/That Tarot—I have used it on others, but never realized how it could relate to my own life!/ He abandoned that thought for more leisurely contemplation at some convenient time. /Let's complete the reading!/
A card appeared, the Four of Star, labeled HOPE/FEAR. Brother Paul had dealt it, but had nowhere to set it down.
Psyche's face appeared within it. The flat picture spoke: "Herald, I live! I love you! I tried to reach you through Hweeh, but when I revived him he got confused. I need a host, close, but I must hide. I can't come to you. To reach me you must deal with the Amoeba—"
/I shall find you!/ he flashed.
The image dissolved. Then the chaos itself dissolved. /Farewell, Patriarch Brother Paul!/ Herald flashed. /Farewell to you, and to your Jesus of Christ!/
"Farewell, Healer," the faint reply came. Or was it his imagination? Of course it was; all animation was imagination. Yet there was a kind of validity to it, as Brother Paul had pointed out: the meaning behind the image. The long-dead Solarian, alive or illusion, had helped him.
He recovered consciousness. He was stifled in stone, barely able to breathe, his body injured and hurting. It was the Jet body, that could breathe without changing size by dribbling air through its main tube. The Amoeba's ray had missed him, but collapsed the tunnel, stunning him, throwing him into a private vision. The animation itself had been illusion!
He was dying. Only the temporary restored power of his aura maintained life in this broken host, and soon that would fail. No God of Tarot could salvage this! Even if the body were not expiring from its injuries, it remained trapped deep in the rubble. It could not be removed intact.
"Herald!"
/I am here, Beloved!/ he flashed. But he realized immediately that it could not have been Psyche, for she was dead except in his dreams, in his frantic wish-fulfillments. This had been a sonic call.
"Herald!" Closer, now.
He mustered what physical strength he had. There was a little air he could woosh, "Here!" Was it loud enough? His lining hurt with the very effort.
"You live, Healer!" the voice exclaimed. "Here, Weew! I have found him! Under this spot!"
Now a strong aura probed the ground, intersecting Herald's waning periphery. "Yes, I feel him!" Hweeh cried. "His aura is greatly disturbed, and I doubt we can save the host, but we can bring the Transfer unit here...." And Transfer him to his own Slash body, and send him to a Tarot Temple for reconstitution.... Or had he experienced it already?
"He will die?" Sixteen asked anxiously.
"Do not fret, Miss. He shall soon rise again."
He shall rise again....
It was Kirlian technology, no mystery about it—but somehow it sounded like Brother Paul's God of Tarot.
9
Geography of Aura
X Mission survey completed. All sapients in the Cluster identified and catalogued. X
& Place life-destructor units adjacent to every sapient-utilized planet. Do not interfere with the subsapients at this stage unless they occupy sapient planets. Pockets of sapients on nonsapient planets will be sorted out after all potential major resistance has been nullified. &
0 Placement proceeding, covertly. 0
& Do not activate any units until all have been placed, so that no advance alarm is given. When all is ready, we shall proceed with the final ritual reverification of the absence of soul sapience. &
Herald's personal quest had been restored; there was a possibility that Psyche existed yet. But several immediate obstacles prevented pursuit of his desire.
The site Transfer unit had been destroyed by the bombardment of the Amoeba's laser cannon. The cargo mattermitter was also gone. It would be necessary to wait for the sublight ship to bring new equipment from neighboring Planet Earth.
The job should have taken hours; it was to take days. Earth, once the heart of Sphere Sol, was fading. It was now an overpopulated, bureaucracy-ridden backworld planet. Much of its population was xenophobic, preferring not even to think about the affairs of the larger Universe. Earth's administration would help, because it had to. Imperial Outworld, under directive of the Cluster Council, would see to that once it got the word. There was also the matter of Solarian pride—but that was at such a state that Earth would not exactly hurry.
