Viscous Circle

  Her questions were making it easier; they provided form for his confession. "A female—a married female—who has had similar nightmares. I met her in this last nightmare, and must discuss it with her."

  "You share your dreams with another Band?"

  Treacherous domain! "Not as I shared them with you, Cirl! It just happened our nightmares overlapped—and now we must straighten them out in the waking state, to avoid further trouble." He flew along the line for a moment, considering. "Worse trouble." Like genocide.

  "I could not enter your dream this time. Your aura was absent. How could she be in it?"

  "This is the worst part of it," he said. "Cirl, I fear this will hurt you, and I would spare you if I could. I don't have to tell you—"

  "Tell me. Anything is better than having you disband, or half-disband, dis-aura like that again!"

  Why hadn't the original Band aura been returned to the host body for the interval? This body certainly would have died, had not Cirl acted so devotedly to save it, and Tanya's host might now be dead for the same neglect. That was criminal carelessness!

  No, not carelessness, he realized as he thought it through. There were prohibitive risks associated with returning the native Band to his body. The Band, having experienced Monsterdom, could have second thoughts about this arrangement, and decide not to cooperate further. He might be appalled at what had happened and disband immediately, depriving Rondl of the available host. In a mission of this importance, it was pointless to risk this. It was also possible that they had done some damage to the original Band in the process of the exchange, not understanding the nature of Bands. He might have tried to disband in the Monster host. What would be the result? The Solarian body would not disintegrate, of course, but might well die. So perhaps they had no aura to return to this host anyway.

  At any rate, they had had to let the Band host be blank for the brief time Rondl was back in System Sirius, not realizing how risky this was. That was just as well for Rondl; he preferred to keep the Monsters ignorant. And suppose the original Band had returned here, to find himself in Cirl's embrace? What would he have said to her? That could have been yet another kind of disaster.

  "I will tell you in a moment. What have the Monsters been up to while I was out?"

  "They remain between moons. I think our interference has made them pause. We have a respite."

  "Good." Rondl gathered his thoughts and courage as they slanted toward the planet. Cirl was guiding him from one line to another, taking him toward a region on the planet's equator. He trusted her guidance. "This last nightmare was of the Monsters, as before, but more complete. I was not absorbed by a Monster host, I was the Monster himself. I interacted with other Monsters. One of them was called Tanya, and we agreed to meet in our Band form when the nightmare ended. We could not afford to have the other Monsters overhear our discussion, you see."

  "But I still don't see how she shared your dream, when I could not."

  "Because it wasn't really a dream. My aura really was in a Monster host, and hers was in another."

  "But you did not disband! I could understand your aura retreating to deep inside you, or becoming extremely weak so that I could not detect it for a time—but how could it travel while your body remained?"

  "In the alien Spheres there are devices that can move an aura intact from one host to another. Such a device was used on us."

  She assimilated this. "So you were not really dreaming. You became a Monster, for a while."

  "True. I really was a Monster."

  "Your nightmares foresaw this. But how could your dreams know what was about to happen to you?"

  "Because my unconscious mind, my deeper aura, knew. Consciously I did not know, for my memory had been blanked, but the information leaked out when my consciousness slept. This has to do with the nature of memory repression; it is not an erasure so much as a blockage. Complete removal of any part of a given segment of experience cannot be accomplished without enormous damage to the personality. Memory is like a holographic image, imprinted on every part and aspect of—"

  "Holographic?"

  "A visual concept. Maybe I should use another analogy. Memory is like a lens: you cannot remove a part of an image by eliminating part of the lens—"

  "Of course you can't! The lens is a totality!"

  "Yes. So is memory. So they really blocked my conscious awareness of my Monster status. Much of my vocabulary tied in with that status, which led to the many little mysteries of my communications, but I could not directly pass that block. Deep in my mind was the knowledge that I would—in due course—become a Monster. My nightmares were excerpts from that awareness, like refuse fished up from the deep ocean."

  She ignored the alien concepts of refuse and ocean. "But no one can foresee the future!"

  Rondl saw that she was not absorbing enough of his meaning. Perhaps she was resisting it on her own subconscious level. He tried again. "It was not necessarily my future. It may have been my past nightmares reflected, in distorted fashion."

  She flew for some time in silence, flashless. This was a critical point. He had been trying to guide her to the realization carefully, in much the way he had learned to train his Band recruits, so that she brought herself to the fundamental concept. That way she would fashion her own emotional supports along the way, and safeguard herself against being shocked into disbanding; her mind should balk before accepting too devastating a concept. He had not managed this perfectly, saying too much and too little, but perhaps it would work out. "Before we met—in the time of your amnesia—you were a Monster?"

