Viscous Circle (12 page)

But the others, intent on the battle, swept up in it, did not receive his message. The position of the two suns was not right; he could not attract the attention of his associates. The charge continued.

The Monster flashes doubled in intensity and frequency: "HATE! HATE! HATE!" They were angry about the loss of their companion. An emotion long suppressed in their species was being brought out; they were reverting to a primitive state.

One of Rondl's group disbanded. This was awful! They were all caught in the malign spirit of the battle, suffering emotional overload, and could not get free. Even if some received his message to desist, they were no longer capable of responding to it.

Rondl slowed, hoping to cause his companions to slow. Then he could lead them away from the Monster ship and allow them to cool. But it didn't work; they charged right on. His reticence only made it seem that he was losing courage. So he had to resume his place in the lead, hoping to think of something else before disaster ruined them.

Another Monster disbanded; then two more allies. Casualties were mounting, just as they would in a real battle. What horror had he loosed among these peaceful people? Was this any better than the havoc wreaked by the Solarians?

They arrived at the ship. Limn went near it, trying to get inside so he could disrupt its operation. The others surrounded the remaining Monsters, flashing savagely.

"That's enough!" Rondl flashed in a full sphere. "Enough! Enough! We have achieved our objective."

But still they fought, radiating hate at each other. Another Band, overwhelmed, disbanded; and another. It was carnage! The destruction-fever was on the group, and they couldn't fight it, just each other.

At last the last Monster-ship defender disbanded, destroyed by the messages of hate bombarding him from all sides. Victory.

Then the Bands settled down, exhausted, finally paying attention to Rondl. But it was too late for nine of them.

Now that he had their attention, he hardly knew where to begin. They had gotten into the spirit of violence too well, and paid the penalty. Buried in the Band nature there was, after all, a remaining spark of aggression, of violence, and he had brought it to the surface with its consequent mischief. He had evoked another kind of monster—the one that lurked deep within the Bands themselves. Now he wished he had not.

At least they were educable. "This is what a real battle might have been like," he told them. "War is hell. Hateful things occur. People have to be toughened to violence, or it overcomes them. We lost a number of us in this exercise because we were not toughened enough. Those of us who survive are the hardened ones. But the hate of the true Monsters will be worse. We must become more disciplined, and more resistive to negative flashes, if we are to have a chance against the real enemy." As he said it, he realized its truth: discipline. That had been the major weakness. He had to have his troops responsive to leadership at all times.

Another Band disbanded.

"But the exercise is over!" Rondl protested.

"Now we are realizing what we have done," Tembl said. She was the philosopher; she was working it out. "We have, however briefly, become monsters ourselves." And as the others picked up her flash, two more disbanded.

Rondl had hoped to conceal this fact from them, but perhaps it was best that they know. In the very process of opposing oppression, they were losing the values they lived for. This, too, was the nature of war.

 

 

 

Chapter 7:

Dream

 

 

Rondl relived the mock battle in a dream. He experienced the flush of excitement as he and his troop charged, then the flashing "HATE! HATE!" of the pseudoenemy. How powerful it was, like Cirl's "LOVE! LOVE!" yet opposite, making him want to disband. And beside him others
were
disbanding, going to their mythical reward. They believed in the Viscous Circle, and so they threw away their lives for trifles. He knew better than to do this himself, yet now he felt an almost overpowering temptation. To leave this misfortune behind, and return in comfort to the Viscous Circle—

He woke radiating horror. Cirl was there to comfort him. "A nightmare," he told her. "An unpleasant dream. All those needless deaths in that practice mission, some of our best personnel lost—"

"There is no death," she reminded him. She had not participated in the mock battle, having been busy helping new recruits to orient. Rondl was now immensely grateful for her absence then. Gentle Cirl would have been the first to disband.

"Still, they should not have—"

"Disbanding is perfectly natural. You need feel no guilt about that."