Herald's host was dying. The torso had been squeezed and cracked, but not crushed; assorted leaks had developed in the internal systems, throwing physical performance out of whack. In the ordinary course, this Jet would linger for several days until the inevitable accumulation of chemical wastes poisoned it fatally.
The capable Jet excavation crew blasted out a large tunnel in short order, making room for him to function. Herald had underestimated their proficiency; they had no difficulty extracting his body. Like a valuable but delicate artifact they removed him from his setting and conveyed him to their temporary camp at the edge of the lava shield, safely away from the lasered site. The Amoeba ship was gone, but it was impossible to tell when it might return.
The site was in new ruins. Solidified slag from the laser strikes covered parts of the excavation, and glassy material had plugged up a number of the open tunnels. The whole center section had collapsed. The surviving Jets were laboring efficiently to re-excavate portions, but not for Ancient artifacts; they were digging for the bodies of their companions. A number of defunct Jets lay in rows in the wan sunlight, like so many metal tubes, their brush-fibers shriveled. Others limped about on partial thrust, helping where they could. It was a scene of carnage and sorrow. These were not warriors, but dedicated specialists; they did not know how to handle the horror of war.
Still they had rallied bravely. Already sizable rescue tunnels had been formed, and many who might have died in the ground, like Herald himself, were being drawn out in time. The medic staff was competent, classifying the patients by degree of injury and amenability to treatment. They concentrated on the critical cases most likely to benefit from prompt attention, without neglecting the others. No energy was wasted in moaning; all were working as well as they could.
Herald saw all this and was inspired to do his part, whatever the personal discomfort. He thought of volunteering to go about healing the injured, but realized immediately that he could not. Physical maladies were only marginally amenable to aural healing, and the moment he stopped concentrating on his own host, it would fail.
His best course was to pursue his own mission, that affected not one mere site but the entire Cluster, and stay out of the way of the others. Though his leverage against physical problems was small, continued effort in key internal systems could magnify his impact.
He had been devastated by his brutal loss of Psyche. Now the Jet archaeologists had been similarly devastated. He understood their situation only too well.
"We can preserve life in this body, but not for long," a busy Jet medic informed him. "And not with comfort."
Herald was already aware of that. His inner linings were burning as he traveled, causing erratic motion, and he suffered disorientation. "It will last until the replacement Transfer unit arrives?"
"It should. You will have to be careful, however, not to abuse your resources. Perhaps we should drug you unconscious for the duration."
"No. There is research I must do. I shall turn the interval to advantage. Give me a drug to enhance my mental activity."
"That would decrease your survival ratio. Chemical imbalances already exist that—"
"The time I waste may prejudice the survival of the entire Cluster," Herald said. "I will be responsible for the risk." He knew what the medic did not: that his aura could heal this host much more effectively than any medication could, but only if his mind were sufficiently alert to focus that aura on the key spots.
"Then we shall assign a nurse to you, for the side effects are hazardous." It was evident that the medic was doing this against his better judgment, because of the special status Herald had. Any other patient would have been rendered unconscious until the Earth rescue mission arrived,
saving the valuable services of the nurse for better things. Herald felt a twinge of guilt but knew he was being unreasonable to feel it. What use to facilitate the Jets' medical convenience, if the delay meant the extinction of all life in the Cluster?
The medic gave him the drug, a colorless gas run through his main jet. It was potent. Soon he felt much better, and was able to focus his aura far more effectively. He could guide this host to almost complete recovery, in time.
The nurse was Sixteen. "I asked for the assignment," she admitted. "You healed me; now I help you."
"I did not heal you," Herald said. "My power was inoperative; Hweeh of Weew healed you."
"He said you had—"
"He sought to protect me from embarrassment. He is an intelligent, generous entity. Now my power is restored, but I must use it to heal this host, who will otherwise perish."
"You can do this? Prolong your own life?"
"My life is my aura. It is the welfare of my host I promote."
"But the host is dying!"
