Chapter 12: Double Circle

Rondl found himself in Cirl's embrace. "Hey, I'm not drifting!" he flashed.

She released him immediately, then moved down the line far enough to obtain a suitable angle on Eclat for flashing back at him. "Rondl! You have recovered!"

Suddenly he realized his Band host had been left unattended. That must have been a horror for Cirl! "I have recovered," he agreed. "But I have been in nightmare. Tell me what happened here."

"We were sleeping when you drifted off the line," she said. "I tried to wake you, but you would not revive. I brought you back to the line, but still you were blank. I was horrified. I realized that the strain of this unsocial campaign has been very great, and that you bore up under it without disbanding, as no other Band could do, but that it had finally been too much for you and your aura had taken leave of your body. But you had not disbanded.

I remembered how strange some of your memories have been -- so there was hope that you were away in that strangeness, and that you would return when your aura recovered. So I held your body, keeping it on the line, waiting for that recovery, refusing to believe you were gone forever even though -- oh, I was so afraid!"

"That I can appreciate!" Should he tell her the truth, or pretend this had been an aberration? Her explanation was close enough to stand.

"Oh, Rondl -- if you should disband, I don't know what would become of me or of our species! I think we would all have to join you."

Join him in oblivion? For they could not transfer to Monster hosts the way he could. That decided him. He had to be honest with Cirl, whatever it cost him personally; she was the one he loved. "Cirl, had you not helped me, I would have perished." At least his Band host would have, making it impossible for him to return, which amounted to the same thing. "I must tell you the whole story, though you may find much of it painful."

"You have always been fair with me," she flashed gladly.

"Cirl, I have recovered my memory."

That dimmed her color. "You know whom you are? You have other commitments?"

Yes, this was going to be difficult. "I do, and I do. But I also have commitments to you and to the species of Band. I now have two lives to reconcile. I fear you will not like what I have learned about myself."

"You have to leave me?" she flashed tragically.

"No! I am not leaving you!" Yet, he added mentally, feeling guilty.

"Then the rest I can tolerate."

He hoped she was right. Actually, she was not prone to disband lightly, for she had not done so when rejected by her former male friend, or when chased by the Kratch. But this might be a sterner test. "I must go to a rendezvous." But that had not been what he intended to say; he was evading the issue."I will go with you! Where is it?"

Go with him? Meet the other Monster in Band guise? Yet how could he prevent this? "The Maze Mountain." Would she know of it? Did it even exist?

Perhaps he had no problem, in that sense.

"I can guide you there!" she flashed. "Whom must you meet?"

Her questions were making it easier; they provided form for his confession. "A female -- a married female -- who has had similar nightmares. I met her in this last nightmare, and must discuss it with her."

"You share your dreams with another Band?"

Treacherous domain! "Not as I shared them with you, Cirl! It just happened our nightmares overlapped -- and now we must straighten them out in the waking state, to avoid further trouble." He flew along the line for a moment, considering. "Worse trouble." Like genocide.

"I could not enter your dream this time. Your aura was absent. How could she be in it?"

"This is the worst part of it," he said. "Cirl, I fear this will hurt you, and I would spare you if I could. I don't have to tell you -- "

"Tell me. Anything is better than having you disband, or half-disband, dis-aura like that again!"

Why hadn't the original Band aura been returned to the host body for the interval? This body certainly would have died, had not Cirl acted so devotedly to save it, and Tanya's host might now be dead for the same neglect. That was criminal carelessness!

No, not carelessness, he realized as he thought it through. There were prohibitive risks associated with returning the native Band to his body. The Band, having experienced Monsterdom, could have second thoughts about this arrangement, and decide not to cooperate further. He might be appalled at what had happened and disband immediately, depriving Rondl of the available host.

In a mission of this importance, it was pointless to risk this. It was also possible that they had done some damage to the original Band in the process of the exchange, not understanding the nature of Bands. He might have tried to disband in the Monster host. What would be the result? The Solarian body would not disintegrate, of course, but might well die. So perhaps they had no aura to return to this host anyway.

At any rate, they had had to let the Band host be blank for the brief time Rondl was back in System Sirius, not realizing how risky this was. That was just as well for Rondl; he preferred to keep the Monsters ignorant. And suppose the original Band had returned here, to find himself in Cirl's embrace? What would he have said to her? That could have been yet another kind of disaster.