  There it was; she had navigated it. "I was a Monster. A Solarian. That was why I kept remembering odd bits of alien concepts, which leaked out around the memory block and vanished the moment I sought further detail. My Monster aura was sent to a Band host."

  "Your odd information!" she repeated.

  "From my Solarian background." He was beginning to relax, seeing her accept it.

  "Now you remember everything?"

  "I do."

  "All your Monster education, friends—do Monsters have friends?"

  "They have friends. I remember it all. I share the Monster outlook. In that life I was a Transfer agent—one who had his aura moved to alien hosts, to gain information about their situation. Sometimes to foment trouble. I was sent here to find something important."

  "And when you have found it—you will return to your Monster host?"

  She had not taken long to get the essence. "When the mission is finished, they will recall me to my Monster host. I will have little choice in the matter. I might resist or avoid re-Transfer, but since my aura is alien to this Band host, it would inevitably fade as time passed. I can only visit this form; I cannot remain. That is my final nightmare."

  "Then I will disband!" she flashed.

  "Don't disband!" he flashed back instantly. "I don't want to go back. I want to stay with you!"

  "I did not mean right now. I will disband when you leave me forever, since this life will have no brightness for me without you." She seemed quite matter-of-fact about it, and that chilled him. She had considered disbanding when jilted by her former male friend; this time she was certain.

  "But there is no need for you to die just because I am not what you thought I was. Not what I thought I was! How could I live with my conscience, knowing you had perished because of me?"

  "Do Monsters have consciences?"

  "Some do. I do. Now."

  "No Band perishes," she reminded him. "There is no guilt or sadness in the Viscous Circle."

  So she believed. He did not want to disabuse her of this touching faith. "But I am not a Band; I'm a Monster. My kind does not believe in the Viscous Circle. I would be alive, knowing I could never join you."

  She was instantly solicitous. "I had not thought of that! We must get you into the Viscous Circle!"

  What harm was there in agreeing? It was such a nice concept. "I'd like very much to join you there. But I doubt it is
open to me, to my kind." And he found that this was indeed very sad. What a fine thing it would be if the myth were true, and he could join. Better than any of the mythical human heavens!

  "I must ask Proft," she flashed. "Maybe there is a way to get an alien, even a Monster, into the Viscous Circle. He will surely know."

  At least there was no immediate threat of her suiciding. She now had a positive aspect to focus on. He did care for her, a great deal; his emotion was every bit as strong and pervading as human love. Ultimately he would be wrenched from her, but he wanted to spare her any hurt he could. "By all means, ask him."

  "Do Monsters marry?" she inquired after a bit.

  Trouble again! "They do. You must be aware of that; you teased me about my supposedly alien concept of marriage."

  But this time she did not respond with a flash of mirth. "Did you marry?"

  "Yes. Before I met you."

  "So you have a Monster wife?" This seemed to bother her more than the notion of death, perhaps because love was more real to her than death.

  "I do have a Monster wife. On a five-year term marriage, almost over." He was sure he knew what was coming, and he dreaded it. Females were females, the Galaxy over.

  "You love her too?"

  That was what he had feared. Yet the answer turned out to be easy. "I don't know. I thought I did, once. Then I met you."

  Cirl was not swayed by the implied flattery. "What does she think of me?"

  "Competitive, I think. But she knows it can't last between us. She knows about fading auras. So after you, there will be her—if we should choose to renew the marriage for another term, which is in doubt. That is the reality of my condition."

  "Poor thing," Cirl said sympathetically.

  "I'm so glad you can accept it," Rondl flashed. "I was really worried—"

  "I don't accept it," she corrected him. "I merely defined the problem."

  "But I thought—"

  "Now we must convoke a circle and explore the matter properly."

  "But I have to meet—"

  "Another female?"

  "That's not—"

  She was flashless, and he realized that he had better agree to her circle. The Maze would simply have to wait. "Take me to your circle," he flashed with resignation. He should have known this would not be simple!

  She sent out the spiraling summons. In due course other Bands arrived—many of them, and soon, for they were now close to the planet, where many congregated.

  This time Cirl directed them into a double circle, one flowing one way, the other flowing the other way. The Bands were carefully interspersed, so that every alternate one faced opposite. Cirl herself was in the other ring, on Rondl's subjective side. What was this leading to? He had not known this variation of the formation existed, and didn't trust it. But he trusted Cirl, so he cooperated.

  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 provoca
tive 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 sexes, 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?