Special Note:

If you don't like reading about gay people, please do not read this chapter.

The issue of how gay channels are handled in Sime~Gen canon is beyond the scope of this novel or my feedback area. There are ample materials available in older fan literature and in the simegen-l list archives if you are interested in finding out more about this controversial and often fan-alienating issue.

Undertow is intended to be as true to canon as possible and therefore nothing happens in Undertow that is uncanonical as I understand it. This does not mean I like how canon handles this particular subject. I happen to prefer one of Jean's interpretations (the idea of channels being imprinted with a sexual preference when they are sexually initiated after their 4th or 5th transfer). There will be more about this in the sequel, Winter Always Comes Early. But not here.

        Somehow Deah had developed a reputation as a class clown, always trying to act out in order to gain status with the other students. No matter how hard Deah tried to stamp it out, the reputation seemed to grow on its own. It was maddening.
        And as if that wasn't bad enough, her own mother had apparently been totally ignorant of the birds and the bees! She supposed she should feel lucky that everybody thought she was joking, rather than truly so misinformed about the facts of life. And maybe there were others in the class who were finding all of this as educational as she was. It was hard to tell, since she couldn't bear to zlin any of them at the moment!

        Katki turned back to the blackboard and started scrawling a stick figure complete with arrows and tantric points. She'd already showed them how sexual arousal changed the directions and paths of selyn flow in the body, and how it happened differently in the various larities and mutations.
        Because of their secondary selyn fields, channels differed from renSimes in some important ways that would become very relevant in a couple of months, when most of the people listening to this lecture would become officially of age.
        For one thing, adult channels quite literally required occasional sex to remain healthy, because the changes in selyn flow brought about by sexual arousal played a critical role in the proper maintenance of the secondary pathways and vriamic node.
        Also, through some cruel twist of design, channels were not wired properly to handle being homosexually aroused. If it happened, the channel suffered a swift, hideous death - not by exploding head, but by messy systemic failure.
        Deah and the other students left Katki's lecture with the distinct impression that the lesson had been intended to provide a personal caution as much as clinical knowledge.

        ----

        Back in Sorel and Betta's dorm room, Deah's "people" (who she tried to think of as her "study group") chattered enthusiastically about the special one-day lecture.
        "Wow, I had no idea that thing about gay channels," said Ramy.
        "I didn't even know there was such a thing as, er, women who like women and men who...." began Ladlo sheepishly.
        "Jeez Ladlo, did your parents at least tell you where babies come from?" scoffed Sorel, who was too old to study with them but happened to be there too. Deah immediately wondered if Sorel had known about the birds and the bees herself, back before she'd received the same lecture.
        "Anyway, there aren't really any such thing as gay channels," said Betta. "She's just telling what would happen if there were such a thing, but there isn't."
        "Yeah," said Ramy. "I mean, if there were really gay channels then one out of ten of us would be gay."
        There was a long pause while they all stared at each other.
        "You must be it, Deah," said Sorel suddenly, and they all burst into giggles.
        "I am not!" said Deah, trying to sound indignant but the idea was just too ridiculous. She started to laugh too. "Betta's it."
        "Oh yes, I am soooooo gay." Betta batted her eyes at her roommate Sorel.
        "No, Mepig's it," said Ladlo. A fresh peal of laughter broke out.
        "Are you kidding me?" said Betta. "Sooner Arat than him."
        "Arat?" gasped Sorel. She rolled back on her bed, laughing so hard she had to hold her sides.
        "Shut up," said Ramy, her face purpling. "He's straight." Ramy's lust for the overbred, underfed channel had only grown worse with time. Deah privately thought that the only reason Ramy wasn't hanging out with Mepig's people instead of Sorel's was that she couldn't lay eyes on Arat without letting out an undignified squeak and rushing from the room.
        "He has been awfully chummy with Jeniard lately," said Betta.
        "Yeah and Teb Randon," added Ladlo with a wicked grin.
        "Arat is not gay," said Ramy, her lower lip quivering in a pout.
        "He asked three different questions during the part about no gay channels," Deah said thoughtfully.
        Ramy squealed in dismay. "I said shut up! Stop it you guys!"
        "What in the world do you see in him, is what I want to know," said Sorel.
        "Isn't it obvious?" exclaimed Ladlo. He stuck his nose in the air and began an uncanny Arat imitation: "I'm just so wonderful. Everybody look at me. My parents are better than your parents. Lah dee dah."
        "He has to act that way. You would too if you were a prince or a king or something and forced to hang around with peasants," said Ramy defensively. "Besides, he's handsome." She paused, and her eyes grew dreamy again. "Really handsome."
        "Ewwwww!"
        "Aagh!"
        "Gag me," muttered Ladlo.
        Sorel, who had started to push herself up on her elbow, fell back laughing once again.
        Betta threw her pillow at Ramy's head, but the dark-haired girl ducked it easily.
        "I'm free to like whoever I want," she said primly. "Just because you all happen to crush on dumpy little Jeniard... or... Professor Doem and his shiny dome...."
        For some time thereafter, there was only the sounds of pillow-thuds, falling books, crashes, giggles, and muffled shrieks.

