Viscous Circle (18 page)

Again the computer ignored the irrelevancy. "Did you identify any individuals of the Ringer species who might have this information?"

Ringer. Something about that term made Ronald grow still more irritated. "The way to obtain the information is to query for it in a viscous circle."

This time the machine, figuratively, blinked. It thought it was being mocked, but was not yet sure. "What is the nature and proper pronunciation of this locale?"

"It is not a locale, it's an effect," Ronald said with perfect honesty that he knew was registering on the machine's sensors. It was beginning to wonder about his sanity.

"This does not calculate. A query cannot be addressed to an effect."

"How would you know?" Ronald was beginning to enjoy this. He had always liked to bait the machine, carefully, and felt he had legitimate motivation now. Computers were not the only creatures who could generate subtle mischief, and this computer was aware of this. The day was centuries past when a man could beat the machine at chess or any other two-dimensional game, but in the complex arena of Station influence-peddling a smart and unscrupulous man could give the machine a fair run. "You yourself are an electronic effect."

"Please address the question. What is the nature and proper pronunciation of this effect?"

Ronald realized that the machine thought he was mispronouncing the term "vicious circle." Since the computer knew that Ronald's vocabulary was competent here, the mispronunciation could be significant. It would of course be nonsensical to query a vicious circle for information. He was tempted to play with this confusion further, but knew it would only lead to trouble. He could not afford to anger the machine overtly. Games were games, but they had to be kept at inconsequential level.

"That's viscous, as in viscosity—the thickness of fluid. Except that it's not really fluid. A mock viscous circle is fashioned of light, so that Bands can better communicate, pooling their resources."

"Please omit the mock effect and define the real one."

This contraption was asking for it! Ronald considered again the sensors focused on his body, making telltales of his involuntary physical reactions. The computer knew when he was lying and when something made him nervous; that enabled it to zero in on the most relevant aspects in a hurry. Ronald doubted that ability was helping it now; most of what he felt was irritated humor. The machine did not care how a Transfer agent felt about alien things; it was merely supposed to elicit the key facts and form an opinion about the agent's emotional equilibrium. This was more of a limitation than the computer could be aware of, because sometimes the feelings that were in suitable balance were key facts. A hardened murderer might feel justified in assassinating an official of the Station, so would be in emotional balance, while a novice agent might feel strong guilt about his reaction to the sight of a humanoid female, and be in severe emotional imbalance. Ronald did not care to explore his feelings about the Bands at the moment; he would do that when he had suitable privacy.

"The real Viscous Circle, as defined by the Band society, is the swirling nebulalike soul-mists of the species. The combined auras of all the dead and unborn Bands. Uncreated Bands; they aren't born in the same fashion as Solarians are. All these auras mix together, like seasoning stirred into a vast pudding. So it really is viscous, but not of much use to the likes of you."

"The aura does not survive the death of its natural host," the computer said. "There is no afterlife. This Viscous Circle appears to be a fallacious concept."

"I agree. It's all one big myth."

"Why, then, do you suggest it can be the source of the information we desire?"

"I did not suggest that. Check your circuits."

"I quote your words: 'The way to obtain the information is to query for it in a viscous circle.'"

"Exactly. A viscous circle. A mock one. But you shunted me off to the
real
Viscous Circle, which we agree does not exist."

Theoretically the machine had no temper to lose, but experienced agents knew better. Its screen clouded warningly. "Correction noted. A mock viscous circle does exist. In what manner can this be the source of information we desire?"

"The mock viscous circle consists of a number of Band individuals pooling their thoughts. One or more among them may have relevant information, and the circle would bring it out." He spoke with perfect sincerity; that was the way to locate the Ancient Site.

"This would necessitate another mission to the subject system," the computer grumbled. "We lack the personnel."

"Lack the personnel!" Ronald exclaimed. "A dozen agents were sent in!"

"Only two returned."

