Are you here Fury? Are you here Hydra? ...

The late-rising winter sun shone from a cloudless sky. Islay's landaura was placid and the gray-green ocean waters were unaccountably calm. Even with the sea breeze blowing, Dee was almost too warm in the cotton crew-neck sweater and Eddie Bauer mountain parka she had brought with her from New Hampshire. She had expected the Hebrides to be cold at this time of year- after all, they were at the lat.i.tude of Labrador-but the egg-bus driver who had brought her from the Scottish mainland told her that Islay rarely had snow or even frost because of the moderating effect of the Gulf Stream. The bright sunny weather was a wee bit unusual, he admitted, but not freakish. It was expected to hold for several days until the next gale blew in.

Dee hoped the fine weather was a lucky portent.

She had finished her doctoral dissertation and now only her orals remained to be dealt with after the New Year. When time came for her to embark for Orb, where she was to be inaugurated into the Concilium in February, she would have completed her formal education at Dartmouth College. What remained for her to learn she would have to learn by herself.

Hence the journey to Islay.

Malama Johnson had done all she could, but a stubborn residue of latency still remained in Dee's mind. It would prevent her from utilizing her full spectrum of metafaculties, prevent her from becoming a paramount, unless it was neutralized.

"But you hafta take care da kine pilikia you self, Makana Lani," the Hawaiian woman had told Dee earnestly. "No kahuna, no mainland shrink going do dat, eh? a.s.s' your kuleana."

"But how am I going to heal myself, Tutu? Through self-redaction? I've tried to get at the really deep inhibitions many times, but I just can't reach them."

"Nevvamine redact, li' dat. Mo bettah you go moku hikina!"

Dee shook her head, refusing to understand.

Malama rolled her eyes in exasperation and abandoned the Pidgin dialect that even the most educated Hawaiians loved to use among their closest friends. "You know perfectly well what I'm talking about, Dorothea. You must return to Islay in the Hebrides, to the place where your mother was murdered, and resolve the traumatic event in your mind. Live it again and purge the horror, the useless guilt, the rage that continues to fester in the deepest core of your being."

"I healed myself of all that years ago. The latentizing factor must be something else."

"Mebbe so, mebbe no! Go anyhow and do the healing journey. But this time begin at the end and go back to the beginning ..."

Masha and Kyle had been very dubious when Dee told them about her plan to visit Islay. First they tried to dissuade her. Then, after she explained the reason for the trip and its potential therapeutic nature, her grandparents wanted to go along and lend her their emotional support. They had no idea of the danger she might face, nor were they worried that she was too young to make the journey by herself. Their only motive was to be available if she should need comfort.

"That's kind of you and very sweet," she had said. "But if Malama Johnson is right, then I have to do this alone."

And also face the Hydra alone.

She checked into a hotel in Bowmore village on the island and dealt with some preliminaries she felt were important. Taking advantage of her new status as a magnate-designate, she visited not only the police station where she had been interrogated, but also the farmhouse at Sanaigmore. The local police inspector, Bhaltair Chaimbeul, furnished her with interesting data she had never heard before, including the fact that the remains of only a few of Hydra's earlier victims had ever been found.

Her visit with the inspector to the farm where the Hydras had lived was disappointing. Because of its evil reputation no one had wanted to live in the place and it had been partially destroyed by a fire seven years earlier. The thrifty islanders had voted to raze it if funds could be pried from the Zone Council, but money had not been forthcoming and so the ruins remained.

On her second day on Islay Dee began the journey of healing. After sending her rented groundcar off to meet her at the end of the trail, she hiked up a rolling expanse of moor to Geodh Ghille Mhoire, the deep cut in the northwestern sea-cliffs where the remains of her mother, her uncle, and her aunt had been found.

She stood now just above the scene of the murders, a well-equipped daypack on her shoulders and a metal-tipped walking stick in her hand. At Gran Masha's insistence she wore a wrist-communicator. The rough region around Gilmour's Chasm was deserted except for a hen harrier scouting a late breakfast.

Nothing had responded to her farspoken call to Fury and Hydra. The aetheric ambiance was tranquil.

Gripping her stick and keeping her mind resolutely blank of memories for the time being, she began the tricky descent into the cleft. Tumbled rocks along one side served almost as giant steps. Her PK helped waft her down the steepest parts, an acceptable fiddle provided that no normals were there to witness it. It was low tide, and with the sea almost dead calm the flat rocks where the victims had fallen and the Kilnave Fiend had come scuttling after them were completely above water. The way into the narrow cave was unimpeded.

