This was an Emulation level dangerous even for a fully balanced and secure Oliat. Jindigar pulled them back from being immersed in the hive mentality of the insectoids. The committee representatives were shouting at each other as they fled.
The Oliat was isolated without an Outreach. But they had done their day’s work. The Holot would be fed—if he could only find a way of telling them so.
He scooped Krinata’s tiny body up in his arms and felt a moment of fear as Cyrus blocked his way, locking eyes with him, his unspoken fear for Krinata like a wall between them. But then Storm intervened, taking Cyrus by the shoulders and turning him away. “Listen to me! You can’t help Krinata. She’s one of them now. They don’t dare let a human medic touch her. Jindigar will know what to do.”
Jindigar was aware of the bunching of Cyrus’s muscles against Storm’s Lehiroh strength, but it was the fierce conflict of friends with a deep caring that was, in its way, so purely male, it bridged the species gap and united them. At last Cyrus yielded and turned his face away while Jindigar carried Krinata out of the cave, the other Outriders closing around the moving Oliat, ignoring the flight of insects overhead because the Oliat did.
Outside, daylight was waning in a cloud-speckled sky, but there was enough light to see the path down the cliff face. Ruff, Storm’s co-husband, insisted on edging past Jindigar and taking the path first, clearing off every bit of gravel Jindigar might slip on.
The Outriders left them at the outer court of the Dushau compound, and Jindigar forged through the inner gate and on down the residential streets to the central plaza. The plaza was defined by the Aliom Temple, the Historians’ Temple, the administration building and the medical services center. All about, people paused among the saplings and new grass to gaze after the Oliat with grave concern or total lack of surprise that it was the human who had collapsed.
Jindigar carried Krinata on through the hospital and right into Trinarvil’s office where he laid his Outreach on a bench and turned to peer up at Trinarvil, who was standing in the middle of the floor between the bench and her desk.
Trinarvil had always seemed old to Jindigar, but in these past months, she had become worn and haggard as well. Catapulted into premature Renewal, her body was rejecting most of the nutrients of this world, regardless of what native foods she ate, a common result of loss of attunement. Her sleep was fraught with nightmares, her days haunted with a sickness only those who had known exile from Dushaun could guess at.
She was much too ill, yet the Oliat needed her, needed an Outreach they could trust—if only for a very short while. And Trinarvil was an experienced Oliat Officer. If she could only accept this world—even if just as superficially as the rest of them had—they could use her for the brief while it would take to Dissolve.
Kneeling beside Krinata, who simply stared catatonically at the ceiling, Jindigar looked up at Trinarvil, knowing she would understand his plea.
And she did. But she only shook her head, the sadness in the etched lines in her face growing to a bleak hopelessness as she gazed upon Krinata. Then she went to the door, weaving her way through Jindigar’s other officers, and called some orders to those outside.
Blankets and hot water were brought for Krinata. Trinarvil let them know implicitly by her movements rather than by attempting speech, that she wanted Llistyien to Emulate Krinata into the Oliat—to evoke within the Oliat the closed mental loop the human was trapped in.
Jindigar’s first impulse was to reject that utterly, but then he saw what she was pulling out of a storage cabinet behind her desk. Trundling the heavy battery pack behind it, she deployed the only vibration therapy machine still fully operating. It was a long, silvery box with four tall poles that telescoped out of it in various directions. Two of them were color projectors and two were sound projectors.
Jindigar had no idea how a human might respond to such a standard -health-adjusting procedure. But could it really be harmful? Especially in link with six Dushau? Yet what else could they try? Before long, the committee people would have the army up at that cave, spraying it with fire or smoke to rid it of the insects trying to help them.
Trinarvil’s people brought in cots for the other six Oliat Officers and strapped them down so they wouldn’t hurt themselves.
Jindigar signaled Zannesu, and they opened the linkages just enough to let Llistyien attune to Krinata and Emulate. It took her three tries to overcome the fear of the darkness possessing Krinata’s mind, Jindigar insisting that what was happening to Krinata didn’t resemble the Dushau malady of being lost in the episodes of memory. Then Jindigar, with all his Oliat, went down into Krinata’s darkness, a depth of stillness where thought locked against thought and paralyzed the mind.
