Cluster

7. Tail of the Small Bear

* notice subject kirlian transfer to sphere polaris agent remains unavailable*

—polaris is the most advanced sphere of that region! ready another agent necessary to eliminate subject immediately—

*caution local factors make infiltration difficult for any but high-kirlian experienced agent*

—what factors?—

*polarian philosophy of circularity presence of cult of tarotism debt system excellent intelligence network*

—won’t those same factors inhibit mission of subject entity?—

*true*

—POWER—

*what?*

—signoff, idiot power, as in what we need for—

*oh sorry CIVILIZATION*

—(what a mess!)—

REPORT—SPHERICAL RECONNAISSANCE

TO: His Ultimate Circularity, Pole Prime:

O Biggest of Wheels, my little report: as thou didst direct, I placed myself in the way of he whom our Neighbor Sphere sought, he of the extraordinarily intense Kirlian aura, the Solarian Flintsmith. I intercepted him as he traveled to the hunting party of his Chief, he of the Powerful Stick. (Solarians, O Illustrious Spinner, do not employ the wheel at this fringe of their Sphere, and tend to think in terms of the stiff hinged rods by which they ambulate. Hence “Powerful Stick” or “Strong Spear” translate loosely into “Big Wheel,” no offense to thee.) We held converse, and the alien Flintsmith, worker of stone, was obliged to invite me to accompany him on his round, and I accepted. In the course of our journey we exchanged minor favors and I had occasion to make physical contact with him, and so verified that he does indeed possess the strongest Kirlian ambiance I have ever touched: a hundred, perhaps two hundred times as dense as my own ordinary one. The report we intercepted from the Solarian government was accurate; it may well be the single finest Kirlian aura in our galaxy.

Having ascertained that, O Honored Cog, I could not conveniently disengage, for we were now amidst the Solarians’ primitive hunt. There was danger to the Flintsmith, and because we maintain amicable relations with these stick figures, I felt constrained to protect him somewhat. Though his body is grotesque in the fashion of his kind, there may never be his Kirlian like again within our region of the Myriad-Mote Galaxy. In fact, taking no presumption to suggest to advise so massive a Revolver as Your Wheelship, I would be inclined to spin into the tightest cultural and economic affinity with the Solarian Sphere, in the interests of exploring this remarkable Kirlian manifestation. Perhaps when our breakthrough into the secret of transfer occurs—apology, my association with Solarians has affected my vocabulary: I mean when our revolution of transfer occurs—we can discover how to engender similar auras in our own kind, where at present our highest intensity is about fifty.

I was able to preserve the Flintsmith’s life from extinction by the animal they hunted, “Ancient Nose-Blow.” (Solarians of most species, sapient and sentient, possess separate respiratory apparatus capable of producing sounds, particularly in the presence of infection. Thus the creature frequently honked or snorted; hence its name, variously rendered as “Aged Honk” or “Old Snort.”) But thereafter, the Flintsmith also preserved my own life from a similar threat. In this manner we inadvertently exchanged life-debts, and were obliged to make the Compact—the first, if I mistake not, between a Polarian and a Solarian. (And there have not been many between Polarians and Nathians either. In fact, Exchanges between Spheres are quite rare.) (But of course Sphere Nath is our longest association.) I therefore terminate my report as of the moment our mutual vow was completed, and resign from this case. In no way shall I betray the interest of my Debt Brother, and should he ever manifest within our Sphere I claim Debt Priority with regard to him.

FROM: Small Bearing, Pole Agent Tsopi, Perimeter Detail.

APPENDED CIRCULAR by Big Wheel:

How brazenly the Small Bear twists her tail into Wheelish matters, presuming to inform us of elementary history and even proffering advice! Yet despite her frequent irrelevancies and truncated spin, there goes one of our best field agents. Note how subtly she imposed on the Solarian in the interest of her mission, and how loyally she protects his own interest now that she has wangled Debt Exchange. The little disk has rolled into love with an alien stick, overwhelmed by his Kirlian aura. Beauty and the Beast! She probably wanted to get into the Round of Records: first Debt Exchange between Pole and Sole. Now she even demands Consummation! Well, we can gyre through this vortex too; if the Solarian Flintsmith ever does manifest here (fat chance!), assign Tsopi as his guide. A cycle or two of forced association with the alien will cure her of such looping fancies; she’ll have her notoriety, and soon her wheel will be spinning normally. (We’d never put up with this, if she weren’t such an efficient operator, and cute as a whirlbug too.)

Flint started to fall, tried to put his foot forward, found he had no foot, grabbed with a hand, and had no hand.

A strong, supple tentacle caught him. “Gently, friend,” a soft voice said against his glowing skin. “Use your wheel; you’re a Polarian now. No rodlike appendages, no human reactions. Think circular.”

He used his wheel, gaining a precarious balance. It was like logrolling in a river; he had to keep reversing to avoid getting dumped. Intellectually as well as physically. “You know!” he said—and discovered that he had spoken by spinning the little ball in the end of his trunk against his own illuminated hide.

“Our Spheres maintain diplomatic channels,” the other replied. “We were advised of your coming by matter-mission capsule, and I was summoned from the Fringe to escort you.”

Now he contemplated his companion. He had no eyes, but his skin-surface was a radiation receptor that provided a less specific but quite adequate notion, somewhat like human peripheral vision extended into a full circle—or rather, a full sphere. He could literally see in all directions at once. He was in the presence of a female Polarian, shaped like a huge chocolate candy kiss and very nicely proportioned from little ball to great wheel. In fact, she was beautiful. “Then you know that I am Flint of Sphere Sol,” he said. “May I know you?”

“I am Tsopi of Sphere Polaris,” she replied.

Something clicked. “Topsy—of Outworld?”

She glowed good-naturedly. “The same, Plint.”

“But you should be out at the Fringe, two hundred light-years from—”

“I claimed preemptive right. We are debt-siblings.”

Oh, yes. She had attached some importance to that, he recalled. They had saved each other’s lives from Old Snort. Still… “And your government mattermitted you two hundred light-years to nursemaid me?”

“It is our way,” she said. “I will see to all your needs.”

Several trillion dollars’ worth of energy expended to bring her here—because it was their way. Yet he found he liked that. It was not just that she was the prettiest entity in the limited memory of his host-body; it was also that he knew her from his human experience, and respected her. This was the first time he had seen a creature from both the human and the transfer views; it provided an added perspective.

But business first. “I must deliver the secret of transfer to your government.”

“There will be occasion for that,” she said. “We shall meet with the Big Wheel himself in a few days.” Local days, his memory informed him, were somewhat longer than those of either Outworld or Earth, but the essence was similar.

His communication ball made a sound like a human fingernail rasping across slate. (He noted peripherally that the little talk-ball was termed a ball, while the ambulation-ball was called a wheel, though both were spherical. And the tentacle-appendage was a male trunk, or a female tail.) “A few days! Topsy, this is urgent!”

“There will be occasion,” she repeated, like a nurse calming a distraught patient.

Flint let it drop for the moment. Tsopi knew him, and shared a bond with him that was evidently important to her. Was she trying to tell him something? After the mannered intrigues of System Capella, he was not surprised to find complications here in Sphere Polaris, but he was disappointed.

She showed him the way through the building. It reminded him strongly of its counterpart at Earth-Prime, with its broad halls, high ceilings, forced-circulation air and lack of growing things. What was there about civilization that made it so restrictive? Yet his host-mind informed him that this was natural to Polarians, even pleasant; individuals of this species, like native Earthians, liked to be massively enclosed by their architecture.

How did no-handed creatures manage to build such edifices? Again his memory provided the answer: Polarians were adept at circular manipulation of objects and concepts. They did not carry building blocks into place, they rolled building spheres into place. Where men laid bricks, Polarians rolled stones. Where men hammered nails, Polarians squeezed glue. The end result was rather similar, as though civilization shaped itself into certain configurations regardless of the sapient species invoking it. Here there were no square skyscrapers, but domed dunes serving the same purpose.

They passed down a smooth ramp, where on Earth there would have been stairs. Of course; ramps were better for wheels, stairs for legs. Ramps were everywhere, contributing to the fluidity of the architectural design.

They had to roll single file, for efficient progress through the throng. Tsopi’s trail just ahead of him was sweet; she had a tantalizingly feminine taste.

Taste? Flint concentrated, and it came: Polarians laid down taste trails with their wheels, much as humans laid down scent. No, more than that: These were actual, conscious signatures of passage, like the trails of Earthly snails. He remembered the first snail he had seen, beside the huge water of the ocean inlet, under the odd blue sky of Earth. Today he didn’t even notice the color of the sky of a given planet; sky was sky color, right for its world. But this taste; every Polarian was really a super-bloodhound, sniffing out every other, all the time. It was the natural way. In fact, it was already difficult to imagine how it could be otherwise.

“These are our power generators,” Tsopi murmured against his hide, flinging back her tail in a very fetching way. This mode of communication was pleasantly ultimate: touch and speech together. In fact, Polarians were a togetherness species, expecting and requiring closer camaraderie than the creatures of Sphere Sol. “Orbiting micro-satellites reflect half the sunlight passing near our planet into our generators, and that fuels our matter transport system. Our remaining energy needs are met by—”

“The center of power,” Flint said, rolling his own ball on her surface. My, this was fun! “The highest Minister, Regent, ruler—”

“Big Wheel,” she supplied. “He’s really more of a coordinator, a converger of spirals. We don’t have your sort of—”

“Whatever you call him: the one to whom I should report. He’s in this vicinity?”

“Yes, the Wheel is here. But there is no—”

“I’m sorry if I affront your sensitivities,” Flint said. “I like your company a lot, and do want to learn about your Sphere. But my mission is of galactic importance. Business before pleasure.” And he broke away from her, dodging into the nearest crosshall.

