Straddling Borders

by

sanshadancer

Story © 2003 by Sanshadancer

All beginnings are hard -- Talmud Tractate Taanis

What’s past is prologue – Wm. Shakespeare

Chapter 1

Homesteaders

The store owner looked over the wooden crate of fruit the rancher had lugged in and considered the merchandise, the price that had been asked, and the rancher and his pretty wife. The man’s hands, holding the crate, had a tension that belied the casualness of the transaction. The merchant ate a berry, slowly, tasting the perfectly ripe fruit, then named a price. “I’ll give you extra,” he offered, “if you take store credit, instead of cash.”

The young rancher pushed his hat back and hesitated, obviously torn between the two prospects. Hard cash was hard to come by for new homesteaders, and it was always a temptation to get currency when one could. Still, few places existed locally to spend hard cash but the present store. “How much extra can we get?”

The merchant considered, and named a figure.

“Hugh, look at these!”

Hugh Valleroy turned to see his wife crouched down by a pen where some new chicks were scrambling.

Aisha captured a yellow fluff-ball, and crooned to it. “I’ve been hoping to get some poultry,” she said as he knelt down beside her, his lean figure moving stiffly, as if his muscles were sore.

“Nice chicks, those,” the storekeeper said, coming from behind the counter and wiping his hands on his apron. “Just hatched yesterday. From good layers, too. They’ll give you plenty of eggs. I’ll trade you a dozen for that crate of fruit. Throw in a sack of feed too. That’s an even better trade.”

Valleroy eyed the chicks, considered their probable price against his need for cash, then nodded and rose. “All right.”

“Care for anything else?” The sharp-eyed storekeeper surveyed their worn clothes. Though they were clean and still showed the creases from being pressed for town, they were quite washed out and sun-faded. “We’re got some nice patterned cloth? Beet sugar for jam? Canning jars? You must be putting up some preserves from your fruit. ”

“Not this time,” Valleroy said quietly, carefully counting out the money for the rest of their order from a lean and equally worn wallet.

“Maybe after harvest,” the storekeeper said equably, recognizing his customers for what they were. And what they didn’t have. “You folks are homesteading out by the border, aren’t you?” He threw the sack of meal over his shoulder, and followed as Valleroy carried the crate of chicks to his wagon.

“That’s right,” Valleroy said neutrally. “It’s good land, close by the river.” He took out a length of well worn rope and carefully tied the crate of chicks down behind the driver’s seat. Then he took off his own jacket to cover the top of the crate, shielding the chicks from the blazing summer sun.

“Though so. Knew you were homesteaders, from around somewhere. But those brambles only grow out there, near the water. I’d heard a young couple was trying their luck by the river. That’s dangerous country, wouldn’t you say, right on the border of Sime Territory? You’ve got Sime Raiders from across the river. Berserkers trying to make it out of Gen Territory. Wildcat coming down from the hills.”

Valleroy shrugged. “We haven’t seen any so far. I’m well armed. Border patrol comes by.”

“Well, I’ll buy all the fruit you bring in,” The merchant eyed their wagon, gauging that it was obviously second-hand. “Folks like the fruit well enough; they just don’t care for the risk in getting it. I guess you know yourself that it’s a ready cash crop. But I wouldn’t care to go prospecting for it, much less live out there. No one around here will even cross the Byval stream. And we’re lucky to see the patrol once a week. Once a month is more likely.”

Valleroy finished tying the crate and straightened up. turning to the merchant, squaring his shoulders. “We’ve had no problems so far. And border land is cheap,” he said quietly.

“It is that. But there’s a reason for it. People have tried their luck out there in the past, but you’ll notice you haven’t got any neighbors.” He hesitated, eyed the woman, then shrugged and dropped the subject. “Well, I’ll wish you luck, you and your wife. Just be careful and keep a rifle close at hand. The government should offer a bounty on those raiders. Same as for the pelt on a wildcat. Doesn’t make sense that they offer it for one and not the other.”

“Thanks,” Valleroy helped Aisha into the wagon, stepped up himself.

“The only good Sime is a dead Sime!” he called after them.

They rode in silence, except for the peeping of the chicks and the rattling of the wheels, until Aisha said, “Hugh, he doesn’t know any better.”

Valleroy stirred. “I know. And I’d shoot a Raider myself, if he was going for you.”

“And if he were going for you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I imagine Klyd wouldn’t like it.” Aisha commented.

“If I shot him, or if I Served him?” Valleroy asked.

Aisha thought. “Good question. I don’t know.”

“Neither do I, “ Hugh said. “It’s a no-win situation,” Hugh said. “These people can’t think of Simes as anything but predators who deserve to be killed. And to most Simes, Gens are nothing more than animals that produce the selyn they Need every month. They’ve never heard of Channels like Klyd, who can take selyn from Gens without killing. Or of renSimes who live on Channel’s Transfer. They can’t imagine a place like Zeor where Simes and Gens can live in peace. Changing that is what we’re all about, with Zeor on the Sime side of the border, and Rior on ours. It will happen, Aisha. Then no one kill Gens for selyn or think of Simes as vicious predators. Sime and Gen will be united.”

Aisha tickled the downy fluff of one of the chicks in the crate behind her seat. “Some day.”

Hugh slapped the reins on the horse’s back, urging him into a trot, as if somehow he could rush to that future. “Some day soon,” he said determinedly, “if I can help it.”

His barn was small, but snug, now lit only by the glow of an oil lamp, carefully secured on a hooked ring. A thunderstorm had turned the summer afternoon into pre-twilight darkness, but the thick stone walls of the small barn made the lash of the rain outside barely audible. He’d quarried the stone from the riverbank, same as the walls for his small cabin. The stone was free except for his labor, but milled lumber cost cold hard cash.

Valleroy knelt by the side of his only cow as she strained through her first calving. He’d been told not to breed her; she was young and had come into season too late in the year, but he’d risked it, thinking of the milk and cream and of butter that would tide them through the winter. And now, as luck would have it, the calf was positioned wrong. He’d been cursing that fate and trying unsuccessfully to turn it for hours, chafing as time ticked by. He didn’t quite have the strength or the knowledge to save his cow, and he was tortured by the awareness that he was already late for an appointment. Near despair, he sat back on his heels, wiping his sweating forehead, leaving a smear of blood across his face, and rubbing his aching arms. Outside the wind picked up and thunder rumbled. He sighed and geared himself up for another try as the cow lowed and strained again. He didn’t even hear the door open.

“Hugh.”

“Klyd!” Valleroy turned, squinting in the premature darkness. The lash of the rain outside and the drumming on the roof drowned out his voice. He steadied himself against the laboring cow and taking a deeper breath, spoke over the noise. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No.” The voice was terse and quiet, but it carried in spite of a pitch of thunder. Lighting briefly illuminated the sky. “I should not.”

“I’m sorry. But we’re not scheduled for Transfer for a few more days, And Melisande,” he gestured. “is having trouble. She shouldn’t be too much longer calving. I’ll be at Zeor soon. You know it’s risky for you to come here.”

“Did you call someone for assistance?” Klyd asked, still framed in the doorway. “Are you expecting someone to come here?”

“Who is there to call?” Valleroy answered, with more than a bit of weary frustration in his voice. “We’ve no vet in the area. And no Gen would dare come this close to the border by choice. Border patrol is all we see out here, and they make the rounds only rarely.” He looked up at the Sime, and in spite of his dark mood a half smile twisted his lips. “Though I can’t say that’s a bad thing, considering whom else comes calling.”

“That’s why I asked. I zlinned no approaching Gens for miles before I crossed the border onto Rior,” Klyd took a few more steps in the room. “Except you and Aisha. But why would you think it risky, unless you had called someone and were expecting them? You knew I could zlin for anyone close by.”

Valleroy sighed, and looked down at his hands, stained with mucus and blood. “I forgot.”

Klyd gave him a curious look of astonishment but came closer to the straining animal, a look of mild distaste on his rain lashed face as he studied it. Simes didn’t raise cattle, or eat meat, but Zeor kept a flock of goats, which were useful for the spinning quality of their hair, as well as for their milk and cheese. “I can’t zlin a cow,” he said impatiently, pushing a damp black forelock off his head with a tentacle, “but I can bring Regan here. Running Zeor’s stables, he’s helped foal plenty of horses. A cow can’t be that different.”

“I know what’s wrong. The calf has a leg back,” Valleroy said impatiently. “I just haven’t the strength to turn it.”

“No wonder,” Klyd said disapprovingly, turning his attention to the Gen. “You’re exhausted.”

“It’s been a busy month,” Valleroy replied without heat. “Anyway, I have to stay here and deliver her. I’ll be at Zeor as soon as I can. Long before our Transfer, I promise. You should go back there.”

“You promised, a month ago, that you would be at Zeor this afternoon,” Klyd returned with some heat. “You’re my Donor, and I’m in Need,” he added. “I’m not leaving until you come with me. It’s time you realized that there are limits Hugh, to even a Channel’s control. Even my control. Unless you agree that I’ll bring back Regan to take your place.”

“That’s not necessary,” Valleroy winced at the tacit reprimand. “I won’t be much longer.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

“You?” Valleroy turned, a trace of a smile brought to his face. “You may do wonders doctoring people, but I don’t think calving a cow is in your repertory. Sectuib,” he added giving Klyd the title that marked him as head of his Householding. “Do you think you’re a veterinarian now?”

“No. But I can support you. You’re much too tired for this.”

Valleroy pursed his lips, tensing a bit as Klyd crossed to him. The Channel laid a hand on his shoulder, the tentacles that were the most obvious difference between Sime and Gen extending from their sheaths on his forearms. The strong handling tentacles twined in his hair; the delicate nerve-rich laterals used in selyn conduction brushing his cheek and trailing across his neck seeking the selyn transport nerves under his skin. Hugh drew a breath as the ronaplin dripping from the lateral tentacles reacted to his skin, sensitizing his nerves. “Klyd, I don’t think--”

“Relax. Let me brace you.”

“I can’t relax and turn a calf,” Valleroy said testily, turning to look up at the channel. “Do you have any idea how strong these animals are?”

Klyd flinched at the wave of frustration coming from the Gen. “I meant drop your barriers and let me control your field. Your fields haven’t matched mine yet,” Klyd added reprovingly. “Have you forgotten everything in the last month?”

“I don’t see how that will help.”

“Do you want to be here all night?” Klyd asked, impatiently, then when Valleroy bristled, he asked. “Do you want to save your cow?”

“All right! Tell me what you want me to do.”

Klyd put his hands on Valleroy’s shoulders. “Relax,” Klyd said, soothingly. “Drop your barriers, match your fields to mine and let me support you. When it’s time to turn the calf’s leg, I’ll give you the extra strength.”

Valleroy nodded, and felt Klyd reinforce his grip with handling tentacles. It was hard for him to split his attention between creating the right nageric state with Klyd and functioning as a veterinarian, but he raggedly got his fields into order . Then the delicate laterals, sliding across his throat and behind his ear, two on each side, found the necessary selyn transport nerves under his own skin. In the straw before him, the heifer lowed and began to strain. Valleroy reached his arm deep inside, fumbling for the tiny foot as the contractions brought it within his reach. The hard muscles squeezed his hand almost nerveless, but then he felt a warmth and strength seemed to flow into him. He pushed the leg back against the straining muscles and felt the calf turn, and suddenly, the obstruction was gone, and with renewed effort the cow delivered the baby almost in his lap.

Hugh eased it to the straw of the stall and drew a relieved sigh, then looked the baby over. “She seems fine even after all that. A heifer,” he said with satisfaction, drying the calf off with a wisp of straw. “When she’s grown, we’ll have two milk cows.”

“Of such, dynasties are made,” Klyd commented, sitting back on his heels and watching him with a trace of amusement.

Valleroy looked up sharply at the arch comment, then shrugged and flushed, self-conscious. Lately, Klyd’s attitude toward Rior seemed to have changed from supportive to patronizing. “She means a lot to me, anyway.” He stood up stiffly, every muscle clearly aching, and moving to the bucket, fished around for the cake of soap and washed his hands and arms. He moved the cake of soap to his shirt pocket.

“I didn’t mean—“

“Yes, you did.” Valleroy accused, and then as Klyd tensed, he recollected himself and shook out his shoulders, dropping his near martial stance. He turned and watched as the cow butted the baby to her feet and nudged her to nurse. “I suppose a calf is nothing much to you,” Valleroy said quietly. “But I could have lost her, could have lost her mother too. That’s a loss I can’t afford right now.” He set his jaw a little and said stiffly. “Thanks for the help.”

“You’re welcome, though I didn’t do much.” Klyd watched as Valleroy put a flake of sweet hay in the manger for the cow, fresh and green from a recent cutting, checked the water bucket, and carefully took down the lamp from its nail hanger. Klyd took the lamp from the Gen. Hugh didn’t comment, though his jaw tensed just a bit. Simes tended to regard Gens as clumsy and not to be trusted with objects that could cut or burn. Valleroy knew Klyd couldn’t help his own upbringing. Rather than make an issue over it, Hugh picked up the bucket of dirty water.

“Is Aisha ready to leave for Zeor?” Klyd asked.

Outside the byre, the rain had stopped, and the sky was clearing. The fields were already steaming in the late afternoon sun. Valleroy put down the bucket to settle the bar into the slot that held closed the barn door, then he picked up the bucket and poured it carefully into the irrigation ditch of the nearby garden. “Aisha is going to stay here this month,” he said quietly. “We picked up some baby chicks in town yesterday. She wants to keep an eye on them till they’re a bit older. And someone has to watch over the livestock.”

“Do you think that’s wise? I can have someone come over to feed and check on your stock. Or even to stay, if that would make you more comfortable.”

“She wants to stay,” Valleroy pushed open the cabin door. Driven indoors by the rain, Aisha had settled in a chair at the table, a basket of patchwork squares at her side. She looked up anxiously, then rose when she saw Klyd.

“A heifer,” Valleroy announced. “She’s seems to be doing well, even after all my mucking about.”

“Hugh, that’s wonderful!” Aisha kissed him, “Next year, we’ll have two milk cows! And more calves.”

“I hope they aren’t all as much trouble calving,” Valleroy said dryly.

Aisha turned to Klyd. “We weren’t expecting you, Sectuib Farris. Hugh was going to Zeor.”

“When he didn’t show on schedule, I decided to ride over.” Klyd looked over the small stone cabin with the same faint air of disbelief and disapproval.

Aisha chose to overlook his expression. “Can I offer you some tea? Thanks to you, we do have trin.” She smiled at him. “We save it for when we might have certain visitors.”

Klyd glanced at her sharply. “There’s no need for that. I sent it over for you to drink, not save!” He drew a breath and softened his tone, seeing his hosts glance at each other. “I’ll see that the kitchens pack some for you regularly when you return.”

“That’s not necessary-“ Hugh began, glancing from Klyd to Aisha.

“Trin tea is good for you,” Klyd said shortly. “And it isn’t as if you can get it here, out-Territory. You should have said something. But no, thank you, Aisha. We need to get back to Zeor. Hugh tells me you aren’t coming with us?”

“I have so much to do. It’s hard enough having Hugh leave for a few days—“ she stopped short, looking up at the dark expression that washed over Klyd’s face. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Valleroy stepped between them. “Klyd knows that.” He turned to the Channel. “I’ll just put together a few things and be right with you.”

Klyd glanced at Hugh, impatience in every line of his Need-tautened frame. “What are you planning to pack? There’s nothing here you could be thinking of bringing that you couldn’t get at Zeor. Except Aisha.”

Hugh tensed again. Klyd’s emphasis, his sharp tone, the slight derision as he said the word “here” gesturing with a tentacle at the small cabin, made his attitude toward Rior obvious. But Hugh dropped his shoulders, lowering his defensive stance as he again refused to argue. “I suppose that’s true. But Aisha wants to stay and I can’t blame her.”

Klyd paced restively. “She’s high field. If she’s not coming, then I should take her field down before we leave.”

Valleroy glanced at Klyd, the Channel’s obvious Need making him uncomfortable with that idea. He knew that Klyd would never injure Aisha as he’d once been injured, Need or not. His own very real Transfer burn had been inflicted deliberately by Klyd, as a necessary ruse to get him into Zeor as a Gen rescuee during the covert operation that had rescued Aisha from Sime raiders. In the months since then, he’d never seen Klyd injure another. Still, the memory lingered. While he had no fear of Klyd for himself, he realized he was still harboring an irrational one when it came to Aisha’s donations. He hadn’t realized until just now how he’d always preferred that Klyd take Aisha’s donation after their Transfer, when Klyd was no longer suffering Need. But he recognized that as a silly fear, worthy only of an uneducated out-Territory Gen, not of a Companion who didn’t merely donate selyn, but who Served a Channel’s Need. He nodded slowly. “You’re right, of course. Aisha?”

She shrugged indifferently. “Whatever you say.”

Klyd had steadied himself into working mode. “Hugh?”

Valleroy drew a breath and marshaled the fields, his and Klyd’s, into a supportive grid that could withstand any disturbance. Then he balanced Aisha into the mix. With his field so high, especially with Klyd’s personal field low, his was the dominant field in the room. He could easily buffer Klyd from any turbulence Aisha’s minor field could produce, even if she became seriously frightened. But Aisha had been donating for months. She simply put aside her sewing basket, rose and pushed up her sleeves. Hugh locked his fields hard against any personal feeling and came up to her, taking her hands in his. His instinct as Aisha’s husband was to protect her. His tutored behavior as Klyd’s Companion was to protect him. He knew the latter had to hold sway, and it was stronger – buried deep inside him were Companion’s instincts that had been rising in him since he’d begun working with Klyd. Protecting Klyd, even at the expense of getting a backlash burn himself, was second nature now when he worked at Zeor. But this was Rior; this was Aisha, his wife, and he still felt a flutter of confusion as to which should hold sway in a crisis.

But it was a textbook donation. Aisha gave him her hands and he gave them to Klyd, sliding his hands out from between them and stepping back a pace with one hand just above one of Klyd’s lateral sheaths. He closed his eyes as Klyd bent his head to touch his lips to Aisha’s for the fifth contact point of Transfer, not just because he didn’t want to see that not-kiss, but because he could follow the fields better without the distraction of sight. He felt Klyd slid his four lateral tentacles onto Aisha’s forearms, felt him take the fifth contact point for transfer from his lips to hers, felt Klyd drop into commitment, setting up the negative field flux in his secondary system, and felt Transfer begin. From Aisha he felt nothing, except a whisper light drop in the ambient field as her selyn was taken into Klyd’s secondary system. Aisha was only a general class Donor, her selyn yield was small, and her field indistinguishable to him when he wasn’t working with Klyd. He was, after all, only a Gen himself, though a Companion. He couldn’t zlin Gen energy fields like a Sime could. But he knew he could sense something. How else could Companions work? Still, he hadn’t been able to communicate too well what he was sensing. He’d discovered Simelan didn’t seem to have the vocabulary for what he was trying to describe, or he just wasn’t it describing it well enough to Klyd that the Channel understood him. He was new, both to the technical language of Simelan and to Companion’s service. It didn’t seem important to worry too much about it, when there was so much else that needed doing.

He felt Klyd finish the Transfer and opened his eyes to see Klyd lift his head from Aisha and simultaneously withdraw his laterals. She waited for him to retract his handling tentacles from her wrists before she took a step back, but Hugh had focused his attention on Klyd, stepping in to brace his fields as the Channel put a hand to his forehead.

“Klyd?”

Klyd shook him off. “I’m fine. You pulled back a little too soon, Hugh. It unsettled me.”

Valleroy reviewed the donation in his mind. “But I thought you were done. The Transfer was over.”

