The Solarians

by Norman Spinrad

“It’d take all day to explain that, General,” Ortega said with a wry grin.

  “Call me Jay” Palmer said impulsively. He was beginning to feel very lightheaded and weak-kneed, as if he had been drinking steadily for hours.

  “I hope that drink was…ah, non-toxic,” he said dizzily, plopping himself down in the nearest chair. As he said the words, he had meant them as a flippant remark, but by the time he had finished the sentence, which seemed to him interminable, he was seriously wondering whether the drink might not actually have been poisoned. After all, the Solarians just could not be trusted….

  “Don’t worry, Jay,” Robin Morel said with a little laugh, “it only seems lethal.”

  Palmer’s head was really beginning to whirl now. He was losing all sense of time now. It was even becoming hard to tell just how many Solarians were in the room with him now. There seemed to be hundreds of them. The air seemed to have a body and flavor of its own, and it was flowing languidly like thick syrup. Palmer had never even come close to being this drunk before, and he was not sure that he liked it. He felt all right now, lightheaded, euphoric, a bit giddy, but the thought of staying in this state for hours was rather frightening and more than a bit nauseating.

  Either Bergstrom had read his mind, or the others had read his face, for the Solarians were all laughing, and Ortega was practically roaring.

  “Don’t worry, Jay,” Lingo said. “This too, shall pass.”

  Linda Dortin seemed to drift over to the hi-fi, and pleasant, soft, rather vague music began to fill the air. Fran Shannon sat down at the smell-organ, and began to play.

  The room was transformed into a garden in the springtime. There was a warm, heavy, constant background odor of freshly cut clovered grass. Against this background, Fran played constantly shifting, ephemeral whiffs of flowers—roses, lilacs, morning glories. The smell patterns seemed to ebb and flow in a strange kind of unison with the notes of the music.

  Palmer’s head felt as if it were going to explode. A part of him was relaxing and enjoying the strange, all-enveloping synthesis of intoxication, odors and music. Never had he been so taken out of himself….

  But that was the trouble. He had never drunk anything remotely like that Nine Planets, and he couldn’t know what its real effects might be. He had the Solarians’ word that it was harmless, but just how much was that really worth? Maybe they intended to keep him in this stupified state permanently…. Maybe the drink had other properties that would rob him of his will…. And maybe, despite what Robin had said, the drink might just have been poisoned after all.

  Palmer dimly realized that this trin of thought might be considered paranoiac, and even that might be caused by the drink. The trouble was, he had no usable criteria to measure the situation against. If the Solarians were really trustworthy, then it was simple foolishness to worry drink, but if they were plotting some king of treachery, then the foolish thing had been taking the drink in the first place….

  Palmer was not really a drinking man, but like all soldiers on liberty, he occasionally had a few more drinks than he needed. At such times, he had known what it was like to be more intoxicated than you want to be, to sit around hoping that you won’t be sick, and stoically waiting for the effects of the alcohol to wear off.

  He felt that way now. He did not feel sick, nor maudlin, nor frightened, but he had had enough and he was no longer enjoying the intoxication. He simply wanted it to end.

  The trouble was that he had lost all sense of time. He had not the slightest idea of just how long he had been drunk, and what was much worse, he had no idea of how long the effects of the Nine Planets would last.

  He felt himself at the center of a warm, vague, pink fog. It seemed to him that he had been befogged for as long as he could remember, and it seemed as if he would be drunk forever….

  Then, quite suddenly, the mist began to lift, to melt away like cotton candy in warm water.

  With amazing rapidity, he was all at once stone sober.

  To his great and wondering surprise, his head was clear and his vision sharp. There was no headache, and no dullness. In fact there was no morning-after feeling at all. He felt as if he had just had eight hours of perfect sleep. He even felt hungry.

  “Aha,” said Ortega. “I see that it’s worn off. That’s the beauty of a Nine Planets. The first seven levels are increasingly strong intoxicants. The eighth level is a delayed action sober-izer, and the last is an energizer. A binge, a good night’s sleep, and wide-awake in the morning in less than twenty minutes!”

