He searched her face frantically, then lowered his eyes to his hands again. They lay still in his lap, just as his nager lay still. But she thought he'd have charged about the room restlessly had he permitted himself the luxury.
"Let's lay that aside for the moment. I'm going to tell you something nobody in the Tecton except Mairis knows. I don't know if Yuan suspects, but it doesn't matter as long as he never knows. You already possess the greatest secret; the rest has to go under the same seal."
"You'd respect the word of a junct?"
"Digen was junct. Don't profane his memory. Azevedo is junct– by Tecton standards. Can you find it in your heart not to respect him?"
"Azevedo is junct? I don't believe it!"
"He is a channel—and more. Swear."
"I can't swear Unto Sat'htine anymore," she said, her hand going to the signet nestled between her breasts.
He caught her hand, and her tentacles naturally twined about his fingers. "Was your disjunction valid?"
"Yes!" Blood rushed to her face in shame at how she'd repudiated it all.
"Did you kill that terrorist out of craving for what you had forsworn?"
"No, but I—I was beginning to want a Gen, not a channel." "And it was my nager that did that to you, wasn't it?" "How did you know?" It was out of her mouth before she could stop the words.
"Laneff, you are not truly junct now, for your disjunction was valid, and it did not fail you. If you do not kill again– Laneff, swear by the validity of your disjunction, marry me, and together we'll fight for your life."
He dropped her hand, his nager closing around him so as not to engage her field at all. "But you must choose freely. Yuan, too, is offering hope. Do not bind yourself to me for the sake of something that may not come to pass."
Yuan, too, had only offered, and then made her choose. They are so alike! Suddenly, it occurred to her to ask, "Shanlun, what do you hate?"
"Hate?" he asked, bewildered. "Why would you ask such a question? Have you ever seen me hate?"
"No. But you must hate something."
"Why?"
His confusion was genuine. Laneff had zlinned closely to detect the truth, and his nager seemed open to her in his confusion. "Well, then, what is your enemy?"
"I pray that I make no enemy in life. I've never found anyone who required me for an enemy."
"That's the oddest answer I could imagine. What do you fight against in the world?"
"A wise man does not fight against. If necessary to fight, the wise man fights for his goal, choosing to preserve life wherever possible."
"Well, how do you feel about the Diet, for example?"
"The Diet?" He considered her. "I'm sorry, I can't hate them. They are terrified, and they live in a fantasy world. Their violence is a form of insanity born of terror, like a Sime in attrition. And there's only one way to approach that kind of blind terror: with love, not hate."
"You could love the Diet? After all they've done?"
With a throat-wringing near-sob, he nodded mutely and turned from her, rising to go toward the door. He moved with the jerky stiffness of an old man, such a sharp contrast to his normally fluid motions. This man, who had professed willingness to give her direct transfer in violation of his stiff-necked Tecton loyalty, who had proposed marriage in defiance of his Householding's custom, was willingly relinquishing hope of having her because he thought she hated the Diet for what they'd done to her and required him to hate as well.
But it's Yuan who's hagridden by hatred. Her whole life had been dedicated to eliminating a basic cause of hatred in the world, the killer Sime. The Diet required Yuan for their enemy. She wanted no enemies in the last days of her life.
She darted around in front of the slow-moving Gen, stopping him with hands on his shoulders, standing on tiptoe to reach. "Shanlun, would you have risked your life to save me, the way Yuan did, if you'd been close enough? Would you have fought for me—against the Diet?"
"May God give me the chance to demonstrate it, yes."
The bone-deep vibration of those words, carried on that powerful nager, made her shiver with the sudden fear that his prayer would be answered.
"Then I choose you, not Yuan. Because he hates. And that's—that's like being junct. He gets so—so vicious on the subject of the Diet—"
His eyes spilled over as he kissed her, grabbing her by the waist and holding her, feet dangling in midair. Then he set her down, breathless, and said, "There is no viciousness in you. Your first disjunction was genuine. It has held under the harshest of tests. Your second disjunction will be a rebirth that will set you free." He spoke with an easy certainty that evoked an irrational surge of recognition in Laneff. This Gen truly understands disjunction!
Before she could recover enough to even think that there was no such thing as a second disjunction short of the grave, he went on, fishing his little silver starred cross out of his shirt and placing it in her hands.
"Swear to me, by the validity of that inner choice you once made, by the inner harmony it gave you, that you will hold my confidence to the grave and beyond, and I will explain what you must know."
"By the choice I once made and the harmony it gave me, I swear to keep your confidence." "To the grave and beyond," he prompted. "To the grave," she repeated, and added, though it sounded silly, "and beyond."
He relaxed, circling her in his arms and his core nager. His face smoothed into that of a young boy, and his nager turned inward, drawing her into a realm of misty stillness, a point at the hub of reality, and then soaring with her on an updraft of ecstasy. Everything in all existence seemed right, embraced by love.
She came up out of it feeling refreshed, her eyes locked to his as he drew her gently down to duoconsciousness.
"How do you do that? What did you do?" she demanded.
"I'm sorry, I should have asked if you wanted to pray with me. But I have so much to give thanks for now that didn't exist a day ago! Forgive me?"
Pray? It hadn't felt like any praying she'd ever witnessed, but she said, "Of course. I didn't know gypsies prayed."
"As with everyone, many don't pray."
"But you are one of them, aren't you? You speak their language."
"I spent my formative years training under Azevedo, not in the Tecton schools. Then I was chosen to go to Digen because the Tecton had no Donor who could handle his Endowment."
"Azevedo taught you to serve the endowed? Then he is endowed? Are all gypsy channels endowed?"
"No! Azevedo is—exceptional in all ways. Azevedo isn't his name. It's a title. It means, well, maybe Wisdom translates it. I've loved him all my life, Laneff. But I can't go back—and I don't want to. I've chosen the Tecton, and Mairis—and Zeor."
"But you were scheduled to give Azevedo transfer."
"It wouldn't have put me out of phase with Mairis. Much. And I'd have been better able to serve Mairis for it, too. That's why Azevedo was waiting for me. But now," he said collapsing onto a lab stool, "he's got to go easy on Yuan." He looked into her eyes levelly. "That's what I was objecting to, in Yuan's office. Desha can't really handle Azevedo yet, and Yuan is totally inadequate. I'd been feeling very happy that I could finally repay some of what Azevedo had done for me. I was going to demonstrate to him all that I'd become through Digen and Zeor, hoping he'd then understand why I didn't go to him at Digen's funeral."