Chapter 10: Woman

He entered the null-gravity system and hurled himself along. He had always enjoyed this aspect of life at the Station, but now it reminded him of the traveling mode of the Bands. Their light construction and use of magnetic lines made them essentially free-floating. He saw himself now not as a Solarian temporarily free of gravity, but as a Band in different form. At least that was his subjective impression of the moment. He knew he was no Band, of course; he was merely experiencing a temporary subjective reversion, as was common among recently returned Transferees. In a few hours his reorientation would be complete, and the entire Band experience would have no more force than a dream or distant memory. Yet right now the effect was potent and poignant.

How much force did a dream have? As a Band he had suffered what he took to be nightmares, actually unconscious enactments of his real nature. Cirl had helped him stave these off, and he had been grateful to her. What was Cirl doing now? Did she think him dead, and would she disband? He did not like the thought of that. He regretted having deceived her, though at the time he had not known it was deception. He had not realized he was a Monster.

The tunnel sent off sideshoots leading to the various subdivisions of the planetoid-hydroponics, recreation, personnel processing, training facilities, and so on. There was even a carefully cultivated wilderness area.

But he was headed for home, not because he was really that eager to brace Helen, but to get into a private situation where he could unwind without embarrassment. There was no telling what the future held at a place like this, and he needed to be restored as quickly as possible.

This was a flying city, and also a military station. It was only partially self-sufficient. Should war come to this sector of space, the Station could become independent, but at the sacrifice of combat readiness and efficiency. So there was no point in becoming obsessed with self-sufficiency.

The Station protected its sources of supply by protecting System Sirius --

which was as it should be. Without such stations, the Solarian Sphere would be as vulnerable to alien encroachment as were the Bands.

There it was again -- that lingering disquiet. It was likely to be harder to shake off this Band experience than it had been for prior Transfer missions. Had he spent too long in Transfer this time, running down his aura, or was there something else? That blanking of his memory had been troublesome, even damaging; unlike other missions, this one had gotten to him, causing him to believe he was really an alien. Maybe that accounted for it; his continuity of identity had been interrupted.

He entered the residential section, automatically drawing out his fins to make the glide down. Bands did not do this; they rode only on magnetic lines. It seemed to him the Band way was better.

Helen was waiting for him. Her hair was arranged in a billowy red cloud that enclosed face, neck, and shoulders artistically. She wore a translucent blue dress that complemented the hair, and elfin slippers. She was an extremely well-formed woman, even after four and a half years of marriage, and knew it, and knew exactly how to show her body off to advantage.

Why, then, did she look like a Monster?

Ronald landed imperfectly, just missing a cornstalk, but his wife seemed not to notice. She stepped toward him, arms spread, smiling brilliantly,

"Welcome home!"

Ronald arranged to stumble. He dropped to the ground, avoiding her embrace. Why had she dressed up for him -- and why was he nonreceptive?

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Are you hurt?" She helped him up.

"Just a little out of phase from the Transfer," he said. "Takes a few hours to realign. You know that."

"Yes, of course," she agreed immediately. "I understand it was a rough one. Come inside; I'll make you some tea."

Tea. A beverage. A liquid that Monsters imbibed. Bands never imbibed.

"No thanks. I'll just stay out here a moment and get organized."

Again she was agreeable. "I'll set up chairs."

"I fear I've scuffed your garden."

"It doesn't matter." She bustled about, setting up the chairs. Space was limited, here in space, so that most furniture was temporary. A garden would not grow well under a chair; it needed access to the scheduled rainfall and hours of admitted sunslight. Sunlight; there was only one sun, here.

So now she cared for him more than for her garden. Did absence make her calculating heart grow so dramatically fonder? Ronald distrusted this. Helen wanted something, and planned to use attention and sex appeal to get it.

Best to tackle the matter forthrightly. "What's on your mind?"

"Does there have to be something on my mind?" she asked archly.

"Always. I scuff your dirt, you smile. That means mischief."

She dropped the pretense. "Before you went on the last mission, our marriage was foundering on indifference. While you were gone, I thought about that.""Why?" He had appreciated her sendoff, but had not suffered illusion about the overall prospects.

She looked startled. "To preserve the marriage, of course. Why else?"

There was the question she hadn't answered. Why else? "If the marriage is going to founder, that is the best time for it to do so. We can simply let the term expire and go our separate ways. We don't need to go to heroic measures to extend an untenable relationship. That's the whole point of term marriage -- to put a peaceful and expected sunset on mistakes. In prior centuries it was a much rougher situation."

