The recruits examined the weather station, its sensors fully extended and the thick trunk of the unit completely extruded from the installation into which it retreated like a burrowing animal during “inclement weather.” Their guide's phrase occasioned wry laughter. He even smiled at their response. Ballybraners had struck Killashandra as a humorless crew, and she wondered if the fever would wrest her sense of the ridiculous from her. Rimbol wouldn't be the same person without his funning.

Tukolom then announced that they would assist the technician by applying to the weather station a protective film against gale-flung particles. The recruits had first to scrape off the previous application, not an arduous job since the gale had removed most of the substance, which was not a jelly, a lubricant or a true paint.

Killashandra found the scraping and painting soothing occupations, for she had to concentrate on keeping her brush strokes even. Overlapping was better than skimping. She could see where the alloy of the arm she worked on had been scored in thin lines that argued other workers had not been as conscientious. Concentration kept her from disturbing reflections such as Rimbol's being “satisfactory” and Jezerey's convulsions.

Borton demonstrated his anxieties by being loud in complaint on the return journey, nagging at Tukolom for more details than the “satisfactory” prognosis. Although Killashandra sympathized with the former shuttle pilot's concern for his friend, his harangues began to irritate. She was sorely tempted to tell him to turn it off, but the scraping and painting had tired her, and she couldn't summon the energy to speak.

When the transport settled back at the hangar, she made sure she was the last to descend. She wanted nothing more than a hot bath and quiet.

Nor was she refreshed at all by the bathing. She dialed for a Yarran beer and for information on Rimbol. He was continuing “satisfactory,” and the beer tasted off. A different batch, she thought, not up to the standard of the Guild at all. But she sipped it, watching the dying day color her hillside with rapid shifts into the deepest purples and browns of shadow. She left the half-finished beer and stretched out on her bed, wondering if the fatigue she felt was cumulative or the onset of the symbiotic fever. Her pulse was normal, and she was not flushed. She pulled the thermal cover over her, turned on her side, and fell asleep wondering what would be found for the remainder of the recruits to do on the morrow.

The waking buzz brought her bolt upright in the bed.

“Lower that narding noise!” she cried, hands to her ears to muffle the incredible din.

Then she stared about her in surprise. The walls of her quarters were no longer a neutral shade but sparkled with many in the all-too-brilliant morning sun. She turned up the window opacity to cut the blinding glare. She felt extraordinarily rested, clearer of mind than she had since the morning she realized she didn't owe Fuerte or the Music Center any further allegiance. As she made for the toilet, the carpeting under her bare feet felt strangely harsh. She was aware of subtle odors in the facility, acrid, pungent, overlaid by the scent she used. She couldn't remember spilling the container last night. The water as she washed her face and hands had a softness to it she had not previously noticed.

When she shrugged into her coverall, its texture was oddly coarse on her hands. She scrubbed them together and then decided that perhaps there'd been something abrasive in the paint she had used the day before. But her feet hadn't painted anything!

Noise struck her the moment the door panel opened. She flinched, reluctant to enter the corridor, which she was startled to find empty. The commotion was coming from the lounge. She could identify every voice, separating one conversation from another by turning her head. Then she noticed the guide stripe at the far end of the corridor, a stripe that was no longer dull gray but a vivid bluish purple.

She stepped back into her room and closed the panel, unable to comprehend the immense personal alteration that had apparently transformed her overnight.

“Am I satisfactory?” she cried out, a wild exultation seizing her. She threw her arms about her shoulders. “Is MY condition satisfactory?”

A tap on her door panel answered her.

“Come in.”

Tukolom stood there with two Guild medics. That did not surprise her. The expression on Tukolom's face did. The mentor drew back in astonishment, expressions of incredulity, dismay, and indignation replacing his customary diffidence. It struck Killashandra as peculiar that this man, who had undoubtedly witnessed the transformation of thousands of recruits, should appear displeased at hers.

“You will be conducted to the infirmary to complete the symbiosis.” Tukolom took refuge in a rote formula. His hand left his side just enough to indicate that she should leave with the medics.

Thoroughly amused at his reaction and quite delighted with herself, Killashandra stepped forward eagerly, then turned with the intention of picking up the lute. Now that she knew she'd have her hearing the rest of her life, she wanted the instrument.

“Your possessions to you will be later brought. Go!” Tukolom's anger and frustration were not overt. His face was suffused with red.

There was not the least physical or philosophical resemblance between Tukolom and Maestro Valdi, yet at the moment Killashandra was reminded of her former teacher. She turned her back on Tukolom and followed her guides to the ramp. Just as she emerged from the corridor, she heard Tukolom peremptorily calling for attention. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw that every head was turned in his direction. Once again, she had made a major exit without an audience.

It was bad enough to be whisked away as if she'd committed a crime, but the meditechs kept asking if she felt faint or hot or cold, as if she was negligent when she denied any physical discomfort. Therefore, she could scarcely admit to a sense of vitality she had never previously experienced, to the fact that everything about her, even their plain green tunics, had taken on a new luster, that her fingers twitched to touch, her ears vibrated to minute sounds. Most of all, she wanted to shout her exultation in octaves previously impossible for the human voice.

The extreme anticlimax came when the chief meditech, a graceful woman with dark hair braided into an elaborate crown, wanted Killashandra to submit to the physical scanner.

“I don't need a scanner. I have never felt so well!”

“The symbiont can be devious, my dear Killashandra, and only the scanner can tell us that. Do please lie down. You know it doesn't take long, and we really need an accurate picture of your present physical well-being.”

Killashandra stifled her sudden wish to scream and submitted. She was in such euphoria that the claustrophobic feel of the helmet didn't bother her, nor did the pain threshold nerve jab do more than make her giggle.

“Well, Killashandra Ree,” Antona said, absently smoothing a strand into her coronet, “you are the lucky one.” Her smile as she assisted Killashandra to her feet was the warmest the young woman had seen from a full Guild member. “We'll just make certain this progress has no set backs. Come with me and I'll show you your room.”

“I'm all right? I thought there'd be some fever.”

“There may be fever in your future,” Antona said, smiling encouragingly as she guided Killashandra down a wide hall.

Killashandra hesitated, wrinkling her nose against the odors that assailed her now: dank sweat, urine, feces, vomit, and as palpable as the other stenches, fear.

“Yes,” Antona said, observing her pause, “I expect it'll take time for you to become accustomed to augmented olfactory senses. Fortunately, that's not been one of my adaptations. I can still smell, would have to in my profession, but odors don't overwhelm me. I've put you at the back, away from the others, Killashandra. You can program the air conditioner to mask all this.”