Cluster (25 page)

“Yes.” Could it suddenly be this easy?

She pushed through the door. It rotated like some he had seen on Planet Earth. Of course even stick figures employed some circular devices, and Polarians used same back-and-forth mechanisms. Nothing was pure. He followed her.

Inside was the throne: a high, ornate ramp set above a lovely fade old Polarian.

“Your Rondure, I bring you Plint of Outworld, envoy of Sphere Sol,” she announced.

The monarch glowed with interest. “Has your debt been abated so quickly?”

Tsopi hesitated.

“Well, speak up!” the Wheel snapped.

“I—yield it,” Tsopi whispered against the floor behind her, very like a guilty cur.

“You
what
?” The Wheel rolled close, looming over them on the high ramp.

“I–”

“I heard you the first time! Female, do you seek to dishonor your Revolver as well as yourself? You yield nothing to me! The moment the individual gives way to society, our Spheres become frictive.” That was an allusion Flint would not have understood prior to his experience with the powder. Frictive meant disaster. “What would the Big Stick of Sphere Sol say if we treated his envoy so abrasively? Stop spinning around uselessly
Abate that debt!
I want his mission done and you back in service soon, or I'll de-wheel you myself! You have already wasted several hours twiddling your tail while he gossiped with the Hierophant—as if the secret of transfer is not of the highest rotation.”

“Your Rondure,” Flint said. “I want only to–”

“Oh, get this lamewheel out of here,” the Big Wheel said impatiently to Tsopi.

Tsopi drew Flint out. “He's got a terrible, uncircular temper when he gets out of round,” she murmured almost inaudibly against his hide.

“You bet your little bare bearing he does!” the Wheel blasted behind them. He had put his ball against the Royal Ramp, and it acted as a sounding board to amplify the volume alarmingly. Royalty had its prerogatives.

They coasted out of the palace. “All right, you explain,” Flint said. “This time I'll listen.”

“Well, it's not easily explainable,” she said. “Let's go somewhere private.”

An unusual request, from a company-loving Polarian. “Somewhere private it is,” he agreed. “But
then
you'll make it clear?”

“I will certainly try,” she said. “But there may be a cultural barrier.”

“I've experienced cultures odder than this,” he said, thinking of the triple-gendered Spicans.

“Your own is odd enough,” she agreed with a flash of her normal humor. He thought of Earth and Capella, and had to agree.

They rolled up to an elevator. An aperture opened in the round chamber, then closed pneumatically when they were inside. There was an abrupt wrenching. Then the portal opened and they rolled out—into a wheelwhirling wilderness.

Flint skidded to a halt, literally. “This is another planet!”

“Of course. No satisfactory wilderness remains on the Home Ball. This is a little resort world fifteen parsecs out, very posh. Don't you like it?”

“We mattermitted fifty light years just like that?”

“Why not? What's the use of technology, except to bring nature closer?”

“The cost—it must be a trillion dollars to move the pair of us!”

“As I tried to explain before, our values differ from yours. We like company, not crowding, but a certain concentration is necessary for ideal efficiency. So we precess, we compromise. Better to expend energy than live in discomfort.”

“That's irresponsible waste!” Now he was sounding to himself like an Imp official.

“Not as we scent it. Letting a star's light proceed uselessly into space, unharnessed—
that's
waste. We save that stellar energy and turn it to our purpose. But Transfer would be better, we agree. We have already noted how well it works for you.”

“That's what I'm trying to
bring
to you. Why won't you
listen
?”

“That's part of the explanation. Come, let's enjoy it.”

He followed her along the path into the forest. The trees were neither vine nor wood, but humps of spongy substance bearing large sunlight-collecting disks. They resembled the sentient Polarians in broad outline, just as the trees of Earth resembled men, with their leglike roots and armlike branches and stiffly erect bearing. Evidently this planet had been seeded with Polarian vegetation, centuries ago. Yes it had; now that he worked it out for himself, his host-memory confirmed it. But already what he saw was merging with what he remembered: these were
trees
, perfectly natural.

