text: So we got a tour of the Cyoziworm Detection Program.
  
  "This room is the eyeball of the operation," said the chief of gendarmes. "Until yesterday, we were inspecting the outskirts of the city. Now we are back on the downtown itself."
  
  "An eyeball, it is not. An accounting-factory, she is what it seems to be," said Llredh. I couldn't argue. Dozens upon dozens of hovens sat at small desks with large stacks of paper, typing things into machines. Or, at the moment, staring at us and smelling of fear. A few tried to slink off, claiming biological necessities with varying degrees of truth. Llredh glared at the ones who lied. More of them looked as if they wanted to leave, but didn't want to call attention to themselves in the presence of the destroyers of their country.
  
  "An accounting-factory we shall call it if you prefer. Every gendarme in Dorday is constantly alert for any report of suspicious behavior, according to the list of likely symptoms that Dr. Wulpmegarn provided. We attend to changes in behavior, especially an increase in fornication or in periods of absence without explanation in which the worm could be feeding. An increase of cowardice and reluctance to face physical danger. An avoidance of religious and social obligations. A sudden switch of profession to harlotry. We pay attention to instances of weakness and fatigue, as if a worm had fed from an uninfected citizen; then we attempt to locate the worm based on the time and location of such events. Such reports come to this room, to be collated and tracked, and, in the case of suitable suspicion, followed up upon. Allow me to show you the next phase."
  
  As we left, the clerks started to breathe again. And whispered to each other, "The usurping dragons and the Black Curse. I knew I should never have taken this job." — "Me too, but the hotel laid me off. What else could I do?"
  
  I flicked my tail, and scored the paint on both walls. I don't much like that nickname. The chief of gendarmes hastened to explain that the clerk's actual words were surely something else, and that the clerk would be put into administrative detention and inspected for worms straightaway.
  
  "No, I hear quite well. But worms? I don't think that the wormridden are the only ones who hate me. You do too."
  
  "I don't!" he lied. "I did until I saw a worm sticking out of a woman's chest and trying to claim my soul," he said, a half-truth.
  
  "You've seen a worm?" I asked, to avoid bickering with one of Ythac's important subjects in front of him.
  
  "Three of them. Sometimes when a person is strapped to the wall unable to move, the worm will protrude itself forth and strike. If it weren't for my udder-guard I would be in a cyozi-camp myself," he said. "Every gendarme on my team has seen a worm, every gendarme on my team hates them more than they hate you."
  
  "Please stop lying to dragons. It really doesn't work. And you're allowed to hate us all you like. We certainly deserve it, for what we have done to you," said Ythac.
  
  A different gendarme showed us the actual testing for worms, while Wulpmegarn narrated. "We have four tests for cyoziworms. The first test of course is intrascopy, which is as close to perfectly reliable as hovens can get. We are forbidden to use that test."
  
  "Should we permit it again?" asked Ythac. "We cannot permit false negatives."
  
  "I recommend against it. I estimate that ten to twenty percent of the wormridden would die in the intrascope, and that using intrascopy on a large number of healthy people will cause a wide variety of medical problems," said Wulpmegarn. Ythac agreed, before Llredh could say anything.
  
  "The second and third tests are standard biological tests, of urine and blood respectively. The presence of a large parasite in the hoven body produces a variety of metabolites: the hormones and wastes of the worm itself, plus the stress products of the body's natural reaction to a large intruder." I had to cast the Word-Fox repeatedly, and I still didn't understand Wulpmegarn. Here's Tarcuna's summary: "The worm's easily-detected byproducts are all normal chemicals in the hoven body. There are more of some of them with the worm than without: the Kia ratio, of kiasterol to anakiathics, is much higher. That's easy to test. But the problem is that the Kia ratio varies a good deal in people generally. Some healthy people have a high Kia ratio naturally. (It would go up still more if they got wormridden.) So simply taking everyone with a Kia ratio of 0.08 or higher is wrong. Wulpmegarn's tests look at five indicators like that. His team of scientists is working to find more indicators, and to find more accurate ways to use the ones they have. That is Science. Which means it is slow to do, and imperfect."
  
  "And the fourth test, invented by my student, is the easiest, the most reliable, and the least popular one of all. Recall that the cyoziworm protrudes through the lower part of the victim's udder?" Tarcuna's fur went entirely flat, and she and Llredh nodded fiercely. "Although the worm's influences do promote quick healing, repeated punctures leave a modicum of scar tissue. So, the shaving test is, the lower udder is shaved and inspected for scar tissue. It is an unusual place to get scars, after all."
  
  "I'll bet that one is popular. Shaving there isn't much fun afterwards. You want that fur to keep your udder from chafing on your chest," said Tarcuna.
  
  The chief said, "I've heard that, certainly. More often, our suspects don't like to be taken into a public room, and have a private part of their body exposed, manipulated, shaven, and inspected by a few strangers. Most of them don't believe in cyoziworms anyway. Several objections were quite violent: some from the wormridden, some from the clean. So suspects are now preemptively restrained."
  
