Jindigar lived it with her: the moment he had realized Takora’s was doomed, and this moment when he knew Jindigar’s was likewise doomed—by his own bad judgment. The Laws of Symmetry, Parity, and Polarity are inescapable Laws of Nature. But how many more times would they have to live it? Could even death end it? must– must end it!
Along Krinata’s own link to her Outreach he told her, //Takora—Takora, you must calm down. You’ve got the links. You must manage them.//
Her panic froze into a shocked stillness. A startling thrill of pleasure coursed through her linkages, captivating her of– ficers. She gasped, //You—you know now? You believe?// All the linkages pulsed with that too-intimate contact that shouldn’t be there. She told him intently, as if everything depended on it, //Jindigar—Jindigar, listen. I forgive you. I want so very much for you to forgive yourself. Please, try to forgive yourself.//
For the first time in all the times she’d told him that, Jindigar heard. It seared through him like a lightning strike, so fast that he didn’t have time to brace against it. And in the wake of that flash came a feeling of warm lightness. For the first time he experienced being Center. A knot he had hardly been aware of melted inside him, a tight reluctance to abandon Center, an Office he’d not really held until this moment. There are no shortcuts to Completion. //Takora. Takora—thank you.//
//If I’d had the courage, Jindigar, I’d have begged you to release me as you did the first time. This time I don’t need courage because I know it isn’t the worst possible fate. If you can save the others by killing me, then do it. I can’t take Center—Jindigar, I mustn’t do it!// She hesitated, then added, //Just tell Cyrus I regretted leaving him.// With that, a serenity suffused her linkages, a peace that made him believe her.
And out of that peace an idea struck. It was almost as if he could grasp the entire pattern of the symmetries of the universe, as the Oliat grasped the pattern of an ecology. Before the clarity could fade, he reached for contact with the worldcircle and made himself a conduit for those energies, intending to pump that energy into the double network of linkages binding them. His Oliat had not been formed on Dushaun, nor had Takora’s second Oliat been grounded into Dushaun’s worldcircle. They were both of Phanphihy more than anywhere else. The energies should be compatible.
They didn’t need much. The shaleiliu roar had already provided most of the Dissolution energy. But the dual-Oliat with meta-links attached required an enormous amount of energy. And all the links had to be saturated—all at the same time.
The meta-links had stretched to the breaking point before shimmering into the high-energy form but still held. Jindigar felt astonishment from Threntisn.
Threntisn stared transfixed as the open Gate he had been trying to direct the hivemaster through filled with the white glow of the worldcircle. A tendril of whiteness wisped through the Gate, threading through the longitudinal axis of the cornucopia representing the hive-memory, through Jindigar, and through Krinata. The shaft of worldcircle light shot along the meta-link right into the center of the Archive and the Eye.
An electrifying surge lanced through them all when that wispy tendril touched the Eye, for it completed a circuit between the core Infinity at the center of Phanphihy and the Eye of the Archive, which also opened into Completion, the Infinitude where all was One.
But instead of gushing entirely into the links that bound Krinata’s Oliat, the energy of the worldcircle shot through the structure of the Archive itself, as if the Archive hungrily drank in the Dushaun component of the new worldcircle. The superstructure of the Archive became a dazzling array of thin lines dotted with colored jewels glowing brighter and brighter, winking and flashing all around them in receding perspective– tesseract joined to tesseract, warping aside into the wildly unimaginable space that was bigger inside than outside.
The hivemind, unaware that such beauty might signal danger, gave itself wholly to the primitive, exquisite, uninhibited thrill of direct contact with the worldcircle—the illusory lure that had drawn them across the plain. //Chinchee didn’t lie!//
The hivemaster checked his thrashing effort to escape from the trap which was the Archive and turned end over end again to regard Jindigar and Threntisn with ever-increasing amazement.
Each hive species basked in the sensuous glory of the fountain they had regarded as a mirage when it disappeared as soon as they got to it, and reappeared when they retreated. The sensitive hivebinders flinched at full exposure to the Dushaun energy carried by the new circle, but then they succumbed to the lure of pure rapture as they basked in the intensified flow of Phanphihy’s energy. Jindigar recognized the mindvoice of Chinchee’s hivebinder, boldly leading the others to release their long pent-up fullsong.
