The soundless vibration turned his muscles to jelly, melted his bones, invaded his mind. He fought to remain with the scene, drinking in all the data recorded in the peripherals. But in the end, before he’d grasped much of the technical background, his will collapsed.
In that moment his bodyfield lost the key he’d used to access the Observer’s level, and he found himself on the recliner once more, facing an ashen-gray display that pulsed sickly.
“He’s not breathing!” exclaimed a technician.
“Neither is Threntisn!”
Teams converged on them, grabbing away the contacts, stretching them out, forcing air into them. Jindigar had no strength to resist. Everything went out of him with the knowledge that the only help for them was utterly beyond their reach. A four-way meta-Oliat could be formed only of the most experienced officers and had to be Constituted by a commission of Complete Priests who could manage to link the Centers. Serving in a meta-Oliat was a legendary privilege, for the range of perception was not just a planet or a Solar System but the entire cosmos. It was the shortest, but the most dangerous, path to Completion, for very little was known about the mechanism. Not many experiments had been done, for theorists were leery of the effects of the linkage between Observer and Observed.
One datum had stuck in his mind, though. Of the four times a meta-Oliat had been Constituted to Dissolve a dual-Centered Oliat, it had succeeded only once. And nobody knew why. At least, that was where the data in this Archive left off. There has to be something else. There has to be.
“There’s something else,” Jindigar was still insisting raggedly as Venlagar and Zannesu carried him back to their quarters. Jindigar, driven, had wanted to go on, but Threntisn’s attendants had called a halt.
Slumped on his cot, Jindigar looked around at his officers. As bad as the last couple of days had been for him, they had been many times worse for his officers—waiting, feeling the creeping inner pressure that wouldn’t slack off, and with nothing to do but depend on him to find the answer. He couldn’t even tell them what he’d found. He wasn’t authorized to know it himself. And it did none of them any good.
They had no choice but to try the Dissolution and let it go as it would. But he knew how it would go. The moment his links blurred, Krinata would take over. Krinata wasn’t Takora–even if maybe she had been once. She couldn’t do a Center’s job. She had lost her grip on his Oliat because she couldn’t cope with the ever-shifting energy patterns and information flow. Even if she knew how, her human body wasn’t conditioned to it.
One more fumble and we’re all dead. What am I going to do?
He stared at them. Zannesu was stirring something in a pot hung over the fire, Eithlarin writing in her diary, Venlagar napping—probably dreaming of his wedding day if the way his throat was working meant anything. The gathering Renewal tides were affecting even Venlagar, his steadiest officer.
When Jindigar had come in, Darllanyu and Llistyien had been teaching Krinata a tune on Jindigar’s whule. They had stopped, but Krinata was still seated cross-legged on the table, the whule cradled in her lap, Llistyien seated in the chair before her. Watching Jindigar, Krinata passively let Llistyien try to wrap her four fingers and barely opposable thumb around the fretboard to cover a chord that would strain a Dushau’s grip.
Jindigar was about to suggest that they transpose the key when voices erupted outside. One female Dushau voice rose above the others in clear Standard.
“You can’t go in there’! That’s a consecrated Temple, don’t you understand! You shouldn’t even be–”
Jindigar leapt to his feet, as everyone else started to move. He thought he heard the rumble of a human or Lehiroh man’s voice, not a sound he’d ever heard inside the compound. Krinata was the only ephemeral allowed this far.
“I can’t do that,” answered the Dushau as Jindigar crossed the Temple floor and approached the front door, realizing it was Trinarvil defending them. “The Oliat must not be disturbed—”
He identified Storm’s voice this time. “Jindigar will be furious with you if you don’t let me speak to his Oliat. You don’t know what’s just happened—”
Jindigar wound through the curved entryway and emerged onto the porch of the Aliom Temple beside Trinarvil, the Oliat hanging back in the shadows behind him, Krinata at his heels.
“What has happened?” asked Jindigar, ignoring his fatigued numbness.
