Thousandstar (#4 of the Cluster series)

by Piers Anthony

  'Like what?' the alien demanded. 'I noted that note of revulsion. Like pickled sewage sludge—awful taste!'

  "How do Solarians derive their life-energy?" Heem temporized.

  'We eat food, of course, like any other creature.'

  "Not HydrOs. Not the Erbs. Not a hundred other Segment species."

  'HydrOs don't eat?' the alien jetted incredulously.

  "We absorb hydrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere and combine them, with release of energy, on a controlled basis. That fuels our metabolism, and the residue is OH2."

  'Water, you mean? H2O? Your waste product is water?'

  "Hardly a waste. We use it for propulsion, combat, communication, manipulation of objects, perception, cushioning of impact—at this very moment we are cushioned by—"

  'Flavored water for speech!' the alien sprayed, amazed. 'I never would have thought it possible!'

  "Not only possible, but practical. For communication and life-style. HydrOs can exist and function on any planet where a suitable atmosphere and temperature exists."

  'But I thought it took more energy to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in water than could be obtained rejoining them.'

  "We don't separate them from water. We draw the elements we need from the air, using enzymes to process them efficiently. It is by far the readiest source of energy, and the trace impurities we utilize to build body mass."

  'I guess it works. You're here; that proves it. Maybe your atmosphere is different from ours.'

  "Perhaps. Hydrogen is very common in the Cluster, but I can't vouch for strange systems like Sol. We HydrOs are the elite of the Segment Thousandstar sapients, in contrast to—"

  'You're hiding something! I can feel it in your system.'

  "In contrast to the eating species," Heem continued unwillingly. "Who are our natural enemies."

  There was a period of tastelessness. 'You mean it?'

  "I mean your kind as you describe it—the eyes, ears, appendages, eating orifices, and other allied organs—most nearly resemble the species we know as the Squams. They lack the eyes, but apart from that—"

  'Oh, I caught that awful emotion! You really do hate the Squams. Not only as a species. Personally!'

  "I have reason," Heem sprayed.

  'You must have. I can feel the taste burning through your whole body. But I don't even know what a Squam is! Why don't you show me a mental picture?'

  "A what?"

  'A picture. An image, so I can see—' She rolled to a halt. 'Oh, I understand. You don't have eyes. You don't even think in terms of sight. You only know of that sense through the contacts your species has had with other Galactic creatures. You can't make a picture!'

  "I can make a taste pattern," Heem offered.

  'Very well. Try that. I am very good at analyzing patterns. We call it art. I work in holographs, in three-dimensional art. Art is a property centered in the right hemisphere of the brain, complementing the logic of the left.'

  "Hemispheres? Your brain is in several parts?"

  'Never mind that now. Just make the pattern.'

  Heem projected the taste of the dread Squam as it fed on his sibling-juvenile Hoom. The pattern of horror still revolted him—and that was the origin of both his success and his failure, as an adult.

  'I'm suffocating,' the alien sprayed. 'It's horrible! But I still can't see it!'

  They had a problem of communication. The Solarian seemed not to comprehend something unless he could visualize it, while Heem had only taste to offer. They discussed the matter, going over the Squam memory in detail, and finally the Solarian began to comprehend. 'I'm forming a mental picture now. It's not a direct translation of your memory, but more of a reconstruction from what I am grasping intellectually. That monster is not at all like me. It's a snake—a snake with arms, and no real head. I have legs, while it doesn't, and I don't spew out my stomach—Heem, if you could see me, you'd see how little I resemble your Squam.'

  "Project a taste-pattern of your physical self," Heem jetted amenably.

  The alien tried, but all that came through was a mélange of peripheral flavors. The alien had no more mind for taste than Heem had for sight. 'It's lucky we can even communicate,' the Solarian jetted at last.