“You do not understand,” she buzzed against the floor, dodging after him. “With us, there is no separation between—first there must be—”

But Flint, in any body, was adept at pursuit and eluding. He accelerated, getting the feel of his wheel—and it was a good wheel, even though it was spherical. Tsopi could outspeed his human body on level ground, but his mind in a healthy Polarian body was too much for her. He zipped around another corner, shot across the ramp, and damped out his scent amidst a welter of tastes on a well-used trail. In moments he had lost her, as surely as he had lost his pursuers on Luna, back three worlds ago.

Yet he had not, in the end, been able to escape his fate, there on Earth’s huge barren moon. He had carried his destiny within himself. Poor parallel, though; now he was not running from, but rolling to his mission.

He paused to reflect, working out his rationale after the fact. Flint trusted his primitive instincts, but his mind refused to give them complete play without comprehending them. There were civilized aspects to his mind, like them or not, and he had to give them their turn. Why had he needed to free himself of so helpful and lovely a creature as Tsopi? Especially since he had known her back home on Planet Outworld and chased a dinosaur with her. Rather, had been chased with her; nobody chased Old Snort!

Because she was threatening to interfere with the performance of his mission, yes. Perhaps not intentionally. But it would be very easy to become romantically distracted by her, because she was not only sweet to the taste, she was genuinely nice. He did not want to sully his memory of Honeybloom by chasing after the first pretty tail he met. Yet he should have been able to persuade her of his mission’s importance, had he really tried. So that was not the whole reason. He had to dig deeper.

And it came: Tsopi knew too much about him. That made her dangerous, however well-meaning she might be. Until he confronted the authorities of this Sphere, he was vulnerable; if anything happened to him, Polaris would be lost to the galactic coalition. Sol had now tried other agents, sending them to other Spheres such as huge Sador, and they had not returned. Remembering his misadventures in Canopus and Spica Spheres, Flint could understand why failure would be common. Only Flint himself had been able to negotiate the intricacies of transfer to alien bodies and cultures and return to Sol. He had succeeded twice, as much by luck as by skill, and this one promised to be his easiest mission yet—but he could take nothing for granted. He could not afford the risk of delay, however attractive it might seem at the moment.

Yet even this was not the whole problem. Every time he scraped to the bottom of his apprehension, he found a deeper level. Was Tsopi a well-meaning innocent—or was she in fact an active anticoalition agent, either native or possessed by alien transfer? She did not have a potent Kirlian aura—but he could not assume that the Polarian-body perceptions could pick this up, or that it was impossible to conceal such an aura. If she were possessed, could she really be ¢le of A[^th], or Llyana the Undulant of Spica—the persona that had animated them? Even the least-threatening situation could have its complications. Perhaps it was his slightly paranoid suspicions that had enabled him to survive while others perished. If Tsopi were actually a transferee, she was extremely dangerous. Of course the chance of her being possessed by that malignant yet intriguing alien-Sphere entity who had tried to kill him before seemed remote, as he had anchored that female to the host-body for some time to come, but much could have happened, such as the accidental death of the infant, freeing the mother. Or a similar entity could have taken over. They knew how to locate him; the question was, how badly did they want him?

Yet Tsopi had been here before him. Unless the spies had access to Sphere Sol information, that virtually eliminated possession. They could not trace his transfer before he transferred! Nevertheless it was a risk, for no one had told him he would be expected in Sphere Polaris. Of course it could be an administrative foulup; they happened often enough. It would be just like Earth’s Council of Ministers to have forgotten to inform him, the most critical party, of their plans for him. Or maybe the Polarians had such a good intelligence network that they had tapped in on Sol’s secret and acted on it. If it turned out Tsopi were innocent, he would apologize to her most handsomely—after the Big Wheel had the technology of transfer.

Meanwhile, he was lost and alone—as usual. It didn’t bother him. He could best proceed on his own.

Exactly where would the Big Wheel be? Since Tsopi would undoubtedly raise the hue and cry for him—or whatever rolling equivalent Polarians had—he had to act fast. Somewhere in his host-memories would be the information he needed, but he had already expended too much time exploring his own motives and could not take time to sift tediously through the host-library now. What he really needed was time; his prior missions had taught him to avoid acting precipitously. At the same time he had to complete his mission immediately—a paradox.

He crossed a scent-trail that offered a safe temporary haven for troubled entities. It was a priestly taste, consciously laid down—perhaps a Polarian monk. Since Flint dared act neither slowly nor ignorantly, perhaps this would help. He wheeled to follow the trail.

With this guidance, it took only moments to thread the network of ramps and locate the sanctuary.

At its portal he paused, for suddenly the taste gave warning. It was the flavor of a foolish young creature, ambitious and intelligent but about to roll off a precipice. Associated with it were the burning of fire, the fluidity of water, the rarefaction of air, and the solidity of ground. The overall suggestion of the taste was not merely haven, but knowledge—more than the average intellect might crave.

But no danger per se. Flint did not fear knowledge; on the contrary, he craved it He rolled across the threshold.

And the ramp collapsed. He dropped sickeningly into darkness—Polarians being every bit as vulnerable to a fall as Solarians—and flung out his trunk to catch any available support. But there was none.

Then his wheel touched something. It was a wall, or a steeply inclined plane. Too steep to travel on. But to prevent himself from scraping, he spun his wheel against it, letting it guide him down. This might not make much sense if he were about to crash, but it was a largely automatic reflex. Polarians preferred to die with their wheels turning.

The slant changed; the wall was angling into a surface he could almost grip. It was tasteless; no one could have passed this way recently. Now it was a steep channel, actually enabling him to slow his fall somewhat.

Gradually the channel leveled, though it remained uncomfortably barren of taste. He came to a smooth stop at the base. He had fallen a considerable distance, but was after all unharmed. Good enough; the threshold warning had been accurate. No one else was likely to follow precipitously—unless there were an alternate entrance. No—his host-memory, keyed by the dramatic fall, indicated that visitors always used this aperture. They left by another, equally single-directional, completing the circuit forcefully. It was common knowledge, available to him had he but known where in his mind to look. Which was why he did not want to act before exploring that mind. The next pitfall might not be as safe.

Sometime he’d have to find a way around that initial informational block. It was like learning all the rules of a complex new game at once, or trying to chew too big a nut so that his mouth wouldn’t close or gain purchase. Though he now had no mouth. If there were a shorthand, an instant keying system—but if there were, Llyana the Undulant surely would have used it to avoid the romantic trap he had sprung on her. Maybe this problem had helped him more than it hindered him.

But now he had arrived—somewhere. His host-memory could not help him, for the host had never actually been inside a Tarotist temple. Not that it was any great secret; it was just one of those experiences, like dropping into a deep hole, or sleeping in a haunted cave, that hadn’t seemed necessary.

Tarotism—there, inadvertently delivered, was the name. It was the cult, a system of beliefs he had heard mentioned in passing back on Earth. Its prime tenet was supposed to be that all concepts of divinity were legitimate. The concept translated into taste—yet unmistakable because of the symbol at the door. The first key of the pack, the Fool. He should have made the connection before, for that had been a human memory. What use to delve into the confused recesses of his host’s brain, when he was neglecting his own?

And what in the galaxy was Tarotism doing here? A human religion among the Polarians? There had hardly been that much contact, not between the Sphere centers. Humans and Polarians merged amicably on Etamin’s planet Outworld, Flint’s home at the fringe of each of their Spheres—but Tarotism had not yet reached that world. So how—?

A dark Polarian stood before him. Flint had not been aware of the entity’s approach. More likely he had been there from the start, and only now showed himself in the brightening light. That was a thing Flint missed: the acute, direct binocular vision of the human eyes, eyes difficult to fool. The Polarian light awareness was serviceable in most instances, but useless for fine definition in a crisis. This body was taste-oriented; sight, touch, and hearing were secondary.

“I am the Hierophant,” the entity said. “What is your Significator?”

Flint applied his ball to his own skin. His host-memory was blank; no help there. “I do not understand.”

“This is the Temple of Comprehension,” the Hierophant replied. “Do you wish your nuclear identity to be open or hidden?”

“Hidden,” Flint said. He was not about to betray his origin and mission to this priest.

“Then we shall ask the Arcana to select your Significator—that symbol of yourself. Actually it is you who make the selection, random though it seems; your Kirlian aura will not be comfortable with any but the appropriate representation.”

Kirlian aura! How much did the Hierophant know?

“I know little; the sacred books know much,” the Hierophant answered. “Do not be alarmed; we mean you no ill, and shall not detain or importune you. We seek only to provide the aid you came for.”

“I came for solitude, a chance to explore my mind,” Flint said. That much was safe enough to say.

“Precisely. Now if you will shuffle the Tarot symbols…”

How did a no-handed creature shuffle anything? But now Flint’s host-memory provided the answer, for this related to an everyday problem of manipulation. He used his trunk to work the control of the mechanical shuffler on a pedestal beside him. This was no random effort; by expert twitches of his ball he made the printed cards in the lighted chamber riff through each other again and again, until they were hopelessly mixed. Then he picked one randomly by touching another surface; the card flipped out of the pack to present itself for identification.

He ran his ball over it. It portrayed a lone Polarian whose trunk reached out to hold a lamp, whose source of light was a bright star. A simple figure, on the surface—yet as a parallel symbol there was a single swimming sperm cell.

Flint’s mission was to bring secret information to foreign Spheres—news that would transform them, enabling them to expand their influence enormously, and to merge into a single galactic coalition. He was a tiny sperm cell coming to the huge egg of each Sphere to fertilize it in unique fashion. His knowledge was the illumination of a star—faint in the distance, yet of tremendous significance. How well the Tarot had chosen!

“You are the Hermit—the ninth key,” the Hierophant said. “Alone, concealed, not what you seem, bringer of light. You say, ‘Where I am, you may also be.’ Though you walk in seeming isolation, your light shows the way for the multitude.”

How much did this bastard know? (Though there was no concept of bastardy in the Polarian intellect; that was a purely human derogation.)

