Thrashing, the Historian stretched the meta-link, dragging them backward, while ahead, the hivemaster drove toward the solid wall of the Archive, stretching the meta-link in the other direction, as if determined to break through to freedom. If those links should snap...

The shaleiliu roar rose to a higher pitch as the links stretched. //Threntisn, if you can reform the Archive around the hive-master so that it is headed for an exit, while I release the meta-links that bind you both to me, perhaps we will separate without harm and let the hivemaster go on his way.//

It was a desperate plan, but Threntisn apparently didn't sense that. He began shifting the environment around them, giving them the illusion of hurling through the Archive toward the Eye. His control was steadier now, the toxin apparently wearing off at last.

Jindigar told Venlagar, who was strained to the breaking point with the extra weight of the meta-forms, //Inreach, we need to take on energy from the shaleiliu hum. Give me the links one at a time.// Then he warned his officers, a peculiar sense of calm steadying him, //Brace yourselves. One way or the other, this will be our last attempt at Dissolution. But no matter what happens to us, the Archive and the hive must go free of it.//

Then, one by one, starting with the meta-links, Jindigar plucked the linkages from Venlagar's grasp and infused them with the shaleiliu roar until it thrummed through them all. As he induced the correct pitch into the linkages the thundering vibration took over the Oliat. The links that bound the three entities shimmered, becoming indistinguishable from that background carrier wave of universal energy.

/ don't believe this. We're actually dissolving. Maybe there was more than one way to use a meta-link to Dissolve a dual-Centered Oliat.

As the moment approached when Jindigar would have no further control over the linkages, he became hyperaware of Krinata. She was the center of a tangled knot of infinitesimal colored threads—the links she claimed to have to my officers. As he watched in amazement her links grew stronger, more organized, as his own dissipated.

//Jindigar! Stop it! I can't make it stop!// Krinata thrashed among her linkages, as if trying to extricate herself, but only succeeded in tangling herself more deeply, reinforcing the hold her own links had on her.

Ill don't know how!// She had Center's links all the time. She told me and I didn't believe her.

His officers strove to deny Krinata's links, too, and to stay with the Dissolution of Jindigar's, hoping against all hope that they'd survive. Then, gradually, each of them succumbed to despair, for Krinata's links held them bound to each other in another Oliat—Krinata's Oliat—with Jindigar as her Outreach. She really is Takora!

The shaleiliu hum, once loud enough to pulverize bone, was fading fast, for her links were unbalanced. Jindigar ignored the sickening whirl the change of Office made of his mind, knowing that the effect was ten thousand times worse for her. He had to think. If she could manage a balance and begin Dissolution, Jindigar would find himself in the same position she was in now, snared in a spontaneously activated network of linkages, for part of the energy his links had soaked up had come from her links—which had been hanging on the edge of nebulosity, not quite thoroughly formed.

When an Oliat formed, it was bound by emitting energy– grounding it into a planetary core. An Oliat was stable because it sat at the bottom of a potential energy well. It had to absorb energy to disassociate again.

Krinata's links had formed in the Holot cave, but he had prevented her from grounding the energies and actually taking Center. Which Takora wouldn't want to do, knowing the dangers. This is something that's happening against her will.

When Jindigar had invoked Dissolution, his links had stolen energy from her links, causing her links to fall into solidity. If she tried to Dissolve, she'd soak energy out of his links again—and they'd go around and around forever.

//Jindigar!// Krinata twisted, turned, and pulled, rejecting the potent intimacy of the Center linkages as if it burned, rejecting the position of Center, for it didn't belong to her anymore. She really is Takora! I didn't destroy her!

Needing to relieve her suffering, he grabbed for his linkages «. again. Only, they and the meta-links were now too insubstantial, having soaked up too much energy from the shaleiliu hum, like ice melting, then boiling away. You can't pick up a handful of steam. But his links were more like live steam compressed in a network of pipes.

Nevertheless, they carried a doubled anguish as Krinata struggled against her linkages and, at the same time, relived the moment Takora knew that she was trapped at Center, unable to Dissolve. She knew that as a result of her own bad judgment, her death would take her Oliat with her. It all flooded down her Center-Outreach link. His own link to his Outreach resonated with the same emotion. Trapped.

Jindigar lived it with her: the moment he had realized Takora's was doomed, and this moment when he knew Jindigar's was likewise doomed—by his own bad judgment. The Laws of Symmetry, Parity, and Polarity are inescapable Laws of Nature. But how many more times would they have to live it? Could even death end it? / must–/ must end it!

Along Krinata's own link to her Outreach he told her, //Takora—Takora, you must calm down. You've got the links. You must manage them.//

Her panic froze into a shocked stillness. A startling thrill of pleasure coursed through her linkages, captivating her of– ficers. She gasped, //You—you know now? You believe?// All the linkages pulsed with that too-intimate contact that shouldn't be there. She told him intently, as if everything depended on it, //Jindigar—Jindigar, listen. I forgive you. I want so very much for you to forgive yourself. Please, try to forgive yourself.//

For the first time in all the times she'd told him that, Jindigar heard. It seared through him like a lightning strike, so fast that he didn't have time to brace against it. And in the wake of that flash came a feeling of warm lightness. For the first time he experienced being Center. A knot he had hardly been aware of melted inside him, a tight reluctance to abandon Center, an Office he'd not really held until this moment. There are no shortcuts to Completion. //Takora. Takora—thank you.//

//If I'd had the courage, Jindigar, I'd have begged you to release me as you did the first time. This time I don't need courage because I know it isn't the worst possible fate. If you can save the others by killing me, then do it. I can't take Center—Jindigar, I mustn't do it!// She hesitated, then added, //Just tell Cyrus I regretted leaving him.// With that, a serenity suffused her linkages, a peace that made him believe her.

And out of that peace an idea struck. It was almost as if he could grasp the entire pattern of the symmetries of the universe, as the Oliat grasped the pattern of an ecology. Before the clarity could fade, he reached for contact with the worldcircle and made himself a conduit for those energies, intending to pump that energy into the double network of linkages binding them. His Oliat had not been formed on Dushaun, nor had Takora's second Oliat been grounded into Dushaun's worldcircle. They were both of Phanphihy more than anywhere else. The energies should be compatible.

They didn't need much. The shaleiliu roar had already provided most of the Dissolution energy. But the dual-Oliat with meta-links attached required an enormous amount of energy. And all the links had to be saturated—all at the same time.