Free Viscous Circle by Piers Anthony Page A

this knowledge while losing your own identity."
    "That is my mystery."
    "I wonder—do you by any chance grasp the alien concept of War?"
    "Certainly. It is a matter of—"
    "No, no, do not define it! Someone would disband! I asked merely conjecturally. It is possible that you studied that concept, and mastered it, and suffered a near disbanding that damaged your memory without, ironically, eliminating the concept. Perhaps it was an intellectual crisis: that devastating concept could not cohabit with your personality, so one or the other had to go, and the concept prevailed. If so, you are unique among individuals. Others have not survived that concept."
    Rondl was not entirely satisfied, but could not refute this explanation. He did not see what was so mind-destroying about the concept of war. War occurred all over the Galaxy, and was a recognized manner of establishing empires. But he realized that it was not the motley collection of odd facts that set him apart so much as his unusual attitudes. He had not been repeating rote when he spoke of the problem of eliminating marriage; he had been expressing what he believed were genuine matters of concern. Yet of course Bands were not faced with any of these.
    What kind of shock could have replaced his Band values with alien ones? If mental revulsion had wiped out his memory, surely the first thing to go would be the offending concepts, not the innocent detail of normal existence. He was now almost afraid to seek the answer.
    Yet he inquired slightly further. "Do you have any idea what alien culture might have concepts such as the ones I have expressed?"
    "Which specific culture you researched?" Proft considered. "There are many thousands of Spheres in the Galaxy, and most of their creatures have notions of property. I would not know where to begin."
    "Perhaps my name is in the past course rolls."
    "Course rolls," Proft repeated. "That would be a form of record, an alien concept you have already referred to. We have no records of anything; Bands don't need them. Why should we keep track?"
    "To prevent students from falsifying their—" But this didn't work. There was nothing to falsify, and falsification itself was an alien concept. Bands learned what they needed and what they wished, departing when satisfied. So there were no records.
    "We thank you, Proft," Cirl said. "I agree that Rondl must have suffered some magnetic derangement that wiped out some of his real experience while leaving some of his education intact. So his responses are mixed."
    She led Rondl away. She was wrong, he was sure—but he decided not to pursue the matter further. He had a foreboding that disaster could come of too ardent a quest for knowledge of his past life, and he liked this life with her too well to place it in jeopardy.
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    Chapter 5:
    Invasion
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    The news flashed rapidly through the Band society: alien monsters were intruding into the Band region of space. They were utterly horrible, possessing gross, fat limbs, liquid-filled eyeballs, and teeth like those of a Trugd. They had no magnetism; they tramped on planetary surfaces vaguely like Bellatrixians, except that they could not even jump far. Their ponderous nether appendages hauled forward one at a time, leaving indentations in the ground. The creatures could not fly; they employed tremendous devices to convey them from planet to planet and even from place to place aboard a particular planet.
    Why were they coming? No one knew. One Band had been in the vicinity when a huge alien vessel materialized near a neighbor star. He and a friend had recognized the alien nature of it and concluded that the creatures were lost, and the friend had gone to that ship to proffer assistance, flashing back spot reports. The aliens had grasped that Band physically and hauled him into their vessel. In a moment had come the magnetic ripple of his disbanding. The aliens had destroyed him without even bothering to communicate,