The only reason I didn’t run was an alpha-queen need to save face in front of my friends. To maintain my la-di-dah social position. They were the children of miners; I was the daughter of a doctor. If I wanted that difference to mean something — and mook-stupid, I did — I had to play nurse to the bitter end.

That drove me to stay hard, hold my breath, and lay Zillif on her assigned cot. In the minutes since I picked her up, she’d already turned copper-rust green, the shade of my jacket; but once in bed, her color bleached away fast. By the time I’d arranged her arms and legs, then hospital-folded her glider membranes into the standard bed-patient pattern, Zillif lay white as a bone.

"Thank you, Faye Smallwood," she said. "You’ve been very kind."

"Is there anything nice I can bring you?" I asked. "Are you hungry?" Most Ooloms brought to the Circus hadn’t eaten for days, no more than a few liver-nuts or clankbeetles. A woebegone percentage were also dehydrated… not that Zillif had that problem, considering how soaked we both were with rain.

"I would like food eventually," she answered, "but not right away."

Her voice hinted she wanted something different. I looked around, but didn’t see my father in the hospital yet; usually the light woke him at dawn, but a gray day like this was dark enough he might sleep longer. My bad luck — I was itching to abandon our new patient to him. "Is there someone you’d like me to check on?" I asked. "I can link into hospital registries all over the world. If you want news about friends or family…"

"I have a link of my own," Zillif replied. "All I’ve done for days is check on people I know."

"Oh." Most patients in the Circus had lost too much finger deft to push buttons on their wrist-implants… which we Homo saps claimed was a blessing.