Ignoring them, Jindigar opened the linkage to Eithlarin, letting Krinata *share their awareness for a moment. //Easy. Steady now. No harm done.// He sent Krinata a human smile and choked her link down again before she could react, trying not to think how frightened he was of her. //Now, Receptor, let’s scan, placing the pond in its proper perspective.//
They flashed into a wider, but more superficial, focus and Received the Gifter hive on the plain above, shaleiliu to the pond’s system, for the Gifters had lovingly deposited their eggs in the hatchery of their new allies. The pond was also shaleiliu to the syrupy substance so industriously made by the Gifters to feed their own young—ah!
One of the serious puzzles) of Phanphihy fell into place. The Gifters were dimorphic, alternating their generations between flyer and amphibian. Flyer eggs hatched into amphibians whose young would be flyers. The amphibians were loners who did not form a hive and thus had no protection unless some other hive would take them in—paid by Gifter syrup.
At the end of summer, when the amphibians were ready to reproduce, the Gifters expected the host hive to gather the eggs and return them to the Gifter hive for hatching. It was so simple, just another one of Phanphihy’s symbiotic chains. It should have been apparent to the Oliat when they first contacted the Gifters.
On the plain above them, the plains grasses were almost tall enough to hide the hive now. But the Oliat awareness caught the gleaming damp surface where the Gifter builders had enlarged the hive. Above the gray hump of the structure, little flyer warriors churned angrily in cone formations, waiting for the signal to attack an enemy. Gravid layers were already crawling over the surface of the large hive, thwarted instincts creating confusion. Unless something were done soon, the hive would send out its warriors.
Feeling their urgency driving like the beat of his own heart, , Jindigar found the need for a functional Outreach overwhelming. He had to tell them, //The Holot must build the Gifters a pond up on the plain and stock it with river fish for them in return for the syrup.//
But Zannesu kept the choke-link to Krinata tight, so she barely felt Jindigar’s message. She turned to eye the Center questioningly, compelled to speak, but having no idea what had to be said.
Jindigar curbed frustration. They would report to the community later. Now they must discover how to control the fungus. There was no way to avoid it. He would have to take them out of time-sync. Reluctantly he announced, //We’re going up-perspective. Eithlarin, brace yourself—//
He directed Venlagar’s attention deep into the pond’s microlife to anchor them in the now, then brought his Formulator and Emulator into the time-sync configuration. He felt Darllanyu’s support holding rock-steady now that her concentration wasn’t riven by hormonal surges. She was the only one except himself who had done this in the field before. And she had actually done it as Formulator, while he had never tried it as Center.
Gently he raised the perspective until past, present, and future formed a unified whole, just as the interlocked bio-systems had been clear to the Oliat gestalt.
The first hatchlings of the Gifter eggs had eaten some Cassrian eggs by dissolving a hole in the shell. The tailored mutant fungus, invading swiftly, had infected the Gifter-amphibian hatchlings. It took root on the tender young skin and grew until it covered the tadpole, and the skin sloughed off, leaving the tadpole to die in agony.
There was nothing like it on Phanphihy. The native beings had no defense. The fungus not only killed Gifter amphibians, it devoured all the native pond swimmers.
The Oliat saw the seething death-pond as joined in a single system to the withering cornfield where a new, landborne secondary imitation of the fungus covered the plants. In the corn– field the sprouts peeked up from the dark soil in rows of light green. Rusty dots of fungoid growth covered the shoots. Jindigar guided the Oliat focus deeper, observing from the three-time perspective of past, present, and future, as the native and offworld life forms fought to coexist. Tuning carefully to both the parent pond-fungus and the plant-fungus, he addressed his
Oliat. //We need to find how to eradicate the fungus—without turning Phanphihy against all outsiders.//
In response Llistyien Emulated the hive structure—the huge gray dome that covered the offworld colony and declared to all Phanphihy’s collective consciousness that here was a hive sheltering a multispecies cooperative, living just as the dominant sentient species of Phanphihy lived.
Eithlarin joined the Protector’s function to the Emulator’s, and the dome took on substance—for it was protection and protective coloration.
