Rah-Rah! Ruh-Rahrah!
        Rah-Rah! Ruh-Rahrah!

        What was going on? Who were these people, and what did they want? How, and why, had they gathered so quickly? Up until now, Deah had barely been aware of the newly minted town that surrounded the Othwol Institute but now it was there and alive with an overt hostility.
        Nervously she changed into her dress uniform and headed back to the main body of the school, unsure as to what she might find when she arrived.

        -----

        The corridors were packed with people. It seemed nearly every local student had not only parents in attendance, but also grandparents, aunts and uncles, and siblings. And all of them were renSimes.
        Betta's parents reported that the crowd was so heavy that they'd had to wait in line for an hour, then prove their relationship to Betta to get in. Sorel's parents, who were Gens and expected to arrive from out-Territory by train early that morning, had yet to turn up and were presumed to be waiting in line amongst the renSimes, or stuck at the train station. Deah hoped it was the latter, because even inside the school the ambient was threatening.
        Having been raised in a village near a Householding, Deah had never been exposed to more than a handful of semi-juncts at any one time before this. Most of the renSimes she could zlin were not like anyone she had ever zlinned before. They were harder. More brutal.
        She tried her best to hide her concerns, because the last thing this crowd needed was to be fed negative emotions by her potent channel's nager. She could tell her friends were doing the same, and wondered if their coverup was good enough. She wasn't about to zlin them deeply to find out, not with the ambient in this state.

        -----

        On stage in the lecture hall chosen for the Parents' Day Presentation, a number of chairs had been arranged and a lectern set up. The chairs were intended to contain members of staff, as well as prominent students and their parents who were part of the presentation. Deah could see Mepig there now, holding what appeared to be an intense discussion with Kitty Katki and City Controller Jaingk. No, scratch that. They were doing their best to disguise it, but it was a furious argument. Probably about where Arat could be, she thought.
        Sorrel and Betta were sitting near the far end of the lecture hall. Deah moved in their direction, but found herself intercepted by a harried Doem who directed her toward the center of the hall instead.
        "For crowd control," he said briefly. "We need to be evenly spaced. In case of emergency watch me for direction."
        Deah wondered why Doem thought they would need crowd control. Could it really come to that? She noticed that all of the teachers seemed unusually tense. In the time it took her to wend her way into the center of the lecture hall, the argument on stage had escalated to wild gesticulations and words loud enough to be heard faintly over the general rumble of the audience. More than a few of the audience were zlinning with great interest.
        Deah discovered Jeniard sitting near where she had been directed. His parents were there too. He introduced Dr. and Mrs. Chartas politely, but she could tell that he was distracted and worried.
        About Arat, she thought, trying to squash her dread of what they'd done.
        "Let's put our parents between us," said Jeniard, "so we're somewhat spaced apart. I think we're meant to anchor the room."
        Deah zlinned the restlessness of the renSimes surrounding them and wondered how good an idea it was to have Jeniard's parents, who were conspicuous for their Gen-ness, there at all. But that was really up to Jeniard, wasn't it?
        "All right," she said, struggling to remember what they'd learned of crowd control in Doem's class. It hadn't been a major subject, and she certainly hadn't expected her limited book-knowledge of it to be put to the test so soon.
        "If only Arat were here," fretted Jeniard. "Crowd control is what he does."
        "Erm," said Deah uncomfortably. Luckily he was too distracted to zlin her very closely, and she moved down several seats to put his parents between them.
        She saw Jeniard's mother put a hand on her son's shoulder. "We're sorry, honey," she said kindly. "We were so looking forward to meeting your friend."
        "He said he'd be here," said Jeniard. He seemed deeply hurt by Arat's apparent betrayal.
        "Well, son," said his father kindly, "Maybe something came up, and he was unavoidably detained."
        Jeniard bowed his head briefly. Then, he raised it again, his face older, harder. "No. There's no use in pretending. He had what he thought were good reasons for not cooperating. I thought I had talked him into it, and he had sworn to Teb and the other teachers that he'd do his part, but...." He gestured helplessly. "He knew what the stakes were, and he made his choice."
        Deah was troubled by their disappointment. She already had a bad feeling about what they'd done; seeing other people hurt by it only deepened her feelings of guilt and dread.
        Jeniard was very sensitive. If he'd made a serious attempt at it, he might have zlinned what she was really feeling through her best shield and despite all the ambient noise. However, he had no reason to think she had anything to do with Arat's disappearance. He hardly seemed to notice she was there after their initial exchange.

