Across the square that separated the Aliom Temple from the Historians’, Jindigar sensed Threntisn sitting on the Historians’ porch, watching the Aliom Temple by the meager light of the moon, knowing what they were trying.
In the worldcircle before them Trinarvil administered one last drug to Eithlarin, then gathered her things and stepped out of the marked area. She didn’t go far, however, but stood to watch from the shadows as the Oliat drifted into the worldcircle, forming up with Eithlarin in the Protector’s position.
Jindigar scanned his officers. Krinata was relaxed enough to accept the bizarre mixture of images from the Oliat’s multiawareness. Llistyien and Venlagar were the most stable, and this time, when Jindigar set the linkages and turned them over to Venlagar, the Inreach didn’t fumble.
But Darllanyu was a nexus of foment. Zannesu, in the Office of Receptor, was already fighting his response to Bar’s desire, unwilling to stir up the needs that had twice sent him after Eithlarin. //Zannesu, in this operation you must permit yourself to respond. I know how hard it is, but for Eithlarin you must. Dar is going to Formulate Renewal, and Llistyien will Emulate it for us. You will Receive that force, making it part of the Oliat.//
//If we let that loose among us, we’ll never stop it, Jindigar,// warned Venlagar, glancing at Llistyien.
//We’re not going to stop it. Eithlarin will have to Protect us. She will return for that—to Protect for Zannesu. The very force of Renewal itself will draw her. And it will be no trick. The force of Renewal will disrupt the linkages and destroy the, Oliat—through Dissolution, I hope.//
//We’ve discussed all this, and we agreed to try it,// Darllanyu reminded them impatiently. //We must risk it.//
Habitually fighting the symptoms of onset, Jindigar curbed an impulse to promise, / will keep you safe. And then, though he did not utter the words, he let the feeling possess him, savoring it as he let her presence suffuse his awareness. Her eyes sought him. Rapture engulfed her.
Happiness shook Jindigar. He yielded, his neck throbbing with a sweet ache at once familiar and strange, urgent and fearsome.
The Oliat braced for the grating shock of dysattunement. Jindigar groped for the world attunement and found that the circle still resonated with the fading overtone of Dushaun he had evoked. Familiar, comforting, it let them take life from this alien world and hope for a home.
A wondering moan of relief and hope escaped Darllanyu’s lips, and Jindigar returned his attention to his Formulator. //We want to hold at this level—the very urge to go on is the power we need to summon Eithlarin. Zannesu?//
//I’ve never Received anything from within the Oliat before.//
Zannesu had been thrust into an Office beyond his training, hut he was already resonating to Dar’s Renewal, straining after Eithlarin, who, frustratingly, was not responding.
//May 1 show him the inner Reception?// asked Llistyien,
and, at Jindigar’s assent, Emulated a Receptor focused inward at the Oliat while at the same time Receiving externally as Zannesu was Receiving Eithlarin.
Barely breathing, Zannesu aligned with Llistyien, and suddenly the Oliat lost all external awareness except for the narrow thread of Krinata’s human senses. Llistyien shifted to Emulating Renewal—which was hardly necessary considering her own condition. Krinata gasped. Jindigar’s glands pulsed. Venlagar groaned. Zannesu emitted an uninhibited mating cry that somehow harmonized between the shaleiliu hum and the Eithlarin link static.
It built faster than Jindigar ever dreamed possible. He never knew how he found the fortitude to focus them outward to Eithlarin. //Protector! Danger!//
And she responded.
Eithlarin, biological instincts a mere memory to her disembodied psyche, nevertheless strained toward her mate, fending off Llistyien and Darllanyu as if they were rivals.
The linkages shuddered with forces wholly unsuited to the* Oliat channels, building until the linkages wobbled and quivered, like out-of-tune whule strings interfering instead of making music.
Eithlarin stirred, eyes fluttering open. Zannesu checked his automatic step toward her, and hovered, Receiving her totally. She turned toward him, her linkages into the Oliat strengthening as the Oliat pattern itself blurred with the vast energies surging through them. Zannesu tore at his shirt collar, his glands engorged.
