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right?” I shifted around so I blocked his path. “How do you know?”
    “She killed herself so that you could return.” Out he went.

Two
    After Reever took off, I reinitiated the Jorenian yiborra-field program and sat there for a while watching the simulated grass grow. Pain from my headache became laced with disorienting confusion. Nothing made sense, so I didn’t bother to think. No doubt Xonea or Squilyp would soon come after me, and tell me all about it.
    “Healer Torin.”
    I looked over my shoulder at the furry face of the strange healer who had attended me last night. Thick black fur covered the bipedal form of the lupine male, although much of it looked as if it had been recently shorn and was just now growing back. His mane, which grew from the top of his skull to the top of his shoulders, also had a shaggy, uneven look to it. The darkness of his body hair made his light green irises appear to glow a little.
    The distinct muzzle and fanged teeth didn’t worry me—I’d encountered a lot of frightening- looking beings in my time away from the homeworld, and most of them were more civilized than Terrans—but something about him made the hair on my neck rise.
    Someone had told me his name and species. . . . “Healer Valtas. What do you want?”
    “It would please me greatly if you would call me Shon.” He made the traditional Jorenian gesture of greeting, briefly extending ten black, blunted claws before retracting them into his articulated paws. “The Omorr wishes you to return to Medical.”
    “I’m sure he does, Healer Valtas.” I turned away, hoping he’d take the hint.
    The oKiaf didn’t; he came and sat down beside me. “Healer Squilyp indicated you have no memory of the last five years, so I assume you do not remember me.”
    I made a sound. Not a nice one.
    “I was an intelligence officer alterformed by the League to serve as a spy,” he said, resting his elbows on his knees. “When they attempted to force me to heal tortured prisoners in order to extend their suffering, I deserted, changed my identity, and became a healer. I accompanied the survey team to my homeworld, where I tried to kill myself. In the process I was infected by a protocrystal life-form which is taking over the planet.”
    I guessed I was supposed to care. Crying shame that I didn’t. “Do you tell everyone your life story five seconds after you meet them?”
    “You thwarted my attempted suicide, and then removed the crystalline infection from my body before it could kill me,” he said. “I would not be alive if not for you.”
    “It wasn’t me, but you’re welcome.” I pulled up a blade of grass, which once separated from the simulator grid’s energy matrix immediately lost coherence and disintegrated. My temper was about to do the same. “Now would you mind leaving me alone? Or do you need help with a second suicide attempt?”
    “I remember what it was like, when I woke up after the alterforming process had been completed,” he continued. “I did not know my own skin.”
    “I know mine. I just don’t know who’s been wearing it for the last five years.” I destroyed some more phony grass. “Anything else happen between you and whatever possessed my body?”
    He gazed at the fake horizon. “Jarn’s efforts to save me are ultimately what led to the return of your persona.”
    That got my attention. “So you’re the one who brought me back from oblivion?”
    “I believe it to be so.”
    Maybe the body-snatching slave girl hadn’t committed suicide after all . . . and was I going to tell Reever that?
    Hell, no. “I guess that makes us even.” I rose and straightened my tunic, and he did the same. “I’m hungry,” I lied. “Want to share a meal interval with me?”
    Judging by his expression, he didn’t know quite what to make of that. Or me. Which made two of us.
    At last he said, “If that is your wish.”
    “You’ll have to show me where the galley is,” I told him as we walked out