"The colony of Worms on Mars, perhaps. But observers on nearby Earth...."

"They were subsapient then, or at least borderline. The humanoid Solarians had no civilization three million years ago. And even if they had, the Ancients could so readily have vanquished them. Why would they hide, then depart without attacking Earth?"

"I don't know," Herald admitted. "If I find any key artifacts here, we may begin to understand this mystery."

They looked, descending cautiously into the main caldera. Herald kept alert for any trace of aura. It required close contact to heal a living entity, or even to analyze a living aura properly, but be could pick up the whiff of aura in an otherwise aura-free region from a fair distance. His notion seemed far less sensible now that he had submitted it to Sixteen's scrutiny; still he hoped....

Why, he wondered, had Hweeh agreed so readily? The chances of discovering Ancient artifacts here were not small, they were virtually nonexistent.

There was nothing. He tried to control his letdown. He needed a positive attitude, or the healing he was performing on his Jet host would be ineffective. He didn't want to become impotent again! After all, there was a whole planet remaining.

If only he wasn't so certain that the Cluster Council committee would do nothing! The Amoeba must even now be moving its battleships into position, and there was no one to cry the alarm or to attempt effective resistance but Herald the Healer. That was another kind of impotence: to know the threat, and to be unable either to act or to cause others to act. Another kind of hell.

They started back up the steepening walls of the caldera. The descent into it had been easy, a relief after the long climb, but now there was a problem. Toward the rim the inner wall became almost vertical, and Herald was abruptly tired, in body as well as spirit.

Extremely tired. He jetted upward determinedly—and flamed out.

His propulsion gone, he rolled helplessly down the slope.

=Herald!= Sixteen cried, reverting to her native intonation in her stress. She jetted after him.

She quickly caught him in her lifting strands and steadied him against her sleek fuselage. "The drug— You overextended, and it betrayed you!"

No wonder he had gotten disorganized! The warning had been right; he had not comprehended the pitfalls of this medication. But this did not diminish his urgent need. "Give me another dose," Herald told her. "There's work to be done."

"No. You have to rest. In a while you will be able to sustain the medication."

He knew she was right. If he did not heed reason now, he was a complete fool. So he relaxed. "So many mysteries," he said. "Why should the Amoeba take all the trouble to come here to our Cluster to conquer us? Couldn't they locate any energy for their purposes closer to home? Why did the Ancients conquer the Cluster, then vacate? They obviously didn't convert it to energy. We have never found any evidence of any matter they destroyed, and I believe there are ways to tell. The removal of a portion of a galaxy would create an imbalance that would in due course be reflected in its dynamics." He thought of the irregular blobs of Cloud 9 and Cloud 6. No, they could not have been full spiral galaxies! "We keep coming back to their seeming irrationality. The purpose of the Amoeba I can comprehend; it is straightforward power. But the Ancients—" He paused. "Maybe that's what Melody meant!"

"Who?"

"Melody of Mintaka, despoiler of the second Andromedan effort at Cluster unification. She played—"

"That drug," Sixteen said, worried. "It must have side effects I didn't know about."

Herald made a gust of tired mirth. "I met her in a Tarot Temple animation. She told me I would not want to know the secret of the Ancients."

"Oh. That is the kind of thing an animation would say, isn't it?"

"Yes, unfortunately. But she seemed so very certain of herself. I believe she did know the secret, or part of it, in her real life. She refused to divulge it then, also."

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

"It must be fun to experience an animation."

Psyche, writhing in the orange flame.... "Not necessarily. You have not experienced it? The Temples are free; they want converts."

"I have been there. The figures would not animate for me, or for any of my kind. We have insufficient aura."

Herald began to appreciate the tragedy of these Jets. They could not animate, they could not Transfer, they could not return to their globular Cluster.

"Don't have pity on us," Sixteen puffed. "We do fine without aura. Had we not been confined by the Ancients, we would have conquered the Cluster ourselves, two million years before your species achieved sapience."

Literally true, he thought. Any of the contemporary sapients could have conquered the Cluster, in time, given the general vacuum of sapience that existed then. Strange that the achievement of sapience had been so nearly simultaneous across the Cluster. In a way this coincidence was fortunate, for it had enabled the contemporary mélange of species to form a larger, cooperative culture, unifying the Cluster more perfectly than would have occurred otherwise. Had the Jets broken out prematurely, they could have preempted it all. Still, that would not have provided them with what they evidently craved beyond all else: aura.

Herald touched her with his aura, calming her ire. "If the Jets had conquered, then you and I would never have met."

"Your logic is suspect, but you see right through me, and I melt in your aura," she said. "I have never experienced such strange, wonderful power before. Even Hweeh does not compare to you."

"He is superior in other aspects," Herald said. "He is more intelligent than I, more educated, and in any other company, he would be regarded as the leader in aura too. Creatures of low aura cannot perceive aura as a separate force. I am a healer, with a most potent and highly trained aura; therefore it becomes manifest to you in this circumstance. But I apologize to you for misjudging your attitude; you are certainly competent, and you have been taking good care of me in my infirmity."

"Accepted," she said, and by the ripple in her trace aura he knew it was honest, though he had not really misjudged her and she knew it. She had a temper after all, but also a forgiving nature. "Actually, we are not the lowest-aural forms in the Cluster. We have made a study of low-aural forms, and have found several nonaura species."

Herald was amazed. " Non aura life? I thought that was impossible! The impulses of the nervous system and brain give rise to semielectric fields that we call aura; this absence of aura implies absence of thought and feeling. In many cultures, aural cessation is the legal definition of death. Species with no aura must be extremely primitive!"

"They are, generally. But we located one that has potential for sapience. It seems to be evolving rapidly, and in another two million years or so—"

"Where?"

"In another globular Cluster, one orbiting Galaxy Pinwheel at extreme range. We suspect that glob was captured by the galaxy recently, perhaps within the past three million years. It could have been an inter-Cluster wanderer. There can be strange life-forms in isolated globs!"

"Not when you get to know them," Herald said.

"This species we call the Blanks. They do not use electrical impulses; their system is entirely mechanical. Control-signals are transmitted through bony linkages, much as sound vibrations move through the bones of the ears of the creatures of this Solarian system whose language we speak. The brain of these entities is a mechanical-chemical network of remarkable complexity. It functions in ways we do not yet properly comprehend; we seem to have underestimated the potential of nonelectric impulses. It operates well enough for potential sapience, we judge. The Blanks are, by other definitions, alive. And presapient."

"Fascinating," Herald agreed. "It is a line of aural research I have overlooked, but I shall pursue it when I have opportunity. This mechanical thought system; does something like that account for the Jets' low aura? No offense to this host, which is a good one.

But I must admit the fit is very tight. There hardly seems to be enough of a system for my aura to occupy."

"Yes. The detail is dissimilar, but the principle relates. We have a combination system: an advanced mechanical and chemical linkage coupled to a relatively vestigial electrical one. We are, in that sense, three quarters machine. Our records show that much of our aura development has been recent, evolutionally; at the time of the Ancients we had only one percent of our present aura."

"This is amazing!" Herald said, amazed. "Yet you were sapient then."

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

"Yes. Our recent evolution has not been from subsapience to sapience, but from mechanical toward electrical. Perhaps in time we would have developed Kirlian science and broken out of our confinement."

"None of the contemporary sapients were sapient at the time of the Ancients, except the Jets," Herald said slowly, feeling that he was on the verge of a fundamental revelation. "There were myriad sapients in the Cluster, but the Ancients exterminated them all—except the Jets."

"Maybe they thought they had exterminated us," Sixteen said. "They may have confined us, then suffered a record-keeping error and overlooked the final act. Our very isolation may have saved us."

But Herald was on another thought. "They destroyed all the sapients of their time, and spared all the subsapients. A straight, selfish act of empire-preservation. These Martians might have posed a threat, but the primitive Earthers did not. And my own subsapient Slash ancestors would have been spared on the same basis. And all the other contemporary species of the Empire. So it is no coincidence that new sapience emerged about the same time all over the Cluster, it was an act of pure selection by the Ancients.

Only those species below a certain level were permitted to continue their development That must be the secret Melody refused to tell! Because it diminishes the image we have of the Ancients; it shows them as selfish, short-range creatures." But somehow he couldn't see an entity like Melody of Mintaka being silent on such a point; she would have enjoyed puncturing the Ancient image.

"Then every Spherical species today owes a debt to the Ancients," Sixteen said. "But... I'm not sure it is true."

Herald was achieving increasing respect for her acumen. Sixteen had a much larger background of personal and species information than he had suspected. No doubt his own host had similar information, but his host was essentially unconscious during the healing process. "How so?"

"All we know is that the Ancients destroyed the sapient Worms of Mars, and spared the humanoids of Earth. We assume this to be true elsewhere—and I don't question this extension—but it cannot have been done on a sapient-nonsapient basis."

"Why not?" Herald was really intrigued. This extemporaneous discussion was bringing them much closer to comprehension of the nature of the Ancients than his prior lines of research had done. He noted how the wan sunlight flashed off her sleek fuselage, making a small iridescent splay.

"The Worms of Mars were colonists. They came from another world. What world? Not Earth; there were no sapient worms there; and if there had been, why was not Earth destroyed or sterilized? It must have been another system. But our surveys reveal no worlds in this neighborhood that such sapients could have come from. Either a world is complete with all its species in unbroken lines of evolution for billions of years, or it is dead, with all extinct. If there had been any Worm cultures in this region of space, the Lodo ship could have been directed there, so that we would not have had to go to the trouble of Lodoforming Mars for their habitation."

"That makes sense," Herald agreed. "Far simpler to sterilize a full world, or leave it alone. Selectivity within a world would be extremely tedious and uncertain."

"Yes. So assume the Ancients destroyed the Mars colony and the full world from which the Worm colony came, too. They therefore destroyed all the nonsapients of that world as well."

"That's right!" Herald said. "Had they been protecting nonsapients, they would have taken the trouble to be selective within given worlds. So they obviously did not care about us. All they wanted to do was root out all sapients, regardless of what other species suffered. Had Earth, or Slash, or any other contemporary-sapient planet had sapients then, it would have been destroyed. So our survival is mere coincidence."

"Yes. But why did they depart, leaving us weed-species to take over what they had cleared for themselves?"

Weed-species—an intriguing concept! "That mystery remains. Perhaps Melody of Mintaka knew. Maybe it was remorse."

"Maybe," she agreed. But they both doubted it.

Jets did not exactly sleep, but they did require a periodic lapse of activity for proper health. The Martian day-night cycle was almost precisely the same as that of Earth, which had become the standard for this region of space, so it was convenient to indulge in the lapse during the cool night. In the morning, Sixteen gave Herald another dose of the drug, and they consumed puffs of nutrient gas from bubbles she had brought along. Once they were grown, Jets did not require much solid intake.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Now his host's physical strength was at par again. He zoomed zestfully up out of the giant crater without even feeling strain. "Next best chance is the chasm," he announced.

"But that's a quarter round the planet!" Sixteen wooshed.

"Right. So we'll have to hurry." And he accelerated to fifteen meridians per hour, close to top speed, going down the volcanic slope and across the monstrous lava plain to the southeast.

"I'm not absolutely sure Sphere Slash is beyond sub-sapience," she said under the cover of the increased blast of her propulsion.

But she let him proceed.

The west terminus of the ninety-meridian chasm was no farther away from the volcano than the volcano was from the Ancient archaeological site. In three hours they were maneuvering through the heavily cratered plain beyond the lava rim, locating the gorge.

The chasm was extremely long, broad and deep; it would take hours to traverse its length. Its sides were not straight but highly serrated. Flash flooding at some time in the planet's past had resulted in spot erosion. But there was very little free water on Mars, and most of that was frozen, since the surface temperature seldom passed the melting point of water; only extraordinary local meteorological conditions ever made it rain.

Somewhere along this phenomenal crack in the planetary surface was an Ancient site. There had to be. Because without it, contemporary civilization was lost. Or was the drug exaggerating his concern, as it had before?

He quested along the northern face of it slowed by the extreme contours, and Sixteen followed the southern wall. She could not detect the Ancient aura, but she would perceive any artificial alteration of the chasm.

Hours passed without success. The canyon went on and on, its offshoots branching interminably, all requiring exploration, consuming his waning energy. Herald continued, refusing to give up hope, slowing his velocity to conserve his host's resources.

The drug was wearing off again; but perhaps the very next wrinkle would reveal the site, or the next, or the next...

Suddenly a subcanyon opened out from the floor of the main one. There had been a number of these irregularities before; the bottom was by no means flat. But now, tired, distracted, disappointed, and careless, he shot over the brink and dropped into the jagged crevice before he saw it. For an instant it reminded him of his drop into the hot pit of the Amoeba's laser strike, but this was cold, hard rock. He had been paying more attention to the sides of the chasm than to the front.

He came to a stop safely, but his strength was gone. Hardly able to emit a decent jet, he could not get out.

In moments Sixteen was there. "It's happened again," she exclaimed. "I have been so absorbed in the search I neglected you."

"Give me the drug," Herald said weakly.

"No! You've had a dose and a booster. A second boost in this circumstance could kill your host."

"If you don't, we can't even make it home," he pointed out. "They'll never find us here, and they're too busy to look anyway. We're as lost as the Ancient site."

"I could return for help," she said. "But you need my care. You don't understand the nature of your host. You think that because it can travel at speed, it is fit. A jet can always travel at speed. When his propulsion fails, he is close to death. Oh, I should never have—"

" You don't understand the nature of my imperative," Herald retorted, clinging to consciousness. "Death is no specter in the face of the threat to the Cluster." And to Psyche! "We shall all die if I don't find what I seek." But he knew he was exaggerating. All be had to do was rest for a few hours, letting his host recover in its own time, until it could tolerate the drug. If he were reasonable— But he was not reasonable!

"We don't understand each other," she said. "I must operate on one immediate principle: preserve your life and health. I know of only one other way, and that is unethical."

"How can it be unethical to implement your assignment?" Herald demanded.

"It is a matter of means and ends. There is a conflict of interests."

"A conflict of interests," he repeated, musingly. "Could that account for the anomalies of the Ancients? They had a special mission Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

we do not understand, whose objectives were contradictory. Are we, perceiving those contradictions but not the rationale, misjudging the nature of the Ancients?"

"That could be," she agreed, relieved to have him talking instead of demanding the drug. "They may have had reasons to eliminate certain types of creatures who happened to be sapient, and to spare certain others. We perceive only the sapient/nonsapient distinction, but if that were coincidental...."

"If only we knew the nature of the species they destroyed," Herald continued. "The Worms are only one example; that's not enough to determine a pattern. I'd hate to think that they were saving whole planets as food animal production units, but we can't be sure.

To compare the ones eliminated to the ones spared—"

"The aura!" she exclaimed. "Now we know that non-Kirlian life is possible. Even non-Kirlian sapience! Could those destroyed species have—?"

It burst upon him like a nova. "Non-Kirlian sapience! If it evolved more rapidly than the Kirlian forms, even though restricted by its inability to Transfer, it could dominate the Cluster, as the reptiles of Earth's dinosaur days dominated the mammals, or the Dash buds of my own Galaxy even now dominate the £ tripeds."

"Those forms would have to be eliminated, to promote the forms with greater potential," she finished. "Like weeding a garden to favor the more delicate but productive plants...."

The concept of weed-species, again, this time with more force. "Then the contemporary sapients were not selected randomly,"

Herald said excitedly. " Their auras determined their selection. They were given the chance to develop, when otherwise the non-Kirlians would have squeezed them out."

"The Ancients must have been the first major high-aura species," Sixteen said. "They evolved in some isolated region, as we did, where there were no non-Kirlians, so they were not eliminated before they achieved their potential. When they expanded into the main Cluster they discovered it was dominated by a type of life that had to waste energy using mattermission because they couldn't Transfer. And these species were suppressing the Kirlians. Within a given system, where planets might be separated by no more than light-minutes, mattermission would be a highly feasible mode of transport; it is only at the interstellar range that Transfer dominates. So the Kirlians had the potential to govern whole galaxies, and when the non-Kirlians realized this, it was savage war.

