The narrow room -- technically a section of corridor -- was stacked high with pallets of crisp new plywood and drywall. Wheeled work cases loomed in an impenetrable cluster at one end, while the other end gave out into a jumble of wrinkled drop cloths, construction workers' lunch baskets, and assorted folding chairs.
        Sitting on the chairs, feeling incredibly out of place, were twelve people ages 11 through 16, who'd been children only hours before.
        Pico Waik stood before them, poised grandly like a performance conductor.

        "Right now, you may be asking yourself... 'Why should I listen to Pico Waik? He's only an Insulator. A common construction worker. Is there anything that Pico Waik has to say that a Tecton channel could possibly have use for?'"
        Deah stared up at the man addressing them, and was aware, through her new Sime senses, of her fellow students doing the same. Their mouths hung open, and a haze of puzzlement rendered the ambient a muddle.
        Pico Waik smiled benevolently at them all, from beneath the brim of his protective headgear. "Ah, young channels, you have no idea how precious you are." He spread his arms, handling tentacles extended through the rubber-valved slits on his protective armwear, and gestured to include the students, the room, all of the city of New Othwol. "Look around you! This, my friends, is a construction site."
        Delight danced through his nager, at once reassuring and teasing. "Yes, this is the Othwol Institute for the Channeling Arts, where the future of the world is built. Where the leaders of tomorrow are put together, shaped, finished. Where else for such auspicious events to unfold, but upon a construction site?"
        Deah raised her own gauntleted hand. "Excuse me... this is the Othwol Institute?"
        Giggles of a somewhat relieved hysterical nature broke out among the other students. Well, somebody had to ask.
        "I mean...." She looked at her forearms, lamentably well-protected in the construction safety gear she'd been issued, and then reached up to touch the equally uncomfortable strap-on hat. "They said it was the Tecton's premier training site. A brand-new state of the art facility."
        Pico Waik beamed. "And so it is. It's just still under construction."
        "But - "
        "Consider the Tecton as a whole. It, too, is still under construction, is it not? Thirteen years after treaty United Simes and Gens in peace under the loving care of channels like yourselves, what is the Tecton yet but a great shell? A tower of such inspired vision that even in its sketchy and unfinished state, it demands awe and passionate loyalty?"
        They stared at him blankly.
        "But you do not know, do you?" he realized, looking at them all in wonder and, Deah zlinned, with great tenderness. "You are still nearly children." His fingers and tentacles curled together as if grasping that which can only slip away. "You have a Sime's senses, with only a child's comprehension of them. You have a Sime's body, with a child's clumsiness. And you are so inexperienced: you were not yet born when Unity came about. The Tecton is the only government you have ever known. Strong, heroic, all-knowing, it is the shining power of good in this world, and you, you, have been chosen to be its healing touch."
        Loyalty and bravery swelled in Deah's chest, compelled by Pico Waik's words and the sincerity of his emotions. Deah was careful to not zlin too much of her fellow students' similar reactions, lest she be overwhelmed. Nonetheless, she detected the change in Pico Waik's nager: a subtle, poignant shift from patriotic hope to sadness. The students' feelings altered to match, a staggered and time delayed response.
        "What nobody has told you, what nobody will tell you, is this: You find yourself upon this threshold by chance. There is no guarantee you were meant to cross it. Oh, no. When I changed over, I had no idea that I would become the Insulator's apprentice; I thought I was going to be a writer. A writer, can you imagine it?"
        Pico Waik picked up a paperback novel that had been lying unnoticed on a stack of lumber beside him. The novel's title, Fire on Water, was dwarfed by the author's name in huge letters: Topal Jerdan. Below that, a Sime man and woman clung passionately to each other against a battle-torn backdrop.
        But before Pico Waik could speak again, he was interrupted: a commotion sounded outside the great plywood box that served this room, and apparently the Othwol Institute itself, as a formal entryway.
        "Aha," smiled Pico Waik. "Our last remaining newcomer has arrived."

