Chapter 17: The Lie

But by the time Rondl located Cirl, he had changed his mind. Too many Bands had been lost, and the cause of the Monsters was too wrong, to permit a simple hand-over of the Ancient Site. He almost preferred to risk the destruction of all the Bands than to give the gift of victory to the Monsters.

Also, he lacked conviction that the Monsters would be magnanimous in victory.

They might "teach the Ringers a lesson" by exterminating them as a species.

This was Monster thinking he was doing, he knew -- but the very notion of delivering benefit to the forces of wrong, merely to abate further wrongs, was repellent. Appeasement: it had a bad flavor in any framework. And if every species did that, the least scrupulous would inherit the Galaxy. A line had to be drawn somewhere.

Yet he had to be honest with the Bands. It was their species at stake.

Cirl met him gladly, and in that moment he knew he was doing it all for her. She had a right to her own type of existence, and her society had a right to the benefit of Ancient technology to protect that existence.

"Cirl, we must convoke a circle," he flashed immediately. "I have a pressing discussion to initiate."

"Of course," she agreed. "The Monsters are drawing nigh our planet."

They gathered all Rondl's recruits surviving the Monster engagement and formed a huge circle. "Here is the situation," Rondl flashed into it. "We have tried to halt the invasion of the Monsters, and have failed. They will proceed to Planet Band and engage in their usual search schedule, incidentally extirpating the Band species, unless we take one of three courses."

They were with him. They had fought the Monsters and suffered a fifty-per cent attrition. They knew that only Rondl had the capacity to help them.

"First I must inform all of you what some of you have known," Rondl continued. "I am not a true Band. I am a Monster in Band form." A shock flowed around the circle, replete with viscous eddies and return shocks. Some Bands had known, but evidently they had respected his privacy and not bruited it about. Had he flashed this news to the Bands individually, some would have disbanded; but the power of the circle held them securely. Only a shock bad enough to destroy them all would destroy any; the circle unified them, providing the strength of mass.

"I did not know this when I commenced this resistance," Rondl continued.

"I had amnesia. I thought I was a Band with a special talent for organization.

I had nightmares about Monsters. Then I was recalled to Monster host, complete with bone-filled limbs and turgid eyeballs, and knew that I had been sent here to betray the Band species." Again the shock; this was what the Monsters called strong medicine, delivered abruptly. But these Bands knew him; they had worked with him. They trusted him. Cirl was helping him, flashing a steady pulse of acceptance into the circle, making his ugly confession more acceptable. She loved him, despite what she knew. She made him seem better than he was. What would he do without her!

"But I had come to know the Band mode of life. It is better than the Monster mode. So although I knew myself to be a Monster, I tried to help the Bands. I am sorry that I had to employ Monster tactics of violence and confusion; it was the only way I could see to stop the invaders. And I am sorry it was not enough."

They were all sorry; they had all failed.

The circle asked him: what were the three courses he saw to stop the Monsters?

"None of them is pleasant," Rondl said. "The first is to marshal an even larger force of Bands, and fight more violently than before." A tremor went through the circle at the concept "fight," so he hastily modified the thought to "resist." Then he continued: "Last time we tried merely to disrupt Monster progress, and to take over their ships. This time we would have to try actually to destroy ships and kill Monsters. To cut off their life-support --

" But he had to halt; the reaction was so strong the whole circle was in danger of destruction. The Bands -- his battle-hardened veterans -- simply could not tolerate this sort of input.

"This is not acceptable," Rondl flashed quickly. "I describe it only to show the manner Monsters would act. Monsters are uncivilized; they believe the ends of conquest justify the means of extermination. At least some do; some Monsters are less uncivilized than others. They aren't all evil." He thought of his Solarian wife, Helen, whose views he had only recently come to understand. "If Bands were to adopt the tactics of the unethical Monsters, those Bands would be like me: Monsters in Band form. Because you are true Bands, you must reject this." And the horror subsided. They were Bands, and they did reject it.

