"What will you do with the information?"

"Set spies on them. Leak my knowledge to them and force them to abandon and move—just to keep them from accomplishing much. Oh, there's lots to do with such information!"

He spoke as if he'd been carrying on this war for years, right in the middle of civilization and the Tecton didn't even know it. "Yuan, why do you hate the Diet so? They're only frightened."

"I don't hate them because they're afraid! Look, they worm their way into a perfectly happy Gen community, and start sowing rumors that the Sime Center harbors a Pen full of Gens used for the kill. They start talking about certain channels who take donations from the community as being junct. Soon, the Gens of the area stop coming to donate selyn. They turn perfectly happy people into suspicious paranoids, and from each destroyed community they reap a few fanatics to join their suicide corps. There is no life form lower than a Gen who'd seduce a Sime into a kill!"

"But I thought the Distect condoned junctedness?"

"Condoned? No, Laneff. We stand for the right of each Sime and Gen to choose a mode of transfer that suits them, as long as nobody gets hurt."

There was so much vivid passion emanating from him that Laneff had to ask, "How did you get into all this?"

"I was raised in a coastal island village that was one of the first the Diet took over. But I joined the Tecton's Donor classes when I established. Maybe I halfway believed the lies. I was prepared to die on my first Qualification! I found out what Sime and Gen are really about– but too late to save my sister. She joined the Diet's suicide squad, only she hadn't established yet. She went through changeover instead, and they murdered her. The same kind of thing was happening in all the families in our village. I swore to stop it, Laneff!"

"Swearing isn't enough. The Tecton—"

"Oh—I found some old books and began reading up on how the Tecton came about. It wasn't always like this, you know. And Klyd

Farris never did have much more than a bare majority when founding the Tecton. There were a number of Householdings that withdrew to form the original Distect, and a lot of other ideas about how the Tecton ought to be run. The time has come for the world to reconsider some of them."

In the narrow white corridor, Laneff looked up at the huge Gen, the powerful, hurtfully brilliant nager enfolding her. Wistfully, she recalled the scintillating tingle of Shanlun's nager. But she would never see him again. Shanlun thinks I'm dead–and it's better for him that way. He shouldn't have to go through it all twice. "I wish I could believe in your way, Yuan."

He examined her face as if trying to zlin her nager. "I'd like a chance to show you—all of it." His hand came up to graze her jaw-line. "The way we finish a transfer between a man and a woman

The pure maleness of him, from scent to the little tufts of hair on the backs of his fingers, penetrated her perceptions. She knew what he meant. In the Tecton, a man and woman who shared transfer were sexually forbidden to each other for that month. Another rule discarded.

Jarmi had drifted down the corridor toward the exit into the infirmary proper, offering them privacy. Do I really want to do this? She had watched Yuan deliberately frightening a helpless prisoner, but with a peculiar measure of compassion. In his place, Shanlun might have done the same. "Are you really going to let him go?" she asked.

"We don't have any prison cells. I think—I'll have him transported to another facility, and on the way, he'll get an irresistible chance to escape. Then, the Diet won't know exactly where he was. I don't think they know about this place yet. But all that's for tomorrow. For tonight . , " He hesitated, awaiting her permission to touch her.

"Life is a game to you, isn't it?"

"A very dangerous game."

"But it's the danger you like, isn't it?"

"How is it you know me so well?"

"Haven't you ever known a Farris before?" she teased.

"Only channels," he murmured, distracted but still holding back his touch. His nager communicated his desire very clearly, but there was no hint of coercion in him.

For all his Distect philosophy, she knew at core he was a Tecton Donor, and a nonHouseholder at that. He was inviting her for only one night, because he was attracted. If I'd met him before I met Shanlun, I wouldn 't have thought twice about saying yes. I have to try to live as if Shanlun never existed. And this man–is very special.

"Yuan—"

"It will be good for you, too. You're not a channel. It wouldn't hurt you to go a few months without sex. But, Laneff, you're Sime, and that's a wonderful thing to be. There's no reason to make it less wonderful by ignoring the essence of your being."

An utterly spontaneous smile overcame her. "You make a very strong case, Sosectu ambrov Rior."

At her assent, he bent down and kissed her with delicate passion.

CHAPTER 6

DISTECT TRANSFER

"I've always wondered what he's like in bed," said Jarmi wistfully, her eyes fixed on Laneff and her nager glowing with admiration.

Laneff was sitting with Jarmi in the cafeteria. Over the last two days, she'd overheard a number of comments about how unusual it was for Yuan to take any member of Rior to bed. Most of the women were wondering what she had that they lacked, but Jarmi seemed to know. Laneff wished she knew, too.

"He's an expert," replied Laneff, burying her nose in her trin tea glass. "I suppose, anyway."

"You mean after all that you didn't—" Jarmi whispered.

Suddenly reminding herself of her original suspicion that Jarmi had to be Yuan's spy, Laneff asked, "Should we be gossiping about the Sosectu?"

Jarmi took that rebuke meekly, but Laneff felt the burning curiosity eating at the Gen—as did every Sime in the room. "Jarmi, he's practically in underdraw. He's more interested in Simeness than sex right now."

That terse hint covered a night of frustration. As much as he'd wanted to, Yuan had been unable to show her the other side of Rior. And she, not being in need yet, had become urgently fascinated to learn that side. His fortitude in the face of their dual frustration had touched her heart as nothing else could have.

She had responded by offering undemanding physical warmth, and in the morning they'd both felt stronger. Shanlun would have understood Yuan's plight even sooner than she did, and being the consummate Tecton Donor he was, he'd have urged her to Yuan's bed.

As she dwelled on that, Laneff saw Yuan come in, going immediately to the serving line. His field seemed to have leveled off.

Staring curiously at the Sosectu, Jarmi said, "I've often wondered what underdraw feels like."

Lost in her own thoughts, Laneff answered, "I much prefer need!" "No—I meant not wanting sex because you want transfer." "Oh, it's a little like being a child again. Sex just doesn't exist for you, but—hunger does."

"Hard to imagine." She was working enthusiastically on a mound of mashed potatoes and turnips heaped onto some kind of cheese pie.

Yuan caught Laneff’s gaze and smiled. The beam of his attention lanced across the scattering of Simes and Gens and sent a warm thrill along Laneff’s nerves. He started to weave his way toward them.

Jarmi weighed Yuan's smile and Laneff’s response. "I've never seen him like that about anyone. Laneff, he's falling in love with you. Be gentle with him."

Shocked by that thought, Laneff zlinned the Sosectu again as he was greeted by people. Jarmi could be right. There might be something personal in Yuan's attitude. She'd known enough Tecton Donors to have learned not to expect anything personal in a sexual relationship. But with Shanlun, it had gone from the deeply intimate to the physical, and had always been personal first and professional afterward. For her, it wasn't the same with Yuan. But for him?