Unto Zeor, Forever

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Mentally counting days, Digen said, “The original infections should all have run their course by now, and the secondaries should be coming out of it—people who picked it up nursing the sick. How many new cases today?”

  Ilyana said, “Who knows? Maybe five, maybe ten.”

  “That’s not so bad, if you can keep them isolated.” He looked to Im’ran. “I can lend a hand this afternoon while Im’ sleeps it off.”

  Im’ran nodded, picking listlessly at his soup.

  Hogan was watching him, but he said, “I do think the epidemic has about run its course. The danger’s not over yet, but we’re on the downhill side, mopping up. Things are pretty well under control. If you want to stay here and get some rest, I think you can.”

  “You two are the ones who require the rest,” said Digen.

  “We got about four or five hours’ sleep last night,” answered Hogan.

  “In how many days?” asked Digen.

  Hogan shrugged. “I can use the experience in epidemiology.”

  Digen looked to Ilyana. “In how many days?”

  She had been eating with a single-minded concentration but now she met Digen’s eyes squarely. “You’re going to go to bed and stay there until I’m sure you’re not coming down with it. And if I can, I’m going to get a solid transfer into you, build up your strength.”

  Digen shook his head. “No, I won’t risk your catching it. Besides, it’s not necessary. I’m all right. Really.” He looked to Im’ran for support.

  As Digen had told the therapist of the transfer abort, and something of the mitigating effect the work against the fanir’s nager had had, Im’ran nodded. “I can believe that. If I were you, Ilyana, I wouldn’t meddle with his systems at this point. Attempting a forcible rephasing on a Farris can be very tricky. And with Digen’s system—in my professional opinion, you could do more harm than good.”

  In her fatigue, Ilyana flared resentment at the Gen, but it was brief. Her good sense came to the fore again, and she said, “But at least you’re going to go to bed for five or six days.”

  Watching her gather and focus the ragged remains of her strength into that demand, Digen hadn’t the heart to oppose her. But he said, “I really don’t see what good that could possibly do. I don’t keep countdown vigil.”

  “You don’t what?” asked Hogan, following the Simelan conversation with difficulty.

  Im’ran struggled to explain it to Hogan while Ilyana said to Digen, “The time to start fighting is now, not after the symptoms have appeared. You’ve been under too much strain, and your health still isn’t as strong as you think it is. We should go home—and care for each other.”

  “You’re frightened,” said Digen, “and so am I. But I don’t regret what I’ve done. I’m willing to live, again, Ilyana. Im’ran’s given me that, at least. I’m not going to have any more trouble with transfer. And I’m not going to die. Not yet.”

  As they looked at each other in a long, silent communion, Digen heard Hogan say, “Im’ran, you have to eat if you expect to regain your strength.”

  Digen saw that Im’ran was holding his soup bowl out to Hogan to take away. It was hardly touched. Digen said, “What’s the matter?” And as he got up and went to the bed, he probed the nager carefully.

  Im’ran said, “It just doesn’t taste right.”

  “Hmm?” said Digen, concentrating now.

  “Sort of sour, bitter maybe.”

  Digen’s eyebrows went up. “You should be hungry enough that anything would taste good.”

  “Well, I am, but it doesn’t.”

  Digen said to Hogan, “Any other Gen patients react this way?”

  “No. By this stage they’re all ravenous.”

  “Hmm. Check his lymph glands.”

  Considering the reinfection rate, Digen didn’t want to touch Im’ran and risk reinfecting him with the disease, which Digen himself might have picked up from him. It was difficult working without proper laboratory facilities.

  Hogan said, “Negative—negative—and negative.”

  “Fever? Itching or burning of mucous membranes? Aches or pains?” Digen sensed none, but he asked the routine questions anyway. Hogan and Im’ran both shook their heads.

  Im’ran said, “I seem to have trouble focusing my eyes, though.”

  Digen said, “Pull the shades farther down. How’s that?”

  “Not much help,” Im’ran offered, peering about.

  Digen said, “Close your eyes. Be quiet, everybody. Im’, I want you to read me the ambient.”

