Cluster (17 page)

Yen evidently there was a Sphere that opposed this cause. They had traced his transfer to Canopus and sent an agent there, not to help him but to kill him. She had failed, and had had to turn about and help him, ironically, in order to protect the secret of her identity. The alien voices in his brain had indicated she was to be sent to the Ear of Wheat.

And he had a fair idea whose host-body she would occupy.

He had to act quickly, for the agent was deadly. She knew transfer technology, so could return to her Sphere after dispatching him. She probably didn't even have to educate the Spicans; her knowledge might be so sophisticated that she just might be able to make do on her own. Maybe her government was able to recall her without a transfer unit at this end. He should not gamble with it. He had to nullify her first, and return to Sphere Sol with the news. Maybe the Minister of Alien Spheres would know which Sphere she came from, from the hints Flint had picked up, or maybe Flint could transfer to Knyfh Sphere and consult with their experts. One thing was certain: the galactic allies had to locate that enemy Sphere and neutralize it, or the whole effort would be sabotaged before it ever touched Andromeda.

Could he somehow trap and interrogate the alien agent? Flint rejected that immediately. He lacked the expertise, and it was too risky here. Better to nullify the agent, return to imperial Earth, and let them send a party to deal with the agent. Or have her shipped back to Sol Sphere with him—no, he had tried that before, and she had somehow slipped the net. He could not trust her to transfer again. Play it safe; give her no chance to foul him up.

Yet he retained the image of
C
le of A[
^th
] of Sphere Canopus, a pretty little thing in humanoid terms. The host body was not the transfer mind, of course, and he could not judge the nature of the entity that had possessed her; yet it was hard to disengage the two entirely. Body did make a difference; he had to admit to himself that he would not have loved Honeybloom had she been ugly. And that powerful Kirlian aura of the other Sphere entity, as strong as his own; alluring. He had begun traveling to other Spheres partly to find his own level of aura, after all. Enemy agent she might be, but he did not want to kill her. Not yet.

Two Impacts spied him and swam up “Bopek—a charge of rape has been lodged against you,” one said. “You will accompany us to the hearing.”

“Rape?” Flint was stunned. “I never–”

“Did you not depart the Impact zone without authorization and enter the Sibilant zone?”

“Uh-oh. Violation of the zones was a serious matter, as he would have known had he bothered to check his host's memory. He had been careless. Better to admit the truth. “I was under the influence of the healing salve–”

“And there you encroached on a Sibilant/Undulant pair and assumed the role of catalyst, forcing on the involuntary mergence?”

“I did not realize–”

“And as a result, a Sibilant offspring was created, forcing unanticipated parentage on the original Sibilant?”

Flint realized that he was in serious trouble. Ignorant of the mating system of this species, and intoxicated by the salve, he had not taken time to explore the cultural restrictions stored within his brain. The whole matter had seemed complex and irrelevant to him mission. Now it was clear: mating was a three-entity affair, impossible with two, compulsive the moment a third appeared. The third served as a catalyst, forcing the other two to mate immediately. Like the game of scissors-paper-stone, which he had played as a child on Outworld though no real scissors or paper existed there, the order of the matchings determining the outcome. Scissors cut paper, paper wrapped stone, stone crushed scissors. So the gender of the catalyst determined the gender of the offspring, but the offspring did not match the catalyst. Hence the intricate zone system, in which visitors of only one gender were permitted at a time the game could not be played unless all three were present.

Since major construction required the talents of all three types, some subzones had been instituted, and couriers brought otherwise unauthorized Undulants through the Impact zone to the subzone without encountering any Sibilants. When Bopek had danced into the Sibilant zone, he had trespassed in much the way a strange male trespassed when he entered a harem. He had thus encountered a Sibilant with an Undulant visitor, and had become the catalyst, forcing involuntary mergence. That, by this culture's definition, was rape.

He was guilty.

But he could not linger for the trial and penalty. The foreign Sphere agent might already be here, and he had to nullify her before she got oriented and nullified
him.
His mission came before the niceties of the Spican etiquette.

