Nevertheless, she was enjoying an upwelling sense of health and vitality. The nightmares had stopped. All pangs of guilt and shame over Prey’s death were gone, and she no longer wondered which passing Dushau avoided her eyes because she was a zunre-killer. She went about her duties in the fields, filling in for people sent to dig defense trenches, bunkers, traps, and deadfalls with more cheer than their situation warranted.
The settlement’s scouts had observed the hives on the plain above the cliff becoming ever more touchy, and a skywatcher had reported three orbiters passing overhead the previous night. Artisans redoubled their pace, fashioning crude weapons from native material; labor was pulled off the job for target practice with stunners and bush-whips.
Irnils turned out to be the champion shot with a stunner, with Terab a close second, because the Outriders disqualified themselves. The Holot community was inordinately proud, their rousing nightly celebrations entertaining the whole camp.
Cyrus took Krinata to the dancing on the fifth night, after her hands had healed. They had to wait for the six-legged Holot to finish before two-legged rhythms were played, the dancing becoming a competition among species, in strength and endurance as much as grace and warrior spirit. But it also seemed to bind the community, for every night a few Dushau joined in as musicians and dancers.
Studying the indigo figures, almost invisible in the dark firelight, Krinata noticed how they eluded all direct confrontation, not flaunting their strength as the Holot did, nor displaying their grace and speed, as the Lehiroh did. Dance was not to them, as to the humans and others, the quasi-sexual ritual of female preening to waken male prowess and lead to sensuous intimacy.
No, there was another energy the Dushau were raising, another way of living symbolized by their dance. They moved among the aggressive shouting and stomping dancers like wraiths, near but not touching, apparently in danger of collision but escaping unhurriedly. They understood the pattern of the dance and wove themselves through it without disturbing it—without leaving a trace. And when they left, the dance was over.
Krinata dreamed of that dance, and what it might become when danced during Renewal, and woke chasing the memory with a tantalizing sense of near understanding. Later that morning, the seventh since they’d arrived, Darllanyu sought her out where she was helping weed a field.
By this time Krinata didn’t even notice the curious stares that followed the Dushau visits. Those who accepted her odd connection to the Dushau had asked their embarrassing questions and become friends. Those who couldn’t encompass it just left her alone.
“You look as if you’ve already done a day’s work,” said Darllanyu as Krinata leaned on her hoe, stripping off gloves.
It was only mid-morning, but Krinata had been out since before dawn. “It’s almost quitting time. Too hot for humans to work. The Lehiroh crew will be out in a bit.” She was supposed to go with Cyrus later, to gather medicinal herbs for the field hospital, in case they survived the battle.
“The roof on the temple is finished, and it’s cool inside,” offered Darllanyu. Krinata raised her eyebrows, and Darllanyu interpreted that correctly. “Jindigar is going to try the constitution now, and he says with the duad link, it’s distracting if you’re focusing on this ecology while he’s trying to pull an Oliat out of thin air.”
She was speaking colloquial Dushauni, and though Krinata didn’t follow it all, she asked, “What duad link?”
“The one you’re holding with Jindigar.”
“Oh,” said Krinata, some things coming clear. “Duad.”
“Will you come?”
All morning she’d been suppressing an urge to go to the Dushau compound to see Jindigar—knowing she’d be brusquely turned away at the gate. “Duad,” she repeated, hacking her hoe into the ground to mark her place. “Can I shower first?”
“Don’t take long,” Darllanyu admonished, and started back along the furrow. “I’ll send Zannesu for you.”
The Aliom temple was indeed cool inside, and they even had a fire going. They had plugged all the windows with some fine, dry moss and trickled water into it from a cistern on the roof. The air that came through the windows was several degrees cooler than that outside.
A new ceiling was in place, forming an insulating attic space above rough hewn roof beams, and the giant Oliat symbol had been finished, an X supported at its crux by an arrow point. It stood away from the back wall, taller than a man and twice as broad. Piles of debris still littered the floor, and heaps of lumber for furniture were stacked near the walls. The astringent smell of sawdust from Phanphihy’s woods filled the air.