She, too, believed. She, especially, believed. It was one of the pleasant things about her. He loved her in part for that belief; it was her signal of faith and innocence, the qualities he lacked. "I know you feel that way. You were considering disbanding when we met," he reminded her fondly. "You were even annoyed with me when I interfered."

"True," she agreed guilelessly. "I am no longer annoyed."

"Yet if you had disbanded, wouldn't your grief have accompanied you to the afterlife?" Rondl asked, intrigued again by the notion of death as a mere transition between forms. The notion was insidiously tempting. It certainly would be a wonderful comfort to believe in such a thing—but he was too objective for that. "What then would you have gained?"

"I would not have gained very much at first," she admitted. "The disbanded aura remains discrete for a time, until it orients and finds its way to the Viscous Circle. But slowly the hurt would fade."

"Wouldn't it fade similarly in life?"

"It has done so," she admitted. "I am glad I did not disband at that time. I would never have met you."

"You do not find me repulsive because of my alien notions? Because I grasp the concepts of war and violence?"

She considered. "I think, at this pass, it is necessary for someone to grasp these horrors. You are the one who has assumed the burden, for the good of the society."

He had really been seeking reassurance that she loved him. He had gotten a disturbingly relevant answer. Could she also answer his doubts about the Viscous Circle? "And if you had disbanded then, and if the hurt you carried with you had been too intense to fade in the afterlife, what then?" Now, in a perverse countercurrent, he was trying to make her see that the mythology was pointless—and hoping that it was not, that she would have a sufficient answer. Wouldn't it be better to embrace such an illusion, to relieve himself of his morbid fear of extinction?

"When the individual aura/soul rejoins the Viscous Circle, all hurts spread out, diffuse, dilute in the viscosity of the totality, and affect the individual only slightly. A great hurt to one is insignificant when borne by the entire soul-mass."

"But you, also, would be diluted! You would lose your individuality at the same rate, stirred into that enormous mass!"

"Yes, that is the beauty of viscosity," she agreed. "Maybe you should have let me go. I almost want to do it now. If you will come with me—"

Rondl concealed his sudden horror. "We have other tasks first," he said hastily. He certainly didn't want her disbanding now, or taking him with her! "The burden I have assumed, for the good of society—"

"Yes, yes of course," she agreed immediately. "And you must rest, for there remains so much to do."
 

Rondl returned to his interrupted sleep, reassured.
 

And dreamed again. This time it was more realistic than before. He really felt the stress of battle, and the hate seemed to come from genuine aliens. Such malignity! Yet now Rondl answered it with his own flashing hate and, fending off the alien animosity, led his people all the way up to the dread spaceship. It was a real ship now, with portholes and bulging turrets and grotesque projecting weapons that fired out bright light and physical projectiles. But Rondl let the light pass through his lens, ignoring its inanimate malignance, and avoided the slower projectiles. The Monster weapons could not hurt vigilant Bands. Yet his Band companions were not aware of this, and were disbanding in droves. He had to get them away from here so that he could instruct them how to handle this attack. He had not prepared them for reality, thinking this was only a mock run.

But he could not communicate with them. Everyone he flashed to, disbanded before comprehending. All his troops were exploding into gas and particles, until he alone remained.

A Solarian hatch opened. A grotesque Monster-head appendage protruded. Its liquid-turgid eyeballs swiveled gruesomely in their twin sockets to orient on Rondl. Its gross oral cavity writhed open, revealing Trugdlike rending teeth. Atmosphere issued from that appalling vent, charged with noise.

"And now, Ringer, you shall be one of us!" the Monster projected verbally. The most horrible aspect of this nightmare was that Rondl was able to assimilate that gross gaseous vibrational pattern that constituted sound, though he had no organ for it, and to comprehend the awful meaning embedded in that shaking atmosphere.

