It sounded so simple. But even in the Archive Jindigar had found no record of an Oliat using the forces of its officers’ Renewal in any way, least of all to Dissolve.
Venlagar, Inreach now, intruded on the linkages with the aroma of stew and a fresh grain bread concocted by the humans. //If you’re to have the strength to do it, Zannesu, you’d better come eat. Sure you don’t want some, Jindigar?//
//In a while. Go ahead, Zannesu. I’ll watch her.// «
He rose. //If you have to let her go, Jindigar—do it gently. Her suffering is so pointless.// The new Receptor went toward the inner door to their living chamber, his steps heavy, his weariness dragging at them all. Only part of him had given her up. The rest fought the loss, and the battle consumed all his strength, for he knew he was her only anchor to the Oliat.
As the door closed behind Zannesu, Krinata rose and circled Eithlarin. Jindigar picked up her view of Eithlarin’s form– the dark indigo skin almost invisible in the twilight, making it seem as if the soft white robe floated empty over the white circle.
Jindigar lifted the linkages from Venlagar, aware of Krinata’s bizarre human conception of the process—the two of them playing cat’s cradle with a loop of string. He damped the pattern to prevent his perception of Krinata leaking through to Darllanyu, or anyone else, then passed the links back to his new Inreach, who fumbled a bit.
Then he let himself watch Krinata moving around the circle. She was so well attuned to Phanphihy and the Oliat mat her step left no trace where she passed over the worldcircle. He let the daring thought surface. Could his Oliat have lasted so long and accomplished so much if it hadn’t been for Krinata being a solid anchor, as no Dushau could have been on this alien world?
Krinata folded herself gracefully down beside him and commented, //If Eithlarin dies, she’ll probably reincarnate—just like I did. Maybe she can be my child.// She reached familiarly for the whule that lay across Jindigar’s lap. As he surrendered il she insisted, III didn’t just lift Takora’s memories from you– and I didn’t learn the whule just from your tutoring, either. Jindigar, I remember being Takora. I know what it’s like being Center. 1 know what you went through, saving my Oliat– Takora’s Oliat. I know what you’re facing now with Eithlarin. I want to help.//
Clumsily she plucked out a melody, her nails rattling lewdly against the strings. She grunted and silenced the sound. //Well, knowing how to do it doesn’t mean being able to do it with hands of a totally different design, no more than knowing the Center’s job makes me able to Center. Jindigar, please accept that. I was Takora. Or tell me what will convince you.//
Her being the real Takora returned would surely explain the way she evoked a peculiar fear and impossible fascination in him. But most of that could come from her having been Ontarrah. //The simple, obvious explanation isn’t always the correct one.//
//Don’t quote the Observing Priests at me! I’m trying to tell you that I know you handled Eithlarin correctly. You were slow—and you were clumsy—but that’s just lack of experience. Your judgment was sound. And when you could finally make yourself do it—you did the right thing.//
//I didn’t know you were aware of what I did. I had the Outreach link choked down pretty tight.//
She sighed and strummed a perfect chord progression. It sent a crawling sensation up his spine, for it was one that Takora had practiced incessantly. //Jindigar—it’s awfully hard to explain. Consciously all I remember is that Holot face distorted by an overlay of Dushau perception—your eyes see in so many directions at once, but humans have only one retina per eye. My memories of being Dushau have images that seem normal to my human memory—:but when the Oliat lets me see through Dushau eyes, my brain feels split—and my eyes feel like they’ve come uncoupled and are looking in opposite directions at the same time—like Dushau eyes.
//Even after you choked down my link to nothing, I still saw him as a devil from hell because I was seeing him from six other points of view—and all of them Dushau. I think that’s because am a Center too. You see, your link to your Outreach was shut down—but seem to have forged links to the other officers of my own—as a Center. Maybe it happened when I tried to take over from you—but, anyway, they are there. I can feel them, even if you can’t.//
//You can feel// That would certainly explain why he
hadn’t been able to control the distortion for Krinata, or to shut down the feedback between her image of the Holot and Eithlarin’s image of the beast that had killed her zunre. The second set of links, operating out of sync with his and uncontrolled, would explain why Llistyien retreated to running with animals, a vague shaleiliu. Her innate optimism had turned flight from terrifying predator into training predator birds to defend her from nightmare.
