4/25/80
Please Note all material posted on Official Virtual Tecton sites is copyright by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED. TO GET YOUR Sime~Gen (tm) MATERIAL SANCTIONED FOR WEB POSTING or TO GET PERMISSION TO REPOST FROM OFFICIAL MATERIALS EMAIL AMBROVZEOR@AOL.COM. Sime~Gen (tm) is the trademark of a fictional universe © copyright by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, 1969,1974, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996
SFGD
1st Draft
Jacqueline Lichtenberg __________ wds
Sime From Gen Divided
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
For permission to use any of this (or any other) copyrighted material
posted here, email AmbrovZeor@aol.com.
Draft:April 16, 1980
SFGD
Part I
Human Experimentation
Chapter One
Funeral
Up on the podium, someone handed the microphone to Mairis Farris, World Controller and Sectuib Apparent in the House of Zeor. He pulled it aloft for a moment to shake the cord loose. Several people dived under the table to free the cord where it had tangled with the banks of lilies and roses.
Laneff Farris ambrov Sat'htine worked her way through the densely packed crowd, her attention divided between her quarry and the security guards at the podium stairs. For the first time in her life, she was glad she was short and Sime slender. The guards on the faraway stairs would not notice her until she was right next to them. But it would be a race to get there before Mairis finished his speech.
From where she was, far back in the sea of humanity surging about the podium, Mairis was still an imposing figure framed by a lavish arch of red roses from the House of Keon and, at his feet, a spray of white lilies from her own householding, Sat'htine.
As the microphone was freed, Mairis took a sip of water from the goblet on the table beside him - the first sign of nervousness she had detected - and then picked up a glinting object and turned to the crowd. The stillness was so intense she dared not move, dared not even feel the anxiety of being trapped so far from her goal.
The amplification system was perfectly adjusted. Mairis'
svoice flowed sonorously through every person listening. "Digen Ryan Farris, Sectuib in Zeor for the last one hundred and sixteen years, is dead."
The shock and grief that had held them all throughout the last week crystalized at those words. Everyone on the face of the earth had known the elder statesman was ailing grievously - but he had overcome much worse many times before. There wasn't a person alive who could remember the world before Digen.
"My great-grandfather, who held the office of World Controller a record six times in his life, is dead. An era has come to an end."
Beyond the far end of the podium, ranks of television cameras scanned the crowd for closeups of grieving faces. She could imagine announcers whispering into their microphones, translating Mairis' words to the rest of the world. Despite herself, she felt the words flow through her, scouring away the paralysis that had descended a week ago with the announcement. It's as much his voice as his words, she told herself, focusing her attention on the section just in front of the cameras where rank upon rank of Zeor's children sat in the hot spring sun, little elbow length capes of Zeor blue turning their section of the hastily build stands into a bright flower. Security was tightest at that end of the podium, but the speakers would be taken off from the opposite end - or so she hoped.
A balmy spring breeze grabbed at Mairis's dazzling blue cloak and exposed the clean black lining. Laneff noted for the first time that the formal cape he wore was of the blue of his House and the Farris black embroidery and lining, no trace of Sectuib's white. He wasn't claiming that office yet. But he would. She was sure of it. And she had to get to him before he did, and became even more inaccessible.
She began to edge carefully around people, slipping through the tiniest rifts that would take her toward the left of the podium. Mairis, a good speaker, was holding the crowd's attention. Laneff noted a television van creeping slowly into the crowd. Its course would intercept her own before she reached her goal unless it stopped soon. On its roof, two Gens wrestled with a huge camera, the long snout of a sunshade pointing at Mairis.
One of the Gens, a redheaded woman who seemed as young as Laneff herself, leaned over the edge of the van roof to call something to the driver - who was also Gen. Laneff felt the Simes in proximity to the van tense, preparing for the shock if the Gen should fall and be hurt, or even merely scared.
It would be a sad commentary indeed if a Sime were provoked into a killmode attack on a Gen - at Digen Farris'
sfuneral. All his life, Digen had worked to make Sime Territory safe for out-Territory Gens, to teach the majority of the world's population that no Sime wanted to kill them.
As if paralleling her thoughts, Mairis was saying, "... and in the last hundred years, under the leadership of Digen Farris, the world has started to move once again toward the dream of our ancestors who founded the Householdings, the union of the two factions of the human race, Sime and Gen. Never again will there be a nation in which only Simes are citizens and Gens are bred and raised in pens like cattle."
He paused, deliberately letting the distaste he had evoked work on his audience. Laneff had never heard him in person before. Hope she hadn't known was dead became reborn as she listened. He understands! He'll do it! All I have to do is get close enough to tell him! Her breath suspended, she watched as Mairis raised his hand. Suddenly a triangular pennant fluttered from it, whipping in the breeze. It was a dark green that everyone recognized.
"Yes, I said raised in the pens like cattle under this banner which proclaimed to all, here you will find a Gen to kill." He crumpled the flag and discarded it on the table, as he said, "But that was progress! Fifteen hundred years ago, my ancestors hunted Gens when they needed selyn. They could never be more than nomads, without civilization, without the stability necessary to raise children to be responsible adults. And they rarely lived twenty years! Then some genius decided to domesticate Gens and set up a government that guaranteed every Sime a kill every month. It was only then that Territory borders came to mean anything.
