that the long, pale tendrils on its head were uncurling from the concealing hair
and were standing out straight. Two of them fell slowly to lie along the top of
her own head; and suddenly Cha Thrat wanted to scream.
Being Rhone’s friend was much, much worse than being its enemy.
Chapter 14
There was fear as she had never known it before—the sudden, overriding, and
senseless fear of everything and everyone that was not joined tightly to her for
the group defense; and a terrible, blind fury that diminished the fear; and the
memories and expectation of pains past, present, and to come. And with those
fearful memories there came a dreadful and confused nightmare of all the
frightful and painful things that had ever happened to her—on Sommaradva and
Goglesk and in Sector General. Many elements of the nightmare were utterly
strange to her; the feeling of terror at the sight of Prilicla, which was
ridiculous, and the sense of loss at the departure of the male Gogleskan who had
fathered the child within her. But now there was no fear of theoutsized,
off-world animated doll who was trying to help her.
Even with the confusion of fear, pain, and alien experiences dulling her
capacity to think, the conclusion was inescapable. Khone had invaded her mind.
Now she knew what it was like to be a Gogleskan; at a time like this the choice
was simple. Friends joined and enemies—everyone and everything that was not part
of the group—were attacked and destroyed. She wanted to break everything in the
room, the furniture, instruments, decorations, and then tear down the flimsy
walls, and she wanted to drag Khone around with her to help her do it.
Desperately she tried to control the blind and utterly alien fury that was
building up in her.
Amid the storm of Gogleskan impressions a tiny part of her own mind surfaced for
a moment, observing that the tight grip she retained on Khone’s fur must have
fooled its subconscious into believing that she had joined with it, and was
therefore a friend worthy of mind-sharing.
/ am Cha Thrat, she told herself fiercely, once a Som-maradvan warrior-surgeon
and now a trainee maintenance technician of Sector General. I am not Khone of
Goglesk and / am not here to join and destroy…
But this was a joining, and memories of a larger, more destructive joining came
crowding into her mind.
She seemed to be standing on top of a land vehicle stopped on high ground
overlooking the town, watching the joining as it happened. The Earth-human
Wainright was beside her, warning her that the Gogleskans were dangerously
close, that they should leave, that there was nothing she could do and, for some
strange reason, while it was saying these things it sometimes called “Doctor”
but more often “sir.” She felt very bad because she knew that the joining had
been her fault, that it had happenedbecause she had tried to help, and had
touched, an industrial accident casualty. Below her she could clearly see Khone
attaching itself to the other Gogleskans without being able to understand the
reason, and at the same time she was Khone and knew the reason.
With individual Gogleskans hurrying to join it from nearby buildings, moored
ships, and surrounding tree dwellings, the group-entity became a great, mobile,
stinging carpet that crawled around large buildings and engulfed small ones as
if it did not know or care what it was doing. In its wake it left a trail of
smashed equipment, vehicles, dead animals, and a capsized ship. The group-entity
moved inland to continue its self-destructive defense against an enemy out of
prehistory.
In spite of the terrible fear of that nonexistent enemy in Khone’s mind, which
was now her mind, Cha Thrat tried to make herself think logically about what had
happened to her. She thought of the wizard O’Mara and how it had said that
Educator tapes would never be for her, and remembered the reasons it had given.
Now she knew what it was like to have a completely alien entity occupying her
mind, and she wondered if her sanity would be affected. Perhaps the fact that
Khone, like herself, was a female might make a difference.