Cluster (28 page)

“That is how he retains his position,” she agreed.

“Well, I meant everything I said, even if you
are
alive. I don't care how many Polarians laugh their balls off at my folly! I came to–”

“No one laughs,” she demurred. “What you have done is beautiful, more circular than any native could have managed. You have reenacted the legend of your star.”

“It was not really intentional.”

“It was innocent,” she agreed.

He drew apart. “It is time.”

“Yes.”

They circled each other, as before. Flint didn't care if the whole of Sphere Polaris was watching; he was going to abate the debt in style.

Tsopi laid down her provocative taste, and Flint augmented it with his own. The two trails fed on each other, building up the mood layer by layer as the two wheels spiraled inward toward the center.

At last they met. Flint's trunk and Tsopi's tail twined together, and their two balls touched each other in an electrifying spinning kiss.

Flint found that his body needed no instruction. As with Solarians and all other species both sapient and animal, nature sufficed. He knew it could not be worse than poking a stiffened stick into the body of the loved one.

Yet the steps of it astonished the human fragment of his mind. For at the height of his passion, Flint lay down and released his wheel. He had not realized that this was possible; he had supposed it was an inseparable part of his anatomy. Now it rolled slowly across the floor away from him, leaving him lame. Without that wheel, motion was virtually impossible; only in an extraordinary circumstance would any Polarian part with it.

The act of reproduction was one such occasion. Tsopi lay down opposite him and moved close. Flint took the exposed portion of her wheel into his vacant wheel chamber. The sensations were intensified excruciatingly, for they were direct; her secretions with his without being diluted by an intervening surface. Trunk and tail reached around to twine together, drawing the connection tight.

Now the real action began. The rim of Flint's torso met the rim of Tsopi's, sealing all the way around their mutual sphere, so that none of it was exposed to the air. The two of them spun it, rapidly. More rapidly than possible in any individual situation, for the wheel-controlling mechanisms of both parties were operating in tandem. Each had specialized adhesive muscles that touched the embedded surface of the wheel, moving it precisely and releasing it to other muscles. This was more than enough for ordinary locomotion. Now it was doubled.

The wheel spun so fast that it grew warm, then hot. Both Flint and Tsopi secreted extra fluid to bathe that sphere in its sealed chamber and alleviate friction, but still the heat increased. It was like traveling through a boiling lake at super-Polarian velocity. Flint knew, now, that that heat was penetrating the globe, making it pervious to the special juices. The elixir was reaching inward, deeper, changing the cellular structure of the mass, activating unique enzymes.

At last something within the wheel reacted. There was an electrochemical shift, as of a fire flaring up. It was the climax, that first stirring of buried animation. There was an instant of almost unbearable rapture as the shock went through the mass, then exhaustion.

Flint and Tsopi fell apart. The wheel rolled free of both of them, steaming. And while they struggled to regain their strength, complicated by the absence of their wheels, through which they normally ate, respired, and eliminated, the loose mass began to shake and flex as though something inside were trying to get out. It did not break open like a hatching egg; it elongated and unfolded, stage by stage, until it emerged complete, sculptured by the hand or wheel of nature: a young Polarian.

The newcomer spent some time getting the feel of his wheel and ball and achieving proper balance. Then, abruptly, he departed.

“Children take care of themselves,” Tsopi explained, her ball vibrating weakly against the floor.

“So I note. But what about us? We've been de-wheeled.”

Far answer, she disengaged her tail, put it to her empty base, and popped the little communication ball in. Her base closed about it despite the disparity of size. With difficulty she got up, until she stood balanced precariously on that tiny ball. There was her new wheel!

Then she cast about with her empty tail until she found Flint's trunk. Her ball socket embraced the available portion of his ball, as he had embraced her embryo-wheel before. For a moment the little ball spun swiftly between them in a remarkably intimate, sweet kiss, a wheel-copulation in miniature. Then she drew away, and took the ball with her. And with that pang of separation, Flint's remaining passion expired. He was sated.