"Seven hundred years ago Rimon Farris discovered he could take selyn from any Gen and give it to a Sime in need - so the Sime didn't have to kill to live. Two hundred thirty two years ago, Klyd Farris founded the Modern Tecton, built on the foundations provided by the householdings and their channels and Companions, but designed to encompass every living Sime. But that was a mere beginning. Over the last century, the face of civilization has changed.
"When Digen Farris was a child, the World Controllership was just being created. When he took over as Sectuib in Zeor, nobody could place a telephone call from across a Territory border. He was the first Sime ever to go to school out-Territory under the now burgeoning Student Exchange Program. When he was a young man, all the Tecton's Donors were trained by Channels, a method so slow and inefficient that the result was the famous Donor Shortage.
"That was in the year one-thirty-two, a full century ago. Is there anyone here who remembers that time? Channels still depend on the highly talented and trained Donors for the satisfaction of their personal need. But now there are enough such Donors."
Laneff could see what Mairis was driving at, and she was elated. He was as much a crusading reformer as his great-grandfather, and whatever new program he had in mind, she was sure her own would fit right into his plans.
She shifted her attention back to the camera truck, which was again forcing its way toward the podium. With renewed determination, she resumed worming her way between people. But the press around her had increased as people squeezed back away from the camera truck, very aware of the precarious hold the redheaded Gen woman had on the camera rigging as she gestured to her assistant with the other hand.
The truck was now blocking her direct route to the podium stairs, but they were very near. If the redhead did fall, Laneff knew she would feel it despite the thick ambient nager from the collective selyn fields of all the Simes and Gens packed around her. In fact, that nager would carry and amplify the Gen's reaction - however mild - until it did waken in her the most primitive of Sime responses to Gen pain, fear, or mere alarm, killust. Even though she was more than two weeks from need herself, she knew she couldn't afford that.
She maneuvered herself into the nageric shadow of a Gen whose selyn field was replete, and strongly controlled. The man traded places with her absently, his attention riveted on Mairis's speech. He was a tall, broadshouldered blond with muscles like a fieldhand and a satiny tan to go with them. His selyn field fell into casual synch with her own body rhythms - a trained Donor she judged.
Sensing her attention on him, he glanced down at her, - then followed the gazes of the people about them to the camera crew. Then, to her, he said, "They probably have no idea what they're doing to the Simes near them."
She smiled, not wanting to show just how worried she was. "I just hope she doesn't fall." Having rested a moment in his calming nager, she began to move again toward her goal.
The shadow of the van crept across her position, and the blond Gen looked calculatingly toward it and then back to her. His eye raked across her face - so typical of the Farris mutation that it rarely attracted attention - and rested a moment on her formal cloak in the dark gold of householding Sat'htine with its orange and turquoise border edged in Farris black.
She felt the definite shift within his nager as he came to a perfectly obvious and totally erroneous conclusion. "You've got to get in there, just in case something happens, Hajene Farris. I'll help you through the crowd." He turned, and with a peculiar note of trepidation she could not take time to analyze, he began using his bulk to wedge her a way through the packed mass of humanity.
Her automatic protest - It's not Hajene Farris. I'm a renSime, not a channel. - died on her lips. She was walking through the crowd now, the broad shoulders and bright beacon of the Gen's nager creating a path for her. She caught up with him and redirected his steps to take them around the front of the truck.
"Is that the position they assigned you? Over by the Security guards?" He waded through a family mob of children, pausing until she caught up again. "We're almost there. It's amazing more of the channels working this crowd haven't lost contact with their Donors! I've never seen anything like this. Follow me."
Her second protest shrivelled unspoken. She knew full well the risk she was taking, allowing anyone to assume she was actually a Farris channel. As a renSime she didn't have the channel's ability to control the ambient nager in her vicinity. She didn't have the ability to give selyn to a renSime who lost self-control and attacked a Gen. In fact, she was likely to be the one to lose control under what to a channel would be the slightest stress.
Yet, without the Gen, she saw now, she would never have made it around the truck. It was moving again, edging closer to the podium stairs, but her escort had gotten her into position before her path could be cut off. She was close enough now to observe the redheaded Gen's nager, even through the miasma of the ambient nager. And there was something there she didn't like at all.
The blond said, watching the redhead's antics. "It's an out-Territory network. I hope there isn't going to be an incident."
"Those Gens are nervous, and the redhead is tense," said Laneff, reading the fields more closely now. "She seems grim. I doubt if any of them have been in-Territory before." As she spoke, she realized she had just confirmed the Gen's assumption that she was a channel. Most renSimes, even Farrises, couldn't have read the fields in that much detail from where she stood. And now that she was in position, there was no reason not to confess. "But you see, - "
Casually, as if not even thinking about it, the blond moved into a position between her and the van. "Relax and listen to the speech. I'll stay until your Donor shows up." He planted a shaft of his attention on her, working to her as if she were a channel. She had worked with many Donors, but she could feel the textual difference in the way he was regarding her as a channel. Her conscience squirmed, but her third protest subsided unspoken as the audience fell into a rapt silence.