  “Twenty minutes?” exclaimed Palmer. “Is that all it was?”

  “That’s all,” said Ortega.

  “How do you feel?” Lingo asked.

  “I feel great!” exclaimed Palmer. “In fact, it gave me quite an appetite.”

  “Purely intentional,” said Linda Dortin. “Dinner is about to be served.” She pushed a button behind the bar, and a section of wall opened, revealing a large dinner table with seven settings—cloth napkins, ornate china, genuine silverware—already layed out on it, and seven comfortable-looking lounge chairs.

  Palmer and the three male Solarians sat down at the table, and Palmer expected the women to sit down too, since the rooas obviously completely equipped, and they would surely have an autoserver.

  But instead, the girls went to another section of the wall. A button was pressed, and a panel slid open, revealing a tureen of steaming soup, slices of melon, a roast, and assorted side dishes.

  To Palmer’s amazement, they began serving the meal gracefully by hand.

  Why, this went out with rockets! he thought. Yet there was something soothing and graceful about this kind of meal, and the women seemed to enjoy it too.

  “Almost like one of those ancient family meals you read about,” Palmer said.

  “Close,” said Lingo. “You know, there was a time when ‘family’ included three or four generations. In those days, each meal was really quite a complex social event. Of course there were plenty of disadvantages. A man was tied to his extended family, often for life, and if they were a bunch of obnoxious louts who he couldn’t stand—well, that was just too bad.”

  “But I suppose it did give people a sense of belonging,” mused Palmer. “I mean, I can almost feel what it must’ve been like. This is all somehow…comforting.”

  “Yeah,” cracked Ortega. “But those old families could also tear each other to tiny little pieces. Trouble was, that the social structure threw people together on a purely chance basis. And involuntary groupings always mean trouble.”

  “Ah, you’re just a professional cynic, Raul,” said Fran Shannon. “Why it must’ve been very romantic in the old days.”

  “Sure, sure, very romantic. Did you know that those romantics used to go around murdering people just because they found their wives with someone else?”

  “Oh, come off it Raul,” laughed Fran Shannon. “You’re just making that up!”

  “Oh?” said Ortega, with a little grin. “Not only am I not making it up, but that sort of thing is still going on, on the planets of the Confederation, isn’t it Jay?”

  Palmer flushed. “Of course it is!” he blurted. “Ah…I mean, if you mean what I think you mean. Er…none of you people are…ah…married?”

  “Yes and no,” said Ortega.

  “Yes and no?” exclaimed Palmer. “You either are or you aren’t!”

  “No, then, according to your way of thinking,” Lingo said. “But kind of yes according to ours. We’re all married to each other, in a sense. We’re all important to each other. In many ways, we function like what you would call a family. But on the other hand, we’re all completely independent individuals, and we’re perfectly free to form whateyer relationships we care to outside the Group.”

  Palmer shook his head. It was quite beyond him.

  “For instance,” said Robin, “you’re not a member of our Group, but there’s no reason in particular why you should have to sleep alone all the time, now is there?”
r />   “There certainly is!” blurted Palmer. But as all six Solarians burst into good-natured laughter, he began to wonder just what it was.

  Ortega was puttering about the bar. Fran Shannon was off in a corner of the common room reading a book. Max and Linda were….

  Palmer, sitting in a lounge chair, with Lingo and Robin in chairs flanking him, could not figure out what Linda and Max were doing. They were sitting on the couch, staring into each other’s eyes, not moving a muscle and not uttering a sound.

  Palmer glanced at Robin, caught her eye, glanced over to Max and Linda and then back at Robin. It was clearly a question.

  Robin laughed and smiled warmly at him. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “I’m no telepath. They’re…well, they’re communing with each other in a way that only two telepaths can, and two telepaths that care for each other, at that. Personally, well I’d rather express my affection in less cerebral ways.” And she winked at him.

  Palmer squirmed uneasily in his chair and glanced at Lingo to see if he had caught it. Lingo was staring pointedly off into space and grinning to himself, as if at some private joke.

