Viscous Circle

by Piers Anthony

  Now was the time. "It would be war," Rondl said. Now they were ready to absorb the necessary definition. "The organized effort of many creatures to safeguard their interests against aggression by others." Would any students disband, or had he brought them to it positively enough?

  None disbanded. The discussion became animated. "How could many creatures organize? Bands do not organize."

  "They must have a leader," Rondl explained. "One who guides the activity of all. Then they can act effectively."

  They considered and discussed and questioned. But they kept remembering the invading Solarians, and inevitably came to agree with his suggestion. In fact, several of them elected to accept his leadership in the effort to save the Bands from the ugly, liquid-eyeballed Solarians.

  "But I was not recruiting!" Rondl protested. "I was only presenting the case, to see if people could accept it."

  Proft had been present, but without flash. Now he entered the discussion. "It is a good case, but you must be prepared to complete it. This, I suspect, is to be your project."

  Rondl realized that if he retreated now, it would seem that he did not believe in his own thesis. Someone had to stop the invading monsters, and it seemed he had to be the one to try. "I will recruit," he said. "But I will insist that any person who wishes to join me check with his family and friends first, so as not to make a rash decision. The action I contemplate may be difficult for Bands to comprehend or accept, and certainly can be dangerous. People may be disbanded."

  "Disbanding is merely a return to the Viscous Circle," the red student flashed. "It is not an occurrence to be feared."

  Belief in Band Heaven seemed to be universal. Risks did not bother these people as much as they bothered Rondl, because they did not really believe in death. Was it fair to them to put their lives in jeopardy on the basis of that faith?

  "I would not encourage any of you to disband merely because you don't mind doing it," Rondl said carefully. "There may be important things remaining for you to accomplish in this life." He hoped that was both accurate and diplomatic. He had no call to disparage their faith, though he regarded it as myth or superstition. "So consider carefully, before risking your physical lives. The task I offer—" He let it lapse into implication.

  "Let us disperse now and consider separately," Proft suggested. "Those who wish to enlist in Rondl's effort may do so tomorrow. He has other classes to address today."

  Other classes! This was rolling along much more swiftly than he had anticipated. Yet he had to complete what he had started.

  As it turned out, Rondl spent many days addressing assorted groups. After the first day, and following each class, an increasing stream of recruits came. Not every Band who received his message decided to join, but one in ten did—and as time passed, the ratio improved. Soon Rondl had more than a hundred recruits.

  It was time to start training. He wondered whether he had done something like this in his prior life. Certainly he had had some similar experience—if not physical, then through research. Strange, though, that there was no news of any project of this magnitude; if he had done it here on Planet Band, someone should have recognized him.

  First he had to organize the volunteers he had, and categorize the associated abilities in his group with attention to the job they had to do, considering their general reluctance to act in an unsocial manner and their readiness to disband rather than oppose the onslaught of a monster. This was unlikely to be easy. First he had to toughen them, make them able to contemplate violent action and then to participate in it.

  The technique came to him as he formulated the problem. He had to decivilize the opposition, make the enemy seem beneath consideration as a sapient species. It was easier to oppose a monster than a fellow sapient. The Solarians had to be monsterized. That should not be too hard to do, since they were most of the way there already.

  Rondl set up a series of skits with assigned parts. A suitable planetoid represented a Monster space ship. As a matter of policy, he no longer referred to Solarians; they were all Monsters. The planetoid was a cylindrical and partly polished chunk of rock with assorted fissures and outcroppings; it really was ideal for the purpose. It suggested the shape of both the Kratch and the Solarian spaceship, reinforcing the impression of monsterism without being too obvious.

  Certain hardened Bands were stationed around the "ship" and assigned to flash crude impulses of hate at all who approached. This took some practice, and one trainee disbanded, but in due course the mock cadre of Monsters was ready.

