How did I get here?

As though his confusion ignited some remote explanation, he saw a distant view of himself sprinting across a plain, a Hooded Dasher close behind, then the swoop of a hylighter as it lifted him to safety. The images played in his mind without his volition.

Rescue? What am I doing here? Ballast? Food? Maybe the hylighter is taking me to its nest and a bunch of hungry . . . hungry what?

“Nest!”

He heard the word clearly as though someone spoke directly into his ear, but there was no one. He knew the voice was not his, not Ship’s.

Ship!

They had fewer than seven diurns left! Ship was about to break the recording. End of humankind.

I’ve gone insane, that’s it. I’m not really being carried through blue haze by a hylighter.

In his mind, a hatch opened and he heard a babble of voices, Panille’s among them. Memories . . . he felt his mind lock onto memories that had been sealed away until this babble of voices. The gondola—the hylighters reaching into the surfaced gondola . . . Waela and Panille making love, tentacles all around like long black snakes slithering . . . questing. He heard his own hysterical laughter. Was that another memory? He recalled the LTA carrying them to the Redoubt . . . the cell—those odd E-clones . . . more laughter. I’m hallucinating . . . and remembering hallucinating.

“Not hallucinating.”

That voice again! The cradling tentacles shifted, but he still saw only blue haze and . . . and . . . Nothing else was certain.

The chatter continued in his mind—memories or present, he did not know. His head whirled. Fragments of what appeared to be holorecords danced behind his eyes.

I’ve finally gone all the way—really insane.

“Not insane.”

No . . . I just talk to myself.

The chatter had begun to separate into discriminate pieces. He thought he recognized specific snatches of conversation, but the internal holorecord terrified him. He felt that the entire planet had become eyes and ears just for him, that he was . . . everywhere.

In fits and starts, silence returned. He felt it wash through his mind. Slowly—the creep of some small creature up a gigantic wall—he felt those other eyes and ears remove themselves from his awareness.

He was alone.

What the hell is happening to me?

No answer.

But he sensed the cadences of his mind’s voice echo down a long, dark system of tunnels and corridors. He was in darkness. And somewhere in this dark was an ear to hear and a voice to answer. Waela was there. He sensed her as though he could reach out with one hand and touch . . .

The tentacles no longer enclosed him!

One palm touched the ground . . . rock, sand. Darkness all around. Waela remained there—-calm, receptive.

I’ve turned into some kind of a damned mystic.

“Live mystic.”