Cluster c-1

by Piers Anthony

  Return from transfer had been horrendous. He had suffered disorientation, pain, and convulsions. Apparently his human body had contracted some malady during his absence. That could have accounted for some of his orientation problems at Polaris; it was reasonable to assume that the connection between aura and body never broke entirely. The prolonged vacancy had weakened the physical vessel. But modern biotics and therapy would have the matter rectified in a few days, and then he could begin his long recuperation.

  So they had had to bounce him out again in transfer while they gave his body special medical attention. He had insisted on a particular location although they had protested that there was no suitable host-body there. He had let them know that there might be no Kirlian transferee for future missions if they didn’t find a host in a hurry.

  Now, at last, he had returned home—in a fashion. For this was the system of Draco, the Dragon. Etamin, his home. How changed it seemed, after an Earth-year. The vines seemed larger, the terrain rougher. But of course the vines were larger than most Earth trees, and the landscape of Stone Age Outworld was violent—and he occupied a smaller, weaker body.

  In fact it was the body of a child barely nine or ten years old. One foot had been mauled and one arm amputated at the elbow. Best available host on a primitive world!

  He had only a short time, and he wanted to see Honeybloom, the Queen of Liquid. Back in Polaris Sphere he had converted Tsopi from Page to Queen of Solid, but that had been, a temporary affair. His real love was his human girl. So he moved along as fast as his rather handicapped body was able.

  A warrior challenged him at the entrance to his village. “I don’t know you, boy—what’s your business here?”

  Flint recognized the man: Fatclub, because he preferred a broad, heavy log for his weapon. Not much of a fighter, really—which was why he was assigned to routine guard duty. “I am a runner for the Swampfighter Tribe,” Flint said. That tribe was hundreds of miles distant, so none of its members were personally known here. “I bear a message for Honeybloom.”

  “You must’ve been a long time on the way,” Fatclub said. “That bitch isn’t here any more.”

  Flint reached for his sharp handax but caught himself. He could do nothing in this body, and did not want to betray his knowledge of the subject. But what an insult to the prettiest, sweetest girl in the tribe! “I move slowly,” he agreed, indicating his mutilated foot with his single hand. “Where is she now?”

  “Up on the hill with her bastard son.” Fatclub made a contemptuous gesture indicating the direction.

  With her bastard… Suddenly Flint realized what had happened. Honeybloom had borne his child—but she was unmarried, since Flint had been abruptly removed from the scene by the Imp government. Therefore she had been expelled from the tribe, and now was the object of ridicule. What a terrible fate for such a girl to suffer! If only he had known—

  But he had known—for he had identified her as the Queen, not the Page, of Liquid, in that Tarot system he had learned in Sphere Polaris. The information had been there in his mind all the time. He knew how babies were made! He merely had not let himself think it all the way through, despite the hint the Tarot had provided.

  He made his way up the mountain, amazed at the difficulty the route presented. The normal Flint-body would have hurdled the ravine, swung up to run along the vines, and shoved thornblossoms out of the way automatically. But this inadequate body had to negotiate the hazards tediously, always alert for lurking predators who would not have dared go after a grown man. This body was also wary of high places and insecure footing, and unable to swing from vine to vine. Wild Outworld seemed much less idyllic from this vantage!

  At last he spied Honeybloom’s solitary lean-to. An old woman was there, chewing on a reptile hide to make it workable for clothing. Tedious labor, hard on the teeth.

  Old woman? No, she was too familiar. This was Honeybloom! Her hair had faded, the once-brilliant red becoming listless brown. Her glowing green skin had faded almost to Earthly white. Her upright virginal breasts had converted to the elongated dugs of the nursing mother. Her loveliness had been masked by the early wrinkles and sags of ill health and hard work and desolation. Her teeth were stained by the juices of the hides she had chewed. She was no beauty any more.

