Cluster c-1

by Piers Anthony

  Flint backed off. So far so good; if this were the worst of it, he would have an easy evening. The smell of the feast was already circulating through the room, and he saw barrels of liquor being set up in a corner. He was hungry and thirsty, and he might even get a chance to go out and look at the stars at greater leisure. That was one thing about having a party at night: the stars were out.

  He bumped into someone. A young man was standing in his way, a man who hadn’t been there a moment ago. He wore brown tights with a padded codpiece, a brilliant red cape, and a supercilious sneer. “I beg your pardon,” the youth said loudly. “I was not aware of your optical infirmity. Stupid of me not to realize that anyone as green as you could not be in the best of health.”

  “He’s baiting you,” the Ambassador advised. “Ignore him. The court’s full of young dandies on the prowl for trouble.”

  “Green is my natural color,” Flint said mildly. “It has to do with the radiation of my star and the atmosphere of my planet, as most people know. My vision is satisfactory—but the eyes of my head were on the Queen, and I do not possess eyes elsewhere.”

  “Are you suggesting that I do?” the dandy demanded, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. He seemed more than willing to be insulted. “I, Lord Boromo of the Chariot?”

  “Ignore him,” the voice in the skull repeated. “I recognize the name. He’s a notorious troublemaker, but an expert swordsman, as these things go. He’s killed several innocent men, but if he draws in the presence of the Queen, he insults her, and his head will roll. And don’t you draw!”

  Flint turned away from the young man, though he would rather have bashed him. But Boromo would not let it drop. “Only a complete barbarian stumbles into his betters and lacks the wit to apologize.”

  “Agreed,” Flint said, moving on. There was a ripple of laughter through the hall. There had been more than casual interest in the encounter.

  “Boromo must be jealous of you,” the Ambassador said. “He was trying to provoke you into a duel, so he could kill you, or at least humiliate you, and win favor for himself. Politics is like that, here. You handled it well, reversing the insult—but I had not anticipated this. Perhaps you’d better excuse yourself and return to the embassy.”

  “When the party’s just beginning?” Flint demanded. And let the young punk have the satisfaction of putting me to flight? he added mentally “I’m enjoying myself.” And he drifted toward the liquor.

  From behind a drape an orchestra starting playing. The fancy courtiers began to dance with the hoopskirted girls. The movements were measured and stately, stylized like the courtship ritual of certain animals. The barreled skirts began to sway, then swing like great bells, in time to the music, while hinting at enticingly shapely derrières beneath them. There was, Flint realized, some point in this complicated clothing; proper suggestion had a refined sex appeal that could build to a higher peak than mere exposure. Honeybloom, back on Outworld, was lovely in her nakedness—but she lacked the artful challenge of these boxed beauties.

  Delle glided up. “Do you care to ask me to dance, handsome envoy of the Dragon?” she inquired pertly.

  Flint had no notion how to do this dance, suspecting he would make a fool of himself if he tried it. But he thought it inexpedient to advertise this. “I prefer to watch,” he said.

  She made a moue. “Sir, you humiliate me.”

  Another dandy came up, as brightly and tastelessly clad as the first. “Do you have the audacity to insult a lady?” he demanded.

  “That depends on the lady,” Flint replied.

  The dandy swelled up. “This insolence cannot be tolerated!”

  “Why not?” Flint asked.

  The first dandy, Boromo, approached. “The animal lacks the wit to take umbrage.”

  “A prick of the sword could be the cure of that,” the other said. A glance of understanding passed between them.

  Delle faced Flint angrily. “Are you going to let them talk about you like that?”

  Flint affected surprise. “I thought they were addressing each other.”

  There was another ripple of laughter in the hall. Both dandies glowered, their hands going to the hilts of their swords in an obviously well-rehearsed gesture.

  “Ho! What is this?” the Queen demanded, sailing forward majestically.

  “Oh oh,” the Ambassador said. “Bess is in on it too, and the maid. They must know what you are, Kirlian and all.”

