Chaos Mode

CHAPTER 7—CHAOS

COLENE woke refreshed. The past two days of travel had been wearing, but they had succeeded in getting out of Shale and most of the way to Julia, and maybe two more days would bring them to Darius’ home Mode. If they were going in the right direction. She suddenly realized that they might not be, because they had come from Julia to reach Provos’ Mode, and that had been replaced by Shale. They should have gone the other way to reach Darius. This direction might be leading back to Earth. If the arrangement of the anchors was the same. There was no guarantee of that, because everything changed when an anchor did. So they would just have to keep on traveling, and if Darius wasn’t the next anchor, well, maybe it was for the best. Because she was in the throes of an emotional impasse. She loved Darius and Seqiro, but she also liked Nona, and Burgess too; they were all good folk. She didn’t want to give any of them up.

There was also that business of not actually being able to marry Darius, because his wife was the one he had to draw joy from. He would have to marry Prima, whose joy would never expire, and have Colene for his mistress. Yet that too might be problematical, because there were plenty of juicier girls than herself available, and Old Enough too. Darius loved the look and feel of young women, and who was she to deny him that? So their arrival at his home Mode would be a time of decision, in several ways, and she wasn’t yet ready for those decisions. As long as they remained on the Virtual Mode, those decisions could be postponed, maybe.

So they would breeze on by Julia, where Nona didn’t want to be queen, and see what they came to next. If it was Earth, well, they could breeze on by that, too, because there was nothing there for her, anymore. She had only just barely gotten away from there, last time; her folks had pretended to understand, then had tried to get rid of her anchor so as to trap her there. They had thought it was her shed next to the little dogwood tree, which she called Dogwood Bumshed, so they had taken that away. But an anchor wasn’t a thing, it was a place on a world, and also a person of that world. So she had to get together with her anchor place, on Earth; no other Earth resident could use it, and she couldn’t enter the Virtual Mode from anywhere else. But she remained mad as hell about her folks’ betrayal. They had had police there and everything staking it out. They might still have it staked out, since they had seen her pass through it and now knew it wasn’t any teenage flight of fancy. So she didn’t want to go there again, for sure.

Yet she was sorry, too, because on another level she did love her folks, and knew they loved her. Her mother was an alcoholic, and her father a philanderer, but they had both tried to straighten out when she, Colene, disappeared. Probably they wouldn’t be able to maintain the straight life for long, but their effort was touching. At least now they knew that Colene wasn’t dead, she was just elsewhere, and happier than she had been at home with her shell of a life. If she had had to stay on Earth, they would have lost her for sure, because she would have killed herself. Somehow. Eventually. She had been playing at suicide, really, scratching her wrists, but there were more effective ways.

When she got really serious about it, she would have found a way.

But here on the Virtual Mode she was—dare she think it?—happy. She liked the company she kept, even with problems. In fact, she sort of liked the problems too. When they worked together to get over a wall, or fend off attackers, she really felt with it and alive. She was part of a going concern, accomplishing something worthwhile. Her life counted. That was the key: it made a difference to the universe whether she lived or died, on the Virtual Mode. In contrast to how it was on Earth.

She got up. Darius was still asleep beside her, and Nona on his other side. The thing about Darius was that when he slept, he really did sleep. He didn’t try to feel her up in the dark, and he never touched Nona at all. Not even when Seqiro slept all the way, so that there was no mental contact. He had integrity, and it was his pride and her frustration. Because she knew how much he liked women. Because she knew that she lacked that fundamental honesty. She had proved it by checking on him, pretending to be asleep so she could watch him. Anything he did to her, he did openly while they were both awake, like tickling her on the butt to make her let go of him; and anything he did to Nona, he did in Colene’s presence, like helping her keep steady on the wall. She knew that he did not try to check on her similarly, and wouldn’t even if she were with another man. He was so damned straight she felt inferior. He was more of a man than she deserved. She would have felt really insecure about that, except that he said he loved her, and he wouldn’t lie.

She crawled out from the shelter. The dawn was forming, and it was such a splendor that she paused for a moment in awe. She had never been one to ooh and aah at the sunrise or sunset, but now she realized that she had never seen it in its wilderness glory. Other mornings had been cloudy or mixed, but this one was perfect, and shades of purple, red, and gold were spreading across the irregular pattern of clouds, with scintillating sunbeams between. This was a natural world, unpolluted by the smoke and light of man’s designs, and it shone with preternatural clarity in the cleanness of the new day. Maybe it was her fancy that made it so, but it was nevertheless wonderful.