        ---

        Scuff of a window opening, and the flap of tattered plastic in wind. Deah smelled cool outdoor air and came awake suddenly, zlinning that someone was halfway in, halfway out of her dorm room window!
        Adrenaline shocked through her. She shouldn't have to worry about being attacked at school, should she? But why else would somebody be climbing in her window in the middle of the night? Except maybe... a prank?
        Even as she zlinned the nager - female, Gen, and clearly Donor-trained - she heard the intruder clear her throat.
        "I say, if you're awake in there, could you give me a hand?"

        Much huffing, puffing and heaving later, Deah found herself with the light lit, her dressing gown on, and face to face with a Gen she didn't know from Eve.
        "I'm Jettina Orlova," said the Gen, smiling a greeting with face and nager. "I'm a student at Fellps School for Donors, across the way." She gestured vaguely out the window behind her.
        Deah stared. She'd never seen Jettina before, but the name was well known. Jettina was a rising star among Donor students, and everybody was looking forward to a couple of months from now when, if all went according to plan, she would be considered advanced enough to work regularly with student channels. Amazingly, her nager was even better than the rumors. But what was she doing here?
        "Wow!" added Jettina, looking at Deah closer and zlinning of genuine admiration. "You're even better looking than they said!"
        Deah was startled. "Excuse me?"
        "I mean, I always say personality is the most important, and from what I've heard you've definitely got that covered. But wow! You're gorgeous!"
        "What!" gasped Deah.
        "Maybe I should explain."
        "No, I think maybe you should leave. I am getting seriously weirded out, here." This has to be a prank… right?
        "You just got Hajene Katki's day lecture on Sexuality and Nager, didn't you? Well, as you know she only gives that lecture once a month. And it's traditional for us at Fellps to give you youngest channels - who have just heard the lecture for your first time - a hard time after it." She chuckled. "Just because the stuff they tell you gets you all paranoid."
        "So this is a prank," said Deah, her suspicions confirmed.
        "It was supposed to be," said Jettina. "But...." She eyed Deah. "Do you believe in love at first sight?" Something wavered subtly in her nager, slipping in and out like a ghost. Deah zlinned quickly, trying to see what it was, but it was just as quickly gone. Deah could have sworn it was shyness and attraction.
        "No!" Deah choked. "Stop kidding around. If your dare was to scare me, you did that just by climbing in the window." She edged backward, but the Gen edged forward to make up the distance, seemingly without realizing she was doing so.
        "Forget the dare," said Jettina. "It's stupid kid's stuff. I've never met a woman that makes me feel the way you do."
        Deah knew that Donor training involved learning to manipulate one's own emotions so as to only feel what was required for work - rather like a method actor prepares for a stage role. But this zlinned so much more real! Deah zlinned Jettina as deeply as she could and the Gen's nager seemed calm except for stray glints and hints that seemed illusory but if zlinned carefully were clearly love, desire and desperation. A deep pure intense emotion would have been suspicious. But could a student really fake this kind of subtlety after only a few months of training? Somehow Deah couldn't believe that. And even teachers like Mushy Mealy betrayed their stray emotions in the course of work. Jettina was trying to hide it, but she really did love Deah.
        "Oh my god, you're not joking," she gasped.
        Deah jumped as her back bumped against the door. Her thoughts raced. Katki had said death could result if a channel became 'homosexually aroused'. Suddenly that wording seemed perilously vague. Did that mean actual intercourse, or simple physical arousal which in a teenager might be caused by just about anything? What about emotional arousal? Could she be endangered if she zlinned Jettina's feelings - or sympathized with her? Or even liked her? Or wanted her nager?
        Jettina stared at her face. The magnificent nager slowly wilted. Tears came to the Gen's eyes. "Oh wow… you hate me," she said in despair. "I knew it, they all told me you were too good for me." Pain and loss bloomed in her nager.
        Deah's eyes widened. She'd never been subjected to a Gen's true feelings before, as trained Donors were rarely this open. Jettina was only a student after all.
        "Jettina, I… look." She couldn't help but feel sorry for her.
        "No… it's OK," Jettina blubbered. "I should have expected it. Nobody likes me in Fellps either." A wave of loneliness joined the suffering.
        I'm in trouble, Deah thought.
        "Look," she began again. "I...."
        "Just one little hug?"
        "...What!"
        "Just one hug, and I promise I will never bother you again."
        "Ohmigod." Panic rose in Deah. "No hugs!" She scrabbled for the door knob.
        "Just one kiss then?" asked Jettina tentatively. She stepped forward and....
        "Aiiiiii!!!"
        Deah burst out of her dorm room door in full flight.

