Cluster c-1

by Piers Anthony

  Two Impacts spied him and swam up. “Bopek—a charge of rape has been lodged against you,” one said. “You will accompany us to the hearing.”

  “Rape?” Flint was stunned. “I never—”

  “Did you not depart the Impact zone without authorization and enter the Sibilant zone?”

  Oh-oh. Violation of the zones was a serious matter, as he would have known had he bothered to check his host’s memory. He had been careless. Better to admit the truth. “I was under the influence of the healing salve—”

  “And there you encroached on a Sibilant/Undulant pair and assumed the role of catalyst, forcing on them involuntary mergence?”

  “I did not realize—”

  “And as a result of that union, a Sibilant offspring was created, forcing unanticipated parentage on the original Sibilant?”

  Flint realized that he was in trouble. Ignorant of the mating system of this species, and intoxicated by the salve, he had not taken time to explore the cultural restrictions stored within his brain. The whole matter had seemed complex and irrelevant to his mission. Now it was clear: Mating was a three-entity affair, impossible with two, compulsive the moment a third appeared. The third served as a catalyst, forcing the other two to mate immediately. Like the game of scissors-paper-stone, which he had played as a child on Outworld though no real scissors or paper existed there, the order of the matchings determined the outcome. Scissors cut paper, paper wrapped stone, and stone crushed scissors. So the sex of the catalyst determined the sex of the offspring—but the offspring did not match the catalyst. Hence the intricate zone system, in which visitors of only one sex were permitted at a time. The game could not be played unless all three were present.

  Since major construction required the talents of all three types, some subzones had been instituted, and couriers brought otherwise unauthorized Undulants through the Impact zone to that subzone without encountering any Sibilants. When Bopek had danced into the Sibilant zone, he had trespassed in much the way a strange male trespasses when he enters a harem. He had thus encountered a Sibilant with an Undulant visitor, and had become the catalyst, forcing involuntary mergence. That, by this culture’s definition, was rape.

  He was guilty.

  But he could not linger for the trial and penalty. The foreign Sphere agent might already be here, and he had to nullify her before she got oriented and nullified him. His mission came before the niceties of Spican etiquette.

  “Fellows, I apologize,” he said.

  Whereupon he invoked the most disgusting crime of which a Spican sapient was capable. He “fushed” them. He visualized them as a Sibilant and an Undulant, himself as a catalyst, and puffed out his bodily perimeter to intersect theirs. He overlapped them both, then contracted, hauling them together inside his flesh.

  The act was appalling. Only in the filthiest of jokes was it even conceivable. A wave of intense revulsion almost overwhelmed the mind of his host. This was despicable homosexual rape! But Flint, desperate and rendered cynical by his recent experience, forced the two to intersect each other. Then he expelled them violently, firing them through the water, linked to each other.

  Both Impacts were unconscious, overcome by sheer shock and horror. And Flint was now guilty of a capital offense. His Impact brain urged immediate penance in the form of suicide. But he had already suffered his readjustment, his impairment of sanity. The sense of separation he had achieved during his prior sexual encounter shielded him. He hated himself, but he swam on.

  Now he was near his original awakening spot, guided by Bopek’s unerring directional/distance sense. And the injured Undulant was still there, in the temporary sub-zone, swimming uncertainly. He was in time—probably because her sudden awakening must have canceled their plans to remove her from the area.

  This would be tricky, but he had to risk it. He swam up boldly. “I see my client has revived. Good work! I must now convey the Undulant to the assigned construction site.”

  The others had not yet received news of his crime spree. Relieved of responsibility, they turned the Undulant over to him.

  The Undulant accompanied him without protest, as he had been sure she would. The mind of the recent transferee was still orienting, still trying to assimilate the complexities of this Spican scheme. He had to keep that mind distracted until he could nullify her.

  But first he had to make quite sure that she was his enemy agent, and not the real Undulant. So he touched her.

  There was the powerful aura, equivalent to his own. “So you know me already,” she said. “You are aware of my mission.”