At the bottom she negotiated areas of slimy wrack and stood finally at the cavern entrance, probing the darkness with her farsight. What had seemed eerie and otherworldly in her dream had a more prosaic aspect in fact. The chamber was typical of Hebridean sea-caves, a simple excavation in Precambrian gritstone accomplished by wave action, having no stalact.i.tes or other picturesque features. Its damp walls were streaked with the white excrement of birds that had nested in the crevices. On the level floor were a few pools of water, areas of rippled sand between smooth, flattened slabs, piles of seaweed, and a few bits of driftwood and other flotsam. The smell of marine growth was strong.

Still keeping her imagination reined in, she went deeper into the cave, finally reaching the place where she had "seen" the three smoking mounds and the hideous creature standing over them. No trace of the atrocity remained. The rocks where her mother and her uncle and aunt had died were long since washed clean by the tides. Half a dozen meters beyond them the cave walls met in a dead end.

Dee closed her eyes then, and let the memories flood back into her mind. This time they would be complete, without any merciful hiatus or deletion. She would relive exactly what had happened in her terrible experience of ten years ago.

She saw the white gyrfalcon that symbolized her own spirit in excorporeal excursion come flying down the chasm to defy the Hydra. The bird pursued the monster into the cave's green shadows, then confronted it as it prepared for its appalling feast.

Who are you? WHAT are you?

I am Hydra the servant of Fury.

What are you doing?

Watch.

She saw the great black body with its grasping limbs, the four heads with eyes like evil stars, the red mouths opening, ready to feed on the lifeforce of the first helpless victim.

The discordant shriek of Hydra's metaconcert reverberated in Dee's mind, that obscene mental symphony that enabled four human beings to metamorphose into a single devouring ent.i.ty with more power than the sum of its partic.i.p.ants.

Held fast in multiple arms, Robert Strachan looked at Hydra.

Not Uncle Robbie! No ...

Yes. Watch and learn.

From the four gaping mouths came shining golden tongues that braided together into a single probe that affixed itself to the crown of Robert Strachan's head. His body was suddenly enveloped in purple radiance. He underwent a galvanic spasm and uttered a hopeless cry as the beast began to drink from the first vital source. Deprived of all willpower but still hideously aware, he could only convulse and suffer as Hydra moved to the second source at the rear of his skull, to the third at the back of his neck, and on down his spine. As the feeding progressed the writhing body's aura changed in color and the skin darkened, as though the flesh and bone within were burning in astral fire. Each emptied chakra point was imprinted with a different, intricately detailed pattern having radial symmetry.

Dorothea Macdonald watched, helpless to interfere; but this time she inhabited the vision with full sentience, experiencing the pain of her dying uncle through redactive empathy.

Finally, when the lifeforce was drained from the seventh chakra at the base of his spine, Robert Strachan died. So did the agony Dee had shared with him. Hydra dropped the seared husk, which lay steaming on the damp floor of the cave.

That was well done, Girl! Now for the next one. Watch! Learn!

It turned to Uncle Robbie's wife Rowan Grant and consumed her vitality in the same way. Again, Dee shared the pain, not knowing why.

It was easier that time, wasn't it?

Last of all, Hydra took Dee's mother.

Not my Mummie no no please ...

Her most especially. Ready? Begin.

For the third time Dee knew that incredible pain, inflicted deliberately by the Hydra to enhance its own pleasure and for another reason as well.

Why did you kill them that way WHY you filthy misbegotten thing?

But the monster only said: Find your own food!

Find your own anger. Find your own pain.

Oh Mum no. I did love you. I'm sorry I was so angry. You thought the therapy would do me good. You thought the pain would be worthwhile if it made me operant. I didn't understand then. I really would have saved you if I could. But I was too young too weak too selfish too unaware- Pain unending. Not for the three victims but for her.

It wasn't my fault that you suffered! It was Hydra's fault and Fury's. I couldn't stop them!

Liar.

Pain.

Hydra laughed at her and her tardy pilgrimage, and as it laughed its monstrous form changed and divided and it became four human beings. One woman was a dark-haired, scarlet-lipped beauty, the other a frail-looking blonde with the glint of madness in her eyes. The taller of the two men smiled like a satisfied cat that had consumed its prey. His brawny companion was the young "father" who had besought Dee's help at the Spouting Horn.

I know who you are! Dee cried. I know you're here on this island hoping for a chance to destroy me. BUT I'M NOT A HELPLESS CHILD ANYMORE. Go ahead! Try to feed. See what will happen!