Finally Tsopi wobbled over to his full-sized wheel, and nudged it forward with her body. Slowly it rolled until it touched him. He twisted about to seat it in its natural socket. The thing was cold and unpleasant at first, a slimy dead mass, but soon his torso warmed it and refreshed its surface lubricant, making it comfortable again. Now he was mobile. But he was unable to speak.

“Do not be concerned,” Tsopi said, vibrating her new ball against him. Her voice was burred, as though she had not yet gotten the feel of the equipment; his ball was slightly larger than hers. The burr of abatement, it was called; a fond allusion to a common satisfaction. “You will soon grow another, even as I lay down new protein around my seed to expand my wheel to full size. In our species, the female suffers her confinement after parturition, and the male is mute.” She paused. “We forgot about that, before; naturally the Big Wheel realized right away that the debt had not been expiated.”

Flint was already aware that the Wheel had done some uncircular scheming. But perhaps that had been necessary. How would the Big Stick—correction, the huge phallus—no, he was still fouled up in the symbolisms of translation, accurately as they might reflect the underlying thrust of Solarian culture—the Regent or Emperor of Sphere Sol have reacted to a Polarian emissary who refused to come to the point? He probably would have diverted the creature to some safe place, investigated privately to ascertain what the hell was the matter, then acted to correct the problem without much regard for the niceties of human convention.

So now at last the mystery of Polarian reproduction had been explained. The seed started with the male, becoming his communication ball, encased in just enough nutrient protein to keep it secure and serviceable, until he passed it along to his mate. Next time she mated it would become an individual entity. No, not necessarily; he realized now that this was an optional aspect of the exchange. Usually the female took the male's ball directly for her new wheel, in what humans would think of as a genital kiss. But if she had special regard for him, she saved his ball, substituting her own ball for the wheel, as on this occasion. In this manner she retained part of him for as long as she chose. After any mating she could transform that seed-bearing ball to wheel-status, thus setting up the union of their two genetic pools, or she could retain it indefinitely.

There was no parallel to this in human reproduction, but he liked it. The female had a very special control. Tsopi's next mating would be infertile, for her virginal wheel contained no male seed. Her first wheel, just manifested as offspring, was actually the legacy of her own male parent; in a sense she had mated with her father. But her first ball had been her own, therefore sterile, and it was now a sterile wheel. She could plan ahead, activating Flint's seed when she incurred a debt exchange with some other male she really respected, simply by having an interim non-debt affair to eliminate the sterile wheel. The debt system, in its subtler applications, was a very fine mechanism.

Actually, this was a variant of the three-gender system of Spica, for it required three individuals to produce one offspring. One male to provide the seed; the female to expand it to the proper size; and a second male to trigger it into birth. That was why consecutive matings could not occur in a given couple; a male could not trigger his own seed. Hence romance was one-shot, and there was no permanent union. The action of consecutive matings with one female now appalled Flint; it was a kin to the incest taboo of his own culture. Repetition was possible, since Tsopi's new wheel in this case was not his ball, but only in an emergency such as near-elimination of the species, or unavoidable repetition of debt exchange, would that become permissible. Much as sibling or cousin mating was possible among humans, and theoretically practiced by the children of Adam and Eve and the children of Noah, but never otherwise tolerated. No doubt facets of the concept of “original sin” entered here; a man should neither kill his brother nor impregnate his sister.

Oh, there was much to meditate on here, and comprehension of the Polarian system led to penetrating insights into his own human system. It would take a Tarot deck to unravel them all.

“Farewell, Plint,” Tsopi said. “The debt has been abated.” She minced unsteadily away on her tiny wheel.

