He turned to Laneff, letting his nager pale to a chalky white flecked with only an occasional blip of color and his stance degenerate into pure gypsy. "I'm just another wandering gypsy. I've even got legal border-crossing tags that say so! I won't be recognized, so stop worrying!" He kissed her quickly, then got in and started the motor, adding the vibrator to it.
As he moved the car out of the court, expertly maneuvering around children, dogs, chickens, and laundry, he waved goodbye.
To blot out the thought What if he doesn't come back? Laneff plunged back into the lab work, setting all their projects in motion at once, and then starting Jarmi on learning the visualization trick for synthesizing K/A. This required giving Jarmi an entire refresher course in organic reaction mechanisms.
Going through it all a step at a time brought back to Laneff how she'd played with the other isomer that could result—the one that ruined the synthesis when it occurred. Must research that thoroughly sometime,, thought Laneff. It was possible that this technique could make the other isomer pure just as it could this one. Maybe there's some use for it?
But she could only make note of it and dismiss it now. When Jarmi was sleeping, Azevedo joined her, showing her how to synthesize kerduvon from the raw extract of mahogany trinroses. The rich red-brown flowers were now grown in botanical gardens all over the world,) but Azevedo said, "Up in the mountains, we have ancient fields of them. Conditions are perfect there—and we get much richer yields of moondrop from those harvests."
"Does it make any better trin tea?" she asked, recalling the fact that the professionally grown ones didn't.
"No; tastes horrible." He showed her how to concentrate the extract from the dried flowers, steam-distill off the fraction of active kerduvon, cook it, then vacuum-distill it. Instead of a molecular mechanism, though, he had her concentrate on a decorative old starred cross he wore around his neck. It was jeweled, flashing a dozen colors like Shanlun's nager.
"Visualize the symbols picked out by the jewels," he commanded. "And the colors are extremely important."
"Is this your molecular symbolism?"
"Goodness no! Wellll—actually, there is a relationship. But just try it; visualize it while you work. "
She learned it under his supervision, then spent another whole night running ten simultaneous procedures, filling two whole benches with apparatus and doing everything the same except what she thought about while working on it.
The one she did without any of the visualizing came out black– almost devoid of the product according to the qualitative test Azevedo had provided her. They graded through dark brown, brown, light brown, all the way to nearly transparent yellow, the one where she'd given her all to the visualization. Azevedo's own product was a pale yellow, the color of Shanlun's nager.
She was staring at the row of vials when Jarmi came in, looking drawn and weary. "Jarmi, I don't believe this. I just don't believe it. It can't be happening—not by any theory of science I've ever heard!"
While looking over Laneff’s results, Jarmi said, "But isn't this what you've been trying to get me to do?"
"Yeah. I think I've been expecting you to fail—only then, what will become of K/A?" She sat down on a wicker stool, picking idly at a stray wisp of the tough fiber. "But if you succeed, how can we possibly report this in a respectable journal?"
"I don't think we'd be anywhere near that point, even if I succeed today! First you're going to have to teach it to several really respectable experts. When it's becomes something 'everybody knows,' then you can write it up."
Laneff slumped on her stool. "I probably won't live that long."
"You know what's wrong with you? Tomorrow is your turnover day —I'll just bet!"
"Three days early?"
"You are pregnant. You haven't been getting enough rest."
"It can't be affecting me this soon," pleaded Laneff, but she was thinking of the solicitous way Azevedo hovered over her when he visited the lab—which was often.
"Well, we'll talk about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, let's get this mess cleaned up. I was supposed to try the K/A synthesis on my own while you do the conductivity studies."
They worked industriously all day long, and when it came time for Jarmi to quit, she said, "Let's just set up the analysis for tomorrow." Laneff had noticed how the Gen was putting in a couple of extra hours each night.
They worked until Jarmi was weaving with fatigue and Azevedo came in and shooed her to bed. "And when was the last time you slept, young mother?" he asked Laneff.
She admitted, "Just before Shanlun left."
"Then off to bed with Jarmi—or you're going to have a very rough turnover!"
"But—" There was no arguing with such a channel. Laneff said, "We won't know whether we've succeeded until these analyses are run. I was going to start them tonight—"
"No. That's an order."
On the way up the stairs, Laneff had to admit that her knees and feet were glad for the respite. She caught up to Jarmi on the third floor and confessed that she'd been run out of her own lab by a ferocious channel.
Jarmi commiserated. "Look, maybe we can get into one of the kitchens and fix us something decent to eat."
"I've got a kitchen all to myself, remember?" And she rattled off the list of ordinary ingredients she had in stock. "Think you could make a meal off of that?"
"Sure! Let's go."
Cooking together turned out to be even more fun than lab work. They discovered they had a lot of food prejudices in common, and apart from those of the gypsies around them. Laneff actually enjoyed the taste of the food Jarmi made while thinking that if Azevedo was right about turnover, it was probably the last meal that would taste good for a long while. Laneff even dutifully remembered to take her new vitamin tablets.
Over the empty dishes, Jarmi looked around at the apartment: an open living room with breakfast nook, a tiny kitchen, a hall leading to three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Jarmi had never seen it before, and Laneff was suddenly ashamed that she hadn't decorated the bare walls. Everything was done in the style she'd come to think of as "Old Gypsy Standard."
But Jarmi let out a wobbly sigh. "It's almost like home." Her voice broke on the last word, and after a moment's struggle, she broke into tears;. "I'm sorry!" she gasped.
Laneff moved her chair over beside Jarmi, supplying tissues and then crying with her because the nageric power of the Gen was
overwhelming. Afterward, they both felt wrung out, and Laneff took Jarmi into the sitting room, where they shoved books aside and sat on the cushion-strewn wicker couch.
"That's why you've been working so hard lately, isn't it?" asked Laneff, feeling like an idiot for not knowing.
"No," she answered. "Well—that room got to be so empty with you gone. It was like home, only there was no Michen to come visiting, no Gilbert, no Tanya, no Sissa ..."
She'd have gone on listing her dead friends, but Laneff put a tentacle over her lips. "I wish I'd met them."
"They were a little afraid of you—oh, not that way. Afraid of what you meant to all of us. Afraid of the gossip about anyone who so much as spoke to you. And now they're all"—she strangled on the word– "dead."