But Abel was on his feet. "Get Jord or Uel!" he directed, and Margid ran out as her husband knelt beside Zeth and Owen. "Jord has such cramps," he said. "Rimon's had them since his injury—but what could be causing them in you, Zeth? No, son, it's not normal turnover."
"Maybe if you balance your fields—" Owen suggested. The two boys were facing one another when Jord arrived.
Zlinning them, he said, "That's right, Owen—let him rest
on your field, but don't let him draw. Zeth, healing mode. Then—oh, shen!" He looked around. "I have to have a Gen to demonstrate."
"Can I do it?" Maddok Bron asked instantly.
"Maddok!" gasped his sister, flaring fear.
"You wanted to learn, Sessly. So do I. If you can't control yourself, you'd better leave. Jord, can I do it?"
"Come on, then," said Jord. "I can't hurt you, doing this."
Bron stood, his wound giving a twinge of pain, but in a moment he found a comfortable stance and faced Jord, fighting apprehension as the channel held out his hands. "I'll have to touch you in transfer position," said Jord. "No matter how frightened you are, there will be no selyn flow. Owen has to be perfectly steady for Zeth, but I'm not in pain or need. I'm just demonstrating."
The Gen put his hands on Jord's arms, tensing as the handling tentacles lashed them together. When the hot, moist laterals touched him, Bron's field took on the same state Abel's did in prayer.
"Zeth," said Jord, "move selyn from your primary system to your secondary, and back again. Keep it up until the pain stops. Like this." There was a start from Sessly Bron when Jord's lips touched her brother's, but Maddok Bron held as steady as Owen. Zeth saw immediately how it was done, and took Owen into their transfer position. Instant relief poured through Zeth's ravaged nerves. It felt good—like a massage to his nervous system—but he was too curious to know what had caused the cramping to do more than relieve the spasms, and then return his primary system to normal.
"Thanks, Owen," he said, and turned to Jord, finding him and Bron side by side, watching him clinically. "Jord, Abel said you've had cramps, and Dad. What caused it?"
Jord moved in to zlin Zeth carefully. "When I'm so sick I can't work," he said, "I get cramps. Now Rimon is so sick he can't work. We've assumed the cramps were part of the sickness, but you're perfectly healthy. ..."
"He's never worked," said Owen, "not counting the fields."
"True, but Zeth—when you took first transfer, did it seem to come in two distinct parts?"
"Yes!" said Zeth and Owen in chorus.
"I'll bet you started using your secondary system then," said Jord. "It's been exercised, then immobilized."
"Like muscle spasms," Bron observed. "When a man works hard every day, and then cannot work—"
"Exactly!" said Jord. Then, after a pause, "I think."
So Zeth began daily exercise so his system would not go into spasms again, beginning with lessons in drawing selyn and transferring. That experience, though, he would not be allowed to tackle until after his second transfer.
With Rimon still a patient rather than a colleague, the channels' schedule was hectic, but at least there were no other cases requiring constant attention. Slina was rebuilding her pens as fast as the weather would permit, but she could not get enough replacement Gens to allow kills in any but the most extreme emergency.
The Simes from town understood—but most could not face channel's transfer. First the ones without family drifted away . . . and then one morning, six crying children were discovered in one of the houses assigned to the families from town. In the night, the adults had gone.
Abel told the children, "Your parents had to go away, but they loved you so much that they left you here, where you can grow up without worrying whether you'll be Sime or Gen."
Zeth, deep in the gloom of approaching need, thought cynically, The kids were too much bother to take along in hard times and bad weather. So they abandoned them. He thought of Jimmy Norton, hardly daring to hope his father wanted him back. Zeth had just begun to realize how lucky he was to be the first child born to a Sime and a Gen.
But Fort Freedom loved all children. By nightfall, Margid Veritt had placed all six where they would truly be loved.
That night Zeth fell into a fitful slumber, and dreamed he was a child again, abandoned by his parents. He knew they were out at the Old Homestead—only he couldn't find it.
Then he saw them. His mother, her flaming hair a halo, her field a shining glory. His father, pale, in need, holding out his arms, tentacles extended, pleading. She moved toward him, graceful, unafraid—but as she touched him, flame leaped, devouring Rimon! Zeth screamed as his father's form blazed. Kadi dropped Rimon, and turned toward Zeth, beckoning—
Heart pounding, he sat up to hug his knees and convince himself it was only a dream. In the other bed, Owen murmured in his sleep, and Zeth zlinned fading anxiety in his friend's field. The uncanny way the Companions responded
to Sime emotions, when they had no sense organs to tell them, disturbed him. Even Bron was starting to do it—gleefully, it seemed. Owen and Hank and Trina and the others cared for the channels, but something in Bron's field seemed threatening.
He lay back, hands clasped under his head, massaging his temples with ventral tentacles as. he puzzled over exactly what he saw in Bron's field. Pity. Bron didn't hate Simes or want to hurt them ... he pitied them. That emotion never entered the fields of the Companions—certainly never Owen's. The Gen was deeply asleep again. Zeth let himself be drawn into sleep once more—and drifted into another dream.
This time it was pleasant. Zeth and Owen were riding in the beautiful hills near Owen's home, carefree children, racing their horses and laughing together. Then, in the way dreams have, without transition, they were walking instead of riding, and Zeth was in changeover. The tentacles grew swiftly along his arms, emerging without effort, plunging him into deep need. Owen's nager was sweet with welcome; his hands held Zeth, steadied him—he could feel warmth along his nerves as Owen held him with both hands ... both hands!
The realization screeched up Zeth's spine in a jolt of terror. Dream merged with reality as ,he woke up screaming, the real Owen before him as the dream Owen had been—
"No! No!" he cried, fighting Owen off as his friend woke up enough to stop trying to restrain Zeth physically and use his field to soothe and calm.
As the terror abated, Zeth felt his Companion's arm—one arm—holding him steady. "It's only a dream, Zeth," Owen said. "It's not real. You're safe. Want to tell me about it?"
Another shudder rippled through Zeth as he remembered his abject terror at the feel of Owen's hands on his arms.
"To tell a dream makes it go away, remember?"
"You were giving me transfer—but you had both arms. I could feel both your hands on me. I don't know why I was so scared, Owen."
Lightly, Owen said, "Well, I always have both arms in my dreams, too." But Zeth didn't laugh, so he added, "You're not letting yourself be affected by superstition?"
Slina, after managing to accept transfer from Jord, had headed off to collect on long-owed favors, in the form of Gens. She returned full of stories. The tax collector had spread new rumors all along her route. It was true that the Simes of Fort Freedom could turn Simes into Gens. Hadn't
the Freehand Raiders killed off most of their pen Gens? But hadn't the tax assessor found the place full of Gens? Not pen Gens, but conscious people, helping to repair the destruction wrought by the Raiders. Who could such Gens be, but some of the Simes of Fort Freedom turned Gen so they not only would not need to kill, but could provide selyn for the other Simes?