  Flint agreed. It did look like trouble. There had been too many little episodes. Suppose these people, antiscience as they were, opposed the formation of the galactic coalition? They could strike a real blow for their dubious cause by eliminating him. But still they dared not do it openly, lest a twenty-fourth-century battleship be dispatched from the nearest Imperial space armory. One barrage from such a ship could put this planet back into the Dark Ages, literally. So they had to be at least somewhat subtle.

  He had walked into a nest of vipers. Still he had certain assets. One was the putative battleship; another was the Ambassador in his skull; then there was his own ingenuity. A bit of bold initiative might work. It really wasn’t worse than being a transferee in an alien Sphere!

  “This oaf insults Your Majesty,” Lord Boromo said.

  Flint made a little bow to the Queen. “I fear there has been a misunderstanding, Queen Bess. I proffered no insult.”

  “And now he calls me a liar!” the dandy exclaimed theatrically. “I call these assembled to witness…”

  And the others would back the dandy up, of course, completing the frameup. They were only waiting to see which way the Queen wanted it.

  “I’m sending an Imperial Guard to get you out of there!” the Ambassador said. “But it will take a few minutes. Stall them if you can. Whatever you do, don’t draw! Then we’d have no case at all.”

  The Queen faced Flint, and he saw the calculating glint in her eyes. She had not quite decided what she could risk. “I had not supposed the Dragon would send a minion to disrupt our party,” she said.

  Flint had had enough of this mousetrapping. “Even the Dragon can at last become annoyed at the yapping of curs.”

  Queen Bess’s mouth dropped open. Both dandies drew their swords partway from their belts. “Lese majesty!” they cried together. “Give us permission—!”

  The Queen nodded almost imperceptibly. The swords moved up to clear the belts—and Flint acted.

  He backhanded Lord Boromo across the face, his knuckles making hard contact with the bone of the jaw. The man went down as if clubbed—as well he might have been, for the barbarian fist, augmented by Sphere Sol karate training, was like a club, capable of breaking bones. Then Flint caught hold of the emerging sword of the second dandy. Because the weapon had no edge, he suffered no cut on his fingers. He brought it up, twisted it easily from the man’s grip, put both hands on the metal, and flexed his muscles in one violent spasm. The sword snapped in half. Flint then kneed the man in the bulging codpiece and let him fall. He threw away the two parts of the sword.

  The action had taken only a moment. Flint was not even disheveled. He bowed again to the Queen. “The Dragon apologizes for allowing the curs to annoy the gracious Queen, and begs forgiveness.”

  “He didn’t even draw!” someone murmured in the throng.

  “The two best duelists in the realm!”

  The Queen smiled as graciously as she could manage. She could not admit complicity in the plot to embarrass Imperial Earth, and did not care to subject herself to public embarrassment. Had Flint threatened her, she could have had her guards mob him; but Flint had put himself on her side, an ally, and that was distinctly awkward.

  “The Dragon shows more mettle in apology than others in victory,” she observed. “It is fitting that the Dragon determine the appropriate mode of disposition of these ruffians.”

  “They failed in their assassin’s assignment,” the voice in his skull explained. “Death is the penalty—not only for failure, but to ensure their
silence. Don’t protest it.”

  But Flint didn’t like it. He could kill in the heat of battle, but not coldbloodedly. He realized Queen Bess was still testing him. A true friend of hers would not hesitate to do her bidding. “The Dragon does not deign to kill curs,” he said. “Let them redeem themselves by serving loyally as attendants to the Queen’s chariot dragon.” A probable sentence of death, as Old Scorch would not take kindly to such types—especially if the Good Queen wanted them dead. But it shifted the responsibility back to her. “If they fail to perform well, their bodies shall be exposed to the scavengers of the wilderness, and when the bones are clean they shall be buried under the floors of their living quarters. In this manner their ghosts shall continue to serve their Queen.”

  There was silence. Flint had prescribed the honorable tribal burial of Outworld, but he was aware it would seem otherwise to these more civilized people. And he had dodged the actual sentence of death. How would the Queen react?

  “My man is almost there,” the Ambassador said.

  “Get lost, Imp,” Flint mumbled subvocally.

