He finished his account, adding, “I couldn’t help either Frey or Krinata because of the Archive. Krinata healed herself, despite the hive’s Long Memory, while Frey failed.”
“You put the Archive above your zunre’s lives?”
Jindigar hung his head. His sigh was a long shudder. But when he raised his eyes, he said firmly, “Yes. And I will always, because if I break my pledge to Grisnilter, what good is my pledge to my zunre, and if I forsake fidelity, how can I or my zunre achieve Completion?”
Threntisn turned to Krinata. “How do you feel about that?”
“Maybe I can’t ever know how a Historian regards Identity, but I’m beginning to believe mine includes Jindigar, and that’s why we’re linked. But I’d rather die than see him go to Dissolution, which is what ruining the Archive would do to him.”
Astonished, Threntisn asked Jindigar, “Is she another Ontarrah? Is that why Darllanyu—”
Ontarrah. Images of a sumptuous bedchamber flooded into her mind, and suddenly she knew who Ontarrah was, though the memory had that same maybe-not-dream quality which so confused her these days.
“No, she’s not,” Jindigar answered levelly. “We won’t make that mistake again. But I owe her my life, many times over. She’s zunre to me, and your son—and so to you. Take the Archive, Threntisn—before it does become altered—and let me fulfill my other obligations.”
Silently he weighed Jindigar, and Krinata thought he’d do it, but he said, “I believe you, Jindigar, and I want to now. But I can’t. I must have full-jeopardy, objective proof for the record before I can risk it. Doesn’t Aliom have some such law for its Seniors?”
“Yes, of course. I understand, but I disagree. There must be some law you are breaking by forcing this choice upon me.” He glanced at the sun. “We must go.” On the stairs he turned and added, “After you fished us out of the Archive’s Eye, I thought you’d understand.”
“I do, Jindigar. You chose Dissolution with the Archive, rather than break either oath. You’d have made a great. Historian. That’s the only other choice you have, you know.” He gestured to the portal behind him. “Come in and let me teach you to reSeal it and foster it yourself.”
Jindigar looked up at the other man with an ironic smile. “I will—on the day you become an Aliom priest.”
“Then we may go to dissolution/death together, each clinging to our own path to Completion and failing.”
Jindigar sighed, shook his head, and took Krinata off toward the street that led to the compound gate.
Eye of the Archive. The image awakened vague shuddering terrors for Krinata. “It seems everybody else remembers what happened in that grieving. All I seem to have is a determination never to try it again!”
“Grieving itself isn’t a fearful experience; being dragged into someone else’s attempted suicide is. I’m sorry, Krinata, but you left me no choice.”
When she asked what he meant, he drew her a vivid word picture of the Archive swallowing them. She recalled the jagged black pinnacle, and a pond with its ludicrously fearsome guardian, and described them, saying, “I cast us off and limited your options. If I’d understood then, I might not have done that. I’m sorry.”
“It was the only way out for me. The problem, of course, was how many other lives were risked for my sake and what I owe them all for that.”
“I didn’t know anyone else was involved when I did it.”
“No?” He shook his head. “Pinnacles, fountains, and luminous statues, of all things—the imagery of the human mind is astonishing. I wonder how I can possibly train you in duad across such a gulf. But I know I heard you play the whule—and beautifully too.”
“I hope my blood didn’t rain the strings.”
“I cleaned them easily. Such an instrument doesn’t survive by being sensitive to moisture, remember?”
The memory of the waterfall in the small canyon rushed at her through the duad link. All the reasons he shouldn’t come to care for her flooded into her mind. “Jindigar—”
“I hope you’ll play for me, now that your fingers are healed. It could help you recall Prey’s grieving and make it useful to you.” They were at the portal, and he said, before she could answer, “Come, let’s alert the Outriders, then go down by the river and watch the piols fish.”
