“Is it not true that no instruction needs to be given to your individuals for them to procreate?”
“It is true. One look at a girl like Honeybloom and the rest follows naturally, if she’s willing.” He decided not to go into the subject of rape; she would never understand it. “But we have better vision than you do; we are visually stimulated.”
“We have better taste than you do,” Tsopi said. “Follow me.” And she began a slow circle.
He rolled after her—and picked up a most sensual taste. She was laying down amour, and his host-body was electrified. His own glands responded with the masculine equivalent, which he knew she would pick up as she completed the circuit and covered his trail. Here was the true meaning of circularity!
Around and around they went, like two unicycles on a circus track. Slowly they spiraled inward, the taste stimulation intensifying. To hell with duty, he thought; this was fun. Every taste she laid down was a tangible caress, intellectual as well as physical. Tsopi was a most attractive specimen of her kind to begin with, and this courtship of hers enhanced her allure considerably. Closer together they came, until they were revolving about a common center like twin planets, almost touching.
And Flint broke away. “No,” he said, though his whole body pulsed with desire for the culmination. “Not this way.”
She paused, disappointed. “You do not wish to expiate the debt?”
“Not as a business transaction. Love is love, and my mission is my mission. I don’t care to mix them.” Actually it was more subtle than that, for he had mixed them in Capella System. But while it was all right to enjoy an interaction initiated for political expedience, it was not right to make political expediency from an act of love. The act had to justify itself. He had come to like Tsopi too well to use her—and though she was quite willing to be so used, in fact almost insisted on it, he could not. His mission had become an albatross, destroying the validity of his personal interaction. Now he was enough of a Polarian to place that personal matter first—but not enough to work it out this way. Let no one ever say or think he had cultivated Tsopi only as a means to the end of his mission!
“But this is the way it is done in our culture!”
“Not in ours—and I am a Solarian.”
“The Big Wheel will not see you unless—”
“Unless I compromise my personal ideals. I won’t see him on that basis.”
It was as though he had struck her—and he had, figuratively. The Polarians had utmost respect for the rights of the individual, and he had told her his rights were being infringed, not facilitated, by her well-meaning action.
“In trying to abate my debt with you, I have complicated it,” she said. “It was wrong of me to impose on you. I will tell the Big Wheel the debt has been expiated.”
“There never was any debt!” he said. “We humans save the life of a friend as a matter of necessity. To fail to make that effort would be cowardice and perhaps murder. You helped me, I helped you; if there was any debt, it canceled out right there. That’s the way it is, in my culture; I cannot claim otherwise.”
“I should have understood you better,” she said. There was a muffled quality to her voice; perhaps the wood of the tree was damping it.
They returned to the mattermitter but did not enter. “The Big Wheel must not see us,” she explained. “He would immediately know that we have not—”
“He would?” But he took her word for it. “Then how do—?” But already his host-memory was supplying the answer. The Polarians had refined the technology of micromattermission so that they could ship individual message capsules the size of a living cell, and move them along in a steady stream so that virtually instantaneous communication resulted. These capsules could carry a complete sonic and visual image, but generally the visual part was dispensed with as not worth the effort. In this case, their demeanor would probably betray their lack of expiation.
Tsopi provided the palace identification code, and Flint spoke it into the message-coder. The Big Wheel responded immediately. “So you tweaked the tail of the Small Bear, eh?”
And Flint realized that the literal meaning of Tsopi’s name in Polarian was “Small Bear,” a bear being another carnivore similar in habit to the Earthian type, though dissimilar in appearance. And of course the star Polaris was in the constellation of Ursa Minor, the Small Bear, right in the tail. The mythology of the skies, like that of the Tarot cards, had uncanny relevance. Or was his life actually dominated by the stars and cards? It was difficult to come to a complacent conclusion.
“Uh, yes,” Flint said, taken aback by this familiarity of the governor of a Sphere. “Now I’d like to give you the key to the mechanism of—”
“Take the mattermitter. I have precoded your destination.”
So the Wheel was ready for personal audience now. “Thank you.” Actually, the expression of thanks was not usual, here; a substantial favor constituted a debt, and an insubstantial one merely enhanced circularity and needed no additional expression. The exchange cut off.
He turned to Tsopi. “That did it. Let’s go.”
“I cannot go,” she said. “The Wheel must not see me at this time.”
“Oh, yes.” How was she supposed to have changed? It was way too soon for her to manifest pregnancy, if Polarians had such a state. The information was surely buried in his host-brain, but there were layers of emotional repression that blocked it off. The host had perished because of a blighted romance, it seemed. The surest indication of the essence of a given species seemed to be in what it guarded most ardently: its mode of reproduction. But Flint’s mission was too urgent to permit time-consuming introspection, and now that he had his appointment with the Wheel he didn’t need to delve. “But where will you go, then?”
“I will seek my own repose. Now, do not keep His Rotation waiting.”
“Right. ’Bye.” He rolled into the mattermitter. With luck, it would not take long to acquaint the technicians with the transfer equations. Then he could return to square things with Tsopi—his way. Or round them off, in the local vernacular.
He rolled out at the spaceport of a medieval Polaris Sphere planet. He knew it by the architecture in the distance; his host-memory had no reticence about identifying it. Of course Polaris suffered Spherical regression the way all Spheres did. That was why transfer was so crucial. It was an instant, cheap mode of communication that could bring civilization right to the Fringe and keep it there. Or at least reduce the cultural lag. For even on Imperial Earth there were backward sections, so efficient communication was not the whole answer.
A port official coasted up. “Salutation, Flint of Sphere Sol,” he buzzed. “I am Dligt, the Polarian Ringer of this region. It is most circular of you to assist us in this difficult contact.”
“Hello, Delight. I understood I was to meet with the Big Wheel,” Flint said uncertainly.
“Of course. Immediately following your dialogue with the aliens. I do not know how we should have managed without your kind presence.”
What was the Wheel pulling? Obviously this misrouting was deliberate; Ringer Dligt had been advised of his coming, and there was a job in progress. “It is the least of spinoffs,” Flint said politely. “But in order that there be no confusion, would you rehearse what is anticipated?”
“Gladly.” The official pointed into the yellowish sky with his trunk. “In close orbit is a craft from Sphere Sol. One of your lifeships. We were uncertain how to approach them, as they have been traveling for three hundred of your years and know nothing of our Sphere. It seems the automatic mechanical devices of the ship have selected this as a suitable planet for colonization, and in due course a landing will be attempted. The shock of discovering it to be already inhabited by unfamiliar sapients may be uncomfortable. But with you here, a genuine Solarian, one of their land—no offense—”