Cluster c-1

by Piers Anthony

“Two males with debt must seek two females with similar debt,” the Nathian replied promptly. “One male then makes formal exchange of obligation with one female. He now abates her debt by mating with her debt sister. The other pair proceeds similarly. This is known as ‘squaring’ debt, one of the few examples of non-circularity in Polarian custom, the subject of ribaldry. There are special conventions for debt between juveniles, or when one party to debt dies before abatement—”

  “Obvious, now,” Flint said. “I should have known—”

  “Demurral,” the Polarian said. “This verifies that even extended transfer cannot replace native knowledge or long-term acquaintance. A transferee cannot deceive one who is truly familiar with the culture.”

  “I stand ready to verify my own identity similarly,” H:::4 said. “I am satisfied with this mode of—”

  “I am not satisfied,” Mintaka said. “Sol fouled up his own question, and Nath merely applied logic. Who would I exchange questions with? The representative of our neighbor Mirzam is dead.”

  “Impasse threatens,” H:::4 said. “Let Sol challenge the others of us as he did Polaris. At least this accomplishes something. We cannot debate interminably, or we fail in our mutual mission through default.”

  “Now wait,” Flint said. “This is a murder mystery, and I hardly know how to—”

  “Agreement,” the Polarian said. “Sol’s forward thrust and linear thinking seem best here.”

  “Pull-hook. Sol gave us all transfer; Sol will not betray us.”

  “Solarian, you said you transferred also to Spica,” the Spican quivered.

  Flint sighed. It seemed he had been nominated, regardless. “Yes. But of course I know no more about Spican culture than about Polarian. So I can’t—”

  “We shall exchange questions. Please define the Spican mating system.”

  It always came down to sex, he thought. That was a fundamental drive in any species, and the most subject to social restrictions. So it was a good tool for verification. “That I can do. You have three sexes, the Impacts, the Sibilants, and the Undulants. The confluence of the three leads immediately to an explosive mergence. The third entity on the scene assumes the role of catalyst—”

  “A moment,” the Mintakan said. “Did you not say that the Andromedan also transferred to Spica?”

  “Yes. In fact, the two of us became part of a mating trio.”

  The Canopian saucer wobbled momentarily as if suffering brief loss of control. “You met and knew the enemy—and mated with her?”

  Flint spread his hands in a useless gesture. “Ridiculous as it sounds, I did. You see—”

  “Then you informed the Spican authorities of her identity so they could kill her,” the Nathian suggested. “No. I—well, you see the situation—”

  “My point,” the Mintakan said, “is that she therefore knows as much about Spica as you do—perhaps more.”

  “That’s right!” Flint agreed, surprised again by the obvious. “So this is no—”

  “In fact, you could give an accurate answer to the question and still be the Andromedan spy.”

  “Not that particular one,” Flint said with a smile. “The spy and I are of different sexes.”

  “I submit that the spy could be male,” the Mintakan persisted. “Spica is irrelevant, but can Canopus assure us that the spy transferee there was the female?”

  The saucer wobbled again. “We cannot,” H:::4 admitted. “We dealt with two transferees, but knew them only by their auras, both extremely high, and their statements. Both claimed to be from Sphere Sol.”

  “So the female who provided the transfer information, after the male had failed, could in fact have been the real Sol envoy. She tried to kill the impostor, who in turn sought to discredit her.”

  “This is possible,” the Master agreed.

  “Yet this Solarian is true to his type,” the Polarian argued.

  “Unless the Andromedan is also of that type. Do you suppose Sol is the only thrust-culture in the universe? It would be natural for the Andromedan to transfer to the most similar species.”

  “Pull-hook,” the Nathian agreed.

  “Objection,” the Spican quivered. “We have observed a circumstance, and postulated an explanation, but have omitted the third aspect. There may be no murderer among us; our comrade of Sphere Mirzam may have been dispatched by the Titan.”

  “The Titan!” Flint exclaimed. “Surely there is no living Ancient here!” but he looked about nervously.

