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“Letters of blood!” Flint echoed. “How well you understand!”

“In that code, debtors could be sold as slaves. You have abated your debt similarly—”

Abated his debt! “Not all cultures require so harsh a remedy,” Flint said, thinking of Tsopi the Polarian and the debt he had shared with her. How much better that system was!

The Shaman turned to face Flint. “Honeybloom is a fine woman, better than I credited at first. You have done right.”

Flint rolled to his knees and embraced the old man with his one arm. There were tears in his eyes. “You know me, Shaman!”

“It takes an old fool to know a young one. I note you have matured, and have mastered the art of transfer, only a rumor in my day. That was why they summoned you to Earth?”

“Yes. My Kirlian aura is very strong.” Flint shrugged. “I will give them the word about Honeybloom’s pension, and the Imps will do it.” Because there was now enough credit in Flint’s personal account to pay a hundred widows. As the most potent aura in the Sphere, he commanded an excellent rate of pay—for which he had had no use, until now. “But I wish to be sure that the money is used wisely, for the benefit of Honeybloom and my son. There might be those who would cheat her—”

“I will arrange for a trust,” the Shaman said. He smiled. “Protected by magic, of course. There will be no abuse.”

“I thank you,” Flint said.

The Shaman looked at him again. “You have aged.” That seemed incongruous, in view of Flint’s present body, but it was true.

“I have had to age,” Flint said. “I have become disgustingly civilized. I travel the galaxy, now—or at least our local cluster of Spheres.”

“Cluster.” The wrinkled, almost sightless eyes searched the sky again for the stars they could not see. “Will you tell me?”

Flint’s mission was secret—but he knew he could trust the Shaman, his childhood mentor, the man who had given him the intellectual basis for survival in the amazing galaxy. “I will tell you everything.”

And he did. It took several hours, but it was good in the telling, even the bad parts.

“Nothing could have given me more pleasure,” the Shaman said at the end. “You have restored my sight; you have shown me the universe.”

“No, only a few near Spheres,” Flint said modestly.

“And a near galaxy. Do you not see the identity of the Queen of Energy?”

“No. It baffles me. It could be any Sphere, even a supposedly friendly one. I have looked upon my enemy many times and not known her.”

“She is from Andromeda Galaxy—an enemy agent sent to eliminate you, for you are the major threat to their project. You can go anywhere they can go, even to Andromeda itself, seeking out their secrets.”

“Andromeda!” Flint exclaimed, suddenly seeing it. “That must be it!”

“And beware—for she obviously has a way to orient on your transfers. Wherever you go, she can go—and she will kill you, for she knows you while you do not know her, and you have humiliated her. Never forget she is a woman, though quite unlike Honeybloom. Whatever guise she wears, wherever she hails from, her motive is not yours. Hell hath no—”

“Hell is a straight line, in Polarian mythology,” Flint said. “And a dry place without zones in Spica. Shaman, you have saved my life!”

“I hope so. Tomorrow I will see your widow about your death. That was a very nice gesture on your part, Flint.”

“I do seem to achieve my best effects in the modes of my deaths! It was circular. What else was there to do?”

“Nothing else—but it took a man to do it.”

They stood up and shook hands, Imperial-style. “Farewell, friend,” the Shaman said.

“Farewell—friend,” Flint echoed, feeling the tears in his eyes that had not been there when he parted from Honeybloom. He had thought he had come to see her, but now he knew it had been for this conversation with the Shaman. He would never see either of them again.

9. Daughters of the Titan

*notice: multiple mattermissions to hyades open star cluster, including 200 kirlian enemy entity*

—hyades! that means they’ve found it! send agent immediately—

*she is only just freed from spica her kirlian is down*

—I know mattermit her there—

*to another galaxy? the energy expense*

—call for concurrence, all available entities—

oo :: CONCURRENCE

—that satisfy you? this is an emergency! mattermit her NOW!—

*(sigh) POWER*

—CIVILIZATION—

“We have another mission for you,” the Minister of Alien Spheres said as Flint animated his own, restored body.

“Not today, Imp,” Flint said. “My Kirlian’s so low I’m ready to phase into the next host I animate. I must have been six months on the road.”

“Three months. Your aura intensity is down to fifty percent, still the highest we have. You’re not in trouble yet. But in this case you’ll use your own body, because there are no hosts where you’re going. In fact, no life there at all.”

“What kind of a Sphere has no life on it?” Flint demanded, intrigued.

“An Ancient Sphere.”

The Minister paused to let that sink in. Flint knew about the Ancients, of course. Some of their earthworks were on Outworld, and others were scattered across the galaxy. The Ancients had had the hugest interstellar empire ever known, perhaps three million years ago; they had possessed secrets of technology that modern Spheres could only glimpse. “You have my attention,” Flint said.

“We have located a well-preserved Ancient colony in the Hyades, a hundred and thirty light-years from Sol,” the Minister said. “Do you know what that means?”

“Taurus Constellation. The Horns of the Bull.” If there was one geography Flint knew well, it was that of the near stars.

“The horns of a dilemma. The Hyades are at the approximate intersection of four Spheres: Sol, Polaris, Canopus, and Nath. All have colonies there, but these have their own primitive mores and we prefer not to involve them. This is a matter for the Imperial Planets—but, none of these four exercise specific authority in that region.”

“Because none want to. A hundred or so stars jammed into a cubic parsec of space. Hard to get a night’s sleep with all that starlight.”

“It’s not that bad. It’s an open cluster, not a closed one. The question is, which Sphere has jurisdiction now? This Ancient site may be the most important find in the galaxy. Who excavates it?”

“What makes you so sure there’s any more there than there’s been anywhere else? Three million years make a big difference.”

“This one’s on an airless planet—and it hasn’t been touched.”

“Airless!” Flint said. “No deterioration?”

“Almost none. It’s the best-preserved Ancient site ever discovered, we believe. A peppering of meteorite pocks, but apparently its location in the cluster protected it pretty well even from space debris. Otherwise, it’s intact.”

“Which means there may be a functioning machine, an Ancient machine—”

“Or an Ancient library that would enable us to crack the language barrier and learn all their secrets,” the Minister said, his pale face becoming animated. Flint had regarded the Ministers as basically devoid of individuality, but now a bit of character was beginning to show. This one really cared about his alien Spheres. “The Ancients had no Spherical regression; they were able to maintain a galactic empire with uniform culture and technology, as far as we can ascertain. They solved the energy problem. If we had that secret—”