        -----

        By now, Mepig had left the stage. Deah wondered if he had been sent to try to find Arat himself. Mepig's father was there though, and several other parents had arrived on stage as well. The featured students and parents were being seated in little groups on the stage, obviously intended to show harmony and togetherness. All of the major Sime Territories were represented, and there was a good spread of wealthy and poor too. There were even a pair of Gen parents, though Deah didn't recognize whose. It was one of the Donor students no doubt.
        Despite their careful physical spacing, those on stage huddled nagerically in a knot, United in more than simply being associated with the school. There was a definite sense of them-against-the-world zlinnable even at this distance. Well, faced with this crowd it had to be expected. Still it didn't look too good.
        And now Deah's parents came working their way through the room. They didn't seem quite so ridiculous now as they had the last time she'd zlinned them; at least they were cheerful and normal, instead of ready for a fight like half the renSimes already stuffed into the place.
        "Yoohoo!" Hilma called out they neared. The people nearby her winced and clapped their hands over their ears. "Deah darling, we made it!"
        "My, that's quite a crowd that's gathered here," boomed Rudge equally loudly. "It took us fifteen minutes just to get across the building!"
        Strike that. They were exactly as ridiculous as before.
        Suppressing a strong urge to simply slip away pretending she hadn't heard them, Deah resignedly waved them over and showed them the seats she'd saved. They slid in between her and Jeniard's parents.
        "Oh my," twittered Deah's mother as she examined Dr. and Mrs. Chartas. "Gens! Who would have thought! Rudge darling, look."
        "You must be very brave," said Deah's father to Jeniard's.
        Jeniard's parents looked like they didn't quite know how to respond, and who could blame them? With a sigh, Deah made the introductions.
        "This is my friend Jeniard Chartas. He's in a lot of my classes. And those are his parents. These are -" she couldn't quite make herself say my parents - "Rudge and Hilma."
        "So pleased to meet you," gushed Deah's mother, "And what do you do? I hear Gens don't donate selyn at all outside of the Territories… certainly you must do something to survive?"
        "Honestly, darling, you make it sound as if they still gather nuts and berries," said Rudge.
        "Haha," said Dr. Chartas, being an awfully good sport about all of this in Deah's opinion. "Well, I am a family physician and Jessica is a midwife."
        Seeing the confusion this reply produced, Jeniard interjected. "They're doctors," he said flatly.
        "Doctors? My, how impressive." Deah's mother actually seemed more amused and condescending than impressed. And she was making no effort to hide it. Deah zlinned her mother in dismay.
        "Mother!" she hissed.
        Her mother brushed her off. "Not now, dear, I'm talking to the nice man."
        Dr. Chartas smiled patiently. "I realize the doctor's profession is not esteemed in Sime Territory. But a channel is the nearest equivalent to a doctor in your Territory, so really we feel as if Jeniard is following in our footsteps."
        Jeniard's mother beamed and nodded supportively.
        Jeniard's own face was frozen, his nager walled. Deah knew how sensitive he was about having not been Gen, and wondered if his parents knew.
        "Oh, it was such a surprise when ours turned channel too. We adopted Deah from the Pen system, didn't we Rudge darling?" Deah's mother's voice and nager were smug. It was as if Deah was an animal trained to do amazing tricks, rather than their child! Deah shoved the disquieting thought aside as uncharitable, but she couldn't deny what she'd zlinned in that moment. It wasn't parently love, but pride in accomplishment.
        "Who would have thought," continued her mother fondly, "when she was wetting-"
        "It's no big deal, mom," Deah muttered. "Can we change the subject?"
        "Now now," said her father, patting her shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with being born to Gen parents. Why, everybody learns so fast in First Year that by the end of a few months you will have caught up to everyone else and no one will ever have to know."
        Oh god, thought Deah. Did he just say that in front of them?
        She cast an apologetic glance and zlin at Jeniard to see if he was offended. He had an odd expression on his face. It was almost… oh no, now it was there in his nager. Pity. Here was the fattest, dumpiest, messiest, dopiest kid in school, whose sense of self-worth and self-identity were so messed up he was literally risking killing himself by accident simply by being who he was, and he was actually pitying her because her parents were so incredibly lame.
        "I don't think dad meant that quite the way it sounded," mumbled Deah, feeling her ears burn. Jeniard's parents looked stricken nonetheless. Her father's comment had probably won Jeniard weeks of anxious letters about his grades and whether he was happy at New Othwol. Jeniard sure wasn't going to thank her for that!

