//I think Krinata can be brought sufficiently close to consciousness so we can adjourn fully, // he decided. //We're straining her system even now. Dissolution would be better for her, but we'd need her active cooperation. So I'll go to the lab and have serum made for her.//

They argued, but there was really no choice. Darllanyu stayed out of it, disqualifying herself because of her feelings. As Eithlarin applied cold towels to Krinata's face and neck, and Jindigar gathered up the linkages to work the adjournment, Darllanyu finally commented, //The wedding flames have burned out. We'll have to start over now.//

//It will be a while until Krinata's well enough,// cautioned Jindigar, feeling her anguish as well as his own cold emptiness. Darllanyu was the deepest into Renewal onset, the most unstable. Everything in him yearned to surrender to her, to let her systems trigger his own. //We mustn't let this loose among us now. Come, it will help a little to be adjourned.//

His link to Krinata was dull and wispy, though her eyes were open a crack and he could feel her mind struggling to orient. He shut down all the linkages to match that one, then summoned the image of spaceship pressure hatches closing across each corridor that stretched between them.

It was Krinata's visualization of adjournment. They had adopted it for this Oliat because none of their symbols worked for her. As he finished dogging the hatches, each of them returned to individual awareness with only subliminal assurance that the others existed. But any trauma one of them suffered would blow the hatches wide-open. Even separated, they shared holistic awareness, a residual that made linear, vocal speech very difficult. They could speak with close associates and zunre who could be trusted to grasp their meaning, but speech with strangers would remain difficult.

Yanking on some clothes, Jindigar took a rain slicker with a deep hood and plunged out into the torrential downpour. He met no one. The graveled walks were awash in spots, and before he reached the north gate, he was soaked and chilled again. He came out into the walled courtyard and surveyed the place.

Around the enclosing palisade, warehouses and offices had been built where ephemerals traded with Dushau who were not in Renewal. Business was suspended today while the community cleaned up from the battle with the clickerhive.

To his left, against the west palisade, a long building was divided into single rooms, each with its own outside door and smoking chimney. It housed the seven Oliat Outriders when they were on duty.

Rain poured off the roof that slanted down over the rough wood porch. Bentwood chairs were scattered against the wall out of the worst of the wet, and in one of them sat Cyrus Benwilliam, feeding shreds of clickerbeast meat to a young pet piol.

The parent piols had come with them across the galaxy, adopting Jindigar and caring for him with great propriety. Here, they had settled beside the fish-farming pond and proceeded to try to populate the planet with piols. It seemed the species' goal was to provide a personal pet piol for every sapient in the galaxy.

As Jindigar sloshed to the porch and paused to scrape mud off his boots on the rail provided, Cyrus looked up. His first reaction at the sight of Jindigar was fear—that Krinata was dead, the Oliat shattered. Jindigar's manner dispelled that, but the human sensed that something was wrong. As he searched Jindigar for a clue, the piol snatched the remaining meat and ran off to roll merrily in a puddle and pretend that his prize was a fish.

The human was too professional to speak to Jindigar until spoken to. Jindigar wanted to reassure him, but the words wouldn't come. He hadn't realized how much harder it would be adjourning from Center than from any other Office. Before they'd balanced, it hadn't been this hard.

Grasping the difficulty, Cy called over his shoulder, "Storm! Jindigar's here—I think they've adjourned."

The end door opened, sending a shaft of light out into the gloomy morning. Storm, one of Jindigar's closest ephemeral friends, his most trusted Outrider, squinted out at Jindigar, then turned and shouted, "It is Jindigar!" He stepped aside to admit the Center. His professionalism was unimpeachable, yet Jindigar had to set his will not to turn and retreat. How am I ever going to do this?

He shed his slicker into waiting hands, telling himself it would be easier once he broke that initial barrier. This was yet another reason no one dared serve at Center twice. It could become impossible to rejoin normal society.

The room was cozy, a fire going and food steaming. To the left, a door opened into the adjacent room, and beyond, Jindigar glimpsed other doors open down the row of rooms, the other Outriders gathering quickly. The four Lehiroh men were co-husbands whose wife had died when Jindigar's ship had crashed on this world. Cyrus and two other human men, trainees, completed the complement of Outriders.

Jindigar understood that Storm and his co-husbands had an agreement with a Lehiroh woman who had just borne them a son, conceived before it had been decided to train the full Oliat, and before Storm's crew had come back to work, tabling their personal life. The decision to Dissolve had freed them to resume relations with the woman and to dare the joy in the care of their child. All four of the men had well-developed breasts from nursing, and Jindigar knew that the baby had to be here somewhere unless the woman had him today.

The human trainees were the last to come in and were quickly taken aside by the other Lehiroh as Storm maneuvered Jindigar to the fireplace, his back to the near strangers.

This is for Krinata, Jindigar told himself. She's done more than this for me. He rehearsed the words in his mind, then forced them out at Storm. "We adjourned."

Comprehension and a bit of relief flushed his humanoid features. When not lactating, the Lehiroh males could easily be confused with humans. Jindigar rested both his hands on Storm's shoulders and said, "Krinata has fever."

"No! I was afraid of that. I should have put a coat on her even—"

"No. Could have destroyed our focus—destroyed this colony! Storm—I go to the lab."

"For a blood specimen?" He grinned but politely kept his predator's teeth behind his lips. "Cy, get your coat. We'll go along and explain to them for Jindigar."

Minutes later, they trudged down the path that skirted the cluster of ephemeral dwellings. Each species was building in its own pattern. Several hundred people still lived in huge common units, for winter had interrupted the projects,

On both sides of the path, foundations had been laid for buildings that would house their rebuilt technology. The Dushau Historians had already resurrected dozens of basic crafts and manufacturing processes from the depths of memory. The ephemerals were versatile and talented enough to learn many such skills. By their most optimistic timetable, the Historians figured it might only take a thousand years to attain space travel again. But, with setbacks such as the clickerhive moving in on them, it could take twice that long.

They passed the houses and skirted the livestock corrals and barns, which showed little activity except for the waspish Cassrians at necessary chores. They enjoyed the rain but hated the chill, and called complaints back and forth in their multi-pitched, whistling voices.

No one worked the fields. They were too marshy even for the light step of the Cassrians. Jindigar resisted the impulse to bring the Oliat to focus on the life in those fields. Phanphihy had a vigorous microlife, and he knew mutant forms were already finding the offworld crops very tasty. If they'd made an error in estimating that process as they had in banishing the minor vermin only to thus attract the killer clickerhive...