text: Dr. Smends, despite being physically unhurt anymore, declined to perform the actual surgery, preferring to sit in a corner with a beaker full of brandy. Dr. Grauzeng, the most recently-hired of the surgeons, was selected to do the actual cutting. I warned her what to expect from the surgery — disintegrating bits of very poisonous worm, and the wounds constantly closing from the healing spells.
  
  "So let's leave the worm alive as long as possible," said Dr. Grauzeng. "If the poison isn't evolved until it dies."
  
  "Oh! We could try that," I said. "The time I had done it, I started out killing it."
  
  "Sever the brain connections first. Otherwise it might wreck her brain, out of fear or fury," said Tarcuna. So we drafted Arilash to try to render the worm insensate for the first part of the surgery — I didn't want to fuss with that and the healing at the same time. She's better with the Lure of Dreams than I am — anyone who's ever cast it except for practice is better.
  
  "And Bthera's going to love you forever," said Tarcuna.
  
  "Beg pardon?"
  
  "Well, you or Spotty. That's the natural reaction to getting rescued from cyoziworms," she said with a shrug.
  
  Arilash looked out the window to peer at Llredh. "Is that right?"
  
  "Wrong, she is not. The clearer situation with Ythac, though, her I did not resent, nor reject! We were on our way there before."
  
  "Perhaps a single, male surgeon would be a better choice...?" said Dr. Grauzeng. "A man might find the patient appealing. I am a woman, and a married one at that."
  
  "Not that kind of love. More along the lines of, well, worship," said Tarcuna. "I mean, I'd do that if Spotty asked. Or nearly anything else. But I was a public friend for a while, so that isn't much of a problem."
  
  "Bthera is a public friend too," noted Arilash.
  
  "This topic, she brings me resentment. Resentment, she brings fire to my tongue and to my lips. Commence the surgery!" roared Llredh.
  
  "Or maybe it doesn't work that way for everyone. We've only seen it twice, and was pretty different for the two," I pointed out, to give poor Dr. Grauzeng a bit of hope.
  
  Dr. Grauzeng, that artist of the scalpel, went in through the cheek. Arilash stunned the worm as best she could, and Dr. Grauzeng clipped its brain-probes. The audience, watching projected images of the surgery on big screens over the table, yelped and squirmed as they saw the writhing proof of the cyoziworm's reality.
  
  After a bit of quick consultation, we decided to try to pull the worm out of Bthera from the top, on the hope that that would be less damaging than cutting her open from cheek to chest. I put the Small Wall into the worm — and did that ever get a bitter hiss from Llredh! — so that it wouldn't be quite so vulnerable to tugging. Either the idea or the execution is imperfect, since the worm broke halfway out. Llredh roared in triumph, nearly making Dr. Grauzeng drop the worm back into the patient.
  
  Which gave Dr. Grauzeng and I our time to scramble, cutting and healing in a frantic rush, like last time. This particular surgery is easier without warplanes. I think we did it in a quarter of the time, and spilled much less poison in Bthera. Taking the probes out of the brain was still very hard, and in the end we didn't have much better choice with two of them than pull quick and heal quick and hope for the best.
  
  After the last incision had been healed, Bthera was in much better shape than Tarcuna had been. She only needed healing every six minutes, even right after, not every minute, and by midnight it seemed safe to leave her in the hospital attended only by hovens and material medicine.
  
  The medical aftermath was more, well, amusing. I didn't get to see much of it, since I was tending Bthera. Arilash was in the thick of it, and told me afterwards. The doctors and biologists had recorded the whole surgery, and were pointing at a dozen pictures from it. They were discussing how the cyoziworm fit into Hove's biology. Two biologists held forth at great length on the phylum of forkworms, a minor branch of parasitic life found in mainly in a distant continent on the Godaxle. Forkworms are hard to dissect because they melt into poisonous slush when killed. The conclusion was obvious. Llredh hissed and fumed, trying to decide if he would destroy the entire phylum or just the cyoziworms.