Seeking another cave suitable to the clickerhive, Jindigar, directed Venlagar’s attention north along the cliff face. At the extreme edge of their range of perception, a good three days’* walk to the north, they found a deep cave high up on the cliff. Jindigar observed that cave as if they were being tested for an Aliom Degree, stretching their newly enlarged range to the utmost.
He forgot their problems with impending Renewal, forgot the awkwardness of using a human Outreach, forgot the pre.-carious condition of the colony, brushed aside the very concept of self-defense, paid no attention to how this mess was his responsibility, and observed that cave’s perfection as a clickerhive home.
None of them noticed the intensifying of the noon sun beating down on them, none of them shivered when the cliff shadow engulfed them, and none of them felt the chill spring rain sluicing down at sunset. Around them, Storm and Cy kept everyone away as the colony resumed cautious movement, tending the wounded, collecting the dead from under the shadow of the circling cone of death, and retiring under their roofs to watch from their windows.
The last daylight was fading when the cone of hive warriors flattened, then lifted and began floating northward, filling the sky with their patterned dance, letting instinct draw them toward a suitable home.
Just beginning to feel the strain himself, Jindigar realized that Eithlarin and the others, less conditioned to this kind of work, were beginning to waver. Determined, he held the Oliat perception steady until the leaders of the swarm arrived at the designated cave. Only when Venlagar Received the warriors possessing the cave did Jindigar reach for Zannesu’s grip on. the linkages. The Inreach was shaking with fatigue, and Jindigar had to pry loose the youngster’s grip—reminding himself that despite the polished performance they’d turned in today, this was still a collection of untrained beginners wishing they were a real Oliat.
Finally in command of the levels again, Jindigar brought his Oliat down from the intense awareness focus, letting the individualities emerge as much as possible, short of adjourning his Oliat.
Breathing easier, he allowed the sense of triumph to surface at last. They had finally worked a full function.
He coughed. He felt drained and weak, and suddenly a whirling blackness billowed up from nowhere, enveloping his Oliat. Disoriented, he just had time to realize that it was Krinata’s mind surrendering to unconsciousness and to feel Storm catch him as he fell. That was a mistake. I should have adjourned us.
TWO
Krinata’s Fever
Hiding in a huge hollow log, rotted out to a thin shell. Outside, the giant anthropoid covered with tufts of stringy gray hair prowled hungrily, sniffing and nudging at the log. All of them– the surviving Outriders included–quivered with shameless fear. Vistral was a shattered planet, the ecology hopelessly upset. Everything was ragingly hungry, no longer selective about diet.
They had seen three Cassrians in their scouting party eaten alive, their exoskeletons cracked open at the thorax and their organs sucked out by the gray giants. A similar fate awaited them all, if anyone so much as moved while the predator lurked outside. Rescue had been too long in coming.
Someone sneezed–
A convulsive wave of terror engulfed them, throwing them up out of the nightmare, the sound of the sneeze still ringing through Oliat consciousness—hut which Oliat?
Jindigar awoke, sitting doubled over, the aftermath of the sneeze smarting through his air passages. Coughing, he realized he was still Centering his Oliat, with one of his officers reliving an episode from a previous Oliat. He groped to control the linkages again.
//It was Eithlarin!// Zannesu recovered first and scrambled out of bed to her side. //The Vistral nightmare.//
They were in their quarters adjacent to the Aliom Temple hall. They must have been carried here and put snugly to bed. The large room, built to accommodate the seven of them, was compartmentalized by thin veils of indoor shrubbery lit by the skylight and the windows high up the walls. While Jindigar couldn’t see all his officers, he sensed their disorientation as their awarenesses swept the room.
In the great fireplace at the far end of the room, a new fire licked at a tree-trunk-sized log. A pot of hot cereal steamed on the warmer hearth next to the teapot, which filled the room with the aroma of a native herb. To one side of the fire there was a hole in the wall that would be a door to their new indoor plumbing facilities. It was covered over with a rough-woven tarpaulin. Fingers of chill spring wind swirled amid the overheated air from the fireplace.
