The big blond Gen turned to her, noticing her move. “Feeling better? Good, you’ll be on soon.” He left his hand trailing on the rope in front of her, and his smile was like a caress, his nager a palpable beat protecting her as Shanlun so often had. He thinks I don’t feel need at all now. She drew breath to contradict that impression, but just then she heard Mairis mention her name, and she realized he had been describing the distant promise inherent in her discoveries, and how they had helped Digen survive several crises before the one that finally took him.
The big blond Gen touched her fingers, most of his attention on her, steady as if she were a channel preparing to work. “Listen! Your cue.”
“Therefore, at this time of ending, I am announcing my candidacy for World Controller and a new beginning. For if I am elected, I will see to it that Laneff Farris’s research will be completed all the way through the fifteen-year study necessary to determine if she can indeed predict changeover. And if she can, then within your grandchildren’s lifetimes, the ultimate reunification of mankind can take place, Digen’s dream can become a reality. Listen now to Laneff Farris describe how her discovery works.”
The blond stood aside as Laneff rose to her feet. Her breath came easily, though her head felt light. She walked to the microphone as a circle cleared around her, and all the cameras in the press zone swerved to focus on her.
“Go ahead,” muttered the squatting technician and vacated the area, scrambling under the line of sight of the cameras.
Laneff knew that part of Mairis’s plan was to present her in public so that Simes could zlin her nager, read her sincerity and her certainty for themselves, before the press could round up all the neurochemistry experts whose skepticism had prevented her results from being published. So she wasn’t startled when the blond guard stood well back so his nager wouldn’t obscure hers. But she was dismayed at how naked it made her feel as all attention focused on her. At least I’m not going to vomit.
She took a deep breath and got through the formal salutations by rote, and then she began to describe the simple amniocentesis method she envisioned for her test, and how her synthetic chemical could then be used to determine the nature of the fetus.
She had no sooner begun than screams erupted around the silver van which hovered only strides away. Simultaneously, the ambient nager became a blinding sheet of white-hot Gen pain.
The cameraman on top of the van had caught his hand in the camera’s aiming mechanism, and his pain was beating through every Sime around the van—Simes wide open to it because they’d been zlinning her. The redheaded Gen ground the camera mechanism back across the man’s hand—Laneff could sense bones breaking– and the man yanked himself free, blood spraying in every direction. He slipped and fell off the van screaming in pain and terror.
Against her will, Laneff was thrown hyperconscious, the world dissolving into a shifting miasma of selyn fields laced with jagged slices of pain. Islands of damped-down calm identified channels working to control the ambient. Dead spots represented renSimes wearing attenuators tuned to maximum. The massive nager of the big blond Gen blazing shock moved toward the source of the ineffable pain.
But even that nager could not damp the shrieking Gen terror that dominated the ambient. That terror wakened her like nothing else since the experience of her First Need, the time she had killed.
Gens interposed themselves between renSimes and the pain-terror source that was triggering off the most basic hunting instincts in the Simes. But to Laneff, those Gens seemed to be holding off her competitors. Hardly aware that she moved, Laneff leaped the rope barricade and streaked for her prey, just as the redhead swung down from the van roof, also radiating delicious fear.
In one flashfire perception, Laneff knew the fallen Gen had not only a mashed hand, but also a broken ankle. She ignored the startle-ment in the massive Donor’s nager she passed. Her ronaplin glands flooded her lateral sheaths with selyn-conducting hormone, and her whole body was tuned to killing pitch.
As she secured her prey, renewed terror took him when he knew the feral hunter was upon him. That promise of imminent satisfaction was too much.
Her hands seized the bloody forearm and the other clean one. Her handling tentacles lashed securely—bruisingly—into place. And her laterals flicked into position on the Gen’s skin while she fastened her lips to his in a relentless demand for selyn.
