House of Zeor Read online

  The unanimous affirmative was deafening. Spontaneous celebrations started in every corner of the room and spread rapidly. Under cover of the roar, Klyd said, “You may thank the photographer for this lucky break. Now you can stay as long as you like without question. I have twenty operatives out checking leads but not a hint of your Aisha. This could take quite a while.”

  Valleroy hissed through his teeth, “Aisha may not have quite a while! We’ve got to discuss strategy. I want to get out and do some work.”

  “You can’t. Not for at least another week.” He put both hands on Valleroy’s shoulders, whispering, “Hugh, God help me, Hugh, I hurt you much worse than I’d intended. If you can never forgive me, I will understand. But my House is yours until you are ready to leave.” He fingered the cloth around Valleroy’s neck and chuckled. “You see? They think you’ve joined us. An honest mistake. But you are welcome here. Now that Hrel has disjuncted, we have room for another Gen.”

  Valleroy brushed that aside, a cold rage building. “You brought me here because I care about Aisha. I thought that entitled me to look for her with my own eyes!”

  “There isn’t anything you could do right now.”

  “How do you know till I’ve tried? I came here to work!”

  “Get hold of yourself, Hugh,” whispered Klyd fiercely. “You’re broadcasting anger, but this is a gathering of joy. The Sime Government may have spies in this very room who’d just love to discredit a channel for disloyalty as well as ‘perversion’!”

  Evahnee’s voice lifted above the crowd. “Hugh! Would you sketch us too?”

  “Go, Hugh. As our Arensti Designer, you’ll be able to travel with me to the competition....”

  “And just when will that be?”

  “It’s only eight weeks away now.”

  “Eight weeks!” Valleroy spat through a wooden smile. “When every minute counts, how can you....”

  “Hugh,” Klyd soothed, “we have no idea where to begin looking or even if she still lives. And we must search without telling anyone who we are looking for or why.”

  “You brought me here,” gritted Valleroy, “to keep me from interfering! Well, I’ll tell you....”

  Evahnee’s voice came again, concerned. “Hugh?” And she started toward them.

  Fuming helplessly, Valleroy eased himself off the table and went to sketch Evahnee and the Gen girl who had offered herself to Hrel at the moment of decision.

  As the praise for his work mounted, people formed lines to be sketched. It had been many years since adulation had been lavished on him, and he reveled in it. But every few moments, cold guilt washed away the warmth of easy belonging as he thought of Aisha...out there, captive in some filthy pen. He was an operative, and he had a role to play. He played it with a grim gaiety that was sometimes genuine.

  With dawn paling the sky, Valleroy found himself drawing cartoons while Evahnee captioned them in Simelan. Jokes flew around the room leaving victims gasping in peals of hilarity. Most of the punch lines were obtusely Sime, and when Valleroy did laugh, he knew it was at the wrong thing...but laughter itself is infectious.

  When it finally broke up, he was so exhausted Evahnee had to wheel him back to his room in a chair. He didn’t remember getting into bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  FELEHO AMBROV ZEOR, MARTYR

  During the next week, Valleroy worked at a drafting table in the design room of the Householding factory. The buildings that housed the mills, factory, dye works, and plants of Zeor’s industry were a separate complex located at some distance from the court residences.

  Zeor, he discovered, made its living from weaving. Once a year, all the weavers in-Territory entered a designing contest, which was held at the city of Arensti, with the winner gaining not only prestige but also the greatest share of sales during that coming year.

  As the Arensti Designer, Valleroy found himself in a position of great prestige within the Householding. He was moved from the infirmary to the bachelor’s quarters, where he shared a suite with two Simes and a Gen. He was given clothes, blue coveralls with Zeor’s crest neatly stitched over the breast pocket, and he was never asked if he was a visitor or a member, but simply treated as a member, though never addressed as such.