A second set of links might even have contributed to driving Eithlarin episodic. Not that it’s Krinata’s fault. I should have known those links wouldn’t just disappear after the cave. Yet Krinata could be just imagining her own links. Imagination was her primary talent.
//Well,// she continued, strumming firm chords, //I know you did the right thing because even after you opened the choke-link, I had no impulse whatever to take over your Oliat. Takora’s experience is in me—far more experience than you’ll ever have as Center—and her experience says you did right.//
//Krinata—if you really were Takora, you’d never have let yourself be caught up in the Oliat linkages, and you’d certainly never have become Outreach to my Oliat. Never in the memory of anyone alive today has a Center been foolish enough to rejoin an Oliat.//
//Not even as Center,// she agreed, //for that would be the attempt to recapture past peak experiences—to create stagnation. The result would be a falling out of the Office of Center into another office—and the Oliat would perish.//
Fie had never told her that. //Where did you learn that?//
//Takora learned it—from Nushitan, her teacher. And Takora taught you—on the planet Riish, in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. I don’t remember any more than that. Where’s Riish? I’ve never heard of it.//
//I don’t know offhand where it is,// he answered absently. //I’d have to ask Arlai.// But the Sentient computer was dormant, inactivated, nothing more than a metal box among Jindigar’s most precious possessions.
//Jindigar, what would it take to convince you?//
Ill think,// he admitted as it slowly came to him in chilling waves, //I think I am convinced. I just don’t want to admit it. But there’s no way you could have grabbed Center that one time if you didn’t have both Takora’s knowledge and her experience. And you didn’t get her experience from me—because 1 don’t have it.//
Ill didn’t have it, either, at first. I think you were right when you said I’d just picked up some of Takora’s memories from you. But somehow those acquired memories wakened more. And now it’s different, Jindigar. Sometimes—only sometimes—I am Takora.//
//Do you feel these—extra—linkages into the Oliat even now?//
// Not really. They’re only there when there’s a crisis.//
//If I see you command those linkages, exhibiting Takora’s style, I think I’d have to admit you are Takora.// But it doesn’t matter. There’s no way on Phanphihy to Dissolve an Oliat with two Centers, and whether she was Takora or not, we are an Oliat with two Centers.
When Dar was ready, they’d make their try for Eithlarin. They had all agreed on that. And he had promised Zannesu that if he could get the full pattern of linkages operating, he’d try for Dissolution. He had been thinking he might still save them all. But if Krinata really had been Takora, or even just had Takora’s Center experience, at least some of them would die.
He had to accept that. The time had come when he had to deliberately sacrifice some lives that others might survive to Completion. Yet everything in him shrank from it. Even the chance that some of them might reincarnate as ephemerals didn’t help. / will not choose who lives and who dies, but I will not survive if Krinata dies.
&nbs
p; //Look—// offered Krinata, //I shouldn’t have said anything. I—the human in me–thought it might make you fed better to know that someone understands. Jindigar—you’re carrying too much of a load for all of us. It’s not right.//
//A Center would know—I’m only doing the Center’s job.// He wanted her ignorance of that to be proof she was only empathizing in the human way—imagining it all. Aliom science rested on the bedrock idea that Dushau could not reincarnate, and Aliom science was their only way out of this trap. He dared not start doubting it now.
