RenSime s-6

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  The strange channel had taken the visitor’s chair directly across the desk from Yuan. He turned and flashed her a grin, and then she recognized him: the gypsy channel from the viewing of Digen’s body. His grin transformed his craggy old face into grandfatherly serenity. “The truth is that none of us expected to be here with each other—now. Such surprises add the zest that makes life worth living.”

  He had uncannily found words to express Laneff’s feelings: the renewal of the will to live frightening in its intensity because it was impossible to satisfy.

  Yuan answered, “When a small army is standing to defend a homestead, any surprise is likely to be painful rather than pleasant. You took a terrible chance crossing our perimeter.”

  “Gypsies go where they will,” answered the channel.

  Shanlun raised a finger, his nager claiming attention. “Which is why I requested the escort. I had to find you.”

  “Why?” asked Yuan.

  Shanlun darted a glance at Laneff. “Had I known she was here, that would have been enough reason. But I was ordered by my Sectuib to come to you as his emissary. He has no way of contacting you unless you call him.”

  “I’ve arranged it that way deliberately,” answered Yuan. He speared the channel with a glance. “I never expected you to betray our confidence like this, Azevedo.”

  “Hear him out, Sosectu, and you may not consider it betrayal. If you do, I stand responsible.” Yuan turned to Shanlun. “But how did you know who to ask for escort?”

  “I didn’t. I was desperate. Mairis’s message is urgent. He wants you to repudiate this alliance publicly, and withdraw all your support, because it is making it impossible to achieve our mutual goals.”

  Yuan’s nager was still ultrabrilliant, untapped by channel’s transfer for too many weeks. Now it filled the room with a deadly weariness. “I see. Mairis has been forced to yield to the hysterics.”

  On the desk before Yuan lay a copy of the paper he’d shown Laneff a few days before. Next to it was a clip filled with other, similar articles Laneff also recognized. “Shanlun, I’m certain this paper is Diet-controlled. They’re trying to spook Mairis into just this move, so they can see which of his backers withdraw. Then they’ll know which prominent figures are ours–and those will become assassins’ targets, like Laneff did. I can’t do that to my own people!” Yuan emphasized that by slamming his fist into the desk top, with a ferocious grimace. “Damn the shendi-fleckin’ Diet! I won’t do it!” He smacked his whole aching hand into the desk top again.

  Azevedo winced, and Yuan apologized. For the first time Laneff noticed the hint of need in the channel’s nager. Then it disappeared as his fields shifted into the channel’s working mode, shrouding him in nageric blur.

  Slumping back in his chair, Yuan said to Azevedo, “RenSimes don’t affect me the way you do. I don’t think I can manage this. Perhaps you’d better leave.”

  Now, Laneff noticed that Yuan’s field had increased in just the short time they’d been talking. His whole body, trained by Tecton methods, was responding to Azevedo’s need.

  Shanlun had tensed, perching on the edge of the seat, his Tecton training urging him to move to reshape the ambient, while something else held him back. Azevedo turned to meet Shanlun’s gaze, no more than that, and Shanlun rose to stand beside and a little in front of Azevedo. The bland confetti nager swirled to enclose Azevedo’s blur, and in moments the two of them had disappeared nagerically. Like channel and Companion. But a Householding Companion traditionally didn’t do that with anyone but his own channel—unless the Tecton ordered it.

  Yuan closed his eyes, his face softening in relief, and Laneff’s heart went out to the man, remembering his delight in the twists of fortune as they’d made good their escape, and understanding now why he couldn’t laugh at this one.

  When he opened his eyes, Yuan glanced from Azevedo to Shanlun and back. Then he centered on Shanlun. “Rior is a daughter House to Zeor. I have returned that pledge and granted Mairis all our loyalty. He has accepted my pledge. Such a pledge transcends temporal alliances of political convenience. If Mairis yields now to Diet demands to repudiate my allegiance, the Diet’s next move will be to demand he prove he means it by throwing all Tecton resources into a drive to wipe out Rior. He knows almost enough about us now to do that.”

