Kirlian Quest (35 page)

"Oh, yes. Right back to the time of the Ancients."

Herald was electrified. "
Your kind knew the Ancients?
"

"Well, yes and no," she said. "We were sapient then—our records show this—but we have no surviving records
of
them. We do know they isolated us by removing all the tools and materials of mattermission and Transfer—not that we were able to Transfer anyway. So we regressed, and existed in comparative savagery for perhaps a million years, and rose again to atomic-level technology. We still could not muster mattermission because of the absence of strategic substances the Ancients had removed, and we regressed again. For a long time it was easier to forget that there was a Cluster out there, than to recognize the nature of our prison. Those of us who could not face our restriction simply set up orbit around the hole."

"Around the hole!" he exclaimed. "There is no way
out
of such a gravitational well, by definition, and even a stable orbit would suffer tides that would tear apart any object that ventured too close.”

"Precisely," she said. "You call it suicide. We can't kill ourselves as easily as other creatures can, and there is often a great deal of discomfort in the trying, so we utilize special means. We preferred to think of it as passing through an aperture to another realm. Who can conjecture what lies beyond?"

Not Psyche!
his hope cried, but he kept that quiet. "Who indeed?" he agreed. "If your kind has anything like a Tarot deck, you must have a card with a black blot in the center: the Hole. In lieu of the one we call Death, or Transformation."

"We do," she agreed. "It is
the
concept of our philosophy. All that we are, and all that we are not, is governed by that singular concept. The hole in the glob. The ultimate escape from the ultimate confinement."

"Perhaps one day I will ride a ship directly into that hole," he said. "The notion is appealing."

"You wish to suicide? You can't go directly into the hole; the vortex forces you into the spiral orbit. The hole has its particular rules about the manner of its utilization."

Suicide?
If Psyche does not live.
"You would not understand," he told her gently. "Continue with your history."

She did not protest. "We regressed—but we would forget even the rationale for that ignorance, and develop again, only to remain corked. Oh, we have a score to settle with the Ancients, who did this to us."

"But the Ancients are three million years dead," Herald pointed out.

"Then we have no recourse," she said.

"It is strange they would do that to you," Herald said. "Many other species, like the Worm colonists of Mars, they exterminated outright."

"While others, like the Solarians, they left untouched," she said. "What was their rationale?"

"If only we knew! There has to be a reason. A foolish, inconsistent species could not have conquered the Cluster. If we could fathom their nature and intent, perhaps we could discover their science. And that is what we have to do."

She made a sonic shrug. "Here we are talking about Jets and Ancients, when I had asked about you. How come you to this Galaxy?"

"I am a healer. I Transfer where my commissions take me. I had to exorcise a—" He broke off.

"I did not catch that," Sixteen said. "What was your mission?"

"It was a failure," he said shortly.

She took the hint and was silent. She was very good about things like that. They jetted on toward the great volcano.

In four hours they reached it. Now they slowed, angling across to achieve the phenomenal, sixty-meridian-wide lava sheet, the residue of the vent's colossal effusions. Near the western edge of it rose Olympus Mons, one of the classic volcanoes of this system. To reach it they had to traverse the rugged mountain range that circled it, rising high to reach the most convenient pass. Then on to the volcano itself, finding a channel through the rim wall that was the abrupt edge of the mighty cone, slanting up toward its lofty half-meridian height. The rise was not steep, but the steady effort was a drain on the diminished resources of Herald's host.

At last they overlooked the central caldera, pocked by smaller calderas where the surface had collapsed after the hot lava leaked out. It was an impressive but barren scene.

"Why are we looking here?" Sixteen inquired. "Sapients do not normally camp in volcanoes."

"That is one reason why," Herald explained. "The Ancients evidently sought to conceal their presence on Mars, at the time of their occupancy, and after. The remains of a site within a volcano are likely to be the first obliterated when the lava flows again. But while in use—what better concealment for a continued flow of creatures and equipment? The kind of heavy construction for which the Ancients were noted would have been obvious to sapient observers. So they needed extensive natural cover."

