"Wait, stay!" she exclaimed, all aflutter with the abrupt change in her fortune. "I have juiceberries... you must be hungry...."
"The bearer of bad news may not eat with the bereaved," he said, quoting a tribal maxim.
She paused. "It is bad news." Yet she did not seem mortified. The truth was, Flint's unexplained absence had been worse than his death, for by his death he had given her legitimacy. She was not glad for his death, and he knew she loved him—but by accepting his death she also accepted his love for her, expressed as part of that message of death.
How truly the Tarot had spoken when it signaled death in his future—but called it also a transformation. He had thought to die in Polaris Sphere, and had not; now he knew for what his death had been saved. This transformation would right things as no ordinary death could have done. Everyone in the tribe knew he had not married Honeybloom—but she would now be a comparatively wealthy woman, if no one objected—and to object would be to call the dead Flint a liar. No one wanted Flint's ghost to return for vengeance against that slight, so no one would say a word. Especially since the records of Imperial Earth would provide legitimacy. Flint had been a powerful man in life, quick and sure with his weapons; he would be a terror in death.
As his widow, Honeybloom would have to become the wife of the Chief, who took care of all widows in accordance with tribal custom. Since most widows were old—at least a year, equivalent to thirty Earth-years—she would receive more attention than the others. She would never be as lovely as she had been, but even her secondary bloom would be a marvelous thing, for she was full-bodied and gentle.
Now Flint's son would be legitimate, and perhaps grow up to be the leader of the tribe, for he would be stepson to the Chief and surely among the strongest and most skillful, as Flint had been. Yes, it was best this way.
But now, too, Flint could never return, even if he completed all his missions for the Sphere. This tribal life, and indeed Outworld itself, was forever behind him. That hurt.
He left Honeybloom, made his way to the grave of Old Snort the dinosaur for a sympathetic word, and finally sought out the old Shaman. It was night before he found the half-blind Earthman on the hill, squinting at the stars.
"Shaman, I grieve," Flint said, sitting down beside the white old man.
"All life is grief," the other agreed. Tribesmen often came to him for advice and magic; that was his job in this primitive society. "I perceive you have suffered grievously indeed—and I regret that no spell of mine can give you back your lost arm or do more than alleviate the pain in your foot."
"It is not for my arm I grieve, but for myself," Flint said. "For I am dead. I died today to spare my son the shame of bastardy. Did I do right?"
"You are but a child! How can you speak of dying?"
"I speak as messenger for one far removed. I am a ghost."
"A ghost." The dim old eyes tried to penetrate Flint's expression for a moment, then peered uselessly into the night sky. "We are the eye of Draco the Dragon, once the Pole Star as seen from Earth, now its farthest recognized colony. Yet there was another dragon, long ago. Draco the Greek legislator. In 621 B.C. he was given authority to codify the laws of the city of Athens, so as to alleviate the need for private individual revenge for wrongs. This he did—but his code was so severe that it was said to have been written in letters of blood."
"Letters of blood!" Flint echoed. "How well you understand!"
"In that code, debtors could be sold as slaves. You have abated your debt similarly—"
Abated his debt! "Not all cultures require so harsh a remedy," Flint said, thinking of Tsopi the Polarian and the debt he had shared with her. How much better that system was!
The Shaman turned to face Flint. "Honeybloom is a fine woman, better than I credited at first. You have done right."
Flint rolled to his knees and embraced the old man with his one arm. There were tears in his eyes. "You know me, Shaman!"
"It takes an old fool to know a young one. I note you have matured, and have mastered the art of transfer, only a rumor in my day. That was why they summoned you to Earth?"
"Yes. My Kirlian aura is very strong." Flint shrugged. "I will give them the word about Honeybloom's pension, and the Imps will do it." Because there was now enough credit in Flint's personal account to pay a hundred widows. As the most potent aura in the Sphere, he commanded an excellent rate of pay—for which he had had no use, until now. "But I wish to be sure that the money is used wisely, for the benefit of Honeybloom and my son. There might be those who would cheat her—"
"I will arrange for a trust," the Shaman said. He smiled. "Protected by magic, of course. There will be no abuse."