        A hinged particle-board sheet slapped open and two towering, gaunt renSimes in the livery of Tecton soldiers burst into the room. They were veterans of the Unity Wars and of years of hardship before and after -- and a reminder that Simes, for all that they no longer killed Gens, were predators.
        The students cringed back, even as surprise, horror, astonishment, confusion and of course intense First Year curiosity sprang up brightly in their nagers. The others' attentions were, Deah zlinned, on a young channel the troopers had hauled in between them.
        He was very tall and narrow-framed, and coltishly gawky in a way that would fade with his dawning Simehood. Despite his obvious prisoner status, he held his back stiff and his head arrogantly high. He was handsome in a way that had become quite popular in Nivet Territory in recent years, and -- judging from the rather embarrassing emotions flitting through at least a couple of nagers in the room -- in Norwest as well.
        "Who's that?" Deah whispered to her neighbor, since it was obvious they all knew him.
        "It's Arat Audnes." The short blond girl's reply was flatly incredulous. "What do you mean, you don't know?"
        "Why should I? I'm not from around here."
        "He's only the most famous kid in all of Norwest Territory right now. Don't they have newspapers in Outer Wherearewelost, or wherever you're from?"
        "Nivet."
        A brutish warrior surveyed the collection of students dubiously. "Who's in charge here?"
        Pico Waik came forward. "I am." He accepted some paperwork, and signed something else. When they were finished with that, the soldiers slammed back out the way they'd come, and Pico Waik winked at their erstwhile charge. "You wait right there. I'll be back."
        Arat stared after him, and only then did the rest of his surroundings seem to register. Bewilderment dawned in his expression and nager. What had he expected? To be greeted in a clean and glittering atrium by a channel and Donor team in full Tecton regalia? A nice welcome reception followed by an expensive multicultural dinner? A building with a complete roof?
        Almost immediately, Pico Waik stepped back up carrying an extra hard-hat and a pair of the protective gauntlets. The other students knew what would come next; Arat was caught by surprise.
        Pico Waik grabbed the hat by its straps and clapped it into place. Arat's head went up and he started backward, dragging the much shorter Pico stumbling after him like an unruly horse pulling his handler by the reins.
        "Whoa, there, big fellow," laughed the renSime. He clipped the two straps together and tugged them fast under Arat's jaw, clamping the hat unbearably tight on the young channel's head. "There... how's that?"
        "Extremely uncomfortable," retorted a by now thoroughly miffed Arat. His accent was cultured, elegant. "Is this really necessary?"
        "Oh, yes. It's for your own safety. See, the others are all wearing them as well. Let me help you with this." As Arat made the mistake of glancing at the other students, Pico Waik grabbed one of his long, skinny forearms and pressed its handling-tentacles out of their sheathes with an expert pulling motion. Then, quick as a blink, he seized hold of them and drew them back through the four holes of a construction gauntlet. Arat did a double-take and stared at him in astonishment. Pico pushed Arat's forearm down into the gauntlet's clutches, and snapped it shut - but not before zlinning him boldly, thoroughly, in a move that raised the hairs on every head in the room.
        "What are you doing!" Arat's nager flared outrage. "Give me that." He snatched the other gauntlet away from Pico Waik and clumsily began to put it on himself. Pico Waik watched, grinning in cat-that-got-the-canary satisfaction. "You'll get better at it with practice," he said helpfully. "It's like putting on boots."
        "I will not get practice at this," said Arat defensively. It sounded like a prayer. "I have no reason to learn to do this."
        Pico grinned. "You might end up in construction one day, you never know! I did."
        Arat just stared at him for a long moment. Then Pico started to re-adjust one of the gauntlet's latches, and Arat jerked his hand away. "You are a pervert, and I'll thank you to keep your laterals to yourself."
        "A pervert? Shoosh... of course not. I am simply a scholar. A scholar of youth, and of the shaping of youth. A connoisseur of the First Month, if you will."
        Arat's expressive lips curled in revulsion, but he did not answer. Instead he turned and stalked toward the students, his head held high. A dark expression and a powerful, dominating nager dared them to stand their ground.
        Several of the other students hastened to get up and back out of his way, to keep their nagers from intersecting. Predators and territory. Adult Sime personal space. Deah watched, fascinated. Because she was not afraid, some of those who moved came over and sat nearer to her, lending a new division to their group.
        Arat chose a chair in the back corner, near but not among the others, as if he did not consider himself one with the other students. Those who still hovered over their own chairs sat cautiously down again.