"Why?" Sixteen asked. "Hadn't they already destroyed the colony?"

"The colony of Worms on Mars, perhaps. But not observers on nearby Earth."

"They were subsapient then, or at least borderline. The humanoid Solarians had no civilization three million years ago. And even if they had, the Ancients could so readily have vanquished them. Why would they hide, then depart without attacking Earth?"

"I don't know," Herald admitted. "If I find any key artifacts here, we may begin to understand this mystery."

They looked, descending cautiously into the main caldera. Herald kept alert for any trace of aura. It required close contact to heal a living entity, or even to analyze a living aura properly, but he could pick up the whiff of aura in an otherwise aura-free region from a fair distance. His notion seemed far less sensible now that he had submitted it to Sixteen's scrutiny; still he hoped.

Why, he wondered, had Hweeh agreed so readily? The chances of discovering Ancient artifacts here were not small, they were virtually nonexistent.

There was nothing. He tried to control his letdown. He needed a positive attitude, or the healing he was performing on his Jet host would be ineffective. He didn't want to become impotent again. After all, there was a whole planet remaining.

If only he wasn't so certain that the Cluster Council committee would do nothing. The Amoeba must even now be moving its battleships into position, and there was no one to cry the alarm or to attempt effective resistance but Herald the Healer. That was another kind of impotence: to know the threat, and to be unable either to act or to cause others to act. Another kind of hell.

They started back up the steepening walls of the caldera. The descent into it had been easy, a relief after the long climb, but now there was a problem. Toward the rim the inner wall became almost vertical, and Herald was abruptly tired, in body as well as spirit.

Extremely tired. He jetted upward determinedly—and flamed out.

His propulsion gone, he rolled helplessly down the slope.

=Herald!= Sixteen cried, reverting to her native intonation in her stress. She jetted after him.

She quickly caught him in her lifting strands and steadied him against her sleek fuselage. "The drug— You overextended, and it betrayed you!"

No wonder he had gotten disorganized. The warning had been right; he had not comprehended the pitfalls of this medication. But this did not diminish his urgent need. "Give me another dose," Herald told her. "There's work to be done."

"No. You have to rest. In a while you will be able to sustain the medication."

He knew she was right. If he did not heed reason
now
, he was a complete fool. So he relaxed. "So many mysteries," he said. "Why should the Amoeba take all the trouble to come here to our Cluster to conquer us? Couldn't they locate any energy for their purposes closer to home? Why did the Ancients conquer the Cluster, then vacate?
They
obviously didn't convert it to energy. We have never found any evidence of any matter they destroyed, and I believe there
are
ways to tell. The removal of a portion of a galaxy would create an imbalance that would in due course be reflected in its dynamics." He thought of the irregular blobs of Cloud 9 and Cloud 6. No, they could not have been full spiral galaxies. "We keep coming back to their seeming irrationality. The purpose of the Amoeba I can comprehend; it is straightforward power. But the Ancients—" He paused. "Maybe
that's
what Melody meant!"

"Who?"

"Melody of Mintaka, despoiler of the second Andromedan effort at Cluster unification. She played—"

"That drug," Sixteen said, worried. "It must have side effects I didn't know about."

Herald made a gust of tired mirth. "I met her in a Tarot Temple animation. She told me I would not want to know the secret of the Ancients."

"Oh. That is the kind of thing an animation would say, isn't it?"

"Yes, unfortunately. But she seemed so very certain of herself. I believe she did know the secret, or part of it, in her real life. She refused to divulge it then, also."

"It must be fun to experience an animation."

Psyche, writhing in the orange flame....
"Not necessarily. You have not experienced it? The Temples are free; they want converts."

"I have been there. The figures would not animate for me, or for any of my kind. We have insufficient aura."

