Viscous Circle (24 page)

Participation was strange. There was the massed, viscous current of light, as before—but also a similarly massed surge of feeling. Rondl knew this was merely the inversion of the communication flow of the reversed Bands, Cirl among them, but the quality was potent. It was not love, for that was unique to two Bands, but it was akin to it—a deep moving of the fundamental emotion. He had experienced nothing like this before, in either Band or Solarian existences. Well, perhaps when the Monsters had put him through hallucinogenic therapy—no, not even then. It seemed the full power and quality of his mind and emotion had been merged and amplified and rendered wonderful in a way his solitary self was incapable of appreciating, because it was simply too small. Even as the individual fragments of aura could hardly compass the majesty of the Viscous Circle—

Give
. The urge transfixed him, and Rondl realized Cirl was sending to him from the other consciousness. The requirement was nonspecific, yet impossible to misunderstand. What inner, suppressed secrets of his being was she picking up, reading his unconscious? She would comprehend his nature, surely, even those aspects he much preferred to conceal. Solarians were a secretive species, in contrast to the Bands; the sensation of exposure, of nakedness, was part of being Monster. He had to cooperate, as one might when joining a nudist colony, lest his failure to do so expose him even less prettily.

He gave. And the torus about him faded into the swirling thickening currents of its intellectual viscosity, and he became—an infant Monster. He had fat fleshy appendages extended by bone, and—

And was drifting through space, following a gentle line, watching the planetoids pass in their hundreds before the stars in their myriads. He was questing for something, but did not know what.

Wrong
. This was a concept almost alien to Band nature, but it came through now. He was not, somehow, doing what he was supposed to. But he was locked in.

A current on this side came to his rescue. "You have slipped through to the other side, and are picking up the unconscious theme consciously. You must not; that is the mirror of your conscious, and must be made conscious only after your conscious theme is complete."

Rondl did not quite understand, but accepted the judgment of those who were experienced in this mode of exploration. He formulated his thoughts, concentrating on the Solarian aspect. In a moment he had it.

He took in fluids, digesting them internally, assimilating them into his system from the inside out. It was really the same as the Band mode of coalescing from the outside.

He stood on his two base appendages and looked up at the night sky. He hovered near the planet and looked down at its nocturnal mystery. What was he searching for?

Wrong
. He had slipped back into the countermode. This was tricky! In the double circle, as in life, the separation of conscious and unconscious was imperfect. But this time it was easier to find his place.

He became adult and went to space—went to ground. And shied away from the Wrong. No ground, not in the Band sense. Space, in the Solarian sense. The great frontier of the unknown, space. To Bands, the unknown was the planetary surface.

He was uncertain he was equipped to cope with the type of mission he craved; eagerness warred with trepidation. Suppose he found himself in some totally alien situation, trapped on a planet amid creatures he could not relate to? As man or Band, he was daunted by this. Correction: as man only. He was exploring only his Monster side at the moment, consciously.

So he went on a training mission. He was transferred to a human host in a system near the fringe of the enlarged Sphere Sol, to Planet Hurri. This was a primitive world, at about the level of the ancient Sumerians of Earth; the colonists fancied they resembled the Humans of that space-time, a Mesopotamian tribe. It hardly mattered whether their level represented the year 2000 BC or the year 1000 AD on the confused Terran scale. It was pre-Transfer, pre-Atomic, pre-Machine, somewhere in the Metals age.

Ah, metals!
the Bands of this circle agreed, finding an aspect of identification amid the confusion of alien concepts. They were following Rondl's thoughts, enhancing and clarifying them, giving him special powers of recall and comprehension, but they themselves were disoriented. Now they began to grasp his frame of reference.

The tribe leader Ronald was to meet for this practice assignment was called Speed Steelthew. Ronald found it easy to suppress his smile, for the man was tall, broad, and muscular, and he carried slung on his hip a gleaming two-edged sword, and in his left hand a three-meter spear. He was a formidable figure of a man, still strong though going slightly to pot.

