The door opened, and the room flooded with sparkling gold, like a cascade of powdered gold caught in sunlight, creating a brilliant rainbow of joyful color. The tall blond Gen who followed that nager into the room was a trim, handsomely muscled man, with clean smooth features, calm in the anticipation of real pleasure—the slil only the First Order four-plus channels and Donors could share.
He spoke, voice as cool as his ineffable skin. The calm penetrated, surety replacing her fear. Need became a pleasure too intense to bear. Anticipating her, Shanlun joined contact, letting his nager turn to a sunlike furnace that raised her intil beyond all flesh-and-blood limits until she was seizing his selyn, drawing it into her dark, aching void in pulse after pulse, giving Shanlun the same life-worshipping satisfaction she was taking . . .
No! She woke sweating, her ronaplin glands aching as ronaplin oozed from her lateral wrist orifices, the laterals themselves peeping from their sheaths as if searching for the reality behind her dream. She wiped herself, thinking, Idiot. It could never be like that with Shanlun. I'm no channel.
She forced herself to get up and find something to do until Jarmi got there at dawn. The Gen was aware of Laneff’s strain and went out of her way to be kind. Several times, she tried to start a conversation about the qualities of transfers, but Laneff shied from it. That night, Laneff was determined not to let the nightmares overtake her again, so she rested sitting up poring over her notes.
And she fell into a light doze, head cradled on her arms. She was in the disjunction class at Teeren, the Rialite Last Year House, going on their first excursion. The class was taken into the closed wing where the in-crisis cases dwelled.
They were obliged to watch a disjunction attempt. A Sime woman
with long, stringy brown hair and a twisted scar on her calf, was brought into the disjunction theater. The room was built on two levels—an open pit surrounded by balconies where students could watch undetected because of the thick selyn-field insulation woven into the glass.
Laneff had a front-row seat, peering down Into the white circle of the floor. A trained Gen Donor stood to one side; a Tecton channel to the other. The brown-haired woman was in need, her long-fingered hands clutching themselves nervously. There were dark hollows around her eyes, and dreadful fatigue in every line of her body.
The woman stood, searching between the two offers of transfer, zlinning the fields and comparing them. Laneff knew that to disjunct was to choose the channel, to choose freely to eschew all transfer contact with Gens forever. She watched the woman in the scene below, begging her silently to choose the channel, to be free and live.
She took a step forward, wavered toward the channel, another step, arms reaching out embracing both channel and Donor, and then she plunged, swift as lightning, for the Gen!
The contact was joined before Laneff absorbed the fact, and as she gasped, the Gen below was thrown clear of the Sime as if by an electric shock. The Sime woman fell to the white floor, convulsing, thrashing and screaming. Instantly, the channel was on her, fighting her movements, capturing her arms to force a lateral contact.
One moment he had it, the next she ripped free. Again, and again they fought, the Gen now joining the battle. The Sime's struggles became ever more feeble. Laneff caught only glimpses of the twisted grimace on the woman's face, but it turned her stomach to see such agony, for she understood it now. A trained Donor couldn't be killed by a renSime, and only the kill could sustain that woman's life.
Gradually, the thrashing subsided. Laneff’s fingers against the glass no longer registered the vibration of muted screams. At last, the feeble protests, the mewling cries of desperation, ceased, and the Sime woman slumped into a boneless heap—forever still, forever free of need—dead.
Not
She woke, mouth gaping, throat open in what might have been a soundless scream or a retching. Her tentacles were clutched around her fingers so hard she had to pry them loose and wait for the pain to stop before she could resheath them. It shouldn't be this bad yet! I've so much more work to do!
All the next day she could hardly think two thoughts connected. She was sitting despairingly over the disjointed scribbling that should have been a cogent experimental plan, when Azevedo came into the lab.
"Oh, at last!" said Jarmi. "Azevedo, will you talk that stubborn woman into quitting for the day?"
Azevedo came close, zlinning her. "You're hungry, Laneff, and tired. When was the last time you took a shower? When was the last time you even poked your nose out of the lab?"
She couldn't remember. "Not very long ago." Three days?
Jarmi came over. "I cooked her a marvelous dinner last night, but she wouldn't come up to eat it. And when I brought her a tray, she left it untouched. I still have a good four portions in the refrigerator upstairs. Azevedo, why don't you and Desha join us for some really exotically spiced food?"
The channel smiled, coaxing Laneff to her feet by tugging on one elbow. "Laneff, I have about as much appetite right now as you do, but Desha will be hungry. She's got her class out in the courtyard drilling them in coordination. Why don't we just pick her up on the way?"
Agreed, they shut down the lab. Laneff grabbed a journal to read during the break, aware of how behind she was in her reading. They climbed the front stairs to the courtyard door where she'd said goodbye to Shanlun, and she asked Azevedo for news. "Nobody has heard a word, nor has there been anything from Mairis. But Shanlun can take care of himself, don't worry."
She discovered to her dismay that it was a torrid summer day outside, with lowering clouds and no wind. The city drowsed about them, people outside the gypsy bands living indoors under air conditioning. The gypsies, however, preferred nature unalloyed and had their windows open. As always, gypsy children, dogs, cats, and family tumult abounded in the yard.
Amid all this, Desha had a class of young Simes jogging around and around the courtyard, leaping obstacles, tossing objects, and chanting. Meanwhile, their fields were doing the oddest gyrations, flickering through a wide inventory of emotions and degrees of intil. In the center, near the fountain, Desha trotted about in a smaller circle, tracking them and shouting instructions. Among the Simes, Gens wove some sort of braided pattern, further churning the already dizzying nager.
Laneff had never seen or heard of anything like it. Gypsies watched from the open windows, as awed as Laneff, but amused by people who'd work so hard in such heat. Azevedo beat a straight path through to Desha, spoke a few words, gesturing toward the doorway where Laneff and Jarmi waited, and Desha called out something to the class. They stopped in their tracks, folding gracefully down to rest.
While Azevedo and Desha spoke, other children scattered about the court began to yell, running toward the alley that led to the main street. It was no game. The Simes of Desha's class rose, most augmenting slightly, and followed the children to the mouth of the alley, forming a cordon.
Azevedo walked along behind them, Desha at his side. The children's yelling became belligerent and rose to hysterical pitch as they swarmed into the alleyway. A second-story window opened over the alley, and a Sime man leaped to the ground just in front of the children, facing the distant street. Another window opened farther down on the other side, and a Sime woman leaped out.
Laneff looked at Jarmi. "Invasion?" They shrugged at each other, then began walking across the court. They'd always had the impression that this place was deliberately kept private, but they'd never seen an outsider attempt entry. They were barely halfway across the court, mixing with the Gens of Desha's class as they pulled into position behind the Simes. The ambient nager was thick but firm with a kind of menace in it.