Outreach tdt-3

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  III know. You explained how we’re already deep into the safety margin. You must go to Renewal seclusion now. I want you to go. Ephemerals have done you enough harm. But that doesn’t make it any easier to say good-bye.//

  In the intimacy of the duo, Jindigar saw himself through her eyes and her emotions. His indigo-napped skin shone in the suddenly bright light, for human eyes were so much more sensitive in the yellow band. His white garments sparkled, making him seem huge and otherworldly. She hardly noted the lack of external ears on his skull but dwelled instead on his seven-fingered hands, seeing a sensualness in the musician’s strength.

  He drew back, suddenly realizing that she wanted to feel his napped skin stroking her face, and there was nothing” innocent in it. That strange attraction had always been there between them, but it was only lately, since Dar had stirred him so deeply, that he was physically aware of it—and vaguely repelled. But Krinata was the most beautiful* courageous, and compassionate person he had ever known. He could not hurt her, so he didn’t let her see that he’d noticed.

  //You have Cy. He’ll make a good life with you.// By the time he could once again tolerate ephemeral company without the danger of close emotional attachments, he would be dealing with their grandchildren—or perhaps another reincarnation of Krinata.

  Ill can’t imagine life without Cy. But he’s not you. You once told me Renewal can be a harsh judge of souls. I hope it will be kind to you….//

  In Renewal, the Dushau body was restored to youthful health while the soul assimilated recent lessons. //The emotional instability will subside in a few years. Raising children can be an immensely vitalizing experience. I recommend you try it. I know Cy wants to.//

  Ill expect we will try it.//

  //Ready?//

  //Yes—just—remember me, just as I am now.//

  //Count on it.// And he gentled her into the Office of Out

  reach for the entire Oliat, the only one of them who could

  speak aloud when they were convened. //Outreach,// he called

  her formally, then opened the full seven-way Oliat linkage,

  calling each of his officers to function.•’ —

  He braced himself, expecting the usual discord as the half-trained officers struggled to work with the larger group. In spite of the woefully inadequate performance of his Oliat, he was about to achieve the rank of Retired Center, to become an Observing Priest with Active status.

  And then he noticed that the linkages had settled into place with neat precision. Just when there’s no time left, they finally get it! His eyes met Dar’s, and on his signal, they fingered the subsuming chord, a musical analogue to the soundless vibration of the carrier wave of the universe, which should be a constant background to Oliat awareness. But he had always had to use the music to approximate a balance.

  Now he used the whule sound to adjust the tensions of the linkages, as if he were tuning whule strings. For the first time he felt each of his officers actively reaching out toward one another, hungrily seeking the full precision awareness. The harmonics grew stronger than they had ever experienced. Frustrated, he knew that if they had another year, they might make a real Oliat out of the half-trained pentad that had grudgingly accepted Krinata and himself to form this shaky heptad calling itself an Oliat.

  As the whule sound died off, the soundless subsuming chord remained and grew to permeate their awareness. It was the first time that had happened for his Oliat, and Jindigar marveled at the new sensations claiming him. His Oliat was in perfect harmony with the universal carrier wave, and in that first, very precious, moment he experienced the very definition of shaleiliu: not jut congruent or harmonious, but a precision attunement to life itself.

  His eyes met Krinata’s, and they shared a memory: the day he had struggled for hours to define shaleiliu for her and had finally reminded her of the time she had questioned him about the purpose of life, the nature of death, the spiritual and material structure of reality, the origin and end of existence, and his identity within that structure and process, and he had responded by showing her a hologram of a lightning flash accompanied by the whule chord. “That sound is the shaleiliu hum and expresses the relationship among all those concepts.

  It is the sound lightning makes when it propagates through air. It is the carrier wave that indicates that the universe is constantly being created and sustained.” He had told her, but she hadn’t grasped it.

  Now tears of joy stung her eyes as she discovered what he had meant. He had served in many Oliats, so the chord was familiar to him, but from Center it was far more intense, for only the Center was aware of all the forces they observed and how each was a perfect harmonic of the shaleiliu hum.

