Chaos Mode

CHAPTER 2—BURGESS

BURGESS was in a mixed state. He had invoked the dread Virtual Mode and suffered the touch of the monsters therein. They were alien and grotesque, yet not actually inimical. They did seem to have a hive of some sort, though it seemed distastefully limited and crude. So far only one of the four had contacted him, but she was trying to understand.

Now this “Nona” pattern was indicating alarm. They had to go back through the anchor; the picture was clear. The aliens were fleeing something on the Virtual Mode.

Burgess would have protested, but he lacked status with this hive. So he would have to accept its mandate, and try to protect it from external threats.

This hive, small and alien though it was, had something strange and enlightening. It enabled him to seem to think for himself. Instead of merely reacting to the latest contact, he experienced the throes of a decision-making process. He was acting like an entire hive—by himself. This was so odd it was ordinarily impossible. Yet the pattern for it was with the aliens, and as he followed that pattern he became conscious of self. He was becoming an individual.

This must be a requirement of survival, on the Virtual Mode. The creatures of the Mode survived, and they had it, so it must be necessary. They touched each other only to compare strategies, not to restore their places in the whole. He would never have conceived of such a thing, had he not discovered its patterning in the Nona thing.

They had to flee into his world, and he had to help them survive it, for they did not know its ways. He had to have initiative. It was a strain in his awareness, especially when he was not in direct contact with the alien, but that was the way it was. Actually he had been developing a crude kind of initiative before, from necessity: cut off from the home hive, he had done what gave him a chance to find a new hive. It had been desperation, because otherwise he would have lost his ability to function as a member of a dominant entity, and would have regressed into animal status. But it was also initiative. He recognized that now. The alien contact had greatly amplified an ability he had not understood before.

He lifted and quested with his jet. He found several round stones, which he sucked in and held for expulsion. They would do for only token attack, but that was all that offered. Just enough to make the others pause, so that escape was possible.

Then he would have to show them the one place where the members of the hive would not go. He believed that the aliens could go there, because they used animal propulsion. They had legs, like those of crustaceans, that pushed against the ground. They seemed to take in air, but to push it out through the same orifice. That was not effective for locomotion. But in this case, their animal nature would help them.

He followed the Nona thing across the Modes. The larger animal went with them. It had four leg appendages, instead of two, but was similarly primitive about its use of air. Its surface was highly irregular, with projections that did not seem to be either eyes or contact points. But it moved well enough, its legs coordinating with bewildering ease. They caught up with the other two. Now there was another surprising thing: the two had merged, and were traveling on only two legs.

They plunged through the anchor almost as a group. The hive members had departed, unable to pursue Burgess through the anchor. They had seen him vanish, and they believed that he would never return. But one was watching, just in case.

Now that one saw the emerging creatures, and honked. That signaled the more distant members of the hive. Soon they would converge, as they had before. There was only limited time to reach the safe zone.

The hive member lifted a trunk. But Burgess, prepared, fired a stone first. It struck an eye stalk, momentarily blinding the hiver. The hiver retreated, unable to decide on a more aggressive course without contact with other hivers. This was Burgess’ advantage, he realized with surprise: he was now able to act with minimal consultation, because of the pattern he had learned from the alien.

The aliens were hesitating. The two who had merged separated again, each using its own legs. Burgess showed the way. He set out toward the nearest section of the wilderness region. He moved as fast as he could, but it was soon apparent that the aliens’ animal legs could propel them faster. That was good, because it meant that the hivers would have difficulty catching them.

But now the pursuit was manifesting. Several hivers were coming into view, converging. He would not be able to outdistance them all. Burgess had several rocks remaining in storage, which he could use to discourage too close an approach. But he would soon be overwhelmed by the greater number of hivers. He saw that clearly now that he was thinking for himself. Also, the same wilderness that blocked the hivers would block him. He could show the aliens the way to their safety, but he could not help himself. He should have remained on the Virtual Mode. Perhaps if he had been more accustomed to thinking as an individual, he would have realized that.