Mairis was at last holding up the object he had taken from the table before he began his speech. "... feel this is the most suitable tribute to the achievements of Digen Farris. I know you can't all see it, so let me describe it. It is a steel coin with the right profile of my great-grandfather on one side and the epitaph that will appear on his memorial, 'Born from Death, he lived for Unity!' The obverse shows a simple line sketch of a starred-cross representing our first hesitant efforts toward Unity.
"This is the very first one struck - it was delivered to me only this morning. Soon the coin will be in general circulation, the first coin accepted at face value both in- and out-Territory, all over the world. I wish he'd lived to see it."
For the first time emotion choked his voice and he had to pause. From her new angle, Laneff watched one of the Gens - a senior Companion in Zeor by his powerful nager - take a step toward his Sectuib-Apparent, but Mairis waved the man back with a gesture that exposed two of his handling tentacles.
The Gens on the truck above her reacted as out-Territory Gens usually did to the sight of a Sime's tentacles, a spark of nageric paralysis known as temrok. It was over in a flash, but something about the redhead's reaction had rung false with Laneff. When she saw the redhead glancing her way, Laneff raised her hands, extending all eight of her handling tentacles from their wrist orifice leaving the sheathe along her forearms sagging empty all the way to her elbows.
She shoved her tentacles into her hair and flipped it back out of her face, then sheathed her handling tentacles in pairs, the dorsals on the tops of each arm, the ventrals on the undersides of each forearm, all in clear view of the Gen. But, though Laneff was certain the woman saw, there was no reaction.
The blond Gen beside her also noticed her restless movement and put out one hand, his untentacled arm contoured with muscle, letting it hover over her hands. All his formidable attention was on her now, exuding a calm sense of experience. He knows Farris channels.
"It will be over soon. Then the Zeor members will follow Mairis out to the grave for the interment. Will you be leaving with the crowd?"
"Maybe," she answered, unable to keep her eyes off the Gens atop the van.
The Gen discerned her worry and surveyed the people around the camera truck. "How many channels are there near enough to help?"
"Dozens," she answered, again, her ability to read this heavy nager reinforcing his assumption that she was a channel.
"I can see why you're worried. It's almost as if they're deliberately trying to provoke the nearby Simes."
Again he was speaking to her as a colleague, his attention never straying from her. She took a breath to correct his error, paused a moment to bask in the unique spice of the situation - what would it be like to be a channel to people all the time? - and then the crowd's ambient nager rose to an intense bittersweet joy that took her breath away.
She realized that Mairis had finished speaking at last. There was a trace of his words left on the side of her memory - "... and so we begin an new epoch in the history of mankind. Toward Unity!"
Oh, if only he really believes that!
On the podium, Mairis and his Companion, accompanied by a troop of other dignitaries, marched toward the stair by which she stood. Between her and the cleared path stood a rank of uniformed security guards, Sime and Gen, mixed, mostly third Order Channels and Donors, a few wearing Zeor blue.
As the group descended, behind her on the van roof, the Gens moved.
Without warning, a blinding sheet of whitehot pain flashed through the ambient nager. The redheaded Gen, screaming, pitched off the van roof into the crowd, blood streaming from her hand where it had gotten caught in the camera's aiming mechanism.
The redhead disappeared into the knot of Simes and Gens next to the van, shock, and a strangling terror ringing through the intangible energy fields centered on the injured Gen. Laneff, weak with the stirring of long forgotten pleasure, staggered toward the Gen, her body taking her toward the promise while her mind shrieked, NO!
The blond waded into the tangle of fallen bodies and plunging forms dragging her after him. All about, Gens were interposing themselves between hapless renSimes and the pain/terror source that was triggering off the most primal hunting instincts of the Sime predator.
But her Gen cut a path for her through the chaos, until, at the center, they could see the injured Gen woman on the pavement, shrieking out her terror of the Simes about her. The nearest Simes, helplessly affected by the Gen's fear, had extended their lateral tentacles, four small pink-gray organs that normally lay sheathed along the sides of each arm, except when in contact with Gen skin (or a channel's laterals) to draw selyn. The Gens accompanying those renSimes fought to counter the woman's field, or to move the Simes away from it. "There you go!" said the blond as the way cleared and he propelled her toward the redhead, fully expecting her to do what any channel would do and use her own body fields to mask out the disturbing field, protecting everyone.
Laneff, not truly in need, found it just barely possible to hold her laterals sheathed as she went to her knees beside the Gen. She could discern a second flashfire of injury now - a broken ankle, she thought. And then, inexplicably, the Gen woman surged to her knees and grabbed at Laneff's arms. The movement sent renewed pain through all her injuries, and at that proximity, Laneff lost control.
