The two piols scampered up the ship's ramp, threading between the feet of two warriors who followed Threntisn and Chinchee. One of the warriors tripped over the animals. Their squeals of surprise stopped everyone. Handing his throwing spear to his comrade, the warrior bent to capture the two animals, and Jindigar's breath caught in his throat. These piols had been all he had to cling to during some of the hardest times of his life.
But the warrior rose with one piol tucked gently under each arm, their claws neatly immobilized. He edged past the Oliat and deposited the animals on the muddy ground, giving each a firm, instructive pat on the rump that sent them off to dig happily in the mud. Jindigar didn't need Oliat awareness to see that the piols had already made themselves at home among the Natives.
They all resumed their climb toward the ship's lock. As they approached the opening a new mindsong intruded on the Oliat's awareness, different and deeply disturbing.
At the top of the ramp two warrior guards leveled then-spears, barring entry to the ship. Chinchee protested, and an animated discussion ensued, which was interrupted by a truly huge rustleman female, a Rustlemother, decked in harnesses and leathers covered with thousands of tiny polished jewels that rattled together musically with every movement she made. She came out of the interior of the ship, lit from behind by the ship's emergency lights. She moved jerkily and braced herself with one hand against the bulkhead when she reached the lock. It wasn't just her advanced age. She was not well.
Zannesu, as Receptor, wanted to search for her exact position in the hive's hierarchy, but Jindigar throttled that impulse and set the Oliat in ground-state awareness, pleased to feel the steady, sure beat of the shaleiliu hum confirming the balance of his Oliat. //We may have to respond to unpredictable events. Curiosity can be satisfied later.//
She parted the guards and admitted them, but then ordered the guards to follow. Apparently the hive had no idea of their goal or purpose but was simply standing aside to see what they'd do.
Threntisn led them through dirt-smudged corridors directly to the main lab where Jindigar had come to donate a blood specimen for Krinata. He stopped in the space between the door and the clerk's counter, fighting despair.
The place was a shambles. Clearly the technicians had defended themselves well. Movable lab equipment had been swept from the tops of fixed counters, and some portable tables had been overturned, chronometers smashed, but many of the drawers and bins had been locked, as had the doors to some of the side rooms. Dark stains that could only be blood were smeared on the sides of cabinets. The floor was strewn with fresh dirt ground in by many feet. A place had been cleared in the middle of the room and stones laid for a hearth fire, which now smoldered dully, coating everything with soot.
And the whole place stank—not the cozy hive redolence they'd encountered where they'd taken refuge on the plain, but burning synthetics, meat seared over open fire, suppurating wounds, illness, and the close pungency of unwashed bodies still reeking of terror, desperation, hope, grief, and something else that pierced through the rest insistently.
//This can never be replaced!// Trinarvil's despair nearly overwhelmed the Oliat.
Jindigar demanded more curtly than he intended, //Emulator, how does this look to the hive?//
The alien den had been made marginally livable, but there were few amenities. Yet it was the best shelter available for the hiveheart. The mind-gatherers in fullsong were desperately grateful for the shelter, even if they lacked food and water. In the other barely livable chambers of this deserted hive, the mind-singers were being tenderly cared for, though they called forlornly for the hivemothers, thwarted in their need to spur the hive's regeneration. Nothing could convince their bodies that the newhive had been displaced from the home they'd built, that it wasn't safe yet to make new life. And so the hive-mind allowed them a sparse few hivemothers to satisfy instinct, and curtailed their complaints with stern discipline.
//That explains the different mindsong we found here,// concluded Zannesu. //Jindigar, we don't belong in here.//
//Steady,// cautioned Jindigar. //We have to see this through. The pensone should hold for long enough.// He diverted their attention to evaluating the Rustlemother's status. She moved laboriously after Threntisn when he finally pushed through the gate in the counter and picked his way carefully over the slippery, dirt-covered floor. She was beyond the age where the fullsong could affect her, and so she exercised authority over the hiveheart. From the way her attendants fussed about her, they obviously knew she was deathly ill, and the hive could not afford to lose her.
Yet now a new hope glimmered in the depths of the hive-mind. This strange hive segment from their hostile neighbors seemed to be offering a truce of some sort.
