Still in desperate need, Jord groped toward Rimon. With terror and guilt coursing through his nerves, Rimon didn't care this time—he couldn't shen Jord again, couldn't kill him when Jon, and Henry Steers, and God knew how many others had already died—killed by Rimon's own hand as surely as if he'd done it himself—because he had to try to live without killing Gens.

When Jord grasped him, lateral to lateral, he didn't resist. He didn't care. He was better off dead. Everyone would be better off if he were dead. As Jord made lip contact the pain began—aching, searing pain like the pain when he had driven selyn into Kadi, but worse—going on and on until blessed blackness blotted out his guilt, his pain, everything. 

Chapter Twenty-One

SELF-DEFENSE

Rimon woke. He felt fine. He was in bed, and Kadi was in his arms, asleep, her head on his chest, the fragrance of her hair sweet in his nostrils. But it was not their bed.

Memory came back in a rush of impressions, all overlaid by overpowering need. Coming to in need and pain, being pulled from a tangle of bodies. Jon dead. Jord in shock. Hands moving him gently—Abel Veritt. Willa pounding up, breathless, taking in the scene and turning on Jord, hitting him on the face and shoulders while she made wordless cries of anger and frustration, Jord never lifting a hand to defend himself until Margid Veritt pulled Willa off him. And finally Kadi seeming to materialize out of nowhere, the anguish in "her field disappearing at once when she saw Rimon was alive, dissolving into concern, her nager an instant, soothing support.

Through it all, the deep, aching, terrible need, the worst he had ever known. Somehow, the Veritts had gotten them all out of the street and into their house, where Abel had thrust Rimon and Kadi into—yes, that's where they were: Abel and Margid Veritt's bedroom. He'd never been in here before.

All Rimon had meant to do was shunt selyn from his reservoir into his own system, just enough to last the few days until his next transfer was due. Need impelling, raw nerves crying out for selyn, he faltered and suddenly Kadi took command, pouring life into him, completing the transfer on a wave of bliss that led them mindlessly to the inevitably physical conclusion.

But now he remembered. Henry Steers. Jord. Jon. All of Abel's hopes smashed at once.

Rimon gently extricated himself from Kadi's arms.

"Rimon?" she asked, sitting up to focus on him vaguely.

"Go back to sleep, Kadi. I've got to talk to Abel." He began sorting through the tangled heap of clothing.

Kadi got up to dress. "I couldn't sleep now. I'll go with you. Jord will be the biggest problem."

"Problem!" laughed Rimon bitterly. "Oh, Kadidid, how am I going to live with this?"

"It wasn't your fault, Rimon." It seemed she had been saying that to him all his life. No, she didn't understand. So far, she had survived her association with him, but sooner or later, she would become his victim, just like all the others.

Rimon's brief post-syndrome had evaporated. Jord was deep in the post-kill depression he had known in himself, in Del, in everyone he touched. Jord didn't look up when Rimon and Kadi entered, but Abel rose from his chair before the fire, and came to them anxiously. "Are you all right?"

Rimon brushed that aside. "Where's Willa?"

"We finally got her to sleep. Jord—"

Jord said dully, "My life should be forfeit to you, Rimon."

"You were driven beyond endurance," Rimon replied. "I never should have tried to teach others to be like me. I'm unnatural, abnormal—"

"No!" interrupted Abel. "It's not unnatural to refuse to kill."

"But I kill anyhow!" said Rimon. "Billy, Vee and Drust, now Jon—and look at my friends, eaten up by the same disease that devours me! Abel, I'm not what you think I am!" He pointed to the bedroom. "In there—I lost control just the way Jord did."

"No," said Abel. "You may have allowed Kadi to control you, but you would never have hurt her. I've seen it, zlinned you, Rimon—if you'd taken a frightened Gen, at the first pain you'd have gone to healing mode. You don't crave pain. Think about that! You say you are unnatural? How can the desire to feel pain be natural? No, Rimon, it was a test."

"A—test—I—failed!"

"No, a test Jon failed, and even Jord failed. But Rimon,

God does not put tests on us to make us give up. My son has to start over, to face the test again. Are you going to refuse to help him? Can you refuse to help?"

"Father," said Jord, a worn whisper. "I can't ask—"

Kadi went to sit beside Jord, saying, "You don't have to ask. We'll do anything we can for you."

Jord shrank from Kadi's presence. "I know what I am, You were right in the first place, Father—we are all cursed. Our strongest will is nothing before the compulsion of our nature. I had no malice toward Jon. He simply—came in the way! It could have been anyone. I no longer even distinguish between Sime and Gen—Father, instead of Rimon, it might have been you, Mother, anyone! Oh, God help me —I can't walk anywhere safely now. There is no place left for me."

How was it possible, Rimon wondered, for Jord to understand so well, while Abel with all his experience couldn't see it? We are killers by nature. The Gens can refuse to die, but we cannot refuse to kill.

Abel was saying, "Jord, there is one place for you: where Rimon stands—beyond the kill. Remember when Kadi was pregnant, and Rimon lived on Willa's selyn? That was before he passed through his crisis. Now he takes selyn routinely from any Gen who will offer it, and they feel no pain. You have done it, too. You know how."

"But I wouldn't dare anymore. I—"

"Don't say it," answered Abel. "Jord, my son—we have all erred. Accept that, and pray for forgiveness. But don't make one sin the excuse for others. Learn from your error —no one is safe until he has passed through the trail that Rimon passed through. Rimon, weeks ago I recognized that my son was approaching this crisis, and I was blinded by pride. I led you to presume we had found the key to safety for our Gen children here at Fort Freedom—but so long as there is any Sime in the community who has not passed through the test, we can't have them here. We must still be ready to give up our children when we must."

"Oh, Abel," said Kadi, her nager aching with Abel's pain. A thought cut through Rimon. What would it be like to give up Zeth after ten or fifteen years of watching him grow?

Zlinning him lightly, Abel said, "Rimon—if we help, perhaps you would be willing to take in any of our Gen children who elect to stay on this side of the border now?"

"Willa," said Jord, very painfully. "I hurt her—insulted her, and then left her. She may never forgive me, but if she does—what am I to do? I love her, and yet—oh, God, what if I kill her, too?"

"You can't," said Kadi. "That much I know. There is a test for Gens, too—and Jon failed it. If he had ever gotten beyond covering his fear with defiance, all that would have happened would have been a simple transfer. No one would have been hurt."

Jord got up and moved restlessly about the room, stopping at the fireplace to stare into the flames. "No," he said at last. "No, we can't blame it all on Jon. I should have been able to resist his fear."

"Not in that condition," said Abel.

"I agree," said Kadi. "Jord, does your God blame you for having human limits? We can go on trying to stay alive —or we can quit and die. I wasn't raised to be a quitter." She met Rimon's gaze and some of her fire flashed to him. "Neither were you, Rimon Farris."

Zeth. Rimon had gone on then; he could go on now. Killing was unnatural because it prevented people from staying alive. Life itself was the greatest value.

"All right, Abel. We'll take in your Gens—for a while. Until you can take them back."