Storm answered from the ground in front of the porch where he stood surrounded by six nervous Dushau who had closed in to escort him back out to the gate. “The Gifters laid eggs in the Cassrians’ hatching pond, and their grubs ate Cassrian eggs, leaving a rotten mess that killed the other eggs. The committees had the lab create a fungus that kills the Gifters’ eggs but not Cassrian eggs or hatchlings. It was supposed to stay in the pond; only tonight, they found a mutated version of that fungus growing on the corn sprouts. It killed corn even faster than it killed Gifter eggs. Jindigar, without the corn Lehiroh and humans won’t survive next winter. We’re too low on vitamin supplements.”
And where will their fungus spread next? Scanning the group of Dushau gathering around them, Jindigar asked Trinarvil, “You knew this?”
“Yes, but Jindigar’s can’t cope with it.”
Krinata, a trained ecologist, muttered, “I’ll bet it was, a native phage that invaded the fungus and turned it.”
Jindigar glanced around, agreeing with a gesture. Darllanyu, hidden back in the shadows of the tunnel entry, asked, “Are ‘ we going to have to work this?”
Zannesu reassured her. “We—can’t”
She shook that off. “If we must—we must.” Every one of them, despite the tight adjournment, knew that she held the vial of pensone in her hand like a talisman. “We can’t abandon the colony at such a moment.”
Eithlarin possessively edged closer to Zannesu but did not contradict Dar.
At Trinarvil’s behest two Dushau Outriders moved to escort Storm toward the outer gate. In a sudden decision, driven perhaps by the long hours of tedious, fruitless effort of the last few days, Jindigar called out, “We’d like him to wait in the debriefing room. We must discuss this.”
Trinarvil looked at him as if he’d gone into Renewal madness, and he thought she would overrule him. But she sighed and went after the group around the ephemeral intruder. “I’ll go get a Historian to let us in. Wait.”
Jindigar turned to his Oliat, leading them back into the Temple. “I don’t want to convene and search the colony’s situation, but I think we must interview Storm. The debriefing room is the only place in here where we can talk comfortably. I don’t want to go into the outer court.”
“Jindigar—if we have to…” repeated Darllanyu.
“Don’t be too quick to become a martyr,” he cautioned, but inwardly admired her courage.
“I want to come with you,” said Krinata.
“Not necessary. I can talk to Storm.”
Venlagar offered, “Llistyien and I can come too. Zannesu and Eithlarin could stay with Dar.”
It was too logical to be argued with—Center, Receptor, Emulator, and Outreach teaming to deal with the external while Inreach, Protector, and Formulator dealt with the internal. Standard practice. Why urn I resisting? He didn’t know, so he said, “Come, then.” But we are not going into the field again.
They dressed against the growing evening chill and went over to the debriefing room, which was now lit with the new candles that gave off a better light for Dushau eyes. Two apprentice Historians stood guard over the equipment while Trinarvil watched Storm sitting nervously on the end of one of the couches. Seeing Jindigar, Storm rose.
Jindigar waved him back to his seat and perched on the edge of an instrument panel opposite him, adopting an informal, friendly tone. “I couldn’t invite you into the Temple. But I’m glad you came.”
“I didn’t want to come into the compound at all—I know you don’t like it. But they wouldn’t deliver my notes to you– I knew they weren
’t getting through.”
“If they had,” he admitted brutally, “I doubt I could have responded. Things have not been good for us.”
“I figured they would have told me if you’d Dissolved.”
“Krinata would have come.” If she survived. “Now tell what has happened. Every detail.”
The trained observer rendered his report in crisp, terse, factual sentences that elaborated on the summary he had given before and ended with a message from Terab, sent both as friend and committee executive. “She said to tell you that unless some Dushau can help, before the colonists all starve, they will storm the Dushau compound—even the inner one. I don’t believe that, Jindigar, but she said I was too out of touch, working for you. She says you have to come and talk to them.”