//This should keep the hives from turning against the colony,// suggested Eithlarin. Ill can hold it now, so you can search.//
Cautiously Jindigar tested their attunement to the planet. The Oliat was still accepting the planet as comprehensible, the hives of flying creatures, land herbivores, hunting carnivores, tree dwellers, and burrowing kinds as friendly to the colony-hive.
Satisfied that they were solidly grounded in a benign world and that Venlagar had them firmly anchored in time, Jindigar opened the linkages among the six of them, still keeping the Outreach link choked off. He let the total attunement steal over them, observing with a wistful satisfaction that the great tone, the carrier wave of the universe, was there for them again, louder, firmer, surer than it had been in the Holot cave. They were truly an Oliat.
His joy was echoed by his other five officers—and he wished Krinata were part of this moment. Jindigar’s Oliat. It felt much as he imagined Completion would feel.
They became one with the entire pattern, which was the biosphere around them, and with the world force—the intangible spiritual force of this planet that sustained them. Jindigar kept their window into time only a few days wide, their geographical range no larger than a day’s walk in every direction. He focused Venlagar on Receiving the development of the fungus.
In clear images generated by Receptor and Formulator working in perfect tandem, Jindigar saw the lab on the ship where the fungus was redesigned. Two Lehiroh and a Holot worked in protective coveralls over the micro equipment. A simple workaday job—gone awry. For within the potion they presented to the committees some of the fungus starter wasn’t properly stabilized.
Simultaneously the Oliat was aware of how the fungus-choked pond had lain dead and rotting in the sun with flying scavengers plucking the floating carcasses up and making off with them—landing in the cornfield to feast, leaving their fungus-loaded droppings behind at the end of the day. And in the moist, sun-warmed soil the unstable fungus had mutated, producing the variety that could—and did—live on corn.
Darllanyu Formulated an image shaleiliu to that. In one of the barns the Lehiroh had built a nut press to extract oil. They had found the pungent oil from a tree nut to be a spice that made native foods palatable to Lehiroh and enhanced their ability to absorb nutrients from Phanphihy’s produce.
Darllanyu’s forward-time image showed Cassrians and humans bent over the corn plants, dobbing that oil onto the leaves of the plants and soaking the ground around them with it. As if in time-lapse display, they saw the fungus dying, the corn growing strong and healthy and bearing huge ears of beadlike seeds the humans fed on gladly.
Jindigar took in the awarenesses of his Oliat, then cast their perceptions wide again—checking and double-checking as he had not been able to do in the Holot cave. He had to see what would happen if all three solutions were implemented at once.
Darllanyu Formulated the image of the Holot tending a Gifter hatching pond on the plain above, while below, the Cassrians covered their pond with the Lehiroh’s spice oil to kill the fungus. Meanwhile the cornfield likewise was saturated in the oil.
The Oliat found instantly that the Lehiroh, lacking their supply of the oil, would suffer an increasing vitamin shortage until the next nut harvest. And with so many of the men lactating, they couldn’t afford even temporary anemia.
Jindigar widened the time perspective to several months. Instantly
it became clear that the ripening fruits of spring would solve the Lehiroh nutrition problem. It was not as good as the nut oil, but the Lehiroh infants were sturdy enough even at birth to survive well.
Still hesitant, thinking of the disasters his work had inflicted on the colony so far, Jindigar checked again, then verified it all one more time. At length Zannesu commented, //This is a beautiful world, Jindigar. But it seems it’s the beauty of your Oliat’s balance that fascinates you.//
Abashed, Jindigar noticed that Eithlarin and Zannesu were feeling the strain—for Jindigar, stabilized by Darllanyu’s having taken the drug, had been able to ignore all the truly glorious springtide forces abroad in the world, while Eithlarin and Zannesu were all too aware of them.
Llistyien, likewise more interested in the renewing lifetides, was tiring under the strain of holding the hive-dome image she held with Eithlarin.
Jindigar admitted, //Our previous failures have shaken my confidence. But—//
Then it happened.
