Jindigar gagged. But he held on, refusing to sever the line to Eithlarin and shatter his Oliat. //Venlagar! The dome was never material—this isn’t real! Venlagar, we must not Receive Eithlarin or the Holot!//
Venlagar gave them one clear view of the bird training field, Llistyien dressed in wisps of summer clothing, running with the ultimate feminine grace, beguiling the fledgling birds with the glowing beauty of a pure spirit so that battalions of them held the starving monsters of Vistral off at the horizon, keeping the meadow safe. Neither Jindigar nor Zannesu could have turned from such a scene where their mate was in danger. Venlagar wrapped it in fog. Perception shifted. The platform shimmered into view around them, filled with knots of battling forms—and no birds.
Zannesu fought like a wild thing—refusing reality, determined to go after Eithlarin. //Inreach!// demanded Jindigar.
//No! Jindigar, no!// begged Zannesu. //Let me go!//
But Darllanyu and Llistyien began to recover. Dragging themselves to their feet, they teamed to sort the images clogging the links, rejecting the Holot’s distorted view of Phanphihy and the remaining echoes of Eithlarin’s nightmare. They brought into focus the platform, the stinking water swirling around them, coating them all with real filth, and Krinata’s red-tinged vision of snarling Holot. But under it all a thrumming distortion of reality beat through the links.
Zannesu collapsed, keening out a wail of unresolvable pain. A Lehiroh saw him go down and aimed a vicious kick at him. His Outrider threw his own body over Zannesu’s, taking the full force of the kick, ribs giving way. The two human Outrider trainees moved in on the Lehiroh attacker.
Cyrus and Storm teamed up and threw one last Lehiroh Imperial trooper into the pond, then leapt onto the back of the Holot who had Krinata. Krinata’s Dushau Outrider seized the chance and wrenched her free. Wrapping himself around her, he rolled with her toward the middle of the platform, cradling her vulnerable head and neck in his hand.
The rest of the Oliat felt the pressure on their necks let up and, with Krinata, drew a long, delicious breath. The Holot’s breakin ended. The reverberating horror died away.
As the ephemeral Outriders fought, most of those on the platform joined their defense of the Oliat against the few attackers. Quickly a space cleared around the Oliat.
Almost all the attackers, Jindigar noted, had once been of the Imperial force that had chased them to Phanphihy and attempted to annihilate them. They were the only ones who, had once succumbed to the Natives’ psychic attack, the hive’s ability to induce psychotic terrors in their enemies.
Had the Oliat’s mistakes caused enough despair to trigger the psychotic cycle in them again? He noted that the attacking ex-Imperials were largely Cassrian and Holot, the two species most affected by the recent disasters, flow could I have missed anticipating this?
The ex-Imperials were outnumbered, but they were combat-trained and driven by desperation. The battle raged, friend against friend, ally against ally.
A Cassrian, arms and legs flailing, arced over Jindigar’s head and splashed into the slimy water. All around the platform swimmers were thrashing about or trying to climb back into the fight. They stirred up such a stench that some people lay writhing in the throes of acute nausea. Jindigar saw one Holot in the water, fur matted with muck, towing an unconscious human toward the edge of the pond where others waited to haul them out.*
In their protected space Jindigar recaptured the attention of his officers. //Zannesu, we can’t save Eithlarin this way. Can you help me command the linkages?//
He tore his gaze from Eithlarin and turned haunted eyes on Jindigar, but a measure of acceptance was there now. //I’m sorry. I’ll try.//
Zannesu steadied down. Jindigar reorganized the links to the other officers, screening Krinata again but not reinstituting the choke-link. They were still in the high perspective, scanning past and future as well as present, microscopic as well as macro. As he cut the data flow to her Krinata began to stir, kneading her throat and coughing. //Jindigar?//
//Eithlarin’s episodic. Can you speak for us?// He had never exposed her to a five-axis spread before. Every time she tried to move, dizziness assailed her. She saw everything through a haze of other images overlaid and couldn’t tell micro from macro, or past from future.
//Cam you make it stop, Jindigar?//
//In a moment–but I’ll have to cut you off again. Can you do it, Krinata? Just for a minute?//
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and groped her way into the Outreach’s function. //Go ahead.//
“//Trinarvil!//” Krinata’s voice croaked. She tried again. “//Trinarvil!//” It came out as shrill as a Cassrian’s voice, but this time it penetrated the noise.