She doffed the slip Nona had made for her, and walked down to the edge of the water. The piranhas were there, no longer repelled by broadcast fear, but she could handle them. She focused her mind and sent a blast of fear and rage dredged from the depths of her old, buried life on Earth. The fish scattered. She smiled, and dipped chill water to splash on her bare body. She could back the fish off only a few feet, compared to Seqiro’s few hundred feet, but she was just a toddler in telepathy. It was great even to have that little bit, and maybe it would grow if she kept practicing.

Just how far could she reach, if she tried her hardest? She had been able to communicate with others, one on one, when she had to, but that had been mainly in emergencies. She had gotten stronger, because at first her ability had been so slight she couldn’t be sure it was working at all. But she had never tried to measure it. Seqiro could even reach across the Modes, when he tried. He had done so when they first met, guiding her in to find him. Of all the things she could have dreamed of, a friendly telepathic horse was the best. When she was with Seqiro, she felt safe, not only physically but emotionally, because his mind constantly embraced her consciousness. That banished her suicidal aspect.

But the time might come when Seqiro wasn’t with her. If she settled down on some basis or other with Darius, and the horse preferred to keep traveling the Virtual Mode with Nona, Colene would have to let him go. She knew she was selfish, wanting man and horse, and she would have to chose. Nona would be a more than adequate consolation prize for whichever one Colene didn’t choose. Nona would rather actually have the horse. So Colene might have to get by on her own telepathy, and it was important to know just what its potential was.

She took a mental breath, oriented her mind, and hurled her thought out just as far as she could. ANYBODY OUT THERE?

She waited. Probably she had projected only about ten feet, not even crossing a Mode boundary. But it had sure felt as if she were hallooing across mountaintops.

Then there came an answer. HUNGER.

Colene felt a chill. She recognized that thought. It was the mind predator that had attacked Provos, and then later found Colene, probably because she had been with Provos. They had had to get her off the Virtual Mode to escape it. It had evidently gone elsewhere, thinking her forever lost to it—but now she had foolishly alerted it to her restored presence. And she wasn’t close to an anchor. Oh, folly!

What could she do? She didn’t know. She knew she couldn’t fight it; the thing was too powerful and awful. It fed on minds the way a cat fed on mice. She was lost.

But she had to try. She lurched up and ran back toward the tent. “Darius! Seqiro! The mind thing’s after me again!”

The others came awake. Their minds linked. “Can you hold it off?” Darius asked.

“No! It’s way too strong!”

“But maybe we can hold it off,” he said. “If we link wills and resist together.”

Then it was as if she were at the center of a tug-of-war. On one side the mind predator was pulling her into its dark maw; on the other, her friends were pulling her toward the light. But the predator was stronger; she felt herself being slowly, inexorably drawn into the horror.

“It’s stronger!” she gasped. “Let me go! So you won’t be drawn in too! Get away from it.”

“No,” Darius said. “You are ours.”

“But I brought it on myself! I asked for it! I sent out a call, and it found me! I was a fool.”

“Shut up,” he said, seemingly from a distance. “Burgess, you seem stronger. Can you resist it?”

Burgess thought he could, because his mind was not as open as theirs, and was different.

Darius picked Colene up physically and carried her to the floater. He set her two hands on Burgess’ contact points. The pull of the mind predator weakened, but did not let go.

“Can you carry her?” Darius asked Burgess.

For a time, the floater thought.

Darius put Colene on Burgess’ top, spread-eagled, her hands grasping contact points, her feet braced against other points. She was naked, but it didn’t matter. The mind predator was another stage weaker. Her four connections to the floater were somehow channeling her mind through his, and filtering out the mind predator. But the monster still lurked, balked only for the moment, by no means defeated. Like an ocean dammed back by a sand castle, it waited, and pressed forward its tidal waves, certain to prevail in the end.

“Stay there,” Darius told her. “Keep resisting it. We’ll get you safe.”

With most of her mind and will she staved off the monster. Peripherally she was aware of the others breaking camp and traveling on. Burgess carried her, blasting through so much air that the heat of it warmed her. He moved across the water and through Mode boundaries, but the siege of the mind predator never eased; it had invaded the Virtual Mode, and she could not escape it as long as she was between anchors. She knew that the others were trying to get her to Nona’s anchor, but she didn’t know whether they would succeed in time. The power of the predator was dreadful, and she could oppose it only feebly, only while she focused her whole will. When her mind wandered, the predator pressed closer. What would happen when, fatigued by the effort of resistance, she slept?

Yet her will could not remain firm enough, long enough, even when she was awake. Was there any point in fighting the inevitable? Wasn’t it better just to succumb now, instead of suffering the pain of the continued struggle?

