"Who cares. It's how you zlin that interests me."
"Just what I wanted to hear!" Now she did take a seat on the transfer bench. They had once discussed the piece of furniture and noted how it was used in various paintings hung about in the halls. "Like this—right?"
Laneff sat, facing the opposite direction, half turning to take Jarmi in transfer position. "Not bad, actually."
Laneff moved to close the contact, but Jarmi fended her off. "Not so fast. You've lost your edge. This should help!"
The Gen raked her long, hard fingernails along her own forearms, leaving instant red welts that sent stinging shivers through the nager and hurt. It wasn't the same as the pain from Yuan's bullet wound, nor the terrorist's broken ankle and torn hand, but the pure, allover sensation wakened Laneff’s nerves to renewed intil.
She went hyperconscious and didn't even hear her own growl of savage frustration as she seized the Gen's sensitized arms. Selyn erupted into her system at first lip contact. Laneff soared on it, drawing with all the pent-up yearning.
Quickly, Laneff was drawing at her peak speed, easily matched by Jarmi. Euphoria held her transfixed on the brink of satisfaction. Pain still burning along her arms, Jarmi deliberately resisted the draw, taunting the half-crazed Laneff to further effort. Helplessly, she drew selyn against the Gen's resistance, and the pain increased, and her satisfaction came nearer, and she increased her draw speed, and the pain increased until it was the exquisite torture of real satisfaction run full to completion.
She came out of it weeping for the unexpected joy of it, knowing that with transfers like this she could avoid disjunction crisis and bring Shanlun's baby to life. Everything was solved.
The Gen opposite her slumped into a boneless mass of terry-cloth, "Jarmi?"
The nager had gone flat. The screaming alarm in Laneff was not echoed by the pain of transfer burn. She wasn't breathing. She wasn't producing selyn. "Jarmi! Wake up!"
"No! No!" Laneff screamed, a long inarticulate wail of anguish. "No!" Then the choking sobs came.
By the time she could go to call Azevedo, Jarmi's hair had dried.
CHAPTER 11
CHANCE
The longest night of Laneff’s life passed in a blurred kaleidoscope of impressions: shock/horror/sorrow veiled behind nageric cushions //spinning images of walls, paintings, doors//faces looming/ stretcher moving / candles / mirrors / flowers / bells / silences / bursts of tears / low-voiced conferences over her head / trin tea and medicine forced on her/sleep at last.
She woke floating in Yuan's nager, convinced she'd had a particularly ghastly nightmare—until she saw his face, worn, sunken, tattered by weight loss and pain, while in herself there was no trace of need. Sunlight leaked around drapes. A dimmed lamp showed his reddish-blond hair, freckles and his gingery eyebrows over sunken eyes. And he'd shaved his mustache. His nager, darkly mottled with trauma and exhaustion, held a tender luster void of all recrimination.
With a cry, she wrenched free of that hypnotic nager and twisted away, facing the opposite side of the bed. She determined to stay that way until he left her alone.
With his good hand, he stroked her shoulder, freeing her hair. "All right. Take your time. We have all day." He eased himself gingerly down on the pillow she'd vacated, his own illness weighing heavily.
She wondered how—and why—he'd dragged himself here to be with her, and marveled at his stamina. But it was only a fleeting awareness. The warmth of the man brought the memory of Shanlun sleeping soundly in just that spot, in just that position. On a tide of anxiety, she thrust herself free of the blanket and plunged across the room toward the dressing alcove—and the refuge of the shower.
The wicker transfer bench was gone. The empty floor space stopped her—almost worse than if the thing were still there, gleaming whitely. In a flash, she relived the entire experience. Her knees buckled. Without the strength to fight it, she let herself slide to the floor mat, her night dress caught awkwardly under her knees.
But the tears wouldn't come. Not again. Only wave after wave of self-loathing answered her seeking for tears. Grief was a refuge denied.
Yuan worked his way to his feet awkwardly, then swayed slowly to her side, favoring the arm bound in a sling. She felt every twinge in him, distantly, without need, without intil. She shied into hypoconsciousness, unwilling to think about it. His shadow over her was like a tangible thing. His voice laved salve over her scream-torn ears. But his words echoed those in her mind. "You killed Jarmi."
It was no rebuke, no accusation. She couldn't divine how those words could carry such intense compassion, especially coming from him—Jarmi's Sosectu.
"She loved you so," whispered Laneff, throat raw from screaming.
"Say it, Laneff. Say, 'I killed Jarmi.'"
She vaguely remembered screaming. Then, for a long long time, she'd been unable to move, or do or say anything for the endless repetition of those words. Catatonic, they'd called her. She wanted now to respond.
Her throat opened, then clenched shut over the words. Mutely, she shook her head, her guts cramping. Every nerve in her was on fire with Jarmi's selyn.
"Say, 'I killed Jarmi,' " he insisted with remorseless compassion. "You have to say it, Laneff, out loud. Say it and accept it."
She felt as if her very mind tissues were about to tear open, spilling mental bile that would burn her brain.
He went to one knee, gasping as he clutched his shoulder. Then he put one hand on the small of her back, his Gen coolness taking the fire out of her. He let his hand smooth upward along the curve of her spine as he urged her, "Tell me about it, Laneff—tell me how good it was—and terrible. Tell me what Jarmi felt."
She hadn't been able to tell them how it had happened. When she'd found Azevedo beside Yuan's bed, she'd only been able to strangle a wail and point in the direction of the apartment. But the channel had known from her nageric state. Running under full augmentation, gathering attendants with shouts, he'd pounded into the apartment and to Jarmi's side, halting only when the hopeless silence of her nager was clear.
How good it had been. Tell a Gen how good it was to kill? His hand stroked her back, pausing just where the selyn-transport nerves joined the spinal axis, sending a seductive relaxation through and through her.
She straightened away from that touch, unwilling to yield the tension that held down the realities. His hand hovered. "Tell me how good it was, Laneff." She turned, unable to believe his nager, searching for the condemnation she knew had to be in him somewhere, searching his face for a hint of it. But it wasn't there. He knew very well—how good it was. A sudden inward rending, and she threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his good shoulder, blurting in total catharsis, "I killed Jarmi! I killed her and I didn't even know I was doing it! I thought I could live forever on such—such—such transfers! But it was killbliss. And she hurt, and died! I—ha-ha-ha-hate myself!" Dry sobs wrenched at her chest, burbling upward, unstoppable.
Hours later, when it abated, he helped her shower and dress and then to eat a little. There was a private funeral. Yuan officiated in Distect style, reciting formal words and then calling Jarmi his most dedicated follower. They took her body away in a rattletrap truck to the gypsy burial ground, far out in the wilds.
After that, they left Laneff pretty much to herself. Yuan stayed in the apartment, sleeping on a narrow cot in the sitting room. He cooked for her, made her get out of bed and dress, but let her sit for endless hours just staring at nothing. Azevedo came, often with Desha. She knew when they'd had transfer, and watched as Azevedo suffered from the inadequacy. But he came to make her feel better– to sit quietly or talk randomly of the life of Thiritees, the children, dogs, students, weddings, and graduations. Every once in a while he mentioned that her lab was standing empty.