"It will in a moment," replied Azevedo, arranging the gypsies in some special order and placing Shanlun and Laneff on the circle while herding Jarmi inside with the other Distect followers. Then he stepped into the ring with them. "Lie down. I'm going to put you to sleep." As they complied, his nager expanded to include the two Simes, Yuan and Jarmi inside a distorted shifting blur. He spoke to them softly.

At the same time, Desha and Shanlun got into another tart discussion in the .gypsy dialect. Dividing her attention, Laneff missed watching the odd hypnotic sleep overcome Jarmi.

Azevedo turned back to his two Gens. "Now our secrets are safe from outsiders."

Desha challenged that, and Azevedo answered, "Shanlun vouches for her. She is sworn." Then, comparing Shanlun and Desha with one eye on the Tecton planes, he said, "Shanlun will work this with me."

A flush of pleasure suffused Shanlun's nager, but he protested, "I haven't since—"

Azevedo snapped, "They have a Second Order channel up there. Desha couldn't handle this. Come!"

As the gypsies settled cross-legged about the circle, Laneff was drawn in between Shanlun and Desha while Azevedo placed himself opposite Shanlun. The brilliant confetti nager faded into a dark-purple shadow. In the space of a deep breath, the entire circle turned to purple mist.

Azevedo seemed to reach out to embrace Shanlun's intensity within his own blurred nager, and the two flowed into that same oneness she'd zlinned in Yuan's office.

The bubble of nageric shadow misted and smeared by channel's shimmer grew to encompass them all, drawing them outside of time. She gave herself to that nonexistence, reveling in the freedom of existing in the now. She was no longer stretched on a torture rack between past and future. Enraptured, she contemplated the now and found it exquisite.

Reluctantly, she was drawn out of that contemplation to find that nearly an hour had passed. Three times, planes had looped low over the nearby stand of trees, but without spotting them. Azevedo bent over the Distect group, waking them one by one. The others were rising, moving stiff limbs, brushing ants and leaves off. Shanlun remained, eyes nearly closed, nager still as a tidal pool, shrouded in dark purple. His face was as wiped clean of character as if he were a babe. Yet she knew he was aware.

She rose, feeling as if she'd just wakened from the most refreshing posttransfer sleep of her life. Zlinning, she reckoned that the Gens had all produced more selyn in that single hour than they normally would in a day, though the Simes seemed to have used less than a fifth the selyn for an hour.

She bent over Shanlun, worried, but Azevedo intervened. "Not yet. Leave him."

He drew her toward the center. "Yuan wants to see you."

The Sosectu was propped up against one of the Simes. He smiled. "Laneff! It wasn't a dream. You made it!"

"I wasn't even hurt! But you—"

"I'm fine now," he said, but it wasn't true. He was hungry, cold, but only a bit weak from his injury which was healed totally. He pulled his feet under him, struggling to stand. "I'm going to get a drink of water. Join me?"

"In a moment," replied Laneff, glancing back at Shanlun.

Yuan followed her gaze. "His people will care for him. Come." Unsteadily, he made for a nearby brook.

She knew, and Yuan knew, there was more to this moment of choice than a drink of water. Laneff compared the two Gens and wondered how she could ever have thought them similar.

Yuan shuffled toward the brook, not looking back to see if Laneff followed. But she could feel a thread of his attention on her. What they'd felt together was real. What he'd promised—and delivered was real, and she was grateful. But what she knew Shanlun to be drew her to his side. That clear motion told Yuan all he wanted to know. Azevedo, having checked each of the gypsies, now turned to Shanlun, motioning Laneff back. He hunkered down before the Gen, smiling, his nager reaching into the dark-purple shadow. Gradually, Shanlun grew aware, character returning to his face as he opened his eyes. He smiled up at Laneff, and it was as if she were engulfed by a rainbow.

Laneff asked, "Was that a demonstration of Endowment?" Azevedo laughed. "No! Just part of the training that leads to the ability to control an Endowment."

The other Distect people and now some of the gypsies followed Yuan to the brook to drink.

Shanlun accused the channel, "No, that was no training exercise. You used yourself unmercifully." "Nonsense. I'm more comfortable now. Not so post." "You haven't been post since I left!"

They were arguing now in English, and Laneff caught a whiff of the same tensions they'd argued with before. "The Tecton has taught you to be too domineering." "And perceptive."

"If I can grant you the right to cope with your own problems, can you not grant me the similar right?" "As long as you acknowledge the problem." Azevedo wilted. "Yes, I know it's a problem. You've made your point, Shan. And we will take both of you to Thiritees. But I don't know about the others."

Yuan and the rest were returning from the stream. Leaning on one of the Simes, Yuan came toward Azevedo, and the old man went to meet him halfway. They discussed what to do next while Shanlun slipped his arm inside Laneff’s so their forearms lay alongside each other, him gripping her wrist.

"You know why he's willing to take you with us?" asked Shanlun rhetorically. "Because he feels responsible for what happened to you at the funeral oration. His intuition—an Endowment of a sort—told him to come right over to me at the rotunda when you were talking to Mairis, and to insist I give him transfer, Tecton and Zeor notwithstanding. Then you'd have been on the platform with Mairis, out of reach of those terrorists."

She couldn't quite picture even Azevedo breaking through a security cordon and wreaking havoc with a Tecton Controller's transfer schedules. "Why didn't he do it then?"

"Because I refused him. So, you see, it's back in my lap again. If I hadn't been unable to control my nager, or if I cared for you less so it would have been easier to keep my attention off you, then you and Mairis wouldn't have had to decide to put you in that box."

There were other considerations, Laneff remembered. But he started her thinking, and as they formed up to move north together, she mulled it over and decided that many people had made responsible decisions contributing to the disasters they'd suffered. When she put it to Shanlun, he replied, "Yes, we've all had a hand in making this mess, and we've all got to pitch in and clean it up."

"Let's get out of here before the Tecton is back with ground patrols!" said someone, and without further argument they marched, Yuan's group accompanying them to the Sime~Gen border. The long, hard walk wearing House sandals made Laneff’s feet hurt. And they were all hungry and tired when they reached the border, here marked only by a thick hedgerow set in a barren corridor between vineyards. It was raining, soaking and chilling everyone. But at least it kept the bees and flies down.

One by one, they wriggled through a small rabbit run through the hedgerow, snagging hair, clothing, and skin on the brambles. In the center it was dry, and Laneff was almost tempted to curl up and sleep. But she crawled out the other side and came out headfirst in Sime Territory.

Yuan and Azevedo were standing in the middle of the muddy road circling the fields. They'd walked together most of the day, conversing quietly. Now Laneff heard them at last in agreement. "Then," said Azevedo, "I'll be sending our messenger to you on the regular schedule."

"Not that there'll be anything to report. My organization can't be a voice in world politics again for a long time to come."

"Yuan, you're not certain the Diet also destroyed your other centers. You won't be until you get back in touch. Now, are you sure you can make it to Bayerne?"