Ronald himself occupied a host of this type: physically robust, scarred in numerous places, possessed of assorted minor discomforts and inhibitions where scar tissue was heavy, yet rather handsome of feature. His hair was fair, and it flowed down about his shoulders without tangles, and his beard was shorter but similarly fine. He was as pretty as a woman, in his fashion. He had reviewed himself in the imperfect mirror surface of a shield.

Pretty as a woman? Well, almost—for now Speed summoned forth two girls whose attributes were about as pronounced as Ronald had seen. Perhaps it was the style of their dress, cut away in front to expose provocative portions of their healthy breasts and cut away behind to show similarly firm buttocks. Yet the exposure was not complete; key areas remained concealed, and to these his eye was drawn almost magnetically. Primitive these people might be, but the art of sex appeal was well advanced long before science came on the scene. Did a nipple show in front? Did a stretch of cloth conceal the deepest crevices behind? He could not quite tell. That mystery was infuriatingly compelling, especially since his mission was not to ogle girls.

"Here are two of my concubines, Purrfurr and Wagtail," Speed said. "Will they be enough?"

Ronald had been advised that customs differed on regressed planets; the fact had just been brought home to him with abrupt immediacy. These young women were being offered to him for his sexual use during his stay here. He could not with grace refuse them.

"Uh, yes, surely," he said, embarrassed. He would have to use them, too, lest he give offense to his host. To his guest host, who was Chief Speed, and to his Transfer host, whose body he occupied and whose mind was discretely anonymous. Professional Transfer hosts, like well-trained beasts of burden, obeyed the will of the master so dependably that their presence was soon taken for granted. The good host did not intrude. As for Ronald, who hoped to be a good guest: when on Hurri, do as the Hurrians do.

But at the moment the girls were only decorations. They took the chief's spear and relieved Ronald of his, which was just as well, as he lacked any notion how to use it. They proceeded to the banquet, served, by assorted girls, on a blanket of glossy green leaves on the ground. The girls did not eat; they lacked the status to join the men in so meaningful an occupation. Ronald found it dismayingly easy to settle into this double standard. He believed in the equality of the genders, but it certainly was nice being catered to by this bevy of shapely creatures.

First the men feasted on spitted boarhound and pickled platypus eggs; they guzzled voluminous quantities of mead ale, which was a thin, sour, but mildly alcoholic beverage. After the first gulp Ronald became acclimatized to the peculiar taste of it and, as the evening advanced and they became dependent on the light of the bonfirelike cooking flame, he even found himself liking it. The stuff was dilute enough so that it never put him out of commission, though it did take his head and parts of his body on a dizzy ride. At first he had questioned whether this culture had any real affinity for the historical Hurrians, who surely had been more civilized than this, with walled cities and cuneiform writing and irrigated gardens; but as the mead took effect, he concluded that there was nothing strange about this culture. Why shouldn't the Hurrians eat hunt-gathered items on the ground outdoors, before an open blaze?

Then they fell to with the concubines, who were so obliging there was no challenge. Ronald was not accustomed to public sexual display, but Chief Speed was doing it with abandon and conviction and considerable expertise, to the polite applause of the watching girls, and Ronald had to follow his host's lead. The mead helped him get into the spirit of the thing; there was probably an aphrodisiac in it. He was able in due course to acquit himself creditably with Purrfurr, unless the maidenly applause was purely polite. This was thanks in large part to Purrfurr's willing expertise and his own slowness in culmination, which permitted a longer and more varied display than would normally have been possible. The mead, again: not only did it reduce inhibitions, it dulled the edge of sexual response. Had he imbibed much more of it, he would have been able to put on the planet's most marvelous display, without climax.

When at last all human imperatives of hunger, sex, notoriety, competition, and expression had been sated, though not the need for recuperation, they proceeded to the business meeting. Ronald fought to keep his eyes open and his mouth closed, and to look properly attentive though his skull seemed out of phase with his brain by half a head and parts of his gut seemed to have been pumped dry. What an orgy it had been!

"...the monster," Speed was expounding.

Monster!
Again the Bands identified with this strange memory. Was he going to challenge a Monster?