Jindigar sneezed again, realizing his body was fighting a microbe invasion allowed to take hold during their long exposure. In an hour or so he’d be fine.
As they all began to stir, sitting up, wrapping blankets around themselves, it occurred to him that it had been more than a day since they’d eaten anything. They had gone to the Dissolution on the usual fast. Small wonder Eithlarin’s having one of her episodes.
He dragged himself to his feet and went to kneel beside Zannesu, who was comforting the Protector as best he could.
//I’m sorry,// Eithlarin apologized, still shaking.
//It isn’t your fault,// assured Zannesu. //We’ll work through this as soon as we’re married. It won’t take much once we’re through Renewal onset. Next time you work Oliat, you won’t be like this.//
She glanced at Jindigar. //It’s unprofessional to inflict such things on the other officers.//
He’d known from the start that she had no business working Oliat with the scars from her previous Oliat experience unhealed, but he admired her courage in coming to Phanphihy to be a colonist after witnessing the destruction of a colony that had disrupted its planet’s ecology. And she had known there was no therapy facility here. But then, it wouldn’t have been much better on Dushaun.
She had been the only survivor from Vistral, Of the three officers who had been lifted off the planet, one had gone episodic, retreating into his farthest memories and totally losing touch with current time. The other had died in the aftermath of Dissolution shock brought on when the predator had touched an Oliat Officer and thus broken into the psychic linkages, flooding them with predator’s ferocity.
Eithlarin alone had been tough enough to survive with nothing more than occasional nightmares. But they made her a threat to Jindigar’s Oliat. No Dushau could resist the arousal of such atavistic terrors, for their species was evolved prey, scavengers who had learned to run rather than light predators, and to glean the predator’s leavings. Eithlarin’s unhealed terrors made the whole Oliat unusually sensitive to breakin trauma.
No one blamed Eithlarin except, perhaps– Jindigar whipped around, searching Krinata’s bed. Everyone else was sitting up, doing waking exercises. But Krinata lay swathed to the eye brows in blankets, tossing feverishly. Very little came to him along the Outreach linkage.
Rising stiffly, he glanced at Dar, who seemed as well as the rest. He and Krinata were the only ones suffering fever. He sent his gladness along the linkage to Dar but went to Krinata. Darllanyu stifled an irrational hurt, telling him, when she knew he’d felt it, //It’s Renewal. I can’t control it. I don’t want the Oliat– her—to claim you now://
// Renewal has affected the linkages too, // Jindigar told them all. //We shouldn’t be getting this much emotional texture across interfaces.// lie knell beside Krinata. Her pale skin was flushed pink—human blood was red, not purple. Dilated blood vessels trying to cool her? Her skin did feel warmer than it should, though damp.
Krinata squirmed away from Jindigar’s touch on her forehead, and instantly her dizziness swept through the Oliat. //She should have a medic’s attention.//
Here was yet another reason it was insane to use a human as an Oliat Officer, even temporarily. The Dushau immune system had never met anything it couldn’t handle quickly and permanently. Jindigar resolved to take much better care of Krinata in the future—but was afraid he wouldn’t be able to. He hadn’t deliberately abused her this time. Yet their lives were dependent on
her beating this disease.
He tucked the blanket around her, reflecting that humans were evolved predators. She didn’t seem so fearsome now, but he knew she could be deadly. How many times had her aggression saved his life? How many times had she risked her life and honor to save his? He supposed he would count them someday, but he would also have to count the times her best efforts had sent them to the brink of destruction. There was no other individual in the cosmos whom he admired more, and none whom he feared more.
//Jindigar!//
Darllanyu’s plea pierced him. They had all followed the gist of his feelings, though not his thoughts. But none of them had lived through what he and Krinata had. He glanced at the high windows where spring lightning danced across the rain-darkened sky. Moving Krinata through that would only make matters worse. //Don’t worry,// he assured them. Ill wouldn’t think of bringing a human medic in here. It would destroy the worldcircle, and I don’t think any of us can tolerate an invasive touch.// After that nightmare, even Trinarvil would jeopardize them.