I wonder what the Active Circle will be like for them?
Hut the hive knew nothing of that. Tasting the worldcircle energies through its hivebinders, the hive concluded in a joyous inductive leap, //It is through you, and only through you, that we may have this. We accept your peace gifts of health and life. We offer in return the peace-binding to One.//
Without pause the hivebinders unleashed the full power of their mindsong, reaching out to bind all—Native and stranger, Oliat and colonist—into one mind, throbbing with the seductive fullsong—an innocent offering of shared joy and final understanding.
Seeing the meta-links as just another form of bond, the hivebinders grabbed them up to weave them into the group mind. But the meta-links were at a much higher potential energy. The instant the contact was made, energy drained from the meta-links into the hivebinders’ newly forged network. The meta-links resolidified—only the hivebinders had created a new meta-link, joining four Centers—Jindigar, Krinata, the hivemaster, and Threntisn/Archive.
A new tonal wave, a shaleiliu hum octaves deeper than
anything Jindigar had ever imagined, shook them–more felt than heard invading Krinata’s unbalanced linkages and creating a painful subtone, as if one instrument in a huge orchestra was out of tune.
The Archive’s recording of the meta-Oliat had held only a pale shadow of this eruption from the roots of existence. Its sheer intensity was frightening. The Archive itself resonated to the unsound with a powerful kinship, just as the Oliat links resonated to the shaleiliu hum and Dissolve.
Something deep in Jindigar responded, aching and straining toward the raw energy, yet also shrinking from the searing, stretching, bright pain it ignited in his brain, blurring everything. Only a Complete Priest could tolerate much of this!
Simultaneously the hivebinders drew greedily on the unlimited worldcircle energy, channeling it into their song. As they did, more and more Dushaun-tinged energy spilled into the Archive and drained into the Archive’s structure, which began to shimmer as Dissolving Oliat linkages did.
//No!// came Threntisn’s roaring denial. //Not the Archive!//
Abruptly darkness enveloped them. Disoriented, Jindigar discovered that the worldcircle current was gone. Threntisn had slammed shut the gateway, cutting off the current. The hivebinders wailed in protest.
The hivemaster howled in shock at yet another betrayal.
The Natives’ reaction cut off as the Archive whirled and spun around them, images flashing by in a searing, dazzling blur. Then everything slammed to a stop, and Threntisn propelled them toward another gateway.
Krinata’s old freefall phobia lanced through her linkages, infecting them all and injecting a new panic into the hivemaster. Without warning the hivemaster twisted and dove at Threntisn.
The last Jindigar knew, the Historian disappeared into the shifting images of the hivemaster and down the shaft of the cornucopia of hive-memory, as Jindigar had once fallen with Krinata.
And he and Krinata were falling, too, the Oliat they shared clustered around them, enmeshed in Krinata’s unbalanced linkages. The meta-links joining the dual-Oliat to the Archive and hivemaster shimmered with energy that now drained back from the higher-potential of the Archive, dimming the Archive’s stru
cture. And that draining seemed to be under deliberate control. Threntisn is doing that–but how?
The meta-link stretched and stretched, soaking up more and more energy. Finally it gave—not with the expected lashing snap but gently—Dissolved away by the inrushing energy, taking the excruciating deep shaleiliu hum—and all the pain– with it.
Without transition Jindigar found himself aware of his body once more, chilled through, head aching as if his brain were too big for his skull. He was sprawled awkwardly on the dirt-smeared floor of the lab. Krinata’s aching limbs and painful returning circulation wrung groans from all the others of the Oliat. None of them were quite certain which Oliat they held Office in. But they all lived.
In the split instant Jindigar had to assess that and note that the hivebinders were now grouped in ranks five deep on the other side of the embers of the campfire, the fullsong hit them with redoubled intensity, a paean of rejoicing carried on a rising wave of worldcircle energies thrumming with the seductive overtones of Dushaun, home, and love.