        A tremendous leap carried her halfway down the hall... which was packed with students.
        Deah had a split instant to recognize Sorel, Betta, Mepig, and the rest of the core Assembly troublemakers amongst them before she tripped over her own feet in astonishment and smashed into the floor in a most unSimelike belly flop, knocking herself out of augmentation mode. A huge cheer erupted around her.
        Deah jumped to her feet hastily, but the damage had been done. Oh, brother, she thought. I've just made a complete fool out of myself... again!
        Jettina Orlova appeared in the doorway Deah had so precipitously exited and took a modest bow. The cheering and applause crescendoed. Deah walked slowly back toward her and zlinned her thoroughly. Give or take some margin of error due to the crowd, Jettina zlinned... as if she had never heard of Deah, much less loved her.
        Jettina beamed, and Sorel and Mepig and the others crowed, as Deah realized she had truly been duped. In fact, she'd been so riveted by Jettina's nager she hadn't even noticed the crowd gathering.
        Shen, she thought in disbelief, that woman is going to make one hell of a Donor. And then she did her duty and went and congratulated Jettina on winning her dare. It seemed more charitable than throttling her.

        ----

        A short time later, in the dead of night, an emergency Assembly was convened. The assembly sizes had swelled over the weeks as more students continued to arrive at Othwol, and tonight the crowd was also riddled with Gen students from Fellps. There were over 130 students present in all.
        Deah had thought that the Assemblies would stop after the Tengstuns dare, because Sosus Tesce and Lero had notified the school authorities and a lot of people had asked a lot of questions. If anything though, the warnings handed down to the students had had the opposite effect to the one intended.
        "Revenge!" cried Sorel, who was standing on top of a table in the middle of the stage. "Are we just going to let those Donors scare our friends this way? Shen, no! We must have revenge! Who's with me?"
        There was a roar of general approval among the rest of the assembled students, interspersed with a few good-natured boos and hisses from the Gens.
        Deah hadn't been the only victim. The Fellps Gens had targeted all the students young enough to have heard Katki's lecture for the first time that day. Indeed, as Jettina had told her, it was a regular tradition. The older channelling students like Sorel and Mepig, having been through it themselves already, had had a good laugh at their younger friends' expense. And the so-called "revenge" they were plotting was little more than an excuse for more dares.
        "Where's Deah?" asked Sorel. She looked around and spotted Deah trying to hide among the students in the crowd. A grin broke out on her face. "Come on up, Deah, let's think of a dare for you in revenge for the humiliation you suffered tonight."
        Man, thought Deah to herself, and the humiliation never ends does it? But she shouldered her way toward the table, smiling gamely as people patted her back and giggled at her. She still couldn't believe she had fallen for the prank. It was as if her brain had switched off completely because there was a powerful Gen in zlinning range. Shen, but some of those student Donors were better with their nagers than the working Donors the channel students had to use in class!
        Deah felt her ears burn as she was boosted up onto the table on Sorel's side.

        Meanwhile, Sorel had given Mepig a hand up onto the table as well. The two were hardly the best of friends, but when it came to creating trouble at an Assembly, their rivalry took the form of a diabolical cooperation.
        "And then there's Arat," said Mepig jovially. "He was just as wronged. What sort of revenge can we think up that can satisfy them both?"
        The noise surged as people shouted out suggestions.

        Someone had abandoned a moldering old red velvet couch on the construction site, and mischievous students had carried it into the auditorium and left it on the stage. Now it reposed near the stage-left exit amongst a heap of other clutter that might or might not soon be disposed of by the construction crews.
        Arat had taken a perverse liking to the couch and immediately taken command of it, not allowing anyone else near it when he was using it. Deah wondered how much of his fetish for the (admittedly once elegant, but far past its prime) piece of junk was because it set him apart from and above the others -- and how much was his innate dislike of physical exercise.
        He was curled up at one end of the couch now, with a fountain pen and some papers. It was probably the latest assignment for Doem. Though he didn't turn them in, Arat did take written reports very seriously, and rumor was he had huge stacks of scribbles squirrelled away in his dorm room, getting "finishing touches" added to them each week. Deah thought if anyone deserved the "perfectionist" label, it was him!
        Deah tried to zlin him through the crowd, but that was all but impossible. The rumor was that, between the intense discipline required for the Professor Tengstun prank and amount of time it'd taken to carry it off, Arat had been a wreck for three days, slightly longer than it had taken Deah to recover from what would have killed any other channel. And of course, amazing though his feat had been, it utterly paled beside the sheer spectacle of Deah's spontaneous stunt. It had, in short, been a clear win for their side, for the first time ever. Sorel was pumped. So was everybody else.

