Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series) (10 page)

"In fact, you would have to be identical to the original subject. Which means—"

'Not me personally. My aura—that is what is identical.'

Heem did a mental roll of equilibrium. "No two auras are identical. Each aura differs precisely as the entity with which it is associated differs. That is why the entity can be recreated in a foreign host, because the truest identity lies in the aura, not the body. You claim you are not the original subject. You also claim your aura, the source of your identity, is—?"

'Yes. That is the unique aspect.'

"And you also claim to be logical?"

'I am a clone!' the Solarian exploded in a taste overload.

This rolled Heem back somewhat. "A clone! A person identical to another, fashioned from the same genetic pattern. A split personality. I suppose that could work, theoretically."

'And in practice.'

"You claim you are cloned from an adult Solarian?"

'No, cloned at conception. We were born as siblings.'

"But the aura is changed by experience. By the time you metamorphosed, you would be too far apart to fool the machine."

'We were raised together, sharing all things. Our auras constantly interacted, evening out any developing distinctions. We were not identical—far from it!—but machines aren't geared for clones.'

"Yet you lack the training and abilities of your clone-brother? I find it hard to believe that you could be close enough to fool the machine, without being close enough to do the job."

'I possess the same potential, but not the specific training, much of which was very recent. I don't think the machine was looking for differences in the area where those differences existed. But it may have interfered with the actual transfer.'

"So that you arrived slightly out of phase, and knocked us both out!" Heem jetted, comprehending.

'I'm sorry.'

"You're sorry! You almost wiped me out of the competition!"

'I really had no choice. My clone-brother had accepted the commission, spent the credit, then when he got hurt—'

"You rolled in to cover his error—at least until the technical situation was met."

'I realize this is unfair to you. But we were desperate. Our whole way of life—my alternative was to kill my brother, to abate his commitment without prejudice—'

"I comprehend."

'So if you want to be angry—'

"Solarian, I would have done the same in your situation. My own sibling died, enabling me to survive, but my demise would not have helped him."

'You are not enraged?'

"I am here on false pretenses myself. I had to get offplanet in a hurry, so I took the only route available. The competition—though I knew I did not qualify."

The transferee was amazed. 'You did the same thing I did!'

"I did. So I can hardly blame you for that. You seem to be my type of personality, even though your body may differ drastically from mine." He reflected on that, remembering the various hints the Solarian had jetted about those differences. "I really do not know what the physical form of a Solarian is."

'Not like the HydrO form, I assure you! We have muscle and bone, and carry our head high, and have arms and legs and hands and eyes and ears—'

"Awful!" Heem sprayed. "You taste almost like a—" He hesitated, not wanting to produce the repulsive concept.

'Like what?' the alien demanded. 'I noted that note of revulsion. Like pickled sewage sludge—awful taste!'

"How do Solarians derive their life-energy?" Heem temporized.

'We eat food, of course, like any other creature.'

"Not HydrOs. Not the Erbs. Not a hundred other Segment species."

'HydrOs don't eat?' the alien jetted incredulously.

"We absorb hydrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere and combine them, with release of energy, on a controlled basis. That fuels our metabolism, and the residue is OH
2
."

'Water, you mean? H
2
O? Your waste product is water?'

"Hardly a waste. We use it for propulsion, combat, communication, manipulation of objects, perception, cushioning of impact—at this very moment we are cushioned by—"

'Flavored water for speech!' the alien sprayed, amazed. 'I never would have thought it possible!'

"Not only possible, but practical. For communication and life-style. HydrOs can exist and function on any planet where a suitable atmosphere and temperature exists."

'But I thought it took more energy to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in water than could be obtained rejoining them.'

"We don't separate them from water. We draw the elements we need from the air, using enzymes to process them efficiently. It is by far the readiest source of energy, and the trace impurities we utilize to build body mass."

'I guess it works. You're here; that proves it. Maybe your atmosphere is different from ours.'

"Perhaps. Hydrogen is very common in the Cluster, but I can't vouch for strange systems like Sol. We HydrOs are the elite of the Segment Thousandstar sapients, in contrast to—"

'You're hiding something! I can feel it in your system.'

"In contrast to the eating species," Heem continued unwillingly. "Who are our natural enemies."

There was a period of tastelessness. 'You mean it?'

"I mean your kind as you describe it—the eyes, ears, appendages, eating orifices, and other allied organs—most nearly resemble the species we know as the Squams. They lack the eyes, but apart from that—"

'Oh, I caught that awful emotion! You really do hate the Squams. Not only as a species. Personally!'

"I have reason," Heem sprayed.

'You must have. I can feel the taste burning through your whole body. But I don't even know what a Squam is! Why don't you show me a mental picture?'

"A what?"

'A picture. An image, so I can see—' She rolled to a halt. 'Oh, I understand. You don't have eyes. You don't even think in terms of sight. You only know of that sense through the contacts your species has had with other Galactic creatures. You
can't
make a picture!'

"I can make a taste pattern," Heem offered.

'Very well. Try that. I am very good at analyzing patterns. We call it art. I work in holographs, in three-dimensional art. Art is a property centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, complementing the logic of the left.'

"Hemispheres? Your brain is in several parts?"

'Never mind that now. Just make the pattern.'

Heem projected the taste of the dread Squam as it fed on his sibling-juvenile Hoom. The pattern of horror still revolted him—and that was the origin of both his success and his failure, as an adult.

'I'm suffocating,' the alien sprayed. 'It's horrible! But I still can't
see
it!'