She showed them. And in the dream-vision, pain turned against the paingivers.

The Hydra faces screamed soundlessly, together with Dorothea Macdonald. She saw them squirming, dying, and was filled with joy.

Abruptly the four Hydra-units became motionless, like holoforms in a frozen Tri-D display. "John Quentin" lost his solidity, turned to a wraith, and faded to nothingness. Yes, of course. He was already dead. Safe from her, d.a.m.n him! But not the others ...

COME AFTER ME HYDRA COME SO I CAN KILL YOU EVEN MORE PAINFULLY THAN YOU KILLED MY MOTHER!.

The Hydra survivors in her dream returned to life. Linking hands, they howled at her in a metaconcert of pure hate. Too late! You should have done it the first time. Coward! Hypocrite!

They vanished.

Joy vanished as well, and with it the beginnings of an awful understanding.

Dee came to her senses, alone in the dank reality of the cave, standing in water up to her ankles. The tide had turned and the sea was streaming slowly into the Geodh Ghille Mhoire. The memorecall of the old traumatic experience was dim, confused, troubling. There had been no catharsis. She inspected the innermost portions of her mind with redactive scrutiny and discovered that the deep mental inhibitions were still in place. Reliving the old nightmare had apparently accomplished nothing.

A few gulls wheeled overhead, their melancholy cries echoing from the walls of the chasm. She wanted to shout her disappointment and anger to the soaring birds. Somehow she had managed to bungle the initial part of her healing journey. Understanding had slipped away from her at the last moment-or else she had let it escape.

Very well. She'd try again.

But not immediately. There was no real danger in the rising tide, but she would have to leave the cave at once. The high-water mark on the wall was above her head. She went splashing out, using her stick, and climbed onto dry rocks above the inundated bench. The sea was still nearly calm, heaving gently up and down as she began the ascent of the blocky "steps" leading to the moorland above the cliffs.

Now the cave would be inaccessible for nearly twelve hours, and to start over at the beginning she would have to wait until long after nightfall for the next low tide. She could see in the dark, of course, but that required continuing mental effort that would seriously detract from the experience.

"d.a.m.n!" she said as she reached the chasm's top. "What am I going to do?"

A wry female voice seemed to say: First you try dry out da boots an' socks, eh?

Dee had to laugh, and bent her creativity to the task. Then she made the only possible decision. She would ignore her apparent failure and proceed along the north-sh.o.r.e path as she had originally planned, retracing the route she and her family had taken on the fatal hike. Whatever happened would happen.

First, though, a bit of prudent reconnoitering.

She traveled a few hundred meters northeast, circling the steep slope above the geodh, and climbed to the top of Cnoc Uamh nam Fear, a small hillock that was the highest point on this part of the island. From its vantage point she let her ultrasenses range out. Westward was only open sea that stretched all the way to Canada. North across the water lay little Colonsay and Oronsay, and Mull, where the invading MacLeans had launched their invasion force centuries earlier. A few scattered bright emanations indicated the presence of harmless nonoperant human life. She turned, scanning Islay itself, and found the northern parts of the island almost deserted. At this time of year, only a handful of hardy visitors came, and the locals stayed mostly in snug villages on the southern and eastern sh.o.r.es. She found no operant minds nearby, no threat to her safety.

... But what was that?

As she faced in the direction she must travel she felt for the merest fraction of a second the weird aetheric disturbance that had frightened her when she visited Islay as a child. It was neither an aura nor the metapsychic resonance of minds working together. It was certainly not farspoken communication. It touched only the emotions, not the intellect, wordlessly urging her to fear for her life ... run away ... give up the journey before it was too late.

As swiftly as it came, the ultrasensation disappeared.

She cried out: I'm not afraid of you! I won't run from you. Hydra!

But was it Hydra? She replayed the elusive fragment, a.n.a.lyzing it with all the skill of a Grand Master Creator. Its source was not Hydra, not even Fury, but something else.

Something. Many things? Not threatening, only warning.

A frisson of unease touched her as she found herself remembering certain stories Malama had told her, frightening accounts of genuine "ghosts" whose unquiet spirits the Hawaiian woman had laid. One of them had been the unfortunate mother of Jack and Marc Remillard. With a dismissive shrug, the kahuna had admitted that the more sophisticated metapsychic pract.i.tioners of the Human Polity did not acknowledge the existence of "malignant personality aspects" that were able to survive death and bedevil the living. But kahunas knew better.