  “We do not know what their powers were, except that they were greater than ours.” the Spican pointed out. “We believe they were land-borne creatures, yet even on our Spican planets, beneath deep and long-enduring oceans, we have found their stigmata. Indeed, these formidable evidences of past life and civilization provided the incentive that took us into space to search for new waters. The Ancients could have left an inanimate guardian, a machine—”

  “A robot!” Flint said. “Or boobytraps, the way the pyramidal Egyptians did on our home planet, to stop intrusions.”

  “We remain at an impasse,” the Antarean signaled. “I suggest we give up this futile search for a guilty entity within our number and form into pairs, each entity in charge of its partner. Anyone who fails to act in a manner conducive to the welfare of our own galaxy will be suspect—and we shall all gather here before any of us leave. Perhaps the Ancients will provide the solution for us.”

  “Good thinking!” Flint agreed. “The Andromedans obviously think there is something here, and they’re afraid of it. When we discover it, they will have to act—or let us gain the secret.”

  “Which connections?” the Nathian asked. “Which entities pair?”

  “Random is best,” H:::4 said. “Let each entity pair with the one most nearly opposite it, here in this circle.”

  As it happened, Nath was opposite Mintaka, Flint opposite Spica, and Polaris opposite Antares. Canopus, suspended above the corpse in his craft, was isolated. “With your agreement,” H:::4 said, “I will pair with the defunct Mirzam. Were I the one who killed it, I could do no further damage, and I will not be able to interfere with your search. If the spy makes its move elsewhere, the partner can summon me for help. I will hover here and remain in radio touch.”

  There was no demurral. Despite the murder, all parties were weary of the fruitless quest for the criminal. The three pairs set out in three directions, at last on the trail of the secret of the Ancients.

  “I really don’t know what we’re looking for,” Flint admitted. “This may be a wild goose chase.”

  “There is no native life here,” the Spican in Antarean guise reminded him, the bumps on its back rippling as it oozed into its forward extrusion. It was able to make fair progress. Flint had to walk slowly, but this was not burdensome. “Thus there can be no flying fish, not even untame ones.”

  “Figure of speech,” Flint said, smiling. “I mean there may be nothing we can use.”

  “Yet we must search.”

  “Yes.” The others were already out of sight, except for the high Canopian craft.

  Now the ruins of the site seemed to loom larger, almost threateningly, as though haunted. Flint dismissed it as nervousness resulting from the shock of discovering the murder. His companion might be an alien agent—no, that was unlikely, for the two Antareans had come together. And how would such a creature have punctured the suit of a jumping entity? There seemed to be no weapon. In fact, his spear was the most likely prospect.

  His spear. Had the killer tried to frame him? That had failed—or had it? The Mintakan obviously suspected him…

  They came to a tall structure, an almost-intact dome rising out of the sand. There was just one hole in it, where air had evidently blasted out at the time of decompression. Yet if the loss of pressure had been that fast, killing every creature there instantly, why weren’t there any bodies? No, no mystery there; an expedition would have come to pick them up. Recovery of the dead was common to sapience; it tied in with belief
in the afterlife, laying ghosts to rest. Flint did not sneer, even privately; he believed in ghosts.

  “This requires exploration,” the Spican said. “Yet in my present body, I hesitate to traverse such territory.”

  “Which sex are you?” Flint inquired.

  “Impact. It was thought this would be better for land traverse than Undulant or Sibilant, and perhaps this is so, but the mode is hardly comfortable. I must admit too that it is strange indeed to come close to so many types without mergence. I remain somewhat nervous.”

  “I can understand that. I was an Impact too, and know the correspondence of limbs is only very general. And of course you are not using limbs at all now.” Flint was now reassured that his companion was legitimate—though the Mintakan’s point about the Andromedan’s knowledge of the Spican system was valid. He would have to trust his intuition—and keep alert. “Since I am in my own body, and it is an athletic one, I shall climb inside, and relay news to you.”

  “This is kind,” the creature agreed.