But that was the predator’s thought, not hers. And this thought was from Burgess, who was aware of her plight without being able to comprehend its nuances. Because of that objectivity, he understood what the predator was doing: trying to make her capitulate without fighting. That could only be because it feared she would escape him if she staved him off long enough.

“Thanks, Burgess,” she said. “I won’t let it trap me that way. I’ll fight just as long as I can.”

There was anger, and she realized that it was from the predator. It didn’t like being balked, even to this extent. Still, she felt her ability to resist draining out of her, as if she had cut a vein in her wrist and the blood was flowing in a thin steady stream to the floor. How long would it be before she drained too far, and lost her strength, and was overwhelmed? A day? An hour? A minute? She didn’t know, but feared that whatever her maximum time was, it would take longer for them to bear her out of the Virtual Mode. She was doomed.

Funny thing: she was suicidal, yet now she didn’t want to die. Because her suicidal impulse was back on Earth, when she had nothing worth living for. Here on the Virtual Mode she had Darius and Seqiro, and she wanted to live for them. So she wasn’t suicidal now. What an irony, that this nemesis was attacking her on this same Virtual Mode that gave her reason to live! Had it come after her on Earth, it could have had her without resistance. But it seemed it couldn’t pass through the anchors. It was the reverse of the rest of them; instead of being a creature of an anchor Mode, crossing the imitation territory of the Virtual Mode, it was a creature of the Virtual Mode barred from the portals of the anchors. Where did it come from, and what kind of thing was it?

Suddenly she was tempted to go find it, to satisfy her curiosity. Surely it was a magnificent entity! All she had to do was let go…

But that was the mind predator’s thought, Burgess reminded her. She must not take it for her own.

Colene rallied her determination again. The predator kept trying to trick her, which meant it was worried. That was a good sign. But she was worried too, because these were merely little waves she was deflecting, not the tide itself. The dark water was rising, and her little sand castle seemed increasingly insecure. Was the thing merely playing with her, teasing her, allowing her to think she could escape, when actually she had no chance?

That was the predator’s thought, Burgess indicated.

Damn! She kept being tricked, being seduced into defeatism. She was too ready to believe she was lost—and that was her own thought.

She hung on, physically and mentally, falling into a daze. And gradually, insidiously, her reality shifted, and the horror loomed.

“I can’t make it!” she cried at last. “Stop the motion! I’m fading out!”

Darius came and lifted her off the floater. “You’re tired, Colene,” he said reassuringly. “You can make it. We’re going to Julia, where we can lose that thing, as we did at Shale.”

“But it’s creeping up on me!” she insisted. “It’s going to get me! The way the fire got those firemen!”

“What?”

“Oh, that’s right, you don’t know about any of that,” she said, babbling, just wanting to hold his attention, because it was all she had to cling to. “Back on Earth, before my time, but I read about it somewhere, a real horror story. There was this big fire in the dead of winter, it was way below freezing, maybe down around zero Fahrenheit, and these three firemen got trapped way up high on a ledge on a building, and the fire was coming for them, and no one else could reach them. They could only get one fire hose to play on that section of the fire, and it wasn’t enough, and the poor firemen were going to get burned up. But then someone had a bright idea, and he said, ‘Play the water on the firemen!’ and they did, and that kept them cool and wet so the fire couldn’t burn them. And the fire raged all night before they got it under control, but all night they kept a steady stream of water on those trapped firemen, protecting them from the heat. And in the morning they got a closer look—and the three firemen were frozen stiff.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“The fire was hot, see, but the night was cold, and water made it colder. So that water made it too cold, but they couldn’t hear the firemen cry, amidst the roar of the fire, and they killed those three men, just trying to save them. Just the way you’re killing me, just trying to save me. Because my body may be getting carried along, but the predator is reaching my mind, and by the time you get me to Nona’s anchor, I’ll just be a frozen husk, and what’s the point?”

“But we have to help you!” he said.

“There’s got to be a better way.”

He nodded. “Yes. I have a better way. I will hold you close.” He put his hands to his clothing, stripping it rapidly off.

“But you don’t need to do that,” she protested. “Just hold me as you are, Darius!”

“This way is better,” he said, stepping into her, naked. His strong arms closed around her, drawing her in crushingly close. She felt his body growing hot.

“Darius, what are you doing?” she cried.

“I am getting close to you,” he said, bearing her back and down to the ground. His knee wedged against her knees, to force her legs apart.

“But I’m too young for this! You never touch me, because—”

His face came down on hers, stifling her protest with a savage kiss. “It isn’t as if you haven’t had it before,” he said, and shifted position on her.

