"Drust will have to leave—and now I can't go with him!"

"If you're Sime, I'll pray to become Sime, too," said Drust.

"Drust—you mustn't! You can't pray to be cursed!" said Vee.

"Won't that guarantee it? Vee, I'm not going to leave you."

Rimon met Kadi's eyes. Hadn't she said almost the same thing to him the day they brought him home on the flatbed wagon, the blood of breakout crusted on his hands, Zeth's selyn sustaining his life? He could see she was thinking the same thought. He gave her a let-it-be signal with one tentacle, and went to hitch up the wagon.

By the time they reached Fort Freedom—stopping only to ask Slina to send a Gen to the Lassiter home—Vee's fever had begun, and she was responding to Kadi's field. Her parents accepted their daughter and Rimon's diagnosis without complaint and took her to her room. But under the veneer of calm, Rimon sensed the father's shock, and his brief savage fight with denial, before he went out to get Abel Veritt.

"Please, Mrs. Lassiter," said Drust quietly, "I want to stay with her."

The woman nodded. "You can come in when I've put her to bed."

"I'll help you," said Kadi.

"Thank you," she replied. A tear slid down her face. "It's not her fault. Her father and I—we've tried, but—"

"It's no one's fault, Mrs. Lassiter," said Rimon. "Changeover is a perfectly natural process." He was furious at Abel Veritt's teachings. They might give hope to the newly escaped Simes from Gen Territory, but look what they did to the two thirds of their children who would change over!

Just then Veritt arrived with Vee's father. As Mr. Lassiter went into his daughter's room, Veritt said, "Rimon– you discovered this sad event?"

"It's not a sad event! It's nothing but a perfectly normal changeover. If you'd stop making the poor girl think she's turning into a monster, she might even survive it!"

Veritt paused, shocked at Rimon's vehemence. Drust was staring at both of them, wide-eyed.

Then Veritt said mildly, "Her survival is in God's hands now. We'll try to keep her comfortable, and we'll pray." He looked at Drust. "Come, Drust. Your prayers will help."

Veritt and the family stayed in the room, conducting their prayers, while Rimon waited outside in the main room. He wondered how long they'd inflict themselves on the poor girl. He could tell it wasn't going smoothly. He could feel Kadi's field swamped by the emotional vortex in the next room. Peevishly, he thought Kadi should be out here, shielding him.

He sat there for hours, ignored, alternately fighting down jealousy over Kadi, and magnanimously allowing her to help Vee. After all, the child was going through the worst experience of her life. If Kadi could help her, he had no right to take her away. He was only one day past turnover, perfectly capable of controlling himself. He was only being selfish.

Finally, it dawned ,on him that while he sulked the changeover had turned into a deathbed vigil. Suddenly shamed out of self-pity, he went into the bedroom.

No one had much to say. Vee had fallen into an exhausted sleep, pale and drawn. The Simes, who had shared Vee's pain and would suffer worse before it was over, all had the look of strain. Only Kadi seemed calm.

Vee moaned, her pain filling the room once more. Rimon felt the ache along his own arms as her new tentacles, still sealed in fluid-filled sheaths, went into spasm again. Kadi held her hands, pleading wearily, "Not yet, Vee. Don't clench your fists—"

"Has she been doing that all along?" asked Rimon.

"Yes, and I can't make her stop. She's worn herself out."

He picked up the feebly twitching arm. The field was depleted, and the membranes were still hard and thick over the wrist orifices. The tentacles themselves were immature. Another random spasm hit, and Rimon watched selyn drain uselessly away as the girl tensed against the pain. But he did detect a slight trickle of selyn tracing out the major nerves to the laterals.

"Wait! There's still a chance she might live!"

Drust lunged into the middle of the room. "She's dying?"

Veritt came to his feet. "What's the matter?"

Rimon turned on them, stunned. "You've been sitting here for hours, not knowing she's dying? I could zlin that outside!"

Veritt's eyes went to the bed. "Can you help her, Rimon?"

"I don't know. I don't really know that much about attending changeover. Who usually does it around here?" He looked around the room, wondering why they were leaving it to Kadi, a virtual stranger and a Gen.

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Lassiter.

"Who specializes in assisting changeover, training the children for it?"

Veritt shrugged. "What can be done to assist changeover other than to submit to God's will?"

"You don't train your children? You don't lift a tentacle to help them! What are you, some kind of—of—lorsh?"

Veritt recoiled in horror. Rimon had always kept a civil tongue around the Fort Freedom people. He'd often thought the gutter language used in town went over their heads.

Veritt said, "I've never allowed one of our own to be abandoned in changeover. You have no reason to call me—that."

Vee moaned again, Kadi struggling to keep her from going rigid against the pain.

"I see it now," said Veritt, zlinning. "She's going to die without killing. Let us pray for God's mercy."

Rimon stood astounded as Veritt led them all in prayer, devoutly thanking their merciful God that this girl was dying. His eyes met Drust's, and the boy's pain became Rimon's own. What if Kadi had gone through changeover before him, and had been allowed to die? As the prayer ended, Drust said to Rimon, "But I want her to live—I don't care how, just to live."

Veritt came to Drust. "Nobody wants her to die, but we must accept God's will. She'll have lived a good life and died without killing. Who could ask more?"

"I can," said Drust defiantly. "I won't—"

Vee screamed, her whole body going rigid.

Rimon grabbed Vee's father and shoved him toward Drust and Veritt. "Get them out of here, and bring that Gen in. Mrs. Lassiter, get some water boiling—hurry." For a long moment she just stared at Rimon. He said, "If you really love your daughter—move!"

In seconds the room was cleared, and he was alone with Kadi and Vee. Now what? "Kadi? Do you remember what your mother used to soften the membranes?"

"They don't have anything—I asked. Rimon, I didn't realize she hadn't been trained at all. I didn't think—"

He sat down on the sweat-soaked bedding, wondering if Vee wouldn't have been better off out-Territory, hounded and beaten to death rather than loved to death. "Sometimes," he said to Kadi, "when we'd run out of creams in the winter, Mama used her own ronaplin to soften the membranes."

"That's right! I saw her do it once. But the child died."

"Well," said Rimon grimly, "ronaplin we have in abundance." He extended his laterals, flushed with the selyn-conducting secretion in sympathy with Vee's growing need. Vee stirred again, striving to extend her own tentacles. The membranes bulged, but didn't break. The contractions were premature and weak.

At that point, Mr. Lassister arrived with the Gen Slina had sent over hours before. Despite the frontier operation she ran, Slina's Gens were always healthy and clean, though heavily drugged, as the Fort Freedom people preferred.

As Mrs. Lassiter came in with the hot water, Rimon said, "Hold the Gen over there until she's ready. Mrs. Lassiter, will you take my wife outside? Vee's going into breakout."

He turned back to Vee, dipping a towel into the hot water and applying the hot compresses to her arms, hoping to induce the swelling necessary to break the membranes naturally. As he let his field relax to normal, so that the Gen in the corner would seem more attractive to Vee, he kept the compresses hot and applied ronaplin to the membranes themselves.