But the Gen turned to the shower room. "I've got to shower first. All I'll want afterward is to sleep!"

Thoughtfully, Jarmi left the shower room door open so Laneff didn't lose touch with her nager and panic. Laneff pulled a stool in front of the door to bask in the Gen nager. "I'll want to shower, too. I spilled– Well, you don't want to know what I spilled on myself today!"

Jarmi leaned out the door to toss her dirty lab coat into the laundry chute. "I'll tell you what I broke if you'll tell me what you spilled." The humor was forced but Laneff appreciated the attempt.

As Jarmi stepped into the shower, Laneff raised her voice and said, "One of the bottles of kerduvon. But it doesn't matter, I'll make more tomorrow. What did you break?"

"Our only, it-costs-seventeen-hours-to-make steam-distillation column! What else!"

"What?" Laneff came up off her stool. "Oh, no! Now I can't make more kerduvon tomorrow!"

"You forget," called Jarmi, "what you really have to have loads of is the K/B fraction. You know, we should make a rule to take a holiday the day before a transfer. Neither of us is in such great shape."

From inside the shower, Jarmi was working on the nager. As she waited, Laneff couldn't help but think of Shanlun. His face—his silly nose, and sunburned forehead, and tactile voice that sent shivers up her spine, and that incredible sparkling colored nager—and his touch on her tentacles. Oh, dear God, don't let him be dead!

Everywhere she looked some personal item of Shanlun's loomed into consciousness, as if his nager lingered in the air.

She got to her feet and stripped off her filthy clothes. As Jarmi was finishing, Laneff edged around her into the shower saying, "Don't bother to turn it off!"

Before Jarmi had her wrap tied, Laneff was out of the shower, toweling off and slipping into a wrap. "Why are Gens always so slow!" she complained, only half joking.

"All right," said Jarmi. "I'm coming. I'll just let my hair dry in the air."

Laneff was waiting on the lounge when Jarmi finally came out of the bathroom, wearing a terry robe over her gown, and with her hair wrapped in a towel. "How do I look?"

"Who cares. It's how you zlin that interests me."

"Just what I wanted to hear!" Now she did take a seat on the transfer bench. They had once discussed the piece of furniture and noted how it was used in various paintings hung about in the halls. "Like this—right?"

Laneff sat, facing the opposite direction, half turning to take Jarmi in transfer position. "Not bad, actually."

Laneff moved to close the contact, but Jarmi fended her off. "Not so fast. You've lost your edge. This should help!"

The Gen raked her long, hard fingernails along her own forearms, leaving instant red welts that sent stinging shivers through the nager and hurt. It wasn't the same as the pain from Yuan's bullet wound, nor the terrorist's broken ankle and torn hand, but the pure, allover sensation wakened Laneff’s nerves to renewed intil.

She went hyperconscious and didn't even hear her own growl of savage frustration as she seized the Gen's sensitized arms. Selyn erupted into her system at first lip contact. Laneff soared on it, drawing with all the pent-up yearning.

Quickly, Laneff was drawing at her peak speed, easily matched by Jarmi. Euphoria held her transfixed on the brink of satisfaction. Pain still burning along her arms, Jarmi deliberately resisted the draw, taunting the half-crazed Laneff to further effort. Helplessly, she drew selyn against the Gen's resistance, and the pain increased, and her satisfaction came nearer, and she increased her draw speed, and the pain increased until it was the exquisite torture of real satisfaction run full to completion.

She came out of it weeping for the unexpected joy of it, knowing that with transfers like this she could avoid disjunction crisis and bring Shanlun's baby to life. Everything was solved.

The Gen opposite her slumped into a boneless mass of terry-cloth, "Jarmi?"

The nager had gone flat. The screaming alarm in Laneff was not echoed by the pain of transfer burn. She wasn't breathing. She wasn't producing selyn. "Jarmi! Wake up!"

"No! No!" Laneff screamed, a long inarticulate wail of anguish. "No!" Then the choking sobs came.

By the time she could go to call Azevedo, Jarmi's hair had dried.

CHAPTER 11

CHANCE

The longest night of Laneff’s life passed in a blurred kaleidoscope of impressions: shock/horror/sorrow veiled behind nageric cushions //spinning images of walls, paintings, doors//faces looming/ stretcher moving / candles / mirrors / flowers / bells / silences / bursts of tears / low-voiced conferences over her head / trin tea and medicine forced on her/sleep at last.

She woke floating in Yuan's nager, convinced she'd had a particularly ghastly nightmare—until she saw his face, worn, sunken, tattered by weight loss and pain, while in herself there was no trace of need. Sunlight leaked around drapes. A dimmed lamp showed his reddish-blond hair, freckles and his gingery eyebrows over sunken eyes. And he'd shaved his mustache. His nager, darkly mottled with trauma and exhaustion, held a tender luster void of all recrimination.

With a cry, she wrenched free of that hypnotic nager and twisted away, facing the opposite side of the bed. She determined to stay that way until he left her alone.

With his good hand, he stroked her shoulder, freeing her hair. "All right. Take your time. We have all day." He eased himself gingerly down on the pillow she'd vacated, his own illness weighing heavily.

She wondered how—and why—he'd dragged himself here to be with her, and marveled at his stamina. But it was only a fleeting awareness. The warmth of the man brought the memory of Shanlun sleeping soundly in just that spot, in just that position. On a tide of anxiety, she thrust herself free of the blanket and plunged across the room toward the dressing alcove—and the refuge of the shower.

The wicker transfer bench was gone. The empty floor space stopped her—almost worse than if the thing were still there, gleaming whitely. In a flash, she relived the entire experience. Her knees buckled. Without the strength to fight it, she let herself slide to the floor mat, her night dress caught awkwardly under her knees.

But the tears wouldn't come. Not again. Only wave after wave of self-loathing answered her seeking for tears. Grief was a refuge denied.

Yuan worked his way to his feet awkwardly, then swayed slowly to her side, favoring the arm bound in a sling. She felt every twinge in him, distantly, without need, without intil. She shied into hypoconsciousness, unwilling to think about it. His shadow over her was like a tangible thing. His voice laved salve over her scream-torn ears. But his words echoed those in her mind. "You killed Jarmi."

It was no rebuke, no accusation. She couldn't divine how those words could carry such intense compassion, especially coming from him—Jarmi's Sosectu.

"She loved you so," whispered Laneff, throat raw from screaming.

"Say it, Laneff. Say, 'I killed Jarmi.'"

She vaguely remembered screaming. Then, for a long long time, she'd been unable to move, or do or say anything for the endless repetition of those words. Catatonic, they'd called her. She wanted now to respond.

Her throat opened, then clenched shut over the words. Mutely, she shook her head, her guts cramping. Every nerve in her was on fire with Jarmi's selyn.

"Say, 'I killed Jarmi,' " he insisted with remorseless compassion. "You have to say it, Laneff, out loud. Say it and accept it."

She felt as if her very mind tissues were about to tear open, spilling mental bile that would burn her brain.

He went to one knee, gasping as he clutched his shoulder. Then he put one hand on the small of her back, his Gen coolness taking the fire out of her. He let his hand smooth upward along the curve of her spine as he urged her, "Tell me about it, Laneff—tell me how good it was—and terrible. Tell me what Jarmi felt."