“Fellows, I apologize,” he said.

Whereupon he invoked he most disgusting crime of which a Spican sapient was capable. He “fushed” them. He visualized them as a Sibilant and an Undulant, himself as a catalyst, and puffed out his bodily perimeter to intersect theirs. He overlapped them both, then contracted, hauling them together inside his flesh.

The act was appalling. Only in the filthiest of jokes was it even conceivable. A wave of intense revulsion almost overwhelmed the mind of his host. This was despicable homosexual rape! But Flint, desperate and rendered cynical by his recent experience, forced the two to intersect each other. Then he expelled them violently, firing them through the water, linked to each other.

Both Impacts were unconscious, overcome by sheer shock and horror. And Flint was now guilty of a capital offense. His Impact brain urged immediate penance in the form of suicide. But he had already suffered his readjustment, his impairment of sanity. The sense of separation he had achieved during his prior sexual encounter shielded him. He hated himself, but he swam on.

Now he was near his original awakening spot, guided by Bopex's unerring directional/distance sense. The injured undulant was still there, in the temporary sub-zone, swimming uncertainly. He was on time, probably because her sudden awakening must have canceled their plans to remove her from the area.

This would be tricky, but he had to risk it. He swam up boldly. “I see my client has revived. Good work! I must now convey the Undulant to the assigned construction site.”

The others had not yet received news of his crime spree. Relieved of responsibility, they turned the Undulant over to him.

The Undulant accompanied him without protest, as he had been sure she would. The mind of the recent transferee was still orienting, still trying to assimilate the complexities of this Spican scheme. He had to keep that mind distracted until he could nullify her.

But first he had to make quite sure that she was his enemy agent, and not the real undulant. So he touched her.

There was the powerful aura, equivalent to his own. “So you know me already,” she said. “You are aware of my mission.”

“You tired to kill me, there in the Keel of the Ship,” he replied. “If need be, I shall counter you with love, here in the Ear of Wheat.”

“Ear of Wheat?” she inquired, perplexed. “Love?” She was confused, understandably, but also playing for time, until she could ascertain the best way to kill him. But he had the advantage of prior experience in this realm.

“I'll explain about the wheat,” he said as they swam. With one part of his mind he noted how smoothly she moved, despite her injury. Did the Kirlian aura of a lovely creature seek out a lovely host, or did the animation enhance the host? Twice she had been beautiful; it could be coincidence. “My species began to be civilized when it mastered wheat. Wheat is a grain, the seed of a grass, a type of plant. You have plants on your home planet?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not wheat.”

“This grain is nutritious and it keeps well. It enabled my ancestors, who were more civilized than I am, to store food over the barren winter months. They ground it up between stones and cooked it into masses of substance called bread. This reliable supply of good food greatly increased their survival capacity. In fact we call it the Neolithic Revolution, the great progress of the New Stone Age. They had to learn to weave baskets to store the grain, and had to make records to dispense it fairly, and this led to many other skills. Eventually it resulted in complete modern civilization.” How glibly he reiterated the Shaman's discourse on the subject! The Paleolithic Flint himself had little affinity for such concepts. But it was one of the bits of knowledge that was becoming clear as he perceived the astonishing manifestations of advanced civilization. “Wheat was so important that man even placed it in the sky. The system of Spica is called the Ear of Wheat, held in the hand of the Virgin. It covers her bare bottom, for she is evidently modest. But the relevance of wheat to Spica is even more pertinent.”

“It's pertinence eludes me,” she said. She was willing to talk, for she was stalling for time, thinking him a fool. Last time they had met, she had tried to kill him violently; this time she was being more cautious, but her objective was the same.

