“Logically, it made better sense for you to get in close to the Gen and work with the channels to shield everyone, not just me.”
“But I was set to guard you, not ‘everyone.’ Mairis will undoubtedly bring charges against me if I ever show my nose in the Tecton again. Laneff, they were after you!”
“Why?”
“I could have stopped them if I’d– and because I didn’t, they’ve wrecked Mairis’s plans. Oh, I really blew it this time!”
He rested his forehead in his palm, a gesture so reminiscent of Mairis feeling the weight of his responsibilities that she had to ask again, “Yuan, just who are you?”
He froze. Then he jerked to his feet, paused a moment with his back to her, and turned, shoulders thrown back, head high. “Yuan Sirat Tiernan, First Order Donor in the Tecton’s scale, and erstwhile Sosectu in Rior in the Distect.”
“Rior!” she breathed. For months, the peripheral presses had been carrying rumors of a revived Distect movement headed by a self-styled Sosectu trying to reconstitute the House of Rior of legend, the Tecton’s traditional adversary.
But within hours of Digen’s death, Mairis had received a crisp document purporting to be from this elusive modern Distect, pledging to support him in any move he might make toward Unity. The legitimate press had plastered that news all over the world until rumors of Mairis’s next move had begun to fling Laneff into the spotlight.
Laneff’s hand went to her mouth, scrubbing as if to erase the whisper of Yuan’s touch. The Distect philosophy held that in any transfer situation, the Gen, not the Sime, was fully responsible for the results: the complete opposite of the Tecton attitude she had been raised to. It was said that one taste of Distect-style transfer was sure to lead any Sime into going junct.
What difference does it make? For me it’s too late. But it did make a difference. She went to pick up her cloak from the chair where she’d tossed it. It was all she had left of Sat’htine, and all she believed in. “I can see why you didn’t tell me that before—transfer.”
“In the chopper, running from Tecton guns, would you have helped me if I’d told you my identity?”
She zlinned him. His nager was calm, steady, barely diminished by her selyn draw. She remembered the ferocious snarl on his lips as he lowered his head and charged straight at the terrorists holding her. “When you attacked those men who held me hostage, what did you plan? Why did you do it? Didn’t you realize you’d probably be shot along with me?”
“Laneff, I’m not the heroic type. I wasn’t calculating odds, or even planning. I just saw the shendi-flamin’ Diet destroying humanity’s last chance at Unity in my lifetime. No matter what, I couldn’t let them get out of there with you prisoner. I’ve been fighting them for a couple of years. They’ve held some of my Simes prisoner—and what they returned to me was hardly worth burying!”
Laneff dropped the cloak and rubbed the welts on her tentacle sheaths where the Diet’s belt had lashed her arms together. If she’d struggled any harder against that confinement, she’d have injured her lateral tentacles and have been unable to take the finishing transfer from Yuan, which had left her more clearheaded than she’d been in days.
A pattern stood out starkly in her mind. She’d ended up in Yuan’s care because she didn’t want to risk exposure to Shanlun’s overripe nager. She’d shed the attenuators because she didn’t want to risk vomiting in public. And she’d killed—and then refused to risk injuring her laterals. Augmenting, I could have gotten away–and I’d probably have died before my laterals healed enough so they could get selyn into me.
Chuckling at the grotesque irony, she explained the sequence of her decisions to Yuan. “At each point I’ve done the right thing, and matters have gotten worse!”
He savored the irony, too, and said, “I’ve always thought that God has an intricate sense of humor. If we can just go along with the joke, we can often come out with the last laugh. You game to try it?”
“What do you mean?” His oddball point of view made a queer sense to her now.
“I promised you a lab and time enough to do some significant work. I don’t pretend to understand neurochemistry or the big project you have to launch, but with us, you can expect eighteen months—”
“No!” she interrupted. “I told you I won’t kill—”
He cut her off. “You didn’t kill me, and you feel better. Laneff, in the Tecton, the most they’ve ever sustained a junct’s life without permitting a kill is thirteen months. In the Neo-Distect, we have people who have lived three years after rejuncting, have lived without killing, and feel no real need to kill.”