"I will tell you in a moment. What have the Monsters been up to while I was out?"

"They remain between moons. I think our interference has made them pause. We have a respite."

"Good." Rondl gathered his thoughts and courage as they slanted toward the planet. Cirl was guiding him from one line to another, taking him toward a region on the planet's equator. He trusted her guidance. "This last nightmare was of the Monsters, as before, but more complete. I was not absorbed by a Monster host, I was the Monster himself. I interacted with other Monsters. One of them was called Tanya, and we agreed to meet in our Band form when the nightmare ended. We could not afford to have the other Monsters overhear our discussion, you see."

"But I still don't see how she shared your dream, when I could not."

"Because it wasn't really a dream. My aura really was in a Monster host, and hers was in another."

"But you did not disband! I could understand your aura retreating to deep inside you, or becoming extremely weak so that I could not detect it for a time -- but how could it travel while your body remained?"

"In the alien Spheres there are devices that can move an aura intact from one host to another. Such a device was used on us."

She assimilated this. "So you were not really dreaming. You became a Monster, for a while."

"True. I really was a Monster."

"Your nightmares foresaw this. But how could your dreams know what was about to happen to you?"

"Because my unconscious mind, my deeper aura, knew. Consciously I did not know, for my memory had been blanked, but the information leaked out when my consciousness slept. This has to do with the nature of memory repression; it is not an erasure so much as a blockage. Complete removal of any part of a given segment of experience cannot be accomplished without enormous damage to the personality. Memory is like a holographic image, imprinted on every part and aspect of -- "

"Holographic?"

"A visual concept. Maybe I should use another analogy. Memory is like a lens: you cannot remove a part of an image by eliminating part of the lens --

"

"Of course you can't! The lens is a totality!"

"Yes. So is memory. So they really blocked my conscious awareness of my Monster status. Much of my vocabulary tied in with that status, which led to the many little mysteries of my communications, but I could not directly pass that block. Deep in my mind was the knowledge that I would -- in due course --

become a Monster. My nightmares were excerpts from that awareness, like refuse fished up from the deep ocean."

She ignored the alien concepts of refuse and ocean. "But no one can foresee the future!"

Rondl saw that she was not absorbing enough of his meaning. Perhaps she was resisting it on her own subconscious level. He tried again. "It was not necessarily my future. It may have been my past nightmares reflected, in distorted fashion."

She flew for some time in silence, flashless. This was a critical point.

He had been trying to guide her to the realization carefully, in much the way he had learned to train his Band recruits, so that she brought herself to the fundamental concept. That way she would fashion her own emotional supports along the way, and safeguard herself against being shocked into disbanding; her mind should balk before accepting too devastating a concept. He had not managed this perfectly, saying too much and too little, but perhaps it would work out. "Before we met -- in the time of your amnesia -- you were a Monster?"

There it was; she had navigated it. "I was a Monster. A Solarian. That was why I kept remembering odd bits of alien concepts, which leaked out around the memory block and vanished the moment I sought further detail. My Monster aura was sent to a Band host."

"Your odd information!" she repeated.

"From my Solarian background." He was beginning to relax, seeing her accept it.

"Now you remember everything?"

"I do."

"All your Monster education, friends -- do Monsters have friends?"

"They have friends. I remember it all. I share the Monster outlook. In that life I was a Transfer agent -- one who had his aura moved to alien hosts, to gain information about their situation. Sometimes to foment trouble. I was sent here to find something important."

"And when you have found it -- you will return to your Monster host?"

She had not taken long to get the essence. "When the mission is finished, they will recall me to my Monster host. I will have little choice in the matter. I might resist or avoid re-Transfer, but since my aura is alien to this Band host, it would inevitably fade as time passed. I can only visit this form; I cannot remain. That is my final nightmare."

"Then I will disband!" she flashed.

"Don't disband!" he flashed back instantly. "I don't want to go back. I want to stay with you!"

"I did not mean right now. I will disband when you leave me forever, since this life will have no brightness for me without you." She seemed quite matter-of-fact about it, and that chilled him. She had considered disbanding when jilted by her former male friend; this time she was certain.

"But there is no need for you to die just because I am not what you thought I was. Not what I thought I was! How could I live with my conscience, knowing you had perished because of me?"

"Do Monsters have consciences?"