"Only two!" Ronald was amazed, and didn't care how his physical reactions showed it. "What happened to the rest? This was supposed to be a moderate-risk assignment, not a ninety-per cent casualty thing!"

"Eighty-three-per cent casualty." The machine was a stickler for detail.

"Still more than adequate for bonus pay!"

The machine did not react to the half-facetious nature of the comment. "The bonus has been credited to your account."

"You deceived us? You knew that few of us would return?" Incredulity was hardening rapidly into righteous anger.

"We did not deceive you. We anticipated nominal losses, such as occur routinely. Part of our investigation now is to determine the reason for the deviation from statistical expectation. Do you have a conjecture?"

Ronald considered, feeling shaky. What was statistical deviation to the computer meant in retrospect five chances in six that he should have been dead. His closest brush with oblivion, thus casually quantified. Of course there were always casualties; that was a grim part of the lure of this line of work; that element of risk. But accidents happened mostly to the careless and the stupid, and he was neither. He was a survival type. He had ascertained that the hard way when he faced the three-headed dog eight years ago. He would not have accepted this mission had he known that the odds were worse than 75 per cent in his favor. Now it turned out that they had been a lot worse.

Of course the high rate of attrition would be a mystery to the authorities; they had not been there. With certain spectacular exceptions, the military mind had never been noted for its flexibility or imagination. Naturally the Transfer spies had been in trouble. Band society was completely
un
military. Rondl himself had been in severe difficulty, and had nearly perished. It had been his great good fortune to encounter Cirl, the lonely female Band.

Cirl. She was nothing, of course. Merely a tool to be used and set aside. Yet he felt a tug at his emotion. He had, in the period of his identification as a Band male, loved her. Now he felt a certain disgust at himself for that lapse of emotional discipline—yet not totally. She was nothing but a flying metal torus, but she had, in her peculiar fashion, been a nice girl. The nicest.

The computer supposed his emotional fluctuations were merely his horror at his close call with death. That was the liability of lie-detector type interrogation instead of direct mind reading. How fortunate that no human being or human machine had true telepathy! "What is your hypothesis for the rate of attrition?" Robbie prodded him.

"Bands, the hosts we were sent to, suicide easily. A simple act of will, and they're gone. Agents with no memory of their real nature, confused—of course they would disband."

"Disband?"

"Suicide." He snapped his fingers. "Like that."

"Suicide is not a survival trait. Explain the situation more cogently."

"The Band society differs substantially from ours. Bands are not well suited to military discipline. I suspect our operatives simply were not able to adjust. Their Solarian urges would have made them seem unsociable, and to be unsocial—"

"No military action was taken against them? No counterintelligence measures?"

Ronald laughed. "None. The Bands have no facilities, no faculties for such things. They don't even have concepts for them."

"You do not believe direct action was taken against the Transfer agents? Such as by the Bellatrixians in that vicinity?"

"I'm sure of it. They simply disbanded."

"We do not employ suicidal personnel."

"They were no longer personnel. They were misfit Bands."

"Clarify concept, please."

"You took away their memories, you fool! You left them—us—nothing to relate to our real natures. We all became Bands, and tried to act in the Band manner. These agents were blank and confused. They had more than a little wrong with them—and an extremely easy remedy at hand, for all that Bands don't have hands. I was lucky, and I suppose the other survivor was lucky too. Maybe I should talk with him and compare notes. I might then be able to come up with a better thesis why we survived. But I think chance accounts for it, mainly."

"I shall refer you to a human operative." The machine was throwing up its figurative hands. It did not understand suicide or alien confusion or luck, other than as statistical phenomena, and evidently it had decided that Ronald Snowden was neither crazy nor potentially violent.

The Solarian officer entered: Colonel Branst, a man Ronald had worked with before. "I understand you're giving the calc a nervous fit!" Branst remarked cheerfully. Naturally he would have been tuning in to the entire interview and making notes for his own follow-up.

