He didn’t stop to reason it through but acted in the manner of Aliom’s “strike,” and for the first time it was totally effortless.
Dimly Jindigar was aware that he was using skills he’d garnered from the Observers’ level of the Archive, skills beyond him despite his millennia of Oliat experience. He reached out to reinforce the meta-link with Threntisn while at the same lime he offered the same sort of meta-link to the hivemind, luring it closer until he could repossess his own linkages in exchange for the meta-link, setting that link into the central core of the hivemind—with a sure, fearless touch. As if he knew what he was doing.
His own linkages settled back around him again, and he tuned for the shaleiliu hum he’d come to rely on. He wasn’t prepared for the roar that blasted into their consciousnesses, * shaleiliu hum as loud as if they were inside the sounding box of a whule.
He tuned it down as best he could, but still it was like working inside a robofactory where noise was not controlled. To gain control he had to balance the trinary Oliat. //Archive Master! Hivemaster!// He called the co-Centers.
Threntisn’s response was sluggish, bemused by the toxin that warped his sense of reality. //What a strange place… the walls speak… but with respect. Come then, Walls, I will be your Archive Master. Come, we will record you for all time to read.//,
The hivemind, bewildered by this turn of events, responded, //.We Record!//
But the responses alone were enough. Jindigar solidified the hive, the Archive, and his Oliat into a trinary meta-Oliat, announcing, III am meta-Center.//
His own officers scarcely knew what was happening. Oddly enough it was Krinata who first understood and found her place as meta-Outreach.
The data flow waxed to a stupendous volume, long since overloading her human brain. She had given up trying to apprehend it all. By some obscure mechanism of the human mind she was able to ignore the incomprehensible and organize the rest of the incoming data into familiar patterns. Jindigar, afraid that her endurance was limited, yielded to her metaphors, letting this un-space take on the forms she imposed on it.
He turned to the hivemind. Its Whole Memory stretched off to one side, a snaking tunnel like a telescoping tube with events depicted on its walls as living plays of the great historical events of the hive. Newhiveswarm brought with it the Whole Memory of its parent hive, a memory that stretched back eons into the dim reaches of pre-intelligence. The Rustlemother who held the Whole Memory could transmit it and add to it just as an Archivist could, but she was ill and dying, making the scenes dim and listless.
The Archive surrounded the Oliat and the hivemaster, plucking insistently at the hints of data coming from the hivemind’s vast memory. Left alone, the Archive would devour the less sophisticated hive-memory. Jindigar forestalled this by invoking the Oliat’s global awareness and baiting the Archive with a flood of data.
The lab was filling with awestruck Natives, too aware of the burgeoning Archive swallowing their Mind to attend to the fallen Rustlemother, nearly crushed under the weight of the stranger. Even the hivebinders in fullsong had suspended their compulsive call.
Jindigar opened out to include the settlement and the plain above. He fed all the data to the voracious Archive while he tried to shake Threntisn out of his stupor. //Threntisn! You’ve got to help! Archivist! I can’t do this alone!//
Just when despair overtook him, Jindigar heard a familiar hail echoing down the chambers of the Archive, //Jindigar!// He whirled around within the Archive space to find Threntisn arrowing toward him, propelling himself through the kaleidoscopic shapes of the Archive’s chambers by the power of his own will, not riding helplessly on the voracious currents of the Archive. His progress seemed erratic but nevertheless purposive. Perhaps the hivebinders’ toxin is wearing off at last!
Through the meta-link he told the Archivist, //We must form a single unit of Archive and hive-memory—then we must open a channel between them so the hivemind can understand that we can cure the disease that’s killing Rustlemother– who is like an Archivist. She carries the Whole Memory of the hive!//
Puzzled, the Historian hesitated. //You can’t talk to me. You’re balanced.//
//Never mind that now,// pled Jindigar. //The Rustlemother’s your colleague, Threntisn. Your instinct was right. We must save her or the hive will become a mere collection of individuals—all that data lost!//
The Historian’s image blinked slowly. Still fighting the toxin, he wasn’t quite able to grasp it all. But his eyes went to the long tube that represented the hive-memory. A Historian’s cornucopia, its tail snaked off toward the Gateway into the Archive while the wide-open end faced them. The open end was screened by a blurred area that sometimes seemed to be one Native species and sometimes another; occasionally an amalgam of them all. But in Krinata’s metaphor the shifting image represented a composite being, the Hivemaster.
