The Uplift War

Even as she wondered, drifting smoke-images seemed to fall together around her. Mist patterns flowed, solidified, became a shape. Athaclena suddenly found she could visualize herself standing in a small boat! And in her hands she held an oar.

Was this how usunltlan manifested in a human’s mind? As a metaphor?

Amazed, she began to row upstream, into the stinging maelstrom.

Forms floated by, crowding and jostling in the fog surrounding her. Now one blur drifted past as a distorted face. Next, some bizarre animal figure snarled at her. Most of the grotesque things she glimpsed could never have existed in any real universe.

Unaccustomed to visualizing the networks of a mind, it took Athaclena some moments to realize that the shapes represented memories, conflicts, emotions.

So many emotions! Athaclena felt an urge to flee. One might go mad in this place!

It was Tymbrimi curiosity that made her stay. That and duty.

This is so strange, she thought as she rowed through the metaphorical swamp. Half blinded by drifting drops of pain, she stared in wonderment. Oh, to be a true telepath and know, instead of having to guess, what all these symbols meant.

There were easily as many drives as in a Tymbrimi mind. Some of the strange images and sensations struck her as familiar. Perhaps they harkened back to times before her race or Robert’s learned speech — her own people by Uplift and humans doing it the hard way — back when two tribes of clever animals lived very similar lives in the wild, on far separated worlds.

It was most odd seeing with two pairs of eyes at once. There was the set that looked in amazement about the metaphorical realm and her real pair which saw Robert’s face inches from her own, under the canopy of her corona.

The human blinked rapidly. He had stopped counting in his confusion. She, at least, understood some of what was happening. But Robert was feeling something truly bizarre. A word came to her: déjà vu… quick half-rememberings of things at once both new and old.

Athaclena concentrated and crafted a delicate glyph, a fluttering beacon to beat in resonance with his deepest brain harmonic. Robert gasped and she felt him reach out after it.

His metaphorical self took shape alongside her in the little boat, holding another oar. It seemed to be the way of things, at this level, that he did not even ask how he came to be there.

Together they cast off through the flood of pain, the torrent from his broken arm. They had to row through a swirling cloud of agones, which struck and bit at them like swarms of vampire bugs. There were obstacles, snags, and eddies where strange voices muttered sullenly out of dark depths.

Finally they came to a pool, the center of the problem. At its bottom lay the gestalt image of an iron grating set in a stony floor. Horrible debris obstructed the drain.

Robert quailed back in alarm. Athaclena knew these had to be emotion-laden memories — their fearsomeness given shape in teeth and claws and bloated^-awful faces. How could humans let such clutter accumulate? She was dazed and more than a little frightened by the ugly, animate wreckage.

“They’re called neuroses,” spoke Robert’s i

Robert stared at his enemies below — and Athaclena saw that many of the faces below were warped, angry versions of his own.

“This is my job now, Cle

The boat rocked as Robert’s metaphoric self turned and dove into the molten pool of pain.

Robert!

Froth rose. The tiny craft began to buck and heave, forcing her to hold tightly to the rim of the strange usunltlan. Bright, awful hurt sprayed on all sides. And down near the grating a terrific struggle was taking place.

In the outer world, Robert’s face ran streams of perspiration. Athaclena wondered how much more of this he could take.

Hesitantly, she sent her image-hand down into the pool. Direct contact burned, but she pushed on, reaching for the grating.

Something grabbed her hand! She yanked back but the grip held. An awful thing wearing a horrid version of Robert’s face leered up at her with an expression twisted almost out of recognition by some warped lust. The thing pulled hard, trying to drag her into the noisome pool. Athaclena screamed.

Another shape streaked in to grapple with her assailant. The scaly hold on her arm released and she fell back into the boat. Then the little craft started speeding away! All around her the lake of pain flowed toward the drain. But her boat moved rapidly the other way, upstream against the flow.

Robert is pushing me out, she realized. Contact narrowed, then broke. The metaphorical images ceased abruptly. Athaclena blinked rapidly, in a daze. She knelt on the soft ground. Robert held her hand, breathing through clenched teeth.

“Had to stop you, Cle

“But you are in such pain!”

He shook his head. “You showed me where the block was. I … I can take care of that neurotic garbage now that I know it’s there … at least well enough for now. And… and have I told you yet that a guy wouldn’t have any trouble at all falling in love with you?”

Athaclena sat up abruptly, amazed at the non sequitur. She held up the three gas ampules. “Robert, you must tell me which of these drugs will ease the pain, yet leave you conscious enough to help me!”

He squinted. “The blue one. Snap it under my nose, but don’t breathe any yourself! No … no telling what para-endorphins would do to you.”

When Athaclena broke the ampule a small, dense cloud of vapor spilled out. About half went in with Robert’s next breath. The rest quickly dispersed.

With a deep, shuddering sigh, Robert’s body seemed to uncoil. He looked up at her again with a new light in his eyes. “I don’t know if I could have maintained consciousness much longer. But it was almost worth it… sharing my mind with you.”

In his aura it seemed that a simple but elegant version of zunour’thzun danced. Athaclena was momentarily taken aback.

“You are a very strange creature, Robert. I…”

She paused. The zunour’thzun … it was gone now, but she had not imagined ke

Athaclena nodded and smiled. The human ma

“I was just thinking the same thing, Robert. I… I, too, found it worthwhile.”

13

Fiben

Just above a cliff face, near the rim of a narrow mesa, dust still rose in plumes where some recent crashing force had torn a long, ugly furrow in the ground. A dagger-shaped stretch of forest had been shattered in a few violent seconds by a plunging thing that roared and skipped and struck again — sending earth and vegetation spraying in all directions — before finally coming to rest just short of the sheer precipice.

It had happened at night. Not far away, other pieces of even hotter sky-debris had cracked stone and set fires, but here the impact had been only a glancing blow.

Long minutes after the explosive noise of collision ebbed there remained other disturbances. Landslides rattled down the nearby cliff, and trees near the tortured path creaked and swayed. At the end of the furrow, the dark object that had wreaked this havoc emitted crackling, snapping sounds as superheated metal met a cool fog sweeping up from the valley below.

At last things settled down and began returning to normal. Native animals nosed out into the open again. A few even approached, sniffed the hot thing in distaste, then moved on about the more serious business of living one more day.