Laneff had never considered that, but in a moment she rejected it. "K/A may have been the cause of Digen's death. Not a bad way to go, actually, but I'll try everything else first. K/A might help control aborts, maybe even all the way into disjunction crisis. But it won't prevent death in disjunction for an adult."

"Why?"

The experience of her own disjunction was with her as never before. "Because if a drug stopped the aborts, and let the channels force selyn into you, you'd die of the cause of the aborts anyway: the craving for killbliss. Nothing can substitute for killbliss."

She remembered the Sime woman, looking older than her years but alive five years without killing. How?

"Laneff, I don't intend to substitute anything for killbliss. I intend to give it to you. And I intend to survive to give it to you again and again. I'll get better at it with practice." Her smile glowed through her nager. "If I get good enough, if you'll help me learn, then maybe you'll be like Thereda, and not even go into disjunction crisis at all." "I wish I could believe that," said Laneff miserably. "Listen. This is the great secret of the Distect. Killbliss is the Gen experience, not a Sime experience at all. The Sime only shares it. The few who've learned to give real killbliss tell me it's better than the ordinary pleasure everyone takes in transfer. Do you know how that used to make me feel? With my speed/capacity profile, I couldn't even have the kind of ordinary transfer partner everybody else has. But you and I are match-on, and you're junct. We have a chance at the very best possible kind of experience. My life is finally turning around, and I'm so happy I could scream!"

Jarmi's relish for the experience eased Laneff’s misgivings, letting her need progress smoothly. With each passing day, Jarmi took increasing delight in the advancing symptoms of need, patiently wanting the transfer, and thus making Laneff want it, too.

But, after the killbliss she'd had at the kill, she found the grinding ache of need slower in onset. She realized she hadn't known what she was getting into when she accepted Jarmi's offer of transfer. True, she couldn't choose channel's transfer here because Bianka, their best channel, was just too infernally slow for Laneff. That one taste of Bianka's touch was all Laneff thought she could tolerate. But she could have asked Yuan.

Perhaps it would be better if I brought him my full need? Yet the memory of the infinite depths of his nager told her that even if she were in attrition, she couldn't scratch the outermost layer of his selyn pattern. And it was the core of that pattern that she craved.

Struggling to keep at least some of the momentum of the lab work going, Laneff took to snacking and sleeping in the lab while nursing the various procedures they had in progress. In need, she could hardly sleep, but would rest on the surface of sleep, skimming shallowly into dream and nightmare.

Once, when she lay down to wait for solvent to wash out a chromatography column, she dove into a most familiar need nightmare.

The desert heat blazed down on the high-walled compound. White-painted adobe buildings with red-tile roofs and barred windows baked under the noon sun. Heat shimmered off the surface of the swimming pool and ball courts, barely shadowed by the trees. Two tall palms waved fronds in a slight breeze so high it was unfelt on the ground. Not a person moved on the grounds of the Rialite disjunction compound, Teeren.

Laneff drew the heavy drapery across her window, shutting out the hot sun and depressing scene. She turned the air conditioner up a notch. The frigid breeze chilled her, making her body want to burn selyn faster just to keep warm. Need blazed brighter than the outdoor sun.

She paced, fighting the obsession, her hands shaking. She tried the breathing exercises they'd taught her to calm the jangle of tension, but they only made her gasp breathlessly, her heart pounding even faster. She wished she could cry, but need blocked that release, too. Need would accept only one kind of release.

Time crawled as her body raced to its death with herself as a helpless passenger, until at last, two hours before her scheduled transfer with the channel, she ripped open the door to her room, and leaving it hanging by one hinge, she went in search of a Gen.

Because of what she was, there were many Gens in the compound she could kill. Even a few of the channels might be vulnerable to her if she caught them by surprise, as she had her first kill. By the time she reached the main lobby of her building, she was hyperconscious, zlinning hard for the whisper of a replete selyn field. Only the tiniest part of her mind was aware of what she was doing: giving up on her chance to disjunct and live a normal life.

In nightmare, she relived over and over again that frantic search for life, the corridors of adobe and polished tile stretching before her endlessly. In reality, it had taken only seconds to traverse the length of the building. In nightmare, it was days during which every turn led back to her room, every hall was lined with a gallery of staring faces—channels of her Householding; people from ages past who had died disjuncting rather than live on the kill.

Intense shame overcame her, but still her feet fled through the halls. In reality, the building was full of Gens. In nightmare, the world was devoid of selyn nager.

Bright fog of selyn nager suffused the insulated brick. It was a warm Gen pulse that grabbed at her body just below her neck, between her breasts. She burst through a door, and there, spread out and waiting for her were two selyn fields, two Gens beckoning tantalizingly.

In her gut, she knew one would deliver the satisfaction she craved. The other would not. Which? Choose! they commanded. But which?

Equally intense, two ruddy gold hearth fires vied for her favor. One was pure Genness laced with familiar overtones that told her of an understanding of her need. The other was like the Donors here, throbbing with compassion verging on pity. Pure Gen knew what was being asked of her, and was confident she could do it. The other, groping blind, only hoped.

A viciousness that shamed her rose. I could make Groping Blind pity himself! I could make him give me egobliss!

She looked at the viciousness pouring up into her, knew it for a part of herself she had never acknowledged before, and thought, I don't have to be this way.

PureGen knew that about her, as he knew it about himself. She chose to let the lifeline of PureGen pull her into a full contact. She took the selyn offered, clumsy with greedy haste, laving her insides with warmth and life. It came fast as she could desire, sensitive and clean, washing through her with bright delight as only a Gen could experience it. Each dynopter of selyn pulsing through her carried that bottomless Gen attitude toward life modulated by ineffable relief from the strain of need.

That modulation soaked into her own nerves, and the shrieking alarm of need was stilled, the jangle of urgencies faded and was gone.

She found herself lip to lip with warm flesh. Her tentacles were held securely by matching tentacles. Channel! As it came to her that PureGen was in fact a channel, a Sime not a Gen, the woman released her, dismantling the contact gently while a ferocious grin transformed her face. A Farris face. A Farris channel she hadn't met before.

Blinking in the bright light, stunned by what had happened, Laneff heard the woman introduce herself and her Donor, the GropingBlind she had rejected. "Congratulations on your disjunction. You'll never need for a Gen again."

The horror of the nightmare returned full force as she woke, the taste of satisfaction still on her nerves and the emptiness of need cramping her guts. The dreamed satisfaction only raised intil, leaving her sweating and shaking as she remembered the lab, the Distect, and her last-ditch effort to make her life's work mean something.