She tried to push him off, but he was too heavy. She tried to fight him, but he was too strong. Suddenly this man she loved had become a monster, stealing what she would gladly have given him at another time. He was raping her—the one thing she couldn’t stand.

Colene screamed. Her whole energy of fear and loathing went into it.

Then she found herself riding Burgess, yanking at his contact points. It had been a bad dream. As she should have known, because Darius would never try to rape her. It was beside the point that he would never have to.

Nona came to her. “What is it?” she asked solicitously.

“The mind predator—it sent me a bad dream,” Colene said. “I’m sorry I screamed.”

“We are getting closer to my anchor,” Nona said. “There you will be safe.”

“But you don’t want to go there! We were going to pass it by!”

“We won’t stay,” Nona said. “Just long enough to get the mind predator away from you.”

“You’re awful nice,” Colene said, relaxing. “Nicer than me.” She let her gaze go unfocused as she rested her head on Burgess’ central hump. There was an eye stalk near, which turned to check on her every so often. There was a time when that might have freaked her out, but now it was reassuring. As long as she was close to Burgess, the mind predator was held somewhat at bay.

She saw the realities change as they passed through the boundaries. Trees popped in and out of existence, and sometimes animals too. The weather changed from Mode to Mode. One was foggy, so that they proceeded through an almost nightlike opacity. It went on and on, until she realized that they must have turned, and were traveling crosswise, remaining in a single Mode. Why was this?

Or could it be Julia? Could they have passed through Nona’s anchor, and her Mode happened to be foggy, so they had to keep plowing through it? Then Colene was safe, and the mind predator couldn’t get her.

They came to a building, and went in. Inside there were rows of seats. Pews. It was a church! Colene took a seat near the rear, and the rest quickly filled in. Then the service started. There was music: the first gentle strains of the Wedding March.

Colene felt a qualm. What was she doing at a wedding? Who was getting married? There was something wrong about this. But she seemed to be the only one concerned.

Then she saw Darius at the front. He was dressed in a suit and looked unbearably handsome. He was the Bridegroom!

And here was Colene, way back buried in the audience. She wasn’t the one he was marrying.

The music intensified as the Bride appeared. She was escorted by an older man, who reminded Colene oddly of her own father, and she was radiantly beautiful.

Colene forced herself to look at the Bride’s face, knowing who it would be. And it was: Nona. Nona was marrying Darius. Exactly as Colene’s nightmare back in the Earth Mode had showed it. Lovely, sweet, gentle, talented Nona, the ideal bride for any man, especially one who had strong magic of his own.

Women around Colene began to cry. It was something women did at weddings. It was sheer foolishness. But Colene was crying too. Not from any appropriate fancy. She was weeping because she was losing the man she loved. Maybe in time she could have married him, but she was too young while Nona wasn’t. Yet even if Darius had been willing to wait, why would he take Colene when Nona was so much better?

The Bride swept up to the Groom. The music faded. The accompanying people peeled away like the gantry from a rocket about to take off. The man who had walked Nona down the aisle went to sit in the front pew reserved for the Bride’s family, beside a woman who could have been Colene’s mother. Who should have been. This whole wedding should have been Colene’s!

The Ceremony commenced. Colene was too lost in misery to pay attention to the words. All that she might have dreamed of, gone instead to Nona!

Then it was done, and the Groom kissed the Bride. They were the perfect couple, and it was the perfect kiss.

What was left for Colene, except to die?

Colene screamed. This time her whole energy of despair went into it.

She found herself riding Burgess, clinging to the contact points. It had been another bad dream. She should have realized that it wasn’t real, because weddings did not just happen from nowhere. But the dream had carried its own conviction, and she had not questioned it, until the doom of her romance seemed final.

This time it was Darius who came. “Thing’s getting to you?” he asked, concerned.

“It sure is,” she said, trying to smile bravely.

“What is it like?”

She knew he was just trying to divert her from the horror of the mind predator, to make her feel better. But it helped, so she answered. “It made me think you were trying to rape me.”

“I would not do that!” he protested.

“I know. You wouldn’t have to.” She tried to smile, but knew it wasn’t coming off. “Then it made me think you were marrying Nona.”

“No, you are the one I wish to marry. If only—”

“If only I had boundless, renewable joy to give,” she said sadly. “But I don’t, and I never will. Maybe you should marry Nona.”

Now Nona appeared. “What?”

“Maybe you have the kind of joy he needs,” Colene said relentlessly. “I mean, you can do all these other kinds of magic, so why not that? Multiplying joy?” She looked at Darius again. “Why don’t you draw from her, and send it out, the way you do, and see how it is?”