“They’re the exception, not the rule, aren’t they?”
“True. It seems to have a lot to do with finding the right transfer partner.” He smiled ruefully. “I’m not the right one for you.”
She couldn’t deny that. All her daydreams had always centered on the most powerful Donors, trained to serve the Farris channels. Now that she’d experienced such a Donor, she could see it wasn’t ideal at all. Her minuscule selyn draw could never evoke any sensation in such a Donor.
“I do have someone in mind for you, Laneff. And there are others who can be asked. We don’t assign donors. We let people choose each other.”
“What if no one chooses me?”
“Someone will. You are—attractive.”
And you’re a very attractive man. She leashed back the surge of
pure sexual awareness that hit her then, knowing its power was a measure of how good a transfer she’d had from Yuan.
“Yuan, would I have access to the latest journals in your laboratory?”
“Your laboratory,” he corrected, nodding. “Certainly.”
“And if by some long-shot chance I produce a breakthrough, and I put into your hands the ability to distinguish Sime from Gen early in life, what would you do with that knowledge?”
She zlinned him keenly now, using all her sensitivity to discern if he was lying.
“We’d give the knowledge to the world.”
“Immediately?”
“If not instantly. Certainly within the month.”
She could find no note of falseness in him.
“Are you really Sosectu? Do you have the authority to make such a decision? Will the others follow you?”
“They’d follow me into death. Some have.”
The grave vibration of that shook Laneff’s bones. “Why are you trying to convince me to side with you? I’m as much your prisoner here as I’d be prisoner of the Diet.”
“No!”
His indignation was like a nageric slap. He paced. “Laneff, the shidoni-be-flayed Diet lorshes would have forced you to do—whatever they could think of to benefit them. If they could get your research, they’d use it to abort every Sime fetus. If they couldn’t get you to cooperate, they’d force you to kill for them and litter the world with corpses marked with your peculiar signature. Their propaganda people could build that into an embarrassment for Mairis that could cost us the whole Unity movement.”
True, any competent channel could identify the burn pattern she left on a kill: the searing of nerves before the selyn reserves were barely depleted. “And you won’t do the same?”
“No, Laneff. You have your freedom. Say the word, and my organization will deliver you up safe and sound inside the walls of any Last Year House you name.”
He’d made her many promises. He’d delivered on two impossible ones: safety and transfer. He really didn’t promise what he couldn’t deliver. And she was afraid to challenge him on this one. And that told her just how much she rejected the option of giving herself up to the Tecton. So where else did she have to go?
“All right, I’ll go with you.” But she made up her mind right there to keep a very close score on his promises. At the least suspicion, she’d do her utmost to see to it that Yuan and his people never got their hands on any of her results until Mairis had them safely in his.
He greeted her concession
with one of those fresh grins that radiated vitality. “Good, that’s settled. Now, I’m starved, and we do have a prisoner to see to. Then it’ll be time to get on the radio and make some travel arrangements. This time tomorrow, you’ll be halfway around the world.”
CHAPTER 4 CONFIDENCE RESERVED
The Neo-Distect’s headquarters lay outside the ancient capital, P’ris. Prom the air, approaching, Laneff could see the city, bisected by the broad, flat river that gleamed in the moonlight. A rainbow of artificial light outlined the Monument to the Last Berserker, huge chunks of stone shaped into a starred cross and dedicated to the ending of the km.
It seemed like centuries since that day when she’d stood there to have her name engraved on that monument signifying her disjunction. And now I’ve betrayed that vow.
Flying low, the silent craft skimmed fields freshly plowed for the spring planting. The ancient checkerboard of the countryside seemed painted rather than real. Nothing could be so perfect. Heading away from the city, they crossed vineyards, the gnarled old vines like rows of gnomes dancing through moonshadow. Patches of virgin woods sliced by gleaming streams housed cleared areas carved out by stubborn farmers.
Beside her, Yuan said, “Once, in Ancient times, before humanity mutated into Sime and Gen, all this was city. Farmers are still digging relics out of the ground.”
