It was like stepping into an anechoic chamber—the constant feedback of living was gone. Is there such a thing as a thought-echo?
But before it became a horrifying sensory deprivation, Jindigar was bending over her, the duad link blossoming to full so she was bending over herself, and she was in desperate need of assurance that she wasn't hurt too badly. "I'm sorry, Krinata. I didn't know that would happen—"
Sniffing and blinking, she tossed her head back and managed to mutter, "It was nothing. Forget it." She could feel the tremors shaking his body. She had only felt the edges of what he'd lived through—the ripping asunder of the bonds holding the Archive to his mind at those strategic points of high emotion—the "scars" that ruined him for the Historian's functions. "I'm fine," she insisted.
He fingered the half-eaten ration bar in her hand. "Brilliant idea. You did beautifully." He straightened and went to lower himself beside Chinchee, moving as if he were afraid of becoming dizzy, but smiling freely now. His teeth seemed dark in the red light. They must be bluer than they'd been since the hive. He really was regaining his health, and if all it cost her was a few tears—it was worth it.
As he reached for the shellperson he glanced back at
Krinata. "Ready?" And suddenly she felt a new sharpness to her awareness of his perceptions, quickly swamping out the absence of a thought-echo. The hold was red-lit, and it was totally dark. It was filled with flat, odorless air, and it reeked of human sweat, Holot breath, and Cassrian acridity. And she understood the chirrup of the hivebinder.
"If you're finally ready," it was saying, "we must hurry, for the big ones cannot stop or turn quickly."
"We may begin slowly, not to touch Threntisn until he's ready. He has the Big Memory now. Let me guide."
Threntisn? She gulped. If he couldn't master the Archive—/ convinced him to do it..'..
But there was no time to think. The hivebinder touched her through Jindigar, and a panorama of images returned. But this time it wasn't a wild, uncontrolled flicker-flash, nor the sickening whirl of the unSealed Archive. Stretching almost to the tearing point, her mind was able to interpret the pattern, perceived through vastly alien minds.
Below the cliff, the troopers held the settlement. The sun was setting. An Imperial banner made of photomultipliers was being raised on a pole in the middle of the settlement. It glowed the Imperial colors into the shadowed night, and every trooper turned to salute.
The settlers had been herded outdoors, under surveillance by the floating gun platforms and patrolling guards. Knowing nothing of the ground-blanketing swarm of insects coming toward them, they withstood defeat with pride.
She felt the first, tentative touch of the pentad—aching, hungering to complete itself again, but repelled by the taint of the Inverts. The hivebinder, relaxed and pleased, wound them all together, keeping the pentad a single entity—as if it were a hive all by itself, while she and Jindigar were a unit, with Jindigar holding the closest mental contact with the alien, Emulating the herald's role. He even walked with
Chinchee's gait as he rose to confront Terab, "Will you let the binder include you among us? It won't be like the last time, when the hive tried to swallow us. We're forming our own hive."
She recoiled, leery of anything so alien.
"It's not permanent," coaxed Jindigar.
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 hive-binder 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.