  Tarcuna inspected the restraints: solid metal chains to hold the suspect spreadeagled against a wall. "Even when I was a wormridden whore, you would have had to pay me a lot to strap me into that thing and poke at my udder." The chief of gendarmes frowned at her, and she frowned back.
  
  "It is a good test, though," said Wulpmegarn. "The current protocol uses it as the primary test. Patients who fail it are then given the blood and urine tests."
  
  The chief of gendarmes demurred. "No. We collect specimens for those tests regardless, in advance, as is more convenient. The specimens are discarded if not needed."
  
  Wulpmegarn concluded, "Evidently there have been unauthorized changes in the protocol, though that one should be harmless as long as the tests are done promptly. If all three tests come out positive, the patient is highly at risk of being wormridden."
  
  "Change the protocol!" thundered Llredh. "The blood test, the piss test — either of these, not both, indicates a worm!"
  
  "There would be too many false positives — there are too many already. The tests aren't individually that accurate," said Wulpmegarn.
  
  Llredh glared at him. "Improve them quickly if you wish! But you must use them as I command. Your replacement, she is somewhere to be found. Your severed head, he will encourage her obedience as a desk ornament."
  
  Wulpmegarn shuddered. "I will do as you demand."
  
  "Do your mightinesses wish to observe an actual inspection?" asked the chief of gendarmes.
  
  Tarcuna nodded. "I do. Not just because I like seeing pretty half-naked girls pinned to the wall, Llredh. I might have something to say about your protocols."
  
  Wulpmegarn frowned. "Your scientific training is minimal..."
  
  "Two years in Dorday Academy, weapons engineering program, before my brain got taken over. My training as wormridden isn't minimal," she snapped. "I'm the only actual useful informant you have anymore, what with Llredh being a dragon and all." She gave Llredh an intense look.
  
  Llredh nodded. "Tarcuna, you must listen to her, Wulpmegarn! She knows much, she is wise!"
  
  So we sat through the inspections of twelve terrified and unhappy hovens. They were brought in wearing hobbles and handcuffs. They were released and stripped, and then bound to the wall.
  
  Tarcuna frowned. "That's one point of vulnerability. The wormridden are stronger and faster than you are. One could fight his way free at that point. Or at least start fighting hoping to get free. You need to keep them bound all the time. Hands to the wall, then unlock the handcuffs, and so on."
  
  "We did that originally, but this version is easier when the suspect needs to be stripped," said a gendarme.
  
  "Ever have any trouble?" asked Tarcuna.
  
  "Not to speak of," said the gendarme, lying. So we interrogated him, and, yes, two wormridden had exploded in violence at that point of the procedure and wound up getting killed by the gendarmes.
  
  "Do it Tarcuna's way from now on," ordered Ythac. "I do not permit my subjects to die for your convenience." Simple enough. He really does have the best interests of Trest at heart.
  
  Then a nurse came to take a blood sample, which was straightforward. The patient was encouraged to provide a urine sample as well, which they uniformly found shameful and miserable. It had to be done that way, though, because when privacy was permitted, the wormridden smuggled in clean urine. The shaving test generally caused struggles as well.
  
  "You need a tight chest-strap as well as arm and leg straps there," said Tarcuna. "If I were wormridden and knew what you had planned, I'd writhe around when you were shaving. You'd cut my udder, and that would make the scars harder to see." (And when we interrogated Ailenne later, that is precisely what she had done.)
  
  "That shall be part of your protocol too," proclaimed Ythac.
  
  Then the suspect was released from the wall — the gendarmes changed the protocol on the spot to keep the suspect restrained at all times, without needing to be ordered to — and taken to a holding cell until the blood and urine samples could be checked. After which, they were unlocked, given their clothes back, and allowed to depart, generally trembling or even crying.
  
  None of the dozen people interrogated while we watched were wormridden. "We get one, maybe two a day tops," said the gendarmes.
  
  Ythac cast a spell. "Nobody in custody here is wormridden. Release them all. No need to subject them to that torture." He flattened his ears and smelled quite miserable.
  
  "Torture? That is no torture! Public safety, science, my revenge — all three demand these protocols!", roared Llredh.
  
  "I agree with the spiky orange and brown guy," said Tarcuna. "Sure, it's an awful way to spend an afternoon. But it's better than spending five minutes wormridden. And when it's over, it's over. Being wormridden isn't over ever unless some dear kind dragon comes along and rescues you, or you get lucky and die." She was truthful and passionate. "Better that everyone goes through that examination than anyone gets a cyoziworm again."
  
  Llredh agreed. Ythac gave orders to inspect hovens more broadly, and to convert other buildings to examination centers, and train more examiners. Wulpmegarn was given special orders to improve the protocols still more.
  
  And that's how you fight an evil insidious mind-controlling parasite.