Scientific terminology in their outlandish accent, their gypsy costumes, seemed totally bizarre. Laneff laughed and then had to explain what was funny about disjunction.
"And that's the other thing," said Shanlun. "Azevedo, you've got to try to learn her synthesis—now, before she can't work anymore."
"Before that, I may have to go to see Mairis. If we don't have a midwife for her, we must beg one of the Tecton. No, Laneff, don't panic. We won't send you to their Last Year House. Zeor has a long history of cooperation with—gypsies. As Sectuib, Mairis can provide someone to care for you." He shifted his gaze to Shanlun. "Someone we can tolerate."
Shanlun put his arm about her, and she felt his inner conflict as he summoned bravery. "I'll go to Mairis. You must stay and work with Laneff while she can work."
Laneff choked on half-formed protests, dizzied by the speed with which events whirled around these two. "Shan, if the Tecton ever lays hold of you, you could be sent anywhere in the world and never get back here!"
"No. I'll go in gypsy garb, and no one but Mairis will know who I am. I'll tell him you're with Azevedo, and—" Bright hope and shyness warred with his apprehension. "Laneff, can I ask him to invite you to pledge Zeor?"
She'd thought about it often enough. Zeor doesn't marry out of Zeor. But Sat'htine was so much a part of her. "Shan, I'm a healer".
"But as a healer, as in all parts of your life, you do strive for excellence. Even facing your own death, you have not ceased to strive for the best you can envision. You have always been as much Zeor as Sat'htine. Let Mairis judge it."
"I can't guarantee my answer."
Azevedo cut in, "There's no reason to be anxious about it, Laneff. You've plenty of time to make that decision. Meanwhile, you're safe here."
That's what I thought with the Distect! thought Laneff, aware that considering another life change, such as pledging a new House, did fill her with intolerable anxiety.
Azevedo turned to the Gen. "Shanlun, you're willing to risk your life—everything–for this child?"
"Yes," he answered without hesitation.
"Do you know why?" challenged Azevedo.
"Yes." He turned to Laneff, as if in explanation. "The impossible doesn't happen randomly. I haven't been tested, but I'm sure I'm at the absolute nadir of my own fertility. Yet this happened despite your precautions, too. This child is yours—and mine—and wants very much to be born now. I'm willing to take as much risk as you do to see that happen."
Laneff had spent three days growing into the idea, realizing that this baby was as important to her as her work, something to survive her. Yet Shanlun had arrived at acceptance within minutes of hearing the news. Her whole love went out to him, and she hugged him close, burying her nose in his chest and muttering, "Yes, I'm scared, too, Shan."
He kissed her. The nageric warmth was incredible.
Azevedo cleared his throat. "Then this is the plan. We'll begin immediately to determine why only Laneff can do this synthesis. Jarmi will continue the structure studies on the purified chemical you salvaged. If the Company can find no midwife, we'll send Shanlun to Mairis with a letter I'll write."
The previous day, Laneff had been assigned a musty old lab, much like the one she'd had in school. Now, she and Jarmi continued to gather equipment and set up their experiments again. Meanwhile, Laneff was welcomed into the community of not-really-quite gypsies from which Shanlun had come.
"Thiritees" was their word for library/school, and the entire top floor of the building housed a collection of ancient volumes that must have dated back to the Ancients. "This is all that's left of the great library of the School of Rathor, disbanded almost a century ago. Many of these books are copies of ones published by the Ancients—before mankind mutated into Sime and Gen."
Whole sections of that library, open to her only under Azevedo's guidance, described the science behind the Endowment. She didn't pretend to understand any of it, but she was interested. Her own child, they explained, would likely be endowed.
The School of Rathor, some of whose members called themselves the Company and traveled out disguised as gypsies, had been founded to preserve the mystical and esoteric lore of the Ancients and to add to that lore by experiment. Their central symbol was the starred cross—an ordinary five-pointed star superimposed on an equal-armed cross. It was the Company who had founded and maintained the safe ways out of Sime Territory for the children of Simes who established as Gens.
If she believed their claim, that certainly solved one of the oldest mysteries of civilization. To know that the safe ways were the work of the people around her made her happier. And Azevedo even began teaching her their language.
Shortly after that, Laneff was asked to attend three brief meetings, from which Jarmi was excluded, designed to familiarize residents of the building on new local laws.
Thiritees was established in a four-story brick building on a sheltered courtyard off a busy avenue in P'ris, a regional and district capital straddling a Sime~Gen border. The city was divided by a wide, oily river into Sime and Gen Territory, and the new experimental Embankment Zone where Thiritees was located. In the Embankment Zone, a mixture of Sime and Gen law prevailed.
The establishment of the zone was not merely the result of Mairis Farris's campaign, they were assured. The City Planners had been considering it for years. But the advent of the Digen coin suddenly made it feasible.
Laneff reported all this to Jarmi, saying, "This may make it easier to order from Sime or Gen Territory suppliers. Deliveries won't be so conspicuous."
They had a much tighter budget here, and less actual space. But Laneff had salvaged all the data from the expensive analytical machines, though her notes were a little mud-stained. With Shanlun's help, she was able to locate or borrow balances, desiccators, and distillation and filtration apparatus. And Shanlun found a renSime woman who was an expert glassblower.
"We'll have to recalibrate everything!" complained Laneff.
"I can do that," replied Jarmi, and set to work.
In a matter of days, they were ready to pick up where they'd left off. Jarmi began running the syntheses they'd planned to do as part of the K/A structural analysis.
Simultaneously, Laneff began to teach Azevedo the K/A synthesis. They worked late at night, when Jarmi was asleep and they had the lab to themselves. Often they'd still be there in the morning, when Jarmi came in munching a sweet roll from the breakfast buffet.
Azevedo quickly demonstrated his mastery of the equipment, and within three sessions, Laneff had identified a familiar air to his manner. "You're a teacher—a professor!"
He pivoted on the wicker stool as he sat at the balance and smiled at her. "I've taught it, yes. But that was years ago."
Now she recognized the elegant battering all her equipment showed. "This is a school—not a lab!"
"A graduate school, yes."
Laneff recalled the groups she'd gone to those legal briefings with. Pregnant women, children, young men, but only a few of middle years. A typical college cross section.
But it was all housed in the one building that extended three damp stories underground, and rambled into a nightmare of wings and additions aboveground.
She'd often walked by the entrance to the living wing. The smells and noises and wild music were just like any gypsy encampment where you might shop for wickerwork. She hadn't seen anything that looked like a schoolroom, and she said as much to Azevedo.
"Our methods aren't suited to mass production of identical experts. And we don't differentiate between students and teachers. We don't have courses or curricula. But we do develop skills. Right now, I'd like to acquire one of yours."