  Flint stepped gingerly over the jagged sill. His fragile-seeming suit was tough, but he didn’t want it scraping against the diamond-hard fragments. He came to stand inside the dome.

  It was bare but beautiful. The complete night sky was visible through its material. No… Flint’s excellent visual recall told him that it was not the sky. It was an image, painted or imprinted holographically inside the dome so cleverly that it looked authentic. As he moved, it moved, as though he were traveling at some multiple of light speed, the near stars shifting relative to the far ones. The effect was awe-inspiring, technologically and esthetically—and intellectually, for it showed a configuration similar in general but completely different in detail from anything he had viewed before. Flint knew the stars as only a Stone Age man could know them; there were no correspondences here. Was it even any part of this galaxy? He would have to check it out when he got back to Sol, if need be querying Sphere Knyfh and any other major Spheres that were now in reach. This could be extremely important.

  “The home sky of the Ancients,” he breathed. “From this, we can determine their Sphere of origin…”

  He could have stared at the splendor of that strange sky interminably, but tore his eyes away. He looked around the floor of the chamber. It was bare—no machines, no furniture, no bodies. So he still had no clue to the physical aspect of the Ancients. But of course this was only one structure of hundreds. Possibly they had come here to gawk at the vision of the far-distant ancestral home, recharging their spiritual vitality. They must have had eyes, at least. It suggested something fundamentally good about the Ancients; they were, in their fashion, human. They had colonized much of the galaxy, yet they longed for home, and kept its memory fresh. Probably this had been a desolate outpost, a supply station, with forced tours of duty: a necessary function of empire.

  Yet it had been wiped out, and suddenly. Perhaps some terrible beam from space had voided their pressure shield, releasing their bubble of atmosphere, killing them all. Maybe an enemy had landed, sacked the post, and removed all artifacts of potential value. In which case there would be nothing left for the archaeologists. Too bad.

  “Sol. Spica,” the Canopian Master’s voice said from Flint’s unit, interrupting his musings. “There has been a development. Please return immediately to the collection site.”

  “What happened?” Flint asked, certain he would not like the reply.

  “The representative of Sphere Antares has been killed. I am holding its partner Polaris under guard pending group assembly.”

  “Oh, no,” Flint groaned. “I thought we’d cleared Polaris.” He ran for the opening, scrambled out, and landed beside the Spican. “You heard?”

  “Dehydrated!” the creature replied in evident horror. To a water entity, dehydration would be a hellish concept on several levels, an obscenity. “Now we know there is a murderer among us.”

  “But neither you nor me,” Flint said. “I was within the dome, with no other exit—and you could not have moved fast enough to do the job, even had you chosen to kill your friend.”

  “Agreed. We two are innocent—but four suspects remain.”

  “Polaris, Nath, Mintaka, and Canopus,” Flint said. “We must hurry. Would it be permissible for me to carry you?”

  “In the circumstance, permissible. But be careful.”

  “Yes.” Flint put his two arms around the glob and heaved it up, feeling the associated Kirlian aura. H:::4 had been right: All entities on this mission were high-Kirlian types. Not just five or ten times normal intensity, but fifty or a hundred. The best their cultures had to offer. High Kirlians for high stakes!

  The creature weighed about as much as Flint did, but it shaped itself to the upper contours of his body comfortably and was easy to carry. He ran as fast as he could toward the rendezvous.

  The Polarian was there, the Canopian saucer hovering close overhead, as Flint tramped up with his burden. The Mintakan and Nathian had not yet arrived. “What happened?”

  “I am under suspicion again,” the Polarian said. “My partner of Sphere Antares is defunct.”

  “I challenged you before,” Flint said, setting down the Spican carefully. “But you satisfied me that you were legitimate. I do not believe you would have done it.”

  “That is most circular of you. But unless you can identify a more immediate suspect—”

  “I think we’d better all establish alibis,” Flint said. He had a suspect, but didn’t care to name it at the moment.

  “Alibis?” the Spican inquired.