  “You tried to kill me, there in the Keel of the Ship,” be replied. “If need be, I shall counter you with love, here in the Ear of Wheat.”

  “Ear of Wheat?” she inquired, perplexed. “Love?” She was confused but also playing for time, until she could ascertain the best way to kill him. But he had the advantage of prior experience in this realm.

  “I’ll explain about the wheat,” he said as they swam. With one part of his mind he noted how smoothly she moved, despite her injury. Did the Kirlian aura of a lovely creature seek out a lovely host, or did the animation enhance the host? Twice she had been beautiful; it could be coincidence. “My species began to be civilized when it mastered wheat. Wheat is a grain, the seed of a grass, a type of plant. You have plants on your home planet?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But not wheat.”

  “This grain is nutritious and it keeps well. It enabled my ancestors, who were more civilized than I am, to store food over the barren winter months. They ground it up between stones and cooked it into masses of substance called bread. This reliable supply of good food greatly increased their survival capacity. In fact, we call it the Neolithic Revolution, the great progress of the New Stone Age. They had to learn to weave baskets to store the grain, and had to make records to dispense it fairly, and this led to many other skills. Eventually it resulted in complete modern civilization.” How glibly he reiterated the Shaman’s discourse on the subject! The Paleolithic Flint himself had little affinity for such concepts. But it was one of the bits of knowledge that was becoming clear as he perceived the astonishing manifestations of advanced civilization. “Wheat was so important that man even placed it in the sky. The system of Spica is called the Ear of Wheat, held in the hand of the Virgin. It covers her bare bottom, for she is evidently modest. But the relevance of wheat to Spica is even more pertinent.”

  “Its pertinence eludes me,” she said. She was willing to talk, for she too was stalling for time, thinking him a fool. Last time they had met, she had tried to kill him violently; this time she was being more cautious, but her objective was the same.

  “Consider the mode of reproduction of wheat,” Flint continued blithely. If his plan worked, he could nullify her harmlessly. He didn’t want to kill the entity possessing such an aura! “There are male and female elements, the pistils and the stamens. But they do not reproduce directly. There must be the intercession of a third element, to bring the pollen to its proper place. This is the wind. It carries the pollen from one plant to another. Without it, the wheat would not reproduce. Some other plants use insects as the third agent. The wind or the bee may be considered a catalyst, enabling the act to occur. It promotes reproduction, though of itself it may be sexless.” Now they were approaching the Impact zone boundary. Beyond it was the Sibilant zone: forbidden territory. But thanks to his distractive discourse, Llyana did not yet realize this.

  “Now the Spicans actually have three sexes,” Flint continued, guiding her on through the veil. “They are interchangeable, after their fashion. The third sex is always the catalyst, initiating the act without being affected by it, like the wind or the bee. The other two sexes become the sire and the parent, depending on the order in which they meet. This is complicated to explain. Perhaps it is simplest to identify the pattern by means of the catalyst If the catalyst is an Impact, the offspring will be a Sibilant. If the catalyst is an Undulant, the offspring will be
an Impact. And if the catalyst is a Sibilant—”

  And now, of course, they encountered a Sibilant, for this was the Sibilant zone. It saw them and tried to take evasive action, but Flint zeroed in on it, bringing Llyana along, forcing an encroachment within the critical range. Like a man suddenly confronted with an act of human copulation in progress, the Sibilant had a reaction. But in this case voyeurism was not sufficient; it had to participate. Because this was the nature of this species; proximity was courtship and consummation.

  The Sibilant turned about and closed on them. Llyana did not yet realize the danger; Flint’s explanation, despite its accuracy, had prevented her from exploring the practical aspect of her host’s knowledge. He had not told her the whole truth, just as some humans fail to tell their children the whole truth.