Jindigar never knew what happened. They told him later that it had taken nearly an hour for them to come out of it.
But it seemed to him like the very next thing he knew, the room came swimming into focus, and residual scraps of thought evaporating from the edges of consciousness seemed cast in the piquant human symbolism whereby Oliat linkages became tubes, information came in colors, and almost anything could have phallic import or monetary value.
Strength was pouring into him like a tangible fluid, and he was glad to be strapped down, for everything whirled crazily. He applied himself to balancing the linkages, vanquishing every shred of Krinata’s private memories that might have leaked into his memory, and synthesizing the multiawareness into coherent meaning. He’d never noticed how much mental effort it took to do that. But as he grew stronger he rolled his head over and found Krinata’s eyes staring into his own.
FOUR
Trap
Krinata’s eyes were human, with three concentric circles, the center one being a single pupil contracted to a mere point against the searingly bright Dushauni lumps. The irises were black, shot through with structures that had no relationship to vision. And the whites were newly bloodshot, showing strain and illness that tore at Jindigar’s heart.
Bandages spotted her arms, chest, and neck, where the baby Holot had savaged her furless skin. Trinarvil knelt above Krinata’s head, palpating her cervical vertebrae and testing for abnormal nerve-current patterns throughout her body. Someone must have mentioned the fall Krinata had taken. The human spine was notoriously delicate.
Eithlarin writhed to consciousness and, gasping, twisted to see that it was Trinarvil handling Krinata. She took a deliberate relaxing breath and schooled herself to patience as she saw Zannesu start awake and groggily fumble at his restraints, needing to get to her to comfort her. Jindigar made a mental note to inform Trinarvil of Eithlarin’s escalating breakin sensitivity if his Protector didn’t do it herself. But most of his attention was on Krinata. //You’re going to be all right now. It’s over.//
//Jindigar?// she marveled. //Where—how—//
As she conceived of questions the answers came to her within the Oliat perception but too fast for her stunned mind. He started to rise, to go to her, but fell back under the restraining straps. Trinarvil released him, and he rolled off to kneel beside
Krinata as Trinarvil went to shut down the irradiators. //Just a moment, and we’ll adjourn,// he reassured Krinata, //but first, can you speak for us?//
She coughed her throat clear. Ill guess so. Go ahead.// Jindigar worked the restraints away from her chest and helped her sit up as she reported for them, “//Trinarvil, we must inform the committees that the new invaders of the Holot’s cave are , only donating an appropriate food for the infants. They mustn’t be molested!//”
The medic took that in, then stepped to the door to send a messenger. By then, all the officers were moving. Jindigar felt the unsteadiness in their legs as they helped one another up. Darllanyu sat on the side of her cot, head cradled in her hands, her blue turban coming unwound. She pushed it off, revealing the elegant shape of her skull as she fought the remnants of the hormonal surge that had driven her out of attunement with Phanphihy.
Her awareness of Trinarvil’s
debilitated health lanced sharply through the Oliat along with her fear that they’d all die that way—in slow agony. The emotion almost shouted the thought, Where will 1 get courage like Trinarvil’s?
Raked by the untoward intimacy with Darllanyu, Krinata burst out, //Jindigar, why didn’t you tell me the links allowed such obscene access into an officer’s feelings!//
//They aren’t supposed to,// responded Jindigar, struggling to adjust the balance to give them all privacy, while at the same time reassuring Darllanyu that they would help each other through that adjustment. //It’s happening because we’re beyond the safety margin. But to become Center one must first hold all the other offices, several times, under different Centers, to learn how to observe another’s privacy when the other has no way to defend it.//
She rubbed her face, her ears moving oddly with the rest of her scalp as Darllanyu’s fear faded into the background. //But I don’t know what was real, what happened, what I imagined, what anyone else imagined and forced into me!//
//What do you remember?// asked Jindigar.