Her mind babbled helplessly while her handling tentacles secured a grip about the woman's arms, blood slicked around them from the gash, but the pain only spurred renSime reflexes into action and her laterals lashed into place on Gen skin. Unable to stop, Laneff went for the final lip-lip contact that would permit her to strip away the woman's selyn and know once again the moment's killbliss she had experienced only once before and renounced forever.
Junct! No - I will not go junct! Not again! I will not kill.
The Gen behind her, bright warm beacon of sanity, made no move, and an incredible déjà vu seized her. He won't help me because he thinks I've got the situation under control.
At that moment, the churning nager broke apart and reformed into a crystalized order. Hands and tentacles slid along her arms from elbow to wrist, deftly applying a strong field against her own, disengaging her grip from the Gen's arms and twinging warm, moist laterals with hers.
As her senses focused, she opened her eyes expecting from the texture of the fields and the smoothness with which she had been shenned out of the killmode attack to see a Farris channel working over her. But the face above hers was more familiar than that.
"Mairis! Oh, no! Now I'll never get to build Digen a real memorial!"
END CHAPTER ONE
#
Chapter Two
Householding
Laneff had no idea where the ridiculous words had come from. That was hardly the sort of thing one said to a channel who has just prevented you from going junct! But there was no time to correct the impression she'd made. Events took on a momentum of their own.
The security chopper which had been circling overhead descended, wiping a circle of the parking lot pavement clean of people. A medical crew had the redheaded Gen onto a stretcher and heavily sedated before the security guards had hustled the other two Gens from the camera truck away from the action.
It was only then, as the chopper was taking off, that Laneff noticed a banner now hanging over the side of the television van. It said, in block lettered English, PROOF FROM THE DIET. The Diet? It was only then that all the peculiar actions of the Gens made sense. She had been on the target area of a terrorist demonstration and she'd almost proved The Diet's point herself -- Simes can never be trusted.
Laneff was still sitting on the ground. Now, after issuing a series of terse orders that cleared the area very efficiently, Mairis knelt down beside her, his whole attention on her. Her insides felt churned by an electric mixer, and her head was beginning to throb with the headache peculiar to selyn disruptions. But all that quieted under his firm management of the fields. It was almost as if she were alone with him in a selyn insulated room.
"She was trying to commit suicide," said Mairis softly, but his words were underscored by the total concentration of his nager on her. "There will have to be a complete investigation. Every detail will have to go on record. But you must understand. It wasn't your fault."
She began a protest, thinking of her deception, but someone called, "Sectuib Farris! The car's on its way in."
He turned, answering easily to the title that wasn't officially his yet, "Get it over here as fact as you can. He turned back to her. "Respect to House of Sat'htine. Zeor wishes to extend formal hospitality to you. I can't take you with us out to the grave, but I don't want you shipped off to the city's Sime Center where every reporter and curiosity seeker may get at you. Will you let my car take you to the Alzada Inn? You will be our guest until you've recovered and the investigation is complete."
She barely got out a mumbled consent over the boiling confusion in her mind. Some part of her, still clinging to her original plan of begging just fifteen minutes of his precious time, was jubilant beyond belief. All the news accounts of security at the Alzada insisted not a flea could get in if not a member of Zeor. Yet uppermost was the thought of how she was going to confess what she had done.
Looking around, she found no sign or trace of the blond Gen. She didn't know his name or householding - if he had one. She wasn't sure she could recognize him from a photograph. It was his nager she remembered.
A huge blue limousine ghosted to a halt near her. The area had been cleared rapidly by the security guards. Beyond the podium, Zeor members were already forming up behind the casket for the walk out to the grave. The rest of the people had been urged out the gateways that surrounded the open area.
Two Gens got out of the car and came toward them. Mairis rose, only part of his attention going to them as he said, "I want you to take - " He paused, looking down at her, " - uh, it is Laneff, isn't it?"
She didn't have the strength for sarcasm, and so she nodded instead of saying, what other disjunct Farris renSime woman is there in Sat'htine?
"I want you to take Laneff to the Alzada. See that she is put in a room not too far from mine. She's our guest."
"Yes, Sectuib."
#
As the two Gens came toward them, he reached a hand down to help her up. "I think you can stand now. Take it easy until we get back. If you have any trouble, Finelli or Molsten can manage it for you." Then in rapid jargon, he outlined what had happened to her and what kinds of medical complications they were to be prepared for.
On the ride across the town of Valzor, she learned that every living member of Zeor had assembled for the funeral - even those too ill to be moved had insisted on coming. There had been several fatalities on the way - unpublicized - and a number of elderly or critically ill members were already in residence at the hotel where Zeor had assembled to elect a new Sectuib. Thus one whole floor of the building was equipped as a hospital.
The hotel, familiar from a week's news coverage, was a huge sprawling building situated on a busy downtown corner where two wide avenues crossed. The main entrance, fancy archaic canopies designed for horse drawn carriages, faced the corner. Back from that, in each direction, spread wings of the building four stories high, rising to towers in places. She knew there were several more connected wings spread directly back from the corner, and a maze of halls and shops underground beneath the buildings. Her limousine was smooth and quiet as a hearse itself, so heavily insulated she couldn't even sense the selyn driven motor. It glided right up to the main front entrance, past the cordon of security and the already ensconced press with cameras and microphones.
