Farfetch tdt-2 Read online

  He worked his way back along the line, shouting, “Get loose, let the sled pass over you, then give it a good push. It will come to rest about an hour straight on, and we’ll pick them up after we rest!”

  She helped others out of their harnesses, until they came to the trailing sled, pulled by Frey. “All right, Frey, let’s get this thing stopped!” called Jindigar. It was the water sled, massive enough to pose a problem.

  The young Dushau slipped out of the harness and turned to catch at the control panel on the leading edge, dancing back before the oncoming mass. He got his hand on the brake lever, but it would not move down. “It’s stuck!” yelled Frey.

  “Storm!” yelled Jindigar, throwing himself at one corner of the sled. “Drag it down!” And then to Frey, he called, ‘Take the other corner!”

  Krinata took the middle of the front of the sled, held on, and let it drag her heels in the sand. The Lehiroh caught the rear corners, and as the mass dragged them toward the group of humans, the two men, Gibson and Fenwick, joined on the sides. The commotion excited the piols, who scampered from side to side and chittered happily, as if this were the grandest entertainment.

  The sled stopped just short of the two exhausted Holot who’d slumped in their tracks without noticing the commotion.

  “Our first equipment failure,” said Jindigar, grimly eyeing the furred, six-limbed Holot while examining Krinata’s arm. “Is it bleeding again?” With a medic’s firm touch he pushed her sleeve back to poke at the bandage. “Looks all right. How does it feel?”

  “Fine,” she lied. She didn’t think it would bleed.

  Jindigar knelt beside the drooping Holot, who were Wearily aware they’d almost been run over. Examining their eyes, one hand feeling each sweat-plastered pelt, he said, “You just need water. You’ll be fine. You’ve done well so far, and it’s going to be easier now that the sun’s down.”

  For Jindigar, Krinata knew, the darkness would bring the greater hardship of near blindness. The intense desert light was dim to his perceptions, while the slightly higher gravity was his norm. She asked Frey, “Can you get at the water?”

  “Yes.” He attacked the shrouded cargo, the two piols peeping over the edge at him as he loosed tethers.

  Gibson helped, saying, “My canteen went dry hours ago.”

  Krinata remembered her own canteen, which she’d barely touched. She gave it to Jindigar, who held it for the Holot female, Terab, who’d been a spaceship captain until she’d lost her license for helping Jindigar’s son, and Jindigar had financed her new start in life. She struggled to drink from the spout built for humanoid lips, then curbed her eagerness, shoving the canteen toward her mate. “He needs it more!”

  Jindigar rose, pleased they’d revived enough to share the water. As he passed Krinata, heading for where Frey had the cargo exposed, he scolded, “You shouldn’t have refrained. You could go down with heatstroke.”

  He’s changed so since our escape! But she was too tired to be charitable. She followed him, complaining, “Why are you always thinking of the things that could happen to me? Haven’t you learned I’m not so frail—”

  He turned, desert cloak flying, indigo face unreadable. “I’ve worked on many worlds with human Outriders who competed with other species until they collapsed, endangering everyone. Experience is a harsh teacher. If I’ve wronged you—”

  Abruptly it seemed to Krinata that he was using the group’s welfare to rationalize his behavior, so he wouldn’t have to admit how much he really cared for these ephemerals. It was unlike him. He’d defended his friendships with ephemerals before other Dushau. But after what he’d endured lately she couldn’t blame him. “Forget it. I’ll be more careful.”

  She bent to untangle the lashing cords, and Jindigar went to where the Cassrian family sat, cleaning sand out of the joints of their exoskeletons. He played with the piols, fed the smallest child, and cheered them by twittering in their own language. The father, Trassle, had once pulled Jindigar out of a fire, saving his life. Now he seemed to be concealing weakness and pain from his family—but not from Jindigar. He respects Trassle.

  Later, she was leaning against the sled’s cargo and drinking greedily when Jindigar paused to apologize. “I’ve been treating you as a patient because I perceive you as gravely injured. / failed to keep Desdinda out of our triad, so your injury is my responsibility. From your point of view, you took a risk to save us all—and succeeded, which is worth taking pride in. I suppose we’re both right.”