Klyd gave him a curious look. “You couldn’t really know that. Anyway, you are supposed to wait until I signal you.”

“I’m sorry.” In the past he had waited for Klyd’s signal, but this time, he’d so clearly recognized Klyd had completed the transfer that he’d thought his part was done too. He made a mental note to adjust his technique in subsequent donations, thinking ruefully that the very sensitivity that Klyd had said made him a natural Companion, and often gave him native instincts on what to do, often just as readily led him wrong.

“It’s all right. You are a month out of practice,” Klyd said shortly. “But you’ll get some at Zeor over the next few days. And speaking of practice, we’re both going to be late for Collectorium if we don’t get moving. The Gens will wait, but I have dispensary tonight too, and the renSimes can’t. We need to get going.”

Valleroy nodded and turned to Aisha. He kissed her, hating to leave her yet understanding why she wanted to stay. Getting Rior on its feet, starting any homesteading from scratch, consumed all their time. But Klyd had impressed on him that he couldn’t simply Serve his Need for the few minutes that took and be done with him. Channels expected to be with their Companions most of the month. At bare minimum, Klyd needed him at least a couple of days before Transfer. And he needed to practice his Companion’s skills and master at least some of the techniques and training most Companions learned. He needed more time at Zeor, not less. For Aisha, though, it wasn’t the same. If it was hard for him to go to Zeor, knowing it was essential, then how much harder for Aisha to go when she really had no reason to be there?

“I’ll be fine. I’m low field now,” she glanced at Klyd. “So no Sime will zlin me. And one of the advantages of being so close to the border is that no Gens will come. If I need you, I’ll come to Zeor.”

“All right.” He kissed her again, and then brushed off the straw he transferred to her clothes. “Sorry. I’m grubby after mucking around in the barn for hours. I’d like to wash up and change clothes.”

“You’re going to change at Zeor anyway,” Klyd said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “You can wash up there. Come on, Hugh.”

Valleroy nodded and walked out of the cabin. He saddled his horse under Klyd’s impatient gaze, and soon they were riding through his fields to Zeor.

“I wish you would have let me send someone until you return,” Klyd brooded.

“I don’t want to risk any Zeor members being caught in Gen Territory.”

“I wasn’t necessarily thinking of sending Simes,” Klyd said mildly.

“I’ll only be away a few days.”

“Aisha should have come with us.”

“She didn’t want to leave. She has the poultry now, and the kitchen garden. I can leave the crops for a couple of days,” Valleroy’s words were belied by the anxiety in his emotions at the thought, “but there are some things someone has to stay behind and care for. Or we’ll lose them. And we can’t afford to.”

“And that’s my point. One lone pair of Gens can’t single handedly do all this.”

Valleroy made a face at that argument. “Gen farmers are used to living on their own and doing everything themselves. We don’t need five hundred people splitting up all the tasks. The Householding lifestyle isn’t common among Simes either.”

Klyd didn’t say anything to that, ducking his head a little as he rode under the heavy swath of vines that partially hid the tunnel separating their two properties. On the other side, Zeor’s neatly ordered fields, steaming after the recent rain, stretched relief lines to the horizon, punctuated by dots of workers in Zeor blue. Valleroy looked at them, thinking of his own fields, still largely unfenced, marred by tree trunks felled but not yet uprooted, patches of uncleared brush, and lumpy with rocks. Given that, he understood Klyd’s reaction on coming upon Rior. But he didn’t support it. Zeor hadn’t been built in a day either. Sometimes he thought Klyd conveniently overlooked that when he drew his unflattering comparisons.

“Gens can run a Householding on their own, you know,” he added absently.

Klyd gave him a sharp look. “And what would be the point of that?”

“I didn’t mean – I just meant--” Klyd’s unwavering stare, as if issuing a challenge, made him grit his teeth to keep from responding in turn. He tried hard to mute that reaction, right down to the emotions that went with it. Klyd was only a few of days from Transfer, at or past the point where most Channels would take Transfer, and thus hyper tense about even small things now. And not showing up at Zeor when he was due, forcing Klyd to come after him at Rior, had to have been stressful. “I do appreciate your offers of help. But I don’t need Zeor’s handouts. I have to do this myself.”

The Channel looked away, and Valleroy nudged his horse toward him. “Klyd--”

“I understand,” Klyd said, his voice so professionally neutral it was almost unrecognizable.

But he knew that Klyd really didn’t understand such an out-Territory attitude. He was simply refusing to argue so close to Need. Hugh swallowed all his arguments too. They rode in silence back to Zeor.

Chapter 2

A Zeor Companion

“Come up and change before our shift,” Klyd said, as he dismounted and handed his reins to a boy at the stables. Hugh nodded.

He followed Klyd to his suite, the master one that he’d first met Klyd’s Grandfather in, not so very long ago. And yet, since then, it often seemed they’d both become completely different people. Klyd’s Grandfather was dead now, and Klyd was Sectuib in Zeor irrevocably now, no tacit splitting of authority, no one else available bearing the Farris name to seek counsel from, to lighten his load even momentarily. Hugh understood, or thought he did, the crushing responsibility Klyd felt for Zeor and its members. As if to underscore that solitary role, Klyd had moved that very month into these rooms, perhaps also in a vain effort to put the loss of his wife, Yenava, behind him.

Valleroy himself was a far cry from the Federal policeman who’d stumbled through his first days in Sime culture. After he’d collected his reward for the mission where he and Klyd had rescued Aisha, the mission that had resulted in the death of Klyd’s grandfather, wife and newborn child, Valleroy had settled on some border land bracketing Zeor, and put his mind to the requirements necessary to keep it. He was still struggling, as a new Homesteader, as a new Companion. Having shed his old identity like an outgrown skin, and not quite comfortable in the new. In either new identity.

So it was appropriate, perhaps, that he shed what he’d begun to think of as his “civilian” clothes: the tough rancher’s jeans, work shirt and jacket, the heavy worn boots. He was so grubby that he took a quick bath, mindful of Klyd impatiently waiting in the suite outside, though he would have gladly spent an hour soaking out his sore muscles in the hot water. Rior didn’t yet have indoor plumbing. For him and Aisha, hot baths were a weekly luxury involving as much labor as respite. He sluiced the soap out of his hair with clean water and quickly toweled off. Someone had laid out for him – not a Zeor coverall, but the soft cotton scrubs that Channels and Companions wore in the collectorium, dispensary, changeover and medical wards. Unlike the coverall with its embroidered pocket crest, they were sans markings or embroidery. Since such scrubs were washed often in harsh soap, embroidering them with Zeor’s crest was impractical, but they were dyed in Zeor colors, the blue that he’d now always think of as Zeor blue. The simple shirt was short-sleeved, as befitted a working Companion. He pushed his feet into the soft canvas shoes, absurdly light compared to his ranchers’ boots, worn by Simes and Gens alike inside the Householding buildings, thinking of what shoes could mean.

Householding Gens who didn’t work in the fields for the most part didn’t even own boots, having no need for heavy, thick-soled shoes. Their lives were largely bounded by Zeor’s walls and fences, for outside of Zeor, without an escort, they were fair game for a Kill. Even the Simes of Zeor rarely visited Valzor, the town right outside their gates. If you talked to them about it, they wondered at anyone, Gen or Sime, wishing to go among juncts. He understood their distaste for the junct lifestyle that required killing a Gen a month for selyn. And even if the Zeor members discounted the viciousness of the kill which Zeor eschewed, they seldom cared to go among townspeople who despised them for their “perversion” in avoiding the junct lifestyle. Yet he felt one had to change the world by being of it, not taking over a little piece of it at a time, as the Householders planned. Every time he changed his own clothes for Zeor-issued ones, he thought of what they represented. Not just the Householders’ lifestyle, but what he’d begun to think of as the Householder’s mindset. Which could sometimes be as restrictive as the functionality of their clothes. And at times as narrow as the pathways their light-soled shoes walked.

He reached into the pocket of his jacket to take out the crest ring he only wore at Zeor, put it on his hand, and ran a comb through his damp hair. In the mirror a different person stared back at him than the farmer and rancher that had been there before. A figure all in Zeor blue, forearms bare in a style Out-Territory Gens almost universally shunned, the heavy crest ring weighing down his hand. Only the deep outdoors tan and rough hands made him incongruous as a Companion. He had personal experience with a Companion’s long days, but a Companions weren’t usually filled with the kind of backbreaking work he’d been doing at Rior. Two completely different worlds, and perhaps he truly belonged in neither of them. He sighed a little at the incongruous reflection he represented and went to find Klyd.

Klyd looked up from whatever he’d been studying as he came into the room, his eyes and other Sime senses raking him from head to toe. Valleroy knew he was seeing a Companion now, not a rancher or even a friend, but a member of his Householding, a personal Donor with all the obligations that entailed. Hugh didn’t feel that he was any of those things yet, still struggling with all of them, but somehow it was easier, in the tacit garb of a Companion, to put aside his own worries about his crops and his livestock, his struggling homesteading, and precarious finances, his concerns about how Aisha would manage in his absence, and focus his attention wholly on the Channel he’d come to Serve.

“You’ve lost some weight.” The tone was mildly disapproving. “And you’re overtired.”

Valleroy shrugged, not liking the personal comments or the implied criticism, but letting it go without objection. In this circumstance, Klyd had a right to such statements. “It’s been a busy month,” he said instead.

“Come here,” Klyd said.

Valleroy pushed back, far back, the niggle of annoyance he felt, not at the request, couched as an order, or even the tone, which was quiet and calm, but at the casually imperious nature of it. Here, in Klyd’s Householding, in a Companion’s dress, he had changed more than his clothes, and Klyd knew it. There was no question in Klyd’s mind, not just that he’d be obeyed but that he had a right to that command. And more even than that, there was some air about him that seemed to say that Hugh was at fault for needing that command. Guilty over his own role in the deaths of Yenava and Klyd’s grandfather, and struggling to come to grips with all his new roles, Valleroy had long held his peace over the way every Channel seemed to order Companions about, but his unease lurked buried under the surface. Every time he heard that tone it flared up a little more. Someday, he promised himself, he was going to hash this out with Klyd.

But now, just arrived at Zeor, and hours late, was not the time. He kept his unease pushed down, and deliberately relaxed, giving the Channel his hands, and felt himself relax even more as Klyd’s hands met his, and then the tentacles twined swiftly around his wrists. It had been a long month and he had missed Klyd. Once the Channel’s touch had terrified him. Now he felt only keen anticipation of pleasure at it. When Klyd took his hands it was as if they had never been apart. Even more, it was as if they were two halves of one whole, separated only by inconsequential skin and bone. He let himself savor that for a moment. Then as his awareness of the Channel’s systems soaked into his own, concern overlaid the satisfaction. Klyd was tense. Too tense. He looked down at the sharp planes of the Channel’s face and said. “I think you’ve lost some weight too.”

Klyd didn’t pay the slightest heed to his words, his attention focused elsewhere. Valleroy felt the odd itchy feeling that told him he was being deeply zlinned, examined with Klyd’s keen Sime senses. He’d asked Denrau once if zlinning tickled all Gens, or just Companions, since he’d never noticed the sensation before he’d Served Klyd’s Need. As Klyd’s former Donor, Hugh felt Denrau would be familiar with what he was describing. But Denrau had given him the blank look that told him he’d said something incomprehensible – and probably improper -- among Householders. He got that look a lot at Zeor. He’d learned better than to pursue the subject when he did.

He waited till Klyd came back to awareness, and repeated his observation. Klyd released his hands, looking a little calmer.

“I’m glad you’re here, Hugh,” Klyd said, ignoring his personal comment. “I’ve missed you.”

Valleroy ran his hands up the Channel’s arms, watching as Klyd closed his eyes in involuntary reaction, gauging the Channel’s state of Need as best as a Gen could. Klyd had more than two days, closer to three really, before he’d Transfer the selyn Valleroy produced to slake his own personal Need. Most Channels were on a twenty-eight day Need cycle, but Klyd generally waited thirty days between Transfers. Hugh wasn’t sure if Klyd’s cycle really was that long, or if he had just had needed extra time in the past for his regular Donor to catch up in selyn production the volume his draw would demand. Whatever the reason, Klyd was fixed on that cycle length now, but usually in hard Need for the last two days of it. He was close to that state now, but not in it yet. Need was uncomfortable, but Valleroy rather thought he was more uncomfortable than he should have been. “You’re much too tense.”

“I’m better now. It’s not easy doing without a Companion most of the month, particularly when that Companion doesn’t show up on schedule.”

Using his own senses to evaluate Klyd’s condition, Valleroy was caught unaware by the rebuke, and flinched at the tacit reprimand in the statement. He raised his eyes to the Channel’s, wondering if they were going to hash that out again.

Klyd had the grace to look ashamed. “I’m sorry. That was unfair. I know you didn’t deliberately delay.”

“Yes, it was.” He rose, not caring that Klyd was unsettled by the abrupt movement, too unsettled himself by the clash of cultures, and the opposing demands fate was forcing on him. He felt guilty enough leaving Aisha alone at Rior. He didn’t care to have more guilt ladled on top of that. He shook off the flare of annoyance. “Where are you due now?”

“Collectorium. Then I have a meeting,” Klyd admitted, rubbing his forehead with a tentacle, looking miserable and making no effort to adjust to that chaos Hugh’s movement has caused his systems. “Standard Householding business. After that a shift in Dispensary. Nothing unusual.”

“Then let’s go.” Hugh tried to mold his fields into a semblance of support, but he was still smarting at Klyd’s comment, and they were roiling in chaos. And he felt clumsy at it, not having practiced in a month. He drew a deep breath and marshaled his fields into some kind of order.

“Hugh,” Klyd said. “Not yet.” He waited patiently himself while Valleroy turned toward him. The Gen was partially reluctant, but yielded with the same inevitable inner inclination with which a plant turns toward the sun. Klyd drew him down beside him, hands on his. “Would you rather I told you a fiction we both know to be a lie?”

“You have Companions. Sectuib.” Hugh gave him the title that said it all. Klyd was head of his House. He had his pick of all the available Companions in it, most of whom had years of experience in Serving him in one way or another. For that matter he probably had the pick of any Companion in the Tecton. “You need me here for Transfer, not waiting attendance on you every day of the month. You have Companions enough that are far better trained than I am for that sort of Service.”

“It’s not the same. But I shouldn’t take that out on you. We did agree on your schedule.”

“No. You shouldn’t.”

“Forgive me? After all, I am in Need.” He squeezed the hands he held gently, expressive Farris lips moving in the rueful grin he knew would get through even to this Gen. He held Hugh’s eyes, waiting for Valleroy’s hard shell of disapproval to melt. “I know you didn’t mean to be late.”

Valleroy irritation dissolved under the Channel’s influence. “I’m sorry,” He moved his hands to the Channels’ forearms, taking a Transfer grip, letting Klyd take his as well, his contrition plain to the empathic Sime. “It’s even difficult for me so I know it must be a hundred times more so for you. That’s why I can’t help being defensive. But I can’t be here all the time, Klyd.”

“I know. We’ll work it out. Let’s both of us just be glad you’re here now.”

Valleroy nodded, and smiled gamely, rising in unison with Klyd to leave. But his eyes still looked a little bleak.

The shift in the Collectorium was routine. Virtually all the Gens were long term Householding Donors, for whom their monthly donation was a regular part of their lives. They came in with a smile, showing obvious respect and affection for their Sectuib. If not for the Householding practice forbidding casual touch between Sime and Gen, Valleroy suspected they would have initiated some physical contact with Klyd outside of the donation, so clear was their awareness and concern for his obvious state of Need. Klyd spent time with each one after taking their donation, zlinning each deeply, asking personal questions relating to their health, and writing them appointment referrals for any conditions he noted. In-Territory, a Channel served the same function as a physician. Valleroy had first been slightly embarrassed at the non-Transfer side of the job, and had wondered if he should be present during this part of their visit, but he’d learned that a Companion was considered in the same professional light as a Channel. While he wasn’t exactly expected to be invisible during these consultations, he was more or less treated as if he were an adjunct of Klyd, the in-Territory equivalent of a physician. Except that a Channel’s Companion served that function only for Channels, most specifically his assigned Channel, while a Channel served his entire Householding of Simes and Gens in that regard. Hugh knew very little about that part of his role.

Not only did each Gen Donor seem unconcerned that he was part of this personal audience, but he came in for some displaced affection. They couldn’t touch Klyd – no donor Gen dared touch a Channel in Need but his own Companion -- but they did lay a hand on Valleroy’s arm, or take his hand in leaving, showing their appreciation for his service to their Sectuib, one they couldn’t provide. He was learning to take all of this in stride. The only surprise of the shift was a young Gen not much past establishment. She panicked as Klyd took her in Transfer grip, before he even got his laterals on her. It took fifteen minutes of Klyd’s near hypnotic persuasiveness before he could take her donation, and even then she began to struggle part way through it. Hugh calmed her down afterwards and got her out of the room. Klyd washed up after the donation, and tossed the towel at the rack, missing it. Hugh picked it up and threw the towel in the dirty laundry bin, more than a little startled at Klyd’s lack of coordination. Simes, especially Simes in Need, didn’t usually make clumsy moves.

“I need a break,” Klyd said shortly.

”We’ve only got two more,” Valleroy said worriedly, “and the schedule--”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t take another donation for at least fifteen minutes. Go tell the controller to hold the next Gen off for a bit.. And bring me some tea.”

He brought them both back tea, and entered the cubicle. Klyd had dimmed the lights and was lying on the Transfer lounge. He looked gaunt and even more worn than Valleroy was after his months of heavy fieldwork.

“Tea,” Hugh announced, and sat down beside the Channel, putting it on the table.

Klyd rose suddenly and took him in Transfer position. Valleroy froze for just a second. He could still be startled at the swiftness with which Simes could move, particularly after being away from Klyd for a month. But he was well trained enough now that he consistently dropped his barriers at Klyd’s touch, rather than raising them in resistance. Klyd didn’t take a fifth, he simply held his arms for a moment, tentacles bruisingly tight around his wrists and forearms, then he slowly relaxed. But he didn’t let go.

“Are you all right now?” Valleroy asked tentatively. “Did I do something wrong? Should I call someone else? Denrau? Charnye?”

The Channel shook his head. “My fault. I shouldn’t have sent you out. But I couldn’t trust myself to go, after that.” He laboriously untwined his handling tentacles, moving reluctantly, but re-looped one and tugged at Valleroy’s wrist when the Gen would have moved away. “Stay here.”

Valleroy settled down, sleeve to sleeve with the Channel, using his own field and their proximity to ease the turbulence in the channel’s systems. ‘Have some tea,” Hugh suggested. “It will make you feel better.”

“I won’t feel better until after our Transfer,” Klyd said grimly. “But it might help.” He sipped the tea, and after a few moments, sighed softly, and laid a dorsal on Valleroy’s wrist in tacit apology. “Sorry if I was a bit short. That donation was a nightmare.”

“I don’t understand what was wrong with her.”

“She’s not untypical.”

“But she was raised here. Her father is a renSime.”

Klyd tilted his head and looked at him curiously. “What difference does that make? She’s still Gen, with all a Gen’s natural instincts. You understand being frightened of just the sight of tentacles. You certainly were when you met me. And a lateral contact is always terrifying for a Gen.”

“But she’s Established six months according to her chart, and she grew up among Simes. I don’t understand why she’s not over it yet. Once I Served,” Valleroy curled fingers around the dorsal braceleting his wrist, “I couldn’t imagine being frightened of you.”

“You’re a Companion,” Klyd said dismissively.