He coughed again. //Very likely whatever has attacked Krinata is a mutation of what I’m fighting.// They’d brought the microlife of their interstellar civilization with them, and it had long since developed the knack of mutating to live in new metabolisms. Throughout the galaxy, standard practice was to use Dushau blood to make antibodies effective for other species.
//I think Krinata can be brought sufficiently close to consciousness so we can adjourn fully, // he decided. //We’re straining her system even now. Dissolution would be better for her, but we’d need her active cooperation. So I’ll go to the lab and have serum made for her.//
They argued, but there was really no choice. Darllanyu stayed out of it, disqualifying herself because of her feelings. As Eithlarin applied cold towels to Krinata’s face and neck, and Jindigar gathered up the linkages to work the adjournment, Darllanyu finally commented, //The wedding flames have burned out. We’ll have to start over now.//
//It will be a while until Krinata’s well enough,// cautioned Jindigar, feeling her anguish as well as his own cold emptiness. Darllanyu was the deepest into Renewal onset, the most unstable. Everything in him yearned to surrender to her, to let her systems trigger his own. //We mustn’t let this loose among us now. Come, it will help a little to be adjourned.//
His link to Krinata was dull and wispy, though her eyes were open a crack and he could feel her mind struggling to orient. He shut down all the linkages to match that one, then summoned the image of spaceship pressure hatches closing across each corridor that stretched between them.
It was Krinata’s visualization of adjournment. They had adopted it for this Oliat because none of their symbols worked for her. As he finished dogging the hatches, each of them returned to individual awareness with only subliminal assurance that the others existed. But any trauma one of them suffered would blow the hatches wide-open. Even separated, they shared holistic awareness, a residual that made linear, vocal speech very difficult. They could speak with close associates and zunre who could be trusted to grasp their meaning, but speech with strangers would remain difficult.
Yanking on some clothes, Jindigar took a rain slicker with a deep hood and plunged out into the torrential downpour. He met no one. The graveled walks were awash in spots, and before he reached the north gate, he was soaked and chilled again. He came out into the walled courtyard and surveyed the place.
Around the enclosing palisade, warehouses and offices had been built where ephemerals traded with Dushau who were not in Renewal. Business was suspended today while the community cleaned up from the battle with the clickerhive.
To his left, against the west palisade, a long building was divided into single rooms, each with its own outside door and smoking chimney. It housed the seven Oliat Outriders when they were on duty.
Rain poured off the roof that slanted down over the rough wood porch. Bentwood chairs were scattered against the wall out of the worst of the wet, and in one of them sat Cyrus Benwilliam, feeding shreds of clickerbeast meat to a young pet piol.
The parent piols had come with them across the galaxy, adopting Jindigar and caring for him with great propriety. Here, they had settled beside the fish-farming pond and proceeded to try to populate the planet with piols. It seemed the species’ goal was to provide a personal pet piol for every sapient in the galaxy.
As Jindigar sloshed to the porch and paused to scrape mud off his boots on the rail provided, Cyrus looked up. His first reaction at the sight of Jindigar was fear—that Krinata was dead, the Oliat shattered. Jindigar’s manner dispelled that, but the human sensed that something was wrong. As he searched Jindigar for a clue, the piol snatched the remaining meat and ran off to roll merrily in a puddle and pretend that his prize was a fish.
The human was too professional to speak to Jindigar until spoken to. Jindigar wanted to reassure him, but the words wouldn’t come. He hadn’t realized how much harder it would be adjourning from Center than from any other Office. Before they’d balanced, it hadn’t been this hard.
Grasping the difficulty, Cy called over his shoulder, “Storm! Jindigar’s here—I think they’ve adjourned.”
The end door opened, sending a shaft of light out into the gloomy morning. Storm, one of Jindigar’s closest ephemeral friends, his most trusted Outrider, squinted out at Jindigar, then turned and shouted, “It is Jindigar!” He stepped aside to admit the Center. His professionalism was unimpeachable, yet Jindigar had to set his will not to turn and retreat. How am I ever going to do this?