"Some do. I do. Now."

"No Band perishes," she reminded him. "There is no guilt or sadness in the Viscous Circle."

So she believed. He did not want to disabuse her of this touching faith.

"But I am not a Band; I'm a Monster. My kind does not believe in the Viscous Circle. I would be alive, knowing I could never join you."

She was instantly solicitous. "I had not thought of that! We must get you into the Viscous Circle!"

What harm was there in agreeing? It was such a nice concept. "I'd like very much to join you there. But I doubt it is open to me, to my kind." And he found that this was indeed very sad. What a fine thing it would be if the myth were true, and he could join. Better than any of the mythical human heavens!

"I must ask Proft," she flashed. "Maybe there is a way to get an alien, even a Monster, into the Viscous Circle. He will surely know."

At least there was no immediate threat of her suiciding. She now had a positive aspect to focus on. He did care for her, a great deal; his emotion was every bit as strong and pervading as human love. Ultimately he would be wrenched from her, but he wanted to spare her any hurt he could. "By all means, ask him."

"Do Monsters marry?" she inquired after a bit.

Trouble again! "They do. You must be aware of that; you teased me about my supposedly alien concept of marriage."

But this time she did not respond with a flash of mirth. "Did you marry?"

"Yes. Before I met you."

"So you have a Monster wife?" This seemed to bother her more than the notion of death, perhaps because love was more real to her than death.

"I do have a Monster wife. On a five-year term marriage, almost over."

He was sure he knew what was coming, and he dreaded it. Females were females, the Galaxy over.

"You love her too?"

That was what he had feared. Yet the answer turned out to be easy. "I don't know. I thought I did, once. Then I met you."

Cirl was not swayed by the implied flattery. "What does she think of me?"

"Competitive, I think. But she knows it can't last between us. She knows about fading auras. So after you, there will be her -- if we should choose to renew the marriage for another term, which is in doubt. That is the reality of my condition."

"Poor thing," Cirl said sympathetically.

"I'm so glad you can accept it," Rondl flashed. "I was really worried --

"

"I don't accept it," she corrected him. "I merely defined the problem."

"But I thought -- "

"Now we must convoke a circle and explore the matter properly."

"But I have to meet -- "

"Another female?"

"That's not -- "

She was flashless, and he realized that he had better agree to her circle. The Maze would simply have to wait. "Take me to your circle," he flashed with resignation. He should have known this would not be simple!

She sent out the spiraling summons. In due course other Bands arrived --

many of them, and soon, for they were now close to the planet, where many congregated.

This time Cirl directed them into a double circle, one flowing one way, the other flowing the other way. The Bands were carefully interspersed, so that every alternate one faced opposite. Cirl herself was in the other ring, on Rondl's subjective side. What was this leading to? He had not known this variation of the formation existed, and didn't trust it. But he trusted Cirl, so he cooperated.

Participation was strange. There was the massed, viscous current of light, as before -- but also a similarly massed surge of feeling. Rondl knew this was merely the inversion of the communication flow of the reversed Bands, Cirl among them, but the quality was potent. It was not love, for that was unique to two Bands, but it was akin to it -- a deep moving of the fundamental emotion. He had experienced nothing like this before, in either Band or Solarian existences. Well, perhaps when the Monsters had put him through hallucinogenic therapy -- no, not even then. It seemed the full power and quality of his mind and emotion had been merged and amplified and rendered wonderful in a way his solitary self was incapable of appreciating, because it was simply too small. Even as the individual fragments of aura could hardly compass the majesty of the Viscous Circle --

Give. The urge transfixed him, and Rondl realized Cirl was sending to him from the other consciousness. The requirement was nonspecific, yet impossible to misunderstand. What inner, suppressed secrets of his being was she picking up, reading his unconscious? She would comprehend his nature, surely, even those aspects he much preferred to conceal. Solarians were a secretive species, in contrast to the Bands; the sensation of exposure, of nakedness, was part of being Monster. He had to cooperate, as one might when joining a nudist colony, lest his failure to do so expose him even less prettily.

He gave. And the torus about him faded into the swirling thickening currents of its intellectual viscosity, and he became -- an infant Monster. He had fat fleshy appendages extended by bone, and --

And was drifting through space, following a gentle line, watching the planetoids pass in their hundreds before the stars in their myriads. He was questing for something, but did not know what.

