Outreach tdt-3

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  “No, Threntisn.” Is there any way to make him stop this? Jindigar had known and cherished too many ephemerals. His mind was riddled with grieving scars too painful to touch, and the loss of Krinata was going to be the worst. Lacking wholeness, he could never work the Historian’s path. With the muted dazzle of the Archive dancing so near him, Jindigar thought, for the first time in a long time, that maybe he had made a mistake, choosing Aliom. But it was a choice made and could not be rescinded. Threntisn knew that but apparently could understand it no more than Jindigar’s father did. “I have too many scars—too many memory blockages.”

  “You’re young yet. We could train you around them.”

  Threntisn only wanted to give him hope, something to live for so he’d fight harder to extricate himself from the trap that held his Oliat. The Historian didn’t understand the anxieties his offer raised, for a Priest gave his whole self to the Aliom, forsaking all other possibilities for Completion. Gently Jindigar replied, “Perhaps you could train me, but I told you once, I’ll enter the Historians’ Temple the day you become an Aliom Priest.”

  “And, as I said, perhaps that means we’ll go down to dissolution/death together.” He shook himself and turned away, saying, “I didn’t mean to be so gloomy. I’ll try to be more cheerful tomorrow.” He went toward his own Temple where he would no doubt spend the night preparing for the debriefing.

  Jindigar walked until nearly midnight, wanting to lose himself in simple physical activity. When he came into the Oliat “quarters, the room seemed hot and stuffy, but everyone else was asleep. He found a dinner plate left aside for him on the warmer hearth, a napkin made of the rough-woven native cloth folded into a tent over it—Krinata’s work. There was dried fruit; tea; hard, thin bread; nuts. Each of his officers had left him a portion of their favorite food.

  The next morning, they convened and went over to the Historians’ Temple. No Aliom practitioner would be allowed within the Historians’ sanctum, any more than a Historian could be admitted to the Aliom building now that the worldcircle had been ignited. But the debriefing apparatus had been set up in a fieldstone addition to the Historians’ Temple, a large room that had its own entry, so they need not pass through the sensitized space.

  They entered an alcove divided from the main room by a shimmering beaded curtain. Beyond that veil the debriefer was working, and Dushauni light filled the room beautifully. As Krinata paused to don dark glasses Jindigar examined the newly laid power lines, scavenged from some spaceship. They snaked across the floor and out a window, toward the power plant by the waterfall. Power regulators had been spliced in, for the waterfall’s jury-rigged system produced unsteady current.

  One of the Historians met them and, seeing Jindigar eyeing the heavy line, commented to Krinata, “It was difficult to get permission to black out the community this morning, but we’re drawing the entire power output.”

  “//Then let’s make it count, //” they replied through Krinata. From her voice Jindigar judged that the balance they had struck in the Aliom Temple ought to hold.

  They followed the Historian through the curtain. The fieldstone walls were undressed, the windows high and opaque, the floor of kiln-fired brick. The gleaming equipment brought from Dushaun seemed grafted onto the primitive setting. Control room couches had been brought in for the officers and set up in the configuration of the Oliat array.

  Threntisn was already in his place, on the opposite side of the debriefer’s large, circular optical membrane framed by a carefully tuned forcefield torus. Attendants were fussing over the connections to his bodyfield, and as they watched, the optical membrane cleared, then sparkled in readiness.

  Jindigar, even with full Oliat awareness, could barely sense the presence of the Archive now. In theory he knew what had been done. The Archive itself did not exist inside the Historian’s brain but was attached to Threntisn’s mind through the locus at its center called the Eye. The Eye of the Archive opened into an elsewhere where space and time were not defined—a place before birth and after death. Around the Eye a multidimensional quasi-spacial structure was erected by the Historian to organize data, but that structure, too, didn’t exist within the brain. It existed on the kind of nonmaterial mental plane where the Oliat linkages existed.

  In the right mental state it was possible to travel such planes and function there as if they were real. But that was a handy fiction created by the mind to rationalize a nonrational experience.

  Threntisn had placed himself in that mental state and had closed all the Archive’s portals, working now through only one, and that one was tightly focused on the optical membrane and the other sensory inputs feeding into his bodyfield from the pickups the Oliat would wear.

