"Oh. Oh, okay, sure." He hesitated, unsure of what to say. She didn't seem particularly happy to see him. Yes, she was tired, and of course it had been traumatic-but Tolk was a surgical nurse. She had seen more people die in a month than many nurses saw pa.s.s away in a decade, and under far more unpleasant conditions. She was as tough as durasteel. How could an explosion that she hadn't even been directly involved in affect her so?

He glanced at his chrono. "My shift starts in a few minutes," he said, and was slightly shocked to realize he was grateful for an excuse to leave. "I'll . . . comm you when I'm done, if that's okay?"

"That-that would be fine," she said.

He hugged her, and again she seemed to stiffen under his hands. He kissed her, and she returned it, but it was like kissing his sister-there was not even a hint of fire in it.

As he walked through the falling snow toward the OT, Jos felt a sudden sense of nameless dread envelop him. Tolk had come off the transport changed. He didn't know how or why, but she wasn't the same woman who had gone up there.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong . . .

Den sensed that something was different when he took his usual place at the sabacc table.

It took him a moment to identify what it was. Then he started to order a drink, and realized that Teedle wasn't on duty.

That was odd. Droids didn't work in shifts like organ-ics-Teedle was always there, whenever the cantina was open. Except that she wasn't, today.

Neither were Jos and Tolk, but that was to be expected, given that the latter had just made the drop from MedStar. The players, besides himself, were Klo, Barriss, I-Five, and a new face-one he was rather pleased to see: Eyar Marath, the Sull.u.s.tan singer from the troupe. Den took his seat, which was right across the table. She looked up from her drink at him and smiled.

Den smiled back. He'd been wondering how to casually run into her, and now here was a platinum opportunity. It had been so long since he'd seen another of his own species that he'd probably find the hag-witch of To'onalk attractive. No problem here, though-Eyar was drop-dead gorgeous. She was young, true-he was probably old enough to be her father-but, judging from the took she was giving him, she wasn't thinking of him in thai way. She had l.u.s.trous eyes, dark as obsidian and large even for a Sull.u.s.tan. Her ears were delicately shaped, with large whorls and lobes; her jowls glistened with saliva. They flushed a deeper shade of pink as she smiled at him, Oh, yeah. What a sugarcane this one was!

"Wa loota, maga nu," she said. "Mi nama Eyar Ah-tram."

Den blinked. She was speaking in the inferior inflective, just as a fern would to a mate.

"Wa denga, see't boos'e. Mi nama Den Dhur."

She smiled again, and suddenly Den wasn't the least hit cold. Not the least bit. n.o.body's father at this table.

"Where's Teedle?" he asked the table at large. He felt a sudden urge for a drink.

No one answered.

He glanced at Merit, saw the big Equani looking slightly discomfited. He said, "She is no longer with us."

"What? Rea.s.signed? She just got here." He wanteda Blaster or two to loosen him up; it wasn't like he needed it, but still . . .

There came another uncomfortable silence. Then I-Five broke it: "The TDL-five-oh-one unit has been disa.s.sembled."

"Come again?"

"It was necessary to obtain the central drive component. The TDL-five-oh-one unit was one of the latest models from Cybot Galactica, and its YX-Ninety Drive's technical specs were compatible with the phase harmonics generator secondary drive of the force-dome. It was-"

Den held up his hands to stop the droid. "Hold up a minute-you're telling me she's been cannibalized?"

I-Five's expression and voice seemed flatter than usual, if that were possible.

"Engineering Section learned that it would be a minimum of five standard weeks before a replacement drive for the damaged generator could be delivered, so they sought some suitable replacement, and requisitioned the TDL-five-oh-one's-"

"Teedle," Den said. "Her name's Teedle." I-Five paused a moment, then continued: "They requisitioned the unit's YX-Ninety. Its field parameters are within the range needed to realign the phase harmonics generator."

Den stared at the droid, his jaw sagging. "I don't believe this. They broke her down for parts'? How could they? She was more than just-" He stopped as the full implications of I-Five's statement hit him. "Field parameters. I remember. You asked her about that-'

Barriss said, "Den, I-Five isn't-" Den ignored her and stared at the droid. " Yow fingered her?"

