Viscous Circle (38 page)

Yet what would happen to the Bands if news of the Site's specific location and nature did not reach the Monsters soon—news from someone the Monsters were prepared to trust? The Monsters would proceed to Planet Band, perhaps doubling their ferocity in reaction to the recent deception. For the diversion of the Bellatrixian incident would not last long; the two Spheres would already be getting in touch with each other through Galactic diplomatic channels and negotiating a truce. So there would be no further bar to the destruction of the Bands.

Could
Rondl go to the Monsters himself, and allow them to destroy him with deep-probe interrogation? Yes, that would do it—but such a procedure took time, many days or weeks, as layer beneath layer of the subject's consciousness was peeled away and analyzed. The sapient mind was horrendously complex. Meanwhile the invasion of System Band would proceed, since the Monsters would suspect that his proffering of interrogation was merely a ruse to give the Bands time. By the time they verified the truth from his mind, the Bands would be gone. Tangt could convince them much faster, because she never had intentionally deceived them; her conscience was clean, and her probing could be accomplished in hours, perhaps minutes—in time for the Monsters to go to the Site and ascertain that it was exactly as Tangt said, before they proceeded to the destruction of the artifacts of the Planet.

He
had
to convince Tangt! Yet how?

Then it came to him. The Bands had an answer, for those capable of assimilating it. "You and I are Monsters," he told Tangt. "We envy the values of the Bands, but do not share them. We dream of peace in life, and fulfillment in death, but never actually grasp those dreams. Because we are what we are. A swine cannot wear a pearl; a Monster cannot be perfect. For us there is no peace, no fabulous realization of afterlife—"

"And no truth," she agreed bitterly.

"Very little truth. We believe in self-interest, not in truth. Our ethical framework has all the esthetic appeal of an eyeball fairly bursting with fluid. Only when we are ready to die for a cause can we truly be believed."

"Perhaps so. The Bands die for their beliefs."

"I am ready to die to save the Bands. I admit I don't have much future anyway, yet life is as precious to me as to any Monster. So my sacrifice will be genuine."

"You're not the suicidal type," she flashed. "You aren't going to convince me of anything by bluffing about something like that."

"Just bring the Monsters to this site," he said. "Believe me about just this much: it is not a trap. Tell them to transfer an electronics expert to another Band host to verify what I have told you about the Site. Explain how I lied to you before. I think they'll let you off."

"Stop this nonsense! I have no intention of—"

"And tell my Solarian wife, Helen, that I'm sorry about her, too. I want her to remarry, to provide a good home for our child."

"You are only annoying me with this blather—"

"For that too, I apologize. You are a better creature than I have been. Farewell."

"Now where are you—"

Rondl willed himself to the proper state, finding it surprisingly easy. His magnetic pattern reversed.

He disbanded.

 

 

 

Chapter 20:

Reality

 

 

Rondl discovered that consciousness remained. Had his aura somehow taken another host, or returned to his Monster body?

No—he had no familiar perceptions. He could not detect magnetism in the manner of a Band, could not hear in the manner of a Monster, and could neither see nor feel, physically. Yet he was aware of the gravity waves of a large mass, and the diffuse aura of another person.

"Tangt?" he inquired. But no flash issued from him. He seemed to have no lens, neither magnetic not physical. It was as though he was disembodied.

Or disbanded. He
had
disbanded! Yet how then could there be consciousness?

Rondl mulled that over as he checked and rechecked his situation. He was definitely conscious and definitely massless. He was able to perceive planets and stars and auras indirectly, or perhaps it was directly, without senses; but he perceived little else. He was unaffected by solidity and energy. He could—he did—travel right through the matter of Moon Glow without impediment, noting merely a slight change in his environment. He believed he could move similarly through the center of a star, barely aware of the heat. So: he was indeed disembodied, a ghost—a disbanded aura.

This meant that the mythology of the Bands had, after all, some basis. The aura did survive the loss of the host, at least for a while.

Yet he was not a Band. He did not believe in any of this. How could it affect him?

