Finally in command of the levels again, Jindigar brought his Oliat down from the intense awareness focus, letting the individualities emerge as much as possible, short of adjourning his Oliat.

Breathing easier, he allowed the sense of triumph to surface at last. They had finally worked a full function.

He coughed. He felt drained and weak, and suddenly a whirling blackness billowed up from nowhere, enveloping his Oliat. Disoriented, he just had time to realize that it was Krinata's mind surrendering to unconsciousness and to feel Storm catch him as he fell. That was a mistake. I should have adjourned us.

Hiding in a huge hollow log, rotted out to a thin shell. Outside, the giant anthropoid covered with tufts of stringy gray hair prowled hungrily, sniffing and nudging at the log. All of them– the surviving Outriders included–quivered with shameless fear. Vistral was a shattered planet, the ecology hopelessly upset. Everything was ragingly hungry, no longer selective about diet.

They had seen three Cassrians in their scouting party eaten alive, their exoskeletons cracked open at the thorax and their organs sucked out by the gray giants. A similar fate awaited them all, if anyone so much as moved while the predator lurked outside. Rescue had been too long in coming.

Someone sneezed–

A convulsive wave of terror engulfed them, throwing them up out of the nightmare, the sound of the sneeze still ringing through Oliat consciousness—hut which Oliat?

Jindigar awoke, sitting doubled over, the aftermath of the sneeze smarting through his air passages. Coughing, he realized he was still Centering his Oliat, with one of his officers reliving an episode from a previous Oliat. He groped to control the linkages again.

//It was Eithlarin!// Zannesu recovered first and scrambled out of bed to her side. //The Vistral nightmare.//

They were in their quarters adjacent to the Aliom Temple hall. They must have been carried here and put snugly to bed. The large room, built to accommodate the seven of them, was compartmentalized by thin veils of indoor shrubbery lit by the skylight and the windows high up the walls. While Jindigar couldn't see all his officers, he sensed their disorientation as their awarenesses swept the room.

In the great fireplace at the far end of the room, a new fire licked at a tree-trunk-sized log. A pot of hot cereal steamed on the warmer hearth next to the teapot, which filled the room with the aroma of a native herb. To one side of the fire there was a hole in the wall that would be a door to their new indoor plumbing facilities. It was covered over with a rough-woven tarpaulin. Fingers of chill spring wind swirled amid the overheated air from the fireplace.

Jindigar sneezed again, realizing his body was fighting a microbe invasion allowed to take hold during their long exposure. In an hour or so he'd be fine.

As they all began to stir, sitting up, wrapping blankets around themselves, it occurred to him that it had been more than a day since they'd eaten anything. They had gone to the Dissolution on the usual fast. Small wonder Eithlarin's having one of her episodes.

He dragged himself to his feet and went to kneel beside Zannesu, who was comforting the Protector as best he could.

//I'm sorry,// Eithlarin apologized, still shaking.

//It isn't your fault,// assured Zannesu. //We'll work through this as soon as we're married. It won't take much once we're through Renewal onset. Next time you work Oliat, you won't be like this.//

She glanced at Jindigar. //It's unprofessional to inflict such things on the other officers.//

He'd known from the start that she had no business working Oliat with the scars from her previous Oliat experience un-healed, but he admired her courage in coming to Phanphihy to be a colonist after witnessing the destruction of a colony that had disrupted its planet's ecology. And she had known there was no therapy facility here. But then, it wouldn't have been much better on Dushaun.

She had been the only survivor from Vistral, Of the three officers who had been lifted off the planet, one had gone episodic, retreating into his farthest memories and totally losing touch with current time. The other had died in the aftermath of Dissolution shock brought on when the predator had touched an Oliat Officer and thus broken into the psychic linkages, flooding them with predator's ferocity.

Eithlarin alone had been tough enough to survive with nothing more than occasional nightmares. But they made her a threat to Jindigar's Oliat. No Dushau could resist the arousal of such atavistic terrors, for their species was evolved prey, scavengers who had learned to run rather than light predators, and to glean the predator's leavings. Eithlarin's unhealed terrors made the whole Oliat unusually sensitive to break-in trauma.

No one blamed Eithlarin except, perhaps– Jindigar whipped around, searching Krinata's bed. Everyone else was sitting up, doing waking exercises. But Krinata lay swathed to the eye brows in blankets, tossing feverishly. Very little came to him along the Outreach linkage.

Rising stiffly, he glanced at Dar, who seemed as well as the rest. He and Krinata were the only ones suffering fever. He sent his gladness along the linkage to Dar but went to Krinata. Darllanyu stifled an irrational hurt, telling him, when she knew he'd felt it, //It's Renewal. I can't control it. I don't want the Oliat– her—to claim you now://

// Renewal has affected the linkages too, // Jindigar told them all. //We shouldn't be getting this much emotional texture across interfaces.// lie knell beside Krinata. Her pale skin was flushed pink—human blood was red, not purple. Dilated blood vessels trying to cool her? Her skin did feel warmer than it should, though damp.

Krinata squirmed away from Jindigar's touch on her forehead, and instantly her dizziness swept through the Oliat. //She should have a medic's attention.//

Here was yet another reason it was insane to use a human as an Oliat Officer, even temporarily. The Dushau immune system had never met anything it couldn't handle quickly and permanently. Jindigar resolved to take much better care of Krinata in the future—but was afraid he wouldn't be able to. He hadn't deliberately abused her this time. Yet their lives were dependent on her beating this disease.

He tucked the blanket around her, reflecting that humans were evolved predators. She didn't seem so fearsome now, but he knew she could be deadly. How many times had her aggression saved his life? How many times had she risked her life and honor to save his? He supposed he would count them someday, but he would also have to count the times her best efforts had sent them to the brink of destruction. There was no other individual in the cosmos whom he admired more, and none whom he feared more.

//Jindigar!//

Darllanyu's plea pierced him. They had all followed the gist of his feelings, though not his thoughts. But none of them had lived through what he and Krinata had. He glanced at the high windows where spring lightning danced across the rain-darkened sky. Moving Krinata through that would only make matters worse. //Don't worry,// he assured them. Ill wouldn't think of bringing a human medic in here. It would destroy the worldcircle, and I don't think any of us can tolerate an invasive touch.// After that nightmare, even Trinarvil would jeopardize them.

He coughed again. //Very likely whatever has attacked Krinata is a mutation of what I'm fighting.// They'd brought the microlife of their interstellar civilization with them, and it had long since developed the knack of mutating to live in new metabolisms. Throughout the galaxy, standard practice was to use Dushau blood to make antibodies effective for other species.