Valleroy flushed, still overwhelmed by Klyd’s casual assignment of him to that category. Most of the time, he still saw himself as an Out-Territory Gen, little different from any other, except that he had developed the ability to Serve Klyd in Transfer. And he didn’t fool himself that his abilities yet extended to serving any other Channel or even beyond that to a normal Companion’s duties. But he was curious about the part of an In-Territory Householding’s Gen life he’d skipped over. “Is donating so different?” Hugh asked, feeling a bit regretful he’d never given a standard donation. He had no experience with what the Gens in the Collectorium were doing, with donating his selyn to a Channel, to be later transferred for a non-Channel or renSime’s use. He thought about that. “Aisha’s not terrified.”

“She’s very strong-willed, or she would have never survived her ordeal. Not all Gens, not even born and bred Householding Gens, are comfortable with donating.”

“Will this girl ever get over it?”

“You mean her fears?” Klyd pushed back his unruly black cowlick with a tentacle, and rubbed his temples as if they ached. “Constant donation will lessen them,” he said wearily. “The instinctive fear is there in all Gens. It’s just a question of degree.”

Valleroy considered that, sipping his tea. It still seemed odd to him that Householding Gens, raised among Simes, some even the children of Simes, could fear them. He’d been afraid, terrified, when he’d met Klyd. And with good reason. He’d been raised Out-Territory, where every Sime was considered a killer, and no one had even heard of Channels who could Transfer selyn from Donor Gens to renSimes. And Klyd had deliberately burned him shortly after they met, a necessary cover to get him into Zeor as an operative, then pretending he’d found him injured by a non-Householding, junct or killer Sime. Valleroy had been terrified of every Sime then. But after their long ordeal when they’d rescued Aisha, after he’d first Served and qualified, he couldn’t imagine fearing Klyd in that way again. He raised his chin at the feel of a lateral brushing his neck and looked at Klyd inquiringly.

“Your field is very comforting, Hugh. Thank you. I’m glad you’re here.”

Valleroy flushed a little at the rare praise. “Do you want some more tea?”

“No. I feel recovered enough to get on with the schedule. And I don’t want to be too late for my next meeting, because we can’t be late for Dispensary. “ He unlooped the tentacle from Valleroy’s wrist and used it to give him a gentle nudge. “Go and tell the controller to send in the next Gen. And get the lights as you go out.”

“Yes, Sectuib.” He rose, rubbing his arms from where the marks from Klyd’s bruising grip were still fading, and flicked the switch so the lights would come up slowly, without unduly disturbing Klyd. He let his fingers trail off the switch, not seeing the fading marks on his wrist, thinking of his own rude cabin, of the oil lamps he and Aisha still used. He planned to do the plumbing to pipe water in next fall, perhaps, after he’d finished with harvest. With good crops he could afford a boiler to heat the water, then he and Aisha would at least have hot and cold running water. But he was far off the Gen Territory power grids, such as they were, and he had no notion of electricity. He had no idea when he’d have the convenience of lights at the touch of a switch, without the mess and smoke of oil lamps and the bother of cleaning and trimming wicks. Right now their cabin was small enough to heat with the fireplace, but eventually he’d need a wood stove. And when they had children, he’d have to contrive a system to heat the rooms, Aisha would be insistent on that in winter. He thought again of the long path that had taken him and Aisha, from respected professions and the comforts of middle class life, to a rude cabin on the border of Sime Territory, far from where other Gens would dare to settle. Then he banished that thought. He was on the border of Sime Territory to build something new, something important. A link between the two cultures. Comforts would come in time, along with knowledge.

He walked quickly down the hall, but not so quickly as to disturb any of the working Channels. Elspeth ambrov Zeor, the Channel in charge of Dispensary today, looked up from the charts she was working on and gave him a dazzling smile as he told her Klyd had recovered enough to resume the schedule. Elspeth was a middle-aged woman, who looked like the grandmother she was, but as he walked back down the hall, he realized the thought of donating even to her made him queasy and he revised his opinion of nervous Gens. Maybe Klyd had a point. On the other hand, how could he know without some empirical evidence?

After he’d ushered the last Gen out the door, Valleroy waited while Klyd finished writing on the Gen’s chart.

“Klyd?”

“What are you feeling so regretful about?”

Valleroy felt his shoulders tighten. He knew all Simes could read emotions, he just didn’t always care to be so casually interpreted. Sometimes it felt like a violation, far more intrusive than Transfer, to have Klyd so always aware of his feelings. The worst of it was the more time they spent together, the more easily Klyd spoke of them, and the more he seemed to expect Valleroy to accept this disconcerting aspect of In-Territory life. Hugh breathed out carefully, mastering the flutter of annoyance so as not to disturb the sensitive Channel, who would not understand his attitude, and said, “I was just wondering if I could donate some month. Rather than Serve.”

Klyd gave him a sharp look, and Valleroy felt the crawling sensation that told him he was being deeply zlinned. He gritted his teeth but held himself open to it, rather than battening down his emotions as he now knew how to do. “You’re… curious?!” Klyd said, sounding astonished.

“Shouldn’t a Companion know what an average Donor feels during donation? It might help.”

“Help what?” the Channel demanded.

Valleroy shrugged, his own ignorance of so much of his duties making him less than facile in speaking of his concerns. And he could see Klyd was in no mood now to entertain any of them.

“The average Gen Donor feels nothing at all,” Klyd returned shortly, returning to his chart, obviously displeased at his question. “Donation for such a Gen is devoid of any sensation – what kind of Channel do you take me for?” Klyd asked, giving him a sharp look, which Hugh didn’t know how to answer. “Your job is to buffer me from these Donors during that process, to shield me. It’s my job to worry about the Gen’s feelings.” He frowned at Valleroy, but the momentary flare of anger, not uncommon in Need, was fading. “Regardless, Companions never merely donate, unless there’s a shortage of Channels for them to Serve. That happens occasionally with low level Companions, but almost never with Companions at your level. We normally rotate Channels up to higher order Companions, Hugh, if any become free. We don’t let valuable Companions like you lie fallow for a month while lesser ones Serve. Anyway, it wouldn’t be good for you. Certainly not at your stage of training and development. You’re still increasing your production. I never,” he said definitively, “pull a Companion in training out of service until their production rate has leveled off.”

“When will that be?”

Klyd frowned, as if this whole line of questioning was somehow offensive to him. “How should I know? You’re old to be increasing your production. I’m most familiar with training Companions who are Householding bred, first year Gens, just established, thirteen or fourteen years old. It seems odd to me that at twice their age, you keep increasing your capacity every month. But then you’re more than keeping pace with me, and I can’t complain at that. I wouldn’t think of assigning you elsewhere until you’re stabilized your production. Much less consider your skipping a Transfer.”

“So I can’t donate?” Valleroy didn’t know why he felt oddly relieved, rather than frustrated that his curiosity was going to be once again thwarted by Klyd’s dictates.

“Unless something should prevent it, it’s standard practice to have Companions Serve every month. With luck, you’ll never miss a Transfer in your entire professional life.” He gave Hugh a sharp look as the Gen reacted to that. “It’s healthier for you anyway, to Serve rather than donate.”

Hugh considered that. “What happens if you have Companions that don’t get a chance to Serve? If you have more Companions than Channels?”

“Zeor occasionally has a few,” Klyd admitted, “since our standards for Channels and Companions are higher than for most houses. We trade lower level Companions when we have a surplus. Trade Channels or trade for Channels if we can get them, as we did for Zinter. But there aren’t many Companions that can safely Serve a Farris. Anyway we have Charnye in reserve. He’s semi-retired, but he would Serve if we ever had a shortfall, for example if you accidentally missed your Transfer appointment. But you’re not likely to ever miss being scheduled for Transfer, Hugh, not a Donor at your level. Even if for some reason I couldn’t take you myself some month, I’d assign you another Channel.”

Valleroy chewed his lip considering that. “Are you going to be assigning me to Zinter?”

“Eventually. Of course,” Klyd flipped through the pages in the chart he was working on and reached for its folder. “But you’re not ready for that yet, so don’t worry about it. Before I assign you to one of my Channels, I’ll make sure you are very well trained. You could easily over control Zinter and hurt him.” Klyd suddenly turned with Sime swiftness and frowned at him. “Why are you asking about Serving Zinter?”

“I wasn’t thinking of Serving someone else,” Hugh explained. “Believe me, I don’t want to Serve anyone else.” His emotions bore the truth of that, and he felt Klyd relax a bit. “I just thought it would be interesting to simply donate some month. To you,” he hastily qualified as Klyd frowned again. “Just to have the experience, so I’d know what these Donors feel.”

Klyd laughed shortly, pushing a Gen’s chart back in its folder, and shoving it in the stack of charts to be reviewed and filed. “Not hardly likely, Hugh.”

“Maybe it would make me a better Companion,” Valleroy persisted, a little frustrated at being so casually dismissed.

“No.”

“Don’t I even get a choice?” Valleroy asked, half rhetorically, as Klyd tidied up the treatment room with a burst of Sime energy.

“No,” Klyd scanned the room, making sure it was in order for the cleaning team that would descend on the place before the next shift. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. The very idea is ridiculous.” Valleroy drew up, ruffled at the abrupt tone, but Klyd was already starting for the door. “Come on, Hugh. Don’t be such a slow-Gen. I’ve got that meeting to squeeze in before our next shift. They’ll wait for me, of course, but they shouldn’t have to. We just have time to make it if we hurry.”

“Seems like you always hurry,” Hugh complained. “Shouldn’t you be resting between Collectorium and Dispensary? Isn’t that what the break is for?”

“Not completely. Collectorium sometimes runs over, particularly if we have problems like that girl today. We don’t like the idea of having high field Gens and Simes in Need crossing paths, so we build in a lag time. And the Channels need a break, too.”

“And you? Don’t you need a break?”

“The other Channels aren’t running Zeor. And I will rest my systems, in the meeting. You’ll manage fields and keep me insulated. All I’ll have to do is talk and think. Unless you’re tired.” Klyd drew up short and zlinned him so deeply and abruptly Valleroy nearly jumped out of his skin at the sensation.

“Do you have to do that?” Hugh complained, catching his breath.

Klyd frowned. “No, other Companion has ever complained at being zlinned. You can’t possibly be feeling anything.”

“I know I sense something.”

Klyd brushed aside that subject with an impatient tentacle. “You just are picking up on non-verbal cues. You’re new to all this. You don’t understand half of what you’re experiencing. Let’s get back to the subject. Are you too tired for the meeting? Do you want a break? I forget you’re not used to managing fields all day.” Klyd hesitated, looking reluctant. “I could bring in Charnye, I suppose, if you are. But I’d rather work with you, and I do think you should take advantage of the practice. As long as you feel you can manage. It should be a minor effort – just a few people--”

“I’m fine. I don’t quite know what I’m doing, but it’s nice to push energy instead of a plow for a day or two. I just hope Aisha is all right.”

“She’s in perfect health. I can’t spare a Channel, but I have one of my most sensitive renSimes working the lowest fields and he zlins in Rior’s direction now and then, to make sure she’s all right. She doesn’t have much field of course, but he can tell she’s there, and that there’s nothing untoward from Rior.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’d come and tell us if he zlinned anything unusual.”

“You didn’t tell me that. I didn’t ask you to do that,” Hugh wrestled with a combination of relief and guilt.

“You were so worried just now, you gave me a jolt. You’re fine when I keep you so busy you don’t think of Rior, but when you do, you’re emotions are distinctly uncomfortable for me. Anyway, it’s no trouble.” Klyd pushed the door open to his office, effectively ending the personal conversation.

Chapter 3

Accounting

The meeting was ordinary and small enough to be held in Klyd’s office. A stooped gray-haired Sime was there, holding a bunch of folders in his hands, and a huge Gen, burly and barrel-chested, who towered over the aged Sime. He was staring out Klyd’s window, watching the field workers.

“Hugh, you’ve met Fioden, I think. He keeps Zeor’s books, our financial officer. And Aridor serves as our chief legal counsel. And for most of the Tecton, for that matter.”

“A Gen?” Valleroy said.

The huge man turned slowly, like a bear, and surveyed Valleroy from under bushy brows. “You think Gens lack analytical skills? I know I’ve been living in-Territory for too long when an out-Territory Gen comes to think that.”

Valleroy drew back a fraction. “Of course not. I just don’t see how as a Gen you can negotiate with juncts.”

Klyd stepped between them. “Ari sends a Sime representative from his department to any legal proceeding where having Zeor represented by a Gen would be prejudicial.”

Aridor laughed. “Meaning all of them.”

“Naturally Gens have no legal status in Nivet,” Klyd said. The dismissive, even arrogant way Klyd said this, overly patient, as if annoyed at needing to state so obvious a fact startled Hugh even more than Ari himself, “so he can’t present a case in court. But he oversees all the prep work.” Klyd fixed Valleroy in place with a frown. “Hugh, we don’t have a lot of time, so perhaps you could hold your questions till later.” It wasn’t a suggestion, and Valleroy gritted his teeth at the tone, but he took the unsubtle hint and concentrated on his job, molding the fields into a neutral vortex that wouldn’t irritate Klyd and striving to be invisible.

He flung himself into a corner, still smarting and puzzling over Klyd’s tone, and ignored the conversation, which seemed mostly about taxes and funds and shifting them from one account to another. The Tecton, or association of Householdings in Nivet Territory, had its own bank, not trusting their money to junct financial systems. But he knew little of high finance, and listening to the talk just reminded him of his own lack of funds. He watched the field workers and tried not to think about his own crops. The sky looked like rain tonight, that was good, they could use it. Another few weeks and the corn would tassel, and the far hay field would be ready for cutting. Zeor’s hayfields, established for years, were ahead of his newly planted ones. He watched the Simes cut down the grass, Gens following behind to bundle it, working quickly to get it in before the rain. They moved through a field faster than locusts. It would take him days of backbreaking labor to get the next cutting of his hay in, even with Aisha helping.

He was deep in dark thoughts, holding the fields steady by rote, not a hard job considering how few people were in the room and how unlikely their fields were to irritate Klyd. He felt the Gen was low field, his selyn taken recently in donation. And the renSime was high field and a least a week from turnover. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew neither posed a particular challenge for him to manage. In fact, ever since his first Transfer, he’d come to measure every Sime by Klyd, and he realized none of them posed any particular threat to him, even when he was low field. He knew, somehow without knowing, he could easily handle any renSime, even if he had come to be attacked a day or two after Transfer, when he was at his lowest potential. The only Simes who really had the potential to hurt him were Channels, and that was a contradiction in terms, given Channels weren’t berserkers. He’d come to the realization that he had spent a lifetime being wary of Simes for no good reason. Klyd was right, he didn’t understand half of what he was experiencing. But he was thinking even Klyd didn’t know which half, when he heard his name mentioned.

“Then there’s Rajel, Jeffers and Corus,” Fioden was saying in his dry insect’s voice. “One Gen established, two new Simes. Coralyn and Stephan came in to disjunct, each bringing a pen Gen. One of the Gens was very sick. We thought for a while we’d lose him, but I’m told he’s over the crisis. But the fact is that we’d be Gen low again, except for Naztehr Hugh, and Rior’s contributions. This would be the third month we’d be Gen low. I’m concerned that it will look unusual to the juncts. We don’t generally go unbalanced more than a month, and our usual pattern is to err on being even, or slightly Gen high. We pay an additional premium in taxes for that extra Gen, and the local government will feel cheated if we keep them from collecting it for too long.”

“They know that, and might take the discrepancy as an excuse to go through all our books,” Ari added.

Klyd rose restively, Need making it hard for him to sit still. “I don’t want to give the juncts any more leverage with us than they already have. “I’ll pick up a pen Gen,” Klyd said, adding “after Transfer.”

“Well,” Fioden temporized. “There is the issue of Naztehr Hugh. He is here, every month and he does donate. If the juncts should inventory our selyn records and tax documents, they’d see we have two additional Gens donating who are not listed on our tax roles.”

“A serious violation of the law,” Aridor noted.

“Yes.” Fioden adjusted his glasses. “In my opinion, Naztehr Hugh and his wife should be listed. That would solve the problem. We would then be Gen High rather than the reverse, by one Gen which is more our usual practice, and our books would no longer be out of balance with our donations.”

“In my opinion,” Aridor added, “Naztehr Hugh and his wife should be back listed, and their taxes paid from their first donations. Then our records will be in balance again for when we are audited, and there can be no question of illegalities. I doubt there’ll be a fine, but if there are any questions, we can give them the story you gave the Householding, that Naztehr Hugh was seriously injured, unable to donate, and that we waited to list him until we were sure he wasn’t going to die.”

“What about Aisha?” Hugh asked, breaking into the conversation.

Fioden turned to him and shrugged, with a dismissive tentacle. “Her donation is easy to hide over a month or two. Donations at the General Class level are always slightly in flux.” He turned back to Klyd. “But Naztehr Hugh’s donation is impossible to list as anything other than a Companion level donation. We are fortunate that the juncts merely tax Companions at pen Gen rates. If they didn’t, a few more like Hugh and Denrau could bankrupt us.”

“We could argue Denny’s appetite does,” Aridor said, teeth gleaming in amusement.

“Yes, well,” Fioden temporized, brushing over this personal comment. “Shall we consider it settled, then, Sectuib?” I have the adjusted records here, for your approval.

“But I’m not a Zeor member. I’m Rior.” Valleroy interjected.

“Rior doesn’t exist to the juncts,” Klyd said, seating himself in a chair and studying the document Fioden passed. “It’s not in Nivet.”

“You have no Channels anyway, so any Gens you take in will have to donate to Zeor Channels,” Fioden pointed out. “And we will have to account for them on Zeor’s books.”

Valleroy looked from Fioden to Klyd. It hadn’t occurred to him that Zeor would be financially liable for any Rior Gens, and he disliked the whole idea. “Perhaps Aisha shouldn’t donate then--”

Fioden is right,” Klyd interrupted. “I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. We must list you and Aisha on Zeor’s Gen rolls. It will straighten out this accounting mess, and it will solve a number of other problems too. And don’t be ridiculous, Hugh. Of course Aisha must donate. Do you want to risk leaving her high field for any Raider to detect?”

Valleroy closed his mouth, and shook his head mutely.

“Well, that’s settled then.” Aridor said. “We won’t keep you, Sectuib. Give you a small chance to rest before your next shift.” Aridor nodded to the Channel and they ushered themselves out.

“Still, I don’t like the idea of my name being listed on some In-Territory government document,” Valleroy said uneasily.

“The name is only for Householding recordkeeping. The Juncts don’t look at it. They’ll issue Pen tags with their own numbering system. We keep all the tags in our records office. When the inspectors come, they just match head counts against recorded tags. They don’t match tag to Gen name or even tag to Gen. It’s all just numbers to them.”

“It’s still my name.”

“Hugh, to the junct government,” Klyd pointed out, with exaggerated patience, “no Gen even has a name. Gens are property only. The Householding practice of retaining names for established Gens is considered a decadent affectation which they ignore. When the Gen government taxes you, does it care what you name your cows or horses?”

Valleroy drew back, startled at that comparison from Zeor’s Sectuib, but Klyd continued on. “Your name is meaningless to them. They won’t be able to track you back to your Government through it. I haven’t even listed your last name, just Hugh ambrov Zeor. Anyway, Fioden is right. Zeor uses your selyn. The government is legitimately owed the price of your Gen taxes.”

“Legitimate!” Valleroy huffed. “Fancy calling the junct government legitimate. They’d Kill me as soon as look at me.”

“They couldn’t Kill you, Hugh,” Klyd said with ragged patience, resting his hands on the report. “I’m not sure there’s a Channel alive that could. But even if they could, once your taxes are paid, you’d be ours and protected under Zeor’s auspices.”