One moment, they were in perfect attunement, anchored in the now of the pond waters and the myriad events occurring there but aware of the past and the future all around the colony. The next moment, images flashed wildly through consciousness, shattering their clear pictorial impression of the world, one distorted image overlaying another forming menacing patterns that ripped at sanity. Jindigar caught one sharp view of a horridly distorted Holot face peering into his eyes—no– into Krinata’s eyes—snarling.
Clutching at his link to his Outrider, Jindigar felt the Holot’s upper hands crushing her shoulders as he shook her. Her head wobbled on her shoulders, her visual field pitching about insanely. The wildly distorted view out of human eyes fought with the Oliat awareness now fragmented, incoherent, invaded. Even through the choke-link Krinata’s terror flooded the Oliat.
//It’s a breakin!// Jindigar told them, wishing that were reassuring. With fourteen Outriders in the field how could anyone have been allowed to touch one of his officers?
He groped toward Zannesu’s awareness, trying to regain command of the linkages and bring them back into now-sync.
Zannesu responded sluggishly. Jindigar barely had hold of the linkages when Eithlarin’s Protector reflexes engaged.
She threw a picture of the Holot shaking Krinata onto the inside of the dome image above them. The rest of the Oliat saw the distorted horror of snarling, sharp-toothed, predatory Holot smeared across the gray dome. It was feral, raging at them. Its emotions-reverberated through the Oliat, intensified somehow by being squeezed through the narrow channel from the Outreach: distrust, fear, fury.
Eithlarin’s awareness collapsed into a maelstrom of terror pressing in from outside the Oliat. Space and time distorted. Phanphihy turned into a seething pit eating away at the colony.
Eithlarin gave one convulsive shudder, trying to reject the invading malevolence, and then suddenly she pitched them all into nightmare. Above them the dome image split open like the tree log on Vistral, and a gray, hairy, clawed hand reached in to grab at them.
//She’s episodic and hallucinating!// Jindigar told them, lighting to wrench free of her power.
But he could only gape helplessly as the hand closed around Eithlarin’s neck.
Zannesu cried, //Jindigar! Help her!// just as Eithlarin screamed.
SEVEN
Gamble
Eithlarin clutched at her neck as if to wrench the ugly gray fingers away. Heedless of everything else, she twisted against the hold of her Dushau Outrider, who was the only barrier between her and the edge of the floating platform. Her screams tore through Oliat consciousness on every level, invading past time, echoing into the future.
The filthy gray fingers grated damply against Jindigar’s neck, the coarse hair penetrating between his skin nap, torturing his sensitized nerves. Simultaneously he felt the same gigantic, clawed hand closing over the most precious area of Darllanyu’s neck. Violated to his core, he roared in outrage. His Oliat joined him, disgust overwhelming their natural paralysis before a predator’s attack.
Twisting against his own Outrider, Jindigar glimpsed Krinata. The insane Holot’s upper hands clutched at her neck. She bent backward, clawing at his grip. Through her eyes he saw the Holot snarling into her face, revealing teeth like the Vistral predator’s, his redolent breath as hot as the winds of Vistral. Must break the feedback!
//Eithlarin! It’s only a Holot!// pled Jindigar, afraid of what he’d have to do if she didn’t respond. He put everything he had down his link to her. //Eithlarin—we’re on Phanphihy!// But which is worse? The Vistral menace was only a hungry animal, but the Holot had been driven insane by a planet that rejected intruders.
Eithlarin fought Jindigar’s call as if it, too, were nightmare.
The more forceful his demand, the more wildly she strained against her Outrider until at last she broke loose and sprawled, skidding to the edge of the platform where fetid water sloshed over her face.
Zannesu struggled against his own Outrider, trying to reach his mate. The Outrider looked from Jindigar to Krinata and yelled, “Should I let him go?”
The platform lurched, sending Jindigar and his Outrider to their knees. Krinata went down under the Holot’s assault, her strangled scream trailing off, for she had no more breath. She couldn’t respond to Jindigar’s need to tell the Outrider to hang onto Zannesu.
