//Jindigar, we've got to stop them!// Krinata gathered her legs under her, as if to make for the door. But then she halted, and Jindigar sensed the conflicting impulses in her. Determined not to usurp Center again, she looked back at Jindigar.
He adjusted the Outreach link so she got only a comfortable trickle of information but4old her, //There's nothing we can do but watch. Even if we could get there in time, we aren't stable enough yet to work on a battlefield.//
Before Terab's demolition crew reached the foundation, the warriors leapt out at them, throwing weapons flying and spears thrusting. The universe spun into an insane distortion—the hive's defense.
Reeling from the mental impact, dodging their attackers, the demolition crew swarmed onto the barrier. One by one they placed their charges and turned to flee. The warriors, unaware of their danger, attacked the fleeing Holot.
The hivebinders increased their efforts. Suddenly one of the demolition crew hurled his explosives aside and went after one of his fellow Holot. The Oliat saw the hideous monster he fought so heroically. Three other Holot scrabbled to disarm the charges they had just placed, deluded into believing that they were about to destroy a priceless work of art. Nearby a Holot female, with gleaming teeth bared, heaved at an invisible monster and stood up straight, as if in victory. Then, sanity once again in her eyes, she glanced around and saw Terab leading a pitched battle against the warriors.
With quiet dignity the Holot female bent to the charge primer, and Jindigar knew what she was doing. Frantically he grabbed up the linkages and pulled in the Reception.
The horror he felt and the horror he anticipated joined as the explosion erupted. Their own flesh tore apart. Chunks of themselves went flying, showering blood onto the ground.
Cringing, Jindigar yanked them free and sent the Oliat spinning into blackness. The horror followed them, churning the blackness with nightmares. Jindigar gripped the linkages and focused on the worldcircle, tapping into the balm of Dushaun. Then he eased them back to limited awareness.
Krinata slumped to the floor where, she stood. The others knelt or hugged themselves. The hive's defense redoubled in volume. Anchoring to the worldcircle, Jindigar, inspired by desperation, organized the linkages so their multiawareness cross-checked each perception and accepted only what seemed the same to all of them, sifting reality from hallucination.
It made an incredible tangle of the linkages, but within moments the others pushed upright, blinking hard at Jindigar as they sorted out this new function. Real images became extra-bright translucencies surrounded with white halos of world-circle energy. Hallucinations appeared transparent and pale next to the real—but sometimes there were many layers of hallucinatory images. If I could have done this for Eithlarin....
Only Krinata still felt the warped reality eating at the edges of her mind. //I'm sorry, Krinata,// Jindigar apologized, //but if I opened any further to you, the data flow would be more confusing to you than the distortion.//
She shoved her hair back from her face and shook as if to divest herself of something wet and unpleasant. //It's all right– as long as I know it's not really real.//
Venlagar asked, working hard to hold the unique pattern Jindigar had set, //Can you manipulate the Oliat like this?//
Observing what he had created, Jindigar didn't give himself time to think but merely took up the linkages and called, //Receptor, we must find out what has happened.//
Zannesu fumbled about until he focused on the hive again. The last dirt clods spattered down. All the ex-Imperials kept their heads down until it stopped, but a few colonists looked up too soon and were hit with rocks and dirt. As if out of nowhere, water coursed into the channels the colonists had dug. It tunneled through the hole the explosion had ripped in the hive's dome foundation and spread out among the ships» The ground, already saturated from spring rains, soaked up very little, and most of the water formed a puddle around the base of the lab ship.
Soon water backed up in the channel. An innocent-seeming piece of wood began to float in that water– It lifted a lever and set off a chain reaction. Ultimately the catapult fired.
The Cassrian and the end of the cable went flying toward the lab ship—the only ship powered up to supply heat and light within, the one ship likely to contain the most vulnerable members of the hive.
Now everything depended on the Cassrian.
But this one must have been an acrobat or a stuntman. He landed square on the sloping hull and anchored himself with fittings taken from a vacuum suit. His task was extremely simple—clamp the electrical contacts into place. But when he did, he would be the first to die.
Several times, as they watched, it seemed he would abandon the task to chase phantasms of horror that opposed him while the real adversary, six warriors and two rustlemen, closed in from below, climbing handholds on the ship's skin. The Cassrian battled with rapidly weakening movements, as if his initial feat had taken up all his remaining strength. But, with only seconds to spare, the Cassrian overcame his personal demons and plunged the cubic home.
Instantly he stiffened, then tumbled down the polished hull.
Below him, the eight Natives screamed and died.
Those who ran to help them were caught in the current and died. Those inside the ship, not knowing they were insulated from the danger, rushed out to see what was happening, touched the hull and died. The entire hive was gravitating toward the charged puddle. Three hivebinders cautiously advanced toward the stricken and died. At the same instant the horror broadcast flicked off, and reality settled in around them.
The hive-mind stopped the headlong rush to the rescue of its dead it ml dying. Natives danced around the edges of the puddle, feeling the tingle of electrical charge through the damp ground. Then the generator at the waterfall blew.
A column of black smoke rose from the generator shed, but the Natives didn't connect that with the cessation of deaths. They circled the puddle, sniffing and babbling at each other.
The colonists picked themselves up and congratulated each other as they gathered their dead.
// Why?// It was Krinata, scrubbing at her face with her hands as if to dispel the last nightmare. //Why did Terab let them do that? Jindigar, two people killed themselves to deliver a relatively minor blow to the hive. Why?//
Jindigar plucked his cross-check linkage pattern apart and reassembled it into a standard global search. It wasn't an Out-reach's function to Formulate such questions, but Darllanyu was only a split instant behind her with the correct formulation.
It didn't lake long. In the houses and in one barn that had been designated a hospital, people lay tossing helplessly in the grip of Krinata's Fever. In less than two days, while the Oliat had struggled to recover, fully a quarter of the colony had come down with it—and a dozen bodies of all four ephemeral species had been laid out for burial.
Several were infants.
But no Dushau. Some ephemerals must feel the Oliat has deserted them because we don't care–the fever hardly touches Dushau.
Krinata's thoughts flew toward Cyrus and the Outriders. //Krinata, take care. Outreach must retain exterior contact.//
//I'm sorry. I've got to know!// She got to her feet again, making for the door. Then she stopped. //Jindigar, please!//
It took every bit of discipline Jindigar had to keep from flickering the Oliat awareness into a search for the Outriders. //Of course, Krinata. Take your place.// He waited for her to resume her position as Outreach, feeling what it cost her. His Oliat might be doomed, but Jindigar wasn't going to throw their lives away by laxness in the most basic safety rules separating officers' functions.