Mairis continued guiding the crowd through history and up to an awareness of how Digen Farris had molded their world. Laneff swallowed against throat muscles and diaphragm that insisted she was about to vomit. She scanned the crowd, knowing she couldn't speak to them feeling like this. If she tried to articulate, she knew she'd double over and retch.
Off to one side, and nearly level with the visitors' box, the silver van was still creeping through the crowd. She could make out the expressions on the faces of the camera crew. One of them, a redheaded Gen woman who seemed as young as Laneff herself, leaned over the edge of the van roof to call something to the driver, a dark-brown-skinned Gen with kinky black hair. Laneff felt the Simes in proximity to the van tense, preparing for the shock if the Gen should fall off that roof and be hurt. Gen pain could trigger a Sime to kill, even against the Sime's own will.
Two or three Gens glanced up at the van, noting the tension in the Simes around them. In the general movement to get out of the van's way, the Gens rearranged themselves to protect the renSimes in the crowd. The slow creep of the van seemed to arrow toward Laneff. And the shuffling movement of the crowd only added to her nausea. Her skin was crawling with a prickling sensation, and she couldn't breathe. The other Simes about her, protected by their attenuators, never noticed.
But the blond Gen turned as a muted gasp escaped her. "You're right," he muttered, "that van could be trouble." And he moved closer to her, firmly planting a good segment of his attention on her as if she were a channel to be supported in some channeling effort. It should have felt good, but instead it only increased her nausea.
In desperation, Laneff tuned her attenuators down to minimum. The ambient nager blasted through her nerves, raising the throbbing of need to a new height, but relieving the paralyzing sense of imminent nausea.
As the silver van crawled toward them, the redheaded Gen woman on top of it held her balance by a very precarious hold on the camera rigging and gestured to her assistant with her free hand. Another Gen—a Donor wearing a Keon red cape—began to climb up onto the van's roof, but the driver opened his door and yelled at the intruder, meanwhile letting the van creep ahead into the crowd. Laneff couldn't hear his words, but his anger came through the spellbound collective nager of the crowd. The Keon Gen desisted and went to warn Simes away.
Now the van was close enough that Laneff could read something of the redheaded Gen's nager, and she didn't like it. It was as if that woman were aiming shafts of calculated malice directly at Laneff. Nonsense! Need-inspired paranoia!
The tall blond Gen guarding her leaned down to say, "That's an out-Territory station. I hope there isn't going to be an incident."
Laneff replied softly, "Those Gens are nervous, and the redhead is tense, even grim. I doubt if any of them have worked in-Territory before."
He eyed her attenuator rings, unable to discern the setting she was using, of course. "They told me you were extraordinarily sensitive. Just relax and listen to the speech." He intensified the shaft of his attention relegated to her, working to her as if she were a channel and he a Donor fully prepared to give her transfer. She melted into the luxury, stealing a moment to bask in the spice of its sheer potency.
She opened her mouth to tell him that she was too far into need for this to be safe, but at that moment the audience fell into a rapt silence.
Mairis was holding up an object he'd taken from the table beside him.". . . feel this is the most suitable tribute to the achievements of Digen Farris. I know you can't all see it, so let me describe it. It's a steel coin with the right profile of my great grandfather on one side and the epitaph that will appear on his memorial, 'Born from Death, he lived for Unity!' The obverse shows the starred-cross shape of the Monument to the Last Berserker.
"This is the very first one struck. It was delivered to me only hours ago. Soon the coin will be in general circulation, the first coin accepted at face value both in– and out-Territory, all over the world. I wish Digen had lived to see it."
For the first time emotion choked Mairis's voice and he paused. Shanlun took a step closer to his Sectuib, and it was as if Mairis disappeared into Shanlun's nager, so massive a nager that he seemed painted onto the background of the podium in glowing iridescent colors.
Meanwhile, the silver van had reached a point so close that Laneff could smell the heat of oil and paint and feel the screech of tense Gen nerves. She, too, was tense, knowing that her cue to speak would come soon, and despite having tuned the attenuators to minimum, she still felt queasy at every shift in the nageric fields about her.
A woman in dun-colored coveralls squatted next to the microphone that had been set up near Laneff. Its snout poked over the rope pedestals that marked the box, and the technician began testing it. Seeing this, Mairis waved Shanlun back with a negligent tentacle gesture. The Gens on the silver van reacted as out-Territory Gens usually did to the sight of a Sime's tentacles; a spark of nageric paralysis. Their tension increased, and Laneff again fought nausea. Shen these shidoni attenuators! She wrenched the offending instruments off, knowing that she'd only double over in a fit of retching if she tried to walk to the microphone while wearing them. The worse her need, the more offensive the things became. Why couldn 't I have been born normal!
The big blond Gen turned to her, noticing her move. "Feeling better? Good, you'll be on soon." He left his hand trailing on the rope in front of her, and his smile was like a caress, his nager a palpable beat protecting her as Shanlun so often had. He thinks I don't feel need at all now. She drew breath to contradict that impression, but just then she heard Mairis mention her name, and she realized he had been describing the distant promise inherent in her discoveries, and how they had helped Digen survive several crises before the one that finally took him.
The big blond Gen touched her fingers, most of his attention on her, steady as if she were a channel preparing to work. "Listen! Your cue."
"Therefore, at this time of ending, I am announcing my candidacy for World Controller and a new beginning. For if I am elected, I will see to it that Laneff Farris's research will be completed all the way through the fifteen-year study necessary to determine if she can indeed predict changeover. And if she can, then within your grandchildren's lifetimes, the ultimate reunification of mankind can take place, Digen's dream can become a reality. Listen now to Laneff Farris describe how her discovery works."
The blond stood aside as Laneff rose to her feet. Her breath came easily, though her head felt light. She walked to the microphone as a circle cleared around her, and all the cameras in the press zone swerved to focus on her.
"Go ahead," muttered the squatting technician and vacated the area, scrambling under the line of sight of the cameras.
Laneff knew that part of Mairis's plan was to present her in public so that Simes could zlin her nager, read her sincerity and her certainty for themselves, before the press could round up all the neuro-chemistry experts whose skepticism had prevented her results from being published. So she wasn't startled when the blond guard stood well back so his nager wouldn't obscure hers. But she was dismayed at how naked it made her feel as all attention focused on her. At least I'm not going to vomit.
She took a deep breath and got through the formal salutations by rote, and then she began to describe the simple amniocentesis method she envisioned for her test, and how her synthetic chemical could then be used to determine the nature of the fetus.