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governing transfer, had killed Jesse Elkar. And Digen himself, as a
first-order channel, and as Sectuib in Zeor, supporting the Tecton way of
life, was morally responsible for Elkar's death.
Digen had always urged Elkar to fulfill his potential as a channel. But why?
For what? To work night and day to the exclusion of all your other interests
in life, only to have the Tecton deny you the fulfillment of your basic needs?
If Elkar hadn't strived so hard to become a first-order channel, he'd be only
second order, but he'd be alive.
There was no second-order Donor shortage. In the Distect there were no Donors
at all and no overdeveloped channels whose bodies demanded more than humanity
could supply.
Hayashi's hands gripped Digen's shoulders, pulled him gently away from the
corpse, up and out of his suspension. Digen turned on Hayashi, thrusting him
roughly away. "What did you do to him? How could you have driven him to this!"
Hayashi said, "Dane panicked in mid-commitment. He's done that before, but I
thought I had him over it or I wouldn't have risked him with Jesse. You know
Jesse'd been treated too roughly for too long. He couldn't manage an ordinary
abort and chose suicide to avoid hurting Dane. Give him a hero's burial in
Zeor."
Digen felt his tears coming then, the blessed release of frustration, rage at
the universe, sorrow over all the things done and undone, said and unsaid.
Seeing the cocoon of recorders and monitors clicking and blinking around the
body of his friend, he struck out at them to silence them, to destroy that
which had destroyed Jesse Elkar.
Hayashi spun him around in mid-blow, taking the impact of Digen's fist on his
own shoulder to protect his machines. "No! Digen, I've got the whole thing
recorded the first time in history we've been able to make such a record.
Well learn so much Digen, he didn't die in vain. Don't make him die in vain."
Struggling feebly, Digen choked out words that burned. "Why didn't you stop
it?"
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Hayashi let go of him. He was shaking too. "Don't don't think I didn't try.
Please don't think that." He displayed his arms with angry burn stripes across
the gnarled old flesh. "I lost him, and that record's all that's left."
Digen touched one of the burn marks, then met Hayashi's eyes. Their grief met
and merged and choked them both to silence.
& Wreckage of human lives & souls bleeding to death in the streets& crippled &
The Tecton is killing us all!
Isolated and alone, victims of the loftiest ideals ever conceived by man, our
souls are being bled to death and there's not enough courage among the lot of
us to call it wrong. We have to do something. Somebody has to do
something fast.
Digen looked at the man who had been banned from the House of Zeor and pulled
himself away from the nageric linkage, so very familiar, so very Zeor in
texture. He could not offer sanction not even now. Something had to remain
unstained by the blood of souls. Something in life had to retain some meaning.
Digen turned toward Rizdel, who was sitting up on the edge of the treatment
table, groggy but alive. "It wasn't your fault, Dane. You have to believe
that. Jesse misjudged his limits, that's all."Mickland misjudged Jesse's limit
.
Rizdel shook his head. "I killed him."
"No," said Digen, trying to sound reassuring. "It's always partly
voluntary the abort reflex has to be permitted to work, by an effort of will."
"He was protecting me. I "
"He was protecting the Tecton," Digen heard himself say. "We don't hurt our
Gens not ever. That's our most sacred vow, and it's an absolute, Dane, an
absolute every Gen in all creation can trust. It has to be that way. It has
to."Doesn't it? Doesn't it ?
Of all the things that happened that winter, Elkar's death hit Digen the
hardest. For days afterward he held himself hard against thinking about it,
but the knowledge thrummed vibrantly through every nerve, whether he let it
come into words or not.
He would sit at his desk in the Sime Center, signing routine papers, and the
panic would hit him. He would be holding retractors for Thornton, and the
surgeon's lecturing voice would recede under a swelling cry ofDoesn't it ? Or
he'd be with Mora, and suddenly Im'ran would come into the conversation, and
the overwhelming loneliness would paralyze him. He and Im'ran hadn't been
quite close enough for any danger of an orhuen, but Digen gradually began to
suspect that their dependency had been something more than a simple one,
because while the physical symptoms abated, thepain never diminished. And now
it was worse than ever.But it has to be like this, doesn't it ?
He would be in the Sime Center screening lab, giving a routine ronaplin
smear, and suddenly he'd remember
Wyner or Vira, or Nigel, or his- parents, dying to keep shaking plague from
sweeping out-Territory and devastating the Gen towns.It has to be doesn't it?
He'd be treating a changeover victim who had been beaten by his family and
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left for dead in a dirty alley, and it would hit him like a tidal Wave:We've
got to do something !
He'd be sitting at the little desk in the surgical-ward office, working
through a stack of charts, entering postoperative notes or writing follow-up
orders, and he'd curse Mickland s injunction out loud, not caring who heard.
He'd be going over Lankh's progress with Mora Dyen, seeing the vast and
unexplainable improvement in the man since Lankh had seen Skip that time in
front of the elevators. He toyed with the idea of trying to get them together
hoping for a miracle because despite Lankh's physical recovery,
psychologically he was a broken man. Indecisive for the first time in his
career, Digen delayed returning Lankh to the Gens.
Invariably these conferences over Lankh would end with Digen seeking refuge
in the Memorial to the One Billion. More and more, as the winter passed, it
became clear to him that he was living amid atrocities. He knew that things
just exactly like these Didi Rill, Lankh, Joel Hogan's neglected injury, and
Jesse's suicide had gone on all about him all his life. He asked himself why
they suddenly seemed to take on new significance. But he was afraid of the
answer. Ilyana Dumas the idea that there exists another way of life. And then
one day in the memorial the question formed unbidden: What if what if it
doesn't have to be that way?
And he knew what had really killed Jesse Elkar. The Tecton's fear drilled
into him since changeover the Tecton's abject terror of going junct. Digen had
studied Hayashi's recordings of the suicide abort, and he knew Jesse had been
perfectly able to get out of it with only minor burns to Rizdel provided he
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