Viscous Circle (11 page)

"Love, love, love!" he broadcast, drawing nearer, orienting more perfectly to the light of Sun Dazzle while she oriented on Sun Eclat. And he felt her response, more wonderful than any intellectual thing could be:
Love, love, love!
There was communication, but of a nonintellectual, nonobjective nature. Love was not intellect, but feeling. The other side of the lens.

Then Rondl stopped thinking and gave himself up entirely to feeling.

 

 

 

Chapter 6:

War

 

 

Rondl floated before a class of twenty young Bands. All were attentive to his beam as it flashed across the enclosure and reflected from the curving wall. Could he get his message across?

"This is the story of the ugly Solarian and the three innocent species," he said. He had the nagging feeling he had adapted the story from some other narration, but he could not think what that might be. There was nothing similar he knew of in Band lore. "The Solarian is a gross physical creature with bone-filled extremities, flesh-filled torso, and liquid-filled eyeballs sliding within moist sockets—"

There was a shuddering flash of revulsion among the students. He was overdoing the horror! Rondl cut short the description, not wanting to disturb them too violently. "And an asocial nature. He comes upon a creature of a different species who is bathing in a favorable light while contemplating an esthetic notion. The Solarian desires this particular patch of light, though there is plenty of other light from this sun, so he shoves Creature One aside and takes the place for himself. Now how should Creature One proceed?"

The students were responsive. "He should move to a new spot," a blue one replied. "Unsocial behavior by one party does not justify the same by another party."

There were affirmative flashes: this was the consensus. "So Creature One moves to a new spot," Rondl continued. "But the Solarian concludes that the new spot must be better than the old, so he shoves Creature One again. Now what should One do?"

There was a trace of doubt, but again the answer was to move.

"And the Solarian, determined that Creature One shall have no peace, pursues him there. It seems that Creature One cannot avoid mischief merely by moving, for the Solarian is jealous of any comfort he may possess. What should One do now?"

There was increased doubt. "He is in an untenable situation," a green student concluded. "All he can do is disband." The others, after due consideration, agreed.

"So Creature One is gone," Rondl concluded. "Now the Solarian casts about and comes upon Creature Two, of a different species. He seeks to move Creature Two out, but Two, having noted the futility of moving, refuses to budge. She is an extremely esthetic member of her species, but she is in the way of the Solarian. So he destroys her."

There was a muted flash of horror. Yet not of disbelief, for the current intrusion by the Solarians into Band space was in their awareness.

"What should Two have done?" Rondl inquired, forcing them to tackle this ugly question. When they could not answer, he prompted them: "What could she have done to save herself from destruction?"

Now, reluctantly, they tackled the problem. "She could after all have moved," a white female student flashed.

"But the ugly Solarian would have followed until she had to disband," a yellow one objected.

"So she would have gained nothing by passive resistance," a black one concluded.

"Except perhaps dignity," a gray one put in.

"She needed another alternative," a brown one said.

"Yet if to remain or to remove are both negative—"

They were getting into it, as Rondl had hoped they would. His hypothetical situation was forcing them to struggle with difficult alternatives. Time to give them some help. "I fear Creature Two is finished; she had no viable alternatives, in the face of the Solarian's ugliness. Now the Solarian casts about again with his liquid-filled eyeballs, as his appetite for mischief seems to be insatiable. He spies Creature Three."

"Oh, no!" the white female flashed, already horrified.

Rondl paused, letting them build up morbid curiosity. He was, he realized, a fairly good storyteller; he must have done some of it before. "Now Creature Three has observed the prior two histories. He realizes that it is futile either to move or to remain. In fact, he knows he can do nothing to help himself—alone." He paused again. The key concept was coming up, and it had to be presented properly.

"But two creatures would still have trouble," a bright-red student objected. "First the Solarian would move one, then the other."

"Unless they act together," Rondl suggested.

The class was blank. They did not understand. Bands did not work together, except to help each other briefly or to mate. The ad hoc formations were exceptional. Here was the delicate point.

