"I can have a baby?"
"Yes, Willa, once you're grown up yourself."
"I want to have a baby, like you, Kadi."
Kadi came up with an answer Rimon had heard her mother use. "You will have your own children, Willa, but first you have to practice and learn how to be a mother by helping me take care of my baby. You'll help me, wont you?"
For a moment, Rimon thought Willa was going to cry, having been denied what she wanted. Then, very solemnly, she nodded. "Willa helps." Then she had another thought. "How did you get your baby?"
Kadi said, "Rimon gave it to me."
Willa turned to Rimon, her eyes lit. "Will you give me a baby?"
"I can't, Willa."
"Why?"
"Because I'm Kadi's husband. Like Del is Carlana's husband. One day you will have a husband, and he will give you babies."
Kadi gave him a warm smile of gratitude. He winked at her, and went off to finish caring for the horses.
Later that night, however, after Willa was asleep, Rimon said to Kadi, "You realize that if I were on a normal schedule, today would be my turnover?"
"Your turnover was three days ago."
"Yes, but it should have been today."
"So?"
"Willa's cycle had adapted to mine. If she were married to a Sime whose need did not exceed her selyn production, her fertility would come at their transfers, as yours does at ours."
"You think she'll marry a Sime?"
"To any Sime who could face the prospect of marrying a Gen, she'd be practically irresistible."
"And Fort Freedom is full of Simes who could easily face the prospect," Kadi added. "Oh, Rimon—what hornet's nest will we stir up next?"
Chapter Sixteen
WILLA'S DECISION
As it turned out, the next Gen to come to live with Rimon and Kadi didn't come from Slina's Pens. He was Jon Forester, whose parents brought him from Fort Freedom at his insistence. They were horrified when Rimon immediately took him to Slina's to have him tagged as a runaway he had "caught," but he left Kadi to explain the law to them. Once they understood that Rimon would have to pay to keep their son, they gave her the tax money for Jon for the quarter.
Alternating Jon and Willa, Rimon was able to get back to an almost normal cycle, although he still took all his transfers in healing mode, and afterward had to balance, his fields. Kadi could help him less and less, for she tired easily, and that made her irritable and often snappish.
Rimon bore it all stoically, even when her lack of emotional stability set his teeth on edge. But he couldn't blame her for what her body, chemistry did to her. He wondered, though, if her depression was the source of his own. He felt as if he were in chronic need from insufficient kills: restless, fretful, depressed and without much appetite. Yet be was getting enough selyn now.
In the late winter, too early for plowing or planting, there was no way Rimon could earn extra money. One time Del asked him to take a consignment of horses over to Birmington, and he did it even though they all knew Del could just as easily have taken them himself. What Del paid him made it possible to pay the first-quarter tax on Kadi.
With the spring, they learned another reason they had been laughed at for homesteading just here. Hoping to get work in the fields around Fort Freedom, Rimon plowed his own fields early, as soon as the ground could be worked. Thus he would be ready to plant as soon as the threat of frost was over—and if he were too busy, Jon and Willa could even do the planting.
Out-of-doors, working off his tensions, his temper improved, and that made Kadi happier. But in the end, all his hard work went for naught: when the mountain snows melted, their little brook swelled to a raging torrent, overflowed its banks, and turned their fields into a lake. The place where they had built their first house was completely under water, the charred timbers scattered over the lake. At one point, the lower tunnel entrance was under water, and they had to move everything from the lowest storeroom where they'd huddled as the cabin burned.
During those days, Rimon spent a lot of his time on the top of their hill, surveying his fields, wondering if nature were trying to tell him something.
But when Abel Veritt arrived to survey the situation, he said, "It's mud now, but it's enriched soil that should give you the best crops in this whole area. Next year you'll know better than to plow too soon."
Veritt went down on one knee and ran his fingers through the soil, smelling it, patting it smooth again. "If I were you, I'd grow trin in this soil. The tea you've been serving me is better than anything we raise, and ours is better than any the townspeople can import. They already buy every bit we can spare—and there's more market than Fort Freedom can supply."
"I didn't grow the trin crop. That came from Kadi's kitchen garden– all her own handiwork!"
Abel laughed. "Will you never stop surprising me with your talents, Kadi? I've never known such an accomplished woman!"
Kadi could do very little of the physical work of extending her garden patch of trin into a whole field, but Rimon carefully followed her instructions, and by early summer the field was lushly green. But Rimon also put in grain and corn, beans, and peas against another hard winter.
By that time, Kadi was no longer able to travel back and forth to Fort Freedom. Rimon went seldom now, too, refusing to leave Kadi for more than an hour or two at a time.
They had many visitors from Fort Freedom; either Abel or Jord almost every day, Jon's parents at least once a week. Jon moved among Simes now as easily as Kadi or Willa, and when he was low-field he would often go home to his family for a day.
Dan Whelan, Sara Fenell, and the others who had broken with Veritt's teachings, moved out of Fort Freedom. Just across the creek from the seedy little border town they built a row of neat white-painted houses, their own small chapel at the end of the row. They began to work the land which stretched along the creek.
That much Abel told them. Rimon found out for himself that during the spring three more families had become disillusioned and joined the dissenters. Privately, Veritt was worried about what would happen when next a new Sime came to them from across the border. Would the dissenters fight to gain a newcomer—and, if so, how would they fight?
"The whole schism is my fault," Jord told them. "It all came to a head when I spent all night trying to bring Karl Risaki through changeover. He'd had your training, but it didn't do any good. He died."
"That happens sometimes," said Rimon. "Kadi's mother was the best changeover attendant I've ever seen. But sometimes she lost even a kid who'd been taught everything."
"Well, after that, I was exhausted," said Jord. "Rimon, I can't keep it up the way you do, and after all night with Karl, I was in no condition to help Suzi Hamilton. She was the one who developed pneumonia. Her family—and some others—blamed me for trying to help an accursed Sime– while Suzi deteriorated so that by the time I got there, there was nothing I could do. Or maybe I could have, if I'd been fresh!"
"You didn't have a Gen to help you," Kadi pointed out.
Jord shook his head. "Rimon and I brought Evva Blant through without Gen help, remember?"
"True, but we didn't start out exhausted," said Rimon.
"When I have Kadi or Willa with me, I work much better."
"Jord, why can't I help you?" Willa asked suddenly. She had just joined them, with tea for everyone. Now she settled next to Jord, who relaxed perceptibly as Willa's field began to work on him.
He stared at her. "You—might get hurt, Willa."
"No. I help Rimon heal people. They hurt. I don't."
Jon Forester suddenly spoke up. "Jord, she doesn't really understand the danger, but I do. Why don't you teach me what to do?"
Willa pouted. "I did it before you came here!" Jord winced, and Willa was immediately contrite. "I won't hurt you," she said, putting her hand over his.