His fathers concern, Rimon realized, had also affected him. Was Kadi controlling him? He'd come away from her to try to think straight… and discovered that he was just as confused—even more so. No, he was sure it was not a false perception. Kadi only let him be himself.

She was waiting for him, wearing her new outfit, her bright red hair tied back with a strip of the blue fabric.

He sensed she was preparing herself for him, fresh and clean and new.

Stalling for time, he laid the armload of wood he'd brought back beside the small fire Kadi had started, saying, "Why don't you make us some tea, Kadi, while I clean up?"

She agreed easily, her nager soothing him as he washed up and came to sit beside her, accepting the tea. After they had taken a few sips, though, she said, "We ought to do it now, Rimon."

"Do it?"

"Have… transfer. I know you can drive yourself another couple of days, but you don't have to do that anymore. You're not avoiding a kill now."

"Kadi—"

"I want it, Rimon. I can't—can't stand to see you in need like this. It—hurts. I can't explain it—it just does."

Rimon met her eyes over his trail cup, aware of the swirling interlocked fields that made up her nager. It was almost as if he could see into the very center of her being, and he was falling, falling into eternity.

"Rimon?"

"Hmmm," said Rimon, blinking his way forcibly duo-conscious.

"I said I want to give you my selyn, and then—I want to make love to you. It will be… a consecration of our new home."

He shook his head, not in negation, but bewilderment. "I wonder if all Gens are as—strange to understand as you."

Kadi cocked her head to one side, also bewildered. "It seems quite plain to me. The place of life and love is the place of home__no?"

Rimon put his cup on a hearthstone and watched it steam. "Right now, love is just a word. I remember it was nice—worth dying for, even—but I can't feel it. I'm too busy—dying—myself to feel anything else. Except fear. Kadi, what if I—what if I can't? What if I hurt you?"

"You won't. I'm not going to let you."

With a forced quirk of a smile, Rimon said, "What are you going to do, take a stick of wood and knock me out?"

Kadi laughed. "No." But there was an undercurrent of anxiety beneath it, increasing Rimon's own anxiety. That faint fear in Kadi's nager, which she was trying so hard to control, reminded him only too much of Billy's nager when he'd begun transfer with Del. Rimon knew exactly what had happened there: the slight anxiety had triggered killdraw against resistance; Billy had felt pain, causing fear; and his fear had driven Del to the kill.

If only I could control my rate of draw, Rimon thought. He sighed, and got up, walking to the edge of the space they had cleared, where their house would be. If we ever have reason to build a house.

Looking up the rocky hillside, he could see the mound of earth over Billy's grave, still a scar on the face of their new home. In his mind's eye, he saw a second grave yawning open, and shuddered with the effort of thrusting the thought aside.

Kadi came up beside him, putting her hand on his shoulder. "Rimon—look—maybe Del failed because it only works between male and female? We don't know. We don't know what makes it work, but we do know that, for us, it does work. Isn't that where every new advance starts? First somebody finds out how to do it. Then somebody makes a fancy theory out of it First thing you know, everybody takes it for granted. Well, we're just starting. We don't have a theory. We don't have to. We just do it."

Edging toward hyperconsciousness, Rimon zlinned her. Her control of her emotional nager was close to perfect again. Still, that small nagging fear was there beneath her desire.

Desire?

She was reflecting his need somehow, absorbing it, amplifying it, and playing it back to him in a new form of intense but painless desire. Her hands closed gently around his wrists, barely touching, sending waves of pleasure through his nerves. Slowly she slid her hands up his arms as he stood helplessly, knowing himself in her control and not caring. He didn't care about anything except what Kadi was doing to him. ;

Her anxiety lessened as she settled her hands over his transport nerves. She was in command. Confidence rose in him… Kadi's confidence. His tentacles lashed about her arms of their own accord, his laterals drinking in the pure joy of her field. It was Kadi who made the lip contact, Kadi who began to pour selyn into Rimon. In pleasant surprise, he accepted… but it was tantalizingly slow. Against his will, need and pure instinct drove him to draw that selyn faster and faster to feed his depleted nerves.

Kadi started in surprise, on the edge of fear as Rimon's draw increased. Reflexively, she resisted and felt pain, just as Billy had. No! Rimon reached into himself and shut off the voracious demand, his whole body screaming against his will. And suddenly, Kadi relaxed, all resistance gone as once more she began to push selyn at him, a little faster this time.

And then there was no more pain, only soaring bliss for both of them, the same intense joy they had shared a month ago… no—this time it was better! Conscious, Rimon could feel every sweet thrum of pleasure, the stark terrors of need melting away to be replaced by—desire.

Even before the last trickle of selyn ceased, Rimon found his mouth softening upon Kadi's to a demanding kiss. Her lips yielded, and as the flow terminated with their fields in perfect harmony, a desire almost as strong as need sang through both of them, resonating and overpowering.

Rimon reached for the ties that held Kadi's jumpsuit at her shoulders. When those and her belt were untied, the garment slithered to the ground. He didn't want to stop touching her long enough to shrug out of his own clothes, but Kadi was helping him, and then they were in each other's arms.

They made love eagerly, hungrily, driven by a mutual yearning, Rimon delirious from the sheer tactile sensations that faded so during need, and Kadi awakened after long abstinence. It was better than the first time—an improvement on perfection, Rimon thought, as he became enough aware to think again. His head was pillowed on Kadi's breast. Too languidly content to sit up, he slid into a position beside her from which he could look at her face. It felt so good just to look.

She turned to him, smiling. "I told you we could do it again."

Smiling crookedly, he said, "Are you always going to say, 'I told you so'?"

"Only when it suits the occasion. You're glowing again."

"I didn't know I could feel better than the first time. But I do."

"Me, too. Maybe it'll just keep getting better."

"If it does, next time it'll blow out my whole system"– or yours. "Kadi—I hurt you. I know I did."

"Only for a moment. You just startled me, and—I think I resisted you, and it hurt. It makes sense that that's a Gen reflex, doesn't it—to try to prevent a Sime from draining away all his selyn?"

"Yes," he said. "Now that I've been fully conscious through a transfer, I know that's it. You can overcome that reflex, Kadi—but how are we going to teach other Gens to do it?"

"It wasn't just me! Rimon, you did something, and it stopped hurting long enough so I remembered how desperate you felt, and then suddenly I could feel it myself– a—need to give…"

That sounded like a child's bad grammar—need to give indeed! But he remembered, "I think I did slow my draw for just a moment. I couldn't hold it though."

She put a hand on the middle of his chest, and he felt a little tingling tremor there. Suddenly there were pale ghosts of nager around things, and he was duoconscious, tingling pleasantly all over as she said, "Maybe next time you'll be able to hold it a little longer. We'll have to teach the Simes to go slower and the Gens not to resist."