Trinarvil’s medics had been working their way toward the Oliat, clucking in and out of the battle with uncommon courage. At Krinata’s call they dashed across the last space to surround her. Jindigar briefed Trinarvil in rapid jargon that Krinata’s throat strained to articulate.
As the Outreach’s voice was heard people turned to listen, .mil the last of the lighting subsided. Her final words fell into a silence broken only by the splashing of swimmers and the sloshing of water over the platform.
Trinarvil turned to the crowd and announced, “The Oliat has been gravely injured. We need more space here.”
The ephemeral Outriders, Storm in the lead, moved into a flying wedge, their stances belligerent, their attention on the crowd as they opened a corridor to Trinarvil’s shed. Jindigar helped Eithlarin’s Outriders get her into the medic’s station. She was quivering in every muscle, her whole body trying to curl in on itself. But he still had the whisper of contact through the wire-thin link. They were still an Oliat.
Inside the shed Jindigar noted that Threntisn’s chair had been moved to place him just inside the door—out of the action hut able to view it all. They edged past him and deposited Eithlarin on one of the couches. Then they told Trinarvil, “//We must report before attending to Eithlarin—if anything can be done for her.//” //Krinata, can you make it that long?//
//If I keep my eyes closed, maybe. What is that stuff, Jindigar—uck!// lie tried to dim the micro and past-time data feeds and sharpen the present/macro for her as he explained that she was seeing the microlife of the pond churned up now by all the swimmers. Meanwhile Trinarvil told the Oliat, “No—the report can wait.” She examined Eithlarin’s eyes. “She’s critical.”
Jindigar looked to Zannesu. Shaking all over, the Inreach gathered all his remaining strength. //My behavior shames me. I will not obstruct my Center further. If Eithlarin dies before we can report, she—and all of us—will have died for nothing.//
Jindigar replied warmly, //You have nothing to apologize for—I’d have done the same had it been Darllanyu.//
He said through Krinata, “//We must report before the Gifters attack.//” Hearing the words she spoke, Krinata twisted to look at Jindigar—saw him covered with crawling amoebas and quickly closed her eyes. //Attack?!//
//I’ll explain.// Jindigar gathered them back toward the doorway where Storm’s crew formed a living barricade in front of the Dushau Outriders.
He sent Krinata up beside Cyrus, who was nursing a hand bloodied as if he’d smashed it into Cassrian chitin. //Krinata, I must stay open to Eithlarin’s condition. If you sense any change, pull back. I may have to act suddenly. Can you handle it?//
// Yes. If that stuff is just Venlagar making like a microscope, I can ignore it. It’s not nearly as bad as a Holot with bad breath trying to choke me.// It was pure bravado. Her stomach was in knots, her head swimming, her knees weakening, and her neck was aching like fire. But he wasn’t going to let her know he saw, for she valued her image of competence, if not in front of him so much, then in front of the others.
He scanned the crowd gathered tightly beyond the Outriders. People were tending their injuries and peering into the shed to see what was happening.
Zannesu had a firm grip on the linkages, while Venla
gar anchored them to reality. The Oliat became aware of the buzz of the Gifter hive up on the plain growing ominously, while the corn blight festered rapidly in the warm sun. There wasn’t much time.
Jindigar addressed the crowd in Krinata’s voice, describing what they’d discovered about the Gifters and how the Holot must pay them. “//As soon as they see you preparing a pond for them, they will understand. The hivemind is primitive. It sees its interaction with us as a kind of mating dance. As long as our moves are of that dance, they will respond without hostility. We teased them with a pond and took it away. Now we must provide them another.//”
A burly Holot male Jindigar recognized as one of the ex-Imperials pushed through to the front and called, “Why should we take your advice? We took your advice before, and look what happened Why did you bring us to this crazy world? To starve our children and torture us to death?”
There was a rising growl of agreement—not all Holot, either. “//This is not an insane world. It holds no grudges, knows no vendettas. But we are guests here and must abide by our host’s customs. The Oliat is learning those customs. We havemade errors for which our lives may already have I men forfeited. Would you ask that of us?//”
A Cassrian voice, double-toned and reedy, untrained in Standard speech, called, “We demand it! You’ve destroyed us!”
