"//They are waiting to see what you are going to do. Move slowly.//"

Threntisn edged out of the room and surveyed the useless mess in the main lab. His stance and expression showed that he was working an Archive access. He set off across the room, stepped around the fire, and punched a lock code to open another side-room door. On ship's emergency power, the door opened very slowly. It wouldn't be long before the power failed.

Threntisn glanced inside, then, satisfied that he had the right room, he turned and called to Chinchee in Cassrian, "Tell them to wait. I will show them something." Then, as Chinchee burst into twittering motion, he added, "Jindigar's, I think we can do it." And he disappeared inside, closing the door behind him.

Controlling evidence of her weakness, the Rustlemother settled next to the fire. Seven or eight of Chinchee's kind rushed to rekindle it for her comfort. The others burst into discussion both vocal and on some hive-mind level that leaked through to the Oliat along with the insistent call of the hivebinders in heat.

Jindigar's knew now what the hivebinders outside had lamented so. Their brothers were suffering, and because of their unfulfillment, the hive would die. But the hive was dying, anyway. They had no more strength to fight. They had admitted the strangers because they had nothing to lose and because the strangers' hive segment had seemed to understand what it was to lose all. Possibly Chinchee was right, and the strangers did wish to enter the hive to heal.

Threntisn took longer than the technician who had processed Jindigar's blood. Jindigar kept the Oliat standing around the door to Cyrus's room, concentrating on shutting out the ever more insistent hivebinders' fullsong, and consequently they lost track of the hive's reasoning.

Abruptly a mental silence descended, and a small group of htvebinders appeared in the hatchway, dragging Lelwatha's whule. They arrayed themselves before the Oliat, as if they intended to form a team to play the long, complex instrument laid before them.

Nut they didn't touch it. A whisper of another mindsong reached through the Oliat's defense. Jindigar asked Zannesu, //Can you filter that out of the fullsong background?//

It expanded to occupy their whole attention, and it was unmistakably Lelwatha's composition. Hesitantly, with many clumsy searchings for the right fingerings, the mind-gatherers arrayed before the whule plucked out a laborious, but accurate, rendition of the opening notes.

Clearly this was a bid for friendly dialogue. Jindigar itched to go to the whule and demonstrate the sounding of the piece. Instead he told his Emulator, //Llistyien, we must discover their motive for doing this.//

His Emulator brought the hivebinders' viewpoint up, washing them in the obscure symbology. Instantly Darllanyu Formulated an interpretation. The hive-mind figured that the strangers' hive-segment had come here to console the hivebinders in fullsong via their remarkable mindsong. When the strangers' segment had not resumed its mindsong inside the hiveheart, the hivebinders had brought the odd instrument, which had been captured by a valiant warrior, hoping it would stimulate the song.

The hivebinders faced the grotesque mind-singers now, puzzling over the continued silence, trying to reawaken that moment of mindsong they had shared while, in the background, the fullsong resumed, urgent, demanding.

//We can't do Lelwatha's Lament again,// warned Trinarvil. //I won't be able to Protect us with the fullsong in the background.// Renewal undermining her stability, she had reacted very strongly to Lelwatha's composition and expected to lose control this time. Especially, thought Jindigar, if I actually play it on his own whule.

He realized with sudden compassion that Trinarvil and Lelwatha must have known each other intimately, for the very thought of him aroused her further. None of my business. The links were leaking personal information again, despite the pensone, and Jindigar could not shut it off.

Zannesu's grieving for Eithlarin had begun to form a tough scar around the pain, but the wound where his mate had been amputated had not healed yet. However, there was still life in him, despite their suicide mission. Stirred by forces beyond his control, he eyed Trinarvil with speculation and hope. Who could fail to be attracted to her mature vibrancy?

Trinarvil's awareness of Zannesu's condition was sharp enough to pierce the veil of pensone. At the same time Jindigar could feel Darllanyu fighting to keep her eyes off his own neck. Venlagar buried his face in his hands and forced his itching fingers not to stray to his aching glands.

Krinata, embarrassed by inexplicable physical sensations, concentrated madly on how much her feet hurt in the higher gravity of Phanphihy. //Jindigar,// asked his Outreach, //what's going on? The pensone can't be even half worn off yet.//

Before Jindigar could answer, another awareness raked through the Oliat linkages—almost, but not quite, like being scanned by another Oliat.

Zannesu winced away from the crude intrusion. //The hive-mind! Venlagar, watch out!//

The hive-mind tugged at the linkages, plucking them loose from Venlagar's grip.

Stunned, Jindigar struggled to get a new grip on the linkages. But the hivebinders seemed to have combined to lift the linkages out of Jindigar's control.

It was not an attack. There was no malice in it, only innocent curiosity. The moment of nascent arousal had finally struck another familiar note for the hivebinders, who knew that the survival of their hive might well depend on figuring these strangers out. The rustlemen had to know what their motives were. The hivebinders had studied the linkages binding the strangers and now felt no compunction in candidly probing into them, as if there could be no such thing as a private or personal matter.

Jindigar had never felt anything like it. Nor had he ever dreamed he could react to such an intrusion with amused calm. Since I consider myself dead already, very little can threaten me. It was an odd sort of freedom. His Oliat had not completed its mission, and so he would not permit it to be stolen from him. But he did not resist with his ordinary stridency, telegraphing to his opponent that he was indeed seriously threatened and therefore half beaten already. / never knew how much I feared death.

It was another deep-Renewal insight and had no place in the affairs of a Center.

But something of it communicated to the hivebinders. Their probing went from demanding to respectful. Then they withdrew, leaving behind a poignant sorrow over the Oliat's dreadful affliction and a reverence for their nobility in the face of such a fate.

The hivebinders climbed onto the whule, sitting erect with their hand limbs clasped before them, here and there a leg draped over the side to keep the bowl-shaped sounding chamber from rocking. They buzzed with a mindtune offering sympathy and hope, apologizing for misunderstanding why they had come, and promising to help the strangers overcome their insensitivity to the vitalizing of the fullsong.

In response to the hive-mind's insight a new group of hive-binders appeared at the door. They had glints of bright red and orange in their carapaces. With scarcely a pause they rushed eagerly into the room, projecting their mindsong before them, targeting now on the Oliat, rather than on any of the members of their own hive. Their glee at the hive-mind's having finally lifted the harsh and unreasonable discipline restraining their fullsong infused it with a new vigor.

Jindigar seized the links to his Receptor and Protector and wove u tighter defense against the intrusive signal. But the proximity of the singers intensified the song. It beat through his filter.