By no means. I remain with you because I need you, and because we are compatible.
“A girl needs a horse,” she argued. “But does a horse need a girl? Wouldn’t you be happier out grazing, if the grass would stay with you?”
I would be satisfied grazing, he agreed. But I am also satisfied to be traveling with you. Since I can not safely graze, and can comfortably travel with you, this is the preferable course.
“But you could travel just as well without me! I’m really holding you back.”
Not so. I would be unable to travel without you. This is the major reason I did not break out of my confinement and enter the Virtual Mode alone.
“I don’t believe that!” She was feeling that self-destructive urge, trying to persuade him to do without her. She didn’t want to be alone; in retrospect she found her prior travel frightening. But to be a drag on this beautiful horse—that just wasn’t right. “Give me one gold reason why you can’t travel without me.”
My intelligence would revert to its normal level, and I would be unable to fix on a specific distant destination. I would soon be captured by any creatures who saw me as a beast of burden.
“But you’re smart! I couldn’t be talking with you like this if you weren’t!”
I draw on your intelligence, which is excellent. In your absence I would retain only the memory of you, not the power of your mind. If other creatures captured me, and none shared minds with me, I would remain dull. I was dull until I made contact with your mind afar; then I became more intelligent than any of my kind.
Colene was amazed. “You mean—it’s all me? I’m really talking to myself?”
You are talking to me, and I am as intelligent as you—because you share your mind with me. If you withheld your mind, I would indeed be just a stupid horse.
“But your kind controls my kind, in your reality! I saw it, I felt it. Your minds make hash of our minds.”
Our leaders retain intelligent humans who provide them with good power of the mind, much as your leaders retain strong horses who provide them with rapid transportation. In your reality your riders control your horses despite the inferior strength of the humans. In mine, the horses control the humans despite the inferior intelligence of the horses. It is a matter of who is in charge, and how power is wielded.
She was coming to accept it, reluctantly. “So you needed a smart companion, so you would understand where you were going and how to get there. And I’m that companion.”
Yes.
“And if I’d turned out to be a bad human man, you’d still have had to go with me, because it would have been either that or stay under stall arrest.”
Yes.
“But I turned out to be a sweet human girl, and you like that better.”
Yes.
She turned to him. “I was joking, Seqiro.”
No.
“I mean, about being sweet. I’m not sweet, I’m suicidal.”
Yes, you were suicidal once, and sweet. Now you are only sweet.
“You believe that?” she demanded.
Yes. So do you. This is why I believe it.
She stepped into him and hugged his neck as well as she could. “I love you, Seqiro.”
Yes. I also love you.
“But would you love me if you weren’t picking it up from my mind?”
No. That is not an emotion I would understand alone. But it is pleasant now.
“I think I like you even better this way. You are my ideal companion.”
Yes.
“Yes,” she echoed. “We are ideal for each other. Seqiro, we must stay together!”
Yes.
“You keep agreeing with me, and I love it!” she exclaimed.
Yes.
“Yet how is it you know so much, when I don’t know it?”
A horse has good memory. I have learned much in my life, and when I am with you I am able to apply it relevantly.
She walked on with restored attitude. Seqiro did need her, perhaps more than she needed him, and this was an enormous comfort. She had made it possible for him to escape his fate, and he would remain with her until he found what he was looking for—which he could best find only while he was with her, sharing her mind. That might be forever. That was long enough.
THEY stepped across a boundary, and suddenly there was barrenness. As far as they could see, the forested slopes had been abruptly denuded. The air was cold and dry.
They retreated, and the friendly trees reappeared. “What happened?” Colene asked, baffled.
Nothing in my reality explains this. But you have thoughts of nuclear war in yours.
“I don’t think it’s that,” she said with a shiver. “No slag. No green glass. No deadly radiation—I hope.” She glanced at him. “I don’t suppose you can detect radiation with your mind?”
Focus on it, and I will try.
She concentrated on deadly rays, uncertain of their names or how they would feel, but sure that they would cut up the tender cells of her body and mess up her genetics. Invisible shafts of destruction, like X-rays, only worse. Would this be enough for him to fathom? She doubted it, yet she hoped, because otherwise they were at an impasse. How could they risk that barren waste, without being sure it wouldn’t kill them just because they were there? They couldn’t go around it, because it was evident that it extended everywhere on that planet. There had not even been any clouds. It was just so utter and final!
I can detect such radiation, Seqiro thought. My telepathic mind is very sensitive to intrusion, and such rays would intrude. There are none.
“Are you sure?” she asked eagerly, but knew it was a foolish question. Seqiro knew what he knew.
Yes, I am sure. But this may be immaterial. If that waste extends across many realities, we shall not be able to cross it.
“It can’t extend forever!” she exclaimed. “My sense says that where I’m going is somewhere beyond it. Darius didn’t say anything about a desert.” But she realized that Darius hadn’t said anything about the intervening realities, because the first time he had simply cut through directly. Only with the Virtual Mode did every reality between them become significant.
Then we must cross.
“But suppose it does cross many?” she asked, nipping across to the other case, as was her fashion when in doubt. “Do we have supplies to make it? I don’t want to be stuck in Death Valley without water!”
I see the bones of horses in your vision of that valley.
“Yes! It’s awful! I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen it in movies. Oh, Seqiro, what shall we do?”
You love my company, but you would not be satisfied with it indefinitely. You must rejoin your human man. Therefore we must cross, because the alternative is not suitable.
“Yes, we must cross,” she agreed. She wished she could say it with more confidence. Where was the heroistic, die-for-her-beliefs girl she longed to be? Not here, unfortunately.
They camped for the night, so as to be able to start early in the day. They agreed that the desert might get hot in the day, and cold at night. They might do best to cross it rapidly and get back into comfortable realities. But if it turned out to be more than a one-day trek, they would be better off to maintain a measured pace, resting in the heat of noon and in the cold of night, preserving their strength. They could make a three-day crossing, but not if they exhausted themselves on the first day.