Finelli, the taller of the two Gens, ran a hand over his face and said, looking out at the already gathering crowd, "I wonder what they'll make of a Sat'htine cloak going in there - after all the insistence the Alzada is Zeor-only?"
She looked at the dark gold folds on her lap. It was dirty smudged, and the cape had ripped right up the back, almost cutting it in two. "Look, suppose I just take it off and fold it like this?" Unhooking it at the neck, she rolled it into a ball, the unremarkable Farris black lining being the only part that showed. In the inner pocket her papers crunckled stiffly.
"That's a good idea," said Molsten, opening the door on his side. To the driver, he said, "Take the car back to the gates and wait for Sectuib."
"Right."
The interior lobby was everything it was said to be. She was sure it must have been built about the same time as the original House of Zeor - which had not been very far from here.
The vintage woodwork had the look of centuries of hand rubbing. The lighting fixtures were high in the coffered ceiling and shed but a dim light, yet the vague scars on the walls in one far corner of the lobby caught her attention - where the cage had once stood to hold Gens owned by Simes checking into the Inn for the night.
Under foot, the carpet was spongy and new giving way to smooth polished stone around a fountain set under a dome. The figures carved in the stonework of the fountain were all Sime, caught in sleek action poses. Finelli stood with her near the fountain, his attention closely schooled not to stray far from her, while Molsten approached the wood desk set across one corner of the lobby.
She was beginning to feel unsteady on her feet, the headache, relieved for a few moments by entering the dim building, blossoming and crawling down her spine. She tried to ignore it by studying the ornate bannister curving upwards from the other side of the fountain. There was a maroon carpet runner up the white marble of the stairs, and the top of the bannister seemed to be upholstered in a velvet dyed to match.
By the time she entered the elevator with her escort, she had given up trying to notice her surroundings. They walked a long way and came to three steps where one building joined another.
All about her, room doors stood ajar, machinery and telephones clattering and jangling amid the turbulent nageric soup characteristic of a busy office.
Molsten said, "The Zeor members of the World Controller's staff have moved in already to set up offices for him. He can't be out of touch for a month, you know."
She had heard that the Householding meeting would last about four weeks, but this brought it home to her as nothing else could. Molsten pointed down a side corridor, "Sectuib will be using that suite. We're putting you at the opposite end of this hall so he won't have far to go to find you, but I don't think the noise will bother you way down there."
As they passed through a pair of firedoors, Finelli closed them, and a nageric and physical silence enveloped them. In her room - a small room with a single bed and a private bathroom all new and modern as the rest of this wing - she lowered herself gratefully to the bed.
Molsten was testing the room's air conditioner, pulling the darkening drapes closed, and saying, "You should try to get some rest before Sectuib gets back. I'll send to the Center for a travel kit for you - you're about the same size as my sister, I think - and you can change clothes and wash up."
The door signal pinged discreetly. Finelli admitted a young woman, also wearing Zeor blue, pushing a rolling apothecary cart, fugitive from some Sime Center by the emblem visible under the new coat of blue paint.
"Ah, Hajene Crielmar! Sectuib told me to tell you that he had to shen Laneff here out of a commitment threshold."
The Sime woman parked her cart, zlinning Laneff with her Sime senses while her eyes were on Finelli. "He's not Sectuib yet," she said levelly. From one of the compartments of the wagon she took a small white envelope of medication. Turning to Laneff, she said, "You're of the Sat'htine Farrises? Yes, I've read about your case." She zlinned Laneff's nager more closely.
"It's not bad," said Laneff. "Sec - uh, Hajene Mairis is very smooth. I hardly felt it."
"It's my job to judge that - but I think you're right. No serious damage. You were lucky." She handed Laneff the packet of medication. "Codenba brand time-release Fosebine. You're not allergic to that, are you?"
"No, thank goodness. I practically lived on it for years." The enormity of what had happened to her was beginning to settle onto her shoulders. She swallowed back the erupting guilt and focused on the channel's instructions.
"Take one every twelve hours until the symptoms subside. For now, I think the best for you would be to spend some time in bed, leave the room darkened and try to rest. Sleep if you can. You won't need the Gens, hut they can stay if you like."
Molsten was ready with a glass of water, and before the channel had left, she had swallowed the medication and could already feel it working to relieve the headache.
"You two," she said to the Gens, "make a terrific team. How long have you been working together?"
"Oh," said Finelli, "we only met yesterday. It's amazing how many instant friendships have blossomed at this gathering."
It had been about a century since all the members of Zeor had gathered in one place. But the scattered individuals of the House still retained such a measure of the distinguishing character of Zeor that teams like these two were forming naturally. Laneff wondered if Sat'htine members would find the same fellowship if they were ever gathered. Wistfully, she hoped so. But she was afraid not.
Molsten was admitting another stranger, also wearing a Zeor blue scarf with a hotel maid's uniform. She was renSime, Laneff noticed. "Your pardon, but we hadn't expected to be using this room. I had better check your supplies." Quietly the woman worked her way through the room, and glanced into the bathroom, then went out and brought back an armload of linens and other items, distributing them about the room.