        Mepig rubbed his hands together in glee. "And I know just the thing. A bunch of Fellps people were involved in this stunt, right? But there are only two who matter. Jettina Orlova, and Bluke Remnent. They're like the queen and king of the Donors. Arat," continued Mepig, "you must genuinely seduce and conquer Jettina, and Deah you get Bluke Remnent."
        "Hey!" protested Sorel. "That's not a fair dare. It's too easy for him."
        A beat of silence followed, during which all of Sorel's people, particularly Deah, turned beet red. Deah didn't know which would be worse, Sorel thinking Deah was too ugly to have an easy time of it, or Sorel thinking that Arat was handsome enough to blow Jettina away! One thing for sure, Sorel's big mouth had just put a foot in itself, not for the first time and probably not for the last time either.
        "Er, I mean," Sorel hastened to clarify as Mepig's people started laughing, "that guy Bluke Remnent is like the most popular boy in Fellps. He's the captain of their sports squad, the president of the student body, their top student grades-wise, and he can have any girl he wants!"
        Deah glanced at Arat again. Objectively speaking he was handsome, and with his long nose, black hair and eyes, and aristocratic bearing he did resemble a Farris all jokes aside. Deah's tormentor wouldn't stand a chance. Rumor had it that Bluke had scared Arat as silly as Jettina had scared her, but he was doing his best - which was pretty shenned good - to appear as if nothing had happened. Of course, even if he'd showed it nobody would have dared ask him for the details.
        "Arat wouldn't take that dare anyway," yelled Jeniard mutinously, from somewhere off to Arat's right.
        "Arat hasn't turned down a dare in weeks," said Mepig, grinning. It was true. Arat's earlier resistance had dissolved just as Deah's had. It was the only way they could prove themselves, when the teachers refused to advance Arat and could not understand that Deah was having trouble learning.
        "Channelling dares," cried Jeniard. "Not like this one!"
        Mepig smirked dismissively, and others laughed.
        Nobody had missed the fact that Jeniard's status with Arat had been rising steadily. The only time Arat was ever seen in public without Jeniard these days was when they had two different classes at the same time. Jeniard was allowed within 10 feet of Arat at all times, and sometimes was the closest of all. They were often observed holding quiet conversations, even with other people around. As Jeniard's grades continued their dramatic improvement, his self-confidence did as well. And he was too smart to let himself get caught alone by Sorel's people anymore.
        But he was still short, and wore thick glasses, and was perpetually rumpled. Betta had commented that Jeniard was the proverbial fat-sloppy-Gen-trying-to-get-through-Customs-with-a-six-foot-long-salami-sandwich-and-a-bucket-of-lutefisk: there was nothing wrong with his status, it was his presentation that people snickered at.
        Jeniard might be outside the ordinary hierarchy where Arat was concerned, but that didn't mean Mepig had to listen to him or would even want to.

        Meanwhile, Deah was trying to figure out how she could realistically accept the dare. It'd make Sorel's side look great if she could accept right now, while Jeniard was trying to keep Arat out of it.
        Then she had an idea. She knew Teb Randon was learning a lot by experimenting on Arat. This Bluke Remnent sounded like a go-getter; Deah was sure he could be talked into pretending she'd succeeded in seducing him, in return for several hours of her time as guinea pig for his practicing. With an attack plan in place, she felt rather optimistic.
        "OK, I'll do it," she said. "Mepig, you're on."
        Mepig's also-handsome face broke out in a deliciously mischievous grin.
        "And to make it fair, Sorel, I'll up the ante on Arat's side," said Mepig generously. "Let's say that Jettina has to actually propose marriage to him."
        "No!" spluttered Jeniard. "No dares like that at all!"
        Arat's pen stopped. He looked up at Jeniard in annoyance. Hoots and howls rang out, jeers for Jeniard's presumption. Arat may have granted him a privileged position, but Jeniard still didn't get to sit on the wide empty space left over on the velvet couch. Nor, it appeared, did he get to make decisions for Arat regarding dares.
        Arat spoke sharply to him, his voice inaudible over the crowd but his manner unmistakable.
        Jeniard's face crumpled and he turned and rushed away, making for the door of the auditorium.
        Looking disgusted (maybe at the interruption to his essay-writing) Arat nodded to Mepig to continue and then went back to supposedly ignoring the Assembly.

        After that, it was a simple matter of Sorel and Mepig hammering out the details of the dare, and then they'd clasp hands and that would seal the dare as official.
        But as they were bickering over whether the proof-of-success had to be public or not, Deah was distracted by some kind of disturbance on the stage right side. For a moment she didn't understand what she was seeing and zlinning - just a whole bunch of students' faces all surging towards her at once. The ambient curdled into chunks. Faster students began to shove madly through the more confused parts of the crowd.
        "It's a raid!" gasped one Gen student as he plowed past the table.
        "Raid, raid!" Others took up the shout. Deah glanced back at the red couch: Arat was gone. He must have zlinned the raid coming and quietly absented himself before anybody else knew what was going on.
        In the next moment, utter madness broke loose. Bodies hurtled every which way and knots of students struggled for the exits. Something heavy struck Deah and shoved her bodily off the table: Sorel.
        "Get down! Don't let them see you or you'll be busted!" the Third shouted in her ear.
        Disoriented, Deah realized adults were now zigzagging through the crowd, trying to nab the ringleaders. The auditorium was quickly emptying, as students vanished like cockroaches into doors and openings. Deah made a belated break for the stage left exit.

