Cluster c-1

by Piers Anthony

  “I will seek my own repose. Now, do not keep His Rotation waiting.”

  “Right. ’Bye.” He rolled into the mattermitter. With luck, it would not take long to acquaint the technicians with the transfer equations. Then he could return to square things with Tsopi—his way. Or round them off, in the local vernacular.

  He rolled out at the spaceport of a medieval Polaris Sphere planet. He knew it by the architecture in the distance; his host-memory had no reticence about identifying it. Of course Polaris suffered Spherical regression the way all Spheres did. That was why transfer was so crucial. It was an instant, cheap mode of communication that could bring civilization right to the Fringe and keep it there. Or at least reduce the cultural lag. For even on Imperial Earth there were backward sections, so efficient communication was not the whole answer.

  A port official coasted up. “Salutation, Flint of Sphere Sol,” he buzzed. “I am Dligt, the Polarian Ringer of this region. It is most circular of you to assist us in this difficult contact.”

  “Hello, Delight. I understood I was to meet with the Big Wheel,” Flint said uncertainly.

  “Of course. Immediately following your dialogue with the aliens. I do not know how we should have managed without your kind presence.”

  What was the Wheel pulling? Obviously this misrouting was deliberate; Ringer Dligt had been advised of his coming, and there was a job in progress. “It is the least of spinoffs,” Flint said politely. “But in order that there be no confusion, would you rehearse what is anticipated?”

  “Gladly.” The official pointed into the yellowish sky with his trunk. “In close orbit is a craft from Sphere Sol. One of your lifeships. We were uncertain how to approach them, as they have been traveling for three hundred of your years and know nothing of our Sphere. It seems the automatic mechanical devices of the ship have selected this as a suitable planet for colonization, and in due course a landing will be attempted. The shock of discovering it to be already inhabited by unfamiliar sapients may be uncomfortable. But with you here, a genuine Solarian, one of their land—no offense—”

  “But I’ve never seen a lifeship!” Flint protested. “My world was settled one hundred Earth-years ago—about three and a half Etamin-Outworld years. Our own lifeship is long gone.”

  “We understand. We have similar problems at our Fringe, and the voyage takes up to four hundred years on that scale. But this ship must have started its voyage the same time as your own ancestors did. You were contemporaries at the start, and also in space for two centuries. And you have suffered the same regressional displacement, even as we have here. And you are of their kind, a thrust-culturist. You are ideally suited to explain the situation to them.”

  “That they can not settle here?”

  “Oh, no. Refusal would not be circular. We would welcome a colony of Solarians. They would be a real asset to this world, a continual source of cultural stimulation. But they must be made to understand that they will be guests in our Sphere, subject ultimately to our government. They must acknowledge the legitimacy of the Big Wheel and refrain from interspecies altercations.”

  “Yes, of course,” Flint agreed, thankful for the education he had received at the Shaman’s wheel. Shaman’s hands, rather. Spherical codes required that the authority of the native Sphere species be acknowledged. That was why Polarians yielded to human authority on Planet Outworld. The rights of such minorities were carefully protected by the host-Sphere, and inter-Sphere complications were anathema. It would be prohibitively expensive to wage Spherical war, and the Fringe areas were hardly worth it. There was also, as Dligt had mentioned, considerable positive stimulation when divergent sapients shared a planet amicably. But of course a ship that had traveled in isolation for three centuries would not be aware of that. Sol’s Spherical boundary had been established only in the past 150 years, filling in the region of space not yet taken by Spheres Polaris, Nath, Canopus, and Spica. “Mattermit me aboard and I’ll talk with their captain.”

  “I must demur, implying no uncircularity,” Dligt said against his own hide. “We have established a visual-auditory communication channel, though we have not as yet implemented contact. We can project your image into the ship, and it will appear substantial to them. We believe this would be the expedient mode.”

  “Why?”

  “Regressives of any Sphere tend to be alienophobic, and yours more than most,” the Polarian explained. “There could be personal danger.”

  “Um, yes. I am in alien guise—no offense.”

  “Offense? Oh—uncircularity.” Flint had heard this concept as “offense” but that was not quite accurate. He would have to watch that, and make sure he understood what was intended, rather than what he expected. There were so many little cultural pitfalls. Most were minor, but some could mean real trouble. “Naturally not. This is why your help is so important. You understand such matters from the Solarian view. You will be able to interview them without creating avoidable uncir—that is, affront.”

  So Dligt was also trying to accommodate himself to Flint’s linguistic mannerisms! A diplomat, surely.

  The Big Wheel was pretty smart, Flint realized. This matter had come up while a Solarian was in the vicinity, so the visitor was being drafted to help tide over what could be a difficult contact. If anything went wrong, Imperial Earth could have no complaint. Strictly speaking, an emissary was not under local Sphere authority, but it would be pointless to object. Definitely uncircular! And Flint was curious about the regressed humans; it would be like meeting his own ancestors as they arrived at Outworld. “Right. Make the connection.”

  The Ringer showed him into the communication booth. “Our operator will monitor the contact,” he said. “Should there be any problem, he will spiral off transmission.”