"Yes. It can't understand why I survived." Ronald laughed, nervous again in retrospect. "I'm not sure myself. One thing's certain: there'll be a breach-of-contract lawsuit if I ever get sent on another eighty-three-per cent mortality mission without being warned."

"There will be a lawsuit anyway. We have ten angry families to account to as it is. Something blundered badly."

The confession was some satisfaction. Ronald turned to a more positive approach. "I'd like to consult with the other survivor. Is he anyone I know?"

Branst smiled. "Her name is Tanya Coombs. She's from another Station."

Ronald shook his head, disappointed. "Never heard of her. Can you put her on vid for me?"

"Sorry, regs prevent. She is being separately interviewed. The computer will align the two interviews and establish the overlap. Then we'll have at it again. We'll have to get the location of that Ancient Site, and fast."

"The machine wouldn't tell: why didn't you wait for our reports before sending in physical troops? You're tearing things to hell over there."

"Coordination. We need to occupy the Site and commence research instantly. So we're investigating suitable bases in the vicinity."

"Bases, hell! Think I don't know a search pattern when I see it? You're looking for the Ancient Site directly."

Branst's brow furrowed. It was a broad brow, with well-worn ruts for this expression; he worried a lot. "You saw the pattern in operation?"

"I was fighting it!" Rondl exclaimed.

"You
what?
"

"My memory of my origin was blanked by your super-strategy experts who hardly know their posteriors from Black Holes! I thought I was a Band. I was fighting to protect my System!"

"You were fighting our occupation!" Branst repeated, catching the irony of it. "Now I see why you were so mad about the memory blank. Good thing you didn't do any harm."

"No harm?"

"We've had a hell of a lot of fouling up out there, by the reports, but no technical resistance."

So no one had caught on to the nature of that fouling up. Ronald decided to let that pass; he just might be charged with treason, if the truth were known. "Well, we never really got it on," he agreed. "Bands aren't much for combat."

"Fortunately. Look, there's good reason for the memory deletion. We did not know what kind of check system the Ringers might have. Sure, they're technically subsapient and socially backward, and they have no representation in the Galaxy's listing of Spheres. But lots of regressive cultures have pretty sharp ways of identifying strangers among them. We couldn't risk tipping our hand—not with an Ancient Site the target. So we blanked out all information. That way none of you could betray us, either accidentally or because of torture. Failsafe."

"Failsafe!" Ronald snorted. "You're lucky I didn't find a way to destroy one of your ships!"

Branst smiled complacently. "Small risk of that. We spotted no weapons in that system, apart from those in the possession of the Bellatrixian enclave—and we're honoring their neutrality scrupulously. They know what we're looking for; they have assured us that they checked out the Site rumors centuries ago, and found nothing anyone could use. They could be lying, but at least we have their guarantee to stay out of it. We have no reason to fear the Ringers themselves, with or without human memories."

"But I had no Band memory either!" Ronald cried. "I couldn't orient!"

"There was reason for that too. A normal Transfer would have been obvious to alien diagnostic equipment. So—"

"The Bands have no such equipment! They don't bother to check or classify auras at all! They figure every aura is only a fragment of the Viscous Circle, to which it will in due course return, so they don't worry about it. It's a completely open society."

"Sounds like anarchy," Branst remarked. "At any rate, we didn't know that, and could not take a chance. Too many other species could be waiting to move in on this, if they ever got a notion that Ancient Site was more than a mirage. Their spies may be among the Ringers already."

"There isn't even a term for spy there. No concept for it!"

"But there is such a concept in other Spheres. So we arranged to make our Transferees seem like natives. We worked an exchange of auras, shunting the Ringer auras into human hosts, so that there was only one aura in each Ringer host. We figured that would fool all but the most sophisticated verification process."

"Except that it militated severely against the agents' ability to survive, let alone function in the mission."

"It does appear to be a blunder. We'll put the host auras back on the next mission."

"The computer said we lacked the personnel for another mission."