The Outriders were camped just within the walls that enclosed the entry to the Dushau compound. Clearly this outer area would contain small cabins to house the Outriders—who had better sense than to intrude on the inner compound and who could then deal with ephemerals on behalf of the Dushau. But only a few of the cabins had walls as yet. The four Lehiroh and Cy had a cook fire blazing and dinner roasting while they cleaned stun rifles.
Cyrus turned. “Jindigar! Come, sit down! Krinata—”
“Oh, no! I forgot, Cy! I was—”
“It’s okay. They told me you were on another job.”
Jindigar lowered himself to sit on a pack beside the fire, and Storm fussed over him, insisting they stay for dinner. “You’ve got to get your strength back.”
“I’m fine now, really. Thank you,” said Jindigar.
They served a haunch of meat, with eggs and fruit, saying, “We’ll be laying in supplies for the winter as soon as the smoke pits are ready.”
“Good,” said Jindigar. “This community will survive.” And he explained the needs of the new Oliat—how much more delicate their balance was than the groups who worked for the Allegiancy. “Ordinarily such an Oliat would work only on Dushaun, using Officers as Outriders. Here, we need you to relate them to the ephemeral community.”
“We’ll keep ephemerals away from them until they’re ready,” said Storm,
They talked of the community’s plans for defense, then they all went with Jindigar for his first view of the river. While the others splashed about with people just getting off work and corning to bathe, the piols flashed about deviling the swimmers. Krinata and Jindigar found a spot under a tree and sat talking. After a while Jindigar questioned her about how she was getting along. “Does Viradel bother you?”
“She doesn’t seem to be spreading rumors. I’ve met some friendly people, but there are also those who won’t speak to me. On the whole, mis is an unusually harmonious group.”
“Well, they’re Raichmat zunre, and Raichmat was of Shoshunri’s School of Efficacious Helplessness, so naturally everyone here is biased in—” He sat bolt upright. “That’s it! But neither Threntisn nor I have applied it consistently!” He glanced at her. “What’s wrong?”
School of Efficacious Helplessness? “I made that up! I made that silly phrase up!” And she recounted her insight while watching the lightning.
“You’ve done a lot of reading. You must have—”
“No! I’d remember something like that!”
“Takora was trained by Raichmat, and you seem to have internalized her from my memories. It’s puzzling, but no human has ever—”
She lost track of his words, assembling fragile threads of memory. Could it really be? The preposterous conviction grew beyond all reason. She told herself the Dushau knew what they were talking about—they didn’t reincarnate. She wasn’t even sure ephemerals did. Maybe everybody doesn’t always–but somehow, I once was Takora. I was never Desdinda–this is totally different. I’m not Takora now, but once I was her.
She looked over at Jindigar, who’d fallen asleep waiting for her to reply to something. I’m out of my mind! He’d never believe it, I don’t!
Other consequences crowded into her head—after being Center, you couldn’t go back into the Oliat. There had to be some reason for that rule—had she caused her problem with Desdinda by breaking an Oliat rule? Or didn’t the rule carry from one lifetime to another–but Dushau didn’t reincarnate, so how could they have multilife rules?
Krinata was still chasing the illogic around in circles when it got so dark, they had to wake Jindigar and leave the river to the nightstalkers. Jindigar walked back to the Dushau compound, weary
but seeming stronger. Perhaps tomorrow there’d be time to discuss her wild notions.
But the next morning, she woke to the sounds of women poking up the fire and washing in the buckets brought in the night before and warmed this morning with hot stones from the banked fire, or helping each other bind their hair.
A low rumble shook the building, evoking a babble of comments: “Sounds mechanical!” “No, just thunder—another storm.” “Thunder doesn’t go on getting louder like that!”
The walls began to rattle, and she was fully awake. The ground shook, the animals in the hive-corral screamed. People poured out of buildings, raising a dreadful racket.
The Squadron!
Krinata had pulled on trousers and was skipping to yank on boots as she ran out the door before any of the women already up and dressed could move. She scrambled across a trench and sprinted toward the Dushau compound, the duad link within her mind ringing out alarm.