They were moving across the almost level land toward the adjacent river. Beyond it was the wilderness. But now he recognized another problem: the water presented a barrier for the aliens, who could not float across it. He had not thought of their limitations before. Was he leading them into a trap?

The hivers were now closing from four directions. One followed directly behind; two were angling in from the sides; one was coming along the river. The fleeing folk were ahead of three, but the one on the river was cutting them off. So even if the aliens could cross water, they would not escape.

The aliens made exclamations. Burgess suspected that these were expressions of dismay at the sight of the hiver ahead of them. Such dismay was well taken.

Burgess did what he could. He floated up to the river and fired a stone at the hiver. But the hiver saw it coming and slid aside so that it missed. Then the hiver oriented a trunk to fire a return rock.

Then a second rock flew at it—one Burgess had not fired. Surprised, he turned his eye stalks to trace its origin. There stood one of the aliens, making some kind of gesture. In a moment another made a similar gesture—and a rock flew away from it. They were firing rocks!

The hiver on the water floated away, because the rocks were too numerous for it to avoid. The aliens were taking them in their upper appendages, moving the appendages swiftly, and letting the rocks sail out. In this weird manner they were able to do combat!

But the three other hivers were approaching. Burgess floated across the water, hoping the aliens could somehow navigate it, because there was no other choice. The aliens moved into the water. Their legs plunged through it to contact the ground below, and they maintained forward progress. They were able to cross! It was slower than on land, but adequate. Soon all four of them were on the other bank.

They moved on toward the wilderness as the leading hiver arrived at the river. The hiver on the water was now trancing again, coming to join the others. Burgess saw that the river had slowed them so that the pursuit was now much closer. They were almost within rock range. With four hivers firing, that was bad.

Burgess floated as rapidly as he could toward the trees, but he had to veer around a rocky hill. That was impassable, of course. The hivers cut across and narrowed the distance between them.

Then the aliens did something amazing. They moved up the slope of the hill! They were able to navigate it, because they lacked air cushions, which had to be almost level. But they were not safe, because the small hill was in rock range; the hivers would bombard them as soon as they finished with Burgess.

A rock came at him, and bounced off his canopy. That one did not hurt, but others would. He would have to stop and fight as well as he could against the four.

But then the aliens stopped. They gestured, and rocks started flying again. They were hurling rocks down at the hivers! Three of them were doing it, while the largest one stood and watched. Burgess realized that that one could not use its legs for this purpose; all four were confined to the ground. How did it do combat?

For a moment Burgess watched, amazed at the facility with which the creatures handled the rocks. They were not limited to small ones that a trunk could handle; they were taking larger ones and heaving them down. The rocks missed, but the hivers halted their pursuit and floated back out of range. They touched each other, getting current on the situation.

Still the aliens threw rocks. This was another surprise: the rocks were reaching the hivers. The aliens could hurl the rocks farther than the hiver could! Their seemingly awkward limbs were good at this.

One hiver was struck on an eye. Another suffered a rock in an intake hole, causing it to lose some of its flotation. The hivers retreated farther, to get out of the surprising range of the aliens.

And the aliens advanced! They continued to pick up rocks and hurl them. The hivers had to retreat, and finally to flee. They could not match the rock-throwing ability of the aliens.

In this manner the aliens had saved Burgess, who would surely have had his eyes knocked out and his intakes blocked if he had been alone. He had tried to save the aliens, and the aliens had saved him.

When the hivers fled, the aliens ceased throwing rocks and returned to Burgess. The Nona creature put an appendage on one of his contact points. Good? she sent.

Burgess returned a picture of a placid blue sky. It was good.