Wrong. This was a concept almost alien to Band nature, but it came through now. He was not, somehow, doing what he was supposed to. But he was locked in.

A current on this side came to his rescue. "You have slipped through to the other side, and are picking up the unconscious theme consciously. You must not; that is the mirror of your conscious, and must be made conscious only after your conscious theme is complete."

Rondl did not quite understand, but accepted the judgment of those who were experienced in this mode of exploration. He formulated his thoughts, concentrating on the Solarian aspect. In a moment he had it.

He took in fluids, digesting them internally, assimilating them into his system from the inside out. It was really the same as the Band mode of coalescing from the outside.

He stood on his two base appendages and looked up at the night sky. He hovered near the planet and looked down at its nocturnal mystery. What was he searching for?

Wrong. He had slipped back into the countermode. This was tricky! In the double circle, as in life, the separation of conscious and unconscious was imperfect. But this time it was easier to find his place.

He became adult and went to space -- went to ground. And shied away from the Wrong. No ground, not in the Band sense. Space, in the Solarian sense. The great frontier of the unknown, space. To Bands, the unknown was the planetary surface.

He was uncertain he was equipped to cope with the type of mission he craved; eagerness warred with trepidation. Suppose he found himself in some totally alien situation, trapped on a planet amid creatures he could not relate to? As man or Band, he was daunted by this. Correction: as man only. He was exploring only his Monster side at the moment, consciously.

So he went on a training mission. He was transferred to a human host in a system near the fringe of the enlarged Sphere Sol, to Planet Hurri. This was a primitive world, at about the level of the ancient Sumerians of Earth; the colonists fancied they resembled the Humans of that space-time, a Mesopotamian tribe. It hardly mattered whether their level represented the year 2000 BC or the year 1000 AD on the confused Terran scale. It was pre-Transfer, pre-Atomic, pre-Machine, somewhere in the Metals age.

Ah, metals! the Bands of this circle agreed, finding an aspect of identification amid the confusion of alien concepts. They were following Rondl's thoughts, enhancing and clarifying them, giving him special powers of recall and comprehension, but they themselves were disoriented. Now they began to grasp his frame of reference.

The tribe leader Ronald was to meet for this practice assignment was called Speed Steelthew. Ronald found it easy to suppress his smile, for the man was tall, broad, and muscular, and he carried slung on his hip a gleaming two-edged sword, and in his left hand a three-meter spear. He was a formidable figure of a man, still strong though going slightly to pot.

Ronald himself occupied a host of this type: physically robust, scarred in numerous places, possessed of assorted minor discomforts and inhibitions where scar tissue was heavy, yet rather handsome of feature. His hair was fair, and it flowed down about his shoulders without tangles, and his beard was shorter but similarly fine. He was as pretty as a woman, in his fashion.

He had reviewed himself in the imperfect mirror surface of a shield.

Pretty as a woman? Well, almost -- for now Speed summoned forth two girls whose attributes were about as pronounced as Ronald had seen. Perhaps it was the style of their dress, cut away in front to expose provocative portions of their healthy breasts and cut away behind to show similarly firm buttocks.

Yet the exposure was not complete; key areas remained concealed, and to these his eye was drawn almost magnetically. Primitive these people might be, but the art of sex appeal was well advanced long before science came on the scene.

Did a nipple show in front? Did a stretch of cloth conceal the deepest crevices behind? He could not quite tell. That mystery was infuriatingly compelling, especially since his mission was not to ogle girls.

"Here are two of my concubines, Purrfurr and Wagtail," Speed said. "Will they be enough?"

Ronald had been advised that customs differed on regressed planets; the fact had just been brought home to him with abrupt immediacy. These young women were being offered to him for his sexual use during his stay here. He could not with grace refuse them.

"Uh, yes, surely," he said, embarrassed. He would have to use them, too, lest he give offense to his host. To his guest host, who was Chief Speed, and to his Transfer host, whose body he occupied and whose mind was discretely anonymous. Professional Transfer hosts, like well-trained beasts of burden, obeyed the will of the master so dependably that their presence was soon taken for granted. The good host did not intrude. As for Ronald, who hoped to be a good guest: when on Hurri, do as the Hurrians do.