“And they’ve saved us!” answered a gruff Holot male. It was Irnils, Terab’s mate. A general wave of agreement supported him, especially among the Lehiroh community.
Terab on me forward and roared them to silence. “We can’t afford civil war! Last night we voted to go with the Oliat’s advice one more time. I say we get to work on it right now!”
Terab began to lead an exodus toward the stairs, to retarget the energies of the crowd, but the Oliat called, “//Terab, wait! We also know how to stop the blight.//”
The Holot soldier edged away from Irnils. “Don’t listen. We can’t trust the Oliat. They wouldn’t answer me the first time I asked! It took them this long to think up a lie!” It was the Holot who had choked Krinata, his fur torn out in patches, a bloody gash showing on his cheek.
The past-time axis played back what the Holot had been yelling at Krinata, when she couldn’t hear him. He had demanded a cure for the blight and a way to keep it from spreading to the Holot crops. That’s all.
//Easy, Krinata. He’s no monster. Just scared.//
Ill know,// answered Krinata, swallowing hard and facing the real Holot before her, not the distorted horror that had attacked her from the depths of the Oliat gestalt, part Holot, part gray-furred ape.
Terab commanded the crowd’s attention. “The Oliat couldn’t answer because they were working—and never has any Oliat taken on a harder job! Have you ever heard of an Oliat working with double-guard before? Have you ever seen an Oliat with Dushau Outriders before?”
Jindigar glanced at Storm. Obviously his Outriders had taken it on themselves to instruct Terab.
The soldier outshouted her. “They just wanted to put o» a good show after getting us into this mess. You can’t trust a Dushau;—they don’t care how long things take. And what kind of Oliat has a human in it?”
Argument erupted everywhere. The crowd, now swollen by those who had dragged themselves out of the pond, was about evenly split between doubters and supporters of the Dushau. Jindigar took that moment to say softly to Terab, “//We don’t have time for this. Terab, listen. You must commandeer the Lehiroh cooking oil.//” And he told her how it must be applied to destroy the com blight, and how to supplement the Lehiroh diet until the next oil-nut harvest.
By then the shouting match showed signs of new violence.
Inside the shed, Trinarvil called, “Jindigar’s, you’ve got to refocus! Now!”
But it was too late. Without warning the wiry link to Eithlarin stretched, then thinned to gossamer. That which was the essence of Eithlarin hurtled off around a dimensional corner.
The Oliat’s sevenfold balance leaned askew–as if the Oliat would pour through the hole in space left where Eithlarin had been.
Zannesu cried, //No!// and dove once more into the void after his mate, dragging the Oliat faster into oblivion.
//Venlagar!// called Jindigar, //You must transform to Inreach – let Zannesu take Receptor to hold her! Krinata, you must not interfere!//
Dimly Jindigar was aware of the Dushau Outriders moving them back into the shed. Storm’s crew jostled the crowd away from the entry to close the doors. He felt Zannesu grasp the plan to transform Offices and acquiesce as Venlagar took up the linkages—for Zannesu was already half into the Receptor’s Office, straining to Receive his mate. As the transform took effect Venlagar gripped the link to the Receptor and kept Zannesu from following Eithlarin.
As the link to Hillarie became more elusive, and the two officers flipped their links end for end in the dance of-transformation, Jindigar—wholly inexperienced at doing this from Center fought to keep his Oliat from shattering, certain that the strain would pull his very body apart.
He was hardly aware of his Outrider pushing him down onto a cot. He heard a smothered whimper from Krinata on the adjacent cot. He rolled over and reached for her, feeling her bewilderment. //Steady. We’re going to be all right.// The human skin was clammy, and she was trembling—a different sort of nervous reaction in a human but still dire enough: plunging blood pressure. Shock.
He gathered her to him, reinforcing their link, opening to her as if her skewed sensory impressions were no threat to his precarious grip on sanity. Then he groped for his new Inreach. It was a peculiar sensation, rippling unsteadily through the contacts. The transposition hadn’t been properly done, nor was il yet wholly complete.