  She stood up straight. “Does that mean you’re going to give me another chance in the triad?”

  “Krinata, that’s impossible. For all the reasons—”

  “Humans heal certain things more quickly than Dushau.”

  “Perhaps, but—” Storm called to Jindigar, and he shouted back, “Coming!” He left, muttering, “We’ll talk!”

  She slumped down to the sand, propping her back against the sled, hips and thighs aching. Jindigar had taken an awful risk letting the first human into a triad, an Oliat subform used to train Oliat officers. And in the end she had done what no Dushau could ever do: she’d deliberately killed another Dushau who was linked to them all, having invaded their triad and made it a tetrad—a different Oliat subform. Did Jindigar feel he’d created a monster? How could she prove to him that he hadn’t?

  Her eye drifted to the shaded side of the dune where Frey was sitting munching rations, staring into space. On impulse—the kind of instant action Jindigar had praised in her, calling it a trait cultivated by those who studied Aliom, the philosophy behind the Oliat practices—she grabbed another ration bar and went to join Frey.

  He glanced up in welcome and made a place for her beside him. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said. Silence stretched until she asked what about, and he offered hesitantly, “We’re zunre, you know.”

  “I’ve wanted to think of the three of us that way.” Zunre, those bound to the same Oliat, were considered closer than blood relatives. “Only Jindigar doesn’t accept me.”

  “But he does, and that’s the problem. Krinata, do you understand why he mustn’t?—It isn’t my place to say it, but I see you gravitating to Jindigar’s company, and I see him fighting to protect himself and the Archive he carries, and—it’s hard to watch your zunre hurting each other.”

  He’s thinking of Desdinda too. She was zunre to us, if only for a moment. “I’ve never meant to hurt Jindigar—or any Dushau.”

  <‘You were there when Grisnilter promised Jindigar he could take the Archive from him and still work Oliat without the Archive interfering. Jindigar didn’t believe it—Grisnilter knew nothing of Oliat dangers—but he took the Archive, anyway.”

  Krinata remembered the windowless bus in which they’d been prisoners. Grisnilter, the oldest Dushau she’d ever seen and a famous Historian, lay across the backseat of the bus, dying. Grisnilter was custodian of a historical record, the Archive, a living memory impressed into his mind, and it would perish with his death if he couldn’t impress it on another Dushau with the talent to become Historian.

  “It hasn’t given Jindigar any trouble,” offered Krinata.

  “Not until Desdinda’s death,” answered Frey. “He tries, but he can’t hide it from me. He’s erratically accessing the Archive, and he’s frightened. It’s a… a sacred trust. He mustn’t mar that record, he mustn’t become lost in it, he mustn’t lose it behind grieving scars, and he mustn’t die before he can pass it on to a Historian. Do you understand?”

  “Dushau memory works differently from human.” Krinata nodded. “You re-experience emotional pain every time you access a memory of something that happened before it.”

  “Yes, and Jindigar was always very good at farfetching, despite his many scars and lack of Historian’s training.”

  Farfetching was the eidetic recall of memories thousands of years past. The danger was to go episodic, to become lost in memory, a fatal form of insanity for a Dushau. Grisnilter had thought Jindigar immune to that—but
he wasn’t.

  “Now he’s afraid that his lack of training,” continued Frey, “may cause him to betray a trust. Everything seems to evoke the Archive for him—even just talking to you.”

  “So that’s why he won’t attempt the triad again—”

  Frey shook his head. “Jindigar’s been qualified to Center an Oliat longer than I’ve lived. I couldn’t guess at all the factors he’s considering when he says no. I’d never dare go against his judgment.”

  “Even when it may be impaired by his personal problems? Even when the survival of the whole group may

  depend on it? Frey, you’re surely old enough to think for

  yourself!” She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “I didn’t

  mean”

  Frey laughed. “And you, zunre, are likewise old enough to think for yourself.” He sobered. “Krinata, we may be zunre, but I don’t wish to acquire ephemeral friends. I don’t know on what grounds to appeal to you—professional, personal, or ethical. I can only beg—stay away from him.”

  “The group is too small to promise that, but I’ll try not to hurt him.” He should have told me. If Frey was right, that explained why none of her arguments affected Jindigar’s decision. He didn’t fear her infirmity, but his own, and his own was not aggravated by the Cassrians.