  Im’ran concentrated, as if focusing on something very slippery. Sweat broke out on his upper lip, and Digen could feel the dark prickle of anxiety all over the Gen. At length, he said, voice tight with panic, “I can’t!”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Digen. “Calm down. I know you can do it—just give me a first approximation.” He was getting worried.

  “Oh, I could calculate that—maybe one thousand fifty hyper-of-rotation with Joel in the saddle point.”

  “Good, now visualize it and read on me, second approximation.”

  “You’re at—” He broke off in frustration, saying, “It just won’t stand still. I can’t focus!”

  Digen bit his lip. “Take a quick stab at it.”

  “Somewhere in the upper seventeen—fifteen and a third, maybe?”

  Way, way off for a fanir.

  By this time Im’ran himself was getting scared. “Digen, what’s wrong with me?”

  “You’re off true and you’re fluctuating. The world isn’t out of focus, your internal standard referent is vibrating around a displaced norm.”

  Im’ran went cold.

  Digen was sorry, for a moment, that he hadn’t softened the blow. You don’t tell a man his legs have been amputated without preparing him for it. But Im’ran was a professional. He had known even before Digen had spoken.

  After a moment of dead silence, Im’ran said, “How far off true?”

  “Not far,” said Digen. “I would have noticed sooner. In fact, even now I can’t sense it. I sense your distress, that’s all. To you it seems much larger than it is, because you’ve been so dead true all your life.”

  “The vibration?”

  Digen concentrated again, comparing now with several minutes ago. He knew that he really should have a base of several hours before hazarding a guess, but on instinct he said, “It seems to be damped harmonic pattern, getting smaller and smaller rather than larger and larger. I expect you’ll be all right.”

  “But permanently off true.”

  “You’ll learn to compensate,” said Digen. “Add or subtract a constant increment. You’re still a fanir, no changing that.”

  “The bad taste in my mouth?”

  “Your body’s way of telling you something isn’t quite right. I read something once about this. Supposedly, the new referent will become your norm, and your body will accept that. The distress symptoms will gradually disappear. But in the meantime, Im’, you’ve got to eat, even if you don’t want to. You’re still very weak.”

  Hogan had been looking from Im’ran to Digen, scarcely understanding a word until Digen said, “You’ve got to eat.” Then he handed Im’ran the bowl again. “You want, I’ll heat it up,” he offered.

  Dazedly, Im’ran took the bowl, staring at the thick liquid, his lips curling in disgust. Suddenly, with an anguished howl, he flung the bowl across the room, turned away from them all, and began to cry.

  Then all at once Digen knew what had caused this to happen to Im’ran. When he had lost control of the spasms that one time, he’d had to come back to an approximation of the fanir’s base and rhythm, and he’d done it to the limit of his own resolution—leaving Im’ran off that tiniest increment and in the direction closer to Digen’s own base—putting Im’ran now within range of an orhuen with Digen.

  He stood helplessly by while the fanir raged, knowing with a sick guilt that he’d have to confess the moment the Gen calmed down.

 
; CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DIGEN’S OPERATION

  Some days later, Digen said bleakly, “If I’m going to be sick, I’d rather it be in my own home.”

  They were seated around the dining table in Digen and Ilyana’s house at the dawn of the tenth day after Digen’s first exposure to Im’ran.

  “He has a point,” said Im’ran. “Rin once said that Wyner would have survived if they hadn’t been using a ward setup.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said Digen. “You didn’t know Wyner. He—Vira too, and Nigel—they were so much more sensitive than I am; I wasn’t even trained to be Sectuib. I couldn’t compete in their league.” Wyner wouldn’t have brought you back off-true.

  “Rin said Nigel wasn’t that much more sensitive than you are,” said Im’ran. “And he died of it, too. Farrises in general are about as sensitive as some people get under the influence of the plague toxin. So I say we should listen to what Digen wants and do it his way.”

  Digen said, “I don’t know why you’re sticking by me after what I did to you.”

  Im’ran met his eyes squarely. “You did exactly what I asked you to do—the results are my responsibility.” He looked at Ilyana. “But I didn’t plan it this way.”