But Valleroy was shaking his head. The more he heard, the less he liked the idea. What was all his striving at Rior for, if he was just one more taxed Gen? It seemed a refutation of everything he was working toward. “No. I don’t think so. They aren’t owed anything in my view. And I won’t be listed as property on some junct tax docket.”

“You won’t what?” Klyd rose, astonished, Need making his control brittle. And testament that he was seldom challenged in his own house. “What do you mean, you won’t?” He collected himself and drew a deep breath. “What makes you think there’s a choice to be had over it? You’ve traveled among the juncts more than most Householding Gens, you understand the junct mentality. The minute you crossed the border onto Zeor’s lands -- and into Sime Territory -- you are nothing more than property. And if you are untaxed, you are illegal property.”

“To them or to you?” Hugh retorted. “I’m not arguing about Aisha. She apparently has to donate and needs to be listed.”

“Are you saying you don’t?” Klyd asked warily.

“You just said they couldn’t Kill me. Why should I cost Zeor the expense,” Valleroy argued, leaning forward earnestly, “only to line the pockets of the junct government? I don’t recognize their jurisdiction over me.”

Klyd relaxed fractionally. “Don’t be unreasonable. If you are untaxed, you’re essentially unclaimed. It’s far better for you to be listed as a Zeor Gen. For Zeor to pay your taxes and to have an established claim on you, than for there to be any sort of undue risk about your status.”

Hugh blew out a breath. “You can speak to me of undue risks? When you traveled outside of Zeor without a weapon or a guard after Aisha? Knowing the Runzi Raiders had all along been plotting against you? Is the Sectuib less important to Zeor than one untrained Companion?”

Klyd tensed, every tentacle licking out of its sheath. “We are not going to discuss my behavior.”

“No, because in your own mind, a Zeor Channel has to be brazenly proud. It’s an essential part of your mindset. But not a Zeor Companion. I’m expected to take every rule and restriction you throw at me--”

“Is that what this is about?” The channel wrinkled his brow. “Some out-Territory Gen machismo? Hugh, no one is denying you anything. This has nothing to do with you, personally.”

“It never does. Maybe that’s because you don’t really see me as a person, do you? That’s what all this boils down to. You see me only as a Gen.”

Klyd drew back, eyes dark, and Valleroy pressed the point. “I’m not supposed to be bothered by this attitude you have that it’s all right for Gens to be recorded property. You don’t even expect that I would be anything except to be properly grateful that you’re doing it because you deem I need it to be safe.”

“That’s enough, Naztehr,” Klyd snapped.

“Well, the world doesn’t revolve around you, Sectuib, and what you think and feel -- even if the rest of Zeor does.”

“I don’t think that it does.”

Valleroy swore, frustrated enough that the epithet slipped out in his own language. “You say you’ve never Killed, so it’s ridiculous that I should ever have been afraid of you. You say donating is safe, so that terrified girl this morning was just being foolishly Gen. You say I’ll be safer if you do this, so it doesn’t matter how I feel about being tallied up and paid for on Zeor’s rolls. You may be Sectuib in Zeor, but that doesn’t mean everyone feels as you feel, Klyd. Or that we think as you do. Or that everyone always has to do what you say. Your anxiety for safety is strangely one way when it comes to Zeor’s Donors and Companions!”

“This is a sensible precaution.” Klyd said, doggedly holding onto his temper. “And as Sectuib, I have every right to make decisions and follow necessary practices regarding the Gens in my Household. Of which you are one. ”

“No, I am not. I’m Rior.”

“You’ve pledged and you Serve,” Klyd reiterated. “That makes you mine.”

Hugh tensed at the blunt words. “I didn’t ask for Zeor’s protection for Serving you. And I don’t want you just automatically including – and ordering me – to abide by it. You told me I could Serve your Need without being a Zeor member! Don’t you remember?”

“Rior exists only in Gen Territory,” Klyd bit out each word as if explaining to an idiot. His tone made Valleroy’s teeth clench in turn. Sometimes it seemed their slightest conflicts seemed to feed off and fuel the other’s dissatisfaction in a spiraling maelstrom. “Here, when you are at Zeor, this is the way things are done, whether it offends your nature or not. And I do expect my own Companion to feel as I feel, to consider strongly how I feel, at least on issues of your safety.” Klyd looked at the Gen, but Valleroy seemed unmoved by that. “And in this you don’t --” Klyd said, fixing him with a meaningful look, weighting every word, “have any choice.”

Hugh half rose, squaring off against the Channel. “Don’t tell me that, Klyd.” His use of the Channel’s name, rather than the title, spoke volumes for him. “I haven’t done everything that I’ve done, and survived through all of it only to have you tell me I have no choices. ” He said the pronoun like an epithet.

Klyd stared at him, and swallowed hard, gauging his Donor’s sudden rebellion. He put the tax folder down and sat down himself. “All right,” he said heavily, as if he’d lost some major war. “You have a choice.”

Hugh dropped down to a seat too, rubbing his forehead, feeling his temples splitting with a migraine. “Why do you do this to me?”

“You wanted your choice,” Klyd said, not masking the sullenness in his voice, his gaze anywhere but at the Gen, his own hands clenched on nothing, tentacles drawn up tight in their sheaths. “Now take it.”

“Take it and what? I imagine it is that I either do what you tell me to do, take everything you throw at me, or get out,” Valleroy retorted.

Klyd turned and faced him. “Do you honestly think any Channel would want to drive away his Donor two days before a Transfer?” He was half pleading. “What can you be thinking, Hugh?”

Valleroy winced at that, having the grace to feel some shame, but still resentful. “You hold Transfer over my head like a Gen farmer holds a shotgun against a Sime.”

“Except that I’m the one who is in Need,” Klyd pointed out tersely.

“Klyd, Need isn’t an excuse for everything,” Valleroy said, equally doggedly. “I’m tired of you bludgeoning me with it every time you want your way. I won’t let you use that to force me into doing what you want.”

“Maybe if you saw me once in a while when I was pre-Turnover, instead of in or close to hard Need, it wouldn’t always be an issue,” Klyd said nastily.

“Let’s not get into that issue again,” Valleroy retorted.

“There are times when being the thought of going junct is more of a temptation than others,” Klyd said, returning the frustration. “At least Pen Gens don’t give juncts this incessant arguing before a Kill.”

The blunt reference to the Kill made Valleroy take off the gloves in turn. “And I have it on good authority that the only good Sime is a dead Sime,” Hugh countered, not at all cowed.

Klyd didn’t say anything for a minute, his mouth momentarily tightening at those words. Then he picked up the folder and tapped the edge, straightening the papers in it, his hands and tentacles trembling a fraction. “You’re not being sensible, Hugh. We can’t remake the world in a day.”

Valleroy stared at the trembling, a telltale sign of hard Need and distress, knowing he should back down, but his eyes were sober. His tone, when he spoke, was very reasonable. “Klyd, please, listen to me. I don’t want to fight with you. Every one of your practices seems to come with strings attached, that I learn about only after the fact. I am being sensible, wanting to put a limit on them before I know what I’m getting into. You have a habit, a bad habit, Klyd, of telling me only a little, and then afterwards, letting me in on all the rest, and then getting upset with me when I don’t go along with all of it. If you were thinking sensibly and not in Need, you’d realize that we’re not on a mission anymore. We have time to think things through.” Some ire finally crept into his voice. “And as for remaking the world, I’m not sure you want to remake it at all, at the pace you’re going.”

Klyd slammed the folder down, his face hardening, as his temper, usually rigidly controlled, short-circuited. “You have yet to harvest Rior’s first crops, and you’re suddenly an expert on social change? A few months ago you were just another scared Gen, terrified of all Simes, ignorant of Channels. You think in this short space of time you can know better than I what Householdings need to do, and have been doing for hundreds of years, to survive in a junct society?”

“And if you continue to do it for hundreds of more, where is the change?”

Klyd reached out and grabbed his hand, reinforcing the capture with handling tentacles, the papers in the folder sliding across the table. “You, yourself, are change! You stand here, arguing with me, and claim there is no change?”

Valleroy tried to turn away, and found he couldn’t. Didn’t want to. “I just can’t… Klyd, it’s my name.”

The Channel shook his head, mystified, but calmed down as Hugh didn’t resist the confining grip. He loosened it, holding both Gen hands gently, but not letting go. “I don’t understand. We can put a different name on the tax document if that makes you feel better. The Juncts don’t care. Why do you care what they think?”

“I don’t see how that makes a difference. If it’s me you’re listing. And what I care about is what you think. What does it say about Rior if I’m listed as part of Zeor? Is everything I’m trying so hard to accomplish just a sham to you? Did you never really accept any of it?”

“Hugh, believe me. This is necessary. I should have realized it myself, but Fiorden is right. The juncts love to hit us with surprise inspections. If one should happen when you are here at Zeor, and our paperwork wasn’t in order, the fine would be higher than your taxes. And they could conceivably confiscate any discrepancy. I won’t risk any Gen of mine being confiscated.”

“Any Gen of yours?” He looked down at Klyd’s tentacles, still locked tight around his wrist. “Klyd, I’m not an In-Territory Gen. Don’t think of me as property. I don’t take that well. I never took it well when I was here on the mission, but I put up with it for the sake of the mission and Aisha. I put up with it, Klyd; I never accepted it. But I don’t have to put up with it now. And I won’t.”

Klyd’s tentacles tightened, almost involuntarily, then he loosened them deliberately. But his voice was hard. “By junct law you are my property. You’re on my land. That makes you mine.”

Valleroy stared at him, not sure what he was hearing.

“But if it came to that, what makes you think they’d take you?” Klyd released his hands with a scornful laugh, a gesture sheer bravado given his state of Need and turmoil. “A few months ago, before you qualified they would have. You’d have been perfect. But you’ve been ruined for the Kill now. They’d take someone who’d make a better Choice Kill than a high order Companion like you. Some barely established child who’d panic at the first lateral contact, like that young girl we just took a donation from. Can you imagine how she’d react to a junct inspection? She’d be terrified at even the sight of them.” Klyd frowned at him. “Think about it, Hugh. If they hit us with an inspection and your donations caused our records to be off, she’d end up as someone’s Choice Kill. But you wouldn’t be touched. Can you live with that on your conscience? I can’t.”

Valleroy said nothing, his resistance gone, sick at the thought.

Klyd sighed and crossed to Hugh around the desk, taking his other hand while the Gen stood mutely. “That’s why we must do this. Even if you hate the laws, these are my members, Hugh. I’m responsible for them. That includes my following the rules the junct government requires so that I can kept them safe. I’m responsible to them and to you in that regard. I swore an oath to them when I became their Sectuib. I don’t always like the laws either. But I have to live under them too. And if you are going to be a part of Zeor, so do you.”

Hugh looked down at their joined hands. “You’ve always told me Gens are responsible for keeping themselves safe.”

Klyd dropped his hands, frustrated and impatient. “Why do you always twist what I tell you? That’s in Transfer situations.”

“Isn’t life just one big Transfer situation?” Hugh asked, but the question was rhetorical. The thought of any Gen at Zeor being confiscated as a Choice Kill, the thought of any more death coming to Zeor because of him had knocked the fight right out of him.

In spite of himself, Klyd laughed, shaking his head in ragged amusement. Perhaps in a bit of relief, sensing the turn in his Companion’s emotions. “That’s a peculiarly Gen point of view. Having you around is frustrating, Hugh. But educational.” He looked at Valleroy anew, zlinning that Valleroy had become resigned, and said, more gently. “I am sorry, Naztehr. But I am sending in the papers, for you and Aisha both. I don’t have any choice. And neither do you. I don’t think you’re going to storm out of Zeor over it either. So you might as well stop arguing and reconcile yourself to reality.” But he watched Valleroy closely.

Hugh blew out a breath, frustrated. “Just don’t take me for granted, Klyd. I don’t like it.”

“Believe me, I don’t.” Klyd said quietly. “And you wouldn’t let me if I did.”

Valleroy met his eyes, not missing the tacit reproof. “I suppose I upset you, and violated every possible canon of Companion behavior too. With you just a day or so away from Need.”

“Just about. Yes.”

Valleroy considered that. Klyd’s detached tone probably hid a world of hurt. “I guess I’m sorry, too.”

“You guess?” Klyd asked.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you when you were in Need,” Valleroy said, in genuine apology. “I never mean to hurt you at all. Next time, if something like this comes up, I’ll ask you to postpone the discussion and the decision until after a Transfer.”

“So you think it’s appropriate to hurt me when I’m not in Need?” Klyd asked, still with that odd remote gentleness. “Is that your idea of Companion-like behavior?”

Valleroy looked at him, frowning. “Are you saying that we can never disagree? That we can never discuss anything, even when it directly concerns me? That there’s no time when such a discussion is reasonable, and I should just automatically do what you tell me to do, accept what you dictate, and never question you?”

“If I am your Sectuib I’d expect your loyalty. And your obedience.”

Valleroy blew out a frustrated breath. “Klyd, you know I can’t do that.”

“Not yet. You’re still learning. Maybe in about six months.”

“Are you being funny?”

“Not very successfully, I suspect.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I know.” He sighed softly. “Hugh, we can certainly discuss things. I just wish you wouldn’t get so emotional about them. That’s what hurts me. But all of this will get easier. For both of us. For now, you are hurting me. You really must learn to try to accept my lead. At least until you’re better trained and know when and how far to take this sort of thing.”

“And when will that be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me a guess.”

“Hugh, I can’t guess,” Klyd said impatiently, as if Valleroy were asking him to perform magic.

“You must have some idea, some feeling from training prior Companions.”

“I don’t, actually,” Klyd said, an edge creeping into his voice. “Your situation is unique. I haven’t exactly ever trained an Out-Territory Gen as my personal Companion. And no Companion I know would ever think to challenge me the way you are doing. The way you consistently, constantly do. I have had no experience with it. And I wish I didn’t have any experience with it now.”

Valleroy bristled at the chill criticism in his tone. “So I’m supposed to do what you tell me to do, blindly, for some undetermined amount of time, until you say it’s all right to question you?”

“Hugh, if I’m your Sectuib, you shouldn’t be questioning my authority.”

“I thought the idea, in my starting Rior, was that I had my own authority. And as for judgment, simply because you inherited Zeor, Klyd, that doesn’t make you omniscient.”

“I never said that I was. I didn’t say you couldn’t question a proposed course of action, in the right circumstances. But if I am your Sectuib, you should accept my authority as a given, whether you agree with me or not.”

“You mean, you get to decide when I can question you and when I can’t,” Hugh said, appalled at the thought.

“If I am your Sectuib, then once I have made a decision, you are oath bound to respect it. And to obey me. I do expect that. And as a Companion you have to learn when to raise issues and when not to challenge me in Need. That’s certainly not a very safe thing for a Companion to do.”

Valleroy sighed. “Klyd, I wonder how often the Simes and Gens in your Householding go along with these rules because in this culture, a Householding Sectuib’s authority is a given. Unless the Simes want to go among juncts and kill, they have no alternative. The Gens have no alternatives at all. But I have alternatives.”

“You keep trying to apply out-Territory standards to In-Territory situations,” Klyd said crossly. “I wish you would stop that behavior.”

“I can’t just ignore reality.”

“You could try a little harder to assimilate your new reality. You’re a Companion of my House, not the Gen equivalent of a Freeband Raider, coming and going where you will. It’s past time you started assimilating your training and started behaving like a First Companion.”

“If it means giving up my freedom, I don’t think I can.”

“Who told you that you had to -- Hugh, you always take things to extremes. I wish you would stop that too.”

“This is extreme for me.”

“Well, stop fighting and learn to accept it. At times, you behave more like a wild Gen than a Companion. Zeor ought to be a better influence on you.”

“Well, perhaps after I’ve been on it’s rolls for awhile, it will,” Valleroy retorted. “And I am a wild Gen, if it means I feel I have some autonomy over my actions and state of mind.”

“Well, you won’t be once I finish this paperwork. Then you’ll be part of Zeor, at least on paper. So you might as well start learning to behave like a Zeor Gen. Now, since you have acknowledged the necessity,” Klyd’s tone make it clear as to what view he’d taken of that, “be quiet and let me do it.”

Hugh flung himself in a chair and stared out Klyd’s office window as Klyd finished the paperwork. “What else is new?” he asked, frustrated as he watched himself added to Zeor’s tax rolls.

“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” Klyd commented, closing that folder and opening another, calmer now that the deed was done. “After all, I’m the one who has to actually pay your taxes. And Ari is right, it’s fortunate that juncts don’t understand Companions well enough to tax you by your selyn yield. Based on that criteria, you’re worth more than the price of a dozen pen Gens. Of a dozen Choice Kills, really.”

Hugh winced. “If that’s supposed to be funny, it’s not.”

“You are just overly sensitive on the subject.”

“I don’t like the idea of being owned.”

“Even by me?” Klyd gave him a quirky grin, trying to tease him into a smile.

Hugh glared at Klyd, unwilling to be drawn out of his unease. “Don’t press your luck, Sectuib.”

“You needn’t be so touchy,” Klyd said mildly. “I only own you legally. I certainly don’t think of any Gen in my house as my property. Not even my personal Companion.”

Hugh didn’t argue his own sense that Klyd had little notion of how his culture colored his attitudes. “That’s small consolation. You don’t have to rub my nose in it. This means more than just a statement on paper to me, and I don’t like it, no matter what spin you put on it. And I think, no matter what you say, it’s more than that to you, too.” When Klyd frowned at this slur against him, the sensitive mouth tightening, he capitulated and steered the conversation onto less sensitive matters. “I don’t like the idea of the expense, either. How much is that going to set you back a month?”

Klyd glanced at him, then allowed the change of subject. “Don’t worry about it. Zeor can easily afford it,” he said absently, his eyes and other senses still evaluating Hugh.

“How can I not?” Valleroy rubbed his forehead, his temples aching at the thought of more debt. “It’s one more thing I’ve cost you, one more thing I take from Zeor that I can’t repay.” He didn’t say how guilt over Yenava still haunted him. “What you can afford and what I can afford are two different things.”

“Aisha donates, and you Serve me,” Klyd shrugged. “Your service alone more than pays both your tax bills.”

“The Gens here also work for their keep,” Valleroy pointed out darkly.

“You work.”

Hugh didn’t dignify that with a reply, knowing full well his own inadequacies. Sometimes they seemed to choke him. He thought longingly of Rior’s wide weed-choked fields, and of plowing them clean. It was hard work, but it was also a welcome release from what he’d come to regard as these eternal conflicts. At times like this, Klyd’s prosaic, well ordered office felt like a prison.

Klyd looked up and glanced over at him, frowning. “Stop sulking. That’s undignified behavior for a Companion. Besides being uncomfortable for me.”

“Denrau told me a Companion should be Companionable,” Hugh replied, only half sarcastically, feeling no closer to shedding his angry mood. Sulking was not what he was doing, but he understood why Klyd was choosing to make light of his dark mood. He wasn’t sure he felt capable of playing along with the tacit deception, though.

Klyd chuckled. “That sounds like Denny. And he was so right, Naztehr.”

“And I suppose I’m not. Companionable, that is. I already know I’m never right.” He still felt half spoiling for a fight.

“You can be, when you try,” Klyd said, his attention more than half on his paperwork. “Companionable, that is.” He looked up, across at Hugh, and smiled mischievously. “Come on, Hugh. Consider good behavior partial payment for your tax bill, if that makes it easier for you.”

Valleroy gave him a sharp look of shock, then glared. “That’s not funny.”

Klyd shrugged, dismissing his attitude, and obviously tiring of the need to coax his Companion out of his black mood. “Well, perhaps we’ll both find each other more amusing after Transfer. But for the time being, practice a little self-discipline.”

