Viscous Circle (23 page)

Unless she turned him in privately, and still met him there, giving him further rope to hang himself.

Well, he had approached this problem at a tangent, obliquely. He hadn't found any better way. He had to try, to take the risks. The alternative was to participate in the destruction of the finest society he had known.

 

 

 

Chapter 12:

Double Circle

 

 

Rondl found himself in Cirl's embrace. "Hey, I'm not drifting!" he flashed.

She released him immediately, then moved down the line far enough to obtain a suitable angle on Eclat for flashing back at him. "Rondl! You have recovered!"

Suddenly he realized his Band host had been left unattended. That must have been a horror for Cirl! "I have recovered," he agreed. "But I have been in nightmare. Tell me what happened here."

"We were sleeping when you drifted off the line," she said. "I tried to wake you, but you would not revive. I brought you back to the line, but still you were blank. I was horrified. I realized that the strain of this unsocial campaign has been very great, and that you bore up under it without disbanding, as no other Band could do, but that it had finally been too much for you and your aura had taken leave of your body. But you had not disbanded. I remembered how strange some of your memories have been—so there was hope that you were away in that strangeness, and that you would return when your aura recovered. So I held your body, keeping it on the line, waiting for that recovery, refusing to believe you were gone forever even though—oh, I was so afraid!"

"That I can appreciate!" Should he tell her the truth, or pretend this had been an aberration? Her explanation was close enough to stand.

"Oh, Rondl—if you should disband, I don't know what would become of me or of our species! I think we would all have to join you."

Join him in oblivion? For they could not transfer to Monster hosts the way he could. That decided him. He had to be honest with Cirl, whatever it cost him personally; she was the one he loved. "Cirl, had you not helped me, I would have perished." At least his Band host would have, making it impossible for him to return, which amounted to the same thing. "I must tell you the whole story, though you may find much of it painful."

"You have always been fair with me," she flashed gladly.

"Cirl, I have recovered my memory."

That dimmed her color. "You know whom you are? You have other commitments?"

Yes, this was going to be difficult. "I do, and I do. But I also have commitments to you and to the species of Band. I now have two lives to reconcile. I fear you will not like what I have learned about myself."

"You have to leave me?" she flashed tragically.

"No! I am not leaving you!"
Yet
, he added mentally, feeling guilty.

"Then the rest I can tolerate."

He hoped she was right. Actually, she was not prone to disband lightly, for she had not done so when rejected by her former male friend, or when chased by the Kratch. But this might be a sterner test. "I must go to a rendezvous." But that had not been what he intended to say; he was evading the issue.

"I will go with you! Where is it?"

Go with him? Meet the other Monster in Band guise? Yet how could he prevent this? "The Maze Mountain." Would she know of it? Did it even exist? Perhaps he had no problem, in that sense.

"I can guide you there!" she flashed. "Whom must you meet?"

Her questions were making it easier; they provided form for his confession. "A female—a married female—who has had similar nightmares. I met her in this last nightmare, and must discuss it with her."

"You share your dreams with another Band?"

Treacherous domain! "Not as I shared them with you, Cirl! It just happened our nightmares overlapped—and now we must straighten them out in the waking state, to avoid further trouble." He flew along the line for a moment, considering. "Worse trouble." Like genocide.

"I could not enter your dream this time. Your aura was absent. How could she be in it?"

"This is the worst part of it," he said. "Cirl, I fear this will hurt you, and I would spare you if I could. I don't have to tell you—"

"Tell me. Anything is better than having you disband, or half-disband, dis-aura like that again!"

Why hadn't the original Band aura been returned to the host body for the interval? This body certainly would have died, had not Cirl acted so devotedly to save it, and Tanya's host might now be dead for the same neglect. That was criminal carelessness!

