Kerrick managed a slight motion of his jaw and Akotolp accepted it as her due. “A frightening disease, raging through your entire system: those sores on your skin are the least part of it. The fargi wouldn’t touch you, too stupid to realize that an infection like this is species specific, had to tend you myself. Most interesting. Had I not worked with warm-fleshed ustuzou in the past your death would have been certain.”

While she talked, mostly for her own benefit, Akotolp changed the dressings on his body. This was moderately painful, but nothing like the pain that he had felt before. “Some of the ustuzou we captured had the same disease, in a milder form. Antibodies from their youth. You had none. I exsanguinated the sickest one completely, made a serum, did the job. There, finished. Now eat something.”

“How . . . long . . .” Kerrick managed to whisper the words.

“How long the food? How long the antibodies? Are you still delirious?” Kerrick managed to move his hand in the motion of time significance. “Understood. How long have you been ill? Very long, I did not keep track. It is not important. Now drink this, you need protein, you’ve lost a third of your bodyweight, it is delicious meat enzymed to liquid, most digestible.”

Kerrick was too weak to protest. Though he did gag on the repulsive liquid before he managed to get some down. After that he slept, exhausted. But this had been the turning point. The disease was over, he was on the mend. He had no visitors, other than the fat scientist, nor did he want any. Memories of the Tanu that he had talked to turned over and over in his mind. No, not Tanu, ustuzou, degenerate, warm-fleshed killers. Flesh of his flesh. Tanu. The same people, the same creatures. He had a double-identity that he could not understand and he fought to make sense of it all. Of course he was Tanu himself, since he had been brought here when he was very young. But that had happened so long ago, so much had happened to him since that all memory of this had vanished. He was left more with a memory of the memory, as though it were something that he had been told about and had not really experienced himself. Though physically he was not Yilanè, could never be, he nevertheless now thought like one, moved like one, spoke like one. But his body was still Tanu and in his dreams he moved among his own people. These dreams were disturbing, even frightening, and he was glad that he remembered very little of them when he awoke. He tried to remember more of the Tanu words but could not, while even the words he had spoken aloud slipped from his mind as he recovered.

Other than the perpetual silent presence of Inlènu* he was left completely alone. Akotolp was his only visitor and he wondered at this.