Only one side could prevail; they thought they could not coexist. So the Ancients set out to promote permanent civilization by eliminating all the non-Kirlians. It may have been the only way. They were the progenitors of our modern culture."

"But why did they disappear?" Herald asked, returning to the old mystery. "The Ancients won; they should have remained to help their own kind along."

"Maybe they did stay," Sixteen insisted. "We find their ruins, their deserted stations, but maybe those were merely for the war effort, and when it was over they abandoned such instruments and settled down within a few pleasant systems and left the other, nonsapient Kirlians alone. You say there is no significant pattern to the manifestations of the highest auras, but if there were a number of types of creatures making up the Ancient nucleus, with several families of auras, and these auras manifested every few generations, so that there would always be a way to key open their Ancient sites in case of emergency—"

Herald had another powerful flash of comprehension. "Psyche!" he cried. "Keyed to the Ancient site!"

"What?"

"I knew one such creature! A Solarian who was in tune with the Ancients. Maybe she was an Ancient!"

"Then we have an excellent lead," Sixteen said excitedly. "We must get back and consult with Hweeh, and get in touch with that Solarian."

Herald sobered. "You said I was too weak for the drug."

"There is one emergency way to prepare you for it, by drawing on an untapped resource within your host. It is not precisely ethical, but in the circumstance—"

"We may have solved the mystery of the Ancients," Herald remarked, "but the mystery of your ethics is growing! What is the problem?"

Sixteen jetted a gust of apology. "It is a little-used measure, because of the social implications."

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

"Forget the social implications! I am not of your culture."

"It is to invoke that store of energy normally reserved for the reproductive effort. It is untapped in normal endeavors. But the amount of reserve energy is normally enough to restore operative function to—"

"You are speaking of making love?" he inquired. "There is something you should know. I don't—"

"Yes, you told me before. You are of another species, only borrowing this host, and you do not wish to have a mistress. It is unethical for me to bring it up a second time. This is why I hesitated."

Herald had been about to mention his true relation to Psyche, but suffered a second thought. This Jet maid, in the line of duty as she perceived it, was about to make a remarkable offer—for his benefit and that of the Cluster. Apparently his refusal to take her as a mistress at the outset had fixed their relationship in a nonsexual mode, so that it was extremely difficult for her to change now. He had encountered similar conventions elsewhere. There were about as many intricacies connected to the processes of reproduction as to any other sapient need. It would not be right to embarrass her further by informing her of his inability to love any female other than his wife.

"I need not prevail on you to that extent. In a little while I will be recovered enough to tolerate the drug again."

"No, you will not," she insisted. "The signs are on you. I am a nurse; I know the drug would kill you this time. Unless that last reservoir is tapped."

Herald sought more information from his host-memory. The Cluster array of sexual conventions was infinitely broad; almost anything could be encountered in mode and attitude. But the Jet practice turned out to be fairly conventional. Liaisons were normally for a period sufficient to bring a litter to functioning independence in society. But some associations were for life, and some were completely casual. Sex was recognized as a physical need, and it was expected that there be periodic indulgence, with or without formal contract, by mutual consent. It was always voluntary. The involuntary participation possible to Solarian females or Spicans of any sex was unknown among the Jets. Without the active cooperation by both parties, the act could not be performed at all. Sixteen's hesitancy was not based on sexual convention, but on the requirement that a given type of relationship, once established, not be distorted. At this stage it would be like sibling romance: possible, but socially awkward. He could alleviate that aspect by claiming prior misunderstanding, owing to his alien conventions. That much was true enough; he had not at that time had opportunity to delve fully into Jet belief and practice.

In summary: He could make love to Sixteen—more correctly, make sex—if she were amenable. But would she be amenable if she knew about his quest for Psyche? He doubted it. Yet he needed to survive, to pursue that quest. What was ethical?

Herald considered the alternatives quickly, and decided that he was justified in permitting a partial lie. "I was married," he said. "It was for life—but she was executed."

He felt the tremor in her little aura again. "Who? When?"

"The Solarian tuned to the Ancients. Just before I came here. The Amoeba bombed the site, and only Hweeh and a Qaval and I escaped."

"Then you are in mourning," Sixteen said. "I apologize for not realizing—"

"I need... to forget," he said. But to himself, the truth: I will never forget— or call her dead!

"And the Amoeba followed you here," she said. "Oh, Herald, we must save you!"

"This is why I told you I needed no mistress. It was not a denial of you, but the memory of—"

"I understand!" she cried. "I did not know!"

"Therefore sex really can have no meaning for me, other than as a purely physical measure. I would not want you to think—"

"Understood." She paused a moment "I, also, have an unfulfillable desire."

"You love one who died?" A surprise! He had assumed, perhaps unfairly, that she was naive about serious love.

"Similar. I love... an alien."

Herald was amazed. She spoke in the present tense, yet the only non-Jets to visit Mars recently were himself and his friend. "Not...

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Hweeh of Weew?"

"He healed me," she said simply.

Hweeh had healed her—when Herald himself had failed. So it had been the Weew's aura that made the conquest, not the Slash's aura. "Hweeh is a fine creature and a dedicated scholar. I doubt he is committed to a female of his kind. He told me he had no family, and has been completely immersed in his profession. The only reason he has not Transferred to Jet host is because he has information locked within his Weew brain that might not be available if he were Transferred away from that brain. We do not yet know the limits to such things, and could not take the chance. Once we gain that information, he will be free. He could animate a Jet host to be with you, if he so chose. Probably he does not know of your interest, so—"

"No. He has other business. He must help you. Do not tell him of my affliction."

Herald yielded. He was in effect lying to her about the nature of his own love, allowing her to think that it was hopeless. Now he had to honor her lie to Hweeh. "I will not tell him... until the Cluster has been saved. Yet he is not slow-minded entity; he will surely know—"

"Unless I conceal it, as I have done hitherto," she said. "I will be your mistress ad hoc, making no other demand on you, that we may get you back to the site safely."

What more could he ask? Sixteen was actually a very attractive young Jet, with a reflectively shiny surface, elegant female curvatures, and a clever intelligence. It was not necessary to inform her that even if it were not for his continuing love for Psyche, who had to be alive somewhere, somehow, he would never be able to love a low-aura creature. Now that he knew that Sixteen had no romantic interest in him either, it became a business matter, justified by circumstance. "Then I see no barrier to proceeding." In fact, he could have saved himself the lie, such as it was.

"Then we shall proceed," she agreed. It was like turning over a manifest for shipped cargo. What a contrast to what he had known on Planet Keep!

Sixteen moved out, found a widening in the subgorge, and began circling. She jetted erratically timed gusts, and the code pattern of this quickly registered in the appropriate perceptive center of Herald's host. It was sex-beat, a signal as direct and compulsive in its fashion as a laser from the Amoeba. His body responded, metabolizing that reserve energy involuntarily. She had certainly been right about that. He had not suspected his host had so much power hidden away, or that it could be tapped in this fashion. Nature, as always, had seen most carefully to the preservation of the species.

He jetted forward to join the dance. He had a rough notion how this species mated, but this hardly mattered. As with most species, instinct governed the procedure. He guided into the same circle, but not precisely her track. His ring was offset slightly, so that the two circles crossed each other in two places.

circles

They were on opposite sides: while Sixteen curved south, he curved north. As he veered east, she veered west, each crossing the other's track in the dust. But Herald was going faster, pursuing; with each complete loop he was farther along than she. Soon they were moving parallel: north together, south together. They almost collided at the two intersections, one crossing outward, the other crossing inward. At the north intersect she was barely ahead, and he inhaled the delightful gases of her jet; at the south intersect he led her, giving her a whiff of his own exhaust. The effect was highly stimulating for both.

Now his host was restored to full vigor. Logic said he should break off and jet home instead of wasting any of that valuable energy in sex. But if nature left the replication of the species to individual logic, fewer species would exist in the Cluster! He could not break out of the pattern; this was no intellectual or moral consideration, but plain physical compulsion.

The two circles drew together, tugged by the interactions at the intersects. Herald's intake and jet angled to match the curvature of that pattern; Sixteen's did likewise. They spun together, like planets in tight orbit about a mutual focus, each absorbing the other's jet trail, reprocessing the gas, concentrating it. Some fresh thin Martian air entered, for this was no perfect seal, and some exhaust escaped, but the percentage of recycled molecules rose steadily.

This was feedback communication, independent of intellect. LOVE her molecules said; LOVE LOVE his own replied. LOVE

LOVE LOVE the message came back, amplified. Yet it was no single molecule, no single concept, but an orchestration of enhancement. From the intellectual to the physical, the meaning amplified, merging so that the originator could not be distinguished. The experience was tremendously exhilarating.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Abruptly the concentration reached the critical level. Herald's chemistry reacted, sending out a cloud of reproductive molecules.

These shot through Sixteen's system, returning to him, and back to her again. Around and around they went, some being lost to the atmosphere of Mars with each circuit, others combining with molecules released by her body. The billions became millions, then mere thousands. At last they all vanished, and it was over. If any had lodged within her tube, those merged motes would remain and grow, nourished by her system, and she would have a litter. If not, the experience had still accomplished its purpose, for Herald was now full of energy. Nothing like sex, in any species, to invigorate the male!

They organized for the return trip. Sixteen gave him the drug, and it seemed to have no effect. But he knew this was because he was already jetting strong: the drug would merely maintain this level longer.

They zoomed out of the subgorge, into the main crevasse, and on to the east. They were now halfway around the planet from the excavated site; it was as easy to proceed forward as back. Perhaps they would discover the Ancient artifact on the way, but even if not, they had found out much about the Ancients anyway.

"The survey confirms your conjecture," Hweeh said when Herald came out of the lapse his drugged journey had brought him to. "It was the action of the Ancients that eliminated competitive species throughout the Cluster. Analysis suggests these eliminated species could have been non-Kirlian. Apparently the Ancients retained power only long enough to ensure that virtually no non-Kirlians survived in this section of the Universe. The Jets were a special case; they were low-Kirlian sapients. They at least had the potential to develop into full Kirlians. So they were isolated, not destroyed. Had they developed into full-Kirlian creatures, they could have broken out. That was the intentional design of their prison. Then their conquest of the Cluster would have been in accord with the Ancient program. The Jets did not develop far enough in this respect, so other Kirlian sapients took over instead.

The Ancients, by this means, transformed this Cluster from mixed-sapience to Kirlian sapience."

"And died out before their project was complete," Herald said. "They had it all: a Kirlian Cluster, and the ability to preserve their culture from Spherical regression."

"Obviously that was related," Hweeh said. "Non-Kirlians could not avoid regression without galaxy-destructive expenditure of energy, because they could not Transfer. Even with Transfer, a certain amount of regression continues, and the temptation to use energy unwisely remains. Two Wars of Energy prove that! But it must be possible to abate regression, since the Ancients did it, had to do it, in order to conquer the Cluster. If only they had bequeathed us their secret! But now we have another problem...."

"The Amoeba," Herald agreed.

"That too. I was thinking of something more personal."

Herald considered. "Was I vociferating while unconscious?"

"It was not necessary. It was obvious how Sixteen brought you back safely. The medic knew it at a glance. Your reproductive reserve was depleted."

"She volunteered it!" Herald said defensively.

"How could she do otherwise, given the need, and in the presence of your aura?"

"She was not overwhelmed by me," Herald said. "I never made an advance to her. My interest is in—" But then he remembered his promise to Sixteen.

"I am not a fool," Hweeh said with considerable justification. "You told her of Psyche?"

"I had to. I think Psyche is a Kirlian Ancient."

"As I thought. I can guess what Sixteen told you."

Herald was silent, realizing that something was wrong. Hweeh was not normally so peremptory.

"She claimed to love another... one unobtainable," the Weew continued inexorably. "The complement to your own situation, that she had just learned about. Were you not suspicious?"

"Hweeh, you make it difficult for me."

"I made it easy for you, hoping you would find distraction. But I had not anticipated this aspect. You put her in an impossible Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

situation. She could not intrude upon the prerogatives of the recent dead; that is part of Jet culture. Neither could she let you perish, though it was your own neglect that put you in that danger. So she had to fashion a story acceptable to you, on very short notice.

She may even have told you she loved me. Not so?"

Herald surrendered. No wonder Hweeh had acquiesced so readily to the unlikely geographic quest! He had wanted to get Herald's mind off Psyche. But the arrangement had fouled up. "I promised not to tell."

"She made you promise, so that you would not have occasion to ascertain the truth. She does not love me. I am an alien creature, physically repulsive to her in that connection. She thought you healed her, and were declining credit. She loves you. But to ease your mind, she lied to you, demeaning her own feeling."

Suddenly Herald saw it. "You are not the fool; I am," he said. "I should have seen it! I thought I was lying to her—"

"Were you?"

"I told her my wife was burned."

"She was, Herald. I witnessed it."

"But she didn't die! Her aura lives—and I shall find it!"

Hweeh was silent a moment, searching for a way to put the matter delicately. "Herald, did you love Psyche at first meeting?"

"No. It took time to know her."

"When did your love manifest unmistakably?"

"When I encountered her... enhanced." Herald savored the memory. "She had an aura of two hundred fifty."

"Then was it not the aura you loved, the enhanced aura of the Ancients?"

"You could put it that way. But it was no Possession. It was her, magnified tenfold. The only aura I ever encountered higher than mine."

"Would not that same aura, in any other female, have commanded your love in much the same fashion?"

Herald felt nervous. "Perhaps."

"In fact you cannot be sure she was not merely the vehicle. You did not love the alien girl; you loved the Ancient aura."

Herald, weak from his ordeal and the sedation of drugs, could only agree. "The Ancient aura makes her what she is."

"And if that aura imbued the girl of Sphere Jet you would love her similarly."

Herald tried to be objective. It was difficult. "Perhaps."

"Why not settle for the live Sixteen in lieu of the dead Psyche? If you find the Ancient aura, you may have love again—without illusion."

Herald thought for a long time. "No," he said at last. "Psyche lives. The real Psyche, whom I love regardless of aura. I know it. She brought you out of shock, there in the tunnel during the laser attack, when I was impotent. She spoke to me. I believe in her. I must find her."

Hweeh was silent. Herald knew his friend perceived only unreason in this cleaving to a dead alien female. And he could not be absolutely sure Hweeh was wrong.

At last Hweeh spoke. "The Earth relief ship arrived while you were unconscious. You can now Transfer to some host elsewhere in the Cluster. Given the personal situation here, and the urgency of the Amoeba crisis, I think you had better do that promptly.

Sixteen told me of your new theories concerning the Ancients, and I have messaged the Cluster Council. They will form a new committee to explore the ramifications—"

"Another committee!" Herald exploded.

"Precisely. So if anything is to be done in time, it seems we must still do it ourselves. We must locate the Ancient source. I did manage to extract information on a highly secret project that may be related. It is not the most promising source of information, but Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

we are severely hampered by the frustrating blindness of the Council. At least it will get us away from here, and perhaps—"

Herald made a jet of bemused wonder. "That the salvation of the Cluster should depend on such random factors! I agree; we must follow up anything that shows promise. Where is this secret project?"

"Galaxy Pinwheel."

"The Blanks? The null-aura species with potential sapience?"

"No, this is a re-creation of the actual Ancient culture. It was hoped that this would lead to insights about—"

"Good notion. Let's go."

10

Moderns of Ancients

X Aural generator manifesting in globular Cluster orbiting third Galaxy. X

& Another generator? Is there an ancient site there? & X No. X

& Then it must be a special project to develop defensive aural technology on a crash basis. Investigate and take covert action if necessary. Repeat, covert. We are almost ready for overt action on Cluster scale. Assign one research and one action unit. & 0 Unit 9 assigned. 0

X Unit S assigned. X

Pinwheel was a quarter the diameter of the major galaxies, so its sapients were somewhat sensitive about its status. It was indeed a full spiral galaxy, and its two major Spheres were now full members of the Cluster coalition.