Flint, though profoundly moved by the experience, no longer felt any desire to associate with her. All that interest, it seemed, had been concentrated in his ball, and now she had that. In fact, the male ball equated closely with the human testicle, in both practice and the vernacular of both species, and was the subject of dirty jokes. Yet ultimately it was the same as the female wheel. There were very strict language conventions here. Just as the tentacle was always called the male's trunk and the female's tail, the communication sphere was always the ball, and the traveling sphere always the wheel. Scratch a seemingly pointless but absolutely firm distinction, and sex was bound to be at the root of it.

What of his male wheel, however! Could it also become a young Polarian? A wave of deep disgust at the notion assured him otherwise; it was merely a mass of protein, a kind of storage of resources. Males could survive for extended periods by feeding on their wheels. One terrible Polarian torture—oh, yes, torture was known here!–consisted of isolating a male without sustenance for a prolonged period, so that his wheel gradually shrank, until it was as small as a ball. When he resembled a recently mated female, he would be released to suffer ridicule. Many preferred to seek their awn repose, rather than endure that humiliation. Another punishment was to remove and destroy the wheel, letting the individual survive or die as he might.

Enough: he now knew more than he cared to of Polarian biology. Tsopi was now the Queen of Solid, a mature female; their mutual dept had been abated, and he was free to communicate the secret of transfer to the Big Wheel. But–
 

But how could he do that, with no communication ball?

He knew the answer, once he delved for it. He would have to take a little more time, growing in his new ball. There would be no problem; the replacement seed was already making its way to the end of his trunk, where it would form the nucleus of the new ball. He had merely to relax and enjoy his recuperation. He was sure, now, that his Kirlian aura was not depleted; he had suffered emotional, not Kirlian, depression, and was good for months yet. Plenty of time to get back in physical shape. A valid excuse to get to know this delightful culture properly.

Flint rolled out of the animation area, heading toward the great, wonderful outside.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8:

Letters of Blood

 

 

*report: critical period notification of mired agent*

–Summon all available entities council–

COUNCIL INITIATED PARTICIPATION*–%::

–well, that's one more than last time proceed–

*our 200 kirlian agent now available for retransfer provided low-kirlian replacement exchanged*

%
low
kirlian transfer? Subject would rapidly be lost!
 
explain rationale%

*200 kirlian agent is our best familiar with this mission low-kirlian would be expendable after exchange low-kirlian would lose identity but remain suitable for specialized mission*

::now
I'm
confused! how can...::

*specialized mission is foster-care of offspring engendered by enemy agent on ours*

%our best agent mated with enemy agent? she was assigned to
eliminate
him!%

–it is a long story, %, as you would have been aware had you attended prior council–

%I was preoccupied with spherical matters %

–this is a
galactic
matter, of overriding import–

%don't lecture
me
, –! you think you're so dashed superior where would this galaxy be, if we %s hadn't%

::please, unity is the essence of power!::

–maybe we should let them achieve their own galactic coalition then they would bicker themselves to death as we do–

%extreme humor noted%

–accept our statement that this exchange is a necessary expedient–

::but she
will
kill him next time?::

–assuredly as victim of rape she is very angry no laser flasheth hotter than that of a female / wronged%

*concurrence*

::signoff::

*–%::POWER CIVILIZATION CONCURRENCE*–%::

 

*
 
*
 
*

 

It was strange being in a human host, with its angular perambulation and acute binocular vision and inadequate taste. Flint caught himself trying to roll, and tripping over his own feet. He had been Polarian a long time, and run his Kirlian aura low; it would have been easy to phase all the way into that sublime identity. He now regarded Sphere Polaris culture as generally superior to that of Sphere Sol. But that episode was over.

Return from transfer had been horrendous. He had suffered disorientation, pain, and convulsions. Apparently his human body had contracted some malady during his absence. That could have accounted for some of his orientation problems at Polaris; it was reasonable to assume that the connection between aura and body never broke entirely. The prolonged vacancy had weakened the physical vessel. But modern biotics and therapy would have the matter rectified in a few days, and then he could begin his long recuperation.