  Fully possessing his Oliat at last, feeling very much closer to Completion, he let his awareness spread. Outside the Aliom Temple, many Dushau waited for the signal for the weddings. They occupied a grassed area within a circle of saplings that separated the Historians’ Temple from their own. The crude log buildings had survived the winter admirably, but they planned to build more permanent stone structures as soon as possible.

  Beyond the temple square, spread the Dushau compound. Close by was housing for those not in Renewal and an embryonic business and manufacturing district. Off to one side an interior wall protected the Renewal compound where housing was already being built with children, schools, and attendant services in mind. The entire Dushau area was now enclosed by a palisade of logs overhung by tall shade trees.

  On the other side of the Aliom Temple, at the far north corner of the Dushau compound, was the inner gate, and beyond it, the enclosed area where they traded With ephemerals. From the outer gate of the trade area, .two graveled paths led to the houses where the other four species of the colony dwelled. Farther to the north were the fields, barns, and corrals. Today, smoke rose from the kiln as pottery was fired, and the moisture-laden air carried the scent of the tannery from across the river.

  The Oliat’s perspective showed them all this at once, while they were peripherally aware of the cliff rising over the colony’s west side and the river winding by at the eastern border. The river came so near the Dushau back gate that they could hear its rain-swollen current as well as the raging waterfall that cascaded over the cliff nearby, turning their one electrical generator, then feeding the river.

  Beyond the northwest edge of the colony, an area at the base of the cliff was packed with the skeletons of flying fortresses and spaceships, their only technological support.

  Nearer the colony, high up on the cliff face, a cave had been enlarged by the Holot, the heavily pelted, six-limbed species who seemed mammalian but didn’t suckle their young. They used the cave for making food for their infants.

  Far to the southwest, the Oliat awareness picked up a storm brewing. On the plain above the cliff, shrubs bloomed, filling the air with a sticky, irritating pollen that clogged everything, coating all exposed surfaces with gum.

  Jindigar drank in the experience of his Oliat’s full global awareness, something he had lived millennia only imagining. Now, at the very moment when he’d grasped the fringes of its possibilities, he must relinquish it. He could, for the first time, fully appreciate the reason a Center’s Oliat career ended with his Oliat. One could easily become addicted to this and become unable to survive as an individual.

  He felt the others savoring the beauty of this final union, comparing it to how they’d striven and suffered before to garner just a fraction of the information now flowing through their multiconsciousness. Now that they’d tasted it, they yearned to refine their focus, to know every microbe in the Cassrians’ hatching pond, every denizen of the river, every disease destroying the fish hatchery, every parasite attacking the sprouting fields—how all these fit into the single ecology they were building out of disparate imports and native life forms.

  But he had to curb their eagerness to explore this new awareness. He tuned the linkages closer to the shaleiliu chord, letting them vibrate, soaking u
p the energy of the unheard sound. The Dissolution that he had been so afraid of would not be at all difficult, now that he had them balanced. He worked those linkages, one at a time, and then in pairs, tediously tuning and retuning, until he felt the wavering, desolidifying shimmer that signified impending Dissolution of the linkages.

  A stray thought surfaced. Now Trinarvil would not serve in his Oliat—as she had predicted she would one day. This whole year, everyone had regarded Krinata as just holding Trinarvil’s place until she was well enough to work Oliat. Trinarvil’s prophetic gift had never failed before.

  And then it happened.

  A screeching, clattering wave of tiny bodies blackened the sky, coming into their sphere of awareness from the northeast. Swiftly, the animals poured info the side of the cliff north of the settlement, into the Holot’s cave. Two Holot females emerged from the cave mouth, clicking flyers diving at their eyes and throats. One of the women went down, sprawling at the edge of the cave mouth near the ladder. Instantly, she was covered with a black blanket of crawling animals yammering in sudden triumph.

  Jindigar abandoned the Dissolution and let the clarity of the linkages resume. //That’s a hiveswarm. We’ve got to stop them—or there won’t be a Holot infant left alive.// He tore out the door, Krinata just ahead of him, the others following, their personal concerns forgotten.