  As the young Dushau gathered his canteen to rise, Jindigar mounted the dune to join them. “Storm’s right,” he called as he drew close, “there’s no way to fix the brake on the water sled without tearing it apart. And there’s no time for that.” He surveyed the western horizon where the dirty pall was creeping higher into the magenta sky. “Frey?”

  The youth’s eyes flicked to Krinata, then fixed on the ground as he replied, “Yes, I’ve been studying the storm.

  We’re not going to make it at this rate. But now that we’re this far, there’s nothing to do but try.”

  He said we could make it. Is Jindigar’s judgment slip ping?

  “With the sun down we’ll be able to pick up the pace,” argued Jindigar.

  “Jindigar,” Krinata said, “a triad could read the situation better. Perhaps if we change course, the storm would only graze us? Or maybe we can find a closer shelter?”

  Below them the line of march was forming up under the Lehiroh’s guidance. Frey offered, “It’s your decision, of course, but if you judge the danger to the Archive from the storm greater than the danger from the triad, I’d be willing to attempt the triad with Krinata again. I think I might be able to hold it this time, and it would increase our range.”

  “What’s changed your mind?” asked Jindigar.

  “That storm frightens me more than Krinata does. I’ve never been in a sandstorm before.”

  “That’s not it. That storm frightens me too.” As Jindigar compared Krinata and Frey, then gazed into the sunset, she wondered what she’d said to win Frey’s confidence. Then Jindigar muttered, “Perhaps we should attempt a triad, though it may incapacitate Krinata.”

  “Jindigar,” she pled, “just try it for a second or two. We have to get a glimpse of what’s really out there. And I’m not as fragile as you think!”

  The Lehiroh were coaxing the water sled back into the air and turning it so the rear end would now lead. Jindigar glanced down, then fixed his back to the scene, agreeing reluctantly. “Just for a second or two.” He issued technical instructions to Frey, then gathered Krinata’s eyes.

  Presently she felt a wall enclosing the two Dushau, shutting her out. It dissolved and re-formed behind her, and then she lost touch with the sand dune, and the people below.

  Boiling, raging, churning storm, a billion particles seeth ing skyward, organized as a living being; the helpless, aban doned sliver of metal half swallowed by a dune; scattering of stickfigures, glittering against the sand in artificial desert cloaks; line of massive lumps floating beside a long ridge; and beyond, slightly north of their course, the rising ground broken, scraggly bushes, a fan shape of dead bushes leading to the mouth of a dry wash whose sides were cave-riddled.

  She was the sand, the wind, the struggling life, and it was all one, its oneness a painful beauty. She was also the storm, her anger rising at the escape of the sparkling parts of the sliver she needed to bury, to destroy. She looked out of the whirling chaos of storm, and she also watched herself looking out, undisturbed by four loci of perception. She saw her face, as if in a mirror, indigo against dirty magenta, bridgeless Dushau nose, hate-filled indigo eyes, sickly white teeth–Desdinda’s face. She was herself and hated Desdinda, and was Desdinda and hated the human intruder and Jindigar, the Aliom priest who had befouled an Archive with his Inversions. Destroy!

  Krinata felt the ravening madness reaching out to shake the very sky, and everything in her defied it. Then, another presence was attracted by the turmoil, a sevenfold presence that stretched her brain and distorted her mind as if to rip her identity apart. She didn’t hear herself scream.

  A wide, meandering river approached a sheer cliff, and between its bend and the cliff, dirt roads cut across an area strewn with half-finished foundations and piles of logs. On one side a stockade was going up, on the other, orbital landers were parked.

  A subaudible hum shimmered through the scene, a grow ing vibration. She could feel everything in that settlement beginning to thrum to a complex rhythm, linking and af fecting everything and everyone else. Her teeth, her bones, every nerve vibrated with increasing energy. She was being shaken apart from within as another Dushau woman’s face formed. She was lovely, about the same coloring as Jindigar. As the vibration increased, her serene pleasure turned to recognition, shock, and then alarm.

