Read Dream Called Time for Free Online Page B

didn’t want to go through transition alone. If I was strapped into a berth in Medical and something did go wrong, Squilyp was my best chance of surviving it.
    I felt something soft and very warm touch my hand, and looked down to see Shon’s paw curling around my fingers. His fur was much finer and silkier than it looked, and his body heat topped mine by a good ten degrees. I also became aware of how good he smelled: like trees and earth and growing things. I felt like wrapping him around me, but the icy cold was deep inside me, where all that lovely warmth couldn’t reach.
    I took my hand from his. If I was going to handle this, I couldn’t depend on the kindness of strangers. Especially one who had been in love with her , not me.
    I hung on to that frigid calm until they put me in a berth in an isolation room and a nurse began to attach monitor leads to my head and chest. Then my muscles went on strike, first stiffening and then knotting as I began to tremble.
    “Leave us,” the Omorr said as he scanned me.
    I saw the oKiaf and the nurses go. “I’m all right.”
    “No, you are not.” He checked his scanner and sighed. “Try to relax.”
    By that point the berth was shaking along with me. “Se-se-seizure?”
    “Your heart rate and respiration have doubled, you are perspiring heavily and presenting involuntary rapid fine tremors, your glucose level is dropping, and your glands are attempting to compensate by releasing a substantial amount of adrenaline into your bloodstream,” he said. “You are having an anxiety attack.”
    How wimpy of me. “S-s-sorry.”
    “Your recent activities have resulted in a serious B complex deficiency, which is contributing to your condition. I am giving you a vitamin booster to augment. Please do not shove the instrument down my throat,” he added as he infused me and then finished wiring me to the equipment.
    I clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering until the anxiety crested and then slowly dissolved. “Sedatives would have worked just as well.”
    He sighed. “Over the last years you have become immune to them.”
    But not to anxiety, evidently. The receding adrenaline left me feeling abruptly exhausted. “Would you do something for me, Senior Healer?”
    “As long as it does not require you to leave this berth.”
    “If I don’t wake up this time,” I said carefully, “put my body in stasis until you can figure out how to bring me back.”
    “Cherijo—”
    “Please.” In spite of my best efforts to control my emotions, I felt a single tear roll down my cheek. “Don’t let some alien take over my body again, Squilyp. Please. I’m begging you.”
    Squilyp did something very un-Squilyp then: He sat on the edge of the berth, pulled me up, and wrapped all three arms around me. “I promise.”
    He didn’t let me go, so shortly thereafter when reality was sucked into a dizzying swirl of colors, I was still in his arms. As my tired brain upended itself, a wistful sadness filled me, and I wished I’d asked Squilyp to send for Reever. Despite what had happened, I regretted that the last words we’d exchanged had been angry and bitter.
    As bitter as the words I’d said . . . that I had signaled . . .
    Memories began pouring into my mind, a series of vivid sensory flashes that blotted out the disorienting effects of the ship’s transition. I was back on the Rilken ship, jaunting toward the CloudWalk , only this time something was different. I saw myself on the deck, blood all over my face. The League soldier who had hit me lay across me, unconscious. I had to push him off and roll him to one side so I could reach the main console and initiate a relay. I watched myself doing those things, and felt as if I were doing them at the same time.
    League command vessel, this is Dr. Cherijo Torin. I have to speak to Colonel Shropana immediately.
    I didn’t receive a response, so I switched relay channels and repeated the request, but that made no difference. The