No, not carelessness, he realized as he thought it through. There were prohibitive risks associated with returning the native Band to his body. The Band, having experienced Monsterdom, could have second thoughts about this arrangement, and decide not to cooperate further. He might be appalled at what had happened and disband immediately, depriving Rondl of the available host. In a mission of this importance, it was pointless to risk this. It was also possible that they had done some damage to the original Band in the process of the exchange, not understanding the nature of Bands. He might have tried to disband in the Monster host. What would be the result? The Solarian body would not disintegrate, of course, but might well die. So perhaps they had no aura to return to this host anyway.

At any rate, they had had to let the Band host be blank for the brief time Rondl was back in System Sirius, not realizing how risky this was. That was just as well for Rondl; he preferred to keep the Monsters ignorant. And suppose the original Band had returned here, to find himself in Cirl's embrace? What would he have said to her? That could have been yet another kind of disaster.

"I will tell you in a moment. What have the Monsters been up to while I was out?"

"They remain between moons. I think our interference has made them pause. We have a respite."

"Good." Rondl gathered his thoughts and courage as they slanted toward the planet. Cirl was guiding him from one line to another, taking him toward a region on the planet's equator. He trusted her guidance. "This last nightmare was of the Monsters, as before, but more complete. I was not absorbed by a Monster host, I was the Monster himself. I interacted with other Monsters. One of them was called Tanya, and we agreed to meet in our Band form when the nightmare ended. We could not afford to have the other Monsters overhear our discussion, you see."

"But I still don't see how she shared your dream, when I could not."

"Because it wasn't really a dream. My aura really was in a Monster host, and hers was in another."

"But you did not disband! I could understand your aura retreating to deep inside you, or becoming extremely weak so that I could not detect it for a time—but how could it travel while your body remained?"

"In the alien Spheres there are devices that can move an aura intact from one host to another. Such a device was used on us."

She assimilated this. "So you were not really dreaming. You became a Monster, for a while."

"True. I really was a Monster."

"Your nightmares foresaw this. But how could your dreams know what was about to happen to you?"

"Because my unconscious mind, my deeper aura, knew. Consciously I did not know, for my memory had been blanked, but the information leaked out when my consciousness slept. This has to do with the nature of memory repression; it is not an erasure so much as a blockage. Complete removal of any part of a given segment of experience cannot be accomplished without enormous damage to the personality. Memory is like a holographic image, imprinted on every part and aspect of—"

"Holographic?"

"A visual concept. Maybe I should use another analogy. Memory is like a lens: you cannot remove a part of an image by eliminating part of the lens—"

"Of course you can't! The lens is a totality!"

"Yes. So is memory. So they really blocked my conscious awareness of my Monster status. Much of my vocabulary tied in with that status, which led to the many little mysteries of my communications, but I could not directly pass that block. Deep in my mind was the knowledge that I would—in due course—become a Monster. My nightmares were excerpts from that awareness, like refuse fished up from the deep ocean."

She ignored the alien concepts of refuse and ocean. "But no one can foresee the future!"

Rondl saw that she was not absorbing enough of his meaning. Perhaps she was resisting it on her own subconscious level. He tried again. "It was not necessarily my future. It may have been my past nightmares reflected, in distorted fashion."

She flew for some time in silence, flashless. This was a critical point. He had been trying to guide her to the realization carefully, in much the way he had learned to train his Band recruits, so that she brought herself to the fundamental concept. That way she would fashion her own emotional supports along the way, and safeguard herself against being shocked into disbanding; her mind should balk before accepting too devastating a concept. He had not managed this perfectly, saying too much and too little, but perhaps it would work out. "Before we met—in the time of your amnesia—you were a Monster?"

There it was; she had navigated it. "I was a Monster. A Solarian. That was why I kept remembering odd bits of alien concepts, which leaked out around the memory block and vanished the moment I sought further detail. My Monster aura was sent to a Band host."

"Your odd information!" she repeated.

"From my Solarian background." He was beginning to relax, seeing her accept it.

"Now you remember everything?"

"I do."

"All your Monster education, friends—do Monsters have friends?"