Well, Cirl had said an alien aura could join the Viscous Circle, if the alien disbanded in Band host and really wanted to join. So the philosophical basis seemed to be there, for what it was worth.

Still...

This could be a dream, a vision. Maybe he had tried to disband, had not succeeded, and now lay inert on the floor of the Ancient Site, inhabiting another nightmare world. If so, he would either wake in due course, or click finally into oblivion. That set of possibilities seemed the more likely.

Tangt's aura remained near. He tried again to communicate with her, but could not. Her aura remained bound to its host, chained to mass, and in that form it could not communicate freely with other auras. It was largely contained, restricted, dependent on the host, as a person became dependent on his spaceship when traveling between planets. That was a different universe.

There was nothing for him here. Even if this was merely a dream taking place while his body died, probably his essence would dissipate soon and he would pass painlessly into nothingness. Yet two things concerned him, even in this state. First, had he succeeded in convincing Tangt and saving the Bands? Second, in what state was Cirl? For in life or death, he wanted the Band society to survive—and he loved Cirl.

Was it possible that for her the rest of the myth had some validity? That she really had found a group soul? What a marvelous thing that would be!

Rondl extended himself, traveling without effort out into deep space. In this dream he made his own rules. He became aware of the Monsters, each of their auras crammed into its gross physical confinement, clustering around the rocky orbit of Moon Dinge like angry hornets. The battle with the Bellatrixians seemed to be abating; he had known that ploy was no more than a temporary diversion.

Then he traveled forward in time, suddenly discovering that he had neither spatial nor temporal limits, and noted how the Monsters abruptly focused on Moon Glow and then vacated the System. Tangt had done it! She had told the Monsters, and they had verified her story and given up this invasion. The Bands were saved!

Now he could expire. His mission had been accomplished. The ideal species would continue. His sacrifice had not been in vain.

Yet he remained. Why? Could—?

He spread out across light-minutes, spatially, searching for what he hardly dared hope for. After all, he was not a believer. The moons and planets of System Band became as pebbles within the immensity of his nonsubstance, tiny interruptions of little account. Size was a physical concept, hardly relating to his present state.

The universe was diffuse, the stars small and far apart. It no longer interested him. Nothing interested him except his quest for Cirl. If she had dissipated, then he had no reason to retain awareness. He could truly extinguish himself; he now realized that he had this ability, too.

The universe was large. The distances between the planets of one system were minuscule compared to the distances between individual stars, and there were billions of stars. He stretched into light-years, finding nothing. The tiny, confined auras of individual living creatures, clustered like maggots on their several little planets, no longer registered. Space went on and on.

Then he sensed something. It was neither a spatial nor a temporal thing; it existed greater than such minor definitions, in a kind of dimension other than whatever he had known—at right angles, as it were, to his universe. It was an encompassing quality vaguely like a sphere, a tremendous and significant something.

It was nonphysical, yet tangible to his present perception. Without vision there was no color, yet there was psychic color. The thing spanned the universe in its fashion, grandly turning, currents within it causing it to shift aspects even as he oriented on it.

Slowly he recognized it. This was a composite of human souls. This was Nirvana, by whatever designation.

So it was true. There was an afterlife.

Rondl found himself being drawn into the mass. This seemed to be where he belonged. Yet there was something missing—

Abruptly he reacted, flinging himself out and away, rejecting this resting-place. He searched for a different something. Through the continuums he went, orienting on—

He found it, with a convection of hope, a radiation of joy: another soul-mass, this one in the general spatial/temporal form of a torus. Its currents evoked its lovely viscosity.

Rondl! Rondl! You found us!

It was the aura of Cirl, jumping toward him, welcoming him—formless, yet recognizable, because she was herself.

Now at last he believed. He knew it was all true, all of what he had taken as mythology. Human Nirvana was real, for those who chose it; the aural afterlife of other species was similarly valid; and the Viscous Circle of the Bands was exactly as represented. They really did have an afterlife, or rather a larger existence, of which the individual life was only a fragment, no more than a planet of the universe—a single aspect amid the infinite variety of the totality.

