their backs to the others. As she sat beside him, he inched away from her and clenched his hands together. "It's because you were familiar when suddenly everything had become strange—strangely familiar. Rantan even looks like Turminor! It's as if we're lost three hundred years in the past." He glanced at her. "Dissolution distorts perceptions. I couldn't–none of us could force ourselves to look up recent events."

At last she understood. Loss of sanity, loss of orientation amid the vast, echoing caverns of their millennia-long memories, that was the chief terror and very real danger of the Dushau, for it meant an inevitable and early death. Remembering what her overly vivid imagination had conjured for her moments ago, knowing it was the palest shadow of what he experienced, she said, "In your place, I couldn't have either."

He studied her. "I may be Kamminth's most experienced officer, but even I've never had to change Offices during a Dissolution. Until you walked in, I didn't know..." His disobedient hand strayed again to her cheek, seeking contact with a slippery and wavering reality. "May I?"

She suppressed the jab of terror, focused on a worn spot in the carpet, and put both her arms around his chest—they barely met behind him—and hugged him. He wrapped both his arms about her, bending his head until his napped cheek rested against hers, and surrendered to the trembling. It would be ever so much better for him if she were Oliat. But only Dushau, of all the hundreds of species of the Allegiancy, had the talent for joining into a team resonant to the ecology of a new world– able to evaluate its habitability for other known species, to determine if a planet harbored a sentient or pre-sentient species. And very few Dushau had the Oliat talent.

Krinata sensed the other four Dushau steadying as Jindigar did. When he finally raised his head, fixing her with his deep midnight eyes, he seemed to have become Outreach in truth. As he spoke again, his voice descended to its normal register, somewhere near the resonance of her bone marrow. "Kamminth's thanks you."

She accepted that gracefully, then touched up a timecheck on her leptolizer. "How long until your Dissolution is completed?"

"Forewarn, our Inreach, is still unconscious. We'll be held in limbo like this until she recovers. But now, thanks to you, I can Outreach for her. In a few days, we'll be able to give the debriefing your department is so anxious for."

She twisted on the seat, offended. "I didn't come for the department!" Appalled at her inappropriate anger, she added, "I came because Zinzik is making a terrible mistake, and I wanted to find some way to stop it."

The piol was clawing its way up Jindigar's white pants. Jindigar grinned at it, showing sharp blue teeth with darker blue grinders behind, and gathered the creature up, lovingly swinging it over his head and nuzzling it, laughing at its delighted squeals. He handed her the piol and got to his feet. "If you didn't come simply to start the debriefing..."

"I wouldn't until you all were ready to work."

"Then we must thank you even more." He made an old-style courtly bow with an easy grace the modern imitators couldn't mimic. "We're indebted. However, our Emperor has commanded our presence, and we will obey."

The creature squirming in her arms, the very solemn Dushau before her, the onlookers ignored behind her, the decadence of the raw fire beside her, all combined to transport Krinata into the past and render her speechless.

Jindigar paused, as if waiting for some ritual reply, and when it didn't come, he said with difficulty, "May I ask a different service?"

He sounded like an actor in an authentic historical. "Jindigar, I don't know how to don imperial courtliness. I'm a programming ecologist, not a member of the court."

"I see," he said thoughtfully. The faint thrumming of imperial music came to them, and Jindigar tilted his head to listen. "We don't have much time. I suspect, if Rantan is really serious about this game, he'll be offended if we appear in hospital garb." He turned, went to the rack of clothing against the wall, and fingered the material. "Authentic, too. Hideously uncomfortable. But I suppose we must dress." He took down one of the garments, raking it with his eyes. "Somebody researched us—or raided a museum!"

He went toward Kamminth and the others, holding out the crisp gold and white robes. In an archaically flavored Dushauni dialect which she could follow only because of her intensive study of the modern language, he said, "I hope you remember your manners. We've got to play this out."

The four of them had relaxed now, too, Jindigar's sense of reality having seeped through their nerves. Kamminth took the robes, examined them, and agreed. The others went to the rack and selected their own garments. Jindigar took a pure yellow surplice over a white undertunic edged with black fringe. They all stripped and dressed without even fumbling at the awkward fastenings. The fine indigo nap covered every bit of them, giving them an oddly dressed look even without clothing. She hardly noticed their lack of mammary glands or external genitalia; general size and shape distinguished male from female. It was their familiarity with the antique dress mode that fascinated Krinata.

She watched spellbound as Jindigar wound a long gold sash around his head to make a turban, and got it right the first time, without a mirror. Looking at him, Krinata identified the costume: Dushaun's first rank sept, and a highly born member of it, too. Three hundred years ago, she'd hardly have been allowed to speak to him. Kamminth likewise claimed aristocratic lineage, but the other three men were undistinguished.

Without a trace of self-consciousness in his outlandish costume, Jindigar came toward her and rendered an elaborate bow, uttering a formal salutation to Zavarrone.

She shrank away in raw embarrassment. "This is silly!"

His manner changed abruptly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to disconcert you. Apparently, we must learn a new culture."

"It's just me," she said, suppressing a need to squirm. 'This is all such a waste of time."

"I couldn't agree more," he said. "But I must ask a favor, or a boon, depending on the dialect you prefer." The music had ceased. Rantan was on his throne giving a speech.

She laughed and tried to perform the obeisance she'd spent hours in a Court Manners Class trying to perfect, but stumbled into him, off balance. "You see? I can't do it!"

"Would you be willing to try? In public?"

"What?"

"Krinata, we're not sure Kamminth can hold us together out there. Stand with us before the Emperor. If I revert to Receptor and can't speak, or if something happens to Fedeewarn, make excuses for us. That's all I'm asking."

"But I..." she began to protest. Then, seeing his genuine need graven on his napped face, and his absolute determination to go through with this, she said, "If you don't mind the risk that I'll blurt out something stupid, or trip on my own feet– sure."

The midnight eyes searched hers. "We'll risk it."

He turned to Kamminth, and she formed them into a marching square with herself at the center, Jindigar at the rear left corner, moving them into position before the carved whitewood doors of the audience chamber. Jindigar drew Krinata to his side. "If you will hold my position here, I will take the Outreach position."

Just like that, she stood in the Receptor's Office, as if she were Dushau. Before she could object, Jindigar advanced to center front. The position behind him, just in front of Kamminth, was vacant—their Inreach, Fedeewarn, unconscious in the infirmary.

Jindigar had once moved in these circles. Surely he knew she had no business marching in an Oliat formation. No human did. He doesn't mean anything by it. If s just protocol. Something inside her squirmed at this real life replay of one of her favorite fantasies—her Oliat returning to the Allegiancy in triumph. She told herself, Act your age! and straightened up.