  He found the innocent trust placed in him to be a serious burden, on his conscience...so he worked relentlessly to produce a winning design. For hours at a time, he pored over the files of past Arensti winners. He roamed all over the compound quizzing Simes on matters of taste and comparing their responses with the opinions of Household Gens. And he sketched. Often well into the early morning hours, he sketched.

  And so it happened that he was returning from his drafting table in the factory complex late one morning. It was too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, and too beautiful a morning for sleeping, so he strolled out into a section of the grounds where he hadn’t been before.

  The nip of occasional mild frost had turned the leaves to vivid paeans of color that evoked poignant memories of lazy fall days spent roaming with Aisha. He had woven russet leaves into her shining black hair and painted her nude under cascades of bright-clothed branches. And he had loved her. Forever.

  He walked down a tunnel roofed with arching branches and floored with fading color. Scuffing through heaps of leaves, he was almost able to feel her hand in his. The tree-lined path seemed to lead on to a promising future.

  He tried to imagine what she would say if she were with him at this moment. He could almost hear her womanly voice filled with childlike wonder. “Where does the red in the leaves come from? Where does the green go to? Why do different leaves turn different colors? Why are some years prettier than others? Do you suppose,” she would say, “the red is always there masked by the green—the touch of frost like the kiss of a Sime—and the red like the Sime in all of us, exposed to various degrees by our different responses to the kiss—and the beautiful years are only a preview of what all of us together may yet become?”

  Valleroy stopped to find a bough bent low across the path. Were those his own thoughts muddled by the fatigue of a prolonged creative orgy? They’d never talked much about Simes, but her conventional Gen background had given her conventional Gen ideas. She couldn’t understand Simes enough to analyze them like that. It was one reason he’d never been able to talk marriage to her...or to any girl he’d ever met.

  But it was the kind of thing she would say...pointing out the congruencies between the physical universe and the realm of the spirit. It was the mystic in her that touched the artist in him and gave him such joy.

  Each time they had quarreled, he had been driven to seek her out again...one more time...until he had decided he’d have to marry her. And when he went looking for her with this decision, he’d found her gone...captured.

  The emptiness hadn’t eased until he’d immersed himself in Zeor’s Arensti design. Here, he had found something that fed a part of him that had never been satisfied by police work. There were moments he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to leave Zeor, and there were moments he was frightened by the thought of staying.

  Either way, he had to find Aisha. The urgent frustration grew to be a thing he shied away from. He kept telling himself there was nothing he could do but seek refuge in the creation of a winning Arensti design. But there was always the guilt that, while she suffered, he reveled in the unfolding discovery of Zeor and all its many-faceted meanings.

  He snapped the bough aside and walked toward the hedge at the end of the tunnel. There was a small opening that led to a narrow, hedge-walled lane. Fresh cuttings were strewn over the leaves, and the painfully straight sides of the hedge still showed moist scars. The scent was intoxicating enough to draw him onward toward the sound of children’s voices and the snic-snik of a sprinkler.

  He came out through a trellis overhung with a mixture of grapes and berries, already partially harvested. The morning sun pierced Valleroy’s eyes, achingly brilliant after the dewy shade.

  The area before
him was surrounded by a tall, freshly trimmed hedge. Throughout the grounds, dazzling greenhouses were being tended by groups of very active children who knew as much about what to do with a hose as did their Gen Territory counterparts.

  Between the newly erected greenhouses, traces of summer crops could still be seen. It was a perfectly normal school garden, Valleroy told himself. Yet it was hard to believe.

  All the greenhouses he’d ever seen had been enclosed by panels of glass, but these were covered with sheets of some flexible transparent miracle of Sime chemistry.

  Agape, Valleroy watched a team of children directed by a heavily pregnant woman. The children wielded hammers and cutters with a professional dedication as they stretched the sheeting over the frames. These children were older than some of the other groups about the enclosure. Valleroy judged them about the age of changeover, the point at which a child became either an adult Sime or an adult Gen.