  “Mairis wouldn’t do that to a daughter House or a sworn ally,” replied Shanlun. “But that allegiance is going to be strained when I report that you’ve got not only Laneff here, but a huge standing army as well. After the raid on Teeren, the Diet and its violent tactics are looking very bad. Mairis can’t afford to be associated with similar tactics—and I’m wondering if we can afford to trust you at all.”

  He didn’t look at Laneff, but she felt his attention dart in her direction, then return to the schooled professionalism of a working Donor.

  “Shanlun, Yuan has saved my life. And he’s provided me a fully equipped lab to work in. He pledged to give Mairis all my findings.”

  Shanlun did look around then. “And to defend you with an army that just begs to be attacked?” He turned back to Yuan. “You engineered the Diet’s attack on Teeren. You’re prepared here for real violence. The Sime~Gen wars were over centuries ago. This isn’t going to further the cause of Unity.” He gestured around him. “And someone as valuable as Laneff shouldn’t be caught in the middle of it, I don’t see how Mairis could still have the same confidence in you, knowing you’ve held Laneff here secretly,”

  Yuan’s eyes narrowed, though his nager was so bright Laneff couldn’t discern anything by the Gen’s anxiety. “I’m not sure that Mairis will ever know you got through to me. You know too much to be allowed to go back to an enemy camp. If Mairis is weak enough to fold at a little throat-clearing from the Diet, the next thing you know he’ll betray us into their hands.”

  Shanlun did not seem cowed by the threat. “Mairis is not your enemy. Don’t you realize that in order to create real Unity, Mairis has to treat with the Diet and their silent sympathizers just as he treats with you? You represent the extreme in-Territory attitude, and they represent the extreme out-Territory attitude. You’re both the tiniest of minorities, but the strength of your organizations is keeping the rest of the world from progress!”

  “We’re keeping the world—” choked Yuan, rising to his feet, leaning over the desk as if to throttle Shanlun.

  Azevedo stepped between them, the ambient nager flowing and shifting as he moved. Yuan’s flaming anger was blocked off from

  Laneff’s senses, and all she could zlin was a faint tinge of bewildered exasperation on the surface of Shanlun’s nager as it emerged from the fusion with Azevedo.

  “Enough!” commanded the channel as if rebuking small boys, “Yuan, you can’t see a tentacle in front of your eyelashes, you’re so woozy with underdraw. You’re in no condition to decide affairs of state on which the future of all humanity may hinge.”

  “Well what the shidoni shenshay frayed deproda do you expect me to do? Go crawling back to the Tecton and beg for transfer?”

  Laneff felt the hot sting of tears in the Gen’s eyes, but his face betrayed none of the anguish he felt. Azevedo did not react to the anger. He simply said, “No, my friend,” and held out his hands to the Gen, tentacles extended in invitation. Simultaneously, his field dropped its masking blur, and pure need blazed forth so powerful that it rammed Laneff’s breath solid in her throat. What kind of a channel could mask such a need!

  “Azevedo!” exclaimed Shanlun, one hand checked in midair. Laneff, too, was on her feet now. Two heartbeats later, Yuan pulled back from the brink of surrender. His haunted eyes went to Shanlun, as if sensing a prior claim. “It would be against our ethic—if you two have an agreement?” And then, hastily, he added, “Forgive me, Shanlun, if I misread you. It makes no sense for a Tecton Donor to be involved with a gypsy channel, but—”

  “You don’t misread him,” supplied Azevedo. He turned to the speechless Shanlun. “You can handle your condi
tion by the training you’ve had which Yuan has not. And you do have Mairis. Yuan has nobody. If Desha can give me to you, can you not give me to Yuan?” Shanlun met the channel’s gaze. “I’ve no claim on you, Azevedo. I am ambrov Zeor.” Straight as a rod, he turned and left, walking as if he had something precious balanced on his head.

  Azevedo gazed after him, and Laneff read a tearing regret in his nager, a sharing of Shanlun’s disappointment. But then he turned to Yuan, melting into a compassion that could not be overshadowed even by the bottomless need he felt. Yuan came around the desk, his whole body quivering in anticipation as he reached to take Azevedo’s proffered hand. The Gen’s field was rising again, but when the nageric blending took place as it had with Shanlun, Yuan steadied, then blinked and turned to Laneff.

