//Dai, are you with us?// asked Jindigar tentatively.
//I'm trying,// she answered, and Jindigar felt the linkage waken. He suppressed a surge of alarm at the clear tinge of Renewal she had been suppressing. If the pensone is wearing off, we've been in here for hours!
//Formulator and Emulator, in tandem,// called Jindigar, resetting the linkages and handing the pattern over to Venlagar. //We have to translate the Archive data Threntisn is presenting into terms the hive can comprehend.//
They had no idea what those terms might be, but Jindigar ignored that and set to work. His Oliat would discover the right casting. Hastily trained beginners, they had nevertheless developed into a fine-tuned instrument. The shaleiliu roar that surrounded them attested to that. This entire trinary Oliat was in lime with some universal force.
//Steady now, and we can handle this,// Jindigar coaxed. Then he blended his Oliat linkage pattern into Threntisn's meta-link. //Show us how the display is evoked. We must translate for the hive-mind.// The Historian hesitated—control of the Archive functions was strictly Historians' responsibility. But then he overcame the trained reflex and allowed them access to the imaging mechanism.
Jindigar worked through Threntisn's touch, schooling himself not to yearn to take control from the Historian. But he couldn't deny it was a long-sought thrill—all that data at his personal command. There was nothing like it in Aliom. And there was something else—some vast, profound insight that beckoned just beyond the tantalizing horizon. It was something Threntisn and all Historians seemed to share, something Jindigar wanted with all his heart and soul. But it was not for an Aliom Priest.
Keeping his distance, Jindigar used Krinata to Outreach the Oliat's translation directly to the Historian, not through linear vocalizing but through a direct, multidimensional interface.
//Jindigar, don't—I can't.// Krinata winced away from the contact, as if it were a deeply personal violation.
Jindigar stanched the flow of data. //Krinata—// But, feeling her reaction, he couldn't ask it of her.
Threntisn shuddered. //I'm sorry, Krinata. I never realized, a human—I mean—//
Jindigar interrupted, III don't think I can adjust that sort of full spectrum meta-link to a narrower channel, but I'll try.//
//We have to do it, don't we?// Krinata asked. When no one answered, because not one of them could ask it of her, she told Threntisn, //I'm game if you are. Afterward we'll just pretend it never happened.//
He looked to the hivemaster, squirming impatiently. The Rustlemother was dying. //Jindigar, I want you to know that a Historian carries just as strict a confidentiality code as the Aliom Priests do. I won't even know that I know anything I get about you from her, until you tell me.//
/ didn't realize–oh. Krinata! But they had to. He worked to narrow the channel, excluding the personal, but it wasn't effective because so much of the understanding of the universe is based on the personal. And how much confidentiality can one expect from a hive that barely comprehends individuality?
Jindigar barely found the strength to continue recasting the images, substituting hive Natives for the people in Threntisn's story, showing which were workers, craftsmen, scholars, and explorers or Heralds. They showed planetary civilizations as hives and microbe species as hiveless marauders. The concept of microscopic life was remarkably easy to get across—the concept of independent individuals simply could not be translated. So Jindigar let the developing science pass as the work of a communion of hive-minds. But he meticulously cast the closing scene in the ship's lab, dirt-smeared floor, campfire, and all just as it was now, with Threntisn in the role of technician, dressed in the belts, headdress, and sigils of a master craftsman.
When they were done, the hivemaster's rumble had turned thoughtful. Jindigar dispelled the crosslink between Krinata and Threntisn, sensing Krinata's relief as his own. He felt almost as if he'd forced her into an intimate act. He needed to break down and beg her forgiveness, pledging to protect her body and mind from any such invasion. The very idea of her pliant body clasped in his arms set him to trembling. Time's running out. I'd better not even look at Dar.
The hivemaster finally stirred, seeming at last to have comprehended their plan to help the Rustlemother. The long cornucopia that was Krinata's image of the hive-mind squirmed about, as if searching for the exit from the Archive.
How does one Dissolve a meta-Oliat? Jindigar had only the vaguest idea, but the standard procedure wouldn't work in this case. Neither of the other two entities were truly in Oliat. If they did "Dissolve," they would totally self-destruct.
Before Jindigar could work up a plan, the hivemaster turned and dived down the throat of his own tunnel-memory, turning it inside out, swallowing himself to turn end over end, lunging toward the Gate at which they had entered, dragging the Oliat behind.
Reacting faster than Jindigar, Threntisn closed the Gate ahead of the behemoth, telling the Oliat, as it drew him along in its wake,//That's not an exit!// He shook at the meta-link joining them as if it were a noisome animal stuck to his flesh by sucker pads. //Let me go! If he breaks out, he could pull the Archive inside out.//
Thrashing, the Historian stretched the meta-link, dragging them backward, while ahead, the hivemaster drove toward the solid wall of the Archive, stretching the meta-link in the other direction, as if determined to break through to freedom. If those links should snap...
The shaleiliu roar rose to a higher pitch as the links stretched. //Threntisn, if you can reform the Archive around the hive-master so that it is headed for an exit, while I release the meta-links that bind you both to me, perhaps we will separate without harm and let the hivemaster go on his way.//
It was a desperate plan, but Threntisn apparently didn't sense that. He began shifting the environment around them, giving them the illusion of hurling through the Archive toward the Eye. His control was steadier now, the toxin apparently wearing off at last.
Jindigar told Venlagar, who was strained to the breaking point with the extra weight of the meta-forms, //Inreach, we need to take on energy from the shaleiliu hum. Give me the links one at a time.// Then he warned his officers, a peculiar sense of calm steadying him, //Brace yourselves. One way or the other, this will be our last attempt at Dissolution. But no matter what happens to us, the Archive and the hive must go free of it.//
Then, one by one, starting with the meta-links, Jindigar plucked the linkages from Venlagar's grasp and infused them with the shaleiliu roar until it thrummed through them all. As he induced the correct pitch into the linkages the thundering vibration took over the Oliat. The links that bound the three entities shimmered, becoming indistinguishable from that background carrier wave of universal energy.
/ don't believe this. We're actually dissolving. Maybe there was more than one way to use a meta-link to Dissolve a dual-Centered Oliat.
As the moment approached when Jindigar would have no further control over the linkages, he became hyperaware of Krinata. She was the center of a tangled knot of infinitesimal colored threads—the links she claimed to have to my officers. As he watched in amazement her links grew stronger, more organized, as his own dissipated.
TWELVE
Dissolution
//Jindigar! Stop it! I can't make it stop!// Krinata thrashed among her linkages, as if trying to extricate herself, but only succeeded in tangling herself more deeply, reinforcing the hold her own links had on her.