        Outside of the auditorium proper, it looked and zlinned like a scene out of some deranged painting. Shrieks of excitement echoed through the building's unfinished interior and the ambient was a nightmare of conflicting reflections. Human forms whizzed this way and that, pursuing and evading, merging in and out of the pillars and stairwells and the crazed ambient like souls writhing in a Cubist hell.
        A renSime construction worker appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Deah, but she augmented reflexively and wriggled free. A Gen teacher from Fellps tried to tackle her physically and nagerically, but she was too much channel for him and he couldn't overcontrol her. Seeing an opening, Deah put on a burst of speed and leaped through an open doorway. Augmenting, she skidded in, out, and between half-built walls, hanging mats of insulation and bare concrete columns before she finally escaped immediate capture or recognition.
        Leaving the building through a side entrance, she found herself in the cool quiet of the outdoors. She could zlin others around but not nearby. She would be too exposed on the streets, but inside the construction barrier where supplies and debris were heaped, there was plenty of cover. She began to work her way around the perimeters of the buildings, planning to come at the dorms from the opposite side the teachers would be expecting.
        First she skirted the auditorium itself, and then the main body of the school. There was a barrier blocking the way between the school and the dorms, which was why students usually used the stage as an indoor shortcut between the two. Deah stayed outside that barrier and plotted a course through the half-built government buildings instead, slipping through the shadows around the bases of the City Sime Center, the Public Library and the Courthouse. From there, she made her way onto the huge flight of steps fronting what would be the New Othwol Town Hall.
        Canvas tarps hung to cover the building's flanks; the tile facade had not yet been applied. Windows gaped dark and glassless exposing the unfinished rooms beyond, or sported wind-tattered plastic sheeting. Traditional ascension poles rose diagonally to meet the walls, joined closer in by their small brothers: two-poled rung ladders, a concession to the addition of Gens to the workforce.
        A plank fence twice as high as a man blocked off the steps from the street, sealing the construction site from curious eyes. Though lights burned on the street, within the fence it was inky black. Together with the looming embrace of the building, it formed a place that at night could be extremely secluded.
        At the bottom of the steps stood a statue that was technically the front of the entire complex. The statue was huge, nearly three stories in height. It depicted an anonymous Sime man and Gen woman, holding hands as they stepped forward together eyes skyward: symbol of Unity, of hope, of change, the Tecton's promise.
        There was a dark figure standing near the statue's base.
        Deah stopped suddenly, thinking herself caught - and then recognized the nager.
        "Jeniard?" She took a hesitant step forward. "Are you all right?"

        "She looks so proud, so confident, so... perfectly in tune with who she is," said Jeniard.
        It took her a moment to realize what he meant. She looked up at the statue, at the woman and at the other figure, the Sime.
        "He looks like Klyd Farris," she offered.
        "Or Arat."
        Deah glanced at Jeniard again.
        There was a lot of talk about Jeniard and Arat, and what went on behind their closed door. That Arat had made a profound change in Jeniard's life at the school, a change for the better, was indubitable. That Jeniard both worshiped Arat and felt possessive of him was becoming increasingly clear, particularly when Arat wasn't in the room and Jeniard felt free to speak. Anything beyond that could only be speculated at, and quite frequently was.
        Jeniard turned toward her. "What was all that screaming?" he asked. "It sounded like a raiderband attacking."
        "It sort of was. A bunch of teachers from both schools busted the Assembly. They had construction workers to help them. I take it you weren't there?"
        Jeniard shook his head. "No, I… left. Earlier."

        Deah could feel the question between them, hanging, waiting to be asked. What was on Jeniard's mind, that had driven him from the Assembly at a run? Had Arat ordered him to leave, or had he just fled Arat's reprimand? Jeniard's foot scuffed the concrete where it was covered in grainy rubble. He must have felt her attention on him, but took his time, composing his thoughts. Finally he turned his head to look at her.
        "He's not such a bad person, you know. He's just misunderstood."
        "Arat?" Deah squinted at Jeniard. "You don't have to defend your friendship with him to me."
        "But I want to." Jeniard scowled. "Why shouldn't I?"
        "Well, I understand that you're his friend - even if I don't understand why. And I wouldn't want you to stop being his friend just because of what other people think."
        "Nobody knows what he's really like," said Jeniard. "If they knew, they'd understand."
        Deah thought it sounded like Jeniard needed to justify his friendship with Arat to himself, not her.
        "Well, the teachers -" she began.
        "The teachers all claim he's lazy," said Jeniard hotly. "But nothing could be farther from the truth! You should see how hard he works on his essays. And shen knows where the City Sime Center would be without him."

        There was a thriving black market in selyn among the students, who used it for augmentation and to perform the nageric stunts featured in most dares. The most obvious source was the Collectorium in the City Sime Center, where many of the students worked shifts as part of their training. This had led naturally to a secondary black market in work-hours. The teachers had yet to catch on, because the actual Sime Center staff, a beleaguered skeleton crew, was in on it. They even supplied the industrious black market schedulers with lists of extra uncovered hours outside of the student time blocks, in the Collectorium and elsewhere.
        Deah had been leery of the selyn trade at first, because it was obviously breaking the rules. Even when she began to see how useful the extra selyn was, she still didn't participate much because she was having so much trouble in school she didn't need any further distractions.
        Arat, on the other hand, had participated heavily. He was said to be a wizard at selyn gleaning, but where he really made an impact was in working extra shifts. For all that the teachers bemoaned his lack of cooperation in class, Arat was a voracious consumer of clinic-hours. Giving Arat some of your sessions directly was supposed to be a guaranteed way to rise a notch or two in his favor, at least temporarily. Rumors varied as to the exact percentage of the Sime Center's workload Arat was carrying, but no one who'd seen the secret schedules could deny that he had a fetish for the clinics that gave "workaholism" a whole new meaning.
        Of course, all of that was a secret. And when Arat never turned in any schoolwork, dug in his heels on in-class demonstrations, skipped most of the questions on tests, and didn't even bother to show up to his physical education classes, why should the teachers think he put any effort into anything?