“Please do not insult the Temple by your suspicion,” the Hierophant said. “We respect your privacy, and we are politically and socially neutral. The Temple of Tarot transcends matters of mundane import. If the key seems apt, it is because you have chosen it so, not we.”

“Sorry,” Flint said. “It is apt.”

“Hermit, we shall now accede to your will,” the Hierophant continued. “You may have a private cell for meditation, or a reading of the Arcana to facilitate your thought.”

A private cell was what he had come for, but now Flint changed his mind. This Tarotism was strange, and it had some connection to Sphere Sol. It was possible that it could be of aid to him, if he could learn more about it. “I choose the reading.”

“I deal the keys as you have arranged them,” the Hierophant said. “Stand at the animation plate, and do not be afraid. No harm will come to you; it is only your own mind made manifest. No news of what the Tarot reveals will pass beyond these premises except as you make it known yourself.”

“Thank you.” Flint rolled to the circle that illuminated itself in a chamber before him. As he touched it, he became the Hermit, in a long gray robe, standing in the darkness atop a mountain, holding his stellar lamp aloft in his right hand, supporting himself by a staff in the left. Yellow light shone down where he looked, cutting through the literal chill of the still air. He was no Fool; he contemplated his next step as well as the far reaches. His feet were cold on the snow.

And Flint leaped out of the chamber. It had been a human representation—not a Polarian one! Hands, not a trunk; feet, not a wheel. Direct vision, not peripheral. Eyes.

“I perceived it,” the Hierophant said. “You are of Sphere Sol, surely a transferee, though we were not aware your kind possessed that marvelous secret. Your animation was the most intense I have experienced, and it suggests a truly remarkable Kirlian aura. Are you the Founder, come to correct us?” And his skin glowed apprehensively as his body sank into a globular mass. When a Polarian was worried, his shape-control suffered.

“I am of Sphere Sol, but I am not your Founder,” Flint said. “I come on a mission unrelated to Tarotism; my presence here is coincidental.” Yet it was amazing that his intense aura should relate so directly to animation; certainly there was some kind of connection. Was animation a nonmechanical, nonsentient way to identify the Kirlian aura? If so, he had been guided by fate into a highly significant insight.

The Hierophant regained his composure. “It is not that we have anything to fear from such a visitation; we have followed the principles of the Arcana faithfully. But the very presence of the Founder after these centuries would suggest some serious development.”

“I understand,” Flint said, considerably reassured himself. “I respect your privacy as you respect mine; no news of this shall leave these premises. Let us proceed with the reading.” And he rolled back into the chamber. When he returned to Sol Sphere, he would do some research on Tarotism and its Founder.

The Hermit manifested again—this time as a Polarian. The card dictated the symbol, but his mind animated it. Or rather his Kirlian aura did. He could control the image to some extent. And in dealing he must have controlled the order of the cards—but if the supernatural had some hand in it, that was as valid. Flint trusted to superscience, but at his core he accepted magic also. He was still a Paleolithic man, and he had seen the effect of spells, and learned civilized behavior from the Shaman, the tribe’s magic man, still the wisest person Flint had ever known. Was there really any difference between super-science and magic?

“This covers you,” the Hierophant said, touching the machine to make it deal the first card. “This defines the influence upon you, the atmosphere in which you relate.” And Flint found himself standing naked and sexually neuter within a circular wreath. Around him stood four figures: a flying animal, a Polarian, Old Snort the dinosaur, and a wheeled carnivorous beast. These in their diverse, devious fashions symbolized the four conditions of existence: gaseous, liquid, solid, and energy. More specifically, air, water, ground, and fire; as at the Temple entrance, the four elements.

“This is the Cosmos key,” the Hierophant explained. “The Crown of the Magi. It signifies that your mission relates to the whole of our galaxy, affecting all creatures. It is also the key of great promise; what you do is good, reaching for perfection.”

Flint didn’t comment. He agreed with the card—but who wouldn’t? It signified nothing but flattery. If this were the practical nature of a Tarot reading, it was a waste of his time.

“This crosses you,” the Hierophant continued, dealing the next. “That is, what opposes you.” And before Flint appeared a handsome queen on her throne, holding a staff in one hand and a flower in the other. A cat stood before her.

“Good Queen Bess,” Flint murmured wryly, reminded of his experience at System Capella. But this was not Queen Bess, but a superficial figure whose ultimate nature he could not fathom. He concentrated, defining it, and the image became Polarian: a female rolling over an elevated ramp, beneath which flames leaped. A two-wheeled carnivore moved complacently beside her.

“Beware the Queen of Energy!” the Hierophant said. “Observe the destructive flame, her hallmark.”

Queen of Energy. Flint’s mission was concerned with the problem of civilization, which was the problem of energy. Transfer enabled the Spheres to elevate their level of civilization without increasing their consumption of energy—and a foreign galaxy was trying to steal the energy of the Milky Way galaxy, incidentally destroying its substance. In short, the card was right on target—and somewhat more specific than the first card. But chance would have both relevant and some irrelevant symbols.

“This crowns you,” the Hierophant said, dealing another card for animation. “This is the ideal for which you strive, your best potential.”

It was a massive fortress, not quite square in Sol fashion or round in Pole fashion, but a cross between them. It was girt by four sturdy towers of similar ambiguity: one flaming, one filled with water, one hollow, and one solidly packed. The four conditions, or elements, again. “The Four of Solid,” the Hierophant said. “The symbol of power. But it is primarily a matter of maintaining what you have, and achieving equilibrium through negotiation. And,” he added a bit slyly, “on the purely personal level, it means pleasant news from a lady.”

That put Flint in mind of Tsopi, as pleasant a female as he had encountered. Could this Tarot tell him anything of her?

“This is beneath you,” the Hierophant said, dealing again. “The foundation, the basis of your mission.” And it was the crater of Luna, or rather the region known as the Lake of Death, inverted as it had looked to him in the hour of his capitulation, when he had made the decision to continue with the transfer mission, rather than to die alone. Then the image receded as if he were rising, and the surrounding landscape of Earth’s moon came into view: the Lake of Dreams, the craters Burg, Posidonius, Hercules, and Atlas, the Sea of Serenity… and then the larger Sea of Rains, Sea of Cold, and Ocean of Storms. Finally the entire face of the moon was visible, and it was a face, the Man in the Moon, the Lake of Dreams forming its left eyebrow. It became small in the distance, and the horizon of a planetary landscape rose up, with two towers, and two carnivores sitting beside a river, howling at that lunar face.

“The moon,” the Hierophant continued. “Adapted from that of your own Imperium. Few planets are blessed with such a close, magnificent companion. This is the symbol of secrecy, of hidden urges, horror, fear, dragging through poisoned darkness in the absence of air—”

“I know!” This card was so relevant it was stifling. The Polarian went on quickly. “This is behind you, that which has just passed.” And it was a charging chariot.

“Enough!” Flint cried against the floor, not caring to expose his experiences in the Eye of the Charioteer on System Capella. They had been good experiences, with a strong-Kirlian Dragon and a Kirlian queen who had, as promised, been very young in bed. These cards, seeming to orient on him with demonic perception, were striking entirely too close to the mark.

“This is before you,” the Hierophant said, dealing the next immediately. “Perhaps it represents your next mission.” It was a human heart, pierced by three swords. “Three of Gas, meaning sorrow.” This time the dealer did not dally, but proceeded to the next four keys in succession—and the animation plate became subdivided so that all four were evident at once.

One was a Polarian suspended by its trunk so that its wheel could not touch the ground, rendering it helpless, yet it did not seem to be in distress: “This is yourself, unable to make an informed decision.” Next a tower being blasted by lightning: “Yet your illusions will soon be destroyed to make way for new understanding.” Then a pattern of six swords, their points touching within a cross: “The Six of Gas—your hopes and fears expressed within the concept of science. Your mission surely involves some modern technological concept.” And the last: a dancing human skeleton wielding a scythe. “A strange animation—we Polarians have no bones—but it represents what is to be, the culmination of all these influences. And it is—”

“I see it!” Flint cried. “Death!”

“Not necessarily,” the Hierophant hastened to clarify. “It is also called Transformation, a shifting from one plane to another. All of us die a little with every experience, and are reborn a little. Life itself may be considered as the process of dying.”

“Maybe so,” Flint agreed. “I’m not sure this is getting us anywhere, though. It’s all drawn from my own mind, isn’t it? That’s why it seems so damned relevant. So it represents what I think will happen, nothing more. The reality could turn out entirely differently.”

“What will happen is governed by what we are,” the Hierophant explained. “And you are very special. The reading does not predict the future, it only tells what is in you. On its own terms it is valid. Your mission is important; you cannot give it up.”

“I wasn’t about to. But what I need are specifics. Such as who exactly is this Queen of Energy who is balking me? Can you name her?”

“No. I do not pretend to comprehend the full meaning of your reading. But you can identify her. Here, let me take this key as the Significator and further define it, using the keys as you have arranged them.” The other images faded and the flaming Queen formed. “This covers her.” And the next image showed: a huge, goatlegged, horned creature, laughing.

“The Devil!” Flint exclaimed. “And look—he has us chained to his post—” For there were two small human figures manacled to the Satanic perch, and they seemed familiar.

“Satan is God as seen by the ignorant,” the Hierophant murmured. “You see the male and female figures as you and the Queen of Energy?”

“Yes I do—and now I know who she is!” Flint paused. “No, I don’t know; I have never seen her in her natural form, or in human incarnation. But she tried to kill me twice, and may be after me a third time. How can I stop her?”

“We shall see. This crosses her.” And it was four swords. “The Four of Gas. It means truce. You cannot destroy her, you can only neutralize her—declare a cessation of hostilities, if she agrees.”

“Ha! I can deal with her if I can identify her. Can we verify her Polarian identity, or find out whether she’s here at all?”

“We can try. Where do you see her influence?”

“In the key for the near future—Three of Gas. Sorrow. If she’s here, she will cause me sorrow, all right. And the first thing I have to do is complete my mission.”