Terab knew as much about Renewal as any ephemeral, except perhaps Krinata. She knew what she was asking.
He looked around at the room, still ready for him to resume work with Threntisn. But there was nothing they could do until the Historian recovered.
In sudden decision Jindigar stood, summoning strength from somewhere deep inside. “Right now, then.” He wasted no energy dissuading his officers from accompanying him, and Storm, as always, had anticipated their needs. The Outriders were waiting for them at the gate. Jindigar inspected Cyrus dubiously but noted how Storm accepted him into the working order without comment. But Cyrus favored the knuckles of his right hand, and one of the human Outrider trainees had a matching bruise on his jaw. On closer scrutiny it seemed that all the human Outriders had been in a brawl recently.
Storm noticed Jindigar’s appraisal and offered, “Humans have their own methods of problem solving. I’m not worried. They’ve been behaving as the best of friends for the last two days. I judge we can trust them—now.”
They sent a runner ahead to warn Terab, and they all started out across the settlement to the Council offices at the center of the cluster of dwellings.
Terab arrived just as they did, stood back warily until Storm had announced the Oliat adjourned, then invited them into her office—a room almost identical to Storm’s quarters. Jindigar noticed the slate-rock and chalk set up at one end of the porch where daily work assignments were posted. At one side of the door there were message pigeonholes for the group leaders and, on the other, a board for posting official announcements.
Inside, Terab’s office had two desks, seating for different species, charts covering the walls, and some record storage cases. An open door in the rear wall led to a porch that ran the length of the back of the building. A fireplace at one side held a banked fire that Terab poked to life and built up as the Outriders helped by lighting candles.
Terab turned from the fire and straightened, her two upper hands joined while her middle hands fidgeted with her loose-fitting jacket. They had all lost too much weight this winter. But there hadn’t been any rationing riots.
“Jindigar—I never thought to talk to you again,” she said, coming to the desk doing him the honor of remaining up on her hind limbs.
Jindigar returned the honor by seating himself on a floor throw. For long, serious conversations Holot preferred to sit on the floor. She scuffed another floor throw into position before him and dropped to four legs, lowering herself with the creakiness of age as Jindigar gestured the others to chairs and said, “Storm tells me you fear for all our lives.”
“The Oliat made a terrible mistake. No one here has ever heard of an Implant Oliat making such a mistake. Some are saying it was done on purpose because the Dushau are planning to leave, abandoning all of us to this world. Some are saying that this world is unlivable—and you knew it all along.”
That sounded like the rumors the Emperor had been spreading about the Dushau in the final days of the Empire. “These ‘some’—are they the soldiers?” asked Jindigar.
A detachment of the Emperor’s own troops had tracked Jindigar’s party to Phanphihy and had attacked the settlement a year ago. But Phanphihy itself had defeated the troops, inducing in them nightmares and debilities until their own fatigue-generated errors destroyed their equipment.
“It started among the soldiers,” admitted Terab. “But it’s spreading. The medic has been reporting an increased call for sleeping aids. If we don’t do something soon, we won’t live to starve. Phanphihy will lash out at us, like it did before.”
How could things have become this bad in only a few days? When he had decided to Dissolve the Oliat, the colony’s situation had been precarious but stable.
Terab couldn’t follow his thoughts, he reminded himself. He had to speak aloud. “Tell me, do you think the concept of the multicolony is not viable? Are the others unable to understand the Dushau requirements or to accept our contribution of knowledge and skill as sufficient?”
“It’s not that, Jindigar. What the Historians have accomplished so far, in resurrecting basic technology and teaching it to us, surprises everyone. We never knew your Historians were useful. But colonists have come to think of an Implant Oliat v as the only key to success. Now they feel betrayed and abandoned. Some of them don’t understand that Dushau are just flesh and blood, fallible mortals like the rest of us.”
“What would it take to convince them that we’re committed to this world in our own life-or-death struggle?”