Jindigar groped for the linkages, amazed that the choke-link to Krinata still held, despite the images hammering through it from the Holot—the malevolent grin of Phanphihy’s flowers, the constant rain of poisonous pollen, the conspiracy among dumb animals to destroy anything the offworlders built, and over all, the hives of the intelligent Natives creeping eerily through the night, pulsing with evil—evil that had taken over the Oliat.
The Oliat has to be destroyed–destroyed!
NO!
As Jindigar fought off the Holot’s emanations Krinata’s Dushau Outrider, helpless before the wrath of a predator, could only yell at the Holot to stop. This was why an Oliat never used Dushau Outriders when off Dushaun.
Where’s Storm!
The platform was a churning, seething mass of scuffling, struggling bodies. Jindigar climbed to his feet, searching. Past-time showed him the ephemeral Outriders plunging down the stairs after the ominous intruders and making for the platform. Their images smeared as they breasted the wave of violence erupting in the wake of the intruders who were attacking the Oliat. The Holot in the lead of the intruders yelled at Krinata repeatedly, then, in frustration, grabbed her and shook her, his hopeless rage transmuting into a catharsis of violence.
In present-time, the Outriders formed up and moved like riot police, working their way to the Oliat. Too slow.
Jindigar ripped the control of the linkages from Zannesu’s frozen clutch.
He choked down the linkage to Krinata even more tightly, knowing he chanced throwing them all into shock by cutting her link. The remorseless flow of Phanphihy’s malevolence abated but, oddly, did not stop. At the same time Eithlarin V primitive terror burgeoned through the inner silence, louder and louder, commanding them.
Darllanyu slumped down and curled on her side, hands clamped over her head, pleading through silent sobs, //Jindigar, stop it. Make her stop….//
That one plea drove him wild. Without thinking he opened his link to Eithlarin, determined to stop her. //Eithlarin!//
But she was fleeing through the corridors of her own mind, chased by that monstrous, hairy hand, detached from its arm and sailing through the air after her while the beast pursued, gesturing with its arm that ended in a bloody stump. Free of its huge, lumbering body the hand was faster than Eithlarin. It gained on her rapidly.
Zannesu joined Jindigar’s desperate call. //Eithlarin!//
She turned, and they thought she’d heard them, but all she saw was the filthy animal hand looming at her. Without warning she surrendered to the nightmare image, giving in to it totally, no longer fighting the threatened fate.
//No!// cried Zannesu, plunging after her into her private memory, into Vistral and all that had come before it in her life—for she was lost in her own memory.
Jindigar had only witnessed that total surrender once before, but he recognized it. //She’s episodic.//
No one heard his pronouncement.
As one, Venlagar and Llistyien sagged to their knees, faces slack with the same retreat that had claimed Eithlarin and Zannesu. As Venlagar failed, the Oliat’s anchor in the outside world slipped free. Venlagar fell away into a memory he shared in common with Llistyien, romping through a bright meadow on Dushaun where they happily trained flocks of colorful Patrol Birds to guard the high-spirited youths of the city. Darllanyu, her strength gone, was about to retreat into her own past, surely to drag Jindigar with her. He had to save them from Eithlarin’s retreat. / have to do it.
But he knew he could never do such a cruel thing. No! Never again! To save them all he had to—just as he had once released Takora from her panicked clutch on the Office of Center, consigning her to Incompletion-death. / can’t!
He could still hear Takora’s despairing cry of terror. He still felt his own stark hopelessness when Krinata had displaced him to float out there helplessly. How can I do that to Eithlarin?
But she was dragging his Oliat to an ugly death. Maybe I can hold her, he told himself, and before he could think more about it, he throttled down the link to his Protector to a thread, a line with no diameter but maybe strong enough to hold her. Simultaneously he opened wide to all the others.
Eithlarin spun free, drifting into the void of her own memories—into the chaos of untime.
Jindigar called the others to their Offices. //Krinata, Zannesu, Darllanyu, Llistyien, Venlagar!// Oh, steady Venlagar, please, be our strength now!
With Krinata came the full blast of the Holot’s perception of Phanphihy. Suddenly Eithlarin’s hold on the hive-dome image above them shattered. The dome cracked and fell toward them. The chunks of dome melted into an oily ichor that coated them with putrescent goo.
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