Hoping to find a way to reinforce that impression, Jindigar focused on Threntisn. The Historian carried Cyrus straight across the lab to a small back room where he deposited the Outrider on a treatment table. Jindigar, ignoring the assortment of curious Natives gathering around them, assembled the Oliat around the doorway.
Checking the human's condition and securing the blanket lightly around him, Threntisn glanced toward Trinarvil as if hoping the medic would take charge. But, of course, Trinarvil could not function so in Oliat. He fixed on Krinata and asked, "Jindigar's, are they going to let me do it?"
"//They are waiting to see what you are going to do. Move slowly.//"
Threntisn edged out of the room and surveyed the useless mess in the main lab. His stance and expression showed that he was working an Archive access. He set off across the room, stepped around the fire, and punched a lock code to open another side-room door. On ship's emergency power, the door opened very slowly. It wouldn't be long before the power failed.
Threntisn glanced inside, then, satisfied that he had the right room, he turned and called to Chinchee in Cassrian, "Tell them to wait. I will show them something." Then, as Chinchee burst into twittering motion, he added, "Jindigar's, I think we can do it." And he disappeared inside, closing the door behind him.
Controlling evidence of her weakness, the Rustlemother settled next to the fire. Seven or eight of Chinchee's kind rushed to rekindle it for her comfort. The others burst into discussion both vocal and on some hive-mind level that leaked through to the Oliat along with the insistent call of the hivebinders in heat.
Jindigar's knew now what the hivebinders outside had lamented so. Their brothers were suffering, and because of their unfulfillment, the hive would die. But the hive was dying, anyway. They had no more strength to fight. They had admitted the strangers because they had nothing to lose and because the strangers' hive segment had seemed to understand what it was to lose all. Possibly Chinchee was right, and the strangers did wish to enter the hive to heal.
Threntisn took longer than the technician who had processed Jindigar's blood. Jindigar kept the Oliat standing around the door to Cyrus's room, concentrating on shutting out the ever more insistent hivebinders' fullsong, and consequently they lost track of the hive's reasoning.
Abruptly a mental silence descended, and a small group of htvebinders appeared in the hatchway, dragging Lelwatha's whule. They arrayed themselves before the Oliat, as if they intended to form a team to play the long, complex instrument laid before them.
Nut they didn't touch it. A whisper of another mindsong reached through the Oliat's defense. Jindigar asked Zannesu, //Can you filter that out of the fullsong background?//
It expanded to occupy their whole attention, and it was unmistakably Lelwatha's composition. Hesitantly, with many clumsy searchings for the right fingerings, the mind-gatherers arrayed before the whule plucked out a laborious, but accurate, rendition of the opening notes.
Clearly this was a bid for friendly dialogue. Jindigar itched to go to the whule and demonstrate the sounding of the piece. Instead he told his Emulator, //Llistyien, we must discover their motive for doing this.//
His Emulator brought the hivebinders' viewpoint up, washing them in the obscure symbology. Instantly Darllanyu Formulated an interpretation. The hive-mind figured that the strangers' hive-segment had come here to console the hivebinders in fullsong via their remarkable mindsong. When the strangers' segment had not resumed its mindsong inside the hiveheart, the hivebinders had brought the odd instrument, which had been captured by a valiant warrior, hoping it would stimulate the song.
The hivebinders faced the grotesque mind-singers now, puzzling over the continued silence, trying to reawaken that moment of mindsong they had shared while, in the background, the fullsong resumed, urgent, demanding.
//We can't do Lelwatha's Lament again,// warned Trinarvil. //I won't be able to Protect us with the fullsong in the background.// Renewal undermining her stability, she had reacted very strongly to Lelwatha's composition and expected to lose control this time. Especially, thought Jindigar, if I actually play it on his own whule.
He realized with sudden compassion that Trinarvil and Lelwatha must have known each other intimately, for the very thought of him aroused her further. None of my business. The links were leaking personal information again, despite the pensone, and Jindigar could not shut it off.
