At the surge of apprehension from Zeth, Uel nodded gravely. "Pray you have Rimon's sheer strength, Zeth. Do what I was doing, and see if you can stop the voiding."
Jord's fields were fragmenting, both from the voiding and from the rough treatment Uel had had to use. Zeth swallowed the lump in his throat as Owen placed his hand on Zeth's shoulder, providing secure confidence. He tried to influence Jord's fields, but Jord's resistance took the form of fragmenting further, his fields a tenuous cloud.
Zeth stopped his attempt at pressure. Spreading his laterals above the prone form, he extended his show-field to surround Jord's. After a moment, Jord's field relaxed and began drifting toward normal. Through all of this, Jord was semiconscious, not exactly in pain, but settling deeper and deeper into the agony of hard need. As Zeth managed the fields for him, Jord came down to duoconsciousness. "Sessly?"
"She's fine," said Zeth. "Rest, Jord. Nobody got hurt. And Bekka's through disjunction."
"Thank God," Jord managed, and relief pervaded his nager, speeding his progress in the direction of normalcy.
When Uel judged that Jord was ready, he had Zeth reinforce his containment of Jord's fields while Uel gave him transfer—or rather drove transfer into him, for Jord made no effort to draw. Zeth studied carefully how Uel attempted to give Jord the satisfaction he craved as much as the selyn he needed—but Jord rejected the emotion. His strength, though– what little there ever was of it—had returned. He refused to sleep, resting only a few minutes before getting on his feet again. "I've put enough of a cloud over Bekka's triumph. Come on—there's celebrating to do!"
Although Jord's cheer might stem from pure bravado, there was no pretense in the joy the channels found when they came out. In the chapel proper they found Abel with Bekka, Maddok and Sessly Bron, and Jimmy Norton, who had witnessed the crisis. Bekka's joy was almost matched by Abel's when he saw his son. A ripple of relieved pleasure went through Sessly's nager when Jord walked in, but Maddok Bron's field was a mixture of concern, hope, and resistance to whatever Abel had been telling him.
Jimmy Norton was looking at Bekka worshipfully—and when Zeth entered, the feeling focused on Zeth as well. "I'm going to do what Bekka did," he said. "I'm going to leave the kill behind. Zeth—will you help me?"
"Of course I will. Everyone here will help you."
"We will pray for you, and with you," Abel added.
"On that we all agree," said Maddok Bron. "Jimmy, we'll take you out of the grip of the Devil—"
"Maddok, he will take himself," interrupted Abel. "Your prayers and your encouragement are welcome—but every Sime must make his own commitment to refuse the kill."
Thus it was no surprise to Zeth, when the bell had been rung and everyone was gathered in the chapel, that Abel had a new statement to make. "Like many of you here with us today, Bekka Trent grew up in Gen Territory. She believed that to be Sime was to be cursed—but she had the courage to refuse that curse. To refuse the kill.
"God has blessed Bekka Trent, as He has blessed this community. Never before in history has a community of Gens made friends with a community of Simes. The only way we can continue that friendship is to guarantee their safety among us:—to end the kill, forever. When we have done that we can tell the truth—the entire truth—to Simes and Gens alike, to
dispel the superstitious fear that brought the Freehand Raiders down on us."
Abel's voice and his field rang with conviction. "There will be no more equivocation. No more careful wording to hide what is or what must be. Truth will prevail!
"Nine years ago, I made a vow. As God is my witness, I shall not die a killer. I gave no thought to the wording of that vow. In nine years, I have killed eleven times—and yet I have said I am not forsworn. I still live. I live for the day when no Sime's need will be a need to kill. To bring that day about, there must be a new vow. I do not ask it of any of you today—but I pray that one day each and every one of you will vow it, before God, as I do now. It does not matter whether you have killed never, or once, or a hundred times. What matters is a future in which everyone, Sime and Gen, is in control of his own destiny. To that end, I make a new vow:
"As God is my witness, I shall never kill again!"
Chapter 10
Carried away with Abel Veritt's joyous dedication, Zeth was amazed to feel utter horror from Owen. Incredulously, he realized that Owen didn't think Abel could keep his vow. If only he could zlin! Bekka Trent's feeling that morning was nothing toward Abel's. He whispered to his Companion, "He's really going to do it, Owen. You can't feel—"
"Yes I can!" Owen returned in an agonized hiss. "He'll die, Zeth!"
But the despair that had gripped Zeth since his second transfer was gone now—the sorrow he sensed in all the Companions merely made him pity their inability to share what all the Simes in the chapel knew that day—all except Jord, whose field also showed worry and sadness, probably because he didn't trust himself to join in his father's vow.
But Zeth could join in. He might not feel the personal presence of God the way Abel Veritt apparently did, but his vow was no less heartfelt: I will never kill. Never!
As they left the chapel, Zeth caught traces of community feeling even from the town Simes. As he and Owen stepped outside, Slina came over to them, her little girl at her side.
"I seen what you done this morning, Zeth," she said. "For a minute I thought it was your father out there, pushin' my men around. Born leader."
Before Zeth could assimilate that, Slina was off on another topic. "Zeth, your dad don't kill—you don't kill—the old man there, he'd do anything not to kill—an' you're all good people. You folks are the only reason there's still a town here. You bailed me out more times than I can think—"
"And you've always helped us, too, Slina," said Zeth.
"Yeah, well, you don't return favors, you don't get none. Shidoni. I'm too old to change now. But change is comin'.
An' my kid—" She pulled the little girl forward. "My Mona, she—oh, shen it, Zeth, I want her to be better off than me!"
The child studied Zeth solemnly with piercing black eyes, disturbingly familiar. Slina squatted down to talk to the girl, pushing a lock of black hair back off her forehead. "This here's Zeth Farris—you remember him? Well, he's a channel now. Mona, you know what changeover is?"
"Yeah," said the girl. "You grow up—turn Sime."
"That's right. Well, when that happens, you come to Zeth, so you don't kill."
"You're not goin' away, Ma!"
"No, honey—just my usual trips. Now quit that!" as tears ran down the girl's cheeks. "You promise me!"
Mona looked up at Zeth, and then back at her mother. "I promise, Ma," she said, throwing her arms about Slina's neck. "I'm gonna be just like Zeth!" Slina stood, picking her up, and with an embarrassed shrug headed back to the temporary quarters of her pen, saying, "Well, maybe so, but no matter what, Zeth will take care of you."
The afternoon was spent trying to straighten out the transfer schedule, which had started late because of the problems with Rimon. Bekka's disjunction, Jord's problems, and the ceremony in the chapel had thrown them even later, but at least Jord was at work again now, hours early—and Zeth, his gloom dispelled, also rejoined the schedule. He found it slightly annoying though, that three Simes scheduled for him told him with varying degrees of diplomacy that as long as Jord was unexpectedly available they'd "really rather ..."
It was not a new story. Everybody used to clamor for Rimon, but now that he was not functioning, the choice of all the older Simes was Jord. Zeth could see the pattern: the younger Simes, those who had never killed, had little preference among Uel, Marji, or Zeth. But those who killed occasionally, and even those who had disjuncted, preferred something Jord could give them that the others could not.