"Ronald, I thought you wanted to extend!"

He realized it was true. She had intelligence and sex appeal, and she kept house well. One need never realize that she had a laboratory job at which she was quite competent; she was content to play the housewife with him.

Whenever he came home, she was there, though surely this complicated her own work schedule.

That was why he had married her, and why he had wanted to remain married to her. But her need for him had been less than his need for her, and she had done nothing to change that situation, and he saw now that that had gradually turned him off. He did not want to be vulnerable. Now she had inexplicably reversed -- and he was being turned off more sharply.

"As far as I know, I have done nothing to merit any change of heart by you," he said. "I haven't even been here."

"That's it," she said. "You were away, and I had a chance to think it out. Whether I'd prefer life with you, or without you, or with another man."

She had a precise way of expressing things, without hems and haws or stumbles or regretted misstatements, just as Cirl did.

He was still comparing Solarian to Band! Yet it was true: in this one respect, and perhaps in others, he had fallen in with similar females. Had Cirl in fact been a surrogate for Helen: expressive, competent, but of a sweeter disposition? "Such reevaluation is necessary at intervals," he said noncommittally.

"Certainly. We don't agree on some things, but you're not a bad sort."

"Thanks," he said with irony. He had expected a more positive assessment. "You're not bad yourself, for a Monster."

"Monster?"

"Private image. To the species I transferred to, Solarians were Monsters." Actually, he himself had foisted that image on them.

"Oh." She reset her legs and her train of thought. His eyes necessarily fixed on the one while his mind fixed on the other. "Then the returns started coming in," she continued. "Six agents in succession, wiped out. No returning auras. I realized I might not see you again, ever. That made me think much more deeply. Generally your missions are not matters of life-or-death. I knew then that I cared for you more intensely than I had thought. It was a kind of shock treatment, a vision of hell."

"Hell does not exist," Ronald said, feeling awkward.

"That depends on your philosophy. You are atheistic; I am religious. I won't claim to believe in a literal hell, the kind with brimstone, but I do believe in a final accounting and in the perfectibility of the spirit.

Certainly there is hell-in-life, and that is what I sampled, briefly. Without you, I would be less than I am, and that I hardly care to contemplate. So let's not debate about literal hell, and just concede that visions of hell certainly exist."

Just as the mock viscous circle existed. Again there was that similarity of outlook. Ronald found himself unable to respond directly to her implication. She was saying that she loved him, or at least that she wanted to renew their term marriage. Before this last mission, he would have been delighted to accept. Now he was in doubt.

"You know, the Bands have no vision of hell," he said, deciding to make a more open test of his insight. "But they do have one of heaven. They call it the Viscous Circle -- a great soul-mass comprising all their auras mixing viscously together."

"Ringer Heaven!" she exclaimed, smiling.

"Don't call them Ringers. They are Bands."

"You kept your promise!" she cried. "You tried to appreciate their viewpoint."

"My memory was blanked; I remembered no promise."

"Unconsciously, then. That was possible, wasn't it?"

Ronald was surprised. "Yes, it was."

"How do you feel about the Ringers -- the Bands -- now?"

He sighed. "It's a Utopian society. They don't fight, they don't war.

Each person lives and lets live, and helps anyone who seems to need or want it."

"That sounds wonderful! But suppose one attacks another?"

"None do. There are no Band criminals."

"But if some alien species moved in -- "

"As we are doing now?"

She chewed her lower lip, then her upper lip. Doing that, she looked very much like a Monster. "You know, I don't like our alien policy. Of course I'm loyal to my own species, but sometimes the way we move in -- but yes, what do the Bands do when faced with violence?"

"They disband in droves. Suicide. Go to their Viscous Circle heaven."

"They're not fighting? Not even to protect their home?"

"Only one group fought -- the one I organized. Now I understand why I alone possessed the ability to do that. I'm a Monster."

She looked askance at him. "Are you playing with me, Ronald? That's the second time you've called members of our species monsters. I don't think it's funny."

"I wish I were playing! It's coming back strongly now. A completely peaceful society, and we're destroying it. A year from now there won't be a Band left. Genocide! We'll get our Ancient Site -- but at what a cost!"

"You sound like me!"

Ronald considered that. "I suppose I do. I never really understood your view before. But now that I've been a Band -- can you imagine how it grates to hear these fine, truly civilized creatures called Ringers?"