“Consider the mode of reproduction of wheat,” Flint continued blithely. If his plan worked, he could nullify her harmlessly. He didn't
want
to kill the entity possessing such an aura. “There are male and female elements, the pistils and the stamens. But they do not reproduce directly. There must be the intercession of a third element, to bring the pollen to its proper place. This is the wind. It carries the pollen from one plant to another. Without it, the wheat would not reproduce. Some other plants use insects as the third agent. The wind or the bee may be considered a catalyst, enabling the act to occur. It promotes reproduction, though of itself it may be sexless.” Now they were approaching the Impact zone boundary. Beyond it was the Sibilant zone: forbidden territory. But thanks to his distractive discourse, Llyana did not yet realize this.

“Now the Spicans actually have three genders,” Flint continued, guiding her on through the veil. “They are interchangeable, after their fashion. The third gender is always the catalyst, initiating the act without being affected by it, like the wind or the bee. The other two genders become the sire and the parent, depending on the order in which they meet. This is complicated to explain. Perhaps it is simplest to identify the pattern by means of the catalyst. If the catalyst is an Impact, the offspring will be Sibilant. If the catalyst is an Undulant, the offspring will be an Impact. And if the catalyst is a Sibilant–”

And now, of course, they encountered a Sibilant, for this was the Sibilant zone. It saw them and tried to take evasive action, but Flint zeroed in on it, bringing Llyana along, forcing an encroachment within the critical range. Like a man suddenly confronted with an act of human copulation in progress, the Sibilant had a reaction. But in this case voyeurism was not sufficient; it had to participate. Because this was the nature of this species; proximity was courtship and consummation.

The Sibilant turned about and closed on them. Llyana did not yet realize the danger; Flint's explanation, despite its accuracy, had prevented her from exploring the practical aspect of her host's knowledge. He had not told her the whole truth, just as some humans failed to tell their children the whole truth.

For the Sibilant was the third entity, the separate one, the catalyst. Position, not gender, determined the roles of the three participants an any sexual encounter. Since the approaching mergence was involuntary—at least on Llyana's part—this was technical rape. But the investigation would show that the Impact and the Undulant were intruders in the Sibilant zone, exonerating the Sibilant. Flint, as Bopek the courier, had to have known this. Therefore
he
was the rapist—again.

Now the compulsion of propinquity was upon the Sibilant. Like a buck winding a doe in heat, it jetted right into contact, extending its substance to interact with that of Flint and Llyana.

Now
she realized something was happening. “You are overlapping!” she exclaimed, exactly like a woman goosed in a crowd, indignant but not wanting to call too much attention to her complaint. She tried to move away, but could not.

The throes of mergence were upon them. Stimulated by the envelopment of the catalyst—as if it were a cup of fermented honey, or a soft bed of fragrant foliage, or a lovely nude girl—Flint proceeded to what was natural.

Llyana was a beautiful creature, literally. Her torso was as sleek yet rounded as any he had experienced, and her perimeter was delightfully permeable. She was formed to be permeated, penetrated, suffused, and as the ineffable environment of the catalyst brought them together he did all those things with her. Her potent aura enhanced the effect. He thought of Honeybloom as his flesh sank deeply through hers, and the whole of his being expanded with instant love. This was not after all so different from human mating; in fact it was better, for the presence of the catalyzing entity guaranteed a perfect union. There would be no last-minute hitches, no frustrating feminine changes of mind, no awkwardness of mechanical copulation. And the volume of interaction was so much greater; the whole body was involved, not merely one small organ. Like a perfect program, it scored—every time.

Llyana was struggling. “This—this–I am being violated!” she protested. “Who
are
you? What are you doing?”

“I am Sissix the sibilant,” the catalyst replied. “Let the inquest show that I did not seek this union. Nevertheless, I do not protest it; you are both handsome specimens.” Actually the catalyst had little reason to protest; catalysm was as close to completely free pleasure as this world provided. The parent was responsible for the offspring, and the sire gave up a healthy chunk of his flesh. The catalyst experienced the same triple orgasm, but without penalty. The Spican sentient's traditional view of heaven was a warm ocean filled with pairs of the other two genders, so that the individual could travel from pair to pair in perpetual catalysis. Unremitting ecstasy!