  The fanir was keeping himself rigidly apart from Digen by the strictest Tecton codes. Ilyana respected that intellectually, but deep down she couldn’t help feeling threatened by the presence of another matchmate to her lortuen mate. Im’ran was desperately sensitive to her feelings, and they all wanted the whole, tense situation to be over with as quickly as possible.

  Hogan said into the dead silence, “Didn’t somebody just say Wyner died of primary entran, not the shaking plague?”

  Im’ran said, “Primary entran complications as a result of shaking plague complications—due to his sensitivity.”

  Digen stood, letting his chair scrape back. “I don’t want to talk about my brothers. This is getting morbid.” He went to the front window, looking out on the clear, cold mountain dawn.

  Behind him at the table Skip Ozik—having somehow become part of the family since Roshi’s illness—said, “Why don’t you leave him alone!”

  “Shuven!” swore Ilyana. “Two touchy Simes in the same room! Let’s keep it down.”

  Im’ran, steeling himself inwardly, reached across the table to Skip. “You should let me help.”

  Skip winced, shuddering at the touch, and got restlessly to his feet. “No.”

  Hogan went after the boy, saying privately, “Why not? It will have to come to that eventually.”

  “You wouldn’t understand. It’s—” He looked over his shoulder at Im’ran, not wanting to be offensive. “It’s just that we’re—incompatible.”

  Digen thought, Need will overcome that. It has to.

  Ilyana said, “Skip, you should have gone with Roshi.” She looked toward the window. Somewhere down the valley the Rior Simes who were Genless were gathering to go raiding among the out-Territory Gen towns in the low foothills. For the first time in decades, Rior had been driven to—murder; But what else could they do? “Maybe,” she said, “there’s still time for you to catch up with them.”

  “You don’t understand, either. I—I couldn’t,” said Skip.

  “I know,” said Hogan. Having himself been raised out-Territory, he better than any of them knew the stark terror the raiding Simes would bring.

  “Oh, stop it, all of you!” snapped Digen, wrenching open the door and charging out into the cold air. It was too much for him. The crystal vision of the Distect that he had come to over Roshi was falling into a shattered ruin around the harsh reality of a raid of killer Simes, a raid that was the very antithesis of the Tecton and its householding base.

  Ilyana came out after him, poised calmly to receive his storm of anguish. “You couldn’t have prevented the raid, Digen. Too many Gens have died; too many Simes need—and—you might be sick.”

  “Killing, death, dying—is that all we can talk about? I’m sick of it! And I’m sick of being treated like a pregnant Gen about to give birth to twin channels!”

  “Whew!” said Im’ran, coming up on Digen’s right, opposite Ilyana. “Have we been that bad?”

  Digen, caught between their two fields, squirmed. It seemed he had spent a lifetime pinioned thus between them, and with them fighting—albeit unconsciously—for control of his innards. He flung himself out of the net of unmeshed Gen nager, clinging to the roof pole, and turned on them. His knees were shaking, and suddenly he realized he was about to faint.

  There was a careening blur as they helped him down the corridor to the rear bedroom. There was the smooth softness of the bed, long ago made ready for him just in case. There was coolness on his brow. Aching concern in the ambient nager.

  I’m sick, he thought with a kind of hysterical shock. It really happened. I’ve got it.

  Time whirled out of focus for Digen. There were brilliant little vignettes embedded in gray fog like jewels in a pudding.

  Skip bending over him, Sime nager raking through him. “His temperature has fallen.”

  “Good,” Joel’s voice replying. “He’s fighting it, then.”

  Another time, he was brought to by a sharp sound, like a pressure wave smacking into his whole body.

  Wave after wave of Gen pain. Ilyana standing on one foot, clutching her ankle, biting her lip, one tear seeping under an eyelash.

  She stubbed her toe in the dark, thought Digen.

  The pain receding. She coming to sit by the bed, quietly at first, linking nagerically and therapeutically. Digen drifting with her, enjoying. Then, gradually, her bravery breaking down and the tears welling outward until she was crying softly but rackingly. If you die, I die too.

  Digen understood why she was crying: not because she would die too but—because she would not die with him.