They continued to the wilderness. Here the big trees spread their branches high and their roots made a lattice on the ground. This prevented any hiver from traveling through, because it was unfeasible to maintain a sufficient cushion of air to support the body. The irregular roots prevented the canopy from making even contact with the ground, and the air leaked out inefficiently. Thus the wilderness was impossible to penetrate, and no hivers went there.

The aliens, however, had no difficulty. Their legs simply stepped on the roots, or between them. They could go wherever they wished in the wilderness.

Now that Burgess had shown them to safety, he contemplated his own problem. He could not join the aliens among the trees. But neither could he return to the anchor porthole. The hivers would now be guarding it. What was he to do?

Then the aliens did the strangest thing yet. One of them touched the largest one, and separated something from it. Were they dismantling the large one?

The second largest alien took the object, which looked like a detached branch of a tree, and poked it at the ground. It sank into the dirt. Then it came up, and the dirt came up and fell among the tangled roots of the nearest tree. The alien moved the branch again, and more dirt fell.

He continued to do this odd series of motions, until considerable dirt was piled across the roots. Then he moved away, and the smallest of the aliens climbed onto the mound of dirt. The legs moved up and down, and the feet landed on the dirt, making it spread and flatten.

This continued. The larger alien piled more dirt, while the smaller tread it flat. Was this some ritual of theirs? What was its point? The spread dirt was forming a channel which passed the tree and extended into the wilderness, where the ground was less interrupted.

Then the Nona creature touched a contact point again. Go she sent, and made a crude map showing the dirt.

Burgess tried to convey to her that he could not go into the wilderness. But she was persistent. Go. Path. Path? An awesome explanation loomed. Burgess pumped up his air and moved to the dirt. He moved onto it. The dirt had filled in the crevices between the roots, and made a section of level ground there. He could travel on this!

He followed the path, and soon was on the other side of the tree, where the ground was navigable. The aliens had made it possible for him to enter the wilderness!

But Burgess realized that where he had passed, the hivers could also pass. They would soon be returning in force, to overwhelm him and the aliens.

After he passed, the alien with the branch used it to scrape away some of the dirt. Now the path was impassable in that region. Burgess realized that the aliens had understood the threat, and acted to protect him. No hivers would follow them into the wilderness.

The day was declining. Now that safety had been assured, it was time for Burgess to eat. Rather than try to explain this process to the aliens, he showed them. He fired a rock up at a fruit hanging above. The fruit dropped. Then he sucked the fruit into his intrunk and ground it up with his internal teeth so that his body could absorb it directly from the reserve chamber. The irreducible husk and seeds he simply blew out the outtrunk.

Now the aliens demonstrated how they consumed food. One used its limbs to climb up into a tree—a process that amazed Burgess—and plucked and threw down several of the ripe fruit. Another caught the fruits before they reached the ground. Then the aliens brought out a sliver of stone or bone and used it to cut the fruit apart. Each piece was then put to an orifice in the upper end of the creature, where it slowly disappeared. The process seemed, on reflection, to be roughly similar to what Burgess did, but with different implements. Now he saw that there were indeed teeth in the upper orifices, which masticated the fruit. Since the chewed fruit did not emerge, it must find its way into the body. It seemed to be a workable system, crude as it was. The largest creature ate its fruit from the ground, but also had grain which came from a pocket along its side.

By now it was getting dark. Burgess simply settled on his curtain and drew in his eye stalks. The aliens were more elaborate. They gathered sticks and brush and fashioned a structure. Then they made themselves horizontal within this structure and were quiet. This, too, seemed workable.

There was a sound deeper in the forest. A kind of clicking.

Then Burgess’ new syndrome of thinking for himself brought him alert again. He had been lulled into a sensation of security, because he regarded the aliens as an alternate kind of hive, and the hive was safe at night. But they were not really a hive, and this was the wilderness. It was not safe at all, especially by night.

He honked. It was a floater’s signal of danger or alert. He had done it automatically, because that was the way of his kind. His new mode of thinking was merely an overlay on the conditioning of his lifetime.

