They reached the hill and headed for the turn past the lower woods.
The house should be in view any second.
'Trapped in the snow?' Harlan said, worrying at it. He didn't look
away from his work, but he frowned as if he would have liked to meet
Jack's eyes.
The house came into view. Almost hidden by sheeting snow but vaguely
visible.
Their new house. New life. New future. On fire.
Earlier, at the computer, when he'd been mentally linked to the Giver
but not completely in its power, Toby had gotten to know it, feeling
around in its mind, being nosy, letting its thoughts slide into him
while he kept saying 'no' to it, and little by little he had learned
about it. One of the things he learned was that it had never
encountered any species that could get inside its mind the way it could
force itself into the minds of other creatures, so it wasn't even aware
of Toby in there, didn't feel him, thought it was all one-way
communication. Hard to explain. That was the best he could do. Just
sliding around in its mind, looking at things, terrible things, not a
good place but dark and frightening. He hadn't thought of it as a
brave thing to do, only what must be done, what Captain Kirk or Mr.
Spock or Luke Skywalker or any of those guys would have done in his
place or when meeting a new and hostile intelligent species out on the
galactic rim. They'd have taken any advantage, added to their
knowledge in any way they could.
So did he.
No big deal.
Now, when the noise coming out of the radio urged him to open the
door--just open the door and let it in, let it in, accept the pleasure
and the peace, let it in--he did as it wanted, though he didn't let it
enter all the way, not half as far as he entered into it. As at the
computer this morning, he was now between complete freedom and
enslavement, walking the brink of a chasm, careful not to let his
presence be known until he was ready to strike.
While the Giver was rushing into his mind, confident of overwhelming
it, Toby turned the tables.
He imagined that his own mind was a colossal weight, a billion trillion
tons, even heavier than that, more than the weight of all the planets
in the solar system combined, and even a zillion times heavier than
that, pressing down on the mind of the Giver, so much weight, crushing
it, flattening it into a thin pancake and holding it there, so it could
think fast and furiously but could not act on its thoughts.
The thing let go of Heather's ankle. All of its sinuous and agitated
appendages retracted and curled into one another, and it went still,
like a massive ball of glistening intestines, four feet in diameter.
The other one lost control of the burning corpse with which it was
entwined.
Parasite and dead host collapsed in a heap and were also motionless.
Heather stood in stunned disbelief, unable to understand what had
happened.