Darllanyu took two steps toward Jindigar, reaching for his neck with fingers that offered tender relief. The energy built, destabilizing the Oliat instead of Dissolving it, wiping away the shaleiliu hum. But there was no way he could stop it. Whatever happened now, happened.
Suddenly the linkages prickled with human surprise. Jindigar flicked a glance at Krinata, and his gaze locked with hers. His breath caught in his throat as he saw himself through her perception, tall shadow within shadow against searing whiteness, vast, commanding, powerful, mysterious, and forbidden. Wanted but forbidden.
She closed her eyes and thrust a question along the linkages together with a faint sound that grew rapidly. //What’s that?//
“Natives!” It was Trinarvil’s voice, carrying to them from outside where she stood on the Temple porch, and she yelled the warning. “We’re under attack!” An alarm bell began to toll.
And then they all heard it. It was a howling, chattering babble, stretching from their very porch into the far distance. Trinarvil ran back through the portal and turned as if to fend off an attack. Six shadowy forms boiled from the entry way. Hardly pausing, they knocked Trinarvil over. A mob of shadows erupted out of the doorway. They headed straight for the worldcircle as if they could sense it.
With every step one of the outsiders took the circle dimmed. Their footsteps took on a vague luminescence. Then, as the vanguard reached the circle, it shimmered and smeared out until the whole floor was permeated with Phanphihy’s energy, just like the rest of the world.
The subtle hint of Dushaun that had held them in attunement with Phanphihy vanished.
Heedless of the stunned Oliat Officers, the intruders charged onto the spot where the circle had been, jostling the officers this way and that. Sobering waves of shock washed through the Oliat. Buffeted by howling Natives, Zannesu staggered, catching sight of two huge shadows smashing into Eithlarin. As if waking from paralysis, he let out a roar that set the roof beams vibrating and dived across to Eithlarin, grabbed her off the elevated platform, and rolled away from the attackers.
Jindigar’s link to Eithlarin stretched tight, draining all the energy in the links. Then it snapped with a sudden finality—, everything that was Eithlarin fleeing the one nightmare she could not tolerate, breakin. She vanished as if she had never been.
Eithlarin was dead before they hit the floor.
The shock of the snapped link to their Protector hit them hard. Jindigar, as Center, took the brunt of it but couldn’t prevent it from going through him to all the others. Without his volition his body staggered toward Darllanyu, compelled by pure, physical need to protect her. But she was surrounded -by Natives stamping and howling in a frustrated war dance. His knees buckled, and he dropped to all fours amid a forest of legs. Feebly he groped for the linkages to shut down the channel to Krinata. He had to protect her from the Dissolution shock.
He was hardly aware of the room filling with frantic bodies, barely conscious of the reek of unwashed Native hive-dwellers, the most intelligent four-species symbionts in the galaxy.
“Jindigar!” Two gentle hands shook Krinata. Dushau hands. “Jindigar, listen. Call me to Protector! Jindigar! I can do it! I have the attunement!”
He forced his eyes open against the crashing pain in his head, his spine, the searing spasms of his internal organs. His senses were raw, as if flayed of every protection. The dim room was too bright, the babble deafening, the odor paralyzing. Hands scrabbled at his skin, feet kicked at him. And it was all alien, too alien.
“Jindigar! I have the attunement. Take me to Protector!” It was Trinarvil shaking Krinata. He needed Trinarvil. The Oliat needed her. He put his hands out
to her and called weakly, //Protector!//
The protests from the others came only as silent agony. They had lost attunement, the world turning into an infinite, formless menace. And they couldn’t let go of Eithlarin.
Zannesu crouched over a lifeless hulk. Eithlarin’s presence was gone—simply gone.
//Trinarvil! Protector!// repeated Jindigar with grim determination. She turned to him, put her hands out in response, and answered steadily, //Center.//
He forged the link to her, following the line that relieved the crashing, stunning pain. Weakness enveloped him, and he lay curled on his side, panting helplessly. But the Oliat steadied as if of its own accord. A new note had been added, deep, calm, vibrantly alive, and stable beyond belief, reasonably at home here. This was maturity.