The project was set up deep inside a globular Cluster orbiting the center of Pinwheel. This glob was 250 light-years in diameter, and contained about 100,000 bright red Population II stars. There was very little obscuring dust within it, few planets—and no black hole, to Herald's relief. It was an entirely ordinary Cluster, and it had been uninhabited until the special project was organized.

Herald tilted his ring, looking around. He was in a Wheel host whose spherical body rolled freely in any direction and whose magnetically fixed disk possessed the assorted sensory equipment of the species. Beside him was Hweeh of Weew, mattermitted once more in his own body at great expense (and protest by the Cluster Council functionary in charge).

A Pin moved forward: an angular four-legged creature whose sensory organs were on projecting spines.

^Welcome, visitors of the Two Galaxies,^ it clacked.

^ I am Prick of Pin, co-supe of this station and your guide for the duration. I hope you are feeling sharp.^ He extended one rod.

Hweeh quickly formed eye-stalk, horn, and sticklike appendage and used the last to touch Prick's proffered stick. @Gratitude, graciousness,@ he said formally in his own language, letting the translation units each entity carried take care of it.

^You have impressive aura!

@Wait till you touch my companion!@

Prick extended a stick toward Herald. Herald angled his disk to contact it momentarily. Now he felt the Pin's own aura: a strong one of one hundred. But of course this project would attract strong auras! θPleasure,θ he said, using the mode of his host, making the sounds by vibrating his disk. Pleasure, he thought. Cupid and Psyche had a child named Pleasure....

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

^Phenomenal! Perhaps your aura is a reversion to that of the Ancients!

Herald dismissed that promptly. θThere is no evidence that any modern species relate directly to the Ancients.θ

Yet what of Psyche!

^Perhaps we shall now procure that evidence.

And that summed it up; for this was the super-secret Modern of Ancients program, the Cluster's major hope to comprehend the nature and purposes of the species that had conquered the Cluster three million years ago.

θPerhaps,θ Herald agreed politely. θShall we proceed?θ We shall proceed—the phrasing of Sixteen's acquiescence to an affair that had demanded herself and him. Had he been willfully blind in the same way the Cluster Council was blind to the threat of the Amoeba despite the evidence? At what price could he justify his quest?

Prick showed the way through the station to the enclave. All of it was under cover, for this was an airless planet. Occasional skylights showed the globular day-night: a thousand bright stars illuminating the surface constantly, preventing full night from ever descending. The average separation of stars in this region was a quarter of a lightyear, and they were large stars. The planet seemed to be encased in a glowing shell.

That was the reason the project was here. No outside species could expect to locate the precise planet of the particular globular Cluster of the particular galaxy that supported it. Only the privileged few even knew of its existence. Who would poke about a globular Cluster for anything? Such Clusters were among the oldest unified structures in the universe; there was nothing new in them. Or so it was generally supposed....

The hall opened out suddenly on a vast domed landscape of such architectural splendor that both Herald and Hweeh paused, awed.

It was an Ancient site as it must have been in its heyday. Rounded buildings rose many floors high, with spiral ramps servicing them; other ramps spiraled down to lakelike reservoirs. There were no straight lines, no angles; everything curved in pleasing ratios. There was foliage everywhere, unfamiliar to Herald's prior experience, though not to his host-mind: Pinwheel trees shading the contours of the parks from the glare of the myriad stars above, pastel-hued lawns, and fruit-bearing gardens.

@I would like to reside here myself,@ Hweeh murmured.

θSo would I,θ Herald agreed.

^So would we all,^ Prick said. ^And so you shall—for a day. We believe we have successfully recreated Ancient architecture, physique, and culture, and we hope this will enable you to feel and think like Ancients and thereby comprehend their secrets.

θAn ambitious notion,θ Herald said.

^The Ancients residing in the enclave are androids,^ Prick explained; ^laboratory-manufactured pseudo-life, directed by operatives.

Most are remote-controlled, but some are actually occupied.

θWe shall need to occupy them,θ Herald said, rotating his disk firmly. θWe are not here merely to observe, but to experience.θ

^The Weew could do it; he is small and malleable. But your own Wheel host is far too massive.

θThen I must Transfer to a smaller host. What is available?θ

^There are service entities of Sculp who occupy the androids for testing and repairs.

θAh, yes, the Sculps. I am familiar with the species. I will accept such a host.θ

^As you wish,^ Prick said dubiously.

The Transfer was instituted, and soon Herald was in a Sculp host. This was a boneless, multispiked sapient whose body had evolved within the convoluted stalks of giant tubetrees.

§Very good,§ Herald said, speaking by rasping several spikes together. §Now let's see the androids.§

The physical nature of the Ancients was unknown, but study of the many ramps on their sites had suggested they were wheeled but also could traverse irregular terrain. Therefore, as Prick explained, the androids possessed both wheels and legs. Three legs, to maintain balance at all times, each with rollers at the base. They also had three upper appendages, with sucker-disks along the inner Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

sides and six tentacle-fingers at the end. Three of the fingers were pointed, with hard claws: pincers for grasping hard objects. The softer, more dexterous alternate fingers made this form extremely facile with tools. A solid head at the top was ringed with optics, auditories, and radiation emitters and receptors. It was, overall, a most ingenious body.

Too bad it had been worked out before Herald's discovery about the distinction between Ancients and pre-Ancients. For it was a composite of a tremendous wealth of misinformation. Once the resurvey of sites was completed, the physical form of the Ancients would be narrowed considerably. Meanwhile, he was willing to find out whether occupation of such an android host provided any real feel-of-Ancient, and whether that would lead to any further key insights, in himself or in Hweeh. It seemed to him that on Mars they had come very close to a basic comprehension of the Ancients, and perhaps one little additional shove would break it all open.

Then, perhaps, would follow the last-second miracle that would save the Cluster—just as had happened when Flint of Outworld and Melody of Mintaka saved the Milky Way Galaxy. Ancient technology had been the key in both prior cases; if it could only be invoked again....

Hweeh seemed to have adapted readily to his own android. §Are you ready?§ Herald inquired.

@Yes,@ Hweeh replied.

"Then let's unify our linguistic modes," Herald said in Quotes. "We both retain facility with the expression of Segment Etamin, which is probably not comprehensible here. It will serve as a convenient but private code."

"Agreed," Hweeh said immediately.

^My translator did not catch that,^ Prick said. ^What is the language?

§It is the mode of Cloud Nine,§ Herald said. §The so-called Large Magellanic, orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. Their symbol is high finance, $. A very happy if irregular scheme.§

^Strange. My translator is conversant with $. I should have—^

§Perhaps it was Cloud Six, the Small Magellanic, the ¢ symbol. I get confused at times. Each host I occupy contributes its language and much of its culture to my mind for a time. Once I depart the host, these gradually fade. Shall we now enter the enclave?§

^Yes, of course. But I must warn you that the— We try very hard to render this enclave as realistic as possible. The program has been modified extensively with experience, until now—^

§Until now it seems to possess purpose of its own? This is an indication of success. Do not apologize.§

^The computer integrates the changes, and it does have positive feedback. Changes are still occurring, so that even I do not necessarily know what prevails unless I constantly recheck. We seem to have here an accelerated social evolution, which is encouraged. However, it means that I will be unable to maintain contact with you after you enter. We have a strict noninterference policy. It is essential that we allow the thrust of the Ancients to manifest in whatever manner develops. Only that way can we—^

§I understand,§ Herald said, cutting off the developing lecture. §This is an excellent program. We shall not interfere, but shall seek to merge with its flow.§ And he rolled toward the enclave aperture.

In a moment he and Hweeh were through. They coasted down the ramp toward the first park. Herald's Sculp host was well suited to this confinement and conversant with the controls of the android. Herald quickly acclimatized, so it was as though he occupied the Ancient mockup directly. Hweeh had more trouble, but his tripod kept him stable.

They encountered a Modern going the other way, skating blithely along with enviable proficiency.

+Aura,+ the stranger said in greeting. He spoke in Clustric, with the Plus inflection, fittingly enough. He had an aura of 120

himself, but it was the unflexing field of machine generation, such as was used to imbue energy being Transferred galactic distances.

Of course! The salient characteristic of the Ancients was their aura, estimated to have a norm of one hundred and extremes of thirty-three to three hundred. One-third of norm to triple norm, though some experts felt this was too conservative. Modern sapients varied much more widely than this, as shown by Sixteen of Jets aura and Herald's own aura. But the Ancients were by the signs far more uniform than the contemporaries. Perhaps that was part of the secret of their strength. Also, no one knew precisely how intense a living aura could get, but three hundred seemed to be the practical limit.

+Aura,+ Hweeh returned, covering Herald's silence.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

+Aura,+ Herald agreed quickly. Too bad this artificial aura could not be used to heal and to Transfer; then the android operatives could really have conveyed the atmosphere of the Ancients!

+You are strangers? I introduce myself: I am Hitherto.+

Herald had not anticipated having to name himself. He really should have taken more time to prepare for this experience! Though this was only a mockup, he was trying to achieve the full spirit of it, and to draw Hweeh into it too. For the sake of anonymity he preferred not to give his real name. It was evident that the operators of these androids were also using alternates.

Again, Hweeh rescued him. +I am Clustergaze,+ he said.

Translation: Astronomer. Herald could use a similar identification. +I am Quester,+ he said.

+Will you require lodging during your stay at our site?+ Hitherto inquired.

Lodging? They were going all out for realism! As though this were one of a million sites of the functioning Ancient community, with travelers passing from one to the other across the Cluster.

+We may not be staying long,+ Herald said. +But it would be nice to relax before we move on.+

+Then allow me to recommend the Kirlian Inn. The sustenance is excellent, and the maid— They do not call her Hellflower for nothing!+

So there were two sexes in this enclave, though the true Ancients might have had a hundred. Well, two was convenient. And food.

And sex appeal. Only what did androids eat, and how did an android female stimulate an android male? Realism could go only so far!

+We shall certainly consider the Kirlian Inn,+ Herald said.

+Aura,+ Hitherto said, rolling back slightly.

+Aura,+ Herald answered. This was evidently a term for parting as well as greeting. How nice of Hitherto to "happen" by to provide this convenient briefing in manner!

They skated on. The little wheels of the feet were not powered; the motions of the legs provided the impetus. Generally, two feet pushed while the third secured the equilibrium of the tripod, but it was possible for all three to act together for extra power. Since it was feasible to rest while coasting at speed, this was an efficient mode of transport. The wheels could be braked and stalled for sudden stops, or for bracing when climbing. He wondered whether it was coincidence that the android form resembled a compromise between the two major sapients of Galaxy Pinwheel: sticklike legs, as in the Pins, and wheels as in the Wheels.

Creation was always a self-image!

"I am feeling very much the Ancient, already," Hweeh remarked.

"They have done a good job of emulation," Herald agreed. Whatever it was they thought they were emulating! "Shall we proceed to the Kirlian Inn?"

"And observe the charms of Hellflower?" Hweeh made a male chuckle, moderately surprising Herald. "I do grow curious."

As they came into the city proper they passed other Moderns going about their business, whatever that might be. With each they exchanged +Aura's+ and obtained further guidance. In one sense it was wasted effort, for they really could find their own way, but it was a pleasant interaction, making them feel closer to this pseudo-culture. Androids these might be, but each seemed to care about his neighbor.

The Kirlian Inn was impressive. Its residential chambers were underground, while its main hall was a planetarium-ceilinged dome.

Herald recognized the inspiration for this design: Flint of Outworld had encountered such a dome in the Hyades site. Unfortunately that had been destroyed, so that it had not been possible to analyze the stellar projection for an insight into the probable location of the Ancient's planet of origin—one of the tragedies of history. The information might have been obtained from Flint himself, for he had been an experienced stellar observer, but he had already faded into his Mintakan host and knew nothing. This present projection was of Galaxy Pinwheel, and small though it was compared to the giants of Milky Way and Andromeda, it was a full galaxy, truly impressive from this vantage.

The floor was smooth, polished, reflective, and gently waved, as though a glassy ocean with fixed waves. Couples were dancing, Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

gliding over the mounds and through the troughs, their forward progress shaping into a kind of syncopation. Herald was intrigued, but also disturbed. By what right did they assume that the efficient Ancients ever consumed time in such pursuits as dancing? In fact, this whole setting was rather medieval in quality. Still, who was to say the Ancients had not danced? They must have had some form of entertainment. Possibly they had communicated by dancing.

The female Moderns were distinguished from the males by their surface texture, color, and delicacy of torso and limb. They wore sections of material over the upper sections of their legs, concealing the junctions of limbs with torso, making a mystery of what really had no mystery. In one sense ludicrous; in another, intriguing. As far as he knew, the androids had no copulatory organs, but it became easy to imagine that if they had, they would be lurking within the flexing shadows of that cloth.

There was, indeed, a certain attractive grace to the females. Herald felt the impact despite his occupancy of a Sculp host within an android body. The skating-feet made the dancing very smooth, and the round cross section of the torso made rotation easy. The dancing figures wove in and out and spun in place like gyroscopes, forming intriguing larger patterns across the floor. The lighting changed color, dimming slowly, so that the night of the sky seemed to extend downward, until only little globes of glow followed the dancers. Oh, yes, very pretty!

At the height of the dance and depth of darkness, the stars of the dome began to move. It was subtle at first, so that it was hard to be certain that any positions had shifted at all; then it accelerated. The stars spread out, traveling down the base-walls and inward across the floor, which now seemed transparent. The room seemed to be within the Galaxy of Pinwheel, traveling through it, the individual stars progressing to the rear in three-dimensional panoply.

Herald had never traveled in space. He had always reached his assignments via Transfer, stepping from planet to planet without traversing the space between. He had never even mattermitted, though that resembled Transfer far more closely than it did space travel. Thus this was a very special experience for him: to see a galaxy as the pilot of a ship might see it. Not that ships really had pilots; even at half-light speed, it took many years to travel even a tiny fraction of a galaxy. But if multiple-light-speed spaceship travel existed, so that pilots would have to steer around stars, this was the way it might be. Ah, rapture!

Hweeh nudged him with a pincer, and Herald reluctantly diverted his attention from the view of space—so like his vision of the Tarot Temple, when he explored the Ghost card to spy the Amoeba—to follow the glance of his companion's forward eye. A brightly colored figure was coasting toward them, her torso swaying as she emerged from the shadow, her skirt shifting suggestively. Hellflower!

Android or not, there was something about her. She exuded sex appeal. Herald tried to analyze its components, but they eluded him. She was simply a wildly desirable female Modern Ancient.

She drew up close, her skirt settling about her. +Aura,+ she murmured, and there was a special thrill in her voice.

+Aura,+ both patrons responded. Hweeh was evidently as entranced as Herald. What was it that could turn on males of totally different species even when they knew it was merely a mockup of a conjectural species?

+What is your pleasure?+ Hellflower inquired, performing a small additional twirl.

Through no fault of her own, she had used the wrong word. Pleasure—the child Psyche had intended to bear by him. What was he doing here, reacting to the lure of an imitation female? Even had she been real, she would have had no shadow of the human appeal of Psyche! This was all a play, an imitation of a society that never existed, and the gut-reality of Hellflower's sex appeal was a chassis of metal and pseudo-flesh.

The illusion shattered, as Herald suddenly placed the mechanism: sound. Fringe-auditory sonics accompanied the maid, tuned to the deepest levels of sapient desire. Certain things seemed to be common to most species, regardless of world of origin, as though all life had diffused billions of years ago from a common source. That was another long-standing mystery: whether life had a common root, and somehow spread across the cluster long before any sapience had developed, or whether some species had evolved three billion years ago and spread life to all habitable planets. Those would be the true Ancients, making the three-million-year Ancients seem like no more than a contemporary ripple of established life. Meanwhile, the fact was that there were certain broad bases of species affinity, so that many species could mix physically without poisoning each other by the products of their metabolisms, and one of these affinities was sonic. Hellflower had aphrodisiac sound!

+ You are our pleasure,+ Hweeh said gallantly.