Time for a separate theme. "When I spun out of control, another Band helped me to recover. When my friend Cirl fell in the water, I brought her out. There is ample precedent for one Band helping another in need."

"True, but those were special circumstances," a silver student said. "Those were positive acts. It would have been unsocial to allow another to suffer when it could readily be prevented."

"If your friend is attacked by a monster, would it not be positive to help your friend?"

They were muted, pondering that. Some had picked up the flash about Rondl coming to Cirl's rescue when the Kratch attacked her.

"Now Creature Three has enlisted the aid of a friend. Together they are stronger than the single Solarian." Again Rondl paused. He had been building up to this gradually, trying to keep them with him. Would he succeed? "Now there does not have to be asocial behavior. The two creatures simply say to the Solarian: 'If you push one of us, both of us will do the same to you.' Now what do you suppose the Solarian will do?"

They considered. "He will depart," a purple student suggested, a trifle uncertainly.

"Then no one has suffered," Rondl concluded.

Immediately there were objections. "But suppose he does push?" They were as yet unable to express the concept "Attack."

"Then has the Solarian not brought the counterpush upon himself? He knew that various actions would have certain consequences. If he lumbered on his gross bone-filled extremities into a wall, he would come to an abrupt and uncomfortable halt. If he drained the liquid from his eyeballs, he would lose his sight. If he pushed Creature Three, he would be pushed back by two creatures. He had been warned; the choice was his. Creature Three has merely helped set the scene."

But they had trouble with this. "Suppose the Solarian brings another monster, to destroy them both?"

"Then perhaps Creature Three needs to fetch more of his own friends."

"But this would escalate! It would be—" The students could not find the applicable concept.

Now was the time. "It would be war," Rondl said. Now they were ready to absorb the necessary definition. "The organized effort of many creatures to safeguard their interests against aggression by others." Would any students disband, or had he brought them to it positively enough?

None disbanded. The discussion became animated. "How could many creatures organize? Bands do not organize."

"They must have a leader," Rondl explained. "One who guides the activity of all. Then they can act effectively."

They considered and discussed and questioned. But they kept remembering the invading Solarians, and inevitably came to agree with his suggestion. In fact, several of them elected to accept his leadership in the effort to save the Bands from the ugly, liquid-eyeballed Solarians.

"But I was not recruiting!" Rondl protested. "I was only presenting the case, to see if people could accept it."

Proft had been present, but without flash. Now he entered the discussion. "It is a good case, but you must be prepared to complete it. This, I suspect, is to be your project."

Rondl realized that if he retreated now, it would seem that he did not believe in his own thesis. Someone had to stop the invading monsters, and it seemed he had to be the one to try. "I will recruit," he said. "But I will insist that any person who wishes to join me check with his family and friends first, so as not to make a rash decision. The action I contemplate may be difficult for Bands to comprehend or accept, and certainly can be dangerous. People may be disbanded."

"Disbanding is merely a return to the Viscous Circle," the red student flashed. "It is not an occurrence to be feared."

Belief in Band Heaven seemed to be universal. Risks did not bother these people as much as they bothered Rondl, because they did not really believe in death. Was it fair to them to put their lives in jeopardy on the basis of that faith?

"I would not encourage any of you to disband merely because you don't mind doing it," Rondl said carefully. "There may be important things remaining for you to accomplish in this life." He hoped that was both accurate and diplomatic. He had no call to disparage their faith, though he regarded it as myth or superstition. "So consider carefully, before risking your physical lives. The task I offer—" He let it lapse into implication.

"Let us disperse now and consider separately," Proft suggested. "Those who wish to enlist in Rondl's effort may do so tomorrow. He has other classes to address today."

Other classes! This was rolling along much more swiftly than he had anticipated. Yet he had to complete what he had started.

As it turned out, Rondl spent many days addressing assorted groups. After the first day, and following each class, an increasing stream of recruits came. Not every Band who received his message decided to join, but one in ten did—and as time passed, the ratio improved. Soon Rondl had more than a hundred recruits.

