Cluster (7 page)

The Council of Ministers was a group of undistinguished men in identical black tunics. Their faces and hands were bone white, except for one brown man. They introduced themselves in rapid order, though they hardly seemed sufficiently distinct from each other to warrant names. Flint made disinterested note in case there were ever any future relevance. He had a perfect memory for such details; it came of practice in hunting and scouting. The Shaman called it “eidetic.” Flint called it practical.

“I'll come straight to the point,” the brown man said. He was the Regent, and seemed to have more character than the others. He probably hailed from a smart brown world. “You have a high Kirlian aura—er, do you know what that is?”

“No.” This was something the Shaman had not mentioned, unless it was the Imp name for intelligence.
Keer-lee-an
aura?

“Very well,” the man said, with a grimace that showed it was
not
very well. “I'll explain. It is a kind of a field of force associated with living things, like a magnetic field—do you know what
that
is?”

“No.” Actually the Shaman had mentioned magnetism, the attractive force some metals exerted on other metals, but Flint was not in a good mood.

“Complete savage,” one of the Ministers murmured in a comment he evidently thought Flint could not overhear or understand. The man did not realize that a complete savage would have acute hearing for wilderness survival. Flint was proud of his primitive heritage, though he realized the Minister had intended the remark disparagingly. Well, toss one more Imp. In due course.

“Hmm, yes,” the Regent said. “Well, some four or five hundred years ago, when Earth was just emerging into the space age, the twentieth century, you know, scientists discovered that there were phenomena that could not be explained by conventional means. ESP, PSI, dowsing, precognition, all fascinating concepts in their time–”

One of the Ministers cleared his throat, and Flint realized why they liked to be so similar: it was difficult to tell which one had interrupted the discussion.

The Regent frowned and continued. “An any rate, it was obvious that force fields of an unknown nature existed. In 1939 a Soviet electrician—uh, the Soviets were a nation or group, somewhat like a stellar system except they were right here on Earth—called Semyon Davidovich Kirlian photographed the patterns of bioluminescence—that is, a glow from living things—that appeared in certain high-frequency electrical fields. This effect resembled a fireworks display, with multicolored flares, sparks, twinkles, glows, and lines. In fact, a Kirlian photograph of a living human hand resembled the image of our galaxy with all its stars and clusters and swirls of dust and gas. And so this discovery–”

“Really, our guest isn't interested in this detail,” the Minister of Population interjected.

The truth was, Flint
was
interested. A human hand that had fields of energy like the galaxy? But if he revealed how much he understood, he would spoil his image of barbaric ignorance, so he kept silent.

“My point,” the Regent continued, “is that this was the start of what was to become the major science of bioluminescence. It has had profound effects on medicine, agriculture, criminology, archaeology, and other sciences, because every living thing has its Kirlian aura, whose pattern is unique to it and varies with its health and mood and experience. Some even call this aura the astral body, or the soul. There are religious implications–”

Again the anonymous clearing of a throat.

“Well, the Kirlian aura is now subject to precise measurement. It varies in intensity and detail with different individuals. Some have weak fields, some strong fields. Most are average. You happen to have very strong field. This means you would be a good subject for transfer of identity to another body, for where your Kirlian aura goes,
you
go. Because your aura is your essence.”

Suddenly Flint caught the man's drift. “Like mattermission—to someone else's body!”

“So someone else's body
and
brain, but you retain your own personality and memories, because they are inherent in your aura. Your aura is
you.
In this case, it goes to some
thing
else's body. You are about to have the magnificent adventure of traveling to the stars.”

The notion had its appeal. Flint was intrigued by the stars, and all the stories connected with them. But he remained angry. “I just traveled from a star, and I want to go back.”

“But this is a signal honor. No human being has done this before. You will be an extraordinary envoy to alien Spheres.”

