Chapter 15: Vicious Circle

They flew to a complex of caves Tangt knew of. These, like Maze Mountain, had been arranged for enjoyable Band access, with lines traversing them thickly. But this region was more extensive than the Maze, and less frequented, so there was far greater privacy. She led the way down through a water-filled passage and up into a small air-filled pocket that had two artificial sources of illumination.

"I didn't know Bands had electric lights!" Rondl flashed, utilizing one.

"Bands do trade with other species, to a limited extent," Tangt reminded him, using the other light. Obviously this cave had been deliberately crafted for exactly such private conversations. Because of the surrounding rock, their beams could not be intercepted by others, and the restricted access prevented any surprise intrusion. "We have few needs, but light for nether regions is one of them. These are complete alien systems, powered from a central generator installed by the Bellatrixians, a species with mechanical dexterity."

The Bellatrixians: of course. He knew about their enclave out in the orbit of Moon Dinge. This was one of the tangible evidences of their trade.

"So I see. Now let's complete our discussion started in System Sirius. I have other pressing business." He also was uncertain why she had gone to such an extreme to keep their dialogue secret, even from Cirl. No one would snoop.

It was the Monsters who needed to be fooled, not the Bands. If she had some dark design in mind --

"Other business?" she inquired, and her orange color seemed to brighten.

Ronald remembered irrelevantly what an attractive female she had been in Monster form. Black hair fibers, slender yet full figure, esthetic facial features; even her fluid-filled eyeballs had seemed harmonious, difficult as that was to imagine at the moment. It showed how Monster tastes differed from Band! "Yes." But he decided not to describe his Monster-combating project yet; not until he knew how she felt.

"Did you find me sexually appealing in human form?"

What was this? Was she reading his thoughts? "As a matter of fact, I did. But that does not relate -- "

"And I found you the same. We're both married there, so nothing could have been done openly!"

Now Rondl caught on. "You thought I sought a romantic liaison?"

"Didn't you? This does represent a unique opportunity. I trust you approve the privacy I arranged. I feel this is an excellent place."

"Tangt, I thought you understood. I'm married in this host, too!"

"Yes. So am I. Therefore it was necessary to be very careful. No one knows we are here."

"That's why you did not answer Cirl's call? To set up a liaison between us without her knowledge?"

"Why else?"

Why else? Did he have a nymphomaniac here? "Tangt, you misunderstood my signal. I have no wish to deceive my Solarian wife or my Band wife, and am certainly not seeking liaisons with business associates." He had thought she understood, in their Solarian exchange; how could he have been so wrong?

"You don't desire me?"

Now he had to be careful. There was no sense in antagonizing her; she could betray him from spite. "Were circumstances otherwise, I would be interested in you. You are certainly alluring, physically, in both human and Band form. But I have become a creature of some scruple, and I have other commitments. Perhaps the males you have encountered before are otherwise. I had an entirely different purpose in coming here."

"Then it seems I did not misread your signal," she said.

"But you did! I seek no romantic liaison!"

"Neither do I," she flashed.

"Now you have me thoroughly confused!"

"There were two interpretations to your manner when we conversed in Sphere Sol, assuming you were neither stupid nor crazy. Rather than betray myself needlessly, I was prepared to submit sexually. That would at least preserve my life."

Rondl realized she had indulged in a rather neat ploy. Sex instead of treason -- that was certainly safer! "What is your alternative interpretation?"

"If I understood your signals correctly back in System Sirius, you have lost sympathy with the Solarian objectives."

Now the treason was out in the open, at least between them. "True. The Monster intrusion is decimating the Band population. I feel this is wrong."

"I agree. But you understand that to take any action detrimental to the immediate objectives of our kind is to invite severe repercussion if it is discovered."

Rondl felt relief, then renewed apprehension. She agreed with him --

except that her like-mindedness could be a ruse. She could be trying to trap him into fully incriminating himself. How could he be sure she could be trusted?

He decided he simply had to take the risk. "I understand that well. It is treason I contemplate, by the definition of my original species. But I no longer consider myself a Solarian; I identify with the Bands. There must be many Solarians whose conscience would agree with mine. It simply is not right to destroy one species, especially a sapient one, for the marginal benefit of another."

"An Ancient Site is hardly marginal."