“You have a good memory for the layout,” the Hierophant remarked. It was actually Flint’s eidetic memory in operation that seemed to accompany him regardless of the brain of his host. “As you wish: Three of Gas the Significator.” The triply pierced heart returned. “This covers it.” And it was overlaid by—“The Queen of Liquid.”

“Not the Queen of Energy!” Flint said, surprised.

“Definitely a different female. Do you know one with the qualities of water? Soft, supple, beautiful, pliable, loving, with an affinity for flowing streams, not intelligent but wise in her timeless fashion, virtuous, the ideal spouse—”

“Honeybloom!” Flint cried with a pang, looking at the triply pierced heart within the Queen’s bosom, struggling to continue its beating despite its transfixion. “I was to marry her, before this. But she would never hurt me!”

“Not intentionally, perhaps. This crosses her.”

Flint cried out in horror. For ten terrible swords converged to pierce the Queen’s body, destroying her.

“There certainly is much Gas in your reading,” the Hierophant remarked. “And that is the suit of Trouble. This is the Ten—signifying ruin. Not of you—of her. Are you sure you have not—”

“I have to return to her!” Flint cried. “Poor, sweet Honeybloom, my green girl! She waits for me—”

“The Tarot—which I remind you is merely the animation of information you already possess—suggests it is already too late.”

“I don’t believe it! Right after this mission, I don’t care what the Imps say—that’s what I should be checking. My mission! Let’s have a supplementary reading on that.”

“We shall have to select a Significator for your mission—”

“It has to do with the Big Wheel. I must see him—now.”

“The Big Wheel! That would be the Key Ten, the Wheel of Fortune, the most important one to Polarians.” It formed: a huge wheel surmounted by a sphinx. “Your Sphere Sol images are fascinating; I have never seen them animated so neatly. I refer to content as well as clarity of image. The Founder—”

“Get on with it.”

“This covers him.” Four staffs appeared, with a castle in the background. “Four of Energy. Completion, peace—”

“That’s it. On.”

“This crosses him.” A woman, bound in front of a line of tall swords. “Eight of Gas. Interference, accidental yet—”

“I know who’s been trying to interfere, maybe well intentioned. A Polarian female, young, pretty—”

“Has she borne issue?”

“Had children, you mean? I don’t think so. She’s really very sweet, in a down-to-ground sort of way, but not—”

“Page of Solid, then, for her Significator.” The image formed. Tsopi.

“Yes—that’s her! Check her out—I want to know if she’s my enemy.”

“This defines her.” The image was of two overflowing cups. “Two of Liquid, signifying love, harmony. There is no enmity here.”

“So she’s innocent!”

“So you believe. I would be inclined to trust that judgment.”

“What crosses her?”

“This crosses her. Two of Solid, signifying change. Not really a negative indication—”

Flint had had enough. “Thanks, but I have to be on my way. Can you direct me to the location of the Big Wheel?”

“I don’t really advise—”

“I know you don’t. But you have helped me—you really have!—and it’s my decision.”

The Hierophant glowed, resigning himself. “We do not impose advice beyond the Querent’s desire. I shall show you a map.”

The map was a pattern of tastes on a sphere, unlike anything Flint had used before but quite adequate to the present need.

He soon found himself at the entrance to the palace of the Big Wheel. “I have important information for His Rondure.”

The guard was unimpressed. “Your identity?”

“Emissary from Sphere Sol, transferred.”

The guard checked as though this were routine. “The Wheel regrets he cannot interview you at this time.”

“He can’t speak with a Spherical Emissary?” Flint demanded incredulously. “This is important!”

“There is an unexpiated debt.”

“Well, I’ll see him anyway.” And Flint shoved by.

“Please desist,” the guard replied. “I do not wish to incapacitate you.”

But Flint continued on into the palace, certain that no attack would be made against an identified agent of a friendly Sphere.

The guard shot him on the wheel with a jet of frictive powder.

The effect was immediate and alarming. A patch of the surface of his ambulation ball became painfully rough, preventing him from controlling it properly. Uniformity of friction was vital to the control of the spherical wheel; the body was always making small adjustments of balance. When the compensation for a slippery surface was applied to a rough surface, that section grabbed and threw the body to the side. But adjustment for extra friction fouled up the minimum-friction surfaces too. The result was an increasingly erratic motion, ending in an ignominious crash.

Then Tsopi was there. No doubt the guard had notified her as soon as Flint identified himself. “Plint!” she cried on his prostrate hulk. “How did this happen?”

“The watch-cog bit me, Topsy,” he explained wryly.

“He tried to see the Big Wheel,” the guard explained. He did not react to Flint’s pun, as there was no similarity in Polarian to the words for “dog” and “cog.” Concepts could be translated; puns were lost. There were, however, dogs in this Sphere; they were twi-wheeled, fast-rolling carnivores, readily amenable to domestication.

Tsopi glowed with distress. “You cannot see him yet! I thought you understood that”

“I thought you understood that I have to see him. My mission—”

“It means that much to you?” she asked. “You risk injury—?”

“Cutespin, it means that much.”

She glowed with vexation. “Then I shall not clog your roller. Come.” She wrapped her supple tail about his torso and drew him upright. Her touch was delightful.

“Page of Solid,” he murmured against her skin as he tested his wheel. The friction was wearing off, being diluted and cleaned away by his body, and he was able to function—carefully. “I’m glad I can trust you.”

“You have been to the Tarot Temple!” she murmured back. “I never thought to look there, Knight of Gas.”

“No, I’m the Hermit,” he said. But he remembered how often the Gas cards, indicated by the flashing swords (the symbolism being the way they sliced through air?), had shown up in his reading.

“Not any more. You’re not giving me the slip again.” She drew up before a large door. “You’re sure you—?”

“Yes.” Could it suddenly be this easy?

She pushed through the door. It rotated very like some he had seen on Planet Earth. Of course, even stick figures employed some circular devices, and Polarians used some back-and-forth mechanisms. Nothing was pure. He followed her.

Inside was the throne: a high, ornate ramp set above a lovely alien garden. On it was the Big Wheel; actually a rather faded old Polarian.

“Your Rondure, I bring you Plint of Outworld, Envoy of Sphere Sol,” she announced.

The monarch glowed with interest. “Has your debt been abated so quickly?”

Tsopi hesitated.

“Well, speak up!” the Wheel snapped.

“I—yield it,” Tsopi whispered against the floor behind her, very like a guilty cur.

“You what?” The Wheel rolled close, looming over them on the high ramp.

“I—”

“I heard you the first time! Female, do you seek to dishonor your Revolver as well as yourself? You yield nothing to me! The moment the individual gives way to society, our Sphere becomes frictive.” That was an allusion Flint would not have understood prior to his experience with the powder. Friction meant disaster! “What would the Big Stick of Sphere Sol say if we treated his envoy so abrasively? Stop spuming around uselessly. Abate that debt! I want his mission done and you back in service soon, or I’ll dewheel you myself! You’ve already wasted several hours twiddling your tail while he gossipped with the Hierophant—and the secret of transfer is of the highest rotation.”

“Your Rondure,” Flint said. “I only want to—”

“Oh, get this lamewheel out of here,” the Big Wheel said impatiently.

Tsopi drew Flint out. “He’s got a terrible, uncircular temper when he gets mad,” she murmured almost inaudibly against his hide.

“You bet your little bare bearing he does!” the Wheel blasted behind them. He had put his ball against the Royal Ramp, and it acted as a sounding board to amplify the volume alarmingly. Royalty had its prerogatives.

They coasted out of the palace. “All right, you explain,” Flint said. “I’ll listen.”

“Well, it’s not easily explainable,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere private.”

An unusual request, from a company-loving Polarian. “Somewhere private it is,” he agreed. “But then you’ll make it clear?”

“I’ll certainly try,” she said. “But there may be a cultural barrier.”

“I’ve experienced cultures odder than this,” he said, thinking of the triple-sexed Spicans.

“Your own is odd enough,” she agreed with a flash of her normal humor. He thought of Earth and Capella, and had to agree.

They rolled up to an elevator. An aperture opened in the round chamber, then closed pneumatically when they were inside. There was an abrupt wrenching. Then the portal opened and they rolled out—into a wheelwhirling wilderness.

Flint skidded to a halt. “This is another planet!”

“Of course. No satisfactory wilderness remains on the Home Ball. This is a little resort world fifteen parsecs out, very posh. Don’t you like it?”

“We mattermitted fifty light-years just like that?”

“Why not? What’s the use of technology, except to bring nature closer?”

“The cost—it must be a trillion dollars to move the pair of us—”

“As I tried to explain before, our values differ from yours. We like company, not crowding—but a certain concentration is necessary for ideal efficiency. So we precess, we compromise. Better to expend energy than live in discomfort.”

“That’s irresponsible waste!”

“Not as we scent it. Letting a star’s light proceed uselessly into space, unharnessed—that’s waste. We save that stellar energy and turn it to our purposes. But transfer would be better, we agree. We have already noted how well it works for you.”

“That’s what I’m trying to bring to you! Why won’t you listen?”

“That’s part of the explanation. Come, let’s enjoy it.”

He followed her along the path into the forest. The trees were neither vine nor wood, but humps of spongy substance bearing large sunlight-collecting disks. They resembled the sentient Polarians in broad outline, just as the trees of Earth resembled men, with their leglike roots and armlike branches and stiffly erect bearing. Evidently this planet had been seeded with Polarian vegetation centuries ago. Yes it had; now that he worked it out for himself, his host-memory confirmed it. But already what he saw was merging with what he remembered: these were trees, perfectly natural.

“You called me Knight of Gas,” he said. “How did you derive it?”

