We shall discover that when we follow it to its source.
“But how do we know that source is friendly?” she asked as she toweled herself off, using a dry shirt. She would have preferred to let herself dry naturally, but she was shivering and had to get clothed before she did herself harm.
I will be able to tell, if I am let into the mind of the anchor person.
“You can’t just peek?”
I can enter only a willing mind. Once I do, I can communicate freely, regardless of the language of the person, and can control that mind, and therefore the body. But I can not penetrate a hostile mind, or even an indifferent one.
“But you controlled the minds of those human servants in your reality, so we could escape.”
Not exactly. Our humans have been tamed, in the manner of your horses and other animals, so are receptive. Wild humans would not be receptive, any more than wild horses in your reality allow themselves to be ridden. They had discussed the differences between their two societies as they walked; Seqiro now understood her framework well enough. Even so, particular humans associate with particular horses, and do not allow unfamiliar horses to govern them if their own horses forbid it. In the stress of the moment I was able to strike through, but that was a limited opportunity. “But you and I made immediate connection!”
Because you are highly receptive.
“Well, I’m not tame!” she said indignantly.
But you desired compatible company. You were extremely lonely and nervous. That enabled me not only to join you, but to reach you from a distance, and across realities.
She nodded, now chewing on cold bread from his supplies, because there was nothing here from which she could make a fire. He was eating a ration of mixed grains. “I was that, for sure! I still am. I need you, Seqiro, I really do! Back when I started getting depressed I did some research, and decided I fit the profile of BPD: borderline personality disorder. I mean, alienation from my parents, sexual betrayal by a date, inability to cope with what I was learning about the evils of the world, and I was son of on a roller-coaster of mood swings with nowhere to go. I really didn’t know who I was, yet I hurt something awful with rejection even when maybe it wasn’t real. I would get so damn depressed, even when there didn’t seem to be any good reason. I didn’t dare trust anyone, especially not after that business with Mitzi, even though that worked out okay, in a way. But I couldn’t stand being alone either. Even when I was in the middle of people who seemed like friends, I knew it wasn’t true, and I just kept cutting my wrists and hiding them. I kept sort of wanting to tempt men, make them get hot, make them really want my body, but I didn’t want sex with them. I knew that was crazy but I couldn’t stop. Little Miss Self-destructive, that was me—until I loved Darius. Then I lost him. Then came the Virtual Mode—and you.”
I understand you and need you as you do me, but I have no sexual desire for you.
“Yeah. I can parade around naked with you, and it doesn’t matter. I thought I just wanted to tease men, but now I think it’s something else. I just want my freedom, freedom from what’s bugging me, and throwing away my clothes in public makes it seem as if I’m doing that, but it doesn’t mean anything with other girls, that happens in the showers anyway, so it has to be men, and when they get hot it sort of proves I’m getting there, I mean I want to be attractive, but it’s sort of dangerous too. Like—you know, once I was eating cereal, and it wasn’t sweet enough, so I put sugar on it, and it still wasn’t sweet enough, so I put more, but no matter how much I put, it wasn’t there. Then someone said, ‘Try salt’, so I put a little salt on it, and suddenly that stuff was so sickly awful sweet I couldn’t stand it. I’d been putting on the wrong stuff, not knowing, because it hadn’t tasted sweet enough. So with the nakedness and me—I’m looking for salt, but sugar is all I have, so I keep trying but it keeps not quite working. Does that make sense?”
Yes.
“And then when I found the salt—Darius—everything sort of came together. But I didn’t quite believe him, and—”
Suddenly she was sobbing. She leaned her forehead against his warm side and the tears flowed down.
You were afraid of intimacy, both physical and emotional.
“I guess so,” she said into his hide. “Did I ever blow that one!”
Yet you did what any practical person would have. Magic is not believable in your reality.
“If I had loved him enough, I would have believed him!”
Love is not precisely what horses experience, but we have learned something of it from our association with humans. In our judgment, the best love is based on practical considerations. Trust should not follow love; love should follow trust.
You condemn yourself because you were unable to do it backwards. You should not.
She lifted her head. “I never thought of that!”
Because you had no compatible and objective mind to explore it with. You do need me—and with me, you are whole. “With you I am whole,” she echoed. “But Seqiro, are you whole with me?”
Yes. My need for you is primarily physical and mental, for I have neither hands nor intelligence alone, but I had those things in my normal existence. You provide also the emotional factor I need, the quest for new things and new meanings. In this you are my completion, as I am yours.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Yes! We are whole!”
Then they settled down for sleep, Colene curled against his warm side with a blanket over them both.
Naturally her own thoughts interrupted it. “Seqiro! If you have to be let into a mind, if it’s a wild mind, how come you could handle those mosquitoes?”
Their minds are comparatively simple. The complex human minds are another matter. Mosquitoes could bar my penetration, had they the wit. But they don’t realize that, and I would not advise them of it.
“So it does make sense, after all.”
Yes. He seemed amused. She snuggled against him and drifted off.
IN the morning they set out on the pontoon bridge. It was solid enough to support Seqiro’s weight, though it did sink somewhat where he stood. Now it was Colene’s turn to shore up his confidence. “These things are strong. See, the platform part of it consists of long metallic planks, so even if the pontoon you’re over sinks, the others take up the slack, and you’d have to weigh a lot more than you do to make them all sink. In my reality they drive trucks across these things. So it may feel insecure, and look insecure because all we can see is one little segment at a time, but believe me, you’re safe.”
Now I have confidence. For he had seen her mental picture of the heavy trucks driving safely across such bridges, and her trust had become his.
However, she led the way, with a hand lightly touching his nose. This was so that her light body would encounter any possible weakening in the bridge first, and to guide him, because his eyes were not well placed to see the bridge. Her mind and hand became his guidance. Only the lack of a halter on his head would have showed an outsider that this was not a girl leading her horse. It was a girl leading her horse, but the relation between them was different.
The surface of the sea continued, but the color of the water shifted as they crossed realities. Life! Seqiro thought. I sense faint life ahead—perhaps very primitive, in the depths of the ocean.