"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 kilclass="underline" 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 bolt-hole 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!"