  “What do you think, Jay?” Robin said.

  “Huh? About what?”

  “About affection. Don’t you think that people should show it if they like each other? I mean in the most natural way. Which, for a man and woman is….” she stared long and frankly and steadily at him. Palmer glanced nervously at Lingo, who was still pointedly ignoring the conversation.

  “Well sure, if two people are in love they should…. I mean, abstinence for its own sake went out with the Age of Freud.”

  “No, no,” Robin said. “I don’t mean love, I mean like. Don’t tell me you believe that a man and a woman have to be in love with each other before they….”

  “Of course not!” Palmer said. “There’s nothing wrong with sex for its own sake, either. It’s the most natural….”

  Robin laughed. “I don’t mean that either!” she exclaimed. “Don’t you understand what like means? It means not being ove with someone, but not being totally indifferent to them either. I’m in love with Dirk, for instance. But…that doesn’t keep me from liking you, now does it?”

  The words were ambiguous, but the warm, close, deep look certainly was not. Palmer felt himself unwilling to return the stare and uncertain as to how he felt about it. After all, he thought, Lingo is sitting right next to us.

  He glanced at Lingo. This time Lingo looked back. There was neither anger nor jealousy on his face. He merely seemed highly amused at something. Palmer could not imagine what.

  “You do like me, Jay?” Robin said. “I mean, you don’t find me ugly, or stupid or boring?”

  “Huh? Why of course not. Why should I? Of course I like you, Robin.”

  She laughed softly, and stared at him again, arching her eyebrows up and down in one quick meaningful stroke.

  He understood the question, but he didn’t quite know how to answer it, and what was worse, he didn’t know how he wanted to answer it. So he pretended that it had never happened.

  Lingo gave vent to a quick, stifled grunt that sounded like a manfully muffled laugh. He glanced over to Robin, shrugged, and motioned to her with his hand.

  She shrugged back, smiled pleasantly at Palmer, got up, walked over to Lingo’s chair and sat down in his lap.

  Lingo laughed, kissed her lightly on the nose and said, “You must be losing your touch, Robin.”

  “Can’t win ’em all,” Robin said, kissing him back.

  Palmer got up in embarrassed confusion and walked over to the bookcase, where he pretended to become absorbed in one of the volumes.

  A few minutes later, Max and Linda disengaged their stares, and, without a word being passed between them, both got up. Max walked over to Fran Shannon, said something to her, and they walked out of the common room together.

  Meanwhile, Linda had whispered something in Ortega’s ear, and they too left together, arm in arm.

  Palmer lay uneasily, but in a way gratefully, on his cabin bunk. The cabin was somehow a relaxingly pleasant contrast to the rest of the ship—a small, plain cubicle with bunk, table and locker, much like any other cabin on any other ship. It was Spartan, and hence reassuringly familiar.

  It had been quite a trying day, all things considered. The more he saw of the Solarians, the less he seemed to understand. In their natural habitat, they seemed even stranger than they had on Olympia III….

  Palmer shook his head. Are they simply a degenerate bunch of hedoni? he thought. He had never seen such incredible luxury on a spaceship before, and on a mission like this, it seemed almost criminal.

  Am I being unfair, though? Palmer asked himself. After all, when you come right down to it, what’s the point in asceticism for its own sake?

  But what really troubled him was the pattern of relationships among the Solarians—if there was a pattern. At times, they seemed almost like a family…But then there was that business about not sleeping alone…. And the business about “like” versus “love”….

  And Robin.

  The way she looked at me…he thought. An invitation if I ever saw one. And Lingo was right there. But he didn’t mind at all…. And then, all of a sudden they start acting like an old married couple. And the way Linda and Max spent all that time just staring at each other, and then each of ’em goes off with someone else. It just makes no sense.

  There was nothing naive about Palmer; he had certainly not spent all his nights alone, or even always with a woman who was really important to him. One either had a serious relationship with a woman or a casual one. Either was “quite normal, depending on the circumstances.

  But how could there possibly be a middle ground?