"I think that's wonderful, Ronald! You've seen the light. I think that was the main thing separating us before, though I always hoped, believed, that someday it would change. I sensed in you the capacity for that change. You were a warrior, treading down other species as though they were all monsters to be slain, while I sought to protect them. Now you want to protect them too." With a vengeance, he realized. He had been trained to overcome alien monsters, starting with that three-headed dog, and had continued to do it --

until this mission. Now the passage of time was not realigning him with the Solarians; it was bringing him to greater identification with the Bands. He had suffered some sort of conversion. His fundamental orientation was changing; the essence of his longing now was alien. "The harder they fall..."

he murmured.

"It's your long-buried conscience emerging."

"But I am a military man!" he protested. "Or at least I'm associated with a paramilitary venture. I must follow my orders and complete my assigned mission. They'll be sending me back soon, along with the other surviving agent

-- this time with our memories intact. I will have no excuse not to locate the Ancient Site."

"You could resign," she said.

"They'd only send in new agents. It would be less efficient, and there would be many more losses, but new ones could do the job, now that I've prepared the way. My first report has already done the damage. I'd know I was responsible for what happened."

"I suppose you'd better go, then, and warn the Bands -- "

"Which would mean treason to my species."

She frowned. "I appreciate the problem, Ronald. Still, I'm proud of you for becoming aware of it. Other species do have rights, especially the right to exist. Maybe you could warn the Bands away, so we could take the Ancient Site without hurting them. That's not ideal, but maybe practical."

"They won't move. Can't move. They travel on magnetic lines of force that are strung out around their home system. They'd rather disband than move over.""They prefer to die rather than compromise? That isn't reasonable."

"Bands aren't reasonable by our lights. They don't understand our imperatives. And they don't mind dying, because of their foolish mythology of the afterlife. They regard disbanding as the proper way to counter aggression.

You can't fight a creature who suicides first. They are the ultimate pacifists."

"Yet it would be less drastic to move than to die, and pacifists should not object to that course."

"I told you, they can't move. If Solarian ships do their usual survey on Planet Band, detonating shells on the surface and all that, the Band equipment that generates all the lines will be destroyed. All the lines will vanish.

Without the lines, all Bands everywhere will perish, most within minutes, the rest within hours. There are no longer enough natural lines to support their population."

"Like returning mankind to stone-age technology, stranding us out here on the planetoid," she agreed. "We'd soon perish without our technology. But I'm still pleased you appreciate their position."

Ronald's growing frustration vented itself on her, Monster-fashion.

"Well, maybe you'll also be pleased to know I married a Band female there.

How's that for appreciation?"

Helen paused, but managed to take this in stride. "Fidelity was never a requisite of our marriage. When in Transfer, you are expected to do as the hosts do. It's essential to your missions. And of course you had lost your memory. It is virtually a contradiction in terms to be unfaithful to a faith that is not in your mind. Since it may have been politically or socially necessary to align yourself with one of the local -- "

"You're thinking like a Monster. There are no politics and no social necessities, other than leaving others alone and helping those in need. I married Cirl because I loved her."

"Yes, of course," she said, her tone showing she did not believe it for a moment. "It is always best to do these things for ethical reasons. But now your memory has returned -- "

"And I'm still a Band at heart. A Band in Monster form. I didn't realize that at first, but I know it now. And you -- you're a gross, fleshy, liquid-filled-eyeballed female Monster. I can't stand you!"

Then both were silent, shocked at what had come out. What a can of worms he had overturned! For he had spoken the truth, though he had not realized it was truth until it pressured its way out. He really did remain a Band in outlook, rather than a Solarian. And that meant --

What did it mean? What could it mean? Objectively, he knew he was a Solarian. He had been born and raised Solarian, in this Solarian System of Sirius, in the heart of Sphere Sol. He had spent a short time, relatively, in Transfer as an alien, and then reverted back to his proper host. The computer had passed him as normal, and the computer did not make mistakes of that nature. Unless the computer happened to have a grudge against some other responsible party, so was messing up the Transfer approvals -- no, ridiculous!

Rondl -- Ronald was Solarian! He had to be.

"Helen, I apologize," he said quietly. "I must be overtired, or not properly acclimatized. Funny things happen when a person's aura is out of phase. No fault of yours."

She recovered her composure in the efficient way she had. "I understand.

And I'm interested. Do you really love this alien creature?"

"I don't want to discuss that. I don't even want to think about it."

"And that expletive -- liquid-filled-eyeballed? -- That's beautiful!"

