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She kept her tongue and tentacles as still as unliving stone, but she remembered. Remembered hearing the news of Yakun’s accusation and sacrifice. She remembered private, forbidden moments with him before, and her vain prayers to Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah to protect him.

How she had tried not to think of him at all.

Perhaps Tsun understood her posture, or her headdress betrayed her, for through the sudden renewal of pain behind her eyes, she saw he knew.

“I do not mean to sadden you,” he said. “It is only that Master Mezhan Kwaad asked me to tell you I knew him, that we were confidants.”

The flash of agony released as suddenly as it had come. Mezhan Kwaad did send him, Nen Yim thought, her growing panic taking a step back. This is her message I am to trust him. Yakun was a heretic. My master is a heretic. So is Tsun.

“Initiate Tsun,” she said firmly. “I said we should not speak of that person. I mean it. Now let me show you our work.”

The Jeedai’s eyes had lost much of their focus; she no longer glared like a predatory beast. Instead she stared for long hours at nothing, a look of puzzlement on her face.

“She seems stunned,” Tsun noticed.

Nen Yim signaled the vivarium to become opaque to sound. “She can hear us, and she knows the tongue of the gods. Even in that state she might remember anything we say. Or nothing.”

“She is being drugged?”

“Not precisely. We are altering her memories.”

“Ah,” Tsun said knowingly. “The protocol of Qah.”

“No,” Nen Yim corrected, “not exactly. That protocol was ineffective on her human brain.”

“How can that be?”

“It is a simple biotic protocol in which clumps of memory neurons are introduced into a Yuuzhan Vong brain. The Jeedai’s brain is too different.”

“And yet you are modifying her memory.”

“A bit at a time. Soon we will be able to do so much more efficiently.”

“You have prayed for a new protocol?” Tsun asked slyly.

“No,” Nen Yim replied. “Our approach has followed two axes. We have mapped and remapped her nervous system. We have identified her memory networks and are using the provoker spineray to discourage their use.”

“You mean her old memories trigger pain?”

“Yes. Accessing her long-term memory extracts a pain sacrifice. The more connected memories she tries to bring to conscious thought, the greater her suffering.”

“Why not simply wipe clean the centers of memory and begin again?”

“Because she retains the knowledge of her Jeedai powers. A day will come—after we’ve shaped her—when we’ll want her to remember how to use them.”

Tsun studied the human. “I see you have scarred her forehead with the Domain Kwaad sign.”

“We will do more, in time. We will alter her face, especially that strange nose of hers. But that is superficial. Attend.”

Nen Yim squatted near the vivarium membrane, opened it again to sound, and spoke to the Jeedai. “What is your name?” she asked.

The Jeedai didn’t react. With a sigh, Nen Yim stimulated a minor pain center and cortical nerve with the provoker spineray.

What would have once made the young Jeedai shriek in agony only cycles before now merely made her flutter her eyes and frown.

“Yes, Adept?” the Jeedai said, as if waking reluctantly from a dream.

“What is your name?” Nen Yim asked.

“My name?”

“Yes.”

“It is—” She frowned, then suddenly her eyes bulged and she gripped her head. “My name is—” Her teeth clenched and her face went white. Then, as if in sudden remembrance, the Jeedai’s face cleared.

“My name is Riina Kwaad,” she said.

“Very good, Riina,” Nen Yim said. “You have learned. And today you will learn more.”

“I see now,” Tsun said. “You trellis her thoughts. Unwanted responses bring pain. Desired ones do not.”

“No,” Nen Yim replied. “That name came from an implanted memory.”

“But you just said that the protocol of Qah was ineffective.”

“Yes. But we can build a kind of Qah cell using her own, human brain cells.”

A look of sheer delight crossed the initiate’s face. “So it is true,” he whispered. “Here, you pursue our dream, the superprotocol—the methods of finding new knowledge without asking