  In Gen Territory, children of this pre-puberty age were not trusted with hammers, nails, knives, and other dangerous tools. But here, he’d learned, children matured quickly and were ready to assume the responsibilities of an adult just after changeover into a Sime or “establishment,” as the Simes termed the beginning of selyn production in the adult Gen.

  Curious about this group of children on the brink of every child’s greatest fear, Valleroy approached their supervisor. The Householding naturally chose the most competent teacher for this critical age group, so it came as no surprise when he recognized the pregnant woman as Klyd’s wife, Yenava.

  She was a tall, solidly built Gen with the strikingly handsome features of the Ancients, young and tanned, and alive.

  Valleroy stopped a few yards away to watch while two boys cut the last piece of the flexible glazing and nailed it into place as if it were canvas. He gathered his courage and approached Yenava. “Excuse me....”

  She turned to him with an instantaneous smile so genuine it made Valleroy want to reach for a sketch pad. Instead he said, “I’m Hugh Valleroy....”

  “Yes, the Arensti Designer. Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to ask an...awkward...question.”

  “I’ll answer as best I can.”

  Valleroy cleared his throat and spoke low enough that the children wouldn’t hear. “I notice a difference in the children here from those...uh...out-Territory. I was wondering if perhaps they know whether they’ll be Sime or Gen?”

  She laughed, a spontaneous, delicate laugh, not at him but in surprise. “No, of course not. A child is a child.”

  There was something classically beautiful about the way she folded her hands over her own child-to-be and regarded those nearly grown ones in her care. “We train them all, equally, in the techniques of surviving changeover. They have nothing to fear, one way or the other. Perhaps that is the difference you see?”

  Valleroy didn’t have a chance to answer, then or ever. It was almost two weeks later and miles away as a fugitive trapped in an icy cave that he had a chance to think through what she had said.

  At that moment, a knot of boys emerged from the completed greenhouse supporting one of their number between them. The invalid’s face was pale enough that, at first, Valleroy thought he’d been injured and was going into shock. But Yenava went calmly to the group and took the patient’s arm, her long fingers probing with sensitive competence.

  Then she flashed that dazzling smile at the boy and said, “Congratulations, Rual!”

  Still hanging limply between his classmates’ arms, Rual managed a brave smile and a strangled whisper that barely carried to Valleroy. “Unto Zeor, forever!” Then he was catastrophically sick all over his teacher’s shoes.

  Retreating hastily, Yenava called to one of the Sime teachers supervising a younger class who were filling pots with soil. The Sime woman made a complex gesture with four tentacles entwined and said something to her class that evoked a cheer. She took a moment to get them back to work. Then she came toward the suffering boy, who was now seated on the ground nursing stomach cramps.

  As if nothing extraordinary were happening, she said, “Yenava, how are you?”

  “How could I be unwell on such a beautiful day?”

  “Good enough. You know,” she said, looking at the stricken boy, “your science class seems to have all the luck.”

  “I’ve noticed that. Must be the time of day.” She looked thoughtfully at Rual. “Arriss, do you think we should ask Klyd to come out?”

  A little more concerned now, Arriss kneeled beside the boy. “Feel better yet?”

  “No,” he gasped. “Why doesn’t it stop?”

  Valleroy could see beads of sweat forming on the boy’s face. His own stomach seemed to be knotting in sympathy. He was a little surprised at himself, calmly watching a beginning changeover, a scene that had always gone very differently at the Gen schools he’d attended. The Sime overtaken by changeover while among Gens was doomed.

  Arriss’s well-trained fingers and tentacles probed all over Rual’s body. Something she did made him vomit again, so she held his head until the heaving subsided. Then she turned to one of his companions. “Get Sectuib. It might be an arrest.”

  The two women conferred again while the class went back to their tasks as if this happened every day. It probably did, thought Valleroy. The teachers were discussing pregnancy and childbirth rather than changeover while the victim himself appeared to be enjoying the surreptitious glances he was getting from his envious peers.