“Tarotism came here three centuries ago; it was really one of our first direct contacts with Sphere Sol culture,” she said. “It has never been really popular as a cult, but it has a certain circularity. It has become established, and the cards do make a compelling entertainment for many who ascribe no philosophical value to them—as in your own Sphere. The animation effect is the main attractant, I think. Thus many of us have had readings,” and some adopt the Tarotism precepts. So we pick up bits about the cards. Males and females who have reproduced are Kings and Queens; those who have not are Knights and Pages. We retain the original Solarian nomenclature, you see. The suits are determined by the qualities of character and situation. Thus I, as a basically planet-bound creature, am Solid or Ground, while you, as a highly mobile off-planet creature, your essence expressed wholly by your Kirlian aura, are Gas or Air. In the archaic Solarian terms, I’m a Coin and you’re a Sword.”

“You certainly are a coin,” he agreed. “You roll and you’re precious.”

“Thank you,” she said, vibrating her ball against his trunk in a most stimulating way.

“And I have seen some combat in my time, so I’m a Sword. In fact, I’m a flintsmith—I make weapons. Good ones, too.”

“I am aware. I knew you then. Remember?”

“So you did.” He paused. “You knew me as a human being. So to you I’m a stick figure, all angles and bones. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“No. We believe in outside contacts, in exogamous cooperation. It’s part of our nature. We have known of the nature of Solarians for many centuries. The Tarot itself has prepared the way, for we associate ourselves with the circular Coins and Solarians with the thrust of Swords. The message of the Tarot is that all systems are valid, no matter how strange some may seem at first. I know you are a fine person in alien guise. And we have a common debt. And now you are here in rotary form, visiting my Suit of Solid as it were, and it is good.”

“Yet you will not let me—the Big Wheel will not let me complete my mission.”

She drew up on a fine expanse of hard foliage overlooking a flowing stream. Paddlewheeled waterfowl disported on its surface, and two-wheeled animals moved away, alarmed by the intrusion of sapients. Originally all creatures of the Solarian home planet had been bicycled, but in time the sapients had lifted one wheel, becoming unicycled, freeing the other to become the communicatory ball. The pattern seemed familiar to Flint; human beings had progressed similarly, from quadruped to biped status.

“Try to understand,” she said. “To us, the individual is paramount in the circuit. Government exists only to serve the needs of the citizens. Where the interests of a single entity conflict with that of society, the entity takes precedence.”

“That’s backwards! Government must always serve the good of the greatest number.”

“In a thrust-culture, perhaps that is so. Here, no.” She made a little gesture with her tail, much as a human used hands to augment a difficult point. “What is good for the individual is good for the society.”

“But centralized society would collapse!” Flint was not used to debating economics or political science, yet his point seemed irrefutable.

“Well, it is true we lack the straight-thrust dynamism of your muscle-and-bone mode. But we have achieved the equilibrium of the turning wheel. We accomplish much by accommodation and mutual respect, rather than force.”

“And your Sphere is twice the diameter of ours,” Flint said. “I don’t claim to comprehend it, but I admit I like it. But what happens when the interests of individuals conflict?”

“This is the heart of our system. It is a form of mutual debt. They must work it out together.”

“Debt. There is the key I don’t have. How do you—”

“Divergent interests must be reconciled. Factions must unify. The interest of one entity must merge with the other, so that no dichotomy exists. You might call it love.”

“Love thine enemy?” Flint remembered another of the fragments of wisdom of the Shaman that had not come clear.

“There can be no enemy. Only debt to be expiated.”

Flint pondered. “Let me see whether I have it straight,” he said at last. “Or curved, as the case may be.”

“Circular,” she supplied. “At Sol, a straight line may be the solution to most problems; here it is a spiral.”

“Yes. You and I saved each other’s lives, and so we owed each other our lives. A mutual debt, very hard to repay. You can’t take back a life, after all. Now in our thrust-culture, we’d call that self-canceling. Equal and opposite forces. But I suppose if you plotted it on a spiral, it could start quite a spin. Equal and opposite thrusts applied to the two sides of a wheel can make it roll twice as fast. So—” But he stopped, beginning to realize. “Pleasant news from a lady…”

“I’m aware that different conventions obtain in your culture,” she said. “You tend to be indrawn, perhaps as the natural consequence of your outward thrust.”

“That’s what I was saying! The Shaman explained it to me, back when I hardly understood and had to stretch my mind to take it in. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“Yes. So you are an expansive, extroverted species—but also strongly introverted, alienophobic. Your mating pattern reflects this. You seek a stranger for the purpose of procreation, then establish lifelong liaison with that stranger. To us that seems extreme. We prefer familiar matings—but we form no restrictive relation.”

“You’re saying you’re polygamous?”

“No, that would be the wrong connotation. We mate for social or economic reasons, but our love is intense while it endures. At the end, there is a child—and all debts have been expiated by that act of creation, all differences reconciled in that child. The chapter is finished; we never mate again with the same partners.”

“To us that would be frivolous,” Flint said. “Mating is tantamount to marriage—a permanent commitment. This is my relation to Honeybloom, the Queen of Liquid. Or Water, Cups, or Hearts, by the cards. When I return to Outworld, I’ll marry her.”

“I understand that, and I wish you well. It is your system,” Tsopi said. “But at the moment you are part of the Polarian culture, and you cannot complete your technical mission until our debt is expiated. There is no conflict between me and Honeybloom”—she had used his term, for there were no parallel concepts in Polarian, no flowers, hence no blooms and no bees and no honey—“so love me now, and never again. You may regard this in the line of duty, since the Big Wheel is anxious to have our debt abated, and will meet with you immediately afterward.”

So, circuitously, politics had become sex. “On Planet Earth, that would be called prostitution,” he said.

“I do not understand the term.”

Indeed, there had been no concept for this either; he had had to use the human word. “Allow me to be a bit finicky,” he said. “I can indulge in sex on a purely casual basis, or as a necessity of my mission, or I can marry. You seem to be offering something in between. Short-term love. And I don’t even know how it is done here. You have no—do you know how Solarians do it?”

“Yes,” she said, glowing with distaste. “It is linear, again. The male pokes his little stick into the female’s—

“All right. You have the idea. Now how do Polarians get the male seed together with the female egg?”

“I propose to show you,” she said.

“I could learn faster if you told me first,” he said with developing exasperation. This reluctance to speak directly to the point—but of course, that was Polarian nature.

“Why did you stop me from describing the Solarian act?” she inquired in return.

“Solarian act?” For a moment he was baffled.

“How the male makes his stick stiff and—”

“Oh. That sort of thing isn’t discussed openly among humans. Not in mixed company.” Then he did a double-take. “I see. Some things are better performed than described.”

“Yes. Also, your human viewpoint might cause you as much distress as our own viewpoint causes us in contemplation of the Solarian act, which seems aggressive and unnatural to us. Why, if the male poked too hard, or missed the opening—”

“All right!” Flint made a fluid shrug. “Better done than said, as we agreed. I don’t promise to be an effective partner, but—”

“Is it not true that no instruction needs to be given to your individuals for them to procreate?”

“It is true. One look at a girl like Honeybloom and the rest follows naturally, if she’s willing.” He decided not to go into the subject of rape; she would never understand it. “But we have better vision than you do; we are visually stimulated.”

“We have better taste than you do,” Tsopi said. “Follow me.” And she began a slow circle.

He rolled after her—and picked up a most sensual taste. She was laying down amour, and his host-body was electrified. His own glands responded with the masculine equivalent, which he knew she would pick up as she completed the circuit and covered his trail. Here was the true meaning of circularity!

Around and around they went, like two unicycles on a circus track. Slowly they spiraled inward, the taste stimulation intensifying. To hell with duty, he thought; this was fun. Every taste she laid down was a tangible caress, intellectual as well as physical. Tsopi was a most attractive specimen of her kind to begin with, and this courtship of hers enhanced her allure considerably. Closer together they came, until they were revolving about a common center like twin planets, almost touching.

And Flint broke away. “No,” he said, though his whole body pulsed with desire for the culmination. “Not this way.”

She paused, disappointed. “You do not wish to expiate the debt?”

“Not as a business transaction. Love is love, and my mission is my mission. I don’t care to mix them.” Actually it was more subtle than that, for he had mixed them in Capella System. But while it was all right to enjoy an interaction initiated for political expedience, it was not right to make political expediency from an act of love. The act had to justify itself. He had come to like Tsopi too well to use her—and though she was quite willing to be so used, in fact almost insisted on it, he could not. His mission had become an albatross, destroying the validity of his personal interaction. Now he was enough of a Polarian to place that personal matter first—but not enough to work it out this way. Let no one ever say or think he had cultivated Tsopi only as a means to the end of his mission!

“But this is the way it is done in our culture!”

“Not in ours—and I am a Solarian.”

“The Big Wheel will not see you unless—”

“Unless I compromise my personal ideals. I won’t see him on that basis.”

It was as though he had struck her—and he had, figuratively. The Polarians had utmost respect for the rights of the individual, and he had told her his rights were being infringed, not facilitated, by her well-meaning action.

“In trying to abate my debt with you, I have complicated it,” she said. “It was wrong of me to impose on you. I will tell the Big Wheel the debt has been expiated.”

“There never was any debt!” he said. “We humans save the life of a friend as a matter of necessity. To fail to make that effort would be cowardice and perhaps murder. You helped me, I helped you; if there was any debt, it canceled out right there. That’s the way it is, in my culture; I cannot claim otherwise.”

“I should have understood you better,” she said. There was a muffled quality to her voice; perhaps the wood of the tree was damping it.

They returned to the mattermitter but did not enter. “The Big Wheel must not see us,” she explained. “He would immediately know that we have not—”

“He would?” But he took her word for it. “Then how do—?” But already his host-memory was supplying the answer. The Polarians had refined the technology of micromattermission so that they could ship individual message capsules the size of a living cell, and move them along in a steady stream so that virtually instantaneous communication resulted. These capsules could carry a complete sonic and visual image, but generally the visual part was dispensed with as not worth the effort. In this case, their demeanor would probably betray their lack of expiation.

Tsopi provided the palace identification code, and Flint spoke it into the message-coder. The Big Wheel responded immediately. “So you tweaked the tail of the Small Bear, eh?”