I-Five said, "I was ordered to determine the potential usefulness of the unit's drive."

"I can't believe it. One of your own kind."

"As much as I hate to rain on your righteous indignation," Barriss said, "there are one or two things about this that you don't know." There was something odd in her voice, Den noticed, but he didn't have time to worry about that. His best server was gone and her "friend" I-Five had been responsible.

"I know all I need to know-"

"Teedle volunteered, Den." That from Merit.

He stared at the minder. "Huh?"

Merit said, "She knew what the consequences would be. It was Teedle who noticed the range compatibility. !-Five merely confirmed it. It wasn't his idea."

Den shook his head. Gutted her. As sentient as anybody at the table, and funny besides, but-rip! just like that.

"I believe you owe I-Five an apology," Barriss said. Again, there was something in her voice, something he couldn't quite pin down. She seemed, well, older. Much older. But that was silly.

"Unnecessary," I-Five said. "I am, after all, merely a droid. Why should I take offense?"

Den sighed. "I'm sorry, I-Five. I was a pa.r.s.ec out of line. I, uh . . . oh, to deep with it. Let's play cards."

Klo began to deal-they had dispensed with the Card-Shark's services several games back, and now it usually sulked in a corner while they played.

So there it was, Den thought. Another reminder of the difference between droids and biologicals. Someone they interacted with as a person could be ... shut down, just like that, because she had a widget that was more useful elsewhere. Of course, people died in wars all the time-companions with whom you shared drinks and laughs could be taken away in the blink of an eye, zip-zap, just like that, but this was different. It made a Sull.u.s.tan stop and think.

Den picked up his hand, glancing at Eyar Marath as he did so. She smiled back. Good. At least his temper tantrum hadn't driven her off. She was beautiful. How long had it been since he'd even sat at a table with one of his own species, much less clapped flaps? Too long.

A thought occurred to him. "Well. Sorry. After all, once the drive they ordered arrives, they should be able to repair Teedle and she'll be as good as new, right?"

There was another moment of frozen silence. Then I-Five said, almost gently, "They didn't requisition the new drive, Den. The military will compensate the corporation that owns Teedle, but they see no need to pay for the repairs twice."

Den stared. "Kark," he said.

"An apt expression," I-Five replied.

Merit dealt the cards.

19.

Jos had finally managed to obtain a jacket and a pair of thermal gloves, which meant that the dome would almost certainly be repaired soon. It seemed like it never failed that, if he went out of his way to prepare for something, the need soon vanished. But at least for the moment, he was better off.

He was on his way to the chow hall when his comlink beeped.

"Doctor Vandar, we have a problem in the OT."

"I'm off duty-" Jos began.

"Yes, sir, Colonel Vaetes knows that, but he asks if you'll please stop by."

"Okay. I'm coming."

At the operating theater, business was slow, with only a few patients. Half a dozen doctors and nurses were gathered around one of the tables, Vaetes among them. He turned, saw Jos, and stepped away from the patient, who was hidden from view by the group.

"Colonel? What's the problem?"

"You ever work on a Nikto?"

Jos's eyebrows went up. "You have a horn-face? I didn't know there were any on this world."

"Afraid so. One of the crew working the bota fields. Ran over a piece of unexploded ordnance and blew the harvester to pieces. Patient's full of shrapnel, and n.o.body here has ever opened a Nikto before. You've cut on a slew of species-any experience on this one?"

Jos blew out a sigh. "Not since my first-year surgical rotation. I'm not really qualified to-"n.o.body else here has ever laid a blade on one, Jos. Not even Lieutenant Divini.

Whatever you know is better than what we don't know."

He was right. "I'll scrub," Jos said.

"Thanks. Tolk is already here."

Jos nodded.

He hurried through his scrub, was gowned and gloved by the sterile circulating nurse, and stepped up to the field. He saw Tolk across the table, lining up instruments. He'd heen hoping to get more of a sense of her mood, but they had a crowd watching, and that wasn't how he wanted to talk to her.