In the fullsong Jindigar could hear the young voices of his children as they would sing to the accompaniment of his whule. He could feel the tender warmth flooding him as Darllanyu would gaze at their firstborn, as he had seen Storm tending his child. Jindigar yearned for the pride of sheltering his new family, so they could grow stronger and wiser than he. He felt Darllanyu’s response to his need echoing back at him through his own Oliat’s link to her. And then they shared the cold knowledge that they had taken pensone.
Sobered, Jindigar realized that the hivemaster had returned the worldcircle energies, the source of ecstasy, to the hivebinders, and now they were lost in the urges common to all life, determined to share their precious delight with everyone.
Fighting the lure of the fullsong, Jindigar pried his eyes’ open and blinked against oddly doubled vision as he searched for Threntisn. He remembered that moment of total astonishment as Threntisn had stared directly out of his Archive’s Gate and into the full, onrushing current of the worldcircle energies—just exactly as a Priest was exposed to it at induction.
//Jindigar, he’s not dead!// Krinata dragged herself toward Threntisn, who was still sprawled beside the Rustlemother.
She lay unmoving, but the Historian stirred slightly at Krinata’s approach.
Krinata knelt and put out one narrow five-fingered hand but didn’t dare try shaking him, not sure what the contact might do to the Oliat—or to the Historian.
“//Threntisn!//”
Through the thickening veil of the fullsong Jindigar heard Krinata’s voice harmonizing with his own as they both spoke– she as his Outreach, and he as hers. This can’t last. “//Threntisn!//” repeated Jindigar, getting his feet under him, trying to ignore the insistent warmth spreading from glands awakened by the fullsong. The pensone is gone. He stepped around the whule the hivebinders had abandoned and went toward Krinata, unsurprised at how weak he felt.
Threntisn moaned, feeling for his head as if not sure it was still there. He was covered with dozens of ugly clots of blood where the hivebinders had stung him. He sat up, squinting to focus his eyes. With difficulty he identified Krinata. “Jindigar’s?”
Jindigar wasn’t quite sure what to answer as he hunkered down next to Threntisn. He found himself replying as Krinata’s Outreach, “//We didn’t think you’d survive!//”
Threntisn looked from one to the other, comprehension dawning. Then his eyes traveled to the ranks of hivebinders undulating in unison behind them, and he rubbed his ears, closed his eyes, and said with suppressed panic, “Jindigar—I can hear them!”
Jindigar probed with Oliat perception. “//It’s a link—a bond, Threntisn. Not a meta-link but more like an Oliat duad subform bond.//” At least Threntisn wasn’t physically responsive to the fullsong. He was still much too far from Renewal to be troubled. “//But—how can a Historian… Threntisn, you’ve become an Aliom Priest!//”
Threntisn’s eyes flashed open but went unfocused in that typical Historian’s gaze as he checked the Archive. “I’ve got—the Whole Memory of the hive in the Archive! But, Jindigar—they’ve got the Archive too. That’s how—but this isn’t possible—it’s not…”
Suddenly the Historian’s gaze slid past Jindigar. Jindigar turned and found Cyrus swaying in the doorway of the treatment room, clutching the cowling of the airtight seal. Threntisn grinned human-fashion, with all the ease of an Emulator, and announced as if he’d just come from a high-level diplomatic conference with the hive, “The hive sees you have recovered. They’re going to let me cure the Rustlemother! Come, Cyrus, I’ll need your help.” Glancing down at the comatose form of the Rustlemother, he retrieved the blood sampler he had filled before the hivebinders stung him and added, “We must hurry.”
The Outrider flipped his hair back, fingered his stubbled chin, and gazed at the lab with dismay. Then, on rubbery legs, he padded across the floor to the campfire.
Jindigar wasn’t sure if he was responding to Threntisn’s plea for help, or if he was arrowing toward Krinata, influenced by the hivebinders’ inaudible but compelling song.
Absently helping Threntisn to his feet, Cyrus said over his shoulder toward Krinata, who was still kneeling between Threntisn and the Rustlemother, “Jindigar’s, should I go with Threntisn or am I on duty?” Then his eyes fixed on Krinata, and something different about her awakened a blaze of hope. Me bent as if to cup her shoulders in his hands, to finally take possession of his wife, but Outrider training held. He asked, “Arc you Dissolved? Is it over?” It didn’t take an Emulator to see that the human was affected by the hivebinders’ fullsong whether he could hear it or not.