Ill don’t know—I—I lost myself. I couldn’t—I don’t – Jindigar, what if—but no, I was Takora, but I’m not Takora now. I’m Krinata—I’m me! I’m only me! Takora didn’t take over the Oliat, did!/ She shivered. //Jindigar, how can you stand it at Center?//
He sat beside her and hugged her, wrapping her blanket around her, only just now realizing what it must have been like for her, her brain not even able to cope with Outreach, to suddenly be Hooded with all the data a Center deals with. //Yes, you’re Krinata, only Krinata. Your mind is your own and all of one piece. No ghostly invaders like Desdinda, no insanity, just you. You will always have, deep in your unconscious, the Takora memory– nexus you got from me. But, you –took Center. It felt like somebody else because you used the Takora memories you’ve isolated in your unconscious. That isolation’s not bad. The human mind can’t deal with the millennia depth of the nexus any more than I could deal with Grisnilter’s Archive when I carried it.// It’s Threntisn’s Archive now, he reminded himself.
His eyes met Darllanyu’s over Krinata’s black hair, and he noted what a pale blue Darllanyu’s teeth had turned. She was not well. Her discomfort at his sympathy for Krinata was intolerable. He got up – but dared not go to Dar. If he dared offer her so much as a touch, he’d never be able to control what came next.
Jindigar’s dilemma increased Krinata’s anxiety, too, but she was still caught up in her own problem. //Jindigar—why can’t you acknowledge that I wax Takora? Really– not just by acquired memory?//
Jindigar’s breath caught in his throat. In a flash he was again swaying on the end of an intangible tether, gazing out over an Oliat that was his own, yet not his—Krinata, who could barely tolerate Outreach, at Center and balancing.
What if it were true? What if she had been Takora?
The very notion was staggering. It would mean that the entire theoretical foundation of Aliom science was riddled with errors: the concept of the purpose of life, the meaning of existence, the shape of the universe—everything was based on the idea that Dushau did not reincarnate as ephemerals do but had only one chance to complete the maturing of personality. Oliat work was part of a system aimed at Completion. To die Incomplete was to vanish from existence. And Oliat experience confirmed that this was indeed what happened to the Dushau who died Incomplete—as Takora had at his hand. But she had been doomed, anyway.
Takora’s death was an old, well-resolved issue. But he admitted it was a burden to his spirits. Do I deny she’s come back because / can’t bear to face her? In the turbulence of onset there was no way to determine that.
Sensitive to Jindigar’s condition, Zannesu interrupted. //Krinata, none of us can deal with this now, and everyone’s waiting….//
Krinata leapt to her feet. //Cyrus!// The picture burning through her mind was a memory, Cyrus peering into her eyes anxiously, his hands warm on her shoulders, trembling but tender, a nuance that bespoke leashed passion, inflamed by Jindigar’s luring her attention away. //He thinks—oh, no!// Her need to allay Cyrus’s fear commanded the Oliat.
The Oliat responded, striving to perceive the Outriders’ barracks, almost as if she were at Center again, but Jindigar had no heart to restrain them.x
The barracks shimmered into focus. It was dusk. Storm and Cyrus were on the porch, the others inside preparing supper. Cyrus sat dejectedly on the edge of the wood porch, his fingers driven into the mass of wild, tightly curly blond hair framing his weathered face, his feet scuffing the mud.
Storm paced. “I wish I could help you calm down.”
“It isn’t your wife who’s in there having God knows what done to her!”
“They know humans! They cured the virus—”
“Yeah, and now look.”
Storm dropped down beside Cyrus. “We agreed to stick this out with the Oliat. This just isn’t like you, Cy.”
“Sure, ‘Lord Kulain’ shouldn’t have any base feelings! Mustn’t sully the Kulain name! Well, all that died with the Allegiancy, and it was past time too!” He thrust himself to his feet and stalked off to the end of the building, halting to stare at the fence but obviously not seeing it.
The Oliat withdrew reflexively. It was too personal a scene and none of their business. Simultaneously Krinata flinched from it, appalled that she’d instigated the same kind of intrusion she’d objected to.
