Jarmi took that rebuke meekly, but Laneff felt the burning curiosity eating at the Gen—as did every Sime in the room. "Jarmi, he's practically in underdraw. He's more interested in Simeness than sex right now."
That terse hint covered a night of frustration. As much as he'd wanted to, Yuan had been unable to show her the other side of Rior. And she, not being in need yet, had become urgently fascinated to learn that side. His fortitude in the face of their dual frustration had touched her heart as nothing else could have.
She had responded by offering undemanding physical warmth, and in the morning they'd both felt stronger. Shanlun would have understood Yuan's plight even sooner than she did, and being the consummate Tecton Donor he was, he'd have urged her to Yuan's bed.
As she dwelled on that, Laneff saw Yuan come in, going immediately to the serving line. His field seemed to have leveled off.
Staring curiously at the Sosectu, Jarmi said, "I've often wondered what underdraw feels like."
Lost in her own thoughts, Laneff answered, "I much prefer need!" "No—I meant not wanting sex because you want transfer." "Oh, it's a little like being a child again. Sex just doesn't exist for you, but—hunger does."
"Hard to imagine." She was working enthusiastically on a mound of mashed potatoes and turnips heaped onto some kind of cheese pie.
Yuan caught Laneff’s gaze and smiled. The beam of his attention lanced across the scattering of Simes and Gens and sent a warm thrill along Laneff’s nerves. He started to weave his way toward them.
Jarmi weighed Yuan's smile and Laneff’s response. "I've never seen him like that about anyone. Laneff, he's falling in love with you. Be gentle with him."
Shocked by that thought, Laneff zlinned the Sosectu again as he was greeted by people. Jarmi could be right. There might be something personal in Yuan's attitude. She'd known enough Tecton Donors to have learned not to expect anything personal in a sexual relationship. But with Shanlun, it had gone from the deeply intimate to the physical, and had always been personal first and professional afterward. For her, it wasn't the same with Yuan. But for him?
And he was looming over their table. "Well, and here I thought I'd have to eat alone," he said, putting his tray down on the square table and seating himself between them. "You don't mind, do you?"
"No," said Jarmi, glancing defiantly at Laneff. "We were just discussing the results we got today." "Oh? Anything encouraging?"
"We've synthesized all the starting materials for Laneff’s compound," answered Jarmi, "and tested them all. Purity is good and the yields were phenomenal. We're going to start the synthesis tomorrow."
"Tonight," contradicted Laneff. "I'll start while you get some sleep." She'd never done it in any other lab before, and others who had tried, had failed. If they were going to debug the procedure, they couldn't afford to lose time.
"Don't push yourself too hard, Laneff," said Yuan. And his concern was overpowering.
"I want to get most of this tedious stuff done before my turnover," said Laneff. "Need always slows me down."
Jarmi added, "Once Laneff has the K/A synthesized, I'll start running the structural analyses she couldn't do in her old lab for lack of funds and equipment. That will leave her free to sit and try to figure out what it all means."
"I'm going to require a number of expensive test materials," said Laneff. "I'm designing an experiment that may tell us what went wrong when I gave K/A to Digen the last time. But I'm going to require a supply of lateral tentacles from cadavers—preferably channels."
Yuan went right on eating the cheese-and-fruit salad on his tray, ignoring the steaming bean soup. "You're right, cadavers don't come cheap. But I know a supplier. Have Stores send your requisition to my office."
The clinical detachment was real, Laneff decided. For all his Rior airs, he was still a Tecton Donor. "Yuan, what were you going to do with the pilot before you decided to let him 'escape'?"
He stopped eating to examine her. "I was very depressed over that. He's so deeply indoctrinated I had to get Bianka to take his field down while he was drugged. He'd have died of fright, or committed suicide otherwise. I don't think we could ever have persuaded him to join us. So I'm glad we hit on this solution."
"Did the drugs do him any harm?" asked Laneff.
"No. Bianka knows her job. We got a good set of map coordinates from him, too. Soon I'll arrange his escape."
Later that night, Laneff completed one stage of the synthesis and left her product drying in the oven. She'd planned to read during this time, but a thought nagged her.
Yuan's attitude was both too soft for a general fighting a war and too callous to suit her Sat'htine ethics. He shouldn't allow that pilot to escape able-bodied enough to come back and fight again. Or he could have brainwashed him into gibbering helplessness. Suddenly, she had to see for herself what his condition was. She didn't dare trust the Sosectu without concrete evidence.
The infirmary was quiet three hours before dawn, the lights dimmed. A Gen was drowsing at the desk in the outer office. Laneff decided not to wake him and just walked on through to the hospital corridor. If everything was all right, there was no reason for Yuan ever to know she'd been checking on his word.
The door at the end of the narrow, tiled corridor was bolted, but no security lock fastened to it. A sign on the door said, "to be opened ONLY IN THE PRESENCE OF A SIME."
She opened the door.
The room was dark except for a dim glow of a night-light set beside the door. Leaving the door open, she went in, zlinning. The Gen was asleep and seemed perfectly healthy. His selyn field was weak, though. She tried to judge whether Bianka had just taken the superficial levels, or had stripped him deeper than an ordinary volunteer would be stripped. But she was no channel, and couldn't be sure.
It was obvious, though, why they had done it. This place ran on selyn power, and everyone had to pay their own way. Also, it certainly made it easier to be in the man's presence.
On the bed, the Gen tossed fitfully, reacting, Laneff surmised, to the corridor lighting. And then he was sitting bolt upright. "Who's there?"
Laneff noticed the wrist shackle had been removed. For the night, so he could sleep? That was Yuan's compassion. And now the sign on the door made sense. "It's only me," she answered, turning a bit so he could see her by the light.
"The Farris!" Startled as he was, his hand stayed habitually near the point where it had been moored by the shackle.
"I came to ask if Bianka had done a good job taking down your field." It had been weeks since Laneff had spoken English, and the idiom now came hard.
"She never did any such thing!" charged the pilot. So it was under drugs. "Oh. I see." But he knew. "She did it while I was out cold?" The lancing panic in the Gen was a mere whisper compared to what it had been during the interrogation when his emotions had been carried on a replete selyn field. Laneff stepped closer to speak more quietly. "You're a lot safer now around Simes. Bianka tried to make it easy for you." She added in a rhetorical tone, "Has anybody here tortured you?"
Wonderingly, he noticed that his hand was free. They took off the shackle while he was asleep!
He eyed her, puzzled. "You don't think waiting for torture is torture? You think I don't know what you came here for tonight? You go back and tell that Mairis that the Diet doesn't breed fools!"
And with that, he launched himself at the open door, in a forward rolling dive. While his body flew through the air, Laneff went into high-level augmentation and stepped forward to block the Gen. She caught his rotating body by the shoulders, tensing to absorb the momentum of the massive Gen.