  “Your sword, Dragon,” the Queen said, holding out her blue hand.

  Somehow he had miscalculated. Whom did she plan to dispatch—him or them?

  Flint put his fingers on the upper blade and drew the sword out, placing his hilt in her hand. As it touched her, something like an electric current traveled along it to his hand. It was the channelized impulse of a strong Kirlian aura!

  “Kneel,” she said firmly.

  Well, he had done his best. The penalty for failure might be death, but he was not going to beg for his life. If he had misjudged her, it was his own fault. He kneeled.

  Queen Bess raised the sword, then brought it down. The tip tapped one of his shoulders, then the other. “I knight thee Lord of Valor,” she intoned. “Rise, Sir Dragon.”

  Flint stood, amazed, as she handed back his sword.

  The Queen winked. “I suspected you had a strong aura when you tamed Old Scorch,” she murmured so that only he could hear. “He is a very special beast—my own pet. Tonight, after the party, you shall have opportunity again to prove your valor. Come to my chambers.”

  The last was said loudly enough for others to overhear. There was a murmur of surprise and awe.

  “She means it,” the Ambassador in his skull said, sounding awed himself. “She hasn’t taken a lover in months. You’ll have to go, unfortunately. We’ll try to slip you an aphrodisiac so you can perform—”

  Flint poked his tongue up under the radio unit, dislodging it from the roof of his mouth. He swallowed it. Now the voice was gone. “May the union of the Imperial Empire be as strong as that we shall experience tonight,” he said with a flourish.

  “So you ditched the Imp radio,” she murmured.

  She had known! She probably had a constant monitor on it. The culture of this planet might be pre-Machine Age, but there would be ways to obtain samples of higher technology, and a smart ruler would see to it. There was no law against it, after all; Earth wanted the colonies to progress. No wonder she was right on top of the situation—and no wonder she had been provoked by him. He must have seemed like a very active spy, with his constant advice from the Sol embassy.

  “The Imp insulted me—and you,” he said. “I don’t need civilized snooping. It takes a man to know a real woman—though she be a queen.”

  “You may be surprised at how young a queen can be when she washes off her makeup.”

  “Not beneath the age of consent, I trust,” Hint said, raising an eyebrow.

  “There is an age of consent in your culture?”

  “Of course not.”

  She smiled, glancing down at the fallen dandies, and she looked younger already. He had supposed the makeup was intended to make her look younger than she was, but the opposite could be true. “So you are from Outworld,” she said.

  “Yes. But I do work for Earth, in what capacity you surely know.”

  She smiled. “I admit we have had our doubts about Imperial policy in the past. But I doubt very much there will be any difficulties in the future. The Empire sends impressive envoys.” And she turned away and floated regally back to her throne area.

  The music started, and the dance resumed. Delle smiled.

  Flint knew it would be days or weeks before the Queen chose to dispense with his services. She was a real woman, with strength and intelligence and nerve—and a Kirlian aura that gave her more sex appeal than any of the palace beauties possessed.

  These humans were in many ways odder than the alien creatures of other Spheres, but Flint fully expected to enjoy his stay here in System Capella.

  7. Tail of the Small Bear

  * notice subject kirlian transfer to sphere polaris agent remains unavailable*

  —polaris is the most advanced sphere of that region! ready another agent necessary to eliminate subject immediately—

  *caution local factors make infiltration difficult for any but high-kirlian experienced agent*

  —what factors?—

  *polarian philosophy of circularity presence of cult of tarotism debt system excellent intelligence network*

  —won’t those same factors inhibit mission of subject entity?—

  *true*

  —POWER—

  *what?*

  —signoff, idiot power, as in what we need for—

  *oh sorry CIVILIZATION*

  —(what a mess!)—

  REPORT—SPHERICAL RECONNAISSANCE

  TO: His Ultimate Circularity, Pole Prime:

