Tachyon's eyes, as he looked straight at Brennan, were uncertain. "There is something else… wrong. Terribly wrong. I could not touch her mind."

Brennan stared at the alien physician. "She's dead?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice. Father Squid put a steadying hand on Brennan's right forearm as Brutus moaned softly from the head of the bed.

Tachyon shook his head. "Look at her, man. She still breathes. The blood still rushes through her veins. Her pulse is steady. Faint, but steady."

Tachyon seemed to be speaking in riddles, but the years Brennan had spent in a Zen monastery made him used to that. Tachyon was making a koan, a Zen riddle designed to teach a subtle lesson about the nature of life.

Brennan's mind seized on that familiarity of form like a life raft tossing about on the ocean of emotion raised by the possibility of Jennifer's death. "When is life like death, and death like life?" he said so softly that Tachyon and Father Squid could barely hear him. He looked from the priest to the doctor. "When the mind is gone," he finished.

Tachyon nodded. "That's correct. The strange thing is, I can detect no organic reason for her… emptiness."

"Was she attacked on the mental plane?" Father Squid asked.

Tachyon shook his head. "I could detect no damage to indicate forcible entry and removal of her mind. It's almost as if it'd been lost… somehow…"

"Can you find it again?" Brennan asked.

Tachyon looked at Brennan, uncertainty in his eyes. "I wouldn't even know where to begin," he said simply. Brennan groaned and grabbed the bed's headboard with enough force to crush a section of its tubular piping. "There's Trace," Father Squid said.

"Trace?" Tachyon snorted and shook his head. "That charlatan!"