She was not stupid, he reminded himself. She merely had difficulty comprehending the nature of aura, being a creature of minimal aura herself. What was obvious to him could not be obvious to her. "Without my aura, the host would die, true, though this Jet-form is exceedingly sturdy. Perhaps the only sturdier sapient is the Magnet, which can be destroyed by hardly anything less than nuclear explosion." Poor Baron of Magnet, there on the ramparts of Kastle Kade! "But I will make this body well again. I do not want any host of mine to be left worse off than I came to it."
"Well, I shall nurse you anyway," she decided.
"That will help," he agreed. He would not have to be as alert while she was watching out for him, and that would enable him to heal the host faster while proceeding with his research.
Hweeh came. "I am relieved you survived, Herald. For the sake of the Cluster and, if I may presume, friendship."
"No presumption," Herald said politely, pleased at the Weew's gesture. True friendship between alien creatures was not casually acknowledged, especially when they were in mutually alien hosts. "We are to be stranded here for a period, and it is essential that we pursue our insight to its logical conclusion. The Amoeba surely will not wait on our convenience."
"Insight?" Hweeh inquired, perplexed.
"That the sites are not those of one Ancient species, but many. The Ancients came as conquerors, bearing their Kirlian Crest. Trace that crest, that specific stigma of this one species, and we locate the few specifically Ancient sites across the Cluster, eliminating the myriad false-Ancient sites that have hitherto confused us. This will enable us to discover their secrets much more rapidly."
Hweeh paused. "When did this insight occur?"
"I found separate burial emblems in the tunnel where I fled the Amoeba. Once the medical problem has abated, the Jets can more than replenish their store of artifacts by delving into these other passages." Herald explained his prior reasoning. "You are a research astronomer; this line of endeavor should be natural to you. I presume the Jets have an archaeological library."
"They do, an excellent one. It is part of their professional equipage. Some volumes were damaged by the lasers, but most are intact."
"Let us repair, then, to that library."
"May I observe, friend, that you appear to have an enhanced outlook," Hweeh said. "Has your natural grief abated?"
"More than my outlook is enhanced," he said, feeling the joy of his revelation about Psyche. She had to live! But he was cautious about expressing this rationale openly, until he had mulled it over and tested it for conceptual errors. "Let us say that I suffer new hope."
Hweeh did not persist, and they moved to the library. This was a pressured tank with computer-controlled nozzles, suitable for use by this species. Hweeh was unable to use it, both because of his suit and his nontubular form, but Herald could. So they coordinated their efforts.
"Now how do we orient on the critical area?" Herald asked. "There must be much good information that does not relate to this particular thrust."
"To do a proper job would require years. However"—Hweeh continued, forestalling Herald's objection—"an orientation survey with eighty percent accuracy can be run in a few hours with this library. Perhaps that will suffice."
"We can try it anyway. First I want a geographic survey of specific dates of known Ancient sites. They are all three million yean old, but there should be some differentiation in terms of centuries. We need to locate the earliest true Ancient site, as marked by the presence of symbols and designs conforming to those on the cubes, not the Worm-bracelets. That may be their home world, with differentiated layering, yielding the secrets of their evolution. We may be able to discover their technology by tracing its genesis."
"Yes, that is promising, with this new symbol-insight," Hweeh agreed. "I can set up a program for that." He went to work, organizing, calling out specific requirements, narrowing the parameters of the requested library information. Herald checked particular references. Hweeh's direction was expert; it was as if Herald were a laser being precisely aimed by the Weew, striking on or very near the target each time. The same research task would have taken Herald alone ten times as long, as he ran down profitless side avenues.
Each Jet book was keyed by odor. His trained host assimilated the information as individual molecules sped through his system. Food for the mind was literally digested; the Jets had the sense of smell developed to an extent that made the abilities of most other sapients seem retarded. One molecule in a million was a strong information-bit, and several thousand bits were coded for the gaseous information storage language. It was almost as good as animation, in its fashion—but much duller.
