Anthony, Piers Cluster 3 Kirlian Quest

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there are ways to tell. The removal of a portion of a galaxy would create an imbalance that would in due course be
reflected in its dynamics." He thought of the irregular blobs of Cloud 9 and Cloud 6. No, they could not have been
full spiral galaxies! "We keep coming back to their seeming irrationality. The purpose of the Amoeba I can
comprehend; it is straightforward power. But the Ancients-" He paused. "Maybe that's what Melody meant!"
"Who?"
"Melody of Mintaka, despoiler of the second Andromedan effort at Cluster unification. She played-"
"That drug," Sixteen said, worried. "It must have side effects I didn't know about."
Herald made a gust of tired mirth. "I met her in a Tarot Temple animation. She told me I would not want to know
the secret of the Ancients."
"Oh. That is the kind of thing an animation would say, isn't it?"
"Yes, unfortunately. But she seemed so very certain of herself. I believe she did know the secret, or part of it, in her
real life. She refused to divulge it then, also."
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"It must be fun to experience an animation."
Psyche, writhing in the orange flame.... "Not necessarily. You have not experienced it? The Temples are free; they
want converts."
"I have been there. The figures would not animate for me, or for any of my kind. We have insufficient aura."
Herald began to appreciate the tragedy of these Jets. They could not animate, they could not Transfer, they could not
return to their globular Cluster.
"Don't have pity on us," Sixteen puffed. "We do fine without aura. Had we not been confined by the Ancients, we
would have conquered the Cluster ourselves, two million years before your species achieved sapience."
Literally true, he thought. Any of the contemporary sapients could have conquered the Cluster, in time, given the
general vacuum of sapience that existed then. Strange that the achievement of sapience had been so nearly
simultaneous across the Cluster. In a way this coincidence was fortunate, for it had enabled the contemporary
m�lange of species to form a larger, cooperative culture, unifying the Cluster more perfectly than would have
occurred otherwise. Had the Jets broken out prematurely, they could have pre-empted it all. Still, that would not
have provided them with what they evidently craved beyond all else: aura.
Herald touched her with his aura, calming her ire. "If the Jets had conquered, then you and I would never have met."
"Your logic is suspect, but you see right through me, and I melt in your aura," she said. "I have never experienced
such strange, wonderful power before. Even Hweeh does not compare to you."
"He is superior in other aspects," Herald said. "He is more intelligent than I, more educated, and in any other
company, he would be regarded as the leader in aura too. Creatures of low aura cannot perceive aura as a separate
force. I am a healer, with a most potent and highly trained aura; therefore it becomes manifest to you in this
circumstance. But I apologize to you for misjudging your attitude; you are certainly competent, and you have been
taking good care of me in my infirmity."
"Accepted," she said, and by the ripple in her trace aura he knew it was honest, though he had not really misjudged
her and she knew it. She had a temper after all, but also a forgiving nature. "Actually, we are not the lowest-aural
forms in the Cluster. We have made a study of low-aural forms, and have found several nonaura species."
Herald was amazed. "Nonaura life? I thought that was impossible! The impulses of the nervous system and brain
give rise to semielectric fields that we call aura; this absence of aura implies absence of thought and feeling. In
many cultures, aural cessation is the legal definition of death. Species with no aura must be extremely primitive!"
"They are, generally. But we located one that has potential for sapience. It seems to be evolving rapidly, and in
another two million years or so-"
"Where?"
"In another globular Cluster, one orbiting Galaxy Pinwheel at extreme range. We suspect that glob was captured by
the galaxy recently, perhaps within the past three million years. It could have been an inter-Cluster wanderer. There
can be strange life-forms in isolated globs!"
"Not when you get to know them," Herald said.
"This species we call the Blanks. They do not use electrical impulses; their system is entirely mechanical. Control-
signals are transmitted through bony linkages, much as sound vibrations move through the bones of the ears of the
creatures of this Solarian system whose language we speak. The brain of these entities is a mechanical-chemical
network of remarkable complexity. It functions in ways we do not yet properly comprehend; we seem to have
underestimated the potential of nonelectric impulses. It operates well enough for potential sapience, we judge. The
Blanks are, by other definitions, alive. And presapient."
"Fascinating," Herald agreed. "It is a line of aural research I have overlooked, but I shall pursue it when I have
opportunity. This mechanical thought system; does something like that account for the Jets' low aura? No offense to
this host, which is a good one. But I must admit the fit is very tight. There hardly seems to be enough of a system for
my aura to occupy."
"Yes. The detail is dissimilar, but the principle relates. We have a combination system: an advanced mechanical and
chemical linkage coupled to a relatively vestigial electrical one. We are, in that sense, three quarters machine. Our
records show that much of our aura development has been recent, evolutionally; at the time of the Ancients we had
only one percent of our present aura."
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"This is amazing!" Herald said, amazed. "Yet you were sapient then."
"Yes. Our recent evolution has not been from subsapience to sapience, but from mechanical toward electrical.
Perhaps in time we would have developed Kirlian science and broken out of our confinement."
"None of the contemporary sapients were sapient at the time of the Ancients, except the Jets," Herald said slowly,
feeling that he was on the verge of a fundamental revelation. "There were myriad sapients in the Cluster, but the
Ancients exterminated them all-except the Jets."
"Maybe they thought they had exterminated us," Sixteen said. "They may have confined us, then suffered a record-
keeping error and overlooked the final act. Our very isolation may have saved us."
But Herald was on another thought. "They destroyed all the sapients of their time, and spared all the subsapients. A
straight, selfish act of empire-preservation. These Martians might have posed a threat, but the primitive Earthers did
not. And my own subsapient Slash ancestors would have been spared on the same basis. And all the other
contemporary species of the Empire. So it is no coincidence that new sapience emerged about the same time all over [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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