Viscous Circle (33 page)

Again the circle considered. The Bands felt Rondl's reservation was well taken; this was a feasible course, but not an ideal one. They were ready to ponder the third course.

More Bands arrived. "They cannot partake of this circle now," Cirl flashed. "They are not prepared for the magnitude and violence of these concepts. Release me, and I shall form a lesser circle with them to explain."

"But I need you here," Rondl protested. "You have been stabilizing this circle."

"I will go," flashed Tembl, the blue philosopher. "I can explain to them."

There was a current of agreement. Tembl had been doing good work, helping to organize; she was competent. The circle abated its viscous current momentarily, allowing her to slide out without ill effect, then closed the gap she left. It would be devastating for a member of a circle to leave without warning, but when there was general agreement and preparation, it became possible. The currents of thought resumed, modified just slightly by Tembl's absence. Every circle, Rondl realized, was a little different from every other.

Rondl resumed his discussion. "The third course is to find a way to repel the Monsters without killing them and without giving up the Site. To win without violence. For this we would need to possess technology greater than theirs. Perhaps tractor beams that would fasten to their ships, swing them about, and hurl them harmlessly back toward Sphere Sol, their home. Perhaps a way to make System Band repulsive to them, so that they flee it voluntarily. Or a way to change their auras so that they become more like those of Bands; then Monsters would not act the way they do now, and could coexist with Bands. The possibilities are endless—if we are only able to discover the necessary technology."

Now the circle thrilled with agreement. This was the best course of all. Individual Bands were already racing ahead, working out what Rondl had worked out. "The Ancient Site! It could have that technology!"

"It could," Rondl agreed. "That Site has never been fully explored; most of its secrets remain untouched. But such breakthroughs are the sort of thing that Ancient Sites are noted for. Certainly it seems worth the try. Unfortunately, we do not at present have possession of that Site. It is in the territory already overrun by the Monsters."

The circle mulled that over, coming to grips with the vicious circle that he and Tangt had encountered: how could they use the Site to prevail, when the enemy already had possession of it?

"We must recover that Site," Rondl flashed firmly, and the circle agreed. "Perhaps only for a short time—only long enough to find the technology that will enable us to prevail. We cannot do it violently; we have already eliminated that course. We must find another way."

They were with him, their beams circling the circle with mounting conviction. "What way?"

"We must cause the Monsters to temporarily vacate Moon Glow, where the Site is," Rondl said. "To depart voluntarily. Then we can move in, occupy it, study it, and perhaps comprehend its treasures in time to save Planet Band."

Now there was doubt. How could the Monsters be persuaded to leave the Moon Glow?

"We shall have to deceive them," Rondl said. "To make them believe the site is elsewhere. Then they will go there, deserting the other moons, and the Bands will be free to go to the real Site without difficulty."

There was a rising disquiet. The circle was having difficulty assimilating this, deception being alien to Band nature. Rondl had to go over the principle again and again, trying to get across his concept of the lie.

At first there was tremendous resistance, as the concept eluded almost all the Band minds: deliberate misunderstanding? A contradiction in terms!

But finally a few Bands began to get it, aided by the great input of the circle. Their shocked revelation sent powerful pulses through the viscosity. Cirl labored to keep the current manageable, though she herself was struggling with the concept.

These few contributed their comprehension to the whole, leaning on the full circle to maintain their equilibrium. Others, too, got it, and hung on similarly. There was a rising tide of excitement and dread as a larger percentage caught on. Finally it elevated into the most powerful current yet, a potent unified emotion of—

"Oh, Rondl!" Cirl's despairing flash came, discrete amid the torrent. "Monster!" The emotion was pure anguish.

And he realized that with comprehension had come not acceptance, but total revulsion. The Bands had finally grasped the alien nature of his thought, and rejected it completely. Exactly as they had rejected the concept of war, before, and—

The circle disbanded. All its components disintegrated—not into component Bands, but into dust. The viscous circle was an entity itself, a temporary one, but possessed, while it existed, of the prerogatives of a living, sapient creature. Properly dismantled, with group acceptance, it reverted to the individuals who composed it; catastrophically sundered, as in this case, it died. When it died, so did its parts.