"The second course is to give the Monsters what they want," Rondl flashed. "There is an Ancient Site in the Band System, which we know as a pleasant retreat. It was constructed three million years ago by an unknown species who knew more about magnetism than any Galactic species does today. I believe the early Bands discovered this Site, and drew on its nature to shape the devices that channelize the lines on which we travel. Thus Band society became interplanetary and interstellar, with individuals traveling through space in a manner possible to no other species I know of. Without that Site, Bands might have been limited to primitive natural lines, mostly about Planet Band; you would have had to compete for limited living area and resources, becoming less pacifistic. Civilization as we know it now would not have been feasible. But we no longer need to have possession of the Site; we already have the technology from it that we needed to fashion the lines that give us freedom of space and conscience. If we give the Site to the Monsters -- if we tell them where it is, so they will no longer need to search so destructively for it -- they might take it over and ignore the Bands. We would be allowed to exist; since the Site is not on Planet Band, they should not go there."

The circle considered that. There was no great shock of revulsion. This was the kind of action the Bands could accept, just as Tangt had thought.

"However, I am not certain this would work," Rondl said. "The Monsters could decide the site is too valuable to leave in the vicinity of an alien species. They might decide to clear us out anyway, or they might suspect that there were other Ancient Sites in this System, and search for them, destroying us anyway. The greed of Monsters has no known limit; they always want more than they possess, and build empires and still are not satisfied, being limited in the end only by force. So though this course is feasible, I do not trust it; it gambles on the goodwill of creatures who have little benevolence toward aliens."

Again the circle considered. The Bands felt Rondl's reservation was well taken; this was a feasible course, but not an ideal one. They were ready to ponder the third course.

More Bands arrived. "They cannot partake of this circle now," Cirl flashed. "They are not prepared for the magnitude and violence of these concepts. Release me, and I shall form a lesser circle with them to explain."

"But I need you here," Rondl protested. "You have been stabilizing this circle."

"I will go," flashed Tembl, the blue philosopher. "I can explain to them."There was a current of agreement. Tembl had been doing good work, helping to organize; she was competent. The circle abated its viscous current momentarily, allowing her to slide out without ill effect, then closed the gap she left. It would be devastating for a member of a circle to leave without warning, but when there was general agreement and preparation, it became possible. The currents of thought resumed, modified just slightly by Tembl's absence. Every circle, Rondl realized, was a little different from every other.Rondl resumed his discussion. "The third course is to find a way to repel the Monsters without killing them and without giving up the Site. To win without violence. For this we would need to possess technology greater than theirs. Perhaps tractor beams that would fasten to their ships, swing them about, and hurl them harmlessly back toward Sphere Sol, their home. Perhaps a way to make System Band repulsive to them, so that they flee it voluntarily.

Or a way to change their auras so that they become more like those of Bands; then Monsters would not act the way they do now, and could coexist with Bands.

The possibilities are endless -- if we are only able to discover the necessary technology."

Now the circle thrilled with agreement. This was the best course of all!

Individual Bands were already racing ahead, working out what Rondl had worked out. "The Ancient Site! It could have that technology!"

"It could," Rondl agreed. "That Site has never been fully explored; most of its secrets remain untouched. But such breakthroughs are the sort of thing that Ancient Sites are noted for. Certainly it seems worth the try.

Unfortunately, we do not at present have possession of that Site. It is in the territory already overrun by the Monsters."

The circle mulled that over, coming to grips with the vicious circle that he and Tangt had encountered: how could they use the Site to prevail, when the enemy already had possession of it?

"We must recover that Site," Rondl flashed firmly, and the circle agreed. "Perhaps only for a short time -- only long enough to find the technology that will enable us to prevail. We cannot do it violently; we have already eliminated that course. We must find another way."

They were with him, their beams circling the circle with mounting conviction. "What way?"

"We must cause the Monsters to temporarily vacate Moon Glow, where the Site is," Rondl said. "To depart voluntarily. Then we can move in, occupy it, study it, and perhaps comprehend its treasures in time to save Planet Band."

Now there was doubt. How could the Monsters be persuaded to leave the Moon Glow?

"We shall have to deceive them," Rondl said. "To make them believe the site is elsewhere. Then they will go there, deserting the other moons, and the Bands will be free to go to the real Site without difficulty."

There was a rising disquiet. The circle was having difficulty assimilating this, deception being alien to Band nature. Rondl had to go over the principle again and again, trying to get across his concept of the lie.