The aliens reacted immediately. They scrambled out of their shelter, making exclamations. They looked around with their odd recessed eyes. One held an object which emitted a beam of light, as if the sun were inside it. The light splashed around in a circle, showing the trunks and foliage of the trees. The aliens had understood the warning well enough, but there was no threat near.

The Nona creature came to touch a contact point. ?, she inquired.

Burgess tried to clarify his concern. He sent a picture of a tree of the wilderness, with a darkness looming beyond it. He made a click with the rocks in his trunk. He fashioned a bolt of fear, hoping it would be intelligible to her.

The Nona made sounds. The others responded. They seemed to have better sonic differentiation than the floaters did, perhaps because their contact points were undeveloped.

Then, so abruptly it had to be by communal agreement, they were quite silent. They remained so for some time, motionless.

The click repeated. It was followed by a rustling and scraping, some distance away but approaching. Describe, the Nona creature sent. Burgess sent a picture of a huge crustacean that dragged itself along the ground by the use of several sets of legs, with enormous pincers in front. He had seen one of these only when it was dead; it had evidently fought some other creature in the night, and been defeated, and had dragged itself out onto the plain to escape. But its injuries had been too great, and it had died there. The flying flesh-eaters had swarmed there in the morning, and a floater had investigated. It had summoned others, who had spread the news, so that soon the entire hive had the mental picture of the creature. This was a monster of the wilderness! And this was what Burgess feared was coming near, with its pincers clicking hungrily.

The aliens consulted, in their fashion. Then they went to work, in their fashion. It seemed as senseless as their prior activities with the sand and shelter, but Burgess suspected that it would turn out to be as sensible at the conclusion. The aliens might not be a true hive as he knew it, but they managed a fair emulation of hive activities.

Then they went to the largest of their number, flashing their little beams of light, and drew out more branches from its hide. Burgess realized that the complicated protrusions were actually not part of the creature; they were somehow attached to it, and could be removed. It was as if he were carrying them, without carrying appendages. The aliens were as strange in their subtle ways as in their obvious ways.

They fetched more fallen branches, and started to spread more dirt. Burgess didn’t know what this dirt was for, as the ground in this glade was level and needed no path for him, but he was willing to help on the assumption that they were accomplishing something useful. He wanted to be part of the hive, as every floater did. So he went to where the larger two-footed alien was, and sucked up some dirt from the place where it was being excavated with the stick, and blew it out where it was being piled. The creature stepped back, then indicated where more dirt should go. Another creature flashed the light there, so that there was no question. Burgess was able to move the loosened dirt faster than the creature could with the stick. Soon he had moved all of the loose dirt and there was a long mound at the edge of the glade.

The creature used its stick to loosen more dirt, and this facilitated Burgess’ effort. He blew it to the end of the mound, extending it. In this manner they formed a small valley and ridge that entirely surrounded the glade.

Meanwhile the Nona creature had gathered more branches, and had rolled some large stones to the glade. Now the aliens set the stones on top of the ridge of dirt, and put the branches up by the stones. They fashioned some of the branches into straight sections, and used stones to pound on these, so that they sank endwise into the ground.

Now at last Burgess came to understand what they were doing: they were making a hive-barrier! What the hivers did entirely with dirt, making a mound that no hiver could cross, the aliens were doing with dirt and stones and branches. Inside the circle it should be safe.

Now the two smaller aliens returned to their shelter. The two larger remained outside it. The four-footed one merely silently, as before, but the other came to Burgess. It put an extremity on a contact point. Faintly its information came through. It was male. His identity was “Darius.” He was a friend. He was watching.

Burgess sent images of his own. He was not sure how well they were being received, but there did seem to be partial communication. Now at least he knew the contact pattern of a second alien. This was reassuring.

Burgess was tired. He had alerted the creatures to the threat, and they had responded in what had turned out to be a sensible manner. He was reassured. He sank back down to the ground and retracted his eyes.