Animation—how much of his visit to the realm of the God of Tarot had been real? Had he seen Psyche, received her message, or was it all a mere figment of his desire? No! The logic was sound, by the light of the Martian day. A strong aura could survive the destruction of the body and live again—for a time. An enhanced aura might live indefinitely, restoring itself from the reservoir of the Ancients. It did make sense! Maybe he had not had any actual messages from Psyche, but she had to be somewhere—if only he could find her. Maybe at the Ancient-site stronghold. Find the Ancients, find her.
Then why had she told him to deal with the Amoeba, to reach her? Did she mean that finding the Ancient site where she was would be useless if the Amoeba had not been neutralized first? Because any site he tried to activate would soon be destroyed by the Amoeba, and her with it? Was that why she had to hide, concealing the activation of the site that her presence represented? That seemed likely, but it posed a formidable dilemma. The Cluster could not overcome the Amoeba without first obtaining the science and technology of the Ancients, and if it were necessary to overcome the Amoeba before activating any sites—paradox.
Sixteen, never far removed, asked to help. "You can run a check on mythologies," Hweeh told her. "The earliest developments of Kirlian science will be referenced in local species myths. I will give you a program to isolate these references. If your chart of localization corresponds to ours, we shall know we are getting there. Can you do that?"
"I am a Jet," she said.
That meant, as it turned out, that she was a competent researcher and classifier and reporter, as a member of an archaeological specialty species should be. Her report was ready before Herald's.
The notion of mythology reminded Herald again of Psyche. Now he wondered, but dared not inquire, whether Sixteen had encountered the legend of Psyche and Cupid, and whether the immortality the mortal girl had been granted at the end, after her return from Hell, actually represented aural enhancement. He had to keep a firm fix on reality, no matter how tempting certain notions might become.
They pondered the results of the two surveys, the geographies of Crest and Legend. The two seemed to be only coincidentally related to each other, and the areas of overlap were patchy and widely scattered. One promising locale was in Novagleam, Milky Way; another was i
n Duocirc Andromeda; a third was in a fragment galaxy of the Cluster. The three were as far apart as it was possible to be.
"There's a spot overlap in Sphere Jet, too," Sixteen pointed out, pleased.
Herald did not comment. She was right about the spot, but the chances of the Ancients originating in such an isolated globular Cluster, near a dangerous black hole, seemed remote. And the extremely low aura of the Jets obviated any likely relationship to the Ancients, the original Kirlians.
"It is evident that the Ancients came as conquerors," Hweeh said. "They arrived all over the Cluster at about the same time. The discrepancies are within the margin of error for the dating procedures, and even if they were not, there is still no consistent cross-Cluster progression. Their arrival could have been simultaneous, and the same for their departure. As for the mythologies... I really had not expected a correspondence, because they do not date the period of the Ancients, but the modern chance discoveries of Ancient sites. They have no significance for the location of the developing Ancient species. In this respect our comparison is a success. Had there been a strong correlation, our research methods would have been suspect. We require another referent."
Herald was amazed again at the competence of the Weew. He had assumed the lack of correspondence meant failure, not success! Of course this was a check against distortion of interpretation of data by too-eager researchers. They had verified that expectations were not generating false answers. Should he submit his belief in Psyche's survival to Weew's scrutiny?
No... he did not dare.
"The Ancients were so powerful; they must have been very high aura, like you," Sixteen said. "Able to heal at a touch, to survive ills that would destroy lesser species. And their sites are always highly Kirlian. I wonder...."
"It has generally been assumed that this was the case," Hweeh agreed. "The Ancients had preeminent Kirlian science. Virtually all aural manipulation by contemporary species has been the result of discoveries at Ancient sites. Our technicians hardly comprehend the fundamental principles; they have mainly followed the Ancient instructions. But we don't know the strength of the personal auras of the Ancients, or their family groups."
Kirlian Quest Page 25