Laneff came up out of it to find the sparkling Gen nager reflected in the bright grin on Jarmi's round face. "Oh, Laneff, you're magnificent! Better than anybody, ever!"
With Jarmi's selyn soaking into the roots of her being, Laneff couldn't find it in herself to spoil the moment for the Gen. She summoned a smile to cover a grimace of tears. "You've made your love of life a part of me. I've never experienced anything like it before." But her selyn is all one color.
Suddenly, the remembered feel of Shanlun's nager was with her, a tangible thing: the whirling colored texture spinning brightly into one throbbing sunlike golden glow. She relived the moment when Shanlun had been offering Digen transfer. It wouldn 't have been like that. She didn't know how it would have been, but she knew the difference. It wouldn't even have been like Yuan.
Suddenly, she was crying, a wail of loss and abandonment that she shaped into Shanlun's name. Jarmi was there, quietly proud that she'd induced post syndrome in Laneff, and Laneff didn't disabuse her of that notion, for in a way it was true. She mourned for the life she knew she must give up forever, for the work she would leave undone in a bare six months from now. Her need was slaked, for the present, she was indeed post, but she had felt no whisper of killbliss. That craving would blast back through her nerves redoubled all too soon. If she couldn't satisfy it, she would go into disjunction crisis. She would either kill or die.
Eventually, exhausted, she fell into a light doze as Jarmi relaxed into deep sleep. Dreams flickered through Laneff’s consciousness, inconsequential pleasures that turned to mild nightmare from which she struggled to wake.
After three hours of this, she rose leaving Jarmi sound asleep. As she made her toilet, she found herself full of energy, driven to accomplish the most she could before her time ran out. She took a notebook into the bathroom and scribbled down ideas for streamlining her experiments and reordering priorities. Six months. It can be done!
Finished, she was all for going to the lab right then. But she remembered the fretful dreams, and was aware of her jangled state of nerves. She also knew the cure from long experience as an adult Sime. If she went to the lab now, she knew she wouldn't accomplish a thing, and would probably just break glassware and ruin experiments through inattention.
Yuan would understand. He'd be willing to help. She remembered the way he'd come into the lab to wish her a satisfying transfer. There had been a wistful invitation in his nager, though he wouldn't ask her outright since he'd failed before. He's still feeling underdraw.
But as far as she was concerned, there were no other men in the installation. And, from her own observations, she was sure Yuan's field had leveled off. The worst symptoms of underdraw might be over for him, though he might still be sterile from it.
It was only just after midnight. She took one of Jarmi's floppy sweaters and a paint-smeared pair of pants she'd torn while they were setting up the lab. Dressed like a beachcomber, her Sat'htine signet on a chain around her neck but hidden beneath the sweater, she ventured into the corridors.
The lights were dimmed, but people bustled everywhere, excited by something. She wended her way toward the branch tunnel where Yuan lived and worked, a branch just off the entrance from the farmhouse. Here the lights were on full strength. Armed men were stationed three deep, rigidly alert.
A whole platoon guarded the stair down from the farmhouse. She was answering another in an endless sequence of challenges, trying to gain entrance to Yuan's hallway, when the door to the stair flew open admitting a puff of damp outside air.
Booted feet tromped down those stairs, revealing knees, and then torsos. Laneff had no trouble identifying Yuan's nager before his red-blond hair appeared. His field filled the entryway, then cleared it as he stepped into the corridor intersection. He surveyed the ranked troops, barked, "At ease!" and then saw Laneff. "What—!"
Simultaneously, Laneff recognized the next nager coming down the stairs. Fluorescent confetti whirled out of that stairwell like a particolored snowstorm. Laneff flung herself at the man she'd thought never to see again.
"Shanlun!"
CHAPTER 7 TEMPTATION
Uncontrolled sobs poured from Laneff as she clung desperately to the apparition of Shanlun, trying to convince herself he was indeed real. Wrapped in the glowing core of his nager, she felt him echoing the same maelstrom of emotions, magnifying them for her, until her overloaded nerves screamed for surcease.
Then an odd thing happened. His nager shrank within her grip to a darkened point, a nonexistence, as if he'd died and pulled her along with him.
Her innards went hollow. Duoconscious, she heard herself making strangling noises. A fractional second later, the particolored snowstorm was whirling about her, isolating her within the suddenly calm core nager. She found her feet dangling in midair, Shanlun's hard, muscular arms wrapped about the small of her back, and his lips searching her own.
Peripherally, she was aware of the growing audience behind her, of Yuan's astonishment, and of a strange and powerful channel who had come down the stairs behind Shanlun. As everything in her answered to Shanlun's sudden physical hunger for her, she heard Yuan dismissing his troops, setting guards, and then marshaling all of them into his own private office. Shanlun wanted to carry her, but she squirmed down and went on her own feet, clinging with both arms to his waist as curiosity surged into her consciousness.
She hardly had patience with the formal trin tea ritual. But the warm tea helped calm her. Shanlun drew her to a wicker bench with seat cushions in crushed green velvet and sat with one arm around her shoulders. Yuan watched from behind his own reed-and-wicker desk with its milk-white ceramic top. His smile was tight—a hint of jealousy?
Laneff straightened away from Shanlun, feeling for Yuan in a rising tide of confusion. She dropped her gaze to the woven floor mats, here dyed a shadow purple with threads of gold and white. "Shanlun was the last person in the world I expected to find here!" offered Laneff by way of apology.
The strange channel had taken the visitor's chair directly across the desk from Yuan. He turned and flashed her a grin, and then she recognized him: the gypsy channel from the viewing of Digen's body. His grin transformed his craggy old face into grandfatherly serenity. "The truth is that none of us expected to be here with each other—now. Such surprises add the zest that makes life worth living."
He had uncannily found words to express Laneff’s feelings: the renewal of the will to live frightening in its intensity because it was impossible to satisfy.
Yuan answered, "When a small army is standing to defend a homestead, any surprise is likely to be painful rather than pleasant. You took a terrible chance crossing our perimeter."
"Gypsies go where they will," answered the channel.
Shanlun raised a finger, his nager claiming attention. "Which is why I requested the escort. I had to find you."
"Why?" asked Yuan.
Shanlun darted a glance at Laneff. "Had I known she was here, that would have been enough reason. But I was ordered by my Sectuib to come to you as his emissary. He has no way of contacting you unless you call him."
"I've arranged it that way deliberately," answered Yuan. He speared the channel with a glance. "I never expected you to betray our confidence like this, Azevedo."
"Hear him out, Sosectu, and you may not consider it betrayal. If you do, I stand responsible." Yuan turned to Shanlun. "But how did you know who to ask for escort?"