"Compared to genocide, it is!" He drifted along his line a moment, then decided to tackle the issue forthrightly. "My affinity, as I said, is with the Bands. My human conscience has been awakened, and I must and shall do what I feel is right. I realize that I cannot be sure of your own attitude, and I risk being betrayed by you. I hope your agreement with me is sincere, and that you will help me save the Bands. But I will try to help them regardless. The question is not which side I am on, but whether you are with me or against me."

"You put it nicely," she flashed. "I am in a similar situation. I can't be sure of you; there is no honor among Monsters. But it is reasonable to assume you feel as I do. The Band society is very like the ideal that human beings have always professed to crave, but have never actually practiced. No Band criticizes another or lets another come to harm without trying to help.

No Band wrongs another. There is no theft, no murder, no misrepresentation, no quarreling. As I think you know, I found myself without memory in Band host. A male Band helped me, and I married him. I doubt I would have survived without him. In fact I think ten other agents succumbed because they failed to find such friends, though they could have had friends merely for the asking, had they but realized. Maybe their own distrust killed them, fittingly enough. I was happy. Then I suffered nightmares -- "

"Me too!"

"And finally I was back in my own Solarian host body, and it was horrible. Not only the body -- the society, too. That ingrained suspicion and narrow self-interest! I had leaped involuntarily from paradise to the gutter.

I wanted to be a Band, but circumstance made me a Monster. I did not know what to do. So I played it safe by acting Solarian, and the stupid computer cleared me. But as time passed I did not settle into the Monster mode; the Band system had the lure of some powerful drug, a good drug, bringing me back to it.

Paradise is addictive!"

"My experience exactly!" Rondl agreed. "I saw that if I did nothing, the Bands would be destroyed. The forces of Satan were invading Heaven itself, and how could I stand idly by? It is not that the Solarians mean to commit genocide; it is that they are hardly aware of what is happening, and hardly care. There might as well be buzzing gnats in their way, for all the consideration the Monsters give the Bands. By the time any protest could be lodged through channels, the Bands would be gone. So I had to act. When I learned there was only one other survivor -- "

"Yes. Let's face it: either one of us can betray the other the moment we are again recalled to Sol hosts. Either one of us can give away the location of the Ancient Site."

"You know where it is?"

"Not yet. But I'm sure I can find it by asking around, and so can you.

Bands don't keep secrets. So neither of us has security in this respect."

"Yet if you wanted to betray me, you could have done so without ever meeting me here," Rondl pointed out.

"No. I might have misread your signals. Maybe you were just looking for a human mind in Band host to romance. There are ways and ways of getting sexual kicks."

"So you explored that aspect first. That was intelligent. I never thought of it. But what would you have done, if -- ?"

"As I said, I was prepared to carry through. I love my husbands, both of them, and I am not promiscuous. But I'm not suicidal either, and there just may be the biggest prize of the Galaxy on the line in the Ancient Site. If sex with you salvaged my life despite my treason, then it would have been a matter of necessity. But you would have had neither my love nor my respect."

"The same for me. But the respect, I think, you are earning. I'm glad you arranged for such a private interview; it was certainly essential that we work out our confusions. We don't want or need the complication of any romantic involvement between us."

"Agreed." But there was something about the way she flashed it that made him wonder. She was beautiful in either form, and it might have been nice to -

-

No. He did not want to fall prey to the fickleness of the masculine urge. "Now I think we'll have to plan a strategy if we are to help the Bands,"

she said. "We may not be able to stop the Monsters from discovering the Site eventually, but maybe we can lead them astray."

"They have already missed it."

"Already? But their search pattern is thorough!"

"The Site is on a moon. It looks like natural terrain. They'll never find it." Some lingering vestige of caution caused him not to name the moon.

He thought Tangt was all right, but there was no point in taking any unnecessary risk. She might find out anyway, of course.

"Then our problem is solved. We'll just report we couldn't find it."

"And their continuing search will eradicate the entire Band society," he said morosely.

"I fear you are correct. Then we'll have to give the Site to them after all." "Give it to them?"

"It is better to have the Monsters gain an Ancient Site than to have them commit incidental genocide in a vain search for it. Choice between evils."

Rondl hadn't given serious thought to that course. "I organized a Band army of sorts to repel the Monster advance. I prefer to drive the Monsters out of Band space entirely. Why should their violence be permitted to profit them?""You got Bands to fight? The ones I know would rather disband!"