“Nothing short of a graveyard filling as rapidly as ours.” . True, fewer Dushau had died so far, and more than half the colony’s number was Dushau. Yet Jindigar knew that a higher percentage of Dushau were in critical condition, struggling with the countertides of Renewal and world-alienation. “It just takes us longer, Terab. But in the end the toll will be heavier on us.”
“The end will come faster if something isn’t done to silence the cynics. They need a graphic demonstration of Dushau loyalty to this colony. They’re blaming all our troubles on you folk—even our being here.”
“That we can’t escape responsibility for,” admitted Jindigar. Except for the soldiers, everyone here had been rescued from the Imperial edict condemning all Dushau sympathizers to death.
“Tomorrow, when the news about the corn blight hits, someone is sure to say it was Dushau sabotage.”
“That’s ridiculous!” snorted Storm, forgetting himself for the moment. “They stand to lose as much as we do.”
“Insanity,” said Terab heavily, “attributes insane moves to others. Jindigar, we need an answer to this mess—and an explanation of why it happened. It doesn’t have to be the real reason—it just has to be plausible enough for people who don’t understand ecology to believe.”
The people here had not been prepared to become colonists. They hadn’t the basic education. Now that the shock of displacement and the daily terror of running for their lives was over, all they wanted was a return to their comfortable, safe existence. Jindigar was in total sympathy.
“The explanation is simple,” said Krinata. “We—”
“Krinata,” interrupted Jindigar, not wanting to discuss their dual-Center problem with someone who could only interpret it as a power struggle.
But she rushed on. “Terab, we misjudged the Gifters for the same reason we have no business trying to balance at all. Too many of us just aren’t well enough to do this work.” She tossed a defiant glance at Jindigar, as if to say he should be ashamed for doubting her discretion.
But Jindigar was just as unhappy to cite physical illness as an excuse for the inexcusable. Many another Oliat had performed at and beyond the brink of death. Besides, none of them were really ill. Yet he would not contradict his Outreach. “The fact remains, we did bring the Gifters, and they have killed Cassrian eggs.” He recalled the moment when they had grasped the solution to the Holot’s problem, and that had somehow communicated to the Gifters’ hivemind. Krinata’s grip on the Oliat failed before they could deep-check that decision. That was no excuse. He had sent word not to molest the Gifters bringing baby food for the Holot. He was Center. He was responsible. He sighed. “It is reasonable to expect the Oliat to rectify the m
ess we’ve made.”
“Terab, if we have to convene again,” said Krinata, “the Dushau too near Renewal will have to take a drug—which may impair fertility—or worse. If they’d used it before, maybe we wouldn’t have fumbled that reading of the Gifters, but they didn’t because the damn drag can destroy them.”
Terab swore a spaceman’s oath. Staring, she muttered, “I didn’t know a drug could delay Renewal.”
“Side effects make it useful only in a life-or-death situation,” Jindigar volunteered. “This seems to be one.”
“Jindigar,” said Terab seriously. “Don’t let them do it. We’ll cope with this somehow.”
“How?” challenged Jindigar flatly.
“I don’t know, but if people knew—”
“Would they believe?” asked Jindigar.
“The problem,” said Krinata, “is that people don’t take Renewal seriously. They think the Dushau just take a long vacation and expect the rest of us to support them while they indulge their whims. It isn’t like that, Terab. Almost half the Dushau are deathly ill right now, and even so, they are working double-shift days, driving themselves mercilessly.”
Solemnly Terab commented, “You’re the only one who’s ever seen any evidence of that. All we see are the fine products that come out of the Compound, the Dushau who come to teach us crafts we’ve never heard of, or the Oliat silently performing miracles behind the wall of Outrider guards.” She fixed Jindigar with a stare. “If this colony is going to work, I think those walls have to become permeable—people have to see that you’re putting as much into this as we are, that you take equal risks. Then maybe I can get them to pull together and solve this blight problem.”
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