"I know you don't know me, but you might remember this, later. You were a good soldier, smart and strong. You stood by your mates in the crash. You had the sort of self-discipline that saves lives." Others, not your own. "Tomorrow, you'll go to another sort of hospital, where they'll help you keep on getting better." Among strangers. More strangers. "Don't worry about the money. I'm setting it up so it'll be there as long as you need it." He doesn't know what money is. "I'll check back on you from time to time, as I get the opportunity," Miles promised. Promised who? Aziz? Aziz was no more. Himself? His voice softened to inaudibility as he ran down.

The aural stimulation made Aziz thrash around and emit some loud and formless moans; he had no volume control yet, apparently. Even through a filter of desperate hope, Miles could not recognize it as an attempt at communication. Animal reflexes only.

"Take care," he whispered, and withdrew, to stand a moment trembling in the hallway.

"Why do you do that to yourself?" Quinn inquired tartly. Her crossed arms, hugging herself, added silently, And to me?

"First, he died for me, literally, and second"—he attempted to force his voice to lightness—"don't you find a certain obsessive fascination in looking in the face of what you most fear?"

"Is death what you most fear?" she asked curiously.

"No. Not death." He rubbed his forehead, hesitated. "Loss of mind. My game plan all my life has been to demand acceptance of this"—a vague wave down the length, or shortness, of his body—"because I was a smart-ass little bastard who could think rings around the opposition, and prove it time after time. Without the brains . . ." Without the brains I'm nothing. He straightened against the aching tension in his belly, shrugged, and twitched a smile at her. "March on, Quinn."

*    *    *

After Aziz, Durham and Vifian were not so hard to deal with. They could walk and talk, if haltingly, and Vifian even recognized Quinn. They took them back to the shuttleport in the rented groundcar, and Quinn tempered her usual go-to-hell style of driving in consideration of their half-healed wounds. Upon reaching the shuttle Miles sent Durham forward to sit with the pilot, a comrade, and by the time they reached the Triumph Durham had recalled not only the man's name, but some shuttle piloting procedures. Miles turned both convalescents over to the medtech who met them at the shuttle hatch corridor, who escorted them off to sickbay to bed down again after the exhaustion of their short journey. Miles watched them exit, and felt a little better.

"Costly," Quinn observed reflectively.