Hellflower paused momentarily, as though sensing Herald's negation of her artful, artificial charms, then made a suggestive gyration. +What is your pleasure worth?+

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Herald wanted to warn his companion of the mechanism here, to ensure that Hweeh not embarrass himself, but didn't want to speak in Quotes in the presence of the maid. Still, why should he be concerned? Hweeh was no immature innocent, and there was no way this could go beyond propriety. Androids had no primary sexual equipment.

But again he wondered: or did they?

+I am ignorant of the going rate,+ Hweeh said. +But if it is within my means—+

Ouch! The Weew had not caught on!

+Then accompany me,+ she said with another alluring spin, buttressed by a strengthened beat of that evocative sound.

Hweeh spun after her, across the waving floor. He seemed to be flying through space, obscuring constellations of stars as he moved.

Folly! But Herald, still unwilling to speak openly, followed. What were they getting into? It was one thing to appreciate the atmosphere of the Ancients, but this.... Hellflower slid out of the inn and onto an elevated ramp that wound upward between the sinuous buildings of the city. Herald's host performed the slide-and-brake skating necessary to travel up the incline without difficulty. Hweeh had to copy Herald's motions as well as he could. They fell somewhat behind the maid.

Now Herald voiced his concern. "Sonics," he murmured low. "Evoke the fundamental instincts. Artificial."

Hweeh lost his stride and almost took a spill despite the stability of the form. "You're right! This time I was the blind one!"

The maid slowed, one eye peering back at them. Herald felt the need to cover up. +Hellflower, where are we going?+

+I am S-Anity,+ she said.

+ Not Hellflower?+ Hweeh asked, chagrined.

+It seems we made an error of identification,+ Herald said. +Apologies.+

+The positive identification is aural,+ she replied after a pause. +I am sure you are the one I want.+

+ I am the one?+ Herald demanded. +Surely it is my companion who—+

Again that odd little pause. +No. You have the aural generation.+

Oh, another conquest of aura. S-Anity's own artificial aura was 150, and the operator was evidently able to spot Herald's higher one. Well, perhaps this was exactly the way true Ancients would have reacted. Find a higher aura, mate with it. Considering his forced betrothal to Flame of Furnace, and his reaction to Psyche when she became enhanced, he could not claim that this was any extraordinary reaction. So the game went on—how far?

Now another Modern joined them, intercepting from a side ramp. +I am S-Elect,+ she announced. +May I augment your party?+

+Since my companion seems to have preempted my female, you are welcome,+ Hweeh said.

A double date? There was something doubly strange about this. What were these females with the different name-codes up to? But Herald did not protest, as he was now quite curious to discover how far such things could go. Strange did not necessarily mean wrong. Maybe the enclave personnel wanted to show oft their talents for the visitors, though it still seemed unlikely that these talents could actually include what was being implied.

S-Anity led them into an upper aperture of a small building. The door shut behind them. A private trysting-spot?

They faced a ring of male androids. There was nothing frivolous in the attitude of these strangers. Herald abruptly realized that he and Hweeh were in trouble.

+Meet some of the members of Unit Nine,+ S-Anity said. +Be-nine, Sta-nine, Leo-nine, Qui-nine.+

+I don't comprehend,+ Hweeh said.

"These creatures are not Moderns," Herald told him tersely. "They are from the Amoeba."

"The Amoeba! How—?"

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

"Now don't go into shock! We have to get out of here! The Amoeba has intercepted the control beams of the androids, so they are now operated from an Amoeba ship. Hence their delay in responding. It takes time for the signal, since it must travel at light speed.

They mean to destroy us."

"But why? "

"Because they believe we can tap the science of the Ancients. And if they believe that, perhaps they have reason."

"So they have taken over the enclave just to abolish us?"

"This part of the enclave, at any rate. They seem to be trying to act covertly. There must have been a reprimand about the blatant laser attack on the Mars site. If they took over the whole enclave, the Pin and Wheel officials would be suspicious. So the Amoeba intercepted only a few androids, and lured us into their power."

"That is correct," S-Anity said.

"Now they have deciphered our code," Hweeh said. "That is why they stood idle and let us talk; they are studying us."

Herald surveyed the situation. There were six Amoeba-controlled androids, counting the two females, against two of them. "The ship must be orbiting at some distance, to remain undetected. Planetary detectors should pick up anything within a quarter light-second. So these androids must suffer a lag of half a second in reaction to any action of ours, unless they anticipate us. They can't have any weapons, for those are not part of the enclave."

"I comprehend," Hweeh said. "If we move rapidly—"

"However, we have locked you in this room," S-Anity said. "It will take you longer than half a second to break out."

Herald rolled to the window. It was a three-story drop to the ground here, and the landing looked hard. Perhaps not fatal, but certainly crippling.

"You think to turn off and leap?" Sta-nine inquired. "We have other operatives below. They will dismantle you before you can turn on again."

Turn off? Turn on? Something nagged at Herald's mind. Did the Amoebites believe there was a mechanism within the androids to enable the occupants to survive such a jump unscathed? They should know better! "You of the Amoeba are sapient," he said. "So are we of the Cluster. Why do you seek to destroy us?"

"You are weed-species interfering with the development of soul sapience," S-Anity replied. "The weeds must be cleared from the garden."

Weed-species? Sapients? Again that concept! But while the Ancients had eliminated non-Kirlian sapients, the Amoeba seemed to be eliminating Kirlians. Which didn't make sense.

The four -9's rolled toward them. Evidently the -9's were the action specialists, and the -S's were the intellectual ones. That might reduce the odds; intellectuals often did not fight well. The problem was, Herald of Slash and Hweeh of Weew were also intellectuals.

Herald rolled quickly across to touch Hweeh. He exerted his aura, focusing all his healing power. " What is the nature of the Amoeba? " he cried. Whatever secrets the Weew had hidden in his shock-protected unconscious had to be brought out now. "Why do they speak of 'turning off'?"

Hweeh shuddered in his android-vehicle. Herald concentrated, willing away the threatening shock. If there were any key to escape, Hweeh had it—and there would be no later opportunities. Hweeh had grown steadily more able to face the concept of the Amoeba and the disaster it represented. Had he healed enough?

The -9's closed in, their arms reaching out. Once they got a firm hold, the half-second response-delay would mean little. Strange that they did not merely hurl themselves forward, bashing the two androids against the wall, smashing the flesh-bodies inside.

Remote-controlled androids were expendable, so they had an inherent advantage to offset their reflex liability.

@I remember!@ Hweeh cried, reverting to his own mode. Herald did not comprehend Weew speech, and had no translator here in the enclave, but his aural rapport brought the meaning through. This happened in times of special emotional intensity and was another aspect of Kirlianism that had yet to be properly understood. @ The Amoeba is non-Kirlian! @

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Non-Kirlian! Suddenly it was all clear. The Ancients had eliminated the non-Kirlian sapients from the Cluster, but elsewhere in the Universe there had to be Clusters where the non-Kirlians had eliminated the Kirlians. This was a universal struggle between the two forms of intelligent life! Now the sapients without auras were returning, and they had a terrible score to settle, three million years in the making, and no mercy could be expected. No wonder Hweeh had gone into shock. He had glimpsed the phenomenal magnitude of this struggle, and known that it was not a war between Clusters, but war between two completely incompatible cultures—and that the other side had an overwhelming advantage.

Then Herald realized the concomitant truth: the Amoebites could not Transfer! Only aura creatures could Transfer their living personalities. That was why the Ancients had been able to spread and conquer so rapidly, with no apparent damage to the Cluster; their non-Kirlian enemies had had to move between systems using a thousand times the energy, and could not compete on the Cluster scale.

But it also meant that the same no-quarter struggle was upon them now, as it had been three million years ago: The Kirlians might be willing to coexist, but the Amoeba had to extinguish all Kirlian life. Aural sapience with its inherently unmatchable mobility represented the most dire possible threat to non-Kirlians. The campaign would be absolutely ruthless! Had Herald been a Weew, he would surely have gone into shock himself; even as a Slash he felt a bit dizzy.

Shock? Sure enough, the Weew had done it again, despite Herald's aura. The android body went still as Hweeh lost consciousness.

Now it was one against four or six—for the salvation of the Cluster, and perhaps all Kirlian life!

+One has turned off!+ S-Anity announced. +Secure the other!+

Turned off: become unconscious. To a non-Kirlian this would mean complete stilling of body functions, like a machine without power. Not death, but temporary cessation.

And Herald had his third revelation, this one personal.

He charged the window, shoving aside the grasping android pincers. That half-second pause inhibited them just enough. Had those been Amoeba-designed androids, they might have incorporated short-circuit mechanisms to enable them to respond in preset emergency patterns. But these were borrowed units, with liabilities. He smashed his pincers at the transparent sheet, shattering it.

The enclave builders had not expected this sort of deliberate stress, or they would have used unshatterable material.

He drew back as the androids charged, then he shoved forward again, toward the opening. The androids leaped to intercept him before he could scramble through. This much they had anticipated, and their move was well timed.

But Herald's two forward skates struck the wall just below the window, as intended. His jointed legs bent under his impetus, then sprang back. He launched himself violently in the opposite direction, directly into the group of androids.

They were caught by surprise. Herald bowled them over, literally. The half-second delay prevented sufficiently rapid recovery of equilibrium for figures knocked off balance to this extent. They skidded across the room, tangling each other, skates spinning in air.

Herald went for the door, but its lock resisted him. He tried to force it open, but it was stronger than his pincers. Naturally the Amoeba would have made sure it was tight! The two S- females, Anity and Elect, scooted over to grab him. Apparently they were not certain the door would hold.

He charged them, needing to maintain his personal freedom of motion. The -9 males were already extricating their limbs from the tangle and scrambling back to their skates. What was he to do?

He caught S-Anity in two appendages, pushing and twisting to upend her. He was only partly successful; one of his pincers snagged in her skirt, ripping it off. He did what he knew was foolish: he looked. And saw—nothing. He had been right all along: the androids had no sexual appurtenances.

S-Elect grabbed him from behind. He must have paused more than half a second, idiot that he was! He spun about, controlling her because he could shift his balance faster than she could shift hers to counter him. He flung her away from him, into the rising group of -9's. Again they all went down in a tangle.

So far he had had the best of it. But so long as he remained confined, theirs was the advantage. They could be disabled but not killed; he was mortal.

He banged against the door, making a loud clatter. "Turn off the power!" he screamed. "Turn off! Turn off!"

"Turning off won't save you now," Sta-9 said, approaching. "We shall dismantle your generator and take it with us."

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

His generator? Surely they did not think he was merely another android! His aural generator was himself! Yet if they did confuse the matter, they might think he had a special model, that generated a higher Kirlian aura, with a more realistic pattern. Ordinary machine auras could not key open Ancient sites, so if he seemed to have a machine that could— Yes, they would want to investigate that!

S-Anity skated toward him. Stripped of her skirt, she was just another Modern, but he couldn't concentrate on escape while being harassed by a mobile Amoebite. He could not keep bowling them over; soon he would get bowled over himself.

She grabbed for him. He waltzed her around, hoping to use her as a baffle against the others. Suddenly he realized that he had made another mistake: He had been yelling in the wrong language, the one the enclave couldn't translate.

^Turn off!^ he cried in Pin. θTurn off!θ in Wheel. §Turn off!§ in Sculp. +Turn off!+ in Plus. And for good measure, several times in Clustric.

Nothing happened. They closed on him again, and this time they were braced against any surprise charge. He spun S-Anity into them, but she took out only one android. Herald knew he had to fight limb to limb—and that he had no reasonable chance.

Unless in the melee he could release his Sculp host from the android body, and sneak across the floor and out the window while the Amoebites took apart the android. They wanted the equipment that they thought enhanced his aura so well, so they could not afford to smash it. Even if his quiescence made them think he had turned off, they still would not want to rush it. That might give him time. Sculps had excellent climbing ability; he might scale the outer wall. It was a serious risk, but—

He tried it, and discovered that it was difficult to open the android from inside; it was intended to be serviced from the outside. And how could he escape this shell without being observed? Maybe he could arrange one more tangle....

Three -9's grabbed him, clamping on firmly. He could not free himself this time! The half-second advantage was nullified by the mindless grip. Now the fourth -9 was returning to open his android, and he could not possibly avoid—

All the androids suddenly froze in place.

Herald shuddered with relief. His plea had been heard! The masters of the enclave had realized that something was wrong, and had cut off the beamed power to the androids. The Amoebites might be in control of these units, but they would not be able to make them operate without that power. Maybe the Amoeba ship would be able to beam down its own power, but that would be chancy because the local power monitors would light up and the ship would soon be located and attacked. Probably by that time Herald and Hweeh would have escaped anyway, and the androids would be in custody of the enclave authorities.

He heard help coming: the clack of Pins, the hum of Wheels. He had saved himself, but it would count for nothing if he did not use his information to prepare the willfully blind Cluster for the battle against the Amoeba. The enemy was handicapped by its lack of Transfer ability—but the enemy had a million heavily armed ships, and the means to mattermit them across the Cluster. Only the science of the Ancients could stop such a thrust—and there was only one way to achieve that science in time.

This was the third revelation he had suffered: to realize that he would have to take Melody of Mintaka's advice seriously, subordinating his personal revulsion to the needs of his society. He would have to enter a functioning Ancient site—the same one Melody had entered—and hope to learn its secrets before the Amoeba blasted it. He had been resistant to the notion, because it seemed to constitute a betrayal of both his personal resolve to stay away from Flame of Furnace, and his love for Psyche. But now he had to do it. In fact, he should have done it before, instead of coming here.

11

Cluster of Sites

X Contact by units S and 9 severed. Enemy has discovered our presence. X

& Then we must act. Accelerate full-scale mattermission to heartworlds of all Cluster sapients. Withhold final action until placement is complete, unless individual ships are attacked. & Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

0 Mission proceeds, virtually complete. Overt action shall be coordinated by schedule. Is it still necessary to hold, pending reverification for soul sapience? 0

& Correct. It is to be regretted that precipitous action is contemplated, but the outcome is not in question. We shall reverify if events do not make this unfeasible. &

0 Problem of logistics. Unit 1, presently on watch by ancient site of planet £, now required for main thrust. 0

& The main thrust is preemptive. Reassign unit 1. The enemy has shown no sign of activating that site, and even if this occurred now, there would not be time for them to draw sufficient advantage from it before our action hour. & Herald lifted his three great feet in turn, getting the feel of his massive new host. This was a £, rather like the triped Moderns skaters, but fully living, sapient, and much larger. The £ were the giants of Sphere Dash, Andromeda, and were among the largest sapients anywhere in the Cluster. For a long time they had been treated as virtual slaves by the more technological, but not more civilized, birds of Dash. But now they had come into their own, and though the labors they performed were much the same as before, and many utilized the supervision of Dash mahouts, there was no question to whom this world belonged. The £ still preferred lives of brute physical work coupled with esthetic mental interactions. The birds were tolerated to the extent they facilitated this by assuming the tedious direction of the physical program, but it was no longer against law or custom for individual

£ to be without mahouts, or to wander wherever they chose.

Here on Planet £ was the finest functioning Ancient site known. Herald only hoped it was not yet known to the Amoeba. If it was, he was about to commit suicide. And maybe that would be fitting.

He whirled his body slowly, setting his feet down in order, progressing along the trail to the great bog of jelly. Melody of Mintaka had trod a similar trail a thousand years ago, on her way to the first opening of this site, and the resulting victory for her Galaxy.

Could Herald do likewise?

Now he was descending into the bog. The atmosphere thickened into viscosity, impeding progress, but his host was adequate to the need. Herald regretted leaving the prismatic feather trees behind. He knew they broke the sunlight into its component hues so that each species could utilize its particular wavelength, but to him it was a tremendously artistic thing, a wilderness mural in light. The bog, in contrast, was deepening into gray, then black, as all light was excluded. He had to use senses other than sight to avoid the greater nether branches of the lattice that crisscrossed the bog at different levels, and he also stayed clear of the aromatic scentwood trunks, so valuable for construction. He was here for quite another purpose!

