Look at you! Yone Farris berated himself. You can'teven take your eyes off her! To his left and a few stridesahead marched Livya Jeter, her pony tail bobbing over the tantalizingswell of her hips. You've got a full scale Imprintation ifever I saw one!

For the last three months, Yone Farris had guided the band ofshipwrecked Gens, his mutant Sime senses unfailingly alert. Butnow, he no longer noticed the sun-spackled forest around them,or the ominous cracking roar that grew ahead of them. Stopdramatizing! he told himself. It's simply Coital Deprivation.

The column of ordinary humans, the Gens, depending on Yone's far-reachingSime senses, followed him right up under the falling tree whilehe argued with himself. So why don't any of the other women dothis to you? Well ... but if it's Imprintation, there's onlyone thing to do. Right! Explain it to her and get it over with. Can't. She's a Sime-phobe like her mother. Dozen reasons whyshe's untouchable. Face it! You've got the CD's and an Imprintationtoo. Plead Channel's Exemption and just take her! It doesn'tapply. She's under age. She doesn't have to consent. You'rea channel. You're exempt. There isn't a planet under Earth'sdominion where you can be tried for rape! You can do it rightthis minute. No! Few more months and we'll be back in civilization. I can hold out that long.

Yone tried to quell the voice of temptation by moving closer toBrian Inikar, one of the Gens walking point, but close, Imprintationis the channel's affliction. You were born a channel, a specialkind of Sime with special problems. You can't help what you are! I can always help it! I am what I choose to be! You can't alwayschoose. What if she just brushed against you now? It's not likeselyn need. I can control it. Yeah. You can control yourselfright into an early grave and everybody else here right alongwith you!

At that point he saw the shadow blotting out the alien sun, andsimultaneously the Gens around him also looked up to see the wallof living wood majestically descending. Behind him, shrill crieserupted from the children; women's screams joined them, and thedeeper male voices rose over the panic yelling, "Scatter!"

Without thinking, Yone grabbed Brian Inikar and pushed him towardthe column of Gens. "Move them to the right!"

Then Yone braced his feet wide apart and raised his arms as ifto take the entire weight of the tree on his bare hands.

Yone was built like the typical Sime, spare-framed, delicate looking,but incredibly tough. Yet no mere human flesh and bone, howevermutated, could stop that tree. He had to draw on the one thingthat differentiated him from the Gens, and he was the only Simeamong them, the only one with tentacles to do this job.

From the orifices at each wrist, he extended the six tentaclesthat usually lay sheathed along each of his forearms from elbowto wrist. Flexing them, he touched the tips of his fingers witheach of the dorsal and ventral pairs. Then the two slender lateralsat the sides of each arm stiffened as he threw selyn – the veryenergy of life itself – into his secondary nervous system andout through the four nerve-rich lateral tentacles.

It felt as if he were focusing four beams of psychokinetic powerthrough those delicate laterals. And for an instant, the treeactually slowed in its fall and hung over their heads. He couldsee the deep, regular expansion cracks in the bark, the festoonsof dirty cobwebs, the trails of insects, the runnels of drippingpink sap. It was a wall that filled the universe.

His feet sank into the matted forest floor as if it were loosesand. He strengthened his body by consuming selyn at one hundredtimes his basal metabolic rate, a "tenth level Augmentation,"and he knew he couldn't maintain it for more than a few seconds.

In one final burst of determination, Yone thrust the majestictree to the left of their path as far as he could – only a fewdegrees – and prayed the others had gotten clear. Then he turnedto sprint, with the last burst of augmentation left in him, clearof the far-flung branches of the crashing tree.

He had gone three steps before his racing brain told him thatLivya Jeter was standing hypnotized in the path of the tree. Skidding wildly, he turned and raced back for her, caught herup over his shoulder, and raced again to get clear.

Amid a final crescendo, the tree settled to the floor of the foresttaking many lesser growths with it. One of the upper branches,as thick as a man's upper arm, slapped across Yone's backsideand sent him rolling with his burden into a tangle of leaves andtwigs around a lower branch.

They came to rest between two of the giant's fallen limbs, buriedin musty smelling, bruised leaves, and for a moment both lay stunnedsenseless.

Then Yone became acutely aware of the soft Gen body lying on hischest, of his arms encircling the hips he had so ached to touch. The scent of her hair overpowered the staleness of crushed leaves. The warmth of her beat through him deliciously reviving his searednerves with that peculiar power only the Gen had. Only the Genbody could generate selyn, and even though Livya had never donatedselyn, as she lay there senseless from shock her body throbbedwith the life of it.

Yone was not in personal need of selyn, but he had just expendednearly the entire reserve he'd gathered painstakingly from theforty-four general class donors among the survivors. The pulseof newly created selyn he sensed in her body was balm to sorelyscorched nerves. He let his lips touch her cheek, seek her lips. His laterals – usually used only in drawing selyn from the Genbody – caressed her skin through several large rents in her clothing.

The Sime empathic faculty opened her body to him, and he couldsense not only the reviving throb of selyn production, but eachand every ache, strained muscle, cut, and bruised organ. He knewthat by direct-sensing that made Sime physicians supreme diagnosticians,that she was unhurt by the fall and would soon wake. He alsoknew that she was physically and emotionally a virgin.

The touch of his lips on hers changed from the coolly impersonalSime contact. It became a kiss that rose from his loins and flowedinward from his limbs. His whole body was responding to the totalpresence of her and he was already growing and searching withthe urgency that flooded him. Now!

She was still only semi-conscious. He could tell by the totallack of response to what he was doing. There was no feedback,as there must be for a channel to accomplish this purpose. Whenshe wakes, I'll get her to cooperate. It will only take a moment.

He heard his thought and suddenly it wrenched a moan from him. No! It's not right! It must be her will! He shook with thenegation that coursed down from his mind ramming into the upwardsurging culmination of desire.

No! I am a Farris. I am a channel. I swore to obey the Tecton'sPrinciples of Action. He had taken the channel's oath to theTecton, and he would not let his body violate that oath. My bodyis mine! I control!

Painfully, he forced himself back from the brink of instant release,accepting the anguish of frustration and making his peace withit. It was a truly heroic effort, but he was unaware of his heroism. And he was not enraged when she refused to accept his heroicdeed graciously.

She came to her senses to find herself gripped by his rock-tensebut tender embrace, to find herself being kissed deep and hardas she had never been kissed before. Her soft, yielding body,stiffened. Her peculiarly Gen fear lanced through Yone's unshieldedlaterals, hit him in the pit of the stomach.

And Yone was Sime. The reflex her fear touched off was even moredeep-seated than the one he had just conquered. Aggression theycalled it, Sime Aggression. The Sime mutation was nature's mostperfectly equipped predator, and the prey was the Gen. But Yonewas also a channel, the one type of Sime able to control thataggression. He forced his shaking arms apart and rolled her,squirming and flailing, onto the carpet of leaves.