The shiltpron player began striking an occasional nageric chord. Rimon drew himself down to hypoconsciousness again, listening on the physical level only, so that the music would affect him less. Yet it kept intruding on the edges of his consciousness as he wished the Raiders would bring the other three Gens out of the tent so he could see if Kadi was there.
The music grew faster, and the Raiders zipped crazily through the figures, gone mad with the rapture of the shiltpron. Rimon realized he had a chance. If the Raiders were drunk, he might be able to dash in and snatch Kadi away from them. His fear that she was in that tent turned slowly to hope.
Despite his attempts to block it, the music was seeping through to him, affecting his field in a most curious fashion. Was his hope real, or was he hitting an emotional high because of the music? Why couldn't he block it?
Abruptly, he realized it was because of the Gens. His father would not allow a shiltpron on the Genfarm because its playing caused a resonance in Gen fields that gave an overpowering feedback to a Sime. That's what the Raiders were doing—deliberately. So jaded by Gen fear that it was not enough for them, they were multiplying the effects of Gen emotions with the shiltpron.
He had to get away. But Kadi was in that tent. He could run right in and grab her—right under their noses. He knew he could.
As the music sang through him, he gave himself up to it, soaring on a cloud of ecstasy. The fear of the Gens was a balm to his soul—ahhh, he felt as a Sime was supposed to feel, at last…
Somewhere, some tiny part of Rimon was horrified. It succeeded in keeping him where he was instead of running out to join the Raiders—but only because he was in a kind of lassitude. Why make any effort? Pure bliss was coming straight to him without his having so much as to think about it.
In the camp, the Simes finally opened the tent and pulled the other three Gens out into the firelight. Flames gleamed on shining red hair. Kadi!
No. Not Kadi. Another girl, short, freckled, snub-nosed. Not Kadi. Kadi wasn't there.
The tiny, isolated, reasoning part of Rimon felt intense relief—and then tried to goad him to leave. She wasn't there. He had wasted over an hour—two hours since he'd left the road. He had to get back to the horses, and head toward Reloc.
But the music held him, dominating the selyn currents in his body, leaving him deliriously activated yet utterly relaxed. The dancers in the camp were whirling flares of selyn, the Gens brilliant beacons of fear. He was bathed in the glow, the beauty of it all.
Then one of the Simes grabbed the boy they had first brought from the tent and tied his hands behind his back. Rimon could feel the boy's bewilderment—he wouldn't be killed for selyn with his arms in that position.
The other Gens were similarly bound. Then the leader of the Raiders chose the tall, awkward Gen girl. He pulled her to the center of the circle of dancers, and the music stopped. The dancers stopped to watch.
Rimon, like the other Simes, remained high, in ecstatic surrender, unjudging. The Sime reached out and ripped away the girl's bodice, exposing her breasts. She cringed away from him as he caressed her, but he hooked a leg behind her knees and sent her crashing to the ground.
The girl's horror of the Raider's touch soared out to every Sime there. He pounced on her, his hands on her breasts, not fondling, but grasping her tightly. When his laterals grazed her skin, she realized what was happening and drew breath for a scream.
It was never voiced. Before the first sound, the Sime had closed her mouth with his and stripped her of life.
Even at a distance, Rimon shared the killbliss of the Simes and the delicious fear of the other Gens when they realized what had happened.
The Gen boy bolted. Hysteria was rekindled in him as he came up against augmenting Simes each way he turned. Finally, he stopped, panting, backing away from the Sime before him—straight into the arms of one who had come up from behind.
He struggled helplessly when the steely arms came around his shoulders, hands on his collarbones—tentacles snaking out to his neck. The moist laterals sought the soft skin of his throat, near the jugular. His attacker took the fifth contact point at the nape of he boy's neck. It was the first time Rimon had ever seen a Gen killed in such a way that he could scream. The sound of his death agony resonated with the fear and killbliss and went on and on and– Rimon came crashing down from his shiltpron-induced high into a spasm of nausea. The agony those Gens were suffering was prolonged—much worse than an ordinary kill. When the proper transfer points were not used, they felt more pain, took longer to die—and he had been reveling in it, letting it control him utterly. He, Rimon Farris, who dreaded his monthly kill. Was this what he would be without Kadi?
They were pulling the red-haired girl to the center of the circle now. It could have been Kadi there. He couldn't watch, couldn't feel her die.
He ran, unnoticed by the drunken Raiders, back to the horses, where he leaped astride and galloped away, back toward the road, toward Kadi, toward himself. He had to leave behind the image of himself watching—participating in—those perverted kills, enjoying it just as any Sime would have.
But the image rose again, and waves of nausea swept him. He had to stop to vomit, retching uncontrollably as chills swept through him with the old question become new reverberating in his head. Rimon is different. Rimon is different.
But if I'm different, what am I? What am I?
Chapter Three
KILL ABORT
Rimon caught up with the traders who had Kadi one day out of Reloc—and while he was scouting about to see if there was any chance of making himself known to her unobserved, Wolf caught up to him. The dog leaped on him, licking his face, barking joyously as if he knew Rimon was there to rescue Kadi. He managed to quiet the animal, and backed off, tying Wolf to a tree while he continued his search. Kadi was there, all right—how could he have thought he would not recognize her nager? She was still Kadi, only more so.
Amid the Gen fields ranging from terror to despair, he found one calm to numbness, yet glowing beyond the others with a sweetness.he had never experienced before. She was in discomfort, but not pain—sunburned, dirty, sweat– and dust-begrimed, bruised from jolting over the rough roads, Kadi was in the state of any Gen being shipped to market after several days on the road. But this time it was Kadi. It was all Rimon could do to keep himself from rushing up to demand her release.
And the dealer was Brant, a pompous stickler for the legalities who would never sit still for a quiet little roadside transaction with a bribe to sweeten it.
So Rimon, Wolf in tow, followed them to Reloc, keeping to a safe distance as he watched Kadi delivered to one of the largest establishments. She was the last one in the wagon, huddled down at the bottom against the wall, half-asleep in her exhaustion. One of the Simes unloading the wagon flicked his whip at her bare feet, and Rimon gasped as if he were the one stung. Kadi struggled to her feet, warily watching the Sime threatening to drag her out of the cage with his whip. "I'll walk, thank you," she said with dignity. Dirt, bruises, whip marks, dark circles under her eyes—and still she managed to hold her head high as she entered the compound and the door closed behind her.
Rimon knew it would take over an hour to prepare her, if they wanted to display her today. He also knew the procedures and closed his mind to them. She would be stripped, showered, and subjected to various indignities intended to frighten her. The guards would be allowed a kill—any Gen who made trouble, as an example to the others. Would Kadi be that example? He shivered in the bright sunlight and set about his preparations to buy her and get her away from there.