At first there was tremendous resistance, as the concept eluded almost all the Band minds: deliberate misunderstanding? A contradiction in terms!

But finally a few Bands began to get it, aided by the great input of the circle. Their shocked revelation sent powerful pulses through the viscosity.

Cirl labored to keep the current manageable, though she herself was struggling with the concept.

These few contributed their comprehension to the whole, leaning on the full circle to maintain their equilibrium. Others, too, got it, and hung on similarly. There was a rising tide of excitement and dread as a larger percentage caught on. Finally it elevated into the most powerful current yet, a potent unified emotion of --

"Oh, Rondl!" Cirl's despairing flash came, discrete amid the torrent.

"Monster!" The emotion was pure anguish.

And he realized that with comprehension had come not acceptance, but total revulsion. The Bands had finally grasped the alien nature of his thought, and rejected it completely. Exactly as they had rejected the concept of war, before, and --

The circle disbanded. All its components disintegrated -- not into component Bands, but into dust. The viscous circle was an entity itself, a temporary one, but possessed, while it existed, of the prerogatives of a living, sapient creature. Properly dismantled, with group acceptance, it reverted to the individuals who composed it; catastrophically sundered, as in this case, it died. When it died, so did its parts.

Only Rondl himself, an alien, managed to retain his personal cohesion.

It was not his way to disband when faced with an appalling concept -- and to him the concept was not appalling. Faced with several bad alternatives, he had chosen the least destructive one. A small sacrifice of honor for a tremendous gain in lives. He was practical -- as the Bands were not.

He was also a Monster. His survival of the destruction of the circle proved it. Had he been a true Band, like Cirl, he would have perished, too. As it was, he was severely shaken, and still hung on to his cohesion with extreme difficulty.

The lie. It had started with the lie he had told Tangt, about the location of the Ancient Site. He had gotten away with that lie, and somehow assumed that he could do so with impunity in the Band culture. But Tangt was not a Band, but a Monster like himself. She would not disband when she learned about the lie, but any true Band would.

No, the lie had started further back -- when he deceived Cirl by going unannounced with Tangt. That had been half a lie, for he had not really meant to do it. He had allowed the convenience of the moment to lead him into it. He should have declined to go with Tangt until he had informed Cirl. There was the half-step. Convenience had preempted truth, and after that the lie had become feasible. He had brought this mischief on himself, by failing to react at the outset in an ethical rather than a practical manner. He had chosen the Monster way, and now was paying the consequence.

"Rondl! Rondl!" someone was flashing at him persistently. "What happened?"

It was Tembl. She had escaped disbanding, because she had joined the other circle before the lie.

What had he done? As he settled into some sort of equilibrium, he realized that not only had he lost all his trained Bands except one -- he had lost Cirl. His love, his wife.

Again he experienced the terrible urge to disband, to suicide, to join her in oblivion. But he hung on, partly because suicide was not his way, and partly because he knew that only he stood a chance of saving all the remaining Bands from a similar fate. The threat to the species remained, regardless of his personal situation.

"Was it a bad concept?" Tembl persisted.

"It was a lie!" he flashed explosively at her, half expecting her to disband also. But the concept passed her by; she could not grasp it, so was not affected by it.

The species of Band would suffer extinction rather than fight; rather than be party to a lie. That was the way it should be, the way he should have known it would be. He had acted rashly; he should never have presented the concept to them. Now, too late to save his friends, his recruits, or his wife, he realized that.

Yet still there seemed to be no way to save the species except that lie

-- now more than ever, for his trained troops were gone. Rondl was a Monster; he was able to lie. Only he could save the Bands -- from both the Monsters and the Monster-concepts. He must use the lie -- and use it by himself, without initiating any other Band to its awful secret. This burden was his alone to bear. And he would do it, honoring the memory of Cirl, whom he had loved. Whom he would always love. The Monsters were ultimately responsible for her death, for they had invaded; they had sent the likes of Ronald Snowden to interfere with her life. The Monsters would pay. Until they did, he could hardly afford the luxury of grief. That was part of his own punishment, richly deserved, for being what he was. A Monster.

"Let me help you," Tembl said, hovering close.

