Channel's Destiny

Simultaneously, Zeth became aware of two facts. The first

was the fighting arrowing steadily toward the hospital. Bron said, "Dear God! They think the ba

At the same time, a familiar nager approached from another direction, flickering as it moved between the rocky outcroppings. Owen!

Maddok started for the ba

Bron stared at him as if Zeth had gone out of his head. "Owen's not here, Zeth—but I am—"

"No—he's coming. There!" He pointed to where Owen's bright hair could be seen shining in the sun as he dashed between two rocks, making his way down to the plateau. "And," added Zeth, "all the Gens have to be able to see where the cha

A few soldiers were driving directly toward the pe

As Owen's nager continued to work toward him, zigzagging to avoid the fighting, Zeth pulled his concentration down to healing one of the Mountain Chapel Gens. He had to let his own need pour through his nerves to get the Gen cells to produce more selyn, to heal themselves. He tried not to be aware of the long time Owen was taking, not to notice when the distant Gen's attention flicked to some battle scene before him. Slowly, the bleeding under his hands stopped. He gave Jimmy Norton a grim smile. "Bandage it," he instructed, and started to turn to the next patient when he saw and zli

Owen was watching Eph Norton and two burly soldiers. The soldiers closed on Norton, bayonets jabbing. Owen threw himself into the fight, knocking one of the Gens down while Norton rammed the butt of his gun into the other's jaw.

Zeth hardly felt the pain amid the scrambled ambient nager, and only realized he himself was in motion when Jimmy zipped past him at the highest level of augmentation.

The first soldier was on his feet again, slashing with his

sword while Norton parried with the clumsier gun. Jimmy leaped to his father's defense, flinging the sword from the soldier's hand with one blow to his wrist, and then even as the man was screaming in pain, grasped him in killmode. On a wave of augmentation, Zeth leaped on Jimmy, hauling him back with all his strength, she

Jimmy fell unconscious, and Zeth groped toward Owen– just as another soldier charged Zeth with his bayonet. Augmenting again, Zeth grasped the gun barrel, intending to fling it away—but he had forgotten the relative weights of Sime and Gen. The man stood rock solid until Zeth got his grip, and then he flung Zeth's lighter body right up into the air– and toward another man waiting with a sword to spit him!

Zeth twisted in midair to land on his feet—but as the soldier slashed at him he automatically grasped the man's right wrist with his left hand, twisting until he dropped the weapon. The soldier sought to throw a punch with his left hand, and Zeth grabbed that as well—and was holding the soldier in kill position while he flared horror.

Owen ran toward Zeth, trying to leap between them, but another soldier caught him in the stomach with his gun butt. It reached Zeth as the most exquisite flash of pain he had ever experienced. He was in killmode, the face before him already forming the rictus of fear as he reached for lip contact.

Owen, unable to move or even breathe, snatched his hunting knife from his boot and flung it straight into the back of the man

Zeth held. The Gen died in Zeth's arms before he could kill—the nager going flat and tasteless though still

replete with selyn.,

In a rage of denied killbliss, Zeth turned as another Gen field, high, warm, welcoming, closed on him. Pure predator, Zeth grasped and drew. He sought to slake his wakened yearning in true killbliss. But this Gen was giving—giving– He speeded his draw, already close to depleting the Gen field. He could still kill—drain—burn– Fierce joy spread through him as the Gen felt pain, then fear, and began to struggle.

Something in Zeth shifted. The searing need for Gen pain was gone. Though need was still there, he was filled with the joy of release.

Something slammed him duoconscious. The Gen fell away from his loosened grasp. In agonized protest, his dual system went into spasm. And then blackness closed over him.

Zeth came to, struggling to breathe, Owen's full weight crushing him. He was on his back on the battlefield, his hands pi

The battle was skirling away from them now. Zeth knew he had tried to kill, but couldn't remember clearly why he hadn't. He sat up, ignoring the bruised feeling through his system. Del was bending over Maddok, who was unconscious and very pale. The other cha

' 'No—Owen—''

"It wasn't me. You dropped Maddok before I could touch you. Then you started convulsing like Rimon used to—just about scared me to– Anyway, you're both all right."

"Zeth?" The voice was querulous, plaintive. Jimmy Norton. Zeth shoved himself to his feet. Jimmy was clinging to his father for support—but there was no nageric link between them. It was Zeth Jimmy was reaching toward—and Zeth held out his arms to him, feeling in his nager the sweet, clean ease of tension that meant disjunction. The transfer wiped out Zeth's pain as totally as it did Jimmy's need—and afterward he hugged the boy, saying, "It's over, Jimmy. You made it. No more need to kill."

Eph Norton, his field glowing with joy and gratitude, took his son from Zeth's arms. "He insisted it had to be you, Zeth. You did it—you made Jimmy my son again!"

But Jimmy Norton was not the only Sime who needed a transfer. As the battle wound down, the cha

Owen's sister was trembling with need, brought on partly by selyn loss from a sword wound in her thigh, and partly by the same augmentation every Sime in the battle had indulged in—to win. The Gen soldiers were all dead or captured and a

strange hush had fallen. Zeth told Jana, "You came through just fine. You resisted, Jana."

In response, she flung herself on him, and when it was over, she clung to Zeth, sobbing, "I wanted to kill. I only murdered a few of them. Sissy Brandon, though—Zeth, she never killed before! Never! And I saw her—"

"We'll have to help her, Jana," Zeth began.

"No, no—she's dead! I think she let them cut her down after—''

"No, Jana—it was war." Even so, their casualties were light. No one close to Zeth had died, and he chose to take that as an omen of better times.

The evening passed in a blur—transfers, post-reactions, and caring for the wounded. Just before sundown, they carried the last of the wounded into the fort, where the men's living quarters, on the side opposite the hole in the wall, were turned into an infirmary. Zeth had no time to think until well after midnight, when he was making a final check through the barracks before trying to find a place for himself—and particularly Owen—to get some rest. Finally it occurred to him to ask his Companion, "How did you escape? We came to rescue you, you know."