At the place where two roads met to feed into the portal, a crowd of Dushau had gathered. Storm and Cy, with a group of Dushau and Lehiroh, surrounded the seven who had balanced in Oliat. Jindigar found Krinata, and she shouted over the ramble, “What is that noise?”
“Look up!” he yelled pointing.
Above the clouds in the morning sky four flat shapes descended, plumes of plasma and vapor spraying from the undersides. The duad linkage made them seem familiar, though she’d never seen one before. “Imperial Landbases,” Jindigar identified tonelessly, “fortresses, each carrying hundreds of troops! Once positioned, they could demolish the settlement, even boil the ground down to bedrock.” His clinical distance reminded her of how he’d told Threntisn that every memory led to the Archive. He’s more frightened than I am!
Someone yelled, “Look!” To the west, on the cliff high above them where one of the bases was settling, a line of armored Imperial troopers waited mounted on gravity scooters, weapons at ready, armor scintillating.
Darllanyu separated from the Oliat and shouted to Cy, “Look! Up there!” She pointed to the mounted troopers. “Phanphihy native—hivebounders—a herald, we think, and a little one—mind-gatherer. Prisoners!”
Jindigar drew Krinata away down the road to the cliff, peering up uncertainly. “It could be Chinchee! I wouldn’t put it past him to try to communicate with the Imperials. They might have forced him to lead them here.”
“How would he know?”
“Phanphihy doesn’t need an Oliat—it is an Oliat!”
By now the trenches were filling, but the refugees from Truth were gravitating toward Jindigar, Terab and Irnils in the lead. Energy weapons, created from the downed landers’ drives, had been placed in the bunkers, and now crews rushed to man them. Others, armed with hunting stunners and farming tools, air rifles, and even quarter-staves, assembled.
“Krinata, do you notice anything odd?” asked Jindigar, pivoting to view each of the four fortresses that were now hovering within a few feet of the ground, forms distorted by shimmering waves of energy and plumes of dust.
At her bewilderment he asked, “How many troops do you suppose are really up there?”
One of the fortresses was settling right on the far edge of the east field, the sun rising behind it. Another was due north of the corral, while the third came down to the south of the stockade on the flat area around the gravel mine. The fourth, on the escarpment above them, cut off all hope of escape. “Eight—maybe twelve hundred in the fortresses. Another hundred or so mounted and ready to move in on us.”
“No,” he said slowly, pivoting. “No, it’s a trick!”
He whirled and strode back to the Oliat where a crowd of the settlement’s elected defense managers were clumsily questioning Darllanyu over Cy’s objections.
Jindigar singled out the ephemeral leader. “I believe I can extract the information you most need.”
He motioned Cy to move the defense committee back and turned to Darllanyu. His demeanor was shockingly distant, impersonal, as he addressed not Darllanyu, but the Oliat. “Does Indito’s notice anything odd about the eastern fortress?”
One of the Officer’s eyes snapped to the east where the descending fortress was still barely visible. The Outreach answered, loudly enough for the committee to hear, “Indito’s judges there is no fortress there, nor to the north, nor to the south! The western one is solid. And manned.” There was a hesitation, a silent communion among them. “Indito’s estimates the western fortress is sparsely crewed—perhaps only three or four hundred.”
A runner was dispatched to concentrate forces in the west, and jubilation spread through the defenders. They numbered nearly a thousand, and the enemy only four or five hundred. Without the Oliat they’d never have known, and the ruse might have made them surrender.
Jindigar fired more carefully worded questions at the Outreach, and gradually the defense command saw how the Squadron had been decimated already. The fortress was barely functional, malfunctions plaguing them where native sand or even air had gotten in. A nasty fungus had ruined the air purifier, and something vile was growing in the water. They’d lowered their ambient temperature to try to kill the microorganisms, and as a result, many of them were ill.
