"No," Rimon said, "it's more the opposite of draw in the special sense of selyn movement."
"I always thought it meant more like discharge," Jord said.
"No, that can't be!" said Rimon and Kadi together.
They laughed, and Rimon said, "We're trying to find words for something that can't be put into words—no existing words, anyway." And neither Abel nor Jord was a native speaker of Simelan.
"Well, I know what I mean! Just imitate Kadi's field." Jord was frustrated, too. He moved to stand beside his father, facing Kadi.
Abel frowned thoughtfully. "May I zlin you, Kadi?" But he was looking at Rimon. Tensing, Rimon nodded.
Veritt zlinned Kadi, and his field shifted. After a while, Jord said, "No, that's not it." Veritt paced away, working off tension again. He seemed ten years older.
"Father," said Jord hesitantly, "let me try it."
Abel started, and then said, "Why not? Rimon?"
"Sure. There's no sense in not letting anyone who wants to try it."
Determined, but not defiant, Jord came to sit where Abel had been, facing Rimon. Obviously, he had killed within the past three days. Remembering that when they'd first met, Jord had been approaching need, his cycle several days behind his father's, Rimon realized that if he was now ahead of Abel—had they aligned the day of the Wild Gen raid?—he must have a short cycle, like Rimon's. Syrus Farris also had a short cycle and extreme sensitivity—maybe the two went together.
Abel sat down across from them. "Anytime you're ready."
Rimon returned to healing mode, and waited. He felt Jord zlin him, and then make a determined effort that caused their fields to clash painfully. Gritting his teeth, he held steady as Jord's field distorted, flowed—and then meshed with his.
Abel rose, coming closer, tears welling up. "Jord!"
Jord snapped back to hypoconsciousness and faced his father in astonishment. Abel snatched him out of the chair and hugged him, crying. "You did it! Jord, my son. Oh, thank God. We can learn it." He was crying too hard to say more, and Jord was crying too, father and son in a painful reunion.
Then Abel said, "You're young, both of you—more flexible than I am. We must have Del try it, too."
Just then Jord sagged heavily against his father. Solicitously, Veritt guided him to a chair. Jord was shaking, sweat standing out on his skin. Kadi said, "Rimon used to react like that—remember the first time?"
"It gets easier with practice," said Rimon, "but I always feel exhausted right afterwards, especially when I'm really healing someone. It passes in a few seconds, though."
Several minutes passed, and Jord still sprawled in the chair, limp with overwhelming fatigue. "Don't you feel better, yet?" asked Abel anxiously.
"I'm all right now," said Jord. "I just don't want to move." But he sat up, looking toward Willa, who was playing with the fire tools.
"What is it?" asked Veritt.
"I just realized—if I can go into healing mode when I'm next in need, and hold it long enough—"
"You won't kill," said Abel. "Jord, forgive me. My son! I thought of you all these years as the symbol of my shame—but you're the greatest blessing God has yet granted to Fort Freedom. Can you forgive me for being so blind?"
Jord stared at his father for several seconds. Then he said, "When I was just through changeover, I used to dream of revenge for the way you treated me. Now I've had my revenge—I've done what you wanted most in all the world to learn. Only—Father, I wish you'd done it first."
Veritt looked away. "I think we both must pray."
The emotional intensity must have made Mrs. Veritt more curious than she could resist, for she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands and inspecting them. Veritt told her the news, and then swept them all outside to ring the bell and announce to everyone that his son had learned one of Rimon's key techniques.
Drust Fenell and Vee Lassiter found one another in the crowd. As Veritt made his announcement, Vee's face lit, and she whispered something to Drust.
As the crowd adjourned to the chapel for prayers of thanksgiving and petitions that everyone might learn the healing mode as easily as Jord, Rimon worried about those two young people, so much as he and Kadi had been just a year ago.
Chapter Thirteen
YEAR'S TURNING
Although plans were made for Rimon to work with the most sensitive of Fort Freedom's younger Simes, he was unable to get back again for the meeting because another blizzard struck, trapping them in their house for two days. Their front door was blocked by a drift of snow up to the roof; the only way in and out was through the tunnel entrance at the bottom of the hill, where the wind through the wide pass kept the snow from piling deep. "It's a good thing the Wild Gens can't travel in this weather," said Rimon. "That trail in the snow tells the whole world exactly where we are."
The trail didn't remain for long, however; storm after storm came out of the mountains, piling new snow on the old. Days became weeks, and it was as if Rimon, Kadi, and Willa were the only people in the world.
Rimon's second transfer with Willa went easily, though again Kadi had to help him balance his fields afterwards. "Next month, I'll see if I can use Willa to complete the job," he said.
"I don't mind helping you, Rimon," Kadi said. "I miss being able to give you transfer."
"Kadi—there was a flow again—and you can't afford to lose any selyn later—in the last months of pregnancy. So by then, I must learn to do it without your help—for the baby."
After that, it seemed Kadi made less effort to control him, and Rimon felt much better. When the snow let up, he congratulated himself—in the whole time he'd been confined with Kadi and Willa, he'd managed not to lash out irrationally at either one of them.
The clearing roads made him wonder what was happening at Fort Freedom—would he find that Jord, too, had managed transfer without killing? In hopes of finding progress had been made without him, Rimon decided to ride over there. Kadi wanted to go, but he didn't want her riding horseback as her pregnancy advanced, and Willa hadn't yet learned to ride.
He was glad he'd gone alone when he found both Abel and Jord haggard and upset. Jord had tried a healing-mode transfer and failed; Abel was still failing to achieve healing mode at all. Rimon didn't stay long; although, the Veritts were polite, he sensed they were holding back from him, trying to cover something—probably the same resentment he felt from everyone else in Fort Freedom.
As he rode home, he wondered if he should ever go back. All he'd done was cause misery. Depressed, he yearned for Kadi's sweet, comforting field.
As he approached their house, however, he sensed something wrong in a strange tangle of fields within the house. Without conscious intent, he slipped into hunting mode, every sense alert. He tethered his horse and approached on foot.
There were three fields in the house. Willa's he recognized, alone, neither frightened nor concerned. The fearsome anomaly was Kadi's field, inextricably twined with that of another Sime, a bottomless black need—
He's going to take her!
In full killmode rage, he flung open the door. Hyper-conscious, he felt as if the other Sime was pulling selyn from Rimon through his touch on Kadi. He had to stop it —do anything to stop it.
Rimon attacked, the world slowing around him as he leaped across the table at the other Sime. But the other eluded his grasp. Gen fear soared all around him, goading him to hunting frenzy.
He drove the Sime back against the wall—and suddenly found himself staring into the brown eyes of Del Erick. And Del, also abruptly duoconscious, was staring back, poised on the edge of the irrevocable act.
Their fields joined intimately, Rimon felt the other's activated killust focused deep in his own body. One flicker would unleash Sime violence upon them both.