Lichtenberg Unto Zeor, Forever

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4344-3969-7
Verlag: Wildside Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 362 Seiten

Reihe: Sime~Gen

In a time much like that of early twentieth-century Earth, Klyd Farris, Head of the legendary House of Zeor and a Sime healer, goes into Gen Territory to become a doctor by Gen law. He falls in love with a Gen woman who is not at all what she seems. Ultimately, he must choose between his Sime heritage and his Gen love--a choice that will shape humanity's future destiny.

Publishers Weekly says: ' created a fervent cult. This second novel of the mutated Simes and their symbiotic-vampire relationship will be welcomed.'

Winner of the Galaxy Award.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lichtenberg, Jacqueline

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE

BERSERKER

Digen Farris, Head of the House of Zeor, great-great-grandson of the legendary Klyd Farris, walked through the train station waiting room, acutely aware of the people turning to stare at his back. They didn’t know who he was; they only knew he was a Sime.

In the dusty little farming town of Sorelton, it was unusual to see a Sime in public. Sorelton was in the heart of Gen Territory, far from the nearest Sime Territory border. All the people in the waiting room were Gen, mostly local people waiting for the big weekly event, the arrival of the train to Westfield.

Naturally, Digen told himself, the retainers, the gleaming metal cuffs peeking from his sleeves, marking him as a Sime, attracted their curiosity, apprehension, even a little fear. In a town like Sorelton, the only Simes they saw with bare forearms were the berserkers intent on using their tentacles to kill Gens.

Digen pushed open the screen door and went out to the platform, letting the door clatter shut behind him. He paused, squinting against the July sun. Before him, the track arrowed out of sight in both directions, a gleaming blue-green ceramic ribbon along which the train would slide on a cushion of air. To his left, an unpaved road wound into the distance between a scattering of houses and farms. To his right, in the only puddle of shade on the platform, one lone Gen sat on his bleached duffel bag waiting for the slideroad train.

As Digen moved onto the platform, the Gen’s attention focused on Digen. Even through the sense-deadening retainers, Digen could feel the man’s idle curiosity turn to a sharp stab of alarm as he sighted the gleaming metal at Digen’s wrists. But the alarm had an odd quality to it that Digen couldn’t quite name. It made his tentacles itch under the retainers.

Digen moved casually toward the far end of the platform, not wanting to distress the Gen any further. At that moment, Inez Tregaskio came out of the women’s restroom and saw Digen.

“Oh!” she said in Simelan. “I thought you said you’d wait for me inside.”

“The ambient nager in there is so thick I couldn’t stand it. In fact, it’s not so great out here, either.” As he spoke, Digen moved to place Inez between himself and the lone Gen, using her body’s selyn field to block the Gen’s field.

Inez, a solidly built young woman a little shorter than Digen, was a Gen specially trained to allow a Sime to draw selyn—the very energy of life itself—from her body without harming her. Closing her eyes to concentrate, she put one hand on Digen’s arm close to the edge of his retainer, and said, “Better?”

Digen nodded. Her calm steady, confident emotions soothed him deeply. “The fellow down there is afraid.”

“You shouldn’t be traveling when you’re in Need like this.”

Gen fear was the trigger that set off the Sime’s attack reflex. But Digen was a channel, one of the rare Simes who could take selyn from any Gen without killing, and later transfer that selyn to an ordinary Sime to satisfy his Need. Digen would never attack and kill a Gen for selyn. But he was not immune to the reflex.

“I have a nearly perfect Donor waiting for me in Westfield,” said Digen. “Just get me there sane, and reasonably stable, and all my troubles will be over.” He turned her by the elbow so they could stroll back toward the Gen. “Meanwhile, this fellow’s nager interests me. There’s something very odd—I wish I weren’t wearing retainers!”

“Maybe your perceptions would be clearer without retainers,” she answered, “but those nice friendly Gens inside the station would turn into a howling mob ready to kill you, and legally entitled to do it, too, if they could.”

“So what should I say, thank God for retainers?” Digen checked his outburst. His frustration was partly due to Need, but also to the injustice of a channel having to wear retainers, which immobilized his vital organs, making him virtually incapable of meeting his responsibilities. “Let’s get a little closer. Maybe I can get a reading. He’s not as afraid now that you’re with me, and there’s something really strange there—almost as if there were two….”

When they were halfway down the long platform there was a sudden flashing blur of movement behind the seated Gen, and Digen knew what he had only half sensed before. The fearful Gen’s nager had masked the low throb of a berserker Sime’s nager spiraling down toward the intensity of Need. The berserker was no channel, but a renSime intent on killing the Gen.