What, he wondered, had Melody discovered in this deep site that she refused ever to reveal? Every time he thought he had figured it out, he considered some more and was sure he was still ignorant. It was a bit like Hweeh of Weew's reflex of shock, concealing important information to protect individual or society. Yet did any individual have the right to make such a decision?

Hweeh had gone to a lot of trouble to make this venture of Herald's possible. The Weew had Transferred back to his own Segment to "pull strings" as he put it, causing the Minister of Weew to confer with the Minister of Dash, who in turn allowed this intrusion into this closely guarded region. Perhaps each had been motivated as much by private curiosity about the site, as by the alleged threat to the Cluster that Herald hoped to abate. So he was here, and there would be one other entity here—and he had resolved not only to save the Cluster, but to tell the truth, whatever it might be. Knowledge was the root of all power.

He came at last to the deep site: a depression in the dark liquid bottom of the bog. And here he met his selected partner for the necessary ceremony of admission: a high-Kirlian female Transferred to £ host. For the site opened only in the presence of a super-Kirlian mating. And there was only one such female that the Cluster Council would let him have.

—Hello, Herald of Slash,— she vibrated, her skin making the sound in the liquid medium.

—Hello, Flame of Furnace,— he replied with difficulty. —I regret that we have had to meet in this manner.—

—Apology noted, accepted,— she responded with a certain humor, for she well knew it had been no apology. —I am aware it was not precisely your preference. Had it not been a Cluster imperative, I would not have come.—

Herald touched her briefly with the tip of one tentacle, feeling her aura. It was 190, the strongest natural one he had ever encountered. Apart from Psyche! Only one entity in a major galaxy in a thousand years broke 200; she was of the one-in-a-century variety, which was still quite respectable.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

—You understand the details?— he asked —The risk?— Maybe she would balk!

—The Amoeba that formed beyond my Galaxy (Furnace was hardly a galaxy, but no doubt its sapients felt otherwise!) will destroy us all if we do not evoke Ancient science to oppose it. The Amoeba may destroy this site as we evoke it. But it may be our only chance, now, for the Amoeba will soon destroy life in the Cluster regardless.—

—you have intelligence and courage,— he said, beginning to soften toward her. This was the female that had stood in the way of his social freedom. He had been ready to perform his duty by her, in order to legitimize his marriage to Psyche, except that he feared Psyche's reaction to that. So he had made application to have the requirement nullified. Then Psyche had died. Flame was in no way to blame for Psyche's fate, yet it was complicated, now, to interact with her. He didn't want to like her!

—Not very much courage, Herald. Let us proceed quickly. I fear the strike of the Amoeba.—

Let us proceed. Again that unfortunately sensitive expression, throwing him once more into his chaos of guilt and rationalization.

Proceed, as he had proceeded with Jet Sixteen in the purely business mergence that had been invalidated by his later discovery that it had not been business for her. The concept had turned him off Hellflower of Modern, and served to gut much of whatever emotion he felt here. Why did he have to suffer these reminders of his errors?

But the Cluster hung in the balance.

—You realize the nature of the ceremony we must perform?—

—Of course. We must mate on the site aperture.—

—Yes. There need be no love in this action, and there is none.— But that, too, had an uncomfortable ring, for he had also said it to Sixteen.

—I am glad you understand, Herald.—

Glad he understood? The vagaries of the female viewpoint!

They proceeded to it without further discussion; efficient copulation, performed for purely practical consideration. Herald tried to abolish the lurking picture in his mind of Sixteen, who had pretended not to love him so as to leave him free. But it was only replaced by the image of Psyche, void of that pretense but as awkward in its way, for he was betraying her. She lived! She had to live! What use to save the Cluster, if she were not in it?

But in his deeper emotion he knew this was not Psyche, but her antithesis. His copulation puncture mechanism balked. He was sexually impotent.

—I am unable,— Herald admitted. —I love another.—

—I admit to being relieved,— Flame vibrated. —I also love another.—

Was this scripted by Sixteen, or did all females lie on demand? He was sick of all of it! —The survival of our culture requires—

—Herald, I approached this necessity without illusion. Now illusion is developing. I had anticipated a more callous personality in you, one that would never be balked by considerations of feeling. You, after all, are the Kirlian, the one like no other ever known, rightfully secure in your arrogance. One never touched by the tragedies of emotion.—

— That is illusion!—

—Perhaps. As I perceive a somewhat more feeling entity than I thought existed, my indifference thaws. It may be that I will not regret mating with you, even if the effort proves to be wasted. I had also underestimated the appeal of your fine aura.—

—Then I abate your developing illusion and thawing indifference. I am a healer; my aura makes entities well. If you have suffered, my aura helps alleviate that suffering, in turn allowing the body to heal itself. But this denotes no virtue in me. While we tried, I thought of Psyche, who was burned to death but whom I still love and mean to recover.—

—I thought of Fuel, my love whom I was not permitted to marry because of you, and who perished horribly in a pit of ice.—

She, too! Ice, to the hot sapients of Furnace, was the ultimate horror. —I did not know,— Herald vibrated, sorry, finding that he was coming to believe her. Why should she even want to deceive him? Their relation had been defined in their early youth, and what either believed about the other had little relevance. —I blamed the fire, and you are a creature of fire. I wronged you.—

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

—No more than I wronged you. Fuel was trapped in his pursuit of a heraldic device carved in ice. I associated you with that concept.—

Heraldic device! He felt abrupt sorrow for the fate of Fuel of Furnace, a kindred entity. —Had we understood each other better, we could have discharged this obligation long ago, and both been free. Neither of us were able to consider rationally.—

—It was my error,— she vibrated. —I refused to travel to Sphere Slash. Perhaps I resisted you because my commitment to Fuel was not complete. I used you as a pretext.—

—Don't say that!— Herald vibrated. —You were never false to your love! While I— He broke off, obsessed by the memory of Sixteen. He had made love to the Jet female!

—You were not false to yours, either; I am sure of it.—

—But I was! I took a mistress.—

—So you took a mistress! Did you love her?—

—No. She was low aura.—

—Then what does it matter? She represented no possible threat to your love. I could never love a low-Kirlian either. Fuel was one hundred and forty.—

Herald paused, sorting through his mixed feelings, ready to be moved by her logic. It was Kirlian logic! —That's right! I took her as mistress because the occasion necessitated it, and it was inconceivable that she replace Psyche.—

—So you were not false. Herald, I like you better, now. Shall we try again?—

—No!—

—Is your loyalty to the Cluster so slight?—

—I was not false to Psyche. I was false to Sixteen, the low-Kirlian female. She loved me, and I used her. How can I respect myself now?—

—You cannot deceive a sapient female in this manner, not even a low-Kirlian one. She surely knew what she was doing. Knowing love was impossible, she took what was offered. If that is all that restrains you, be reassured.—

Herald considered again, further swayed by her reasoning. But still he balked. — You are not low-Kirlian. You are my most likely love in the Cluster. I dare not touch you.—

—I assure you, there is no real danger of love between us! I have not forgotten Fuel of Furnace, and never will. I mentioned him only to explain my situation.—

—You lie, Flame! You loved Fuel because he was the highest aura you encountered, even as I loved Psyche. Had his aura been a mere ten or fifteen, you would never have noticed him, regardless of his other merits. I do not question those merits. I am sure he was deserving, as much so as my Psyche. But it was aura alone that compelled you to choose him from a thousand other deserving entities. Now my aura moves you regardless of your will, as yours moves me. You and I are Kirlians, a type apart. We can love each other, and shall love each other, if we do not separate soon. Then we would both be false.—

—To our dead loves,— she finished with acerbity. —Herald, can it be so wrong? We only recognize reality at last—

— My love is not dead! — he exclaimed, experiencing a wash of emotion that shook him. —She lives, somewhere in this Ancient network, and I must recover her!—

—Very well, she lives. And to free her, you must mate with me. Would you rather leave her locked in the tomb of the Ancients forever?—

Never that! —It is a paradox! To save her, it seems I must betray her!—

—Think of it this way: The fire took her from you. It is fitting that Flame bring her back. If I could restore my Fuel similarly, I would not hesitate.—

—It would be more fitting that my low-Kirlian mistress perform that service.—

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

—So you do love the mistress, too,— Flame vibrated knowingly.

—No!— But honesty compelled him to reconsider. —She has an aura so low it can hardly be measured. As far beneath norm as mine is above it. Yet she is a worthy sapient, intelligent, feeling, competent. I wronged her not by taking her as mistress in my hour of need, but by denying her my love. I think— He broke off for a moment, surprised. —I think Psyche herself would have wanted me to give that love, in that circumstance.—

—There is a corollary.—

He came to it with a certain difficulty. —If she were to grant that love... she would by similar token grant this love.—

—Our Kirlian nature enables us to compromise,— Flame vibrated. —After this mission is done, if we both survive, and if you have not recovered your high-Kirlian true love, I will on occasion animate your low-Kirlian false love. We need make no apologies for such a liaison.—

—That will not be necessary,— Herald said with sudden decision. —We have our liaison here.—

He found himself potent, and completed the act.

Afterward, they stood together on the Ancient disk, waiting for the site to respond.

—It would be ironic if nothing happened now,— Flame vibrated gently.

—Or if too much happened, like an Amoeba strike,— he added. —But regardless, it was worthwhile, of itself. I love others, but I could love you also, in other circumstances.—

—And I you,— she agreed. —I would not even exclude this circumstance.—

—You have helped me to know myself, as my friend Hweeh has done, and to comprehend some of the impact I have on others.—

—Your friend Hweeh?—

—Hweeh of Swees of Segment Weew. He is the leading research astronomer of the Cluster, and a fine intelligent entity, with an aura of one hundred and twenty-five. He enabled me to come here, since this locale is restricted, by exerting influence in his Segment.—

—I thought I recognized the name. The Minister of Furnace told me that he was acting on behalf of the clearance made by an astronomer of Weew. I had wondered how Weew entered the picture.—

—That is a long story. The threat of the Amoeba is being contemplated by a Cluster committee, and—

—A committee! Are they serious?—

—That's why we had to—

He was interrupted suddenly.

The disk on which they stood started to sink; the site was opening!

—Suppose we remain locked inside forever, as Melody of Milky Way and Dash of Andromeda were?— Flame inquired nervously.

—This I would define as an 'other circumstance,'— he vibrated. —Then we should be lovers, eternally.—

—No offense intended to you, but I prefer that we complete the mission.—

The aperture spiraled closed above them as they spiraled down. Gas pushed out the water. They stood in a bare cylindrical chamber.

The wall faded into inchoate color. This was a form of animation: reflection of the thoughts of the visitors, overlapping each other until they controlled it.

Now they could not converse sonically, for the £ hide did not vibrate properly in air. But Herald knew what to do. He summoned a controlled animation: a visio-sonic communications unit. The thing rolled into proximity from the nebulous background.

"Communicate," Herald made it say in Clustric, as the machine-screen formed his own image, a Slash.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

"Where are the bones?" Flame asked in the same language. Her self-image was of a winding tongue of fire. Her body was semisolid, but its surface bore oil that burned, providing heat energy for the internal functions. She was beautiful.

"Bones?"

"The hosts of Melody and Dash never emerged from this site. Only their auras returned. After a thousand years, the £ bodies—"

The screen showed a pile of huge £ bones in disarray, with little incendiary flies, fireflies, scorching out bits of desiccated flesh.

Her image of death.

Grisly thought! "The remains could have been incinerated completely or dissolved by the site maintenance mechanism. Or they might have been preserved intact by inert gas, sterile, and lifted to the surface on the same platform-shift that brought us down here. We are not in a position to know."

"Strange that a creature as cognizant as Melody of Mintaka should desert her innocent host in a place like this, permitting her to die of hunger and confinement."

That bothered Herald too. "What happened to the two prior hosts?" he demanded of the image-machine. Maybe the site itself would answer.

It did. By a rapid series of images it told how the £ had been given suitable food refined by the site equipment, and granted visions of all the beautiful things they could imagine, creating a kind of perceptual paradise. It was not reality, but it had been a good deal more satisfying than many realities were. They had lived a long time before dying natural deaths.

"It was an idle question," Flame said. "But I am glad to have the answer. It seems the Ancients were not cruel." She looked about at the changing images around them. "We should get on with the mission, before the Amoeba does. I suffer premonitions of impending doom."

"It is not necessary for you to risk yourself further," Herald told her. "Now that you have enabled me to enter the site, you can Transfer directly back to your natural host in Furnace, assured that your £ host will not suffer."

Her image flared with irritation. "While the Amoeba bombs this site and attempts to eliminate you," she replied. "If the enemy succeeds, the entire Cluster will be sterilized, including Furnace. I have nothing to gain by going home before the job is done."

Herald liked her better and better. "Then help me search. I must discover the technology of the Ancients, and how to apply it rapidly, and get that information to Cluster specialists. You can zero in on the secret Melody of Mintaka would not tell. It must have relevance to the contemporary situation."

"Let me remain here, interrogating the unit. You must Transfer elsewhere, where the Amoeba cannot trace you."

She was offering to be decoy, and he had to accept. "If the site is attacked, go home immediately," he told her. "I will Transfer to my own body in Slash, or some other convenient host, from whatever site I occupy."

"You will occupy a site? There would be no host there!"

No living host. His whole personal quest was based on the assumption that the sites could be occupied by auras. If Psyche lived, she was in an Ancient site, using it as a host, maintaining herself through constant enhancement of her aura. If she had done it, he could do it. If she had not then he did not want to live. This was the critical test. "My aura will imbue the Ancient equipment itself.

I will have its secrets... from within."

"May you succeed," the image-Flame whispered, amazed. She did not say what she obviously thought: impossible.

He concentrated. Take me to a safe site with usable machines, he thought, hardly expecting it to be this easy.

He was in deep space. Deep deep space! Intergalactic space, perhaps inter-Cluster space.

He rotated, guiding his orientation by willpower, since he had no body. Now he saw a Galaxy, so far away it resembled a diffuse star. It was Andromeda! Or the Milky Way, or some other great Galaxy of the Universe.

Was he lost in some far Cluster? He had not anticipated this!

How was he able to see, since he had no body? None of this made much sense.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

He examined his situation more closely. Now he turned his lens on it. His apparatus was a conglomeration of antennae, baffles, and refractive fields. A functioning Ancient machine, in a safe location. A million light-years from the nearest Galaxy. Well, he had asked for it!

His aura had animated the machine. It was possible! He was now a robot in space. No one suspected that the Ancients had left functioning equipment out here! Not that it made much difference, as no telescope could resolve so small an object at such a range.

No physical ships would be traveling out here. It would take them at least two million years to get this far, and any that did that not only had to be freezers, they had to predate all contemporary cultures by two million years, and postdate the Ancients by one million years, which meant they could not exist anyway. Even the survey Net could not pick this up. The Net did not go this far out, and the receivers were not nearly sensitive enough. Only freak luck would show a space-borne extra-Galactic Ancient site, which was why this one was safe from discovery by Cluster entities—or the Amoeba.

If he could report the site's precise location, the Cluster Council could have their experts attempt to tune it in, and mattermit a specialized crew here.

Mattermit?

Yes, this was a mattermission station. He recognized it as such because he was of it. It was also a Transfer station intended for energy transport. Evidently the Ancients had Transferred a sapient entity along with their shipments of energy, to supervise operations. Though what they were doing way out here in nowhere was not clear.

This might be the only surviving space station, or there might be hundreds, some much more conveniently placed for investigation by Cluster experts. He would have to perform a survey. He had already established that a high-aura creature could occupy Ancient equipment; therefore victory on both Cluster and personal fronts was within reach. The Cluster could achieve Ancient science, which was turning out to be even more marvelous than he had really dared hope, and he could recover Psyche. Maybe this was where the Ancients themselves had gone: into their own equipment! Unfortunately, they had not been able to reproduce themselves there— No, they would not be such fools! All would soon be known. But until he knew where he was, he could not accomplish much.

Location: exactly where was he? He needed some sort of spatial coordinates, precise ones. Was there orientation equipment here?

