"I am here to treat you for shock. You are a most important research astronomer, and your Segment wants you back in service. I fear they are overworking you, causing you to suffer breakdown."
"By no means!" the Weew responded forcefully. "I am devoted to my work."
"Even though it takes you away from your family?"
I have no family. Only my work. Without my research slides and tables, I would have no life at all. I am eager to return."
So he was a creature dedicated to his profession, as Herald was to his own. Herald found himself liking this Weew.
"I am eager to have you return, Hweeh. But it is not enough merely to rouse you from shock; we must abate the cause of it. It seems that some facet of your research sent you into shock, and it is necessary that we nullify this before you are exposed to it again."
"Nothing in my research could shock me! What harm or horror can there be in material that has been on record for decades or even centuries or millennia?"
"I took the liberty of consulting with an entity of your Segment, Swees of Weew, a logistic mathematician now retired. He said much the same."
"Oh, yes, the scholar named after my home planet. I had him verify certain of my data once. A fine mind! I must chat with him some time."
"So it seems we have a mystery here that neither my kind nor your kind fathoms. Perhaps you saw something in your telescope—"
Hweeh made a shudder of mirth. "Sir, I use no telescope! I am a research astronomer. I would not know even how to turn on a living telescope, or how to aim it. And how could I see anything new? The images I might see in a scope would have taken a million years to reach me. My research holographs, made by survey teams scattered throughout the Cluster, and buttressed by periodic information from the Net, are mattermitted to my library. They are far more current than any direct view could be."
"So you are assured that nothing you might perceive through your research could shock you?"
Hweeh changed color briefly. "Oh, I would not make so encompassing a statement as that! Were I to perceive a Cluster-sized black hole developing, its advancing edge within a light-year of the Milky Way—"
"In that event, we would all go into shock, not to mention tidal disassembly and eventual compression into nothingness!" Herald said. "But nothing less than that...?"
"Well, even a Galaxy-sized black hole, or a Segment-sized one, if it were close enough...."
"Yes, I daresay it would be an unnerving thing to reside adjacent to even the smallest, cutest black hole! In this you differ from no other sapient species. Yet you did go into shock. Is it likely that you did in fact perceive such a threat?"
"Hardly! Black holes do not manifest so abruptly in that manner. Few natural events do. Are you sure I was in shock? I might merely have been meditating."
"I am sure, sir," Herald said gravely.
"You will permit me the smallest, cutest skepticism?"
Herald smiled. A lively mind here, not without humor. Certainly not paranoid or confused.
Whirl of Dollar made a quiet buzzing signal. Herald glanced at him. "What is it, Witness?"
"I do not wish to interpose as this is not my business. But I am reminded of my prior conjecture, that there may be a parallel that could offer enlightenment. Not Possession, precisely, but—"
"Who is this?" Hweeh inquired.
"I interview you in a special circumstance," Herald explained. "It is necessary that I keep the company of two other entities. I regret this infringement of your privacy."
"No objection. I have no guilty secrets, unfortunately."
Herald had to smile again. "This is Whirl of Sador, the Earl of Dollar, here to witness my performance on Planet Keep. In the other chair is the Lady Psyche of Kade, another client. They will respect your confidence."
"What is this parallel the Sador sees?"
"You may answer him, Witness," Herald said.
"It is that in each case the subject is not aware of the manifestation, or chooses not to believe in it. The Lady Kade is ignorant of the actuality of our case against her, and the astronomer of Weew is not aware that he goes into shock at the mere utterance of—"
"Hold!" Herald cried.
"A certain phrase," Whirl concluded without pause. Psyche tittered.
"Do I do this?" Hweeh inquired, interested. "What is this phrase?"
"If he told you, you'd zonk out again," Psyche said.
"This has happened in your presence?"
"Yesterday," she assured him.
"I remember yesterday. I thought it was but a moment ago, and wondered why the interruption. And you also suffer a malady of this nature?"