“You called me the Knight of Gas,” he said. “How did you derive it?”

“Tarotism came here three centuries ago; it was really one of our first direct contacts with Sphere Sol culture,” she said. “It has never really been popular as a cult, but it has a certain circularity. It has become established, and the cards do make a compelling entertainment for many who ascribe no philosophical value to them—as in your own Sphere. The animation effect is the main attractant, I think. Thus many of us have had readings, and some adopt the Tarotism precepts. So we pick up bits about the cards. Males and females who had reproduced are Kings and Queens; those who have not are Knights and Pages. We retain the original Solarian nomenclature, you see. The suits are determined by the qualities of character and situation. Thus I, as a basically planet-bound creature, am Solid or Ground, while you, as a highly mobile off-planet creature, your essence expressed wholly by your Kirlian aura, are Gas or Air. In the archaic Solarian terms, I'm a Coin and you're a Sword.”

“You certainly are a coin,” he agreed. “You roll and you're precious.”

“Thank you,” she said, vibrating her ball against his trunk in a most stimulating way.

“And I have seen some combat in my time, so I'm a Sword. In fact I'm a flintsmith; I
make
weapons. Good ones, too.”

“I am aware. I knew you then. Remember?”
 

“So you did. He paused. “You know me as a human being. So to you I'm a stick figure, all angles and bones. Doesn't it bother you?”

“No. We believe in outside contacts, in exogamous cooperation. It's part of our nature. We have known of the nature of Solarians for many centuries. The Tarot itself has prepared the way, for we associate ourselves with the circular Coins and Solarians with the thrust of Swords. The message of the Tarot is that all systems are valid, no matter how strange some may seem at first. I know you are a fine person in alien guise. And we have a common debt. And now you are here in rotary form, visiting my Suit of Solid as it were, and it is good.”
 

“Yet you will not let me–the Big Wheel will not let me complete my mission.”

She drew up on a fine expanse of hard foliage overlooking a flowing stream. Paddlewheeled waterfowl disported on its surface, and two-wheeled animals moved away, alarmed by the intrusion of sapients. Originally all creatures of the Polarian home planet had been bi-cycled, but in time the sapients had lifted one wheel, becoming unicycled, freeing the other to become the communicatory ball. The pattern seemed familiar to Flint; human beings had progressed similarly, from quadruped to biped status.

“Try to understand,” she said. “To us, the individual is paramount in the circuit. Government exists only to serve the needs of the citizens. Where the interests of a single entity conflict with that of society, the entity takes precedence.”

“That's backwards! Government must always serve the good of the greatest number.”

“In a thrust-culture, perhaps that is so. Here, no.” She made a little gesture with her tail, much as a human used hands to augment a difficult point. “What is good for the individual is good for the society.”

“But centralized society would collapse!” Flint was not used to debating economics or political science, yet his point seemed irrefutable.

“Well, it is true we lack the straight-thrust dynamism of your muscle-and-bone mode. But we have achieved the equilibrium of the turning wheel. We accomplish much by accommodation and mutual respect, rather than force.”

“And your Sphere is twice the diameter of ours,” Flint said. “I don't claim to comprehend it, but I admit I like it. But what happens when the interests of individuals conflict?”

“This is the heart of our system. It is a form of mutual debt. They must work it out together.”

“Debt.
There
is the key I don't have. How do you–”

“Divergent interests must be reconciled. Factions must unify. The interest of one entity must merge with the other, so that no dichotomy exists. You might call it love.”

“Love thine enemy?” Flint remembered another of the fragments of wisdom of the Shaman that had not come clear.

“There can
be
no enemy. Only debt to be expiated.”

Flint pondered. “Let me see whether I have it straight,” he said at last. “Or curved, as the case may be.”

“Circular,” she supplied. “At Sol, a straight line may be the solution to most problems; here it is a spiral.”