He shed his slicker into waiting hands, telling himself it would be easier once he broke that initial barrier. This was yet another reason no one dared serve at Center twice. It could become impossible to rejoin normal society.
The room was cozy, a fire going and food steaming. To the left, a door opened into the adjacent room, and beyond, Jindigar glimpsed other doors open down the row of rooms, the other Outriders gathering quickly. The four Lehiroh men were co-husbands whose wife had died when Jindigar’s ship had crashed on this world. Cyrus and two other human men, trainees, completed the complement of Outriders.
Jindigar understood that Storm and his co-husbands had an agreement with a Lehiroh woman who had just borne them a son, conceived before it had been decided to train the full Oliat, and before Storm’s crew had come back to work, tabling their personal life. The decision to Dissolve had freed them to resume relations with the woman and to dare the joy in the care of their child. All four of the men had well-developed breasts from nursing, and Jindigar knew that the baby had to be here somewhere unless the woman had him today.
The human trainees were the last to come in and were quickly taken aside by the other Lehiroh as Storm maneuvered Jindigar to the fireplace, his back to the near strangers.
This is for Krinata, Jindigar told himself. She’s done more than this for me. He rehearsed the words in his mind, then forced them out at Storm. “We adjourned.”
Comprehension and a bit of relief flushed his humanoid features. When not lactating, the Lehiroh males could easily be confused with humans. Jindigar rested both his hands on Storm’s shoulders and said, “Krinata has fever.”
“No! I was afraid of that. I should have put a coat on her even—”
“No. Could have destroyed our focus—destroyed this colony! Storm—I go to the lab.”
“For a blood specimen?” He grinned but politely kept his predator’s teeth behind his lips. “Cy, get your coat. We’ll go along and explain to them for Jindigar.”
Minutes later, they trudged down the path that skirted the cluster of ephemeral dwellings. Each species was building in its own pattern. Several hundred people still lived in huge common units, for winter had interrupted the projects,
On both sides of the path, foundations had been laid for buildings that would house their rebuilt technology. The Dushau Historians had already resurrected dozens of basic crafts and manufacturing processes from the depths of memory. The ephemerals were vers
atile and talented enough to learn many such skills. By their most optimistic timetable, the Historians figured it might only take a thousand years to attain space travel again. But, with setbacks such as the clickerhive moving in on them, it could take twice that long.
They passed the houses and skirted the livestock corrals and barns, which showed little activity except for the waspish Cassrians at necessary chores. They enjoyed the rain but hated the chill, and called complaints back and forth in their multi-pitched, whistling voices.
No one worked the fields. They were too marshy even for the light step of the Cassrians. Jindigar resisted the impulse to bring the Oliat to focus on the life in those fields. Phanphihy had a vigorous microlife, and he knew mutant forms were already finding the offworld crops very tasty. If they’d made an error in estimating that process as they had in banishing the minor vermin only to thus attract the killer clickerhive…
“Storm—the Dissolution. We can’t do it now.”
“Not until Krinata’s well. We understand.”
“No—the Holot infants.”
“True—they are already very hungry. But nobody expects you to—everyone knows you can’t go on.”
“We must—only without experienced Outriders….”
Cyrus had paced along behind Jindigar, knowing that his straggle to revive his speech faculty would be easier with someone he’d known longer. Now Cyrus put in, “I won’t quit until Krinata can.”
Jindigar was pleased with himself when he was able to turn and acknowledge that. To Storm he added, “Your child needs you. I will accept other Outriders you may train.”
“No,” said Storm. “One careless step by an Outrider and you might all die. There are others willing to nurse the baby. We’ll see this through.”
Jindigar knew the others who would take the baby were not of Storm’s religion, and it would pain him to give the child up. But Storm generally spoke for his co-husbands, as Jindigar did for the Oliat. Jindigar added, “It should only be a day or two until we find a food for the Holot infants that won’t attract another clickerhive.”
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