  A pang as of the penetration of a knife stabbed Flint Here was the realization of the Tarot’s Three of Gas—terrible sorrow to his loved one. A heart pierced by three swords: the loss of her lover, the birthing of a bastard, and expulsion from the tribe. She might as well have died—except for her duty to the baby.

  He had deliberately put Llyana the Undulant of Spica into a similar situation, never suspecting that its horrors were being concurrently visited on his own fiancée. The alien female had deserved it, and perhaps Flint himself also deserved this retribution of fate—but why had it been visited not on him but on poor gentle Honeybloom?

  At least she had shown her mettle by carrying on, by surviving despite the callousness of her society. She would have made a good, durable wife, able to endure bad times as well as good. She had had more than mere beauty to recommend her; in this the Shaman had been wrong.

  Of course he could right the matter now, by coming back to her in his own body. But now he knew that the authorities of Imperial Earth would never permit that. There was no one else in the Sphere whose Kirlian aura approached Flint’s own; no one who could do the job he could do. And that job had to be done, lest the entire galaxy be destroyed by the Andromedans. Then there would be no life at all for Honeybloom—or anyone.

  He could arrange to have her moved to a more civilized planet, where no stigma would attach to her. But she was a creature of Outworld; she could not be happy anywhere else. She had not even departed any farther than necessary from her tribe; how could she tolerate removal from her world?

  The Tarot had spoken truly: there was nothing but sorrow here, and he was powerless to abate it. This misery had been set the moment Star Sol had projected its omen of eclipse to touch his life. He was the victim of fate. He—and those close to him.

  But he could alleviate it somewhat. He moved on to the lean-to.

  Honeybloom looked up listlessly. Her eyes seemed washed out, and there were cry-wrinkles around them.

  “I bear a message… from Flint,” Flint said.

  “Flint!” she exclaimed, and for an instant animation brought her beauty back. But it dissipated quickly. “I am weary of this teasing. Flint will never come back.”

  There was only one way to end it. And it had to be ended. “He spoke to an official of Imperial Earth, just before he died—”

  “Died!” she cried, horrified.

  “—honorably, in the line of his duty to his Sphere. Hunting a monster.” The monster of Galaxy Andromeda—but no use to attempt to explain that to her. “He said: ‘Tell my dear wife Honeybloom of Outworld that I love her, and bequeath to my son my name and trade. Let him be a flintsmith.’ ”

  “But Flint did not marry—”

  That was one of her faults: she was honest. “I only repeat the message,” Flint said. “You are listed in Imperial records as his common-law wife. Because he died as an officer of Imperial Earth, you are now entitled to his pension.”

  She stared, amazed. “But—”

  “It will not be a great amount, but it will enable you to resume residence within the tribe. As his acknowledged widow, you have no stigma; you may marry again if you wish. In that event the pension will accrue directly to his son, until he comes of age.”

  “You mock me!” she cried, tears flowing. They were not pretty tears, but grief tears. How she had suffered!

  She did not believe him—and why should she? “He also said, ‘My finger is still stiff.’ I don’t know what that means.”

  But she knew what it meant. She flushed—and believed. For none but the two of them knew about the stiff-finger hex she had laid on him for the too-intimate poke he had given her lush posterior as she slept among the juiceberries.
And of course more had stiffened than the finger. It was the kind of detail only the real Flint would remember or remark upon.

  “All you have to do is apply at the Imperial office,” Flint said. “The forms have been approved. That is the end of my message.” He turned to go.

  “Wait, stay!” she exclaimed, all aflutter with the abrupt change in her fortune. “I have juiceberries… you must be hungry…”

  “The bearer of bad news may not eat with the bereaved,” he said, quoting a tribal maxim.

  She paused. “It is bad news.” Yet she did not seem mortified. The truth was, Flint’s unexplained absence had been worse than his death, for by his death he had given her legitimacy. She was not glad for his death, and he knew she loved him—but by accepting his death she also accepted his love for her, expressed as part of that message of death.

