"You volunteerin'?"

"Hell, no! Don't get me wrong. I couldn't care less what other kinds do, but that don't mean I'd do the same. She wants him, she kin have 'im. But I don't hafta talk to 'er."

"Still, Jindigar's different from the rest o' them Dushau. He's good folk. Solid. Don't like ta' see 'im ailing like this. I hope they know what's good for 'im."

They chattered on as they washed, and Krinata had to wait, hoping she wouldn't be found eavesdropping. She'd almost forgotten the time she'd come out of Jindigar's cabin wearing his robe. Gibson had drawn the logical and ridiculous conclusion. Without knowing the Dushau lifecycle, what else could they think? But the disapproval of cross-species fornication had frosted her already cool relationship to the rest of the Truth's complement.

It was worse because Jindigar didn't acknowledge the relationship, for those who didn't disapprove didn't know how to treat her. Knowing this, she could handle it. But did Jindigar know of the rumor or was he being protected from it?

Certainly the Dushau were keeping her away from Jindigar mistakenly, when she might even help him, Krinata began to note her surroundings and plan. They were in a desert. A force dome covered twenty-five identical barracks. One building was an infirmary. Once a day they were allowed to go to a larger building where they were fed adequate but revolting food. And though prisoners in other barracks were led off to a huge, flat building to work, all they were given to occupy their time was the maintenance of their own building .This they were all forced to do with primitive tools as guards stood over them and made sure they were properly humiliated.

Even Jindigar, as much as his fellows tried to protect him, was forced to scrub floors while guards gloated over the high and mighty prince brought low. But he took it with his usual disregard for the trappings of dignity, which in itself was a kind of genuine dignity of true royalty. Krinata took her cue from this, and threw herself into her tasks with a childlike glee that soon baffled the guards into leaving her alone, calling her simpleminded.

Once, Desdinda saw her chance to strike a blow at Jindigar, and surreptitiously knocked over the bucket from which he was scrubbing the latrine floor. Krinata, working at the other end of the room, could do nothing when the guard flattened Jindigar with the butt of his weapon.

The daytime heat was crushing, somewhere beyond human endurance. The nighttime chill was enough to leave ice on the bathroom floor. She was issued extra clothing, but it hardly helped. She spent a lot of her time wrapped in her blankets, curled on her bed, shivering. Or else, she'd lie prone, waiting for the heat to abate. So there was very little time when she could pursue Jindigar.

Finally, late one afternoon, she went out onto the porch for some air, and found Jindigar sitting at last unguarded. She sat down beside him. "I hope you're feeling better."

"So do I," he replied.

At least he's talking. "I'm going to be awfully blunt and candid, but I have to know. Have you been avoiding me? Do you want me here?"

She hadn't noticed two Dushau coming .out of the door behind her. They circled to confront her. "Leave him alone!"

She said calmly, "I was only talking to nun."

"I said leave him alone! He is not to be disturbed."

"I wasn't 'disturbing' him!" she retorted, beginning to feel anger building. How could they talk about him as if he weren't even there?

"I say you were."

Krinata didn't even know the Dushau's name. She stood up and faced him squarely, "Don't you think Jindigar should be the judge of that?"

"He's in no condition to judge anything."

She looked down at Jindigar who was staring blankly off into space. God, maybe they're right. But she wasn't going to make a scene that would put more stress on him. She made a frustrated sound and whirled to stalk back to her bunk and fling herself face down, trying not to cry.

Later, Rinperee found her there, and sat beside her waiting to be noticed.

"What do you want?" Krinata challenged, wishing she didn't sound so belligerent.

"To try to explain. I know you're important to Jindigar. And I know you want to help him. But..."

"If you're talking about that horrid rumor, it's not true!"

After a shocked pause, Rinperee asked, as if truly seeking information, "Can you honestly tell me Jindigar means nothing to you?"

She sat up, crossing her legs. She had to be civil, now that one of them was at least acknowledging her existence. "He's probably the best friend I have left now. But I'm nothing to him except a fairly competent programming ecologist who's a pretty mean bluffer, too. That stupid rumor is a lie."

"Krinata, I'm Dushau. You don't have to explain the 'stupidity' of that rumor to me. But you are wrong to think you're nothing to Jindigar but a programmer. And therein lies a dreadful danger to him. It was none of my business what he did to himself as an Oliat, but he's an Historian now, and his clarity of access to the Archive depends on his not acquiring any emotional scars to lie between him and that spliced memory. If he nurtures friendship for you, he will grieve hard at your death, and lose countless precious facts Grisnilter and all his forebears suffered so to preserve.

"That is why we guard ourselves so from entanglement with Ephemerals. When it was just his personal memories he was throwing away, few could intervene. Now, we all have a stake in his well-being. And I'm the closest we have to an expert on treating his condition. I've asked the others to keep you away from him, so I feel I owe you an explanation."

"Explain this, then. What's wrong with him? How do you know he doesn't need to talk to me?"

"In absorbing the Archive, he's undergone an intense mental strain, a challenge to his ability to sift reality from phantasm.

He's struggling on the verge of going episodic. Do you know what that means?"

"I'm a certified Oliat debriefing officer, and within a couple of credits of getting my field liaison rating. You may know Historians, but I'll bet I know more about Oliat."

Humor melted the stern expression on Rinperee's face. As if sharing a private joke, she bent toward Krinata and intimated, "My father, two of my brothers, and my sister are Oliat. I've no talent for it, or I would be also. I've taken a lifelong interest in it. I can't claim ignorance."

Abashed, Krinata apologized. "I have my little prides."

"And you're well entitled to them. I can't belittle what you've accomplished for Jindigar and all the rest of us. What can I say to bring you to trust my judgment?"

Krinata's curiosity wakened, and she set a test. "The Dushau unanimously deny being telepathic. If trading memories isn't telepathic, what is?"

"Telepathic, as it's commonly used, refers to perception of worded but unvoiced conscious thoughts of others. Few Dushau have such ability, and never very strongly. What Historians do in keeping the Archive—what the Oliat does to constitute and balance—have no comparison among Ephemerals. Therefore we deny the application of such concepts as telepathic or psychic or precognitive. It is simply our mode of awareness that is different."

"All right," said Krinata, chalking it all up to tangled semantics. They're telepaths, never mind what they say. "But Jindigar's undergone some kind of immense psychic shock of the same magnitude as losing his Oliat, and that nearly wiped him out. I know, I lived through it with him. And I helped him then. Ask him, if you don't believe me. What makes you think I can't help him now?"

"I'm neither Historian nor Oliat; I'm a Sentient psychologist. But I know enough to recognize a Dushau under an intolerable burden. Such is Jindigar. He needs time and quiet to assimilate events. You may have helped him before, in the short run. But, innocently enough, you were setting him up – now, or fifty or a hundred years from now when you must die – to take a grieving. Do you know what a grieving is? What it does to Dushau?"