Viscous Circle (19 page)

"There is no such thing as a lack of personnel when an Ancient Site is involved. We'll start a whole new bunch of agents if we have to. But for now we do have two."

"Stick with the two. Even forewarned, new ones will not be competent. But if I go back, leave the host aura out. I don't want to be distracted by a whole new set of memories and obligations." Ronald marveled at himself. Did he care what obligations the host Band might have? "I worked things out myself; I want to finish them myself."

Branst shrugged. "It may be academic. With only two agents remaining—"

"And no news yet on the location of the Site—"

"Yes, I suppose we'll have to send you back. With memory intact. And hope the attrition problem has been solved. Even a single agent is enough, if he knows enough to survive and to do the job." He made an expansive gesture. "You'd better take a break, now; it'll be a day at least before we assimilate the two reports and plan our next move. You're anxious to see your wife, I'm sure."

"I sure am," Ronald agreed. Then wondered privately:
was
he?

Branst was quick to catch the doubt. "You have a problem?"

Ronald spread his hands, embarrassed. "We're near the end of our tenure. I'm not quite sure I want to extend."

"No problem at all. If you figure you have little time left with her, play it for all it's worth. If it doesn't work out, you've lost nothing."

Moron!
Ronald thought. But aloud he agreed: "Maybe so. She's a good woman. We just don't seem to hit it off perfectly. She doesn't go for the Transfer duty."

"The Service can arrange to have you debriefed elsewhere for an extended time," Branst said. "You don't have to see her at all. But what's the point? Go settle it."

"Right you are," Ronald said. It was pointless to discuss a complex emotional situation with a military man. They shook hands, and he left the debriefing premises.

 

 

 

Chapter 10:

Woman

 

 

He entered the null-gravity system and hurled himself along. He had always enjoyed this aspect of life at the Station, but now it reminded him of the traveling mode of the Bands. Their light construction and use of magnetic lines made them essentially free-floating. He saw himself now not as a Solarian temporarily free of gravity, but as a Band in different form. At least that was his subjective impression of the moment. He knew he was no Band, of course; he was merely experiencing a temporary subjective reversion, as was common among recently returned Transferees. In a few hours his reorientation would be complete, and the entire Band experience would have no more force than a dream or distant memory. Yet right now the effect was potent and poignant.

How much force did a dream have? As a Band he had suffered what he took to be nightmares, actually unconscious enactments of his real nature. Cirl had helped him stave these off, and he had been grateful to her. What was Cirl doing now? Did she think him dead, and would she disband? He did not like the thought of that. He regretted having deceived her, though at the time he had not known it was deception. He had not realized he was a Monster.

The tunnel sent off sideshoots leading to the various subdivisions of the planetoid—hydroponics, recreation, personnel processing, training facilities, and so on. There was even a carefully cultivated wilderness area. But he was headed for home, not because he was really that eager to brace Helen, but to get into a private situation where he could unwind without embarrassment. There was no telling what the future held at a place like this, and he needed to be restored as quickly as possible.

This was a flying city, and also a military station. It was only partially self-sufficient. Should war come to this sector of space, the Station could become independent, but at the sacrifice of combat readiness and efficiency. So there was no point in becoming obsessed with self-sufficiency. The Station protected its sources of supply by protecting System Sirius—which was as it should be. Without such stations, the Solarian Sphere would be as vulnerable to alien encroachment as were the Bands.

There it was again—that lingering disquiet. It was likely to be harder to shake off this Band experience than it had been for prior Transfer missions. Had he spent too long in Transfer this time, running down his aura, or was there something else? That blanking of his memory had been troublesome, even damaging; unlike other missions, this one had gotten to him, causing him to believe he was really an alien. Maybe that accounted for it; his continuity of identity had been interrupted.

He entered the residential section, automatically drawing out his fins to make the glide down. Bands did not do this; they rode only on magnetic lines. It seemed to him the Band way was better.