But at the moment the girls were only decorations. They took the chief's spear and relieved Ronald of his, which was just as well, as he lacked any notion how to use it. They proceeded to the banquet, served, by assorted girls, on a blanket of glossy green leaves on the ground. The girls did not eat; they lacked the status to join the men in so meaningful an occupation.

Ronald found it dismayingly easy to settle into this double standard. He believed in the equality of the sexes, but it certainly was nice being catered to by this bevy of shapely creatures.

First the men feasted on spitted boarhound and pickled platypus eggs; they guzzled voluminous quantities of mead ale, which was a thin, sour, but mildly alcoholic beverage. After the first gulp Ronald became acclimatized to the peculiar taste of it and, as the evening advanced and they became dependent on the light of the bonfirelike cooking flame, he even found himself liking it. The stuff was dilute enough so that it never put him out of commission, though it did take his head and parts of his body on a dizzy ride.

At first he had questioned whether this culture had any real affinity for the historical Hurrians, who surely had been more civilized than this, with walled cities and cuneiform writing and irrigated gardens; but as the mead took effect, he concluded that there was nothing strange about this culture. Why shouldn't the Hurrians eat hunt-gathered items on the ground outdoors, before an open blaze?

Then they fell to with the concubines, who were so obliging there was no challenge. Ronald was not accustomed to public sexual display, but Chief Speed was doing it with abandon and conviction and considerable expertise, to the polite applause of the watching girls, and Ronald had to follow his host's lead. The mead helped him get into the spirit of the thing; there was probably an aphrodisiac in it. He was able in due course to acquit himself creditably with Purrfurr, unless the maidenly applause was purely polite. This was thanks in large part to Purrfurr's willing expertise and his own slowness in culmination, which permitted a longer and more varied display than would normally have been possible. The mead, again: not only did it reduce inhibitions, it dulled the edge of sexual response. Had he imbibed much more of it, he would have been able to put on the planet's most marvelous display, without climax.

When at last all human imperatives of hunger, sex, notoriety, competition, and expression had been sated, though not the need for recuperation, they proceeded to the business meeting. Ronald fought to keep his eyes open and his mouth closed, and to look properly attentive though his skull seemed out of phase with his brain by half a head and parts of his gut seemed to have been pumped dry. What an orgy it had been!

"...the monster," Speed was expounding.

Monster! Again the Bands identified with this strange memory. Was he going to challenge a Monster?

Was he? Ronald was having trouble remembering, as it were, ahead. He also wondered why this particular episode of his past, by no means his proudest, was here unveiling itself. Now the Bands, too, had assimilated his uncivilized indulgence in the grossest fashion.

"...sends fear and nightmares among our people," Speed was saying.

Nightmares -- a connection was beginning to show! "Sours wives' milk, makes brats bawl. Annoying."

Ronald nodded wisely, preventing himself from pitching forward into the dirt. The remaining leaves had been taken up when the meal finished; too useful to be wasted, they would be used to wipe knives clean and to serve as toilet tissue. "Annoying," he agreed.

"...destroy Cerberus...where you come in."

"Of course," Ronald agreed equably. Now at last he was getting a handle on his mission, the sample task he was to perform to benefit these primitive people. "Let me draw a suitable laser rifle from Supply -- "

Speed smiled, enjoying a private humor. "No laser, Imp."

Ronald wrestled groggily with this. "Imp?"

"That is you. Polite address for an Imperial Sol Representative."

Polite? Ronald doubted it. But at the moment he lacked the mental acuity to debate the issue. "No laser?"

"There are very few operative modern weapons here in the hinterworlds."

Oh. Of course. It required technology to maintain lasers, which needed to be periodically recharged. "A solid-projectile handgun, then. With a carton of bullets, and a selection of exploding shells. Clumsy but adequate."

"All the bullets were used up a century ago."

"But new supplies can be shipped by sublight freighter. There should be a continuous stream of such supplies." His head was clearing slightly. The sensation was not pleasant.

"Next ship to arrive in six Sol-years. Been on the way for two hundred years. Due care will be exercised, but bullets are precious. Supplies will vanish within weeks."

"But it's not supposed to be that way! Ammunition should be issued to imperial troops only -- "

Idly, Speed fished in the coals of the dying fire with a stick, watching the wood char. "Mister Ronald -- Imp -- sir, how long would you retain your bullets if Purrfurr wanted them?" And the sensual woman reappeared, twining her luscious body against Ronald's. So lithe and full and cuddlesome was she that he started to suffer arousal again despite the thorough depletion of his resources. "She will give you anything you desire, anything at all -- in exchange for a bullet. How long will you tell her no?"