She moved a little closer to him. He could feel the heat of her body as she replied, //I do know. That’s the problem. Once I made the same mistake—taking on too much of a burden. I collapsed under it, endangered my Oliat, and you had to do– what you did. Now it’s as if you’re compelled to relive my mistake.//
//If that’s the case, Krinata, and you must cut me off to save the others—then do it.// He turned to face her. Ill mean that. You are going to survive this Dissolution.//
She struck the shaleiliu chord on the whule, the chord that summoned the Oliat to session, then she pushed the instrument half into his lap, taking his hand and guiding it to touch the resonating chamber. //This is a manifestation of the carrier wave of the universe, and it seems to be telling me, right now, that you and I go to Completion together—or neither of us goes. If I have to send you off into death, somehow we will meet again and do it all again, until we finally get it right. But I don’t intend to do it wrong again this time, Jindigar. This is my Oliat, as it is yours, and I don’t intend to lose any of us. Think of it this way—if I’m Takora, then I’m a Center, yes, but I’m a Center who never Dissolved—so I’m still legitimately part of an Oliat. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t resist.//
That, too, would explain a lot. //But there’s no way to determine if you are Takora.//
//The Dissolution will prove it to you, one way or another. I’m not worried. I just don’t want you hurt.//
Touched beyond words, he put his arm around her shoulders. He could feel the human bone structure under her jacket as her clean hair moved lightly across his bare forearm. She turned her face up to him, a white oval in the darkness. There was absolutely nothing Dushau about her, nothing even faintly suggestive of female. Yet-a guarding knot inside of him loosened. He felt tension draining from his neck muscles where the glands stirred comfortably. He let his aching fingertips sound the whule strings, suggesting a more intimate melody, mid was not surprised when Krinata’s fingers finished the tune of the lovers’ song.
Slowly, as if she were fighting an impulse stronger than she was, her hands slipped upward over his chest and sought the sensitive points at the base of his neck with the unerring accuracy of the sexually mature Dushau. But there was a tentative innocence to her exploration that was more erotic than the most experienced bride’s touch.
He fell his lips form words put of a softly expelled breath. “Oh. Krinata, no…”
If she were truly Takora—truly a Center—she would know better than to court such a danger. But even if she’d been Takora, she was now human and facing death. Were her needs really so very different from those of a Dushau?
But even if it would help her, it was stirring him and so it must stop. He would have to find the strength.
Suddenly Krinata jerked up, staring into the darkness behind Jindigar. She shrank from what she saw there. Jindigar turned, half afraid that she was hallucinating, tapping into Eithlarin’s world somehow.
Between them and the fire at the far end of the room was the silhouette of a Dushau woman, and Jindigar knew instantly that it was Darllanyu. As she moved toward them he also knew that she’d heard the melody of lovers plucked by Krinata’s fingers in tandem with his own unmistakable touch on the strings.
Sharing music on that level was a very great intimacy that he had not yet permitted Dar. And she had certainly noticed that he’d cloaked himself and Krinata in privacy from the rest of the Oliat. He rearranged the linkages to include Dar, bracing, for he knew she was now almost free of the drug. The languid comfort Krinata had evoked in his body evaporated before the sharp heat of Dar’s presence.
He stood up to confront her, gathering the poise of the Center around himself, but feeling more like an Active Priest than anyone competent to work Oliat.
Darllanyu announced, //Trinarvil says she’ll be here before midnight to give Eithlarin the stimulant—and then we’ll try our plan.// Then she shifted her gaze to Krinata.
Darllanyu could only be seeing a shadowy hint of Krinata, but through Oliat awareness she knew what they’d felt. The strain was evident as she asked, //Jindigar, is there any reason for me to wait for you after Dissolution?//
Unexpectedly Jindigar was paralyzed by a rush of alarm, as if he stood in a ship that had suddenly lost internal gravity. Krinata answered in the tone and cadence of Takora, //Only that you are his mate. It’s gone too far, Darllanyu. If you leave him now, he won’t mate this time. Don’t do that to him– please don’t.// She gathered her jacket around her and cut across the Temple to the front door.
Darllanyu turned to stare after her, astonishment suffusing the now open linkages. Several moments later, as Jindigar was still frantically searching for something to say, Darllanyu observed, //If she really is Takora, she knows that since I can no longer have children, you may as well choose the mate best suited to you.//
His heart pounded wildly at the mere thought that she might leave him. But then, what of her, if Krinata had to kill him? //That mate is still you, Dar.//
//Do you regret that?//
//No. I thought you understood that I’d learned that lesson
when she was Ontarrah.//, . .