  How truly the Tarot had spoken when it signaled death in his future—but called it also a transformation. He had thought to die in Polaris Sphere, and had not; now he knew for what his death had been saved. This transformation would right things as no ordinary death could have done. Everyone in the tribe knew he had not married Honeybloom—but she would now be a comparatively wealthy woman, if no one objected—and to object would be to call the dead Flint a liar. No one wanted Flint’s ghost to return for vengeance against that slight, so no one would say a word. Especially since the records of Imperial Earth would provide legitimacy. Flint had been a powerful man in life, quick and sure with his weapons; he would be a terror in death.

  As his widow, Honeybloom would have to become the wife of the Chief, who took care of all widows in accordance with tribal custom. Since most widows were old—at least a year, equivalent to thirty Earth-years—she would receive more attention than the others. She would never be as lovely as she had been, but even her secondary bloom would be a marvelous thing, for she was full-bodied and gentle.

  Now Flint’s son would be legitimate, and perhaps grow up to be the leader of the tribe, for he would be stepson to the Chief and surely among the strongest and most skillful, as Flint had been. Yes, it was best this way.

  But now, too, Flint could never return, even if he completed all his missions for the Sphere. This tribal life, and indeed Outworld itself, was forever behind him. That hurt.

  He left Honeybloom, made his way to the grave of Old Snort the dinosaur for a sympathetic word, and finally sought out the old Shaman. It was night before he found the half-blind Earthman on the hill, squinting at the stars.

  “Shaman, I grieve,” Flint said, sitting down beside the white old man.

  “All life is grief,” the other agreed. Tribesmen often came to him for advice and magic; that was his job in this primitive society. “I perceive you have suffered grievously indeed—and I regret that no spell of mine can give you back your lost arm or do more than alleviate the pain in your foot.”

  “It is not for my arm I grieve, but for myself,” Flint said. “For I am dead. I died today to spare my son the shame of bastardy. Did I do right?”

  “You are but a child! How can you speak of dying?”

  “I speak as messenger for one far removed. I am a ghost.”

  “A ghost.” The dim old eyes tried to penetrate Flint’s expression for a moment, then peered uselessly into the night sky. “We are the eye of Draco the Dragon, once the Pole Star as seen from Earth, now its farthest recognized colony. Yet there was another dragon, long ago. Draco the Greek legislator. In 621 B.C. he was given authority to codify the laws of the city of Athens, so as to alleviate the need for private individual revenge for wrongs. This he did—but his code was so severe that it was said to have been written in letters of blood.”

  “Letters of blood!” Flint echoed. “How well you understand!”

  “In that code, debtors could be sold as slaves. You have abated your debt similarly—”

  Abated his debt! “Not all cultures require so harsh a remedy,” Flint said, thinking of Tsopi the Polarian and the debt he had shared with her. How much better that system was!

  The Shaman turned to face Flint. “Honeybloom is a fine woman, better than I credited at first. You have done right.”

  Flint rolled to his knees and embraced the old man with his one arm. There were tears in his eyes. “You know me, Shaman!”

  “It takes an old fool to know a young one. I note you have matured, and have mastered the art of transfer, only a rumor in my day. That was why they summoned you to Earth?”

  “Yes. My Kirlian aura is very strong.” Flint shrugged. “I will give them the word about Honeybloom’s pension, and the Imps will do it.” Because there was now enough credit in Flint’s personal account to pay a hundred widows. As the most potent aura in the Sphere, he commanded an excellent rate of pay—for which he had had no use, until now. “But I wish to be sure that the money is used wisely, for the benefit of Honeybloom and my son. There might be those who would cheat her—”

  “I will arrange for a trust,” the Shaman said. He smiled. “Protected by magic, of course. There will be no abuse.”

  “I thank you,” Flint said.

  The Shaman looked at him again. “You have aged.” That seemed incongruous, in view of Flint’s present body, but it was true.

  “I have had to age,” Flint said. “I have become disgustingly civilized. I travel the galaxy, now—or at least our local cluster of Spheres.”