        -----

        On stage, things were looking grim. Mepig had returned, without Arat of course. Three extra chairs had been carried away leaving the stage ready for the presentation. The people on stage, however, didn't look ready at all, unless you counted ready to flee the scene.
        The presentation had been very carefully planned out. There were to be speeches by school and Sime Center administrators, demonstrations of students taking donations and giving transfers, and uplifting promises about the new directions the school, New Othwol, and the Tecton in general were going in. It was, in essence, a demonstration of how wonderful the Tecton was, and an opportunity for the parents to take home stories that would raise the morale of their home communities. When Deah had first heard the details of what the presentation's content would be, she'd felt a twinge of irrational jealousy. A presentation like this should have been given to her and her classmates when they first arrived, instead of them getting dumped on a construction site and left to the tender care of Pico Waik!
        However, now it looked like even the parents wouldn't be getting the Parent's Day Presentation.
        As Controller Jaingk stepped up to the lectern, there was a sudden roar from outside, loud enough to be heard over all of the people indoors. Immediately everybody in the hall was on alert, making the ambient electric. Deah's hair prickled as if standing on end, and a chill ran down her spine.
        This is not good. This is very not good, her instincts told her, even as she half-glanced behind her to see if the path farther back into the school was clear. Not really. The hall was packed.
        A couple of students scrambled to secure the doors to the hall on the side nearest the outer wall of the building, but they were too late. Several parents had gotten there first, and flung them open, letting in blue light from outside and merging with a loud and agitated crowd packing the corridor that fed the lecture hall on that side. Deah realized that the noise had increased the first time because the glass doors to the outside had been opened as well, and those people in the corridor were people who should have been outside the building.
        She could hear the chanting - Rah-rah! Ruh-rahrah! - and the groaning of the construction barricades beyond the crowd; obviously those had been breached at at least one point. And there was a smell of smoke in the air - why could she smell smoke?
        Now Deah couldn't deny she was scared. Her heart was hammering and adrenaline and augmented selyn levels were coursing through her, readying her to fight or flee. She caught Jeniard's eye and he looked white-faced and tight-lipped, though she could make out nothing of his nager in the mess the ambient had become. That was when she realized how much trouble they were really in. If she couldn't zlin him, and he couldn't zlin her, how much influence could they possibly be having on the crowd? In fact, whose insane idea had it been to have untrained students in charge of crowd control in the first place?
        And then, suddenly, the answer came, when a bunch of people indoors started taking up the chant too. Once Deah could hear the words, she wished she couldn't.

        Audnes! Forever!
        Audnes! Forever!

        It was Arat they were after.

        -----

        Now she knew why it had been so important that Arat appear at this presentation, that he stay in line and do as the administration asked. These people were supporters of Arat's parents, and they had to be shown that Arat was alive and well and cooperating with the Tecton presence here. And though she'd never seen him use it with deliberate intent, Deah had felt Arat's instinctive cohesive effect on crowds. They had probably been counting on Arat's strength and influence to keep the hand-picked crowd of relatives inside the lecture hall calm, instead of spilling out into the streets to ignite the more deadly crowd outside.
        His parents had used their Audnes influence to lead just such mobs to attack the Tecton three times in Arat's lifetime. The Tecton had to bring him to heel and get him to exert his inherited influence on its own behalf instead... or else.
        Come to think of it, she couldn't see anyone else of Arat's people besides Jeniard and Mepig here, and she knew for a fact there'd been a lot of them supposed to be helping with the presentation. Was it possible that there had been students actually prepped and trained for crowd control, who had failed to show up or slipped away when Arat didn't show? Had Deah been pressed into service at the last minute as an emergency stop-gap? Even with her lack of training, her imperviousness to nageric shock made her a better anchor than many would be.
        But this wasn't going to work. This crowd was out of control.
        "We have to get them out of here," yelled Jeniard, shouldering close to her.
        He meant his parents. Deah wholeheartedly agreed.
        "Come on!" she yelled at her own parents, grabbing her mother by a trailing handling-tentacle to get her attention. Two channels couldn't protect two Gens against this many people, and Rudge and Hilma were nonjuncts changed over before the wars. They'd had a lot of Householding contact and had lived through sieges, battles, and selyn riots too. Regardless of how much of an embarrassment to her they were personally, they were about the best renSimes to have with them in trying to get out of here, short of trained Tecton personnel or soldiers.
        And, being perfectly healthy renSimes, they instinctively grasped the necessity of protecting some of the only available Gens. There was no argument or brushing her off this time. As a group, the two families formed a tight nagerically intersecting bunch and began forging their way toward the lecture hall's inner doors.
        Deah never saw what was happening on stage now or if Doem tried to give her any instruction.

