First Order. Do you know what that means?" At her nod, he urged,. "Go to him. And if you never come back to me, Laneff, then do not fail him."
There was no tinge of jealousy in the Gen now, Azevedo let her discern that. Then the channel said, "This is the real Yuan ambrov Rior. And in the morning, he'll be able to reconsider this whole matter and create a novel solution."
Laneff didn't want the two Gens to fight over her work or herself. This was probably the best way to avoid that.
She followed the two men out of the office. In the corridor intersection, Shanlun was standing among the small knot of gypsies who had apparently come with Azevedo, two Simes and two Gens. They spoke quietly as Yuan gave orders.
"Find quarters for our guests. With careful regret, you will deny them exit. They may, however, access all the public areas. They are to be treated with respect. Any problems, refer up chain of command. Understood?"
"Understood!" snapped a Sime woman, but she was hard put not to smile at the new agreement between Yuan and Azevedo. Laneff understood that Yuan had been particularly difficult to live with lately.
"Desha," called Azevedo. A very young Gen woman separated from the gypsies and came to him.
"Shan told me, Azevedo," said the woman in a very thick accent. Her field was bright, and Laneff surmised that she had been Azevedo's scheduled Donor. If gypsies have schedules.
In a whirl of crisp orders, the group sorted itself out, Yuan and Azevedo disappearing down a side hallway, guards hustling the four gypsies away, and two more guards trying to spirit Shanlun off with them. But he turned to her. "Laneff, can we talk?"
Laneff stepped toward the guards, two renSimes she knew only by sight. "Where can you possibly quarter him? There's hardly a patch of floor to sleep on anywhere!"
"We'll put him with the gypsies, in Hyssop Corridor."
"Five people in one of those dinky rooms? And zlin his nager? Two of those gypsies are renSime! Do you think Yuan would ask that of anyone?"
The guard looked after the retreating figure of Yuan. Laneff added, "Jarmi and I have a much larger room—and I don't use my bed much. We'll take him in."
The two guards zlinned her replete nager and shrugged. One turned to Shanlun. "Is that agreeable with you?"
"Yes."
The second guard shrugged, and Laneff took Shanlun back along
the main trunk corridor toward her lab. "I hope you're not sleepy yet. Jarmi is heavily out of it after our transfer, and—"
Shanlun beamed. "So you didn't kill again!" He muttered something in the odd language she'd heard him speaking with the gypsies. "I should have trusted Yuan for that. But who's Jarmi?"
She explained tersely, then opened a fire door that led off into a crisscrossed maze of tunnels. "My lab is this way—that is, if you're not hungry?"
"Breakfast is yet a couple of hours away."
In the lab, she made trin tea while he inspected the place. She explained what they had accomplished, how Jarmi had helped, and what she hoped yet to do.
"My heart told me you were still alive, Laneff, but my head wouldn't listen. Laneff—I have never been—bereaved—like that before. If Yuan hadn't forced me to stay, I think I'd have fought him for the privilege. And I don't think Mairis would fault me for that."
"No, he won't, because after I die, you'll be able somehow—maybe through your gypsy friends—to get my work back to him. I've been praying for someone I could trust—"
He wasn't listening. With one huge, cool Gen hand, he reached behind her neck and cradled her head, forcing her to face him. His eyes were pools that seemed to reflect the multicolored effect of his nager. As she watched, and zlinned, the effect faded. The intense pure gold inner core engulfed her. "Die, Laneff? No. Not again. No."
"Shanlun, nobody can prevent it." Least of all Jarmi. He drew her face close with a trembling intensity more profound than the restrained yearning in his nager. Then he kissed her thoroughly, his whole body responding. The totality of sensation cascaded through her until it was as if he were kissing every part of her. At last, she drew away panting. "Do you know what you're doing to me?"
"When did you have transfer?"
"About five hours ago."
"Then I know what I'm doing to you. Or—is there someone else?"
Such panic she had never felt in a man before. But she had to admit it. "When I ran into you—I was looking for Yuan." The memory of that unfulfilled night gnawed at her, and as eager as she was for Shanlun, he, too was suffering underdraw symptoms as well as the backlash of breaking his exclusive with Digen. Such stresses rendered the higher-order Tecton Donors both impotent and virtually sterile, until after their next good transfer.
"You love him?"
"No!" But that wasn't true. "Yes!" But that wasn't true, either. "I don't know! He's—he's so much like you!"
Shanlun denied that, and they talked for a while about Yuan's role in the whole affair until she related that Yuan had given her a finishing transfer after her kill.
Searching her face, as if trying to read her nager, Shanlun asked, "Could I win you away from him by doing the same sometime?" But there was no hint of nageric seduction in his nager.
"You're too Tecton straight!"
There was a tremor in his voice as he countered, "I'd do it, Laneff —if it would bring you back to me. If it was the only possibility, I'd do it. And more, a full transfer."
She was shocked. Of course, logically, the amount of selyn she might take would never be missed by any of his channel clients. But the Tecton doesn't condone junctedness! Yet Laneff found a greedy eagerness erupting within her which she could put down only by telling herself that Shanlun could be no more satisfying than Yuan.
Again, the puzzle that had tormented her rose again. "Shanlun ambrov Zeor, who are you, really? Why do you know these gypsies– their language, their customs, their channels? What kind of a name is Shanlun, anyway? And where did that Desha get off calling you Shan? You look like them, you know."
He looked down at his hands, folded quietly in his lap as he perched on a wicker lab stool. His nager stirred into a faint prismatic display, then washed out to pale gray.
"And where did you get that crazy nager?"
"I'm sorry, does it bother you?"
"No! And that's what's so intriguing about it!"
"The Tecton calls my type of Donor a Cardinal. And I'm at about ninety-three percent capacity right now. And that capacity is higher than most because I'm trained to serve the—" He broke off, glancing about suspiciously.
"This is private," said Laneff, having checked the place daily and found no spy devices.
"—to serve the endowed," he finished.
"Was any of that real?" asked Laneff. "It was another life, forever ago."
"It was all real. It's the training to handle that kind of emergency that gives my nager its peculiarities. The one time you accidentally zlinned me working, you discovered why I don't let it show most of the time."
Laneff remembered him bending over Digen, offering. "You never got that training in the Tecton," guessed Laneff.
He didn't answer her directly. "Laneff, I want to marry you—a permanent, sanctified union. I don't ever want to lose you again."
"Shanlun, you have to get it through your head. Jarmi was good—
the best the Distect has for me, anyway. And she wasn't good enough. That means I'm going to die soon in disjunction crisis."