It has to be the K/A fraction of kerduvon that's causing the abortifacient effect!

There were two possible approaches: remove K/A from the purified kerduvon mixture and see if the remainder still acted as a disjunctive, or produce purified K/B and see if it acted as the disjunctive.

She set Jarmi to work trying to coax their chromatographic technique to extract K/A from kerduvon while she worked at nursing higher and higher yields of K/B out of her synthesis. Meanwhile, she ordered cadaver brains, both Sime and Gen, through Azevedo's supplier, knowing it would take weeks to get them.

The bench work was tedious and draining. Time after time, she stopped herself from snapping at Jarmi or Azevedo—or the crippled old Sime man who came daily to clean the apartment. She tried telling herself it was just loneliness for Shanlun, but then came the nightmares.

The first shattering episode came as she stretched out on the lab cot to wait for a solvent to clean out one of her columns. Her feet hurt, and her back hurt, which was hardly surprising since she'd been at it for nearly fourteen hours without a break. So she gave herself a half hour to relax, knowing she couldn't sleep because of the need gnawing at her.

But she drifted just under the barrier of sleep, where half-waking she watched dream images of all the Gens she'd ever known flitting across the screen in her mind. Each nager had an individuality she'd have recognized through a closed door. She dwelled on each Gen nager, savoring the memory, entertaining the tactile fantasy she'd never let herself indulge in when she'd known them: tentacles around cool Gen arms, moist Gen lips on hers, rich fabric of nager penetrating—penetrating . . .

No! Shestarted awake, heart pounding, disgusted at herself for she

realized every last shred of her disjunction conditioning to seek a channel when in need had gone. She was vulnerable to almost any Gen now. And most of them were vulnerable to her.

She still had twenty minutes to wait. Fixing her thoughts firmly on Jarmi, she lay back, staring at the gray ceiling. She had to let her eyes close.

She was a child again, playing with channel dolls, fantasizing what it would be like to be a channel.

She was a channel, experiencing each month the full force of need that the Tecton protected renSimes from—because, tempted, any renSime would kill helplessly. And she was in need now, stretched out on the contour lounge in the transfer suite of a big city Sime Center. Her Donor would arrive any moment now. She could afford to savor the essence of need, to probe her fear of it. She could rely totally on this Donor.

The door opened, and the room flooded with sparkling gold, like a cascade of powdered gold caught in sunlight, creating a brilliant rainbow of joyful color. The tall blond Gen who followed that nager into the room was a trim, handsomely muscled man, with clean smooth features, calm in the anticipation of real pleasure—the slil only the First Order four-plus channels and Donors could share.

He spoke, voice as cool as his ineffable skin. The calm penetrated, surety replacing her fear. Need became a pleasure too intense to bear. Anticipating her, Shanlun joined contact, letting his nager turn to a sunlike furnace that raised her intil beyond all flesh-and-blood limits until she was seizing his selyn, drawing it into her dark, aching void in pulse after pulse, giving Shanlun the same life-worshipping satisfaction she was taking . . .

No! She woke sweating, her ronaplin glands aching as ronaplin oozed from her lateral wrist orifices, the laterals themselves peeping from their sheaths as if searching for the reality behind her dream. She wiped herself, thinking, Idiot. It could never be like that with Shanlun. I'm no channel.

She forced herself to get up and find something to do until Jarmi got there at dawn. The Gen was aware of Laneff’s strain and went out of her way to be kind. Several times, she tried to start a conversation about the qualities of transfers, but Laneff shied from it. That night, Laneff was determined not to let the nightmares overtake her again, so she rested sitting up poring over her notes.

And she fell into a light doze, head cradled on her arms. She was in the disjunction class at Teeren, the Rialite Last Year House, going on their first excursion. The class was taken into the closed wing where the in-crisis cases dwelled.

They were obliged to watch a disjunction attempt. A Sime woman

with long, stringy brown hair and a twisted scar on her calf, was brought into the disjunction theater. The room was built on two levels—an open pit surrounded by balconies where students could watch undetected because of the thick selyn-field insulation woven into the glass.

Laneff had a front-row seat, peering down Into the white circle of the floor. A trained Gen Donor stood to one side; a Tecton channel to the other. The brown-haired woman was in need, her long-fingered hands clutching themselves nervously. There were dark hollows around her eyes, and dreadful fatigue in every line of her body.

The woman stood, searching between the two offers of transfer, zlinning the fields and comparing them. Laneff knew that to disjunct was to choose the channel, to choose freely to eschew all transfer contact with Gens forever. She watched the woman in the scene below, begging her silently to choose the channel, to be free and live.

She took a step forward, wavered toward the channel, another step, arms reaching out embracing both channel and Donor, and then she plunged, swift as lightning, for the Gen!

The contact was joined before Laneff absorbed the fact, and as she gasped, the Gen below was thrown clear of the Sime as if by an electric shock. The Sime woman fell to the white floor, convulsing, thrashing and screaming. Instantly, the channel was on her, fighting her movements, capturing her arms to force a lateral contact.

One moment he had it, the next she ripped free. Again, and again they fought, the Gen now joining the battle. The Sime's struggles became ever more feeble. Laneff caught only glimpses of the twisted grimace on the woman's face, but it turned her stomach to see such agony, for she understood it now. A trained Donor couldn't be killed by a renSime, and only the kill could sustain that woman's life.

Gradually, the thrashing subsided. Laneff’s fingers against the glass no longer registered the vibration of muted screams. At last, the feeble protests, the mewling cries of desperation, ceased, and the Sime woman slumped into a boneless heap—forever still, forever free of need—dead.

Not

She woke, mouth gaping, throat open in what might have been a soundless scream or a retching. Her tentacles were clutched around her fingers so hard she had to pry them loose and wait for the pain to stop before she could resheath them. It shouldn't be this bad yet! I've so much more work to do!

All the next day she could hardly think two thoughts connected. She was sitting despairingly over the disjointed scribbling that should have been a cogent experimental plan, when Azevedo came into the lab.

"Oh, at last!" said Jarmi. "Azevedo, will you talk that stubborn woman into quitting for the day?"

Azevedo came close, zlinning her. "You're hungry, Laneff, and tired. When was the last time you took a shower? When was the last time you even poked your nose out of the lab?"

She couldn't remember. "Not very long ago." Three days?

Jarmi came over. "I cooked her a marvelous dinner last night, but she wouldn't come up to eat it. And when I brought her a tray, she left it untouched. I still have a good four portions in the refrigerator upstairs. Azevedo, why don't you and Desha join us for some really exotically spiced food?"

The channel smiled, coaxing Laneff to her feet by tugging on one elbow. "Laneff, I have about as much appetite right now as you do, but Desha will be hungry. She's got her class out in the courtyard drilling them in coordination. Why don't we just pick her up on the way?"