And Flint realized that the literal meaning of Tsopi’s name in Polarian was “Small Bear,” a bear being another carnivore similar in habit to the Earthian type, though dissimilar in appearance. And of course the star Polaris was in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the Small Bear, right in the tail. The mythology of the skies, like that of the Tarot cards, had uncanny relevance. Or was his life actually dominated by the stars and cards? It was difficult to come to a complacent conclusion.

“Uh, yes,” Flint said, taken aback by this familiarity of the governor of a Sphere. “Now I’d like to give you the key to the mechanism of—”

“Take the mattermitter. I have precoded your destination.”

So the Wheel was ready for personal audience now. “Thank you.” Actually, the expression of thanks was not usual, here; a substantial favor constituted a debt, and an insubstantial one merely enhanced circularity and needed no additional expression. The exchange cut off.

He turned to Tsopi. “That did it. Let’s go.”

“I cannot go,” she said. “The Wheel must not see me at this time.”

“Oh, yes.” How was she supposed to have changed? It was way too soon for her to manifest pregnancy, if Polarians had such a state. The information was surely buried in his host-brain, but there were layers of emotional repression that blocked it off. The host had perished because of a blighted romance, it seemed. The surest indication of the essence of a given species seemed to be in what it guarded most ardently: its mode of reproduction. But Flint’s mission was too urgent to permit time-consuming introspection, and now that he had his appointment with the Wheel he didn’t need to delve. “But where will you go, then?”

“I will seek my own repose. Now, do not keep His Rotation waiting.”

“Right. ’Bye.” He rolled into the mattermitter. With luck, it would not take long to acquaint the technicians with the transfer equations. Then he could return to square things with Tsopi—his way. Or round them off, in the local vernacular.

He rolled out at the spaceport of a medieval Polaris Sphere planet. He knew it by the architecture in the distance; his host-memory had no reticence about identifying it. Of course Polaris suffered Spherical regression the way all Spheres did. That was why transfer was so crucial. It was an instant, cheap mode of communication that could bring civilization right to the Fringe and keep it there. Or at least reduce the cultural lag. For even on Imperial Earth there were backward sections, so efficient communication was not the whole answer.

A port official coasted up. “Salutation, Flint of Sphere Sol,” he buzzed. “I am Dligt, the Polarian Ringer of this region. It is most circular of you to assist us in this difficult contact.”

“Hello, Delight. I understood I was to meet with the Big Wheel,” Flint said uncertainly.

“Of course. Immediately following your dialogue with the aliens. I do not know how we should have managed without your kind presence.”

What was the Wheel pulling? Obviously this misrouting was deliberate; Ringer Dligt had been advised of his coming, and there was a job in progress. “It is the least of spinoffs,” Flint said politely. “But in order that there be no confusion, would you rehearse what is anticipated?”

“Gladly.” The official pointed into the yellowish sky with his trunk. “In close orbit is a craft from Sphere Sol. One of your lifeships. We were uncertain how to approach them, as they have been traveling for three hundred of your years and know nothing of our Sphere. It seems the automatic mechanical devices of the ship have selected this as a suitable planet for colonization, and in due course a landing will be attempted. The shock of discovering it to be already inhabited by unfamiliar sapients may be uncomfortable. But with you here, a genuine Solarian, one of their land—no offense—”

“But I’ve never seen a lifeship!” Flint protested. “My world was settled one hundred Earth-years ago—about three and a half Etamin-Outworld years. Our own lifeship is long gone.”

“We understand. We have similar problems at our Fringe, and the voyage takes up to four hundred years on that scale. But this ship must have started its voyage the same time as your own ancestors did. You were contemporaries at the start, and also in space for two centuries. And you have suffered the same regressional displacement, even as we have here. And you are of their kind, a thrust-culturist. You are ideally suited to explain the situation to them.”

“That they can not settle here?”

“Oh, no. Refusal would not be circular. We would welcome a colony of Solarians. They would be a real asset to this world, a continual source of cultural stimulation. But they must be made to understand that they will be guests in our Sphere, subject ultimately to our government. They must acknowledge the legitimacy of the Big Wheel and refrain from interspecies altercations.”

“Yes, of course,” Flint agreed, thankful for the education he had received at the Shaman’s wheel. Shaman’s hands, rather. Spherical codes required that the authority of the native Sphere species be acknowledged. That was why Polarians yielded to human authority on Planet Outworld. The rights of such minorities were carefully protected by the host-Sphere, and inter-Sphere complications were anathema. It would be prohibitively expensive to wage Spherical war, and the Fringe areas were hardly worth it. There was also, as Dligt had mentioned, considerable positive stimulation when divergent sapients shared a planet amicably. But of course a ship that had traveled in isolation for three centuries would not be aware of that. Sol’s Spherical boundary had been established only in the past 150 years, filling in the region of space not yet taken by Spheres Polaris, Nath, Canopus, and Spica. “Mattermit me aboard and I’ll talk with their captain.”

“I must demur, implying no uncircularity,” Dligt said against his own hide. “We have established a visual-auditory communication channel, though we have not as yet implemented contact. We can project your image into the ship, and it will appear substantial to them. We believe this would be the expedient mode.”

“Why?”

“Regressives of any Sphere tend to be alienophobic, and yours more than most,” the Polarian explained. “There could be personal danger.”

“Um, yes. I am in alien guise—no offense.”

“Offense? Oh—uncircularity.” Flint had heard this concept as “offense” but that was not quite accurate. He would have to watch that, and make sure he understood what was intended, rather than what he expected. There were so many little cultural pitfalls. Most were minor, but some could mean real trouble. “Naturally not. This is why your help is so important. You understand such matters from the Solarian view. You will be able to interview them without creating avoidable uncir—that is, affront.”

So Dligt was also trying to accommodate himself to Flint’s linguistic mannerisms! A diplomat, surely.

The Big Wheel was pretty smart, Flint realized. This matter had come up while a Solarian was in the vicinity, so the visitor was being drafted to help tide over what could be a difficult contact. If anything went wrong, Imperial Earth could have no complaint. Strictly speaking, an emissary was not under local Sphere authority, but it would be pointless to object. Definitely uncircular! And Flint was curious about the regressed humans; it would be like meeting his own ancestors as they arrived at Outworld. “Right. Make the connection.”

The Ringer showed him into the communication booth. “Our operator will monitor the contact,” he said. “Should there be any problem, he will spiral off transmission.”

“What problem could there be? It’s only an image.”

“We are not certain. But we prefer to be careful.”

They were apt to be so careful they ended up running around in circles, Flint thought. Better the straight-line thrust of the human mind, that could move into and through a situation efficiently.

Suddenly he was in the Solarian lifeship. Everything was metal—a flat, featureless floor, bare walls, and complicated ceiling. The automatic mechanism kept the ship largely sterile.

But where were the people? Could they have regressed to the point of extinction? The ship really didn’t need them for its operation, but it was supposed to take care of them and see to it that they were equipped for colonization. But regression could lead to primitive violence, possibly wiping out the living complement. It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it might. The ship could protect its cargo from almost every danger but human nature.

Flint tried rolling forward—and it worked. The floor of the communication booth was movable, like a mat on rollers, and so he could shove it about with his wheel without actually going anywhere. The projection translated those floor-movements into modifications of the image, so that he could travel about the ship exactly as if he were really on board. Very nice; he had not experienced anything like this on Planet Earth. The Shaman had been right, as always: there was much to respect about Sphere Polaris, technologically and socially. Overall, it seemed to be somewhat more advanced than Sphere Sol.

He moved about the chamber, noting the banks of buttons and dials. This was evidently the control room, perhaps sealed off to prevent meddling by the passengers. He found a passage exiting from it; sure enough, it was blocked by a closed door, like an airlock.

Well, he was accomplishing nothing here. He rolled right at the bulkhead—and through it “Now I know what a ghost feels like,” he murmured, and was startled by the sound of his own voice. His image-ball could not have produced it. He spoke against the supporting wall of the communication booth, and it was broadcast here along with the rest.

He emerged into another hall, similar to the first There were side passages branching off. He should have thought to study a map of the ship; he was in danger of getting lost.

Well, he didn’t have all day. If he went straight ahead he was bound to get somewhere, as the size of the ship was finite. He passed through another sealed portal—and suddenly faced the residential portion of the ship.

It was breathtaking—though in this host he did not breathe, exactly. The whole cargo section had been left open, a monstrous cavelike chamber, with the housing of the colonists on the outer wall. The spin of the ship held them there at approximately Earth gravity; this was a lot simpler and cheaper and more reliable than artificial gravity, and simplicity was the keynote of a lifeship, for all its sophistication. The less complicated it was, the less could go wrong with it; that was a universal principle.

By the same token, the necessary recycling of organic substances was done by natural means. Assorted plants grew, in some sections amounting to a veritable jungle. He recognized berry bushes and fruit trees. This was very like that ancient Garden of Eden the Shaman had told him of.

Had man come to Earth originally in just such a vessel, and the legend of Eden was all that remained after regression had wiped out the memory? If so, where had man come from? Could there be genuine human beings elsewhere in the galaxy, never connected to Earth or Sphere Sol? He would have to meditate on that sometime.

He moved into the nearest field, skirting a small lake where fish swam. He rounded a tangle of hedge—and encountered his first sentient.

Flint wheeled back, appalled. The creature was grotesque. It stood on a split fundament, with bony joints at intervals. Two bent sticklike appendages projected from the sides, terminating in splays of miniature digits. The thing was all angular and rigid, yet with an irregular covering of flesh that made portions of it bulge outward like spilling candle wax, half-congealed. At the top was a head perforated by several holes, half-buried under a tumbling mane of hairs.

Flint’s system revolted. He felt sick, which was a problem, because this body had no way to vomit. He had never liked illness or grotesqueries, and never before had he contemplated anything so inherently disgusting. For this was no primitive monster; it was conscious and sapient.