Jindigar opened a data flow to the Historian along the meta-link that bound the ternary Oliat. Gradually Threntisn comprehended. //A channel to the hive—of course. But I wouldn’t know how, Jindigar.//
//Let’s do it this way,// suggested Jindigar, and directed Krinata, as meta-Outreach, to approach the hivemaster.
She eyed the zone of mixed images, then returned, //That’s a hole into the hive-memory. It’s an infinite tunnel. I could fall down it forever!//
She had fallen through such a hive-memory with him once, while trying to save his life. It had been one of the most terrifying experiences she’d ever endured. Jindigar knew, through the long intimacy of their linkages, how she had overcome the terror by simply putting it behind her, saying, ‘/ never do that again. And he was sending her into it again.
//You can’t fall in while we’re meta-linked,// he assured her, knowing that logic had nothing to do with phobia. But he carefully explained his plan.
Krinata glowed with skepticism, but she moved out into the vaguely defined space between Oliat and hivemind. Jindigar sent Threntisn out with her, coaxing him into the meta-link with Krinata, urging him, //Now go ahead and explain to the hivemind what you were trying to get Chinchee to tell them when you were taking the Rustlemother’s blood specimen.//
Krinata approached barely close enough for her projection to reach the hivemaster, then, glancing nervously at Threntisn, she squirmed as the other meta-Center spoke through her, “// I —we—want to be your friend, Hivemaster. As I have healed one of our sick, I—we—can heal your Rustlemother and save your Whole Memory.//”
Threntisn twisted to gape at Jindigar. //Save the Whole Memory? Jindigar—how could I follow—be understanding—//
//You’re reading Oliat data,// explained Jindigar confidently while he quailed inwardly. He’s a Historian! Bemusedly Threntisn accepted that, perhaps still affected by the toxin or maybe absorbing Krinata’s unquestioning attitude. As if it were all routine, the Historian formulated a method Jindigar could never have imagined. //Let us show you what is wrong with Rustlemother, how it was our doing, and how we can cure her.//
With a dramatic gesture Threntisn reshaped the Archive chambers about them, confronting the hivemaster with a panorama of scenes recorded in the Archive, scenes explaining the concepts of communicable diseases, scenes of the development of immunology, scenes explaining the rapid mutation of certain microorganisms so they could cross species lines, and the rapid and efficient control methods available in the ship’s lab.
It was a virtuoso performance by a true Archive Master, and Jindigar was about to heave a sigh of relief and turn his attention to how to get them all out of this when the hivemaster rumbled ominously, sending only confusion down the meta-link.
//Llistyien, can you Emulate the hivemind?//
Jindigar felt her trembling at the very idea, still clenched up tight around herself, expecting annihilation momentarily. But, with Krinata performing her Office as if nothing unusual had happened, Llistyien straightened and brought the hivemaster’s rumble to the Oliat as a clear expression of bewilderment. As elementa
ry as Threntisn’s presentation had been, the hive simply didn’t comprehend.
//Dai, are you with us?// asked Jindigar tentatively.
//I’m trying,// she answered, and Jindigar felt the linkage waken. He suppressed a surge of alarm at the clear tinge of Renewal she had been suppressing. If the pensone is wearing off, we’ve been in here for hours!
//Formulator and Emulator, in tandem,// called Jindigar, resetting the linkages and handing the pattern over to Venlagar. //We have to translate the Archive data Threntisn is presenting into terms the hive can comprehend.//
They had no idea what those terms might be, but Jindigar ignored that and set to work. His Oliat would discover the right casting. Hastily trained beginners, they had nevertheless developed into a fine-tuned instrument. The shaleiliu roar that surrounded them attested to that. This entire trinary Oliat was in lime with some universal force.
