RenSime s-6

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Later, while Jarmi was boiling some noodles in the kitchen of their apartment and Laneff was snapping some raw green beans into the salad, Laneff confessed her split feelings.

  “I’ve felt a little like that myself,” replied Jarmi. “Too many shocks in too short a time—and now this. I mean, even Azevedo has lost touch with reality! He thinks Shanlun survived! We’ve seen how the Diet works.”

  At Laneff’s stricken expression, Jarmi left off stirring the boiling noodles and came across to lean on the counter beside Laneff. “I know you loved him. I know you felt something for Yuan, too. These things tear a woman apart!”

  The Gen, too, had lost dear ones brutally, and her sympathy came from a deep personal knowledge. She’d lost weight, lately, from poor appetite as well as overwork, and maybe silent grieving as well. Laneff had expended selyn recklessly in augmentation that afternoon when Yuan arrived. The shrieking intil was gone, but the need ached to the bone, and she was ready to take Jarmi in transfer right then and there—but the noodles boiled over. The Gen jumped to rescue the pot.

  Laneff held her breath, half wishing the Gen would burn herself and send that indescribable thrill through the air to trigger her off into a thoughtless hunting-mode attack. What am I thinking? She forced herself to breathe, to take her fist down from her mouth. “Jarmi, don’t be surprised if I just suddenly—”

  The Gen turned from the steam as she drained the noodles. “What? I thought you were all right?”

  Laneff nodded. “But I was just hoping you’d burn yourself!” Disgusted, Laneff buried her face in her hands.

  Jarmi came and pried her fingers loose, her steam-reddened hands soothing Laneff’s tremors away. “It’s all right. I understand now. Oh, Laneff, I didn’t realize! When those terrorists set you up, that man had been deliberately hurt. No wonder! Of course, now I understand it all, Laneff!”

  Laneff noticed a nageric shift in the room. Azevedo and Desha were at the door. Pulling herself together, she went to let them in, and the four of them shared a dinner from across the ocean, completely free of all the pungent herbs and spices favored by the gypsies.

  Laneff could barely stay duoconscious long enough to smell the memory-laden fragrances, let alone taste anything. She nibbled a few bits, forcing herself to swallow. If Shan is dead, this baby is all that’s left of him. I must eat. She choked down a few more bites and then swallowed her vitamins.

  Azevedo likewise was unenthusiastic but doing his best. The two Gens ate ravenously, Jarmi delightfully detailing her sauce recipes for Desha. Afterward, they were cleaning off the table, and the two Gens were in the kitchen washing dishes, when Azevedo leaned over and commented to Laneff, “It’s obvious what condition we’re in, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “I think it’ll pass. It’s just intil.”

  But he zlinned her at intervals for a while, finally saying, “In this channel’s opinion, I think you two ought to transfer tonight—before you precipitate it unexpectedly.”

  “Is that an order?” asked Laneff.

  “I don’t order that sort of thing. I zlin that you’ve got yourself set on Jarmi—and that’s good. But with intil such as you’re displaying, you might go for some other Gen.”

  “You still think Jarmi’s the best choice for me right now?”

  “Gen transfer should help stave off disjunction crisis.” Then he added, “But if for some personal reason Jarmi is unacceptable to you —I am here, Laneff. Always.”

  The assurance in his nager helped Laneff relax. The two Gens came to the bar that divided off the kitchenette, and Desha called, “I suspect you’re talking about us!”

  Azevedo straightened. “Now what else would two Simes in need be talking of?”

  Jarmi laughed. “Two overstuffed Gens, of course.” But there was strain in the humor all around. Shanlun’s absence at this time—when he’d been so sure he’d be back—then Yuan’s report—all left a black hole in the nager.

  Desha took Azevedo off almost immediately after that, and Jarmi confronted Laneff. “He’s right, you know. We ought to do it tonight.”

  Laneff realized that somewhere in back of her irrational mind she’d treasured the hope that Shanlun would return to give her transfer—as he’d once promised he might, to win her from Yuan. She thrust all that aside and told Jarmi, “Yes. I do want you. You’re comfortable—and good for me.”

  “And I want you. Nobody has ever been like you!”

