His own linkages settled back around him again, and he tuned for the shaleiliu hum he'd come to rely on. He wasn't prepared for the roar that blasted into their consciousnesses, * shaleiliu hum as loud as if they were inside the sounding box of a whule.
He tuned it down as best he could, but still it was like working inside a robofactory where noise was not controlled. To gain control he had to balance the trinary Oliat. //Archive Master! Hivemaster!// He called the co-Centers.
Threntisn's response was sluggish, bemused by the toxin that warped his sense of reality. //What a strange place... the walls speak... but with respect. Come then, Walls, I will be your Archive Master. Come, we will record you for all time to read.//,
The hive-mind, bewildered by this turn of events, responded, //.We Record!//
But the responses alone were enough. Jindigar solidified the hive, the Archive, and his Oliat into a trinary meta-Oliat, announcing, III am meta-Center.//
His own officers scarcely knew what was happening. Oddly enough it was Krinata who first understood and found her place as meta-Outreach.
The data flow waxed to a stupendous volume, long since overloading her human brain. She had given up trying to apprehend it all. By some obscure mechanism of the human mind she was able to ignore the incomprehensible and organize the rest of the incoming data into familiar patterns. Jindigar, afraid that her endurance was limited, yielded to her metaphors, letting this un-space take on the forms she imposed on it.
He turned to the hive-mind. Its Whole Memory stretched off to one side, a snaking tunnel like a telescoping tube with events depicted on its walls as living plays of the great historical events of the hive. Newhiveswarm brought with it the Whole Memory of its parent hive, a memory that stretched back eons into the dim reaches of pre-intelligence. The Rustlemother who held the Whole Memory could transmit it and add to it just as an Archivist could, but she was ill and dying, making the scenes dim and listless.
The Archive surrounded the Oliat and the hivemaster, plucking insistently at the hints of data coming from the hive-mind's vast memory. Left alone, the Archive would devour the less sophisticated hive-memory. Jindigar forestalled this by invoking the Oliat's global awareness and baiting the Archive with a flood of data.
The lab was filling with awestruck Natives, too aware of the burgeoning Archive swallowing their Mind to attend to the fallen Rustlemother, nearly crushed under the weight of the stranger. Even the hivebinders in fullsong had suspended their compulsive call.
Jindigar opened out to include the settlement and the plain above. He fed all the data to the voracious Archive while he tried to shake Threntisn out of his stupor. //Threntisn! You've got to help! Archivist! I can't do this alone!//
Just when despair overtook him, Jindigar heard a familiar hail echoing down the chambers of the Archive, //Jindigar!// He whirled around within the Archive space to find Threntisn arrowing toward him, propelling himself through the kaleidoscopic shapes of the Archive's chambers by the power of his own will, not riding helplessly on the voracious currents of the Archive. His progress seemed erratic but nevertheless purposive. Perhaps the hivebinders' toxin is wearing off at last!
Through the meta-link he told the Archivist, //We must form a single unit of Archive and hive-memory—then we must open a channel between them so the hive-mind can understand that we can cure the disease that's killing Rustlemother– who is like an Archivist. She carries the Whole Memory of the hive!//
Puzzled, the Historian hesitated. //You can't talk to me. You're balanced.//
//Never mind that now,// pled Jindigar. //The Rustlemother's your colleague, Threntisn. Your instinct was right. We must save her or the hive will become a mere collection of individuals—all that data lost!//
The Historian's image blinked slowly. Still fighting the toxin, he wasn't quite able to grasp it all. But his eyes went to the long tube that represented the hive-memory. A Historian's cornucopia, its tail snaked off toward the Gateway into the Archive while the wide-open end faced them. The open end was screened by a blurred area that sometimes seemed to be one Native species and sometimes another; occasionally an amalgam of them all. But in Krinata's metaphor the shifting image represented a composite being, the Hivemaster.
Jindigar opened a data flow to the Historian along the meta-link that bound the ternary Oliat. Gradually Threntisn comprehended. //A channel to the hive—of course. But I wouldn't know how, Jindigar.//
//Let's do it this way,// suggested Jindigar, and directed Krinata, as meta-Outreach, to approach the hivemaster.
She eyed the zone of mixed images, then returned, //That's a hole into the hive-memory. It’s an infinite tunnel. I could fall down it forever!//
She had fallen through such a hive-memory with him once, while trying to save his life. It had been one of the most terrifying experiences she'd ever endured. Jindigar knew, through the long intimacy of their linkages, how she had overcome the terror by simply putting it behind her, saying, /'// never do that again. And he was sending her into it again.
//You can't fall in while we're meta-linked,// he assured her, knowing that logic had nothing to do with phobia. But he carefully explained his plan.
Krinata glowed with skepticism, but she moved out into the vaguely defined space between Oliat and hive-mind. Jindigar sent Threntisn out with her, coaxing him into the meta-link with Krinata, urging him, //Now go ahead and explain to the hive-mind what you were trying to get Chinchee to tell them when you were taking the Rustlemother's blood specimen.//
Krinata approached barely close enough for her projection to reach the hivemaster, then, glancing nervously at Threntisn, she squirmed as the other meta-Center spoke through her, "// I —we—want to be your friend, Hivemaster. As I have healed one of our sick, I—we—can heal your Rustlemother and save your Whole Memory.//"
Threntisn twisted to gape at Jindigar. //Save the Whole Memory? Jindigar—how could I follow—be understanding—//
//You're reading Oliat data,// explained Jindigar confidently while he quailed inwardly. He's a Historian! Bemusedly Threntisn accepted that, perhaps still affected by the toxin or maybe absorbing Krinata's unquestioning attitude. As if it were all routine, the Historian formulated a method Jindigar could never have imagined. //Let us show you what is wrong with Rustle-mother, how it was our doing, and how we can cure her.//
With a dramatic gesture Threntisn reshaped the Archive chambers about them, confronting the hivemaster with a panorama of scenes recorded in the Archive, scenes explaining the concepts of communicable diseases, scenes of the development of immunology, scenes explaining the rapid mutation of certain microorganisms so they could cross species lines, and the rapid and efficient control methods available in the ship's lab.
It was a virtuoso performance by a true Archive Master, and Jindigar was about to heave a sigh of relief and turn his attention to how to get them all out of this when the hivemaster rumbled ominously, sending only confusion down the meta-link.
//Llistyien, can you Emulate the hive-mind?//
Jindigar felt her trembling at the very idea, still clenched up tight around herself, expecting annihilation momentarily. But, with Krinata performing her Office as if nothing unusual had happened, Llistyien straightened and brought the hive-master's rumble to the Oliat as a clear expression of bewilderment. As elementary as Threntisn's presentation had been, the hive simply didn't comprehend.