//Even after you choked down my link to nothing, I still saw him as a devil from hell because I was seeing him from six other points of view—and all of them Dushau. I think that's because / am a Center too. You see, your link to your Outreach was shut down—but / seem to have forged links to the other officers of my own—as a Center. Maybe it happened when I tried to take over from you—but, anyway, they are there. I can feel them, even if you can't.//

//You can feel// That would certainly explain why he

hadn't been able to control the distortion for Krinata, or to shut down the feedback between her image of the Holot and Eithlarin’s image of the beast that had killed her zunre. The second set of links, operating out of sync with his and uncontrolled, would explain why Llistyien retreated to running with animals, a vague shaleiliu. Her innate optimism had turned flight from terrifying predator into training predator birds to defend her from nightmare.

A second set of links might even have contributed to driving Eithlarin episodic. Not that it's Krinata's fault. I should have known those links wouldn't just disappear after the cave. Yet Krinata could be just imagining her own links. Imagination was her primary talent.

//Well,// she continued, strumming firm chords, //I know you did the right thing because even after you opened the choke-link, I had no impulse whatever to take over your Oliat. Takora's experience is in me—far more experience than you'll ever have as Center—and her experience says you did right.//

//Krinata—if you really were Takora, you'd never have let yourself be caught up in the Oliat linkages, and you'd certainly never have become Outreach to my Oliat. Never in the memory of anyone alive today has a Center been foolish enough to rejoin an Oliat.//

//Not even as Center,// she agreed, //for that would be the attempt to recapture past peak experiences—to create stagnation. The result would be a falling out of the Office of Center into another office—and the Oliat would perish.//

Fie had never told her that. //Where did you learn that?//

//Takora learned it—from Nushitan, her teacher. And Takora taught you—on the planet Riish, in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. I don't remember any more than that. Where's Riish? I've never heard of it.//

//I don't know offhand where it is,// he answered absently. //I'd have to ask Arlai.// But the Sentient computer was dormant, inactivated, nothing more than a metal box among Jindigar's most precious possessions.

//Jindigar, what would it take to convince you?//

Ill think,// he admitted as it slowly came to him in chilling waves, //I think I am convinced. I just don't want to admit it. But there's no way you could have grabbed Center that one time if you didn't have both Takora's knowledge and her experience. And you didn't get her experience from me—because 1 don't have it.//

Ill didn't have it, either, at first. I think you were right when you said I'd just picked up some of Takora's memories from you. But somehow those acquired memories wakened more. And now it's different, Jindigar. Sometimes—only sometimes—I am Takora.//

//Do you feel these—extra—linkages into the Oliat even now?//

// Not really. They're only there when there's a crisis.//

//If I see you command those linkages, exhibiting Takora's style, I think I'd have to admit you are Takora.// But it doesn't matter. There's no way on Phanphihy to Dissolve an Oliat with two Centers, and whether she was Takora or not, we are an Oliat with two Centers.

When Dar was ready, they'd make their try for Eithlarin. They had all agreed on that. And he had promised Zannesu that if he could get the full pattern of linkages operating, he'd try for Dissolution. He had been thinking he might still save them all. But if Krinata really had been Takora, or even just had Takora's Center experience, at least some of them would die.

He had to accept that. The time had come when he had to deliberately sacrifice some lives that others might survive to Completion. Yet everything in him shrank from it. Even the chance that some of them might reincarnate as ephemerals didn't help. / will not choose who lives and who dies, but I will not survive if Krinata dies.

//Look—// offered Krinata, //I shouldn't have said anything. I—the human in me–thought it might make you fed better to know that someone understands. Jindigar—you're carrying too much of a load for all of us. It's not right.//

//A Center would know—I'm only doing the Center's job.// He wanted her ignorance of that to be proof she was only empathizing in the human way—imagining it all. Aliom science rested on the bedrock idea that Dushau could not reincarnate, and Aliom science was their only way out of this trap. He dared not start doubting it now.

She moved a little closer to him. He could feel the heat of her body as she replied, //I do know. That's the problem. Once I made the same mistake—taking on too much of a burden. I collapsed under it, endangered my Oliat, and you had to do– what you did. Now it's as if you're compelled to relive my mistake.//

//If that's the case, Krinata, and you must cut me off to save the others—then do it.// He turned to face her. Ill mean that. You are going to survive this Dissolution.//

She struck the shaleiliu chord on the whule, the chord that summoned the Oliat to session, then she pushed the instrument half into his lap, taking his hand and guiding it to touch the resonating chamber. //This is a manifestation of the carrier wave of the universe, and it seems to be telling me, right now, that you and I go to Completion together—or neither of us goes. If I have to send you off into death, somehow we will meet again and do it all again, until we finally get it right. But I don't intend to do it wrong again this time, Jindigar. This is my Oliat, as it is yours, and I don't intend to lose any of us. Think of it this way—if I'm Takora, then I'm a Center, yes, but I'm a Center who never Dissolved—so I'm still legitimately part of an Oliat. Maybe that's why I couldn't resist.//

That, too, would explain a lot. //But there's no way to determine if you are Takora.//

//The Dissolution will prove it to you, one way or another. I'm not worried. I just don't want you hurt.//

Touched beyond words, he put his arm around her shoulders. He could feel the human bone structure under her jacket as her clean hair moved lightly across his bare forearm. She turned her face up to him, a white oval in the darkness. There was absolutely nothing Dushau about her, nothing even faintly suggestive of female. Yet-a guarding knot inside of him loosened. He felt tension draining from his neck muscles where the glands stirred comfortably. He let his aching fingertips sound the whule strings, suggesting a more intimate melody, mid was not surprised when Krinata's fingers finished the tune of the lovers' song.

Slowly, as if she were fighting an impulse stronger than she was, her hands slipped upward over his chest and sought the sensitive points at the base of his neck with the unerring accuracy of the sexually mature Dushau. But there was a tentative innocence to her exploration that was more erotic than the most experienced bride's touch.

He fell his lips form words put of a softly expelled breath. "Oh. Krinata, no..."

If she were truly Takora—truly a Center—she would know better than to court such a danger. But even if she'd been Takora, she was now human and facing death. Were her needs really so very different from those of a Dushau?

But even if it would help her, it was stirring him and so it must stop. He would have to find the strength.

Suddenly Krinata jerked up, staring into the darkness behind Jindigar. She shrank from what she saw there. Jindigar turned, half afraid that she was hallucinating, tapping into Eithlarin's world somehow.