        -----

        If anything, the situation out in the corridors of the school was worse. Deah was practically in shock, retaining the desire to keep hustling along until they found a safer place to be, but unable to believe what was happening around her.
        "The cellars," said Jeniard.
        Deah felt a wave of claustrophobia at the very idea of being below ground where she couldn't zlin what was coming.
        "The dorms," she said, even as Jeniard's parents' nagers registered their siding with Jeniard. Of course. They were Gens. They couldn't zlin anyway and their nagers would be hidden if they went underground.
        "We should get as high up as possible, in a small space that can be defended," said Hilma practically. "The dorms are perfect."
        "Mine's on the third floor," said Deah.
        They shoved past a struggling knot of renSimes, and she realized they were fighting. She couldn't even zlin who they were. She felt a sick horror, and tried to keep her nager as pristine as possible but it was getting more and more difficult. Her parents were almost gleeful, given in to augmentation mode and the excitement of the moment. Dangerous. Very dangerous. Like predators intoxicated by the chase. Jeniard's parents were remarkably restrained, their natural dignity helping to keep them from panicking, but they were still feeling an increasingly urgent anxiety that was getting perilously close to fear. Close enough to trigger an attack by Simes.
        "But if there's fire," began Jeniard.
        "Here's the stairs," said Deah. "You go down there. I'll take my parents up to my dorm room."
        Resistance to separating passed through Jeniard's nager, and then he saw the logic to what she was saying.
        "All right."
        And then the three Chartases were gone.

