Laneff had once thought such things existed only in history—or films. But these were live people with a collective nager of leashed threat and brawny eagerness.

When she told Jarmi, as they were waiting for a slow reaction to terminate, that she found them frightening, Jarmi only said, "They're all ours, and they're good at fighting. It's only that you're in need, now, and so anxious about—us. Afterward, you'll see. They really are friendly."

Trying to see Jarmi's point of view, Laneff zlinned many of the strangers. She found no obvious juncts among the Simes now guard– I ing them, though many of those who lived underground all the time ¦> bore the stigma she knew glowed in her own nager.

"Yuan wouldn't ask juncts to fight Gens," assured Jarmi. "They might accidentally kill someone."

Jarmi's attitude seemed to be that any Gen who wanted to get himself killed ought to do it on purpose, and ought to get the Sime to agree first! Laneff couldn't encompass that.

In a few days, the defenders settled into a routine, melding themselves into the life of the installation, helping with construction as well as defense. The cafeteria now worked around the clock. Extra tables were set up and the rules changed to allow trays to leave the area. A schedule was instituted on flushing toilets, because sewers were overloading. And the thermostats were turned up because the air conditioners couldn't cope with all the body heat and kept burning out their condensers.

The troops trained constantly in a large underground garage area Laneff hadn't even known was there until Jarmi took her to watch the mock battles. "Some archaeologists once decided this was an old church. I don't believe it."

On the twenty-third day after her kill, Laneff found Jarmi dogging her tracks unmercifully. She rounded on the woman, letting out a bellow of frustration. "Can't I even go to pee without you looking over my shoulder!"

Jarmi grinned, shrugged, and waited in the corridor. The public room had three stalls, used by Sime and Gen women. It was an arrangement that had always made Laneff nervous. Now, as she waited her turn among noncombatants and troops, she couldn't keep the four Gens in the room from etching into her consciousness. She fidgeted and wished for Jarmi's buffering field.

Then she berated herself for that wish, horrified at how dependent she was becoming on the Gen. And if I kill her?

When she claimed a stall, she found it ridiculously difficult to relax enough to do her business. Having wasted almost five minutes, when others were waiting—some of them Sime and aware of her problem —she gave up, washed her hands and left.

That night, she was going over some test results at her desk in the lab—the only place that had not been invaded by troops—when a woman came hesitantly through the door. "I thought I'd find you here," she said in a Simelan dialect that sounded local.

The woman was renSime and had been here for years. She was pale, and her nager seemed to echo with the tremor of the junct stigma.

"Did I forget to file a form?"

"No—I was—it's just that I– Well, maybe it's not my place . – -it's personal of course ..."

Laneff scrutinized the woman more closely. She was of advanced middle years, thin as any Sime, medium height, mouse-brown hair. And there was an aura of calm there that Laneff had not noticed before, despite the woman's obvious embarrassment. "Is there something I can help you with?" asked Laneff.

She beamed. "No. I just wanted to tell you that—well, I killed for the first and last time when I was fifteen years past changeover. And that was nearly five years ago. If you don't fight Jarmi, I'll bet she can do the same for you."

Surprised, Laneff zlinned the woman and remembered the last time she'd seen her. In the toilet room. She'd taken the stall Laneff had vacated, unsuccessful.

"Well, I've got to get back to the kitchen. We've got hungry troops to feed!" And she was gone.

Laneff decided nobody had put the woman up to this. But by the time her shock had worn off, it was too late to call her back. When Jarmi turned up, near dawn the next morning, Laneff had made peace with the idea of the Gen's solicitous and permeating presence.

Jarmi's attitude seemed to be a signal to the other Gens they met in halls and cafeteria. It seemed all the Distect Gens were Donors, and the ones who were high-field were dreadfully polite about it, being very careful never to tempt Laneff. Yet she couldn't help but shy from every high-field Gen except Yuan.

His field continued at that searingly brilliant level, but he seemed to be making his peace with his condition. When he was around, Laneff found she could truly relax her guard. And so she encouraged him to drop into the lab to talk about her work, not caring whether he understood or not.

The morning of the twenty-fifth day, after Yuan had left the lab, Jarmi followed Laneff to the exhaust chamber where they had set up a trin tea service using a lab flask and a sand bath. "We've got to talk,

Laneff."

Laneff had been indulging in the thousandth comparison between Shanlun and Yuan. "Why?" she snapped.

"A lot of things haven't been said yet. Like—well, I know the Tecton keeps renSimes on a twenty-five or -six-day cycle. But I don't know your cycle, exactly."

Laneff wasn't used to discussing need with Gens. Need was a medical condition treated in confidence by a channel—a fellow Sime who knew without asking what it was like. Jarmi didn't have the clinical attitude that would have made Laneff comfortable. She hitched herself onto a wickerwork lab stool and toyed with a rack of test tubes. "Do you realize, Jarmi, I know even less about you than you know about me?"

"We've both put the work above personal interests. And we've accomplished a lot. We'll accomplish a lot more after this transfer. You can't expect your mind to be working efficiently now!"

"It's not so bad yet—at least when you're around." She grinned and confessed her experience in the public toilet. "The Tecton had me on a twenty-five-day cycle most of the time. But I don't feel twenty-fifth-day right now. Even when Yuan was here—he was comfortable, not raising my intil."

Even without technical training, Jarmi knew that intil meant the appetite for transfer which was as different from need as appetite was from hunger. "If you're not high-intil, then we shouldn't push it. But you don't know when you might be taken by it."

"And this place full of Gens!"

"Yes. I'd be horribly jealous. And so would their Sime."

Laneff had meant she might kill, and she knew Jarmi had deliberately misunderstood. Yet this was very much the Rior attitude. "How do you manage without a Controller? What if somebody took the wrong Gen?"

"Sosectu would straighten it out, and of course Bianka or one of the other channels would have to find a match for the other Sime—or serve them channel's transfer."

"Don't renSimes who've taken direct Gen transfer, and carry that signature in their nagers, get caught by the channels when they turn up at Sime Centers for channel's transfer? And what about the computers? Every renSime is expected to turn up somewhere for transfer on schedule! Surely they notice?"

"The Tecton system isn't as tight as you might think. But seriously, how can I tell you our secrets when you aren't even pledged to the House?"

"I'm not likely to go back to the Tecton!" said Laneff. "I've had enough of the Diet." She rubbed the band on her arms. "Where else is there but here?"

"Well," replied Jarmi with real daring in her nager, "you could go back to the Tecton and live on channel's transfer by using K/A to control the transfer aborts that cause death in disjunction crisis. You'd live as long as you could here—maybe a good lifetime."