"You're being very polite. Bands have no eyeballs, no liquid in their bodies. No soft flesh. They're just hard rings, metallic, with no moving parts except a fringe of tendrils that hardly count. Their nervous systems are wholly magnetic -- like printed circuitry, transistor diodes, semiconductors.

Only they're a good deal more sophisticated than that. They can alter currents by applying magnetism, without changing the physical structure of a thing.

Some kind of finely attuned system of impedances -- I'm no physicist, I don't know what it is, or even if such a thing exists as magnetic impedance, but it works. They are the original magic rings. So to them, a purely physical living form, with soft flesh and moving parts and leveraged limbs and liquid in flows and sacs -- a Solarian is an assemblage of repulsively odd anatomy. They react much as we would to a maggot-ridden barrel of rotten eggs poured into our bathwater."

Helen let out a peep of stifled laughter. "An egg shampoo -- a real live shampoo!"

"But if you don't mind dropping the subject -- "

"Rotten eggs," she repeated. "Eyeballs made of rotten eggs, with yolk-pupils and -- " She stifled some more mirth. "I look like that?"

"Of course not! You're -- " But he could not think of a suitable refutation, because her eyes did somewhat resemble -- ridiculous!

"Let's put it to the test," she decided. "If I can't turn you on, then I must be a monster." She inhaled deeply, making her breasts accentuate, and recrossed her legs to show more flesh.

"Why does everything have to turn sexual with you?" he demanded. "I don't want this. I just want to relax and think, to work things out in my own mind before I make a worse fool of myself."

"Because this had been my only real hold on you," she answered seriously. "I'm not really a sexual creature, you are. I can take sex or leave it, but you've always needed it, so I have perfected it for you. We never saw eye to eye -- liquid-filled or not -- on any really important thing except this. Sex is the one thing that always pleases you. I am willing to bet that your Band female caught on to that early enough, too! So if it ever fails to move you, then I've lost you. The hook will have slipped."

She took another deep breath and leaned forward, and her torso-mounted flesh masses shifted form in a manner that ordinarily would have had a profound effect on him. "I thought you were a good man despite your flaws, which is why I married you," she continued. "I had about given up hope, after four years, that your worst flaw would ameliorate. But I think my original estimate has abruptly been confirmed. I am a creature of causes, as you know, and the redemption of you has been a prime cause."

"I was one of your causes? Along with the cornstalks and downtrodden aliens?"

"Of course. I felt you had the capacity to understand all the rest, and I was right. Only now you have turned entirely over, and not only sympathize with the plight of an alien species, but identify with that species. You think you may love an alien female. That's somewhat farther than I would have had you go, but not a disaster. If you really love her, I can't compete. But if I can compete, then it's not true. That is, what you think is love for her is merely newfound empathy. I know you have never separated love and sex; if you don't love, you can't -- "

"I mated with her."

"Yes, I thought that was the case. Any worthwhile female of any species finds out how to hold her male. So I want to find out now, while you think you love elsewhere, whether you really do, or whether you're fooling yourself.

It's important for me to know, for one thing, because -- "

She was amazing! And despite his intensifying alien perspective, she remained desirable to him. True, her flesh was ponderously puffed by liquid and gel, eyeballs and all -- but that was the mode of Monsters. And her reaction impressed him. He had insulted her in more than one way, and she had risen immediately to the challenge. He called her undesirable, so she proposed to make proof of that by seducing him. It was probably a valid test.

Yet there was something missing. She really should not be that interested in him. There were other men in the Station, and she was an attractive Monster, and some of the other men had indicated, in the approved manner of such things, that they would be interested in Helen if she were ever free. For that matter, there were other women who had indicated similar interest in Ronald. In a Station like this the regular personnel got to know each other pretty well, and there was a standard system of private communication that everyone understood perfectly. Only within marriage itself did the communication seem to break down; whether that was nature or irony he wasn't sure. Maybe emotion got in the way of objectivity. Or perhaps the culprit was commitment, since plenty of emotion could precede the formal alliance. "Why is this important to you?" he asked, becoming aware that she had broken off as though expecting his challenge.

"Because I want your baby."

She had hit him hard that time! He had wanted a baby at first, and she had not. Since it was necessary for both parties to take fertility pills in order to make conception possible -- countering the universal contraceptive medication of the Station -- that had meant they had been childless. As their marriage term wore on, his interest in that aspect had diminished. He might have been thinking, unconsciously, of contracting his next term marriage with a woman who also wanted a baby.

"But with less than six months to go in the term, we'd have to renew.

