Viscous Circle Page 5

  Rondl caught the correct angle on the light of Sun Dazzle and flashed a message to Cirl: "You are the color of Moon Fair."

  He had sought to flatter her. He succeeded beyond expectation. She went into a continuous flash of gratification. Females, he recalled from his anonymous wellspring of odd information, liked to be foolishly praised. But he had better be careful, because if he flattered her any more than he had just done, she might fall off the line and spin out of control. He wondered again what kind of a male it had taken to cast her off. Rondl rather enjoyed this byplay, and he liked Cirl well.

  But how could he afford to like her? He had no memory of his past associations. Suppose he were married to another Band? This species, he realized now, was monogamous; individuals associated intimately with only one partner at a time. Other species in the Galaxy were different, some having several sexes, or group matings, or—

  But, frustratingly, the moment he realized he was gaining information that might be relevant to his past associations, the memory faded out.

  Cirl slowed, and Rondl positioned himself to take advantage of the two suns again for regular intercommunication. "Now the summoning," she announced. "It will take a while for them to arrive, but if we made a circle closer to the planet it would disrupt traffic, and that would be unsocial."

  To be unsocial was unthinkable in Band culture. Cirl's comments were constantly evoking additional background knowledge from Rondl's mind. That was useful in itself, though more was needed.

  Now Cirl broadcast a bright call: "CIRCLE—CIRCLE—CIRCLE—CIRCLE!" the words flashed out in a sphere that expanded at lightspeed as she rotated and revolved. Apparently this was a general summons to anyone receiving. She continued it for some time.

  Then responses came—"Joining!" "Joining!"—flashes from different directions, some from such distance that no Bands were visible. Rondl wondered just how far a meaningful flash could be read, and realized as he thought of it that there really was no limit. A tightly focused flash traveled as far as light could go; only the interference of dust and gas in space abated it, making it gradually less intelligible. There had been some instances of messages received between two stellar systems, though there the problem was one of alignment rather than clarity, since—but the memory faded. Still, he realized, communication was no problem at all inside a moon system; it was necessary only to intercept a number of Bands in the vicinity, and Cirl had evidently blanketed the region sufficiently to gain the desired responses.

  "But what is to happen?" Rondl asked while they waited. He remained bothered by his seemingly wide background knowledge of things that was nevertheless rent by gaping gaps wherever his interest was most specific. Why should he know about alien Spheres and not about Band circles? But of course this was what they were trying to find out.

  "A circle is best experienced," Cirl told him. "It can't really be explained."

  In due course the other Bands arrived. They were orange and gray and violet and all other colors, male and female, young and old: a complete assortment. But all were the same diameter, and very nearly the same thickness. The magnetic and optic properties of ring and lens required this particular size, so that all Bands could interact effectively. They were standardized in this respect; age and sex made no difference. They flashed greetings to the group at large; it was evident that most of them had not met the others before, but all found each other agreeable.

  What would happen, Rondl wondered, if Cirl's former male friend should appear? Presumably nothing; their relationship had been sundered.

  When Cirl deemed their number sufficient, she organized the circle. "Rondl, take your place downlight from me, on a suitable line," she directed, positioning herself flatface to Sun Eclat. "The others will fall in."

  "But what will this accomplish?" he asked.

  "You will discover." For once she was not being overly communicative.

  So Rondl took his place, stabilizing himself as Cirl did, unrotating, so that his stationary lens received her full beam. She moved him out a certain distance, then had him hold position. It took a certain amount of coordination to align both beam and line, but they did it.

  A gray Band fell in downlight from him, and others farther along, each taking pains to be the correct distance away. The communication was all one-way, with Cirl's flashes passing through a kind of tube formed in space by the growing sequence of stationary Bands. Some of them were unable to remain on a magnetic line and must have been in some discomfort, but they were governed by the necessary position in the formation and did not complain.

  Now, under Cirl's direction, the line of Bands began to curve. As it curved, so did the magnetic line, which was distorted by the pull of the line of Bands. Rondl angled himself slightly, so that Cirl's focused beam angled to the side. The next Band moved over to continue intercepting the beam, and the following Bands moved over farther. The tube kept curving until at last it closed on Cirl, completing the circle. It resembled yet another Band: a living ring. Several magnetic lines intersected it, each bending through part of the arc, then breaking free to continue its natural route. The formation began spinning slowly, so that each Band had his turn taking in energy from a line, then hanging on between lines. As the circle spun faster, the interception of lines became more regular, so that all participants had a comfortably sufficient supply of energy.

  Now, abruptly, the single-person stream of communication Rondl had been receiving from Cirl expanded in amount and intensity and quality and variety, becoming a group-communication circuit. Perhaps a hundred Bands were contributing their inputs—but it was no cacophonous jumble, but rather a supremely unified whole of many components. A hundred individual threads, as it were, had been fused into a single massive cable.

  And almost as he thought of that, fashioning a mental image of a multithreaded twined cable, his thought came back to him, modified by the input of all the other Bands. Suddenly the cable brightened, becoming amazingly lifelike, and each thread was a separate color, and the colors merged in the curving distance like flashes of light, making the whole wonderfully artistic.

