Simultaneously the Oliat was aware of how the fungus-choked pond had lain dead and rotting in the sun with flying scavengers plucking the floating carcasses up and making off with them—landing in the cornfield to feast, leaving their fungus-loaded droppings behind at the end of the day. And in the moist, sun-warmed soil the unstable fungus had mutated, producing the variety that could—and did—live on corn.
Darllanyu Formulated an image shaleiliu to that. In one of the barns the Lehiroh had built a nut press to extract oil. They had found the pungent oil from a tree nut to be a spice that made native foods palatable to Lehiroh and enhanced their ability to absorb nutrients from Phanphihy's produce.
Darllanyu's forward-time image showed Cassrians and humans bent over the corn plants, dobbing that oil onto the leaves of the plants and soaking the ground around them with it. As if in time-lapse display, they saw the fungus dying, the corn growing strong and healthy and bearing huge ears of beadlike seeds the humans fed on gladly.
Jindigar took in the awarenesses of his Oliat, then cast their perceptions wide again—checking and double-checking as he had not been able to do in the Holot cave. He had to see what would happen if all three solutions were implemented at once.
Darllanyu Formulated the image of the Holot tending a Gifter hatching pond on the plain above, while below, the Cassrians covered their pond with the Lehiroh's spice oil to kill the fungus. Meanwhile the cornfield likewise was saturated in the oil.
The Oliat found instantly that the Lehiroh, lacking their supply of the oil, would suffer an increasing vitamin shortage until the next nut harvest. And with so many of the men lactating, they couldn't afford even temporary anemia.
Jindigar widened the time perspective to several months. Instantly it became clear that the ripening fruits of spring would solve the Lehiroh nutrition problem. It was not as good as the nut oil, but the Lehiroh infants were sturdy enough even at birth to survive well.
Still hesitant, thinking of the disasters his work had inflicted on the colony so far, Jindigar checked again, then verified it all one more time. At length Zannesu commented, //This is a beautiful world, Jindigar. But it seems it's the beauty of your Oliat's balance that fascinates you.//
Abashed, Jindigar noticed that Eithlarin and Zannesu were feeling the strain—for Jindigar, stabilized by Darllanyu's having taken the drug, had been able to ignore all the truly glorious springtide forces abroad in the world, while Eithlarin and Zannesu were all too aware of them.
Llistyien, likewise more interested in the renewing lifetides, was tiring under the strain of holding the hive-dome image she held with Eithlarin.
Jindigar admitted, //Our previous failures have shaken my confidence. But—//
Then it happened.
One moment, they were in perfect attunement, anchored in the now of the pond waters and the myriad events occurring there but aware of the past and the future all around the colony. The next moment, images flashed wildly through consciousness, shattering their clear pictorial impression of the world, one distorted image overlaying another forming menacing patterns that ripped at sanity. Jindigar caught one sharp view of a horridly distorted Holot face peering into his eyes—no– into Krinata's eyes—snarling.
Clutching at his link to his Outrider, Jindigar felt the Holot's upper hands crushing her shoulders as he shook her. Her head wobbled on her shoulders, her visual field pitching about insanely. The wildly distorted view out of human eyes fought with the Oliat awareness now fragmented, incoherent, invaded. Even through the choke-link Krinata's terror flooded the Oliat.
//It's a break-in!// Jindigar told them, wishing that were reassuring. With fourteen Outriders in the field how could anyone have been allowed to touch one of his officers?
He groped toward Zannesu's awareness, trying to regain command of the linkages and bring them back into now-sync.
Zannesu responded sluggishly. Jindigar barely had hold of the linkages when Eithlarin's Protector reflexes engaged.
She threw a picture of the Holot shaking Krinata onto the inside of the dome image above them. The rest of the Oliat saw the distorted horror of snarling, sharp-toothed, predatory Holot smeared across the gray dome. It was feral, raging at them. Its emotions-reverberated through the Oliat, intensified somehow by being squeezed through the narrow channel from the Outreach: distrust, fear, fury.
Eithlarin's awareness collapsed into a maelstrom of terror pressing in from outside the Oliat. Space and time distorted. Phanphihy turned into a seething pit eating away at the colony.
Eithlarin gave one convulsive shudder, trying to reject the invading malevolence, and then suddenly she pitched them all into nightmare. Above them the dome image split open like the tree log on Vistral, and a gray, hairy, clawed hand reached in to grab at them.
//She's episodic and hallucinating!// Jindigar told them, lighting to wrench free of her power.
But he could only gape helplessly as the hand closed around Eithlarin's neck.
Zannesu cried, //Jindigar! Help her!// just as Eithlarin screamed.
SEVEN
Gamble
Eithlarin clutched at her neck as if to wrench the ugly gray fingers away. Heedless of everything else, she twisted against the hold of her Dushau Outrider, who was the only barrier between her and the edge of the floating platform. Her screams tore through Oliat consciousness on every level, invading past time, echoing into the future.
The filthy gray fingers grated damply against Jindigar's neck, the coarse hair penetrating between his skin nap, torturing his sensitized nerves. Simultaneously he felt the same gigantic, clawed hand closing over the most precious area of Darllanyu's neck. Violated to his core, he roared in outrage. His Oliat joined him, disgust overwhelming their natural paralysis before a predator's attack.
Twisting against his own Outrider, Jindigar glimpsed Krinata. The insane Holot's upper hands clutched at her neck. She bent backward, clawing at his grip. Through her eyes he saw the Holot snarling into her face, revealing teeth like the Vistral predator's, his redolent breath as hot as the winds of Vistral. Must break the feedback!
//Eithlarin! It's only a Holot!// pled Jindigar, afraid of what he'd have to do if she didn't respond. He put everything he had down his link to her. //Eithlarin—we're on Phanphihy!// But which is worse? The Vistral menace was only a hungry animal, but the Holot had been driven insane by a planet that rejected intruders.
Eithlarin fought Jindigar's call as if it, too, were nightmare.
The more forceful his demand, the more wildly she strained against her Outrider until at last she broke loose and sprawled, skidding to the edge of the platform where fetid water sloshed over her face.
Zannesu struggled against his own Outrider, trying to reach his mate. The Outrider looked from Jindigar to Krinata and yelled, "Should I let him go?"
The platform lurched, sending Jindigar and his Outrider to their knees. Krinata went down under the Holot's assault, her strangled scream trailing off, for she had no more breath. She couldn't respond to Jindigar's need to tell the Outrider to hang onto Zannesu.
Jindigar groped for the linkages, amazed that the choke-link to Krinata still held, despite the images hammering through it from the Holot—the malevolent grin of Phanphihy's flowers, the constant rain of poisonous pollen, the conspiracy among dumb animals to destroy anything the offworlders built, and over all, the hives of the intelligent Natives creeping eerily through the night, pulsing with evil—evil that had taken over the Oliat.
The Oliat has to be destroyed–destroyed!
NO!
As Jindigar fought off the Holot's emanations Krinata's Dushau Outrider, helpless before the wrath of a predator, could only yell at the Holot to stop. This was why an Oliat never used Dushau Outriders when off Dushaun.