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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
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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.
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