"It takes special training. We do lose a number to disbanding. They don't even think of it as suicide; it's easy for them."

"I know. I wonder how many human beings would suicide at some point in their lives, if it was as easy as thinking one thought and blinking out painlessly? Especially if they were assured of going instantly to heaven for eternal bliss."

"Most of them. At some point, even if only briefly, we all want to die.

It would certainly be better than struggling with progressive illness, or degeneration of faculties late in life."

She spun thoughtfully. "Their belief in the Viscous Circle is so firm!

What survival value can there be in a species belief in fantasy? It's almost as if someone inculcated this illusion to wipe them out."

"That's the way I see it," Rondl agreed. "Yet their faith is consistent with their pacifism. Any aggressive, negative, emotionally off-balanced elements disappear, because it is the unstable individual that is most likely to suicide. What's left is the finest. It would be ideal for Band society to be isolated from the more aggressive Spheres -- if only that were possible."

"It was isolated until this Ancient Site showed up. I wish I could stay here forever."

"But we can't. We must revert to Monster status, or have our auras slowly fade away to nothing. No Transfer is permanent."

"Don't I know it! For us there is no Nirvana. But we must try to save it for the Bands." She slid irresolutely along the line. "I didn't know it was possible for Bands to fight. Do you really think they can drive the Monsters out?" Rondl reconsidered soberly. "No. Not alone. I have probably recruited the least stable of the Bands, the ones who are most willing to take risks and be unsocial. Even those are basically nice people, who would not partake of war as Monsters know it. We have to try for nonviolent ways to oppose the invasion, and that is difficult. We only delayed the siege of Moon Glow; we didn't halt it. We'll do better next time, but at best it's a holding action.

And we have only one more moon to hold before they lay siege to Planet Band itself. We need more."

"What we need," she flashed brightly, "is the use of that Ancient Site.

There never was an Ancient Site in a decent state of preservation that didn't transform the situation of the discovering culture."

"That's why Sol wants the Site," Rondl agreed glumly. But the notion appealed to him. What could his group of trained Bands do if their powers were suddenly magnified by the technology of the Ancients? Bands were not atechnological; it only seemed that way because they had so few tangible artifacts. They could make complex electronic components merely by concentrating on the magnetic structure of metal objects. Bombs would be possible, perhaps, if a triggered release of intense magnetism were arranged; and super-powerful lasers. And devices no bigger than grains of sand might disrupt the computer circuitry of major ships. The possibilities were endless

-- with a little more technological information at their disposal.

"They might drive the Monsters right out of the System and preserve Sphere Band forever," Tangt finished for him.

"If only we had the Site to draw on," Rondl said. "But we don't."

"It's a vicious circle. You need the Site -- to drive the Monsters away from the Site."

"And if we don't get the Site, the Monsters will send all Bands to the Viscous Circle," Rondl agreed.

"On the other hand, if we tell the Monsters where the Site is, we can probably save the Bands. The Monsters just don't really care about the Bands, one way or the other."

"They just don't really care," Rondl echoed.

"What moon is it on?"

Now was the test of his faith in her. It was insufficient. "Dinge," he lied. "Moon Dinge, the smallest, farthest, faintest one."

"Well, there's one moon remaining before they attack Planet Band itself," she concluded. "Let's try your way first. Try to fight them off, hold them back, save that moon."

"Moon Fair, the closest, biggest, brightest, prettiest," he agreed. "If we could hold them off one moon, maybe we could push them off another, and finally win back the System." Was this a foolish dream?

"And if we fail -- if Moon Fair falls -- then we shall report dutifully to our kind that the Ancient Site is on Moon Dinge," she said.

"Yes," he agreed, feeling guilty. Why did he keep reminding himself that he was a Monster? No Band could have lied like that -- especially not to a friend. "We'll report that, if we fail."

"Then we are unified," she flashed enthusiastically. "Maybe we can break the vicious circle -- and if we can't, at least we'll save the Bands."

"One way or another," he agreed.

"I'm almost sorry we came here on business. I think the other would not have been so bad."

Now Rondl's guilt was two-edged: for the lie that helped make her amenable, and for his increasing desire for that amenability. She was magnetically attractive; among Bands, attraction was literal, though they also used the word figuratively. "Let's get out of here," he suggested, not wanting to be near her much longer -- for both reasons.