Cluster (15 page)

His body was bulbous, balloon-like, and somewhat nebulous. He seemed to have no skin, no well-defined outer boundary; instead he thinned out to a frothy fadeout. His breath was more than respiration, and his gills less than solid. He took in water through his mouth, then pumped it through his entire system and finally out in fine bubbles. This carried oxygen and nourishment into his system and carried wastes out. It seemed a reasonably simple, efficient, comfortable arrangement, as long as the water was fresh. A man in scuba gear, like one in a spacesuit on the moon, could die in an unfresh medium.

But of course the human form on Earth used air in a similar fashion. All people breathed from a common pool, and passed many of their wastes back into it. Plants and bacteria renewed it constantly, as they did for the water environment here. So this was a perfectly comprehensible system, not like a confined suit at all.

But part of him had been crushed. The normal froth-pattern was abnormally irregular and discolored, and much of the mass had suffered where the nutrient flow had been too long interrupted. The seawater was like blood; when it stopped passing through, the tissues perished. Too gross an interruption, and regeneration became unfeasible.

The body had been injured severely enough to cause the loss of its Kirlian aura: spiritual extinction. But Flint's far more intense aura had animated it, restoring it to life. What was fatal to an aura of intensity one was survivable to an aura of intensity two hundred.

Now he had a body and an identity. But after his experience as a transferee in the slave Sphere, he was cautious about advertising it. First he would ascertain the nature of this society, and of his place in it. Then he would make his contact, directly, properly, without dangerous missteps.

He explored his new mind. Its content was not immediately clear to him, but he wasn't worried. It was bound to be a serviceable mind, because of the nature of transfer.

Thought Flint had the symbology of transfer memorized, his comprehension of its actual mechanism was vague. It was instantaneous, like mattermission. A subject could be “beamed” to a specific locale, generally a planet in a Sphere. But there was no receiving station; instead there had to be a host with which the arriving Kirlian aura could associate. There was no problem about getting lost or landing in an unsuitable body; if there no appropriate minds in the target region, the aura bounced, reanimating its original body. There were other qualifications, having to do with the aura's notion of what was suitable; the potential host had to be sapient and of the same gender. Why this was so was not clear; there was a great deal the Solarian technologists did not yet know. But transfer worked; that was what counted.

So Flint knew he had a sapient, male body he could make function. But as before, he had to work at physical coordination, and to concentrate in order to isolate specific memories, while the language process was largely automatic. He swam some more, while he pieced it together. Swimming enhanced his alertness by providing greater flow of water through his system.

He was Bopek, an Impact. He was a courier. There were three groups of sapient Spicans, all waterdwellers: the Impacts, the Undulants, and the Sibilants. This was an Impact zone. As courier he had to convey Undulants from the Undulant zone through the Neutral Corridor to the Undulant enclave.

Did that make sense? Flint visualized it as a world of swimming dogs, cats, and mice, three of the animals that had helped man colonize Outworld. He was a dog conducting a cat past the mice warren to the cat enclave. Not exact, but helpful for orienting. It was important—and here a confusing complex of alarms sprouted from his host's memories and experiences—to keep the three types separate except on special occasions. Any two could associate freely, in any numbers, but never all three types. Apparently cats did not eat mice except in the presence of dogs, and dogs did not chase cats unless mice were watching.

Right now there was a big construction project in the Impact (dog) zone, that required the cooperation of Sibilants (mice). So the Sibilants had been granted temporary access. But one portion of the project had to be done in cooperation with Undulants (cats). Since they could not enter the mixed zone, a special courier channel excluding all others had been defined. But as only a native Impact was familiar with the home zone, all visitors had to be guided lest they stray.

Yes, it was coming clear, though this was about as much of the Spican system as he cared to assimilate at the moment. His host had been escorting an Undulant, avoiding contact with Sibilants. But he had made an error, or been misguided, and taken her through a destruct area. A portion of the demolition structure had collapsed, crushing them both. Such a collapse was slower in water than in air, and swimming entities could move quickly when they had to, so they had been able to avoid complete annihilation. But the shock and violence had been too much. The Kirlian auras had dissipated, leaving functioning soulless bodies. Flint's projected Kirlian aura had animated the empty Impact, while the undulant–

What had happened to her? She had been an exceptionally well-formed specimen of her type, a veritable queen of felines, a tigress.

He swam back to inquire.

His companion Impacts had broadened the Neutral Corridor into a temporary Undulant enclave. Llyana the undulant remained unconscious, inanimate; they could not revive her, though her body lived.

No question about it. She, like his host, had been deprived of her Kirlian soul. But no alien had been waiting to animate her vacant body. She was effectively dead.

Too bad. It was an unfortunate waste of an excellent specimen. Looking at her, Flint/Bopek reviewed the ideal criteria for the Undulant species, and found that Llyana was to Undulants as Honeybloom was to women. She had the same eyestalks and nebulous body as he did, but lacked his stout flippers. Her mass was similar, but proportioned differently: she was long and sinuous, propelling herself by means of fishlike or snakelike ripples of her entire torso. In addition, while he and the other Impacts were basically horizontal, somewhat like the swimming turtles of Earth's seas, Llyana was vertical, being flattened on the sides like most fish. Some Undulants were too long and thin, others too stout; Llyana was just right.

Flint realized with an internal chuckle of self-directed humor that not so long ago he would have been appalled at the mere contemplation of such a creature, and would have considered the notion of a beautiful Undulant as sick humor. It was amazing how a change of body and brain altered aesthetic perception.