“Colene, I don’t want to marry Darius!” Nona protested. “I respect him as a man, but I respect you too, and I would never—”

But now Colene’s suicidal urge was manifesting. “Go ahead, Darius. Do it. Draw from her, and send it out. See if it’s good.”

“But—” he started, seeming out of sorts.

“Find out,” Colene insisted. “So you know. So we all know. Is she someone you could marry?”

Darius looked at Nona. “I suppose I could check. But you have to understand that this is an unsettling procedure. I take all of a woman’s joy, and then I multiply it and send it out to all present, including her. So she gets most of it back. But never quite all. So that in time she becomes inevitably depleted. That is why I can not marry for love. I have to marry only for joy, and when it is gone I have to divorce her and marry a new one who has not been depleted.”

Nona looked at Colene. “This is not the kind of magic I know. I do not think I would be successful at it.”

“But you don’t know that,” Colene said. “You can’t know until you try it, can you? You didn’t know you could make fireballs, until you tried. So don’t you want to know? You can find out just like that.”

“But what would it prove?” Nona asked.

“It would prove you have the power of joy,” Colene said. “Or that you don’t.”

Nona came to a conclusion. “It would be easier to demonstrate that I lack this power of joy,” she said. “Darius, test me.”

“I see no point in this,” he said.

“Do it,” Colene said grimly.

He looked at Nona, who looked back at him. Both looked at Colene. Then Darius took Nona in his arms and pressed her close in, as close as was possible. It looked like a love embrace. But it wasn’t. How well Colene knew it wasn’t! It was a terrible kind of taking, despite the good that it did for the community, in Darius’ Mode.

He drew from her. “Oh!” Nona gasped, appalled, seeming to wilt. He turned her loose, and she leaned against a tree, reeling.

Then he sent out the joy. Colene felt it, suddenly being much improved. And Nona felt it too, recovering. But she looked shaken.

“So what’s the verdict?” Colene demanded. “How is she?”

“I feel the same,” Nona said. “But that—that was an awful experience. My very being—”

Colene bore on Darius. “Tell me.”

“It is too soon to be sure,” he said, seeming surprised.

“Not with Seqiro, it isn’t. Horseface, is her joy depleted?”

No.

“So she can take it without losing joy,” Colene said. “She’s a cornucopia, always full.”

Darius stared at Nona. “This is my impression. You have some magic of this type.”

“So you could marry her for love, and not deplete her,” Colene said victoriously. But she tasted the ashes.

Nona’s eyes widened. “I never thought—but perhaps—”

Darius nodded. “It could be done.”

And Colene knew that she had lost again. Because Nona could win Darius’ love without even trying. The Wedding Scene was feasible. Once they sorted it through and realized how much sense it made. Colene, lacking both magic and joy, could not cut it. She was doomed.

Then Colene was screaming again—and again found herself riding on Burgess, holding the contact points. It had been yet another bad dream, more plausible than the others.

This time it was Seqiro who checked on her. Your mind goes opaque when the mind predator gains control. What was the vision this time?

“I dreamed that Darius tested Nona, and she had enough joy. You know, she wasn’t depleted, even a little. You verified that, by checking her emotion before and after. So she could marry Darius, and be his ideal wife, because of the joy and because she’s beautiful and nice and obliging and magical and all. I mean, why should he want a twisted underage thing like me, a vessel of hurt and depression, when he can have a wonderful creature like her?”

But he does not wish to marry her, and she does not wish to marry him.

Colene laughed bitterly. “Darius would love to have an affair with her, because she’s got the universe’s most ideal body and she’s a good person. But she wouldn’t just do that without marriage. So he would do the honorable thing, and marry her.”

Yes, he would. But not if she did not wish it, and she does not. She likes him as a figure of competence and adventure. She does not wish to settle into marriage with him any more than with a man of the Julia Mode.

Colene knew that was true. Nona really had no designs on anyone. She just wanted to explore the Virtual Mode forever. But she was such a luscious thing that men were simply not going to leave her alone. And the closest man was Darius. Sooner or later the fox was going to notice the goose. This was the nature of things.

True. Propinquity causes interest in members of your species. He will become increasingly interested in her, and that will bring her return interest. The passage of time makes this inevitable.

“And it will happen before I get old enough,” Colene said. “Even if I could be old enough right now, I couldn’t compete with her. My only hope is to get us to Darius’ Mode right away, with no delay. But we have to stop at Julia, because of this damned mind predator, and that delay’s going to be fatal.”

Yes, that seems to be the case.