  Jarmi’s nager engulfed her, full Gen attention penetrating. It wasn’t anything like a trained Donor’s attention—but it was Jarmi. It seemed to Laneff that this Gen was the only stable, dependable thing in life. Familiar. Comfortable.

  At last she dared to relax, to give in to the lure of sweet Genness. This is the safest way. Azevedo’s right, I’m dangerous like this, and Jarmi’s my best choice. Besides, tomorrow I’ll be able to work for a change!

  The sitting room was an alcove off the bedroom, adjacent to the dressing room and shower. It had a huge picture window, facing west —and the blank side of another building. The westering summer sun had turned the overcast to rose and gold, and the light from the window blushed the white-painted wicker furniture to pink. Laneff went to the window, expecting Jarmi to sit on the odd little transfer bench that was upholstered over a wicker frame.

  But the Gen turned to the shower room. “I’ve got to shower first. All I’ll want afterward is to sleep!”

  Thoughtfully, Jarmi left the shower room door open so Laneff didn’t lose touch with her nager and panic. Laneff pulled a stool in front of the door to bask in the Gen nager. “I’ll want to shower, too. I spilled– Well, you don’t want to know what I spilled on myself today!”

  Jarmi leaned out the door to toss her dirty lab coat into the laundry chute. “I’ll tell you what I broke if you’ll tell me what you spilled.” The humor was forced but Laneff appreciated the attempt.

  As Jarmi stepped into the shower, Laneff raised her voice and said, “One of the bottles of kerduvon. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll make more tomorrow. What did you break?”

  “Our only, it-costs-seventeen-hours-to-make steam-distillation column! What else!”

  “What?” Laneff came up off her stool. “Oh, no! Now I can’t make more kerduvon tomorrow!”

  “You forget,” called Jarmi, “what you really have to have loads of is the K/B fraction. You know, we should make a rule to take a holiday the day before a transfer. Neither of us is in such great shape.”

  From inside the shower, Jarmi was working on the nager. As she waited, Laneff couldn’t help but think of Shanlun. His face—his silly nose, and sunburned forehead, and tactile voice that sent shivers up her spine, and that incredible sparkling colored nager—and his touch on her tentacles. Oh, dear God, don’t let him be dead!

  Everywhere she looked some personal item of Shanlun’s loomed into consciousness, as if his nager lingered in the air.

  She got to her feet and stripped off her filthy clothes. As Jarmi was finishing, Laneff edged around her into the shower saying, “Don’t bother to turn it off!”

  Before Jarmi had her wrap tied, Laneff was out of the shower, toweling off and slipping into a wrap. “Why are Gens always so slow!” she complained, only half joking.

  “All right,” said Jarmi. “I’m coming. I’ll just let my hair dry in the air.”

  Laneff was waiting on the lounge when Jarmi finally came out of the bathroom, wearing a terry robe over her gown, and with her hair wrapped in a towel. “How do I look?”

  “Who cares. It’s how you zlin that interests me.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear!” Now she did take a seat on the transfer bench. They had once discussed the piece of furniture and noted how it was used in various paintings hung about in the halls. “Like this—right?”

  Laneff sat, facing the opposite direction, half turning to take Jarmi in transfer position. “Not bad, actually.”

  Laneff moved to close the contact, but Jarmi fended her off. “Not so fast.
You’ve lost your edge. This should help!”

  The Gen raked her long, hard fingernails along her own forearms, leaving instant red welts that sent stinging shivers through the nager and hurt. It wasn’t the same as the pain from Yuan’s bullet wound, nor the terrorist’s broken ankle and torn hand, but the pure, allover sensation wakened Laneff’s nerves to renewed intil.

  She went hyperconscious and didn’t even hear her own growl of savage frustration as she seized the Gen’s sensitized arms. Selyn erupted into her system at first lip contact. Laneff soared on it, drawing with all the pent-up yearning.

  Quickly, Laneff was drawing at her peak speed, easily matched by Jarmi. Euphoria held her transfixed on the brink of satisfaction. Pain still burning along her arms, Jarmi deliberately resisted the draw, taunting the half-crazed Laneff to further effort. Helplessly, she drew selyn against the Gen’s resistance, and the pain increased, and her satisfaction came nearer, and she increased her draw speed, and the pain increased until it was the exquisite torture of real satisfaction run full to completion.