  For the Sibilant was the third entity, the separate one, the catalyst. Position, not sex, determined the roles of the three participants in any sexual encounter. Since the approaching mergence was involuntary—at least on Llyana’s part—this was technical rape. But the investigation would show that the Impact and the Undulant were intruders in the Sibilant zone, exonerating the Sibilant. Flint, as Bopek the courier, had to have known this. Therefore he was the true rapist—again.

  Now the compulsion of propinquity was upon the Sibilant. Like a buck winding a doe in heat, it jetted right into contact, extending its substance to interact with that of Flint and Llyana. Now she realized something was happening. “You are overlapping!” she exclaimed, exactly like a woman goosed in a crowd, indignant but not wanting to call too much attention to her complaint. She tried to move away—but could not.

  The throes of mergence were upon them. Stimulated by the envelopment of the catalyst—as if it were a cup of fermented honey, or a soft bed of fragrant foliage, or a lovely nubile nude girl—Flint proceeded to what was natural.

  Llyana was a beautiful creature, literally. Her torso was as sleek yet rounded as any he had experienced, and her perimeter was delightfully permeable. She was formed to be permeated, penetrated, suffused, and as the ineffable environment of the catalyst brought them together he did all these things with her. Her potent aura enhanced the effect. He thought of Honeybloom as his flesh sank deeply through hers, and the whole of his being expanded with instant love. This was not after all so different from human mating; in fact it was better, for the presence of the catalyzing entity guaranteed a perfect union. There would be no last-minute hitches, no frustrating feminine changes of mind, no awkwardnesses of mechanical copulation. And the volume of interaction was so much greater; the whole body was involved, not merely one small organ. Like a perfect program, it scored—every time.

  Llyana was struggling. “This—this—I am being violated!” she protested. “Who are you? What are you doing?”

  “I am Sissix the Sibilant,” the catalyst replied. “Let the inquest show that I did not seek this union. Nevertheless, I do not protest it; you are both handsome specimens.” Actually, the catalyst had little reason to protest; catalysm was as close to completely free pleasure as this world provided. The parent was responsible for the offspring, and the sire gave up a healthy chunk of his flesh; the catalyst experienced the same triple orgasm, but without penalty. The Spican sentient’s traditional view of heaven was a warm ocean filled with pairs of the other two sexes, so that the individual could travel from pair to pair in perpetual catalysis. Unremitting ecstasy!

  “Your motions only enhance the interaction,” Flint told Llyana, knowing this was like telling the victim of ongoing rape not to struggle.

  “This—this is mating!” she screamed, shocked. Her message came through her body as much as her vocal apparatus, for they were now overlapping each other’s nervous systems.

  Flint had never before felt such extreme pleasure. In the human body, the joys and pains of various experiences were actually self-generated. No actual transfer of sensation occurred, merely external stimulus. But here there was the enveloping joy of literal mergence, of becoming one with one’s species. Sissix and Llyana pooled their nervous impulses with Flint’s to make a symphonic unity of amazing depth and intensity. Before, when Flint had been the inadvertent catalyst, he had been too revolted by the concept to appreciate the pleasure; now he relished it.

  “And what a mating!” Sissix agreed. “No wonder you two sought a catalyst! I have never partaken of such a powerful union before. By pure chance, I am a participant in a greater experience than I ever could have initiated deliberately.”

  Still Llyana protested. “I am not your kind! This is an abomination!”

  And there it was: her open confession of alien status. With that unguarded admission in the presence of a witness (actually so much more than a witness, for this verification occurred on the complete range of apperception, not just sight), Flint had the key. Overlapped as he was, he could read it directly from her own system and force further testimony. His defense against the charge of rape would hinge on his own identity as an envoy from Sphere Sol, and Llyana’s identity as—who?

  “You are… an agent of an inimical system, from far, far away, beyond Sphere Knyfh… no, in another direction,” he repeated, picking it out despite the almost overwhelming urge to complete the procreative act. “Your home Sphere is—”

  “No! No!” she screamed, every nerve jangling with a current that only increased his pleasure to the bursting point. “Three different species… miscegenation!”

