While word of the new crisis spread through the Dushau community and delegates went out to confer with ephemerals, Jindigar and Krinata spent the evening studying the lab work on the pond infestation and the fungus. Even without a Sentient computer the ephemerals had taken only a few hours after discovering the pond invaders to mutate and produce the fungus from a stock fungus used for pest control purposes on many Cassrian worlds. It should have been safe. But something had gone wrong.
Phanphihy just doesn't want us here?
When Jindigar found his thoughts drifting in such a perilous direction—as if the Phanphihy delusion were taking hold of him as it had the Imperial troopers—he laid the study aside and went to talk to Trinarvil. He found her in her office with Zannesu and Eithlarin, discussing the side effects of pensone.
As Jindigar entered, Trinarvil broke off and looked up. "You're determined to take them into the field again?"
Jindigar replied by reciting his findings. "We must consider our options very carefully," he said. He spoke directly to Zannesu, who had prudently taken a seat as far from Eithlarin as he could. Both of them now had inflamed fingertips, just as Jindigar did. He put his hands behind his back. "I won't demand this of anyone."
"One dissent and we don't go?" asked Zannesu.
"That's right," answered Jindigar.
Trinarvil closed the folders before her. "Blood chemistries show that pensone will increase Eithlarin's break-in phobia. She's unstable, Jindigar, and Zannesu is such a close shaleiliu with her that he resonates to it."
"But Zannesu also stabilizes her," Jindigar pointed out. "We must rest before deciding. Trinarvil, could you run blood chemistries on all of us tonight?"
She pushed to her feet and leaned over the desk. "Certainly, but I can tell you the results right now. Inconclusive."
He knew she was right but didn't know what else to do. The next morning, they discussed it all again and voted unanimously to work. Jindigar sent word to Threntisn that he wouldn't be searching the Archive and took his Oliat into the Temple where he presented them with Trinarvil's estimates of their individual need for pensone according to then– blood hormone levels—notoriously unreliable in early onset because the glands produced surges of hormone at irregular intervals. It was just such a surge that had conquered Darllanyu in the Holot cave.
Darllanyu looked at the slip with her results on it, then folded it. "I told you before. I won't go into the field without pensone. I almost killed us all last time."
Jindigar sagged. People who had used pensone usually gave up engendering their own children. And he'd so wanted Darllanyu's children. A barren first mating such as they had shared in their First Renewals often left that nagging, unfulfilled feeling they had both endured for more than five thousand years.
On the other hand, their lives depended on each others' stability. And they would have to deal with the Cassrian reproductive process this time.
The morning sun beaming through the skylight illuminated the far end of the Temple where the Hand of Fire stood—a carving made of Phanphihy wood. It was a Dushau hand, where each of the seven digits began as a bolt of lightning striking out of thin air, converging to form the palm of the hand in which nestled a bowl of water—with a live fish swimming in it. On the table beside it was a small plate of Phanphihy glass with the tiny pensone capsules arrayed on it. Next to that was a stack of empty glass plates, none any bigger than the palm of a hand.
"I think," said Jindigar, "that we should test ourselves for dosage. Anyone who merits a two-capsule dose both by kinesiology and blood test will take it. Reasonable?"
No one objected. Jindigar went first, taking an empty plate and putting one capsule on it. He took it to the worldcircle under the skylight.
The white gravel of the wedding circle had been cleared away, revealing the large wood carving of the Oliat symbol inlaid into the floor, an X balanced on the point of an arrow. When the officers took their places on the symbol, they stood within the worldcircle.
His Oliat's first official function had been the opening of the worldcircle, thus consecrating the Temple. Jindigar remembered how they had arranged themselves on the symbol that day. All Aliom practitioners qualified to help had surrounded the circle. Unsure how Krinata would affect the process, he had focused the Aliom community into one single mind-entity and sealed the world-energy leakage oozing up through the Temple floor in a foglike haze.
Then, with the Temple floor sealed away from the world, Jindigar had made himself a gateway for the world's energy, letting it erupt upward through him and sending it on up through the skylight and up into the life sphere of the planet. Much to his surprise, when they stepped out of the new worldcircle, it continued to spume energies skyward, and the rest of the floor remained clean of any static.
His gaze rested on Krinata now. Either Krinata is Takora, and Dushau do sometimes reincarnate, or a worldcircle does not always dissipate when stepped on by someone not trained in Aliom. He wasn't prepared to choose between these basic tenets right now. Perhaps he should ignite a testing circle to see if other humans could walk on it.
He stepped into his place on the center of the Aliom symbol, feeling the tingle all over his skin nap, like bathing in an electric field. Only it had a deeper, healing effect very disturbing on the threshold of Renewal.
Jindigar held the dish cupped in the palm of his hand, cradled against his waist, and held his other arm straight out in front of him, palm down. "Ready, Zannesu."
Zannesu touched Jindigar's outstretched hand and applied a measured force. Slowly Jindigar's arm sank toward the floor. By sheer willpower he was able to stop it at about a forty-five-degree angle. Adding a second capsule made Jindigar's arm collapse instantly. Two capsules would be a poisonous dose for him right now.
Jindigar tested Zannesu, then Zannesu and Llistyien tested everyone else—except Krinata. Darllanyu's arm was strengthened to rock steadiness by three capsules and collapsed by four—the only one of them to exceed Jindigar's standard.
"Before you take it," said Venlagar, "let's test the Oliat with it."
"But that puts Krinata in it," objected Zannesu. "Of course, it's poison to her. We'll have no strength."
"It'll test our collective balance," said Jindigar, though such principles didn't always transpose neatly to other species.
The Oliat joined in a line, arms circling one another's waists, Dar at one end and Krinata at the other, Jindigar in the middle. Dar put the pensone down while Jindigar coached Krinata to heft a fire shovel, holding it at arm's length.
The shovel barely cleared the floor. "I can't lift it!"
"Good," replied Jindigar, and let up on the adjournment seals as he suggested, "Now, see if you can lift it."
She strained, and the shovel wobbled up waist-high. They were not in good balance. //Dar? You can go ahead.//
She held the pensone to her, and Jindigar signaled Krinata, who raised the shovel again, exclaiming, //My God!// Her arm rose to shoulder height, supporting the shovel easily.;
Zannesu observed, //Maybe we can do this after all.// .;
As Darllanyu took the drug and waited for it to take effect, it Jindigar busied himself with Zannesu and Krinata, setting the foundation linkages. //Now, Krinata, I'm going to set the choke– link to you, so you won't have to carry the brunt of this. You'll be Outreach, completing the Oliat balance and allowing us to function, but you won't be able to speak for us, and you'll hardly feel what we're doing.// If we were a glorified heptad before, now we're a crippled one!'