Then he caught up the linkages from Zannesu and turned the Oliat out, toward the world of Phanphihy, seeking the shaleiliu between the Holot hunger and the world's abundance.

It was the simplest of Oliat exercises. Out there, the life forces surged with determination equal to that of the Holot. The spring had brought renewal to this world, but the Holot were not of a piece with it.

The Oliat subforms, strive as they had throughout the winter, had not brought the offworld settlement into tune with this ecology. The colonists and Phanphihy had only one thing in common—the propagation of new life, the raw enthusiasm for survival, the upsurge of the cycle of renewal.

Reaching for the point of shaleiliu, Jindigar traced that commonality, absorbed now in a Center's task and momentarily oblivious to the dangers, gratefully accepting one last gratification before Renewal forced him to reorder his priorities. He surrendered to the infant's hunger and frantic need for the safety of home, casting about for the fulfillment of that need.

All at once Darllanyu echoed that need, her concentration disrupted by a burst of Renewal hormones. She lost attunement with Phanphihy, alien and unreal. Reflexively, she raked the Oliat linkages for the one secure anchor, the wellspring of life, the core energies of Dushaun itself, home. Jindigar, tied to her at depths beyond fathoming, was swept along, his perceptions shifting. The spring lifetide of Phanphihy akin to home, but yet alien, became a looming menace.

He could not separate his perception from Darllanyu's.

Through him, her convulsive rejection of this world suffused the Oliat. In a whirl they all lost the attunement with Phanphihy, the shaleiliu hum deserted them, and the Oliat balance disintegrated.

Fighting panic, Jindigar forced his eyes open but saw only darkness fraught with sinister gleams of dark red against black– rocks, vats, beings—alien beings. The Oliat multiawareness brought him insane fragments of images through his officers' eyes and an overwhelming sense of revulsion.

Old, basic drills taking hold, Jindigar sought his Outreach's linkage and opened to it, reinforcing his Oliat's baseline. Her human vision showed the cave walls, gray with glints of white and blue. The vats shone bronze. The fire spread a radiance by which he could see Venlagar holding the Holot baby—and he could feel Krinata's arms cradling the infant's warm softness, her innermost being melting into a nearly orgasmic yearning for a child of her own, something she had never been interested in before.

Venlagar, under the confusing onslaught of the disintegrated balance, staggered backward. Krinata caught the baby up from Venlagar's grip and whirled to stare at Jindigar, eyes glittering, mouth open showing pale white teeth and blazing fury, as if he'd violated her most sacred being. //How dare you! Get out of my head!//

Around them, officers reeled, sagging to the ground, caught by their Outriders, whose touch would not be felt as too intrusive. Darllanyu, gravitating toward the child, got her hands onto the infant, blasting the linkages with a Formulator's perception of the baby's need. Krinata pulled back possessively. Jindigar, all his being wanting only to touch the worldcircle energies of Dushaun, nevertheless drove himself toward the infant, wondering briefly if he was Center enough to save them from this.

Krinata wrenched the baby from Darllanyu's grasp, heedless of the infant's slashing claws, but she pulled too hard. She staggered back, stepped on Cyrus's foot, overcorrected, and lunged forward into Jindigar. Clutching the baby to her to protect its fragile body, she twisted aside as they all fell, toppling Storm with them.

Despite Cyrus's effort, Krinata's head hit the floor. The human vision dimmed, as if Krinata were losing consciousness. Then everything went wild.

Fighting panic, Jindigar found himself isolated outside the Oliat linkages, detached as if surveying his own Oliat from some astral vantage, connected to them only by a slim thread. And Krinata was at their Center now.

His officers, thrashing in panic themselves, clutched at the artificial Center as if she were their own.

She knew little of that. Her whole attention was on Jindigar floating bodilessly in some other dimension. There was an urge in her to snap that tenuous link to Jindigar and send him to Incompletion-death. As I once sent Takora.

Will paralyzed by that thought, he was unable to plead with her. In all of his dealings with Ontarrah/Krinata he always ended up at her mercy, helpless, seriously wondering if he had . earned Incompletion-death by virtue of stupidity. All his fear of this entity burgeoned upward, and it seemed an insanely rational fear.

Then, with a mind-wrenching twist, without time to think that this was death, he fell into the familiar Office of Outreach. In that moment the shaleiliu hum surged through the Oliat– Krinata's Oliat—with a brash new power, zooming their awareness in on the single point of harmony between Phanphihy and the Holot's hunger, restoring a shaky attunement to the planet.

The locus was on the plain above the cliff—a hive of pollen-gatherers whose main staple was the sticky pollen now being produced by the abundant grasses. From this, a certain tree sap, and their own saliva, they made a syrupy suspension of nutrients for their own use—and as a gift to make allies. The Gifter hive, alive with spring's furious activities, was bound, as all Phanphihy hives, through a sensitive group consciousness. As the Oliat browsed over their identity, the hive paused– as if on one held breath.

In that instant of precise clarity the Oliat found the syrup compatible with the Holot infant's needs—but without Jindigar at Center to judge the matter.

Krinata's will drove them, her bottomless compassion for the baby, her nurturing impulse that would not let anything or anyone go hungry, her emotions, wakened by Emulation, and fueled by her human metabolism's eternal state of quasi-Renewal. The Oliat's response reverberated. The young must be cared for. The purpose of life is within the young.

Dimly, Jindigar noticed the committee onlookers near the cave mouth murmuring among themselves, nerving themselves to intervene while the Dushau there hastened to restrain them.

Then the soundless tone that bound Krinata's Oliat dopplered away, the Oliat's balance wobbling in Krinata's grip before she could finish the evaluation. Worse, she lost the distinct identity of each of the Offices, the discreet links connecting them swelling and blurring, almost as if about to Dissolve, but instead leaving them aswim in a miasma of wild energies.

But it was Jindigar's Oliat. Summoning all his will, he opened a clear, firm link to Zannesu, assigning him to Inreach again and, by that act, taking Center. //Zannesu, can you tolerate the link to Krinata at Outreach?//

A surge of horror came back through the link, but Zannesu replied, //Since I must, I can.//

Jindigar turned his attention to his other officers, and one by one, called them. //Outreach. Inreach. Receptor. Emulator. Protector. Formulator.// Shaping and holding the balance, relying on the vague attunement to Phanphihy that Krinata had brought them, he told them, //We have a job to finish. We must tell the Holot about the Gifter hive and negotiate with the Gifters for the colony.//

Krinata's touch on the Outreach link came in strong, commanding, competent—the touch that had held them with a towering strength from Center. As Jindigar set their goal before them, human perceptions faded back into the Oliat awareness, and all the surprising strength disintegrated. Suddenly helpless, she cried out, rolled away from Jindigar, and curled around the now-struggling baby. Cyrus scrambled around in front of her.