"I thank you," Flint said.
The Shaman looked at him again. "You have aged." That seemed incongruous, in view of Flint's present body, but it was true.
"I have had to age," Flint said. "I have become disgustingly civilized. I travel the galaxy, now—or at least our local cluster of Spheres."
"Cluster." The wrinkled, almost sightless eyes searched the sky again for the stars they could not see. "Will you tell me?"
Flint's mission was secret—but he knew he could trust the Shaman, his childhood mentor, the man who had given him the intellectual basis for survival in the amazing galaxy. "I will tell you everything."
And he did. It took several hours, but it was good in the telling, even the bad parts.
"Nothing could have given me more pleasure," the Shaman said at the end. "You have restored my sight; you have shown me the universe."
"No, only a few near Spheres," Flint said modestly.
"And a near galaxy. Do you not see the identity of the Queen of Energy?"
"No. It baffles me. It could be any Sphere, even a supposedly friendly one. I have looked upon my enemy many times and not known her."
"She is from Andromeda Galaxy—an enemy agent sent to eliminate you, for you are the major threat to their project. You can go anywhere they can go, even to Andromeda itself, seeking out their secrets."
"Andromeda!" Flint exclaimed, suddenly seeing it. "That must be it!"
"And beware—for she obviously has a way to orient on your transfers. Wherever you go, she can go—and she will kill you, for she knows you while you do not know her, and you have humiliated her. Never forget she is a woman, though quite unlike Honeybloom. Whatever guise she wears, wherever she hails from, her motive is not yours. Hell hath no—"
"Hell is a straight line, in Polarian mythology," Flint said. "And a dry place without zones in Spica. Shaman, you have saved my life!"
"I hope so. Tomorrow I will see your widow about your death. That was a very nice gesture on your part, Flint."
"I do seem to achieve my best effects in the modes of my deaths! It was circular. What else was there to do?"
"Nothing else—but it took a man to do it."
They stood up and shook hands, Imperial-style. "Farewell, friend," the Shaman said.
"Farewell—friend," Flint echoed, feeling the tears in his eyes that had not been there when he parted from Honeybloom. He had thought he had come to see her, but now he knew it had been for this conversation with the Shaman. He would never see either of them again.
9
Daughters of the Titan
*notice: multiple mattermissions to hyades open star cluster, including 200 kirlian enemy entity*
—hyades! that means they've found it! send agent immediately—
*she is only just freed from spica her kirlian is down*
—I know mattermit her there—
*to another galaxy? the energy expense*
—call for concurrence, all available entities—
oo :: CONCURRENCE
—that satisfy you? this is an emergency! mattermit her NOW!—
*(sigh) POWER*
—CIVILIZATION—
"We have another mission for you," the Minister of Alien Spheres said as Flint animated his own, restored body.
"Not today, Imp," Fli
nt said. "My Kirlian's so low I'm ready to phase into the next host I animate. I must have been six months on the road."
"Three months. Your aura intensity is down to fifty percent, still the highest we have. You're not in trouble yet. But in this case you'll use your own body, because there are no hosts where you're going. In fact, no life there at all."
"What kind of a Sphere has no life on it?" Flint demanded, intrigued.
"An Ancient Sphere."
The Minister paused to let that sink in. Flint knew about the Ancients, of course. Some of their earthworks were on Outworld, and others were scattered across the galaxy. The Ancients had had the hugest interstellar empire ever known, perhaps three million years ago; they had possessed secrets of technology that modern Spheres could only glimpse. "You have my attention," Flint said.
"We have located a well-preserved Ancient colony in the Hyades, a hundred and thirty light-years from Sol," the Minister said. "Do you know what that means?"
"Taurus Constellation. The Horns of the Bull." If there was one geography Flint knew well, it was that of the near stars.