  Rondl led the practice attack with a picked squad of his most promising recruits. One was Limn, a yellow-white male whose specialty was alien mechanics; he understood space vessels and thought he would be able to disable one if he could get inside it. So he was about to try to get inside the mock ship. Another was Tembl, a dark blue female of winsome magnetism who planned to study philosophy, but had a lot of emotion and felt impelled to rout the invader from Band space. A third was Blut, a gray student of Solarian languages; he knew Solarians were not asapient monsters, but he had had a friend disband prematurely because of the invasion, and wanted no more of that. Despite their mythology, Bands did have a certain objection to involuntary or untimely disbanding; for one thing, a prematurely disbanded individual brought less than the optimum amount of accumulated experience back to the Viscous Circle. Thus the harvest was unripe. It simply wasn't proper to undertake a physical life only to return without full experience. This represented a certain waste of the loan of a Soul. So though Blut was incapable of conceiving it this way, he had a score to settle with the Solarians, and Rondl was glad to have his linguistic expertise in the party. He wanted to be able to talk with the Solarians, if only to warn them to withdraw. That was the civilized thing to do; it would make his effort legitimate if the Monsters then ignored the warning.

  If they ignored it? When! Rondl somehow knew that nothing short of violence would cause them to reconsider. It would be as useless to reason with a Kratch as to expect the Solarians to desist merely because someone asked them to.

  They flew toward the ship. Suddenly the hate flashed from it: "HATE! HATE!" Though it was a setup, on a mock run at a pretend ship, and they all knew it, the scenario abruptly seemed to come to life. An actual message of hate—that had phenomenal impact! Most Bands had never experienced anything like this. The ship became metallically menacing, and the creatures associated with it became Monsters indeed. "Hate!" Rondl flashed back, and the Bands with him picked it up, at first tentatively, then with more conviction. They were, after all, the objects of mindless hate; how could they fail to respond?

  They flew closer, flashing their mutual animosity, getting into the terrible spirit of it. It was as if a cloud of malevolence encompassed them. Suddenly one of the mock Monsters exploded. Particles puffed outward in a dissipating cloud.

  Oh, no! That person had disbanded. Rondl realized that this practice exercise had become too serious. He had concentrated all his effort to make it realistic, to overcome the Bands' natural reluctance to indulge in violence, without realizing that success could be as mischievous as failure. The hate broadcasters had not been properly prepared to withstand the return of their hate. He would have to abort this session and prepare more carefully for the next. "Desist! Desist!" he flashed in a spiral.

  But the others, intent on the battle, swept up in it, did not receive his message. The position of the two suns was not right; he could not attract the attention of his associates. The charge continued.

  The Monster flashes doubled in intensity and frequency: "HATE! HATE! HATE!" They were angry about the loss of their companion. An emotion long suppressed in their species was being brought out; they were reverting to a primitive state.

  One of Rondl's group disbanded. This was awful! They were all caught in the malign spirit of the battle, suffering emotional overload, and could not get free. Even if some received his message to desist, they were no longer capable of responding to it.

  Rondl sl
owed, hoping to cause his companions to slow. Then he could lead them away from the Monster ship and allow them to cool. But it didn't work; they charged right on. His reticence only made it seem that he was losing courage. So he had to resume his place in the lead, hoping to think of something else before disaster ruined them.

  Another Monster disbanded; then two more allies. Casualties were mounting, just as they would in a real battle. What horror had he loosed among these peaceful people? Was this any better than the havoc wreaked by the Solarians?

  They arrived at the ship. Limn went near it, trying to get inside so he could disrupt its operation. The others surrounded the remaining Monsters, flashing savagely.

  "That's enough!" Rondl flashed in a full sphere. "Enough! Enough! We have achieved our objective."

  But still they fought, radiating hate at each other. Another Band, overwhelmed, disbanded; and another. It was carnage! The destruction-fever was on the group, and they couldn't fight it, just each other.

  At last the last Monster-ship defender disbanded, destroyed by the messages of hate bombarding him from all sides. Victory.