“Yes. You and I saved each other's lives, and so we owed each other our lives. A mutual debt, very hard to repay. You can't take back a life, after all. Now in our thrust culture, we'd call that self-canceling. Equal and opposite forces. But I suppose if you plotted it on a spiral, it could start quite a spin. Equal and opposite thrusts applied to the two sides of a wheel and make it roll twice as fast. So–” But he stopped, beginning to realize. “Pleasant news from a lady...”

“I'm aware that different conventions obtain in your culture,” she said. “You tend to be indrawn, perhaps as a natural consequence of your outward thrust.”

“That's what I was saying! The Shaman explained it to me, back when I hardly understood and had to stretch my mind to take it in. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“Yes. So you are an expansive, extroverted species, but also strongly introverted, alienophobic. Your mating pattern reflects this. You seek a stranger for the purpose of procreation, then establish lifelong liaison with that stranger. To us that seems extreme. We prefer familiar matings, but we form no restrictive relation.”

“You're saying you're polygamous?”

“No, that would be the wrong connotation. We mate for social or economic reasons, but our love is intense while it endures. At the end, there is a child, and all debts have been expiated by that act of creation, all differences reconciled in that child. The chapter is finished; we never mate again with the same partners.”

“To us that would be frivolous,” Flint said. “Mating is tantamount to marriage, a permanent commitment. This is my relation to Honeybloom, the Queen of Liquid. Or Water, Cups, or Hearts, by the cards. When I return to Outworld, I'll marry her.”

“I understand that, and I wish you well. It is your system,” Tsopi said. “But at the moment you are part of the Polarian culture, and you cannot complete your technical mission until our debt is expiated. There is no conflict between me and Honeybloom”–she had used his term, for there were no parallel concepts in Polarian, no flowers, hence no blooms and no bees and no honey– ”So love me now, and never again. You may regard this in the line of duty, since the Big Wheel is anxious to have our debt abated, and will meet with you immediately afterward.”

So, circuitously, politics had become sex. “On Planet Earth, that would be called prostitution,” he said.

“I do not understand the term.”

Indeed, there had been no concept for this either; he had had to use the human word. “Allow me to be a bit finicky,” he said. “I can indulge in sex on a purely casual basis, or as a necessity of my mission, or I can marry. You seem to be offering something in between. Short-term love. And I don't even know how it is done here. You have no—do you know how Solarians do it?”

“Yes,” she said, glowing with distaste. “It is linear, again. The male pokes his little stick into the female's aperture, and–”

“All right. You have the idea. Now how do Polarians get the male seed together with the female egg?”

“I propose to show you,” she said.

“I could learn faster if you told me first,” he said with developing exasperation. This reluctance to speak directly to the point—but of course that was Polarian nature.

“Why did you stop me from describing the Solarian act?” she inquired in return.

“Solarian act?” For a moment he was baffled.

“How the male makes his stick stiff, and–”

“Oh. That sort of thing isn't discussed openly among humans. Not in mixed company.” Then he did a doubletake. “I see. Some things are better performed than described.”

“Yes. Also, your human viewpoint might cause you as much distress as our own viewpoint causes us in contemplation of the Solarian act, which seems aggressive and unnatural to us. Why, if the male poked too hard, or missed the opening–”

“All
right
!” Flint made a fluid shrug, realizing how much his barbarian enthusiasm had been overlaid by civilized reticence. “Better done than said, as we agreed. I don't promise to be an effective partner, but I'll try.”

“Is it not true that no instructions needs to be given to your individuals for them to procreate?”

“It is true. One look at a girl like Honeybloom and the rest follows naturally, if she's willing.” He decided not to go into the subject of rape; she would never understand it. “But we have better vision than you do; we are visually stimulated.”

“We have better taste than you do,” Tsopi said. “Follow me.” She began a slow circle.

He rolled after her, and picked up a most sensual taste. She was laying down amour, and his host-body was electrified. His own glands responded with the masculine equivalent, which he knew she would pick up as she completed the circuit and covered his trail. Here was the true meaning of circularity!