"They have friends. I remember it all. I share the Monster outlook. In that life I was a Transfer agent—one who had his aura moved to alien hosts, to gain information about their situation. Sometimes to foment trouble. I was sent here to find something important."

"And when you have found it—you will return to your Monster host?"

She had not taken long to get the essence. "When the mission is finished, they will recall me to my Monster host. I will have little choice in the matter. I might resist or avoid re-Transfer, but since my aura is alien to this Band host, it would inevitably fade as time passed. I can only visit this form; I cannot remain. That is my final nightmare."

"Then I will disband!" she flashed.

"Don't disband!" he flashed back instantly. "I don't
want
to go back. I want to stay with you!"

"I did not mean right now. I will disband when you leave me forever, since this life will have no brightness for me without you." She seemed quite matter-of-fact about it, and that chilled him. She had considered disbanding when jilted by her former male friend; this time she was certain.

"But there is no need for you to die just because I am not what you thought I was. Not what
I
thought I was! How could I live with my conscience, knowing you had perished because of me?"

"Do Monsters have consciences?"

"Some do. I do. Now."

"No Band perishes," she reminded him. "There is no guilt or sadness in the Viscous Circle."

So she believed. He did not want to disabuse her of this touching faith. "But I am not a Band; I'm a Monster. My kind does not believe in the Viscous Circle. I would be alive, knowing I could never join you."

She was instantly solicitous. "I had not thought of that! We must get you into the Viscous Circle!"

What harm was there in agreeing? It was such a nice concept. "I'd like very much to join you there. But I doubt it is open to me, to my kind." And he found that this was indeed very sad. What a fine thing it would be if the myth were true, and he could join. Better than any of the mythical human heavens!

"I must ask Proft," she flashed. "Maybe there is a way to get an alien, even a Monster, into the Viscous Circle. He will surely know."

At least there was no immediate threat of her suiciding. She now had a positive aspect to focus on. He did care for her, a great deal; his emotion was every bit as strong and pervading as human love. Ultimately he would be wrenched from her, but he wanted to spare her any hurt he could. "By all means, ask him."

"Do Monsters marry?" she inquired after a bit.

Trouble again! "They do. You must be aware of that; you teased me about my supposedly alien concept of marriage."

But this time she did not respond with a flash of mirth. "Did you marry?"

"Yes. Before I met you."

"So you have a Monster wife?" This seemed to bother her more than the notion of death, perhaps because love was more real to her than death.

"I do have a Monster wife. On a five-year term marriage, almost over." He was sure he knew what was coming, and he dreaded it. Females were females, the Galaxy over.

"You love her too?"

That was what he had feared. Yet the answer turned out to be easy. "I don't know. I thought I did, once. Then I met you."

Cirl was not swayed by the implied flattery. "What does she think of me?"

"Competitive, I think. But she knows it can't last between us. She knows about fading auras. So after you, there will be her—if we should choose to renew the marriage for another term, which is in doubt. That is the reality of my condition."

"Poor thing," Cirl said sympathetically.

"I'm so glad you can accept it," Rondl flashed. "I was really worried—"

"I don't accept it," she corrected him. "I merely defined the problem."

"But I thought—"

"Now we must convoke a circle and explore the matter properly."

"But I have to meet—"

"Another female?"

"That's not—"

She was flashless, and he realized that he had better agree to her circle. The Maze would simply have to wait. "Take me to your circle," he flashed with resignation. He should have known this would not be simple!

She sent out the spiraling summons. In due course other Bands arrived—many of them, and soon, for they were now close to the planet, where many congregated.

This time Cirl directed them into a double circle, one flowing one way, the other flowing the other way. The Bands were carefully interspersed, so that every alternate one faced opposite. Cirl herself was in the other ring, on Rondl's subjective side. What was this leading to? He had not known this variation of the formation existed, and didn't trust it. But he trusted Cirl, so he cooperated.