“Oh, Seqiro, let’s you and I just gallop off somewhere and be free!” she cried, knowing her wish was vain. “You don’t care if I’m a vessel of dolor.”

I don’t know where we would go.

“Just anywhere! Anywhere far away from here! Maybe we can outrun the mind predator.”

We can try. Get on my back.

She climbed off Burgess and climbed onto Seqiro’s back, using the harness to get up there, because his back was well above the top of her head. Then he started to move, cutting away to the side, across a Mode boundary, and farther to the side. He broke into a trot, and then a canter, and finally a full gallop. Soon they were lost in a jungle, where the ground was almost clear under hugely spreading trees. No one could find them here!

“This is great, Seqiro!” Colene exclaimed. “Do you like it as well as I do?”

There was no answer. The horse slowed to a walk, picking his way between the trees.

“Hey, what’s up, horseface? Why don’t you answer me?”

He just kept on walking.

Colene felt a small thrill of concern. Was something wrong? She reached for his mind with hers, using her own telepathy—and found nothing.

Alarmed, she put her whole mental force into it. Seqiro! But still there was no response.

She climbed down and jumped off. Seqiro stopped walking. She went to the horse’s head, putting her hands on his nose to compel his attention. Seqiro—where is your mind?

The horse merely stood there. There was no response from his mind. Indeed, all her mind found was dull equine thoughts of vague hunger and awareness of her hands. He was waiting for her to give her next command.

Seqiro had become an ordinary horse. His telepathy was gone, and with it his seemingly human intelligence. The major companion of her life on the Virtual Mode had become a mere animal.

“Oh, Seqiro!” she said, the tears coming. “I never meant for this to happen!” Now she realized that she had been concerned about the wrong thing. Darius would not betray her. But if Seqiro had lost his telepathy, so that he could no longer draw on her human intelligence and became equivalently smart himself, her life on the Virtual Mode would become chaos. Seqiro linked them all, forging them into a perfect group, or hive. She had become so accustomed to that mental linkage that now, without it, she felt horribly naked and inadequate. Which was an exact description of her condition.

“Without you, I don’t want to live!” she cried. “Your mind sustains me. You were never just a horse. I can’t stand to have you this way.”

Seqiro lowered his head and began to graze.

Colene wept.

She found herself riding on Burgess. This time she hadn’t screamed, but it had been another bad dream. The implacable siege of the mind predator remained, still inching up on her consciousness.

“And what if I think about you, Burgess?” she asked. “Will you, too, turn bad?”

Burgess’ intrunk came up. It started sucking air. It grew larger, and more air flowed in. Then it oriented on her head. Suddenly the suction became overwhelming. She was ripped from her hold and drawn into the internal void.

Yes, this was her Burgess nightmare. Only this time she knew it for what it was. So she flowed with it, letting it happen. That made it easier.

In a moment she was shot out through the outtrunk. She flew through the air in an arc. Then she saw the ground coming. It was time to get out of this dream, before she made a bruising landing. But she couldn’t.

She crashed into the ground headfirst. Her neck broke, and her skull cracked open. Red blood and gray matter got scrambled with brown dirt and green grass. She was dead, of course, and not prettily. Well, that was one way to end her travail.

The others hurried across. “Colene!” Nona cried. “Are you all right?”

Here she was, with her brains stirred into the ground, and the idiot asked that?

“She’s unconscious,” Darius said. He got down and wedged his arms under her body, picking her up. Chunks of brainy dirt fell out of her skull and plopped on the ground.

“Is her mind whole?” Nona asked, concerned.

No, it was only about two-thirds there; the rest was in a dirty gray pile on the ground.

She is conscious, Seqiro thought. But unable to speak or move.

“I must heal her!” Nona said. She embraced Colene, pressing Colene’s head to her bosom.

Darius would rather have that treatment, Colene thought wryly. She herself had hugged him so, when he was worn out from hauling the wagon through the Mode anchor, but she simply lacked the volume and quality of upholstery Nona had. And of course she lacked the magic of healing, along with all other magic. But this was no good for Nona to do, because Colene’s messed-up brains were leaking out onto her nice clean blouse.

Then Nona’s magic took hold. Colene felt herself healing. No, don’t do it, she wanted to cry. Let me die in peace. That will solve everything!

But her brains sloughed off the dirt and formed back into their natural convolutions. The crack in her skull diminished into a crevice and healed over, and her blood-sodden hair rinsed itself clean and became its normal lusterless brown. She was whole again.

She opened her eyes. “What happened?” she asked. She knew what had happened, but wanted to ascertain how they had experienced it.