"No!" he cried, atmospherically, impossibly. But the thing reached forth a gruesome physical appendage, replete with ungainly long bone supports inside the taut flesh, and knobby joints, to grasp Rondl. At the end of this apparatus the flesh split into multiple tiny extensions, each of which had little bones and joints, and these extensions sought to close on Rondl's body. One of them poked through his lens, like the tip of the Kratch's spike. A more horrible contact could not be imagined; even a genuine Kratch was better than this, for it at least was comprehensible.

He woke radiating revulsion and fear, and again Cirl comforted him. She clasped him magnetically close, then withdrew enough to indulge in a rotating-mode dialogue. They discussed the dreams, and concluded that Rondl was experiencing the semi-alien emotion of guilt for the way he had led a dozen Bands into disbanding. "It is a function of your disbelief," Cirl said. "You suppose they are dying, so you are concerned. If only you believed—"

"What Band ever disbanded and then returned to report on the Viscous Circle?" he demanded.

"Why none, of course. No Band returns without first rejoining the Circle—and thereafter he is completely mixed by the viscosity, and returns only as elements of new-formed Bands, as new hosts are generated."

"Have any of these remixed fragments reported?" he asked.

"Fragment is an inapplicable concept. When a Band merges with the Circle, he loses his former identity, so there is no real memory."

"Experience changes us day by day, yet we remember," he reminded her. Her picture of the myth was so complete!

"Perhaps some do remember," she agreed. "That must be how we learned about the Afterlife."

"How do you know some Band didn't simply make it all up, for the notoriety?"

"For the what?"

Another alien concept. "To become widely known among Bands."

"Who would want to be widely known?"

"Or for whatever reason. So he invented—"

She was incredulous. "No Band would invent!"

He gave it up. Her faith was lovely, and was part of what made her lovely. Why should he seek to lessen it? "At any rate, I want to send no more Bands to oblivion—ah, anonymity in the Viscous Circle before their time."

"Yes, that would be proper," she agreed. "But still you need not dream about those already gone. Your dreams cannot affect them."

Here she was more sensible than he. Of course his dreams were useless, even as apology. "Yet still I feel remorse, for causing—"

"You did not cause," she reminded him firmly. "Disbanding, even in extraordinary circumstance, is always an individual decision. They decided to go."

"What about when the Kratch—"

"It is better to disband than to suffer physical demolition by such a creature."

So she considered even that case voluntary. To resign rather than be fired—whatever that alien notion meant. Charming naïveté. Yet the presence and persistence of her faith made his unfaith easier to bear. They turned about and made love, and it was wonderful.

Yet even then Rondl wasn't satisfied. "We have never married," he said.

She flashed humor. "You have used that term before. Alien creatures marry. Bands are able to associate amicably."

"Proft understood it. He said—"

"Proft is familiar with alien concepts, and may even forget they are alien. He surely knew what you meant, and spoke to that point without quibbling about the details." She was glowing more brightly now, enjoying herself.

"Yet there should be some social commitment, acceptance in the vision of the community, a family situation to raise offspring—" Rondl paused, realizing. "You know the concept! You were going to marry your prior male friend! You're teasing me!"

Her laughter radiated merrily. "How long I have wished to catch you just once in your own alien mesh of concepts! Of course I grasp marriage!"

"Then marry me!" Rondl flashed, relieved.

She glowed. "I will arrange this thing, if it pleases you." She was still shining out her satisfaction at having confused him about an unalien concept. Rondl realized he surely deserved it; he had been confusing her all along with alien concepts.

She took him out into space and summoned another circle, and in that sublime viscosity of common thought Rondl and Cirl agreed to love one another as long as it was convenient and mutually satisfying to do so, and to see that their little Band was properly treated when it arrived.

Afterward, individual Bands flashed to Rondl. "That was a pleasant gesture," an orange one said. "How nice to make your love public for all to appreciate. I think I shall do the same, one day."

Most Bands, Rondl realized belatedly, kept marriage private between the two parties concerned. Since there were no records, it really did not matter who else knew about such agreements. So he had, after all, brought an alien tinge to this. But he was not dismayed.

 

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