  What an experience humans missed, unable to draw directly from their lovers’ systems. To experience their mates’ orgasms; in fact, to mate the orgasms themselves, fashioning a pyramid of rapture impossible to any single entity.

  “What an experience!” Sissix agreed, picking up part of that impulse. “I feel as though I’m careening through the vastness of an infinite ocean, seeing clusters of glowfish—”

  “That is deep space,” Flint informed it. “Those glows are stars. We are aliens from distant Spheres.”

  “Noooo!” Llyana reverberated. But she could no longer hide it; her own nervous system, so powerfully animated by her intense Kirlian aura, betrayed her. The two strong auras were the real source of the enhancement the Sibilant felt; because it was actually sharing their aura-imbued systems, it was for the moment an enhanced entity. Yes, it would definitely be able to testify as to the alien nature of its mergence companions.

  Flint had experienced orgasm before. Now he knew that no mating of his with Honeybloom could approach the enchantment of one with this alien. Because Honeybloom had a Kirlian aura of about one, or average: a washout as far as interaction with his own aura went. Llyana/¢le’s aura was about two hundred, matching his own. There was simply no way to beat that. Interpenetration of extremely intense auras, combined with the physical and emotional rapture of sexual mergence…

  Then Llyana got smart—and Flint was able to appreciate how intelligent and disciplined she was, again because his nerves were hers. She concealed her origin and purpose by throwing herself into the mergence with full force.

  And the climax was upon them. They drew together until the three were a tight, rock-hard ball, with only small portions remaining discrete, and there was appalling pressure. The urgency of completion was so great it seemed that their very substance would sunder.

  And it did. Rapture became rupture. The ferocity of the explosion was soul-shattering. Impelled by the atomic nucleus of their triple overlay, they smashed out in three directions. There was an instant of exquisite pain as a gross chunk of flesh was ripped out of his body; then Flint was rushing through the water, incomplete yet completed. He agreed with the Sibilant: what an experience! Ordinarily the three participants of a union separated after climax, allowing their explosive impetus to carry them far from each other. Flint as the sire and Llyana as the parent had lost portions of their mass, and needed time to heal and regain full size. Both had already suffered from the accident that had made the hosts available, so recuperation was critical. Sissix, as catalyst, had escaped without loss, of
course. If Flint chanced into another mergence as anything but catalyst, he would lose yet another portion of himself, and that could be disastrous. So he had to be careful, and to get out of the Sibilant zone as soon as possible. He understood now that these zones were not merely prudery, but necessary to the survival of the species. Uncontrolled matings could be fatal!

  Nevertheless, he swam around to follow Llyana. It was a risk, but a necessary one. He had to be sure he had nullified her.

  He found her, undulating along with an infant of her kind. The little creature was scarcely formed, and was technically a neuter, but recognizable by its lack of flippers or propulsion jet. Babies had to be sexless, or they would be inadvertently caught up into mergences and not survive into maturity. Like humans, they developed when they were ready.

  “Well, happy motherhood,” Flint said. She spun on him, coiling like a snake. Undulants had more supple bodies than Impacts, and could bend more readily. In the absence of a catalyst she had no further specific sex appeal, but she remained an esthetic specimen. “Schlish!” she exclaimed.

  He chuckled as well as the alien vocal apparatus permitted. “You can’t swear in Spican. There is no equivalence here, and the phonetics cannot be literally rendered. I believe what you’re trying to say is ‘fush!’ ”

  “Schlish! Fush!” she agreed vehemently.

  “Please—not in front of the child,” he cautioned her. “And you’d better let me show you out of the Sibilant zone, or we may encounter another roving catalyst. I don’t think you’d want to mate again so soon.”

  She swelled up as if ready to explode. But his warnings did have effect. She swerved to follow him, and did not make any more intemperate remarks. Their infant swam docilely after her. Alien she might be—but her body was Spican, and the biological ties of motherhood were controlling, just as they were among humans, even when the child was the result of rape.