On the plain above them, the plains grasses were almost tall enough to hide the hive now. But the Oliat awareness caught the gleaming damp surface where the Gifter builders had enlarged the hive. Above the gray hump of the structure, little flyer warriors churned angrily in cone formations, waiting for the signal to attack an enemy. Gravid layers were already crawling over the surface of the large hive, thwarted instincts creating confusion. Unless something were done soon, the hive would send out its warriors.

Feeling their urgency driving like the beat of his own heart, , Jindigar found the need for a functional Outreach overwhelming. He had to tell them, //The Holot must build the Gifters a pond up on the plain and stock it with river fish for them in return for the syrup.//

But Zannesu kept the choke-link to Krinata tight, so she barely felt Jindigar's message. She turned to eye the Center questioningly, compelled to speak, but having no idea what had to be said.

Jindigar curbed frustration. They would report to the community later. Now they must discover how to control the fungus. There was no way to avoid it. He would have to take them out of time-sync. Reluctantly he announced, //We're going up-perspective. Eithlarin, brace yourself—//

He directed Venlagar's attention deep into the pond's microlife to anchor them in the now, then brought his Formulator and Emulator into the time-sync configuration. He felt Darllanyu's support holding rock-steady now that her concentration wasn't riven by hormonal surges. She was the only one except himself who had done this in the field before. And she had actually done it as Formulator, while he had never tried it as Center.

Gently he raised the perspective until past, present, and future formed a unified whole, just as the interlocked bio-systems had been clear to the Oliat gestalt.

The first hatchlings of the Gifter eggs had eaten some Cassrian eggs by dissolving a hole in the shell. The tailored mutant fungus, invading swiftly, had infected the Gifter-amphibian hatchlings. It took root on the tender young skin and grew until it covered the tadpole, and the skin sloughed off, leaving the tadpole to die in agony.

There was nothing like it on Phanphihy. The native beings had no defense. The fungus not only killed Gifter amphibians, it devoured all the native pond swimmers.

The Oliat saw the seething death-pond as joined in a single system to the withering cornfield where a new, landborne secondary imitation of the fungus covered the plants. In the corn– field the sprouts peeked up from the dark soil in rows of light green. Rusty dots of fungoid growth covered the shoots. Jindigar guided the Oliat focus deeper, observing from the three-time perspective of past, present, and future, as the native and offworld life forms fought to coexist. Tuning carefully to both the parent pond-fungus and the plant-fungus, he addressed his

Oliat. //We need to find how to eradicate the fungus—without turning Phanphihy against all outsiders.//

In response Llistyien Emulated the hive structure—the huge gray dome that covered the offworld colony and declared to all Phanphihy's collective consciousness that here was a hive sheltering a multispecies cooperative, living just as the dominant sentient species of Phanphihy lived.

Eithlarin joined the Protector's function to the Emulator's, and the dome took on substance—for it was protection and protective coloration.

//This should keep the hives from turning against the colony,// suggested Eithlarin. Ill can hold it now, so you can search.//

Cautiously Jindigar tested their attunement to the planet. The Oliat was still accepting the planet as comprehensible, the hives of flying creatures, land herbivores, hunting carnivores, tree dwellers, and burrowing kinds as friendly to the colony-hive.

Satisfied that they were solidly grounded in a benign world and that Venlagar had them firmly anchored in time, Jindigar opened the linkages among the six of them, still keeping the Outreach link choked off. He let the total attunement steal over them, observing with a wistful satisfaction that the great tone, the carrier wave of the universe, was there for them again, louder, firmer, surer than it had been in the Holot cave. They were truly an Oliat.

His joy was echoed by his other five officers—and he wished Krinata were part of this moment. Jindigar's Oliat. It felt much as he imagined Completion would feel.

They became one with the entire pattern, which was the biosphere around them, and with the world force—the intangible spiritual force of this planet that sustained them. Jindigar kept their window into time only a few days wide, their geographical range no larger than a day's walk in every direction. He focused Venlagar on Receiving the development of the fungus.

In clear images generated by Receptor and Formulator working in perfect tandem, Jindigar saw the lab on the ship where the fungus was redesigned. Two Lehiroh and a Holot worked in protective coveralls over the micro equipment. A simple workaday job—gone awry. For within the potion they presented to the committees some of the fungus starter wasn't properly stabilized.

Simultaneously the Oliat was aware of how the fungus-choked pond had lain dead and rotting in the sun with flying scavengers plucking the floating carcasses up and making off with them—landing in the cornfield to feast, leaving their fungus-loaded droppings behind at the end of the day. And in the moist, sun-warmed soil the unstable fungus had mutated, producing the variety that could—and did—live on corn.

Darllanyu Formulated an image shaleiliu to that. In one of the barns the Lehiroh had built a nut press to extract oil. They had found the pungent oil from a tree nut to be a spice that made native foods palatable to Lehiroh and enhanced their ability to absorb nutrients from Phanphihy's produce.

Darllanyu's forward-time image showed Cassrians and humans bent over the corn plants, dobbing that oil onto the leaves of the plants and soaking the ground around them with it. As if in time-lapse display, they saw the fungus dying, the corn growing strong and healthy and bearing huge ears of beadlike seeds the humans fed on gladly.

Jindigar took in the awarenesses of his Oliat, then cast their perceptions wide again—checking and double-checking as he had not been able to do in the Holot cave. He had to see what would happen if all three solutions were implemented at once.

Darllanyu Formulated the image of the Holot tending a Gifter hatching pond on the plain above, while below, the Cassrians covered their pond with the Lehiroh's spice oil to kill the fungus. Meanwhile the cornfield likewise was saturated in the oil.

The Oliat found instantly that the Lehiroh, lacking their supply of the oil, would suffer an increasing vitamin shortage until the next nut harvest. And with so many of the men lactating, they couldn't afford even temporary anemia.

Jindigar widened the time perspective to several months. Instantly it became clear that the ripening fruits of spring would solve the Lehiroh nutrition problem. It was not as good as the nut oil, but the Lehiroh infants were sturdy enough even at birth to survive well.

Still hesitant, thinking of the disasters his work had inflicted on the colony so far, Jindigar checked again, then verified it all one more time. At length Zannesu commented, //This is a beautiful world, Jindigar. But it seems it's the beauty of your Oliat's balance that fascinates you.//

Abashed, Jindigar noticed that Eithlarin and Zannesu were feeling the strain—for Jindigar, stabilized by Darllanyu's having taken the drug, had been able to ignore all the truly glorious springtide forces abroad in the world, while Eithlarin and Zannesu were all too aware of them.

Llistyien, likewise more interested in the renewing lifetides, was tiring under the strain of holding the hive-dome image she held with Eithlarin.