And the five-axis perspective in time and magnification confused things even more, threatening Krinata’s sanity. //Yen– lagar, Zannesu!// He called them to their new Offices and threw everything wide-open to reach for Eithlarin, using that barest whisper of a linkage to complete the Oliat pattern. He ignored the shimmering static that came down his Protector’s link, drowning out the last trace of the shaleiliu hum. Krinata’s strength was fading. In three desperate, rough maneuvers he slammed them back down to groundstate awareness—here and now, macro-conscious.
He felt Krinata shudder horribly with each shift in consciousness. Darllanyu only took it, hanging on grimly. Llistyien fought nausea at the sudden transposition, but as their awareness came back to single perspective, Venlagar and Zannesu settled into their new Offices, relieving a great deal of the strain.
Jindigar built the Oliat pattern again, finally bringing Zannesu into balance, his initial panic beginning to subside.
//Jindigar, help her!// pleaded his new Receptor, and let them all feel the bewildered confusion coming down the tenuous link from Eithlarin, who had fled her own intolerable memories and deserted the world-plane, but was held back from the sweet oblivion of death she sought by the Oliat link.
Trinarvil was kneeling at the head of Jindigar’s cot, gesturing as if trying to attract Krinata’s attention. “You must let her go!” she demanded in an urgent whisper.
“//No!//”
“Then we’ll lose all of you. How long can you hold—”
Feeling every bit of Zannesu’s anguish, Jindigar answered as if it were Darllanyu out there. “//As long as we must—as long as she can.//” Sometimes—rarely—people returned from that far place. But she has chosen it.
Trinarvil put one hand on Krinata’s forehead and looked into her eyes. “Jindigar—can you hear me?”
“//Yes,//” answered Krinata, her voice husky.
Jindigar was aware of her body warming now despite her clothes, which were dampened by splashed pond water.
“We’ve got to take Eithlarin to the worldcircle. If she and
Dar are in the circle when Dar’s dose of pensone wears off, Renewal may lure Eithlarin hack. Can the Oliat move?”
“//Yes,//” they answered, Krinata’s voice breaking this time. She clung to Jindigar, burying her
face against him, as if he were her only anchor to reality.
Jindigar’s eyes met Cyrus’s. He held Krinata against him, wishing he could soak up the shocks still washing through her system. Hut at least she’s alive. I haven’t broken my promise to Cyrus yet.
//Let Eithlarin go, Jindigar,// said Zannesu wearily. Jindigar had set the links so that Zannesu was the only one really in touch with Eithlarin. //She can’t make it.//
They were in the Aliom Temple. Eithlarin, shrouded in folds of white, lay on an elevated platform within the worldcircle, which was bright of itself but cast no light to see by. Jindigar, Krinata, and Zannesu sat around the rim. Venlagar and Llistyien had gone to cat, while Trinarvil was trying to help Darllanyu purge the drug from her system fast enough to do Eithlarin some good.
//You don’t mean that,// answered Jindigar. Dusk cast dense shadows through the skylight. This was a dark world—depressing. Would Dushau eyes ever adjust? He could “see” Zannesu only via the Oliat senses or through Krinata’s human night vision. Did Eithlarin want to return to such a world? Should he wish that fate on her? With his aching fingertips he .strummed a random chord on his whule. //But even if you meant it, Zannesu I couldn’t let her go. I’m going to keep vigil until Darllanyu is free of pensone, and then we’re going to give Eithlarin one last chance to return to us—to this world– to you.//
//There’s probably been brain damage. I’d rather die Incomplete than make her suffer that.//
His implication was clear—that Jindigar wanted to recall Eithlarin only to spare the rest of them the risk of her death. //Renewal may repair the brain damage—if she has someone to love her, to stimulate her, to recast her body, to serve her anew.. Does she, Zannesu?//
//You know she does. Jindigar, I would have killed you in that moment when you cut her off! How can you ever trust me again?//
//No Dushau would have behaved differently, my zunre. There isn’t an officer of this Oliat who would hesitate to work with you. When the time comes, we’ll all be in the circle, and we’ll unite in our call to Eithlarin. If we can bring her to us– even just a little closer—we’ll try to Dissolve and let you bring her to Renewal.//
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