        Pico Waik boosted himself up to sit upon a pallet of kraft-wrapped pipe, from which he could look down upon his little audience. When he spoke again, his tone was deliberate, thoughtful.
        "Most of you have probably heard of Topal Jerdan. But did you know that this particular book, Fire on Water, is set in our very own New Othwol? Of course, before the wars, there was no such town as New Othwol. Instead, the land we're sitting on was part of a farm -- the Othwol Superfarm -- that supplied feed to the Norwest Territory Pen System. It also supplied Gens, but mainly wheat, rice, barley, oats, corn, and soy; all manner of grain and beans."
        Deah had never heard of it, but the local students zlinned of comfortable recognition. All except Arat Audnes, whose nager was suddenly stiff and unreadable.
        "It was very wealthy," continued Pico Waik, "and owned by a very old family: family Audnes."
        Ah.
        "When the Norwest Government Pen system collapsed, hordes of raiders came sweeping southward and eastward, and the Othwol Superfarm lay directly in their path.
        "The Audnes saved their own skins by fleeing into the mountains. But the fields were burned, the Gens caught and killed, the renSime workers murdered, fled or died of attrition. By the time battlefront itself arrived, there was no one left to defend the Audnes claim on the land. Soldiers tore the buildings down for firewood and bunker stone. The Audnes great house, plundered and abandoned, became headquarters first for Gen Army officers, and later for their Tecton equivalents.
        "But finally, as we all know, there came Unity and peace. And down from the mountains came two young Audnes: these two." Pico Waik turned the book so they could better see its cover: a man and woman, a bloody red landscape.
        "Hadar and Inet. They were cousins, and the only surviving adults of the central Audnes line. Their parents had died in the mountains, and so had Hadar's first wife - giving birth to a baby boy, Arat."
        A thrill passed through the others. Deah glanced at Arat. He looked angry, but he had clamped down on his nager and there was not much to zlin.
        "Born to wealth and comfort, these two young people returned to find their old world completely devastated!
        "Their junct peasantry, cowed by the months of terror and the fear of attrition, had bowed to Tecton rule. A Tecton model city was being raised on the rubble of their estate, named New Othwol to both remember and repudiate what had once stood here. And new young families from other Territories were moving in and passing through, eager to fill up the Norwestern waste.
        "Yet Hadar and Inet still think of this land as theirs, and the people -- for all that many of them were strangers -- as theirs as well. To the Audnes, the Tecton is not a savior, but a usurper and oppressor.
        "From the very start they refused to take part in the Tecton's system of transfer and donation, and indeed, they demanded that the possessions that were theirs by birthright be returned. And, they have led three local rebellions against the Tecton, all doomed to failure."
        Pico Waik smiled. "Oh, the Audnes have supporters among those who'd been loyal to their parents -- otherwise they never could have remained active and in hiding for so long. But the old juncts are dying, and none of the younger generation wants any part of the old ways."

        The nagers of the others hummed with satisfaction. They must have heard all of this in children's school, or at the dinner table, many times before. For Deah, though, it was deeply disturbing. Could this person's parents really be the Tecton's enemies? The enemies of Unity, advocates for a return to the kill? Deah knew plenty of kids whose parents had been swept along helplessly into Unity, some who'd even temporarily gone Raider. But actively attacked the Tecton after Unity? It was appalling.