        -----

        Deah felt her instincts were correct; the farther they got up the stairs the fewer people they encountered, and by the time they reached her dorm room on the other side, things were eerily quiet.
        She opened the door and they were exposed once again to the rumble from outside. The room was filled with smoke, faint but clearly visible. Nobody was inside.
        "There's no lock on the door," said Rudge.
        "Can we block it with something?" asked Hilma.
        Deah cast her eyes about the room. "The extra bed," she said.
        The three of them grappled with the loose bed frame, the one that had never yet been properly attached to the wall. They managed to brace it against the door, but it seemed like precious little defense against what they'd seen.
        "I'll hold this in place," said Rudge. "You two guard the window."
        The window was still open from before. "Should we close it?" asked Deah, as she and her mother approached it.
        "No," decided Hilma. "Glass."
        "OK," said Deah. The dangers of shattered glass were far greater than the damage of being hit by a rock or something that might fly in.
        They looked out the window and could see only a roiling mass of renSimes beyond the barriers, and zlin the savage ambient around them. There was little differentiation between individuals or evidence of their specific actions. The crowd was thinner now than it had been when she'd looked out this window before; many of the people must have gravitated toward the action on the other side of the school. Still, what was there was ugly. It was like the murals of battles painted on the broken walls where the Householding had once stood near her hometown.
        "I never thought semi-juncts would be so… so angry," she said. "The people at home were never like that-were they?"
        Deah's mother's eyes were blank; she was closer to hyperconsciousness than duo and Deah almost thought she hadn't heard.
        "These aren't semi-juncts, dear, they're juncts," she said, patting Deah's hand.
        "…what?"
        "Unrepentant," explained her father from across the room. "Hardened juncts who have never learned to see Gens as people too. They don't have any guilt. That's why they zlin differently from the folks back home."
        "But all juncts are semi-juncts now," Deah exclaimed. "All of them."
        "Don't be naïve, dear," said her mother. "That's what they told you in children's school, but the real world isn't that simple."
        "The ones who've never dealt with Gens in day-to-day life could hardly have learned so see them as people on their own, regardless of how many channel's transfers they have to get," said Rudge.
        "The only answer is for the Tecton to brainwash them," said Deah's mother. "That, and more Gens starting to live here, mixing with the population. That should happen naturally as the free Gen population gets larger."
        "Then the Tecton will stop having to rely upon the secret Pens," said Rudge. "Once and for all."
        Ugh. It was the same kind of talk that they spouted at their "secret meetings", only this time it actually made an awful sort of sense. She'd always thought the 'secret Pens', old-time Gen Pens supposedly run today by the Tecton itself, were a myth. But zlinning what she zlinned now, it wasn't so hard to believe that these people killed once a year, never saw Gens in day to day life, and had fully retained the cruel and depraved mindset of the junct Sime.
        "Once construction is complete and the Tecton is fully staffed here, they can step up programs to educate the people," said Deah's mother. "To convince them emotionally  that killing Gens is wrong."
        And then they'll all die, thought Deah. The Othwol Institute had done a good job of teaching her about what happened to semi-juncts, those sad wretches who could not physically give up the kill, but who knew that killing other people was the worst sin one could ever commit.
        "They never told us," she said. "About the juncts." Even as she said it though, she knew why: it was because most of the students already understood. They were from here. They had grown up with the knowledge. And Jeniard had tried to tell her, when he'd talked about the massive support Family Audnes had in the area. Even he, who wasn't from a Sime Territory at all, knew better than she.
        No wonder they don't want the Tecton here, thought Deah. No wonder they're fighting. Who wants to be brainwashed? Who wants their kids to hate them for being the way they think Simes were meant to be?
        Her whole world felt turned upside down. She sat down on her bed with a thump, not knowing what else to do.
        "Oh, honey," said her mother, a touch of sympathy in her nager. "I'm sure they will explain everything in time. You're still so young."
        Deah wanted to apologize to her parents for hating their behavior earlier. It seemed so harmless now. Especially when she thought of what it must have been like to decide to adopt a drugged, drooling pre-Gen from a Pen instead of having their own, pre-Sime child. They'd been born well before Unity. If they hadn't both been non-junct - quite rare in those days - and met one another while visiting a Householding, she probably never would have been adopted. How could she complain about their motivations? And as clueless as they were socially, her parents had lived through the Unity war and the intervening years. They knew war and chaos and they knew more about people than Deah, for all her ability to zlin deeply, could yet comprehend. The future was suddenly very uncertain, the solidity of the Tecton's presence here suddenly very tenuous. If the buildings were burned down, if the mob sought out and attacked the Tecton uniforms, if she became separated from her parents and could not find them again, perhaps never saw them again....
        "Give her the present, Rudge, darling," said Hilma.
        "I almost forgot about it," said her father. He produced a small cardboard box wrapped in kraft paper and tied with twine. "I didn't think we'd be giving this to you under quite these circumstances," he said with a rueful little chuckle. "But we brought this for you. We knew how much you liked them. It seems a little thing now, but… well go on, take it."
        Her parents smiled at Deah as she took the box numbly and unwrapped it, then stared at is contents in disbelief. It was the black fighting-stallion, #1, the completion of her horse collection.
        "Mother... father... I... don't know what to say."
        Her mother leaned forward and hugged her. "We love you, honey. Good luck in your studies… we know you'll be able to overcome it all. We know you will."
        It was so surreal. Her whole world was shattered, her school beset by rioters, and things were burning. And yet here they were giving her a china horse and acting as if she'd be back to school tomorrow.
        She traced the black stallion's outline with her finger, just as she'd spent the last years tracing its outline in the catalog. Then she looked up at the others on the shelf.
        All throughout her childhood she had begged her parents to buy these for her, but they never had. She had no choice but to save her own pennies, her allowance, and slowly purchase the horses one per year. It had taken enormous willpower for a young child who had other loves as well.
        But since unwrapping the collection upon arriving at Othwol, she hadn't given the horses a second thought. She could have purchased #1: Thoroughbred Stallion for herself weeks ago, but she had forgotten all about it.
        It was the most powerful indication yet of how much she had changed in her short time at New Othwol. This present was for the child-Deah her parents had raised, and that person no longer existed in the world.