“You fell off Burgess,” Darius said.

“And bumped your head,” Nona added.

You were unconscious, Seqiro thought.

Burgess had tried to catch her with a trunk, but had only succeeded in slowing her fall.

That was all? No flying through the air, no splattered brains? Obviously not. She had suffered yet another bad dream. Even though she had known it was a dream, she had somehow come to believe in it. She hadn’t been blown through Burgess’ trunk; it was laughable to think she could even fit, since small stones were the largest things he could handle. And that business about her brains falling out! She had a gruesome, self-destructive imagination. What else was new?

But now she saw that there was a pattern to these bad visions. Whoever she focused on became the object of the next bad scene. If she focused on two, then they both turned bad—There was no protection in numbers.

So how could she protect her friends from her warped dreams? Because she knew they were all good folk, not deserving of her foul imagination. Darius would never rape anybody; Nona would never try to hurt Colene, whether by marriage or anything else; Seqiro would not turn dumb unless caught in a Mode that prohibited telepathy, which seemed unlikely; Burgess would not suck up anyone through his trunk. They all meant well, and were cooperating to get her to the next anchor so she could escape the mind predator. All she had to do was hang on. Even if it felt as if they were playing a stream of water on her body and freezing it, in their effort to rescue her from the fire of the mind predator’s hunger. Hang on. Hang on and on.

And how could she best do that? She was bound to be thinking of something. On what could she focus, without mischief? Probably the mind predator could distort anything; that was part of its strategy.

But what about herself? Maybe even that would be distorted—but at least she wouldn’t be wronging anyone else. She herself was the only one she had the right to malign.

So she climbed back onto Burgess, took hold of his contact points, and promised not to fall off again. After all, he was carrying her to safety. She focused on herself, knowing that this was unlikely to be pleasant.

“Come on, mind thing,” she urged. “Do your worst. I’m calling your bluff.” Just like that, it happened: she woke. She was sitting cross-legged in a cold chamber, shivering in a flimsy nightie. There was a chamber pot nestled within the clasp of her bare thighs, and from it issued a stench that stung her nose.

She looked around. It was dark, but dawn was coming and she was able to see that she was in a shed, with an array of things propped against its bare walls. An ancient, battered teddy bear, a Raggedy Ann doll, a couple of books, a guitar, a picture of a horse, an artificial flower. Around her, on the floor, was a tattered blanket she must have had hunched over her body. Also a kitchen knife.

Now she knew where she was. In Dogwood Bumshed, her hideout. Ready to commit suicide. Because she hadn’t truly believed in Darius, and he had returned to his distant world, and then she had known the extent of the folly of her disbelief. She had had the chance for the love of her life, and had thrown it away. Had she really wanted to believe? Or had she merely been looking for a pretext to kill herself and be done with the agony of existence?

She had set herself up, ready to slice her forearms with the knife, and bleed them into the pot so as not to mess up the floor. If she filled the pot and wasn’t dead yet, she would take it out behind the shed, empty it by the roots of die dogwood tree, and bring it back in for another filling. In due course she would be all the way dead, and it would be done at last. At least the dogwood tree would have good fertilizer.

But she had chickened out. She had sat here with the knife in her hand, and her bare arms over the pot, and not been able to make the cut. So she had sat here, her bare bottom getting creased on the floor, trying to force the courage to do what she had come to do—and instead had gone into the most wonderful of dreams.

She had dreamed that she had heard a thought in her mind: COLENE! Wait for me! Then, after a pause, Take hold! And she had reached out with her mind and taken hold of the Virtual Mode, and had become an anchor person, and had gone out across the realities to meet Darius. And on the way had found Seqiro, the magnificent telepathic horse. And later the others, and adventure galore. They had gotten trapped in the DoOon Mode, where the Emperor Ddwng wanted to get hold of the Chip Darius had used to send up the Virtual Mode, and wouldn’t let them go until he had it. He threatened to slaughter Seqiro, to make Colene cooperate, and he threatened to cut out Colene’s ovaries for their eggs, to make Darius cooperate. But they had escaped, by tricking Ddwng into freeing his anchor, and found themselves in the Julia Mode with Nona. That was another whole adventure, because those folk could do all kinds of magic. Finally they had won free of that and found the Shale Mode, and the adventure continued.

Until the mind predator had come after Colene, and now it had done its worst: dumping her back here in dreariest reality. Costing her everything. All the wonderful adventures, all her hopes and fears along the Virtual Mode, all her love for horse and man.

