Mairis grew still. Digen sat up, arms reaching out, tentacles extended, even the sensitive laterals out and searching. His face took on a glow of ecstasy, sloughing off decades. His nager twanged with an odd—killbliss?
Whatever it was Digen was experiencing, it spoke to Laneff. It was what she’d sought in the kill and never found. She’d trade her soul for one moment of it.
One word escaped Digen’s lips. “Ilyana!”
And then the selyn fields collapsed in on themselves to a pinpoint black vortex. Attrition.
Transfixed by the gut chilling horror, she stared as the limp old body sank into Mairis’ arms.
Chapter Five
COMPASSION
As she finished the story, Laneff couldn’t suppress the tears she hadn’t been able to shed at Digen’s death. She grabbed a tissue from her lab coat pocket, and then Jarmi was hugging her, sniffling in sympathy. There was no reason to fight the upwelling emotions.
In seconds, Laneff was crying openly, her arms around the Gen woman’s shoulders, her face cradled against her neck. She wasn’t sure if she was crying for the valiant Sectuib of the last century, for the ineffable beauty his death had let her glimpse set forever beyond her reach this side of the grave, or for the cruel parting from Shanlun, who was as good as dead to her now because she could never—ever—return to the Tecton. The sobs renewed themselves when she thought it would be kinder for Shanlun if he thought her dead now, because in mere months she’d be dead anyway.
Jarmi cried with Laneff, resonating with the same texture of emotion. It wasn’t at all like Yuan. He had been a tower of strength supporting her in weakness. Jarmi understood that weakness and shared it. Together, they overcame it.
At last, Jarmi searched out a box of tissues, and over a clenched wad of them she said, “No wonder Mairis accepted the alliance with us. Digen understood junctedness as a totally separate thing from the kill. In Digen’s vision of Unity, any Sime could be junct and walk the streets safely because every Gen would understand what he was. Any Sime could have that experience you had when he died.”
Laneff had only told her that they’d once discussed the theory of junctedness, not why it had been brought up. “Maybe it was that forbidden glimpse that weakened my conditioning. Maybe if I hadn’t been in that room then, I wouldn’t have killed.”
She shrugged. “We can’t do science on maybes. What I don’t understand is why Digen died. If K/A controlled the aborts the first time, why not the second?”
“I never had a chance to discuss that with Mairis or Shanlun. They were caught up in the funeral arrangements and the grand convocation of Zeor to elect Mairis Sectuib. Shanlun never got to give Digen that final transfer, which left Shanlun with so much selyn he couldn’t really control his fields. Mairis wasn’t quite due for transfer at the time but they arranged it for just after the funeral. Then we were scheduled to have a meeting on the data I’d collected.”
“Makes sense. Underdraw is hell on those higher order Donors. It’s a travesty, what the Tecton does to them and the channels.” Before Laneff could object to the slur on the Tecton, Jarmi added, “Look at the time! No wonder I’m starved. Come on, Laneff. Let’s go eat.”
Laneff had never shared a meal with the woman before, an odd omission considering the time they’d spent together. Laneff had been reluctant, after the first day, to go to the cafeteria, where it seemed each Sime ate paired with a Gen, shrouded in privacy. She felt people regarding her with an odd wariness as she sat alone, and thereafter took to skipping meals or grabbing a bite at the snack bar that was always open.
Jarmi was standing by the door, watching Laneff, who rose from her desk chair and shrugged. “All right.”
But Jarmi stayed put, tilting her head to one side. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Dinner.”
“No. I’m offering you a transfer date, Laneff: It’s our custom around here to take meals only with a transfer partner.”
Yuan had said they didn’t assign for transfer here. “Jarmi, I could—kill—you.”
“I doubt it. But, if it’ll make you feel better, let’s go to the infirmary and see a channel who can match us. Yuan was right. I do like you.”
“I like you, too, Jarmi. But I’ve never known that to make a difference.”
“Well—it does around here. Look, it’s also our custom that you can refuse my offer, and no hard feelings. There’s no accounting for a Sime’s taste in nageric timbre. We could still be friends.”