  Yet to the Solarians, there obviously was some kind of middle ground between the casual and the serious. There had to be some rules, at least of taste, if nothing else, in the Solarian culture, but Palmer was unable to see them.

  It was all totally maddening. I’d have an easier time understanding six Doogs, he thought.

  This was going to be one long trip.

  Palmer stood uncertainly just outside the entrance to the common room. Rationally, he knew that there was no reason for him to be leery of facing Lingo or Robin, but his mind was having trouble convincing his viscera.

  He shrugged resignedly, and stepped through the entranceway. A sudden twinge, almost an unpleasant kind of wistfulness quivered through Palmer as he entered the common room. The Solarians were clustered around the strange eliptical table. They were talking animatedly, laughing, smiling. The group radiated a bubbling sense of camaraderie, fellowship, warmth.

  Palmer recognized the unpleasant feeling for what it was: loneliness, estrangement. And envy. These people had a something. Something that was shared, without being all-enveloping, something that enabled them to pass the long weeks of the voyage to Duglaar pleasantly and zestfully, with neither boredom nor sheer hedonism.

  They had roots. Each one had roots in the other five, and Palmer knew with certain conviction that as long as this group was together, any place in the Galaxy would be home to them.

  But a profeional soldier, he thought bitterly, has no home. And while he felt the warm pull of the Solarian group, he could not forget for a moment that these people were Solarians, strangers from the hermit system of Sol, whose motives and aims could neither be understood nor trusted.

  But still….

  “Ah, Jay,” said Lingo. “This should interest you. A fascinating game. Take a look.”

  Palmer walked over to the eliptical table. Seven little piles of what looked like seven different hues of colored sand had been laid out on the surface of the table. A transparent plastic plate covered the table-top about an inch and a half above the piles of sand.

  “What is this thing, anyway?” he asked.

  “A telekinesis table,” said Robin Morel. “Only a few people like Max and Linda have a real telepathic Talent, but everyone has some latent telepathic ability. Thi
s set-up is designed to let the average person play around with his latent psi faculties.”

  “How does it work?” asked Palmer.

  “The surface of the table is virtually frictionless,” said Ortega. “The colored ‘sand’ is really tiny balls of colored steel, micro-polished so that they have the lowest possible frictional coefficient. Then the transparent top-plate is sealed over the table-top, and the air in between is evacuated, creating a reasonably good vacuum. So rolling friction and air resistance are as close to zero as possible, thus minimizing the amount of psychokinetic force needed to move the ‘sand.’ And of course, the individual balls have very small masses. I’ve only an ordinary amount of psi myself, but watch! I’ll use the green pile.”

  Ortega stared intently at the table-top. As Palmer watched in amazed fascination, the pile of green particles slowly began to flatten out until it was a rough circle, only one particle thick. Gradually, the circle began to change, and after several minutes, the rough initials “R. O.” had been formed by the green particles.

  “Not bad for an amateur,” said Max Bergstrom. “Of course Linda and I can work this gizmo with our minds tied behind our backs.”

  Suddenly, the red pile began to move as if each of the individual particles were an energetic little insect. In seconds, a red heart was formed on the table-top.

  The yellow pile snapped into the shape of an arrow, which pierced the heart. Some of the yellow grains jumped to the surface of the heart and formed the legend “M. B. 1 L. D.”

  “Oh really!” grunted Ortega, wrinkling his nose.

  Everyone laughed. Even Palmer found himself joining in.

  “Come on, you try it now, Jay.”

  “I really don’t think I….”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “Well…” said Palmer dubiously, “just what am I supposed to do?”

  “Just think at the sand,” said Ortega. “Try the blue pile.”

  Palmer shrugged, and stared intently and somewhat self consciously at the pile of blue particles. Move! Move! he thought, come on, damn you, flatten out!

  Nothing much seemed to happen. A few individual particles at the apex of the pile trickled down towards the edges. Palmer concentrated intently for several minutes. Perhaps there were a few more particles at the periphery now than when he had started, and maybe the pile was minutely flatter, but….