//Then why does she attract you so? Why is this happening? I’m not going to be even semirational about it much longer. Explain it to me, Jindigar.//
//I can’t. I don’t understand it. But as soon as we Dissolve, she’ll be out of our lives. Just let me have the chance to prove that to you.//
//Why me, Jindigar?//
//Because you’re so beautiful and you do things to me that no one else has the power to do. Krinata’s right—I’ve chosen you. There won’t be anyone else this time. I thought it was mutual.//
//It was. Or, at least I thought so, until I saw what Krinata is to you. Jindigar, if you’d chosen me, it wouldn’t be possible to respond to Krinata like that.//
//It isn’t the same!// he insisted.
//Maybe not biologically, but psychologically it is. Otherwise, why did you choose to cut Eithlarin off when Krinata was the actual source of the disruption? You could have cut Krinata off. Even if Krinata had died, it wouldn’t have hurt her—she’d only reincarnate again. But Eithlarin has lost her chance at Completion!//
//She’s not dead yet,// argued Jindigar doggedly while his mind gnawed at the insidious question Dar had posed. Even if prompted by onset-induced jealousy, it was a good question. Krinata/Takora approved of his choice, but that was no evidence that he’d been right.
//Dar, much of what a Center has to do is done on perception of shaleiliu, using the Aliom “strike.” Maybe I was wrong– maybe I can’t risk Krinata just because, on some level, I do believe she was Takora—and I can’t do that to her twice. I almost couldn’t do it to Eithlarin. It was a “strike,” Dar. There’s no reasoning behind it. No way to judge it this soon.//
//You’re not really answering me.//
//When you’ve been Center, maybe we can discuss it.//
//Why do I get the impression that you’ve discussed it with Krinata?//
//Because I have. Center to Center.//
//Jindigar!//*
She felt that a part of him did not belong exclusively to her, which, in Onset as she was, seemed an intolerable threat. Jindigar already felt the same about her. Dwelling on it would only make it worse. He tried again to explain in terms a non-Center could grasp. Ill set a close, tight link to Eithlarin. She chose to go—wherever she is-.// He turned to Eithlarin, opening
the linkages so Dar would feel the gaping void and the whispering static of the link. //We all had a part in what’s happened. An Oliat, more than any other bound entity, is an integrated singularity. The Center can’t do anything the Oliat as a whole doesn’t do. No officer’s needs prevail, and no officer is free of the consequences.//
Darllanyu shuddered and turned away, as if wishing she could control the linkages and close off her awareness of Eithlarin. //All right. You’ve made your point. I did beg you to stop Eithlarin. I shouldn’t have done that, any more than you should have allowed what—you just allowed with Krinata.
But I’m not qualified to Center. I didn’t know what would happen to Eithlarin if you shut her away enough to protect the rest of us. I didn’t mean her any harm.//
//Neither did I. But I knew what might happen.//
//I’m ashamed to admit,// she confessed, transfixed by the input of Eithlarin, //that I’m glad it’s her, not me.// She hugged herself, her inflamed fingertips absently scratching at the gold armlet Jindigar had given her. //If it had been a choice of me or Krinata—who would it have been?//
lie clamped off all the linkages, isolating his groan within himself. That was the question he had not dared ask.
//A Center has to make choices, Jindigar,// she reminded him gravely. //You’re going to have to decide which of us lives and which of us dies. If—because of what you once did to Takora, you can’t or won’t sacrifice any of us, then just like Takora you’re going to take your whole Oliat to Incompletion-death with you.//
//No!// he answered without thinking. //Krinata, at least,
must live through this.//
Darllanyu concluded, //So, you would have cut me off to save Krinata. That’s honest, anyway. Jindigar, has it occurred to you that you’re behaving this way because you’ve spent too much time among ephemerals—too much time Emulating ephemerals? You don’t know what it is to be Dushau anymore. Maybe you’d better use that phenomenal ability of yours to Emulate a Dushau and find out what it’s really like!//
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