They won't give us the null-pills otherwise. Children have to be born to marriage with at least three years remaining."

"Did you ever wonder what I saw in you?" she asked. "We know what you saw in me: the natural padding on my chest and bottom."

"Oh, there was more to it than that," he corrected her, smiling. "Others have similar padding, but you moved it about more aptly."

"That took practice," she admitted. "But you don't have much padding in those places, and you hardly move it about at all."

"Well, I thought you liked my character. My sunny disposition -- "

"Others have that. You're not remarkable in that respect."

"I admit I came to doubt my remarkability, but as long as you were satisfied I did not see fit to question too closely. Something about not eyeballing gift horses in the teeth."

"Gift horse," she muttered darkly. "I would have preferred another analogy."

"I didn't really look at your teeth."

"I know what you looked at!" She ran her gaze over him speculatively as she reverted to her thesis. "It was your mind I liked. Largely frittered away in nonessentials, but beneath the garbage of your indolence you had a first-class intellect."

"But we have always disagreed intellectually!" he protested, surprised.

"And your aura. You're no 200, but you are a 55, and that's one hell of an intensity. Fifty five times as intense as the sapient norm."

"The minimum aura for a Transfer agent is 50, so that's not special. And your own aura is equivalent. You could be a Transfer agent too, if you wanted to."

"For posterity," she said. "I wanted a child with a mind and an aura.

Aura does not seem to pass from generation to generation; still, it seemed better not to settle for a low-aura father. At any rate, intelligence is largely hereditary, and so that part seemed like a good investment."

"But you could have had my baby three and a half years ago, if that was all you wanted!"

"True. That was not all I wanted. I needed to be sure the marriage would be renewed at least one term, because I don't like an unstable family situation. Not for a child. I know they claim that the Station nursery can raise a three-year-old child better than the parents can, but I don't believe it."

"I was raised in a nursery!"

"That's part of your problem. You oriented on the Station instead of on humanity. You lack empathy -- or did, until this past experience."

Ronald hadn't thought of it that way. "Could be. I don't orient on Monsters at all now. I prefer the Band society."

"Yes. You lacked really strong human roots, perhaps, and have now found stronger ones. It does sound like a nice society." She readjusted herself, downplaying the sex appeal for the moment. "Environment does play an important part, and a stable family is the most important part of the environment. We differed so persistently that I could not be sure it would last, so I had to wait."Ronald shook his head. "You are a calculating female!"

"Indeed I am. Now my calculations indicate that it can work out, because your attitude about minority aliens has suffered a promising change, and I want that baby."

"Right when I tell you I love elsewhere -- that turns you on?"

"An alien is no threat to me, Ronald. This mission will finish and you'll never see her again. I owe her a debt for doing what I could not: evoking your fundamental empathy, making you suitable to be the father of the kind of child I want to raise. In a unified family. Personally. You are, despite your momentary present confusion, definitely human. Which I am about to prove."

"I'm less certain than you are," he muttered. "I don't necessarily follow your logic. Extension of our marriage tenure is at this moment in greater question than ever before, yet you suddenly decide all is well."

"No. Now that you've seen the light about aliens, I've decided we could be philosophically compatible for a longer period. You're more human."

"Did it occur to you that if my love for my alien wife passes, so could my understanding of alien causes?"

"Emotion passes. Understanding remains. You will continue to realize that we can't just ride roughshod over creatures like the Bands. Not even when an Ancient Site is involved."

"That much is true," he agreed. "I've got to help the Bands some way.

But I don't know how."

"I know where to look," she said. "I'll tell you, after we make love."

He drew back. "You're setting a price on it?"

She laughed. "Touché! That's prostitution, isn't it, and we women aren't supposed to be too obvious about that sort of thing. On top of that, I'm the one who's paying. All right, I'll let you know now. You'll have to talk privately with the other survivor of the mission, Tanya Coombs. I know where to find her."

"Good idea!" he agreed. "She's the only other person who has been there.

But why would you be reticent about suggesting that?"

"I understand she is a remarkably attractive woman."

Now Ronald laughed. Trust a woman to think of that first! He knew he had a certain reputation for a wandering eye, so she would prefer to keep temptation out of his way.

Helen moved in to him. Flesh was all over her, wrapped around bones and shifting under tendons, and her eyeballs were indeed liquid-filled and glistening moistly as though they had sprung leaks, and the red fibers of her head were all over. Yet despite his sharpening memories of the Bands, he found himself reacting positively to the Solarian female.

He was, indeed, a Monster.