He perceived her with the clarity of emotional distance. She was eager to take Cirl's place. She was attractive enough. She was competent, intelligent, and extremely adaptable for a Band. But she was a Band. Was he going to take her the route of Cirl, into comprehension of his true nature and thence into suicide? She deserved far better than that!

"Go away," he flashed.

Hurt, uncomprehending, she departed. She had the strength not to disband. Rondl felt more like a Monster than ever. Everything he touched turned to dust. But this time, he believed, he had not taken the half-step of convenience -- the convenience of allowing Tembl to cater to him, to please him, to share his burden. He had taken the hard step of rejection, and thereby freed her to live the life of a true Band.

Now he was alone. All his trained, hardened Bands were gone. It would take so long to train new ones that the Monsters would ravage the home planet first. And if he did train new Bands -- what would prevent them from disbanding when faced with the necessity for effective action, as these had done? The plain fact was that Bands were not physically or socially constituted to fight. Why did he keep deluding himself that it wasn't so?

Fighting was the prerogative of Monsters.

Rondl would have to do it alone, as he had already concluded. Yet what could a single Monster do by himself?

He had the answer to that: he could tell his lie. Not just a Monster-distracting lie, for that was no longer sufficient. A Monster-killing lie.

Poetic justice: Monsters destroyed by a Monster who was the tool of Monsters.

Because of who he was and what he was, he just might be able to pull it off.

Now he had purpose. He accelerated, going toward the planet. He needed to locate Tangt, to get his revised lie perfected.

He came to a thickly populated line. "I seek Tangt," he flashed in general. "Can anyone direct me?"

No one here knew Tangt. It took only an instant to verify this; Band communications were very efficient when properly used. He flew to another well-traveled line and flashed again, again without success. He wished there were a better way to locate an individual, but knew there was not. That the society of Bands was anarchistic was part of its beauty -- but at the moment it was frustrating.

He kept trying, surveying many hundreds of Bands randomly. And finally, from a purple individual, he got an answer: "I encountered an orange Band of that name yesterday in the green plains region of the planet."

"Thank you!" Rondl flashed. He zoomed toward the indicated region. To Monsters, a planetary surface was eighty per cent of awareness; to Bands only thirty per cent. A given Band could be anywhere in space near a moon or near a planet. What mattered was not matter, but the routing and strength of the magnetic lines. Yet a planet did offer a highly varied terrain, providing interest and diversion, and that was an attractive aspect. Many Band pleasure spots were on planetary surfaces. As was the case with other sapients, the Bands appreciated novelty.

Oh, Cirl -- you were of this planet!

By his nature he had slain her, forced her to self-destruction. But no: he could not afford to think about her. Not yet.

When the mountains flattened into a plain and local vegetation turned it green, Rondl began inquiring again. This time the responses were thicker. Soon he zeroed in on Tangt, who was hovering in the vicinity of an outcropping of gray rock. "Tangt!" he flashed. "This is Rondl!"

"Please depart," she flashed. "I am distracted."

"I cannot. I need you to help save the Bands."

"I cannot be concerned with that now."

What was the matter with her? "You must help," he insisted. "Otherwise the whole Band society will be lost, including your own Band husband!"

"My husband is dead," she said.

"Dead?" He had not anticipated this.

"When I told him of my nature, thinking that if your wife could sustain it, perhaps after all so could he -- he...he disbanded. Right here. I thought I loved him."

"My wife also disbanded," Rondl said, surprised at this parallel. "When she learned more of my nature. I know I loved her."

"He just wouldn't believe that disbanding is the end!" she flashed. "He told me I could join him -- "

"For what it's worth, Cirl consulted with an educated Band who felt it should be possible for Monsters in Band guise to join the Viscous Circle, if they believe in it -- or perhaps even if they don't, so long as they really want to find it."

"That is not worth much!" she flashed, then returned to her grief. "Such a good person, but he clung to his superstition. 'If you are more Band than Monster, follow me,' he told me, and just like that he disbanded. And I can't follow."