Herald began to appreciate the tragedy of these Jets. They could not animate, they could not Transfer, they could not return to their globular Cluster.

"Don't have pity on us," Sixteen puffed. "We do fine without aura. Had we not been confined by the Ancients, we would have conquered the Cluster ourselves, two million years before your species achieved sapience."

Literally true, he thought.
Any
of the contemporary sapients could have conquered the Cluster, in time, given the general vacuum of sapience that existed then. Strange that the achievement of sapience had been so nearly simultaneous across the Cluster. In a way this coincidence was fortunate, for it had enabled the contemporary mélange of species to form a larger, cooperative culture, unifying the Cluster more perfectly than would have occurred otherwise. Had the Jets broken out prematurely, they could have pre-empted it all. Still, that would not have provided them with what they evidently craved beyond all else: aura.

Herald touched her with his aura, calming her ire. "If the Jets had conquered, then you and I would never have met."

"Your logic is suspect, but you see right through me, and I melt in your aura," she said. "I have never experienced such strange, wonderful power before. Even Hweeh does not compare to you."

"He is superior in other aspects," Herald said. "He is more intelligent than I, more educated, and in any other company, he would be regarded as the leader in aura too. Creatures of low aura cannot perceive aura as a separate force. I am a healer, with a most potent and highly trained aura; therefore it becomes manifest to you in this circumstance. But I apologize to you for misjudging your attitude; you are certainly competent, and you have been taking good care of me in my infirmity."

"Accepted," she said, and by the ripple in her trace aura he knew it was honest, though he had not really misjudged her and she knew it. She had a temper after all, but also a forgiving nature. "Actually, we are not the lowest-aural forms in the Cluster. We have made a study of low-aural forms, and have found several nonaura species."

Herald was amazed. "
Non
aura life? I thought that was impossible! The impulses of the nervous system and brain give rise to semielectric fields that we call aura; this absence of aura implies absence of thought and feeling. In many cultures, aural cessation is the legal definition of death. Species with no aura must be extremely primitive."

"They are, generally. But we located one that has potential for sapience. It seems to be evolving rapidly, and in another two million years or so—"

"Where?"

"In another globular Cluster, one orbiting Galaxy Pinwheel at extreme range. We suspect that glob was captured by the galaxy recently, perhaps within the past three million years. It could have been an inter-Cluster wanderer. There can be strange life-forms in isolated globs."

"Not when you get to know them," Herald said.

"This species we call the Blanks. They do not use electrical impulses; their system is entirely mechanical. Control-signals are transmitted through bony linkages, much as sound vibrations move through the bones of the ears of the creatures of this Solarian system whose language we speak. The brain of these entities is a mechanical-chemical network of remarkable complexity. It functions in ways we do not yet properly comprehend; we seem to have underestimated the potential of nonelectric impulses. It operates well enough for potential sapience, we judge. The Blanks are, by other definitions, alive. And presapient."

"Fascinating," Herald agreed. "It is a line of aural research I have overlooked, but I shall pursue it when I have opportunity. This mechanical thought system; does something like that account for the Jets' low aura? No offense to this host, which is a good one. But I must admit the fit is very tight. There hardly seems to be enough of a system for my aura to occupy."

"Yes. The detail is dissimilar, but the principle relates. We have a combination system: an advanced mechanical and chemical linkage coupled to a relatively vestigial electrical one. We are, in that sense, three quarters machine. Our records show that much of our aura development has been recent, evolutionally; at the time of the Ancients we had only one percent of our present aura."

"This is amazing!" Herald said, amazed. "Yet you were sapient then."

"Yes. Our recent evolution has not been from subsapience to sapience, but from mechanical toward electrical. Perhaps in time we would have developed Kirlian science and broken out of our confinement."

"None of the contemporary sapients were sapient at the time of the Ancients, except the Jets," Herald said slowly, feeling that he was on the verge of a fundamental revelation. "There were myriad sapients in the Cluster, but the Ancients exterminated them all—except the Jets."