Then he realized: This was a human being. A naked female.

He forced himself to reorient, as he had in Spica when disorganized by the enormity of the triangular sexuality there. Gradually his human essence assumed command. By the definition of his kind, this was a nubile young woman, lithe and healthy and sexually desirable, like his fiancée Honeybloom. Monster indeed!

How thoroughly he had merged with his Polarian host! This was a plain warning: his Kirlian aura was fading dangerously, reducing his human identity. It was supposed to diminish at the rate of one intensity-norm per day, but evidently this was variable. He would have to wrap up this mission and return to his own body—he quelled a surge of distaste at the notion—for a prolonged recuperation of aura. Maybe he was fading faster as a result of the fatigue of repeated transfer missions.

But at the moment he had another mission: to explain things to these lifeship primitives, and to give the secret of transfer to the Polarians.

The girl, meanwhile, seemed as startled as he was. In a moment she would bolt in terror. “Do not flee,” he said quickly. “I will not hurt you.”

She screamed piercingly and ran, her torso and limbs flexing in a manner that would have intrigued Flint had he been in a human body. He could not afford to have her depart in confusion, so he wheeled after her, overtaking her easily. He reached his trunk around her, to stop her flight—and it passed through her without resistance. He had forgotten he was only an image.

So he paced her, keeping up easily because of his superior mode of travel. “Listen to me! I represent Polaris Sphere—” And stopped. Idiot that he was, he had been speaking in Polarian. No way for the girl to understand him.

In fact, he had gone at this all wrong. He should have had the technician arrange for a human image rather than this Polarian one; surely the equipment was capable of such a translation. As a strange human, he could have commanded the girl’s attention, and spoken to her in her Own language. Obvious—in retrospect.

Now the girl’s screams had alerted her tribe. Naked men appeared, carrying homemade spears: crude weapons, preflint, he noted professionally. What a boon flintstone was to ancient man, with its supreme hardness and chip-ability. Yet here, amidst the advanced metal of a functioning spacecraft, they had lost even good stone. Probably there was no flint to be had. Without hesitation they threw these clumsy shafts at Flint—without effect, of course.

When they saw that, they all fled. Flint rolled to a halt. He had bungled the mission brilliantly. “Cancel the projection, before I do any more harm,” he said.

And he was back in the booth.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I ruined it. A complete disaster. As a Paleolithic man myself, I should have known better.”

“Do not be unwheeled,” Dligt said. “You may have been too close to the problem, lacking the vantage of dissimilarity. We have failed many times in initial contacts; your involvement was an experiment in linearity that has taught us much.”

“You’re right; the straight-line approach can be completely wrong. I see that now. But I have spoiled it for your circular approach, too. I don’t know how to make amends.”

“Not at all. Being now satisfied that the linear system is not applicable to the present case, we shall return to circularity. We shall project a still figure of a Polarian, along with a tangible offering of trinkets to delight the primitive mind. In time they will discover that there is no harm in the projection, and will seek more trinkets, which we shall provide. This will lead inevitably to communication, because they will desire it. It will take time, and many circuits, but the end result is assured.”

“Circularity…” Flint said. “Slow but sure. Yes, I understand now. And I suspect you understand the primitive mind better than I do.”

“I do approach it from a more distant perspective,” the Ringer agreed. “Also, civilization has an insidious effect, if you are not accustomed to it. It changes you subtly, until you are a different person—without knowing it. You are no longer Paleolithic.”

“You are perceptive,” Flint said.

“Merely trained in the field.”

Flint thought of Tsopi, who had not tried to oppose his direct-line thinking. Had he appeared to her as the life-ship female had appeared to him? All angular and horrible? Then she, too, had overcome a formidable revulsion—only to run afoul of the human mode of thinking, as disastrous to social interaction as to initial contacts. “I am unused to the concept of circularity, but perceive it has merit. You have been most understanding. May I prevail on you to put a linear query in a separate matter?”

The official seemed surprised. “Linearity is your nature, yet you have done much to overcome it. I shall try to respond in that fashion.”

“I appreciate it, Delight. If one of the parties declines to make a debt-settlement when the opportunity offers, what happens?”

“That is the subject of half our literature!” Dligt said. “The results are highly variable. Many debts cannot be settled.”

“One that can be settled. If a male declined solely because he preferred to perform an unrelated mission—one that could wait a little longer, but—”

“To turn down a debt-settlement capriciously? Nothing is more important than debt. The entire culture suffers if any facet of individual prerogative is infringed. Are you familiar with the legend of Roller and the Bearing?”

Flint stifled a snort of laughter (not hard to stifle, since the Polarian ball did not snort well), realizing that this was serious. “I regret, no.”

“Roller was a primitive yet attractive male who inadvertently incurred debt-exchange with an immature female, a bearing. Her age prevented immediate abatement. When she was of age she sought him out—but Roller did not recognize her, and so quite properly declined to mate. Maturation changes females, you understand—”

“I understand,” Flint said, remembering the phenomenal change in Honeybloom, once a thin, shy child.

“Rather than off-balance the debt by informing him of his error, the Bearing sought her own repose.”

Flint’s memory jogged. Tsopi had used that phrase. “Does that mean what I begin to suspect it means?”

“She is now in the sky as one of our fainter stars. It is a beloved, sad story.”

Flint’s worst fear had just been realized. “She… died? Rather than tell him?”

“In linear terms, yes. Forgive me if I have become circular. I realize your query was theoretical, but it is a delicate subject, even so. The Polarian mind can conceive of virtually no circumstances that would justify such crude debt-abatement.”

Dligt evidently had a pretty fair notion of Flint’s problem, but was being most circumspect—as was the Polarian nature. “Such crudity is possible to a primitive alien mind, however,” Flint said grimly, feeling a terrible rawness inside. “Please, I have made another uncircular mistake. Will you mattermit me directly to the palace on Polaris Prime?”

“Certainly.” And without delay the official set the controls, and Flint rolled through the mattermitter into the palace a hundred and fifty light-years away.

The Big Wheel was right there. “So the emissary completes a circuit,” he commented.

Suddenly Flint thought: What did Roller do, when he learned of the Bearing’s fate? “In your constellations, where is the figure of Roller?”

“Odd you should inquire about that particular figure. Or were you already aware that it is otherwise known as Etamin, your Dragon star?”

“I am aware now,” Flint said. And he knew what he had to do. Whether he was now more Solarian or more Polarian he could not be sure, but the Polarian way was what he had to seek. Every mistake he had made had been the result of linear thinking.

“I shall summon my technicians,” the Big Wheel said.

“I regret I cannot meet with them,” Flint said. “I regret that your Sphere must suffer, but at the moment its welfare conflicts with that of an individual. If you will do me the kindness of informing me of the place of Topsy’s demise, I will join her there.” As Roller had joined the Bearing in the sky.

The Big Wheel paused. “We do not seek to impose our conventions on the natives of other Spheres. We did not understand you properly, and now we make amends by facilitating your mission linearly.”

“Please spare me the embarrassment of attempting to explain,” Flint said. “It would not be circular.”

“We seem to have crossed each other’s boundaries.”

“Yes.”

“In cases like this, individuals have been known to visit the Temple of Tarot.”

“Circularity.” And Flint rolled rapidly out of the Palace.

Back on Earth, he knew, they would never understand. Perhaps there would be Spherical repercussions because of his demise. But all that had become secondary. He had to settle with Tsopi before he could undertake anything else. Now he understood Polarian nature, and had phased through far enough to be dominated by it—and it was not just a matter of fading Kirlian aura. His treatment of Tsopi had been as wrong as failing to avoid the thrust of a spear. The shock of seeing himself as other creatures saw him, there in the lifeship, had made a great deal clear, too late. Had he only paid proper attention earlier…

He crossed the Temple portal and dropped inside. The Hierophant met him as he coasted up. “The Hermit returns.”

“The Knight of Gas,” Flint corrected him. Actually he had reproduced, making him the King of Gas, but that had been in a Spican host and probably didn’t count. “I have come to join the Page of Solid. I must be one with the Small Bear.” And what was a small bear, except a bearing?

“I am constrained to inquire whether you realize what this means, since you are not of our culture.”

“It means the Three of Gas—and the Dancing Skeleton. Sorrow and Death, as the cards foretold. I did not appreciate their relevance before, but—”

“Neither do you appreciate them now,” the Hierophant said. “You cannot substitute the Page of Earth for the Queen of Liquid and retain the relevance of the reading.”

“At the moment, they are one,” Flint said. “I balked on an abatement of debt, and I must repair that error in whatever way I can. Unite me with Topsy.”

“Spoken like a true Polarian,” the Hierophant remarked.

“Mock me if you will, for I deserve it. But deliver me to her.”

“I would not mock so noble a gesture. It is the Polarian way, and you have shown creditable comprehension and decision. Stand in the animation chamber.”

So it comes, Flint thought. Oddly, he was not afraid. On Luna, given the chance to die in his own fashion, he had declined, choosing instead to endure his problematical life. Now, rather than pursue a mission suddenly simplified, he chose the great transformation of death. It was not sensible, linearly, but it was right. He rolled across to the plate.

And as the light came, there was Tsopi, so real it seemed he could touch her, more beautiful than any creature he had ever seen before. “I come to expiate the debt between us,” he said. “And—I love you, Small Bear.”

For a moment she stood there, beautifully balanced on her wheel, like the tantalizing image she was. In that pause he realized that he had spoken only part of the truth when he said he loved her. He loved the other Small Bear too: the mode of Sphere Polaris.

Then she spoke, startling him—until he remembered the Polarian finesse with projections. Naturally they could animate her voice too. “And I love you, Alien Stone,” she said, translating his name as he had hers. “It is like rising from the dead, finding you thus.”

That hurt. What sadist was orchestrating this dialogue of his humiliation? “Wherever you may be, there I join you.”