"They just don't believe in death, or in war, or in deceit," Rondl agreed. "It's a species-wide foible. Maybe that's what it takes to be truly pacifist -- turn the other cheek, or whatever -- because even if the enemy kills you, he hasn't really hurt you. We humans fight to the end because we don't believe in life after death, not really, no matter what beliefs we claim to hold or what our assorted religions specify. Our absolute horror of death gives it all the lie. All we have is this one life, so we refuse to give it up easily, even when the continuation is painful. We'll cheat, lie -- " He broke off his flash. He was setting up to lie to her now -- again -- and didn't want to give himself away. No honor among Monsters!

"They don't believe in death," she agreed. "Or in any other evil. They really don't believe. So why am I here, marking the gravesite of a mate who left no body? There is no grave! If I am right, he is beyond help or grief; if he is right, he is either laughing tolerantly at me or feeling sorry for my ignorance."

"Exactly," Rondl agreed, feeling his own suppressed grief lighten somewhat. "The Bands die happy. To them it's like cutting losses by resigning early from a game. They don't understand grief. Only Monsters experience that.""Only Monsters deserve to!" She lifted away from the stone. "Yes, it is fitting that we suffer. Why did you seek me?"

"My effort failed. All my army disbanded except one who escaped by coincidence. I sent her away rather than risk her following the same course."

"Then it must be my way. We must tell the Monsters where the Site is."

Now the lie. Rondl hated this, but steeled himself; it was the only way.

He had already paid the penalty for his lie; now he had to squeeze it for maximum advantage. He was fortunate, ironically, that Tangt's grief for her disbanded husband had prevented her from checking on the location of the Ancient Site. "Yes. At Moon Dinge."

"So you said. But we need to pinpoint it better than that, since they missed it before."

"They had reason to miss it. Actually it's near Dinge, not right on it."

The lie loomed larger; could he get away with it?

"How can a Site be near a moon?" she demanded. "You mean it's a satellite? They should have spotted that."

"There's a planetoid in the same orbit. You know how populous this System is with debris, with rings and bands of material everywhere. This is just one of those anonymous chunks of rock, similar to the ones we use for Stations in System Sirius, not really near Dinge spatially, but it seems so because of the orbit. Similar designation -- fourth orbit out from Planet Band. Not big enough to be considered either moon or subsatellite, but big enough for a Site. Really hidden out there, among thousands of similar chunks.

But it's easy to travel back and forth, moon to Site, when the location is known." He was making so much sense he was almost believing it himself.

"An Ancient Site -- on a planetoid in moon orbit?" she demanded, seeming to balk at the concept. "The Ancients usually built on solid land."

"So the Monsters assumed, and missed the Site. What do we know about the Ancients? Most of what we see are their three-million-year surviving cellarholes. No wonder the Monster sweep overlooked this one, and perhaps countless others elsewhere in the Galaxy. No one thought to check planetoids."

"Small wonder!" But she seemed to be accepting the idea. After all, the Monsters had missed the Site, so an explanation was needed. "Well, there'll be no trouble locating it now. Do you think it's a live Site?"

"A fair chance. You never can tell about the Ancients."

"That's certain!" She whirled about, riding a line upward. "We must not tell the Bands about this," she flashed back.

"Agreed." Actually, the Bands would not care about the Site itself; in fact they would gladly give it up to make peace. He knew; he had surveyed them. He had been the one to doubt the efficacy of that strategy, fearing the continuing greed and ignorance of the Monsters. But if the Bands knew the truth now, they could flash to Tangt the correct information about the Ancient Site, and that would destroy Rondl's lie. So Tangt's own furtive nature was her undoing; she was protecting the lie that deceived her.

"You're the only one who understands," she flashed.

"It takes a Monster to understand a Monster." Again he felt attracted to her. It was not love of the sort he had held for Cirl; that was dammed back for the moment, so that he could do what he had to do. With Tangt the attraction was plain understanding.

"This is crazy," she said in a flash tinted with romantic invitation.

"But shall we -- ?"

And he thought, why not? This was not Sphere Sol, and their Band mates existed no more.

Yet Rondl had a misgiving. First, his loss of Cirl did not automatically free him to love another; he still loved Cirl. She, at least, had been true to her belief, her pattern of life. Certainly he had a kind of camaraderie with Tangt. But it was an affinity of the Monster aspects of their nature, rather than of the sublime. Oh, they both wanted to save the Bands; that was a sublime motive. But that did not mean they needed to make love to one another.