HE resumed consciousness when another alien contacted him. This was the smallest one, who turned out to be female. There was something special about her; she was intense, and her thoughts forged through with sharper definition. She was “Colene.” She was watching now.

But she wasn’t satisfied just to be alert for danger. She wanted to know about Burgess. Where did he come from, why was he alone, why had he invoked the Virtual Mode? Her determination to know cut through the problem of communication. He found it relatively easy to understand her, and she was understanding him. Her pictures were coming through with increasing clarity. She let him know what her own world was like: similar plants to this one, but no creatures like him, and many variations of her type. Creatures who had ridges down their length, through which their bodily communications flowed, and four legs, and minds at one end. Strange!

He tried to clarify for her what his world was like. It was dominated by a number of creatures she thought of as “arthropods”; she knew what spiders, insects, and crabs were. But the dominance by power was the “phylum” to which the floaters ultimately belonged: the vast array of “triramous” animals. That was her term, and she presented it with such wonder that he had to explore the matter further. It seemed that this was the key difference between their worlds: the triramous phylum existed in one, and the “chordates” in the other. In each, the numerically inferior type nevertheless had achieved the greatest influence over other types, and had the greatest freedom of action.

The time in the development of life when their two worlds had been the same was, by Colene’s reckoning, the “Cambrian.” The records of his world had no indication of her type of creature, known also as the “vertebrates”; the records of her world lacked indication of the triramous creatures. But surely the two coexisted in that time, 550 million years ago. The time of the great proliferation of species, most of whose phyla later was lost. Colene’s kind had become aware of this early abundance by inspecting a layer of rock they called the Burgess Shale. Now her identification of him was associated with this, so that he was “the creature of Burgess” and his world was “the Shale rock.” It was just the way she visualized it, she explained, and she intended no disparagement. She rendered this concept with such a friendly corollary that Burgess had to respond.

This “friendly” concept was as alien to him as the matter of individuality or self. He focused on it, because though it was vague, it was pleasant. It was another type of patterning. It was what Colene presented as “emotion”: an attitude about things that related to the self. For a hiver, pleasure was achieved by conformance to the consensus of the hive, which was achieved by frequent contacts. To be current was to be satisfied; to lack currency was to be unsatisfied. There were no other significant indications. But with Colene’s pattern of self came emotions which related to the individual, and currency was irrelevant. Since Burgess would slowly fade and die without currency with a hive, this alternate system was of interest; could he learn to survive without currency? If so, he would be unique among his kind.

Colene was eager to know more about Burgess and his species and culture. He was as eager to know about hers. Already the alien pattern she transmitted was taking hold, showing him the way to think in her fashion, and he was coming to feel friendly to her. He had never liked another creature before, because such emotion did not exist among floaters except in the sense that each member of the hive needed his hive. Colene, more than the others, was relating to him. She seemed like a discrete entity to him, and he saw himself as a discrete entity in her view. That was something new and valuable. So he tried to obtain more information about her and her kind. Their intellectual pattern was as strange as their physical pattern.

She responded with yet another new emotion: a pleasant, odd, paradoxical mood she called “laughter.” She would make him a “deal,” a summoning of chance which would determine who learned first about whom. They would watch the other two creatures of her type, and see which of them was first to move body or limb. If it was the male, then Burgess, being male, would prevail, and Colene would inform him of all he wished, to the extent of her ability. If it was the female, then Colene, being female, would prevail, and Burgess would inform her similarly. This deal was so strange that Burgess did not understand how to decline, so he agreed by default.

They watched, and in a moment the Nona creature rolled over. “I win,” Colene sent with another thrill of momentary pleasure. “But I will tell you everything, the next time.” She communicated increasingly in linear chains of thoughts, which were relatively slow compared to floater contact, but seemed to be the key to contact between their species. They were linear creatures throughout, he realized; they applied food to one end of their bodies and eliminated the residues from the other end, and their thinking was similar. But as he came to understand this, and attune, his ability to communicate with Colene improved. Now there were few confusions, and concepts of increasing complexity were being exchanged.