“How do you keep the Tecton Air Traffic plotters from tracking this plane so close to the city?”
“Well, let us say that a new organization has to use novel methods.”
She’d been zlinning the plane, trying to detect any equipment that might bedazzle the Traffic Towers or prevent the Simes in the towers from noticing the plane. But it carried all the usual beacons and seemed utterly normal.
“I guess you don’t trust me yet,” she commented.
“If you were in my place, would you trust any new Sime who could abandon Tecton values so quickly?”
“No.” Ihaven’t abandoned them. I just can’t live them.
“When you know more about us, you can choose freely. Then we’ll trust you with all our secrets.”
Laneff couldn’t fault him for that. After all, there were still things she wouldn’t trust him with—such as the Endowment.
“Yuan,” she asked as the plane circled for landing, “what prevents the Tecton from tracing me here?”
“Only my most trusted people know where you are. We’ve left the Tecton no clue about you. Rest secure, Laneff.”
His nager was so powerful she couldn’t help but believe him. But she also knew that Mairis and Shanlun had other ways of getting information. Lore out of all the fantasy stories she’d ever read led her to suspect that the Endowment could be used to locate a missing person. And the Endowment was no fantasy. Digen had been able to set fires by some trick of nageric focus, which Shanlun was trained to deal with. Mairis, she was sure, could do equally exotic tricks.
She shut off that line of thought as they bumped down onto a fragment of Ancient roadbed that started in the midst of a field and ended at a ramshackle farmhouse and barn shaded by a grove of trees.
They were in Gen Territory. The farmyard, spilling off to one side of the house, held chickens, goats, and an old cow. A handworked pump stood in the yard, while the air held a taint of outhouse.
As they climbed out of the tiny plane, the pilot and copilot helped a nurse move the stretcher their prisoner was strapped to. They were the only occupants of the plane. Zlinning as well as looking about her,. Laneff observed, “A little primitive, but then your bolthole in the mountains seemed primitive from outside, too.”
“Can you detect any selyn batteries in use?”
“Except for the plane, no. But then I’m no channel.”
“You have the sensitivity of one, though.”
She shrugged. “In a renSime, it’s a handicap.” It was, in fact, what had condemned her to an ugly death, no matter what Yuan promised. It was her sensitivity that made her react badly to attenuators. And her sensitivity left her open to enticement by Gens—whether she was disjunct or not. A channel’s sensitivity without a channel’s control.
They followed the stretcher into the farmhouse, where a Gen woman met them with two toddlers clinging to her slacks. She was holding a bowl, kneading bread dough as she talked. “Sosectu, you’re running late,” she said in heavily accented Simelan. “Everybody’s been so anxious. You better get on downstairs right away.”
“I’m going, Tithra. Tell Becket to set the dogs tonight.”
“He would anyway, with you here.”
The plane’s pilot manipulated something on the mantel of the
fireplace, and the whole facade swung out to reveal a stairwell lit by a single candle. Yuan followed the stretcher, calling over his shoulder, “And save me a slice of that bread! It smells great!”
The woman swore in some dialect Laneff couldn’t identify except that it sounded P’risian. “It had better,” she added in Simelan, “I’m working hard enough at this flacked-out business!”
At her show of temper, Yuan paused. “Tithra—trust me. Your bread baking and barnyard mucking are going to reunite all mankind. I know it!”
“I don’t really resent it, Sosectu,” she responded in a kinder voice. “I volunteered. And—the transfers are worth it all!”
Yuan grinned one of his bright, satisfied grins. Then he led Laneff down into candlelit dimness, his red-blond hair like burnished copper. The door whumped shut behind them. By candlelight, they followed a dank corridor lined with Ancient brick. Down a ramp and around a corner, down more stairs, they found another door. The plane’s pilot and copilot were already returning without the stretcher.
“Get that plane back before dawn,” ordered Yuan, “then go to ground for a few weeks.”
The Sime pilot answered, “We’ve got our instructions, Sosectu.” And the Gen copilot added a grin of adoration to the Sime’s nageric respect for Yuan.