Exposure to the hivebound had left them all seeing horrors crawling out of solid bulkheads or lurking behind every tree or hill. Transfixed within their hallucinations, the crew made irreparable errors with precious equipment. They wanted nothing more than to get off this uninhabitable planet before their ships were no longer spaceworthy.
Jindigar traded a glance with Krinata, and she knew this was indeed what had happened to Raichmat’s Outriders. It hadn’t happened to Truth’s passengers only because Jindigar and Frey had kept them treading lightly through this world’s ecology. Her sledgehammer attacks with Inverting the triad could have destroyed them all.
Indito’s Outreach proclaimed, “The whole fortress rings with resentment and anger covering fear and revulsion. They must attack soon, for we stand between them and home.”
Indito’s prediction was hardly made when the mounted cohort on the cliff above rose in a maneuver clearly intended to be parade-ground-precise and impressive. But three stragglers, one scooter failure that sent its rider tumbling into the river, and a midair collision spoiled the effect. As if to divert attention from that, the fortress extruded a beamer-cannon and fired at the row of abandoned landers parked to the north of the corral. The loud crack-whump sound deafened them, and shards of shredded hull and circuitry rained down, forcing all the unarmored to duck.
Then the cannon turned and bombarded the corral. The animals huddled together in terror. The densely packed flesh exploded. Blood and chunks of sizzling meat rained onto rooftops and defenders to the north.
Then battle was joined, and people were screaming and dying on all sides as armored troopers descended toward the Dushau compound.
“Why don’t they just obliterate the settlement?” asked Viradel, who was holding a stun pistol, standing among the other refugees who’d come with Jindigar.
Jindigar answered, “They want us alive.”
On the cliff top more troopers were pouring out of the fortress—some jumping down the cliff using their armor’s repellers, others on grav-scooters or huge, round flying gun platforms. The defenders, pulled out of the north trench and from the riverside emplacements, had regrouped to defend the Dushau stockade, forming a line about a hundred meters away.
Krinata watched horrified as the fighting came at them like a wave and was stalled by the defenders. Five scooters were downed by Lehiroh farmers, but more armored Imperials descended from the cliff. The Outriders urged the Oliat toward the river. Jindigar called, “Cy, it’s pointless to retreat. We can’t outrun them.”
“Then let’s surrender!” said Krinata.
“No use!” replied Terab. “All of us here are guilty of consorting with Dushau—an automatic death penalty.”
Krinata could see no pattern in it, no right place to be, no way to efficacious helplessness. All her
insights deserted her, except the one determination never to try to solve a problem by Inverting an Oliat subform. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I can’t just stand here and watch people be slaughtered defending me!”
She charged down the road toward the battle, pausing only to grab a stunner from a dead defender. Crouching low, she zigzagged, firing the stunner at coruscating Imperial armor. She was amazed to be alive when she reached the place where six Holot had downed three troopers. Riderless scooters floated overhead. Beyond her, defenders stole weapons from the dead bodies and fired on the next wave of troops. Then– crisp formation dissolved on contact with the defenders. The professionals had lost their nerve. Still, many defenders went down before overwhelming force.
Krinata saw a Holot engineer she recognized fire at a mounted trooper. The trooper, armor sparkling with protective fields, fired back. The Holot went down, and the rider zoomed over him, still firing at his victim.
Krinata tossed her stunner aside, dove at the Holot’s body, and snatched up his beamer to fire at the trooper, as she rolled for cover behind a boulder. As she moved, the Holot’s head came away from his shoulders and rolled to her feet. She screeched, gagged, and almost retched. But then she saw the scooter returning, its rider aiming a beamer at her, but his armor was gray now, not scintillating.
With a coolness that astonished her she rose to her knee, aimed at the professional who was aiming at her, and squeezed off the neatest shot she’d ever put into a moving target. The trooper’s armored head rolled to one side, his body fell off the scooter on the other side, and the scooter was left riderless, coming toward her on inertia.
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