        Pico Waik enjoyed their reactions for a moment, particularly savoring Deah's. Finally his attention returned to the one at whom this performance was obviously aimed.
        "And where are your parents now, Arat?"
        Arat's eyes narrowed dangerously, but if anything his nager divulged even less than before. He did not answer.
        "They are in prison," Pico Waik supplied. "How their world changed! In thirteen years, to go from young lordlings on the verge of inheriting a kingdom, to wretched and penniless imprisonment. What horror, what surprise, they must have felt, as it all came tumbling down around them. Nobody expects at changeover to be a failure in life.
        "And you, Arat, you're on probation, are you not? You are at a crossroads. It says so in the papers, in the tabloids. Can you throw off your parents' legacy and become a minion of the Tecton, in order to remain free? Can you learn the role of the sheep, and be grateful for it?"
        Arat's nostrils flared. Stress revealed itself now as subtle ripples in his nager, concentric shells of heat writhing over a chill contempt at his core.
        Pico Waik chuckled. "Look at you: pride is written in every inch of you. You cannot conceive of a situation in which you are not innately, by definition, the best of the best. And why not? That is what your parents told you you are, isn't it?"
        Arat did not answer.

        Pico Waik looked the other students over now, assessing them. His eyes and attention lingered on Deah, moved on, and then returned to her. She knew it was her different reaction to his story that had caught his interest.
        "You... yes, you. What is your name?"
        Deah cleared her throat. "Deah."
        Pico Waik shook his head impatiently. "Your family name."
        Deah flushed. "I have none."
        "Ah!" His face and nager broke into a grin. "A child of Sime Territory's anonymous past, then. Tell me, were your parents disjunct? Nonjunct?"
        Deah's parents weren't actually her real parents; she was adopted, and her biological parents had been Pen Gens. She wasn't proud of that, and after hearing Pico Waik trot out Arat's dirty laundry, she wasn't about to admit it, either!
        "They're nonjunct."
        "Anybody famous?"
        "No."
        Pico Waik smiled again, a conspiratorial little smile. "Did you want to be a channel, when you were a little kid?"
        "Yes," Deah admitted.

        "It is little wonder that, as children, we fantasize about changeover and Establishment. How can we avoid it? Everything in our future depends upon the outcome of that fateful transformation.
        "Children born into the world post-Unity grow up well cared for and well loved, praised for excellence in childish pursuits, and encouraged to worship their parents' heroes: great leaders like Risa Tigue and Klyd Farris. By the time they come of age, they've taken to heart their parents' dreams, and in innocence they believe that it can all come true.
        "Yes, it's like a fairy tale: The little cinder-girl becomes a princess, the frog becomes a prince, the ugly duckling becomes a swan. We've all been guilty of it, have we not?"

        Pico Waik smiled ruefully, his nager hinting at a real and personal loss.
        "Sadly, our real-life changes are rarely so heroic. For every famous channel, there are hundreds of anonymous people who made that person's life and training possible. For every Sime Center built, there are a thousand laborers whose names are forgotten before the doors even open.
        "Oh, someone must be the next World Controller; someone must be the next Klyd Farris or the next Risa Tigue. But the rest of us?" Pico Waik smiled down on them, arms spread to include. "We learn, oh, yes. First that we cannot be the smartest, then that we cannot be the strongest, then that we cannot be the fastest or most beautiful, and so on until at last we search for what we might be good at, what niche might accept us, and are grateful for whatever that might be, no matter how lowly."
        "What cruel bewilderment falls upon us at the end of our youth! What terror of our own fallibility! First Year makes of us supermen; yet afterward must come the decades of our lives as ordinary men and women, as mere Simes."
        Made insatiably curious by young-adulthood, the students had little ability to distinguish the valuable from the ridiculous. His words rang with truth, with conviction. A pall of dismay and chagrin crept over them. Even Arat's nager flickered uncertainly.

        And yet, Deah could not help but feel this couldn't be true, that Pico Waik had to be wrong. She zlinned furtively of the other students, searching for some sign of genius - or failing that, some sign of disbelief.
        But Deah had only been a Sime for four days, for ninety-six hours. She'd spent nearly all that time in travelling, and as yet had received no formal training. Not knowing the things that any channel or even any renSime would know implicitly at an older age, Deah had to struggle with half-grasped perceptions, trying to glean meaning from them.
        Pico Waik studied Arat keenly.
        "It happened to your parents; yet even they chose not to pass on the truth. They told you you'd inherit rule of New Othwol, did they not? A cruel gift for a child, an illusion so powerful yet so impossible."
        Pico Waik held up the book, Fire on Water. Now its two figures seemed to cling together not in passion, but in terror. "At the front of this book, there is a dedication. It says, 'As the future marches forward, so must the past be pulled down into the darkness. Even as waves crash upon the shore, so must water flow back into the sea.'
        "You, Arat, have become a symbol of the old order. Will you accept that it is over and begin again as nothing, or will you be dragged under the way your parents were?" Pico grinned suddenly. "Are you prepared to become the Insulator's Apprentice?"

