial bodily rhythms. Hours of intense exposure had sealed them, and now, asleep, they healed each other.

  Neither had known a moment’s surcease since the first day they had met. But Digen had been unaware of that extra tension in him that resisted his natural response to his matchmate. Now, when Digen awoke, all that was gone, the whole weight of it, which had sapped his strength, was lifted. The depression that had gripped him all winter had disappeared without a trace; he was flooded with a new strength of spirit that felt like his old, preinjury self. It was like waking from a terminal illness to find oneself in a new, healthy body, with all the vitality of youth.

  She slept in the crook of his arm; the premature lines of her face smoothed at last, and he could sense the same ebullience within her. He kissed her gently on the cheek. The contact, even without a direct lateral touch, threw him soaring into giddy hyperconsciousness.

  As he was just beginning to discern visual images again, he felt her awaken, responding to his state, moving in his arms to transfer position.

  He wanted it. He needed it. He had used selyn recklessly in his efforts for Hayashi, and since Im’ran he hadn’t had a real transfer. In fact, with Ilyana in his arms, he knew he hadn’t ever before in his life had a real transfer.

  They owe me this. Shen and Shid! We’ve earned at least this!

  Her hands slid softly into full transfer contact, gently teasing his laterals from their sheaths, still coated with blood and ronaplin. As she made the full transfer lip contact, her fields slid off kilter to compensate for his scar, but somehow she avoided the odd, tilting sensation Im’ran had evoked. She was holding him firmly in trautholo so that not a trickle of selyn moved across their contacts.

  “Ilyana!” He groaned, trying to initiate the flow.

  “You’re still in secondary recovery, I can feel it. I’ll have to control this, Digen, or you’ll abort, and I couldn’t stand that. Qualify me some other time.” She sought the lip contact and suddenly Digen realized that somehow she had gotten his ronaplin on her lips.

  The selyn, when it came into him, came at his highest kill speed, way above his satisfaction threshold, and it came and came and came, forced deep into him, down and down to that newest level that Im’ran had touched with such a feather-light flicker compared to this solid, sure, unrelenting deluge. Through and through, down and down, even deeper, selyn coursed until, with a bursting flash, Digen felt as if a whole new area of his being had been burned clear. He knew there was no physiological structure corresponding to what she had touched—but it felt as if there were. His control barriers fell flat before the onrushing pulses of selyn, pulses matched so perfectly to his own body rhythms that he could scarcely tell they originated outside himself.

  And when it was over, and he was full, primary and secondary systems alike, so full he felt as he had always supposed a Gen must feel, the selyn flow did not end, leaving him to begin the long, slow, but subliminally terrifying decline into attrition.

  This time, at satiation and beyond, Digen rested on the terminus, and Ilyana’s body supplied him selyn at the exact rate at which his body was using it. For every pulse that went through him, consumed and dissipated, a pulse entered so precisely on his rhythm that he never felt it enter.

  As a result, for a time, at the peak of satiation, he was held forcibly at constant field. His whole body sang a euphoric bliss, a crescendo chord of a symphony, every voice of sensation within him precisely attuned to all the others and caroling his joy.

  It lasted a long, long time, and gradually, without the sudden, shuddering shock usual to termination, the world faded in around him and he slid gently from full hyperconsciousness, through duoconsciousness, and gently on down to the posttransfer hypoconsciousness in which the Sime senses were blocked, leaving the world etched in painfully bright tactile, audio, and olfactory sensation.

  Hyperacute from long disuse, tactile nerves registered the ineffable Gen skin against his—and the areas of painfully coarse clothing between them. Digen loosened the long zipper of her uniform and she undid his. Somehow the unwanted clothing fell aside, forgotten. He was wholly concentrated on the incredible feel of her skin. It was as if he’d never felt human skin before.

  The aroma of her body teased his long-unused glands until they ached. The taste of her mouth raised him to new heights. He was surprised that he could have been near her all these months and not noticed. He had to touch her everywhere at once. His greed for her knew no bounds.

  Somehow she contrived to keep lateral contact as they slid together. She held him at constant field again, through that contact, and tipped him back to duoconsciousness, so that his awareness of her went deep, deep into her body, luxuriating in its nager while at the same time he retained his keen, hypoconscious awareness of her touch. It was a combination wholly new to him, and before he realized how powerful it was, together, in perfect unison, they came. She had turned the drab physical necessity of posttransfer systemic realignment into a sublime work of art.

  His whole body thrummed to the glory of it, too much to bear. He began to cry—in unutterable sadness for all the wasted years—in joy too great to be endured by mortal flesh that at last, at last, he was alive.

  “No, not like that,” she said, breathing heavily. “You’ll spoil it.” And with skills Digen had never known existed, she quelled the tide within him and turned it into another fresh, unique consummation—as keenly felt as if it were their very first.

  The third time, Digen turned her aside. “I must. I must cry, let it come. I’m a channel, Ilyana. I must clear myself.”

  “Channel!”

  Her frustrated outcry was like a slap in the face to Dig
en, hitting him on all senses at once. He sobered instantly. “Ilyana, you’ll pledge to us now. You’ll learn to live with—channels. Whatever we’ve accomplished today, the Tecton won’t change much within our lifetimes.”

  She shook her head, casting all that aside, and groped for a lock on his fields, guiding him toward another peak, collimating all his turbulent energies into a pure sexual arousal. “This is better for you, Digen, the natural way.”

  She’s still Distect. She’ll always be Distect. No matter how hard she tries, always Distect.

  The full sense of what he’d done finally hit him: lortuen consummated—with a Distect Gen. It will take time, he thought, but it will be all right. It has to be all right.

  Gathering himself together, facing now the practical situation, he wriggled loose from her and stood to pace across the room. “Enough for now, Ilyana. There are things that must be done.”

  She drew herself to her feet and padded up behind him. Her nager flowed sensuously over him, satin to his ravaged nerves. “If you must, then I’m with you, Sectuib.”

  But what she really wanted was to focus all the surging energies within him on purely sexual release, leaving his secondary system unrelieved. He couldn’t permit that. Too many renSimes would suffer for it. Oh, Im’ran! The fanir would have allowed the full hysterical postsyndrome to run its course, guarding him from all destructive pain, and when it was over Mora would have been there to take up the rest.

  That part of my life is over, gone forever, thought Digen. Mora will never get her Farris child now. In lortuen, he could be potent only with Ilyana.

  He turned to Ilyana, buried his face in her hair, and said, “There will be time to finish this later, but first I—we—have obligations—to—to Rin and Joel—it’s been close to four hours—and you’ve got to eat and rest. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”