She drew to her full speed, seeking the moment of egobliss she only half remembered and had renounced forever. He resisted, his nerves responding to her draw with a burst of that peculiar pain only Gens could feel—and junct Simes craved like nothing else. Lured by that hint of killbliss, she abandoned herself to the draw, increasing the Gen’s pain by her swift demand.
In one crying burst of resonant triumph, the quintessence of killbliss overcame her. Too soon, the living vibration damped out of the selyn field. The brightness of soul-essence dopplered away. The pulsing surges of new selyn created in Gen tissue ceased.
The warm, pliant corpse slid from her grasp.
And as at her first kill, the amount of selyn she had been able to glean during the split instant of her attack was not enough. Need still growled within her.
She turned, unaware of the turquoise hem of her cloak trailing in the Gen’s blood. The world had stopped.
I—killed …
The vocalization of that fact rang through the emptiness of her mind. I—killed. Rejuncted.
Spectators had formed a wide ring about the scene at the side of the van. On the podium stairs, Mairis and Shanlun seemed suspended in the act of racing toward her. Beside her, the big blond Donor fought back his shock. The redheaded Gen woman had reached the ground and stood near the driver’s door as the other camera crew swarmed down from the van roof.
And Laneff found herself zeroing in on the redheaded woman as her next victim.
With a strangled choking noise that was hardly a cry, Laneff threw herself into the Donor’s arms, knowing that her selyn draw could never produce pain in him. His nager, though enticingly Gen and replete with more selyn than she could use in a year, held no hint of promise of killbliss. With all her will, she forced herself to cling to him —not to kill again.
As if that were a signal, pandemonium erupted. Mairis and Shanlun raced down the stairs, shouting orders to the guards right and left. Simultaneously, the two men climbing down from the van roof leaped onto Laneff, catching her around in her own cape and yanking her free from the arms of the Donor, who was left stunned beside the van.
Laneff was borne into the air toward the redhead and the driver while at the same time a furious wind whipped dirt and gravel into the air. The thrumming roar of a helicopter’s blades beat down on them, scattering the spectators while the guards flung arms over their eyes and groped forward.
Laneff couldn’t see. They’d wrapped her cloak with its black lining full around her and over her eyes, the pin of the clasp now digging into her chest. But she could zlin Mairis and Shanlun racing toward them heedless of the flying gravel. And she sensed the moment the Donor Gen overcame shock enough to see she was being kidnapped.
She struggled halfheartedly, a token resistance, for she knew that if she fought she would seek to kill again. It was the only honor she had left, for by Tecton law she was doomed to death by attrition of selyn —death in the Last Year House, where she would not be allowed to kill again. She was too old to disjunct again. She would die for lack of the kill. A year at the most.
Her captors set her on her feet, quickly and expertly lashing her forearms around with a tough belt, pulled up tight so the pressure on her laterals held at the very threshold of unbearable pain.
Hardly daring to breathe, she stood helpless as two of the men drew guns. One held a gun to her head while the other waved his at the security guards converging on them. Meanwhile, the redhead and the other man unfurled a banner fastened to the side of the van, reading The Diet Proves Simes Can’t Be Trusted.
Before Mairis and Shanlu
n could quite work their way to the fore of the guards, the chopper almost touched down right beside Laneff’s captors, and the redhead scrambled for the open hatch, shouting instructions.
Numbly, Laneff thought, It’s not the Tecton Security chopper!
And then the blond Gen moved.
He charged, head down, straight for Laneff, passing the redhead and the other man. One of Laneff’s captors got off a shot at the Donor, but he kept coming. Before the other, whose gun was pointed at Laneff’s head, could react, the Donor had swept through them, catching Laneff below the waist and hoisting her up over his shoulders.
For several moments, the world vanished for Laneff, pain exploding through her nerves while her arms dangled over the huge Donor’s shoulder, and then a slamming impact against the chopper’s hatchway knocked the breath out of her. She heard the hatch bang shut behind them, and the patter-pop of several bullets hitting the side of the chopper.