With difficulty Ronald refrained from responding to the woman's expert allure. He doubted he would have been able to hold firm had he been fresh and sober. A bullet? He would have given his soul for further pleasure with this creature! "Point made. No bullets," he said, his head clearing somewhat as Purrfurr pouted prettily and withdrew. He wished he had had a bullet to give her. "But that puts us back to the -- the crossbow." He was a little weak on his knowledge of ancient weapons, but thought that was about right.

"Even that technology is beyond us," Speed said with a certain satisfaction. "We are simply not that far advanced. We can forge flat steel --

when luck provides the proper alloys in our crudely refined iron -- and make good swords, spears, and primitive armor. But this exhausts our limited resources. The crossbow requires gearing to crank up the tension, and gears are devious things."

"Yet it would be easy for Sol to send a factory ship, set it in orbit beyond the reach of native women, and produce and maintain the most modern weapons."

"For centuries?" the chief inquired rhetorically. "That orbiting ship would regress farther than the planet! But even at the outset, whether a ship in orbit would be truly out of reach is moot. Spacemen are notorious for rampages on leave; they are seldom satisfied with shipboard fare of whatever nature. I think one would soon encounter Purrfurr or her like, and the rest would follow. Girls always filter into military posts." Speed shrugged. "But there is another aspect. Generally, offensive and defensive weapons parallel each other, armor defending against spear and arrow, the bazooka defending against the tank, the laser against the ballistic missile, the matter disruptor against the stellar dreadnought. To place advanced offensive weapons in the hands of iron-age primitives who lack the resources or philosophy to mitigate their impact -- this would lead to internecine warfare, perhaps wiping out whole colonies. It is better to let the weapons match the culture.

No mustard gas without gas masks."

"You are amazingly conversant, for a primitive," Ronald observed. Or was the intoxication of the mead just making it seem that way?

"I'm practical, not ignorant. You would be wise to be the same.

Spherical Regression is a force that dominates every culture of the Galaxy. Of all known species, only the Ancients were free of it, which is perhaps the most tantalizing thing about them. The farther from the center of civilization a given planet is, the further regressed it is. This serves as a natural limit to the size of empires; the fringe of one culture cannot preempt the center of an alien one, because the aliens will at that position be more technologically advanced than the first culture. Oh, I know massive matter transmission is possible -- but that is so hideously expensive that any species who tried to build and maintain an inter-Sphere empire using that would soon bankrupt itself and collapse. I for one am satisfied to have it that way. We face no threat of alien invasion here; the closest alien Sphere, Antares, is also at fringe level in this region of space. We trade peacefully with the few Jellyfish we encounter; anything else is pointless."

So Antarians, who were sapient and technological aliens, were called Jellyfish here, just as CenterSphere agents were Imps. Good-natured contempt for outsiders. "But I assumed you intended to -- that you needed a civilized man to handle civilized weapons that you primitives do not understand."

Speed choked on a mouthful of mead. "Oh, that's rich!" he gasped.

"Civilized weapons!"

"What, then, do you need me for?" Ronald inquired, nettled. "I'm certainly not going after your monster with a hammered iron handsword!"

"That's the best we have to offer," Speed said, sobering. "Much superior to a gun without bullets. I think it will do the job."

"But any of you can do that! I'm not trained to use such a weapon. I would be worse than nothing."

"Not so, Imp. Only you or your ilk can accomplish this mission. That is why we petitioned for a genuine civilized CenterSphere Transferee. Your host can handle the sword; he is well versed therein."

That much was true, Ronald remembered. The Transferee assumed the capabilities of the host, if the host was cooperative. This one would certainly cooperate to save his body from the ravages of a beast-thing, not to mention ensuring for himself lagniappe like the goodwill of Purrfurr. Yet it was not enough. "Somewhere, O primitive Chief, you have lost me. My host body may be competent with the weapon, but still this draws nothing from my civilized training. I also happen to be ignorant of the terrain, the nature of the monster -- "

"Cerberus sends fear and nightmares -- "

"Souring the milk," Ronald agreed. "That isn't much to go on."