  O Biggest of Wheels, my little report: as thou didst direct, I placed myself in the way of he whom our Neighbor Sphere sought, he of the extraordinarily intense Kirlian aura, the Solarian Flintsmith. I intercepted him as he traveled to the hunting party of his Chief, he of the Powerful Stick. (Solarians, O Illustrious Spinner, do not employ the wheel at this fringe of their Sphere, and tend to think in terms of the stiff hinged rods by which they ambulate. Hence “Powerful Stick” or “Strong Spear” translate loosely into “Big Wheel,” no offense to thee.) We held converse, and the alien Flintsmith, worker of stone, was obliged to invite me to accompany him on his round, and I accepted. In the course of our journey we exchanged minor favors and I had occasion to make physical contact with him, and so verified that he does indeed possess the strongest Kirlian ambiance I have ever touched: a hundred, perhaps two hundred times as dense as my own ordinary one. The report we intercepted from the Solarian government was accurate; it may well be the single finest Kirlian aura in our galaxy.

  Having ascertained that, O Honored Cog, I could not conveniently disengage, for we were now amidst the Solarians’ primitive hunt. There was danger to the Flintsmith, and because we maintain amicable relations with these stick figures, I felt constrained to protect him somewhat. Though his body is grotesque in the fashion of his kind, there may never be his Kirlian like again within our region of the Myriad-Mote Galaxy. In fact, taking no presumption to suggest to advise so massive a Revolver as Your Wheelship, I would be inclined to spin into the tightest cultural and economic affinity with the Solarian Sphere, in the interests of exploring this remarkable Kirlian manifestation. Perhaps when our breakthrough into the secret of transfer occurs—apology, my association with Solarians has affected my vocabulary: I mean when our revolution of transfer occurs—we can discover how to engender similar auras in our own kind, where at present our highest intensity is about fifty.

  I was able to preserve the Flintsmith’s life from extinction by the animal they hunted, “Ancient Nose-Blow.” (Solarians of most species, sapient and sentient, possess separate respiratory apparatus capable of producing sounds, particularly in the presence of infection. Thus the creature frequently honked or snorted; hence its name, variously rendered as “Aged Honk” or “Old Snort.”) But thereafter, the Flintsmith also preserved my own life from a similar threat. In this manner we inadvertently exchanged life-debts, and were obliged to make the Compact—the first, if I mistake not, betw
een a Polarian and a Solarian. (And there have not been many between Polarians and Nathians either. In fact, Exchanges between Spheres are quite rare.) (But of course Sphere Nath is our longest association.) I therefore terminate my report as of the moment our mutual vow was completed, and resign from this case. In no way shall I betray the interest of my Debt Brother, and should he ever manifest within our Sphere I claim Debt Priority with regard to him.

  FROM: Small Bearing, Pole Agent Tsopi, Perimeter Detail.

  APPENDED CIRCULAR by Big Wheel:

  How brazenly the Small Bear twists her tail into Wheelish matters, presuming to inform us of elementary history and even proffering advice! Yet despite her frequent irrelevancies and truncated spin, there goes one of our best field agents. Note how subtly she imposed on the Solarian in the interest of her mission, and how loyally she protects his own interest now that she has wangled Debt Exchange. The little disk has rolled into love with an alien stick, overwhelmed by his Kirlian aura. Beauty and the Beast! She probably wanted to get into the Round of Records: first Debt Exchange between Pole and Sole. Now she even demands Consummation! Well, we can gyre through this vortex too; if the Solarian Flintsmith ever does manifest here (fat chance!), assign Tsopi as his guide. A cycle or two of forced association with the alien will cure her of such looping fancies; she’ll have her notoriety, and soon her wheel will be spinning normally. (We’d never put up with this, if she weren’t such an efficient operator, and cute as a whirlbug too.)

  Flint started to fall, tried to put his foot forward, found he had no foot, grabbed with a hand, and had no hand.

  A strong, supple tentacle caught him. “Gently, friend,” a soft voice said against his glowing skin. “Use your wheel; you’re a Polarian now. No rodlike appendages, no human reactions. Think circular.”

  He used his wheel, gaining a precarious balance. It was like logrolling in a river; he had to keep reversing to avoid getting dumped. Intellectually as well as physically. “You know!” he said—and discovered that he had spoken by spinning the little ball in the end of his trunk against his own illuminated hide.