  He frowned at the door as it closed behind Shanlun. “I’ve taken his channel from him. I don’t want to take his woman, too. Laneff, he’s the one you prefer, isn’t he?”

  “Yuan, I—” She couldn’t deny it, but she wasn’t all that sure in her heart, either. “Whatever else,” said Yuan, “he and I are sworn to the Tecton’s

  First Order. Do you know what that means?” At her nod, he urged,. “Go to him. And if you never come back to me, Laneff, then do not fail him.”

  There was no tinge of jealousy in the Gen now, Azevedo let her discern that. Then the channel said, “This is the real Yuan ambrov Rior. And in the morning, he’ll be able to reconsider this whole matter and create a novel solution.”

  Laneff didn’t want the two Gens to fight over her work or herself. This was probably the best way to avoid that.

  She followed the two men out of the office. In the corridor intersection, Shanlun was standing among the small knot of gypsies who had apparently come with Azevedo, two Simes and two Gens. They spoke quietly as Yuan gave orders.

  “Find quarters for our guests. With careful regret, you will deny them exit. They may, however, access all the public areas. They are to be treated with respect. Any problems, refer up chain of command. Understood?”

  “Understood!” snapped a Sime woman, but she was hard put not to smile at the new agreement between Yuan and Azevedo. Laneff understood that Yuan had been particularly difficult to live with lately.

  “Desha,” called Azevedo. A very young Gen woman separated from the gypsies and came to him.

  “Shan told me, Azevedo,” said the woman in a very thick accent. Her field was bright, and Laneff surmised that she had been Azevedo’s scheduled Donor. If gypsies have schedules.

  In a whirl of crisp orders, the group sorted itself out, Yuan and Azevedo disappearing down a side hallway, guards hustling the four gypsies away, and two more guards trying to spirit Shanlun off with them. But he turned to her. “Laneff, can we talk?”

  Laneff stepped toward the guards, two renSimes she knew only by sight. “Where can you possibly quarter him? There’s hardly a patch of floor to sleep on anywhere!”

  “We’ll put him with the gypsies, in Hyssop Corridor.”

  “Five people in one of those dinky rooms? And zlin his nager? Two of those gypsies are renSime! Do you think Yuan would ask that of anyone?”

  The guard looked after the retreating figure of Yuan. Laneff added, “Jarmi and I have a much larger room—and I don’t use my bed much. We’ll take him in.”

  The two guards zlinned her replete nager and shrugged. One turned to Shanlun. “Is that agreeable with you?”

  “Yes.”

  The second guard shrugged, and Laneff took Shanlun back along

  the main trunk corridor toward her lab. “I hope you’re not sleepy yet. Jarmi is heavily out of it after our transfer, and—”

  Shanlun beamed. “So you didn’t kill again!” He muttered something in the odd language she’d heard him speaking with the gypsies. “I should have trusted Yuan for that. But who’s Jarmi?”

  She explained tersely, then opened a fire door that led off into a crisscrossed maze of tunnels. “My lab is this way—that is, if you’re not hungry?”

  “Breakfast is yet a couple of hours away.”

  In the lab, she made trin tea while he inspected the place. She explained what they had accomplished, how Jarmi had helped, and what she hoped yet to do.

  “My heart told me you were still alive, Laneff, but my head wouldn’t listen. Laneff—I have never been—bereaved—like that before. If Yuan hadn’t forced me to stay, I think I’d have fought him for the privilege. And I don’t think Mairis would fault me for that.”

  “No, he won’t, because after I die, you’ll be able somehow—maybe through your gypsy friends—to get my work back to him. I’ve been praying for someone I could trust—”

  He wasn’t listening. With one huge, cool Gen hand, he reached behind her neck and cradled her head, forcing her to face him. His eyes were pools that seemed to reflect the multicolored effect of his nager. As she watched, and zlinned, the effect faded. The intense pure gold inner core engulfed her. “Die, Laneff? No. Not again. No.”

  “Shanlun, nobody can prevent it.” Least of all Jarmi. He drew her face close with a trembling intensity more profound than the restrained yearning in his nager. Then he kissed her thoroughly, his whole body responding. The totality of sensation cascaded through her until it was as if he were kissing every part of her. At last, she drew away panting. “Do you know what you’re doing to me?”

