Indignation warred with common sense and her upbringing. She wanted to storm Imperial Guard Headquarters, demanding careers be terminated for this outrage. She wanted to throw her rank around as she never had before. But she held back as the Emperor's words finally sank in. Anyone deeply associated with the Dushau—that meant anyone working for Survey– was suspect of a capital offense against the Crown.

She thought of Fiella being asked if they'd ever had Dushau guests. The lovable moron would surely name their guests of last night.

Resentfully, she set the bathroom screen on reflect and inspected her streaked face. She muttered, "Well, let them put me on trial. My record's clean! There's no conspiracy!"

But that hadn't protected Jindigar. Hardly able to stand, badly in need of privacy and rest, he'd been dragged out into public and marched off to be deported, his most private nightmare labeled sabotage. He should have gone with Trinarvil! Either way, he was out of her life forever.

Ashamed at her renewed surge of tears, she sniffled and steeled herself to approach the world again, suspecting it would take all that was in her—and there wasn't much left after the harrowing events of yesterday, little sleep last night, and some skipped meals. Low blood sugar. Must eat something.

Back in her office, she punched up some soup and nntri-crackers, and some fish for Imp. She swallowed the food without tasting, but gradually she began to think again.

There was a frightened, panicky thumping in her chest telling her to run for her life. And there was a rational adult saying that was silly. Yet what were her options?

She had friends she could call, invite herself to be their guests. But what kind of friend would that make her, implicating them? She had enough credit to buy passage back to Pesht, to inflict herself on her family. She could imagine her father's face when, after more than ten years of ignoring his advice about career, she came running home at first sign of difficulty. No. She was a better Zavaronne than that.

She had to get hold of herself. It was very late. When she left, the outer office was deserted—unusual, but not unheard of. She decided to walk home, and ended up pacing the city streets so abstracted she lost her way and had to use her leptolizer to find her apartment building.

Fiella was relieved to see her at last, and plied her with food and comforts, and even found some piol food for Imp. Krinata hadn't seen a news brief since Kamminth's Oliat had returned, so she had Fiella compile all items to do with the critical shortages, inflation, riots and Dushau. It boiled down to nearly an hour of fast coverage.

She was shocked to hear that the Binwons' three colonized worlds were accused of withholding raw protein shipments due by contract, claiming the foodstuffs didn't exist. There were shots of warehouses jammed with shipping containers, purportedly filled with the nonexistent protein. Imperial troops were being mustered and sent to that frontier, a warning that hoarding would not be permitted during this crisis.

One whole continent on Treptes, the home world of a gentle, flying folk, had a total power outage that lasted through their summer season. Refugees were streaming off that blistering, uninhabitable desert. Looting and mugging had broken out, utterly against the Treptes nature. It was sparked by sheer desperation. The world's spaceports were closed to emigration by order of the Emperor.

On the more cosmopolitan Ramussin, where many species had colonized, and more had taken up residence, an anti-Dushau riot had broken out just after the Emperor's broadcast. It was virtually destroying a major residential district of the capital. Dushau sympathizers were being publicly executed in gruesome ways, along with a few Dushau.

"Krinata, do you really want to see those details?" asked Fiella.

"No, no, that's enough. I don't need any more nightmares."

She forced herself to go through a normal evening routine, and set her sleep field for the entire night.

The next three days, she walked through her work like a zombie. They turned out the Margo prospectus, and Krinata presented it at the Colonization Board meeting. It was approved without comment, and posted so shopping colonists could sign up. But Krinata felt the tense reserve among her colleagues. If she was in trouble, so were they—so was all of Survey, for they worked intimately with the Oliat teams.

People like Clorinda Dover made haste to adopt an anti-Dushau patter, saying they'd always distrusted the Immortals. In fact, the misnomer, immortal, became a common epithet countering the slur most people imagined Dushau meant by terming them Ephemerals. Dushau might live thousands of years, but they were very mortal. Krinata had only to think of the deaths she'd seen to know that.

Krinata tried copying the new style, but choked on the words, and despised her cowardice. She was no longer hiding from the obvious troubles of the Empire, but she couldn't betray her friends and herself for political expediency. All they could do to her was fire her, and there were other jobs. Even in such an economy, there were other jobs.

When she'd reached that emotional state on the second day, she ordered the mess in her storeroom—which had also been raped—and her bathroom cleaned up. Then she sent the bill to the Imperial Guards.

She was feeling pleased with herself at last when she got home that night, firmly telling herself that Jindigar and the others were halfway to Dushaun by now and it was time to put that part of her life behind her. But behind her eyelids, she was tormented with images of Jindigar convulsed in suffering. Mother always told me I had too vivid an imagination for my own good. She was right. Then Fiella told her the bad news.

Some Sentient she didn't know had been questioning her about Jindigar's visit, and what use the Dushau had made of her. Krinata had the probe played back and determined that the person behind sabotaging Finemar was probably still after Jindigar, perhaps trying to steal the Raichmat report Jindigar had worked on here that night. She still couldn't believe it was the Emperor. But it didn't matter, Jindigar had used Arlai to assemble his data. Fiella knew nothing.

On the third day, she felt dragged out by a headache and deep muscle ache from too much tension. From her office she evoked Finemar. hoping the Sentient was back on-line after being repaired, and that the infirmary was operating again. But a strange Sentient answered, introduced herself and asked, "How may I serve?"

Krinata hunched on the edge of her chair, forgetting her headache. "What happened to Finemar?"

"I've replaced him."

"But where is he?"

"I don't know. On some other assignment, I presume. May I help you? There are other patients."

"Uh... no, thank you. It's not important."

The screaming fear was back. There'd been nothing wrong with Finemar that he couldn't have fixed by himself. She left early, thought of going to a theater or concert, knowing she needed to relax. At home, all she had was Imp for company, and Fiella. But she couldn't make herself part of the throng streaming into the amphitheater for a classical Nopne concert. It resembled the riots she'd viewed too regularly lately.

She didn't want to talk to any of her friends, couldn't bear to hear the anti-Dushau slogans on their lips. They weren't friends actually, she realized. It'd been over a year since she'd had a serious lover, and the rest were just acquaintances, sharing interests but not attitudes.

Restlessly, she walked home, buying small things to nibble on as she went, trying to tempt her lagging appetite with delicacies from far planets. There were no shortages in the Allegiancy capital yet, though prices were soaring.

Even the long walk didn't get her tired enough to sleep without help. But she was becoming addicted to the field, and deliberately left it off that night. Around midnight, when she'd tossed for the thousandth time to shake a ghost nightmare in which members of her Oliat were dying all about her, her senses winking out as if somebody were putting out her eyes and ears with a hot poker, the screen in her room turned from mirror into gleaming starship bridge. In the center paced Arlai. He turned as the screen focused, and looked at Krinata lying in bed.