As if some bored war deity had read his thoughts, the drone of a medlifter dopplered up.

"Incoming, people!" Vaetes shouted. "Jos, you got this?"

"Probably not, but you looking over my shoulder isn't going to help much. Go. If I have a problem, I'll yell."

The watchers cleared out, leaving Jos, Tolk, and the circulating sterile droids. Jos looked across the field. The sparkle and shimmer of the overheads against the electrostatic boundary gave Tolk's masked face an almost otherworldly quality. Even gowned and masked, he thought, she's beautiful.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," Tolk said. Her eyes, above her mask, didn't seem to be smiling. She wasn't looking at him.

Jos glanced at the patient. Nikto were reptilian in appearance, with a couple of dozen small horns haloed around the face and crown, and a larger pair on the chin. There were four or five different subspecies; this one had greenish gray skin, which meant it was a mountain and forest dweller. His clothes had been cut off, and there were several stanched wounds on his torso.

The procedure would be the same as with any patient in that Jos would have to track the wound channels and mine the shrapnel, then repair injured organs. And he'd have to work with what was there, because he was pretty sure there weren't any cloned Nikto organs in the hank.

Getting to the shrapnel wouldn't be easy. The Nikto's scales had shifted to overlap the entry points. This was an autonomic reaction, evolved over millennia, to keep the wounds as sterile and protected as possible until they healed. Usually that worked quite well-but usually there weren't several big chunks of durasteel sealed in a Nikto's viscera.

"We need to relax the muscles enough to be able to lift his abdominal scale plates," he said to Paleel, the circulating nurse who wasn't scrubbed sterile. "Find out what does that to a Nikto."

"Already got it," the nurse said. "Myoplexaril, variant four. Three milligrams per kilo of body weight, IV."

"Okay. What does he weigh?"

"Sixty kilograms."

Jos did the math. "Give him one eighty of Myoplexaril, vee-four, IV push."

Somebody had started an intravenous big-bore, TKO, which was good. Running IVs was a primitive process at best, and, on top of that, Jos had never enjoyed starting them on reptiloids-finding a vein under scaled skin was always a challenge. But all the osmotic drips were in use at the moment, so he had to make do with what was available. Threndy, the other nurse, filled an injector with mus-cle relaxant, double-checked the medicine vial and dosage, and pressed the injector against the IVs Rx portal.

It would take a moment for the pharmaceutical to do, the trick. Jos said, "Threndy, why don't you finish the instrument sort? Paleel, go and get a second reptiloid kit, just m case. Tolk, over here and help me categorize wounds."

The nurses moved.

With Tolk now standing next to him, if they kept their voices down, they could have a private conversation. "You okay?" he asked.

She kept her gaze on the patient. "I'm fine."

"You don't seem fine. Since you got back from Med-Star, you've seemed, well . . . distant."

She looked at him, then back at the patient. "Looks like this one got hit in the spleen-if they have spleens." She pointed at a puncture wound with a stat-patch.

"Tolk."

She sighed. "What do you want me to say, Jos? It wasn't a visit to a pleasure dome. I saw people spewed into s.p.a.ce like ripe poptree seeds. The lucky ones died right away."

"People die here every day," he said. "You seem to be able to deal with that."

"Not the same," she said.

"It wasn't like you did it, Tolk."

She gave him a sharp glance, and was about to say something when the patient's abdominal plate relaxed and retracted-and a gush of purplish hemolymph from one of the now exposed wounds lanced out and hit him squarely in the chest.

The next few minutes were occupied with stopping the flow of vital fluid. The nurses and droids handled that, while Jos stepped away from the table. He'd have to change clothes and rescrub. Which meant a serious conversation with Tolk wasn't going to happen now.

Blast.

But he wasn't going to drop it. Something was wrong, something over and above the trauma of what had happened. There was something that Tolk wasn't telling him. And he wouldn't rest until he knew what it was.

Barriss Offee was having a hard time concentrating on her work.

In front of her, in a bed in the recovery ward, a trooper lay-or rather, most of him did."