Colene paused in her monologue. She had gotten the coat nicely brushed out, and the mane untangled. Maresy was looking good, now: a mare whose brown hair matched Colene’s, just as Seqiro’s did. “Am I boring you? You don’t really have to listen to all this, you know. You just have to pick up the way you are from my mind: the perfect mare. I’ve just come out of a siege with a mind predator, and all this horror of my past life has really been freshened up, because that’s what the predator was doing to make me capitulate. But it really helps to have you listen, Maresy.”
Maresy turned her head to nuzzle Colene’s cheek. I understand.
Colene hugged her around the neck. “You’re back, Maresy. Just like before. Only now there are others. They are all your friends.”
She looked around. More time had passed than she had thought. The camp had been made, and the others were eating. “Come on, Maresy. I never introduced you to them.”
She did so. Now Maresy did not shy away at all; she was poised and friendly. Darius patted her, and she did not flinch; Nona offered her a carrot, and she ate it; Burgess lifted a trunk, and she touched it with her nose. Then, surprised, she lowered her nose to touch one of his contact points.
The others stared. Maresy was establishing contact with the floater, his way!
Then she met Seqiro. They sniffed noses. Then Seqiro sent a single, amazed thought to Colene: She has been restored! Without the intercession of another horse.
“All I did was talk to her,” Colene said. “And share my feelings. Just as I used to do with Maresy of Earth.” But she realized it had been more than that. She had projected her mind to the mare, in a continuing stream, and the mare had accepted it and been defined by it. Now Maresy was the horse Colene had loved, because Colene had defined her. It had been, in its way, an act of creation.
Colene went to have her supper. Nona gave Maresy a dish of feed, and she ate it without concern. Then they turned in for the night, this time with two horses eating hay nearby. Seqiro seemed interested in Maresy, perhaps still amazed that Colene had been able to handle the restoration alone. It had been some time since he had had a companion of his own species, and perhaps he had missed it. Colene remembered that horses generally preferred to associate with their own kind, if they had a choice. Had she been depriving Seqiro, all this time?
It was good to be alive, even with mental silence and a language barrier. Colene had thought that it was Seqiro’s mental ambience that made all the difference, but now it was absent, and they were still the hive. With another member, for a while. What more could she ask for?
She reached out to touch Darius’ shoulder. She knew what more. But she just wasn’t ready for that, yet.
IN the morning the news was bad. Darius had been exploring, and had discovered that a formidable party of minions was approaching the wild country. It might be several hundred. He put his head next to Colene’s, so that she could read his image directly, and she saw that it was so. The horse masters intended to locate the fugitives physically, so that mental silence would not allow them to hide any more.
What were they to do? Colene knew that this was a dire strait, because the horses meant only mischief to Seqiro. But there had to be some way out. Colene was normally suicidal, but now she was perversely positive.
She put her head next to Seqiro’s, using her limited-range telepathy instead of his. “Why do they hate you? Aside from your independence?”
I am a potential rival for leadership, because of my size and power of mind. I do not seek it, but the lead stallion does not believe that.
She knew that Seqiro just wanted to explore and learn new things, and have a sweet human girl or two to dote on him without being coerced. He had found exactly that on the Virtual Mode. After seeing the ways of power in the Julia Mode, she had a better understanding. Small, greedy minds did seek power, and believed others were out to take it from them. So this was in that fashion an ordinary situation.
But in that case, all they had to do was satisfy the horses that Seqiro was not going to stay, just as Nona had not stayed in her Mode. “Can you tell them you’re going away again?”
They would believe it a ruse, or that I would return with formidable creatures from other Modes.
Um, yes; paranoia had an evil rationalization for everything, and would not be persuaded of innocence. But something else bothered her. “There must be many rivals for power; why should they be so hot after just this one, Seqiro?”
There are not many. I am the only one who matches Koturo in mind. If he eliminates me, there will be no real threat to his dominance for some time.
Koturo. The lead stallion. That figured. But still she wasn’t satisfied. “Do the other horses support him? I mean, don’t they have some choice in the matter? Maybe some of them would like you better.”
Many would. They would not ordinarily support him in this. But he trumped up a charge against me, so I was confined with my minions while they investigated it. It was a false charge, as they must have discovered, but in the interim I escaped to the Virtual Mode with you.
Okay. So now there should be no charge against him. Yet they were acting as if there were. So a new, worse charge must have been trumped up in his absence. “And I know what that is!” Colene exclaimed. “Maresy! They will be saying that you were the one who mind-blasted her!”
Surely so. It is a serious crime, equivalent to your rape. “But you didn’t do it! She wasn’t there when I came to you, and you couldn’t have done it after you went on the Virtual Mode.”
True. But Koturo will have claimed I did, and his minions will support him.
“Then you can deny it, and your minions will support you! That would make it your word against his. What happens then?”
Then it would be a matter of challenge. But my minions will not support me; they were removed when I was confined. That is how I was confined, because only human minions can operate the mechanisms of the stalls.
“This challenge,” she persisted. “Exactly what happens there?”
When there is a question of honor between two horses, they may be obliged to settle it by mental and physical combat. The presumption is that the one who has the right of the case will prevail.
Colene bore down. “Exactly what kind of combat? I mean, do you try to mind-blast each other? In which case, why bother with anything physical?”
One horse can not readily destroy the mind of another. It is easier to defend than to attack, in this respect. So the minions attack the opponent’s minions physically, supported by their master, and the minions that prevail then attack the other horse physically. If they can injure him sufficiently, or if he is distracted by having to use his mind to try to wrest control of them from the other horse, he may be laid open to an effective mind attack.