"We primitives are affected by superstition and magic," Speed said earnestly. "It's part of our culture, deeply rooted. You, as a truly civilized man, have no concern about such nonsense. You know magic is merely the ignorant explanation for illusion and natural phenomena, exaggerated for the credulous by medicine men and other charlatans. You do not let such concepts deceive you for an instant."

"Naturally not." Evidently the chief delighted in calling himself primitive the way some complex people liked to call themselves simple. He was nobody's fool, and Ronald distrusted whatever this was leading to. "But that doesn't help in a sword-versus-monster situation."

"Ah but it does, Imp! Because you will not be afraid. Supernaturally inspired terror will not stay your hand. The deceits of magic will not affect you." Ronald squinted at the Chief, uncertain whether he was being openly mocked. This man obviously had no special respect for representatives of the civilized Sphere; why was he being so effusive about their objectivity? Was this the result of some tribal political schism, which forced the Chief to call in help that he believed was not needed? "You are afraid to tackle this monster? Magic will stop you?"

"Not exactly. But fear prevents me from dispatching Cerberus myself."

"Isn't that the same thing? You implied it uses magic to make credulous people afraid. You yourself are not credulous."

"Not at all. I said the monster projects fear."

"That's nonsense! Fear can't be projected. There has to be something for a person to be afraid of, whether real or imaginary."

"Exactly what I hoped you would say. You are truly civilized. You will not be vulnerable."

"I think the mead has inhibited my comprehension. Why should I not be vulnerable to something you are vulnerable to?"

"You are civilized," Speed repeated patiently. "I am primitive. I'm hopelessly caught up in superstition."

"The very fact that you can talk as rationally as you have been doing gives the lie to that. You have been circling me intellectually like the tortoise round the hare. What are you up to, Speed?"

"The tortoise round the hare," the Chief repeated, smiling. "I do like that, Imp. I suspect you have more wit about you than I had credited. As I recall, there is a point to that particular legend."

"You know what I mean! The hare round the -- " Ronald paused. The tortoise had won that race. Yet the analogy seemed inverted. The mead was still irrationalizing his thought processes. The hare should represent the civilized person, which meant --

"I can discourse rationally, by your definition," Speed said seriously,

"because I am familiar with the litany of civilization. I know how you advanced people think. But it is not the way I think. I am a creature of my culture, and I could not throw that off if I wanted to."

Ronald mulled that over carefully, driving back the mead-fog to the far recesses of his worn brain. "You really do believe in magic?"

"Indubitably."

"But you know it's nothing! Magic doesn't exist!"

"You know that. I know otherwise. I have been touched by the power of magic."

"But you have done such a good job of being rational. You know science works. How can you speak so sensibly, and not believe?"

"I believe in science because I have seen it work. I also believe in magic because I have seen it work. You assume the two are mutually exclusive.

They are not. They are in fact merely different names for the same thing, as is shown in the Tarot pack of concepts. What we primitives call magic, you civilized people call science."

"But -- "

"How can you perform public fornication with a girl you never saw before today, whom you know to be the wife of your host, in the presence of that man, when your entire culture has contrary values?"

Ronald was taken aback. Concubine-wife. Much the same thing. He was guilty as charged. "Well, when in Rome -- "

"Were I in CenterSphere Sol, in the ambience of that culture I might afford the luxury of dispensing with the beliefs and prejudices of my cultural background. But I am not."

Ronald was not sure it was a fair parallel, but was not inclined to argue the case. The forces of cultural conformance were strong. "Very well.

Magic affects only those who believe in it, for whatever reason. I don't believe in it, so the monster cannot cast a fear-spell on me. But still, if the creature is horrendous, like a griffin or a dragon, I could be afraid, and for quite adequate cause. I make no claim to being a courageous man. How do I know I can beat this thing with a mere sword?"

"You exaggerate the case. Cerberus is neither griffin nor dragon. He is merely canine. He will hiss and snap, but any man could cut him in pieces without difficulty."

"Any man who isn't afraid."

"You've got it, Imp."

He had got it. But Ronald hardly believed it. It simply could not be that simple! There had to be something he had not been told.

The Bands considered, too. Some of the nether narrative began to leak through. Ronald squelched that, like a qualm, but in the process lost a little of his human narrative. He picked it up a few hours later, in its terms, passing over what he presumed in retrospect was a comfortable sleep in the arms of the pneumatic Purrfurr.