As she was about to leave, she noted Laneff's cape, rolled into a black ball and forgotten on the dresser. "Oh, it's torn - and soiled! Sat'htine?" She shook it out and held it up. "You'll want this for the banquet. I'll have it cleaned and mended for you." And she was gone before Laneff knew what to say. At least she left my papers.
To the Gens she said, "Banquet?"
"I hadn't thought," said Molsten, "but Sectuib will probably expect you to be there, if you're feeling up to it. I'll go and find you something appropriate to wear - the Center won't send anything like that."
He left her with Finelli. The Gen settled in the lone chair by the window, propped his feet up on the table and tilted his chair back in a restful position. His selyn field was strong enough that, as he began to relax, she found that she, too, was unwinding. She settled herself onto the bed willing to sleep if she could.
Two hours later, she woke with only the vaguest memory of Finelli leaving. There was a note on the dresser giving a room number where he could be reached, and the channel's travel kit from the Center was beside it. The Tecton often found it necessary to send channels and Donors off to distant places at a moment's notice, without luggage, and so they had designed a packed overnight case which could be provided at the destination - all standardize.
Not being a channel, she had never been issued one before and she opened the small suitcase with fascination. There was a case of woman's toiletries, banded around with a black paper strip on which FARRIS APPROVED had been stamped in gold - there wouldn't be anything in the products to which she might be allergic. There was a pale yellow nightgown and dressing gown, slippers, a pair of street sandals, a couple of Center uniform jumpsuits and a dress - all in her size.
There was even a copy of this month's issue of The Tecton Times and a recent paperback best seller. In a side compartment she found several sets of underwear. They think of everything.
Feeling much better now, she showered and changed, and when Mairis arrived she was watching the interment ceremonies on television - taken by the newest telephoto lenses, it was still a vague, distant view of the proceedings, explained by an announcer's voice.
"If you have a moment, now," said Mairis as she let him in, "I'd like to discuss what happened earlier."
Behind him came a Gen woman who seemed vaguely familiar. She was carrying a bulky recorder which she set up near a wall socket and plugged into the building's selyn current system rather than into the electrical socket.
"I'm feeling a lot better now," agreed Laneff while all this was going on. "I think it's the fosebine, though."
Mairis zlinned her critically. "I expect you're right. But the discomfort should be relatively mild. If it does get worse, I want you to call me about it. "A renSime should never be subjected to that kind of thing," said Mairis, and she heard a roughness in his voice accompanying a vague nageric ripple she couldn't identify before it disappeared. "Laneff, this is my wife, Yanine ambrov Zeor Second Companion in Zeor. She's here as a court representative to take your statement about the affair. The recording will also be used by the World Controller's investigating committee, and it may be loaned to out-Territory investigators -- official ones, not the press at large, but it probably will be in the hands of the press before the month is out, no matter what we do. Think you're up to this yet?"
"The sooner the better, I think." She sat on one corner of the bed while Mairis paced away from her, opened the drapes so the late afternoon sun turned the pale yellow room to rose, and then stood staring out over the parking lot to where a rank of movie and television cameras were drawn up behind a police cordon.
Laneff had had fantasies about that cordon - seeing herself marching past those guards pretending to be a Zeor Farris.
When Mairis turned from the window, for one frozen moment, she saw her father standing there glowering disapproval. Then the impression evaporated, and he asked, frustration erupting, "What did you mean you'd never get to build Digen's real memorial?"
"I did say that." The total confusion of that moment overcame her again. "Everything else had failed. I had to try, you see. And when I heard what you were saying, I knew you'd want my project! Only there was this blond Gen - "
He took a couple of steps toward her, focusing attention on her, a potency greater than Shanlun's or even Yanine's. "Let's slow down and take it one event at a time. Tell me everything that happened to you after you arrived at the cemetery, step by step."
Gathering all the self-discipline she owned, she launched into a dry, factual account of the events.
She finished, saying, "So you see, I'm not entirely free of blame. If I hadn't let the blond Donor think I was a channel, he'd have protected me rather than throwing me into the heart of the situation - and there would have been even less of an incident for The Diet to capitalize on."
Mairis glanced at his wife, the nager between them locking on some plane Laneff couldn't perceive. As a renSime, she didn't have the physical equipment to penetrate such a nager.
"There was no blond Donor interviewed on the scene," said the woman.
"No," said Mairis. "We'll have to put out a notice through the Centers to see if we can get him to come forward. You said you thought he might be a First Order Donor?"
"I'm certainly not fit to judge that - but he seemed to consider it natural to pick up with a Farris channel. I just assumed he was a Farris specialist - so he had to be a First."
"Logical enough," said Yanine. "I'll put out the bulletin."
"That then would seem to be the whole story. We can't go any further until we find the blond Gen. Yanine, turn the recorder off."
The snap of the switch seemed to echo in the hotel room. "Now," said Mairis, "what is this project of yours?"
