Flint wheeled back, appalled. The creature was grotesque. It stood on a split fundament, with bony joints at intervals. Two bent sticklike appendages projected from the sides, terminating in splays of miniature digits. The thing was all angular and rigid, yet with an irregular covering of flesh that made portions of it bulge outward like spilling candle wax, half-congealed. At the top was a head perforated by several holes, half-buried under a tumbling mane of hairs.
Flint’s system revolted. He felt sick, which was a problem, because this body had no way to vomit. He had never liked illness or grotesqueries, and never before had he contemplated anything so inherently disgusting. For this was no primitive monster; it was conscious and sapient.
Then he realized: This was a human being. A naked female.
He forced himself to reorient, as he had in Spica when disorganized by the enormity of the triangular sexuality there. Gradually his human essence assumed command. By the definition of his kind, this was a nubile young woman, lithe and healthy and sexually desirable, like his fiancée Honeybloom. Monster indeed!
How thoroughly he had merged with his Polarian host! This was a plain warning: his Kirlian aura was fading dangerously, reducing his human identity. It was supposed to diminish at the rate of one intensity-norm per day, but evidently this was variable. He would have to wrap up this mission and return to his own body—he quelled a surge of distaste at the notion—for a prolonged recuperation of aura. Maybe he was fading faster as a result of the fatigue of repeated transfer missions.
But at the moment he had another mission: to explain things to these lifeship primitives, and to give the secret of transfer to the Polarians.
The girl, meanwhile, seemed as startled as he was. In a moment she would bolt in terror. “Do not flee,” he said quickly. “I will not hurt you.”
She screamed piercingly and ran, her torso and limbs flexing in a manner that would have intrigued Flint had he been in a human body. He could not afford to have her depart in confusion, so he wheeled after her, overtaking her easily. He reached his trunk around her, to stop her flight—and it passed through her without resistance. He had forgotten he was only an image.
So he paced her, keeping up easily because of his superior mode of travel. “Listen to me! I represent Polaris Sphere—” And stopped. Idiot that he was, he had been speaking in Polarian. No way for the girl to understand him.
In fact, he had gone at this all wrong. He should have had the technician arrange for a human image rather than this Polarian one; surely the equipment was capable of such a translation. As a strange human, he could have commanded the girl’s attention, and spoken to her in her Own language. Obvious—in retrospect.
Now the girl’s screams had alerted her tribe. Naked men appeared, carrying homemade spears: crude weapons, preflint, he noted professionally. What a boon flintstone was to ancient man, with its supreme hardness and chip-ability. Yet here, amidst the advanced metal of a functioning spacecraft, they had lost even good stone. Probably there was no flint to be had. Without hesitation they threw these clumsy shafts at Flint—without effect, of course.
When they saw that, they all fled. Flint rolled to a halt. He had bungled the mission brilliantly. “Cancel the projection, before I do any more harm,” he said.
And he was back in the booth.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I ruined it. A complete disaster. As a Paleolithic man myself, I should have known better.”
“Do not be unwheeled,” Dligt said. “You may have been too close to the problem, lacking the vantage of dissimilarity. We have failed many times in initial contacts; your involvement was an experiment in linearity that has taught us much.”
“You’re right; the straight-line approach can be completely wrong. I see that now. But I have spoiled it for your circular approach, too. I don’t know how to make amends.”
“Not at all. Being now satisfied that the linear system is not applicable to the present case, we shall return to circularity. We shall project a still figure of a Polarian, along with a tangible offering of trinkets to delight the primitive mind. In time they will discover that there is no harm in the projection, and will seek more trinkets, which we shall provide. This will lead inevitably to communication, because they will desire it. It will take time, and many circuits, but the end result is assured.”
“Circularity…” Flint said. “Slow but sure. Yes, I understand now. And I suspect you understand the primitive mind better than I do.”
“I do approach it from a more distant perspective,” the Ringer agreed. “Also, civilization has an insidious effect, if you are not accustomed to it. It changes you subtly, until you are a different person—without knowing it. You are no longer Paleolithic.”
“You are perceptive,” Flint said.
“Merely trained in the field.”
Flint thought of Tsopi, who had not tried to oppose his direct-line thinking. Had he appeared to her as the life-ship female had appeared to him? All angular and horrible? Then she, too, had overcome a formidable revulsion—only to run afoul of the human mode of thinking, as disastrous to social interaction as to initial contacts. “I am unused to the concept of circularity, but perceive it has merit. You have been most understanding. May I prevail on you to put a linear query in a separate matter?”
The official seemed surprised. “Linearity is your nature, yet you have done much to overcome it. I shall try to respond in that fashion.”
“I appreciate it, Delight. If one of the parties declines to make a debt-settlement when the opportunity offers, what happens?”
“That is the subject of half our literature!” Dligt said. “The results are highly variable. Many debts cannot be settled.”
“One that can be settled. If a male declined solely because he preferred to perform an unrelated mission—one that could wait a little longer, but—”
“To turn down a debt-settlement capriciously? Nothing is more important than debt. The entire culture suffers if any facet of individual prerogative is infringed. Are you familiar with the legend of Roller and the Bearing?”
Flint stifled a snort of laughter (not hard to stifle, since the Polarian ball did not snort well), realizing that this was serious. “I regret, no.”
“Roller was a primitive yet attractive male who inadvertently incurred debt-exchange with an immature female, a bearing. Her age prevented immediate abatement. When she was of age she sought him out—but Roller did not recognize her, and so quite properly declined to mate. Maturation changes females, you understand—”
“I understand,” Flint said, remembering the phenomenal change in Honeybloom, once a thin, shy child.
“Rather than off-balance the debt by informing him of his error, the Bearing sought her own repose.”
Flint’s memory jogged. Tsopi had used that phrase. “Does that mean what I begin to suspect it means?”
“She is now in the sky as one of our fainter stars. It is a beloved, sad story.”
Flint’s worst fear had just been realized. “She… died? Rather than tell him?”
“In linear terms, yes. Forgive me if I have become circular. I realize your query was theoretical, but it is a delicate subject, even so. The Polarian mind can conceive of virtually no circumstances that would justify such crude debt-abatement.”
Dligt evidently had a pretty fair notion of Flint’s problem, but was being most circumspect—as was the Polarian nature. “Such crudity is possible to a primitive alien mind, however,” Flint said grimly, feeling a terrible rawness inside. “Please, I have made another uncircular mistake. Will you mattermit me directly to the palace on Polaris Prime?”