Tossing and moaning, Vee became more frantic as moments went by. Rimon sensed the gathering contraction and put the wet towels aside, rolling the edge of the blanket up and thrusting it into her palms. As soon as the rough material touched her sensitized palms, the contraction hit, hard.

"That's it, now, Vee! Harder… harder this time… Come on, you can do it!" Rimon coiled one tentacle around each of her elbows and ran it down her arm to her wrist as the contraction peaked, hoping to force the fluids she had against the membranes and break them open.

Her frustrated need grabbed at him. For a moment, he was shaken by an attack of killust. On the brink of attrition, Vee uttered a choked cry, convulsed by the worst breakout contractions Rimon had ever seen. And then in one bright, searing agony, the membranes tore open, releasing the new tentacles in a flood of warm fluids.

Panting, gasping out little stunned chuckles of pure amazement, Rimon and Vee clutched at each other. In those seconds, stolen from the flow of time, Rimon knew again the dizzy euphoria of Sime rebirth coupled with an odd yearning ache. In one moment of spinning reorientation it was gone, and Vee's long-deferred need exploded outward, commanding them both.to killust.

Vee, blind now to ordinary senses, zeroed in on Rimon's field, laterals extended. Augmenting, fighting off the killust, Rimon avoided her grip and bounded across the room to grab the drugged Gen from Lassister's grip.

There was no understanding in the Gen's eyes, no fear in his nager, even when Rimon thrust him toward Vee. Her father came two steps after Rimon, and stopped, alternately piercing Rimon with his gaze and frowning at Vee's feeble groping for transfer grip. She could not raise herself from the bed.

< Rimon slapped the Gen's face to try to rouse him from his drugged stupor. There was a flicker in the boy's eyes.

The nageric backlash from the slap hit Rimon like a shower of icy nails, and all at once the savage killust was back. The boy saw it in Rimon—and understood.

Rimon shoved the dull, throbbing selyn source toward Vee, forcibly retracting his own tentacles. He was augmenting, so it all seemed to happen in slow motion as he waited in anticipation of the kill. The Gen's fear peaked to terror as Vee's killbliss flooded Rimon, wakening his yearning to participate fully—No! No!

Abel Veritt loomed before Rimon's gaze, the last sight he saw as he blacked out. He came to seconds later, sagging in Veritt's arms as the older Sime was in the act of lowering him to the floor. A moment of sick, dizzy chaos hit him before the world steadied. It was over; the ambient nager had quieted. Rimon struggled to his feet, but couldn't seem to co-ordinate.

Veritt pushed Drust past them into the room, and then Lassiter followed them out onto the front porch. It was dark, the night crisp and cold with bright stars shining. Rimon gulped the air into his lungs, fighting strange, threatening sensations that swept through his body.

"That's it, Rimon, take it easy now," Veritt coached softly, as he walked Rimon around in circles.

"Did you zlin what he did?" Vee's father asked, amazed. "He used his own killust to rouse Vee from the brink of the grave, then to stir the Gen so she could fix on him– then he simply relinquished the Gen to her. Abel, anyone, else would have killed that Gen himself, but Rimon just– just gave him away. And now there's no trace of killust in him!"

The two men looked at Rimon with something approaching awe.

"Well, what could I have done, let her die? In attrition? Is that what you do?" As the two men looked at him blankly, he gasped. "You worship a merciful God and that's the kind of mercy you practice? Letting kids die in First Need—for no reason at all?"

Veritt's eyes closed, his hands clasped in what Rimon had come to recognize not as a masochistic practice, but an attitude of prayer.

"The wisdom of the young often surpasses that of their elders," said Veritt. "This is a • lesson we must ever be learning. I will not offer the excuse of ignorance. I am guilty. I have sinned."

Taken aback, Rimon said, "I—I don't understand, N'vet?"

Veritt drew himself up straight. "I had two sons. I have a daughter, somewhere on the other side of the border. But my younger son was Sime… and died in changeover, as Vee might have died today, had you not saved her. We have rejoiced that it was God's will that our children die without having to kill. But it was not God's will, but our own! Rimon, you must teach us—you must help us."

There was such intensity in Veritt that Rimon had to take a step backward. "Abel, I swear we didn't know you didn't know."

"Will you teach us?"

"Of course I'll do what I can, but—there was nothing really wrong with Vee, except that she believed she had been cursed, and it almost killed her. All I could do for you, Abel, would be to teach your children that it isn't a curse to be Sime—or Gen either—any more than it's a blessing or a curse to be male or female."

Veritt sat down on the top step, heavy with age. Rimon joined him. Lassiter slipped quietly inside, leaving them alone. Veritt sighed. "Ah, but it is a curse to be Sime."

"Maybe it's merely that we're not strong enough to withstand God's blessings?"

Veritt looked aside at Rimon, startled. "The more I know of you, the more I am sure God sent you here for a purpose. But still I believe and must teach that it is a curse to become Sime, and be unable to resist the kill. Perhaps, when we see your children grow up in a house where a Sime lives without killing, perhaps then I can see it as a blessing too strong for a mortal to withstand. It's a new thought, Rimon. You shake the foundations of my faith."

"I'm sorry," said Rimon hastily.

"No, don't apologize. I feel renewed. It's almost as it was when I was young, riding with the Raiders—and suddenly, a whole new world was opened for me when I discovered we don't have to kill people. Tonight, I feel young again. I don't know yet where it will lead, but tonight I saw you in killust and now it's gone, yet you didn't kill. Perhaps, indeed, you'll teach us all not to kill."

It was a terrible responsibility. "What—what if I fail? What if—Abel, you saw. Kadi's pregnant. She'll be able to give me transfer again this month, but next month—the month after, at latest—she won't have enough selyn for me. Then I might hurt her—I suppose I might even kill her. I don't know."

"Are you certain, Rimon? Where did you learn all this?"

"I—I've grown up in-Territory. I've zlinned pregnant Gens. That's always the way it is; the field just bleeds away."

Rimon would never be able to follow Veritt's strange mode of thinking. He was surprised when the man suddenly turned to him, taking his hands, shaking with suppressed enthusiasm.

"Rimon, it's clear to me now! You'll take a Gen from the Pens, and you'll not kill, but use him again and again to supplement what Kadi can provide for you. You'll prove to all that Simes don't have to kill to live. When you can take selyn from any Gen—not just Kadi—and refrain from killing, then you'll be able to teach others."

"I hope so," said Rimon, "because there's nothing else that I can do—now."

"Son, I think I see now why God made me Sime," said Veritt. "Fort Freedom is here, not just to help the Simes fleeing across the border in despair, but to offer a welcome to you. You will teach us all not to kill. I know it, Rimon! Because of you, Rimon Farris, I will not die a killer!"