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 find 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 a\l 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!
The soundless vibration turned his muscles to jelly, melted his bones, invaded his mind. He fought to remain with the scene, drinking in all the data recorded in the peripherals. But in the end, before he'd grasped much of the technical background, his will collapsed.
In that moment his bodyfield lost the key he'd used to access the Observer's level, and he found himself on the recliner once more, facing an ashen-gray display that pulsed sickly.
"He's not breathing!" exclaimed a technician.
"Neither is Threntisn!"
Teams converged on them, grabbing away the contacts, stretching them out, forcing air into them. Jindigar had no strength to resist. Everything went out of him with the knowledge that the only help for them was utterly beyond their reach. A four-way meta-Oliat could be formed only of the most experienced officers and had to be Constituted by a commission of Complete Priests who could manage to link the Centers. Serving in a meta-Oliat was a legendary privilege, for the range of perception was not just a planet or a Solar System but the entire cosmos. It was the shortest, but the most dangerous, path to Completion, for very little was known about the mechanism. Not many experiments had been done, for theorists were leery of the effects of the linkage between Observer and Observed.
One datum had stuck in his mind, though. Of the four times a meta-Oliat had been Constituted to Dissolve a dual-Centered Oliat, it had succeeded only once. And nobody knew why. At least, that was where the data in this Archive left off. There has to be something else. There has to be.
"There's something else," Jindigar was still insisting raggedly as Venlagar and Zannesu carried him back to their quarters. Jindigar, driven, had wanted to go on, but Threntisn's attendants had called a halt.
Slumped on his cot, Jindigar looked around at his officers. As bad as the last couple of days had been for him, they had been many times worse for his officers—waiting, feeling the creeping inner pressure that wouldn't slack off, and with nothing to do but depend on him to find the answer. He couldn't even tell them what he'd found. He wasn't authorized to know it himself. And it did none of them any good.
They had no choice but to try the Dissolution and let it go as it would. But he knew how it would go. The moment his links blurred, Krinata would take over. Krinata wasn't Takora–even if maybe she had been once. She couldn't do a Center's job. She had lost her grip on his Oliat because she couldn't cope with the ever-shifting energy patterns and information flow. Even if she knew how, her human body wasn't conditioned to it.
One more fumble and we're all dead. What am I going to do?
He stared at them. Zannesu was stirring something in a pot hung over the fire, Eithlarin writing in her diary, Venlagar napping—probably dreaming of his wedding day if the way his throat was working meant anything. The gathering Renewal tides were affecting even Venlagar, his steadiest officer.
When Jindigar had come in, Darllanyu and Llistyien had been teaching Krinata a tune on Jindigar's whule. They had stopped, but Krinata was still seated cross-legged on the table, the whule cradled in her lap, Llistyien seated in the chair before her. Watching Jindigar, Krinata passively let Llistyien try to wrap her four fingers and barely opposable thumb around the fretboard to cover a chord that would strain a Dushau's grip.
Jindigar was about to suggest that they transpose the key when voices erupted outside. One female Dushau voice rose above the others in clear Standard.
"You can't go in there'! That's a consecrated Temple, don't you understand! You shouldn't even be–"
Jindigar leapt to his feet, as everyone else started to move. He thought he heard the rumble of a human or Lehiroh man's voice, not a sound he'd ever heard inside the compound. Krinata was the only ephemeral allowed this far.
"I can't do that," answered the Dushau as Jindigar crossed the Temple floor and approached the front door, realizing it was Trinarvil defending them. "The Oliat must not be disturbed—"