  Then the Bands settled down, exhausted, finally paying attention to Rondl. But it was too late for nine of them.

  Now that he had their attention, he hardly knew where to begin. They had gotten into the spirit of violence too well, and paid the penalty. Buried in the Band nature there was, after all, a remaining spark of aggression, of violence, and he had brought it to the surface with its consequent mischief. He had evoked another kind of monster—the one that lurked deep within the Bands themselves. Now he wished he had not.

  At least they were educable. "This is what a real battle might have been like," he told them. "War is hell. Hateful things occur. People have to be toughened to violence, or it overcomes them. We lost a number of us in this exercise because we were not toughened enough. Those of us who survive are the hardened ones. But the hate of the true Monsters will be worse. We must become more disciplined, and more resistive to negative flashes, if we are to have a chance against the real enemy." As he said it, he realized its truth: discipline. That had been the major weakness. He had to have his troops responsive to leadership at all times.

  Another Band disbanded.

  "But the exercise is over!" Rondl protested.

  "Now we are realizing what we have done," Tembl said. She was the philosopher; she was working it out. "We have, however briefly, become monsters ourselves." And as the others picked up her flash, two more disbanded.

  Rondl had hoped to conceal this fact from them, but perhaps it was best that they know. In the very process of opposing oppression, they were losing the values they lived for. This, too, was the nature of war.

  Chapter 7

  Dream

  Rondl relived the mock battle in a dream. He experienced the flush of excitement as he and his troop charged, then the flashing "HATE! HATE!" of the pseudoenemy. How powerful it was, like Cirl's "LOVE! LOVE!" yet opposite, making him want to disband. And beside him others were disbanding, going to their mythical reward. They believed in the Viscous Circle, and so they threw away their lives for trifles. He knew better than to do this himself, yet now he felt an almost overpowering temptation. To leave this misfortune behind, and return in comfort to the Viscous Circle—

  He woke radiating horror. Cirl was there to comfort him. "A nightmare," he told her. "An unpleasant dream. All those needless deaths in that practice mission, some of our best personnel lost—"

  "There is no death," she reminded him. She had not participated in the mock battle, having been busy helping new recruits to orient. Rondl was now immensely grateful for her absence then. Gentle Cirl would have been the first to disband!

  "Still, they should not have—"

  "Disbanding is perfectly natural. You need feel no guilt about that."

  She, too, believed. She, especially, believed. It was one of the pleasant things about her. He loved her in part for that belief; it was her signal of faith and innocence, the qualities he lacked. "I know you feel that way. You were considering disbanding when we met," he reminded her fondly. "You were even annoyed with me when I interfered."

  "True," she agreed guilelessly. "I am no longer annoyed."

  "Yet if you had disbanded, wouldn't your grief have accompanied you to the afterlife?" Rondl asked, intrigued again by the notion of death as a mere transition between forms. The notion was insidiously tempting. It certainly would be a wonderful comfort to believe in such a thing—but he was too objective for that. "What then would you have gained?"

  "I would not have gained very much at first," she admitted. "The disbanded aura remains discrete for a time, until it orients and finds its way to the Viscous Circle. But slowly the hurt would fade."

  "Wouldn't it fade similarly in life?"

  "It has done so," she admitted. "I am glad I did not disband at that time. I would never have met you."

  "You do not find me repulsive because of my alien notions? Because I grasp the concepts of war and violence?"

  She considered. "I think, at this pass, it is necessary for someone to grasp these horrors. You are the one who has assumed the burden, for the good of the society."

  He had really been seeking reassurance that she loved him. He had gotten a disturbingly relevant answer. Could she also answer his doubts about the Viscous Circle? "And if you had disbanded then, and if the hurt you carried with you had been too intense to fade in the afterlife, what then?" Now, in a perverse countercurrent, he was trying to make her see that the mythology was pointless—and hoping that it was not, that she would have a sufficient answer. Wouldn't it be better to embrace such an illusion, to relieve himself of his morbid fear of extinction?