Hugh clenched his teeth at the imperious tone of what had been couched as a definite order, but did his best to present a neutral supportive field, concentrating on settling and ordering his own systems and Klyd’s. “Yes, Sectuib.”

“That’s better.” Klyd said absently, and went back to work. Valleroy watched him for a few minutes, the fight slowly going out of him as they both worked on their respective tasks, and finally he asked, “Is there something there I can help with?”

“I’ll just be a few more minutes.” Klyd gave him a curious look and said, “You are helping, Hugh. Supportive fieldwork is part of your job. You do it very well, when you put your mind to it. You just need to focus and concentrate on the effort.”

“It doesn’t seem like much,” Valleroy said doubtfully. “And all I’m doing is sitting here. I could help with something while I manage fields.”

“Maybe later. Some Companions never learn it at the level you can provide naturally, and good as you are at it when you try, you need to concentrate more. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t think. Or at least not of something upsetting to you. Don’t talk.”

“Klyd—“ Valleroy warned.

The Channel grinned. “I only meant you should rest a little yourself. We do have a dispensary shift coming up, and I’ll want you fresh for that.”

Valleroy sighed at that, and flinging himself back in a corner, watched the field workers while Klyd went through more paperwork on his desk. But he couldn’t seem to stop his mind from racing. “How in the world did Aridor get legal training here in Nivet?”

“He didn’t,” Klyd said absently. “He’s from Out-Territory, like you.”

Valleroy straightened. “He is? How did he come here? When? From where?”

Klyd looked up, thinking back. “I bought him at auction, of course. Oh, ten years or so ago.”

“You bought him?”

“Um-hmmm. At Iburin, as a matter of fact. How else would I come by an out-Territory Gen?”

“I thought you usually rescued Pen Gens when you were Gen-low?”

“Now and then we do buy a Choice Kill at Auction,” Klyd commented. “Likely farm hands, when we can get them. They sometimes have useful notions of crops our Gens would like to eat and the best ways to grow them. So we pick one up when we can.”

Valleroy made a face. “Human draft horses?” It was an echo of a taunt he had once thrown at Klyd. Would he never stop wondering at the Channel’s motives? But Klyd didn’t rise to the aspersion, barely looking up from his work.

“Come on, Hugh. You know better than that. Zeor hardly needs to buy Gens from Auctions and certainly not for mere manual labor. Simes are much better at physical work. When we are Gen-low, and we occasionally are, given more of our children changeover than establish, Zeor’s mission is to save Pen Gens. We pride ourselves on that.”

“So most of the Gens in your house started off even more helpless than out-Territory Gens,” Hugh pointed out.

“That’s not very tactful to say of your fellow Gens,” the Channel said disapprovingly.

“You’re the one that told me they weren’t my people, Klyd.”

“They are once they’re ours,” Klyd answered.

“That’s convenient.”

“Don’t be rude. Anyway, Zeor is old. We have many multi-generational born and bred Householding Gens. They’re hardly helpless.”

Hugh bit his tongue and refusing to be drawn into that argument again, said, “So, how did you come to get Aridor? Did you want Gen legal skills?”

“No. We wouldn’t go think to go looking for them at an auction, even if we did. Do you imagine a Choice Auction is some sort of trade fair? That they give us an educational and employment background of each Choice Kill?” Klyd’s question came with a sort of arch amusement. But he shrugged. “We trade among Householdings when we need a particular skill set not at Zeor, whether Gen or Sime. We rescue Pen Gens, as a rule, if we are Gen-low. If we actually buy a Choice Gen, we try for skills we can only get from an out-Territory Gen, but as I said, we’re usually interested in farmers. Gens eat on both sides of the border, after all. And it’s something of a fad among Householding Gens to try exotic foods that the Wild Gens Out-Territory eat.”

He gritted his teeth. He could see Klyd’s point. He couldn’t fault the logic of it. But he could wish Klyd were a little more tactful about now he expressed it. “So how did you happen to need those particular skills at the time?”

Klyd leaned back. “We didn’t, actually. My father took me to the auction as part of my Sectuib’s training. He felt that I needed to see an auction, zlin the junct mentality and understand how to bid and buy Gens if I should need to. That was the first auction at which I ever purchased a Gen. I think I did rather well.”

“Well don’t pat yourself on the back too much,” Valleroy retorted caustically, thinking it was a lot harder for the auctioned Gens than the prospective buyers.

Klyd laughed. “My father said pretty much the same thing. Ari wasn’t prime stock, the sort juncts usually buy when they go looking for Choice Gens. But for some reason he was in with the rest. He was supposed to be sold as a Choice Kill, and he looked like one, but the problem was, he was the analytical type and didn’t zlin like one. The auctioneer tried to pass him off, but of course juncts in Need could zlin the difference.”

“He wasn’t scared?” Valleroy thought of the huge Gen. “I guess maybe he felt he could take on any Sime.”

“He was scared,” Klyd said, giving him a level look. “What Gen wouldn’t be in such a situation? But he didn’t have that raw terror that marks a real Choice Kill. It was more a rational reaction to his horrible circumstances. It certainly wasn’t the most satisfying kind of fear, at least not to a junct paying top price for a Choice Kill. So apparently no one had bid his reserve auction price. He’d been put into the breeder auction then. Pen males don’t necessarily make good breeders, and sometimes the big Gen-Farms look for some out-Territory blood to strengthen their stock. But he didn’t make his reserve there either because he was considered too big. Most Gen Farmers,” Klyd added confidentially, “don’t like big Gens.”

“Why not? Isn’t it like with any animal, the bigger the better?” Valleroy didn’t mask his disgust.

“Not necessarily. Their breeders can have trouble bearing huge babies. And they get the same amount of babies from normal sized breeders as from large ones. Smaller Gens cost less to feed and there’s no relation between size and selyn production. So Ari wasn’t an ideal breeder Gen either, and he’d been around the lot a bit longer than most. That should have frightened him even more, but he’d become almost numb from it all. And that dropped his reserve price further.”

“What happened?”

“We arrived at the tail end of one auction lot, and before the next. I went around after the auction, just to zlin the leftovers from the prior auction, and to examine the upcoming lots. Figure out what was available, what hadn’t sold, what might be reasonable. Ari struck me as being a good buy.” Klyd was deep into his story, not noticing Valleroy was studying him as much as listening to the story. “He wasn’t exuding raw terror, and I saw that he was watching me, so I went over to speak to him. He wasn’t too terrified to talk with me when I addressed him in English. He was frightened of me, of course, and he didn’t believe I would or could really rescue him. Like you, he’d never heard of Householdings, and thought of all Simes as killers. But his intelligence and education helped him overcome his fear enough to speak to me, and tell me something of himself. The Auction operators refuse to speak English to the Choice Kills, even though they’ve picked up a few words. And while the captives can talk to each other, Ari couldn’t believe a Sime was willing to speak to him. And he was a little desperate to communicate. It’s not unheard of, with intelligent Gens at auction, that they try and work their way out of their captivity, one way or another. And as Ari tells the story now, he’s a lawyer, so of course he tried to talk! He was frightened, but listened to me.” Klyd gave him a narrow look. “That’s something you occasionally have problems doing.”

“I’m not being sold as a Choice Kill.”

“True enough. Perhaps it would improve your temperament.”

“Klyd—“

The Channel laughed and continued. “That’s always a good first sign for a Householding recruit, that their will can overcome their fear. And if you remember, it was one of the traits that attracted me to you, the first night we met. It’s not always the case, as you know from that girl this morning. I really thought Ari was the best of all the lots as a potential Zeor member.”

“Why didn’t you make him a Companion then?” Valleroy said, feeling an odd niggle of jealousy.

“He didn’t have a Companion’s field. I’ve told you before, that’s rare, Hugh.”

“What about the other Gens there?”

“There weren’t any that would be obvious Companion material, not that we’d ever expect to find such a thing at auction. You know by now a Companion’s field synchs in sympathy to a Sime’s Need. That emotion isn’t exactly flowing at a Choice Kill Auction. But we’re getting off the subject. Because of all his faults, Ari was going cheap. In fact, the auctioneer was delighted to palm off what he considered a worthless creature on naïve Householders.”

“So you bought him.”

Klyd nodded. “Didn’t even have to pay auction fees. My father wasn’t exactly thrilled. He thought some nice young field stock would have been better than a middle-aged Gen with an esoteric out-Territory law education. But he’d already made it clear we couldn’t bring the entire auction stock home to Zeor, that I could only pick one. So I bought him, for a good price too, and home to Zeor he came. End of story.”

“Did he only let you pick one puppy out of a litter too?”

Klyd’s look softened. “I suppose it sounds callous to you, but it was far otherwise. When I look back now, I think how glad I am that I chose Ari. But it was a terrible experience, really, to see all those Gens and know they were destined to be slaughtered. That was part of my learning experience too. Zeor can’t save them all. We can hardly save any, really. It was very hard, coming home with just Aridor. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards. I’ve never cared much for buying Gens at auction, frankly.” He shrugged. “Can you blame me for not wanting to thrash myself, a dozen years later, with the bad aspects of that memory? Every Zeor Sectuib has to learn to deal with the knowledge that we can only save a fraction of your people. It isn’t easy to go among them.”

“I know you aren’t. That you have to armor yourself, surrounded as you are. But –“

“What?”

“Sometimes it almost seems like you’re baiting me.”

Klyd didn’t answer for a minute, then he got up and looked out one of the windows that overlooked Valzor. “When my father took me to the auction, I was reluctant to go, at first. Rescuing a Pen Gen is one thing. But going to an auction where your people are in chains, Wild Gens but still as self-aware as the Gens in my Householding, to bid on them while surrounded by juncts who plan to kill then, well that was very hard for me. I didn’t want to do it. But I had to.”

Valleroy said nothing. As a Companion, it was his job to empathize with Klyd’s pain, but he was thinking unkindly that it was harder for the Gens and his sympathy was with them. Klyd threw him a searching look, as if reading that thought, but continued. “As a future Sectuib, I had to learn to function in that society, to go among juncts and not be crippled with anger and hatred, just as I had to learn to be able to function, to take donations and heal, in spite of Sime Need or Gen pain.” He turned to Hugh pointedly. “As my Companion, you need to learn that too.”

Valleroy shook his head slowly. “Not hate the people who think I am an animal worth nothing but Killing? I don’t think I can. Oh the juncts who don’t know any better, that’s different. But your Government does know that the Gen government is out there, and that the Householdings exist and could form an alliance. They know about Zelerod’s Doom too, and yet they do nothing. I can’t forgive that.”

Klyd sighed and sat down wearily. “Hugh, you can’t function and protect me, if you are consumed by personal hate. You have to learn to become inured to these feelings, so that we can both function.”

“Inured?!”

“You become angry and resentful of me, because I don’t share your feelings. I understand you resent the junct lifestyle and junct laws, but if you are serving as my Companion, you do need to get past the worst of those feelings. Perhaps I do bait you, as you call it, with unpleasant facts, just as my father had to take me among juncts.”

“I’ll can’t stop resenting that lifestyle. And I think you should feel the same.”

“Hugh, if you’re going to Serve as my Companion, I’ll be looking to you, expecting your nager will provide protection and solace when I go among juncts. Instead, you have consistently failed to provide that. You not only become wrapped up in your own anger and hatred, becoming another point of irritation, but then you become frustrated, even angry at me for not feeling as you do. But it’s not my job to agree with and support you in your negative emotions. Rather it is your sworn duty to support me. No matter what I do, or say, or whether you agree with me or not. A Channel has very few defenses against his Companion, and when you are angry at me, you not only fail to do your job, but you hurt me. All of which keeps me from doing mine. And then how can Zeor be a force of change, when Zeor’s own Companions cripple their Sectuib? If you are going to Serve as my Companion, you have to learn to not personally react or be affected by these things, and instead to put your efforts into providing a consistent support for me, no matter what I do or don’t do, and regardless whether you agree with me or not. Even if I’m making an alliance or supporting with taxes the junct government that you hate. That is your profession.”

Valleroy lowered his eyes. He saw the sense of it, but he couldn’t accept it. “You’re saying I’m not supposed to have an opinion, or any feelings?”

“I didn’t say that. Not exactly. Naturally you have feelings. A Companion’s sensitivity and empathy are very highly prized. You couldn’t Serve without them. But when you are working, you are supposed to use that sensitivity and empathy to protect your Channel. To focus your attentions and your empathy in that direction. Not to react personally to the outside issues that I might be confronting. A First Companion can be a trusted advisor to his Sectuib. When that Sectuib asks for that advice. But when you are functioning as a Companion, your support must be invariable no matter what I do or say. And as your behavior in that regard is far from that ideal, you have to learn it and practice it until it is unvarying. If I bait you now, as you say, it is to give you opportunities, in restricted settings, to master that necessary skill. You may not like it. I wouldn’t expect you to like it. But I do expect you to learn it. And learn it well, Hugh.”

Valleroy raised his head to stare into Klyd’s eyes, hearing the tacit warning in Klyd’s last words, his emotions in a churn.

Klyd eyed him, then sighed, and dropped the subject, giving Valleroy time to consider what he’d said. “As for Ari, it turns out he has actually been invaluable to Zeor. Having a source who’s familiar with Gen law has been surprisingly useful to Zeor and the Tecton. We’ve even done some work for the Nivet government. Ari took over our legal staff a few years ago, when our chief Counselor died. He can’t try cases of course. He can’t even testify in court, since Gens have no legal status in Nivet other than property. But he trains our young staff, and he brings in as much some months consulting for the Nivet government than we sometimes make in the mills. Border treaties, free passage zones, that sort of thing. There’s more of that every year. And he’s the only in-Territory Gen-trained law consultant there is. He keeps complaining he wants me to buy him a few more out-Territory lawyers,” Klyd laughed, “but fortunately or unfortunately, no more have crossed our path.”

“Why doesn’t the Nivet government just raid a few?” Valleroy asked, still feeling at sea. “And set up their own Gen law counselors?”

Klyd looked at him curiously. “The raiding wouldn’t be a problem, if they knew where to find them. But afterwards? Do you think junct Simes could work with Gens? Or the reverse? It’s not easy even for rescued out-Territory Gens, saved from being Choice Kills, to work with Householders. And even if the Gens could, do you think the juncts could teach them to speak and read and write our language? Openly admit that Gens are intelligent? Consult with them as equals? All of that is heresy to the present government. They have no rehabilitation or emotional support system, no educational programs for rescued Gens, no experience in reeducating them as Householdings do. They leave that for us perverts.”

Valleroy shrugged. “I suppose you are right.”

Klyd sighed. “We’ve gotten back to discussing unpleasant subjects. Something you should not be introducing when I am this close to Need. You do have a job to do, Naztehr, and I do expect you to do it.” Klyd’s voice had grown cool and imperious, a Sectuib’s tone. “So try again, and this time practice some discipline.”

Valleroy winced but said nothing. Under Klyd’s unyielding gaze he managed to wall off his emotions and somehow mold his fields into the kind of automatic support he knew Klyd expected. It was much harder to do it on command than by feeling it naturally. It wasn’t the effortless synching he could do when he and Klyd were emotionally attuned. But he discovered he could sustain that state by conscious will. It was tiring, but once he knew he could do it, his own bravado made him pour his energies into it. The Channel flicked a tentacle, and without a word, returned to his own work.

Chapter 4

Professional Confidences

Hugh held his peace as best he could for the rest of the day. But that evening, after hearing young Zinter snap at Denrau to attend him, using the same coolly imperious tone to the Companion who was five years his senior, Valleroy peace broke. Even though it wasn’t Klyd’s order to him, perhaps because of that, he suddenly found the practice intolerable. He groused about it to Zeor’s First Companion they were taking a “Sime free” trin break, the two Channels being otherwise occupied. The long day, filled with one culture shock after another, had frayed his temper, he let loose his full frustration, with at least the safety of knowing he could do that with Denrau as he never could with Klyd. But Denrau had sat back in his chair, eyes wide with astonishment, studying him as if he’d grown two heads.

“Hugh, what can you be thinking? Zinter’s not like that at all. He’s a nice kid, with as gentle a temperament, for a Channel,” Denrau temporized, “as a Companion could want.”

“I know what I hear.” Valleroy put his cup down sharply enough that his tea spilled and a renSime two tables distant frowned at the disturbance in the ambient and moved a few tables away. “And what I see.”

“Well, listen again,” Denrau admonished mildly, “and this time, pay attention and understand what you’re seeing and hearing.”

“And what’s that?”

Denrau ran a hand through his hair, as if wondering where to begin. Then, eyeing Valleroy, he took a breath and said slowly. “For one thing, you will never, ever, catch a Channel, or any Sime for that matter, approach any Companion when he easily avoid it. Or when he’s upset. Even a Companion. Especially a Companion. He’ll always call the Companion to come to him. Naturally, this close to Need, the tone may be a little terse,” he shrugged that off as inconsequential.

Valleroy looked at him, envying Denrau’s born and bred understanding of his role. Denrau always seemed so self-assured. Valleroy never saw him ruffled when Klyd called him in for the difficult cases, cases that Klyd knew Valleroy was too inexperienced to handle. And even when Klyd showed his Need-shortened temper, Denrau took the worst of Klyd’s sharp tongue with no more than sympathy and compassion in response. He had all of his Sectuib’s pride and self-confidence with none of Klyd’s Sime temperament. And he walked the halls of Zeor with all the calm self assurance of a prince. Which made the reality of the circumstances even more puzzling to Valleroy. He didn’t understand how Denrau could keep that self-assured pride with first Klyd, and now Zinter, snapping at him as if he were as green as Valleroy. He couldn’t connect the emotions at all. Pride and self-assurance were one thing. Keeping that state while knuckling under and being lorded over and ordered about by Klyd’s sharp tongue, and then by an adolescent like Zinter was quite another. Valleroy tried again, vainly, to express his confusion and discomfort. “But that’s --”

“Wise,” Denrau insisted. “Within every Sime is still a deadly predator, with a predator’s instincts. The Channel most of all, because he feels full Need every month, and unlike a non-junct renSime, satisfies his Need with a Gen. A Channel is more dangerous, his Need is greater than a renSime. His Need is directed to a Gen and not to Channels’ Transfer, as a renSime’s is. So no Channel will ever risk pursuing any Donor, if he can help it. No matter how controlled the Channel, no matter how well trained the Companion, no matter how prosaic the situation, a Channel, in Need or out of it, prefers never to put himself in any situation where he even remotely stalks any Gen in any way. Even his own Companion. Sometimes especially his Companion. So a Channel will always call that Companion to him. And a Companion always, always responds, Hugh. Calmly, smoothly, and willingly, no matter what you have to drop to do it. Because you never, and I do mean never, want to put a Channel in a position of breaking his own conditioning by coming after you. That’s just the reality of Sime/Gen relations.”

Hugh was rubbing his forehead, stretching his mind around another new concept. “Now, I understand it, when you put it that way. It makes perfect sense. But I can’t help how I feel when I hear it, and see it, day after day. It still seems well –“ he hesitated over saying how he really found it and substituted, “rude.”

Denrau laughed in genuine amusement. “It is absolutely good Householding manners. Expecting anything else is rude. Being a high order Donor makes it even more essential. Even though we could easily over-control the lower order or inexperienced Channels if they snapped, it would be devastating to the Channel. It could ruin one. And a high order Channel, if provoked, or not handled properly, can be truly dangerous. Hugh, respecting each others strengths and weaknesses is what allows us to live together as equals. Putting a Sime in an uncomfortable position that might cause him to lose even a little control is bad manners. It’s cruel. And it’s hurtful, both to the Sime and to our aims of mutual cooperation.”