Without instructions, the chopper pilot lifted straight up and then tilted hard as he raced for speed.
Diaphragm knotted and eyes watering, Laneff fought pain and dizziness. And then the Donor had the cruel belt off her arms, sending new lances of fiery pain through her whole body. It was only coming to her now that she wasn’t dead.
“Come on, Laneff, help me take that pilot, and I’ll get you out of this!”
She shook her head, unable to assimilate it all. “Come on, get up on your feet—there now …” Pulling her up, he worked with his nager to steady her, though how he could do that while he himself was in such a state she didn’t know. “I can’t . – – ,” she gasped as breath came again. “Listen!” he commanded, spearing her with his eyes as he steadied her by the shoulders. “That pilot is part of this—that shen-be-flayed Diet set you up for that kill. They came there intending to make a Sime kill—maybe targeted on you!—just to prove Digen and Mairis are out to enslave or destroy Gens! Are you going to stand here and let that man take you to the Diet headquarters—where they’ll treat you like that?” He kicked at the belt on the deck by her foot. “Gather your wits, woman, and zlin for me. How many of them are there up there?”
She glanced around now, curious for the first time. The chopper was designed to carry cargo, and they were in a huge lower bay, with ribbed bulkheads bare around them. Above and on the forward bulkhead, stairs led to a hatch—shut now. Undoubtedly the pilot’s compartment.
She went duoconscious, to zlin through that bulkhead and hatchway. Clearly, through the light construction, she zlinned the selyn nager of one Gen—scared, but grim.
“There’s only one—the pilot. But there’s room up there for three.” And now that she was zlinning, she noticed the pursuing copters. “Behind us—way behind—three choppers. Must be the Tecton.”
“Must be,” he echoed abstractedly as he studied the hatch. “Do you think the pilot knows what happened down there?” “Do you think I can read minds?” she countered.
But he was already at the hatch. “Come here. Force this lock bar for me, and I’ll take care of the pilot.”
“Can you fly one of these things?”
“Sure.” He grinned pure Gen male vigor and a peculiar Gen ferocity. “How high are we?”
There were no ports in the cargo bay. Zlinning, she estimated, “Higher than the Vermilion Tower restaurant over there,” she said, pointing, “but there are hills right in front of us.”
“Good; we’ll make it.” As he spoke, he put his own strength to forcing the lock bar up. “Come on—augment!”
He knew what he was asking of her: to use selyn at many times her normal metabolic rate to strengthen her muscles beyond Gen abilities. He was a professional Tecton Donor. He knew she hadn’t been satisfied by that one kill, that need still lurked within her.
At her hesitation, he turned to her, his field supportive. “What beautiful irony: use the Diet’s own selyn to defeat them. Come on, Laneff. We don’t have much time.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and set herself to the bar. She had to nudge the huge male Gen hands aside to get a good tentacle and finger grip on it, but then she summoned her full augmentation capacity, closed her eyes to concentrate, not caring if she injured her back or gave herself a hernia. She let loose all her strength, and the bar tore loose, the hatch slamming open before them, the muted noise of the rotors bursting into a storm of sound while pure daylight streamed through the wrapped bubble windshield.
Before she recovered her balance, the Donor was through the hatch and onto the pilot. One huge male fist slammed into male jaw, and the pain both of them felt ratchetted through Laneff renewing her killust. She fought it down as the Donor extracted the unconscious Gen pilot from the control seat and threw himself into place, grabbing the controls with fair expertise. Then his nager steadied around her, and all trace of killust faded.
Over his shoulder, he shouted above the noise, “Laneff, get that belt and secure that man’s hands before he comes to.”
“I don’t think he’ll come to very soon. He hit his head on something hard when you felled him.” Her voice sounded small in her ears, though she yelled the words.
The chopper had leveled and steadied under the Donor’s hands. Now he turned to gaze at her, and she was aware that he was as surprised they were alive as she was.
