The girl looked up at them with dull brown eyes, expecting nothing, her field high but lusterless. Like an animal, but not an animal. A human being. Somehow he had to make himself zlin one more kill. For Abel. For Zeth. I can't let all those deaths be in vain.
Steeling himself, he went hyperconscious, seeing the Gen's bright field, Abel a shadow of need, a void aching to be filled. Abel allowed his need to rise in full force and stepped forward. Even now, he was gentle as he drew the girl to her feet, not frightening or hurting her. Like all Slina's Gens, she showed no reluctance to be handled, waiting dumbly for whatever Abel might do.
There was a horrifying familiarity to the scenario. Abel took the Gen in kill position, the draw began without fear, painlessly—but as the draw increased there was resistance —pain—fear—the fear fed need, increasing the draw voraciously, a feed back of pain/pleasure—killbliss.
Abel dropped to hypoconsciousness on a wave of guilt as vicious as the killbliss had been, turning his post-kill reaction to depression. He let the limp body pull him to his knees, then disentangled himself, closing the Gen's staring eyes and composing her limbs before wrapping the body in a cloth laid by for the purpose.
Rimon didn't interrupt the ritual. Finally Abel rose to face him, raw pain in his voice as he asked, "Did you learn anything?"
"Yes," Rimon replied. "Abel—you drew so little!"
"I drained her."
"No! That's just it: it wasn't your draw that killed her– it was her reaction. Come on—I've got to tell Kadi."
"You go," said Abel. "I must pray first. Each time… I pray it may be the last time."
"Abel—I must talk with Kadi first. But I have an idea."
The problem was that the idea terrified Rimon, and he couldn't understand why. He felt an overwhelming relief when he was back with Kadi in the main room.
"What happened? Where's Abel?" she asked anxiously.
"Praying. Kadi, I can't believe it. Abel uses so little selyn, I don't know how he can live on it! More selyn is wasted—dissipated—than he actually draws."
"Rimon—what—"
"You could give Abel transfer and never know you'd done it."
"But—"
"I'd never miss that amount, Kadi!"
"Rimon—I don't know if I can stand to give transfer to anyone but you. What I did to that Raider—"
Rimon forced himself not to grasp at the excuse. He hated the nagging jealousy that sought to keep him from what he knew was right. It had to be right! Why else did Gens produce more selyn than most Simes needed? Why did they grow constantly in capacity? If selyn were not wasted in the kill, there'd be plenty to go around, even if some Gens never learned to give real transfer.
"Kadi—Abel's not a Raider. You won't want to hurt him —there won't be anything unnatural, like running your system backwards, or his. The worst that can happen is that he'll draw more than I expect—and for one month, if necessary, I can draw from the kids and balance my fields."
"I—I don't like it, Rimon. I don't know why I feel it's wrong."
"Try it—just once."
"Try what?" asked Abel from the doorway.
When Rimon told him, he shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. I cannot interfere between you and your wife." But the surge of desire in his nager belied his words, even as heartfelt relief emanated from Kadi.
Putting his arm around her, Rimon told Abel, "That's just it—you wouldn't interfere. As little selyn as you need, I wouldn't notice any difference at my own transfer. And Kadi has that ability to produce—on demand, it seems. All Gens may have it. Every Gen I've worked with has increased production.
"And the waste! I haven't witnessed a kill by an ordinary Sime since Vee Lassiter's changeover, and that time I either didn't know what to look for, or wasn't sensitive enough to see the difference. More than half the selyn in that Gen today was lost, not consumed. Abel, you don't have problems with shorting, do you?"
"Almost never. Jord always had. Apparently, I'm just an —'ordinary Sime,' " he finished painfully.
Rimon winced. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that we're better, just different. If anything, needing extra selyn is a detriment, except that we may pay back by healing. I think the dual system is hereditary—my father has it, and I had cousins with shorting problems. Dan Whelan doesn't have it, but he recalls that Uel's mother did."
"Yes," said Abel. "She faced a terrible moral dilemma during her pregnancy, taking many extra kills in order to produce a new life. If only she could know—but she must. If God is just, she knows her child has found a new way of life."
"Then the only exception is Jord. Neither your nor Margid seems to have an extra selyn reservoir."
"Margid is not lord's mother, although he never knew the woman who gave birth to him. Her death may have been due to this very condition, for she died of attrition in childbirth."
"I'm sorry," murmured Kadi.
"It was long ago," Abel replied. "But what you're saying is, I may be physically incapable of learning not to kill."
"We don't know that!" Rimon said fiercely.
Kadi clung to him, seeking strength as she said, "It's important that we try, Abel. Now that Willa's pregnant, Jord is going to require help soon. Remember what Rimon went through? We may learn something that will help Jord and Willa—and your grandchild."
With great, wrenching pain, Abel said, "Yes, of course. I can't refuse to try."
Abel was not the only one to relinquish his privacy that day. Hank and Uel had agreed to have their second transfer in the chapel, as Jord and Willa had done, before the whole of Fort Freedom. It was another bit of progress, a boost to everyone's morale—especially as Uel represented a future in which no Sime would ever have to kill.
Rimon had worried that there might be a tendency among the people of Fort Freedom to consider Hank and Uel saints, on some untouchable moral plane. The boys, however, saw to it that any such image was immediately shattered, by acting like what they were: two adolescents testing their newfound abilities. When no one managed to snag them for chores or lessons, they ranged as far from authority as they could get, each trying to outdo the other in a happy contest of Sime versus Gen. Uel, unhampered by conscious or unconscious guilt, had no aversion to augmenting, or to using his tentacles. Rimon watched him explore the world anew with Sime senses, envying his untrammeled delight. It will be that way for Zeth one day.
Hank, freer with Uel than with any adult, used his friend to try what he could do as a Gen—discovering such useful abilities as how to tickle someone from ten paces away. Uel soon found that although he could overpower Hank physically, whenever he came close enough to do so he was in range of Hank's nageric tricks. Rimon let them alone, figuring that the lessons they learned were good for both of them.
They capped their adventures by sneaking off into town one evening, where both had previously been forbidden to go. No one ever found out exactly what they did there, but the next day was Uel's turnover, complicated by a headache for which he got no help from Hank because he had one too.
Both boys settled down after that—apparently having proved something to themselves—and the lessons went apace. Like Jord, Uel was able to imitate healing mode the first time he zlinned it. After a few successful experiments, and before Uel hit turnover and the risk of instability, Rimon had him try drawing in healing mode from Anni Suttin, the most stable of the Gens staying with him. The result was a successful lesson and a tremendous vitalization of Uel's secondary system.
As Uel approached need, his high spirits dampened somewhat, but even the last few days he continued surprisingly steady, and Hank could still coax a smile out of him even on their transfer day. Both boys were subdued, though, when Rimon went to seek them after he left Abel. They were in the chapel together, praying, in that solemn mood of adolescents facing a public responsibility.