  “Cluster.” The wrinkled, almost sightless eyes searched the sky again for the stars they could not see. “Will you tell me?”

  Flint’s mission was secret—but he knew he could trust the Shaman, his childhood mentor, the man who had given him the intellectual basis for survival in the amazing galaxy. “I will tell you everything.”

  And he did. It took several hours, but it was good in the telling, even the bad parts.

  “Nothing could have given me more pleasure,” the Shaman said at the end. “You have restored my sight; you have shown me the universe.”

  “No, only a few near Spheres,” Flint said modestly.

  “And a near galaxy. Do you not see the identity of the Queen of Energy?”

  “No. It baffles me. It could be any Sphere, even a supposedly friendly one. I have looked upon my enemy many times and not known her.”

  “She is from Andromeda Galaxy—an enemy agent sent to eliminate you, for you are the major threat to their project. You can go anywhere they can go, even to Andromeda itself, seeking out their secrets.”

  “Andromeda!” Flint exclaimed, suddenly seeing it. “That must be it!”

  “And beware—for she obviously has a way to orient on your transfers. Wherever you go, she can go—and she will kill you, for she knows you while you do not know her, and you have humiliated her. Never forget she is a woman, though quite unlike Honeybloom. Whatever guise she wears, wherever she hails from, her motive is not yours. Hell hath no—”

  “Hell is a straight line, in Polarian mythology,” Flint said. “And a dry place without zones in Spica. Shaman, you have saved my life!”

  “I hope so. Tomorrow I will see your widow about your death. That was a very nice gesture on your part, Flint.”

  “I do seem to achieve my best effects in the modes of my deaths! It was circular. What else was there to do?”

  “Nothing else—but it took a man to do it.”

  They stood up and shook hands, Imperial-style. “Farewell, friend,” the Shaman said.

  “Farewell—friend,” Flint echoed, feeling the tears in his eyes that had not been there when he parted from Honeybloom. He had thought he had come to see her, but now he knew it had been for this conversation with the Shaman. He would never see either of them again.

  9. Daughters of the Titan

  *notice: multiple mattermissions to hyades open star cluster, including 200 kirlian enemy entity*

  —hyades! that means they’ve found it! send agent immediately—

  *she is only just freed from spica her kirlian is down*

  —I know mattermit her there— />
  *to another galaxy? the energy expense*

  —call for concurrence, all available entities—

  o o :: CONCURRENCE

  —that satisfy you? this is an emergency! mattermit her NOW!—

  *(sigh) POWER*

  —CIVILIZATION—

  “We have another mission for you,” the Minister of Alien Spheres said as Flint animated his own, restored body.

  “Not today, Imp,” Flint said. “My Kirlian’s so low I’m ready to phase into the next host I animate. I must have been six months on the road.”

  “Three months. Your aura intensity is down to fifty percent, still the highest we have. You’re not in trouble yet. But in this case you’ll use your own body, because there are no hosts where you’re going. In fact, no life there at all.”

  “What kind of a Sphere has no life on it?” Flint demanded, intrigued.

  “An Ancient Sphere.”

  The Minister paused to let that sink in. Flint knew about the Ancients, of course. Some of their earthworks were on Outworld, and others were scattered across the galaxy. The Ancients had had the hugest interstellar empire ever known, perhaps three million years ago; they had possessed secrets of technology that modern Spheres could only glimpse. “You have my attention,” Flint said.

  “We have located a well-preserved Ancient colony in the Hyades, a hundred and thirty light-years from Sol,” the Minister said. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Taurus Constellation. The Horns of the Bull.” If there was one geography Flint knew well, it was that of the near stars.

  “The horns of a dilemma. The Hyades are at the approximate intersection of four Spheres: Sol, Polaris, Canopus, and Nath. All have colonies there, but these have their own primitive mores and we prefer not to involve them. This is a matter for the Imperial Planets—but, none of these four exercise specific authority in that region.”