Cirl had held herself discrete for him, not yet joining the encompassing mass, and now they were together. She had forgiven him his Monster blemishes and trusted in his perfectibility. She had waited because she loved him—and he loved her.

Together they floated toward the joy of the ultimate mergeance, the unity of the Viscous Circle.

 

 

 

Epilog:

 

 

As Rondl had seen, the ploy was effective; the Monsters departed System Band. The unique Band culture survived. Rondl and Cirl themselves merged into the ultimate viscosity of the Viscous Circle, sharing their wealths of experience with all the other auras of this group soul, giving it a better awareness of the nature of alien creatures. In time—though the Circle was essentially timeless—parts of the aura substance that had been theirs were infused into newly conceived Bands, continuing the natural cycle; and these new Bands, though remaining true to the pacifism of their kind, did have a slightly improved tolerance for the nature of Monsters. Future incursions by other sapients into Band space would be handled more realistically, with fewer automatic disbandings. The Bands did finally petition for Galactic recognition as a Sphere, so that future intrusions into their space were less likely. So the fate of Rondl and Cirl was as satisfactory as exists in these continuums.

The fate of the Monsters called Solarians was not as sanguine. Much energy had been expended in the futile quest for the priceless technology of an Ancient Site, and the government of Sphere Sol was now deeply in debt. As a result, the Solarians running the Sphere were at a disadvantage, and political and economic power shifted more rapidly to the Solarian/Polarian combine of Planet Outworld in System Etamin. Within a century Etamin was the dominant force within this Sphere, and the discredited authorities who had sponsored the raid on System Band no longer had power. In this incidental way, the Band episode helped shape the development of an empire. However, it was not an event that the Solarians cared to dignify in their history texts, and its significance was not widely appreciated among them until many centuries had elapsed and new standards of scholarship obtained. The names Ronald and Tanya did not become legend, and the names Rondl, Tangt, and Cirl were unknown.

Ronald's widow, Helen, in due course bore a son. She undertook a new term marriage, which was reputed to be more satisfactory than her first. The boy grew up to be involved in liaison work with non-Solarian sapient species and had a good reputation for competence, integrity, and empathy.

Tanya had brief notoriety for breaking the scandal of Ronald's betrayal, but when the Ancient Site turned out to be useless, she became anonymous. She retained an interest in the culture of the Bands and retired from Transfer service to labor on the Bands' behalf, eventually succeeding in getting their petition recognized, qualifying them as a legal Sphere.

The Polarian chaplain, Smly, returned to his native System of Etamin and counseled many of the important creatures whose influence was increasing. They called him "Smelly," in the fashion of Monsters, and said there was a good odor to his advice. Perhaps he influenced the decision to treat the Bands more graciously.

Thus the Bands survived, despite their mythology. Therefore the Viscous Circle survived, too, and this was perhaps the most important and least appreciated thing of all.

 

 

 

Author's Note

 

 

On May 8, 1980, I started writing the first draft of
Viscous Circle
. I had sold it the year before on the basis of a summary, and now it was time to get to it. I was running on a tight schedule, because my agent had gotten me contracts for five novels, more or less on top of each other; I had completed three and this was the fourth. Fortunately I am one of the most disciplined writers extant; I allow nothing to interfere with my work.

Well, almost nothing. I have two little girls and one big girl—daughters and wife—and a number of animals and neighbors and fans and similar ilk, and all of them seem to have better things for me to do than write my novels. So I try to isolate myself in my study, which is a twelve- by twenty-four-foot wooden cabin two hundred feet from the house, in the pasture with the horses and the squirrels. It has no electricity, and in the summer afternoons, even with all windows open, the temperature rises to 102°F. My glasses slide off my sweaty nose and I leave sweat-prints on my manuscript, but I do work. The ilk let me have about six working hours a day, seven days a week. I do sneak in reading at odd moments, such as while eating and watching TV and waiting in lines; and I have learned to write novels on a clipboard in pencil anywhere, such as when riding in a car, visiting relatives, babysitting horses, waiting for the dentist to proceed with his next torture, and similar occasions of otherwise wasted time.