Tangt was no better than he was, except that she was not duping him into participation in a lie.

That made him pause. She was his kind, capable of violence and cheating and all the other crimes of Monsterdom. How could he be sure she wasn't duping him?

Yet in what way could she do it? They had agreed to give the Ancient Site to Sphere Sol; that was his lie. They had each lost their Band mates, and she now turned to him for comfort and understanding; where was the problem there?The question showed the answer. Female Monsters did not operate that way. They were seldom genuinely giving; they sold their sex for some sort of advantage, small or great. His Monster wife Helen always did. She talked of love, but what she wanted was a suitable environment for her offspring. It was a commendable objective -- but she had given him short conjugal shrift for years until recently deciding it was all right. And had it never occurred to her that he also might want a suitable environment for his offspring? That he might care for his child as much as she, and not require any bribery to do what was right? Women who sold their bodies openly were termed harlots; those who sold them covertly were considered decent. Both wronged their men and themselves by their contempt for the male mystique. Monsters, all!

So what was Tangt buying? Surely not his green color or forthright personality! Not even his camaraderie; she had not missed him until he located her, just now. So this interest was an on-the-spot thing, as it had been before. Now why should she have no interest in him when they were apart, and want to make love when they were together?

Because, perhaps, she had her own report to make, not necessarily the one they had agreed on. His absence could have meant he was dead, therefore no worry. His presence meant he had survived; therefore she needed to take action. So she was doing so. But what did she really intend?

"You seem pensive," Tangt flashed. "Don't you like me?"

She was definitely up to something! How should he handle this? Was there a way to kill a Band in the guise of making love, perhaps by means of some horrible thought that would force reflexive disbanding, and was that what she planned to do? Or was she trying merely to compromise him, using the act as a lever against him to endorse her story to the Monsters? She might fear he would change his mind later and try to prevent her from reporting on the location of the Ancient Site; he would be less likely to change if he had a more personal commitment to her. Thus she could be using sex purely as a standard precaution, a device to help ensure his loyalty.

Yet if he turned her down, she would know he suspected her motive.

Best to stall, until he had a better notion what she intended. "I find you most attractive, Tangt. But I loved my wife, Cirl."

"Before she died. Of course. And I loved Fomt. Yet now, with each gone -

- "

What recently widowed female who had loved her husband would within hours be soliciting sex from another male? That decided him. "I cannot at the moment love another Band. The memory is too fresh." And that was no lie.

"Well, we shall soon be recalled to our natural hosts."

To make their reports. But that would happen regardless. How could romance -- or sex -- affect it? This really bothered him; he did not want to fall into the twin traps of taking Tangt at face value or affronting her and making an enemy unnecessarily. To be a Monster was to have Monster problems!

To struggle with lie against possible lie, never being truly sure of oneself or of one's companions. How much better the Band way was! "Maybe we should talk again. As Monsters. Privately."

"Privately," she agreed, after a pause during which, no doubt, she considered the ramifications of this counteroffer. She knew she was unusually attractive in Monster host, so a male might very well prefer to have her that way. "Before making our reports?"

"That could be awkward, since the computer will get at us first. Perhaps before making the reports final."

"Before finalizing them," she agreed. She was surely suspicious now --

yet so was he. What kind of a game were they playing with each other? Who was author of the most fundamental lie?

They located a line loop, a place where they could safely leave their Band hosts. A host could survive for a time without an aura, if kept in an environment reasonably secure from dangers. Since Bands did not need anything more than a line for sustenance, there would be no problem about nourishment.

They set themselves up in miniature orbit about a rocky outcropping, and chatted innocently while waiting for the Transfer recall of their auras. "I'm glad these are not the bad old days when a Transferee had to reach an alien Transfer unit in order to return to his natural host," she flashed.

"That was why the early agents, like Flint of Outworld, had to have auras in the range of 200," Rondl agreed. "Not only did they suffer a much more rapid attrition of aura in Transfer, they had to supervise the construction of a Transfer unit to send them back. It took real courage to travel to a foreign host then! But this new system remains uncertain. Some of the losses in this mission may have been mis-Transfers."

"Yes," she agreed. "The old -- "