        "Um, well maybe if he put just a tiny bit more effort into impressing the Powers that Be?" suggested Deah. "I mean, everybody knows he can do the classwork, why doesn't he just do it? And he could at least be neutral to the teachers instead of trying to antagonize them."
        "But you see it's not as simple as that," said Jeniard. "Arat requires better support than the school Donors can provide. He says Mileay nearly killed him the first time they worked together, and I believe him -- he was white as a ghost afterward and he passed out for about eight hours that night. Asking him to do a class demonstration with Mushy Mealy is like asking him to jump off a bridge with a cinder block as flotation - he'd have to be crazy to want to do it."
        "Give me a break. Everybody knows Mileay is useless. Can't he just forget the support when he gets him? I do, and from what I've seen you do too."
        "No, he can't. He requires that support. I can't explain it, but he does. He falls to pieces without it."
        "Hmm," said Deah. She couldn't argue because she'd noticed the same thing about Arat. "Well, he is a bit of a leaner," she admitted.
        "He's the worst leaner imaginable," said Jeniard. "He even leans on me sometimes. And none of those others like Donettis or Fench are up to snuff either. The only one he can depend on at all is Teb Randon and you know how little we see of him in class. So that's why he refuses to do the demonstrations half the time, he doesn't want to get hurt or overextend himself."
        "Yeah… well...." Support was a different matter for different channels, and Deah had begun to suspect that her own perspective on it was very unusual. For all her other shortcomings, she appeared to require very little support compared to the average channel. She and Arat were at the extreme ends of a spectrum that the school Donors only supported the middle of. "Has he tried to explain this to the teachers?"
        Jeniard snorted. "Of course he has! They all think he is purposely causing trouble. You've seen it: they say he is making too big a deal of his own sensitivity, because of Teb stroking his ego during their practice sessions. And nobody believes anybody could be as much of a leaner as he is!"
        "Well, if he was just a bit nicer about it," said Deah. "I mean, he's managed to make enemies with every teacher and administrator in the school. Between picking on them for their faults and treating their teaching attempts with contempt, it's no wonder they don't listen to his legitimate complaints."
        Jeniard made a growl of frustration. "This is exactly what I am trying to tell you! Nobody understands him. He is doing his best to avoid making trouble. Haven't you noticed he never speaks unless spoken to, and doesn't complain about anything unless it's actually preventing his work?"
        "Um," said Deah. "No?" It was true Arat said very little, but what he did say was usually devastatingly contemptuous. As for the latter, it depended on whether you believed such little nitpicky details could really prevent him from working or not. The way it zlinned to everybody but Arat, he was just being a jerk about stuff other people were polite enough to not talk about.
        "Well, whatever it looks like, he's trying as hard as he can to fit in. He's taken dares in the Assemblies even though it's totally against his nature, and he's worked with the black market schedulers doing everything they ask, and he's doing his honest best to put up with what he sees as downright abuse of him on the part of the school's staff."
        "Well, obviously his best isn't good enough on that score," muttered Deah, but Jeniard's words disturbed her. It was true that end results didn't tell the whole story. She was trying as hard as she could to make the grade in class, and the results made it look as if she'd never opened a book in her life. Who was to say that Arat wasn't trying his best to be a nice cooperative guy?
        "I mean," continued Jeniard, "Nobody understands what he goes through. They call him cruel, but it's everybody else who is cruel to him! Teachers and students alike. People say his parents are eager killers, but they aren't; they had family Donors, and used those. They're only junct because of old accidents long ago - not surprising considering they're renSimes and lack a channel's control. You can argue that it was criminally foolish of them to try to live on Gen transfer without channel supervision, but they're hardly the only renSimes guilty of trying that! And those rumors that they bought Arat a Gen for his first kill are just sickening. Nothing could be farther from the truth!"
        "Who did he kill?" asked Deah, curious.
        "Ask anyone - ask Betta. She'll tell you. It was Arat's nurse he killed. She had raised him from a baby, and she was the only one that ever gave a damn what he thought or felt. She was a mother to him, and the kill was an accident."
        A horror rose in Deah. "But... why would anyone spread lies about something like that?"
        "They hate him," said Jeniard in helpless anger. "All of them, and they hate his family too. The Tecton lets those rumors run wild to damage the power of the resistance. Throwing the Audnes in prison was only the first step. Now they have to break the resistance's back. The rumors make the Audnes monsters even to their supporters."
        Deah winced. "Jeez Jeniard, you sound like a radical."
        "I'm not… honestly I'm not, Deah," said Jeniard. "But I didn't come from here, I came from Gen Territory. I'm an outsider just like you. So looking from the outside, I can see how it is. The resistance is nothing to joke with. Half the population - the original population of the area - is sympathetic, and twenty percent actually support it. There have been three violent uprisings in the past thirteen years, all led by the Audnes, all dangerous enough to be taken seriously. If the Tecton wants to hold this area and continue to develop it in the name of Unity, it must eliminate the heart of the resistance: the Audnes. Arat's kill gave them the publicly acceptable excuse they needed to put the Audnes in prison and the rumors will do the rest. It may take years or even decades, but the resistance will die eventually. It has to, for the Tecton's sake."
        Deah nodded. "And Arat is caught in the middle."
        "He is, Deah. And he's terrified of the situation he's in. The first time I ever saw him in our dorm, he was crying. He made me promise never to tell what I'd seen - shen, he scared the crap out of me that night. But every night since then, it's been the same. And letters come. His family's lawyers, demanding more money. He pays them every penny of his stipend, and it's all hopeless because you know they will never be freed, and they will be dead soon like all the others. You do know they've died, don't you? Everyone who was captured that night with Arat. Most of them from disease, and the younger ones from complications in disjunction attempts. All that's left are his parents and one of his uncles.
        "And Deah, he's so ill. He's allergic to everything and his immune system is shot, every bug that comes through here hits him first. You have no idea what he goes through to hide his condition, day in and day out. If they knew, they'd try to fix him, and he's more allergic to medicine than anything else. It'd murder him. All it would take is one mistake, and it'd be done. And do you think they'd believe him if he told them so?"
        "But surely if he said -"
        "It makes no difference," hissed Jeniard. "Look at his family. Most of them didn't last two months in prison. And prison is what this school is for Arat; he can't leave, and no one will listen to what he needs. All he has to look forward to is a lifetime of service to the Tecton, his parents' enemies. Even if he embraces it wholeheartedly, who will believe him? Unless he travels far away from here, he'll always be looked upon with suspicion."
        Deah frowned.
        "I don't know what I'd have thought of him if I didn't know him better," said Jeniard. "But being his roommate I have no choice. Do you see? Even if I had known his family and even if I did hate him, I would still have to be his friend. No decent human being with a shred of compassion could watch that kind of suffering and not feel compelled to help."