So he gave her the information she desired, and in the process found that he was learning much about her anyway. Every concept she found foreign meant that she had experience of a different nature, and that helped define her. Indeed, she could not exchange the full degree of her recent experience with twenty others of her kind simultaneously, getting current; she had to “talk” individually with each. Except that she did have an alternate mechanism: the largest creature, with the four feet on the ground, was a “horse” who was “telepathic.” He was male, and he could communicate simultaneously with all the others of the group. While in his presence, the others could draw on his ability, so that they could exchange information simultaneously. So they were indeed a hive, by this mechanism, and Burgess could be part of it, if he learned to transmit to the horse without requiring direct contact with a contact point. All this Burgess learned, in the process of answering her questions about the nature of floaters, hives, and individuals.

Communication, though linear, was becoming so facile that Burgess almost forgot the strangeness of the situation. He structured his thoughts to be linear, and paced them, so that though time passed in the transmission, Colene was able to understand his situation.

His kind had evolved, according to hive memory, in that same Cambrian explosion she knew about. This followed the near extirpation of all forms of life, the greatest of three formidable extinctions. The seas had been left bereft of all but single-celled life forms, so many new many-celled forms rapidly evolved. These filled the seas and competed for dominance, and some were winnowed out while others proliferated. Then the second greatest extinction came about 225 million years ago, wiping out nineteen of twenty life forms. But the survivors soon bounced back, forming many competent species. Then the third extinction came, 65 million years ago, again wiping out most life forms. This time the triramous phylum, which had been established but not dominant, expanded to fill the vacated niches. From these came the floaters, who foraged on the surface of the sea, and found it easy to forage also on land. They were just another type on the sea, but became dominant on land, with many species developing. Most lost their multiple contact points, specializing in individual hunting and foraging. But the hivers retained them, and became more closely cooperative, finding security in close numbers. They became smarter together, because of heightened communication. They learned to use the rivers as avenues to reach all parts of the land. By remaining near the water’s edge they succeeded in avoiding predators, who were normally either of the land or of the water. Then one species learned to change the land to make better regions for safety at night, and this one flourished.

Burgess had been an external contact entity. Instead of remaining in close communication with his own hive, he acted as liaison to foreign hives, so that the hives could communicate with each other somewhat in the way individuals within each hive did. Each hive had its own nuances, so that a floater from one hive could not readily relate to one from another hive. Burgess had to learn to tolerate and comprehend foreign nuances, and to be able to endure for periods without being current with his native hive. In this manner he helped coordinate the activity of the hives, so that they did not congregate in particular regions and deplete the resources.

But then he had encountered a hive that had gone bad. He picked up some of the poison of its nature, and knew that it had to be isolated from contact with other hives, lest it poison them too. He returned to his own hive and signaled warning: a series of honks. Then he retreated, knowing that he could never return, so that he himself would not infect his hive. It was a tragedy, but there was no alternative.

He was expected to join the bad hive now, since he could relate to its members and had nothing further to lose. That hive would not be allowed to contact any other hive. Any member it sent out would be driven back or killed. But Burgess could not bring himself to join it, because its poison revolted him. He preferred to regress into animalism alone, as would inevitably happen without hive contact. It was a horror, but the alternative was to die swiftly.

But when his native hive saw that he was not joining the poisoned hive, it instituted defensive measures. This was because it feared that he would try to rejoin it, and thus poison it. So it sought to kill him before that could happen. Burgess knew that its decision was reasonable; it had hundreds of members to protect, while he was only one. The single floater always had to give way to the welfare of the hive. Burgess had attempted to forage and hunt alone, in a remote section of his home hive’s province, but this was not allowed. Parties were sent out to kill him.