So had she really dreamed it all? Or was this the bad dream? How could she know? Because if the whole Virtual Mode were a dream, she was doomed. But if the mind predator was doing it, then she was locked into its power, and was doomed. Because she knew without trying that this time she was not going to be able to snap herself out of it by screaming or crying. The grip of the mind predator had been growing stronger, and now it was too strong.

So was there any point in being concerned about it? She was locked into destruction either way. If she had dreamed it all, then it was time to kill herself, because Earth had nothing for her. If the mind predator had her secure, then she might as well kill herself too, because life in its embrace was too horrible to contemplate.

Could she kill herself in a bad dream? Would that kill her in reality, depriving the monster of her mind and emotion? For the thing fed on her fading dreams and fears, as worms fed on a decaying carcass, and if she died there would be nothing for it.

There was one way to find out. She took up the knife again and oriented it above her left arm. This time she wouldn’t chicken out!

Yet there was a faint demurring thought. Not hers; it was Burgess. It didn’t make sense for her to die, when she was so close to the anchor and freedom. If she died, the mind predator would have beaten her.

Beaten her? No way! She was going to beat it, by dying and leaving it nothing to feed on.

But that faint thought hung on. This was the predator speaking, not Colene. It wanted her to give up all resistance, because then not even her friends could help her, and the anchor would be too late.

Ludicrous! It wanted to feed on her living mind, destroying it stage by stage. Only by killing that mind could she balk it.

Still that faint nagging thought. She could not truly kill herself in the dream, she could only acknowledge the mastery of the predator by giving up all hope of escape. Death in the dream was captivity by the predator.

Which was right? She was sure that death was the correct course, but was there a reasonable doubt? If so, was it rational to commit suicide?

Reasonable doubt. Rationality. Life. Death. Chaos.

She cudgeled her brain, trying to make it think logically instead of with pure feeling. Did death make sense, or life with the risk of awful captivity? Should she trust her own, strong thoughts, or that faint nagging Burgess thought?

And there was the key: her own thoughts had been ranging all over everywhere, always winding up in disaster. So she couldn’t trust them. While Burgess was the only one who could help her against the mind predator. He was not subject to human thought processes, because he was alien. He was not subject to human distortion. Thus he could be trusted. Maybe. If it really were his thought she was picking up.

And what he thought was that in human terms Colene seemed to have a good existence ahead. She was with a good little hive. All of the others were working to bring her to safety, and there was not far to go. They all needed her and wanted her to survive.

They needed her. From out of chaos, a thought to warm her soul. She made a difference to others.

“Airfoot, you’d better be right!” she exclaimed, throwing away the knife.

The scene exploded, literally. Bumshed flew apart, the walls flying out across the dawn yard. Colene’s precious things were scattered in a circle. The floor dropped out from under, leaving her sitting cross-legged in space. A draft froze her legs, blowing her nightie up and off her body, leaving her naked. The stinking pot before her belched a stench so putrid that she couldn’t breathe.

But all this proved was that she had defeated the dream, and now it was coming apart. She had managed to fight off the monster, again, thanks to Burgess. “Ha-ha, rotmind!” she cried. “I’ve beaten you! You can’t have me! Nyaa, nyaa, nyaa!”

But she had exulted too soon. The mind predator rallied from its rage, and the siege intensified. It had not lost the game, only an episode, and its resources were relatively infinite. Now it wasn’t trying to trick her, it was marshaling its full power for the direct brute kill. No amount of dreaming would stop it this time.

Then there was light. Colene blinked. She was riding on Burgess, and they were on a fair hill. Behind them was the sound of ocean waves breaking against the face of a cliff. She recognized this place, for she had been here before.

They had passed through the anchor, and this was the Julia Mode.

The malignant siege of the mind predator faded. This time it was really gone.

“Oh, thank you, Burgess!” she cried, doing her best to hug the floater. “You got me through! You saved my sanity!”

They had all gotten her through, Burgess clarified. Nona by knowing the way and making a smooth path by magic, when the terrain became too rough. Darius by drawing joy from Nona and sending it out to Colene, so that she never sank too low to be recovered, and by conjuring them across a crevasse when there was no time to go around it. Seqiro by keeping them all connected, and carrying everything they needed, and sometimes hauling things out of the way so that it was possible to make a path for Burgess. And Burgess himself, by carrying her, and shielding her to some extent from the mind predator.

Colene realized that the others had put forth a heroic collective effort on her behalf. She had thought the battle was all her own, but that was only the inner part of it. Her friends had fought the outer part of it. She felt a terrific surge of gratitude. But when she tried to express it, things blocked up, and she burst into tears.

But it was all right. Her mind was back in full contact with theirs, and they understood. Chaos had been defeated, this time.