        Deah could not like Arat. Arat was as unlikable a person as she had ever heard of, much less met. But she would see him differently because of what she now knew. She had known already that his arrogance and his fearsome anger were only a defense. She just hadn't known how much he was up against. She looked up at the statue and wondered if Jeniard came here a lot.

        "Why did you follow me?" asked Jeniard, at last.
        I didn't, Deah almost said, but then instead she said "I wanted to know why you ran." And that was true, but there was another truth as well: she couldn't bear the torment he'd displayed, and her compassion had not allowed her to ignore him. In that, they were the same.

        "You want to know why I ran?" Jeniard repeated.
        "Yes. Will you tell me?"
        Jeniard turned to look at her. He wore a halo of refracted gaslight, his features too dark to read. His nager was unstable, precariously pre-turnover, intense.
        "Do you believe it is possible for a person to be born into the wrong body?"
        Deah realized that just as there was another Arat that none of them knew, there was also another Jeniard. The meek thick-glasses boy of the classrooms and hallways was only a facade, and that she didn't know the man who lay within. Vital, complex, private. Unseen.
        "Do you believe," continued Jeniard, "that a woman can be mistakenly born into the body of a man, or someone meant to be Gen mistakenly change over?"
        "I don't... I'm not sure. I never thought about it before."
        "Do you think it's possible for a person to be born to the wrong parents?"
        Deah stiffened. "No!"
        "But your parents were Pen Gens, weren't they?"
        "They're renSimes."
        "No, I mean your real parents."
        Deah sighed. She shouldn't have expected it to remain a secret, not with Sorel's big mouth. "Well, yeah. I was adopted the day the treaty was signed."
        "Don't you ever wonder if you might have had better luck in school if...."
        "If my mother hadn't been Pen-drugged while she carried me?" Deah knew he could zlin the truth in her anyway, so she didn't bother trying to deny it. "Well... yeah. Actually I wonder about it a lot."
        "That's hard."
        "Yeah."
        The cool wind buffeted and flattened the tarps, punctuating the silence between the two channels.