"They say I am possessed," she said. "That an alien aura inhabits me irregularly. That is why the Healer came."
"Yes, I detect the parallel," Hweeh said. "I can appreciate your skepticism, since what is described is not the manner of hostaging. It cannot be intermittent, unless there is Transfer apparatus in the vicinity. May I touch you, Lady?"
She glanced inquiringly at Herald, who was intrigued by this developing interaction between his clients. There seemed to be no harm in it, however. He nodded.
"Certainly," Psyche said. She rose gracefully and crossed to the Weew, extending her hand and resting it lightly on his surface.
"Lady, you are not possessed," Hweeh assured her. "My aura is only half that of the Healer, but it is five times yours. I question strongly whether you have ever been host to a foreign aura."
Herald maintained a discreet silence in the face of this confirmation of his diagnosis. It took an entity of high aura to appreciate the certainty of such a conclusion. There was really scant chance of error. The Witness would have to wheel on this!
Sure enough, Whirl rolled forward. "May I touch you each in turn?"
"Certainly." "Yes." Hweeh and Psyche said together.
The Sador extended a wheel to contact the Weew first. "You do have a very strong aura, much more intense than mine. Then he touched Psyche. "But yours is less than mine. I agree that there is no Possession now, and regret that my aural expertise is not sufficient to verify past status. But my belief, and that of those whose interests I represent, is based on other criteria. I retain my position."
"Unfortunate that the Possession cannot be tested as readily as the shock-phase," Hweeh said. "There is much we have yet to learn about each. May I converse with the Lady?"
"If the Lady accedes," Herald said. "I admit to being frustrated in both cases at the moment. If the two of you do not feel your respective privacies are being infringed upon, speak of what you will. It should do no harm."
Psyche brought over her chair and sat beside Hweeh, resting her hand on him again. "This is very interesting," she said. "I have not had so much diversion and good feeling in two years. I never met a physical Weew before."
"I have perhaps been too much absorbed in my work," Hweeh replied. "I had forgotten how pleasant the touch of an innocent young entity could be. Tell me about yourself, if you will, and if you also will, incorporate in subtle fashion reference to the phrase that allegedly sends me into shock. Perhaps we can assist each other."
Herald glanced at Whirl, and caught the glint of the vanes of his communication wheel angled at him. Could the two subjects successfully interrogate each other?
"There is not much to say," Psyche said. "I have never left the planet of Keep, and seldom even Kastle Kade, since the affliction of my mother. Much of my experience has been imaginative. Why even my name means 'Soul'—but surely that would not interest an astronomer."
"Quite opposite, Lady. Your name unites you to my profession most directly, and tells me much about you."
Her eyes widened in one of her cute naive mannerisms. "Really? How so?"
"Modern astronomy is the study and theory of the manifestation of great space," Hweeh said. Again Herald glanced at Whirl, and again met the angled glint of acknowledgement. The Weew had used the term "Space" himself without suffering ill effect. "But research astronomy has
a broader base. It also considers the reactions of sapient entities to views of space in past times. Thus I review the mythology of space as well as its geology."
"The geology of space!" Psyche said. "What a nice concept!"
"Indeed yes; this is one of the many fascinations of my work," Hweeh agreed. "But the mythology is as important, for it provides insights into the nature of the conceptualizations of many creatures. Your own kind, the Solarians, have a very rich astronomical symbolism, for example. The brighter stars were in your prehistory considered to be manifestations of divine entities, gods and goddesses, who lived and died in heroic scale. One of your Sol-system planets, Venus, seemed like a bright star to your primitives, and was called the Goddess of Beauty. One of her children was Cupid, the God of Love, and Cupid married Psyche, a mortal girl who must have been very like you. So you see, I know you through my studies."
"I am to marry Cupid?" she asked in wonder. "The God of Love?"
"Your namesake did. For you, perhaps it will be an extremely lovable man. Yet the love of Cupid and Psyche was not without peril."