  The morning shadows had grown six inches shorter by the time Klyd arrived followed only by Denrau, the Gen who served as his personal donor and official Companion. The channel threw the boy a searching glance, but stopped to speak to his wife first. “This is much too hard on you.”

  “I like fresh air, and I like to keep busy.”

  Klyd’s voice dropped to an intense whisper that Valleroy barely overheard. The channel’s attention was so totally for his wife alone that it was as if the two of them were isolated in a bubble of privacy. “We’ll talk about it later. I don’t want you overworking, and that’s final!”

  “And who’s going to take my place?” Her whisper matched his.

  “Zeor will survive, somehow.” He kissed her firmly on the lips, a passionate tenderness betrayed by one quivering tentacle that brushed her cheek. It lasted the briefest moment, and then he was at his patient’s side, intent with concern as if nobody else existed in his world.

  Denrau positioned a field kit beside the patient, and the two experts went to work. They repeated the poking and prodding the others had subjected Rual to. Then they progressed to measurements with instruments unlike any Valleroy had ever seen. Under Klyd’s soothing voice, Rual’s suppressed nervousness disappeared. The channel’s patience and confidence never wavered when the boy’s attempts to follow directions only resulted in more heaving spasms, this time accompanied by much more pain.

  Three times Klyd had the boy drink down some pink liquid that reminded Valleroy unpleasantly of his own medication. Three times the pink liquid came back mixed with the remains of breakfast. The fourth time the channel tried an orange-colored wafer.

  As they waited to see if the wafer would stay down and take effect, the science classes were gathered by their teachers and marched out in orderly lines laughing and shouting enviously as they passed their fallen classmate. When Klyd turned to glance at them, they straightened immediately into solemn angels murmuring, “Good morning, Sectuib.”

  They waited another few minutes after the last class disappeared through the arbor. Finally satisfied that the wafer would stay down, Klyd helped Rual to his feet while Denrau closed the first-aid kit.

  Rual, unlike any changeover victims Valleroy had ever seen before, seemed in perfect control of himself. With only a little help from Denrau’s steadying hand, he walked toward the arbor, head high, but legs trembling. Klyd paused beside Valleroy to say, “You ought to sleep.”

  “What about Aisha? Can she sleep peacefully?”

  �
�No word yet. I’m doing everything that can be done, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t sleep.”

  “How would you feel if it were Yenava out there?”

  Klyd raked him with a glance that seemed to strip his brain of its very memories. Then the channel did an odd thing. He shot out a hand, one lateral tentacle probing along Valleroy’s neck, behind the ear. At the same time, Valleroy felt a strange buzzing in his ears.

  Before he had time to move, the tentacle was gone, leaving in its wake only a hot streak on the Gen skin. Klyd dropped his hand self-consciously. “I’m sorry. But I had to know. It’s comforting to have one’s guesses confirmed.”

  As if retreating from a dreadful embarrassment, Klyd took off for the arbor at a brisk walk. Valleroy couldn’t catch up without running, so he let the channel go. It was time he went to bed, at least for a few hours.

  He paced back along the tree-lined path, but the spell of the autumn leaves was broken. It wasn’t until well after sundown that he got back to work.

  As the days passed, he decided his design would capture the essence of Householding Zeor. He struggled to define that essence. There was pride, yes, but a fluorescent pride masking a self-righteous defiance of Sime society’s rejection of the channels and their way of life. Valleroy depicted this with sharp, bright colors.

  The people of Zeor had built a wall around their thoughts, accepting members of other Householdings but not Simes who killed or Gens who refused to donate. This was not, Valleroy discovered, without justification. Most Sime farmers wouldn’t sell a Householding fresh produce or grain. Therefore, much of the Householding’s effort went into farming, which forced them to turn their backs on Gens they could save because there was no way to feed them.

  Valleroy depicted this conflict of the channels against prevailing Sime society with geometric lines forming a rigid pattern of three-dimensional hexagons very like a honeycomb. Here and there he allowed one hexagon to have bulging sides, as if stressed almost beyond endurance.