Valleroy shook his head. “I understand some of what you’re saying. The ideals sounds wonderful. But what I see is Simes giving all the orders and Gens obeying.” His discomfort with that reality came out in full fledged resentment. He looked up at Denrau as if the Gen’s own calm acceptance could be Transferred as easily as selyn.

Denrau shrugged, dismissing that issue. “A Companion can give orders to a Channel. Naturally. He’s the only one who can, besides Sectuib, if the Channel isn’t Sectuib himself. And if he is Sectuib a First Companion is the only one who can over-rule him. Sometimes it’s even necessary for him to do so. But when a Channel has reached that state, he’s usually lost control himself.” Denrau gave him a meaningful look. “And it’s almost always the Companion’s fault for letting him get into that state. It’s certainly no good situation when a Companion has to overrule a Channel. It’s nothing to seek, and nothing no competent Companion would ever allow to happen if he can help it. As for Sectuib’s orders to you, well that’s really mostly your fault.”

Hugh opened his mouth, but Denrau forestalled him.

“Just as it was my fault, that Zinter had to call attention to my duties to me. You should be paying enough attention to Klyd that he shouldn’t need to call you as much as he does. I know you’re still learning Klyd’s ways, much as I need to become more familiar with Zinter’s. It’s not my place to instruct you--” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve probably said too much already.”

“No, Denrau, don’t. I want to know.” Hugh gestured at the refectory around them, the mixture of Simes and Gens together. “I’m here to learn after all. And I don’t know whether Klyd just expects me to understand all this without being told, or if he just doesn’t want to tell me.”

Denrau pulled a face at that, but tactfully didn’t comment on the allegation against his Sectuib. “Companions bend, Hugh. Not because Channels can’t, but because Companions are better able to take the risks. If a Channel should break, it could be disastrous. A Companion yields out of strength, not weakness. Companion’s service is an honor. And a great responsibility to the House. Companions are not subservient.”

“I can understand that, intellectually.” Hugh said. “I know you don’t take it that way,” he added, “But the reality is that an absolute expectation of obedience is hard to take. And the ‘no matter what you have to drop to do it’ is also not very realistic.”

Denrau shrugged. “Being a high order Channel’s Companion is not normally considered a part-time job. Unlike lesser Companions, there just aren’t as many of us. It’s simple numbers. We can’t trade off shifts as easily as the lower order Companions do. And the higher order Channels are more sensitive to changes and find it that much harder to work with different Companions. So it is ‘realistic’ for our situation. We’re almost always on duty, one way or another. We do have a few days off after Transfer, when our Channels are post and we’re at our lowest field gradient. Their high secondary systems give our Channels an extra measure of stability at that time, and they don’t need us as much post Transfer. Any reasonably competent Companion can sub for us then. That’s when most Channels take the opportunity to work with the lower order Companions, and bring them up in potential. And then we get some time off. Usually we’re both happy to have a break from each other, for those few days. But after that -“ Denrau sketched a headshake. “A Companion Serves.”

Hugh stared at him, even more puzzled and confused to hear what so clearly appeared as caste-like behavior described in work shifts and Need cycles. The appearance was misleading. But his feelings about it didn’t fade as easily as the misconception.

“And as for the rest, well, you’re old for Companion’s training. Most Gens establish at fourteen or so. Stamina is hardest for them, focusing attention and concentration for hours at a time. But obedience, at that young age, comes a little more easily.” Denrau didn’t say the obvious, that he found Hugh lacking in both skills. Instead he continued, “After a while it becomes ingrained. I lost concentration a few minutes ago; purely my own fault, and Zinter is young, in Need, and taxed by learning some of the Zeor disciplines he never encountered at Imil. A Companion in service is supposed to stay attuned to a Channel’s needs. When I failed, naturally he snapped at me. But it was my error, and I was understandably contrite, not upset. He shouldn’t have to remind me of my job, no more than Klyd should need to reprimand you, when you’re trained. Until then, well, you can’t fault a Channel in Need for having a sharp tongue. It’s the mildest symptom when a Companion fails in his duties, and his safest release for his displeasure. You don’t blame the Channel for the Companion’s lapse. And once you and Zinter are trained, and we’re all more accustomed to each other--” He fell silent suddenly and glancing repressively at Hugh, indicated that Klyd coming toward them.

“What are you two talking about so seriously?” The Channel asked the question lightly, but his glance from Hugh to Denrau was searching.

“What would two Companions talk about, except how to Serve their Channels better?” Denrau replied with teasing archness. At the same time, Denrau’s nager deliberately threw oil on the conversational troubled waters, projecting a deferential Companion’s nager that was neutral enough it didn’t trespass on Hugh’s service to Klyd, but still forced Klyd to relax. Denrau then tossed Hugh the same “I told you so” glance, complete with raised eyebrow, that Nashmar had once thrown him in Imil, when Klyd had been so torn up in knots with entran. It came to Hugh again that there was a whole undercurrent and sub-texture to Companion’s service of which he had only scratched the surface, and which he still didn’t understand. And which Denrau obviously felt was out of place discussing in Klyd’s current state of Need. And Klyd, though he still looked from one to the other of them, obviously wanting to know more, accepted the cup of trin that Denrau poured and reluctantly let the Companion steer the conversation to lighter topics.

It was a casual but masterful example of how a Companion managed a Channel. Valleroy was impressed, but he noted how indirect Denrau’s control was. He preferred more direct, more open and honest handling of issues. He wondered if this was ever going to be possible between himself and Klyd, but he decided to let things ride again.

But Klyd wasn’t willing to be so easily put off. Later he corralled Denrau in between shifts and with just the two of them present in the ward’s break room, questioned, “What were you and Hugh talking about in the refectory?”

Denrau didn’t respond to Klyd’s intensity, staying relaxed. He opened the tea canister he’d reached for and measured an amount into the teapot, poured the hot water before answering. “Professional confidence.”

“Denny—!”

“That’s not fair, Sectuib.” Denrau had smiled at the nickname, but he didn’t yield. He put the canister away and turned to face his Sectuib squarely. We’re not twelve anymore, and I’m the First Companion of your House. I’m responsible for all the Companions in it, and that includes Hugh. If he comes to me for help in confidence, I can advise him. I can advise you, but you two have to help each other. You should talk to Hugh about it, if you want to know. After your Transfer, that is. He needs to talk to you. In fact, he needs a lot of talking to. What that Gen doesn’t know is dangerous.”

Klyd sighed and sank into a chair. “I can’t talk to him.”

Denrau sat next to him, not touching but his nager as soothing as a cool compress. “Why not?” His tone was conversational, not accusatory.

“He’s not ready.”

“He’ll never be ready if you don’t train him,” Denrau pointed out, as practical as always. “The more quickly the better. Bad habits are easier to eradicate when they’re caught young and soon. As we’ve all learned.”

“But Hugh is not young,” Klyd said, frowning.

“He’s new to this. Why let him fall into trouble through ignorance when you can teach him right the first time?”

“He’s too old to be taught conventionally. And I’m afraid if he finds the service too taxing, he’ll reject it.”

Denrau’s brow cleared. “So that’s it. But he is a Companion. Even I can see that. He may have started late, but I’ve never heard of a Companion capable of serving Need at the level Hugh can function, turning his back on Companion’s service. In my opinion, it’s this running back and forth that’s the problem. Keep him here, a few months. That’s all it would take. Then his body’s own nature would speak for itself, the same as for a Sime after disjunction. A Companion’s response is innate. And at our level, very strong. It’s the refinement of that nature that requires training. Keep him with you, and he’ll come around.”

“He won’t stay. And a renSime can’t disjunct unless he wants to. Hugh doesn’t want to stay.”

Denrau sighed and said. “It’s not fair, Sectuib. You’re never had a Companion to satisfy you well, and now that you’ve found one…” He rose and went to the steeping tea pot, pouring a glass for Klyd and setting it before him.

Klyd raised up at that, ignoring the offered tea. “You mustn’t think that. You satisfied me, Denrau.”

“Not as well. Give me enough professional credit to respect that I know my own shortfalls, Sectuib.” Denrau settled down beside him and sipped his own tea. ”I’m not so selfish as to be unhappy if you found a better match. You know it’s something for which we’ve both been alert, the same as you’ve been hoping to get Zinter for me.” He pondered for a moment. “But if you really think Hugh doesn’t have the ability to choose to Serve, you shouldn’t train him. You should cut him loose as soon as possible.”

Klyd set his jaw, and turned away. “That’s not an option.” His voice was cold, a Sectuib’s again.

Denrau furrowed his brow again, but didn’t take offense at the tacit rebuke. “Forgive me, Sectuib. I’ve never heard of a Companion with Hugh’s ability not choosing Companion’s Service. But I’ve never known of an out-Territory Companion either. There’s a lot I don’t know.”

Klyd sighed and relaxed deliberately, his shoulders settling from their marshal stance. He took a sip of tea and cleared his throat uneasily before continuing. “I’ve read up a few cases in the literature. Deviantly pathological Gens, usually rescued by Householdings from being choice kills. Their natures are torn, they may have a Companion’s natural abilities, but deep down, they resent Simes. There are cases of such Donors causing serial shen fatalities before the pathology was understood.” He didn’t say he’d done this reading since he’d met Hugh. He didn’t have to.

“But Hugh’s not sadistic,” Denrau pointed out gently.

“No.” Klyd smiled albeit a bit grimly, thinking of Hugh’s quoting him the often touted Gen phrase about the only good Sime being a dead one. Denrau would faint if he’d heard Valleroy had said that to a Sectuib in Need. He reached out a reassuring tentacle to Denrau even at the memory of it. “He’s not that.”

Denrau fingered the tentacle covering his hands, his field reacting to the turbulence in the Channel’s emotions, puzzling through Klyd’s unease. “He’s never shenned you has he? Never given you an abort?” he gave Klyd a searching glance, but the Channel shook his head. “He doesn’t seem vicious,” Denrau continued, his brow furrowed with concern. “Of course, I haven’t had much contact with him, as infrequently as he’s here.”

“No. I’m just uneasy at times that he might, even without meaning to. He’s so stubbornly independent.”

Denrau shrugged, not disagreeing. “Because you allow it.”

“Believe me, Denny, I don’t allow it. I just don’t know how to prevent it.”

“Hugh seems mostly confused and troubled to me. He does have a Companion’s nature, or he wouldn’t be so torn. And with good reason. No top Companion should be so independent; it goes against one’s basic nature. With the right training and conditioning, a few months could see a change in him. If you want him to Serve you, he will have to learn. An untrained Companion can be as dangerous as an untrained Channel. I don’t have to remind you of that. I think what you really need to decide is if you want him to Serve you. And if he wants to Serve. But he’s here, so I would think he’s made that decision by now. And after that, the answers are easy.” Denrau rose and gave Klyd’s near hand a gentle squeeze. “I should get back to Zinter.”

Instead Sime tentacles twined quickly around his wrist, delicate in appearance but as strong as coiled steel. “Denny.”

The Gen paused and looked down into the Channel’s dark eyes. “Yes, Sectuib?”

“You won’t tell me?”

“Try talking to him first, Sectuib. I will tell you this much, I don’t think he’s as stubborn as you think. And I don’t think he is sadistic, either. He wants to Serve, and just doesn’t understand how.”

Klyd nodded and his tentacles slid from their grasp.

Denrau paused in parting and added. “If it comes to that, I am pledged to you before any Companion’s oath.”

Klyd looked after him and sighed. “The answers are not all that easy,” he muttered.

Valleroy came in and poured himself a cup. “You’re talking to yourself,” he complained good naturedly.

“Was I?” asked Klyd. “Must be Need.”

Chapter 5

Sleepless night

Valleroy had no time to ponder Denrau’s words through the rest of his shift, and when it was over, he was tired enough that he thought he’d barely keep his eyes open even long enough to get back to his room. But once there, and changed for bed, he found himself tossing and turning. Finally he went to sit by the window. The moon was full, enough to light the fields where he could spy a group of Simes working in the cool of the night, using moonlight as a guide. Simes needed little sleep, but they made him feel even more guilty and anxious, thinking of his own crops. And the conversation with Denrau came back to haunt him. He was considering it, remembering his own resentment of Klyd earlier, and trying to reconcile his feelings with Denrau’s comments, but he just couldn’t seem to work it out. Sometimes it seemed a Companion was expected to live divorced from his own emotions and concerns. And yet that couldn’t be possible for most people, and if his dream of Sime/Gen interaction were to be true, if the Gens out-Territory were to be convinced that they could associate with Simes and serve Need, somehow Gens and Simes had to learn to live together without one in thrall to the other.

It was just after two when Klyd came through the door and the Channel drew up at the sight of him.

“Hugh! What are you doing awake? I sent you to rest hours ago.”

Valleroy shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. You know how it is. Too tired to sleep, too many things on my mind.”

“Nonsense.” Klyd frowned at him, then disappeared into the bath. “That’s a Sime attitude,” he called through the doorway. “Gens don’t have that problem.”

Valleroy winced at this typically Sime attitude. “Maybe not Householding Gens, though I doubt that too. But some of us Gens out in the real world do.”

Klyd appear at the door again, frowning. “New Companions trying and failing to keep up with Channels sometimes do, which is why I sent you to rest. You are not Sime, and close association with a Channel won’t give you Sime stamina. When you are not working, and you are sent to rest, you are to rest, Hugh.”

“I wasn’t trying to keep up with you,” Hugh said, astonished at the accusation. “I may not know much, but I know better than to think I can do that.”

“Then you should do as you’re told.”

Hugh rubbed his forehead in frustration, as if he could wipe his headache away. Klyd’s tone was the same one from this morning, terse and abrupt, as if he expected that instant, unconditioned obedience. It set his teeth on edge. The sound of the shower put a temporarily lull in their conversation. During which he told himself firmly to remember what Denrau had told him, and what he had spent the last few hours pondering: That Klyd’s tone was Need-based. Not being in Need himself, he had no reason to snap back at Klyd for a Need-based mood, however short the Channel was with him. He shouldn’t let Klyd provoke him.

He heard the shower cut off, drew a deep breath and instead said, trying for the reasonable tone he’d often heard Denrau use, he asked, “Why do you think that simply by ordering me to do something, that I can? Or that I will? Even if I want to? I wasn’t deliberately disobeying your orders. I don’t have conscious control over that ability, like a Sime does. I am tired, that’s the whole problem. I’m too tired and sore to sleep, and I’m also worried about Aisha.”

“I told you we should have brought her with us.” Klyd reminded him curtly, coming out and rubbing his damp hair with a towel. “Maybe next time you’ll listen.”

“Then we’d both be worrying about the farm,” Hugh said testily.

Klyd tossed the towel in a hamper and ran hands and tentacles through his short black hair. “Hugh, I’ve told you before that serving as a Companion is not a part-time job.”

“It has to be, for me.”

“I know that,” Klyd said impatiently. “But when you are here at Zeor, working, you have to be here. Not mentally back at Rior. Your performance is abysmal. Your attention is spotty, your concentration is worse. And your discipline is non-existent. When I send you to rest, you are supposed to do it. Not argue with me. Not give me excuses. When I walked in here, I expected to find my Companion sleeping, not sitting up in the dark, awake and worrying needlessly and not resting. I’ll need your strength tomorrow.”

Smarting against his will under the Channel’s criticism, sharper than Klyd had yet used to him, Hugh said tightly. “I’ll decide what I need to worry about. As for the rest, you’re so tied up in Need, you’re not listening to me. I have been trying. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You are not trying, not nearly hard enough. You try at what you feel is important to you. And what you think you should do. You pick and choose. You disregard anything you don’t understand or disagree with. You’re not the least bit serious about your Companion’s Service.”

Valleroy winced at hearing the very fears and inadequacies that had been one of the reasons he couldn’t sleep held up in the pre-dawn light, by the very person he’d come to help and said , “That’s not fair. I am here, when I have a million worries at home.”

“I offered you a solution to those, which you disregarded. A proper Companion would listen to his Sectuib.”

“I can’t become a Householder -- or a Companion -- overnight. ”

“I sometimes think you don’t want to be a Companion at all.”

“I want to Serve your Need,” Valleroy temporized. “I haven’t missed a month since I qualified. No matter what, I’m here, Klyd.”

“There’s much more to being a Companion than that.”

Valleroy bowed his head, not denying that fact. And considered what Klyd wasn’t saying. “Are you saying you don’t want me here?”

Klyd sighed and sat down, rubbing his forehead. “I’m saying that when you are here, I expect you to be focused on your duties here, not mentally back at Rior.”

”It’s not that easy.”

“It is if you learn to focus your attention. It has to be. Worrying about Rior when you are here is wasted effort. It detracts from your present duties. It overtires you. And it upsets me.” Klyd forestalled Valleroy’s response with a raised tentacle, and continued. “If you need help resting, and Companions often do through no fault of their own -- their duties are hard enough – you should ask me, Hugh. I’m perfectly able to assist you.”

“You mean put me to sleep like a child?” Valleroy accused.

“Is it better to stay awake and behave as one?” Klyd retorted.

Valleroy drew an outraged breath at that, but Klyd gestured him quiet. Hugh--” he reached out with a tentacle and turned the Gen’s face toward him. “If you are going to Serve me, you have to really Serve – not pick and choose what you will and will not do, and on a daily basis decide what you agree with and what you don’t. That’s behaving like a child. And I don’t expect that of you.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not picking and choosing, and I am trying.”

“That’s’ not how I see it. You took an oath, remember.”

Hugh flared at that and jerked his chin back. “Don’t give me that. I took it under duress!”

Klyd withdrew the tentacle, shoulders tensed, and rose. “Are you asking to withdraw it?”

Valleroy shook his head slowly. “No. But when I made it I didn’t understand what pledging to you involved. And I still don’t. I’m trying to help. I understand you’re in Need, but you could try to give me a little credit for wanting to be here, with you, and being here, even if I don’t understand everything all at once.”

“Obedience doesn’t always necessitate understanding. For once, Hugh, just do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it, and don’t argue!” Klyd stormed.

Valleroy winced at that. “Klyd. Don’t.” he warned.

”The reasons, if you really need them, will come in time.”

“Or they won’t. You don’t care one way or the other whether I understand or not,” Valleroy flared, looking up at him. “You just expect me to follow you blindly, like every other Zeor member. Sometimes I think you believe Gens really are incapable of that kind of comprehension.”

Klyd sighed, pacing away from the Gen, rubbing his arms, every sense scoured by his rising Need. “Why do you twist everything I say? Gens are limited in their grasp of Sime experiences, by necessity. You simply don’t have the requisite physiology. That’s not an insult to your intelligence, or your relative maturity. That’s a simple biological fact, Hugh. Companions understand more than most, and I do expect that with a little effort, you could understand as much as is possible, and can become a great Companion. But you are right. Your understanding is not really requisite to serving me at a basic level now. What I need right now is your attention, your concentration and your obedience. And you are not giving me your best even at that basic level.”

“I can’t just blindly obey you.”

Klyd turned abruptly and stared at him, eyes dark and intense. “Or you refuse to. Don’t you trust me, Hugh?”

“Yes. Of course I do. That’s not my point.”

Klyd shook his head. “I can feel your reservations.”

“Very well. I trust that you’ll do what you think is right for your and for Zeor. I’m not sure if that will be right for me. Or for Rior.”

Klyd reached out slowly and took his hands, taking them into Transfer position, but not extending his tentacles. “If something is in the best interests of Zeor, it’s in your own best interests. That was one of the first lessons you learned. Remember? Now you have to live it, not just learn it.”