Zannesu's grieving for Eithlarin had begun to form a tough scar around the pain, but the wound where his mate had been amputated had not healed yet. However, there was still life in him, despite their suicide mission. Stirred by forces beyond his control, he eyed Trinarvil with speculation and hope. Who could fail to be attracted to her mature vibrancy?
Trinarvil's awareness of Zannesu's condition was sharp enough to pierce the veil of pensone. At the same time Jindigar could feel Darllanyu fighting to keep her eyes off his own neck. Venlagar buried his face in his hands and forced his itching fingers not to stray to his aching glands.
Krinata, embarrassed by inexplicable physical sensations, concentrated madly on how much her feet hurt in the higher gravity of Phanphihy. //Jindigar,// asked his Outreach, //what's going on? The pensone can't be even half worn off yet.//
Before Jindigar could answer, another awareness raked through the Oliat linkages—almost, but not quite, like being scanned by another Oliat.
Zannesu winced away from the crude intrusion. //The hive-mind! Venlagar, watch out!//
The hive-mind tugged at the linkages, plucking them loose from Venlagar's grip.
Stunned, Jindigar struggled to get a new grip on the linkages. But the hivebinders seemed to have combined to lift the linkages out of Jindigar's control.
It was not an attack. There was no malice in it, only innocent curiosity. The moment of nascent arousal had finally struck another familiar note for the hivebinders, who knew that the survival of their hive might well depend on figuring these strangers out. The rustlemen had to know what their motives were. The hivebinders had studied the linkages binding the strangers and now felt no compunction in candidly probing into them, as if there could be no such thing as a private or personal matter.
Jindigar had never felt anything like it. Nor had he ever dreamed he could react to such an intrusion with amused calm. Since I consider myself dead already, very little can threaten me. It was an odd sort of freedom. His Oliat had not completed its mission, and so he would not permit it to be stolen from him. But he did not resist with his ordinary stridency, telegraphing to his opponent that he was indeed seriously threatened and therefore half beaten already. / never knew how much I feared death.
It was another deep-Renewal insight and had no place in the affairs of a Center.
But something of it communicated to the hivebinders. Their probing went from demanding to respectful. Then they withdrew, leaving behind a poignant sorrow over the Oliat's dreadful affliction and a reverence for their nobility in the face of such a fate.
The hivebinders climbed onto the whule, sitting erect with their hand limbs clasped before them, here and there a leg draped over the side to keep the bowl-shaped sounding chamber from rocking. They buzzed with a mindtune offering sympathy and hope, apologizing for misunderstanding why they had come, and promising to help the strangers overcome their insensitivity to the vitalizing of the fullsong.
In response to the hive-mind's insight a new group of hive-binders appeared at the door. They had glints of bright red and orange in their carapaces. With scarcely a pause they rushed eagerly into the room, projecting their mindsong before them, targeting now on the Oliat, rather than on any of the members of their own hive. Their glee at the hive-mind's having finally lifted the harsh and unreasonable discipline restraining their fullsong infused it with a new vigor.
Jindigar seized the links to his Receptor and Protector and wove u tighter defense against the intrusive signal. But the proximity of the singers intensified the song. It beat through his filter.
//Brace yourselves!// warned Llistyien in tandem with Darllanyu.
Understanding didn't help. The alien rhythm beat through them in ever-increasing waves as the little beings poured all their frustration into it.
Jindigar frantically ran through a desensitizing procedure he'd never had a chance to teach his Oliat. He wrapped them in a cocoon spun of their own linkages, a tangle worse than he'd built to filter the hallucinations. As fast as he worked, the fullsong eroded his efforts, seeping into their nerves, hitting reflexes that triggered vital glands deadened by the drug.
The Dushau felt sick, but Krinata, unprotected by drugs and unable to benefit from Jindigar's complex cocoon of linkages because her brain couldn't handle the data flow, could not resist the song. She turned toward Cyrus.
Muttering deliriously, her mate fought free of the blanket he was wrapped in. Driven by her human response to the forces of Renewal, she drifted to her mate's side and bent to tuck the blanket around him. Before Jindigar knew what she intended, she blotted Cyrus's damp forehead with one corner, seeking with all her heart to ease his suffering and heal him.
//Jindigar—// warned Trinarvil, trembling with a sudden need to support Krinata's effort through Oliat function.