  She came out of it weeping for the unexpected joy of it, knowing that with transfers like this she could avoid disjunction crisis and bring Shanlun’s baby to life. Everything was solved.

  The Gen opposite her slumped into a boneless mass of terry-cloth, “Jarmi?”

  The nager had gone flat. The screaming alarm in Laneff was not echoed by the pain of transfer burn. She wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t producing selyn. “Jarmi! Wake up!”

  “No! No!” Laneff screamed, a long inarticulate wail of anguish. “No!” Then the choking sobs came.

  By the time she could go to call Azevedo, Jarmi’s hair had dried.

  CHAPTER 11

  CHANCE

  The longest night of Laneff’s life passed in a blurred kaleidoscope of impressions: shock/horror/sorrow veiled behind nageric cushions //spinning images of walls, paintings, doors//faces looming/ stretcher moving candles mirrors flowers bells silences bursts of tears low-voiced conferences over her head trin tea and medicine forced on her/sleep at last.

  She woke floating in Yuan’s nager, convinced she’d had a particularly ghastly nightmare—until she saw his face, worn, sunken, tattered by weight loss and pain, while in herself there was no trace of need. Sunlight leaked around drapes. A dimmed lamp showed his reddish-blond hair, freckles and his gingery eyebrows over sunken eyes. And he’d shaved his mustache. His nager, darkly mottled with trauma and exhaustion, held a tender luster void of all recrimination.

  With a cry, she wrenched free of that hypnotic nager and twisted away, facing the opposite side of the bed. She determined to stay that way until he left her alone.

  With his good hand, he stroked her shoulder, freeing her hair. “All right. Take your time. We have all day.” He eased himself gingerly down on the pillow she’d vacated, his own illness weighing heavily.

  She wondered how—and why—he’d dragged himself here to be with her, and marveled at his stamina. But it was only a fleeting awareness. The warmth of the man brought the memory of Shanlun sleeping soundly in just that spot, in just that position. On a tide of anxiety, she thrust herself free of the blanket and plunged across the room toward the dressing alcove—and the refuge of the shower.

  The wicker transfer bench was gone. The empty floor space stopped her—almost worse than if the thing were still there, gleaming whitely. In a flash, she relived the entire experience. Her knees buckled. Without the strength to fight it, she let herself slide to the floor mat, her night dress caught awkwardly under her knees.

  But the tears wouldn’t come. Not again. Only wave after wave of self-loathing answered her seeking for tears. Grief was a refuge denied.

  Yuan worked his way to his feet awkwardly, then swayed slowly to her side, favoring the arm bound in a sling. She felt every twinge in him, distantly, without need, without intil. She shied into hypoconsciousness, unwilling to think about it. His shadow over her was like a tangible thing. His voice laved salve over her scream-torn ears. But his words echoed those in her mind. “You killed Jarmi.”

  It was no rebuke, no accusation. She couldn’t divine how those words could carry such intense compassion, especially coming from him—Jarmi’s Sosectu.

  “She loved you so,” whispered Laneff, throat raw from screaming.

  “Say it, Laneff. Say, ‘I killed Jarmi.’”

  She vaguely remembered screaming. Then, for a long long time, she’d been unable to move, or do or say anything for the endless repetition of those words. Catatonic, they’d called her. She wanted now to respond.

  Her throat opened, then clenched shut over the words. Mutely, she shook her head, her guts cramping. Every nerve in her was on fire with Jarmi’s selyn.

  “Say, ‘I killed Jarmi,’ ” he insisted with remorseless compassion. “You have to say it, Laneff, out loud. Say it and accept it.”

  She felt as if her very mind tissues were about to tear open, spilling mental bile that would burn her brain.

  He went to one knee, gasping as he clutched his shoulder. Then he put one hand on the small of her back, his Gen coolness taking the fire out of her. He let his hand smooth upward along the curve of her spine as he urged her, “Tell me about it, Laneff—tell me how good it was—and terrible. Tell me what Jarmi felt.”

