As dangerous as he knew it was, as forbidden as it was to an Aliom Priest, Jindigar was drawn forward by a gripping pang of nostalgia, a need he'd never known was in him. Concurrently he was aware of Krinata paralyzed in the grip of remembered terrors, wanting to break away from the Oliat and flee but refusing to yield to Dushau instinct, which would be human cowardice.

I am Center, he told himself, in Office and working to a purpose. He groped for that solid anchor, struggling to find reality again. And as he found it their headlong rush toward infinity slowed. 11 Must reset Receptor's focus.11

He lifted the Oliat linkages, but before he could reset them, a vaguely familiar disturbance loomed out of nowhere, permeating the linkages. //The hive-mind!// identified Trinarvil.

Simultaneously the hive-mind snatched the linkages out of

Jindigar's grasp, the sudden distortion cutting off the shaleiliu hum, leaving Jindigar stunned.,

The moment Jindigar's resistance slackened, the Archive pulled them in faster. Shocked by the loss of the linkages, Jindigar was unable to check their uncontrolled fall into the Archive Gate. He and his Oliat were swept into the voracious maw of the Archive as if they were just another datum to be recorded, classified, and stored. But, behind him, attached by the nebulous tissue of the Oliat linkages, came the hive-mind, as bewildered as it had been when its members had been electrocuted.

Reflexively Jindigar fought to regain his linkages, acutely aware of the alarming overload of data pouring into Krinata from the hive-mind and of the acute shock overcoming his officers at a strange touch on the links. But the hive-mind was bigger than the Oliat, stronger, older, and determined to survive.

Suddenly it all made sense. The Dushau had come here to protect the Natives, but this planet would tolerate no intruders, just as an Archive would not, just as an Oliat would not. They could not protect the Natives unless they became Natives. Then Jindigar saw the answer. The two Archives, hive and Dushau, must be joined.

He didn't stop to reason it through but acted in the manner of Aliom's "strike," and for the first time it was totally effortless.

Dimly Jindigar was aware that he was using skills he'd garnered from the Observers' level of the Archive, skills beyond him despite his millennia of Oliat experience. He reached out to reinforce the meta-link with Threntisn while at the same lime he offered the same sort of meta-link to the hive-mind, luring it closer until he could repossess his own linkages in exchange for the meta-link, setting that link into the central core of the hive-mind—with a sure, fearless touch. As if he knew what he was doing.

His own linkages settled back around him again, and he tuned for the shaleiliu hum he'd come to rely on. He wasn't prepared for the roar that blasted into their consciousnesses, * shaleiliu hum as loud as if they were inside the sounding box of a whule.

He tuned it down as best he could, but still it was like working inside a robofactory where noise was not controlled. To gain control he had to balance the trinary Oliat. //Archive Master! Hivemaster!// He called the co-Centers.

Threntisn's response was sluggish, bemused by the toxin that warped his sense of reality. //What a strange place... the walls speak... but with respect. Come then, Walls, I will be your Archive Master. Come, we will record you for all time to read.//,

The hive-mind, bewildered by this turn of events, responded, //.We Record!//

But the responses alone were enough. Jindigar solidified the hive, the Archive, and his Oliat into a trinary meta-Oliat, announcing, III am meta-Center.//

His own officers scarcely knew what was happening. Oddly enough it was Krinata who first understood and found her place as meta-Outreach.

The data flow waxed to a stupendous volume, long since overloading her human brain. She had given up trying to apprehend it all. By some obscure mechanism of the human mind she was able to ignore the incomprehensible and organize the rest of the incoming data into familiar patterns. Jindigar, afraid that her endurance was limited, yielded to her metaphors, letting this un-space take on the forms she imposed on it.

He turned to the hive-mind. Its Whole Memory stretched off to one side, a snaking tunnel like a telescoping tube with events depicted on its walls as living plays of the great historical events of the hive. Newhiveswarm brought with it the Whole Memory of its parent hive, a memory that stretched back eons into the dim reaches of pre-intelligence. The Rustlemother who held the Whole Memory could transmit it and add to it just as an Archivist could, but she was ill and dying, making the scenes dim and listless.

The Archive surrounded the Oliat and the hivemaster, plucking insistently at the hints of data coming from the hive-mind's vast memory. Left alone, the Archive would devour the less sophisticated hive-memory. Jindigar forestalled this by invoking the Oliat's global awareness and baiting the Archive with a flood of data.

The lab was filling with awestruck Natives, too aware of the burgeoning Archive swallowing their Mind to attend to the fallen Rustlemother, nearly crushed under the weight of the stranger. Even the hivebinders in fullsong had suspended their compulsive call.

Jindigar opened out to include the settlement and the plain above. He fed all the data to the voracious Archive while he tried to shake Threntisn out of his stupor. //Threntisn! You've got to help! Archivist! I can't do this alone!//

Just when despair overtook him, Jindigar heard a familiar hail echoing down the chambers of the Archive, //Jindigar!// He whirled around within the Archive space to find Threntisn arrowing toward him, propelling himself through the kaleidoscopic shapes of the Archive's chambers by the power of his own will, not riding helplessly on the voracious currents of the Archive. His progress seemed erratic but nevertheless purposive. Perhaps the hivebinders' toxin is wearing off at last!

Through the meta-link he told the Archivist, //We must form a single unit of Archive and hive-memory—then we must open a channel between them so the hive-mind can understand that we can cure the disease that's killing Rustlemother– who is like an Archivist. She carries the Whole Memory of the hive!//

Puzzled, the Historian hesitated. //You can't talk to me. You're balanced.//

//Never mind that now,// pled Jindigar. //The Rustlemother's your colleague, Threntisn. Your instinct was right. We must save her or the hive will become a mere collection of individuals—all that data lost!//

The Historian's image blinked slowly. Still fighting the toxin, he wasn't quite able to grasp it all. But his eyes went to the long tube that represented the hive-memory. A Historian's cornucopia, its tail snaked off toward the Gateway into the Archive while the wide-open end faced them. The open end was screened by a blurred area that sometimes seemed to be one Native species and sometimes another; occasionally an amalgam of them all. But in Krinata's metaphor the shifting image represented a composite being, the Hivemaster.

Jindigar opened a data flow to the Historian along the meta-link that bound the ternary Oliat. Gradually Threntisn comprehended. //A channel to the hive—of course. But I wouldn't know how, Jindigar.//

//Let's do it this way,// suggested Jindigar, and directed Krinata, as meta-Outreach, to approach the hivemaster.

She eyed the zone of mixed images, then returned, //That's a hole into the hive-memory. It’s an infinite tunnel. I could fall down it forever!//

She had fallen through such a hive-memory with him once, while trying to save his life. It had been one of the most terrifying experiences she'd ever endured. Jindigar knew, through the long intimacy of their linkages, how she had overcome the terror by simply putting it behind her, saying, /'// never do that again. And he was sending her into it again.