There should be... and there was. As he thought of it, this subunit became functional. He focused his scopes and antennae, becoming aware how marvelously efficient they were, and in moments had his answer. He was at the fringe of the Cluster ellipsoid, and the Galaxy he saw was Milky Way.

He noted his position as precisely as possible, then concentrated again: nearest other functioning unit.

And found himself in orbit about Cloud 9. In an instant he had jumped another million light-years. The implication was plain: However many Ancient units had been in Cluster space originally, few remained now. That suggested a fair attrition rate. The machines were not perfect. Not quite.

How many such stations had there been originally? He could not tell; the information was not in the Ancient memory banks. These were functional sites, not memory-storage units. Probably a landbound site, such as the one be and Flame had entered, would be more complete. Maybe she was getting all the information they needed while he wasted his time traveling.

But he still needed to identify the ones that remained. Not only would analysis of their equipment offer the Cluster parity with the Amoeba—and perhaps superiority— but each could be an excellent base for launching attacks against the enemy. It would take the best Cluster industries a significant period to build sophisticated new equipment along Ancient lines, even given full blueprints, assuming the Cluster Council ever let the blueprints get out of committee. In that period the Amoeba could overrun it all. It would be necessary to use the stations already in place to stave off the enemy thrust until the new weapons were ready.

Still, why mattermit technicians out to a space station, if there were planetbound ones available? If he could find one, and get news out about its location before the Amoeba struck, they might get a Cluster battlefleet into position to protect it. Those energy-globe Amoeba ships were effective, but they would find armed Cluster battleships to be much more of a challenge than an unarmed archaeological mission!

He considered the geography of the Cluster. Where would a planetary site be most accessible to the natives, and least accessible to the Amoeba? Not in deep space, certainly! But Amoeba ships had come to Planet Keep and Planet Mars within the Milky Way Galaxy, so a Galaxy was no protection either. And he had fought, as it were, hand to hand with the Amoebites in the globular cluster orbiting Pinwheel. They might be non-Kirlian, but they could certainly get around. Probably the Amoeba could strike anywhere, and within minutes. Except perhaps at a major Cluster military base, or a fleet of battleships.... A military base? Why Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

not? Technology alone made the Amoeba superior. Nullify that, and the advantage would swing firmly to the Kirlian Cluster. At a military base, it would be a straight one-to-one combat without frills. The Amoeba's technological sophistication would be matched by the sheer firepower of the base.

But how would the Ancient equipment know where contemporary bases were? The Ancients had put together their Empire three million years before such bases had been established. Unless the Ancient equipment monitored such things....

No harm in trying, anyway. So far he, like other contemporary entities, had consistently underestimated the capacities of the sites.

He might find out more by investigating the instruction banks of the equipment itself, but this was like delving into a host-memory: tedious and time-consuming. Easier to make it operate in its own fashion. He wanted his answers now, before the Amoeba struck.

He willed—and was there. In a planetary site near a military base. He looked out of his lens and saw—

A Jet.

So he had reached a site in Sphere Jet, Sixteen's globular Cluster home near the black hole. Of course the Ancients had been here, since they had taken the trouble to isolate the low-aura Jets. Well, the Jets were part of civilization now, fully sapient and with more aura than they had had three million years ago. Too bad they had not known about this Ancient site in their midst.

Too bad for them; perhaps fortunate for the rest of the Cluster. Had they discovered this site a million years ago, the Jets would have become the Cluster enemy!

Not known? He was looking into a chamber of the site itself. The Jet was inside the site!

Maybe the Jets did not realize its significance. They might think it was merely an interesting artifact. He would contact them.

How? He was in the Ancient circuitry, his aura little more than a current within it. As Psyche's aura must be, somewhere. Getting in direct touch with a creature outside this circuitry was a problem. He had no living host to step into, unless he tried for the Jet himself, and he hesitated to do that yet. It might only foment confusion.

Well, he could operate the equipment to a certain extent, as he had done in space, turning perceptors about. Could he make this machine speak?

He tried. Attention, he thought. Too bad there was not a vision screen or animation chamber here. He could really communicate with one of those!

The Jet in his view reacted. It wooshed something in an unfamiliar language. Certainly not the language Sixteen had used briefly,

=, and no variant of it; the fundamental precepts and inflections differed.

But then Herald's circuits meshed, and meaning came through. And the invocation of those special circuits told him something else.

This language was related to that of the Ancients themselves, for the equipment could comprehend it directly.

No... it had to be a full translation rendered into Ancient by this amazingly sophisticated site. Naturally it seemed like Ancient to him, at the receiving end. The reason he had not understood the Jet original was that the modern language was not immediately comprehensible either to him or to the Ancient equipment. It had to be classified and rendered into machine-language. The Ancients would have understood the speech of Jet three million years ago, so the equipment could trace its considerable evolution.

Other Jets appeared. They operated the inputs. Naturally they were curious about this manifestation of the site. He was curious about them, too. If they understood this equipment well enough to tune the controls, why hadn't they understood it well enough to Transfer to the main centers of the Cluster, instead of remaining in isolation? They could not have discovered this site just in the past day; they moved around in it with too much familiarity.

Of course. They were low-Kirlian and so could not Transfer. Still, why hadn't they told the Cluster Council about this site, knowing how important it was? Were they saving it for their own use, contrary to Cluster policy?

Herald decided on caution. He really knew the Jets only from the one archaeological expedition on Planet Mars, and from Sixteen.

That had been a separated group, reared in the Galaxy. Their home culture in Sphere Glob might be quite different, with secrets and motives unsuspected by other Clusterites. These Jets might not be quite as friendly as he had thought at first. If he had been a member of a culture restricted to a globular Cluster, adjacent to a dangerous black hole, for three million years, how would he feel about outsiders? Particularly when the first outsiders had done the restricting and the later outsiders had alleviated it only to the extent of taking (and never returning) sapients as samples for study. No question about it: He would be extremely cynical about the motives of aliens!

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Now their dialogue filtered through to him. |||The machine spoke! Is it a communication from the ancient ones?|||

Not the = of Sphere Jet, but the ||| of the site. A full translation! He was already coming to comprehend the Ancient mode better.

|||No. Consider the readings. There is an abnormality in the machine. It is very old; such problems are to be expected.|||

Time to get in touch, since they were now aware of him anyway. As they were low-Kirlian, they could not get at him even if they weren't friendly.

No abnormality, he willed. I am Herald the Healer of Sphere Slash, Andromeda.

|||It must be a recording,||| a Jet said.

|||No, the readings indicate aural flow in excess of aperture-keying intensity. A definite malfunction.|||

|||Eliminate it. It is vital that the unit be properly functional for Action Hour.|||

|||This is difficult without risking damage to the apparatus. These ancient devices are of borderline reliability.|||

They didn't believe him! Idiots, I am Herald, Kirlian sapient. This site must be made available to Cluster experts immediately.

|||Inanimate consciousness?||| a Jet exclaimed.

|||Notify X!|||

Not inanimate consciousness! Herald blared. I am a living creature. Speak to me!

|||The site has developed self-consciousness!||| a Jet cried, horrified. |||We must destroy it!|||

Oh, oh. Herald decided to shift location; he was making reverse progress here. Another site near a military base, he willed.

The Jets vanished. Where was this site? He extended his awareness. It was in Sphere Duocirc, Andromeda. %. But—

Within the site were more Jets.

Something was wrong. Jets could not be here in an undiscovered site in the heart of Galaxy Andromeda! Unless....

Where was the last site? he inquired with sudden suspicion.

And had the answer from his Ancient circuits: Sphere Slash, Andromeda. Not Glob Jet, but his own home region!

The Jets, verifying their gauges, became aware of him.

|||There is a disturbance in the equipment!|||

Herald willed himself to another site: the one at Glob Jet. The real one.

He bounced. There was no such site.

|||Message from X: Be on alert for machine consciousness in functioning ancient sites.|||

If there were no site in Glob Jet, how had the Jets gotten here? They must have infiltrated the Cluster, somehow locating sites that no other species was aware of.

But the Jets could only have done this by using the sites themselves, as Herald was doing now. Not by Transfer, for them, but by mattermission. Perhaps one of their archaeological teams had uncovered a functioning site, giving them entry into the entire system? And they had used that site for their own purposes, instead of giving the invaluable secret to the Cluster. Now, in the face of the crucial threat by the Amoeba, the Jets were still keeping the secret, though they had to know how vital it was for the very existence of Kirlian life. Which side were they really on?

Then Herald perceived what he had missed before: These Jets differed in detail from those he had known. They had a different taper on the fuselage, a distinct pattern of coloration, and thicker support fibers. They were in fact a separate variety of Jet, perhaps a distinct subspecies. No wonder their speech and manner were strange!

|||This unit possesses alien consciousness!|||

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Herald wished himself away again. This time he landed in Sphere Magnet of Segment Etamin, Milky Way, a station hidden in an orbiting planetoid. No Jets here, fortunately!

Strange that these hostile Jets had not infused their auras into the mechanism of the sites, as he had done, so they could chase him down directly. That was the obvious course, instead of trying to track him by reading their instruments. Of course, Jets were low-Kirlian, so could not ordinarily Transfer, but this was not an ordinary situation. The Ancient equipment possessed the power of enhancement, so that even very weak auras could be elevated to Transfer strength. Now any Kirlian creature could Transfer! They must have discovered this. If they really wanted to catch him....

A Jet appeared in the mattermission aperture. That was another thing: Why did they mattermit so freely? The expense of energy, when Cluster distances were involved, was criminal. The Ancients must have given their equipment huge reserves, but the Ancients were no longer present to restore that energy as it was depleted by wasteful use, and these fabulous sites would inevitably become nonfunctional in time. If these Jets had the finesse to use all these supposedly undiscovered sites, surely they knew the value of energy!

Herald investigated. He concentrated himself in the circuitry adjacent to the control panel and extended his aura into the volume of space the Jet would occupy as he operated these controls.

Sure enough, the Jet came. Herald tuned in on the typically small aura he knew was there—but it was not there.

Either he had lost his ability to perceive fractional auras —or this entity had no aura.

No aura at all?

He gave it one more try. He drew on the resources of the equipment, enhancing his own aura to almost three hundred, and spread a more powerful perceptive net. If anything, even a millionth of norm, were there, he would pick it up.

Nothing was there. His field spread through purely mechanical channels. No electrical or semielectrical nervous system at all. It would be impossible for any entity to Transfer into such a host.

Slowly the truth registered. This species of Jet was not small-aura, it was null-aura. No wonder they used mattermission: even with the potential of enhancement, they could never Transfer. No wonder they followed Herald only by instrument. The Ancient equipment could detect his Kirlian frame, but this Jet variety was inherently incapable of it.

Non-Kirlian sapience! Completely without aura, yet fully intelligent and competent. He had the proof at last, from direct experience; such species did exist in the Cluster. Perhaps the Jets of Sixteen's species knew about this, but had concealed it, fearing their cousins would be destroyed, as all other non-Kirlian sapients had been three million years ago. Now, with the coming of the Amoeba, they could act at last.

|||Alien consciousness manifests in this unit!||| the Jet exclaimed.

And through the Ancient unit came the answer: |||Destroy unit!|||

They were playing for keeps, these sudden allies of the enemy! The Jet nudged the master power switch—and Herald willed himself back to Sphere Slash, Andromeda. Now he knew why Psyche dared not reveal herself. Cutting the power of his equipment would destroy any aura within it.

He arrived safely. His £ host stood in the communication chamber, beside that of Flame's host. Apparently the non-Kirlian Jets had not yet discovered his point of origin.

He hopped quickly into the host. The Jets were no doubt querying the site network about his location. If he got out before they caught up, they might lose him entirely. This particular site had no mattermission facilities, perhaps because there could be so few receivers for creatures this size. It was pure Kirlian. That was a big help. Neither the non-Kirlian Jets nor the non-Kirlian Amoeba could strike directly, physically, here.

Non-Kirlian Jets, non-Kirlian Amoebites—how could he have missed it. Once more he had been blind to the obvious. These strange Jets were the Amoebites! Non-Kirlian sapience from another Cluster of the Universe.

Where was Flame? Her host was here, but if her aura had followed his into the Ancient equipment....

The flame of Flame appeared in the screen in the holographic image. "Herald? Is that you?"

"Yes! We must depart instantly. The Amoeba has taken over the Ancient network of sites. We must get out, for this is the one site Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

they cannot invade physically. Don't go in the circuitry, because they may turn it off by remote control."

"Herald, I know! But I must tell you—"

" Move! Or it is death—for us and Cluster! Activate the surfacing mechanism!"

"Herald, I have found Psyche! "

His whole £ body stiffened, almost falling against the panoramic wall. "You believe? Others think I delude myself about her survival—"

" I know! I doubted, but I saw you actually enter the machine, so I tried it myself. While you led the Amoeba a merry chase across the Cluster, distracting them, I surveyed quietly for her aura, and the Ancient net told me. She did inhabit the sites, her aura alone, enhanced. Hers was the highest aura ever—"

A pattern of interference rippled across the screen. The image of a Jet appeared. |||Activated site discovered!||| it exclaimed. |||The £

site!|||

"The Amoeba has found us!" Herald cried.

"Transfer directly out—now!" Flame screamed, her image wavering high and yellow. "The Cluster needs you. We can't escape physically; they will control the mechanism."

"We both must Transfer out! You go home to Furnace; I'll go to Slash!"

"Yes!" she agreed. "Then we will each report to the Council!"

He concentrated... and felt the power of the site take hold. But as it started, another ripple of interference came. The Amoeba could not use the Kirlian properties directly, but could perceive the activity of this unit via their instruments. Now it was throwing up machine-Kirlian blocks to cut them off. If Herald made it through to his Slash body, his aura would be so garbled that he would be insane.

Flame's aura plunged into the circuitry, driving back the interference momentarily, clearing the way for him. "Go, Herald, go!" she cried, her flame image flickering with the desperate effort.

He had to go, knowing that she, choosing to facilitate his Transfer, had trapped herself instead. He shifted his destination to his Solarian host on Planet Keep, since the Amoeba had overheard his Slash destination and blocked it off. He tried to draw Flame along with him, but could not. There was no available female host on that section of the planet. All he got was a part of her, a final faint message: Psyche... at... Amoeba!

He had delayed too long. The Amoebites had cut him off again. They were operating the circuits, narrowing down his options, beating down Flame's valiant resistance. Non-Kirlian they might be, but they certainly knew how to operate this Kirlian equipment!

One last chance—

He shifted destinations again. And suddenly, as his identity was wrenched from the troubled circuitry of the site, and from the beautiful entity he could have loved, who had forfeited her own chance to escape for him; he suffered the most momentous realization of all. The intellectual impact was such as to numb his mind. He had now explored the Ancient equipment even further than Melody of Mintaka had, and knew what she had discovered. He knew the secret of the Ancients—and knew despair.

12

Amoeba of Space

X We are discovered! X

& It does not matter. The weed-species cannot mobilize in time to take effective resistance. We shall proceed on schedule. & X What of the reverification? X

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

& We must do it if we can. Should it be convenient to pick up any sapients for this purpose, we shall do so. & X But we shall not delay action hour for this purpose. X

& We shall not delay it. &

Herald found himself in the Jet host on Mars.

The host was weak, of course. He had not yet recovered from either the physical injury or Herald's strenuous travels around the planet. He was under continued medical care, inactive, as the Jet archaeologists still labored to salvage artifacts from the bombed site. But he was recovering —and Herald had no intention of complicating his health again.

"Bring me Sixteen," he said.

The medic balked, not realizing who was speaking through the host. "She cannot be disturbed."

Herald forced his ailing host to move. "This is critical. Read the aural indicator, perceive my identity. My mission is to save the Cluster from invasion." And to recover Psyche! he added mentally. He. honestly could not tell which was more important to him at the moment—or whether there was really any chance of doing either. No wonder Melody had kept her silence. He now knew more about the Ancients than she did, and the situation differed: It was correspondingly worse.

The medic yielded. He summoned Sixteen.

