Darius exchanged a glance with Nona. Even with telepathy, this didn’t seem to make much sense.
“Each Mode has its own rules,” Darius said. “Whether of magic, or science, or memory, or something else. Perhaps they all were unified once, if we could trace back to the points of divergence. This creature is surely no stranger than many others we might encounter in other realities. But surely he has a name of his own, and we should honor that.”
“What’s his name?” Colene asked Nona.
“It’s just an electrical identity pattern. I wouldn’t know how to translate it to a name in our terms.”
“That’s what I thought,” Colene said smugly. “So we have to call him something we can relate to. So it’s Burgess. The same goes for this world/reality. So it’s Shale.” She faced Darius. “You have a problem with that?”
He knew better than to challenge her on a minor point. “I have no problem, if he does not. He can address us by electrical pulses, if he wishes, so long as we are able to tell whom he means.”
“Nah. Seqiro can render the translations. When we say Burgess, he’ll hear his pulse, and when he pulses at us, we’ll hear our names.”
Nona looked doubtful. “Seqiro has not yet related to—to Burgess. He has merely amplified my power of relating to a familiar, and I have somewhat clumsily communicated. We shall have to spend a great deal more time together before we can converse at all readily. It is—it is like learning another language. For him and for me. We have been exchanging pictures.”
“Well, then maybe we should get into some safe nook and get to know him,” Colene said brightly. “Because we don’t want to have to risk another anchor change; no telling what might come up next time. And Burgess is the only one who can free his anchor anyway. So let’s find out what’s on his mind, and see if our purposes align, and then maybe we can travel on together.”
Darius looked around. “This is only two realities away from—from Shale. There are probably similar creatures here, and we probably should avoid them until we know more about them. So perhaps we should travel until we find a reality that seems barren, or at least inoffensive.”
“Good point,” Colene agreed. “Nona, tell Burgess what we’re up to.”
“I will try,” Nona said. Darius had a notion what she was up against. Relating to an alien creature was no simple matter, but Colene acted as if it were just a matter of translating a few terms.
Colene shot him a glance. “No, I’m just trying to get something done, before anything worse happens.”
He tended to forget that his private thoughts as well as his uttered ones were shared with the others. Seqiro would limit communication if requested, but that would make it seem as if Darius had something to hide. So normally only his strongly sexual thoughts were excluded.
“Oh they are, are they?” Colene demanded. Darius was smart enough not to respond.
Nona put her hand on the creature’s knob again. “These are his contact points,” she explained. “Normally he touches one to a contact point of another of his kind, and they exchange information rapidly. In the way ants do with their antennae, perhaps. But I am alien, so the exchange is difficult.”
Then the telepathy faded, as Seqiro focused entirely on Nona. Darius was alone again.
Colene, never one to miss an opportunity, stepped up to him, ready for more kissing games. Perhaps with a demand to know exactly what sexual thoughts weren’t being relayed, relating to whom? But she hesitated.
“You—are—well?” he asked in her language.
“I’m not sure.” She looked around. “Is there something coming?” He was sure he had the essence, because her gesture and expression matched what he understood of her words.
“I—see—no.” Indeed, the landscape was clear. There were only bushes and trees.
“Something ugly,” she said. “Festering. Horror.” Or words to that effect. She kept looking around, as if expecting disaster to appear.
“There is nothing,” Darius reassured her. “I can tell by my feel for emotion. My power is working here, I believe.”
Still she reacted. Lines appeared in her face and her lips drew back from her teeth. “Awful. It’s coming for me. I know it!”
Then he began to sense it too. Because he was tuning in to Colene, and the ugliness was there in her mind. There was something—something that he had never found in her before. Not her normal depression, but something worse.
He took her in his arms. “Use mind-talk!” he urged her. “Show me the whole of it!”
She let him have it. Her telepathy was quite limited, compared to Seqiro’s, but they were in close physical contact and her emotion was strong. The ugliness expanded to foul his own awareness.
He felt frightened and ill and despairing. He wanted to flee, but couldn’t. It was as if a monstrous predator had locked his gaze to its own eye and would not let go. Moment by moment, that terrible grip strengthened, squeezing his mind and soul.
He tore himself away from her, and the awfulness diminished. “The mind predator!” he cried. “The thing that pursued Provos, our friend who remembered only the future. Now it is orienting on you!”
“The mind predator,” Colene agreed sickly. “Oh, Darius, get me out of here!”
He knew he had to. Because Colene and Provos had traveled the Virtual Mode together, and Colene had reported with mental pictures when they returned. The thing had threatened to destroy Provos, seeking her across the realities. They had escaped it only by fleeing through an anchor. It seemed to be a horror of the Virtual Mode, not a particular reality, and it could not pass out of its range.
He stepped to the horse. “Seqiro,” he said into the animal’s ear. “Break contact. Emergency.” Probably Seqiro could not understand his actual words, but the sound was enough to break his concentration.
The ear twitched. Then the telepathy returned.
“Colene’s in trouble!” Darius said. “The mind predator. We must go back through the anchor immediately!”
That got the horse’s instant full attention. Suddenly the horror invading Colene’s mind was blasting at them all. Nona screamed and sank to the ground.
Darius fought back, forewarned by his prior encounter with it. “Stifle! Stifle!” he cried. “Don’t relay!”
Then it stopped. The horse had damped out that aspect. In fact he had cut Colene out of the circuit. Nona climbed back to her feet, her eyes round with horror.
“Tell Burgess we must go back to his world,” Darius told her. “Now. Before that thing consumes Colene.”
“But it’s not safe there!” she protested.
“It’s not safe here! We shall have to go through and flee the other creatures, or fight them. Hurry!”
She put her hand back on a knob. The telepathy faded out again.
Darius picked Colene up. She was like a doll, mostly limp, but her hands and feet were twitching sporadically. The mind thing was making mush of her mind. He strode back toward the anchor, carrying her. The others could follow or not, but he was getting Colene away from the mon—
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.