Helen was waiting for him. Her hair was arranged in a billowy red cloud that enclosed face, neck, and shoulders artistically. She wore a translucent blue dress that complemented the hair, and elfin slippers. She was an extremely well-formed woman, even after four and a half years of marriage, and knew it, and knew exactly how to show her body off to advantage.

Why, then, did she look like a Monster?

Ronald landed imperfectly, just missing a cornstalk, but his wife seemed not to notice. She stepped toward him, arms spread, smiling brilliantly, "Welcome home!"

Ronald arranged to stumble. He dropped to the ground, avoiding her embrace. Why had she dressed up for him—and why was he nonreceptive?

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Are you hurt?" She helped him up.

"Just a little out of phase from the Transfer," he said. "Takes a few hours to realign. You know that."

"Yes, of course," she agreed immediately. "I understand it was a rough one. Come inside; I'll make you some tea."

Tea. A beverage. A liquid that Monsters imbibed. Bands never imbibed. "No thanks. I'll just stay out here a moment and get organized."

Again she was agreeable. "I'll set up chairs."

"I fear I've scuffed your garden."

"It doesn't matter." She bustled about, setting up the chairs. Space was limited, here in space, so that most furniture was temporary. A garden would not grow well under a chair; it needed access to the scheduled rainfall and hours of admitted sunslight.
Sun
light; there was only one sun, here.

So now she cared for him more than for her garden. Did absence make her calculating heart grow so dramatically fonder? Ronald distrusted this. Helen wanted something, and planned to use attention and sex appeal to get it.

Best to tackle the matter forthrightly. "What's on your mind?"

"Does there have to be something on my mind?" she asked archly.

"Always. I scuff your dirt, you smile. That means mischief."

She dropped the pretense. "Before you went on the last mission, our marriage was foundering on indifference. While you were gone, I thought about that."

"Why?" He had appreciated her sendoff, but had not suffered illusion about the overall prospects.

She looked startled. "To preserve the marriage, of course. Why else?"

There was the question she hadn't answered.
Why else?
"If the marriage is going to founder, that is the best time for it to do so. We can simply let the term expire and go our separate ways. We don't need to go to heroic measures to extend an untenable relationship. That's the whole point of term marriage—to put a peaceful and expected sunset on mistakes. In prior centuries it was a much rougher situation."

"Ronald, I thought you wanted to extend!"

He realized it was true. She had intelligence and sex appeal, and she kept house well. One need never realize that she had a laboratory job at which she was quite competent; she was content to play the housewife with him. Whenever he came home, she was there, though surely this complicated her own work schedule.

That was why he had married her, and why he had wanted to remain married to her. But her need for him had been less than his need for her, and she had done nothing to change that situation, and he saw now that that had gradually turned him off. He did not want to be vulnerable. Now she had inexplicably reversed—and he was being turned off more sharply.

"As far as I know, I have done nothing to merit any change of heart by you," he said. "I haven't even been here."

"That's it," she said. "You were away, and I had a chance to think it out. Whether I'd prefer life with you, or without you, or with another man." She had a precise way of expressing things, without hems and haws or stumbles or regretted misstatements, just as Cirl did.

He was still comparing Solarian to Band! Yet it was true: in this one respect, and perhaps in others, he had fallen in with similar females. Had Cirl in fact been a surrogate for Helen: expressive, competent, but of a sweeter disposition? "Such reevaluation is necessary at intervals," he said noncommittally.

"Certainly. We don't agree on some things, but you're not a bad sort."

"Thanks," he said with irony. He had expected a more positive assessment. "You're not bad yourself, for a Monster."

"Monster?"

"Private image. To the species I transferred to, Solarians were Monsters." Actually, he himself had foisted that image on them.

