Fully possessing his Oliat at last, feeling very much closer to Completion, he let his awareness spread. Outside the Aliom Temple, many Dushau waited for the signal for the weddings. They occupied a grassed area within a circle of saplings that separated the Historians' Temple from their own. The crude log buildings had survived the winter admirably, but they planned to build more permanent stone structures as soon as possible.

Beyond the temple square, spread the Dushau compound. Close by was housing for those not in Renewal and an embryonic business and manufacturing district. Off to one side an interior wall protected the Renewal compound where housing was already being built with children, schools, and attendant services in mind. The entire Dushau area was now enclosed by a palisade of logs overhung by tall shade trees.

On the other side of the Aliom Temple, at the far north corner of the Dushau compound, was the inner gate, and beyond it, the enclosed area where they traded With ephemerals. From the outer gate of the trade area, .two graveled paths led to the houses where the other four species of the colony dwelled. Farther to the north were the fields, barns, and corrals. Today, smoke rose from the kiln as pottery was fired, and the moisture-laden air carried the scent of the tannery from across the river.

The Oliat's perspective showed them all this at once, while they were peripherally aware of the cliff rising over the colony's west side and the river winding by at the eastern border. The river came so near the Dushau back gate that they could hear its rain-swollen current as well as the raging waterfall that cascaded over the cliff nearby, turning their one electrical generator, then feeding the river.

Beyond the northwest edge of the colony, an area at the base of the cliff was packed with the skeletons of flying fortresses and spaceships, their only technological support.

Nearer the colony, high up on the cliff face, a cave had been enlarged by the Holot, the heavily pelted, six-limbed species who seemed mammalian but didn't suckle their young. They used the cave for making food for their infants.

Far to the southwest, the Oliat awareness picked up a storm brewing. On the plain above the cliff, shrubs bloomed, filling the air with a sticky, irritating pollen that clogged everything, coating all exposed surfaces with gum.

Jindigar drank in the experience of his Oliat's full global awareness, something he had lived millennia only imagining. Now, at the very moment when he'd grasped the fringes of its possibilities, he must relinquish it. He could, for the first time, fully appreciate the reason a Center's Oliat career ended with his Oliat. One could easily become addicted to this and become unable to survive as an individual.

He felt the others savoring the beauty of this final union, comparing it to how they'd striven and suffered before to garner just a fraction of the information now flowing through their multiconsciousness. Now that they'd tasted it, they yearned to refine their focus, to know every microbe in the Cassrians' hatching pond, every denizen of the river, every disease destroying the fish hatchery, every parasite attacking the sprouting fields—how all these fit into the single ecology they were building out of disparate imports and native life forms.

But he had to curb their eagerness to explore this new awareness. He tuned the linkages closer to the shaleiliu chord, letting them vibrate, soaking up the energy of the unheard sound. The Dissolution that he had been so afraid of would not be at all difficult, now that he had them balanced. He worked those linkages, one at a time, and then in pairs, tediously tuning and retuning, until he felt the wavering, desolidifying shimmer that signified impending Dissolution of the linkages.

A stray thought surfaced. Now Trinarvil would not serve in his Oliat—as she had predicted she would one day. This whole year, everyone had regarded Krinata as just holding Trinarvil's place until she was well enough to work Oliat. Trinarvil's prophetic gift had never failed before.

And then it happened.

A screeching, clattering wave of tiny bodies blackened the sky, coming into their sphere of awareness from the northeast. Swiftly, the animals poured info the side of the cliff north of the settlement, into the Holot's cave. Two Holot females emerged from the cave mouth, clicking flyers diving at their eyes and throats. One of the women went down, sprawling at the edge of the cave mouth near the ladder. Instantly, she was covered with a black blanket of crawling animals yammering in sudden triumph.

Jindigar abandoned the Dissolution and let the clarity of the linkages resume. //That's a hive-swarm. We've got to stop them—or there won't be a Holot infant left alive.// He tore out the door, Krinata just ahead of him, the others following, their personal concerns forgotten.

The searing sunlight blinded them through Krinata's human sensitivity, but they kept running, gradually forming around Jindigar in the Oliat pattern, Krinata as Outreach in the lead. Seeing this, the Dushau waiting outside for the weddings to begin parted to let them pass. Some Dushau qualified to act as Outriders fell in around them as they caught up to a crowd of Dushau heading for the north gate.

The sky was aswarm with the flowing mosaic of tiny bodies moving as if commanded by one brain. Above the rush of wings and the clicking, twittering, and clattering sound of the animals, they heard screams of anguish, shouts of former military commanders rallying a defense, and finally, the searing crack of weapons fire.

No! the Oliat protested as one mind, and Jindigar half heard

Krinata's echoing of that. The blinding pain of burned animals plummeting out of the sky was added to the panic of the colonists on the defensive. The Oliat shuddered.

Jindigar held them firm, not daring to reduce their sensitivity. As one, they pounded around the curved ends of interlinked walls that formed the inner gate and emerged into the walled courtyard outside the gate. Their ephemeral Outriders, led by the Lehiroh, Storm, and the human Cyrus Benwilliam Lord Kulain, half dressed in his wedding finery, fell into step around the Oliat, replacing the Dushau guards. Jindigar didn't even break stride but headed around the curved ends of the outer gate and onto the trail leading northwest, toward the cliff face.

As they ran, the weapon fire increased. A section of the invading swarm peeled off and attacked their attackers. A few animals penetrated the shield of fire and flew, claws extended, beaks slashing, at the heads of the colonists behind the weapons.

The colonists' valiant effort did not distract the swarm from its main target, though. Above them, in the mouth of the cave, another Holot woman went down under a living blanket of the small beasts, her fur torn away, her eyes pecked out. Below, the Holot men raged, aiming futile barrages of fire into the swarm that stretched in an arched cone all the way to the eastern horizon.

Jindigar detected an animal intelligence in that swarm– cohesive but not truly coherent—guiding this warrior vanguard to seize a haven for the new hive. All of this planet's higher life forms were organized into hives, and spring was a time of swarming.

He increased his pace, closing with Krinata and Cy. After a year of harsh pioneering life, they were all in good condition, but the humans were tiring fast. He chose a spot and left the path, forging out toward the cliff and the cave—trying to get some distance between them and the frantically firing defenders. Then he brought the Oliat up short. Without pausing to let them catch their breath, he set the linkages wide-open again– hoping their increased balance was still his to command.

It was. The shaleiliu hum was still with them. Within two heartbeats, Venlagar, as Receptor for the Oliat, had steadied into a better focus than he had ever achieved before. The roiling ferment of life forces flowing around them resolved, and Jindigar breathed a sigh of praise to Venlagar—his strongest officer.