  “What problem could there be? It’s only an image.”

  “We are not certain. But we prefer to be careful.”

  They were apt to be so careful they ended up running around in circles, Flint thought. Better the straight-line thrust of the human mind, that could move into and through a situation efficiently.

  Suddenly he was in the Solarian lifeship. Everything was metal—a flat, featureless floor, bare walls, and complicated ceiling. The automatic mechanism kept the ship largely sterile.

  But where were the people? Could they have regressed to the point of extinction? The ship really didn’t need them for its operation, but it was supposed to take care of them and see to it that they were equipped for colonization. But regression could lead to primitive violence, possibly wiping out the living complement. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it might. The ship could protect its cargo from almost every danger but human nature.

  Flint tried rolling forward—and it worked. The floor of the communication booth was movable, like a mat on rollers, and so he could shove it about with his wheel without actually going anywhere. The projection translated those floor-movements into modifications of the image, so that he could travel about the ship exactly as if he were really on board. Very nice; he had not experienced anything like this on Planet Earth. The Shaman had been right, as always: there was much to respect about Sphere Polaris, technologically and socially. Overall, it seemed to be somewhat more advanced than Sphere Sol.

  He moved about the chamber, noting the banks of buttons and dials. This was evidently the control room, perhaps sealed off to prevent meddling by the passengers. He found a passage exiting from it; sure enough, it was blocked by a closed door, like an airlock.

  Well, he was accomplishing nothing here. He rolled right at the bulkhead—and through it “Now I know what a ghost feels like,” he murmured, and was startled by the sound of his own voice. His image-ball could not have produced it. He spoke against the supporting wall of the communication booth, and it was broadcast here along with the rest.

  He emerged into another hall, similar to the first There were side passages branching off. He should have thought to study a map of the ship; he was in danger of getting lost
.

  Well, he didn’t have all day. If he went straight ahead he was bound to get somewhere, as the size of the ship was finite. He passed through another sealed portal—and suddenly faced the residential portion of the ship.

  It was breathtaking—though in this host he did not breathe, exactly. The whole cargo section had been left open, a monstrous cavelike chamber, with the housing of the colonists on the outer wall. The spin of the ship held them there at approximately Earth gravity; this was a lot simpler and cheaper and more reliable than artificial gravity, and simplicity was the keynote of a lifeship, for all its sophistication. The less complicated it was, the less could go wrong with it; that was a universal principle.

  By the same token, the necessary recycling of organic substances was done by natural means. Assorted plants grew, in some sections amounting to a veritable jungle. He recognized berry bushes and fruit trees. This was very like that ancient Garden of Eden the Shaman had told him of.

  Had man come to Earth originally in just such a vessel, and the legend of Eden was all that remained after regression had wiped out the memory? If so, where had man come from? Could there be genuine human beings elsewhere in the galaxy, never connected to Earth or Sphere Sol? He would have to meditate on that sometime.

  He moved into the nearest field, skirting a small lake where fish swam. He rounded a tangle of hedge—and encountered his first sentient.

  Flint wheeled back, appalled. The creature was grotesque. It stood on a split fundament, with bony joints at intervals. Two bent sticklike appendages projected from the sides, terminating in splays of miniature digits. The thing was all angular and rigid, yet with an irregular covering of flesh that made portions of it bulge outward like spilling candle wax, half-congealed. At the top was a head perforated by several holes, half-buried under a tumbling mane of hairs.

  Flint’s system revolted. He felt sick, which was a problem, because this body had no way to vomit. He had never liked illness or grotesqueries, and never before had he contemplated anything so inherently disgusting. For this was no primitive monster; it was conscious and sapient.

  Then he realized: This was a human being. A naked female.

  He forced himself to reorient, as he had in Spica when disorganized by the enormity of the triangular sexuality there. Gradually his human essence assumed command. By the definition of his kind, this was a nubile young woman, lithe and healthy and sexually desirable, like his fiancée Honeybloom. Monster indeed!

  How thoroughly he had merged with his Polarian host! This was a plain warning: his Kirlian aura was fading dangerously, reducing his human identity. It was supposed to diminish at the rate of one intensity-norm per day, but evidently this was variable. He would have to wrap up this mission and return to his own body—he quelled a surge of distaste at the notion—for a prolonged recuperation of aura. Maybe he was fading faster as a result of the fatigue of repeated transfer missions.

  But at the moment he had another mission: to explain things to these lifeship primitives, and to give the secret of transfer to the Polarians.

  The girl, meanwhile, seemed as startled as he was. In a moment she would bolt in terror. “Do not flee,” he said quickly. “I will not hurt you.”

  She screamed piercingly and ran, her torso and limbs flexing in a manner that would have intrigued Flint had he been in a human body. He could not afford to have her depart in confusion, so he wheeled after her, overtaking her easily. He reached his trunk around her, to stop her flight—and it passed through her without resistance. He had forgotten he was only an image.