  But it was the extraordinarily enhanced meaning that almost overwhelmed Rondl. It was as though his thought was magnified a hundredfold in power, clarity, and depth. For his communicative flashes were assimilated and modified by those of each other Band in the circle. What was valid was multiply enhanced; what was suspect was reduced or eliminated. There was a constant flow, the result of many minor corrections. This was the true viscosity, the remarkable yet consistent motion of comprehension. It was a marvelous experience.

  Now Cirl's thought circulated. "I convoked this circle for my friend Rondl, who cannot remember himself, and who suffers strange images like this one of some physical connection of threads. Where does he come from? What is his history? How should we proceed to return his history to him? He has odd flashes of information, yet is ignorant of much of what we take for granted. Does anyone know of him, as he was before his amnesia?"

  The massed thought concentrated on Rondl, who felt embarrassed by the cynosure. It was as if every level of his being was being scrutinized simultaneously, as if he were a cable that was being unraveled to its component threads. Many darts of query came at him, each tugging at a particular thread, suggesting identities that faded as the proposed match-ups failed. Very soon it was concluded: no one knew Rondl's nonamnesiac self.

  Then came a rapid survey of his informational oddities and lapses. A hundred beam-thoughts pried at his situation. It was like being interrogated by computer.

  Computer! For a moment the viscosity thickened and stalled. That was exactly the kind of oddity they were cataloging! What was a computer?

  "It is a big electronic machine with millions of informational bits that can be coded for rapid access, many circuits that respond to certain directives—"

  Machine? The circle was having trouble with this concept also.

  "A device that performs a task. A complex tool. Instead of—" But Rondl fou
nd himself confused by their confusion. Suddenly it seemed preposterous that he should be describing a thing no other Band knew about. Where could such information have come from? How could it be valid? What did he know about such an alien construction?

  Alien construction. Alien. The circle oriented on this. Had Rondl associated with alien creatures? Had he come from the farthest-reaching lines, the ones that extended all the way to the Spheres of other sapient creatures?

  They pierced him with investigatory needles. The massed experience of this randomly assembled group was considerable; some of them had traveled to other Spheres. They clarified that such travel was no casual matter; it required many years, the significant fraction of a lifetime, to reach even the nearest alien Sphere. Rondl was not physically old enough to have made such a trip. Soon the circle concluded that Rondl had indeed had some experience with aliens, but had not actually traveled beyond System Band. That meant that the only aliens he could have encountered were those of the local enclave, the hoppers of Sphere Bellatrix.

  They explored this in greater detail. The alien colony maintained in System Band by the Bellatrixians interacted only minimally with the natives. The aliens were huge greenish things with leg projections that propelled them in leaps across the surface of a moon or planet. They were largely nonmagnetic, unable to endure in off-planet space in their natural state. They had to wear special suits to contain the atmosphere they constantly bathed in, the gases passing in and out of bodily orifices. It was understood that the aliens would disband if this process of ventilation was ever interrupted, so devoted to it were they. The Bellatrixians could not traverse the lines alone. Apparently their gross physical features were necessary to enable them to host auras non-magnetically. They functioned, in their fashion—but what a horror it would be to be captive in such a host!

  Under the wealth of this information and feeling, Rondl responded. He had had experience with Bellatrixians! They maintained a moderate Sphere about halfway between Sphere Mintaka and Sphere Sador, both of which were huge. They resembled a creature he termed grasshoppers, which hopped from blade to blade—

  He lost it. The circle tried to evoke his further memories, but could not. No Band knew of this species of Grasshopper; none of the animals of Planet Band propelled themselves quite like that. But at least this was progress. They resumed the exploration of the nature of Bellatrixians:

  There was a certain compensation to this gross, limited form. The aliens were physically dexterous. They could support heavy objects and transport nonmagnetic things, and fashion impressive artifacts. Some few Bands had traveled the tenuous interstellar lines to visit Sphere Bellatrix, or had had friends who had done so in past generations, and reported that the aliens had constructed marvelous structures on their planets, like artificial mountains, with many lights and all manner of vehicles hopping from one to the other. Each Bellatrixian had a nest-hole in a structure that was shared with a mate or family; in this manner they kept their species going. Their machine structures were formidable—in this limited context the circle was coming to understand the concept of machine—and the aliens possessed matter-affecting devices they termed "weapons" that could cause their ships to disassemble like disbanding Bands, and planetoids to break apart as though smashed by meteorites. But these formidable creatures had not come to System Band to break apart planetoids but to "trade." They were eager to do this, for they could readily accomplish some things Bands could not, in exchange for some things the Bands could do more readily for them. As it turned out, this was a beneficial arrangement; the aliens removed some mountains that were inconveniently located, and hauled in some metallic planetoids that the Bands had not been able to handle. In return for these "services" the aliens accepted some of the skills of the Bands, such as the internal adjustment of magnetic circuits within semiconductors. The aliens had had to utilize clumsy metal threads sewn through other substances to fashion their crude magnetic circuits; apparently they were unable to reach in magnetically to modify the field properties of objects directly. Bands could do this easily, and could duplicate the magnetic attributes of given artifacts in much smaller compass without changing the shape or mass of the objects. The aliens had been at first amazed by this: how could a tiny block of metal be made to perform the complex switching operations of one of their gross devices—when the Bands did not even touch or change the object physically? But they were quick to accept such transformed objects once they tested them.