Krinata's intent in her action, to affect the outcome of an illness, was perilously close to a kind of symbolic Inversion of the Oliat. But, lost in the grip of the fullsong, she had all but forgotten that the Oliat was balanced and working and that she could draw the rest of them after her.
With a sudden, determined effort Jindigar snapped them all to attention. //Krinata, we must warn Threntisn of the hive-heart's function. Then we've got to get out of here.//
Krinata glanced at Trinarvil, then at the hivebinders, and the fog cleared from her eyes. Shuddering a little, she tore herself from Cyrus and with more than one backward glance went to the lab door. Just as she arrived the door opened, revealing Threntisn holding a loaded injector. "I've got it," he announced in Cassrian, then searched for Chinchee, puzzled when the Herald wasn't visible.
Al Threntisn’s first words the fullsong cut off on a note of bewilderment. All around the room, tangled piles of Natives, twined together in mutual enjoyment, ceased their activities, stunned b the sudden interruption. In one far corner Chinchee struggled up among u group of his own species, his harnesses and wishes of rank discarded, his white skin smudged with the dirt from the floor. Threntisn recognized him, anyway, and called out, "Tell them I am ready now to show them why they must leave this ship to us."
Jindigar could hardly believe that the Historian was oblivious to what had been going on in this room. But Threntisn wasn't in Renewal. And he was intent on the miracle he was about to demonstrate. He cut straight across to the treatment room and administered the dose to Cyrus while Chinchee self-consciously attempted to recoup his dignity.
Satisfied with Cyrus's condition, Threntisn turned, saying, us if expecting Chinchee to be standing right behind him, "Tell the Rustlemother here that it will take a while before she sees a change, but – " Surprised that neither Chinchee nor the Rustlemother was looking over his shoulder, the Historian cut off. Helooked down to find many hivebinders gathered in the doorway, observing his every move, reporting to the hivemind. His gaze lilted, searching for the Rustlemother, who was slumped by her fire, apparently asleep.
am he watched, the elderly female toppled to the floor, the platelets that made up her skin rustling audibly and the myriad accoutrements of her office clattering against the floor as she fell
Two warriors and several of the white-skinned craftsmen dashed to her side while Threntisn darted a look at Krinata. "Jindigar’s, you should have told me the leader was sick too! 'This could be our chance!" Looking neither left nor right, he went to a locked cabinet, found a blood specimen extractor, and strode directly to the Rustlemother's side, edging out some of her attendants as he called to Chinchee, "Tell them I am a friend. I will help her."
Jindigar had his Oliat nearly paralyzed in the net of their own linkages, and as swiftly as he worked, he could not disentangle them quickly enough to shout a warning.
The hivebinders could move as fast as a Cassrian when they chose. The entire complement of them in the room, seeing the giant alien using his sting on their Mothering-one, swarmed all over Threntisn and stung him first.
While the Dushau system could handle most toxins with dispatch, the sheer volume of poison brought Threntisn to his hands and knees. The hive-mind, seeing it as an attack by peace-heralds who came to get help—help that was freely given—recoiled in shock.
Chinchee let out an ululating wail of protest and dashed forward, throwing his body into the strenuous contortions of
Herald's speech, begging the hive to halt the attack on Threntisn. But it was too late. Threntisn slid down and lay prone, unmoving"
Jindigar finally unlocked the last crosslink and addressed his Receptor. //We need to monitor Threntisn's life functions– if he still lives.//
Zannesu, understandably off-stride, gave them too much amplitude. Threntisn's vital functions flashed through the Oliat, dominating their own united heart and respiration rhythm. As Llistyien was overwhelmed by the Reception, her Emulation of the effect of the toxin on the Historian's nervous system awakened similar responses in the Oliat.
Jindigar was as helpless in the grip of the toxin Emulation as if he'd been stung himself. Spontaneously the contact with Threntisn became a link. Aghast, Jindigar watched the link transform and deepen of its own accord into a meta-Oliat link, as if Threntisn were the Center of an allied Oliat.