  In the long gray murk after that, he remembered a strong compulsion to speak to her, something important he had to say. But by the time he summoned all his energies to articulate, she was gone.

  He knew he had to live to tell her. But he couldn’t remember what it was he had to say, what it was she had to know before he could die.

  Im’ran was sitting next to him, carefully not touching. Yet, the nageric linkage was deep and clear. Digen didn’t remember him coming or Ilyana leaving. It was as if one had turned magically into the other. He wanted to laugh at the idea of Ilyana turning into an off-true fanir but the desire slipped away unfocused. Dimly, he fretted that the fanir’s nager wasn’t ideal for treating shaking plague. But that too slipped away in a kind of languorous numbness.

  Another time, Digen knew there were people in the room, whispering so low that they could barely hear each other. But the words were etched into him like blue fire.

  “Digen, are you awake? Can you hear me?” Joel was speaking. Digen sensed him as almost transparent, a ghost floating in bright gray fog. There was no nageric link at all—unreal ghost. But Digen was aware of the worried indecisiveness in the Gen—so very unlike Joel Hogan the doctor.

  Digen tried to say “Yes,” but there was only an inarticulate hiss. He closed his mouth, then, realizing that it had been open and he had been breathing through it so long that his tongue and cheeks were dry, wooden.

  Need—piercing, aching, driving need.

  Hands and tentacles came about him and cool water dribbled between his lips. Rolling it about his parched tongue, Digen realized the need was not his own, but Skip’s. At least he won’t catch it. And he has good resistance. His case was mild, comparatively. He won’t vector it.

  “Digen.” The words came registering as sound.

  Digen managed to focus one eye. “Hmm.” Joel was saying, “His temperature is rising.”

  “It has to be now,” Joel said. “In just a little while your sensitivity will spike, and if we cut then, it could kill you.”

  “Digen, I’m against it,” said Im’ran. “Ilyana and I can hold you steady. I’ve worked it out on paper.”

 
Skip said breathily and gently, “Quiet. He’s raw inside.”

  Digen’s first reaction was no! The great screeching horror of a knife actually biting into his own flesh, a knife held by a Gen hand, the whole thing picked up and amplified, fed back to him by Gen nager—the event leaped to life in his imagination, and he shrank from it. No, not on me!

  His fear whirled up out of him, spinning and spinning into an almost palpable form, and it laughed at him.

  The great surgeon! The great liberator of mankind! So now you know what you want to do to people. You expect more of them than you expect of yourself?

  And something in Digen, a perverse artistic sense, said, How fitting to die under the knife you so worshipped or to live through it and know what it is.

  Joel was bending over him. “Digen, we’ll require your cooperation. We have no local anesthetics left, and only a little alcohol for disinfection. You mustn’t fight us.”

  Suddenly Digen was eager for it. He saw in this moment the convergence of all the threads of his life.

  “Do it,” said Digen.

  Skip spun away from the bed, too caught up in Digen’s mixed emotions to endure another moment. Im’ran knelt beside the bed, only his head, shoulders, and upper chest visible to Digen. The fanir’s nager was bursting with arguments he would not voice. Slowly, a note of anguished resignation rose from him, then turned to an unquestioning loyalty.

  “Yes, Sectuib,” said Im’ran, head bowed.

  The old title thrummed through Digen on so many levels that he could not name his reaction. He felt Im’ran had crowned him sovereign monarch. Deeper, there was the forlorn protest, No, Zeor is dead! And deeper yet, he knew this as Im’ran’s way of saying that one cannot abdicate from one’s genes. Sectuib in Zeor is Sectuib forever, made so by the pledges of generations, the Death of the One Billion.

  A sense of panic rose to engulf Digen, the urge to protest that title driving him up and up to complete touch with reality. The fog lifted from his senses, the room about him aglow with the combined nager of Im’ran and Ilyana, a golden ruddiness that warmed and assured. Hogan was laying out his tray on the stand by the bed. Skip, next to the door, struggled to control his own need well enough not to disturb Digen; yet, because he had never had any training in vriamic control, he simply could not handle the fields. But he could read them out for the Gens. “Im’, he’s duo and scared witless.”