Krinata could find no words, but Jindigar rose and answered through her, “//We are still bound.//” The two Oliats, like the hive and the Archive, were linked, interlinked, and crosslinked by such a tangled webbing that Jindigar could see no way out for them.
Krinata turned to look up at Jindigar, and all her longing for Cyrus sharpened by the fullsong poured through the link and out along the double pattern of linkages into all the officers. Darllanyu moaned.
Both sets of Oliat linkages thrummed deeply to the hive’s fullsong, blotting out Threntisn’s voice explaining to Cyrus what had happened as he dragged the human away toward the lab room.
On a surge of fullsong too powerful to resist Jindigar became lost in Krinata’s large black eyes, swimming in her pain, pierced to his core by her dashed hopes. Shame overwhelmed him. He, who had been regarded as prince of a whole species, had not fulfilled his promise to Cyrus, while Cyrus, lord of a minor Territory, and Krinata, Lady of Zavaronne, had lived up to their titles.
Her face, turned up to him, was white against the black of her gracefully swaying hair. Her face was a work of art, her body a statement carved from health and vigor strengthened by adversity. Her proportions bespoke subtle harmonies. Her movements flowed from some secret fastness beyond mortal knowledge.
From that fastness she had looked gently into his soul and granted him absolution for the worst of all crimes.
Shivering with awe before a greatness he could never attain, Jindigar sank to his knees before her, able only to efface himself and hope to be granted the touch that would be life itself.
It’s the fullsong. He had never felt this way except at the threshold of his wedding trial.
He swallowed, acutely aware of the sensitized tissues of his throat and neck, the glands throbbing mercilessly. Without volition his hand drifted toward Krinata’s cheek. //Takora—I wanted you—I always hoped one day—//
She shied from his touch, hardly letting his fingers brush her lips. //It can’t be, now—it can never be.// Her eyes shifted toward Darllanyu, bringing several ambiguous linkages into play. Under the stimulation of the fullsong each officer responded, setting both networks of linkages shimmering, blurring into one another. Jindigar was as aware of the delicious tremor pulling Darllanyu toward him, as he was of Llistyien and Venlagar reaching for one another, and Zannesu s
troking Trinarvil’s throat in plaintive question, and Trinarvil agreeing, //I will teach you, youngster, how this is done. And then– we will see.//
Jindigar curled his fingers into his palm, hoping the pain from the tender, developing nail roots would break him out of it, hut still he could not take his eyes off Krinata. He swallowed again, finding the unmistakable taste of arousal seeping from long-unused glands. The fascination of that ache echoed in five other Dushau throats grew to override all thought of the Oliat’s predicament. Jindigar reveled in the deft female touches easing two other throats over that first, delectably painful, stretching.
Darllanyu was ready. He had only to reach for her. Her lingers had nursed him through that very first Renewal onset when there had been real pain that had dashed arousal after arousal to nothing. He would not put her through that again. His fingers yearned to show her what they had learned since that first crude eagerness. But the very thought of Dar’s touch set the linkages to wobbling unpleasantly, driving his eyes back to Krinata; where they rested and feasted hungrily, the linkages singing a promise.
His breath came in short bursts, in sync with the human pattern. He felt her aching marvelously in a very different place. But it was very much the same sensation, a body’s way of demanding, Join with me.
All at once he needed her as he had never needed another in all his life. And it was mutual. The forces loose in the Oliat drove them together, urge upon urge, wave upon wave, insisting that the two Centers must become one.
Krinata’s human fingers floated to his fisted hand and hesitated. Jindigar’s diaphragm locked as he waited for the touch of human skin. With exceptional sensitivity she uncurled his lingers, her touch on his swollen nail beds unbelievably intimate. Then she cradled her cheek in the palm of his hand, positioning his longest finger at the point under her jaw where the most sensitive female gland should be, and a single tear leaked from her eye. Ill love you too. I always have.//
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