  At first the aliens had not even recognized the Band line generators and modifiers as constructs of sapience; they had thought of them as unique natural objects the Bands had happened to discover and adapt. But again they were quick learners. Now Bellatrix represented a good "market" for many magnetic artifacts of specified nature, and such artifacts were used in the alien space-traveling vessels and even for "export." That concept remained confusing; apparently "export" items were neither retained nor used, but sent to other Spheres in return for some intangible statement of status.

  Rondl found he understood the concepts of trade, services, market, and exports without difficulty. But this time he withheld his thoughts, preferring not to confuse the circle further. He merely absorbed the massed thoughts of the others, finding this process highly useful to his mental adjustment.

  It did not matter what the artifacts were used for. As long as the Bellatrixians were willing to accept such easy work in exchange for such imposing labors as moving mountains, the Bands were satisfied. In fact, a fair subsidiary vocabulary was developing, used by those Bands who specialized in alien negotiations. Such Bands could hardly be understood by others; they flashed glibly of "credit" and "deficits" and "investment," all things that seemed to relate to the mysterious alien system of "economics." They also flashed warning: it was their judgment that though the Bellatrixians were compatible despite their amazingly alien nature, they were typical of the species of the larger Galactic society. These species had concepts that were difficult to comprehend, even devastating. One that completely eluded the great majority of Bands was "war." It seemed to relate to the attempt by one species to degrade the welfare of another. Some few Bands had, by dint of deep study and prolonged concentration, managed to assimilate this concept. They had then disbanded. Thus other Bands had decided to leave that concept alone, and to remain generally clear of aliens.

  "I know of these aliens," Rondl flashed. "Yet it seems to be part of a general, erratic background I have. I also know of Mintakans and Sadors, and perhaps others if some key concept were to invoke them from my secret memory. But until such invocation comes—"

  The circle considered, and recommended in its viscous consensus that Rondl survey a wider range of Galactic species. Some one among them might have the associations suggested by his vocabulary. Then he could survey the particular Bands who had been in that region of space or who specialized in studies of that species. One of them might turn out to be himself, or at least an acquaintance of his former self. That would finally give him the information he was questing for: who was he?

  At length the circle disbanded, breaking up into its component entities. This was the way the spirit circle was supposed to be: a special, superior entity, losing fragments of itself to the physical Bands, recovering them when their separateness terminated. He understood that myth better now. But it remained a myth: the greatest viscous circle of them all, a deific entity created in the likeness of the most moving of living-Band formations. A really charming fantasy he almost wished he could believe in.

  Now they had a course of action: survey the alien contacts and look for a Band who had departed the association of the specialists in particular alien relations. A tedious, unpromising chore, but necessary—unless he preferred to travel out to the alien Spheres themselves, to see what matched his knowledge. If there were a Mattermission unit—

  A what? He lost it. Somehow he had had the notion he could blithely jump to far places without the passage of time. Of course he could not do that! He could no
t go to any alien Sphere without consuming years, and he lacked the patience for that sort of thing. They would have to research in a library instead.

  Except that the Bands had no libraries. This was yet another alien concept in his mind. A library was a place where references existed, open to all persons interested. Books, tapes, holo-recordings—all alien devices. There was nothing like that in this region of space.

  Cirl, however, was not dismayed. "We shall go to the Education Nexus and question the instructors. They have much broader experience, and will be able to help us."

  Of course. Young Bands, like the youth of all sapient species, needed to be trained. Animals inherited most of their vital patterns of behavior, but sapients had to be taught. Naturally the individuals with the greatest stores of information were the ones to do the teaching. Maybe these instructors had taught Rondl himself, and would remember him as a student. Maybe they had records—

  "Records?" Cirl asked blankly as they flew back toward the planet. "What are they?"

  Another anomalous concept! Aliens kept records; Bands did not. Material continuity was of little importance; what counted was the immaterial continuity of the Viscous Circle. Since all the Band information theoretically went to the group Soul eventually, no physical repository was needed. No wonder the Bands were not recognized as a Galactic Sphere. They simply did not organize themselves in conventional sapient fashion.

  Yet as he considered this, Rondl was not at all sure that the other sapients of the Galaxy had the better system. They discriminated against the Bands because the Bands were different. Difference was not at all the same as inferiority.

  Cirl was leading the way more slowly than she had on the way out, so that Rondl could use Dazzle as a beam source for communication and rotate for convenient converse. They traveled on roughly parallel lines and flashed back and forth. It was very pleasant, and Rondl found himself wondering whether it was possible to increase that pleasantness.