What she could discern in his nager was only curiosity, but as a Channel, he could show her only what he wanted her to zlin. Suddenly, she was overcome with a horrifying notion. "I'm not connected with The Diet! I didn't set that incident up just so I could get in here to talk to you!"
The pure curiosity wavered and became mixed with less easily identified emotions. He wasn't controlling his nager to deceive her. "Laneff, I've just spoken to your father - as Sectuib ambrov Sat'htine. I had to make sure you really are Laneff Farris ambrov Sat'htine. With that clear, I know your involvement in this can be nothing other than an accident. Knowing something of your background, I am ever more curious about your 'project.' What would you have said to me on the stairs, if The Diet hadn't intervened?"
She swallowed, remembering suddenly how she had rehearsed the speech. "I was going to say, 'Sat'htine has the keys to the new Age, if you'll only listen a moment, Sectuib Farris.' Do you think that would have caught your attention?"
"Sat'htine? Not yourself?"
"Well - it's a medical discovery, and since your training in Gen medicine is well known ..."
"Your father didn't mention anything about this. I would expect a householding discovery to come to me through the Sectuib of the House."
"And I'm not even an Officer?" She couldn't disguise the bitterness in that. "Hajene, my medical training has been the same as yours - except that I'm not a channel. I'm a graduate of Strysko University Medical School, not Lasser, and my specialty is cytology not surgery, and I'm a researcher not a clinician, but my medical background is the equal of that of any Sat'htine physician!"
"Hmmmnnn, is there some reason though for this odd approach?"
She had to curb her most unprofessional indignation.
She smoothed the wrinkles out of her Center jumpsuit and replied calmly, "My father - doesn't approve. Nobody does, and I've tried everyone - everything! They can't see it; they don't believe it's possible: they don't have enough imagination to understand what the world will be like when I'm proved right. You have all three qualities, and you have the authority to get me a research grant!"
"You haven't told me yet what it is you want to research." "Oh!" She got up and retrieved her papers from where the maid had left them. "Hajene, I have a method of distinguishing Sime from Gen before birth." Spreading the chart out on the dresser, she said, "Look here. It has long been accepted that there must be a difference between Simes and Gens prenatally since such vast differences in foetus selyn demand exist between channels and every other submutation. Here, the work of Jonsun and Milmark shows through the dissection of thousands of children who died in accidents, that there is absolutely nothing physiologically to distinguish Sime from Gen until the onset of maturation - when Simes develop tentacles and Gens do not; when Simes develop the selyn transport nerves, and Gens do not; when Gens suddenly begin producing selyn from somewhere at the very living core of their cells - and Simes do not.
"Yet - everything we understand about genetics says there must be a difference! I maintain that that difference is in the chemical encoding of the genes themselves - the very molecular base of heredity. I don't know how much of this was taught when you were in school, but there have been some incredible advances in the last five years.
"Using the biochemical techniques for analyzing the genetic code developed by Krost and Fibs under the auspices of Householding Frihill just three years ago," she said, displaying the data that had become so famous when they 'cracked the genetic code', "I obtained these results." Flipping pages, she held places with her fingers and pointed with tentacles at the graphs and diagrams that had been the heart of her Doctoral Thesis.
"Here you see compared the analysis of tissue samples from renSimes, channels, Gens -- several identifiable submutations of each --- and there's no mistaking there is a difference. Now, look at the charts for children!"
He took his time bent over the notebook pages, concentrating so fully that his nager seemed to collapse in on itself and disappear from the room. Silence stretched until Laneff began to feel cramped from the awkward position she was holding.
"Now, what I propose is a fifteen or twenty year study, gathering the biochemical analysis of amniotic fluid before birth - when there has been proven to be a difference between Sime and Gen, at least where channels are concerned - and following the development of the children right through maturation. If I'm right - and I'm sure I am - the genetic programming differences active in the foetus will show up as by products in the amniotic fluids before birth."
"At most, I would expect you to learn to distinguish channels from others by that method - and we can already do that nagerically, by prenatal selyn draw."
She flipped to the last pages of her notebook and unfolded a large chart. "This chart shows the variant strains of renSime, and just about as many strains of Gens, each strain with its own secondary characteristics that breed true. There hasn't been a new strain identified in the last fifteen years - humanity seems to have stopped mutating. If there is a genetic difference between Sime and Gen, now is the first time in history when it could be isolated."
She pointed to ranks of figures on the chart, hoping he was following. "Here you see the distinct differences in the genetic analysis of adult Simes and Gens. Here, in older children, the distinction seems to blur, but on the ten infants I was able to test, there it is again! In the foetus, it's got to be active! Here are the chemical equations - you see, that difference has got to show up in the amniotic fluid. One or another of these tests will show us the difference."
"The differences you're discussing are microscopic. Your analytic technique might not be good enough to make them significant."
"Here," she said flipping back a few pages, "the technique is described in detail. Judge it for yourself. If it proves insufficiently sensitive, we can refine the method -- already since I devised this system, a better spectrometer has come on the market." She had the brochure stuck inside the back cover and produced it. "And this is on the commercial market. There are instruments in development that make this look crude. However small the difference, I can find it."