“I remember.” Hugh looked down at their joined hands. “Maybe that is true for members. I’m not sure how true it is for me. I have to live my own life, Klyd. Zeor is attractive to me. But I can’t let it absorb me.”

Klyd extended his handling tentacles, twining them tightly around the Gen wrists. “This once frightened you, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Hugh asked ruefully.

“But you are not frightened now.” It wasn’t a question, but Hugh shook his head anyway, staring down at their joined arms, half mesmerized. Klyd extended his laterals, sliding them across the Gen forearms, finding the nerves, letting the ronaplin sensitize the Gen skin. Hugh sighed and deliberately relaxed, his nager moving naturally into a state of preTransfer readiness. Klyd held the state a moment, then carefully retracted his laterals and loosened his handling tentacles, still leaving them coiled loosely around the Gen wrists. “I told you then that you were a natural Companion. And I was right. You react like a Companion. That’s rare, Hugh. And you take it far too much for granted. Not a Gen in my House can do what you do and Serve as you Serve. Yet you disregard that and behave as if it is a given that any Gen from out-Territory could step into your place. Even Companions raised In Territory can’t do that. They are trained. And they learn discipline first. Understanding comes later.”

“Maybe they could, if you did things differently. Everyone here behaves as if the rules are set in stone.”

“That’s ridiculous. If that were true, you wouldn’t be here right now. The fact is, Hugh, that I’ve never met any Companion, from any House, with your abilities. And it was I who brought you to recognize them. I understand you, much better than you understand yourself. I know you, better than you can know yourself. I know what you want. And more importantly, I know what you need.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“You also thought,” Klyd emphasized the word deliberately, accentuating it with a handling tentacle, “that you were incapable of serving me. You were wrong before about yourself before. Very wrong as it happened. And you are just as wrong now.”

Valleroy clenched his teeth. “Klyd-”

Klyd moved so that he covered his hands with just one of his own, while the other moved to rub his neck, one tentacle grazing his chin, one lateral brushing his cheek, as if seeking the source of the tension. “I apologize. You’re tired and upset. I don’t mean to argue with you. In time, you’ll come to understand these things. I realize much of this must seem foreign to you, and I accept that. But for now, Hugh, just try to trust me. I don’t mean in Transfer, I know you trust me there. Now. But remember that you didn’t before. Now you’ve learned that you should have always trusted me there. You need to extend that trust to non-Transfer situations and learn to trust me as completely as any member of my house. To respect my judgment.”

“It’s not the same.”

“You were a military officer. I know discipline is not foreign to you. That’s all I’m expecting.”

Valleroy raised his head, frowning. “Military service is to an organization, not a specific person.”

“But you have a superior officer, don’t you? Companion’s service is toward an ideal, like your military organization, but a Channel gives you direction. Perhaps it will help you to think of it like that.”

Hugh stared down at the hand covering his. Klyd’s touch reawakened all the feelings he had toward Companion’s service. He found he wasn’t angry any more. “This is very different, Klyd.” He looked up. “But you have to know I want to Serve your Need. And Zeor is important to me. I just don’t want to lose myself.”

“I don’t want you lost either, Hugh.” Klyd said meaningfully.

“Then understand this. For me to Serve you, I have to stay independent of you, and of Zeor. Maybe that’s the opposite of what you expect. Maybe that’s anathema for a Companion. But I can’t just –“ he hesitated and said, “Give in. I can’t be strong for you, if I’m not strong myself. I spent too many years learning to be strong, on my own, to just fold now.”

“You’re confusing strength with separateness. We can be stronger together than apart.”

Valleroy grimaced, not having enough experience to put his thoughts into words. “I have to prove something to myself before I can give anything or everything to Zeor.”

Klyd sighed and said nothing for a moment. “Perhaps I can understand that. But not when I am in Need.” Klyd tugged lightly at his hand. “Come, let’s sleep. No one can reason when they are tired, only argue. In the morning, everything will seem clearer.”

“I didn’t think you slept this close to Need.”

“You’re tired enough you’re affecting me. And I’m tired too. I could sleep a little. If you would.”

Against his will, Hugh smiled a little. “That’s blackmail.”

“Something even Channels have to resort to, with Companions as stubborn as you,” Klyd smiled, albeit a bit wanly, and suddenly for Hugh it wasn’t against his will. The strong response he could feel for Klyd surged over him again, like a swamping wave, and he felt his own hands tighten on Klyd’s, felt the rush of their enveloping nagers, and Klyd’s sharp, warning gasp. The Channel was suddenly trembling.

“Easy, Hugh. Don’t move!” Klyd drew a steadying breath, and let go of his hands firmly. “All right. That was close. You almost tempted me into Transfer!”

“I’m sorry.” Valleroy said, though he wondered why that was such a terrifying thought to the channel.

“Think, Hugh!” Klyd said, answering his unspoken question. “What kind of channel am I, if I lose control that way?” He shivered as if from a nightmare. “I’ve already lost control twice with you. The first time, I burned you much worse than I intended. The second, ” Klyd trailed off, wondering if that transfer had resulted in an even worse outcome. It had saved his life, but at what expense?

“You were in attrition ,” Valleroy answered, not liking to speak of the horror of that time, not when Klyd was in his present state of need.

Klyd reached out, one lateral slipping behind his ear, touching him very lightly, and then dancing away as if in fear of being burned himself. “You have to learn some control, Hugh. One minute you’re rejecting me with every fiber of your being, and the next, you’re pulling me down in the deepest trautholo I’ve ever felt. As a Companion, you are a Channel’s worst nightmare.”

“I wonder you put up with me,” Hugh confessed honestly.

“You also can be an enticing promise. But if I don’t get you trained soon, and on an even keel, you are going to ruin me, one way or another, Hugh Valleroy.” He sighed, and clasped his arm lightly, tugging him away from the window seat. “Come on, let’s get some rest.”

Chapter 6

A Companion’s Point of View

The sun was lancing through the skylight, warming the sheets he was sleeping in. It was another lancing beam that woke him though.

“Hugh?”

He turned over. The bed was empty, save for himself, only a sheet thrown back where Klyd had been. He looked around and saw a Gen sitting on the footboard. A Gen dressed in the same sort of Zeor blue scrubs he was sleeping in, Companion’s uniform, only faded to a pale blue from long use. A lean Gen, almost as slender as a Sime, except for his sturdy Gen muscles. He wore short-sleeves, his forearms bare, as befitted a working Companion. Sunglare from the skylight and the many windows made the Gen’s features obscure enough that he had to blink and sit up to make them out.

“Denrau?” He blinked again, half wondering if he were dreaming. As ordinary and prosaic as Denrau often seemed in all their daily encounters, the Gen had often haunted Valleroy’s conscience waking and his dreams when asleep, both as a paragon he couldn’t live up to, and as an accuser. After all, if it hadn’t been for Valleroy he’d still be serving Klyd – and no doubt, deep at heart, he felt he still should be, given Valleroy’s ignorance of a Companion’s duties. He rubbed his eyes, but it was Denrau, as real as life and twice as natural, sitting in a pool of sunlight at the foot of the bed. Valleroy wondered what he could be doing there. As a rule, now that Denrau was serving Zinter, Klyd had been largely staying apart from him. Not so much because Klyd was keeping Denrau away from himself. But now that Zinter was rephrased into Klyd’s Need cycle, Klyd was keeping the relatively untrained, by Zeor standards, Zinter away from the equally untrained Valleroy.

Valleroy sat up. “What are you doing here? Where’s Klyd?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but Klyd sent me to see if you were up.” Denrau smiled a little deprecatingly and raising his hands, twined or crossed his fingers around each other, little finger with ring finger, middle to index, and the thumbs of his two hands together in a gesture that obviously meant something to him, but the significance of it totally escaped Valleroy. “I’m afraid this close to Need, no other Companion is of interest to him except his Donor.”

Hugh stretched, wincing a little at the stiffness in his back. Even Zeor’s mattresses didn’t dispel the results of days at the plough. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sleep this late. It’s very bad of me to come here to work and yet sleep the day away. Normally, I’m up at dawn.”

“I suspect that normally you don’t work a late shift in Dispensary,” Denrau said dismissively. “But no matter. Klyd said you were tired and not to wake you if you were still sleeping.” The Gen shrugged, uncrossed his fingers and stretched out his arms in a gesture reminiscent of a Sime extending tentacles, and gave a conspiratorial smile. “So I waited for a few minutes, thinking no one possibly could sleep with someone staring straight at them. But you did. That is, you didn’t wake, but you stirred a little, and I thought you were close to it. I know you must be very tired to sleep so deeply. But I hated to go back without you and disappoint Klyd. I’m sorry.”

Hugh left off rubbing his eyes with a square hand, and glanced at the Gen. “I should be the one apologizing to you,” he admitted. “When I saw you here, I thought you were some apparition, in retribution or something. I guess that means my apology is too long overdue.”

“You want to apologize to me? Whatever for? For yesterday?”

Hugh looked away, uncomfortable. “No, not for that.” He hesitated a minute and then thought he would never have a more private place to have this discussion. No one would intrude in the Sectuib’s bedroom. “For serving Klyd.”

Denrau raised his eyebrows. “Zeor is in your debt for that.”

“But if it weren’t for me… Denrau, you have to understand I never intended to supplant you.”

“Oh? Oh!” The Gen shook his head in sudden realization of what Valleroy meant. “You needn’t think I’m jealous. Companions and Channels can be jealous of each other’s Transfer partners, that’s true. But you don’t need to worry that I’m feeling any toward you. What do you take me for?” Valleroy didn’t know how to answer this, and Denrau continued. “You seem to be a closer match to Sectuib. If Klyd will be better Served, I am pleased for both of us.”

Valleroy stared at him, not sure how to take it. “That’s all?”

Denrau frowned. “Did you want to tell me something else?”

“I just thought you’d feel—“ Hugh stumbled again, not knowing what to say, sure anything he said would be wrong.

“It’s not as if I’m not working,” Denrau said, frowning in puzzlement. “We have Zinter, after all. It’s expected that Zeor’s most experienced Companion would Serve a Zeor Channel in training. With Charnye retiring, who else is there? And vice versa, with you being new, and Sectuib needing to train you.” Denrau raised his hands and shrugged his shoulders, in one of those tentacle reminiscent gestures Companions fell into. “What other arrangement could there be?”

Valleroy didn’t answer.

“It will have to be this way for a while,” Denrau said equably. “Anyway, it’s I who should be thanking you. Klyd announced that it was your artistry that secured Zinter for us. The House is in your debt for that as well. We desperately needed another Channel of his caliber to take some of the load off of Klyd. And you’ve given me a new Channel to train to Zeor standards. And since I’m closer to Zinter’s Transfer parameters than I was to Klyd’s, it’s a good match all around.”

The Companion’s attitude was incomprehensible to Valleroy. He could have understood jealousy, but Denrau was viewing the whole transaction with the professional, impersonal, long-range view of a First Companion. Exactly as he was supposed to, and as Valleroy feared he never could. The disappointment Valleroy had expected him to feel over not serving Klyd didn’t even seem to come into his evaluation, and his casual confidence of his own merits as a Donor completely negated such petty considerations. Valleroy felt the gap between himself and Denrau widen further. Denrau knew he was a valuable Donor; one who would be cherished in any House. No wonder he moved like one born to a dynasty. Whereas Hugh felt his own doubts treble. He didn’t see how he could emulate such perfection; he felt plagued with the knowledge of his own inadequacies and he seriously doubted whether he should be serving Klyd at all. And yet the thought of not serving him filled him with dread and jealousy. As ambivalent as he sometimes felt toward his role in Householding affairs, his desire to Serve Klyd was very personal, and when he compared it to Denrau’s behavior, he felt even more inadequate. He rubbed his forehead, feeling another headache descending on him.

“Anyway,” Denrau went on, “Channels and Companions trade off every few months, you know. Just to avoid any strong dependencies. Once you and Zinter are trained, I’ll be Serving Klyd often enough.” He didn’t seem to notice as Hugh swallowed hard. “Even Charnye will Serve him, once you’re been trained enough for Klyd to trust you with a Channel below your capabilities. Charnye needs to keep up his skills, even semi-retired, and you’ll need to learn to Serve the lower orders. That’s a skill too.” Denrau sighed and stretched. “We’ve desperately needed another high order Channel and Companion since – well, for a while. It’s better for Klyd to have several to cycle among. Better for us Companions, too, to practice the flexibility of serving many Channels.”

Hugh’s face was blank, but inside he was thinking furiously. Klyd hadn’t put it quite like this. He knew he’d occasionally be expected to Serve Zinter; Klyd had said as much. But he’d thought of it as an occasional thing, something he’d train for and do once, to prove he could. Not a regular cycling among available Donors and Channels. He couldn’t imagine giving up Klyd for Zinter. Perhaps for one Transfer, but to regularly cycle made him distinctly uneasy. In fact, just the thought of serving any other Channel gave him a sick feeling in his stomach, as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. He told himself it couldn’t be fear. Hadn’t he learned that Transfer was delightful? Didn’t he know, intellectually, that if he could Serve Klyd there wasn’t a Channel in Zeor he needed to fear? But he didn’t know what else to call the feeling. One more hurdle he’d need to overcome, when the time came. He swallowed hard and to distract himself, cleared his throat carefully, around the lump in it and said, “Zinter’s trade was Klyd and Nashmar’s doing. Zeor’s not in my debt for any of it. It’s my fault that-- ” He fell silent, hesitating to bring up the loss of Yenava. It seemed no matter what he said, he seemed to tread on dangerous ground. He threw caution to the winds and said what he felt. “Well, anyway. I never meant to take Klyd away from you. I just wanted to tell you that.”

“What a strange way you have of phrasing things. I suppose it is the language difference,” The Companion looked at him curiously. “You can’t imagine I thought I owned Sectuib, did you? Like a junct owns a pen Gen?” Denrau said. He seemed surprised and amused at the thought.

“Well, why not? He seems to think he owns us,” Valleroy said, stung at the inequity of it and not completely masking his resentment.

But Denrau wasn’t listening again, seemingly distracted by some other senses. “Hugh, I’d really like to get you back to Klyd. He manages well enough; he is Sectuib after all. But no Channel should be without a Companion this close to Need. If you need to sleep a while longer, then I need to get back to him myself.”

Hugh roused himself. He’d find time to discuss all this with Denrau later. “Sorry. No, I’ll go. I’m here to work, after all. Just give me five minutes.”

Chapter 7

Breakfast revelations

Klyd smiled tightly when he saw them approaching. Denrau murmured something to Klyd that Hugh didn’t catch, laid a hand gently over one lateral sheath, then wandered off while the Sectuib approached Hugh.

“Didn’t you have time to get something to eat, Hugh?”

“I’m not really hungry,” he said, truthfully enough. This close to Transfer, Klyd’s Need seemed to leach away not just the Channel’s appetite but his own as well. His stomach growled with hunger, but his interest in food had fled.

Klyd smiled that tight non-smile again, and Hugh felt how brittle Klyd’s control was.

“We’ll grab some lunch then, before this afternoon’s dispensary.”

“You can’t be hungry, this close to Need.”

“I’ll be hungry enough,” Klyd said obscurely. “Come, let’s go.” He went off without another glance, taking Hugh’s acquiescence for granted, and Valleroy hurried to follow.

Walking through the corridors of Zeor always made Valleroy aware of the difference between his life in Gen Territory, and his life here. He was a fairly ordinary man there, in looks as well as station, and had never rated a second glance.

But at Zeor, nearly every member, Sime or Gen turned their eyes to Klyd as they walked past. And it wasn’t even just Klyd. When he was alone, Gens might or might not notice him, though Companions seemed to get much of the same attention from Gens as Channels did, a quiet but definite recognition. But the Simes’ attention was different, they were drawn to his field like a magnet. Their gazes were respectful; Valleroy never felt threatened. But he was only too aware of being the center of more notice at Zeor than he cared for, or felt he deserved. Long used to it, Klyd seemed oblivious to the virtual hero worship his presence seemed to evoke. In fact, this close to Need, Klyd’s attentions often seemed directed inward, to maintaining the control he required to function, while Valleroy’s job was to deal with the outward concerns. Valleroy had to pay attention to the fields, and the people they represented. He couldn’t avoid or ignore their attention and wrap himself in a cloak of self-absorption as Klyd was doing. Hugh found it disconcertingly foreign. His efforts to mimic Klyd’s casual disregard or formal acknowledgement never felt very successful. But Zeor’s members were either oblivious to his issues or exceptionally polite.

The refectory was nearly empty, given it was late for breakfast and too early for lunch. The staff had somehow been warned of their coming and had made up some food fresh for them The smell of food roused him from being merely hungry to being ravenous. He had lost weight this month, and his appetite finally kicked in with a vengeance. The renSime working the kitchens noted that with a sharp look, and though Hugh felt somewhat embarrassed at the obviousness of his hunger, as if his stomach had growled in a meeting, the renSime served him generously with fresh hot cereal, studded with raisins, apples and walnuts. For both Klyd and Valleroy, he provided tea and fruit, the dark, nearly black late season bramble berries that were ripening on both sides of the border at this time of year, served with a dollop of light sweet cream.

Klyd frowned at his food as if it were a particularly absorbing problem that had to be solved, but resolutely dipped a spoon into the dish. Valleroy ate his cereal hungrily, which seemed to ease Klyd’s way a bit. But it was obvious the Channel didn’t want any food. Forcing down a few bites of fruit was an act of disciplined will that seemed to take most of his concentration, sparing nothing for conversation.

Hugh didn’t mind since the rest of his meal was presenting him with its own problems. For weeks he and Aisha had spent much of what little free time they had scouring Rior’s hedgerows, gleaning these wild brambles. The small fruits grew well in the fertile river edges but few Gens dared to come so near the Sime Territory border. The fruit sold well in town, since they ripened before melons and apples, and Gens always had a taste for sweets. Brambles provided Hugh with ready cash money during their short season of ripening and it was cash he needed for other things. Because of that, neither he nor Aisha had wanted to eat themselves what was one of their first salable crops. So it seemed somehow disloyal to be enjoying a luxury Aisha couldn’t. On the other hand, it was worse to consider letting good food go to waste. He remembered watching the store owner taste the fruit he’d so laboriously gathered, fruit he’d never tasted himself. His mouth watered at the memory, as it had then when he couldn’t indulge himself, and he dipped his spoon in the dish. He ate the fruit nearly as slowly as Klyd, his pleasure lightly tinged with guilt, then watched as Klyd struggled with his, thinking absently of the future, when he and Aisha would have transplanted enough canes to their river borders that they didn’t have to go gleaning far to bring in a crop. Luxury fruits would probably sell as well as his wheat and corn crops combined, with less than half the labor. He thought idly of if he should try some peaches. He had no cash for peach trees this year, but next year he might be able to manage. But of course one needed at least two as pollinators for peaches, double the expense. He could set up some hives too, for bees. Bramble honey and bramble jelly would go high in town. After a while, Klyd sighed audibly, interrupting his cash filled musings. The Channel pushed his dish away, still more than half full.

“Aren’t you going to finish those?” Hugh asked with an edge in his voice as he stared at the leftover fruit. The kitchen staff had served Klyd generously as if hoping he’d be tempted, even as close to Need as he was. But Klyd had barely touched the dish. The fruit in the bowl would have cost several dollars, enough for a duckling, or two or three chicks. He thought of Aisha, scrimping on food to save enough for her small flock of poultry, thought of her fussing over them now, home alone, and swallowed hard.