  Krinata took her place as any veteran Outreach might. Her outward poise never deserted her, but Jindigar could feel the flutter of tension within her. //Steady,// he urged as they settled into their couches and secured themselves with the spaceman’s restraints. //Threntisn has complete control of the Archive now. We won’t fall into it. Nothing like that can happen this time, Krinata.//

  The Dushauni lights were dimmed, so most of the illumination now came from the optical membrane. Historian technicians began their age-old tasks, and for Jindigar it became– despite the bizarre setting–a soothingly familiar rhythm. As each of them settled helmets, foot contacts, and hand grips, a technician balanced the input circuits to clear the membrane again, using that clarity to measure Threntisn’s readiness to tune another input channel. The Archive could take the Oliat’s full data throughput, but Threntisn couldn’t. Most of the data had to bypass his conscious mind.

  The debriefing chamber was like a spaceport traffic control room or a singing meditation, picking up the essential rhythm of body and world, ‘blending them to shaleiliu—to perfect harmony.

  As the last of the contact checks died away Jindigar told Krinata, //Now wait for Threntisn’s question—he’s doing the job you used to do when debriefing an Oliat to make a prospectus for a newly discovered world.//

  Ill know,// she replied impatiently. //We went all through that.//

  Krinata had been a master of the debriefer used by Survey to make living brochures of colonizable worlds. She’d confessed that it had never occurred to her that Dushau hadn’t created the debriefer merely to make Oliat memory visible to non-Dushau.

  Suddenly Jindigar remembered how she had evoked his reliving the tornado that had killed Kamminth’s Outreach, Taaryesh. He had been Kamminth’s Receptor at that time, but by the time Krinata had debriefed Kamminth’s, only three officers had been left alive, and Jindigar had taken Outreach. The reliving of Taaryesh’s ungrieved death had nearly destroyed Jindigar. He hadn’t thought until this moment how hard it must have been on Krinata—for at that time she had already begun to exhibit Oliat function sensitivity. Only, he hadn’t known it until months later.

  Spontaneous awakening of ability from contact with the debriefer would make sense if she was, indeed, Takora rein carnated. And that illfated debriefing had been her very last use of the equipment until now. She’d never mentioned it, but it must be on her mind. //Krinata, it won’t be like Taaryesh. It will be vivid for us, yes—but real, not nightmarish. Relax and let Threntisn frame it for us. Just hold the linkages and let the data flow.//

  Darllanyu felt his concern for Krinata. She shifted uncomfortably. //What’s taking that Historian so long?//

  Absently Jindigar kneaded his chair arm to relieve the nag– ging itch of his nail beds. He stared at his inflamed fingertips and refused to check Darllanyu’s restless hands as he answered, //Threntisn is being cautious—wisely so, considering what happens when I tangle with that Archive.//

  //Let’s not dwell on that,// suggested Venlagar.

  Then Threntisn’s question came directly through their Outreach: How did you know the clickerbeasts were attacking the Holot?

  The whole-Oliat response was engaged. With the Inreach focused on past experience, and the Outreach holding the c
urrent links, data flooded up out of their global memory into the current links, then flowed out through Krinata and onto Threntisn’s screen as visual patterns while his Archive assimilated the Oliat’s subtextual data.

  To the Oliat it was real again: their first experience of the shaleiliu hum, their bright anticipation of Dissolution shattered, and the sky blackened with screeching, yammering, clicking bodies swarming toward the cliff face and the lip of the cave where the Holot fought them and lost.

  The entire scene unreeled, skillfully directed by Threntisn’s prompts. Why did you respond? And when they had controlled -the swarm, How did you induce them to leave?

  Jindigar, at Center, separated the remembered data into levels, allowing facts to go into open file for any Historian to access, and then grading the Oliat’s experiences so Aliom trained researchers could retrieve it.

  He had never done this before, and in his concern for his officers, he had forgotten that he, himself, was entering new depths. One mistake and someone using the Archive might have data dumped into his nervous system with such speed that it would destroy his mind. It suddenly occurred to him that generations of Aliom Priests had debriefed to this Archive. It probably contained everything he’d need to train himself to his next level and lead this community properly.