  "When the individual aura/soul rejoins the Viscous Circle, all hurts spread out, diffuse, dilute in the viscosity of the totality, and affect the individual only slightly. A great hurt to one is insignificant when borne by the entire soul-mass."

  "But you, also, would be diluted! You would lose your individuality at the same rate, stirred into that enormous mass!"

  "Yes, that is the beauty of viscosity," she agreed. "Maybe you should have let me go. I almost want to do it now. If you will come with me—"

  Rondl concealed his sudden horror. "We have other tasks first," he said hastily. He certainly didn't want her disbanding now, or taking him with her! "The burden I have assumed, for the good of society—"

  "Yes, yes of course," she agreed immediately. "And you must rest, for there remains so much to do." Rondl returned to his interrupted sleep, reassured. And dreamed again. This time it was more realistic than before. He really felt the stress of battle, and the hate seemed to come from genuine aliens. Such malignity! Yet now Rondl answered it with his own flashing hate and, fending off the alien animosity, led his people all the way up to the dread spaceship. It was a real ship now, with portholes and bulging turrets and grotesque projecting weapons that fired out bright light and physical projectiles. But Rondl let the light pass through his lens, ignoring its inanimate malignance, and avoided the slower projectiles. The Monster weapons could not hurt vigilant Bands! Yet his Band companions were not aware of this, and were disbanding in droves. He had to get them away from here so that he could instruct them how to handle this attack. He had not prepared them for reality, thinking this was only a mock run.

  But he could not communicate with them. Everyone he flashed to, disbanded before comprehending. All his troops were exploding into gas and particles, until he alone remained.

  A Solarian hatch opened. A grotesque Monster-head appendage protruded. Its liquid-turgid eyeballs swiveled gruesomely in their twin sockets to orient on Rondl. Its gross oral cavity writhed open, revealing Trugdlike rending teeth. Atmosphere issued from that appalling vent, charged with noise.

  "And now, Ringer, you shall be one of us!" the Monster projected verbally. The most horrible aspect of this nightmare was that Rondl was able to assimilate that gross gaseous vibrational pattern that constituted sound
, though he had no organ for it, and to comprehend the awful meaning embedded in that shaking atmosphere.

  "No!" he cried, atmospherically, impossibly. But the thing reached forth a gruesome physical appendage, replete with ungainly long bone supports inside the taut flesh, and knobby joints, to grasp Rondl. At the end of this apparatus the flesh split into multiple tiny extensions, each of which had little bones and joints, and these extensions sought to close on Rondl's body. One of them poked through his lens, like the tip of the Kratch's spike. A more horrible contact could not be imagined; even a genuine Kratch was better than this, for it at least was comprehensible.

  He woke radiating revulsion and fear, and again Cirl comforted him. She clasped him magnetically close, then withdrew enough to indulge in a rotating-mode dialogue. They discussed the dreams, and concluded that Rondl was experiencing the semialien emotion of guilt for the way he had led a dozen Bands into disbanding. "It is a function of your disbelief," Cirl said. "You suppose they are dying, so you are concerned. If only you believed—"

  "What Band ever disbanded and then returned to report on the Viscous Circle?" he demanded.

  "Why none, of course. No Band returns without first rejoining the Circle—and thereafter he is completely mixed by the viscosity, and returns only as elements of new-formed Bands, as new hosts are generated."

  "Have any of these remixed fragments reported?" he asked.

  "Fragment is an inapplicable concept. When a Band merges with the Circle, he loses his former identity, so there is no real memory."

  "Experience changes us day by day, yet we remember," he reminded her. Her picture of the myth was so complete!

  "Perhaps some do remember," she agreed. "That must be how we learned about the Afterlife."

  "How do you know some Band didn't simply make it all up, for the notoriety?"

  "For the what?"

  Another alien concept! "To become widely known among Bands."

  "Who would want to be widely known?"

  "Or for whatever reason. So he invented—"