"Oh." She reset her legs and her train of thought. His eyes necessarily fixed on the one while his mind fixed on the other. "Then the returns started coming in," she continued. "Six agents in succession, wiped out. No returning auras. I realized I might not see you again, ever. That made me think much more deeply. Generally your missions are not matters of life-or-death. I knew then that I cared for you more intensely than I had thought. It was a kind of shock treatment, a vision of hell."

"Hell does not exist," Ronald said, feeling awkward.

"That depends on your philosophy. You are atheistic; I am religious. I won't claim to believe in a literal hell, the kind with brimstone, but I do believe in a final accounting and in the perfectibility of the spirit. Certainly there is hell-in-life, and that is what I sampled, briefly. Without you, I would be less than I am, and that I hardly care to contemplate. So let's not debate about literal hell, and just concede that visions of hell certainly exist."

Just as the mock viscous circle existed. Again there was that similarity of outlook. Ronald found himself unable to respond directly to her implication. She was saying that she loved him, or at least that she wanted to renew their term marriage. Before this last mission, he would have been delighted to accept. Now he was in doubt.

"You know, the Bands have no vision of hell," he said, deciding to make a more open test of his insight. "But they do have one of heaven. They call it the Viscous Circle—a great soul-mass comprising all their auras mixing viscously together."

"Ringer Heaven!" she exclaimed, smiling.

"Don't call them Ringers. They are Bands."

"You kept your promise!" she cried. "You tried to appreciate their viewpoint."

"My memory was blanked; I remembered no promise."

"Unconsciously, then. That was possible, wasn't it?"

Ronald was surprised. "Yes, it was."

"How do you feel about the Ringers—the Bands—now?"

He sighed. "It's a Utopian society. They don't fight, they don't war. Each person lives and lets live, and helps anyone who seems to need or want it."

"That sounds wonderful! But suppose one attacks another?"

"None do. There are no Band criminals."

"But if some alien species moved in—"

"As we are doing now?"

She chewed her lower lip, then her upper lip. Doing that, she looked very much like a Monster. "You know, I don't like our alien policy. Of course I'm loyal to my own species, but sometimes the way we move in—but yes, what do the Bands do when faced with violence?"

"They disband in droves. Suicide. Go to their Viscous Circle heaven."

"They're not fighting? Not even to protect their home?"

"Only one group fought—the one I organized. Now I understand why I alone possessed the ability to do that. I'm a Monster."

She looked askance at him. "Are you playing with me, Ronald? That's the second time you've called members of our species monsters. I don't think it's funny."

"I wish I were playing! It's coming back strongly now. A completely peaceful society, and we're destroying it. A year from now there won't be a Band left. Genocide! We'll get our Ancient Site—but at what a cost!"

"You sound like me!"

Ronald considered that. "I suppose I do. I never really understood your view before. But now that I've been a Band—can you imagine how it grates to hear these fine, truly civilized creatures called Ringers?"

"I think that's wonderful, Ronald! You've seen the light. I think that was the main thing separating us before, though I always hoped, believed, that someday it would change. I sensed in you the capacity for that change. You were a warrior, treading down other species as though they were all monsters to be slain, while I sought to protect them. Now you want to protect them too."

With a vengeance, he realized. He had been trained to overcome alien monsters, starting with that three-headed dog, and had continued to do it—until this mission. Now the passage of time was not realigning him with the Solarians; it was bringing him to greater identification with the Bands. He had suffered some sort of conversion. His fundamental orientation was changing; the essence of his longing now was alien. "The harder they fall..." he murmured.

"It's your long-buried conscience emerging."

"But I am a military man!" he protested. "Or at least I'm associated with a paramilitary venture. I must follow my orders and complete my assigned mission. They'll be sending me back soon, along with the other surviving agent—this time with our memories intact. I will have no excuse not to locate the Ancient Site."

"You could resign," she said.

"They'd only send in new agents. It would be less efficient, and there would be many more losses, but new ones could do the job, now that I've prepared the way. My first report has already done the damage. I'd know I was responsible for what happened."