  So he paced her, keeping up easily because of his superior mode of travel. “Listen to me! I represent Polaris Sphere—” And stopped. Idiot that he was, he had been speaking in Polarian. No way for the girl to understand him.

  In fact, he had gone at this all wrong. He should have had the technician arrange for a human image rather than this Polarian one; surely the equipment was capable of such a translation. As a strange human, he could have commanded the girl’s attention, and spoken to her in her Own language. Obvious—in retrospect.

  Now the girl’s screams had alerted her tribe. Naked men appeared, carrying homemade spears: crude weapons, preflint, he noted professionally. What a boon flintstone was to ancient man, with its supreme hardness and chip-ability. Yet here, amidst the advanced metal of a functioning spacecraft, they had lost even good stone. Probably there was no flint to be had. Without hesitation they threw these clumsy shafts at Flint—without effect, of course.

  When they saw that, they all fled. Flint rolled to a halt. He had bungled the mission brilliantly. “Cancel the projection, before I do any more harm,” he said.

  And he was back in the booth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I ruined it. A complete disaster. As a Paleolithic man myself, I should have known better.”

  “Do not be unwheeled,” Dligt said. “You may have been too close to the problem, lacking the vantage of dissimilarity. We have failed many times in initial contacts; your involvement was an experiment in linearity that has taught us much.”

  “You’re right; the straight-line approach can be completely wrong. I see that now. But I have spoiled it for your circular approach, too. I don’t know how to make amends.”

  “Not at all. Being now satisfied that the linear system is not applicable to the present case, we shall return to circularity. We shall project a still figure of a Polarian, along with a tangible offering of trinkets to delight the primitive mind. In time they will discover that there is no harm in the projection, and will seek more trinkets, which we shall provide. This will lead inevitably to communication, because they will desire it. It will take time, and many circuits, but the end result is assured.”

  “Circularity…” Flint said. “Slow but sure. Yes, I understand now. And I suspect you understand the primitive mind better than I do.”

  “I do approach it from a more distant perspective,” the Ringer agreed. “Also, civilization has an insidious effect, if you are not accustomed to it. It changes you subtly, until you are a different person—without knowing it. You are no longer Paleolithic.”

  “You are perceptive,” Flint said.

  “Merely trained in the field.”

  Flint thought of Tsopi, who had not tried to oppose his direct-line thinking. Had he appeared to her as the life-ship female had appeared to him? All angular and horrible? Then she, too, had overcome a formidable revulsion—only to run afoul of the human mode of thinking, as disastrous to social interaction as to initial contacts. “I am unused to the concept of circularity, but perceive it has merit. You have been most understanding. May I prevail on you to put a linear query in a separate matter?”

  The official seemed surprised. “Linearity is your nature, yet you have done much to overcome it. I shall try to respond in that fashion.”

  “I appreciate it, Delight. If one of the parties declines to make a debt-settlement when the opportunity offers, what happens?”

  “That is the subject of half our literature!” Dligt said. “The results are highly variable. Many debts cannot be settled.”

  “One that can be settled. If a male declined solely because he preferred to perform an unrelated mission—one that could wait a little longer, but—”

  “To turn down a debt-settlement capriciously? Nothing is more important than debt. The entire culture suffers if any facet of individual prerogative is infringed. Are you familiar with the legend of Roller and the Bearing?”

  Flint stifled a snort of laughter (not hard to stifle, since the Polarian ball did not snort well), realizing that this was serious. “I regret, no.”

  “Roller was a primitive yet attractive male who inadvertently incurred debt-exchange with an immature female, a bearing. Her age prevented immediate abatement. When she was of age she sought him out—but Roller did not recognize her, and so quite properly declined to mate. Maturation changes females, you understand—”

  “I understand,” Flint said, remembering
the phenomenal change in Honeybloom, once a thin, shy child.

  “Rather than off-balance the debt by informing him of his error, the Bearing sought her own repose.”

  Flint’s memory jogged. Tsopi had used that phrase. “Does that mean what I begin to suspect it means?”

  “She is now in the sky as one of our fainter stars. It is a beloved, sad story.”

  Flint’s worst fear had just been realized. “She… died? Rather than tell him?”

  “In linear terms, yes. Forgive me if I have become circular. I realize your query was theoretical, but it is a delicate subject, even so. The Polarian mind can conceive of virtually no circumstances that would justify such crude debt-abatement.”

  Dligt evidently had a pretty fair notion of Flint’s problem, but was being most circumspect—as was the Polarian nature. “Such crudity is possible to a primitive alien mind, however,” Flint said grimly, feeling a terrible rawness inside. “Please, I have made another uncircular mistake. Will you mattermit me directly to the palace on Polaris Prime?”

  “Certainly.” And without delay the official set the controls, and Flint rolled through the mattermitter into the palace a hundred and fifty light-years away.

  The Big Wheel was right there. “So the emissary completes a circuit,” he commented.

  Suddenly Flint thought: What did Roller do, when he learned of the Bearing’s fate? “In your constellations, where is the figure of Roller?”

  “Odd you should inquire about that particular figure. Or were you already aware that it is otherwise known as Etamin, your Dragon star?”