“Please, just tie him up. Then come sit here and tell me what’s going on behind us. They’ll be shooting at us soon as they get close enough. You get me out of this, Laneff, and I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
CHAPTER 3
STIGMA
Laneff regarded the unconscious Gen pilot. He was wearing dark-gray coveralls over tough charcoal work clothes. There was a massive ring on his right hand and a wristband on his left bearing a watch. Perhaps twenty-five years old, he showed well-developed muscles. His nager, dimmed with unconsciousness and disorganized around the head injury, was still strong for a nondonor of selyn.
“I don’t suppose it would do him any harm,” she shouted over the noise, “if I tie him up.”
The Donor turned, grinning. “Ambrov Sat’htine!”
“Yes,” replied Laneff choking back a bitter tear, “even junct, ambrov Sat’htine.” Her House was dedicated to health and healing. But it can’t heal me now. She got the belt and secured the Gen pilot, using his shoelaces on his ankles.
“How close are they now?” shouted the Donor.
She zlinned arear. “Gaining, uh—what’s your name?”
“Yuan.”
“Well, Yuan,” she said, perching in the copilot’s seat, “why don’t you just land here and let them catch up. It’s only Tecton security back there now.” Last Year House. She had toured a Last Year House once, seen the ghastly death that awaited any Sime who became junct after their first year as an adult. That vision was with her now. Why didn’t it stop me then?
Below them, rolling hills and steep water canyons peeled away one after another. “Laneff—is that what you really want?”
“Is there any choice?”
His silence drew her attention. Their eyes met. “Yes, I’m offering you a choice.” He yanked down a set of earphones with attached microphone and twisted them onto his head, then reached over to pluck down the copilot’s set. “Put this on so we can talk over the noise.”
She complied. “Not that there’s anything to say. You’ve got to get me to a Last Year House before I kill again.”
He eyed her sideways. “In a Tecton Last Year House, you’d live maybe ten months or a year. You’d be too sick to work after maybe six months. What of your research?”
Stricken, she met his gaze silently. All for nothing.
“Come with me and live—maybe eighteen months, two years– maybe more. And have a laboratory where you can complete your work, refine your synthesis so others can duplicate it, set up protocols for your fifteen-year project, and maybe even publish. In two years, you could do all that!”
“And who would I have to kill to do it?” Her rejection of temptation was visceral, but the
temptation beckoned like that Gen’s sweet terror. Her body had first known selyn satisfaction coupled to that peculiar kind of Gen fear, and, disjunction aside, that touch of fear would always be the measure of quality in her satisfaction. Why did I have to be renSime!
A heavy rumble shook the chopper. Yuan clutched the controls, glancing futilely behind. “They’re shooting at us! They think we’re Diet!” He grabbed for the radio microphone, and fighting the controls, reached to dial across the frequencies.
Laneff couldn’t help thinking how ludicrous he seemed as he tried to do everything with fingers. Lacking tentacles, Gens had no easy life of it. As she reached to adjust the radio for him, she thought, They were sure I’d establish as a Gen, not change over at all. And if I’d been Gen, I wouldn’t now be condemned to death. Savagely, she heard herself add, If it would add a year to my life now, I’d cut off every one of my tentacles!
She found their signal. “… unmarked Straight-Riser, you are assisting a junct to flee the scene of a kill. You will be shot down if you do not land immediately. Tecton law requires that any fleeing junct be summarily executed. You have been warned. Repeat …”
Yuan cut in over their signal. “This is Yuan Sirat Tiernan, TN-1. I can’t land this thing! The pilot is unconscious. Help!”
“You can’t?” asked Laneff, surprised at her own panic.
“Of course I can. Playing for time.” And he tried again, then twice more. But the Tecton voice kept on repeating. Frustrated, he searched the maze of dials around him until he grunted, “Shidoni-be-flayed Diet! We can’t get out on the Tecton frequencies! Just like them not to trust their own pilots!” Disgust and contempt vied for nageric prominence with hatred of the Diet.
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