Rinperee, and Trassle with his children were sleeping. Terab sat beside the snapfield, glumly contemplating nothing. In another cell, Trassle's wife, and two Dushau, were sleeping. One of the human men and one of the Lehiroh were playing with improvised dice.
Unaccountably, that cell was interesting. She stayed there until gradually, her perception began to shift, narrowing to the dice. They weren't just bits of chipped stone with numbers carved on them. They were dancing masses responding to the laws of probability. But those laws were warped around the two men. An idea nudged its way to her. She could make the dice fall a particular way.
She visualized the highest score. On the second try, it worked.
And again, and again, regardless of who won. Until the only way they ever fell was high-score. The human accused the Lehiroh of cheating. But the Lehiroh denied it, abstractedly contemplating the dice. Then he scanned the ceiling, the walls, and his eyes came to rest in Krinata's direction. Stunned, he muttered an awed expletive. Then, as if she were standing beside him, she heard, "Jindigar?"
The impulse to answer came, but she couldn't. The Lehiroh deduced what Jindigar's group was doing, however, explained quickly to his companion, sure they had a plan. As he was waking the others, the panel in the wall opened and produced their dinner, plus a read-once message capsule.
The scene shimmered as she became aware of the aroma of food. The cell around her became substantial, the awareness of two other views of it remaining. It wasn't like looking through Dushau eyes; her brain wouldn't be able to interpret the wide-angle, multi-image messages from Dushau eyes. Rather, she was aware of their understanding of then– visual fields, and acutely aware of the focus of their attention.
"Adjourned," announced Jindigar with a sigh. He sat up, grabbing Frey. "Do you realize what we did?"
'Inverted," he said dully, but there was resignation in it, not horror. Then he said to Krinata, "You're good."
They ate because they knew they'd need the strength. Then Jindigar reassembled them, saying, "Krinata, just like with the dice. Sit here, see the shaftway, and imagine the cells clear of fields and bars."
She felt as she once had waking from a severe fever: things not quite real; eyes too lazy to focus; mind not wanting to concentrate. But she asked, "If you can do this 'adjourning' why do you have to shift positions and dissolve us before we get clear? It'd be safer to ran like this."
"This effort will take much more energy. It's different. Believe me, Krinata, I know what I'm doing."
"Oh, I do." Despite the spaced-out, aching stretch of a burning fever, the detached bemusement that prevented her from really enjoying what was happening as she'd always dreamed she would, she knew she'd treasure this memory forever as the highpoint of her life.
When they'd settled again, she knew those in the other cells were prepared now. She leaned back against the wall, and let herself into a fever-dream where the fields faded and the bars withdrew, freeing them all. She even remembered to open the gate at the end of the brig shaftway. The guard there had to be asleep at his post. The surveillance crew manning the spy eyes were more interested in a game where the stakes were the first chance to rape the prisoners.
She set up the entire scenario with loving detail as if it were one of her favorite dreams.
Then it happened. The sizzle of the force field disappeared. The bars retracted into the bulkhead.
But Krinata wasn't aware of it as more than a minor annoyance. She was into her dream. She saw Jindigar get to his feet and wander out into the corridor, and she followed with Prey, Storm at her heels, tucking Rita inside his shirt. Bell clambered over the rumpled beds and tumbled after them. People were emerging all around them. The three of them remained floating in a silent communion. The group moved.
A scurry rolled into the brig corridor and reversed in place, leading them. Arlai said, "Follow me," from the comunit. It's his scurry, imagined Krinata.
The brig security barricade at the end of the hall was also retracted, and two Holot drowsed at their station.
Everyone filed by silently, except the Cassrians, whose chi-tin clicked on the deck surface.
Twice during their silent wending through shaftways, crew-members marched by. Krinata imagined they didn't spot the ragtag line of escapees. Then, just after a detachment of armed guards swept by, Jindigar wilted into Storm's arms, gasping, shaking. The edges of her perceptions blurred, twisting into nightmare shapes—Desdinda's face, but she imagined it away. They were safe, surrounded by their four Lehiroh Outriders. She'd seen them fight once. They went on. Finally, they came to a hatch with a pressure-seal light over it. The scurry signaled it open, and they started in. Two of then– Lehiroh dealt with the duty guard expediently. Krinata became aware this wasn't a dream. The other two viewpoints, the fever weakness and ache were fading.
With a rhythmic rattle, a wall of bright armor appeared between them and the yacht lying in its cradle. Imperial armor, imperial emblems seen from four separate viewpoints swam hypnotically in her mind. She tumbled back into dream, but now it was not under her control. It was nightmare.
She could only see one thing at a time, and could not by any force of will lift her attention from that thing.
Beamer fire crisscrossed around them, flashing off deck and bulkheads. Krinata appreciated the beautiful pattern with only peripheral awareness that it was deadly.
A Lehiroh sent an armored man into a graceful cartwheel, to land in a heap. Krinata stared helplessly at him while he tried to rise, only to be smashed by the body of a comrade whirling down on top of him.
A swath was cleared through the armor, and Desdinda was there, seated in a chairmobile, the fourth viewpoint, distorted, blackened around the edges.
As Jindigar staggered to Desdinda, Krinata saw his face coming toward herself, twisted into a feral deathmask. Prey cut off the view, grabbing Krinata by the shoulders, capturing her eyes. We've been invaded, distorted into a tetrad. We must rebalance. Trust Jindigar. It was her own thought, not Prey's; she was absolutely certain. But she could not have thought at all had he not been there.
Yet Prey was more frightened than she, looking to her for courage. And she found it. Grabbing his wrist, she pulled him forward, their four Lehiroh moving with them, keeping them in a box free of the squirming, scrambling dogfight all around them.
They enclosed Jindigar in their zone of peace, and Krinata began to drag Desdinda's chair and Jindigar with them toward the yacht. Miraculously, the entire fight went with them. She went back to imagining Truth's complement winning through to the yacht entry, leaving unconscious troopers behind them.
Trassle stole a beamer, cutting down six troopers before he was stopped by a Holot. Their own Holot tackled that trooper and grabbed his weapon. Combined fire made the remaining troopers hit the deck as the Truth's complement scrambled for the yacht, Jindigar dragging Desdinda.
Then it happened. The world flipped inside-out. The four viewpoints overlapped and spun out of control. The refugees shriveled into twisted horrors, mere caricatures of people. They dripped ichor and babbled in garbled screams. Everything they touched steamed as if sullied by acid.
Krinata felt her own body covered with ugly growths that oozed puss. Her hands became instruments of torture to the one she touched—Desdinda. And Desdinda was the only pure thing, the only salvation for them all. They must touch her, yet dared not for it destroyed her.