        This was the last straw for Arat. He came to his feet, furious. The other students bolted out of their chairs in a panic; evidently the delusion of grandeur ran in both directions.
        In that moment, Deah finally realized what she'd been zlinning all along: Arat was two weeks old -- past his turnover day -- and Pico Waik was using his perfectly zlinnable post-turnover state to manipulate them all. The endless dark fall, the suffocating entrapment of need, perfectly enhanced Pico Waik's talk of disillusionment and failure. And the students, First-Year-curious and thoroughly naive to the way the world zlinned, were completely duped.
        Deah jumped to her feet as well.

        "Hogwash!" she interrupted loudly.
        There was a sudden, shocked silence. She strode forward between them, turning to confront all of them at once.
        "What, you believe this Pico Waik, this fool? He's no teacher. Think! He's just some construction site guy, supposed to keep us out of trouble until a real teacher comes to get us. So you've got nothing better to listen to, go ahead and listen. But for shen's sake, don't just believe everything he says, use your brains. This stuff could warp us for life. We're in First Year, naive as hell and pumped full of learn-life-quick hormones. That's the only reason he sounds convincing at all... that, and Hajene Undertow, here," -- Deah swung about and pointed her finger at Arat -- "feeling about as sorry for himself as a spoiled rich boy who thinks the whole world is against him can possibly feel, and projecting it all over the room with his big, fat nager!"

        A peculiar shiver -- was it dread? Was it delight? -- went through every other nager in the room. It was as if her words had delivered a powerful slap to everybody there, or more accurately as if she had shocked each person and the results had been retransmitted perfectly to them all. And having caught their attentions, she held them suspended in an echoed fading of her own contempt and impatience... it altered their belief of Pico Waik into foolishness and their awe of Arat into its less admirable constituents: fear, unthinking habit, and slavish greed for rubbed-off fame.
        Her surprise, and then flash of sudden understanding, became theirs, the emotions without the knowledge, followed by aftershocks of different-flavored surprise as each of them belatedly made the same realization she had: This is what it means to have power as an adult. To affect others. To control how they affect you. It was a heady realization.

        And then, it faded. More gradually than it had manifested, the effect of her nager came undone, leached from the surroundings leaving a chill like sundown.
        Her new burst of surprise at this result seemed contained, isolated within her personal reach.
        And so, also, were the others isolated; she could zlin them now without the interference from herself and each other. Here, a spark of hidden amusement. There, dread. Like stars, the shining points of individual nagers broke out to burn in constellation against the vast emptiness of the greater Ambient that is the world. It was awful, and wonderful, and an even more terrible vision of what was to come than any they had yet seen.
        What had separated them so? What had created order of the chaotic sharing that had gone before? They sought, instinctively, to learn.
        The answer, Deah zlinned suddenly, lay in the ambient itself; it was somebody's field, spread thin and superimposed over theirs, or perhaps under-and-through theirs, its influence so pervasive and powerful that it had been first invisible, but was now ubiquitous. A shock; like discovering she had not been looking at the sky at all, but its reflection on water.
        And it was him, Arat, the arrogant young channel with the fine clothes, who had brought about this unnerving change. Either his advantage over them in age, or some innate superiority of his own, had allowed him to work this subtle mastery.
        A ripple went through the ambient as they all realized this, one after the other. Hidden amusement became surprise, then delight. Dread became surprise, then sudden fear. Hate or resentment flared bright in more than one breast - and did not affect each other, held apart by his insidious strength.
        Incredulous anger jolted through Deah. Without knowing quite how she did it, she resisted his control - flexed her field in a jolt that shattered that control like a skin of ice.