  Deeply relieved, Jindigar marshaled his full concentration, mastering another Center function. He hardly noticed when Threntisn segued into questions about the search for a new food source, and Krinata and Venlagar once more held the Holot infant in their arms.

  The Historian led them through the search. Jindigar carefully separated the knowledge they had gained of the Holot and the Gifters from the Oliat’s inner experience. He noted the point where he and Zannesu had shifted the linkage patterns to Llistyien, insulating Krinata from the data flow.

  Only this time, of course, she wasn’t insulated. She had to handle the outflow to the debriefer, grip the linkage balances, and relive it all with them—discovering now what had been going on outside her awareness. Jindigar could not spare her a moment’s thought, though, as he sifted and sorted, assigning levels.

  //Not long now. Brace yourselves, here it comes, Dar,// he managed as Threntisn’s final question echoed through them.

  And why did you collapse?

  Jindigar had told him to finish with that one, but now he regretted it. They were all exhausted, and he heard Darllanyu whimper softly as the memory of her loss of attunement swept through the Oliat, their current reactions worsened by three more days of increasing sensitivity.

  The optical membrane showed the cave seen through human eyes as Jindigar had sought orientation in his Outreach. The inner level recorded the feel of her body against him as they fell, Krinata holding the squirming Holot baby as they and Storm toppled together to the hard floor of the cave.

  Then the membrane went black—optical membranes in service never did that. Jindigar thought the instruments had jammed at the shock of a Center being displaced, but then, with the memory of Krinata’s takeover, Jindigar floating above them, came a twisted, distorted image lit in dull shades—Krinata’s visualization of the Gifters’ hive on the plain above the cliff. . Jindigar didn’t know if Threntisn had ever dealt with human I vision, and he was sure it would give the Historian a headache, l| but there was nothing he could do. That had been the Oliat’s perception.

  Her vision took over the data flows, as if she again usurped his position. The Oliat relived that moment of stark panic when Krinata took Center. Jindigar’s touch on the data flow into the Archive froze, tangling the data feeds, but he lived the confrontation with the Takora-image. Held fast by linkages, by duty, by nameless terror, Jindigar stared into human eyes that held Dushau vistas.

  For a moment it seemed that he could recarve history and reach out to accept her as Takora, his Center, a profoundly attractive woman. He could fall into her Office of Outreach, and they could pick up where her death had left them. She could Dissolve, and then they could discuss mating according to the proverb, How good it is for zunre to mate together!

  With a frightful shock memory resumed, and Jindigar snapped into the Office of Outreach. The membrane image shimmered and became Jindigar’s remembered glimpse of the committee onlookers clustered near the mouth of the cave. Then the Oliat linkages disintegrated in Krinata’s grip and the membrane went black again.

  They relived Jindigar’s struggle to re-form the Oliat linkages around himself. Eithlarin, fatigued, tried to thrust aside those memories and live secure in the now of Jindigar’s full control. Zannesu and Darllanyu also fought off the memories, but Jindigar summoned his last strength and held them to it a moment longer, hoping to record Krinata’s inner processes as she realized what she had done—and perhaps how and why she’d done it. He prompted her by sending—as he had warned her he would—his impossibly cruel words that had triggered her breakdown. //Krinata! Listen! You didn’t do that. Takora did.//

  Krinata twisted on her couch to look back at him—and he saw himself through her eyes, a dark indigo form, earless head, a wide grimace showing pale blue teeth—too pale—large, wide-set eyes marbled and unreadable. She saw the seven long fingers of each of his hands, fingertips swollen provocatively with the developing nails. Overlaid was the image of himself in the cave, pulling her attention back to him, his lips parted to show the pale white teeth of a corpse.

  Abruptly Krinata thrust aside her hand grips and flung herself sideways out of the headset’s field, sprawling half off the couch and onto the rough brick floor.

  But Jindigar was ready. He had prepared them all, and now he moved with a swiftness that taxed his inexperienced officers. Before Krinata’s shoulders had struck the floor, he slammed the seals shut, forcing them into adjournment.

