Terab said, as if wondering if the Dushau had lost his grip on reality, “Jindigar, the herbivores are not intelligent—”
“No,” he agreed. “They’re not even self-aware as whole hives. So we must communicate on the lowest levels. Chinchee knows how. It’s his role—Herald. But we need someone from each species among us.” He turned to Irnils.
Terab reached toward the hivebinder tentatively. “Better me, then.”
Krinata felt a wash of truly alien perspectives reshape the gestalt, realigning her concept of reality. And then Jindigar was kneeling before Shorwh.
Shorwh reached to touch the hivebinder. Suddenly he was in the link, too—a child’s perspective, strange in its fragmented Cassrian view, yet vibrant with the essence of youth.
Jindigar turned to Storm. “You’ve been so close. Could a little closer hurt?”
The Lehiroh reached for the hivebinder with both shaking hands, and Krinata remembered her fascination for the Oliat linkages. What compelled a person to become an Outrider– always so close to the Oliat, yet never a part of it. Apparently Jindigar understood Storm’s feelings. He took Storm’s hand in his own and captured the Lehiroh’s eyes, and Krinata was seeing the Lehiroh—so very human, even to the round black pupils of the eyes—through Dushau perception, handicapped by the darkness, so she saw only blotches enhanced by imagination and memory, augmented by the peculiar duad perception. But it was the hivebinder holding them, not an Oliat subform.
She suddenly knew something about Jindigar that had escaped her notice even through all their adventures and intimacies of shared memory; for all the good reasons he’d delayed taking Center, the real reason was that he loved working Oliat and didn’t want it to end; he was too involved with experimenting. He wanted to offer others what Krinata had found. A peculiar stretching disturbed the duad, including Storm within its perceptions. But the harmony of triad couldn’t solidify. There was a moment of painful discord, then she was on her knees, head spinning as Storm collapsed screaming.
Jindigar knelt, capturing Storm’s hands, calming him. The hivebinder held the linkages out of sheer instinct. It was as shocked and bewildered as the rest of them. Jindigar finally got Storm’s attention. “I shouldn’t have allowed that.”
But Storm struggled to his feet again. “No—I’m glad you did. Now I know I could never be part of even a subform.” His eyes strayed to Krinata, but he said to Jindigar, “At least I can help with this.” He touched the hivebinder again, apologetically, and the hivebinder brought him back into the group rapport. Now there was the pentad, the duad, a Holot, a Cassrian, and a Lehiroh—each a distinct entity, yet part of a whole. Krinata saw how exotic this seemed to the binder, but it was starved for its own function and willing to work even thus, to create what it must have to live.
With this multispecies core the hivebinder touched the group mind of the troopers, already resonating with a common patriotism, and brought them into light contact.
The settlers also had a united mind, a group opinion of the Imperial colors—a lifelong conditioning to upwelling patriotism overlaid by recent bitter experience. That, too, was brought into the overall resonance, though only the ones who’d touched the hivebinder seemed real to Krinata. The settlers and the troopers all seemed to believe they were imagining the images and sensations that flowed through their minds.
Among the minds joining now were many Dushau, adding depths and overtones as they grasped what was happening. They, led by the Aliom trainees, didn’t reject what was happening but strove only to protect those who had no training with multiperception. Somehow, out of the swirling mists of Dushau memory, came the unmistakable trace of the Archive.
Oh, no!
But this time it was a multiplex stillness, warded round with a dynamic strength. Images flowed in connected sequences, with no compelling lure attached to them. Only one portal was open, and it was shrouded in a reflective grayness. Threntisn was in control—and recording.
Krinata’s personal relief sent cascades of joy through the entire mind, and Jindigar’s innocent wonder that she might have doubted cut off before it turned to confusion. //Look at what is truly threatening us,// he suggested.
The pentad, through the Outreach, brought a wide view into focus. Up on the plain, among the tall grass, huge mottled herbivores ran, half a dozen species, thousands of individuals. Heads down, hooves beating a hypnotic rhythm, they ran with their fellows, not the hive-bearers, nor the young, nor the providers—just the protectors, but from so many hives, so many species.