She came, jetting very slowly and with poor control. "Herald," she said with a gust of gladness. "I thought I would not encounter you again."

Suddenly Herald was ashamed. "Sixteen is your illness because of me? Do you require healing?"

"No illness, Herald. I brought it on myself—"

"I have mistreated you; and now I propose to aggravate it."

"You misunderstand. I always knew—"

"My legal fiancée, Flame of Furnace, gave up her freedom, perhaps her very identity, to promote my welfare. Only through her agency was I able to return here, escaping the Amoeba. Now I must ask you to do the same."

"I will, Herald, I will! Yet—"

"This also you must know: Flame located... my dead wife. Psyche is alive."

"She—not dead?"

"Psyche's aura survives. It is imprisoned in the equipment of the Amoeba which now ties into that of the Ancient sites, because the Amoeba has taken over those sites. I must go to the Amoeba to fetch her out. My true love."

"No wonder your legal fiancée died!" Sixteen said.

No wonder! He did not even try to justify it morally; he simply had to do it. "Will you help me?"

"Herald, I am... I can't—" She broke off. "How may I help you?"

"I need a host for Psyche. To bring her back. Because she no longer has any body of her own."

Sixteen considered. Herald blanked his mind to what might be going through her mind. "To be the host... for your dead true love.

To make her live again."

"It is also an extremely dangerous mission. We may both die. We face a situation that may be impossible to accomplish. We go to the heart of the Amoeba itself."

"Yes," she said slowly. "If I do this, I must either die, or yield my body to... to another female."

"Sixteen, I know you love me!" Herald blurted. "You told me you loved Hweeh of Weew, but you lied. I... do not love you. It is a Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

terrible thing I ask of you. But such is my desperation, I ask it anyway. The Amoebites resemble Jets; perhaps as Jets we can negotiate with them." Yet Melody's secret undermines it all, for they are not Jets! "You have little to gain, everything to lose, as did Flame, when she helped me. But there is another aspect—"

"This aspect suffices," she said.

"I think I know how to stop the Amoeba—if it is stoppable at all. To save the Cluster. Perhaps to solve the crisis of energy itself—if there is any solution."

"That seems sufficient."

He knew from her attitude that she was not accepting it. And why should she? "I wanted to ask you first, because— But he had to stop. How could he say: Because I rely most on those with whom I have mated. There were limits, somewhere. Or were there?

"It will be difficult, but I will do it," Sixteen said.

"I am Herald the Healer of Slash," Herald said. He was now in Solarian form, and this was Planet Outworld, the heart of Segment Etamin. "My companion is Hweeh of Weew, the astronomer who discovered the threat of the Amoeba." Hweeh was also in Solarian host.

The Solarian Minister of Etamin nodded gravely. "The political pressure from Weew has been great not to mention that from Qaval. Still, I fail to see how—"

"We must negotiate directly with the Amoeba," Herald said. "Therefore two of us must be mattermitted there in Jet hosts—"

"Mattermission to the Amoeba? " the Minister demanded incredulously. "The energy expense, the risk—"

"Agents of the Amoeba are already all over the Cluster," Herald explained. "They occupy the Ancient sites. Their preparations are well advanced. We have no time to mobilize for defense, and we cannot afford to wait for committee action. We must go to the Amoeba before the full-scale strike is launched."

"I shall have to put the matter to the Cluster Council—"

"There is no time for that! The strike may come within hours, and once it starts we shall be powerless to stop it. We cannot compete with the Amoeba! The Amoeba knows we know about it. Already its ships are mattermitting into place."

"But to take on my own authority an initiative that may affect the welfare of the entire Cluster, utilizing two Jet hosts whose home Sphere is not even within my Segment—"

"That initiative must be taken," Herald said. "The hosts must be Jets. I may be the only entity who can persuade the Amoeba to cooperate. It is because of my aura, which they have encountered before, and should recognize."

"But you said the Amoebites are null-aura!"

"Precisely. We must present them with a known aura of considerable intensity. Only through their machines can they identify it, and they may panic if my aura shows up in their equipment—if they have not blocked that off entirely."

"I don't follow all of that," the Minister said. "For the sake of argument, let's assume you are accredited to go. But your companion of Weew does not need to—"

"Not Hweeh," Herald said. "The other Jet is to be a female."

"A female! What possible justification for her?"

Herald knew the Minister would not accept his personal reasoning about Psyche, or consider it relevant to the mission. "I must stand on personal privilege. Jet Sixteen has agreed to accompany me, and I need her. The cost of mattermission for her is trivial, compared to what is at stake."

"Trivial! I must stand on common sense!" the Minister retorted. "We must muster every available resource to oppose the Amoeba.

Not only would mattermission consume priceless energy, it would betray our plan of defense to the enemy, for they could use their equipment to draw from your mind everything you know."

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

"That's just what I want! " Herald said. "They must learn everything that Sixteen and I know, and verify its complete authenticity.

Alone they might distrust me, believing that I had been specifically primed; they will not have my natural body. But Sixteen they will have to believe, for she is—"

"Absolutely not! What possible quality could she have that would justify any part of an expense and risk of this magnitude?"

"She is of their type, physically, mentally, and to a large extent in aura too," Herald said. "In effect, a modern Ancient."

"Now you have lost me completely! It is the Amoeba you mean to visit, not an Ancient site. Meanwhile other Cluster experts are trying to gain the expertise of the Ancients, so that we can try to defend ourselves against—"

"You misunderstand. The Ancient knowledge is useless to us in this context."

"Useless! It is our supreme and only hope!"

Hweeh cut in. "I fear my friend has not made one point clear. The Amoeba is the modern wing of the Ancients. What we took as our ultimate salvation has been revealed as our ultimate threat. God and the Devil are one."

The Minister gaped. "The—but the Amoeba is non-Kirlian!"

"Precisely," Herald said. "This is the disaster that has befallen us. We thought the Ancients were the super-Kirlians. But Melody of Mintaka discovered the truth: The Ancients were in fact non-Kirlian. In the war between Kirlians and non-Kirlians, they were the enemy. And now they have returned, to complete the job left unfinished three million years ago. Unless we can somehow talk them out of it. It is a small chance. But as Kirlians, we can be of use to them. They may agree to spare us, if we show them how we can serve—"

"No!" Hweeh said to Herald. "The Ancients were not the enemy." And he explained. And Herald was amazed. He had been blind—again.

Herald jetted from the mattermission receiver. It had worked! He was in an Amoeba ship!

It was a strange one. There was no deck, only a web-work of fibers anchoring the vital mechanisms in place. The outer shell was not metal or even solid. It seemed to be a field of force, holding in atmosphere, light, and heat. Beyond it the huge glowing mass of Furnace showed, individual stars glinting clearly around its fringe. Herald felt sudden nostalgia for Flame; had she made it home after all? But he was sure she had not.

There seemed to be no gravity here, but in this host it hardly mattered. It merely meant the support brushes were free for other purposes. The main jet propulsion was as effective as ever. The anchoring pattern tended to separate the ship into compartments, and this helped him orient. This was a ship designed for deep space, completely.

In a moment Sixteen joined him. "Oh, Herald—I'm terrified!" she said as she braked uncertainly to a hovering halt. "I'm afraid it is triggering my—"

"Hang on," he said. "I know you are ill, but this is not the vacuum it seems. The Amoeba ships travel by mattermission, so they have to reduce their mass to a fraction of what is normal by our standards, to conserve energy. In fact, there is virtually no mass, apart from the life-support systems, weaponry, and personnel, and those are surely stripped to their minimums. To a considerable extent, these ships are energy, for that can be Transferred. They coordinate Transfer and mattermission, jumping the whole ship by means of these two modes simultaneously. That was why it was so difficult for Cluster astronomers to determine the nature of this fleet. All that showed was the collection of artifacts within each vessel. The ships mattermit on short hops by shooting out micro energy receivers, which instantly form a mattermission receiver, so that the solids can follow. It happens so swiftly that it looks as though the whole ship is mattermitting without receivers. For longer jumps they need pre-existing receivers, of course, but these don't have to be ship-size, but just enough to start the buildup on the larger receiver. Apparently the Ancients left millions of such receiver-nodes around, forming paths between their full-scale permanent receivers, and enough are still operative to make Cluster travel quite feasible for the Amoeba. Just one example of the sophistication of their technology, then and now. For travel between Clusters, a variant—"

"I am not ill," Sixteen protested. "My infirmity stems from—"

An Amoeba-Jet arrived. He spoke in the alien Ancient language which Herald could understand in part because of his recent experience in the Ancient equipment. But the Amoebite's voice emerged from a tiny energy vortex in what was evidently the ship's Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

control section, duplicating the Etamin language in which Herald had conversed with Sixteen. The implications were formidable: first that even translation equipment here was nonsolid, and second that the Amoeba not only understood the communication modes of the Cluster, but had incorporated them into its equipment. Just a few words had been enough to enable the machine to orient. The same had happened during the Moderns's androids fracas, so it was no fluke. If the Amoeba knew this much about modern culture, what secrets remained to the Cluster?

|||What is this intrusion?|||

Now it comes. Herald deemed the odds 50-50 that they would be vaporized on the spot. "We are envoys from the Cluster," he said.

"Herald of Slash and Sixteen of = ."

|||Politics are outside my competence. Go to my Unit Officer, Three.|||

A lowly functionary! Maybe just as well. This creature lacked the authority to make decisions, so could neither accept nor execute intruders. Yet this act of relaying the envoys lent a certain validity to the mission. "Send us there," Herald said.

They jetted back to the mattermitter. And emerged in a larger net ship. 3 Envoys from the Cluster? 3 the Unit Officer inquired. 3 This would be for reverification. Go to the Action Unit Command, Zero. 3

Reverification? Well, if they fit some slot in the Amoeba's conception, so much the better! All Herald needed was the chance to talk to an entity in authority. Since there was obviously a hierarchy here, with all routes leading to the top, things were already more promising.

The third ship was larger yet. 0 Weed-species envoys are not in Action competence, 0 the Commander said. 0 However, reverification is in order at this time. Go to the Coordinator, &. 0

That sounded high enough! At last they emerged in a huge sphere ship. The Coordinator looked like any other Amoebite, but he spoke with an authority that rang through even in translation. He gave Herald no chance to talk. &There is nothing to negotiate. We have no conceivable use for your services. Your kind shall be exterminated. We allowed your entry only to implement our final verification, which we shall perform on you immediately. &

"Exterminated?" Herald asked. "For what purpose?"

& To render this Cluster suitable for Soul Sapience. & This was his entry! Herald struck fast and hard, not yielding the communication floor before he had to. "Soul Sapience," he repeated. "What we call Kirlian Sapience. You eliminated every other non-Kirlian species in every cluster you traveled to. Sapient and non-sapient—all have fallen to your ruthless conquest. You spared only the Kirlian subsapients, hoping that in time some of them would develop sapience. For you knew they had that potential—if only the devastating competition of the non-Kirlian species were eliminated. Then you eliminated yourselves, by forming your vast space fleet and leaving the Cluster. You went to other Clusters doing the same thing, promoting Kirlian life at the expense of non-Kirlian life, though this destroyed all other sapience you encountered. This was a phenomenal effort, requiring tremendous energy and time and patience, because sometimes you have to portage across enormous volumes of space where no trail of mattermission nodes exists. But you are capable of these, because you can 'turn off' for centuries at a time, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years, and turn on again when you arrive at your next target Cluster. You can do this because you have no organic nervous system as we know it, nothing to degenerate from lack of use. All that remained behind you were your highly sophisticated network of stations, keyed to open only to the living presence of high-Kirlian auras and to your own special code signals.

"Now, after three million years, you are on the second loop—or is it the tenth loop, or the hundredth?—and it has been so long, and you have done it so many times, that you have forgotten the true nature of your quest. You retain the words without the meaning: Soul Sapience. Faced with the actuality of your three-million-year object, or your thirty-million-year object, or however incredibly long it has been, you assumed automatically that the myriad high auras of this Cluster were either animal—or mechanically generated. Since sophisticated machine-generated auras may be capable of keying open your old sites, you sought out these auras and destroyed them routinely. But your main mission was to sterilize all sapience here, as you have done for so long you have no records of the time when this was not the case, when you yourselves were an evolving species with a future distinct from your past.

"For you are the modern representatives of what we call the Ancients, that mighty species we supposed were the ultimate Kirlians.

We strove so desperately to master your colossal technology, to comprehend your science and your rationale and your mysterious fate, never suspecting that these things were not because you were superior, but because you were inferior. You pushed Kirlian technology far beyond what we have because that was the only way you could use it. Your machines had to be virtually perfect.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

You have no auras of your own.

"And so we are mutually guilty. We were looking for super-Kirlians, so did not recognize you when you came. You were looking for weed-species, so did not recognize the developed fruit of your prior effort here. We both saw you as conquerors, as exterminators, so of course you were. But now we can work together to solve the problem we both face. Energy."

The Coordinator did not respond.

"We assumed that your Kirlian science had eliminated Spherical regression," Herald continued with more confidence. "Actually, you never settled long enough in a cluster to experience it. You use half-light-speed ships for your maneuvering, and special mattermission and energy-Transfer for the long hops. It takes a great deal of time, but you have that. What you don't have is aura—and that is what motivated you to undertake this fantastic everlasting mission."

The Coordinator just watched him. And Herald realized with a sinking sensation that this creature, this representative of a species that had remained in virtual stasis for many millions of years, like the Solarian termite society, simply could not grasp the concept of success. The Amoeba suffered no regression—but it also enjoyed no further progression. "Soul Sapience" was indeed a term whose meaning had been lost.

He tried again, bemused by this unexpected difficulty, but knowing he had to break through somehow. The shape of life itself in the Universe depended on it! "Coordinator, we of this Cluster are Soul Sapient. I invite you to verify this in myself. I am the type of life you seek."

The Coordinator made a signal, and a force field closed about Herald and Sixteen. Beams played over them. Amoebites might not be receptive to new ideas, but they acted with extreme efficiency.

A flanking Amoebite, evidently a technician, read off the analysis: |||The entities are of an evolved cousin-species, sapient, fractional aura, not the type we seek. We normally isolate such types from the main galaxies and let them be. Male amplifies his aura to two hundred thirty-five times sentient norm, mechanism uncertain. Pattern corresponds to that typical of the interference force recently encountered in several sites around this cluster. Female is normal for her species, aura still far below level required.

She is gravid, parturition due momentarily. |||

Gravid! Suddenly Herald realized what was wrong with Sixteen. She was not sick; she was about to give birth to what she had conceived—by him. The interval between copulation and parturition varied widely around the Cluster, from seconds to centuries.

Had he thought about it, he would have realized she was due. His half-willful blindness, again! She had put herself into this danger because he had asked her to, even though he wanted her to be host to another female—the one he really loved.

Had it been conscious irony on her part? To let her rival be present for the birth of the offspring? What would Psyche think of that!

& Let the female go. We do not execute the innocent. & They did not execute the innocent! Apparently the Coordinator was unconscious of the irony, as he prepared to exterminate all life within this Cluster that was sapient!

Sixteen, evidently released from the force field, jetted to the far side of the ship. Herald remained in stasis, able to speak but not to move.

& So this is the source of our annoyance! Now he claims to be Soul Sapient, thinking to deceive us with his artificially enhanced aura. He shall pay the penalty for that blasphemy. &

The field intensified. It had held him firmly but without discomfort. Now it caused pain, rising steadily. The Coordinator had resolved his doubt by refusing to absorb any of Herald's explanation. Blindness—how to get around it?

"Listen to me!" Herald cried. "There is no aural generator or enhancing mechanism. I was in your equipment; I can exist in any male host of any Kirlian species. Test me! Let me show you that what I say is true!"

& We have no suitable 'hosts.' What you claim is impossible and heretic. We shall not waste time on it. & Herald cast about for some way to penetrate this determined wall of ignorance before the pain made thought impossible. The Amoeba knew that Kirlian sapience did not exist, therefore was blind to its manifestation. Just as the sapients of the Cluster had known the Ancients were super-Kirlians, and that the Amoeba formation near Furnace was only a minor natural formation of dust, so had been unable to recognize their true natures—or their connection to each other. Melody of Mintaka had been smart enough to comprehend part of the truth, but had declined ever to speak of it. No, no words, no demands would sway this mentally moribund Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Coordinator!

