Piers Anthony: Cluster

“I was married in my fashion. Posthumously, as it were. I, too, had my personal life preempted by the needs of my galaxy. It is a sad thing, isn’t it.”

As he played his comment, she accompanied him with a haunting tune of agreement. The sheer beauty of the impromptu duet startled him. When Mintakans communicated, they really did make beautiful music together! It was far superior to the human forms, both as dialogue and music. In that affinity of sound, he realized how lovely she could be when she chose. If he were not careful, he could fall into the same snare he was fashioning for her. The lure of a Kirlian aura matching his own…

“Side boasted of her beauty, and was sent to hell by the jealous queen of the gods,” Flint continued. As was Honeybloom, shamed, exiled by her tribe, deprived of her luster; existing in a living hell. How he missed her, now that he could never recover what had been.

“So was Starshine,” Andromeda played softly. “Her beams were the clearest, and so she was banished for life, and her star still glows near the indomitable disks of the Hero…”

A strikingly similar legend—or was she making it up, playing a variation of his tune, teasing him? It hardly mattered; the theme was still new. “Then Orion fell in love with Merope, and killed all the savage beasts on her father’s island kingdom,” Flint continued. He was enjoying these mythological memories. Myths were very important to Stone Age man, especially myths relating to the visible stars. The constellations had been different from Outworld, but the Earth myths, easier to relate to than modern Earth, remained. “This was to find favor with her father, Oenopion, so that he would permit them to marry. When Oenopion rejected him, Orion took Merope by force.”

“How is this possible?” she played. “Either party can interrupt the beam—”

“In other Spheres involuntary mating is possible, as in Spica.” Where Andromeda herself had been raped. “A Solarian’s urination tube can become very stiff: it can penetrate against resistance. And Merope may have been amenable; it was her father who objected.”

“As one’s galaxy may object, enforcing by powerful conditioning.” She played so softly he barely received it. But the meaning was startling: She had been conditioned against him? She must, then, have evinced some inclination, as had Merope.

And in his own life, was Merope the Polarian Tsopi? He could not marry her, for they were of different Spheres. Anyway, her culture and nature forbade permanent liaisons. But while it lasted, it was wonderful, once cultural misunderstandings were resolved. Call Sphere Polaris Oenopion, blinding him to its secrets… no, there was no good analogy here. And why should there be? This was only a game. Or was it?

“Illicit beam exchange!” Andromeda played, comprehending. “Yes, that happens, despite serious opposition. It is mooted as most intense. The stigma of his prior exchange made him an unsatisfactory liaison…”

“You’re catching on. So Oenopion drugged Orion into a deep sleep and put out his eyes. Lenses, to you.”

“He blinded the giant!” she played.

“That’s in your legend too?”

“That’s what you are doing to my galaxy. You are cutting off our ability to transfer into other galaxies, to investigate their sentient Spheres.”

“Because your are stealing our vital energy!” Flint played back fortissimo, his harmonics jarring against her melody.

She did not respond directly. “Did you mean it, about the morality of your species being no better than ours?”

Again, he forced himself to express the truth, rather than uttering human or Milky Way patriotism. “Yes. I may have been more cynical at the outset, but my experiences in other bodies and other cultures have changed me. In Canopus I learned that to be humanoid was not to be superior; in Spica I found three sides to any question; in Polaris I appreciated circularity. I have learned that there are many validities, and like the Tarotists I find myself concluding that they all are proper. If I went to Galaxy Andromeda I would probably come to appreciate that reality too. I am not the same entity I was, either as an individual or a species.”

“Concurrence.” The tune was hardly more than a wish. Then: “Was that the end of Orion?”

“No. He learned that he could recover his sight by traveling toward the sun—”

“By seeking a new source of energy!”

“Maybe. When he could see again, he went to Crete and went hunting with Artemis or Diana—”

“What name?”

“Artemis in Greek, Diana in Roman. Same girl. Diana was a beautiful, skilled, chaste huntress who loved no male. She—”

“You are making sport of me!” Andromeda clanged, and the notes of her voice were like lasers.

“Believe me, that’s really the legend. I may have reason to kill you, but never to ridicule you. But don’t be concerned; she killed him .”

“Oh,” she played with a mixed background. Mintakan chords could convey so much meaning! “Sing me Diana.”

“She was a musician who liked singing and dancing, and was skilled in all things except love. When she and Orion went hunting together, he was struck by her beauty and competence, and he touched her—”

“As you touched me in Spica!” she played angrily. “How lucky I was that it wasn’t in Sol, or you would have rammed your defecation tube—”

Flint let the description pass. “That’s possible,” he agreed. “You’re quite a female in your fashion.”

“My fashion is Sphere / of Andromeda!” But in a moment she muted. “How did she kill him? With a laser?”

“Not as clean as that. She summoned a scorpion to sting him to death. That’s a bug with a jointed tail containing venom, very potent. Now that scorpion is also in the sky. When it rises, Orion’s constellation fades, hiding from it.”

“I wonder whether there are Mintakan scorpions?” she played musingly.

“Let’s go out and see.”

She trilled her laughter. “You are very clever, no matter what host you bear. We remain here. We shall be blinded together.”

Until the Mintakans traced the missing hosts, Flint thought. “That could be very tedious,” he played. “I have aura to carry my identity at least sixty days, and probably you do too. What will we do to pass the time? Make love?”

“I suspected you would think of that,” she played. “It seems to be characteristic of males all over the universe. Even here, where there are no sexes, some entities are constantly eager to make music together.”

“Not physically, not by laser exchange, but by making music together? I’d really like to know how—”

“Don’t be concerned. Death hastens the demise of the aura, and even transfer cannot extend it long. A living body suffers in the absence of its aura, and the aura suffers in the absence of its natural host.”

“So that’s what happened to my body when I returned from Sphere Polaris! I was so sick—”

“Yes. The body must be reanimated periodically, exercised, or it gets rusty. You did not know?”

“Our species is new to transfer.”

“Then accept my information: Our Kirlian auras have faded considerably already, because the tie to the natural host is never completely severed, and death is the ultimate burden. In just a few hours we shall expire.”

“A few hours!” There went his hope. In sixty Earth-days discovery was almost certain; in six hours it was prohibitively unlikely, unless the Mintakans were a lot more sophisticated about such things than the average Sphere bureaucracy. So Andromeda had won after all. He believed her; now he could feel his own aura depletion, like the loss of blood, an insidious draining of his most vital resource.