Finally, Zeth blurted out the formula greeting to someone who had just become adult, Sime or Gen: "Congratulations, Owen."
Owen's eyes flashed, and fixed on Zeth's. "For what?" he demanded. "For staying alive to be a useless cripple?"
"I'm sorry!" Zeth cried, hit right upon his guilt. "It's my fault, Owen. I'm so sorry!"
Owen rolled his head away, and said through gritted teeth, "It wasn't your fault."
"I tried to stop them," said Zeth. "I couldn't move."
Owen looked at him now. "You were hurt?"
"I'm just stiff and sore, but you and Jana—"
"Jana?" Suddenly Owen was interested. "They did the same thing—?" He tried to sit up, but pain dropped him on the pillow.
"No! She'll be fine! They broke her arm. It'll heal—really! I saw her this morning."
Owen's eyes closed. "Good. Pa will have someone to help him." He put his right hand over the stump of his left arm, and grimaced.
"Owen, does it hurt? Should I get a channel?"
"It hurts all the way down to my fingers, and I know they're not there. No," he added as Zeth moved, "don't get a channel. They'd put me to sleep again. I'm going to sleep enough of my life away . . . asa Gen."
There was bitter self-loathing in the word "Gen." "You had to be Gen to live," Zeth pleaded. "Now you can be like Mama—like Hank Steers—"
"Don't lie to me! How can a one-armed Gen be a Companion?"
Zeth choked back his words. How could a one-armed Gen offer transfer with the crucial contact points gone?
"That's enough!" Both boys jumped at Abel Veritt's stern tones. Veritt flinched at Owen's pain, and then came steadfastly to his side, zlinning him critically. "The fosebine is wearing off. I'll get Rimon to check you over and give you more."
"What for?" Owen asked dully. "Maybe I should just die."
Veritt said, "Zeth, you're tiring Owen. Find your father, and ask him to come up here."
"He's with Mama," said Zeth. "They're having transfer."
"By now he should be—oh. Well, find Uel or lord, then."
"Yes, sir."
"No—don't, Zeth," said Owen. "I don't want to sleep."
"What do you want, son?" Veritt asked gently.
"I want to die."
"No," said the old man. "God made you Gen to preserve your life. Do not question His wisdom."
"I don't think God cares," Owen said flatly.
In the same reasonable tone he used to teach the older children, Veritt said, "You are not thinking, Owen. You have grown up in a community blessed with constant proof of God's caring. I, too, questioned His wisdom many times when I first became Sime. Yet I've lived to see His plan unfold. We are building a world where such brutality as you've suffered can never happen again."
The grim set of Owen's features relaxed under Veritt's care, and tears began to slide down the boy's cheeks. "That's right," Veritt said, pushing Owen's bright blond hair back off his forehead. "Tears are good. Let them cleanse your grief away so you can find God's plan for you. Pray for guidance,
son. There's a reason for what happened to you. I don't know what it is, but I have faith it is a part of God's plan."
Owen drifted to sleep under the spell of Mr. Veritt's words. Then the old Sime guided Zeth from the room. "How did you put him to sleep?" Zeth asked, "You're not a channel."
"Did you think I'd never noticed you boys nodding off during my sermons?"
Not believing he had heard right, Zeth looked up to find the old man's eyes twinkling. Abel Veritt joking with him? He felt suddenly grown up, admitted to the adult world . . . but he didn't deserve it.
"Zeth," Mr. Veritt said seriously, "Owen's injury is not your fault. You were hurt yourself, son."
The aching guilt exploded. "We shouldn't have been there! Mr. Whelan told us to go up to Mr. Brick's place, but I couldn't. I made Owen and Jana come with me."
"Let's talk about it," said Mr. Veritt, leading Zeth to the bench in the hall. "Tell me, how did you make them come with you?"
"I told them their pa would be there."
"But was your purpose wrong, Zeth? Did you intend to harm your friends, or profit at their expense?"
"... No. I was just scared to come alone," Zeth admitted.
"So," said Mr. Veritt, "you disobeyed Mr. Whelan, and you enticed your friends into disobedience."
As it was not disobedience that bothered Zeth's conscience, he brushed that aside with "Yeah, I guess so."
"However, Owen and Jana were under no constraint to follow your example. They also chose to disobey. Zeth, you are blaming yourself for the wrong thing."
"But I'm responsible!" Zeth insisted, looking up to find Mr. Veritt Half smiling at him.
"Yes, Zeth, you are responsible. Not guilty, but responsible. Like your father, you accept the consequences of your actions, whether you intended them or not. That's a very grown-up attitude for such a young boy."
The words warmed Zeth, but they couldn't remove the hollow feeling when he thought of Owen. Mr. Veritt studied him. "I wish I could assign you a penance, Zeth, to atone for your disobedience. But your parents have never fully accepted my beliefs, and I will not impose them on their son."
"Assign it, Abel."
Zeth looked up to see his father at the head of the stairs.
"Don't call it a penance," said Rimon Farris, "call it a punishment. I trust you to know what's right for Zeth."
"Don't you want to know—?" Veritt began.
"It wasn't me he confessed to. Wanttell me what you did, Zeth?" Farris was calm and relaxed now, glowing with repletion of selyn.
"I didn't go up to Mr. Brick's yesterday," said Zeth, "so neither did Owen and Jana. That's how they got hurt."
"I see," said Farris. "You feel responsible." He turned to Abel. "What would you have him do about it?"
Mr. Veritt said, "I think two problems can be solved at once. Owen will require a great deal of help in the next weeks and months. He'll be awkward, and others will feel embarrassed around him. Some will avoid him, while others will find it easier to do for him than to teach him to do for himself. Zeth, I'm assigning you the job of making Owen independent."
"... What?" Zeth asked in puzzlement.
"He doesn't have to be helpless. Take care of him until he can care for himself. Figure out how he can feed himself, dress himself, bathe himself. As soon as he's strong enough, get him on a horse. If you require apparatus, get Dan Whelan or Tom Carson to help you make it. Ask the women to design clothes Owen can get in and out of by himself. You see, Zeth—your penance is over when Owen can get along perfectly well without you."
Zeth was stunned. It was the worst punishment he could imagine. It was impossible. He won't even talk to me!
Rimon Farris smiled warmly. "Perfect!" he said. "Abel, I wish I'd thought of it."
Soon Zeth decided his punishment would destroy his friendship with Owen forever. The more he tried to be gentle, the more sullen and stubborn Owen became. The first day he wouldn't eat at all. The second, as his pain receded, his growing Gen appetite caught up with him.
Owen's sister, her arm in a sling, was temporarily suffering the inconvenience Owen would face for the rest of his life, but she wasn't much help to her brother. When Zeth brought the lunch trays up, Jana told Owen, "Trina made us soup in mugs, see? That way we can drink it."