From his hiding place under the wooden platform the berserker leaped up and over a pile of cargo bales and made straight for the seated Gen. Digen yelled a warning to the Gen and launched himself down the platform, augmenting his natural speed by burning up extra selyn. The Gen had time only to perceive the two Simes coming at him faster than any Gen could move. His spiking panic was a screaming pain to Digen but a delicious promise of fulfillment to the berserker.

Digen arrived the split instant the berserker’s fingers touched the Gen’s arms. He swept the berserker’s hands aside, letting them close instead on his own retainer. With his other hand, Digen grabbed the Gen’s arm and yanked the man to his feet, thrusting him aside.

He had a moment then of eye contact with the berserker. The scrawny, mud-caked, adolescent figure resolved into that of a young girl, face twisted in a feral snarl, eyes dilated in the last stages of death by selyn attrition.

Still holding the Gen by one arm, Digen shifted his other hand to capture the girl. By this time, Inez pounded to a stop beside Digen, chest heaving. Digen could not shed the retainers to channel selyn to the berserker. And already the girl was straining toward Inez’s more potent selyn field. Digen made an instant decision. “Inez, take care of her!” And he shoved the berserker into the Donor’s arms.

Still dragging the terror stricken Gen behind him absentmindedly, Digen watched the transfer.

The berserker girl’s hands closed with bruising Sime strength over Inez’s forearms, and simultaneously the Sime’s strong handling tentacles lashed out from their sheaths—two along the top of each arm and two along the bottom of each arm—to immobilize the Gen. From the sides of the berserk Sime’s arms came the tiny pinkish lateral tentacles, four of them, dripping the selyn conducting hormone, ronaplin.

As the laterals made contact with Inez’s skin, the berserker sought the mouth-to-mouth, lip-to-lip contact necessary to complete the selyn transfer. Inez made the contact willingly, surprising the young Sime.

A moment, and it was all over, the young Sime’s Need sated. Digen saw her then, a young girl, bruised and battered, blood mixed with the mud-covered, torn clothing. And he knew what her history must be.

Children showed no difference between Sime and Gen. But in the teens, without warning, some children—even the children of Gens—went through changeover, developing the need for selyn and the organs to satisfy that Need. Here in Sorelton teenagers were watched, and any child showing the classic symptoms of changeover was apt to be attacked, beaten to death like some crawling horror out of their elders’ own childhood nightmares of going Sime. This girl had escaped during such a beating and hidden herself here under the train platform until her tentacles had matured and broken free. Then, attracted by the Gen’s fear of Digen, she had attacked on simple instinct.

Raised out-Territory, she knew nothing of Simes, nothing of what she had become, save that it was loathsome.

Bare seconds had passed since Digen had first pelted past the station room door. Now, the door came open as people crowded out to see what all the commotion was about. Sighting them, the girl gathered herself to spring for freedom, powered now with the speed and strength of the selyn she had taken.

Digen had to augment to grab and hold her with one hand while with the other he still held the Gen behind him. “Don’t be afraid,” he said to the girl in her own language. He let her see the retainer encasing his arm. “We’ll protect you.”

From the door, the Gens had begun to mutter, taking in the situation. Inez moved in front of the girl, taking her other arm. One of the Gens coming out onto the platform said, “It’s the Staner girl! She’s Sime!” And he made a grab for the rifle kept on the wall inside the door for just such an emergency.

Digen turned to them, raising his voice. “The situation is under control. Please call the Sime Center and ask them to pick this girl up.” And hurry, he thought, because I’m not going to miss that train!

He turned to the girl and whispered, “You run for it, and they’ll hunt you down like an animal.” He felt her absorb that with the returning sanity of sated Need. “Now, if I let go of you, will you stay with Inez?”

The girl looked up at the Donor. Digen could imagine how confused she must be, trying to assimilate the new information her Sime senses gave her. He said, “Inez is a trained Donor. You can’t hurt her, and she can help you feel better.”

The girl gave one wary jerk of a nod, and Digen, sensing her decision to stand tight, let go of her arm. The crowd of Gens by the door grumbled as one of them thrust his way through to the front. It was the stationmaster. He called to Digen, “They’re on their way to collect the kid.”

“You see?” said Inez to the girl. “They know your family. They don’t want to kill you. They only want to protect themselves. Don’t scare them and they’ll leave you...