But she had to try. She lurched up and ran back toward the tent. “Darius! Seqiro! The mind thing’s after me again!”
The others came awake. Their minds linked. “Can you hold it off?” Darius asked.
“No! It’s way too strong!”
“But maybe we can hold it off,” he said. “If we link wills and resist together.”
Then it was as if she were at the center of a tug-of-war. On one side the mind predator was pulling her into its dark maw; on the other, her friends were pulling her toward the light. But the predator was stronger; she felt herself being slowly, inexorably drawn into the horror.
“It’s stronger!” she gasped. “Let me go! So you won’t be drawn in too! Get away from it.”
“No,” Darius said. “You are ours.”
“But I brought it on myself! I asked for it! I sent out a call, and it found me! I was a fool.”
“Shut up,” he said, seemingly from a distance. “Burgess, you seem stronger. Can you resist it?”
Burgess thought he could, because his mind was not as open as theirs, and was different.
Darius picked Colene up physically and carried her to the floater. He set her two hands on Burgess’ contact points. The pull of the mind predator weakened, but did not let go.
“Can you carry her?” Darius asked Burgess.
For a time, the floater thought.
Darius put Colene on Burgess’ top, spread-eagled, her hands grasping contact points, her feet braced against other points. She was naked, but it didn’t matter. The mind predator was another stage weaker. Her four connections to the floater were somehow channeling her mind through his, and filtering out the mind predator. But the monster still lurked, balked only for the moment, by no means defeated. Like an ocean dammed back by a sand castle, it waited, and pressed forward its tidal waves, certain to prevail in the end.
“Stay there,” Darius told her. “Keep resisting it. We’ll get you safe.”
With most of her mind and will she staved off the monster. Peripherally she was aware of the others breaking camp and traveling on. Burgess carried her, blasting through so much air that the heat of it warmed her. He moved across the water and through Mode boundaries, but the siege of the mind predator never eased; it had invaded the Virtual Mode, and she could not escape it as long as she was between anchors. She knew that the others were trying to get her to Nona’s anchor, but she didn’t know whether they would succeed in time. The power of the predator was dreadful, and she could oppose it only feebly, only while she focused her whole will. When her mind wandered, the predator pressed closer. What would happen when, fatigued by the effort of resistance, she slept?
Yet her will could not remain firm enough, long enough, even when she was awake. Was there any point in fighting the inevitable? Wasn’t it better just to succumb now, instead of suffering the pain of the continued struggle?
But that was the predator’s thought, not hers. And this thought was from Burgess, who was aware of her plight without being able to comprehend its nuances. Because of that objectivity, he understood what the predator was doing: trying to make her capitulate without fighting. That could only be because it feared she would escape him if she staved him off long enough.
“Thanks, Burgess,” she said. “I won’t let it trap me that way. I’ll fight just as long as I can.”
There was anger, and she realized that it was from the predator. It didn’t like being balked, even to this extent. Still, she felt her ability to resist draining out of her, as if she had cut a vein in her wrist and the blood was flowing in a thin steady stream to the floor. How long would it be before she drained too far, and lost her strength, and was overwhelmed? A day? An hour? A minute? She didn’t know, but feared that whatever her maximum time was, it would take longer for them to bear her out of the Virtual Mode. She was doomed.
Funny thing: she was suicidal, yet now she didn’t want to die. Because her suicidal impulse was back on Earth, when she had nothing worth living for. Here on the Virtual Mode she had Darius and Seqiro, and she wanted to live for them. So she wasn’t suicidal now. What an irony, that this nemesis was attacking her on this same Virtual Mode that gave her reason to live! Had it come after her on Earth, it could have had her without resistance. But it seemed it couldn’t pass through the anchors. It was the reverse of the rest of them; instead of being a creature of an anchor Mode, crossing the imitation territory of the Virtual Mode, it was a creature of the Virtual Mode barred from the portals of the anchors. Where did it come from, and what kind of thing was it?
Suddenly she was tempted to go find it, to satisfy her curiosity. Surely it was a magnificent entity! All she had to do was let go…
But that was the mind predator’s thought, Burgess reminded her. She must not take it for her own.
Colene rallied her determination again. The predator kept trying to trick her, which meant it was worried. That was a good sign. But she was worried too, because these were merely little waves she was deflecting, not the tide itself. The dark water was rising, and her little sand castle seemed increasingly insecure. Was the thing merely playing with her, teasing her, allowing her to think she could escape, when actually she had no chance?
That was the predator’s thought, Burgess indicated.
Damn! She kept being tricked, being seduced into defeatism. She was too ready to believe she was lost—and that was her own thought.
She hung on, physically and mentally, falling into a daze. And gradually, insidiously, her reality shifted, and the horror loomed.
“I can’t make it!” she cried at last. “Stop the motion! I’m fading out!”
Darius came and lifted her off the floater. “You’re tired, Colene,” he said reassuringly. “You can make it. We’re going to Julia, where we can lose that thing, as we did at Shale.”
“But it’s creeping up on me!” she insisted. “It’s going to get me! The way the fire got those firemen!”
“What?”
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know about any of that,” she said, babbling, just wanting to hold his attention, because it was all she had to cling to. “Back on Earth, before my time, but I read about it somewhere, a real horror story. There was this big fire in the dead of winter, it was way below freezing, maybe down around zero Fahrenheit, and these three firemen got trapped way up high on a ledge on a building, and the fire was coming for them, and no one else could reach them. They could only get one fire hose to play on that section of the fire, and it wasn’t enough, and the poor firemen were going to get burned up. But then someone had a bright idea, and he said, ‘Play the water on the firemen!’ and they did, and that kept them cool and wet so the fire couldn’t burn them. And the fire raged all night before they got it under control, but all night they kept a steady stream of water on those trapped firemen, protecting them from the heat. And in the morning they got a closer look—and the three firemen were frozen stiff.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“The fire was hot, see, but the night was cold, and water made it colder. So that water made it too cold, but they couldn’t hear the firemen cry, amidst the roar of the fire, and they killed those three men, just trying to save them. Just the way you’re killing me, just trying to save me. Because my body may be getting carried along, but the predator is reaching my mind, and by the time you get me to Nona’s anchor, I’ll just be a frozen husk, and what’s the point?”
“But we have to help you!” he said.
“There’s got to be a better way.”
He nodded. “Yes. I have a better way. I will hold you close.” He put his hands to his clothing, stripping it rapidly off.