Farfetch

Lazing back into dream, she found herself in a hive nursery snoozing amid a pile of other infants—a hard carapace digging into her back, powderpuff fur against her cheek, soft rustleplates tickling her toes. Her skin was stark white against the nest pebbles. Young as she was, she was already roaming through the hive, peeping through the eyes of her fellow crafters, watching the rustlemen trying to teach mind-gatherers to coordinate warriors in battle lust.

The freedom to wander the hive, be a rustleman producing mortar to repair a wall, or be a warrior training hard to defeat o

Her attention was grabbed by her trainer, a rustlemother who held the Whole Memory. If she was to herald, she must absorb the Whole Memory of her hive first. It would be hard. What came naturally to rustles was agony to whites– but rustles couldn't herald. It was her bred-for duty.

Steeling herself, she reached for the Whole Memory.

Her mind stretched like a flexible ship-to-ship access tube inflated in space and about to burst. She looked down that long tu

Twice in space she'd felt this; the first time in a perfectly safe access tu

And there was Jindigar. She grabbed, and they slammed into one another. Suddenly there was the hive, and there was herself, and they weren't the same thing anymore. This was the hive's tu

Images flew by, history blurring, incomprehensible as seen through an eternal mind that wasn't an individual. They passed juncture after juncture where new hives had swarmed off older ones. They spun around the walls, marveling at the images of Dushau and others exploring their world. Jindigar rode this corkscrew toboggan chute, perceptions squeezed tight against it all, muscles locked, mind paralyzed in the hard clutch of denial.

Now we're all helpless! How do you like it, Invert!

The Desdinda voice, mixed sonorously with Krinata's, brought Jindigar's eyes open. She shouted into their paralyzed minds, You'll never win! I'll never let you win!

With a thrust Desdinda propelled them head over heels into a cavernous void. Infinitely deep. But where the tu

In panic she flailed about for something familiar–and she landed on Ephemeral Truth, Arlai's Dushau simulacrum bowing graciously before her Outreach. "Takora's Oliat is most welcome and will be properly served."

Jindigar was standing behind her, in the Office of Protector of her Oliat, but Arlai knew better than to speak to him while the Oliat was balanced. In fact, his ship was so beautifully designed, she was going to order a copy made for herself. Perhaps she'd name it Eternal Truth. Yes, that was a good name. She could travel now that her Oliat career was ended by successfully Centering.

When they arrived at Dushaun, Arlai obligingly tendered a copy of Truth's plans, but by then she knew she was terminally ill. It began with weakness in the limbs and spread to a weakness of the mind—blurring memory, inability to reason without being caught by reminiscences, and a loosening grip on the Oliat. She'd experienced four Renewals and knew that, though she was in pre-Renewal instability, this was not normal.

It hadn't been until Dushaun was in their scopes that Arlai's tests isolated the problem—senile dementia. An organism she'd fought off on their last planetfall had altered her metabolism beyond repair.

Her last memory was the hospital bed, her Oliat about her, Grisnilter hovering in the background to retrieve her memories for his Archive. All her Officers were in Renewal, even young Jindigar, so earnest in his priesthood, so inquisitive and easy to delight, a point of bright, burning enthusiasm that could light her days through Renewal, if only she could make him understand that's what she wanted. But, though she knew she'd fascinated him, it often seemed everyone else did too. He was so undiscriminating. But she could live with that for one Renewal—it'd be his fourth. He should mature quite a bit.

A bright new thought occurred to her, and she couldn't understand why it hadn't come before. It's time to Dissolve this Oliat. If any of them were actually in Renewal, Dissolving now could kill someone. Why have I waited so long?

Yet, as the thought formed, it drifted away into the blurring daze of no-time that gripped her. With a little puff of despair she knew she was drawing them all with her into premature death—helpless to Dissolve. Grisnilter was right. I shouldn't have tried the Oliat.

She had no strength to impart this insight before it drifted away. Darkness encroached. She stopped breathing. Her chest ached, but it was too hard to draw air. They couldn't prevent themselves dying with her. Dissolution/death, a bottomless void.

She felt Jindigar's panicked sense of helplessness as on-rushing darkness swallowed them all. Without warning his strength flooded upward, wrenching, ripping the Oliat from her grasp, relegating her to Protector. A twist, and he Inverted the entire Oliat. Spi

Krinata/Takora felt his hands on her face, wet with her tears, cold as death. He was lying half on top of her, a gray armored body pi

Jindigar's panic in the moment of Takora-death saturated her nerves, the same feeling as when she/Krinata had stolen -the triad from Jindigar's control and Inverted to help the hive fight the Troopers. She'd meant only to save i

Jindigar had said it. My decisions limit your options; your decisions limit mine, Grisnilter had wanted him—and Takora–to avoid that. Each renders the other helpless.

A hard knotted ball of emotions inside her melted away, leaving relaxation where she hadn't known there was tension. She was consumed with a vast sorrow that she hadn't had the fortitude to Dissolve her Oliat properly so they wouldn't die with her. Knowing her guilt and her weakness, she forgave him and became him, the walls of identity blurred beyond repair. Tears flowed softly from her eyes, and her breath came in little spurts halfway between laughter and sobs. Before Krinata's eyes the visage of Desdinda evaporated to mist, swirling away into limbo. Gladly Krinata followed Takora into dissolution/death, sure her life was over.