So he had tried a desperate ploy: he had invoked a Virtual Mode. This was largely a matter of chance. Few of his kind could even sense the Modes, and none wished to explore them. But Burgess’ experience as a foreign contact person had prepared him for this yet-more-alien contact. He had tuned in increasingly well, and when a Virtual Mode had come, he had reached for it, using his mind and will to secure an anchor in his Mode. Then he had awaited the contact of whatever creatures inhabited the Virtual Mode with considerable trepidation, knowing that they were likely to be more alien than anything he had encountered. But if they happened to be of his kind, they might represent a new hive, which was not poisoned, and which would not be harmed by his own infection.

“But what is this poison?” Colene asked, concerned. “Is it a disease that will make us die?”

No, it was not a physical disease. It was a mental one. It was a syndrome known to infect hives that became too small. Their internal contacts became so intense that their members lost their tolerance for any foreign floaters at all. Since it was necessary to share offspring, who went at the outset of their lives to foreign hives, so that there would not be ingrowing, this was an attitude that could not be allowed to spread, lest the entire species fragment and lose its dominance. Burgess himself had not succumbed to it, or he would never have been able to invoke the Virtual Mode. But he had been exposed to it, and that was enough to make him dangerous. Its nature was insidious, and he might at any time be overcome by it. So he was banished from the hive.

“Bigotry!” Colene sent, grasping the poison concept. “Racism. Intolerance. Prejudice. We have those poisons in our species too!”

They had it too? What had he floated into? He had hoped to find a hive to which he could relate without such contamination, so that he would never succumb to it himself.

“No, we here on the Virtual Mode don’t have it,” Colene clarified. “But it is elsewhere in our species. More prevalent than in yours, I think.”

He relaxed. The aliens had been exposed to the poison, but had not succumbed to it, which was the same as his own state. They would understand his situation. So instead of being a problem, it meant that this was after all a hive he could join. The strangest kind of hive, but not as strange as it had once seemed. The aliens resembled few-legged animals, but understood the dynamics of hive life. The reality counted more than the appearance.

“What about reproduction?” Colene asked, sending a picture of big floaters and little floaters. “I know you are male and female, because that’s the first thing that registers when we make mental contact, but just how do you do it? Do you have marriage or life-pairing?”

Burgess tried to address the matter, because her question implied social aspects that confused him. Mating within the hive was a straightforward act, and the young departed for other hives, while the incoming young from other hives were schooled by the contacts they made with hive members. But it seemed that among the aliens the concept of self complicated reproduction. Colene seemed not to accept the idea of young who had no contact with those who had generated them.

Suddenly there was a crash. Colene jumped up and flashed her ray toward the sound. A huge pincer appeared above the barricade. It came down by one of the angled branches, clamped on it, and crunched through the wood.

Then it swept sidewise, knocking other branches out of the way.

It was a crab, a big one, and their defense was inadequate. The thing was coming right through the wood, and the mound of dirt did not inhibit it either.

Colene broke contact and joined the others. Then she returned. “Can you read me, Burgess?” she asked faintly.

Yes, he received her.

“Good. Seqiro’s not carrying me, now; I’m doing it on my own. So we can coordinate like a hive. You too, if you respond to me. To fight this monster. Okay?”

To be part of a hive again: that was what he wanted most. However it was arranged. Especially since only hive action could be effective against the crab.

“We can’t stop it head-on,” she sent. “But we can attack its weaknesses. If we know them. Do you know them?”

Burgess oriented all three mobile eyes on the monster, as it widened its channel through the rampart. It was slow, but once it got inside, it would have no difficulty catching each of the aliens in its pincers and crushing them. It would crunch off Burgess’ trunks, rendering him helpless, then consume him at leisure. It was terrible to behold, but it did have some few weaknesses. The eyes and the breathing holes. On the plain, by day, hivers would surround the crab and shoot jets of sand at its eye stalks, forcing them to retract. Then into its holes, clogging its breathing. That would slow it. Then they would try to roll large rocks onto it, crushing it. Or simply flee to their hive, where their rampart of dirt and barrage of stones would dissuade it.

