He would have liked to see more of that “illusion,” because its nature was hardly clear to him.
Then the firefly returned. It hovered before Burgess’ inflow trunk, and became a small round rock. He touched his trunk to it, to suck it in, but it had no substance. It was merely a discoloration of the air.
The rock expanded into a boulder. Still it could not be touched. His trunk passed through it without effect. It caught fire, but there was no heat at all. It became a fall of water, flowing away across the ground, but had no wetness. It simply did not exist, in all its forms.
“There you have it,” Colene said. “Illusion is something that just isn’t there. But it looks so real you think it is there, until you try to touch it.”
Burgess was impressed. The powers of these creatures were like none he had encountered before.
“No, the rest of us don’t have magic,” Colene said. “Only Nona. And Darius, only his is different. He can magnify joy, and he can conjure. But it’s not safe to conjure on the Virtual Mode, because he can’t tell exactly where he’s going. And he can’t magnify my joy, because I’m depressive. So we won’t be seeing much of his magic soon. And I don’t have any magic at all. Just maybe a trace of telepathy that rubs off from Seqiro. Who isn’t really asleep now, because otherwise we wouldn’t be understanding each other like this. We’re a mixed bag. Now you’re with us, and I guess you can’t do magic either, but you can float and fire out jets of dirt, so you can do more than I can.” Her emotion turned negative as she finished. He wasn’t sure why.
“Because everybody else has special talents,” Colene answered. “While all I’ve got is depression.”
Burgess still could not understand that. There was a concept he thought would relate, but he could not form that concept by himself.
“I’ll help you,” Nona said. “It’s that Colene has what she calls an inferiority complex. But her inferiority is illusion. It isn’t there.”
“What do you mean, it isn’t there!” Colene protested. “I can’t float, I can’t conjure, I can’t do magic, and what little telepathy I can do is laughable compared to Seqiro’s power. I can’t even be happy! So what is there to recommend me?”
“You are our leader,” Nona said.
“I’m what?”
“You are the one of us with the most intelligence, creativity, determination, and initiative. When there’s an emergency, you are the one who takes charge. You are the one for whom the Virtual Mode was started, and for whom it continues. Without you, the rest of us would not be here. We have talents; you have the essence.”
Yes, that was it. The strongest member of the hive had a weakness that was illusion. Something she saw that did not exist.
“You agree with her, doubletrunk?”
Yes, he agreed. His perplexity had been resolved.
Colene shook her head, a gesture which indicated different things depending on the emotion. “Wish I could!”
The illusion still looked real to her.
Late in the day the man stirred and the horse woke up the rest of the way. They remained somewhat tired; the feeling in their bodies carried through with their thoughts. But neither was concerned with this.
“Hey, Colene, what is our course?” Darius asked.
“You haven’t decided on it?”
He smiled. “Well, what do you think it is?”
“I think we’d better just track on around the Virtual Mode until we find your reality.”
“By day or night?”
“Day, of course! We’ll fall in a hole at night.”
“So we’d better start moving at dawn.”
“I agree.”
Again, Burgess saw the way of it. Colene had made the decisions, but attributed them to Darius. It was the way she wanted it.
Nona picked up a leaf and changed it into a piece of bread, which was one of the substances they ate. Then she paused. “I am working from a substance of the Mode we’re in. That means it can’t sustain us, even if I change its nature.”
Colene nodded. “Probably right. We’d better not gamble. We’ll stick to what we brought with us.”
Again she had made the decision. At each turn, Burgess saw the truth of Nona’s statement.
“Oh, stop it, airsnoot! It’s just common sense, is all.”
She was the one with the ordinary sense, yes.
They spent the night behind barricades, taking turns watching. At one point Darius and Burgess were awake, and Seqiro partly conscious, so that they could communicate. “This is just one boundary away from your Mode, Burgess,” Darius remarked. “There should be others of your kind here, yet I have seen nothing.”
There were floaters here. Their signs were all around. Burgess hadn’t realized that it mattered.
“There are? Then why haven’t they attacked?”
Because the nearest camp was a distance away at the moment. Floaters ranged from region to region, so as not to deplete any single area. In this Mode they had camped here half a year before, but now were safely beyond. The remnant of their ramparts was visible beyond the boundary Colene had demonstrated. Unless they were quite unlike Burgess’ former hive, none would range here for another half year.
“So I was worried for nothing! What about the suckworms?”
They were surely all around. But the women had made sure there were none close by.
“So actually the worms protect us, because anyone who comes after us is likely to be nabbed by one of them first.”
That did seem likely.
“But we’ll keep watch anyway,” Darius said. “No telling what we’ll find when we travel. Each Mode will be just a little different from the last, in general nature, but the specifics can change dramatically. We can’t ever afford to let down our guard.”
That seemed wise.
IN the morning they started out. They wanted to be careful, but they didn’t want to be too slow, so they moved along boldly. They remained alert, ready to change course or to proceed with excruciating care when there was some hint of potential trouble.
Darius led the way, holding a staff made from a chip of wood from Shale. When he came to a boundary, the forward end of the pole disappeared, being pushed into the unseen reality. Then Darius disappeared, as if passing through a doorway in a wagon. Then the rear end of his pole followed, as if being fed into an opaque sheet of water. If that pole did not jerk or show any other sign of distress, Seqiro followed. He too vanished in a linear fashion, seeming to be a headless horse, a two-legged horse, the isolated tail of a horse, and finally no horse. If that tail did not twitch, Nona followed. She carried a stick of her own on her shoulder, so that the end of it followed her across the boundary. If the position of that end did not change before it disappeared, Burgess followed. He saw his own outtrunk painlessly cut off, and his own leading section. Then his central eye stalks passed through, and it was his trailing end that disappeared. His canopy eye patches helped verify that he remained intact, but they were normally used only for tracking the spot contours of the ground. Behind him Colene walked, with another pole on her shoulder. He kept one eye oriented always on that pole, and if it did anything odd, he would advance just enough to blow out a stone to alert Nona in the Mode ahead, then turn quickly, ready to blow out another stone in the Mode behind. It seemed complicated, but it was just a chain of cross-checks, so that they could all come quickly together in a central Mode if they had to.