I wonder what the Active Circle will be like for them?
Hut the hive knew nothing of that. Tasting the worldcircle energies through its hivebinders, the hive concluded in a joyous inductive leap, //It is through you, and only through you, that we may have this. We accept your peace gifts of health and life. We offer in return the peace-binding to One.//
Without pause the hivebinders unleashed the full power of their mindsong, reaching out to bind all—Native and stranger, Oliat and colonist—into one mind, throbbing with the seductive fullsong—an innocent offering of shared joy and final understanding.
Seeing the meta-links as just another form of bond, the hivebinders grabbed them up to weave them into the group mind. But the meta-links were at a much higher potential energy. The instant the contact was made, energy drained from the meta-links into the hivebinders' newly forged network. The meta-links resolidified—only the hivebinders had created a new meta-link, joining four Centers—Jindigar, Krinata, the hivemaster, and Threntisn/Archive.
A new tonal wave, a shaleiliu hum octaves deeper than
anything Jindigar had ever imagined, shook them–more felt than heard invading Krinata's unbalanced linkages and creating a painful subtone, as if one instrument in a huge orchestra was out of tune.
The Archive's recording of the meta-Oliat had held only a pale shadow of this eruption from the roots of existence. Its sheer intensity was frightening. The Archive itself resonated to the unsound with a powerful kinship, just as the Oliat links resonated to the shaleiliu hum and Dissolve.
Something deep in Jindigar responded, aching and straining toward the raw energy, yet also shrinking from the searing, stretching, bright pain it ignited in his brain, blurring everything. Only a Complete Priest could tolerate much of this!
Simultaneously the hivebinders drew greedily on the unlimited worldcircle energy, channeling it into their song. As they did, more and more Dushaun-tinged energy spilled into the Archive and drained into the Archive's structure, which began to shimmer as Dissolving Oliat linkages did.
//No!// came Threntisn's roaring denial. //Not the Archive!//
Abruptly darkness enveloped them. Disoriented, Jindigar discovered that the worldcircle current was gone. Threntisn had slammed shut the gateway, cutting off the current. The hivebinders wailed in protest.
The hivemaster howled in shock at yet another betrayal.
The Natives' reaction cut off as the Archive whirled and spun around them, images flashing by in a searing, dazzling blur. Then everything slammed to a stop, and Threntisn propelled them toward another gateway.
Krinata's old freefall phobia lanced through her linkages, infecting them all and injecting a new panic into the hivemaster. Without warning the hivemaster twisted and dove at Threntisn.
The last Jindigar knew, the Historian disappeared into the shifting images of the hivemaster and down the shaft of the cornucopia of hive-memory, as Jindigar had once fallen with Krinata.
And he and Krinata were falling, too, the Oliat they shared clustered around them, enmeshed in Krinata's unbalanced linkages. The meta-links joining the dual-Oliat to the Archive and hivemaster shimmered with energy that now drained back from the higher-potential of the Archive, dimming the Archive's structure. And that draining seemed to be under deliberate control. Threntisn is doing that–but how?
The meta-link stretched and stretched, soaking up more and more energy. Finally it gave—not with the expected lashing snap but gently—Dissolved away by the inrushing energy, taking the excruciating deep shaleiliu hum—and all the pain– with it.
Without transition Jindigar found himself aware of his body once more, chilled through, head aching as if his brain were too big for his skull. He was sprawled awkwardly on the dirt-smeared floor of the lab. Krinata's aching limbs and painful returning circulation wrung groans from all the others of the Oliat. None of them were quite certain which Oliat they held Office in. But they all lived.
In the split instant Jindigar had to assess that and note that the hivebinders were now grouped in ranks five deep on the other side of the embers of the campfire, the fullsong hit them with redoubled intensity, a paean of rejoicing carried on a rising wave of worldcircle energies thrumming with the seductive overtones of Dushaun, home, and love.
In the fullsong Jindigar could hear the young voices of his children as they would sing to the accompaniment of his whule. He could feel the tender warmth flooding him as Darllanyu would gaze at their firstborn, as he had seen Storm tending his child. Jindigar yearned for the pride of sheltering his new family, so they could grow stronger and wiser than he. He felt Darllanyu's response to his need echoing back at him through his own Oliat's link to her. And then they shared the cold knowledge that they had taken pensone.
Sobered, Jindigar realized that the hivemaster had returned the worldcircle energies, the source of ecstasy, to the hive-binders, and now they were lost in the urges common to all life, determined to share their precious delight with everyone.
Fighting the lure of the fullsong, Jindigar pried his eyes' open and blinked against oddly doubled vision as he searched for Threntisn. He remembered that moment of total astonishment as Threntisn had stared directly out of his Archive's Gate and into the full, onrushing current of the worldcircle energies—just exactly as a Priest was exposed to it at induction.
//Jindigar, he's not dead!// Krinata dragged herself toward Threntisn, who was still sprawled beside the Rustlemother.
She lay unmoving, but the Historian stirred slightly at Krinata's approach.
Krinata knelt and put out one narrow five-fingered hand but didn't dare try shaking him, not sure what the contact might do to the Oliat—or to the Historian.
"//Threntisn!//"
Through the thickening veil of the fullsong Jindigar heard Krinata's voice harmonizing with his own as they both spoke– she as his Outreach, and he as hers. This can't last. "//Threntisn!//" repeated Jindigar, getting his feet under him, trying to ignore the insistent warmth spreading from glands awakened by the fullsong. The pensone is gone. He stepped around the whule the hivebinders had abandoned and went toward Krinata, unsurprised at how weak he felt.
Threntisn moaned, feeling for his head as if not sure it was still there. He was covered with dozens of ugly clots of blood where the hivebinders had stung him. He sat up, squinting to focus his eyes. With difficulty he identified Krinata. "Jindigar's?"
Jindigar wasn't quite sure what to answer as he hunkered down next to Threntisn. He found himself replying as Krinata's Outreach, "//We didn't think you'd survive!//"
Threntisn looked from one to the other, comprehension dawning. Then his eyes traveled to the ranks of hivebinders undulating in unison behind them, and he rubbed his ears, closed his eyes, and said with suppressed panic, "Jindigar—I can hear them!"
Jindigar probed with Oliat perception. "//It's a link—a bond, Threntisn. Not a meta-link but more like an Oliat duad subform bond.//" At least Threntisn wasn't physically responsive to the fullsong. He was still much too far from Renewal to be troubled. "//But—how can a Historian... Threntisn, you've become an Aliom Priest!//"
Threntisn's eyes flashed open but went unfocused in that typical Historian's gaze as he checked the Archive. "I've got—the Whole Memory of the hive in the Archive! But, Jindigar—they've got the Archive too. That's how—but this isn't possible—it's not..."
Suddenly the Historian's gaze slid past Jindigar. Jindigar turned and found Cyrus swaying in the doorway of the treatment room, clutching the cowling of the airtight seal. Threntisn grinned human-fashion, with all the ease of an Emulator, and announced as if he'd just come from a high-level diplomatic conference with the hive, "The hive sees you have recovered. They're going to let me cure the Rustlemother! Come, Cyrus, I'll need your help." Glancing down at the comatose form of the Rustlemother, he retrieved the blood sampler he had filled before the hivebinders stung him and added, "We must hurry."