Beaten her? No way! She was going to beat it, by dying and leaving it nothing to feed on.
But that faint thought hung on. This was the predator speaking, not Colene. It wanted her to give up all resistance, because then not even her friends could help her, and the anchor would be too late.
Ludicrous! It wanted to feed on her living mind, destroying it stage by stage. Only by killing that mind could she balk it.
Still that faint nagging thought. She could not truly kill herself in the dream, she could only acknowledge the mastery of the predator by giving up all hope of escape. Death in the dream was captivity by the predator.
Which was right? She was sure that death was the correct course, but was there a reasonable doubt? If so, was it rational to commit suicide?
Reasonable doubt. Rationality. Life. Death. Chaos.
She cudgeled her brain, trying to make it think logically instead of with pure feeling. Did death make sense, or life with the risk of awful captivity? Should she trust her own, strong thoughts, or that faint nagging Burgess thought?
And there was the key: her own thoughts had been ranging all over everywhere, always winding up in disaster. So she couldn’t trust them. While Burgess was the only one who could help her against the mind predator. He was not subject to human thought processes, because he was alien. He was not subject to human distortion. Thus he could be trusted. Maybe. If it really were his thought she was picking up.
And what he thought was that in human terms Colene seemed to have a good existence ahead. She was with a good little hive. All of the others were working to bring her to safety, and there was not far to go. They all needed her and wanted her to survive.
They needed her. From out of chaos, a thought to warm her soul. She made a difference to others.
“Airfoot, you’d better be right!” she exclaimed, throwing away the knife.
The scene exploded, literally. Bumshed flew apart, the walls flying out across the dawn yard. Colene’s precious things were scattered in a circle. The floor dropped out from under, leaving her sitting cross-legged in space. A draft froze her legs, blowing her nightie up and off her body, leaving her naked. The stinking pot before her belched a stench so putrid that she couldn’t breathe.
But all this proved was that she had defeated the dream, and now it was coming apart. She had managed to fight off the monster, again, thanks to Burgess. “Ha-ha, rotmind!” she cried. “I’ve beaten you! You can’t have me! Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa!”
But she had exulted too soon. The mind predator rallied from its rage, and the siege intensified. It had not lost the game, only an episode, and its resources were relatively infinite. Now it wasn’t trying to trick her, it was marshaling its full power for the direct brute kill. No amount of dreaming would stop it this time.
Then there was light. Colene blinked. She was riding on Burgess, and they were on a fair hill. Behind them was the sound of ocean waves breaking against the face of a cliff. She recognized this place, for she had been here before.
They had passed through the anchor, and this was the Julia Mode.
The malignant siege of the mind predator faded. This time it was really gone.
“Oh, thank you, Burgess!” she cried, doing her best to hug the floater. “You got me through! You saved my sanity!”
They had all gotten her through, Burgess clarified. Nona by knowing the way and making a smooth path by magic, when the terrain became too rough. Darius by drawing joy from Nona and sending it out to Colene, so that she never sank too low to be recovered, and by conjuring them across a crevasse when there was no time to go around it. Seqiro by keeping them all connected, and carrying everything they needed, and sometimes hauling things out of the way so that it was possible to make a path for Burgess. And Burgess himself, by carrying her, and shielding her to some extent from the mind predator.
Colene realized that the others had put forth a heroic collective effort on her behalf. She had thought the battle was all her own, but that was only the inner part of it. Her friends had fought the outer part of it. She felt a terrific surge of gratitude. But when she tried to express it, things blocked up, and she burst into tears.
But it was all right. Her mind was back in full contact with theirs, and they understood. Chaos had been defeated, this time.
CHAPTER 8—JULIA
NONA’S feelings were mixed. She was relieved that they had managed to get Colene through the anchor before the mind predator destroyed her. The girl had been writhing and crying out increasingly, and the issue had seemed in doubt. It was impossible to know what she was going through, because when the predator attacked, her mind was cut off. Only Burgess had some limited contact, perhaps because the predator didn’t know how to exclude his alien mind. But Colene’s moments of rationality between siege had made it clear that she was suffering, and feared that she could not resist the predator much longer.
However, to save Colene they had had to do what Nona least wanted to do: return to Julia, her home Mode. Now they were standing on the hill by the sea, near her home village, on the world of Oria. The fractal outlines of the terrain were evident, though in this region they had been so much worn down that a stranger might miss them. When the villagers saw the party and recognized Nona, they would demand that she remain to be queen of Oria, because she was now the only person who could do full magic. Everyone could do illusion, of course, but that didn’t count. The real magic had been the province of the men, and now it was the province of the women, but only those who were born in the ambience of the anima. It would take a generation for the women to achieve their full powers. Except for Nona, the ninth of the ninth, who had brought the anima.
She didn’t want to be queen. She didn’t want to marry and breed. She didn’t want to stay here. Because staying would mean the end of her adventure on the Virtual Mode, which had hardly begun, and every child she bore would draw some of her magic away, until at last she too was left with only illusion. How could she avoid being trapped into this role she so detested, when they recognized her?
“Listen, Nona,” Colene said. “I really appreciate this. I know you don’t want to be here, but I guess we’ll have to stay a week or so, here in Julia, same way we did in the Shale Mode. So I guess it’s up to me to figure out how to fix it so you won’t get trapped.”
Nona had forgotten that Colene was back in the mental network, or as Burgess put it, the hive. So the girl had picked up Nona’s thoughts. Nona should have asked Seqiro to limit them. “This is not your responsibility,” she replied.
“Oh yes it is! I’m the one the mind predator was after, and you’re the one who had to come here to save me. So I owe you. I don’t want my problem to become your problem.”
Nona shrugged. “It can only be my problem, because I am the one with the anima magic.”
“And I’m the one with the animal cunning,” Colene said. “I’ll figure out something. Maybe we can hide you.”
“It’s not that,” Nona demurred. “I would not be recognized beyond this village, physically. But the moment I do any magic, anyone on Oria will know me. Then in a moment, all will know that I am back.”
“Well, maybe if you just don’t do any magic, then.”
“I shall have to, to provide food and shelter for us,” Nona said. “We must not use our carried supplies while in an anchor Mode.”