Cluster by Piers Anthony Page B

light of the sun was sickeningly yellowish. This was Imp Earth, all right. Then the capsule penetrated another wall like a spearpoint through hide, and stopped inside.
    A bit dizzy, Flint got out.
    A man stepped up to grasp his hand. Flint was tempted to grasp that flabby appendage and throw the idiot over his shoulder, but restrained himself. It was better to ascertain the facts before acting, as the Shaman always reminded him. Then he could throw a few Imps about.
    â€œWelcome, Flint of Outworld. I am the Minister of Population. It was our excellent aura-intensity files that located you. The Council is ready for you now.”
    â€œUgh,” Flint grunted noncommittally. He followed the man through bare halls like the base of an overgrown vine forest. He felt confined, his vision, hearing, and smell restricted to the point of uselessness. Surely this was one of the fabled Earth prisons. He kept a nervous eye out for predators, though he knew that the larger dinosaurs had died out on Earth. Confinement like this might have killed them.
    The Council of Ministers was a group of undistinguished men in identical black tunics. Their faces and hands were bone white, except for one brown man. They introduced themselves in rapid order, though they hardly seemed sufficiently distinct from each other to warrant names. Flint made disinterested note in case there were ever any future relevance. He had a perfect memory for such details; it came of practice in hunting and scouting. The Shaman called it “eidetic.” Flint called it practical.
    â€œI'll come straight to the point,” the brown man said. He was the Regent, and seemed to have more character than the others. He probably hailed from a smart brown world. “You have a high Kirlian aura—er, do you know what that is?”
    â€œNo.” This was something the Shaman had not mentioned, unless it was the Imp name for intelligence. Keer-lee-an aura?
    â€œVery well,” the man said, with a grimace that showed it was not very well. “I'll explain. It is a kind of a field of force associated with living things, like a magnetic field—do you know what that is?”
    â€œNo.” Actually the Shaman had mentioned magnetism, the attractive force some metals exerted on other metals, but Flint was not in a good mood.
    â€œComplete savage,” one of the Ministers murmured in a comment he evidently thought Flint could not overhear or understand. The man did not realize that a complete savage would have acute hearing for wilderness survival. Flint was proud of his primitive heritage, though he realized the Minister had intended the remark disparagingly. Well, toss one more Imp. In due course.
    â€œHmm, yes,” the Regent said. “Well, some four or five hundred years ago, when Earth was just emerging into the space age, the twentieth century, you know, scientists discovered that there were phenomena that could not be explained by conventional means. ESP, PSI, dowsing, precognition, all fascinating concepts in their time–”
    One of the Ministers cleared his throat, and Flint realized why they liked to be so similar: it was difficult to tell which one had interrupted the discussion.
    The Regent frowned and continued. “An any rate, it was obvious that force fields of an unknown nature existed. In 1939 a Soviet electrician—uh, the Soviets were a nation or group, somewhat like a stellar system except they were right here on Earth—called Semyon Davidovich Kirlian photographed the patterns of bioluminescence—that is, a glow from living things—that appeared in certain high-frequency electrical fields. This effect resembled a fireworks display, with multicolored flares, sparks, twinkles, glows, and lines. In fact, a Kirlian photograph of a living human hand resembled the image of our galaxy with all its stars and clusters and swirls of dust and gas. And so this discovery–”
    â€œReally, our guest isn't