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.”