Outreach

Unashamed, Krinata bent forward and, as she had hardly dared when she'd first heard Jindigar play, she let herself cry for the one who suffered so, for anyone and everyone who suffered—for Lelwatha and Jindigar and the colony and the hive. The Oliat rode her wave of emotion.

Lelwatha had gauged the length of that exquisite passage so perfectly that just when none of them could tolerate it another moment, the piece moved into the final segment, one rising arpeggio bringing them up over the peak of agony and down into the quietude of forever. Spent, they rested with Lelwatha in the radiant peace beyond Completion where hope need not be, painful, nor joy etched out of the knowledge that it must be followed by despair.

Jindigar dwelled on the final note, letting it sound through the linkages, refining the Oliat's balance.

For a long time the hive's mindtune was silent, and Llistyien, still a little breathless, judged, III don't think it meant anything to them.//

The afternoon shadow of the cliff had long since covered them. Threntisn shifted, obviously tiring of holding the weight of the human in his arms. He knew only that the Oliat had tried something, but his patience was wearing through.

"//Wait,//" the Oliat cautioned him through Krinata.

As if that were a signal, the hive warriors parted, opening a narrow lane into the hive. Chinchee confidently retrieved his hivebinder from Krinata's lap and marched forward into mat opening, urging Threntisn to follow with a Cassrian command.

Jindigar scrambled to his feet. //Let's see if they'll let us

in too.//%

As Trinarvil and Ruff, her Outrider, crowded up behind Threntisn, the warriors narrowed the opening, clearly excluding the Outrider. //Jindigar?// she asked.

//They distinguish between Oliat and guards—and they don't want guards.// Through Krinata he said to Ruff, "//Let's not make an issue of it.//" No Center in his right mind would take an Oliat in without any Outriders. But they had already commended their lives to the community.

One by one the officers passed through the lane and followed Threntisn to the lab ship.

ELEVEN

Hiveheart

The two piols scampered up the ship's ramp, threading between the feet of two warriors who followed Threntisn and Chinchee. One of the warriors tripped over the animals. Their squeals of surprise stopped everyone. Handing his throwing spear to his comrade, the warrior bent to capture the two animals, and Jindigar's breath caught in his throat. These piols had been all he had to cling to during some of the hardest times of his life.

But the warrior rose with one piol tucked gently under each arm, their claws neatly immobilized. He edged past the Oliat and deposited the animals on the muddy ground, giving each a firm, instructive pat on the rump that sent them off to dig happily in the mud. Jindigar didn't need Oliat awareness to see that the piols had already made themselves at home among the Natives.

They all resumed their climb toward the ship's lock. As they approached the opening a new mindsong intruded on the Oliat's awareness, different and deeply disturbing.

At the top of the ramp two warrior guards leveled then-spears, barring entry to the ship. Chinchee protested, and an animated discussion ensued, which was interrupted by a truly huge rustleman female, a Rustlemother, decked in harnesses and leathers covered with thousands of tiny polished jewels that rattled together musically with every movement she made. She came out of the interior of the ship, lit from behind by the ship's emergency lights. She moved jerkily and braced herself with one hand against the bulkhead when she reached the lock. It wasn't just her advanced age. She was not well.

Za

She parted the guards and admitted them, but then ordered the guards to follow. Apparently the hive had no idea of their goal or purpose but was simply standing aside to see what they'd do.

Threntisn led them through dirt-smudged corridors directly to the main lab where Jindigar had come to donate a blood specimen for Krinata. He stopped in the space between the door and the clerk's counter, fighting despair.

The place was a shambles. Clearly the technicians had defended themselves well. Movable lab equipment had been swept from the tops of fixed counters, and some portable tables had been overturned, chronometers smashed, but many of the drawers and bins had been locked, as had the doors to some of the side rooms. Dark stains that could only be blood were smeared on the sides of cabinets. The floor was strewn with fresh dirt ground in by many feet. A place had been cleared in the middle of the room and stones laid for a hearth fire, which now smoldered dully, coating everything with soot.

And the whole place stank—not the cozy hive redolence they'd encountered where they'd taken refuge on the plain, but burning synthetics, meat seared over open fire, suppurating wounds, illness, and the close pungency of unwashed bodies still reeking of terror, desperation, hope, grief, and something else that pierced through the rest insistently.

//This can never be replaced!// Trinarvil's despair nearly overwhelmed the Oliat.

Jindigar demanded more curtly than he intended, //Emulator, how does this look to the hive?//

The alien den had been made marginally livable, but there were few amenities. Yet it was the best shelter available for the hiveheart. The mind-gatherers in fullsong were desperately grateful for the shelter, even if they lacked food and water. In the other barely livable chambers of this deserted hive, the mind-singers were being tenderly cared for, though they called forlornly for the hivemothers, thwarted in their need to spur the hive's regeneration. Nothing could convince their bodies that the newhive had been displaced from the home they'd built, that it wasn't safe yet to make new life. And so the hive-mind allowed them a sparse few hivemothers to satisfy instinct, and curtailed their complaints with stern discipline.

//That explains the different mindsong we found here,// concluded Za

//Steady,// cautioned Jindigar. //We have to see this through. The pensone should hold for long enough.// He diverted their attention to evaluating the Rustlemother's status. She moved laboriously after Threntisn when he finally pushed through the gate in the counter and picked his way carefully over the slippery, dirt-covered floor. She was beyond the age where the fullsong could affect her, and so she exercised authority over the hiveheart. From the way her attendants fussed about her, they obviously knew she was deathly ill, and the hive could not afford to lose her.

Yet now a new hope glimmered in the depths of the hive-mind. This strange hive segment from their hostile neighbors seemed to be offering a truce of some sort.

Hoping to find a way to reinforce that impression, Jindigar focused on Threntisn. The Historian carried Cyrus straight across the lab to a small back room where he deposited the Outrider on a treatment table. Jindigar, ignoring the assortment of curious Natives gathering around them, assembled the Oliat around the doorway.

Checking the human's condition and securing the blanket lightly around him, Threntisn glanced toward Trinarvil as if hoping the medic would take charge. But, of course, Trinarvil could not function so in Oliat. He fixed on Krinata and asked, "Jindigar's, are they going to let me do it?"