  “Each entity must explain where he was at the time of the murder,” Flint explained. “If he were elsewhere, he cannot have been there, so would be innocent.”

  “Most ingenious,” the Spican agreed. “You Solarians do have a marvelous directness. We must also ascertain the mode of demise.”

  Mintaka and Nath arrived. “This is very bad,” the Nathian clicked.

  Flint explained about alibis, giving his own and the Spican’s.

  “Demurral,” Mintaka flashed. “We have not verified that there is no other exit to your dome. And if the Spican were the spy, the Antarean would be the first to know it, and would therefore be marked for death. And that death prevents us all from knowing how rapidly that type of entity can move. It could be the fastest among us all.”

  Devastating logic. Flint and the Spican were back under suspicion.

  “However,” the Mintakan continued, “the element of velocity is relevant. My companion of Sphere Nath certainly cannot move as rapidly as some of us, and furthermore must leave a typical trail in the dust. Even were I not able to testify that Nath went nowhere without me, the absence of the trail would vindicate him.”

  “And I assent that the Mintakan was always in my perception,” the Nathian said.

  “Perception,” Flint murmured. “You don’t have eyes. How can you be sure—”

  “I possess acute auditory and vibratory perception,” the Nathian replied a bit tersely. “This is equivalent or superior to your optics. When light fails, you are blind, whereas my sonar—”

  “I accept your word,” Flint said.

  “Nath speaks accurately,” the Polarian said. “Their perception of physical objects is excellent. We must accept that alibi.”

  “You know where that leaves you,” Flint said.

  “It would be uncircular to misdiagnose any suspect; we must ascertain the truth. We are all suspect, and none of us can alibi the Canopian.”

  “Correct,” H:::4 said. “My craft could readily have traversed the necessary distance and returned, and it is armed. I could certainly have done it, and I am thus a suspect. I suggest, however, that were I the Andromedan agent, I could kill you all now, and could have done so at the outset. I am well armed and have no need to act covertly.”

  This was exactly what had occurred to Flint. He had avoided a direct accusation because if he proved his point, one pellet or ray from the saucer could wipe him out. But why would the M
aster bother to kill in secrecy?

  Perhaps because he could not safely leave his craft, and had to wait on the explorations of the others. If the secret of the Ancients were discovered here, it had to be salvaged or destroyed, according to the Andromedan view—and salvage would naturally be best. So it was simplest to eliminate any entity who caught on to the spy’s identity. Or to keep cutting down the size of the expedition, until the one or two survivors could be controlled.

  Flint believed the Polarian was innocent, and doubted that the Spican, handicapped as it was by an unfamiliar body, could have done it. Since the others had alibis, that left Canopus, with all his mobility and armament.

  “May I remind you that there remains the possibility of some Ancient agency,” H:::4 said. “Perhaps it lacks the power to eliminate all of us, but seeks to sow dissent by selective killings.”

  There was that. “Let’s get together to investigate the crime,” Flint said. “Whoever or whatever is stalking us, it seems to strike only isolated entities. If there is safety in numbers, let’s take advantage of it.” And maybe there’d be a chance to get away from the Canopian craft.

  They trekked along the route marked by the Polarian’s wheel. The dust was undisturbed here, except for that. No way to conceal the trail. The absence of a trail could only implicate Canopus again.

  They approached the mouth of a large runnel angling underground. It seemed to be an avenue for vehicles. That suggested the Ancients did not fly or run rapidly; they preferred to ride.

  “We discovered a sealed airlock below,” the Polarian explained. “I notified Canopus, who asked me to emerge and show my location so that he could establish it specifically for the other members of the expedition. My companion, Antares, had investigated the lock and informed me that there was operative equipment within. Therefore we felt the discovery was significant.”

  “When I located Polaris visually, I followed him back to this tunnel, which I could not enter,” the Master said. “He entered, then reported the demise of his companion. As you can see, there are no tracks besides those of Polaris and Antares. I therefore placed him under temporary detention and summoned the other members of the expedition.”