In a wild moment, Laneff imagined what it would be to take transfer from this Gen—not kill her. Yuan had felt nothing from her draw. Jarmi—might. For just a hint of what Digen had felt—for a fractional taste of the killbliss that would stave off disjunction crisis and her own death—no. “Jarmi, we have to be absolutely sure that it’s safe. You don’t know anything about me—”
“I know that Yuan promised you a chance to live without killing, without going mad for lack of killbliss. And I know I’m that chance. I didn’t know how much I was going to want to do it.”
Jarmi’s sincerity loosened the tough binding of Tecton law on Laneff. “Let’s go see your channel.”
The Gen woman bounced cheerfully out the door and along the hall. “Oh, I’m so happy! I didn’t know I could feel so happy!”
Laneff was buoyed on the Gen’s flaring nager, surprised at how very good it felt. “Jarmi, this channel had better be awfully good…”
Jarmi sobered. “We don’t have any First Order channels. They just don’t seem to gravitate to our movement. But our Seconds have become keen judges of a good match. It’s been years since a bad match caused a kill.”
The infirmary was deserted except for the duty channel and her—Companion? The old Householding designation seemed more apt than the Tecton title Donor, because their relationship was so obviously personal. Jarmi explained what they wanted. The channel, a tall woman with curly brown hair, perhaps in her mid-twenties, had the look of a dedicated healer. Her Companion, a man with the body of a weight lifter, a silly mustache, and a nager that sparkled with pure good humor, exclaimed jovially, “So you’re Laneff Farris! I’d never have guessed you were so small from your pictures!”
Laneff didn’t consider herself overly sensitive about her height, but that rankled. She looked up at the bulging muscles, estimating his weight. “I could challenge you to two falls out of three. Don’t worry, I’d be careful not to injure you.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “No contest! You could easily tie me in a bow knot!”
As they bantered, the channel was scrutinizing Laneff. Now she ordered, “Come on over here so I can zlin you.”
As Laneff moved over against the backdrop screen, standard equipment in any infirmary, she felt for the first time in her adult life as if there were no embarrassing stigma on her nager. She knew the channel zlinned the junct signature, a worse embarrassment than the disjunction scars had been, but this channel didn’t regard it as a moral weakness.
“Jarmi,” ordered the channel.
Jarmi stepped up against the screen to let the channel zlin them. “Laneff, I’m so nervous!”
“No you’re not. You’re riding a peak of hope. But from a peak, there’s nowhere to go but down.” Duoconscious Laneff zlinned her. “But what are you hoping for?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, yet. Like—I was rejected for Third Order Donor training by the Tecton. It nearly crushed me.”
The girl’s accent held overtones of a Sime territory somewhere to the northwest of Householding Invor—possibly Alberta Leaf Territory. She looked as if she might have some Indian blood. “You zlin like a Third, though….”
The channel answered. “She doesn’t zlin like a Third to a channel, because she never Qualified Third. She was rejected by the Tecton because she has extremely high internal barriers, a very low yield of selyn, yet she delivers that selyn at what any Third Order channel would consider violent speed. She has the spee
d of a First, and there’s no way to train her to deliver the capacity of a First, or at the speed of a Third. She’d make an ideal transfer mate for you, Laneff. May I make a contact examination?”
Jarmi held her breath to keep from cheering. Laneff simply nodded and extended her tentacles to twine them about the channel’s tentacles. Then, the channel twined her laterals around Laneff’s laterals and made lip contact in full transfer position.
The woman’s fields penetrated to Laneff’s core, but without the delicate dimensionality of a First Order channel’s touch. Anxiety billowed through Laneff as the channel created selyn movement throughout their linked systems. But it was slow and clumsy movement. Unable to stand it another instant, Laneff retracted her laterals and pushed the channel away, gasping.
Instantly embarrassed, Laneff apologized.