They ran. Under their pounding feet the ground turned to muck matted with pulverized straw. As far as anyone could see in any direction, humped backs pumped like waves of the sea, long necks poking up here and there, undulating in rhythm. Long, furred beasts beside scaled ones, curly pelted beside sleek, a solid mass of living flesh moved as one to their deaths. The hives would live. The hive was as immortal as the plain itself.
At the edges of the stampede swarms of smaller creatures, vermin and scavengers, hunters and hunted, ran together toward the intruder crouched on the lip of the precipice.
On the lower plain, dusk did not halt the advance of the swarm. Hundreds of varieties of insects, the warriors of thousands of hives, some as big as a human hand, others almost microscopic, flowed across the countryside, a living blanket of destruction. But where they passed, grass and leaves were uneaten, life undisturbed. This army was disciplined and dedicated to one target. The offworlders.
And then the beasts and insects of the plains saw a huge native hive covering the fortress and spreading over the settlement below—one such as the intruders destroyed so routinely, one such as Chinchee visited in his eternal rounds as Herald, binding the hives together, as this giant hive was bound to all others.
The vision-hive covered the intruders, controlled them, defined them, tamed them. Krinata was at once part of the gestalt of the new hivekind, and on the periphery of the lightly touching mass of plains hivekinds. The hives’ mass consciousness was infused with a red rage, energized by instinct, driven by primal urges to defend the hives.
Desperate with how close the stampede was, Krinata closed her eyes and summoned that natural ability Jindigar had called being a natural Conceptor—conceptualizing the dome of the hive over them.
The pentad flinched, almost shattering the multirapport, and Jindigar caught her back against him. “No, that’s Inverted. Come—be Receptor—like this…”
And they were suddenly cut off from the hivebound, and deep into Raichmat’s Oliat. Jindigar was Outreach, and she was Receptor—full, functioning Oliat. It was as if they were standing with one foot supported by Jindigar’s memory and another planted firmly on the deck of the fortress. She compared what she’d tried to do with how a Receptor functioned, seeing how to flip the function over with a topologist’s disregard for essential differences.
Suddenly they were back among the hivebound, and she was Receiving the image of the monstrous hive covering fortress and settlement. It wasn’t something she was doing, projecting outward. She simply looked and noticed the old moss on the mortar between building blocks, the weather curls in the plume of smoke rising from the chimneys, and the smells of cozy living. She didn’t have to imagine it because it was real in its own way. Her Receiving made that level of reality available to everyone.
She became enraptured by the work, reveling in the sensation of being—having been—Officer to Raichmat’s. She remembered how they’d discovered each of the species stampeding at them now and how they’d recognized the threat such a bound group would present to any settlement. They hadn’t discovered the heralds, hadn’t learned how to establish peace with the plain.
At some point the pentad rejoined them, giving them awareness of the movements on the plains, the mood of the stampede, of the pace slackening, the fury dissipating into confusion, the insectoidal programming disintegrating. The resulting chaos was perhaps more dangerous than true animosity. For as the pentad grudgingly bega
n to trust Jindigar and Krinata again, the herds arrived.
Already, though, they saw a hive where they had expected to see a fortress and armored troopers. The leaders of the stampede could not stop with all the tons of hurtling flesh behind them—but they turned away from the “hive” as a river current cuts around a solid boulder.
Jarred out of the rapport, Krinata heard the hatch clang open, troopers’ armor clattering into the echoing darkness. The Commander’s reedy Cassrian voice called, “You can’t stop them now! They’re going to—”
The deck shifted hard under them as something hit the fortress, and Krinata tumbled off-balance into Jindigar.
TWELVE
Ad Hoc Oliat
Krinata was on hands and knees when the next impact jarred the unprotected fortress. Then they came thick and fast, the vibration reaching deafening proportions. Around them bulkheads deformed, stretching joints designed to withstand energy-bolt fire in space, the stresses of takeoff and landing, or the recoil of firing weapons—but not without cushioning energy screens.