  "Meaning transmission is a separate function, integral to all sapients," Heem jetted. "Transferees never have language problems. I am not certain why we are having any communicatory problems; it is my understanding that even creatures with grossly differing life-styles and modes of perception normally mesh perfectly in transfer. Your impersonation of the original Solarian scheduled for this mission may account for it."

  'It may,' the Solarian agreed. 'There is something else, however.'

  "You are full of little surprise rolls! First you are unqualified, then you resemble my worst enemy. What now?"

  'You—does your kind have genders? Male and female?'

  "Yes, we are a bisexual species."

  'And you—you are of which gender?'

  "Male, naturally."

  'That is what I was afraid of.'

  "Afraid? Did you crave to have a neuter host?"

  'No. You see, I am female.'

  "Impossible!" Heem exploded. "Cross-gendered transfers do not occur. It must be a confusion of nomenclature."

  'Cross-gendered transfers are not supposed to happen,' she jetted. Actually, she was probably sounding or lighting, but he perceived it as jetting. 'They even use transfer as a definition of gender, in questionable cases. As when an individual of a species changes back and forth at different stages of life, now male, now female, like the Mintakans. If a given aura arrives in a male host, it's male.'

  "Agreed. Therefore, what you term female must in fact be male."

  'Do males bear offspring, among your kind?'

  "No. Females do that."

  'I—do that.'

  "You claimed you were a clone of a male!"

  'I am. One detail was changed, after the cloning."

  "Some detail! You could not consider yourself the same person, after that!"

  'I had little choice in the matter, since it happened when conception was only hours past.'

  Heem ignored her strange time-unit. "You would have grown completely apart from your other half!"

  'No. We were raised as siblings, as I said before. We were treated identically. I was called male, so there would not be any fuss, but Jesse and I knew, always. When we matured, we lived apart from our peers, and anonymous to our neighbors. Which was not hard to arrange, since we were of the royalty. Our auras changed together, constantly interacting. Really a single aura with two bodies.'

  There was an uncomfortable pause. "The transfer should not have taken," Heem jetted at last. "You should have arrived in a female host, or bounced."

  'That's what I assumed would happen. If the transfer took, I would occupy a female host, or at least a neuter one, of Segment Thousandstar, and my brother's onus would have been abated. He had only to report for transfer; no more was guaranteed. If I bounced, then it would signify that the Thousandstar host had not been adequate, and the advance payment would forfeit to Jesse. I expected to bounce—and thereby save our family fortune without actually undertaking a mission for which I was not qualified.'

  "They will know—the Society of Hosts will know that your body is female, when they exercise it."

  'We prepared, just in case. Our old estate retainer, Flowers, was to take the body home for care, so no one else saw it. Lucky thing we set that up, I suppose.'

  "But the fact that transfer did occur—to a male host! This can not be explained."

  'It seems unique, certainly. My arrival was painful to us both; I must have come close to bouncing, but didn't quite make it. I still feel the effect; your system is basically hostile to my aura. I think the clone-factor must have made the difference. My aura was close enough to fool the machine, so it sent me through as a male, and your system had to accept me as a male even though I was not. Am not! Since the original entity, before c
loning, was male, I could be considered as a male with an added X chromosome. Really, Jesse's aura is awfully close to mine. In the circumstances—'

  "Your logic is female. It must be so," Heem jetted limply. "That would account for the initial unconsciousness we both suffered, and for the trouble we now have communicating. It is not that you are alien; it is that you are female, and therefore the most alien creature of all. Your mind does not operate in comprehensible fashion."

  'In the circumstances, I'm disinclined to argue. I have brought three disasters upon you, and I don't know how to mitigate any of them.'

  Heem rolled those disasters around in his mind. First, an unqualified individual, thereby serving as a liability instead of an asset, when he desperately needed an asset. Second, a creature of an anathema-species: one that consumed food. Third, a female. Three things in ascending order of mischief.

  Yet was he blameless? He too was unqualified for this competition, and to her he was the anathema alien without the organs of perception she required, and she had no more desire to occupy a male host than he had to have a female transferee.