"Oh, tell me!" she cried, clapping her hands girlishly.
"With pleasure. Seldom do I discover so willing an audience for technical matters in my specialty. Psyche was the daughter of a king, and so lovely that she outshone Venus herself. This made Venus jealous, for the emotions of the gods reflected those of their creators. She sent her son, Cupid, to pierce the breast of Psyche with his arrow of love, and make her love the most vile and miserable creature available. This was the goddess's way of punishing the mortal girl whose only fault was beauty. But when Cupid saw Psyche, he was as it were scratched by his own arrow and stricken by love himself.
"Psyche's mortal family knew nothing of this. But somehow no offers for her hand in marriage were made. When the king consulted an oracle to determine whom his daughter should marry, he was told—"
"The Scion of Skot?" Psyche inquired with a twinkle.
But Hweeh was deep in his narrative and did not heed the interjection. "He was told to dress her in clothing of mourning and leave her on a mountain, where a fierce winged serpent would claim her for his bride. So with much regret the king did this. But Psyche was transported from the mountain to a pleasant valley where there was a magnificent palace. Here invisible servants catered to her every whim. But at night when she went to her bridal bed, it was dark and she could not see her husband at all. He did not feel like a winged snake—not in his entirety, at any rate—but as he departed before dawn, she could not be sure."
"But it was Cupid!" Psyche said. "Not a dragon, not a monster, not an amoeba, but the God of Love!"
"Yes," Hweeh agreed. "It—she—@@@@—" He slumped.
Herald launched himself at the bowl, trying to bring his aura into play before the Weew faded out, but he was too late.
"I did what he asked—and it sent him back into shock," Psyche said, the fingers of one hand touching her mouth. "I'm sorry."
"You did very well," Herald assured her. "You caught us all by surprise. I did not realize what you had said until he reacted. Now we know that it is the single word 'amoeba' that sets him off. That's progress."
"But will he be hurt?"
"No, this merely delays us again. I think it was inevitable. And we are learning. His mind is whole; it is only this one thing that knocks him out. When he wakes, he has sealed it off again, until a direct reference sends him back into shock. A highly specific complaint."
"What does it mean?" Psyche asked.
"I wish I knew," Herald admitted. "It is hard to avoid the suspicion that we are all in deadly danger from the Space Amoeba. Yet this is hardly credible."
"I do love a mystery!" Psyche said. "I used to wish Kastle Kade had a ghost or something."
"It has one," Whirl said.
She shrugged that off. "I hope I can hear the rest of the story of my name."
"You could look it up in one of your references," Herald pointed out. "An excellent library like the one you have should certainly have—"
"No, that would not be fair. It is his story."
Herald shrugged at this new girlishness. They left the room.
In the afternoon the Duke took them on a hunt. "One of the animals has gone berserk," he explained. "It has ravaged the demesnes of the Baron of Magnet, my vassal, and killed several of his servitors. It behooves me to rid my environs of this menace. I caution you not to seek participatory action, as the beast is imbued with Transfer aura and is dangerous."
One of the prisoners of Keep, Herald realized, thus an animal with sapient cunning and criminal intent. Just the thing to lend adventure to this situation! Probably the nobles of the planet valued such prey, as it justified their position. If there were never any crises, there might cease to be any need for this feudal society and its warrior class.
They mounted steeds. The upper wheels of the Sador horses were shaped into seats, with holes for human legs, and the outer rim served as a rail to contain the upper body and provide handholds.
Psyche looked very refined in her riding habit, with its red jacket and white tight trousers. Her legs showed beneath the saddle wheel, extremely well formed. Herald was beginning to realize how much a simple tunic masked! Her fair hair was tied back in the fashion called a ponytail, changing the lines of her head and face. Like the mythological princess: lovely.
Whirl of Dollar was braced in his circular saddle by his own projecting wheels, and seemed to be quite stable. At first the sight of a six-wheeled creature astride a six-wheeled creature seemed odd to Herald but he quickly acclimatized. It was really no stranger than one quadruped astride another, which was how it had been on Planet Earth.