Soon cracks opened, connectors parted, and sparks showered. Momentarily Krinata was gripped by deja vu infused with a sense of horror. Dying in agony. Malevolent sand dunes. Cry of betrayal. “No!” she whispered, “it’s not the same now.” She crawled to a bulkhead where, using both hands, she made it to her feet.
Jindigar was sitting on the floor holding his head, the duad linkage bringing Krinata only a hint of his pain as the fragile boundmind gestalt shattered. The Cassrian Commander, even more dazed, stared at a cascade of sparks dousing a pile of his troopers.
“Commander,” called Jindigar over the roar from without and the growing babble of voices within. “Can you deploy your auxiliary ground anchors? The mains aren’t holding!”
Brought back to himself, the Commander made it to his feet in a virtuoso demonstration of suit armor handling. Swaying, he answered, “We lost them when the tornadoes demolished the other two fortresses.”
Jindigar wiped a smear of blood trickling from his nose and got to his feet, standing knees bent, arms flowing to keep his balance. “Then let’s get the rim attitude jets going to keep us away from the cliff.”
“Blew the circuits when we landed. My last technician is in sickbay, unconscious. Onboard Sentient has lost too much circuitry to help.”
Jindigar swore, then glanced at the pentad. They were climbing to their feet by using the wall and each other, while the Outriders consulted in loud bellows. Jindigar called to them, “I have the fortress blueprints. If the pentad can locate the problem, maybe I can fix it in time.”
The Commander began an objection while Darllanyu as Outreach consulted the others. Krinata grabbed at Jindigar’s elbow to maintain her balance and captured the Commander’s attention. “Jindigar can do it if you can find him the tools.”
The Commander hesitated only a moment, then spoke into his communicator. But Jindigar was having less luck. He moved to the pentad, arguing in Dushauni Oliat jargon that Krinata couldn’t follow. Then, in exasperation, he paced away from them, hissing something that sounded like, “Clumsy amateurs!” He turned to Krinata, summoning the duad. //Scan with me.//
It didn’t come as words but as an urge to seek the integrity of the fortress—to reach for the gestalt that included the inanimate thing. Tantalizing, the perception hovered at the edge of knowledge, giving them only a few cryptic details of close-by functions. Just for a flash she realized what Jindigar had had with Truth and Arlai when he hosted an exploring Oliat aboard.
Jindigar hissed, frustrated, “No good. If a pentad can’t make it, no duad could, either.”
Cy had now rigged some kind of a line over a track that ran the length of the cargo bay. He handed the end to Jin– digar, who absently accepted it. Keeping his balance by swinging from the line, Jindigar rounded on the pentad while the Outriders tore loose more cables and rigged more lines, the troopers picking up the idea and doing likewise.
“We’re going over that cliff,” said Jindigar grimly.
The Outreach replied dispassionately, “Animals have already plunged over. The people below are evacuating the area. There may be a pile of carcasses to cushion our fall.”
Jindigar spat, “The fall will split this fortress open.”
The swarm of insectoidals was not far beyond the river now, the lead flyers already flitting across the span of water in huge leaps, smaller mites carried on their backs. Krinata’s flesh puckered in revulsion—but she thought the mass of tiny bodies was beginning to deflect its course.
“What do you propose, Invert!” It wasn’t Darllanyu speaking—but the pentad, gripped by fear of what logic suggested.
Krinata staggered toward them and yelled to be heard, “Those poor beasts out there deserve to be saved as much as we do. If this is to be our world, we have to act like it. With just a small amount of power to the shields, maybe we could form a cushioning wall to keep them from going over the cliff!”
Jindigar looked from her to Threntisn, to Darllanyu, decision hardening his features. “Threntisn has earned his proof of the Archive’s condition. I’ll take your Center, with Krinata as my Outreach. I have the blueprints, you have the perceptions. Your hands can use my skills—we might be able to save a few hundred animals and ourselves—and this fortress for the community.”
Jindigar’s Oliat. Because he had a bare fifty years until Renewal, this would be one of the shortest-lived Oliats on record. She could be part of that—at least until a Dushau could take her place. Again he was asking her for a commitment without apprising her of the dangers. But this time she didn’t mind. It would be worth her life if they could pull it off. Their eyes met as he added, “I renounce Inversion while bound to this Oliat, and so will Krinata.”