It was time to start training. He wondered whether he had done something like this in his prior life. Certainly he had had some similar experience—if not physical, then through research. Strange, though, that there was no news of any project of this magnitude; if he had done it here on Planet Band, someone should have recognized him.

First he had to organize the volunteers he had, and categorize the associated abilities in his group with attention to the job they had to do, considering their general reluctance to act in an unsocial manner and their readiness to disband rather than oppose the onslaught of a monster. This was unlikely to be easy. First he had to toughen them, make them able to contemplate violent action and then to participate in it.

The technique came to him as he formulated the problem. He had to decivilize the opposition, make the enemy seem beneath consideration as a sapient species. It was easier to oppose a monster than a fellow sapient. The Solarians had to be monsterized. That should not be too hard to do, since they were most of the way there already.

Rondl set up a series of skits with assigned parts. A suitable planetoid represented a Monster space ship. As a matter of policy, he no longer referred to Solarians; they were all Monsters. The planetoid was a cylindrical and partly polished chunk of rock with assorted fissures and outcroppings; it really was ideal for the purpose. It suggested the shape of both the Kratch and the Solarian spaceship, reinforcing the impression of monsterism without being too obvious.

Certain hardened Bands were stationed around the "ship" and assigned to flash crude impulses of hate at all who approached. This took some practice, and one trainee disbanded, but in due course the mock cadre of Monsters was ready.

Rondl led the practice attack with a picked squad of his most promising recruits. One was Limn, a yellow-white male whose specialty was alien mechanics; he understood space vessels and thought he would be able to disable one if he could get inside it. So he was about to try to get inside the mock ship. Another was Tembl, a dark blue female of winsome magnetism who planned to study philosophy, but had a lot of emotion and felt impelled to rout the invader from Band space. A third was Blut, a gray student of Solarian languages; he knew Solarians were not asapient monsters, but he had had a friend disband prematurely because of the invasion, and wanted no more of that. Despite their mythology, Bands did have a certain objection to involuntary or untimely disbanding; for one thing, a prematurely disbanded individual brought less than the optimum amount of accumulated experience back to the Viscous Circle. Thus the harvest was unripe. It simply wasn't proper to undertake a physical life only to return without full experience. This represented a certain waste of the loan of a Soul. So though Blut was incapable of conceiving it this way, he had a score to settle with the Solarians, and Rondl was glad to have his linguistic expertise in the party. He wanted to be able to talk with the Solarians, if only to warn them to withdraw. That was the civilized thing to do; it would make his effort legitimate if the Monsters then ignored the warning.

If
they ignored it?
When!
Rondl somehow knew that nothing short of violence would cause them to reconsider. It would be as useless to reason with a Kratch as to expect the Solarians to desist merely because someone asked them to.

They flew toward the ship. Suddenly the hate flashed from it: "HATE! HATE!" Though it was a setup, on a mock run at a pretend ship, and they all knew it, the scenario abruptly seemed to come to life. An actual message of hate—that had phenomenal impact! Most Bands had never experienced anything like this. The ship became metallically menacing, and the creatures associated with it became Monsters indeed.
 

"Hate!" Rondl flashed back, and the Bands with him picked it up, at first tentatively, then with more conviction. They were, after all, the objects of mindless hate; how could they fail to respond?

They flew closer, flashing their mutual animosity, getting into the terrible spirit of it. It was as if a cloud of malevolence encompassed them. Suddenly one of the mock Monsters exploded. Particles puffed outward in a dissipating cloud.

Oh, no! That person had disbanded. Rondl realized that this practice exercise had become too serious. He had concentrated all his effort to make it realistic, to overcome the Bands' natural reluctance to indulge in violence, without realizing that success could be as mischievous as failure. The hate broadcasters had not been properly prepared to withstand the return of their hate. He would have to abort this session and prepare more carefully for the next. "Desist! Desist!" he flashed in a spiral.