Only Rondl himself, an alien, managed to retain his personal cohesion. It was not his way to disband when faced with an appalling concept—and to him the concept was not appalling. Faced with several bad alternatives, he had chosen the least destructive one. A small sacrifice of honor for a tremendous gain in lives. He was practical—as the Bands were not.

He was also a Monster. His survival of the destruction of the circle proved it. Had he been a true Band, like Cirl, he would have perished, too. As it was, he was severely shaken, and still hung on to his cohesion with extreme difficulty.

The lie. It had started with the lie he had told Tangt, about the location of the Ancient Site. He had gotten away with that lie, and somehow assumed that he could do so with impunity in the Band culture. But Tangt was not a Band, but a Monster like himself. She would not disband when she learned about the lie, but any true Band would.

No, the lie had started further back—when he deceived Cirl by going unannounced with Tangt. That had been half a lie, for he had not really meant to do it. He had allowed the convenience of the moment to lead him into it. He should have declined to go with Tangt until he had informed Cirl. There was the half-step. Convenience had preempted truth, and after that the lie had become feasible. He had brought this mischief on himself, by failing to react at the outset in an ethical rather than a practical manner. He had chosen the Monster way, and now was paying the consequence.

"Rondl! Rondl!" someone was flashing at him persistently. "What happened?"

It was Tembl. She had escaped disbanding, because she had joined the other circle before the lie.

What had he done? As he settled into some sort of equilibrium, he realized that not only had he lost all his trained Bands except one—he had lost Cirl. His love, his wife.

Again he experienced the terrible urge to disband, to suicide, to join her in oblivion. But he hung on, partly because suicide was not his way, and partly because he knew that only he stood a chance of saving all the remaining Bands from a similar fate. The threat to the species remained, regardless of his personal situation.

"Was it a bad concept?" Tembl persisted.

"It was a lie!" he flashed explosively at her, half expecting her to disband also. But the concept passed her by; she could not grasp it, so was not affected by it.

The species of Band would suffer extinction rather than fight; rather than be party to a lie. That was the way it should be, the way he should have known it would be. He had acted rashly; he should never have presented the concept to them. Now, too late to save his friends, his recruits, or his wife, he realized that.

Yet still there seemed to be no way to save the species except that lie—now more than ever, for his trained troops were gone. Rondl was a Monster; he was able to lie. Only he could save the Bands—from both the Monsters and the Monster-concepts. He must use the lie—and use it by himself, without initiating any other Band to its awful secret. This burden was his alone to bear. And he would do it, honoring the memory of Cirl, whom he had loved. Whom he would always love. The Monsters were ultimately responsible for her death, for
they
had invaded;
they
had sent the likes of Ronald Snowden to interfere with her life. The Monsters would pay. Until they did, he could hardly afford the luxury of grief. That was part of his own punishment, richly deserved, for being what he was. A Monster.

"Let me help you," Tembl said, hovering close.

He perceived her with the clarity of emotional distance. She was eager to take Cirl's place. She was attractive enough. She was competent, intelligent, and extremely adaptable for a Band. But she was a Band. Was he going to take her the route of Cirl, into comprehension of his true nature and thence into suicide? She deserved far better than that.

"Go away," he flashed.

Hurt, uncomprehending, she departed. She had the strength not to disband. Rondl felt more like a Monster than ever. Everything he touched turned to dust. But this time, he believed, he had not taken the half-step of convenience—the convenience of allowing Tembl to cater to him, to please him, to share his burden. He had taken the hard step of rejection, and thereby freed her to live the life of a true Band.

Now he was alone. All his trained, hardened Bands were gone. It would take so long to train new ones that the Monsters would ravage the home planet first. And if he did train new Bands—what would prevent them from disbanding when faced with the necessity for effective action, as these had done? The plain fact was that Bands were not physically or socially constituted to fight. Why did he keep deluding himself that it wasn't so? Fighting was the prerogative of Monsters.