  'That's kind of you to think that, but—'

  "I wonder," Heem jetted slowly. "I had a desperate need to get into space, and I knew I needed a transferee. I must have encompassed any aura that came, overriding the natural cautions of my system. It could be as much my fault as yours."

  'I do prefer your logic to mine,' she admitted.

  "And you did accomplish what I required," he continued. "They must have verified my aura and yours, and approved me for the competition while I was still trying to devise a scheme to slip through without a transferee. So I made it to space after all. But now—"

  'Now my presence is hampering you,' she said. He now found it easier to stop attributing her communication to jets; she simply did not jet or spray, even in her mind. She spoke. She seemed to become more intelligible as he accepted this alien reality.

  "I really had little hope of winning the competition anyway. I am satisfied to be offplanet, with or without a transfer aura. But I do not know how you will return to your natural body if we leave the competition."

  'I have to return!' she cried. 'I couldn't stand to be blind and deaf all my life!'

  "To do that, we will have to win the competition. That will not be easy."

  'But only one person can win. Don't all the transferees get to go home, after it is over?'

  "They should. But I personally do not dare return to my home-planet for the retransfer of my visitor. You would go home—but I would be perpetually confined. I joined the competition to get away from that fate."

  'But if we win the competition—'

  "Then I will return as a hero, my criminal record pardoned. They have given me a considerable incentive."

  'Then it's decided. We both have incentives. We win the competition!'

  "Solarian—"

  'Jessica. That's my name.'

  "Jessica Solarian—this competition may be more hazardous than you appreciate. We could both perish."

  'I understood it was a low-risk mission.'

  "It is supposed to be. But I have had news of prior competitions. If the objective is important, the participants get highly competitive. A certain amount of intrigue, even violence occurs. It is not supposed to, but it does."

  'Oh,' she said faintly. 'But maybe this objective is not so important.'

  "Perhaps. We shall soon know. The ship is stabilizing; we have almost achieved escape velocity."

  'Um,' she agreed nervously. 'So we may face real action. Look, Heem, we should get to know each other, so we know how to integrate. It could make a big difference. Exchange memories, compare notes, values—'

  He had had enough of this. "No!" he jetted. "Go away!"

  'I can't go away. You know that. I'm stuck here in your body until we get to an aura transfer machine, besides which, I genuinely want to help. I feel responsible—'

  "I don't want your help!"

  'Well, my help has been forced on you. You shouldn't have signed up for this mission, if you really didn't want—'

  Heem needled an intense negation at her.

  'Hey! That hurt!' she protested.

  "Then be tasteless. Silent. I don't want to be aware of your presence when I begin piloting this ship."

  'Well, you needed my help before, and I think you'll need it again. Since my own welfare is tied up in this just as much as yours—'

  Heem, furious at her persistence, needled angry loathing at her.

  Jessica bounced it back at him. The impulse washed through his mind, disgusting him.

  'See, I can do it too!' she said. 'I can make your mind just as miserable as you make mine. And I will, if I have to. But I don't want to have to.'

  "What do you want?" Heem demanded. A part of him wondered why he had turned so negative, and another part of him did not want the answer.

  'Just to get to know you. So I know what I'm involved in. Really know, instead of just that you're—'

  "No!"

  'Now look, Heem. You're being unreasonable. What do you have against me? Maybe I can alleviate it.'

  Heem formulated a savage needlejet, thought better of it, and sprayed irately, "You're alien! I don't want you poking into my mind."

  'I think we've been over that, Heem. What either of us wants in that respect is pretty well irrelevant. You knew there'd be an alien transferee—'

  "Not a female one!"

  'Oh, now we have it, do we? It isn't just the shock of encountering a female where you didn't expect one. You're a male chauvinist!'

  "Females are all right in their place."

  'And what is that place? In the steaming kitchen, the nursery, the laundry room—'

  Heem interrupted her with a spray of pure incomprehension. "What is a kitchen? A nursery? A laundry?"

