She followed his gesture and was gazing upon a small jewelry box which opened to expose a gleaming steel coin. "It's Digen!"

The coin bore the unmistakable profile of the age-ravaged face within the coffin: the elegant Farris forehead no longer graced by the characteristic cowlick, the aquiline nose, the sensitive lips so typically Farris, yet the whole imprinted by the dynamic personality of this unique individual. He was unmistakably Farris, yet no longer typically Farris.

This was what the public saw as they paused beside the coffin, and what they felt was reverberating through Laneff. Her breath caught in her throat, as Sime and Gen alike shared one powerful moment of true emotional unity, naked to each other without the cloaking of their fears.

It was too potent. This was what she had always imagined a channel and Donor shared during selyn transfer. For a renSime, a Sime who wasn't a channel, it was altogether too dangerous.

But Mairis gave her only a momentary glimpse and then gently blurred and damped the fields until the three of them were standing in a bubble of privacy amid the emotional torrents. Laneff, still duoconscious, aware at one and the same time of her ordinary five senses and of the nageric fields produced by living selyn fields, living Gens and Simes, perceived Shanlun as a dizzying whirl of particolored fluorescent confetti, while Mairis blurred and shimmered as all channels did when working to control the nageric fields. Shanlun, too, was working as a Donor, his full concentration focused on Mairis, his awareness of her so dim that she hardly knew he was there.

When they were all breathing easily again, Mairis said, "Now do you understand? You knew how people would feel when Digen's death was announced, and I didn't. You were right. Now is the time to make Unity a reality. And your research is the key that makes it feasible."

"But it's so far from complete!" Laneff's research in Sime neuro-chemistry had led her to synthesize a compound which should provide the key to distinguishing Sime from Gen before birth.

He nodded. "You can't go any further without a fifteen– to twenty-year study, and that means government funding. At the funeral this morning, I'm going to go up on that podium and challenge the world: elect me World Controller, and I will see that this research—and other projects like it—gets the funding necessary to make Digen's dream a reality. When children no longer have to grow up wondering or fearing which they'll be, Sime or Gen; when no child unexpectedly goes through changeover becoming Sime and killing the nearest Gen in the berserk raging of First Need—as you did—then it will be possible to abolish the borders between Sime and Gen Territory, and to stop tearing families apart at the very roots. Humans cannot have peace in this world until we accomplish this. Digen knew that. He understood the importance of what you were doing. And I now know that the time is right. Laneff, will you help me?"

"What if they don't elect you?"

"Then the time isn't right. But I'll keep working all my life—as Digen did. And I'll keep asking for your help."

His dark Farris eyes bored into hers, but the nageric atmosphere was cool. She said, "I had thought I was asking for your help to find funding for my project."

He held out a hand to her, extending his handling tentacles, the two dorsals from the sheaths that lay along the tops of his forearms, and the two ventrals from the bottoms of each forearm, so that as their fingers met, his four tentacles reached for hers in a grip of mutual trust. The contact sent a pulse of slow, calm power through her, as if it came from Shanlun.

But with that skin contact, she realized that Mairis was himself on the edge of hard need. She could perceive the two separate selyn-transport nerve systems in the channel, where the renSimes such as herself had only one system. The primary system, which supplied energy to the channel's own body, was dim to Laneff’s perceptions, though the secondary system which the channel used to collect selyn from Gens and transmit it to renSimes in need, glowed brightly.

Mairis was in need, but he carried a vast store of selyn which circulated throughout his body, allowing him to control the nager in his vicinity. The intense, solid power she felt at his touch was really being transmitted to her directly from Shanlun. And Shanlun, a Gen whose body was hyperdeveloped in the ability to produce selyn, seemed engorged with selyn.

Entranced with the immanence of such Gen essence, Laneff barely heard Mairis say, "It is best when partners help each other." He withdrew his touch, insulating her once again from the compelling field. "We'll announce our partnership on the podium later this morning. Digen's funeral shouldn't be an ending but a new beginning. You'll stand with Shanlun and me and explain your discovery to the world."

Laneff could feel the grinding effort Shanlun was making to keep his attention on Mairis. She tore her eyes from the Gen and said, "I'd be afraid to even try that without a prepared speech to read. All night, I've been listening to the reporters insisting I already have a safe chemical test for pregnant women to determine whether the child will be Sime or Gen. And they even interviewed two police chiefs in different cities claiming Distect terrorists threatened to bomb any lab where such tests were done."

Shanlun's nager flared, and his full attention came to focus on her. "Of course it's Diet terrorists."

"True. Bombings are more the Diet's style, not the Distect's," said Mairis, turning curiously toward the Gen.

But Laneff scarcely heard him. Need thrilled across her nerves in answer to the fabulously rich Gen nager that now tantalized with promise.

Mairis stepped between them and did something with the fields that blunted the effect. She drew a shaky breath. It's only natural it should feel good to be the focus of a high-field Gen's attention, she told herself. Her hard-won conditioning to be attracted only to the channel's field when in need couldn't be failing. It was just that Shanlun had been due to give Digen transfer, but the death had intervened, so he was exceptionally high field.

As Shanlun steadied back to his job, narrowing his attention onto Mairis alone, Mairis said, "These threats of violence make it all the more important to get you up there to convince them you don't yet have all the answers. I'm pledging only to fund your research if I'm elected World Controller—not to institute massive prenatal screening tomorrow! The majority of the people on both sides of the borders are ready for this, but it's got to be done slowly, to build trust."

Laneff nodded. The out-Territory Gens feared that with real Unity, the Simes would take over all Gen governments, and there would be nothing to prevent them from beginning again to keep Gens in pens and breed them for the kill. Most Gens had more sense than that, but even out-Territory had its own terrorist groups—such as the Diet. Mairis asked, "You're not afraid of the terrorists?" "No," she said, glancing about at the far-flung ring of guards. "But I can't say I'd care to live like this."

"It won't be very long. When the reporters find something more exciting, we can relax the precautions. And research, face it, is always dull."

She had to smile at that, despite the thrumming anxiety of prematurely roused need. Her awareness of Shanlun was heightened now, despite all Mairis could do. The ronaplin hormones and selyn-con-ducting fluids were seeping into the sheaths of her lateral tentacles, that normally lay quiescent and all but invisible along the sides of each arm. Mairis, she was sure, was acutely aware of her condition. I've got to think of a way out of this. I can't stand next to Shanlun for hours, in public.

"I'm sorry, Laneff," whispered Shanlun forlornly.