' 'No—Owen—''
"It wasn't me. You dropped Maddok before I could touch you. Then you started convulsing like Rimon used to—just about scared me to– Anyway, you're both all right."
"Zeth?" The voice was querulous, plaintive. Jimmy Norton. Zeth shoved himself to his feet. Jimmy was clinging to his father for support—but there was no nageric link between them. It was Zeth Jimmy was reaching toward—and Zeth held out his arms to him, feeling in his nager the sweet, clean ease of tension that meant disjunction. The transfer wiped out Zeth's pain as totally as it did Jimmy's need—and afterward he hugged the boy, saying, "It's over, Jimmy. You made it. No more need to kill."
Eph Norton, his field glowing with joy and gratitude, took his son from Zeth's arms. "He insisted it had to be you, Zeth. You did it—you made Jimmy my son again!"
But Jimmy Norton was not the only Sime who needed a transfer. As the battle wound down, the channels were faced with lines of people determined not to succumb to the kill in the weakness of relief. Owen tugged at Zeth. "Jana needs you—hurry!"
Owen's sister was trembling with need, brought on partly by selyn loss from a sword wound in her thigh, and partly by the same augmentation every Sime in the battle had indulged in—to win. The Gen soldiers were all dead or captured and a
strange hush had fallen. Zeth told Jana, "You came through just fine. You resisted, Jana."
In response, she flung herself on him, and when it was over, she clung to Zeth, sobbing, "I wanted to kill. I only murdered a few of them. Sissy Brandon, though—Zeth, she never killed before! Never! And I saw her—"
"We'll have to help her, Jana," Zeth began.
"No, no—she's dead! I think she let them cut her down after—''
"No, Jana—it was war." Even so, their casualties were light. No one close to Zeth had died, and he chose to take that as an omen of better times.
The evening passed in a blur—transfers, post-reactions, and caring for the wounded. Just before sundown, they carried the last of the wounded into the fort, where the men's living quarters, on the side opposite the hole in the wall, were turned into an infirmary. Zeth had no time to think until well after midnight, when he was making a final check through the barracks before trying to find a place for himself—and particularly Owen—to get some rest. Finally it occurred to him to ask his Companion, "How did you escape? We came to rescue you, you know."
Owen had tied the torn ends of his shirt together, but his Gen tags with Slina's dagger-like emblem flashed in the candlelight. He had repossessed the tags along with his knife. "I wasn't going to let those fools make me miss my transfer," he explained. "I just pretended to be helpless. None of those soldiers were very bright, especially Commander Whitby. He came to question me this morning. By then I had them convinced I couldn't even button my shirt without help—so when I paced around behind him, pretending I might tell him something, he never thought I'd pick up the washstand and bash him over the head. Then I took his keys, and off I went! The so-called guards never even saw me sneak out the gate. I was halfway up the mountain before they started sending out search parties."
"They never saw you leave? You are trying to earn the title 'wer-Gen,' aren't you?"
By this time they had reached a knot of people, Simes and Gens, clustered around the bunk where Maddok Bron was recovering from transfer burn. As they had plenty of fosebine, his headache was only a dull throb. Dan Whelan, Eph Norton, Hank and Uel, Slina, and Cord Ashley were all deep in plans.
"... as a decoy," Slina was saying as Zeth and Owen came up. "Not one trooper escaped today. When the others come back, the Simes here'll zlin 'em. We get some folks in uniform up on the walls, and those Gens'll just ride right into the trap, nice as you please!"
"But half the wall is down!" Cord Ashley protested. "It'll take days—"
"Shen," Slina laughed, "bunch of my Simes are out hauling logs now. We'll have that wall back by sunrise—just has to look the same from the outside." Replete with selyn from a guiltless kill that day, Slina was hypoconscious and in a jolly mood. Now she looked up and saw Zeth. "Well," she said heartily, "your plan sure worked!"
My plan? But just then Jana came up from the other side. "Please, Slina, speak more softly. The wounded Gens must sleep."
"Sure thing, kid," said Slina in a whisper far more penetrating than her speaking voice. "Well, Zeth, what next?"
Jana remained behind Slina, looking expectantly at Zeth, as did everyone else. "Slina, you'll handle the legal problems. Maddok, I'm afraid the Simes who killed today will be coming to you for comfort."
"I think I can manage that," Bron said evenly. "I will tell them what we are fighting is no demon—but you overcame killust today, Zeth. I was wrong. My pride could have gotten me killed—and made you a killer. I couldn't stop you. You did it yourself. I've been thanking God for your strength since I woke up."
He felt inside his shirt, searching for something.
"I just wish I understood what happened," said Zeth. "I didn't kill, but others, even those who had never killed—"
"Zeth," said Uel, "you zlinned just like Abel Veritt before he died."
Zeth remembered the feeling Abel had given them all. He had gone beyond the kill. "But Abel died. He couldn't accept selyn."
"You're a channel, Zeth," said Owen.
"But Abel wasn't. Why should—?" Suddenly it all fell into place. "Owen—I remember now what Abel and I had in common. We were both almost killed! Marji almost killed Abel at her changeover. And Dad almost killed me. You have to die to be free of the kill!"
A weight lifted from his spirit. He barely heard Uel say, "Then I'll do it, too," as Hank's nager flared real fear.
Jana said, "Do it to me, Zeth. I don't ever want to be tempted again."
"No," said Owen. "You're not a channel, Jana. I'm not allowing any experiments on my sister!"
"That's right, Jana," said Bron. "Let the channels decide what's best." He was holding his papers and tags. Putting the tags around his neck, like Owen's, he said, "Zeth, only someone who is beyond the kill has the right to make such decisions." He held out his papers to Zeth. "You're my channel now. I choose you."
Dan Whelan and the others all looked at Zeth, echoing Bron's trust. It was the same excruciating feeling he had known in the chapel at his father's eulogy. But now it was bearable.
Abel had chosen him to hold the papers of the Gens of Fort Freedom, and he had not been able to accept. Now, his hand closed firmly over Bron's papers. "Abel once told me the truth of our predicament in Fort Freedom. Fear is our real enemy, not the people it possesses.
"So many of our—family—have died fighting that fear. But so long as we can live together, they didn't die in vain." He looked up at Owen, then around the circle of familiar faces and back to Bron. "I'll do my part to see that Fort Freedom continues, if you'll all do yours."
The wave of affirmation drove him duoconscious, and there were tears behind his eyes as he added, "I can do it because I know now that Abel Veritt did not die forsworn, nor was his faith in the future unjustified-" Zeth held the papers aloft, accepting without reservation the triumphant knowledge: "Fort Freedom lives—forever!"