“The old goat almost makes
me
want to transfer,” one of the ministers whispered to another

Not only did Flint overhear this, he knew the Regent heard it too, for the man's lips twitched into the merest suggestion of a snarl. That almost endeared him to Flint; there was at least some character beneath the civilized veneer. This Council was like a nest of piranha-beetles when the meat ran out, snapping at anything that moved, including each other. Flint's own ire was simple; he wanted to go home. The Ministers' ire was complex, but not his business, unless he could find some way to turn it to his own advantage. Maybe one of them would help him escape, just to spite the others?

For he had no intention of having his aura transferred. “Go to the stars—in some creature's body?” Flint thought of being a wheeled Polarian, and was revolted.

“Precisely. And you will bring to those Spheres the secret of transfer itself, and enlist them in the galactic coalition.”

But Flint had heard more than enough. He turned and ran out of the chamber so quickly that the assembled Ministers were left staring. “Stop him!” the Regent cried.

Imperial guards appeared, barring Flint's passage. But they were civilized and soft, while Flint was a tough Stone Age warrior. He dodged the first, ducked under the reaching arm of the second, and nudged the third into the fourth. He really felt crippled, without either spear or fingernails. He left them behind in a tangle.

He came to the capsule area and jumped into one. The transparent cover closed over him and the thing launched through the wall. This time Flint watched closely: the wall irised open as the blunt snout of the craft shoved in, so that it formed an aperture just the right size. He emerged outside, and looked back to see the wall closing behind like the anus of a grazing dinosaur. And what did that make the capsule and its occupant, ejected like this from the bowel of the building? Flint smiled briefly, thinking of what men called Polarians. Now Flint himself was the dinosaur dropping.

The capsule was on some sort of vine or wire that extended before and after, a bead on a string. That was why it didn't fall into the chasm between buildings. Flint felt nervous, peering down into the void. If that string broke—but of course it wouldn't. The Imps were very careful about things like that, being extremely dependent on their machines.

Now he had only a moment to make plans. The Imps would be waiting for him at the next stop. He had to outmaneuver them. But it would be foolish to go out into this awesome city; he would give himself away in an instant even if he found a way to cover up his green skin. He had to act in a manner they did not expect. And he had to get home.

The capsule punched into the next building. Evidently it was a shuttle, going back and forth between the mattermission center and the Ministry. Yet that was limited, and outside there had been a network of lines like the spreading limbs of a large vine tree. Surely the string continued to other places.

There was a little panel of buttons before him, and a sign. He could not read it, but could guess: this was a manual control system, like reins on the horses that more civilized worlds than Outworld used. He had learned about them in social studies, thinking it useless information. He punched buttons randomly as the capsule slowed to a halt. He could see the Imp guards clustered at the landing.

Abruptly the capsule took off again. It shot past the surprised faces of the guards and on through the opposite wall. Now he was back in suspension, seeing the connecting lines spreading every which way. Each one represented potential escape, if only he could figure out the system in time. Flint punched more buttons, and the capsule slowed, as if confused by the multiple directions.

By quick experimentation and use of his excellent memory, Flint got a notion of how to operate the thing. Each button represented a preset destination, like telling a child runner “Go to Chief Strongspear.” The question was, where did he want to go, and illiterate as he was, how could he choose that particular button?

Once he got home, he would ask the Shaman to teach him how to read, completing the lessons started. It had become a survival skill.

Well, maybe he could use his own ignorance to advantage. Every time he punched a button, the capsule shifted its route to head for that location. By punching new buttons, he kept shifting his destination, so that the Imps could not tell where he was going. Evidently they could not intercept him here in the capsule en route, so he was safe for the moment. He had a chance to think.

First, he had to delve into his own motives. The Shaman had always disciplined him in this: “Know thyself.” Sometimes the obvious became spurious, and new truths manifested from the hidden mind.