  She hadn’t been able to tell them how it had happened. When she’d found Azevedo beside Yuan’s bed, she’d only been able to strangle a wail and point in the direction of the apartment. But the channel had known from her nageric state. Running under full augmentation, gathering attendants with shouts, he’d pounded into the apartment and to Jarmi’s side, halting only when the hopeless silence of her nager was clear.

  How good it had been. Tell a Gen how good it was to kill? His hand stroked her back, pausing just where the selyn-transport nerves joined the spinal axis, sending a seductive relaxation through and through her.

  She straightened away from that touch, unwilling to yield the tension that held down the realities. His hand hovered. “Tell me how good it was, Laneff.” She turned, unable to believe his nager, searching for the condemnation she knew had to be in him somewhere, searching his face for a hint of it. But it wasn’t there. He knew very well—how good it was. A sudden inward rending, and she threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his good shoulder, blurting in total catharsis, “I killed Jarmi! I killed her and I didn’t even know I was doing it! I thought I could live forever on such—such—such transfers! But it was killbliss. And she hurt, and died! I—ha-ha-ha-hate myself!” Dry sobs wrenched at her chest, burbling upward, unstoppable.

  Hours later, when it abated, he helped her shower and dress and then to eat a little. There was a private funeral. Yuan officiated in Distect style, reciting formal words and then calling Jarmi his most dedicated follower. They took her body away in a rattletrap truck to the gypsy burial ground, far out in the wilds.

  After that, they left Laneff pretty much to herself. Yuan stayed in the apartment, sleeping on a narrow cot in the sitting room. He cooked for her, made her get out of bed and dress, but let her sit for endless hours just staring at nothing. Azevedo came, often with Desha. She knew when they’d had transfer, and watched as Azevedo suffered from the inadequacy. But he came to make her feel better– to sit quietly or talk randomly of the life of Thiritees, the children, dogs, students, weddings, and graduations. Every once in a while he mentioned that her lab was standing empty.

  Yuan, too, spent hours talking to her. Gradually, time became structured into morning, noon, night. The rhythm of passing days became the tension of approaching turnover. The baby was developing. Morning sickness seized her, and she had to urinate more often. The brisk quickening of need prodded her thoughts into motion again. Azevedo was sitting with her—had been the entire day, lurking in wait for the renewed hysteria at the first touch of cold need. Instead, she turned to him and shocked herself by saying, without preamble, “She raked her own arms with her fingernails.” Azevedo stopped in midsentence, bewi
ldered. Yuan, who’d been preparing dinner, charged out of the kitchen. “She—what? That fool!” Setting aside the bowl he was carrying, he knelt before her, taking her hands in his cool, damp ones. “Then it wasn’t your fault, not at all. That was a stupid thing to do with you!” Azevedo asked, “This is some sort of Distect practice?” “We’ve worked out a few such evocations to prod listless need. Jarmi hadn’t learned any of them, but people talk.”

  “Then Jarmi, too, was responsible for what happened. She used a technique she didn’t fully understand.”

  “But why?” asked Yuan. “Laneff, did she also resist your draw?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “And she felt pain?” prompted Yuan. Again Laneff nodded, and he added, “That’s part of the technique, but it got away from her. Why would she be so desperate?”

  Azevedo pulled back. “I told her this would be her last transfer with Laneff until after the baby was born!” And then he frowned. “She was so depressed. Working like that, not eating, having no one to share her grieving for all the lost ones. To have come here only for Laneff, and then to fail with her—I should have realized! I should have monitored them!”

  Sitting on his heels in front of Laneff, Yuan put his face in his hands, driving his fingers into his reddish-blond hair. “They obviously weren’t as well matched as I thought—”

  Laneff saw the responsibilities like reflections. At Jarmi’s funeral, she had seen a device Azevedo had told her symbolized Thiritees: a cube made of half-silvered mirrors. Inside the cube, a candle burned, Its flame reflected in all six reflecting surfaces, infinitely in all directions, and visible from outside the box through the half-transparent walls.

  She hadn’t been able to get that object out of her mind. Now she saw one thing it meant. If one person did something, another responded, and another responded to that, out to infinity, each acting in free will, each responsible for the results. But it’s all one!