Damon sighed and sat down, leaning his head on his hands. “I doubt if I can explain. You’re not matrix-trained, you haven’t the language, you don’t even have the concepts.”

Andrew said grimly, “Just put it in words of one syllable.”

“There aren’t any.” Damon sighed and was silent, thinking. Finally he said, “I showed you the channels, in Callista and in Ellemir.”

Andrew nodded, remembering those glowing lines of light and their pulsing centers, so clear in Ellemir, so inflamed and sluggish in Callista.

“Basically, what ails her is overload of the nerve channels.” He saw that Andrew did not understand. “I told you how the same channels carry sexual energies and psi forces, not at the same time, of course. When she was trained as Keeper, Callista was taught techniques which prevented her from being capable of — or even aware of — the slightest sexual response. Is that clear so far?”

“I think so.” He pictured her whole sexual system made nonfunctional so that she could use her whole body as an energy-transformer. God, what a thing to do to a woman!

“Well, then. In the normal adult the channels function selectively. Turning off the psi forces when the channels are needed for sexual energies, turning off sexual impulses when psi is being used. After matrix work you were impotent for a few days, remember? Normally, when a Keeper gives up her work, it is because the channels have reverted to normal levels, and normal selectivity. Then she is no longer able, as a Keeper must be able, to remain totally and completely free of the slightest trace of sexual energy remaining in the channels. Evidently Callista must have thought this had already happened in her channels, because she could feel herself reacting to you. She did for a moment, you know,” he said, looking at Andrew hesitantly, and Andrew, unwilling to remember that fourfold moment of contact, to acknowledge that Damon could have been part of it, could not raise his eyes. He only nodded, without looking up.

“Well, then, if an ordinary Keeper — a fully functioning Keeper, with conditioning intact and channels clear — is attacked, she can protect herself. If, for instance, you had not been Callista’s husband, someone to whom she had given the right, if you had been a stranger attempting rape, she would have blasted straight through you. And you would have been very, very dead, and Callista would have been… well, I suppose she would have been shocked and sick, but after a good meal and some sleep she would not have been much the worse. But that didn’t happen.”

Andrew said numbly “God!”

It isn’t you I don’t trust, my husband…

“She must have believed she was ready, or she would never have risked it. And when she realized she was not ready — in that split second before she blasted you with the reflex she couldn’t control — she took a backflow through her own body. And that saved your life. If that whole flow of energy had gone through you, can you imagine what would have happened?”

Andrew could, but discovered he would much rather not.

“It must have been that shock which brought on her menstruation. I watched her carefully until I knew she wasn’t going into crisis, but after that I thought the bleeding, and the normal energy drain of that time in women, would carry off the overloading and clear the channels. But it hasn’t.” He frowned. “I wish I knew precisely what Leonie had done to her. Meanwhile, I asked you not to touch her. And you must not.”

“Are you afraid she will blast me again?”

Damon shook his head. “I don’t think she has the strength for that now. In a way it’s worse. She is reacting to you physically, but the channels are not clear so there is no way to carry off the sexual energies through the channels in the normal way. There are two sets of reflexes operating at once, each jamming the other, inhibiting either of the normal functions.”

“I feel more muddled than ever,” Andrew said, dropping his head in his hands, and Damon set to work to simplify further.

“A woman trained as Keeper sometimes has to coordinate eight or ten telepaths. Working in the energon rings, she has to channel all that force through her own body. They handle such enormous psi stresses, like” — he picked up the analogy neatly from Andrew’s mind — “an energy-transformer. So they can’t, they dare not, rely on the normal selectivity of the ordinary adult. They have to keep those channels totally, completely, and permanently cleared for the psi forces. Do you remember what my sister Marisela said?”

They heard it together, an echo in Damon’s mind: In the old days the Keepers of Arilinn could not leave their posts if they would… The Keepers of Arilinn are not women but emmasca…

“Keepers aren’t neutered anymore, of course. They rely on vows of virginity, and intensive antisexual conditioning, to keep the channels totally free. But a Keeper is, after all, a woman, and if she falls in love, she is likely to begin to react sexually, because the channels have returned to normal selectivity, for psi or for sex. She has to stop functioning as a Keeper, because her channels are no longer completely clear. She could handle ordinary psi, but not the enormous stresses of a Keeper, the energon rings and relays — well, you don’t know much about that, never mind it. In practice, a Keeper whose conditioning has failed usually gives up laran work altogether. I think that’s foolish, but it’s our custom. But this is what Callista was expecting: that once she had begun to react to you, she would begin to use the channels selectively, like any normal mature telepath.”

“So why didn’t she?” Andrew demanded.

“I don’t know,” Damon said, in despair. “I have never seen anything like it before. I would not like to believe that Leonie had altered the channels so they could never function selectively, but I cannot think of anything else it could be. Since Leonie evidently altered her channels in some way, to keep her physically immature, I can only think it was that. But do you understand now why you must not touch her, Andrew? It’s not because she would blast you again — and probably kill you this time — for she would let herself die before she would do that. It would be so easy for her that it terrifies me to think about it. But it’s because the reflexes are still there, and she’s fighting them, and it’s killing her.”

Andrew covered his face with his hands. “And I begged her…” he said almost inaudibly.

“You couldn’t know,” said Damon gently. “She didn’t know either. She believed she was deconditioning normally, or she would never have risked it. She was willing to give up the psi function of the channels entirely, for you. Do you know what that meant to her?”

Andrew muttered, “I’m not worth it. All that suffering.”

“And so damned unnecessary!” Damon broke off. He was talking blasphemy. No law was stricter than that which prevented a Keeper, her oath once given back, her virginity lost or even suspect, from ever again doing any serious matrix work. “It was what she wanted, Andrew. To give up her work as Keeper, for you.”

“So what’s to be done?” Andrew demanded. “She can’t go on like this, it will kill her!”

Damon said reluctantly, “I will have to clear her channels. And this is what she does not want me to do.”

“Why not?”

Damon did not answer at once. Finally he said, “It’s usually done under kirian, and I have none to give her. Without it, it’s hellishly painful.” This made Callista sound like a simple coward, and he was reluctant to give that impression, but he did not feel capable of explaining to Andrew what Callista’s real objection was. His eyes fell with relief on the rryl in its case.

“But if she is well enough to ask for that, perhaps she is really better,” he said with a glimmer of hope. “Take it to her, Andrew. But,” and he paused, said at last, reluctantly, “don’t touch her. She’s still reacting to you.”