“That’s all right,” soothed the channel. “I’m not used to handling Farrises. But your previous transfer has left your system in prime condition, though coitally deprived. No residual killbliss need. So this is a good time for you two to start a relationship. Jarmi is high field—as high as she ever gets. You’re matched in speed and capacity. But”—she turned to Jarmi—”style may give you problems. You’ve never handled an active junct before. And Laneff is fast. I couldn’t judge levels within the First range. There could be a discrepancy between you two that I can’t perceive. There shouldn’t be any real difficulty, though, if you handle her firmly.”
Jarmi smiled, the relief she felt pulsing through her nager. “I’ll handle her carefully, all right! She deserves the best!”
At that point, Yuan swung into the room, talking before his eyes focused on them. “I certainly hope you have good news for me tonight, because—Laneff! Jarmi!” He beamed. “Paired?”
Jarmi answered, shyly, “For just one transfer, but I’m hoping.”
The ponderous brilliance of his field lit the whole office as he turned to the channel, hugging her spontaneously. “You see, Bianka, I was right!”
In that single moment before Yuan let her go, Laneff sensed a spear of quickly suppressed jealousy from the channel’s Donor. Yuan turned from the channel and hugged both Jarmi and Laneff together, his field leaving her dizzy as he withdrew.
“I knew something had to go right today!” said Yuan.
The channel said, “So tell us what’s gone wrong.”
“First tell me, how’s our prisoner?”
The channel went to a desk near an inner door and picked up a standard Sime Center file folder with a chart tacked inside it. She rattled off some numbers, then said, “I got his name out of him today. Odeah Polk. He’s nearly recovered from the blow on the head, but he’s in a constant state of stark terror that’s wearing him out physically. I don’t—like to go near him. He’s convinced Simes are going to torture him.”
Jarmi said, “That just shows how his people would torture any Sime they caught.”
What happened to my world of law and order? Adventure novels were no fun to live in. Her arms still remembered the feel of that leather belt, the rough hands, the hard gun barrel.
Yuan hooked one knee over a corner of the desk and perched on a stack of chart folders, one of which, Laneff now noticed, had the black flashing that indicated a Farris’ records. Mine. The channel had done her homework, and probably did know enough about her to assign Jarmi in transfer.
“Then we could release this Odeah Polk anytime now?”
“Yes, Sosectu,” answered the channel. “But why?”
He eyed Laneff with that same dancing light of spontaneous enjoyment she’d seen during their escape from the Tecton choppers. “You know, Laneff, you really do look to a Gen’s eyes just like Hajene Perrin—or just any Farris channel.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” asked Bianka.
Yuan picked up Laneff’s file and idly flipped through it. “Bianka, Nen, we could all be in imminent danger now, because of what I did rescuing Laneff.”
“How?” asked Nen, the Companion. “The Tecton thinks you were captive in that chopper. They never heard your radio signal. As far as they know, you and Laneff were flown into that Diet hideout which their choppers promptly blew sky high with one of those new missiles. I saw the Tecton tapes on the news. That cave must have been a munitions dump to have gone up like that. Nobody survived. You’re both officially dead.”
Bianka said, “You could let yourself be found wandering dazed in those hills, survivor by a miracle.”
“I don’t have any explanation for why I swept Laneff into the Diet chopper instead of away into the crowd, letting the Tecton guards deal with the terrorists. Do you think even I could fool Mairis Farris in a face-to-face interrogation? Five minutes, and he’d know Yuan Sirat Tiernan is Sosectu ambrov Rior.” His overcharged nager ached. “I could never come back here again for fear of revealing everything. I don’t think I could live like that for long.”
Bianka said, “You obviously can’t live like this for long, either.” Her nager cried out her sympathy for the Gen’s need for a good transfer with a First Order channel.
“You’re my best channel, Bianka.”
She glanced at Nen, who assented to her unspoken question with a shrug while his nager throbbed denial. She said, “I’m willing to try a transfer, Yuan, but I don’t think I can help you much. You’re a First.”
Yuan fixed Nen with a meditative stare. Then he shook his head. “No, Nen, I won’t try to take her from you. Even if it would help me, I wouldn’t. What is our way of life worth if we discard it at a moment’s discomfort?”