  Darllanyu and Zannesu stiffened but did not cry out. Venlagar and Eithlarin struggled loose to tend the others as Jindigar scrambled to Krinata’s side. He arrived just as one of the Historians admitted Trinarvil through the bead curtain, and another pushed her equipment—already set up and humming—from behind a screen.

  Threntisn, couch and all, was whisked away through an inner door, contact lines clattering to the floor after him. Jindigar extricated Krinata from the contacts. He gathered her to him, saying aloud, “Come on now, you can do it. It’s not the same as the first time. You didn’t actually take Center. It was only a memory—like having an episode. Krinata? Come on.”

  Her eyes opened, and she gazed up at him. He had to remind himself sternly that the whiteness of her teeth was permanent, and natural, even in health. Her circular pupils were wide-open, but there was intelligence in her expression. The pulse at the base of her jaw was strong, her breathing deep. “Krinata, it was an Oliat debriefing.”

  She nodded, but on the next breath, as Jindigar signaled Trinarvil to cut the lights, Krinata began to sob. The convulsive breathing and copious flow of lubricating fluids was, in humans, tied to the production of pain dampers in the central nervous system. As alarming as the process was, it was hardly ever fatal. He found himself emitting the sound that would begin the analogous process for him, and it wasn’t long before they all followed suit. They had survived one last supreme test.

  An hour later, not even having taken time for a meal, Jindigar had Threntisn begin the replay work. The Historian had come without hesitation when Jindigar sent for him, knowing that the Oliat was desperate. But his teeth were not a healthy blue, and even adjourned, Jindigar could sense the headache pounding through his nervous system. Exposure to the human senses was hard enough on the Oliat-trained. A Historian had no experience of aliens.

  Jindigar worked at the optical membrane nonstop for hours, cuing up ever more narrow time segments of that crisis point, asking for any and all cross-references from the Archive– sifting every obtuse theory ever proposed to explain Oliat functions. He used skills he hadn’t touched in three Renewals and wished for his Sentient computer, Arlai.

  He went over and over the ground, then covered it again, but could fin
d no way at all for an Oliat with two Centers to survive Dissolution.

  They gave up at midnight, met again at dawn, and drove themselves all the next day. Never had two minutes of history been analyzed with more care. Yet there was no answer. Jindigar, desperate now, thought hard about the Aliom-keyed areas of the Archive. If the answer wasn’t in the two minutes they’d recorded, then it had to be in the reserved area. This was perhaps the oldest and, largest Archive still active. If anyone had ever stumbled on a way, it had to be here.

  He told Threntisn’s apprentice, “I’m going to evoke some of the deeper keyed areas and search by association to our primary recording.” He pointed to the optical display before him. “According to this, there’s a lot of material there. Tell Threntisn this may take awhile.”

  Jindigar arranged himself in the recliner and took the hand contacts again. Relaxing, he ran through the drills to summon within his bodyfield the keys he had been given. Simultaneously he reran the two-minute recording planting associative search markers al through it. The Archivist had to do the rest.

  He waited as images overlaid each other on the optical display, and emotional contexts played through him at random. Presently sequences began to surface that made sense. Jindigar drank most of it into his memory for later use but sifted topic after topic for anything relevant to Dissolving. But there was nothing on the dual-Centered Oliat.

  There has to be something! He had one more key he knew but had never been authorized to use because he had not yet Centered and Dissolved. It would be dangerous for him, but … resolutely he invoked the Observer’s key.

  With the suddenness of a flash flood data poured into his consciousness, scorching nerves, streaking dizzily by. It felt like driving into an obstruction at full speed and being catapulted through the air spinning end for end.

  He grabbed at an image of a convocation of Oliats, and suddenly he was in an Active Temple on Dushaun. The rosy glow of the worldcircle turned the white garments of the five Oliats assembled there to light pink and somehow made visible the linkages that bound four of the Oliats into a single unit, a meta-Oliat. The fifth Oliat had two Centers, two whole sets of linkages lacing them together. the shaleiliu hum was so intense, it made Jindigar curl in on himself, tensing against it as if it threatened to dissolve him. It was coming from the four-fold Oliat and was focused on the fifth Oliat assembled on the worldcircle itself. I’ve found it!