Yuan would understand. He'd be willing to help. She remembered the way he'd come into the lab to wish her a satisfying transfer. There had been a wistful invitation in his nager, though he wouldn't ask her outright since he'd failed before. He's still feeling underdraw.

But as far as she was concerned, there were no other men in the installation. And, from her own observations, she was sure Yuan's field had leveled off. The worst symptoms of underdraw might be over for him, though he might still be sterile from it.

It was only just after midnight. She took one of Jarmi's floppy sweaters and a paint-smeared pair of pants she'd torn while they were setting up the lab. Dressed like a beachcomber, her Sat'htine signet on a chain around her neck but hidden beneath the sweater, she ventured into the corridors.

The lights were dimmed, but people bustled everywhere, excited by something. She wended her way toward the branch tunnel where Yuan lived and worked, a branch just off the entrance from the farmhouse. Here the lights were on full strength. Armed men were stationed three deep, rigidly alert.

A whole platoon guarded the stair down from the farmhouse. She was answering another in an endless sequence of challenges, trying to gain entrance to Yuan's hallway, when the door to the stair flew open admitting a puff of damp outside air.

Booted feet tromped down those stairs, revealing knees, and then torsos. Laneff had no trouble identifying Yuan's nager before his red-blond hair appeared. His field filled the entryway, then cleared it as he stepped into the corridor intersection. He surveyed the ranked troops, barked, "At ease!" and then saw Laneff. "What—!"

Simultaneously, Laneff recognized the next nager coming down the stairs. Fluorescent confetti whirled out of that stairwell like a particolored snowstorm. Laneff flung herself at the man she'd thought never to see again.

"Shanlun!"

CHAPTER 7 TEMPTATION

Uncontrolled sobs poured from Laneff as she clung desperately to the apparition of Shanlun, trying to convince herself he was indeed real. Wrapped in the glowing core of his nager, she felt him echoing the same maelstrom of emotions, magnifying them for her, until her overloaded nerves screamed for surcease.

Then an odd thing happened. His nager shrank within her grip to a darkened point, a nonexistence, as if he'd died and pulled her along with him.

Her innards went hollow. Duoconscious, she heard herself making strangling noises. A fractional second later, the particolored snowstorm was whirling about her, isolating her within the suddenly calm core nager. She found her feet dangling in midair, Shanlun's hard, muscular arms wrapped about the small of her back, and his lips searching her own.

Peripherally, she was aware of the growing audience behind her, of Yuan's astonishment, and of a strange and powerful channel who had come down the stairs behind Shanlun. As everything in her answered to Shanlun's sudden physical hunger for her, she heard Yuan dismissing his troops, setting guards, and then marshaling all of them into his own private office. Shanlun wanted to carry her, but she squirmed down and went on her own feet, clinging with both arms to his waist as curiosity surged into her consciousness.

She hardly had patience with the formal trin tea ritual. But the warm tea helped calm her. Shanlun drew her to a wicker bench with seat cushions in crushed green velvet and sat with one arm around her shoulders. Yuan watched from behind his own reed-and-wicker desk with its milk-white ceramic top. His smile was tight—a hint of jealousy?

Laneff straightened away from Shanlun, feeling for Yuan in a rising tide of confusion. She dropped her gaze to the woven floor mats, here dyed a shadow purple with threads of gold and white. "Shanlun was the last person in the world I expected to find here!" offered Laneff by way of apology.

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.