Standing on top of the hill, Dee let her mind range out again, seekersense honed to the keenest. This time there was no evocation of deadly danger, no warning.

She thought of farspeaking Malama, even briefly considered asking her angel for advice and rea.s.surance. But then a hot rush of resentment welled up in her, sweeping away any temptation that smacked of continuing childish dependence.

No one could help her except herself.

Malama had done all she could. The angel, that preprogrammed Lylmik artifact, had also told her she was on her own. Her mother, her uncle and aunt, even the other murder victims were quite dead and beyond communicating with her. She was alive and strong and ready to begin her life as an adult. If irrational fears or even genuine enemies stood in her way, she would have to remove them.

She set off for the T?n Mhor headland a couple of kilometers to the northwest. As she strode along in the sunshine, she realized with a sudden burst of hopefulness that the T?n, not the death-cave, marked the proper starting place for her journey. Perhaps she had not failed after all. Perhaps she had been a fool to think that she could accomplish her goal before completing the full pilgrimage.

When she reached the headland she sat for a time, resting against the same rock that had sheltered her and Ken and Gran Masha. She relived the original gyrfalcon dream in memorecall once again, this time without empathy, as though it were some fantasy drama and she an objective critic. She suffered no pain or fear, made no attempt to a.n.a.lyze the experience.

Next she retraced her panicky flight down the steep path where she had met Throma'eloo Lek. Before returning to the clifftop, she scanned the blackened ruins of Sanaigmore Farm and the lands around it. There was nothing unusual to be found. The nearest human beings were at Loch Gorm, six kilometers due south, and her farsight showed that they were only biologists taking a census of the swan population.

Staying as close to the precipitate sh.o.r.e as she could, she hiked down to sandy Sanaigmore Bay, pa.s.sing roofless, abandoned crofts with stone walls that seemed to be slowly sinking into the ground. There was still hardly any wind, but the air seemed colder and more damp. Haze was slowly bleaching the blue sky to milky gray. Far offsh.o.r.e the horizon was beginning to blur. As she continued her resolute tramp through sand dunes, small bogs, and areas of dead bracken, she marked the absence of seabirds that had been so abundant on her childhood trek. Even the ubiquitous "peeps"-the sh.o.r.erunners that should have been rather common in winter-seemed to have disappeared.

After walking for over two hours she stopped to scan the sullen sea. It had turned leaden as the high overcast moved in. When she extended her farsight she encountered a bank of fog about a dozen kilometers offsh.o.r.e.

"Uh-oh," she muttered, and switched her wrist-com to the weather channel. As she had feared, the fog was expected to move inland within a few hours. Still, if she stepped along briskly she might still reach the beach picnic shelter at Traigh N?staig, completing the journey before visibility was too badly impaired.

She had not yet stopped for lunch. The other sea-cave, where she had seen the white gyrfalcon, was not far off.

When she came to the area above it she sat at the rim of a small gully and unwrapped her peanut-b.u.t.ter sandwich and orange. While she ate, her childhood musings over the splendid Greenland falcon drifted back into her mind. The bird had killed in order to live, and that had troubled her young conscience very much. When Dee grew older, she chose to minimize her consumption of flesh in order to spare the lives of higher animals. Janet and the nonborns had mocked her resolution, and most of her fellow students at Dartmouth had thought her a squeamish sentimentalist.

But she had felt that the abstinence was necessary.

At this time in the Galactic Age, the majority of philosophers and ethicists had rejected as illogical the idea that humans should not kill and eat living things. Milieu physics had demonstrated that all life, not merely that of higher animals, was enmeshed within the vital lattices. Even so-called inanimate objects were known to have a minimal share of vitality, and so if one avoided the consumption of life, one would consume nothing. Logic dictated that the proper food for the human species was that which had nurtured it throughout its evolution. Dee's moral preceptors taught her that "Thou shall not kill" really meant "Thou shall not kill thine own kind-those who think." The stewardship of other lifeforms and prevention of their needless suffering was properly regulated by prudence and logic; only the lives of sapient beings, whether human or not, fell under a solemn commandment.

Now, for the first time, Dee thought to ask herself why she was so anxious to spare animal life, when at the same time she would have gladly killed the humans who comprised Hydra.

Hydra is a murderer! A torturer who deserves to die.

... Is that why you're trying to trap it?

I want to bring it to justice. Stop it from killing again.

... And if it tries to kill you?

I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to strike back with all of my mental strength! Kill it in self-defense. It's perfectly justifiable.

... And if you captured it and it didn't try to harm you?