Third Watch by Anne McCaffrey

be afraid, Khorii,” he told her.
    She looked annoyed. “So Ariin was telling the truth. All this time you’ve actually been an alien shapeshifter, one of the demideities my people call the Friends. Some Friend! Bad cat, Khiindi! Very bad cat indeed.”
    “I’m not,” he said, his lordly baritone carrying a hint of the plaintive mew that usually made her forgive him any trouble he’d caused. “Haven’t I been your loyal friend all these years? It’s very unkind of you to say otherwise. I pledged to help you through any troubles you encountered, and I always have. That’s what I’m doing now, only I need my true form to do it. And I wanted to talk to you, face-to-nonfurry-face.”
    “I’m listening.”
    But at that point, a gaggle of female techs entered the time lab. “Lord Grimalkin, you’ve returned!” one of them said. “Why are you wearing that old thing?”
    The speaker was clearly dazzled by him, and he gave her a kindly smile. “I fear I lost something in my translation,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d be a dear and go to my quarters and collect my amber robes, would you? The matching slippers and headdress are packaged with it.”
    She nodded, he winked, and she danced out the doorway. Some days it took so little from him to bring happiness to others.
    When he looked back at the other techs, they were whispering behind their hands, their eyes looking speculatively at Khorii.
    “Ah,” he said. “You’re wondering about this youngling, I see. She’s—mmm—the result of experiments I’ve been conducting in the future.”
    “Experiments?” the eldest of the techs chortled. “Is that what you call it now, you sly cat? Experimenting?”
    He shook a finger at her. “You know me too well, Twexa. You’re right, of course, she’s a descendant we lords have been attempting to reverse-engineer.”
    “Bit young for that, isn’t she, sir?” Twexa asked.
    “You wrong me, Twexa. I am as serious a scientist in my own way as my colleagues are in theirs.”
    “Of course you are, dear. Your sense of fun can be misleading. I’m always telling the others that,” she said.
    “Thank you, Twexa. Your understanding means a lot to me.”
    The tech he’d sent to fetch his robes returned, and he allowed her to help him don them, leaving Khorii in the care of the others. At least she wouldn’t have to answer any questions, since they were all asking them at once. He regretted the necessity for speed in his toilette. The tech—Polida—was touchingly appreciative. But her time would come as long as he had the crono. There was no reason for his sweet Halili to know about anything he did in his two-legged form.
    With a hand in the middle of Polida’s back, he shepherded her to the main time chamber, where Khorii was surrounded by techs, all gabbling together as they surveyed the time map spread before them.
    He broadcast a burst of commands, and the techs scattered throughout the facility, leaving him alone with Khorii.
    Turning from the time map to face him, she said in an accusatory tone, “Ariin isn’t here!”
    “I can’t be held responsible for that!” Grimalkin replied. “If you recall, she was the one who got rid of me, not the other way around. I thought we two should stand together, as we have your entire life to solve this problem, so when I saw that she had abandoned you as well, I came to your rescue.”
    “You never told me you were a grown-up man,” she said, unmollified. “Of course we stood together when you were my kitty.”
    “It makes no difference if we are standing together on four feet or six,” he said, the wheedling mew underlying his voice again. “We are still a team. I may look like a grown-up, but many of my own kind claim that is a false assumption. Your sister dislikes me, and resents you because, when I was forced to bring back your mother’s egg, I brought hers instead of yours. That is how I came to be frozen in the shape of a small cat. My people