Five pairs of dilated indigo eyes locked onto her. With the duad wide-open, she knew with Jindigar the factors they weighed with the swiftness only the Oliat linkages could achieve. They had grieved with her and survived it. But an Oliat link was closer. Would the tarnish on her soul rub off onto theirs? But she and Jindigar had turned away from Inverting when the hivebinder had constructed the vision of a hive over them.
She had things of her own to consider. While I’m in the
Oliat I can’t have children or a husband. If she fell in love, it might kill them all. She had to make up her mind to live celibate and helpless before the forces of this world. She’d never needed marriage, but celibacy wasn’t her way of life, either.
Opening her mouth to say, Surely you can find someone better than I, she saw herself forever locked out of the awareness that had come to mean so much to her. The sensory deprivation frightened her more than the risks. It won’t be for a whole fifty years.
Jindigar said, “We can’t do skills-suffusion with less man an Oliat. Without that there’s not enough time. We can’t even abandon the fortress now. We’re surrounded.”
Suddenly Krinata was shamed at wasting time pondering her personal feelings. “I don’t know what oath you’d accept from me—but—I renounce Inversion for as long as I’m part of Jindigar’s Oliat, and I’ll abide by the laws and customs of Aliom—even though I don’t know what they all are right now.”
After she’d said it Krinata waited, heart in her throat, hoping they’d accept her, and fearing it.
With the duad wide-open she felt the pentad examining their balance. In the back of her mind there grew a bizarre image of ten separate Dushau eyes winking in a rippling pattern in rhythm with her own heart. Wispy Dushau fingers combed through her emotions. Her throat constricted around a scream, but she let them inspect—sensing they sought to discern her place in the scheme of things, even though as a mere pentad they couldn’t be sure.
And then everything changed.
The world swam fluidly around Jindigar. Dimly she realized that the Officers were shifting function to accommodate a new distribution of talents and strengths, Jindigar’s grip molding them, seeking a balance. They shifted and shifted again, randomly at first, th
en, under Jindigar’s firming touch, purposively.
When she could see again, Zannesu stood between her and Jindigar—as Inreach—and Darllanyu, shaking with self-doubt, was at Krinata’s right, Jindigar’s Formulator. The others arranged themselves behind Jindigar, and she, herself, stood outside the organism that had assembled itself—Outreach. They were behind her, but she could see them clearly.
In front of her the Cassrian Commander was reaching to shake her shoulder, demanding attention, and Cy was forcing himself between them protectively while Storm bellowed orders to his co-husbands and the rest of Cy’s team, proclaiming a new full Oliat in function.
Something buried within the back of Krinata’s mind came to a solid equilibrium, the vision of the others faded, and she felt Jindigar, only slightly more intense than in duad. //Easy now, you can do it. Speak with us. Relax and let it happen—just as you learned to be duad-Receptor.//-
In sudden panic she tried to find the Takora memories within her, but they seemed shriveled and gone. Ill don’t know how!//
//She can’t do it!//
They’re as scared as I am. The united panic threatened to rip them apart before they’d truly balanced.
But Jindigar wouldn’t permit it. //She’s done harder things. Krinata, turn—look at us.//
Petrified, she forced herself to twist around and look behind her. The world spun as she moved, and she knew she was failing the Oliat. Zannesu stood behind her, between her and Jindigar—only in his eyes, she saw also Jindigar– and Darllanyu—I’m not crazy. I’m not.
Dizzy with the composite views as the Oliat zunre looked directly at each other, Krinata finally reached a point of tension beyond which she couldn’t go. As sudden relaxation struck her she thought she was fainting, too weak to live another moment.
But as her knees sagged another strength energized her body, and suddenly everything seemed normal. Her mouth opened, saying, “We know where the problems are.” And she began to reel off a list of locations, ordering the Commander, “Send tool scurries—” The words choked off as a panic grabbed her guts. Her mouth had moved of its own accord! Horror gripped her. She had paid dearly to rid herself of Desdinda’s compulsion. //No!//
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