//Steady now, and we can handle this,// Jindigar coaxed. Then he blended his Oliat linkage pattern into Threntisn’s meta-link. //Show us how the display is evoked. We must translate for the hivemind.// The Historian hesitated—control of the Archive functions was strictly Historians’ responsibility. But then he overcame the trained reflex and allowed them access to the imaging mechanism.
Jindigar worked through Threntisn’s touch, schooling himself not to yearn to take control from the Historian. But he couldn’t deny it was a long-sought thrill—all that data at his personal command. There was nothing like it in Aliom. And there was something else—some vast, profound insight that beckoned just beyond the tantalizing horizon. It was something Threntisn and all Historians seemed to share, something Jindigar wanted with all his heart and soul. But it was not for an Aliom Priest.
Keeping his distance, Jindigar used Krinata to Outreach the Oliat’s translation directly to the Historian, not through linear vocalizing but through a direct, multidimensional interface.
//Jindigar, don’t—I can’t.// Krinata winced away from the contact, as if it were a deeply personal violation.
Jindigar stanched the flow of data. //Krinata—// But, feeling her reaction, he couldn’t ask it of her.
Threntisn shuddered. //I’m sorry, Krinata. I never realized, a human—I mean—//
Jindigar interrupted, III don’t think I can adjust that sort of full spectrum meta-link to a narrower channel, but I’ll try.//
//We have to do it, don’t we?// Krinata asked. When no one answered, because not one of them could ask it of her, she told Threntisn, //I’m game if you are. Afterward we’ll just pretend it never happened.//
He looked to the hivemaster, squirming impatiently. The Rustlemother was dying. //Jindigar, I want you to know that a Historian carries just as strict a confidentiality code as the Aliom Priests do. I won’t even know that I know anything I get about you from her, until you tell me.//
/ didn’t realize–oh. Krinata! But they had to. He worked to narrow the channel, excluding the personal, but it wasn’t effective because so much of the understanding of the universe is based on the personal. And how much confidentiality can one expect from a hive that barely comprehends individuality?
Jindigar barely found the strength to continue recasting the images, substituting hive Natives for the people in Threntisn’s story, showing which were workers, craftsmen, scholars, and explorers or Heralds. They showed planetary civilizations as hives and microbe species as hiveless marauders. The concept of microscopic life was remarkably easy to get across—the concept of independent individuals simply could not be translated. So Jindigar let the developing science pass as the work of a communion of hiveminds. But he meticulously cast the closing scene in the ship’s lab, dirt-smeared floor, campfire, and all just as it was now, with Threntisn in the role of technician, dressed in the belts, headdress, and sigils of a master craftsman.
When they were done, the hivemaster’s rumble had turned thoughtful. Jindigar dispelled the crosslink between Krinata and Threntisn, sensing Krinata’s relief as his own. He felt almost as if he’d forced her into an intimate act. He needed to break down and beg her forgiveness, pledging to protect her body and mind from any such invasion. The very idea of her pliant body clasped in his arms set him to trembling. Time’s running out. I’d better not even look at Dar.
The hivemaster finally stirred, seeming at last to have comprehended their plan to help the Rustlemother. The long cornucopia that was Krinata’s image of the hivemind squirmed about, as if searching for the exit from the Archive.
How does one Dissolve a meta-Oliat? Jindigar had only the vaguest idea, but the standard procedure wouldn’t work in this case. Neither of the other two entities were truly in Oliat. If they did “Dissolve,” they would totally self-destruct.
Before Jindigar could work up a plan, the hivemaster turned and dived down the throat of his own tunnel-memory, turning it inside out, swallowing himself to turn end over end, lunging toward the Gate at which they had entered, dragging the Oliat behind.
Reacting faster than Jindigar, Threntisn closed the Gate ahead of the behemoth, telling the Oliat, as it drew him along in its wake,//That’s not an exit!// He shook at the meta-link joining them as if it were a noisome animal stuck to his flesh by sucker pads. //Let me go! If he breaks out, he could pull the Archive inside out.//
Thrashing, the Historian stretched the meta-link, dragging them backward, while ahead, the hivemaster drove toward the solid wall of the Archive, stretching the meta-link in the other direction, as if determined to break through to freedom. If those links should snap…
The shaleiliu roar rose to a higher pitch as the links stretched. //Threntisn, if you can reform the Archive around the hivemaster so that it is headed for an exit, while I release the meta-links that bind you both to me, perhaps we will separate without harm and let the hivemaster go on his way.//
It was a desperate plan, but Threntisn apparently didn’t sense that. He began shifting the environment around them, giving them the illusion of hurling through the Archive toward the Eye. His control was steadier now, the toxin apparently wearing off at last.