  “When did you have transfer?”

  “About five hours ago.”

  “Then I know what I’m doing to you. Or—is there someone else?”

  Such panic she had never felt in a man before. But she had to admit it. “When I ran into you—I was looking for Yuan.” The memory of that unfulfilled night gnawed at her, and as eager as she was for Shanlun, he, too was suffering underdraw symptoms as well as the backlash of breaking his exclusive with Digen. Such stresses rendered the higher-order Tecton Donors both impotent and virtually sterile, until after their next good transfer.

  “You love him?”

  “No!” But that wasn’t true. “Yes!” But that wasn’t true, either. “I don’t know! He’s—he’s so much like you!”

  Shanlun denied that, and they talked for a while about Yuan’s role in the whole affair until she related that Yuan had given her a finishing transfer after her kill.

  Searching her face, as if trying to read her nager, Shanlun asked, “Could I win you away from him by doing the same sometime?” But there was no hint of nageric seduction in his nager.

  “You’re too Tecton straight!”

  There was a tremor in his voice as he countered, “I’d do it, Laneff —if it would bring you back to me. If it was the only possibility, I’d do it. And more, a full transfer.”

  She was shocked. Of course, logically, the amount of selyn she might take would never be missed by any of his channel clients. But the Tecton doesn’t condone junctedness! Yet Laneff found a greedy eagerness erupting within her which she could put down only by telling herself that Shanlun could be no more satisfying than Yuan.

  Again, the puzzle that had tormented her rose again. “Shanlun ambrov Zeor, who are you, really? Why do you know these gypsies– their language, their customs, their channels? What kind of a name is Shanlun, anyway? And where did that Desha get off calling you Shan? You look like them, you know.”

  He looked down at his hands, folded quietly in his lap as he perched on a wicker lab stool. His nager stirred into a faint prismatic display, then washed out to pale gray.

  “And where did you get that crazy nager?”

  “I’m sorry, does it bother you?”

  “No! And that’s what’s so intriguing about it!”

  “The Tecton calls my type of Donor a Cardinal. And I’m at about ninety-three percent capacity right now. And that capacity is higher than most because I’m trained to serve the—” He broke off, glancing about suspiciously.

  “This is private,” said Laneff, having checked the place daily and found no spy devices.

  “—to serve the endowed,”
he finished.

  “Was any of that real?” asked Laneff. “It was another life, forever ago.”

  “It was all real. It’s the training to handle that kind of emergency that gives my nager its peculiarities. The one time you accidentally zlinned me working, you discovered why I don’t let it show most of the time.”

  Laneff remembered him bending over Digen, offering. “You never got that training in the Tecton,” guessed Laneff.

  He didn’t answer her directly. “Laneff, I want to marry you—a permanent, sanctified union. I don’t ever want to lose you again.”

  “Shanlun, you have to get it through your head. Jarmi was good—

  the best the Distect has for me, anyway. And she wasn’t good enough. That means I’m going to die soon in disjunction crisis.”

  He searched her face frantically, then lowered his eyes to his hands again. They lay still in his lap, just as his nager lay still. But she thought he’d have charged about the room restlessly had he permitted himself the luxury.

  “Let’s lay that aside for the moment. I’m going to tell you something nobody in the Tecton except Mairis knows. I don’t know if Yuan suspects, but it doesn’t matter as long as he never knows. You already possess the greatest secret; the rest has to go under the same seal.”

  “You’d respect the word of a junct?”

  “Digen was junct. Don’t profane his memory. Azevedo is junct– by Tecton standards. Can you find it in your heart not to respect him?”

  “Azevedo is junct? I don’t believe it!”

  “He is a channel—and more. Swear.”

  “I can’t swear Unto Sat’htine anymore,” she said, her hand going to the signet nestled between her breasts.

  He caught her hand, and her tentacles naturally twined about his fingers. “Was your disjunction valid?”

  “Yes!” Blood rushed to her face in shame at how she’d repudiated it all.

  “Did you kill that terrorist out of craving for what you had forsworn?”