"The horns of a dilemma. The Hyades are at the approximate intersection of four Spheres: Sol, Polaris, Canopus, and Nath. All have colonies there, but these have their own primitive mores and we prefer not to involve them. This is a matter for the Imperial Planets—but, none of these four exercise specific authority in that region."
"Because none want to. A hundred or so stars jammed into a cubic parsec of space. Hard to get a night's sleep with all that starlight."
"It's not that bad. It's an open cluster, not a closed one. The question is, which Sphere has jurisdiction now? This Ancient site may be the most important find in the galaxy. Who excavates it?"
"What makes you so sure there's any more there than there's been anywhere else? Three million years make a big difference."
"This one's on an airless planet—and it hasn't been touched."
"Airless!" Flint said. "No deterioration?"
"Almost none. It's the best-preserved Ancient site ever discovered, we believe. A peppering of meteorite pocks, but apparently its location in the cluster protected it pretty well even from space debris. Otherwise, it's intact."
"Which means there may be a functioning machine, an Ancient machine—"
"Or an Ancient library that would enable us to crack the language barrier and learn all their secrets," the Minister said, his pale face becoming animated. Flint had regarded the Ministers as basically devoid of individuality, but now a bit of character was beginning to show. This one really cared about his alien Spheres. "The Ancients had no Spherical regression; they were able to maintain a galactic empire with uniform culture and technology, as far as we can ascertain. They solved the energy problem. If we had that secret—"
"Then I could retire," Flint said. But the notion no longer filled him with enthusiasm. He had had himself put in the records as officially dead, so that Honeybloom would have his pension. There was no longer any life to retire to. And this business of traveling to strange civilizations had slowly grown on him; this was his type of adventure.
"You could retire, having saved our galaxy," the Minister agreed, not aware of the irony. "We have elected to compromise. We have sent message capsules to all our neighbors with the news. The potential significance of this discovery transcends local Sphere boundaries. The other Spheres of this cluster have agreed to a cooperative mission, with all discoveries to be shared equally, for the good of the galaxy. They are notifying their neighbors, and we hope several of these will participate also. We have of course also advised Sphere Knyfh of the inner galaxy, but naturally they cannot afford to mattermit a representative five thousand light-years on speculation."
Flint nodded. "If all the Spheres mattermit their own physical representatives to the Hyades that will be some menagerie!"
"That's why we're sending you. You have had direct experience with some of these creatures. You will be able to recognize them and deal with them despite their strange or even repulsive aspects. Other humans would be at a severe disadvantage."
"That's true," Flint agreed, remembering the way human beings had seemed to him when he occupied a Polarian host. He had been shocked and nauseated, and so had blundered badly. Of course, he still suffered some from an aversion to illness or deformity—his recent excursion in the body of a one-armed boy had been a real exercise in control!—but alienophobia was a nearly universal phenomenon. This Hyades group would not be the most compatible assemblage!
Yet the prospect remained intriguing, and not merely because of the monstrous potential of the Ancient site. To deal physically, in his own body, with all the alien sapients he had known only in transfer....
He arrived at Gondolph IV at night. Four bright stars were visible in the sky, overwhelming the more distant field. They were Gondolph's neighbors, II, III, V and VI, all within half a light-year, but they had the aspect of stars, not suns. No perpetual day here after all; the cluster was not that tight. Maybe someday he would visit a closed or globular cluster; then he'd see something!
The cluster of civilizations was not that tight, either, he thought. Each Sphere functioned independently of its neighbors, with only minor interactions. Together the massed Spheres made up the disk-shaped cluster of the Milky Way galaxy, like so many cells forming a creature. The Milky Way had also operated largely independently of its neighbors in the cluster of galaxies. Until recently....