Jindigar told Venlagar, who was strained to the breaking point with the extra weight of the meta-forms, //Inreach, we need to take on energy from the shaleiliu hum. Give me the links one at a time.// Then he warned his officers, a peculiar sense of calm steadying him, //Brace yourselves. One way or the other, this will be our last attempt at Dissolution. But no matter what happens to us, the Archive and the hive must go free of it.//
Then, one by one, starting with the meta-links, Jindigar plucked the linkages from Venlagar’s grasp and infused them with the shaleiliu roar until it thrummed through them all. As he induced the correct pitch into the linkages the thundering vibration took over the Oliat. The links that bound the three entities shimmered, becoming indistinguishable from that background carrier wave of universal energy.
/ don’t believe this. We’re actually dissolving. Maybe there was more than one way to use a meta-link to Dissolve a dual-Centered Oliat.
As the moment approached when Jindigar would have no further control over the linkages, he became hyperaware of Krinata. She was the center of a tangled knot of infinitesimal colored threads—the links she claimed to have to my officers. As he watched in amazement her links grew stronger, more organized, as his own dissipated.
TWELVE
Dissolution
//Jindigar! Stop it! I can’t make it stop!// Krinata thrashed among her linkages, as if trying to extricate herself, but only succeeded in tangling herself more deeply, reinforcing the hold her own links had on her.
Ill don’t know how!// She had Center’s links all the time. She told me and I didn’t believe her.
His officers strove to deny Krinata’s links, too, and to stay with the Dissolution of Jindigar’s, hoping against all hope that they’d survive. Then, gradually, each of them succumbed to despair, for Krinata’s links held them bound to each other in another Oliat—Krinata’s Oliat—with Jindigar as her Outreach. She really is Takora!
<
br /> The shaleiliu hum, once loud enough to pulverize bone, was fading fast, for her links were unbalanced. Jindigar ignored the sickening whirl the change of Office made of his mind, knowing that the effect was ten thousand times worse for her. He had to think. If she could manage a balance and begin Dissolution, Jindigar would find himself in the same position she was in now, snared in a spontaneously activated network of linkages, for part of the energy his links had soaked up had come from her links—which had been hanging on the edge of nebulosity, not quite thoroughly formed.
When an Oliat formed, it was bound by emitting energy– grounding it into a planetary core. An Oliat was stable because it sat at the bottom of a potential energy well. It had to absorb energy to disassociate again.
Krinata’s links had formed in the Holot cave, but he had prevented her from grounding the energies and actually taking Center. Which Takora wouldn’t want to do, knowing the dangers. This is something that’s happening against her will.
When Jindigar had invoked Dissolution, his links had stolen energy from her links, causing her links to fall into solidity. If she tried to Dissolve, she’d soak energy out of his links again—and they’d go around and around forever.
//Jindigar!// Krinata twisted, turned, and pulled, rejecting the potent intimacy of the Center linkages as if it burned, rejecting the position of Center, for it didn’t belong to her anymore. She really is Takora! I didn’t destroy her!
Needing to relieve her suffering, he grabbed for his linkages «. again. Only, they and the meta-links were now too insubstantial, having soaked up too much energy from the shaleiliu hum, like ice melting, then boiling away. You can’t pick up a handful of steam. But his links were more like live steam compressed in a network of pipes.
Nevertheless, they carried a doubled anguish as Krinata struggled against her linkages and, at the same time, relived the moment Takora knew that she was trapped at Center, unable to Dissolve. She knew that as a result of her own bad judgment, her death would take her Oliat with her. It all flooded down her Center-Outreach link. His own link to his Outreach resonated with the same emotion. Trapped.
Outreach tdt-3 Page 22