Was he? Ronald was having trouble remembering, as it were, ahead. He also wondered why this particular episode of his past, by no means his proudest, was here unveiling itself. Now the Bands, too, had assimilated his uncivilized indulgence in the grossest fashion.

"...sends fear and nightmares among our people," Speed was saying. Nightmares—a connection was beginning to show. "Sours wives' milk, makes brats bawl. Annoying."

Ronald nodded wisely, preventing himself from pitching forward into the dirt. The remaining leaves had been taken up when the meal finished; too useful to be wasted, they would be used to wipe knives clean and to serve as toilet tissue. "Annoying," he agreed.

"...destroy Cerberus... where you come in."

"Of course," Ronald agreed equably. Now at last he was getting a handle on his mission, the sample task he was to perform to benefit these primitive people. "Let me draw a suitable laser rifle from Supply—"

Speed smiled, enjoying a private humor. "No laser, Imp."

Ronald wrestled groggily with this. "Imp?"

"That is you. Polite address for an Imperial Sol Representative."

Polite? Ronald doubted it. But at the moment he lacked the mental acuity to debate the issue. "No laser?"

"There are very few operative modern weapons here in the hinterworlds."

Oh. Of course. It required technology to maintain lasers, which needed to be periodically recharged. "A solid-projectile handgun, then. With a carton of bullets, and a selection of exploding shells. Clumsy but adequate."

"All the bullets were used up a century ago."

"But new supplies can be shipped by sublight freighter. There should be a continuous stream of such supplies." His head was clearing slightly. The sensation was not pleasant.

"Next ship to arrive in six Sol-years. Been on the way for two hundred years. Due care will be exercised, but bullets are precious. Supplies will vanish within weeks."

"But it's not supposed to be that way! Ammunition should be issued to imperial troops only—"

Idly, Speed fished in the coals of the dying fire with a stick, watching the wood char. "Mister Ronald—Imp—sir, how long would you retain your bullets if Purrfurr wanted them?" And the sensual woman reappeared, twining her luscious body against Ronald's. So lithe and full and cuddlesome was she that he started to suffer arousal again despite the thorough depletion of his resources. "She will give you anything you desire, anything at all—in exchange for a bullet. How long will you tell her no?"

With difficulty Ronald refrained from responding to the woman's expert allure. He doubted he would have been able to hold firm had he been fresh and sober. A bullet? He would have given his soul for further pleasure with this creature! "Point made. No bullets," he said, his head clearing somewhat as Purrfurr pouted prettily and withdrew. He wished he had had a bullet to give her. "But that puts us back to the—the crossbow." He was a little weak on his knowledge of ancient weapons, but thought that was about right.

"Even that technology is beyond us," Speed said with a certain satisfaction. "We are simply not that far advanced. We can forge flat steel—when luck provides the proper alloys in our crudely refined iron—and make good swords, spears, and primitive armor. But this exhausts our limited resources. The crossbow requires gearing to crank up the tension, and gears are devious things."

"Yet it would be easy for Sol to send a factory ship, set it in orbit beyond the reach of native women, and produce and maintain the most modern weapons."

"For centuries?" the chief inquired rhetorically. "That orbiting ship would regress farther than the planet! But even at the outset, whether a ship in orbit would be truly out of reach is moot. Spacemen are notorious for rampages on leave; they are seldom satisfied with shipboard fare of whatever nature. I think one would soon encounter Purrfurr or her like, and the rest would follow. Girls always filter into military posts." Speed shrugged. "But there is another aspect. Generally, offensive and defensive weapons parallel each other, armor defending against spear and arrow, the bazooka defending against the tank, the laser against the ballistic missile, the matter disruptor against the stellar dreadnought. To place advanced offensive weapons in the hands of iron-age primitives who lack the resources or philosophy to mitigate their impact—this would lead to internecine warfare, perhaps wiping out whole colonies. It is better to let the weapons match the culture. No mustard gas without gas masks."

"You are amazingly conversant, for a primitive," Ronald observed. Or was the intoxication of the mead just making it seem that way?