  The searing sunlight blinded them through Krinata’s human sensitivity, but they kept running, gradually forming around Jindigar in the Oliat pattern, Krinata as Outreach in the lead. Seeing this, the Dushau waiting outside for the weddings to begin parted to let them pass. Some Dushau qualified to act as Outriders fell in around them as they caught up to a crowd of Dushau heading for the north gate.

  The sky was aswarm with the flowing mosaic of tiny bodies moving as if commanded by one brain. Above the rush of wings and the clicking, twittering, and clattering sound of the animals, they heard screams of anguish, shouts of former military commanders rallying a defense, and finally, the searing crack of weapons fire.

  No! the Oliat protested as one mind, and Jindigar half heard

  Krinata’s echoing of that. The blinding pain of burned animals plummeting out of the sky was added to the panic of the colonists on the defensive. The Oliat shuddered.

  Jindigar held them firm, not daring to reduce their sensitivity. As one, they pounded around the curved ends of interlinked walls that formed the inner gate and emerged into the walled courtyard outside the gate. Their ephemeral Outriders, led by the Lehiroh, Storm, and the human Cyrus Benwilliam Lord Kulain, half dressed in his wedding finery, fell into step around the Oliat, replacing the Dushau guards. Jindigar didn’t even break stride but headed around the curved ends of the outer gate and onto the trail leading northwest, toward the cliff face.

  As they ran, the weapon fire increased. A section of the invading swarm peeled off and attacked their attackers. A few animals penetrated the shield of fire and flew, claws extended, beaks slashing, at the heads of the colonists behind the weapons.

  The colonists’ valiant effort did not distract the swarm from its main target, though. Above them, in the mouth of the cave, another Holot woman went down under a living blanket of the small beasts, her fur torn away, her eyes pecked out. Below, the Holot men raged, aiming futile barrages of fire into the swarm that stretched in an arched cone all the way to the eastern horizon.

  Jindigar detected an animal intelligence in that swarm– cohesive but not truly coherent—guiding this warrior vanguard to seize a haven for the new hive. All of this planet’s higher life forms were organized into hives, and spring was a time of swarming.

  He increased his pace, closing with Krinata and Cy. After a year of harsh pioneering life, they were all in good condition, but the humans were tiring fast. He chose a spot and left the path, forging out toward the cliff and the cave—trying to get some distance between them and the frantically firing defenders. Then he brought the Oliat up short. Without pausing to let them catch their breath, he set the linkages wide-open again– hoping their increased balance was still his to command.

  It was. The shaleiliu hum was still with them. Within two heartbeats, Venlagar, as Receptor for the Oliat, had steadied into a better focus than he had ever achieved before. The roiling ferment of life forces flowing around them resolved, and Jindigar breathed a sigh of praise to Venlagar—his strongest officer.

  Without reasoning it through, Jindigar simply Received that this swarm of clicking quasi-rodents was here because, months ago, the colony had—on the advice of a subform of the Oliat– discouraged several other hives from settling near the colony. They had accidentally created an ecological vacuum—and the Holot had topped it off by sending out an irresistible reek of food on the winds. Thus the hive entity perceived this as their rightful dwelling place.

  Krinata whimpered deep in her throat and sagged against Cyrus, who threw Jindigar a piercing look. Jindigar ignored both touch and glance, and reset the linkages, muting the information flow to Krinata. She could not modulate for herself. During her first encounter with full Oliat awareness, she had nearly lost her sanity. She was the Oliat’s weakest officer.

  “//Cy,//” said the Oliat through Krinata, “//the Guard Commander must order cease fire. They’re making it worse.//”

  Subliminally, Jindigar realized he’d chosen to send Cyrus as much to separate him from Krinata as to convey the message. But he concentrated the Oliat awareness now on the living black wave undulating above them in stunningly beautiful patterns.

