Viscous Circle (4 page)

Then something loomed. Instantly Rondl's danger-awareness flared. The sea creatures consumed anything they could catch! Why hadn't he remembered
that
before? He had so blithely flown right down into their region of power. This one was behind him; he saw its dim bulk by the refractions in the water, and by its crude magnetic component. Its frontal orifice was open, and the interior glowed slightly. The creature was straddling his line; Rondl had to flee forward. But the line continued down, with no crossing lines; this could mean trouble.

The water creature pursued, propelling itself swiftly through the water by threshing its flukes. In this medium, it could move faster than Rondl could. Trouble, indeed!

Was this a Kratch? No, it was a Trugd. Now his capricious memory yielded him such a detail—now that he had been trapped. Why couldn't his memory have had the simple courtesy to warn him before he descended to the point of dubious return?

Rondl moved on down—and found an intersection whose other line led upward. But the Trugd was too close; it would catch him long before he reached the surface. He had to continue on down, seeking cover, some place the monster could not follow. Some place too small for it to pass.

Now he was near the bottom of the lake/sea. There was almost no light; the contour of the land was obscure. The murk did not interfere with his perception of magnetism, but still he felt increasingly uneasy. He detected the minor metallic components of some plants or rooted animals; fortunately, they were not predators. He brushed past them, and so did the Trugd.

Suddenly the monster caught up to him. Its huge glowing frontal orifice was set with sharp bits of bone: teeth. These teeth slammed together as Rondl hurled himself out of the way.

Now he was off the line. No power was coming in. He had saved himself from immediate consumption, but he was fading. He became uncomfortably aware that too great a drain of bodily energy would cause him to disband, to die. Magnetic energy held his physical substance together; there had to be sufficient charge to keep, as the expression went, body and aura together.

Yet the monster had control of the line. To return there was to be crunched. That would represent forced disbanding; in fact, that was what the monster sought. The sudden release of the metals and energy of Rondl's body would be an excellent source of sustenance for a creature who could neither harvest energy from a magnetic line nor draw matter from the ground.

Rondl realized he had only one chance: find another line. Normally the lines occurred in patterns, generated from positive-negative terminals elsewhere on the planet. In that sense, the lines did have ends—but all ends were at the center of the Band universe. Why the lines meandered individually he was not sure; his background understanding of the phenomenon suggested they should spread evenly. Obviously they did not. Perhaps the metallic components of features of the land masses distorted the line-pattern until it became an unchartable confusion. So he had to search randomly, hoping to find a new line before he suffered energy suffocation.

He sensed one. He had not been aware that he could tune in on these lines underwater from a distance; he was still learning his own capabilities. But this line was below the water, within the land. Frantically he slid across the bottom, propelling himself by pushing against the low background magnetism, searching for an access. But progress was painfully slow, and any attempt at greater velocity only drained him further.

The Trugd, realizing the prey was not returning to the original line, came after him. Again Rondl scooted away, using his scant and dwindling reserves of energy, as the awful teeth bit into the nether soil. Then the monster, realizing it had missed its prey, drew back and spat out the unwanted dirt. No reprieve there!

Rondl had an inspiration born of desperation. He flung himself into the just-excavated hole. There at the bottom was the line he had sought. He straddled it as well as he could, drinking in its power, heedless of the sediment filling in above him. He could not travel, for the muck was too solid for his feeble propulsive force, but he was safe for the moment. The monster could not get him without also getting a lot of bottom-gook that it would have to spit out. In that event, Rondl would get spit out also. It was not the best kind of security, but it sufficed for the moment.

The Trugd snuffled about, then realized what had happened. It reversed its orientation and threshed its flukes at the ground. Silt wafted up and away. Soon a broad, shallow cavity was being excavated. Rondl was exposed—but so was a larger portion of the line.

The monster reversed again and nosed in to find its meal. Rondl shot to the end of the exposed line and buried himself in silt. The monster concluded that it had not excavated far enough, and reversed itself again. Its flukes wafted away more silt. Again Rondl was exposed—and again he shot himself into the soft extremity.

The third time the monster excavated, the line came to the surface of the ground. Rondl burst from the muck and cruised up and away while the Trugd still threshed, unaware for the moment of the prey's departure.

Now he was able to travel. Liquid was slow, but not nearly as slow as muck. Rondl soon found a line intersection—the lines never actually touched each other, but often passed close enough so that a Band could conveniently shift from one to the other—and moved up toward the surface of the water.

The Trugd finally realized what had happened and came forging in pursuit. It was horribly swift in this medium. Rondl felt the vibrations of its progress before it came into view; currents were forming in the water, churned by its huge flukes. Rondl drew all the energy he could from the line and strained forward, holding nothing back—and knew it wasn't enough. The monster would overtake him before he broke the surface.

The turbulence increased. Bubbles appeared in the water. Currents switched this way and that. For a moment Rondl lost his hold on the line and started to suffocate. But he clung to equilibrium and heaved himself back—and realized that the Trugd had hung back. It should have caught him by this time, but was instead diving for deep water. Why?

Rondl forged on up and into the air. What a relief! Then he discovered what had dissuaded the Trugd.

A tempest had formed during Rondl's descent. Wind and airborne moisture buffeted him. The entire surface of the sea was being whipped into froth. The monster evidently preferred the quiet depths, and was afraid of violence of greater scope than its own threshings. Perhaps there were even larger monsters, who generated even greater turbulence, so that this was a warning to hide. Maybe some such creatures were airborne and a frothy surface was the danger signal. Rondl had been lucky!

But not altogether lucky. It was difficult to cling to his line in this turbulence. Worse, the magnetic lines were twisting, because of the electrical components of the storm. The magnetism surged and abated, making Rondl feel ill. He could be disbanded by this natural phenomenon, too.

