Farfetch

She had things of her own to consider. While I'm in the

Oliat I can't have children or a husband. If she fell in love, it might kill them all. She had to make up her mind to live celibate and helpless before the forces of this world. She'd never needed marriage, but celibacy wasn't her way of life, either.

Opening her mouth to say, Surely you can find someone better than I, she saw herself forever locked out of the awareness that had come to mean so much to her. The sensory deprivation frightened her more than the risks. It won't be for a whole fifty years.

Jindigar said, "We can't do skills-suffusion with less man an Oliat. Without that there's not enough time. We can't even abandon the fortress now. We're surrounded."

Suddenly Krinata was shamed at wasting time pondering her personal feelings. "I don't know what oath you'd accept from me—but—I renounce Inversion for as long as I'm part of Jindigar's Oliat, and I'll abide by the laws and customs of Aliom—even though I don't know what they all are right now."

After she'd said it Krinata waited, heart in her throat, hoping they'd accept her, and fearing it.

With the duad wide-open she felt the pentad examining their balance. In the back of her mind there grew a bizarre image of ten separate Dushau eyes winking in a rippling pattern in rhythm with her own heart. Wispy Dushau fingers combed through her emotions. Her throat constricted around a scream, but she let them inspect—sensing they sought to discern her place in the scheme of things, even though as a mere pentad they couldn't be sure.

And then everything changed.

The world swam fluidly around Jindigar. Dimly she realized that the Officers were shifting function to accommodate a new distribution of talents and strengths, Jindigar's grip molding them, seeking a balance. They shifted and shifted again, randomly at first, then, under Jindigar's firming touch, purposively.

When she could see again, Za

In front of her the Cassrian Commander was reaching to shake her shoulder, demanding attention, and Cy was forcing himself between them protectively while Storm bellowed orders to his co-husbands and the rest of Cy's team, proclaiming a new full Oliat in function.

Something buried within the back of Krinata's mind came to a solid equilibrium, the vision of the others faded, and she felt Jindigar, only slightly more intense than in duad. //Easy now, you can do it. Speak with us. Relax and let it happen—just as you learned to be duad-Receptor.//-

In sudden panic she tried to find the Takora memories within her, but they seemed shriveled and gone. Ill don't know how!//

//She can't do it!//

They're as scared as I am. The united panic threatened to rip them apart before they'd truly balanced.

But Jindigar wouldn't permit it. //She's done harder things. Krinata, turn—look at us.//

Petrified, she forced herself to twist around and look behind her. The world spun as she moved, and she knew she was failing the Oliat. Za

Dizzy with the composite views as the Oliat zunre looked directly at each other, Krinata finally reached a point of tension beyond which she couldn't go. As sudden relaxation struck her she thought she was fainting, too weak to live another moment.

But as her knees sagged another strength energized her body, and suddenly everything seemed normal. Her mouth opened, saying, "We know where the problems are." And she began to reel off a list of locations, ordering the Commander, "Send tool scurries—" The words choked off as a panic grabbed her guts. Her mouth had moved of its own accord! Horror gripped her. She had paid dearly to rid herself of Desdinda's compulsion. //No!//

//Easy,// came the soothing Central flavor of Jindigar as the others recoiled from her.

//She's conditioned against it,// argued Center. //We aren't properly tempered or balanced yet. Let's just see how long we can hold together.//

Krinata's body moved of its own accord—at the will of the Oliat, or maybe of Jindigar?—out across the cargo bay, pulling herself along on one of the lines. Outriders cleared the troopers away from them, calling loudly, "Oliat coming through! They know how to get the power going again!"

Forever after, the rest came to memory shrouded in the veils of dreamlike unreality. There were sharp images embedded in long blurs, and she suspected that the clear memories were shuffled out of time sequence. Jindigar, when pressed, assured her that this was because none of them had ever occupied the Offices they were now handling, and because, using such an impromptu assembly procedure, he could not be delicate with the skills suffusion. "But we didn't have six or seven days for the whole tedious business of stabilizing our form!"

At some point Krinata found herself bending over a nightmare tangle of circuitry hanging out of a buckled access hatch and tenderly snapping a wedge-shaped circuit element into place. A phrase drifted to the top of her mind on bubbles of laughter: ad hoc Oliat. //We're an ad hoc Oliat!//

Amusement at the absurd concept spread through their shared consciousness, and in its wake tension subsided. The work went faster. Her hands flew even though her eyes tended to see the work under someone else's hands in a far part of the fortress.

She staggered along a narrow passage, steadying herself against a bulkhead as repeated blows shook the fortress. She searched for a tubular access to a catwalk. Cy paced at her shoulder, keeping the troopers around them from demanding her attention. The thuds and shiftings had become muted because of carcasses piled against the hull and because the entire stampede was indeed slowing, more and more of the racing animals veering off before hitting the "hive." Chinchee and the hivebinder were still projecting a hive, and the animals' instincts screamed only, Wrong, wrong, wrong! as they hurtled into the symbol of ally, not enemy.

Suddenly a shudder slid the deck from under her, and a screaming of tearing metal filled the air. The thunderous sound of a million hooves pounding the turf redoubled as she smelled the reek of sweating animal bodies and freshly turned dirt on a puff of air. Her companions didn't need her a

The passage was inundated with small, brown-furred bodies, sharp teeth, beady eyes, short stubby tails, pointed ears. Carrion eaters, blood lust too aroused by the stampede to veer away from a hive—their natural prey,—swarmed into the fortress. And it wasn't just here—she sensed Darllanyu and Jindigar both wading through a sea of small bodies.

Large goose bumps formed all over her, and she felt her begrimed hair standing on end. Her physical reaction was mirrored among the Dushau, making them all acutely uncomfortable, echoing a derisive, human, around the circuit. Jindigar interceded, //That's not human sexual arousal!// Apology and curiosity swept them all, but she was at the panel Jindigar needed, and her hands flew.

How Jindigar managed to direct so many at once, she never knew. Later he only raised his hand, palm cupped, fingers pointing to the sky, and explained, "What must be done can be done."

She asked, "Is that a Law of Nature?"

"Maybe," he quipped. "Or maybe it's only a local ordinance."

But at the time, surrounded by a river of small, dirty, hot vermin nipping at her field boots with their sharp teeth until finally one of them actually hit flesh and made her yelp and dance, Krinata could only struggle against distraction, fight her natural inclination to resist the spooky possession that gripped her, and tell herself over and over that she couldn't afford a nervous breakdown yet.