  'Oh, my. Maybe I'd better find out more about your females. Let's start with the basic common ground. Your females do bear children, don't they, so—'

  "They do produce litters." But he did not want to discuss that aspect. It was a private female thing about which he knew no details. "What is this kitchen your females belong in? This laundry?"

  'They don't belong in—oh, never mind. It's where we fix our meals and clean our clothing.'

  "Meals? Clothing?"

  'You know. We just covered that. Food, to eat, and—'

  "You are not revolted?"

  'Let's leave the ramifications for later. What do you really have against females?'

  "I do not—"

  'Yes you do. You are against me not because I'm alien, but because I'm female. I mean to get to the root of this. Why don't you want to associate with a female?'

  "Because you invade my privacy! There are thoughts that are not meant to be known to your kind."

  'Thoughts? It's not as if I were parading nude in public! I—'

  "Nude?"

  'Without clothing. Exposed.'

  "We wear no such encumbrance. Our bodies are always exposed. Why should any creature not be exposed?"

  'Well, we Solarians do have some exposure. I meant in a sexual connection. Copulating in public, that sort of thing.'

  "What is private about copulation?"

  'Oh, my! I think I see the problem. To Solarians, sexual activity is generally private—even the necessary organs are called privates—while thoughts may be disseminated freely to an audience of millions. To you HydrOs, I gather—'

  "Thoughts are private!" Heem sprayed, shocked. "Among comprehending males, thoughts may on occasion be broadcast. But never in mixed company."

  'And I, as a female able to read many of your thoughts—I guess that has a certain effect on you, as it would on me if I were thrown naked into the men's room at a busy hour.'

  "I do not comprehend your analogy, but your emotion seems equivalent."

  'Uh, yes. And I must admit your view makes about as much sense as mine. Bodies are not obscene, really; it's only the mind that makes them so. I'd hate to have my t
houghts advertised at certain times.'

  "You do not object to a male fathoming your most private thoughts?" Heem found the notion incredible.

  'Well, you're alien. Your metabolism is completely different from mine. I wouldn't object to walking naked before a dog or a horse or a dragon of either sex; they're different creatures. But the cynosure of my own kind would be devastating. Now you—you're alien, but you're also sapient. That makes it hard to judge. But I think you would hardly care about my human attributes, so it wouldn't matter if you saw them. If you could see.'

  Heem pondered that. She only minded being perceived by those who comprehended what they saw? She was certainly alien! Yet her rationale made a certain devious sense. She was so far removed from him that she had little comprehension of his concerns. What relevance, then, did her gender have? He began to feel easier.

  In a moment the fluid cushion of the acceleration compartment drained, and Heem found himself in near-free-fall, in control of the ship. He jetted the Mission button. "Welcome to the competition," the ship's nozzle sprayed. "The target planet is Eccentric, in this System. The three host species are HydrO, Erb, and Squam."

  "Eccentric!" Heem exploded. "I anticipated Ggoff!"

  'I am not familiar with your local geography,' Jessica said. 'I presume this is System HydrO, so Planet Eccentric must be fairly close to your home-world. But where is Ggoff?'

  "This is not System HydrO!" Heem corrected her. "This is the colony System of Holestar, shared by three species. My home-world is Impasse. Ggoff is in System Erb, adjacent to us."

  'I'm getting confused already!'

  "Ggoff really is as close to us as to the Erbs; closer, considering that we have a better established sub-Sphere here. Ggoff is habitable by both Erbs and HydrOs, so—"

  'Since we're not going to Ggoff, stop confusing me with irrelevancies. What about Eccentric?'

  "Eccentric is quite a different roll."

  "The objective is an Ancient site," the ship's spray continued after its reasonable pause. "Suspected of being in operable condition."

  'An operative Ancient site!' Jessica exclaimed. 'That's the most important thing there is!' Then she realized: 'Which means this is going to be the most savagely contested competition of the century.'