It's the toxin, thought Jindigar, repelling panic. It's just an illusion. Threntisn would not touch Oliat functions for anything in all creation. Me was Historian, through and through, set on guarding and maintaining his Archive. Unless my meddling has damaged something! Jindigar recalled all the times he'd struggled to sift the data properly during the debriefing and how he'd gone too deep into territory he wasn't authorized to tap, when he'd searched the Aliom files for a way to Dissolve– and found a meta-Oliat function.
But there was no time to think. In a flash the new meta-link Fastened into Jindigar, as if attracted to him. The link opened into Threntisn and beyond Threntisn into the rest of the Archive, as if the Archive were Threntisn's Oliat.
A familiar terror gripped Jindigar as he thrashed against the forces that swept him up out of his body and into the intangible regions where Archives and Oliat linkages existed. The thick darkness flowed inexorably, carrying him and his Oliat toward a glowing aperture, an Archive Gate.
Breasting that current in an effort to belay their fall, Jindigar glimpsed the structure around the aperture, a glistening network of colored jewels defining a tesseract that warped away into unimaginable dimensions. Windows on its faceted sides showed scenes that enticed the unwary, for they were traps that protected the Archive from unauthorized entry. They had to stay away from those windows.
Not only had Jindigar once carried this very Archive, he also had worked with its reserved Aliom sections, and he'd debriefed to it in link with his Outreach, who had once been lost in it with him, and, who had, together with him, been rescued by Threntisn.
Now the new link that bound them to Threntisn quickened the Archive with welcome, as if it recognized them. / wouldn't put it past Grisnilter to have taught it to recognize me!
The Gate dilated, inviting Jindigar to enter, to travel the pathways and chambers to the core, to the Archive's Eye, the origin of the Archive, and the point at which all Archives joined, the point at Infinity where all existence touched non-existence, the Historians' fabled Gateway to Completion.
As dangerous as he knew it was, as forbidden as it was to an Aliom Priest, Jindigar was drawn forward by a gripping pang of nostalgia, a need he'd never known was in him. Concurrently he was aware of Krinata paralyzed in the grip of remembered terrors, wanting to break away from the Oliat and flee but refusing to yield to Dushau instinct, which would be human cowardice.
I am Center, he told himself, in Office and working to a purpose. He groped for that solid anchor, struggling to find reality again. And as he found it their headlong rush toward infinity slowed. 11 Must reset Receptor's focus.11
He lifted the Oliat linkages, but before he could reset them, a vaguely familiar disturbance loomed out of nowhere, permeating the linkages. //The hive-mind!// identified Trinarvil.
Simultaneously the hive-mind snatched the linkages out of
Jindigar's grasp, the sudden distortion cutting off the shaleiliu hum, leaving Jindigar stunned.,
The moment Jindigar's resistance slackened, the Archive pulled them in faster. Shocked by the loss of the linkages, Jindigar was unable to check their uncontrolled fall into the Archive Gate. He and his Oliat were swept into the voracious maw of the Archive as if they were just another datum to be recorded, classified, and stored. But, behind him, attached by the nebulous tissue of the Oliat linkages, came the hive-mind, as bewildered as it had been when its members had been electrocuted.
Reflexively Jindigar fought to regain his linkages, acutely aware of the alarming overload of data pouring into Krinata from the hive-mind and of the acute shock overcoming his officers at a strange touch on the links. But the hive-mind was bigger than the Oliat, stronger, older, and determined to survive.
Suddenly it all made sense. The Dushau had come here to protect the Natives, but this planet would tolerate no intruders, just as an Archive would not, just as an Oliat would not. They could not protect the Natives unless they became Natives. Then Jindigar saw the answer. The two Archives, hive and Dushau, must be joined.
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 hive-mind, 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 hive-mind—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 hive-mind, 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 hive-mind. 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 hive-mind'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 hive-mind 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 hive-mind. Jindigar sent Threntisn out with her, coaxing him into the meta-link with Krinata, urging him, //Now go ahead and explain to the hive-mind 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 Rustle-mother, 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 hive-mind?//
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 hive-master's rumble to the Oliat as a clear expression of bewilderment. As elementary 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 hive-mind.// 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 hive-minds. 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 hive-mind 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 hive-master 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.