The texture, complexion, and identity of the Oliat changed then, as it must with each change in officers.
Trinarvil Protected. Gradually understanding replaced helpless horror, inducing attunement in them once again. It wasn’t hard. They’d only lost it momentarily.
Jindigar expanded their awareness. The room was filled with unwashed bodies, stinking of fear and flight. Weapons flashed in the last flickers of the dying fire in the pit at the other end of the room. The Native hive’s warriors brandished spears, hatchets, and other throwing tools. They were of medium size, covered with a heavy winter pelt, and favored traveling on all fours, apelike. Their upper pair of limbs branched at the elbow into one forearm with a hand at the end of it, and another with a paw with retractile claws. Their main clothing was their weapons harnesses.
Among them were a few of the rustlemen, as Krinata had dubbed them. They were the most intelligent of the hive-dwellers, evolved from the predatory rustlebirds. They were covered with the quasi-feathers or evolved scales that caused the rustling sound when they moved. They stumped about the unfamiliar space of the room trying to bring the warriors to order with piercing screeches and gestures. Several of the rustlemen carried on their shoulders the little, carapaced hivebinders, the telepaths of the hive who created the hive’s group mind and defended it.
The warriors milled about, as if bewildered, stomping repeatedly at the place where the worldcircle had been, as if infuriated at being cheated.
The cacophony outside rose. Energy weapons fired over the roar of voices. The settlement’s defenses had mobilized. Death permeated the Oliat perceptions.
//Zannesu!// The Receptor still bent over Eithlarin’s body, rocking back and forth. //Zannesu! Receptor! We have to stop this!//
With incredible effort Zannesu dragged part of his attention back to his Office. Jindigar focused the Oliat’s awareness outward toward the cliff, setting Zannesu to Receive what was happening, carefully gentling Trinarvil into Protector.
On the upper cliff edge, the last of the hive-dweller Natives were climbing down the ropes of the lift onto the settlement below. And the reason for their panicked flight was now evident to the Oliat. Right behind them came a pack of ravenous carnivores such as Jindigar had never encountered before. They were wiry-pelted and went on all fours, but they had long, snouted heads that ended in a suction appendage. The forepaws appeared to be nearly as dextrous as hands. As the Oliat focused on them one of them grabbed one of the small, exoskeletal hivebinders, cracked the carapace, and sucked the shell dry-without bothering to kill the Native first.
Briefly perception blurred. The tiny telepath’s agony blanketed the hivemind and the settlement with a spasm of distorted horror and creeping dread. Then it was gone. The settlement’s militia, drawn mostly from the ex-Imperial troops, went wild. They fired indiscriminately into the hordes of Natives now streaming toward the Dushau compound.
Within the compound itself, people ran in every direction. Some fled the encroaching predators. Others dashed to rescue mates or restrain those in the irrationality of Renewal onset from mindless, suicidal attacks on the invaders. A few, desperate, set fire to buildings in the Natives’ path, hoping the primitives would stop out of fear. At least there aren’t any children yet!
//Darllanyu, can you Formulate the dome image around the Temple?//
She sat up, dashing blood from a cut on her mouth, struggling for self-possession. She didn’t answer him, but the dome image wavered hazily over them.
//Protector, see if you can pick that up and use it.//
Trinarvil had not been on the planet when the colony had used that image to repel the all-out attack of the hives, but she had heard the story. Llistyien brought Emulation into play behind her efforts, and soon the gray blocks of a Native hive-dome were almost tangible above the Temple.
It took longer than Jindigar had expected for the invading hive to react. Their hivemind was in chaos, convulsing with deaths. But finally it penetrated: the dome above them was not their dome. They were in someone else’s hive.
The hivebinders riding the rustlemen’s shoulders reacted first, twittering and nipping at their partners. A profound disturbance ran through the invaders, and within moments the commands of the rustlemen had triggered a mass exodus.
