“Certainly.” And without delay the official set the controls, and Flint rolled through the mattermitter into the palace a hundred and fifty light-years away.
The Big Wheel was right there. “So the emissary completes a circuit,” he commented.
Suddenly Flint thought: What did Roller do, when he learned of the Bearing’s fate? “In your constellations, where is the figure of Roller?”
“Odd you should inquire about that particular figure. Or were you already aware that it is otherwise known as Etamin, your Dragon star?”
“I am aware now,” Flint said. And he knew what he had to do. Whether he was now more Solarian or more Polarian he could not be sure, but the Polarian way was what he had to seek. Every mistake he had made had been the result of linear thinking.
“I shall summon my technicians,” the Big Wheel said.
“I regret I cannot meet with them,” Flint said. “I regret that your Sphere must suffer, but at the moment its welfare conflicts with that of an individual. If you will do me the kindness of informing me of the place of Topsy’s demise, I will join her there.” As Roller had joined the Bearing in the sky.
The Big Wheel paused. “We do not seek to impose our conventions on the natives of other Spheres. We did not understand you properly, and now we make amends by facilitating your mission linearly.”
“Please spare me the embarrassment of attempting to explain,” Flint said. “It would not be circular.”
“We seem to have crossed each other’s boundaries.”
“Yes.”
“In cases like this, individuals have been known to visit the Temple of Tarot.”
“Circularity.” And Flint rolled rapidly out of the Palace.
Back on Earth, he knew, they would never understand. Perhaps there would be Spherical repercussions because of his demise. But all that had become secondary. He had to settle with Tsopi before he could undertake anything else. Now he understood Polarian nature, and had phased through far enough to be dominated by it—and it was not just a matter of fading Kirlian aura. His treatment of Tsopi had been as wrong as failing to avoid the thrust of a spear. The shock of seeing himself as other creatures saw him, there in the lifeship, had made a great deal clear, too late. Had he only paid proper attention earlier…
He crossed the Temple portal and dropped inside. The Hierophant met him as he coasted up. “The Hermit returns.”
“The Knight of Gas,” Flint corrected him. Actually he had reproduced, making him the King of Gas, but that had been in a Spican host and probably didn’t count. “I have come to join the Page of Solid. I must be one with the Small Bear.” And what was a small bear, except a bearing?
“I am constrained to inquire whether you realize what this means, since you are not of our culture.”
“It means the Three of Gas—and the Dancing Skeleton. Sorrow and Death, as the cards foretold. I did not appreciate their relevance before, but—”
“Neither do you appreciate them now,” the Hierophant said. “You cannot substitute the Page of Earth for the Queen of Liquid and retain the relevance of the reading.”
“At the moment, they are one,” Flint said. “I balked on an abatement of debt, and I must repair that error in whatever way I can. Unite me with Topsy.”
“Spoken like a true Polarian,” the Hierophant remarked.
“Mock me if you will, for I deserve it. But deliver me to her.”
“I would not mock so noble a gesture. It is the Polarian way, and you have shown creditable comprehension and decision. Stand in the animation chamber.”
So it comes, Flint thought. Oddly, he was not afraid. On Luna, given the chance to die in his own fashion, he had declined, choosing instead to endure his problematical life. Now, rather than pursue a mission suddenly simplified, he chose the great transformation of death. It was not sensible, linearly, but it was right. He rolled across to the plate.
And as the light came, there was Tsopi, so real it seemed he could touch her, more beautiful than any creature he had ever seen before. “I come to expiate the debt between us,” he said. “And—I love you, Small Bear.”
For a moment she stood there, beautifully balanced on her wheel, like the tantalizing image she was. In that pause he realized that he had spoken only part of the truth when he said he loved her. He loved the other Small Bear too: the mode of Sphere Polaris.
Then she spoke, startling him—until he remembered the Polarian finesse with projections. Naturally they could animate her voice too. “And I love you, Alien Stone,” she said, translating his name as he had hers. “It is like rising from the dead, finding you thus.”
That hurt. What sadist was orchestrating this dialogue of his humiliation? “Wherever you may be, there I join you.”
“I am in the Great Circle.” Around them formed the huge bright sphere of the Polarian heaven, the Ultimate Circularity in which all of Sphere Sol was merely a faint constellation. There was the sound of perfect music and the taste of rapturous interaction and the sensation of harmony.
Flint reached toward her with his trunk, and she reached toward him with her tail—but he hesitated, not wishing to shatter the illusion by verifying her insubstantiality. Then she closed the gap—and there was physical contact.
Astonished, he drew her close. “You’re alive!”
“Now I am,” she said. “The Big Wheel bade me wait, so that he could remedy the matter.”
So His Rondure had detoured Flint to an educational mission while he got the facts from Tsopi. “The Wheel is a meddling genius!” Flint exclaimed angrily. “He’s downright linear in his fashion.”
“That is how he retains his position,” she agreed.
“Well, I meant everything I said, even if you are alive. I don’t care how many Polarians laugh their balls off at my folly! I came to—”
“No one laughs,” she demurred. “What you have done is beautiful, more circular than any native could have managed. You have reenacted the legend of your star.”
He drew apart. “It is time,” he said.
“Yes.”
They circled each other, as before. Flint didn’t care if the whole of Sphere Polaris was watching; he was going to abate the debt in style.
Tsopi laid down her provocative taste, and Flint augmented it with his own. The two trails fed on each other, building up the mood layer by layer as the two wheels spiraled inward toward the center.
At last they met. Flint’s trunk and Tsopi’s tail twined together, and their two balls touched each other in an electrifying spinning kiss.
Flint found that his body needed no instruction. As with Solarians and all other species both sapient and animal, nature sufficed. He knew it could not be worse than poking a stiffened stick into the body of the loved one.
Yet the steps of it astonished the human fragment of his mind. For at the height of his passion, Flint lay down and released his wheel. He had not realized that this was possible; he had supposed it was an inseparable part of his anatomy. Now it rolled slowly across the floor away from him, leaving him lame. Without that wheel, motion was virtually impossible; only in an extraordinary circumstance would any Polarian part with it.
The act of reproduction was one such occasion. Tsopi lay down opposite him and moved close—and Flint took the exposed portion of her wheel into his vacant wheel-chamber. The sensations were intensified excruciatingly, for they were direct; her secretions mixed with his without being diluted by an intervening surface. Trunk and tail reached around to twine together, drawing the connection tight.
Now the real action began. The rim of Flint’s torso met the rim of Tsopi’s, sealing all the way around their mutual sphere, so that none of it was exposed to the air. And the two of them spun it—rapidly. More rapidly than possible in any individual situation, for the wheel-controlling mechanisms of both parties were operating in tandem. Each had specialized adhesive muscles that touched the embedded surface of the wheel, moving it precisely and releasing it to other muscles. This was more than enough for ordinary locomotion—but now it was doubled.