Llyana, too, had damaged tissues. The other Imparts were forcing a flow of water through her mouth, setting up a suitable current with their flippers, keeping her technical life processes functioning. They assumed, reasonably enough for them, that if he had recovered, she would also. But of course Bopek had not recovered; he had been reanimated by an alien spirit. Flint.

The medic team arrived. “Conduct her down the Neutral Corridor to the Undulant enclave,” the ranking Impact directed. He spoke, as did all sapients here, by vibrating an internal fin against a ribbed surface; the sound emerged from his mouth, but had nothing to do with his respiration.

“You to the Impact infirmary,” the leader said to Flint. “You are mobile, but have sustained similar physical injury. We must be sure you are fit for the service.”

One did not argue with a ranking member of one's kind. Flint stroked for the region his memory said was the infirmary. It turned out to be a building: a semifloating structure anchored to the depths by a stout braid. The braid was symbolic of the three elements of sapience: Impact, Undulant, and Sibilant. He paddled into the emergency bay and let the medics apply foam-salve. It was a marvelous relief; he had not realized how much he had been hurting.

“Now take it easy,” the medic warned. “This stuff is excellent, but it has a certain intoxicating effect in some individuals. You'll need to rest for a cycle or two.”

“Thanks.” Flint paddled off.

He not only felt better, he felt good. He swooped through the pleasantly cool water, turned over, and glided eyestalks down. He had not noticed the scenery before, but now he could relax and enjoy it.

There were many sources of light in the water. Much was from the plankton, tiny creatures who grubbed nutriment from materials in the water and were in turn digested by larger creatures, including the sapients. The colors of the plankton varied with individual species, and an entity lacking a particular element of nutrition became increasingly attuned to the color of the plankton possessing that element. Thus feeding was a continual and ever-varied experience, satisfying the eye as well as the body. At the moment, all colors looked delicious to Flint, a warning of his condition he did not heed.

He dived down. Most fish on Earth possessed gas-filled sacs or bladders that provided buoyancy but inhibited rapid changes of depth. His present body was more sophisticated; he was able to compress or expand it considerably, so that he could dive without effort and discomfort, and rise again as easily. As he approached the nether margin of the sea, he spied the turrets of the anchored animals. They floated in the currents, their long thin tails descending to the ocean floor. They had intricate combs and networks of tubes through which they strained the water, and they too were of many colors. Flowers of the floor. Some made pleasant noises to attract the sea insects that pollinated them. But these were primitive forms; the advanced life was invariably triple-gendered.

Flint drifted upward, savoring the experience. He had never imagined sea living could be so blissful. He saw the hanging discoloration signifying the fringe of the Impact zone. Lower creatures could pass through it freely, but he knew he should turn back. But he felt like exploring! He was a courier; he had a right to tour out of bounds, didn't he?

On through the Sibilant boundary. What fun! The thrill of seeing unfamiliar territory added to his satisfaction. He could cruise indefinitely!

Then he spied something special ahead. It was a pair of entities, an Undulant and a Sibilant. Of course, the Undulants were working in the Sibilant zone this period, just as the Sibilants were working in the Impact zone. So long as the three types never came together in the same place at the same time, no problem.

So why did he experience this heightening, secret, almost obscene excitement?

The Sibilant had the same nebulous torso and eyestalks as the others, but it lacked both flippers and vertical flattening. It propelled itself forward by jetting water from its main body tube. This action was accompanied by a gentle susurration that gave the entity its name. It was capable of considerable speed through the water, and especially rapid starts.

But that was of no immediate concern to Flint. The moment he spied the pair of creatures, something changed in him. He felt a guilty but powerful attraction. He shot forward on a collision course. If only they didn't see him too soon!

He was successful; by the time the others became aware of him, it was too late. He collided.

There was only a slight impact. His body did not shove theirs over; it merely overlapped theirs. Part of his flesh intersected that of the Sibilant, and part of it interacted with that of the Undulant. Their substance was so diffuse that it merged with his to make a sold-seeming cross-section.

This state of partial merging was tremendously exciting and compulsive. He now had a firm hold on each of the other entities, not with his flippers but with the actual flesh of his body. Diagrammatically, it looked like this, with Flint the center entity.

 

 

He gathered his strength and heaved. As his body flexed at the edges it thinned at the center, drawing them in closer to each other. Then he flexed outward, taking in more of their substance, extending his overlap, experiencing a phenomenal satisfaction in the process.

By a series of pulses he brought the Sibilant and the Undulant into contact with each other, within his own flesh. Now their efforts joined his, so that the pulses became more powerful. The effort became transcendentally important. Flint gathered his resources, tightened his grip on each of the others, and threw his entire strength into a convulsive contraction that hauled both other entities all the way into his flesh and into each others' flesh. The process was both painful and fantastically rewarding. In fact it was orgasmic.

Orgasm...

Flint's first transfer had set a pattern. He knew he was in an alien body, but it was much like knowing he was a man; it was
right.
He still thought of himself as human. His alien sensation translated so readily into the human equivalents that he was hardly conscious of it after the first moments. Intellectually, he kept noticing details and comparing them with his other embodiments, but that was much the way a man compared one world to another. While everything was changed, he was still fundamentally a man. Here in the Spican locale he had a more stringent adaptation, to a swimming for—but he was still basically a swimming
man.
And the Undulant he had escorted was a swimming woman. Or he could think of it as a dog, cat, mouse system. Different, yet still basically comprehensible.