“She wanted a horse and a man. But I think if she had to chose between us, to be with only one of us, you would be the one.”
Perhaps. But her ultimate loyalty must be to her own kind. She must in the end be with you.
“Fortunately there is no conflict. She does not have to choose between us. I like you too, and will be glad to have you with us.”
I think there is no good place for me in your Mode.
“But you can not stay forever on the Virtual Mode. As you breathe, your substance is slowly replaced by the material of the many Modes we cross, and the time will come when that overbalances your anchor Mode substance, and you will no longer be able to cross the Modes. You must decide where you wish to be, before that happens.”
That is a hard decision. Perhaps I would remain with you. But what then of Nona and Burgess?
“That is a difficult question. Burgess really needs a hive of his own kind. Nona wants to explore forever, and does not wish to marry and settle down. I would be happy to have her for a mistress, but Colene would object.”
Most strenuously, Seqiro agreed. She does not appreciate the way of a stallion with mares.
Darius laughed. “At least you do!”
I understand the one I am with, as I explained before. I can then use my mind similarly. This is a pleasure for me, as I am not naturally intelligent.
“Don’t you ever long for your home, with others of your kind, including mares?”
I was dissatisfied in my Mode. I was not comfortable with the complete domination of your kind by my kind, and I wanted to explore other ways of existing. Therefore I was out of favor, and am not welcome there. As for mares—they are the same as any other horses, except when in heat, and that is quickly attended to. We do not marry in the fashion of your kind.
“But now that you have associated so closely with us, you must have come to appreciate our ways. You understand the meaning of personal commitment. Of love. You will not be able to throw those concepts away as if they never existed. Wouldn’t you like a long-term relationship with a mare who understood you? Suppose there were a mare who resembled Colene?”
There is such a mare. But she is a figment of Colene’s imagination. Colene calls her Maresy Doates.
Darius shook his head. “A dream mare! Yet strange things can happen on the Virtual Mode. Maybe she exists in one of the Modes adjacent to yours.”
They resumed their practicing for telepathic resistance. The horse always won easily, but he assured Darius that his level of resistance was increasing.
They reached the doctor’s office. Darius had not had to worry about the route, because Seqiro had memorized the map when Colene had studied it, and had a firm sense of his place on its grid. They went to the parking lot beside it, and Darius dismounted. Seqiro waited beside the cars, tuning in to Colene, her parents, and the doctor. He would make sure that there was no trouble.
Hi, folks, Colene’s thought came. Get in here, Darius. There was a current of joy in her that would have made her marriageable in his Mode had it been permanent instead of the surge of the moment.
Darius went inside, guided by Colene’s knowledge, relayed by the horse. There he suffered himself to be stuck by a needle so that some of his blood could be sucked out for their science tests. This would assure that he carried no loathsome disease, as if that were not self-evident. Colene had already given her blood.
“Now we go to the license office,” Colene said. “See you there, Darius.”
Darius returned to Seqiro, and they set out across the grid of streets again. They continued to practice resistance. This time Colene tuned in on it, realizing what they were doing. Try me too, horseface, she thought. Make me bite my thumb. Ouch!
But her resistance had been more than Darius’ resistance. She had been close to the horse for longer, and she was more truly attuned. This gave her a better knowledge of the ways of his power, and she was able to fashion a more effective defense against it. She also had a stronger motive: she had been stunned by a mental blow from one of the other horses of Seqiro’s Mode, and knew firsthand how devastating it could be. She wanted never to be subjected to that again.
In due course they reached the appropriate office. This time Seqiro had more delicate work to do: he had to convince the clerk that Darius had appropriate identification, such as a “driver’s license”, “birth certificate”—as if a person needed proof to show he had been born!—and then sign his name on a line of a piece of paper filled with print, He took a blank sheet of paper from Colene and showed it as many times as the clerk requested things, and each time Seqiro made the clerk satisfied that he had seen what was required. Darius was not entirely easy about this, yet knew that if he tried to provide the legitimate identification of his own culture, it would not be understood. This was a shortcut through blind bureaucracy, as Colene put it. He filled in the forms with information Colene provided, letting her mental hand guide his hand so that he wrote in her graphics, and it was done. They had their marriage license.
Now Colene had to go with her folks to make other arrangements. Darius had the rest of the day to himself. It was time to deal with the matter of the Sin Eater. Seqiro’s mind ranged out to the region where the abused youth lived. Soon enough he located Raff, and walked toward his neighborhood. Even from a distance, the confusion and self-loathing registered. “That young man is truly unhappy,” Darius said. “And he did not even do the crime. He does not understand why they blame him.”
We might give him understanding, by connecting your mind to his. Would that help?
“I am not sure it would. It is the community that needs better understanding. It is the community that is doing wrong. If that changed, then the Sin Eater would be freed.”
I could compel some individuals to change, but that would endure only while I applied mental force. They would revert when I stopped.
“When we were crossing the bog, I tried to draw and multiply the mental powers of others. I made Nona’s magic work for us all, for a while. If I could multiply a change of attitude, it might last for several months, as does the joy I normally spread. But I do not know whether I could do that, and in any event my magic does not work in this Earth Mode.”
How do you know that it does not?
“I tried it when I was here. I was unable to conjure myself or anything else, and I could not multiply joy. Certainly I would have used my magic to defend myself, were it possible, when I was attacked by four youths from a car.”
What happened? I learned some of this from Colene, but now need to know more.
“I had just arrived here, before we instituted the Virtual Mode. It was a spot crossover, just sufficient for me to find and extract the woman I had come for. I did not realize then that she was extractable because she was destined to have little impact on her own Mode, therefore could be readily removed from it. She was going to die soon, by her own hand. She was a vessel of dolor instead of joy. But at that point I knew none of this. I simply found myself by the street, and I had to step quickly back to avoid being struck by a car. A person in the car made a gesture, which I took to be communication of some kind, so I emulated it. The car then stopped, and four youths emerged and attacked me. I tried to invoke a pacification spell, but it had no effect. I was battered, and left in sore straits. It was Colene who later came and rescued me from likely death by exposure. By the time we came to understand each other, I loved her, and she loved me. But she declined to return to my Mode with me, and I knew she was a vessel of grief, so I left her—and then regretted it, and instituted the Virtual Mode in an effort to find her again and bring her home.”