Nen smiled, a relief radiating from him that weakened Laneff’s knees. “You are my Sosectu.”
“Some Sosectu! I may have gotten us into more of a war with the Diet than we can handle.”
“But there couldn’t have been any survivors from that Diet hideout. As far as they know, you’re as dead as the Tecton thinks you are.”
He shook his head. “In an organization this size, there is no way to eliminate spies. We have to assume that they know what Sosectu ambrov Rior looks like. With Yuan Sirat Tiernan’s face plastered all over the media these last few days, we have to assume the Diet now knows Yuan Sirat Tiernan is Sosectu ambrov Rior. Their spy or spies would know that the Sosectu is alive and well, and might also know that Laneff is here, alive and well. If they don’t know it, they can deduce it from the fact that I am here. They would figure that we’ll provide her with time and a place to work—and then use her results to breed Gens for our juncts to kill. And they have more bombs—and suicide volunteers.”
“Yuan,” said Bianka when he’d run down, “you’re building a remote possibility that’s been with us for years into an acute threat. Are you sure you’re not suffering underdraw?”
“My governors work well enough,” countered Yuan. “My selyn production will level off soon. I just feel rotten, that’s all. Look, I know it’s a remote chance, but I haven’t built this organization by ignoring remote chances.”
“You have a plan,” accused Nen.
“I didn’t until I walked in here and found Laneff paired already,” replied Yuan grinning at Jarmi. “With that stabilizing her, I think it’s safe to expose her to Odeah Polk. We’ll call her Hajene Farris, avoiding first names, and let him think she’s an emissary from Mairis, and that Laneff is actually in some Tecton Last Year House being treated royally, with lab facilities and the best transfers the House of Rior can provide.
Laneff objected, “Mairis would never agree to that! It would have been channel’s transfer only. He couldn’t afford to break the law, even if he had the power!”
“I know, but the Diet doesn’t think that way. By now, they’ve convinced themselves that we’re using your process to breed Gen babies in test tubes, to take the whole world back onto the kill. They’ll try to convince Mairis and the rest of the world of that, so when they attack and destroy us, they’ll be taken as heroes.”
“It won’t work,” said Nen.
“I hope not,�
� said Yuan. He rubbed his red-blond mustache thoughtfully. “Laneff, I just got word that Sat’htine has mourned your death, and inscribed your name with their disjuncts in their Memorial.”
Logically, she had known her father would have accepted her death by now. But to have ignored her final kill? Jarmi’s hand, cool and Gen, closed about her shoulder. Laneff leaned gratefully on the Gen’s field, fighting tears.
“The Diet will use that small kindness to your memory to argue that the Householdings don’t consider the kill immoral anymore.” He let that sink in and then added, “Until now, the Diet has been a bunch of disenfranchised and bitter paranoids ranting and raving in a corner. But since Mairis’s announcement that he’s running for World Controller to abolish the borders within two generations, money and recruits—real professionals—have been gravitating to the Diet organization, and it’s growing. Now is the time to put a stop to them.”
“By convincing them that Laneff is in a Last Year House?” asked Bianka incredulously.
“Right,” answered Yuan. He turned to Laneff. “We set them up. They self-righteously attack a facility for the helpless. Media coverage demonstrates Laneff was not there, has never been there, and no secret Gen pens are being kept to supply juncts with kills. The Diet is shown to be the hysterical paranoids they really are.”
“Suppose somebody gets hurt?” asked Laneff.
“I have my spies in their organization. Mairis will be warned in plenty of time.”
“All right,” agreed Laneff. “I’ll go along.” It crossed her mind that if she didn’t, Yuan might be less enthusiastic about supplying her lab with all the expensive things she’d requisitioned. Pretending she wasn’t herself for a few minutes was a small price to pay for being able to do her work. The Diet represented the kind of Gens who raised their children without preparing them for changeover, and then condemned the changeover victim for killing. That was what she’d dedicated her life to stopping. “What do I do?”
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