  Krinata, her heart stuttering as if she hadn’t breathed in minutes, her bones aching with inaudible hot sound, saw through a screen of black dots Jindigar’s face suffused with a naked pleasure that was embarrassing. Then everything went black. She never felt herself hit the sand.

  When she came to, the sun had barely moved, and Storm was bending over Jindigar, who was muttering, “Darllanyu, darllanyu…” while Frey knelt over him arguing, “No, it’s sunset, not dawn. Jindigar!”

  She sat up, holding her breath, remembering Frey had been afraid that Jindigar could become lost in the Archive, episodic, disoriented beyond cure. That settlement they’d seen must have been from the Archive. If he thought it was now dawn—

  Storm saw her clutching her pounding head. “Krinata!” He came to her. “What happened?”

  “Not sure—some—ooohhh!” She hurt all over.

  Jindigar, on his knees, shaking his head to clear it, saw her. “You—” he started. “Desdinda!”

  “She’s dead,” Krinata reminded him insistently.

  He got to his feet, drawing Frey with him, reassuring them both. “I know. Frey, don’t you remember now?”

  Bewildered, the younger Dushau said, “Remember what?”

  “What Krinata did while we were unconscious after the crash!” He looked to Krinata as if normal people always remembered what they’d been doing while unconscious, and at her denial, prompted, “You linked us in triad, and Desdinda Inverted us and brought the storm down on Truth.”

  “Jindigar,” repeated Krinata through the buzzing ache in her skull, “Desdinda is dead.”

  “Yes! I should have realized!” He gazed down at the three Lehiroh who were testing the water sled brake, but he wasn’t seeing them. He was abstracted as pieces of a puzzle fell into place. “It’s a Loop, of course.”

  Frey exclaimed, “You mean Desdinda is looping in Krinata!” He turned to her. “Oh, Krinata, I’m sorry!”

  “It’s only apparent,” continued Jindigar, “when we link triad. I knew we never should have tried it!”

  “Now wait a minute,” protested Krinata, getting up despite the explosion of pain. “I seem to recall an image of a dry wash—and caves—a bit off our course to the north. Wouldn’t it be a shorter trek to head—”

  “I remember!” said Frey. “Jindigar, we can make it!”

&nb
sp; “Yes, but, Krinata, you must understand. This Loop is dangerous. A fragment of Desdinda’s hatred resides in your mind like a flight of electrons trapped in a superconducting torus, or an endless-loop recording. Whenever we tap you in triad, it’s activated, Inverts us, and uses us to destroy ourselves.”

  She felt soiled. “Well, it didn’t win this time. And it won’t—ever—I promise.”

  He put one hand on her shoulder. “No, it won’t win, zunre. / promise.”

  Then, in a whirl, they were pulling out, racing the storm again. They found their sleds drifting lazily, and Jindigar swiftly made the assignments, giving one to Shorwh, the eldest of the Cassrian children, when he insisted he was strong enough to spell his father at the chore.

  She trudged behind Jindigar’s sled, contemplating this alien thing inside her, wondering what the cure would be. Revolted by the idea of being dominated by a malevolent spirit, she had to force herself to think about it, to formulate questions to ask Jindigar at the first chance. Knowing what it was, she could surely control it.

  As the hours wore on she spent most of her energy ignoting the rough chafing of the straps of her harness where grit had sifted through her clothing. She’d bound her hair tightly on top of her head, but wisps escaped and plastered themselves to her sweating face. The explorer-issue hiking boots she wore were full of sand again and seemed to weigh more than she did. There was a blister on her right heel that screamed with every step.

  Angling north, Jindigar set a faster pace now that the cruel sun was down. He walked with his desert cloak thrown back and his head high, as if sniffing the wind, no sign in his stride that he was nearly blind and using the duad perceptions to guide them.

  It was a race now, she told herself, banishing the image of the storm swerving and chasing them across the desert. Desdinda’s rage was not hers and would not dominate her.

  The moon had passed zenith and begun its descent before Krinata stumbled for the first time. “I tripped on a rock!” she exclaimed as she regained her balance. “A rock!”

  Jindigar glanced over at her and called, “Good. Watch your step now. We’re coming to the edge of the valley.” He had her pass that message back, and Krinata heard grumbling protests that it was too dark to watch anything.