        Immediately they were plunged back into anarchy and incompatibility. Deah's eyes blinked rapidly as she clawed her way toward duoconsciousness, trying to make sense of what she was zlinning and looking at. She was startled to find she and Arat were much nearer each other than before, face to face in fact, standing before all the other students.
        She looked up, and up, and met his eyes. He seemed taken aback by what had happened, his body language indecisive. For a moment they stared at each other, re-evaluating.
        And then Arat recovered, a subtle shift of stance and nager that turned surprise and wariness into displeasure and arrogance. The ambient cleared with eerie precision as Arat asserted himself upon it once again.
        A chill went up Deah's spine and her confidence vanished instantly. Defending other kids in her hometown, she had bluffed down bullies countless times - but that was before she could zlin. Now, knowing how absolutely sure he was of himself and his superiority struck right to the heart of Sime instincts she had not yet learned to suppress.
        His eyes narrowed as he studied her. "You don't have any idea who I am, do you?"
        She could not answer. She was paralyzed.

        Then, for a relief, a dry chuckle and a nageric finger of amusement intruded from outside their sphere, released her from the spell.
        It was Pico Waik: the Insulator. He had not moved, but remained sitting a few feet away, his chin on his fists, watching and zlinning them intently. His nager hummed with fascination, and subtleties they could not yet begin to identify.
        "There is something sacred... no, sensual, about these moments," he said softly. "You have no reference, no knowledge of yourselves. You do not keep your privacy and publicity separate in your fields. I take from your core emotions - I, who cannot zlin a thing in the secret hearts of most adults!"
        "You," said Arat impatiently, "who will face flogging or imprisonment or worse for your perversion, and the sooner the better."
        Pico Waik smiled. "In you, Arat, I zlin humiliation, an almost unendurable loss. A fierce clinging to pride, the only thing that prevents you from completely breaking down. The last of the Audnes... it is enough to take the breath! It is magnificent."
        Arat did not allow a reaction to show on his face, but his pulse quickened slightly and his nager flattened, blurring the evidence of what Pico described enough that Deah was left wondering if she had imagined what she'd zlimpsed.
        "And you," said Pico Waik to Deah, "for you, nameless child, this is the pinnacle of your life. This is what you have always dreamed of, yes? I can zlin it in you, the trembling eagerness and hope, the absolute fearlessness with which you enter into your new life. You do not understand yet what disappointments you'll face. You cannot comprehend it yet, that your future cannot be what your dreams spell out. Only time will teach you. Only time will teach you both." He paused, appreciatively.

        "Bloody shen! This place will be the death of me."
        They all started as a woman's voice rang out through the corridor/storage room/entryway, accompanied by the annoyed nager of a mature channel.
        One of the large construction work cases shifted. Then, to the crashing sound of cascading tools, it jumped suddenly up on top of its neighbor. From behind it appeared the owner of the voice and nager. They zlinned in amazement as she used extra selyn to augment her natural strength and heave another tool case out of the way, leaving it wheels-up on top of another.
        "Haven't you people ever heard of the fire marshall? What if there were an emergency?"
        A grunt, and a final case disappeared over the others to tumble ignominiously against a wall, and the path was clear. A large set of real double-doors was now visible at the other end of the room.
        The channel came forward, dusting herself off, utterly ignoring Pico Waik as she passed him. She smiled at the students, her nager firm, friendly, intelligent. She did not wear either a hard hat or arm protection. She did, however, wear the familiar and revered Tecton uniform.
        The ambient lifted with a sudden burst of relief and joy, as everybody realized this must be an actual teacher at last.
        "Hello, I'm Jae Katki, I'll be one of your instructors. Welcome to Othwol Institute for the Channeling Arts!"

[chapter 2: the initiation]
[send and view feedback about this story]
[character name pronunciation guide]
[return to the Undertow index]
[return to Kaas' Art and Writing index]
[return to the Secret Pens]
[B.S.]