Rondl would have to do it alone, as he had already concluded. Yet what could a single Monster do by himself?

He had the answer to that: he could tell his lie. Not just a Monster-distracting lie, for that was no longer sufficient. A Monster-killing lie. Poetic justice: Monsters destroyed by a Monster who was the tool of Monsters. Because of who he was and what he was, he just might be able to pull it off.

Now he had purpose. He accelerated, going toward the planet. He needed to locate Tangt, to get his revised lie perfected.

He came to a thickly populated line. "I seek Tangt," he flashed in general. "Can anyone direct me?"

No one here knew Tangt. It took only an instant to verify this; Band communications were very efficient when properly used. He flew to another well-traveled line and flashed again, again without success. He wished there were a better way to locate an individual, but knew there was not. That the society of Bands was anarchistic was part of its beauty—but at the moment it was frustrating.

He kept trying, surveying many hundreds of Bands randomly. And finally, from a purple individual, he got an answer: "I encountered an orange Band of that name yesterday in the green plains region of the planet."

"Thank you!" Rondl flashed. He zoomed toward the indicated region. To Monsters, a planetary surface was eighty per cent of awareness; to Bands only thirty per cent. A given Band could be anywhere in space near a moon or near a planet. What mattered was not matter, but the routing and strength of the magnetic lines. Yet a planet did offer a highly varied terrain, providing interest and diversion, and that was an attractive aspect. Many Band pleasure spots were on planetary surfaces. As was the case with other sapients, the Bands appreciated novelty.

Oh, Cirl—you were of this planet!

By his nature he had slain her, forced her to self-destruction. But no: he could not afford to think about her. Not yet.

When the mountains flattened into a plain and local vegetation turned it green, Rondl began inquiring again. This time the responses were thicker. Soon he zeroed in on Tangt, who was hovering in the vicinity of an outcropping of gray rock. "Tangt!" he flashed. "This is Rondl!"

"Please depart," she flashed. "I am distracted."

"I cannot. I need you to help save the Bands."

"I cannot be concerned with that now."

What was the matter with her? "You must help," he insisted. "Otherwise the whole Band society will be lost, including your own Band husband!"

"My husband is dead," she said.

"Dead?" He had not anticipated this.

"When I told him of my nature, thinking that if your wife could sustain it, perhaps after all so could he—he—he disbanded. Right here. I thought I loved him."

"My wife also disbanded," Rondl said, surprised at this parallel. "When she learned more of my nature. I know I loved her."

"He just wouldn't believe that disbanding is the end!" she flashed. "He told me I could join him—"

"For what it's worth, Cirl consulted with an educated Band who felt it should be possible for Monsters in Band guise to join the Viscous Circle, if they believe in it—or perhaps even if they don't, so long as they really want to find it."

"That is not worth much!" she flashed, then returned to her grief. "Such a good person, but he clung to his superstition. 'If you are more Band than Monster, follow me,' he told me, and just like that he disbanded. And I can't follow."

"They just don't believe in death, or in war, or in deceit," Rondl agreed. "It's a species-wide foible. Maybe that's what it takes to be truly pacifist—turn the other cheek, or whatever—because even if the enemy kills you, he hasn't really hurt you. We humans fight to the end because we don't believe in life after death, not really, no matter what beliefs we claim to hold or what our assorted religions specify. Our absolute horror of death gives it all the lie. All we have is this one life, so we refuse to give it up easily, even when the continuation is painful. We'll cheat, lie—" He broke off his flash. He was setting up to lie to her now—again—and didn't want to give himself away. No honor among Monsters!

"They don't believe in death," she agreed. "Or in any other evil. They really don't believe. So why am I here, marking the gravesite of a mate who left no body? There is no grave! If I am right, he is beyond help or grief; if he is right, he is either laughing tolerantly at me or feeling sorry for my ignorance."