Klyd shrugged, looking uncomfortable, as if his lack of appetite made him guilty of something. “I did try. After Transfer, I promise to eat a whole dish,” he temporized as if didn’t realize he wasn’t speaking to Denrau or Charnye. “But for now this is the best I can do.” He looked up in Hugh’s eyes, and smiled ruefully at the startled look in them, but seemed to mistake the reason for it. “I’m not super-human, Hugh.”

Valleroy had never seen Klyd quite like this, and he realized the channel had taken his question as a Companion’s directive. He’d understood intellectually that a Channel’s Companion could order around a Channel in Need, but he’d never seen Klyd’s response when the tables were so turned, had never quite imagined he’d be on the receiving end of it.

“Why don’t you finish them, if you don’t mind?” Klyd pushed the dish across the table, and then massaged his aching arms. “You look like you could use the calories.”

Valleroy eyed the swollen ronaplin glands on the Channel’s forearms as Klyd sipped his tea and considered Klyd’s reaction. He wasn’t very expert yet at gauging Need. While he knew Klyd’s personal Companions were the only ones in the Householding who could occasionally over-rule Klyd, he still hadn’t learned under what circumstances such demands became appropriate, though he’d gathered it was generally only when the Channel was in Need. It startled him that Klyd had just responded to him as if he’d been a Companion making such a demand on a Channel. And as if he had a right to. Mostly he felt Klyd regarded him like a particularly slow student at the back of the class, hardly an authority to be acknowledged. He shelved the circumstances and the tone he’d used, for future reference.

But there was still the fruit. He snagged the bowl toward him and picked up his spoon, thinking it was foolish for Klyd to think he’d be fussy about eating from the same dish. After all, he wore Zeor standard clothing, ate from Klyd’s table, slept near his side and Served his Need. And he tried, however unsuccessfully, to function as a skilled Companion. And now, his name was on a tax document , paid for monthly as if he were any In-Territory Gen, born to a Householding or rescued from a Pen. What did it matter if he finished up a little fruit? It wasn’t the outer aspects of all this casual self-abnegation that bothered him, it was what it represented. He’d more than once dreamed of Zeor as a quiet monster, slowly devouring him alive. He felt like he needed to keep some part of himself separate from Zeor, just to survive. And he felt that Klyd was bound and determined to absorb him into that Householding life, however much the Channel gave outward support to Rior. It seemed the more he understood of Klyd and Zeor, the farther apart he became, the opposite of what he and Klyd had expected. But seeing the pinched look beginning around Klyd’s eyes, the bulging ronaplin glands stretching the skin tight on his forearms, the drawn tension in the Channel’s face and frame, his own concerns, even his own needs, seemed petty and frivolous compared to the increasing signs of Klyd’s Need.

Chapter 8

Studies and Personalities

Zeor’s Management Team, meeting every two weeks, was comprised of the heads of all the departments that ran Zeor. Valleroy had attended a couple of times, but was still learning the personalities and departments involved. A few he knew from personal encounters: He knew Edger, a powerfully built Gen who ran Zeor’s physical plant, and Nasum, an older Channel who managed what Zeor called its selyn delivery services, which comprised everything from General Class Donors to Klyd’s very own dispensary schedule. Varil a tall renSime, was responsible for a myriad of ancillary service departments, everything from Housekeeping, to food preparation. Klyd was there was Sectuib, of course. Denrau attended in his capacity as First Companion, an office which tacitly represented all Gens in the Householding. Other representatives who ran the various businesses, the farms, the mill and the dye works sat in, but Valleroy was still learning their names and he just nodded quietly to them. He sat through most of the business meeting with his attention only marginally on the topics.

“I’ve an update on this,” Varil tossed a professional looking quarterly journal on the conference table. “Everyone remember what we last discussed?”

There were muted affirmations. Valleroy craned his neck to see the title: The Genfarmers’ Quarterly. He was too startled to have complete control of his reaction. Klyd glanced at him reprovingly and said, “Perhaps you could summarize for Naztehr Hugh’s benefit. He wasn’t here when we first reviewed this.”

“Of course. We don’t have much access to Out-Territory resources on Gen health and medicine, Naztehr. The only real research being done on such things In-Territory, outside of Householdings, is done by Genfarmers. And while we don’t much care for the source of it, we subscribe to all the journals. They’re often the first line of information on new diseases, health and nutritional information concerning Gens.”

“Of course,” Valleroy said, understanding now, and glancing at Klyd in apology.

“Last month, they reported the results of an interesting study. A new vegetable based protein derived from fanta beans was discovered to boost selyn production in Gens by up to twenty percent. It’s a long term affect, requiring a Gen to eat this as a protein source for one of its meals up to six months before the results are seen. Fanta beans are a high quality protein, dense in nutrients, low in fat. Studies indicate that not only does it boost selyn production, it could prolong life spans. But the study indicated that for Genfarmers, the results were not useful. They’re not interested in prolonging Gen life, as you know, except for breeders. And breeders aren’t Killed, so increasing their selyn production is of no use to them. As for the regular Pen issue, feeding this protein in advance of Establishment does no good, the lag time requires it to be fed for six months post-Establishment for the results to be seen. And holding Pen issues, or even Choice Kills, that length of time for a selyn increase the average junct Sime couldn’t effectively glean at Kill was deemed unimportant. So for their purposes, the study was reported a failure.

“But for Householdings, all of those drawbacks are immaterial. We are interested in healthy Gen nutrition, and prolonging Gen life. The six month lag is certainly no detriment for us. Our Channels can effectively tap and distribute any selyn production increase from our Gens and distribute it to our renSime members. It seemed like a win-win situation, a quality food and increased health benefit for our Gen members, and increased selyn production for our renSimes. So, as per our previous discussion, I sent for a goodly supply. It arrived last week and I put our kitchen staff on preparing the two recipes listed in the journal.”

“And?” Klyd looked around the table at his staff.

“I’ll leave it to Naztehr Hugh to demonstrate the results.” He opened a package containing a load of bread and tossed a slice of it before Valleroy. “Try it, Naztehr.”

Valleroy picked up the slice and obligingly took a bite. He nearly spit the result out onto the table. Belatedly remembering a dozen Zeor members were watching him, he managed to choke down the mouthful. The aftertaste was just as unpleasant. Swallowing hard, he tried to keep himself from gagging.

Klyd’s hand covered his, as if in comfort, but Valleroy could feel the tension in the muscles. “What was the meaning of that, Varil?” Klyd’s tone was outraged.

“My apologies, Sectuib.” Varil looked horribly embarrassed, and every Sime at the table had gone a little green in sympathetic reason to Valleroy. Varil had apparently picked the Gen with the strongest nager to illustrate his point, but he hadn’t counted on Valleroy’s lack of control driving the point home so well. “I forgot you were so close to Need.”

“You should apologize to Hugh.”

“My apologies as well, Naztehr. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“No offense taken,” Hugh assured him, clearing his throat carefully around the taste. “I just wasn’t expecting it, not from Zeor’s kitchens. But I have eaten worse. I was in the army.”

Varil shrugged skeptically. “Perhaps you have, but our Gen members have not. After making up the recipes, some of our Gen kitchen staff tasted the results. Or rather, tried to taste them. They all agree they’re unpalatable. I can’t foresee asking a Gen to eat this substance day after day, for many months, even for a significant increase in selyn production.”

“But it’s not solely for selyn production. There are the health and lifespan benefits,” Nasum argued. “Regardless of how it tastes, this is a superior food for Gens.”

“Perhaps it only seems you live longer when you eat the stuff,” Denrau offered, teasing the Sime good-naturedly. He picked up a slice himself and sniffed the bread, glancing at Valleroy as if in warning. Understanding him, Hugh put a fingertip on Klyd’s wrist, prepared to shelter the sensitive Channel from the Gen’s hefty nager, one he was conditioned to be attuned to. Denrau popped just a crumb into his mouth, his face wearing the abstracted look of a Companion who was battening down his nager. He screwed up his face a little at the taste, but no Sime at the table even blinked, so well had he shielded himself.

Varil let out his expectant breath in relief, shifting a little in his seat and giving Denrau a grateful nod. “We didn’t purchase a huge supply of this, but I can’t see our using what we have. What I’d like to do is cut our losses, and sell what we purchased to Laris-Dey Genfarm, down river. Old Laris, who runs the place, isn’t a bad sort. When his grain fields flooded, we sold him some surplus meal at a fair price, when everyone else was selling high, hoping to starve his stock to death and him into foreclosure. He hasn’t forgotten that. Buys all his cloth from us now, in spite of our being filthy perverts, and even grain and vegetables, when we have some extra to sell. We could unload the stuff on him at a fair price, and he’d probably be grateful for it. His fields are still a bit swampy, and I’d wager he’s still strapped enough that his breeders and pre-Gens are hungry enough to eat anything that doesn’t move, regardless of the taste. ”

Valleroy glanced at Varil sharply. He had thought of stock as being animals. He hadn’t realized that Varil had been referring to people. Gens, like himself, most of them women and children. He hadn’t expected Zeor to have any doings with the Genfarmers in the area. But the rest of the table took no notice of the comment and he lowered his head and concentrated on controlling his emotions.

“Aren’t you giving up a little too quickly, Varil?” One Sime asked.

Varil shrugged. “I can’t see asking our Gen members to eat this.”

“Perhaps some would like to volunteer.”

“I’m not sure I’d want to be in the dining hall when they tried it,” Varil said frankly. “And I imagine I speak for every Sime.”

The other Gens at the conference table had portioned out the slices of bread among themselves. Denrau put another crumb in his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue before he swallowed it. “It’s not very palatable, but I’d be game to give it a try. Once you’re used to it-- Or at least if you expect it –”

“Denny, we don’t even know if this stuff would have any appreciable affect on a Donor functioning at your level of selyn production,” Varil said. “We don’t know that it will have any effect at all on Companions. Or even what it might do to a Companion’s physiology. Obviously that wasn’t part of any Pen study.”

“True, but we won’t know either, unless someone tries,” Denrau argued. “And why wouldn’t it? It might increase a Companion’s production even more than a General Class Donor.”

“As if you need your production increased. Spare us all! I can already zlin you from one end of Zeor to the other when you’re high field. Anyway, you’d have to eat five or six ounces of this – a serving sized portion, every day for months just to see any result in selyn production. Would you really want to do that?”

“It’s not very palatable,” Edger said, the large Gen who was responsible for ancillary services. “I wouldn’t even care to feed it to horses, as it is. But surely someone can spice the recipe up a bit? Add some flavorings? We’re not pen Gens, at least not any more. We appreciate some attempt at culinary skill.”

“Hoping to make Companion, Edger?” Gerard teased, “Or just live longer?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Edger said, fiddling with the fragment he’d taken. “Who’d sneer at a few more years? I’m getting old enough to be conscious of that. But to be truthful, I’ve been trying since I established to move up from Donor, General Class. I’m on the edge, could make it up to Donor, Second Class with a few more dynopters, but not even Sectuib here can squeeze more out of me, no matter how we both try. You Companions,” he jerked a chin at Denrau and Hugh, “don’t know how lucky you are. My grandfather was rescued from a Pen, his biggest dream was for one of his children to Serve as Companion to a Channel. That’s never going to happen for me, but maybe my sons, or theirs, might make it some day. So if this stuff could boost me up a rating, I’m game to try it. The taste isn’t great, but once you’re used to it, it’s bearable.”

“Edger, that’s not necessary,” Klyd said gently. “And even if this increases the average selyn yield of general Donors, I don’t expect it to have any affect on delivery speed, barrier relinquishment or selyur nager, the qualities that mark the difference between the general classes of donors and the Companion levels.

Edger shrugged. “What’s necessary to you isn’t necessarily necessary to me, Sectuib. With all due respect. I’ll settle for the increased capacity. I like to pull my own weight. And I wouldn’t sneer at any health benefits either. Like I said, I don’t expect to make Companion. Boosting me up a rung on the General Class donor scale would be enough. And even if it doesn’t, I like to do what I can, and I’d like to try it, see if it will. Still, I wouldn’t mind a bit of flavor in this stuff.”

“Well, then we seemed to have at least two Gen volunteers,” Nasum said, looking around the table. What about it Varil? Did the kitchen staff try any experimentation with the recipes?”

Varil shook his head. “There were only two – bread and a porridge like mixture that’s even worse than the bread. I didn’t tell them what it was for. Just asked them to make the recipes.”

“Well, our kitchen staff can be pretty imaginative, when they want to be.” He didn’t taste the food, obviously regarding it as for Gens alone, but he studied a fragment of the slice that was making the rounds. “And no one wastes eggs, oils or flavorings on Pen Gens. With those added…”

Hugh had been wondering about how palatable the stuff would be, even doctored up with spices. But on the other hand, it had occurred to him he’d been of necessity on somewhat shortened rations. His crops were reasonably promising but he needed to sell as much of them as possible for the cash. Winter was coming. And calories were, after all calories, even if they tasted rather like sawdust.

“I’m willing to try it too.” He offered. “If you are willing to let me take some back to Rior. Perhaps Aisha can experiment with some Gen Territory flavorings.” He wondered after he said it, where he was going to get the money for fancy spices, then clamped down on that thought. He could get used to the taste, even un-doctored.

Klyd shot him a swift repressive look. “No. I don’t think so. I have no objection to a certain percentage of our Gen members volunteering, once they’re educated as to the nature and risks of the study. With the stipulation that no more than five percent of our Gen population can volunteer the first year. We don’t operate on much more than that margin of surplus selyn. While the likelihood is greater that this experiment will increase our yield, rather than the reverse, we have to be prudent. Is that agreed?”

The department heads nodded.

“Ten Gens then,” Varil commented. “I’ll put a sign-up sheet in the Collectorium, if Nasum agrees.”

“I’d like a chance to hand pick the Gens.” Nasum objected.

“Volunteers only,” Klyd overruled. “You can allow for fifteen, Varil. Some will probably drop out after a few days.”

“Yes, Sectuib.”

“Very well then. Participating Donors are to be monitored once a week by the staff Channel to make sure there are no adverse reactions to this substance. After all, studies on pen Gens are valuable, but hardly definitive. And keep the group in proportion. Companions can volunteer if they choose, but I don’t want the test group skewed. The proportions of Companions to general Donors in the study should reflect our own population. Companions will also need the permission of their assigned Channel, who’ll be responsible for monitoring them daily to ensure there are no adverse affects. With the exception of Denrau. And Hugh of course. I’m sorry, I realize you both wanted to do this and the chance of an adverse reaction is very remote. But we have no replacement for either of you, if your production should reverse rather than increase, or if this substance indisposes you in any other way. I can’t risk our few top Companions even slightly in any sort of experiment. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to volunteer after the initial study.”

Denrau had lowered his head at Klyd’s order, his field constricting as he shuttered his emotions from the Simes in the room. It took him a moment to marshal his reaction. Then he looked up, his face set in neutral lines. “Of course, Sectuib.”

Klyd drew a deep breath. “What about it Varil? Does that take care of your supply issue as well?”

Varil cocked his head, considering. “I’d purchased more than we can use in this revised version of the study. Shall I offer the remainder to Laris-Dey as I’d planned? Or do you want me to check and see if any of the other Householdings might be interested?”

Klyd shrugged. “That would be unlikely. Zeor usually leads in these things. Later they might be interested but we’d still have to transport it to them. There’s time for that after we see if our Gens will even eat it long enough to see the results of the study, or if there are any results at all. It might not work on Householding Gens. No, go ahead and offer it to Laris-Dey.”

“Yes, Sectuib.”

Klyd looked around the table searchingly, “If there’s no other business?” When no one offered any, he nodded. “Meeting adjourned.”

Hugh didn’t know what to think as he followed Klyd out of the room. At first he’d been shocked at the proposal. Then he’d come to gradual understanding and acceptance, even willingness to be part of the scheme. Then Klyd’s ban against his personal Companions participating in the study had shocked him again. And he didn’t know what to think about Zeor consorting with a local Gen Farm.

He watched as Denrau and Zinter walked down the hall ahead of him. The Gen seemed to have gotten over his momentary disappointment, since he had his hand lightly on Zinter’s forearm as they walked along. Zinter had been rephrased into Klyd’s Need cycle, so both Channels were in Need at the same time. Valleroy gathered that had been to facilitate Companion trade-offs, so that if something happened to him, then Klyd could have Denrau or Charnye, and Zinter would be Served by the remaining Companion.

Denrau must be emotionally calm, if he was touching Zinter. Hugh still felt unsure when and how he should touch a Channel in Need. Mostly he still let Klyd initiate such contacts. So he watched with narrowed eyes, both upset and even somewhat jealous that Denrau had worked quickly enough through the emotional fallout from that meeting to be a Channel’s support a few minutes later. He himself was walking at Klyd’s side, but Klyd hadn’t looked at him since his pronouncement. And he didn’t know how to look at Klyd. Intellectually he understood Klyd’s caution. Emotionally, he was, if he let himself connect with those feelings, more than a little angry. And he couldn’t afford that. He buried them down deep, watching Denrau and Zinter and then, covering himself with a conjured concern for Klyd, reached out purely as a distraction, and put his own hand on Klyd’s forearm.

The Channel looked down at him. Then he said very quietly, “You’re faking it very ill, Hugh.”

Valleroy drew his hand back, hurt and stung.

“We’ll talk about it later.”

Chapter 9

Wheels and Cogs

“What bothered you about that department heads meeting?”

Valleroy shrugged and approached the subject in a roundabout way. “Varil certainly has diverse interests, doesn’t he?”

“Does he?” Klyd gave him a sideways glance. “I didn’t notice. He’s in charge of our selyn delivery system. Basically anything that affects that, he’s interested in.”

“I know he sets our schedule,” Hugh said.

“He does much more. He supervises the dispensary and collectorium, sets the schedules for all Channels, Companions, renSimes and Donors, keeps the accounting of where all the selyn goes.”

“The accounting?”

“Of course. There’s a lot of bookkeeping. It gets worse every year, really, but there’s no help for that.”

“Bookkeeping?”

“Hugh do you realize you keep repeating what I say? Yes, bookkeeping. How much each particular renSime has expended during the month, has left in his system at his Transfer date and draws in Dispensary, the quantity of selyn each Gen Donors yields, what each Channel needs to take in and carry in Collectorium to provide for Dispensary that day – we monitor all these figures and track them all according to seasonal trends and environmental factors. That’s why Varil latched onto this study. It falls right into his interests.”

“Seasonal-” He stopped at Klyd’s amused look, cleared his throat and asked weakly. “There are seasonal trends?”

“Of course. Gens tend to produce a little less selyn in winter, when they divert calories to keeping warm. That’s generally offset though, by the fact that our renSimes use a bit less in winter. They use more in the growing season because they augment during planting and harvest. Nasum has to keep that all in mind, and of course he coordinates with Varil quite a bit. But we still try to offset the tendency with diet. For example, Varil provides more high calorie foods during cold snaps, desserts that appeal to Gens to provide extra calories that will offset any production drop. We generally try to increase our Gens production though we do it carefully and slowly. Experiments like the one Nasum and Varil are trying are rare.”

“You talk about selyn production as though it were a crop and the Gens were livestock.”

Klyd raised his eyebrows, astonished. “We have close to three hundred Simes who depend on Gen selyn. Naturally we account for that production. We must do everything we can to ensure a steady, healthy uninterrupted supply of it from our Gens.”

Valleroy swallowed, not quite caring for the sound of that.

“How could our Householding renSimes survive, without Donor selyn?” Klyd asked. “You know how important it is that we keep a balance of Gen to Simes. We also take special care to ensure the health of our Gen members. It’s much more than ensuring that they’re well fed, Householdings keep regular records, try to provide for a quality lifestyle. Our Gens are monitored monthly to ensure they are in good health. I wager your out-Territory doctors don’t take as good care of their patients as we do of our Gens.”