Piers Anthony: Cluster

“It is ironic but perhaps fitting that the two most intense Kirlian entities in our galactic cluster should terminate quietly together,” she played hauntingly.

“It must have been foreordained. When I read the Tarot in Sphere Polaris—” He paused in mid-chord. “Tarotism hasn’t spread to Andromeda yet, has it?”

“Not as a cult. I made a report on it as part of my mission, as it seems to relate indirectly to the powers of the Ancients.”

“Well, there’s something about the cards, whatever their rationale. They informed me that I was crossed—that is, opposed—by the Queen of Energy, defined as the Devil, in turn crossed by the Four of Gas. They said I could not destroy her, only neutralize her. I did not know then that—”

“It might be that Diana had never encountered a male worthy of her,” Andromeda played, seemingly oblivious to his tones. “Perhaps she had the most intense aura ever measured, and could not squander it on inferior entities. When she met her equal, crude and alien though he seemed at first, she felt the first stirrings of… of…” Her melody faded out in confused dissonance.

So she had suffered the impact of their similar auras too! There had been a magic about her from the outset in Sphere Canopus, not sexual attraction but the unique Kirlian aura. Officially he had been on a mission to save his galaxy, but personally he had been questing for his natural mate. That, despite the complication of inter-galactic politics, was / of Andromeda. She had strength and courage and intelligence and beauty and aura—and the last overwhelmed all the rest. If she reacted similarly to his aura, she was already largely captive to her fundamental instinct to reproduce; not her species , but her aura .

“The Hermit and the Queen of Energy,” Flint played musingly. “Neither able to prevail or to trust the other, playing at potential love. What would the cards say?”

Yet her sentiments paralleled his, keyed by the music that acted as virtual telepathy. “Even though he raped her as Merope, and cost her much pride and much time, she recognized in him a force and intelligence that matched her own. Her culture forbade it, but he was her ideal mate, and the call of the aura had to find expression. Then she became revolted at her own suppressed passion, and knew she had to kill him, though it was really that element within herself she hated. So she summoned the scorpion—or perhaps forced him to summon it—but she really died with him.”

“You flatter my intellect without believing in it,” Flint played harshly, denying his own urgings. “You are trying to seduce me, not kill me. You want the secret of involuntary transfer-hosting for your galaxy, and I alone possess it.” But he was bluffing, though he knew there was truth in his words; she had moved him by the insidious appeal of her melody, making his strings vibrate sympathetically, and his drums and tubes follow. They were indeed ideal mates, despite grotesque distinctions of form, and now there was little reason to fight it. He, too, felt superior because of his Kirlian aura; he, too, had a fundamental urge to produce offspring with a Kirlian aura intensity that matched his own. Left to chance, a similar aura might not appear for a thousand years; this way, a new, high-Kirlian strain might be initiated immediately.

Yet of course their Mintakan host-bodies carried none of their original genes. Still, phenomenal things happened in the diverse universe, and the limits of Kirlian potential were not known. “You could have locked me in here alone and let me die while you transferred home to make your report. Why didn’t you?”

“We both are dead,” she played sadly. “That is irrevocable. But there will be no other chance to establish our kind. We, you and I, are Kirlians, not Andromedans or Milky Wayans. I had hoped that before we expired—”

He understood her perfectly. Yet there was also that in him that made him resist. “It may come,” he played. “But only if you play me the truth. You are the professional huntress, well able to live and die without romance. What do you really want of me?” Maybe he was just trying to establish his male dominance. They both knew the stakes: the formulas in his mind. Whichever galaxy got them would win. He could not allow her to seduce him into giving that information to Galaxy Andromeda.

She played an intricate little tune of submission that was thoroughly alluring. “You have eidetic recall.”

“Yes, of course. Don’t you?”

“No. I have many talents, but lack that one. Otherwise I would have instantly memorized all the equations you evoked in the Ancient field and broadcast them to our relay station.”

“There was more there than you possess?” He knew there was, but he wanted her to admit it.

“Much more. The Hyades site was the best-preserved one yet discovered in the galactic cluster. In those equations are techniques millennia ahead of anything we know. Perhaps the whole answer to the energy problem is there. If we had that, there would be no need to draw from other galaxies…”

“And so you want me to spell out those equations for your technicians.”

“And yours too! There need be no further strife between the galaxies!”

This caught him by surprise. Not one galaxy or the other, but both, joined in one superior civilization, the ethic of energy now unifying them instead of dividing them? It was a mighty vision, and an appealing one. “Why didn’t you just tell me this at the outset?”

“I knew you would not believe me—”

“Unless you softened me up first. Very calculating.” And that was his true objection. Her intellectual and aura appeals struck him as valid, but he did not appreciate being used, manipulated, or deluded. As long as she tried to use one technique to soften him for another, she was practicing deceit, and he would not have it that way.

“There was also—” She lost her tune, and had to start over. “Orion and Diana. I used the political situation as a pretext to enable the personal one. There is so little time remaining. I don’t know how to—”

“How to love?” he asked. This inversion undercut his position abruptly. If she were not playing at love for the sake of politics, but was playing at politics for the sake of a love she could not confess… “And you wanted to?”

Her music stopped completely, making an awkward silence. He remembered that she had been conditioned, and he was sure her galaxy had fiendishly efficient techniques for that. But if that conditioning remained in force, he certainly could not trust her.

At last a single, faint, half-muted chord. “Yes.”

Could he believe her? Conditioned or not, she was a devilishly clever and ruthless huntress. Yet the Kirlian quest might override all other considerations. They could not have interfered with her aura without destroying her . “Prove it.”

“I don’t know how.” Now her tune was pleading.

“I can show you how to love, once I figure out the Mintakan system. I’ve had experience.” In several Spheres. But in his mind he saw Honeybloom’s body laid out for the carrion-feeders, symbol of the loss of his love for her through no fault of hers; an awful vision. Honeybloom’s love had been true, his flawed. “I mean, prove your sincerity about galactic cooperation.”

She played the key tune, and the door opened.

“I am free to go?” Flint inquired dubiously.

“Only if I am allowed to broadcast the information to my station before your aura fades entirely and you forget the knowledge of the Ancients.”

“I don’t trust this.”

“Then you make both broadcasts. I will give you the code for my station, betraying its location.”