As the last of the Natives squeezed through the doorway, Jindigar got to his feet. //We’ve got to expand the hive-dome to enclose the entire compound.// He helped Zannesu up, cradling the Receptor away from the sight of Eithlarin’s limp body, urging, //Come, Receptor.//
Outside, chaos reigned in the lanes of the compound. Several buildings were on fire, lending an eerie flicker to the growing dawn light. A military flare went up, burst, and shed white light over all. The Oliat wove that radiance into the image of the dome, expanding it, adding details of aging, stains of droppings, scars of old battles won. With every detail of realism the invading hive’s retreat hastened.
NINE
Chinchee Returns
The hivemind noticed that the strangers’ hive-dome was invisible. Panic seized the hive’s warriors. Outside the Dushau’s will led compound, the stream of hive-dwellers reversed in their tracks and poured north, along the base of the cliff. But here and there individual Natives regarded the illusion-dome as a perfectly ordinary thing, apparently aware of the colony’s right to it.
Gradually the hivemind accepted that pragmatism, and the
rout became an orderly retreat to regroup around the spaceships
parked at the northern edge of the colony’s territory.w
The Oliat, still numb with shock compounded by Zannesu’s ringing denial of his loss, watched in growing horror as the advance warriors stormed the open hatches of the ships, showing every sign of taking permanent possession.
Flatly, tonelessly, Zannesu warned, //Ineed to hate them. She didn’t deserve that. Why—why, Jindigar? Why did it happen like that? Ten minutes—just ten minutes more and she’d //
Incompletion-death is always senseless. It is failure, pure and simple. Or so Aliom seemed to imply. Maybe he hadn’t understood. Or maybe Aliom was wrong. //Idon’t know if I’ll ever find an answer for you, my zunre. But as long as I live, I will try. One thing I am sure of, though–to hate the Natives is to throw oneself after Eithlarin.//
//It was my fault. I couldn’t hold her.//
Something in Zannesu’s tone hit a nerve. Eithlarin’s inexorable retreat, the sudden, shocking loss, the excruciating need to act—If I had been faster, held harder, thought more clearly– she’d be alive.
Guilt. He feels guilty–but there was nothing he could have done. It came to Jindigar with a sense of creeping horror. have held that kind of guilt about Takora–all these years it’s been in me, and I never knew it. thought that, because I did the best thing, that I had to consider it the right thing. But the truth is, I don’t. He could not tell Zannesu what he had been told—that he need not feel guilty because no one could have saved her.
Surprisingly Krinata added the comment that lightened Zannesu’s anguish. //Look at it this way. Eithlarin gave us one invaluable parting gift. By truly heroic effort, so very typical of her, she returned to us when we needed her. She loved us and knew we loved her. Even
if it was in her—–fate, maybe—to die Incomplete, she wanted us to know it wasn’t our fault. Personally I don’t see how such a selfless act could earn her anything but good from the universe.//*
It was the strangest thought ever planted in Jindigar’s mind. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to germinate. It could lead to suicide in misguided causes. Yet he could find no flaw in Krinata’s reasoning. He knew why. The carefully constructed epistemology he’d relied on for judgment had suddenly been wiped out. Everything had to be rethought from scratch, and at the moment that was all he wanted to do. Onset symptoms! I’m in no condition to be a Center.
But for the moment Zannesu stabilized. Jindigar called them to work and, with Krinata’s permission, choked down her link again, invoking their normal multiawareness. //Receptor, Protector, Emulator—we must expand the dome image over the whole colony—including the ships. The hive must not settle among the ships!//
As his Oliat responded the shaleiliu hum returned, all trace of static gone. But, after what they’d done to themselves, how long would it take for hormonal surges to build again?
Jindigar lifted the linkages and refocused the Oliat’s attention outside themselves, hoping for the best.
Despite the recent acrimony, the colonists formed up to defend their homes against this new menace. Trinarvil, so much nearer Completion than Jindigar, Observed the shaleiliu engulfing the ephemerals. She should be Center.
Jindigar followed her lead, focusing the Oliat on the shaleiliu generated among the colonists, and his Protector gratefully seized upon it and used it to spread the dome image out over houses, barns and fields, and the Cassrians’ pond, everywhere that men and women stood shoulder to shoulder to claim their homes.
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