Burgess did not think linearly, but in three-dimensional bursts of information. He was learning to squeeze it into the form they could comprehend, but Colene still had to translate. Thus his input seemed like Colene’s thoughts, and there was a slight delay while she organized it. In time that would change, and he would communicate directly, but it was all right for the interim.
“We have to stay in the wilderness,” Burgess (Colene) said (thought). “Because the floaters of my hive mean to kill me, and will kill you too, now that you have associated with me. They govern the plain by day.”
Because he had contacted the poisoned hive, and then not joined it, they thought of him as a traitor they could not trust. Nona wasn’t yet clear on this attitude, but it probably made sense in terms of their values.
“We have already experienced their hostility,” Darius said. “Fortunately we can throw rocks farther than they can.”
“But we’ll have to pass through their lines,” Colene said for herself; there was a different inflection to her thought, and of course she was also speaking verbally now.
“They’ll be massed and ready for us, and we’ll have to go well within their range. That’s no good; just that blowing sand could blind us.”
Nona agreed. She never wanted to get into one of those sandblasts again. There was nothing like that on her home world. But of course this was a different world, in a different reality, where there was no magic. She was constantly running afoul of that, expecting to shape things by magic, or to fly from one place to another, or to transform things into the materials or food she needed. She felt rather helpless, here, and looked forward to their return to the Virtual Mode, where her magic worked.
But the mind predator had attacked Colene, forcing them to flee the Virtual Mode. Colene had mentioned the predator before, because it had attacked her friend Provos when the two traveled the Virtual Mode. Now Provos had returned to her own reality, and severed her anchor, so was permanently beyond its reach. So it was coming after Colene instead. Colene believed that it would give up after a while as it had with Provos, but this was not certain. So they had reason to stay off the Virtual Mode for a few days, and then to hope that the predator was gone.
Unfortunately the big crab was still lurking; its hungry malevolence was a constant presence, because Seqiro remained attuned to it, and the rest of them could pick up that tuning. Worse, the horse was growing mentally tired, because he had been awake a long time and the continuous broadcasting of the fear was draining him. As his power weakened, the crab was losing its fear and moving closer. In time that defense would be gone.
So they decided to travel deeper into the wilderness, until the hivers lost interest. They would wait out the hivers the same way as they waited out the mind predator. They hoped to find a place where they could finally relax, where there was food and water, so that they wouldn’t have to use their carried supplies. It was always best to eat at the anchors, Nona understood, because what they ate that came from any of the worlds of the Virtual Mode would not remain with them. They had to eat only on an anchor world, or food carried from an anchor world.
But forging a level path for Burgess to float along was bound to be tedious and slow, if they had to go any distance. It would have been easier if Nona’s magic worked in this reality, but her ability to relate to a creature as a familiar was diminished, and none of the rest of her magic seemed to work at all. She felt helpless.
Then she saw something scuttle across the remains of the dirt barrier they had made. It was a multi-legged bug, with long antennae trailing to the sides. It was small enough to hold in one hand, but moved very quickly.
She had an idea. “Seqiro, stun me this creature,” she said.
The horse oriented his powerful thought on the creature, for just a moment, and the bug stopped where it was, stunned. Seqiro had not been able to relate well to Burgess at first, but had done better as he tuned in, and now contact was good, if Colene was there to interpret. This bug had a much smaller mind, and was easier for the horse to overwhelm. As he learned to relate to the minds of Burgess and the crab, he learned to relate to all the minds of this reality, to a degree.
Nona nerved herself, and picked the thing up. It had four bony extensions extending back from its head that shielded its body; it was by this armor she handled it. She set it in her other hand and held it close to her face. It seemed to have about twenty-five pairs of legs, the largest to the front, diminishing to tiny at the rear. Each leg had six jointed segments. There turned out to be four antennae: two were very long and smooth and flexible, while the other two were shorter and furry. Between the legs and the bony shield projections were weblike lines. What could they be?
Well, perhaps she could find out. She focused her mind, reaching into the mind of the bug and seeking to tame it. She hoped to make it a familiar. It was working; that part of her magic was working. She had doubted, when facing the challenge of trying to relate to Burgess, but with this smaller-minded creature she was having no more difficulty than she would have at home with an ordinary bug.
Colene came over to see what she was doing. “Ooo, ugh!” she said. “You’re holding a fat six-inch-long centipede!”
“I’m taming it,” Nona explained. “It moves very quickly. Perhaps it can explore the way for us, and warn us of danger ahead.”
“Good idea,” Colene agreed. She bent to look more closely. “Say—that’s biramous! See, each segment has a pair of legs and a pair of gills. In fact—in fact it’s Marrella! Or his distant descendant, adapted to land. I’ll never forget that arthropod, after that session with Amos.”
“Gills?” Darius asked, getting interested. “Do they work in air?”
Colene returned to the floater and touched a contact point. Burgess’ thought came: “The creatures with external gills do use them in air. My gills are protected under my canopy, drawing nourishment from the air with which I float. Marrella does not float, but does use its gills to breathe and to enhance its travel.”
Nona remembered the discussion of uniramous, biramaus, and triramous. “It travels with its gills?”
“It moves them to enhance the take-up of what you call—” Burgess hesitated, then continued when another mind supplied the concept. “Oxygen. When it is in a hurry, this movement of the gills also enables it to be lighter and faster on its feet. It can not float in the manner I do, but perhaps some millions of years hence it will evolve to that degree.”
“Gills becoming wings,” Colene murmured, intrigued. “I guess it wasn’t just the triramous line that survived, here; Mary Marrella didn’t leave any descendants in my world.”
Nona set Marrella down. “It is my familiar now,” she said. “It will be my antenna, and show me the best route.”
“That would be good, if I could conjure us to the safe spots it locates,” Darius said. “As we did in Julia, your reality. But I can not, here in Shale.”
“And it would be nice if I could fly, here,” Nona agreed. “But my magic is almost as diminished as yours.”
“Sometimes I feel lucky I don’t have magic,” Colene said. “At least Seqiro’s talent is full-strength, here, so we can coordinate.”
“Yes,” Nona agreed. “Seqiro helped me get Marrella.” She glanced down. “Go, friend. Spy the way.”