  Jindigar turned the maintenance of the linkage level of the Oliat over to Zannesu, his Inreach, then pulled his Emulator forth. //Llistyien, we must become as the swarm above; full resonance.//

  Llistyien had let herself become part of that perceived beauty, one with the life-dancing surging rhythmically above them. She Emulated that rhythm for them, making it part of the Oliat self-perception, and the subtle magic of the Oliat took over. An Oliat was an observer—perceiving only, never acting on the environment.

  To the entire Oliat Jindigar announced, //Shoshunri’s Second Observation!// Everyone but Krinata knew he intended to use the Law of Nature, which decreed that no observer left the observed unaffected. He brought the Oliat’s attention onto the swarm and carefully noticed how out of place they were. The Holot cave would not yield food, the locals were hostile and would no doubt raid for eggs, and there just wasn’t enough room.

  Long, long beats of time passed as the defenders continued to fire. Part of the pattern the Oliat now observed was the argument between Cy and the Guard Commander, a Cassrian who didn’t believe in the Oliat’s powers and who had never trusted Jindigar. Finally, the Commander leveled his weapon at the unarmed Outrider and spat, “You’re interfering with our operations. I told you to move!”

  “Has the Oliat ever let you down?” Cy did not flinch but merely returned the Cassrian’s gaze levelly.

  “That’s not the point—those things are killing people!” whistled the Commander in a reedy but trained voice.

  “The point is to stop them. Firing at them is obviously not doing any good. May as well fire at a smoke cloud.”

  The Cassrian waved a claw-hand, then clicked it against his carapace in frustration. “What else is there to do?”

  Cy drew himself up to his considerable height, somehow looking authoritative despite his formally decorated shirt flapping over his work trousers. “If you can’t trust the Oliat, then trust me. I will take full responsibility, and if necessary, I will deal with Terab.”

  Cy had no true official standing in the elected hierarchy of the colony, but he had been head Outrider to the Oliat that had preceded Jindigar’s. He was known and respected among the earliest settlers, but this Cassrian was one of the later comers.

  Nevertheless, Cyrus Benwilliam Lord Kulain had been raised to both military and civilian command.

  The Cassrian was no stranger to dealing with humans. It took only moments for him to realize that he’d been outclassed. He raised hi
s weapon and signaled the cease fire.

  Jindigar and the Oliat felt Krinata’s glow of admiration, which quickly threatened to make Cyrus a hero. That sent a discomforting prickle through Jindigar, and he distracted them back to the job.

  Enraged by their dead dropping all around them, the flyers suddenly discovered that their opponents had become defenseless. As one, they bent to furious destruction.

  //How can we attract their attention?// Darllanyu, in the Office of Formulator, had the answer. He opened to her and let her create within their field of observation an image that was both there and not there. It was not illusion, for it had been there, and had been real, a year ago and was still part of the colony’s identity, an image lurking in the back of everyone’s mind.

  Over their perception of the colony, Darllanyu Formulated the dome of a giant hive, a dome of gray blocks, the dwelling of the dominant intelligence of this plane! they called Phanphihy. Eithlarin, Jindigar’s Protector, added her strength to that projection—for the hive’s dome was its means of protection, and this image had been a gift of the Natives to be the colony’s protection.

  Gradually, the fury of the swarm’s attack abated, and one section at a time, the flying wave broke off and swept around in a circle, their instincts confused. Their primitive vision showed nothing changed. Scent and sound showed nothing changed. Yet somehow the group mind controlling them finally sensed a wrongness. Their species did not coexist with the dominating intelligence.

  The formation swept around and around, clicking loudly, their wings slapping the wind. They formed a vertical cone with its point right over Jindigar’s head. He shifted now, to bring Venlagar’s Reception into play.

  Venlagar Received the bloodied corpses and the fierce rage of the offworlder warriors. A clickerhive did not belong here. Life here would mean destruction.

  Jindigar reflected that only on Phanphihy, a planet that was virtually an Oliat itself, could his amateurish Oliat close the circuit between observer and observed without Inverting the Oliat function. Here even the lowest of beasts could read other species’ perceptions.