The Duke and his men-at-arms carried lances—long poles with guards at the rear to protect the hands, and sharp points at the forward ends. They also had shields and wore light armor and helmets. This was a truly medieval expedition, with all its pomp and fanfare. There was even a servitor honking periodically on a musical horn.
Each shield, of course, bore its heraldic device, and this enabled Herald to recognize the participants instantly, much better than by face or form. The ramifications of Galactic intercourse had provided legitimacy for an extraordinary number of Achievements, so that even the lowliest servitors of Kastle Kade bore the proud Arms of distant planets.
They boarded the ferry and crossed the lake. The craft was bulky and slow, but it carried the full party of twenty mounted knights. Water reptiles swam close, pacing the ferry: huge, long, toothy, sinuous things.
The Duke noted Herald's interest. "We keep Lake Donny stocked with the finest Solarian alligators, so that it shall not be forded or swum."
"You imported reptiles from Sphere Sol?" A colossal expense!
"A few reptile eggs were shipped by freezer ship with our ancestors a thousand years ago. We took good care of those eggs." The Duke looked out over the water, counting snouts. "Aren't they beautiful!"
"Um," Herald agreed faintly. Now he knew why no one swam in the beautiful lake!
The ferry's powerplant was intriguing yet practical: A dozen large Sador animals sat in harnesses around the sides, paddles affixed to their wheels. They were like so many rotary motors, propelling the craft vigorously forward. The paddles were designed so that the toothy reptiles could not get at the tender portions of the animals.
The party debarked at the North Landing, where the North Road wended its way through the deep forest west toward other castles of Keep. But a branch road coursed south around the west shore of the lake, toward the dam. They took this branch, and wheeled forth on the packed-dirt highway. The wheels of the horses propelled them with greater speed and endurance than sapient bodies could produce, and Herald clung to his saddle wheel tightly. The wind of motion whipped through his human hair, rapidly tugging it into disarray; but Psyche's ponytail remained distressingly neat.
The scenery was refreshing after a day shut up in the castle. The trees of Keep were Sadorian, probably seeded several thousand
years before when Sphere Sador first colonized it. They were monstrous barrels with wheels projecting irregularly, their flat spokes angled to catch the sunlight. As the shadows changed, the wheels turned to maintain optimum position. But the lesser vegetation differed. There were fields of Sol-style grasses, probably imported to halt soil erosion and to provide the grains so beloved of Solarians. This was very much a planet of compromise: Sador and Sol. At leisure, be would have to review local history and discover exactly how this had come about. There must have been at least two Terraforming operations following several Sadorforming stages, as alien species of vegetation normally did not take readily to the soils and microbes and light of a local environment.
There were animals, too. Small wheeled things scooted off the road and hid in the grass, and in the distance were grazing herds of cattle, cutting swaths through the grass with their bottom wheels and sucking up the fragments. Their top wheels were used to blow away flies. Flies, of course, accompanied cattle wherever they went, and there were as many species of flies as there were of other creatures. Some flies had wings, some jets, some magnetism—but they were always a similar nuisance. Herald remembered the laser-flies of his homeworld in Sphere Slash with no particular fondness. And there were birds, hovering on their heli-wheels, snapping up these flies. No matter how mixed, the ecology was always in balance.
Almost halfway around Lake Danny they diverged from the road, going up a steep gravel rut into the western ridge of mountains. Herald clung to his saddle-rail with both hands as his body tilted back and back; the incline was such he feared his mount would fall over backwards. But the other members of the party seemed unconcerned, and he knew the wheelers were extremely stable, so he concealed his alarm.
Up and up they went. At last the path leveled off and he glanced back. There, in the center of the lake, was Kastle Kade, marvelously scenic with its walls and embrasures and turrets and the flag of Kade flying from the pinnacle. But he shuddered at the narrow, excruciatingly steep path down to the water.