Flint was in a spacesuit, and it was no more awkward than adapting to an alien host-body. This was not like the old Luna spacesuits, clumsy and suspect; the material of this suit fit him like a sheath of exterior muscles. It yielded wherever his motions required, but maintained comfortably normal atmospheric pressure. A porous layer next to his skin permitted the transfer of fluids and gases necessary to his health. His body would not suffocate from lack of oxygen or drown in its own sweat. It had discreet airlocks for intake and outgo, so that all natural functions could be accommodated readily and safely. The suit was tough—but it had limitations. If it were perforated and not immediately patched, he would quickly die of exposure and decompression. Therefore he carried no power weapon; it was too possible for it to be used against him. He was, however, armed—unobtrusively.
He looked about. The Hyades, mythologically, were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the nymph Aethra, and they were half-sisters to the Pleiades. There were two ways to relate that to the present situation; the Titan was the Milky Way galaxy, and his daughters the Spheres, perhaps seven of which would be represented here. Or the Titan was the empire of the Ancients, and his daughters were the scientific and cultural artifacts left behind—each one of immense potential significance to the contemporary scene.
At a time like this, he longed for the ability to journey back into the time-frame of the Ancients. Not merely to penetrate their technological and cultural secrets, but just to get to know them as individuals. Surely they had been something very, very special!
But now to meet his companions—and commence the archaeological research. A Nathian lifeship had discovered the site and set down the first mattermitter. For reasons comprehensible only to the Nath mind, that device had sat on the planet unused for twenty Earth years. News of galactic peril brought by micromessage from Sphere Polaris, and the quick transmission of transfer information had brought this site back into awareness. The Nath government had recognized the possible relevance and finally revealed the existence of its device. After that, things had moved rapidly. More mattermission units had been sent through the first and attuned to their Spheres of origination. Thus all representatives could be shipped at a common time.
They were to meet at a designated staging area within the site. Flint wondered why the units hadn't been grouped together to begin with, but assumed it was to provide a certain initial privacy. The shock of coming face to face with alien monsters—yes, it was better to allow some spacing and nominal adjustment room. But the Nathian organizers might have had some
quite different notion.
Flint's eye was attracted by a surprising but familiar form: the disk of a Canopian flying saucer. He had thought these craft were airborne, but evidently they used another mechanism. At least this one did, for it traversed the vacuum effortlessly. It spotted him, and coasted down to hover close above. "Conveyance, Sphere Sol?" its speaker inquired in the standard language of Imperial Earth.
"Sphere Canopus comes in style," Flint observed, grasping the flexible ladder that descended for his convenience. "You mattermitted the whole craft?" That would have cost tens of trillions of dollars worth of energy, unless they had worked out a really economical system.
His benefactor turned out to be a Master: facet-eyed, mandible-mouthed, with wings forming a cloak, and half a dozen spindly legs. It looked like a monstrous insect, and perhaps it was—but it was also highly intelligent and of inflexible nerve. In Sphere Canopus these were the Master species, while humanoids were Slaves—and Flint had learned the hard way not to interfere with that social scheme. In fact, he had developed a lot of respect for the Masters. "What we do, we do properly," it said in its melodious voice. "This does not imply any pleasure in the task."
Of course. The Canopian Masters wanted to be left alone to run their Sphere in their efficient fashion. Slavers generally did not appreciate the cynosure of dissimilar cultures. But the one in charge of Flint's case when he had visited there in transfer, B:::1, had yielded to the inevitable, and Canopus had joined the galactic coalition. "I am Flint of Outworld. I visited your Sphere a few months ago."
The Masters seldom showed emotion, but something very like surprise made this one's mandibles twitch. "I regret I did not recognize your specific identity, in your natural host. I am H:::4, of Kirlian intensity forty-five."
"Your government risks a high-Kirlian entity on a mattermission mission?"
The Master extended one thin leg to touch Flint's shoulder. Even through the suit, Flint felt the power of the aura. It seemed higher than forty-five—unless his own reduced aura made the differential seem less. "The secret of the Ancients necessarily involves some aspect of Kirlian force. I suspect all representatives here will be Kirlian, even as you and I."