As she came in with Zannesu, people stood talking in small groups. She saw Jindigar sitting on a pile of boards close to Darllanyu, and there was something different about him—a vibrant sensuousness that echoed through the duad link—as if a totally different personality with different values and goals was straggling to emerge. He brushed his fingers across Darllanyu’s cheek in a clearly intimate gesture, whispering to her. Her hands drifted to his neck, but he caught them and returned them to her lap, a firm negative.
Then he saw Krinata and rose to come toward her. He moved like an old man, carefully on top of his feet. She was shocked at how he seemed to have aged. His nap even seemed darker. “I’m glad you decided to come,” he said. “I should have come out to see you—”
“No,” she denied. “It’s all right. If I can help—”
“Well, I don’t know. But let’s get started and see what happens.” He turned to look around the room and gathered attention by calling out the first line of a chant, which everyone answered. The groups coalesced into one, a form that changed constantly, Dushau dance without the structure of the aggressive species, yet bursting with triumph, vigor, and the joy of celebration. Her feet wanted to move in the patterns, but she held back, for they were doing more than dancing. They were presenting themselves to Jindigar for his judgment, displaying skills, announcing talents. Eventually they ended in a single movement, all facing the Oliat symbol.
At the base of the huge symbol was a larger-than-life wood carving of a Dushau hand, the end of each of the seven fingers tapering into a stylized flame while the palm, cupped upward, became a bowl filled with water in which a tiny fish swam. The carved hand was set on a stone tray filled with dirt, and planted as a miniature garden. On another tray hewn from a gorgeous pink stone from a local quarry was an array of local fruits. She’d heard mat the Dushau eventually planned to use that stone for permanent buildings. They were uncomfortable with wooden structures, which wouldn’t last long enough to raise a child.
Jindigar gazed at the ensemble of symbols. “Well, pioneering does require improvisation. The test is whether it works.” He motioned to Krinata to stand to one side, asking, “Can you focus your whole attention on these symbols?”
“I can try,” she said without much hope. She was much too interested in what was going on, but he was attempting a job he wasn’t qualified for, and she wanted to help.
“Do your best,” he replied, and turned and went into the space between the carved X and the wall. Singly, the others went behind the symbol to face him. Sometimes their low voices could be heard, but she was more fascinated by the hand growing from the tiny garden, turning to flame. The duad link vibrated, tantalizing her with near insights from time to time, a pattern trying to form, delicate, unstable, guided by that symbolic hand beneath the balanced X which formed the shape of the Oliat array:
ProtectorReceptor
Center
FormulatorEmulator
Inreach
Outreach
At one point it seemed that the carved hand had turned from wood to polished indigo agate, and now real flames rose from the fingertips, casting light and warmth on the world cupped in the palm and growing in the soil that nurtured the hand. The plants around the hand had matured, become vines twining around the fingers, shading the pond. Each of the seven flame jets emitted a single musical note, forming a chord
.
She had just begun to see how the flames both rose from the fingertips of the hand and descended from the X, tracing out a branched path like a lightning strike, depicting the way all things were of one fabric, when the last of the candidates emerged, followed by Jindigar, and the whole vision shimmered back to reality—a wooden hand, no flames, no obvious significance.
As the candidates had returned they’d divided themselves into two groups. There were six in the smaller group, everyone else in the larger, as the last man came around to the front. He looked from one group to the other as a total hush fell. He turned to the array of symbols and chose and ate a piece of fruit. Then he picked up the platter of fruit, offering it to the group of six, who had drawn closer together. Krinata had learned to .recognize fear in a Dushau, and she saw it now as the last man faced them.
Jindigar announced, “Indito will take your Center.”
Indito proffered the tray of fruit to each of the other six, and each hesitated as if his life depended on it before selecting and eating a fruit.
When the tray was returned to its place, Jindigar addressed them. “You will be a very substandard Oliat, in great danger from your own lack of experience, but if you survive long enough, you’ll gain skill and serve this community well. I’ll speak to the Outriders I brought with me, and to your own Senior Outrider. They’ll be waiting if you can Temper and Balance.”