        Deah knew what they said about Jeniard: that he played Gen to Arat, in private. Everybody knew Arat preferred Jeniard's support to that of most of the school's Donors. And she knew Jeniard had been born Out-Territory, to Gen parents.
        "You hadn't wanted to be Sime," she guessed.
        Jeniard turned his back on her suddenly. She could feel a raw, powerful emotion rising in him, desperation and longing and a pain centered in the heart, a pain that felt to her exactly like her childhood crush on her Simelan instructor. It was humbling to know that they all felt the same emotions, even in their most private and most tortured moments.
        "I should have been Gen," he said painfully. "I wanted to be. I assumed I'd be. My father and mother are both doctors. I thought I was going to be a doctor too, inherit their practice, grow old with them. And now I can't even live in the same nation!"
        "But they could join you here, in Sime Territory."
        "And let down all the people who depend on them? They couldn't do that. And even if they could, they'd be useless here, their skills a laughingstock. Nobody in Sime Territory thinks doctors are anything but butchers. They'd be living on my charity. I couldn't ask my parents to do that for me."
        Deah considered. "No, I guess not."
        "It's been nearly three months," Jeniard continued. "I should be used to being a Sime by now. But in the morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror and I'm shocked. I feel like a Gen when I'm walking down the hall, and then we get to class and they ask me to do something as a channel and it takes me a moment just to get myself into that mental space. It's like a -- a performance I must act out each day to get by and make the grade."
        Deah took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Wow."
        Jeniard laughed, a short bitter laugh. "I wish that was all it was! But it isn't. That isn't even the worst of it. I should have been a woman too."
        Deah was startled.
        "But Jeniard, you've been a boy all your life. There was never any question. How can you think that?"
        "You don't understand. It's something I just know, something I always knew. When I was a little boy, I used to envy the girls their dolls and dresses. I preferred the company of women - at family gatherings, I'd spend time with my mother and aunts and grandmothers, instead of with the men."
        Deah studied Jeniard intensely, trying to understand. He zlinned of truth, and Deah thought his expression was honest as well.
        "So you identify more with women, Jeniard, that doesn't necessarily mean -"
        "Sometimes," he whispered, "I just want to reach out and take him, Arat, in my arms. Not as a friend or even as a Gen, but as a woman takes a man. And bedamned what they say about channels!"
        Deah gaped at him. A million things went through her head in that instant, he must be joking and that's dangerous and but Betta said no channels actually feel this way.
        "But Jeniard, you can't... you just can't. That's -"
        "I know!" His voice was harsh. "I know, you don't have to tell me. It's just what I feel, not what I do."
        "But what are you going to do? You can't go on like this, the risk...."
        "If there were any justice in the world, if there were any fairness, I would at least be able to serve him in transfer. Why did I have to be a channel, on top of it?" His nager ached with the same poignant heartache; its similarity to Deah's childhood crush no longer seemed so strange.
        "Does... Arat doesn't feel the same way, does he?"
        "Shen, no. He has so many problems of his own I'm lucky he even knows I exist. And he was scared silly when that Bluke fellow had him cornered. It's a good thing I walked in when I did."
        Deah tried, but couldn't picture that scene at all. The difficulty lay in picturing Arat 'scared silly'. However, picturing 'scared silly' by itself was no problem, having experienced it herself so recently. "Whew," she said at last. "Look... maybe you should tell somebody."
        "I can't tell anyone!" cried Jeniard, appalled. "I can't even believe I've told you. Shen, you're not going to blab are you?" His words were frustrated, hopeless.
        "No! No, I would never."
        Jeniard zlinned her, and she opened to him, showing him the promise. There was a long silence.

        And then, his passion stilled as suddenly as if his heart itself had stopped. His turnover had arrived.
        "Jeniard?"
        "I wish I could live my life within this moment," he said huskily, "neither ruled by my emotions, nor yet feeling need. If only...."
        There came the wrenching sensation of lost footing, the beginning of two endless weeks of falling into death. Deah quickly altered her nager to help him, to support him through the worst of the transition.
        The remembrance of their voices seemed as colorless now as the physical world. For these moments, so close were their fields, that his need leached the life from her physical senses as well. Only the selyn glow was bright, diffuse from windows and the streets and seemingly the starry sky. The night world etched out against their senses in nageric form.
        Their eyes met, and he smiled a grim, practiced smile.
        "And now," he said very softly, "there is no more problem. For a little while."
        Deah nodded. Now if Jeniard thought of Arat, non-Gen, the predator in him would turn away in disinterest. He would feel nothing until transfer; not love, not regret, not even the pain of having been reprimanded in public.
        He was invincible until then.

        After a few moments, Deah carefully disengaged her field. Jeniard had recovered, settled in to the subtle advance of need. He looked as if he were about to thank her, but something held the words back. He simply nodded, and then turned his back on her and began to walk toward the dorms, his shadow catching against the roughness of the paving.
        "What are you going to do?" she asked suddenly, not wanting this moment to end, not wanting to go back to the stiffness of being on opposite sides of the Sorel-Mepig rivalry.
        Jeniard stopped and looked at her. "I've been here three months already. That means in only nine more months, they'll send me far away, probably to a border town because of my Genlan. I can make it that long. I have to."
        "I meant, what are you going to do right now?"
        "I'm going to walk back in there like nothing happened."
        "What will Arat say?"
        Jeniard's lips tightened. "Arat rarely has to say anything." He turned and walked back into the building's dark hulk, his footfalls hunter-soft.

        Deah understood now that Jeniard's transition to adulthood was as difficult as her own, if not more so. And she and Jeniard were not the only ones; there was Arat himself, supremely talented and yet struggling to overcome the handicaps of poor health, his own arrogance and other people's prejudices. There was Sorel, who hadn't yet realized that she would never be anything more than the channel with the biggest mouth and the smallest nager. They were just the colorful ones. If one looked closer, wasn't everybody locked in futile struggle against fate, the future, and themselves?
        The statue loomed above her, invisible to sight but an inky silhouette to her Sime senses. Male and female, Sime and Gen. His hand gripped hers, tentacles wrapped around, their eyes turned bravely skyward.
        "Is there any happily-ever-after?" she asked it. There was no reply.