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Fort Freedom people. He'd often thought the gutter language used in town went
over their heads.
Veritt said, "I've never allowed one of our own to be abandoned in
changeover. You have no reason to call me that."
Vee moaned again, Kadi struggling to keep her from going rigid against the
pain.
"I see it now," said Veritt, zlinning. "She's going to die without killing.
Let us pray for God's mercy."
Rimon stood astounded as Veritt led them all in prayer, devoutly thanking
their merciful God that this girl was dying. His eyes met Drust's, and the
boy's pain became Rimon's own. What if Kadi had gone through changeover before
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him, and had been allowed to die? As the prayer ended, Drust said to Rimon,
"But I want her to live I don't care how, just to live."
Veritt came to Drust. "Nobody wants her to die, but we must accept God's
will. She'll have lived a good life and died without killing. Who could ask
more?"
"I can," said Drust defiantly. "I won't "
Vee screamed, her whole body going rigid.
Rimon grabbed Vee's father and shoved him toward Drust and Veritt. "Get them
out of here, and bring that Gen in. Mrs. Lassiter, get some water
boiling hurry." For a long moment she just stared at Rimon. He said, "If you
really love your daughter move!"
In seconds the room was cleared, and he was alone with Kadi and Vee.Now what
? "Kadi? Do you remember what your mother used to soften the membranes?"
"They don't have anything I asked. Rimon, I didn't realize she hadn't been
trained at all. I didn't think "
He sat down on the sweat-soaked bedding, wondering if Vee wouldn't have been
better off out-Territory, hounded and beaten to death rather than loved to
death. "Sometimes," he said to Kadi, "when we'd run out of creams in the
winter, Marna used her own ronaplin to soften the membranes."
"That's right! I saw her do it once. But the child died."
"Well," said Rimon grimly, "ronaplin we have in abundance." He extended his
laterals, flushed with the selyn-conducting secretion in sympathy with Vee's
growing need. Vee stirred again, striving to extend her own tentacles. The
membranes bulged, but didn't break. The contractions were premature and weak.
At that point, Mr. Lassister arrived with the Gen Slina had sent over hours
before. Despite the frontier operation she ran, Slina's Gens were always
healthy and clean, though heavily drugged, as the Fort Freedom people
preferred.
As Mrs. Lassiter came in with the hot water, Rimon said, "Hold the Gen over
there until she's ready. Mrs. Lassiter, will you take my wife outside? Vee's
going into breakout."
He turned back to Vee, dipping a towel into the hot water and applying the
hot compresses to her arms, hoping to induce the swelling necessary to break
the membranes naturally. As he let his field relax to normal, so that the Gen
in the corner would seem more attractive to Vee, he kept the compresses hot
and applied ronaplin to the membranes themselves.
Tossing and moaning, Vee became more frantic as moments went by. Rimon sensed
the gathering contraction and put the wet towels aside, rolling the edge of
the blanket up and thrusting it into her palms. As soon as the rough material
touched her sensitized palms, the contraction hit, hard.
"That's it, now, Vee! Harder& harder this time& Come on, you can do it!"
Rimon coiled one tentacle around each of her elbows and ran it down her arm to
her wrist as the contraction peaked, hoping to force the fluids she had
against the membranes and break them open.
Her frustrated need grabbed at him. For a moment, he was shaken by an attack
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of killust. On the brink of attrition, Vee uttered a choked cry, convulsed by
the worst breakout contractions Rimon had ever seen. And then in one bright,
searing agony, the membranes tore open, releasing the new tentacles in a flood
of warm fluids.
Panting, gasping out little stunned chuckles of pure amazement, Rimon and Vee
clutched at each other. In those seconds, stolen from the flow of time, Rimon
knew again the dizzy euphoria of Sime rebirth coupled with an odd yearning
ache. In one moment of spinning reorientation it was gone, and Vee's
long-deferred need exploded outward, commanding them both to killust.
Vee, blind now to ordinary senses, zeroed in on Rimon's field, laterals
extended. Augmenting, fighting off the killust, Rimon avoided her grip and
bounded across the room to grab the drugged Gen from Lassister's grip.
There was no understanding in the Gen's eyes, no fear in his nager, even when
Rimon thrust him toward Vee. Her father came two steps after Rimon, and
stopped, alternately piercing Rimon with his gaze and frowning at Vee's feeble
groping for transfer grip. She could not raise herself from the bed.
Rimon slapped the Gen's face to try to rouse him from his drugged stupor.
There was a flicker in the boy's eyes.
The nageric backlash from the slap hit Rimon like a shower of icy nails, and
all at once the savage killust was back. The boy saw it in Rimon and
understood.
Rimon shoved the dull, throbbing selyn source toward Vee, forcibly retracting
his own tentacles. He was augmenting, so it all seemed to happen in slow
motion as he waited in anticipation of the kill. The Gen's fear peaked to
terror as Vee's killbliss flooded Rimon, wakening his yearning to participate
fully No! No!
Abel Veritt loomed before Rimon's gaze, the last sight he saw as he blacked
out. He came to seconds later, sagging in Veritt's arms as the older Sime was
in the act of lowering him to the floor. A moment of sick, dizzy chaos hit him
before the world steadied. It was over; the ambient nager had quieted. Rimon
struggled to his feet, but couldn't seem to co-ordinate.
Veritt pushed Drust past them into the room, and then Lassiter followed them
out onto the front porch. It was dark, the night crisp and cold with bright
stars shining. Rimon gulped the air into his lungs, fighting strange,
threatening sensations that swept through his body.
"That's it, Rimon, take it easy now," Veritt coached softly, as he walked
Rimon around in circles.
"Did you zlin what he did?" Vee's father asked, amazed. "He used his own
killust to rouse Vee from the brink of the grave, then to stir the Gen so she
could fix on him then he simply relinquished the Gen to her. Abel, anyone,
else would have killed that Gen himself, but Rimon just just gave him away.
And now there's no trace of killust in him!"
The two men looked at Rimon with something approaching awe.
"Well, what could I have done, let her die? In attrition? Is that what you
do?" As the two men looked at him blankly, he gasped. "You worship a merciful
God and that's the kind of mercy you practice? Letting kids die in First
Need for no reason at all?"
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Veritt's eyes closed, his hands clasped in what Rimon had come to recognize
not as a masochistic practice, but an attitude of prayer.
"The wisdom of the young often surpasses that of their elders," said Veritt.
"This is a lesson we must ever be learning. I will not offer the excuse of
ignorance. I am guilty. I have sinned." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]