They had a problem of communication. The Solarian seemed not to comprehend something unless he could visualize it, while Heem had only taste to offer. They discussed the matter, going over the Squam memory in detail, and finally the Solarian began to comprehend. 'I'm forming a mental picture now. It's not a direct translation of your memory, but more of a reconstruction from what I am grasping intellectually. That monster is not at all like me. It's a snake—a snake with arms, and no real head. I have legs, while it doesn't, and I don't spew out my stomach—Heem, if you could see me, you'd see how little I resemble your Squam.'

"Project a taste-pattern of your physical self," Heem jetted amenably.

The alien tried, but all that came through was a mélange of peripheral flavors. The alien had no more mind for taste than Heem had for sight. 'It's lucky we can even communicate,' the Solarian jetted at last.

"Meaning transmission is a separate function, integral to all sapients," Heem jetted. "Transferees never have language problems. I am not certain why we are having
any
communicatory problems; it is my understanding that even creatures with grossly differing life-styles and modes of perception normally mesh perfectly in transfer. Your impersonation of the original Solarian scheduled for this mission may account for it."

'It may,' the Solarian agreed. 'There is something else, however.'

"You are full of little surprise rolls! First you are unqualified, then you resemble my worst enemy. What now?"

'You—does your kind have genders? Male and female?'

"Yes, we are a bisexual species."

'And you—you are of which gender?'

"Male, naturally."

'That is what I was afraid of.'

"Afraid? Did you crave to have a neuter host?"

'No. You see, I am female.'

"Impossible!" Heem exploded. "Cross-gendered transfers do not occur. It must be a confusion of nomenclature."

'Cross-gendered transfers are not
supposed
to happen,' she jetted. Actually, she was probably sounding or lighting, but he perceived it as jetting. 'They even use transfer as a definition of gender, in questionable cases. As when an individual of a species changes back and forth at different stages of life, now male, now female, like the Mintakans. If a given aura arrives in a male host, it's male.'

"Agreed. Therefore, what you term female must in fact be male."

'Do males bear offspring, among your kind?'

"No. Females do that."

'I—do that.'

"You claimed you were a clone of a male!"

'I am. One detail was changed, after the cloning."

"Some detail! You could not consider yourself the same person, after that!"

'I had little choice in the matter, since it happened when conception was only hours past.'

Heem ignored her strange time-unit. "You would have grown completely apart from your other half!"

'No. We were raised as siblings, as I said before. We were treated identically. I was called male, so there would not be any fuss, but Jesse and I knew, always. When we matured, we lived apart from our peers, and anonymous to our neighbors. Which was not hard to arrange, since we were of the royalty. Our auras changed together, constantly interacting. Really a single aura with two bodies.'

There was an uncomfortable pause. "The transfer should not have taken," Heem jetted at last. "You should have arrived in a female host, or bounced."

'That's what I assumed would happen. If the transfer took, I would occupy a female host, or at least a neuter one, of Segment Thousandstar, and my brother's onus would have been abated. He had only to report for transfer; no more was guaranteed. If I bounced, then it would signify that the Thousandstar host had not been adequate, and the advance payment would forfeit to Jesse. I expected to bounce—and thereby save our family fortune without actually undertaking a mission for which I was not qualified.'

"They will know—the Society of Hosts will know that your body is female, when they exercise it."

'We prepared, just in case. Our old estate retainer, Flowers, was to take the body home for care, so no one else saw it. Lucky thing we set that up, I suppose.'

"But the fact that transfer did occur—to a male host! This can not be explained."

'It seems unique, certainly. My arrival was painful to us both; I must have come close to bouncing, but didn't quite make it. I still feel the effect; your system is basically hostile to my aura. I think the clone-factor must have made the difference. My aura was close enough to fool the machine, so it sent me through as a male, and your system had to accept me as a male even though I was not.
Am
not! Since the original entity, before cloning, was male, I could be considered as a male with an added X chromosome. Really, Jesse's aura is awfully close to mine. In the circumstances—'

"Your logic is female. It must be so," Heem jetted limply. "That would account for the initial unconsciousness we both suffered, and for the trouble we now have communicating. It is not that you are alien; it is that you are female, and therefore the most alien creature of all. Your mind does not operate in comprehensible fashion."

'In the circumstances, I'm disinclined to argue. I have brought three disasters upon you, and I don't know how to mitigate any of them.'

Heem rolled those disasters around in his mind. First, an unqualified individual, thereby serving as a liability instead of an asset, when he desperately needed an asset. Second, a creature of an anathema-species: one that consumed food. Third, a female. Three things in ascending order of mischief.

Yet was he blameless? He too was unqualified for this competition, and to her
he
was the anathema alien without the organs of perception she required, and she had no more desire to occupy a male host than he had to have a female transferee.

'That's kind of you to think that, but—'

"I wonder," Heem jetted slowly. "I had a desperate need to get into space, and I knew I needed a transferee. I must have encompassed any aura that came, overriding the natural cautions of my system. It could be as much my fault as yours."

'I do prefer your logic to mine,' she admitted.

"And you did accomplish what I required," he continued. "They must have verified my aura and yours, and approved me for the competition while I was still trying to devise a scheme to slip through without a transferee. So I made it to space after all. But now—"

'Now my presence is hampering you,' she said. He now found it easier to stop attributing her communication to jets; she simply did not jet or spray, even in her mind. She spoke. She seemed to become more intelligible as he accepted this alien reality.

"I really had little hope of winning the competition anyway. I am satisfied to be offplanet, with or without a transfer aura. But I do not know how you will return to your natural body if we leave the competition."

'I
have
to return!' she cried. 'I couldn't stand to be blind and deaf all my life!'

"To do that, we will have to win the competition. That will not be easy."

'But only one person can win. Don't all the transferees get to go home, after it is over?'

"They should. But I personally do not dare return to my home-planet for the retransfer of my visitor.
You
would go home—but
I
would be perpetually confined. I joined the competition to get away from that fate."