He struggled to rise above the disturbance, but the lines were comparatively feeble and, in any event, did not go very high. The turbulence got worse with even a slight increase in elevation. A gust of wind caught him and flung him off the line. He fell, tumbling, dreading another encounter in the deep water—but caught another line—and was blown off it also. He fought to recover, but the storm and confusion were too much, and in moments he was back near the ground.

He was afraid to enter the water again, though it was certainly calmer under the surface. The Trugd could be lurking. He flung himself across to a scanty beach, and landed jarringly. In this tempest, this was the best he could do; neither air nor water was safe.

Yet how long could he endure without an energy source? The answer was: until the tempest abated. He had no choice. Or until he ran so low on energy that he had to risk the water rather than expire outright. His experience-memory informed him that these storms were generally of short duration, and a Band who lay still and conserved his energy could last that time. The odds of survival were in his favor.

 

 

 

Chapter 3:

Cirl

 

 

Rondl discovered that Bands also slept, and dreamed, and that during such periods of comparative quiescence their energy needs diminished. He had a greater reserve than he had thought—or at least a longer period over which stored energy could sustain his survival. His dreams had offered him a period of comfort, for in them he had found a line extending straight up to the nearest planetoid belt, far from any atmospheric storm. In this system each planet had its rings of debris, and each sun had its planetoid belts; there was a great deal of fragmentary matter.

He woke when another Band approached. The tempest continued, and water and air lashed the beach, whipping the sea into monsterish animation. It was easy to imagine that this was the result of the submerged wrath of a super Trugd, though of course he knew better. At any rate, this was no weather to be aloft in. The other Band was trying to achieve elevation, and failing, as Rondl had failed. The light was poor, but the Band's flashing cry of despair came across clearly as the creature plunged at last into the sea.

Rondl launched himself into the air. The background magnetism was irregular here, making his flight erratic. But he found a line and followed it into the water where the other had fallen.

He was fortunate. The line passed beneath the region where the Band was floundering. Rondl placed himself in position, then caught the other in a magnetic clasp, exactly as red Malr had done for him. Then he used his small tendrils to maintain the hold while he shifted his magnetism to propulsion and rode the line back to the surface, bearing his burden.

The tempest was diminishing at last; it now seemed safe to remain airborne. Rondl released the Band, then rotated to flash to it. "Are you well?"

"Why did you have to interfere?" the Band flashed angrily. Rondl realized with a start that it was female; there was a characteristic signature that showed the gender unmistakably. A bright yellow, youthful Band. "I was about to disband!"

"You wanted to disband?" Rondl asked, amazed. "To suicide?"

"Suicide?" she asked blankly. "This storm interferes with communicatory light; I do not grasp your meaning."

Indeed, he had not expressed it well. This was another concept largely foreign to the Band intellect. Plants and animals lacked sufficiently defined auras, so when their physical forms succumbed, they died. But Bands were not supposed to die, so could not suicide. Or so Bands believed. Rondl found he did not believe. So still the tantalizing oddities came, though he could not fathom their source. "Disbanding," he said. "I cannot believe any person would choose to disband."

"You are a male," she retorted with a savage flash.

"Oh—a romantic entanglement? I apologize for whatever the oaf did."

"Oaf?"

"Negative male."

"You regret the action of another male?"

"He was surely a very misguided individual to wrong a female as attractive as you." For she was indeed attractive; her personal magnetism had literally drawn him in. He was not clear on what qualities made a Band female pleasant to male perception, apart from raw attractive power, but she seemed to have these too.

She spun out a bright flash of mirth. "You are a strange one!" Her color seemed to intensify. "Do you really like me?"

"Yes," he replied, surprised. "But this is not to be regarded seriously; I do not know you."

"You like me without knowing me?" Now she seemed intrigued, rather than confused.

"Would I like you less if I knew you better?"

"Another did."

"Did like you less—or know you better?"

"Yes."

Yes to both, she seemed to mean. "I am not the same as that other." He paused. "At least I do not think I am. I do not know him, and I do not remember me."

"Do not remember
him
, you mean."

"Do not remember
me
. Before I came here. I—"

"You don't remember! How can you come out here to the place of private thinking if you don't remember your problem?"

"That
is
my problem. I do not know who I am, other than my name. I seem to have amnesia."

"You poor creature. Yet I think I would exchange my situation for yours. I don't
want
to remember."

"Let's trade!" he flashed.

She radiated mirth again, her color and light making her seem like a little sun. "You want to obtain cause to disband? You must have been strange indeed before you lost your memory."

"That's what I fear. I keep having inappropriate images, but I can't trace their derivation. I came out here and almost got consumed by a Trugd. Now I am lost; I don't know the way out of this region."

"I will show you the way out," she said. "Let us introduce ourselves."

"All I know is my name: Rondl."

"I am Cirl. I am—you don't really want my history, do you? It's not very interesting."

"It is bound to be more interesting than mine."

"Let's just find our way out of here," she decided. She led the way up the line, forging through the dissipating storm with confidence. Rondl followed, glad he had saved her. He would have done it anyway, but this was an excellent benefit: a quick route out.

Still, they needed to converse while traveling, because a noncommunicating Band was difficult to perceive accurately at any distance. The body of an individual became part of the background scenery; a ring visible but not obvious. A communicating Band, in contrast, compelled attention; all Bands were hypersensitive to incoming speech beams, and could receive them from a wider angle than they could transmit them. Rondl had seen Cirl when she flashed in despair as she plunged into the water. It was the difference between an inert object and an animated one. So now, in the diminishing but still-powerful tempest, they could lose track of each other if they did not each augment their visibilities by talking.

"I am interested in your history," he flashed. "Tell me how you came to the point of disbanding."