Zannesu was with the new Oliat, as was Darllanyu. Jindigar’s gaze locked to hers for a moment, then he added, “Indito, if you’re very clever, you’ll set Dar as your Outreach, and Zannesu as Inreach.” He named off the other Offices but added, “Of course, it’s your Oliat, and not my place to advise further.”
Jindigar swept Krinata toward the portal, leading an exodus. The oppressive heat of late afternoon made Krinata’s knees sag, and from how tired she was she realized how exhausted Jindigar had to be. The others dispersed, and Darllanyu caught up with them near the Historians’ temple, where Threntisn was sitting on the porch, at a makeshift table, eating fruit and sipping from a canteen.
Stopping Jindigar, Darllanyu said to Krinata, “I must thank you for grieving Avelor’s with me. If we never speak again, I want you to know you’ve given me a Law of Nature I could never have apprehended without you.”
Krinata was nonplussed. Jindigar explained, “Dar, I suspect Krinata doesn’t recall peripherals.”
“But when she saved me from Avelor’s beasts, she—”
“Avelor’s beasts?” asked Krinata.
“You don’t remember,” stated Darllanyu. Bewildered, she complained, “Jindigar, what good is a grieving she can’t remember?”
“Humans are like that. It doesn’t worry me.”
“Nothing ever worries you.”
“Let’s not quarrel. This may be an ending for us.”
“You chose to send me into Indito’s.”
He riveted her with a peculiar gaze, a ragged tone to his voice as he said, “If I’d been an Active, I probably couldn’t have. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
It was Darllanyu’s turn to manifest some other personality, ready to shuck off all the affairs previously important to her and turn in a different direction. Those two personalities warred within her as she locked eyes with Jindigar.
Then, suddenly, choosing duty above gratification, she whirled and strode back to the temple.
Jindigar watched her go, one hand almost beckoning her back. But, resolutely, he turned away, gripping Krinata’s arm as Zannesu had—repressed tremors pulsing through him. Could Dushau seduce each other into Renewal?
As they made for the street of houses that led to the gate, Threntisn called, “Jindigar!”
TEN
Farfetch
Jindigar stopped, paused before turning as if summoning strength, and then called back to Threntisn, “Yes?”
Threntisn beckoned, and Jindigar glanced at Krinata. She
offered, “I could find my own way to the gate”
“This can’t take long. I must find the Outriders. Can you wait?”
“Sure,” she agreed, and expected to park herself near one of the newly planted saplings. But Jindigar kept his hold on her elbow as he headed for the Historian’s porch.
As they approached, Threntisn piled up two more stacks of lumber and laid out some more fruit from a net bag beside him. “Come—there’s fresh—whatever these are. We must name these things, you know.”
Jindigar remained standing. “Your department. I’m on an errand, Threntisn.”
“Bluntly, do we have an Oliat?”
“Maybe, though anywhere else they’d be called a heptad.”
“Not my business to assess your risks—”
Jindigar tensed. “But it’s your business to set them.”
Krinata had never seen Jindigar’s anger before, and she well understood it, for Threntisn had set impossible conditions for taking the Archive from Jindigar.
“Sit down,” urged Threntisn. “I’ll have someone escort Krinata to the gate. You and I must speak frankly.”
Jindigar looked to Krinata. “This concerns my apprentice too. And, if I were her, I wouldn’t appreciate being disregarded.”
“If I were you,” said Krinata to Threntisn in her best Dushauni submission-mode, “I wouldn’t assume that the senior Oliat priest had been detailed to escort a visitor to the gate.”
Threntisn gazed at her in astonishment, then a smile lighted his face and he stood, sweeping her a courtly bow. “My apologies. I hadn’t realized you were so deeply involved. Jindigar—please. I won’t keep you long.”
They took seats, and Threntisn handed Krinata one of the nicest yellow fruits, which could be eaten skin and all. It was cool and juicy, and she was thirsty! “Thank you.”
Jindigar likewise accepted a fruit and idly toyed with a very large loop of string on the makeshift table. “You may speak freely in front of Krinata.”