Jindigar gripped the linkages, ashamed at his momentary weakness. //Krinata, it’s not something we’re doing. It happens because of our instability.//
Venlagar suggested, //We should adjourn.//
//Yes, hurry,// added Krinata. //Let me go to him!//
Jindigar complied. Reaching to Zannesu, he brought them back into balance and opened the linkages into an even pattern. Then, using Krinata’s image of airlock hatches closing off the links, he separated their awarenesses and came up to full individual consciousness just in time to hear them all say aloud, in unison, “//Adjourned.//”
Trinarvil sighed loudly. She was seated at her desk, the office door shutting away the babble of her curious assistants gathered in the hall outside. The apparatus had been put away. One Dushaun-spectrum lamp was lit, powered from the waterfall south of the Dushau compound. Jindigar noted how the light sent waves of profound relaxation through his whole body and took that as a measure of his personal dysattunement to this world. When Renewal truly took hold of him, he just might become as ill as Trinarvil.
“I’ve got to—” Krinata started, heading for the door. Then she paused, looking over her shoulder at Jindigar. “Is it all right?”
He nodded, saying, “Trinarvil, can someone escort Krinata to the Outriders and explain vibration therapy to Cy?”
She rose. “Escort, yes—explain—we can try.” She followed Krinata to the door and spoke a few words to someone outside.
Krinata hesitated in the doorway. “Jindigar, Takora… no. It isn’t important right now. Think about it, please.”
She left, and Trinarvil returned to her desk carrying a tray with mugs of hot soup, which she passed out. When she sat down with her own, Krinata’s was left steaming by itself.
The Outriders will see that Krinata eats something, he reassured himself. None of them had eaten since dawn. The. soup tasted splendid. Subliminally he was aware that although the mug she drank from had been made on Dushaun of Dushaun clay—not the Phanphihy product the Oliat had been served in—Trinarvil found the native herbs and roots foul. He sat up straight, staring. He shouldn’t have had that awareness, fully adjourned. Testing, he found no leakage. But he had spoken aloud to Trinarvil right after adjournment—without effort. And Eithlarin had endured her touch on Krinata. Could she be ready—?
His eyes met the medic’s, the swirling indigo pattern showing she was focused on him, aware of their rapport. She was Oliat-trained, though it had been centuries since she’d worked. And she had predicted that she’d serve in his Oliat. Her prophecies always spoke true.
Into his hopeful silence she said, “No, Jindigar—I’m too old.” She set the mug down and shoved it aside with a clear rejection. “I’ve failed to adjust to this world.”
“Trinarvil, our situation couldn’t be worse.” And he described in Oliat shorthand how Krinata had grabbed Center. “An Oliat with two Centers can’t Dissolve. If you could replace her—just for a day—I could Dissolve easily. And—through the Oliat you could make world attunement.”
“And if I couldn’t? What Krinata almost did to you would be nothing by comparison.”
Theoretically she was right. He glanced at Darllanyu, curled around her mug and into herself, and was tempted to do or say anything to get Trinarvil to agree to help them.
“Isn’t there someone else?” asked Trinarvil. “If you’re not going to work, it doesn’t take a great deal of skill to hold Outreach during Dissolution.”
“I’ve tested every Aliom student here. There isn’t one who could tolerate anything more than a tetrad now. If one of them volunteered, it would take at least another year’s nonproductive drill in subforms before I might attain enough of a balance to Dissolve. Trinarvil, you can see we don’t have a year.”
She didn’t deny it. “You don’t trust Krinata—even if she gives her word not to do that again?”
“I’ve had experience with—” He’d never told Trinarvil about the Desdinda loop and all the promises Krinata couldn’t help but violate because she had the “Aliom strike”—the trait that caused instantaneous, uncritical reaction in an emergency and, when properly trained, always resulted in an optimal resolution. From all the promises Krinata had violated they had both learned that she would always “strike” under stress, promise or no promise, though she was not well trained. They had given up on promises.
He started over. “I do trust Krinata. But I made a mistake in taking her into Oliat. I should have known that the Takora nexus had to surface—and cause her to ‘strike’ for Center.” Which was odd considering that the nexus had been lifted from his own mind and thus could not encompass the Center reflexes—because he, himself, hadn’t had them when he’d been Takora’s Protector. The nexus could contain only that part of Takora he could accept—just as his own Oliat was absorbing his qualities, filtered through their own limits.
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