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.