Unless— "Flame!" Herald cried. "Flame of Furnace. She is still in the site on Planet £!" If she survived! "You think of her as an aberration in the equipment, as machine consciousness, but ask her who she is. She will show you she is sapient, Kirlian life."

The Coordinator considered, as though willing to humor the condemned entity. & Does the site £ aberration re-main? & X It remains, X an Amoebite answered on the communication screen. These creatures did not seem to bother with holography; perhaps it took up too much useful space. X We have isolated it, but have not yet been able to destroy it without damaging the site itself. X

The Coordinator addressed Herald again. & You claim this force can animate a female host of this cluster with sapience? &

"Yes! If you will only get a host—"

& Then she will animate this female host, & be said, indicating Sixteen.

Oh, no! Then there would be no host for Psyche! Multiple auras could occupy a single host in special circumstances, but the nervous system of a Jet was simply too restricted to accommodate two auras of this intensity. How could he give up Psyche? Yet the alternative was complete failure.

Psyche, forgive me! Herald cried mentally with a terrific burst of emotion enhanced by the agony of the crucifixion he was undergoing in the alien force field. Then he steeled himself and said: "Bring Flame's aura here, if you can. Abate your interference pattern, leave her a channel, so she can Transfer. She will animate this host." He hoped/feared.

& We convey the aberration to this unit. Now it arrives. Direct it. & So soon! "Flame!" Herald cried. "Flame of Furnace: Animate the Jet host. We must prove we are Kirlian sapients, to save the Cluster! Flame!"

Sixteen's body paused. Would it work? Could Flame hear him? Would she do it? Could she do it?

Then Sixteen changed, subtly. Even from this distance, Herald felt the change of aura. He could not read the aural family, but if this were the fringe of it, the strength at the center had to be on the order of two hundred. Flame.

|||Aural generation!||| the technician said.

& It is a technical trick, & the Coordinator cried. & She has a generator. &

"Oh, come on! " Herald exclaimed. "You searched her yourself! Have more faith in your own readings! What machine could she have? How could she turn it on without your knowledge?"

|||They must have technology we have not analyzed,||| the technician said.

"Flame, tell them who you are!" Herald cried. "All our lives depend on it!"

"I am—" she started, but broke off. She shuddered. "I must—"

Then Herald realized what was happening. "Parturition is upon her!" he cried. What a time to have this happen. And it was his own fault—in more than one way! Sixteen had tried to tell him, and he, obsessed with his own mission, had not listened. Like the Amoeba, he had allowed his singleness of purpose blind him to a matter vitally affecting its success.

Then it was Sixteen talking. "Oh, Herald, I tried to delay it," she said. "But the shock of Possession—"

She gave an involuntary heave. From her tube an object shot out, one of the obstructions that had reduced her mobility. It was a tiny Jet, nurtured on the lining of her tube, nourished by the gases that passed through her system. Now it found itself in air, and took its first individual breath. A thin stream of gas shot out from it, bringing control.

But Sixteen was heaving again, birthing another infant. Then a third. That completed her litter.

& You offered to demonstrate Soul Sapience in this female, & the Coordinator said. & Instead you have demonstrated parturition, a phenomenon already known to us. This consumes time. We shall now eliminate you, and return female and offspring to a reservation in the hope that in several million more years this subspecies will achieve the goal. & He signaled the technician.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Herald's pain became intolerable. He knew they were going to kill him. It had all been for nothing! The Coordinator had all that he needed to know, and was wrapping up the matter efficiently. Just as Prince Circlet of Crown had been assured that Psyche was Possessed, so had burned her.

Sixteen moved. |||Desist, &!||| she cried. |||You abridge the ancient law at the peril of your mission!|||

The Coordinator paused, and Herald's agony abated. & You speak without translation! & Indeed she had! Herald understood her mainly by the translation to Quote.

|||How many other clusters, elsewhere in the universe, have developed Kirlian sapience, Soul Sapience—and been eradicated by the Amoeba?||| she continued. |||You, &, who have cautioned your subordinates about the danger of overlooking the very thing you seek—you are doing it yourself! You are blind, intellectually sightless! When you take samples for verification and reverification of the absence of Soul Sapience, you call them animals, even when they are sapient, making your verifications worthless! The Ancients have become a machine: uncomprehending, ruthless, dedicated to a purpose without recourse to reason. This is their tragedy—and yours!|||

& How can this be? & It was as though the Coordinator had to listen to an indictment delivered in his own mode, and could not shunt it aside as easily as one delivered in an alien mode. & You are not one of us! &

|||I am not one of you,||| she agreed. |||I am of your fine old equipment, which performs its set mission better than you do yours.

Even now, that machinery is turning against your misplaced thrust, halting your erroneous sterilization of this Cluster. No more Kirlian sapients shall be destroyed by your confusion.|||

&Terminate her!& the Coordinator said to his technician.

"Is this the way you spare innocents?" Herald called. How like this was to the final moments at Kastle Kade, but this time there could be no reversal of the tragedy. Flame, Psyche, the Cluster, and Kirlian life itself hung in the balance. And he—could do nothing!

There was a pause. |||I cannot!||| the tech cried, bewildered. |||The field does not respond!|||

He was correct. Suddenly Herald himself was released.

In a moment the Coordinator had verified it: The ship's controls did not obey his directives. & We have been betrayed, sabotaged! &

|||No,||| Flame Sixteen replied. |||You have been saved from your own folly. Now you shall be educated. Consider these my offspring, sired by this high-Kirlian male while in Transfer.|||

It was Sixteen talking, somehow, in Amoebic. But what was this about the Amoeba's own equipment turning against the invasion?

Sixteen could not have set that up! Had Flame somehow managed to take over the unit from inside? But she was no longer in the circuitry! There was a missing element that confused him almost as much as it confused the Coordinator. No one not thoroughly conversant with the equipment of the Amoeba should have been able to wrest control from Amoeba technicians. He had occupied the related Ancient equipment himself and knew its complexity! This had to be some sort of bluff.

The technician played his analyzer beam over the infant Jets. At least that beam responded to control! ||| They have auras in the normal Kirlian-animal range— yet they are sapient,||| the technician announced, shaken.

" Normal auras?" Herald cried. "Not fractional?"

"They are normal," Sixteen said, this time in Quotes. So it couldn't be Flame, who had never occupied an Etamin host and did not speak Quotes. No, he was confusing himself; Flame would use the linguistics of the host. "I knew they would be. I had faith."

& Faith, & the Coordinator echoed faintly.

"Do you realize what this means?" Herald demanded of the Coordinator. "A male of Slash can interbreed with a female of Glob, in terms of aura. My aura of over two hundred merged with her aura of one two-hundredth, and the offspring are the median, or normal. That cannot be coincidence; no Jet has had that high an aura before! If a high-aura sapient Transferred to an Amoeba host—"

The Coordinator, shaken by the problem with the equipment and Sixteen's declarations, seemed on the verge of accepting part of the concept of existent Kirlian sapience. Right now he reminded Herald of the Duke of Kade, coming to recognize the horrible truth (yet untruth) of Possession. The Ancients were like the Cluster entities—if they could only accept it.

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

& Impossible. We have no auras at all. &

"But you are closely related to the Jets of Glob," Herald persisted. "With them and some genetic engineering, you might interbreed, and your offspring would have fractional auras. Then full Kirlians could Transfer into those hosts...."

The bait was too tempting. The Coordinator's resistance broke. He wanted to believe. & Our dream for these fifty thousand cycles!

Soul Sapience at last! & The translation told Herald that was about four and a half million years, which suggested that the Ancients had been doing this for one and a half million years before they came to this Cluster the first time. Such persistence!

Victory had been granted to the Cluster—and to the Amoeba too. "I don't know how you did it," Herald said to Flame Sixteen. "I don't even know which of you did it. But it was a magnificent job, and I love you both." Then he had to add: "But Psyche is the one I long for. Without her, my personal life is bereft, and I have no wish to continue after I am assured the Cluster is secure."

Sixteen looked at him, not approaching. "How do you propose to explain your affairs with two other females?"

"I don't think I would even try. The exigencies of my position were foreign to her culture. Yet to promote her interest I would have affairs with a thousand other females, and each would be meaningless. Had I never met Psyche, I could have loved you, Flame; I know I could! In my ignorance I wronged you. And though I am emotionally deaf to low aura, I might have loved you, too, Sixteen. But I did meet Psyche, and she conquered me, and though it was her enhanced aura that first broke down my resistance, it is her I love forever, high aura or low, whether she lives or dies or whatever form she takes. I do love you girls, and know you each are worthy, but it is as a satellite to my greater love for her. I love you in part because you helped me in my quest for her. I regret that I must treat you so, using you both as I have, but that is the way it is. The truth must be told. Now I must search for her—for the rest of my life, if need be. Because without her I have no life."

Now Sixteen moved closer, and be felt more of her Transfer aura. "Flame understands," she said. "That is why she elected to stay in circuit and handle the equipment takeover. This is the prime unit, here aboard this ship; all others key into it. So she controls the Amoeba fleet, now."

Herald paused. " Flame controls it? But she—"

She was almost upon him, her aura passing two hundred. The equipment had enhanced it beyond Flame's level, obviously. "And Sixteen needs an aura, and I need a host." Now her aura paralleled his own, moving above it. "I, too, understand, Herald. I always understood. The ways of other cultures are not my own, and they cannot be judged in terms of mine. You were a creature of Slash, a foreign Galaxy, alien to me in form and culture, yet love ameliorated everything. All that sustained me through my long exile in hell, desperately hiding, concealing my nature from the meters of the devils, learning their language and custom and the liabilities of their largely automatic system, coming to know that they were after all well-meaning sapients unswervingly loyal to their mission, as I was to mine—all that sustained me was my overwhelming love for you. I knew it was returned. Every dialogue you held near Ancient equipment I perceived, though I could not answer lest I betray myself and lose all. Now—"

"Psyche!" he cried, finally recognizing her aura, finally comprehending her meaning. " You jumped to the host, not Flame! You saved me from execution!"

"We all saved you—just in time for the family," she agreed. Then they were together—forever.

Epilogue

There were a number of details to be worked out. It took about two centuries. To the Kirlian sapients of the Cluster, Ancient science had represented the ideal of complete energy sufficiency and the abolition of the problem of Spherical regression. To the Amoeba, Soul Sapience had represented the ultimate civilization, with potential for truly universal scale—and energy sufficiency.

Both cultures were disappointed.

Yet there were tremendous gains to be made through the combination of Ancient science with Kirlian sapience. A great deal more could be accomplished than had been possible before, by either type of life alone, and programs of further research were inaugurated. One avenue of exploration was the heredity of high auras. Another was the classification of information. The Amoeba had no texts, because the semimechanical memory system of the non-Kirlians served far more accurately than that of aural creatures. Ways had to be found to pool the complete knowledge of both types. This led to a continuing series of incidental Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

benefits, elevating the levels of technology and comfort for both.

The program of the Amoeba was changed. There was to be no more elimination of sapient species, regardless of their type. Cluster animals were treated better, since the Amoeba revered all Kirlianism. Joint units initiated a quest for Kirlian sapients already existing in other Clusters of the Universe, advising them of the all-Kirlian Cluster and providing the technology to guarantee their survival in Clusters whose majority of sapients were non-Kirlian. These missions demonstrated to other Clusters that the future of sapient life lay in the integration of types. Gradually the super-civilization spread across the Universe, a nucleus of really sophisticated energy use and conservation and unmatchable technology. The process was open-ended, and not without hazard, for the Universe was effectively infinite. But where this wave of reform passed, the frequent wars of energy and genocide of sapients ceased. There was now a better way.

Herald the Healer's part in the resolution of the Amoeba-Cluster crisis served to abate the Curse of Llume on Sphere Slash. He remarried Psyche of Kade. It was not complete bliss, for he had a slightly wandering eye and she had a temper, so they did have their tiffs, but they always made up, and their underlying love was deep. They had a child named Pleasure, of course. But she had lost her body and home, and he his profession, for new means of healing and identification were provided by the Amoeba technology. Constitutionally unable to settle down, they remained active as Transfer agents, always operating as a pair, using multiple and diverse hosts to assist the processes of forming the new order. Both were effectively immortal, owing to continued enhancement of their auras. In fact, immortality was now available generally to those who desired it, provided they were willing to make their lives worthwhile for civilization.

Sixteen of Jet was pleased to serve as Psyche's base host; she had always craved high aura. But as the labors of the Cluster-Amoeba integration increased, Psyche was away from that host for longer periods. This was unfair to Sixteen, who had no local sire for her Kirlian family. Two Kirlian entities learned of this and were moved to act. Flame of Furnace and Hweeh of Weew visited the hosts Herald and Psyche had used. Their natural auras were not as high, but this hardly made a difference in these days of enhancement.

When Flame met Hweeh, and their two potent auras interacted and their two fine minds took the measure of each other, something happened. In due course they married and disappeared into private life.

On Planet Keep of Sphere Sador, Segment Etamin, the Duke of Qaval emerged as the most powerful noble of that society. He arranged to be designated heir apparent to the Throne of Crown, and assumed effective political control of the planet. He promoted the Baron of Magnet to be the new Duke of Kade. Magnet was the only other survivor of the destruction of Kastle Kade, as he was being conducted under guard to his own castle when the nuclear detonation occurred, and had been tough enough to roll out of the mess that remained of his guards as the mushroom formed so close behind. He was slightly radioactive, however. He did his best to salvage what remained of the rich herds and pastures of that region, and to render aid to other sapients who had been near the holocaust. Prince Qaval, meanwhile, brought in sophisticated Kirlian equipment to ensure that never again could a sapient entity be burned at the stake for Possession—falsely.

So the Kirlian Quest was ended in the Cluster—and initiated in the Universe. The figure of Herald the Healer, savior of the cluster, became a part of history, joining those of Melody of Mintaka and Flint of Outworld. Only one more story remained to be told: that of the last— more correctly first—of the shapers. This was the founder of the Temple of Tarot, whose amazing private experience provided the philosophical grounding for all that followed. He was Brother Paul, an obscure novice in an obscure sect of pre-Spherical Planet Earth during its Fool period. His was the quest for the God of Tarot.

Cluster Political Geography

Sphere or Segment

Symbol

Location

Character

& Coordinator

Amoeba

|||

Deep space

X Research Command

0 Action Command

Ast

*

Andromeda

Whorl of Precipice

Bhyo

Milky Way

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

Cloud 9

$

Large Magellanic Cloud

Cloud 6

¢

Small Magellanic Cloud

Dash

—

Andromeda

Duocirc

oo

Andromeda

Duke of Kade

Lady Psyche

Earl of Dollar

Baron of Magnet

Caesar of Capella

Etamin

"

Milky Way

Prince Circlet of Crown

Brother Paul of the Holy Order of

Vision

Flint of Outworld

Melody of Mintaka

Fa¿

¿

Milky Way

Freng

Milky Way

Furnace

#

Fornax

Flame

Jet

=

Globular Cluster NGC 6624

Sixteen

Knyfh

%

Milky Way

Lodo

•

Milky Way

Moderns

+

NGC598 (Pinwheel)

Hellflower of the Kirlian Inn

Novagleam

σσ

Milky Way

Pin

^

NGC 598 (Pinwheel)

Prick

Qaval

δ

Milky Way

Duke of Qaval (Keep)

Quadpoint

::

Andromeda

Smallbore of Metamorphic

Sculp

§

Sculptor

Slash

/

Andromeda

Herald the Healer

Thousandstar

:::

Milky Way

Weew

@

Milky Way

Hweeh of Swees

Wheel

θ

NGC 598 (Pinwheel)

Cover illustration by Ron Walotsky.

Copyright © 1978 by Piers Anthony Jacob

Kirlian Quest by Piers Anthony

ISBN: 0-380-35113-7