“I saw you with Dar. I’m sorry it doesn’t seem to be working out. She’s so much closer to Renewal than you are.”
“There’s no telling how long Indito’s will last, if it ever forms. But—I can’t make plans until I’ve delivered the Archive. I can’t even train Krinata. The Archive’s unaltered now, but my every thought sets it resonating. Every association—even references to people I’ve known—every personal memory leads me to it. I wouldn’t dare try to Center even if they’d have me—Threntisn, didn’t you see how I almost pulled the entire grieving zunre into the Eye with me? I didn’t mean to do that! I could inadvertently pull an entire Oliat in there with me. The thing’s a giant trap now. Take it, and let me use my talents for this community.”
“I can’t. My oath forbids.”
“Couldn’t you see the Archive is unaltered? You came into it to rescue us.”
Krinata listened, haunted by echoes of memory—suddenly unable to sort dream from reality. Did she remember being sucked down into a whirlwind called an Eye, or had that been a nightmare from the bad times out on the plain?
“With Grisnilter’s Seals broken there’s no way to test his Archive. No one could check every record in it against other Archives. It would take more than a lifetime! But we were all able to get out, which clearly indicates that the structure is undistorted. Your zeal convinces me that the contents are probably unedited. That’s why I made my offer. I’ll chance it, if I have proof of your fidelity to satisfy our Criteria. Surviving Centering would be sufficient.”
“But that’s impossible. You saw that at the grieving. My identity is pledged to Raichmat’s multicolony just as it is to delivering Grisnilter’s Archive. Since the Archive will destroy any Oliat zunre linked to me—in fact, it prevents my completely dissolving the duad I’m holding with Krinata, and so it endangers her too—I can’t fulfill either pledge.
“Shoshunri Observed that it’s impossible to achieve Completion by forsaking fidelity or to achieve fidelity by forsaking Completion. You’re demanding I choose between two vows of equal force. Either choic
e is a forsaking of fidelity. So you’re asking me to forsake fidelity to prove fidelity.”
He knew something like this could happen, thought Krinata. That’s why he fought Grisnilter so hard.
“That’s a good description of what you’re demanding of me,” the Historian replied. “I’m pledged to protect the accuracy of our memory. I dare not introduce a questionable Archive into our colony’s permanent record. This is now my community. For a Historian, the community becomes Identity. I wouldn’t expect an Aliom to understand Identity, but you come of a Historian family….”
Jindigar seized on that. “Yes, and so I know this community must have this Archive—the risk of taking it is less than the risk of delay, for I will fail eventually.”
“I don’t know that you haven’t failed already. With the
Seal broken I’ve no way to test it, short of absolute proof of your fidelity. How did you break into it? Inverting?”
Jindigar held himself very still, but his confession when it came held neither guilt, remorse, nor pride. “Yes.” Jindigar recited the events that led to Desdinda’s death as if telling off memory beads on a well-worn string.
Finally he added, “We were a very hasty, unbalanced triad, and I did Invert them—but only to affect the Emperor’s machinery, which was being used to keep us from our proper place in the pattern—I wouldn’t expect a Historian to understand. We did survive, so I was right. But Desdinda’s death left us all injured—so I was also wrong. Frey eventually died as a result of a train of bad judgments, for which I’m also responsible. If Krinata and I die because of the Archive being unSealed, then it will confirm the injunction against Inversion, for it will be clear that Inverting has impaired my judgment, preventing anyone associated with me from attaining Completion.”
“And if you survive?” Threntisn prompted.
“It won’t disprove the theory, for the dangers are as formidable as reputed. Threntisn, I didn’t Invert originally to disprove the major tenet of Aliom! It was a ‘strike,’ an unpremeditated action, an expression of the primal desire to survive to Completion. I believe I still have a good chance at it.” He explained how Desdinda’s death had left a Loop impressed on Krinata, and how she’d finally dealt with it in the hive. She hardly recognized a single image. But it brought back the stark terror, the forced confrontation, and the infinite relief she’d felt. Those had become such an integral part of her identity, she didn’t know they were there anymore.
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