Yuan waved them along. “On with it, then!” Beyond the massive door, Laneff found clean, white-tiled corridors leading in several directions from a wide foyer. Fresh, machine-scrubbed air, brilliant selyn-powered lighting, computerized offices, and a staff of crisp, alert young Simes and Gens behaving as if they worked for one of the far-flung House of Keon corporations confirmed Laneff’s expectations.
Everywhere they passed, Yuan was hailed as Sosectu, deferred to, consulted, and respected, just as if he were Sectuib of this secret Householding. Rior had coined the word, Sosectu, to mean a Gen Head of Householding, and here it had become a reality once again, the past brought alive.
Laneff was given an ID tag keyed so she wouldn’t set off alarms wherever she walked, a passkey chip to her new lab, sleeping quarters, and other low-security areas, just as if she were employed by any big research corporation. Then Yuan guided her through a maze of corridors into a sleek new section. At the very end of the newest hallway, only half lined with white ceramic tile and mosaic patterns, they came to a door painted with the lighthouse symbol of Rior. Yuan commanded, “Use your key.” She slid the disk into its slot, and the door purred open. Instantly, a
Gen’s nager blushed the ambient rose-pink. “You said this was an empty lab!”
He smiled. “Your assistant, Jarmi ambrov Rior!”
The Gen woman bent over a packing case in the midst of the empty floor straightened and turned, her nager flooded with guilelessness. But Laneff went cold inside. Now she knew how Yuan meant to keep tabs on her work and make sure she didn’t sneak her results out to Mairis. A spy.
“Jarmi, this is Laneff Farris ambrov Sat’htine. I’m hoping you two will hit it off. She has the draw speed to match you and the renSime capacity you’ve been hoping for.”
Laneff turned her back on the Gen, confronting Yuan. “I don’t want an assistant. I work alone.”
Yuan circled Laneff. “Jarmi volunteered to help you set this place up.” He gestured to the bare tile floor littered with debris from construction. Plumbing lines and power cabl
es plumed up out of the tiles. Along the walls, modern vent chambers with manufacturers’ labels still stuck to the glass windows gaped darkly at them. “She’s the closest to a neurochemist I have here. This was to be her lab.”
“Sosectu,” complained Jarmi, “I’d much rather see this lab and budget going on Laneff’s project than on the microwave patterns on the skin of mice and rats!”
Yuan’s movement brought Laneff to face Jarmi again. The Gen woman was not much taller than Laneff, but plump as only a Gen could be. She had a fringe of dark hair, and a short nose that supported black wire glasses frames.
“You mean,” asked Laneff, “you ‘re developing that new diagnostic microwave detector? The one that was abandoned by Paidridge Labs?”
“Of course,” replied Jarmi. “Our House is mostly Gen. We have Gen healers. Channels shouldn’t have to be overtrained just so we can use them as diagnosticians! That’s no way to treat a vulnerable minority like channels.”
Laneff had never before heard channels referred to as a vulnerable minority. To most people, they were powerful authority figures. Bemused, she said, “It sounds like a worthwhile project. Sat’htine was toying with the idea of funding it last year.”
“But your project is so much more worthwhile!” Jarmi was looking up at Laneff, squatting next to the packing box, her pale-green lab coat spread on the dirty floor around her. Her nager, nearly blanked out by Yuan’s, held a wistful enchantment laced with sparks of excitement. But then it dimmed, and with sadness she added, “But if you don’t want help …”
Laneff felt the objections caught in the back of Yuan’s throat, nearly choking him. But he kept silent as Jarmi finished repacking the instrument and closed the box. “There, now my things are out of your way. You can start requisitioning.” She rose. “I’ll send someone for that.”
“Wait!” called Laneff, stopping her halfway to the door. “You know, it won’t be long until you can have this lab back. I probably won’t survive the year.” She kept talking over the Gens’ combined objections. “If my work is ever to be completed, somebody has to work with me who can carry on after I die. Yuan says you’re the best he’s got; why should I pick anybody else?” A thousand years from now, would it matter if the Neo-Distect or the Tecton had the first method of distinguishing Sime from Gen before birth?
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