“I am in the Great Circle.” Around them formed the huge bright sphere of the Polarian heaven, the Ultimate Circularity in which all of Sphere Sol was merely a faint constellation. There was the sound of perfect music and the taste of rapturous interaction and the sensation of harmony.

Flint reached toward her with his trunk, and she reached toward him with her tail—but he hesitated, not wishing to shatter the illusion by verifying her insubstantiality. Then she closed the gap—and there was physical contact.

Astonished, he drew her close. “You’re alive!”

“Now I am,” she said. “The Big Wheel bade me wait, so that he could remedy the matter.”

So His Rondure had detoured Flint to an educational mission while he got the facts from Tsopi. “The Wheel is a meddling genius!” Flint exclaimed angrily. “He’s downright linear in his fashion.”

“That is how he retains his position,” she agreed.

“Well, I meant everything I said, even if you are alive. I don’t care how many Polarians laugh their balls off at my folly! I came to—”

“No one laughs,” she demurred. “What you have done is beautiful, more circular than any native could have managed. You have reenacted the legend of your star.”

He drew apart. “It is time,” he said.

“Yes.”

They circled each other, as before. Flint didn’t care if the whole of Sphere Polaris was watching; he was going to abate the debt in style.

Tsopi laid down her provocative taste, and Flint augmented it with his own. The two trails fed on each other, building up the mood layer by layer as the two wheels spiraled inward toward the center.

At last they met. Flint’s trunk and Tsopi’s tail twined together, and their two balls touched each other in an electrifying spinning kiss.

Flint found that his body needed no instruction. As with Solarians and all other species both sapient and animal, nature sufficed. He knew it could not be worse than poking a stiffened stick into the body of the loved one.

Yet the steps of it astonished the human fragment of his mind. For at the height of his passion, Flint lay down and released his wheel. He had not realized that this was possible; he had supposed it was an inseparable part of his anatomy. Now it rolled slowly across the floor away from him, leaving him lame. Without that wheel, motion was virtually impossible; only in an extraordinary circumstance would any Polarian part with it.

The act of reproduction was one such occasion. Tsopi lay down opposite him and moved close—and Flint took the exposed portion of her wheel into his vacant wheel-chamber. The sensations were intensified excruciatingly, for they were direct; her secretions mixed with his without being diluted by an intervening surface. Trunk and tail reached around to twine together, drawing the connection tight.

Now the real action began. The rim of Flint’s torso met the rim of Tsopi’s, sealing all the way around their mutual sphere, so that none of it was exposed to the air. And the two of them spun it—rapidly. More rapidly than possible in any individual situation, for the wheel-controlling mechanisms of both parties were operating in tandem. Each had specialized adhesive muscles that touched the embedded surface of the wheel, moving it precisely and releasing it to other muscles. This was more than enough for ordinary locomotion—but now it was doubled.

The wheel spun so fast that it grew warm, then hot. Both Flint and Tsopi secreted extra fluid to bathe that sphere in its sealed chamber and alleviate friction, but still the heat increased. It was like traveling through a boiling lake at super-Polarian velocity. Flint knew, now, that that heat was penetrating the globe, making it pervious to the special juices. The elixir was reaching inward, deeper, changing the cellular structure of the mass, activating unique enzymes.

At last something within the wheel reacted. There was an electrochemical shift, as of a fire flaring up. It was the climax, that first stirring of buried animation. There was an instant of almost unbearable rapture as the shock went through the mass, then exhaustion.

Flint and Tsopi fell apart. The wheel rolled free of both of them, steaming. And while they struggled to regain their strength—complicated by the absence of their wheels, through which they normally ate, respirated, and eliminated—the loose mass began to shake and flex as though something inside were trying to get out. But it did not break open like a hatching egg; it elongated and unfolded, stage by stage, until it emerged complete, sculptured by the hand of nature: a young Polarian.

The newcomer spent some time getting the feel of his wheel and ball and achieving proper balance. Then, abruptly, he departed.

“Children take care of themselves,” Tsopi explained, her ball vibrating weakly against the floor.

“So I note. But what about us? We’ve been dewheeled.” For answer, she disengaged her tail, put it to her empty base, and popped the little communication ball in. Her base closed about it despite the disparity of size. With difficulty she got up, until she stood balanced precariously on that tiny ball. There was her new wheel!

Then she cast about with her empty tail until she found Flint’s trunk. Her ball socket embraced the available portion of his ball, as he had embraced her embryo-wheel before. For a moment the little ball spun swiftly between them in a remarkably intimate, sweet kiss, a wheel-copulation in miniature; then she drew away, and took the ball with her. And with that pang of separation, Flint’s remaining passion expired. He was sated.

Finally Tsopi wobbled over to his full-sized wheel, and nudged it forward with her body. Slowly it rolled until it touched him. He twisted about to seat it in its natural socket. The thing was cold and unpleasant at first, a slimy dead mass, but soon his torso warmed it and refreshed its surface lubricant, making it comfortable again. Now he was mobile. But he was unable to speak.

“Do not be concerned,” Tsopi said, vibrating her new ball against him. Her voice was burred, as though she had not yet gotten the feel of the equipment; his ball was slightly larger than hers. The burr of abatement, it was called; a fond allusion to a common satisfaction. “You will soon grow another, even as I lay down new protein around your seed to expand my wheel to full size. In our species, the female suffers her confinement after parturition, and the male is mute.” She paused. “We forgot about that, before; naturally the Big Wheel realized right away that the debt had not been abated.”

Flint was already aware that the Wheel had done some uncircular scheming. But perhaps that had been necessary. How would the Big Stick—correction, the huge phallus—no, he was still fouled up in the symbolisms of translation, accurately as they might reflect the underlying thrust of Solarian culture—the regent or emperor of Sphere Sol have reacted to a Polarian emissary who refused to come to the point? He probably would have diverted the creature to some safe place, investigated privately to ascertain what the hell was the matter, then acted to correct the problem without much regard for the niceties of human convention.

So now at last the mystery of Polarian reproduction had been explained. The seed started with the male, becoming his communication ball, encased in just enough nutrient protein to keep it secure and serviceable, until he passed it along to his mate. Next time she mated it would become an individual entity. No, not necessarily; he realized now that this was an optional aspect of the exchange. Usually the female took the male’s ball directly for her new wheel, in what humans would think of as a genital kiss. But if she had special regard for him, she saved his ball, substituting her own ball for the wheel, as on this occasion. In this manner she retained part of him for as long as she chose. After any mating she could transform that seed-bearing ball to wheel-status, thus setting up the union of their two genetic pools, or she could retain it indefinitely.

There was no parallel to this in human reproduction, but he liked it. The female had a very special control. Tsopi’s next mating would be infertile, for her virginal wheel contained no male seed. Her first wheel, just manifested as offspring, was actually the legacy of her own male parent; in a sense she had mated with her father. But her first ball had been her own, therefore sterile, and it was now a sterile wheel. She could plan ahead, activating Flint’s seed when she incurred a debt exchange with some other male she really respected, simply by having an interim non-debt affair to eliminate the sterile wheel. The debt system, in its subtler applications, was a very fine mechanism!

Actually, this was a variant of the three-sex system of Spica, for it required three individuals to produce one offspring. One male to provide the seed; the female to expand it to proper size; and a second male to trigger it into birth. That was why consecutive matings could not occur in a given couple; a male could not trigger his own seed. Hence romance was one-shot, and there was no permanent union. The notion of consecutive matings with one female now appalled Flint; it was akin to the incest taboo of his own culture. Repetition was possible, since Tsopi’s new wheel in this case was not his ball, but only in an emergency such as near-elimination of the species, or unavoidable repetition of debt exchange, would that become permissible. Much as sibling or cousin mating was possible among humans, and theoretically practiced by the children of Adam and Eve and the children of Noah, but never otherwise tolerated. No doubt facets of the concept of “original sin” entered here; a man should neither kill his brother nor impregnate his sister.

Oh, there was much to meditate on here, and comprehension of the Polarian system led to penetrating insights into his own human system. It would take a Tarot deck to unravel them all!

“Farewell, Plint,” Tsopi said. “The debt has been abated.” And she minced unsteadily away on her tiny wheel.

Flint, though profoundly moved by the experience, no longer felt any desire to associate with her. All that interest, it seemed, had been concentrated in his ball—and now she had that. In fact, the male ball equated closely with the human testicle, in both practice and the vernacular of both species, and was the subject of dirty jokes—yet it was ultimately the same as the female wheel. There were very strict language conventions here. Just as the tentacle was always called the male’s trunk and the female’s tail, the communications sphere was always the ball, and the traveling sphere always the wheel. Scratch a seemingly pointless but absolutely firm distinction, and Sex was bound to be at the root of it!

What of his male wheel, however? Could it also become a young Polarian? A wave of deep disgust at the notion assured him otherwise; it was merely a mass of protein, a kind of storage of resources. Males could survive for extended periods by feeding on their wheels. One terrible Polarian torture—oh yes, torture was known here!—consisted of isolating a male without sustenance for a prolonged period, so that his wheel gradually shrank, until it was as small as a ball. When he resembled a recently mated female, he would be released to suffer ridicule. Many preferred to seek their own repose, rather than endure that humiliation. Another punishment was to remove and destroy the wheel, letting the individual survive or die as he might.

Enough: He now knew more than he cared to of Polarian biology. Tsopi was now the Queen of Solid, a mature female; their mutual debt had been abated, and he was free to communicate the secret of transfer to the Big Wheel. But—

But how could he do that—with no communication ball?

He knew the answer, once he delved for it. He would have to take a little more time, growing in his new ball. There would be no problem; the replacement seed was already making its way to the end of his trunk, where it would form the nucleus of the new ball. He had merely to relax and enjoy his recuperation. He was sure, now, that his Kirlian aura was not depleted; he had suffered emotional, not Kirlian depression, and was good for months yet. Plenty of time to get back in physical shape. A valid excuse to get to know this delightful culture properly.

Flint rolled out of the animation area, heading toward the great, wonderful outside.