But he hardly heard her. His eyes were on the page where she had described how the amniotic fluid specimens were to be taken; a hollow needle inserted through the navel, piercing the uterus. At the appropriate stage of pregnancy, there wouldn't be any major selyn transport nerves in the way - but the risk to mother and foetus were obvious to his trained medical eye.
"And there's also the risk of puncturing the umbilical cord," he said. "The procedure will have to be done by a channel. Even these days, there aren't many who would be willing."
"You would," she said.
He glanced again at Yanine and their nageric meshing closed them off from her scrutiny for several seconds.
"Mairis, when I was a child," his wife said, "I would have given anything to know I was going to be Gen."
He, of course, being a channel had known he would be Sime from the time he was old enough to realize there was a difference between Simes and Gens. The channel foetus drew so much extra selyn from the mother during birth that women often died giving birth to a channel. This prenatal selyn draw was most ferociously exaggerated in the Farris strain.
Closing the notebook and folding the papers, Mairis asked, "Why are you so determined to force this experiment to succeed?"
"Force?"
"Yes."
"All I'm asking is a chance. I can't understand why nobody has been willing to give it a chance."
"There is risk - to mother and child. In modern times, some might feel the risk outweighs the possible benefits."
Laneff traded glances with Yanine. "I don't think your wife agrees. I certainly can't agree."
"Why?"
Frustrated, she paced restlessly across the small room. "Hajene - Sectuib - if it had been known I was going to be Sime, I would not have been allowed to get into the position which caused me to kill in first transfer. Being Farris, and not a channel, odds were so strong that I would be Gen, and my physique was so Gen-like, that everyone really believed I would be a Farris Gen. And I believed it." She had to take a calming breath, but managed to go on without even a quiver in her voice. "It took me all of First Year after my changeover, to adjust to the fact that I am renSime. And I had to do that while I was disjuncting."
Duoconscious, Mairis was both zlinning her nager to read emotions and watching her face. She had never felt so thoroughly scrutinized in her life, and it made her squirm.
"I don't know that pre-knowledge would have saved you from accidentally killing, Laneff. You have the typical renSime's low capacity for selyn, but coupled with the Farris channel's selyn draw speed. You're the first on record to have such a trait - it would have been a surprise under any circumstances. In fact, in your own case, the amniotic fluid test might have been even more confusing if - say - the genetic factor for your draw speed is the one that produces the identity trace. You would have tested out as a channel chemically, but nagerically without the prenatal selyn draw of a channel."
"Confusion would have been better than placid certainty." Her answer came quickly, but she hadn't ever thought of that. Would it be worse to live in uncertainty when others had their certainties?
Yanine had wrapped up her equipment, and now she went to the dresser where the notebook rested. Gazing at the pages, she said, "Mairis, I'd like to study this more closely. We certainly can't dismiss the idea on surface knowledge."
He nodded. "I won't be able to get to it for awhile. The programming schedule is tight this week, and something has to be done about The Diet prisoners. They're out-Territory citizens."
"I'll prepare a summary report for you."
"May we borrow this notebook?" Mairis asked her.
"That's what I brought it for." She had planned to give it to him without explanation if she had to. At least now she knew he was interested.
Mairis said, "Yanine, will you get the door?"
Zlinning the corridor outside her room, Laneff perceived a Gen standing patiently waiting to be noticed. When Yanine opened the door, she saw it was another hotel maid wearing the blaze of Zeor blue. "The Sat'htine cloak," said the maid handing it in on a hanger. "And this came for the ambrov Sat'htine."
Yanine took the small bundle wrapped in plastic and the hanger. "Thank you." When the door was closed, she hung the cloak on a hook on its back, proffering the bundle to Laneff. "What's this?"
"I don't - " And then she remembered as she opened it and pulled out a long, shimmering dress of the exact shade aquamarine used by Sat'htine. "Oh, Molsten said something about getting me a dress in case you wanted me to attend some banquet."
"Banquet?" asked Mairis looking to his wife.
"It's tonight - in about an hour, I think. The whole householding is supposed to gather for opening ceremonies."
Mairis looked bludgeoned. "I'd forgotten!"
Yanine held the dress up to Laneff, examining it critically. "Molsten has good taste. You'll look splendid in this. You've got to come to the banquet. That is, if you feel up to it."
"Yes," added Mairis. "You must come. What would a householding be without at least one guest?"
After some routine protests, she agreed. As she was closing the door behind Mairis, she heard him remark, "I'm going to have to give another speech! How could I have forgotten?"
As she began getting ready, she wondered why he really wanted her present.
Please Note all material posted on Official Virtual Tecton sites is copyright by Jacqueline Lichtenberg and ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED. TO GET YOUR SIME~GEN(tm) MATERIAL SANCTIONED FOR WEB POSTING or TO GET PERMISSION TO REPOST FROM OFFICIAL MATERIALS EMAIL AMBROVZEOR@AOL.COM. Sime~Gen (tm) is the trademark of a fictional universe © copyright by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, 1969,1974, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1986