Yuan said, "A meal would be nice, but let's get this chopper covered. And we've got to haul out the transmitter and arrange to get us out of here before the Tecton net closes on us. Maybe– Callen, maybe you should go with us?"

"Nope. This's my place. Picked out my dyin' spot already. Get you on inside before you freeze!"

A brisk wind was blowing dark clouds over the sun, and here the air was somehow thinner—colder than in the city. Flower-tipped ground cover whipped in the wind, and a pond at the far side of the meadow rippled with waves on which ducks and geese bobbed contentedly.

Yuan helped Laneff down, saying, "We've got a Diet prisoner inside. Unconscious. Probable concussion. Make him comfortable in the side room, and let me know when he comes to."

"Leave it to me," said the Sime, waving them away.

Again Laneff wondered what kind of people she'd fallen in with: people who casually harbored Tecton fugitives, took Diet prisoners, and maintained secret hideouts. But the wind gusted sharply and big pats of rain hammered into them. "Come on!" said Yuan, scooping her along in the crook of his arm.

They dashed under the roof of the wooden porch, and clattered inside. Here it was warm, with a cheery fire going in an open hearth in the center of the room. Nearby, some books were spread on a rough table, a pair of wire-frame glasses tossed on top of them. An oil lamp gave reading light. The walls were lined with shelves of books, making them almost a selyn-insulated density. She could barely zlin the outside.

One end of the room held a deep-red couch and a couple of high-backed chairs that could swallow a person whole. The other end was a kitchen, with a sink rigged with a hand pump for water, and a foam-and-plastic cooler chest. Herbs hung from the rafters in dry bundles, and racks held myriads of sacks and bottles. Near the hearth, a crockery teapot steamed trin aroma into the air.

Under Yuan's touch, a section of bookcase swung out revealing a heavy door behind which opened a tunnel leading back into the living rock of the hillside; something one only read about in storybooks, a place Gens could hide from Simes come raiding. The cabin could be that old.

"Come on," coaxed Yuan. He lit an oil lamp and closed both doors behind them. Then he stopped at a door on their left, went into a dark room sparsely appointed with rough-hewn furniture, and turned on a heater. "Callen will bring blankets to keep the prisoner warm. Come!"

At the end of the tunnel, a room opened—a natural cave that had been nicely wood-paneled and -floored. There were two large beds, a studio couch, and two chairs around a small table. A selyn-powered

heater started at Yuan's touch, and then he had regular selyn-powered lights going. In one corner, an opulent antique transfer lounge was surrounded by a heavy drape of modern insulating fabric. The carved-wood scrollwork made it worth a fortune, but Laneff liked the sensuous emerald-velvet upholstery. "Like it?" asked Yuan, warming his hands at the heater. "You can't zlin this from outside!" "Even Mairis couldn't zlin us if he were right outside!" "But does it have facilities?"

"Of course, but not too glamorous." He gestured to a door framed by knotty pine cabinetry, enough storage for five people.

She opened the door and found a short tunnel, chill with underground humidity. At the end, a door opened into a dank chamber lit by a bare lamp. The toilet was a raised platform with a hole in it, set over the wash of an underground stream. A pitcher and basin on a washstand and a bathtub ripped from some old hotel, rigged with a selyn-powered heater—fully charged.

When she returned to the room, flinging her grimy and tattered cloak over a chair, Yuan said, "Someday we'll get around to decorating in there, too!"

"You like this place, don't you?"

He was seated on the transfer lounge, one hand smoothing the soft velvet. He beckoned her. "It's safe—and comfortable." When she didn't move, he added, "And necessary."

The half-finished feeling she had fought down after the kill was returning. "Yuan—I have to know more about you."

The relentless pull of his nager let up. "I did promise you transfer —as soon as we were safe. How could you trust my other promises if I renege on this one?"

Somehow, the very easing of that pull sent a renewed shiver of need through her. She couldn't suppress a sound that verged on a whimper. "You mean—you meant everything?"

"Zlin me. I don't promise rashly. We're safe now—" "No. They'll divert the agrosatellite to photosearch for the chopper. They'll find us—"

"That'll take time. We won't be here by then." "Where could we go? How?"

"First let's complete what you started this morning. Then we'll get something hot to eat and plan the future." She still held back, and he added, "How can you make rational plans while your whole body is screaming in agony?"

"It isn't that bad."

"Fretting in misery?"

"Well ..."

In a different tone, he suggested, "Yearning in hope."

If it hadn't been for the need he was coaxing to the surface in her, she'd have laughed at his search for the right inflection on the Simelan noun "need." The tension had drained out of her– What harm could it do me now?

She joined him on the lounge. In a perfectly rehearsed maneuver, he had her reclining, her knees bent over the contoured rest and her shoulders raised comfortably against the back of the lounge. He sat at her side, on the curved projection, as if he were a channel about to give her transfer. But he was Gen. It was her most secret—and forbidden—dream come true. The future and the past fell away, and she gave herself to the moment.

His field narrowed to focus wholly on her. It wasn't anything like Shanlun's attention, yet it wakened echoes of the power she'd often felt in him. With firm control, he drew her hyperconscious. The Gen body hovering over her pulsed with an ever brighter selyn field as each cell in him produced selyn. It was a brightness that lit the room to her Sime senses. The furniture wisped into transparency, the clothes in the closets became perceptible and dissolved into nothing. They were encased in a private bubble of reality. She could not zlin outside, and so there was no world outside.

Her tentacles slid naturally into place on his bare arms, feeling each cord of muscle under the curly hair on his skin, outlined by the richly coursing selyn pulsing through his tissues. In a flash of peak need, she yanked the big Gen down until his weight was almost crushing her slight frame, and their lips met.

Brilliant selyn burst into the dark pockets of her brain. The first abundant gush choked off to a mere trickle. Suffocating, she struggled to draw selyn against that immense resistance. She could sense the limitless supply in him, but not the mechanism whereby he denied her. Furious at betrayal, she redoubled her effort and was rewarded with a tiny increase in flow rate.

But the Gen felt no pain, no fear. No killbliss promise was carried on that current of selyn. Yet the struggle itself was exhilarating. The knotting, cramping tensions of need melted. The sense of cold darkness within evaporated. Strength came back. He made it last long enough despite the shallowness of her need.

She came up out of it gasping, exultant, having won selyn from a Gen despite his resistance. She grinned up into his face, feeling now his body heat against her. "You never learned that from the Tecton!"

"Actually, Therapists sometimes have to do such things for channels in trouble."

Shanlun. She remembered Shanlun working over Digen, coaxing and tempting him. And Digen lax against the fluffed white pillows, dead. All the grief she'd been unable to experience during the last few days welled up, choking her. In two breaths, she was sobbing against the sharp knives of loss and failure, of ending. Clutching Yuan's huge shoulders, she sat up to bury her face in his chest. He gave a relieved sigh.