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putting the white stuff down in earnest finally, had been doing that since noon. He worked over the details he had thus far uncovered, munched them with his overmind until he thought he had the proper question to pose next.
        "Hulann, does this have anything to do with something you have uncovered in your diggings?"
        The monitors on Banalog's desk reacted violently.
        "No," Hulann said.
        Banalog ignored the answer and paid close attention to the opinions of his machines. "What have you found?"
        "Nothing."
        "What could it be that you would consider so important that you would risk a washing and restructuring to hide it from me?"
        Hulann was terrified. Suddenly, he saw his world falling down around him, crumbling to ruin, powdering, blowing away on a cold wind. His past would be erased by the washing techniques. His first two hundred and eighty-seven years would be taken from him. He would have no past for his children. The stigma would be borne by his family for a dozen generations.
        Banalog raised his head, his lids stripped back, looking suddenly shocked. "Hulann! Have you found a human in those ruins of yours? A living human?"
        "You have!" Banalog gasped.
        Hulann had a vision of Leo being dragged from the shattered, charred building. He had another vision of the boy's frightened face-and a final picture of the small, twisted, bloodied body lying on the frozen earth after the executioners had finished with it.
        He came out of the chair with a swiftness he did not know he could summon, a swiftness reserved for the first two hundred years of a naoli's life. He went over the desk, not around it, tramping on the screens of the traumatist's data devices, flicking switches off and on as he scrambled over them.
        Banalog tried to scream.
        Hulann toppled the traumatist's chair, spilled both of them onto the floor, using his forearm to choke the other naoli's mouth so full that the call for help could not be heard. Banalog tried to push up. Though he was a hundred years Hulann's senior, he almost managed to break free.
        Swinging his arm, Hulann cracked Banalog's head. It bounced off the floor. The wide, green eyes were shut off by the slowly descending double lids.
        Hulann struck again, to make certain. But Banalog was unconscious and would remain that way long enough for Hulann to make plans.
        Make plans.
        The full understanding of his position came to him harshly, making him dizzy and weak. He thought that he might vomit. He felt the contents of his more sensitive second stomach surging back into his first stomach. But he managed to stop the regression there. Up until a moment ago, he had been a candidate for washing and restructuring. That had been bad. Now, it was worse. He was a traitor. He had struck Banalog to keep himself from being committed and to keep a human child safe. They would surely execute him now.
        Once he had thought losing his past was the worst they could do to him, worse than death as a traitor. Now he realized this was not so. At least, restructured, he could give his children the heritage of his future deeds. But" executed as a turncoat, he would give them nothing but disgrace for centuries to come.
        What could be done? Nothing. There was no way to salvage his family name. He was only thankful that he had bred so few children. He rose from Banalog and considered his next step. Suicide, at first, seemed the only honorable path. As not even that would redeem his name, it seemed silly. He had nothing now but his life. He must salvage that.
        And the life of Leo. That too. For, after all, it had been for Leo that he had ruined himself. To let Leo die now would be to give an air of farce to the entire affair.
        The first thing, then, was to secure Banalog so that he could not spread an alarm until Hulann and the boy were beyond the clutches of the Second