“You’re not that sharp against big crabs,” Colene remarked.

That was true. The armored creatures were formidable. The normal way of dealing with them was simply to flee them.

“Well, we can’t flee this one. So we’ll kill it or drive it away. We’re going to blind it first. You fire dirt at its eyes, and keep doing it, so Darius can get close with his sword.”

Burgess sucked up dirt and sent a stream of it at the crab. The crab’s eye stalks were small, and hidden behind the giant claw, but the dirt blew in on them. The crab scuttled to the side, trying to get clear of the dirt, but Burgess kept blowing it. Colene and Nona were both shining lights so the crab was clear.

Meanwhile the Darius creature moved right in within reach of the claw, waving a bright stick. He struck down with that stick, knocking at an eye stalk. The eye flew off the stalk. Then he chopped at the second stalk.

But the crab, hurt, scuttled away, and the stick—now Colene’s thought clarified that it was not wood, but metal, with a sharp edge, a crafted weapon—struck the shell, denting it but doing no real harm. The claw swung around to grab him, but Colene screamed warning and he dropped to the ground and scrambled away. The pincers clicked together above him, poorly guided because one eye was gone.

Then there came a new emotion: fear. It made Burgess want to turn around and flee, though he had nowhere to go. “Easy, Burgess,” Colene sent. “Seqiro’s doing that. Ignore it.” She removed her hand-appendage from his contact point, and abruptly the fear was gone. Then she touched him again, and it was back. “See? It’s on our side. I’m feeling it, so you are too, when I’m in contact with you. But I understand it, so I can resist it. For a while.”

He tried to tune it out, and it diminished though Colene’s contact remained. What a strange weapon!

The crab turned around and barged back out of the enclosure. Burgess understood why: it felt the fear too, and thought it was its own. The attack-thought of the alien hive had driven it away.

Darius and Nona went to work repairing the damage to the wall, while Colene remained with Burgess, shining the light ray for them. Seqiro merely stood, still sending the fear to the crab. He was able to do it without touching any contact points!

“Well, we won that one,” Colene sent. “But I think we’d better get out of here, first thing in the morning, and find some place we can defend better. The next monster may not scare as easy.”

Burgess agreed. However, there was still time before dawn, and they would have to wait until then to travel.

“We can not relax,” Darius said. “The moment Seqiro eases up, the crab will turn around and come back here.”

“Oops,” Colene said. “Is that true, horseface?”

For the first time Burgess was aware of the four-footed alien’s thought: It is true. I must not sleep. There was a qualitative difference to it.

“What about when day comes?” Nona asked. “Will the crab retire then?”

No. The crab was aware of prey, and would keep pursuing it, regardless of injuries, as long as the crab remained hungry. It was not a thinking creature.

“Then we aren’t going to be able to sleep again, after this,” Colene sent. “We’d all better stay alert, to make sure Seqiro does. But we can use the time to talk. Now I’ll answer your questions about me, Burgess.”

Burgess was satisfied with that. Where did she come from, and in what ways did her world differ from his, and how had she come to know about the ancient shale? What was the significance of reproducing, among her kind? What had brought her and her companions to the Virtual Mode? Where were they going? Why had they so suddenly fled the Virtual Mode, after going there with him? Why was it easier to understand her than it was the others?

Colene sent the laughter emotion, which was odd against the background of the fear the horse was still sending. “You want to know everything all at once, don’t you! Well, we’ll answer you, but it will be better if I show you how it was with me before I ever learned of the Virtual Mode. Then you can pick up on the background, and maybe catch on to how we think. Hang on while I tell you about my crush on Amos.”

Her emotional squeeze on something termed an Amos? This was not necessarily going to be easy to grasp.