Why was he fleeing? After a flurry of superfluous reasons, he penetrated to the basic one: He could not face the notion of being placed in the prison of an alien body. He had always been allergic to weakness, abnormality, or illness. Honeybloom's stiff finger hex had been more than a nuisance; it had forced a recognition of physical incapacity on Flint, to his emotional discomfort. Chief Strongspear's threat of a pus-spell had been devastating, for the thought of making love to a sick woman completely unmanned Flint. He had always been supremely healthy himself. Good clean combat wounds were all right, but anything festering—ugh!

The idea of becoming a monstrous bug or stupid dinosaur or slimy jelly-thing—no, Flint could not face this. He knew himself to be brave in the conventional sense, but an abject coward in this. His essence, his spark of individuality, was his strength, and any weakening of that was like suffocation. He had to remain in his own good body. Even if this meant dying in it.

He spied a different kind of area, cleared of the huge buildings. What could this be, here in the perpetual metropolis of the Imperial planet? A bit of forest?

He brought his capsule closer to it by punching buttons, coordinating them like the fracture lines of imperfect flint rocks. He had, after all, the touch of an expert. A little
here
, a little
there
, and the capsule jerked closer to a destination that was not programmed for any of its buttons. Finally the clearing expanded, and he spied a spaceship.

Flint had seen similar craft at the little spaceport on Outworld. It was an orbiter shuttle, a jet-propelled ship that carried things up to the orbiting interstellar ships. A starship would break apart if it ever tried to land on a full-sized planet, but there was no need for it to come down when the shuttle relayed everything.

This was Imperial Earth, origin planet of man. Spaceships still set out from here for all parts of Sphere Sol. If he could locate one going to Outworld and get aboard it...

But of course it would be two hundred years before he got home. Even if he were frozen—a notion he didn't like—so that he didn't age, he would still be way too late for Honeybloom. But at least he would be going in the right direction.

Who the hell was he fooling? Half the people on Freezers died in transit. Of every twelve shipfuls, three were lost in space and three more were lost in failed revivals. For some reason, he had once thought that was more than half gone, but the Shaman had corrected him. In any event, why should he risk throwing away his young life like that? The Shaman's case had been different: he had been old, thirty-five, when he embarked on his freezer-voyage to Outworld.

Yet he couldn't stand being cooped up in a metal lifeship for the rest of his life, either. He'd be stir-crazy, as the Shaman put it, before two months were out. There was no way home but mattermission: instant transport.

But he knew there was no chance of getting mattermitted back. Not on his own. Starships were not closely guarded; who in his right mind would stow away aboard a vessel that wouldn't dock for fifty or a hundred years? But mattermission was such a special thing that everything to be sent had to be triple-checked, though it were no bigger than a grain of sand. Which was just about the size of the message capsules that zipped back and forth between the major planets. No sloppy procedures there!

Which made it all the more amazing that he should have been mattermitted all the way to Earth. It must have cost a couple of trillion Solar dollars in postage. More than any person was permitted to earn in a lifetime. In fact more than the annual budget of most systems in the Sphere. Not that the tribesmen of Outworld bothered with money; what use was it, after all? Oh, some of the villagers used it in trade for larger shares of food or help on their lean-tos, and there were Imp trinkets the girls liked that could be obtained only with money. But it really wasn't part of Paleolithic existence. Flint know about it only because of the Shaman's education.

What was two trillion dollars' special about him? Surely there were others who could transfer to bug-eyed monster bodies. Other who would be more amenable, with a lot more education than Flint had. Maybe some ugly or ill ones, who would be glad to get out of their poor human bodies, gambling on a better alien body. Why take a barbarian flintsmith from the farthest colony planet?

Surely there was good reason. Either the job was so dangerous or horrible that only the most ignorant person would go, or he had some qualification that made him so much better than the others that it was worth the expense of mattermitting him here. Since an ignorant person would not stay ignorant long, the latter seemed more likely. The Regent had said that Flint had a very strong Kirlian aura. Apparently not many people had that, and only the ones with it could transfer.