Chaining the Lady

19. Bog of Jelly

:: what? ::

The £ plodded along the channel, her great paws setting down gently: one, two, three. She rotated slowly as she moved, and her mahout spun his wings and rotated in the opposite direction so as to keep facing forward. The elegance in this mode of travel was the hallmark of the planet.

Melody explored the mind of her new host. She had taken it hostage, but did not wish to damage it. This entity was Cnom the £, a new-mature female of gentle disposition. She was on her way to fetch the aromatic Deepwood that only her kind could collect, supervised by the mahout upon her back.

Cnom was more intelligent than her Dash mahout, but lacked the initiative or desire to oppose his will. The Dash were ambitious, organizing, accomplishment-oriented creatures, given to concerns about forthcoming millennia and matters of the distant past, while the £ preferred to take life as it came. Under Dash direction the planet had become the heart of a major Sphere of Andromeda, though it remained primitive. That pleased Cnom, and she was happy to contribute her physical labors to that end.

Melody was not so pleased. “This is a form of sapient slavery,” she told Cnom. “My culture disapproves of that.”

“Perhaps you should return to your culture,” the £ suggested amicably.

“I hope to do that. But it is not feasible at the moment.” And Melody explained how she had been captured by a Quadpoint in Milky Way galaxy, and transferred to this planet as prisoner. But by willing herself to arrive elsewhere than intended, she had landed in an unplanned host. “You see, my galaxy is at war with Andromeda. I regret imposing on you, but it is essential that I recover my freedom.” She did not choose to clarify how important her freedom was; after all, she was not at all sure that she could do anything to save her galaxy now. But she had to keep trying.

How rapidly would the hostages get the energy-transfer equipment set up? How could she prevent it, alone in an alien galaxy?

Yet Flint of Outworld had succeeded, even after he had died in the Hyades. His aura had carried on long enough to neutralize the enemy agent. She was not even dead yet; surely she had a chance!

Cnom marched on, unperturbed by the intrusion of another mind. Melody realized that this was because of the £ relationship with the Dash. An alien personality within the mind was little different from one perched upon the back.

Upon the back. Melody knew she would not be able to do much while the mahout remained. But without the mahout, her host would be deemed “wild” and subject to restriction until assigned a new mahout. That was the way of this planet.

She looked around. This was easy to do, since Cnom’s three eyes were situated on the top, side, and bottom of the main torso. That was so the £ could examine the sky or upper sea, the ground, and the surrounding area for forage and danger—simultaneously. The side-eye, brought in a full panoramic view as the body turned; only by closing it could she avoid that information.

The Dash, in contrast, carried all three of his eyes below, as flying creatures related to the world primarily in a downward direction. Of course the Dash no longer flew —not with their wings, anyway. Their brains had grown too large for the necessary economy of body mass. But perched on their £, they still were mainly concerned with a down focus.

The surrounding vegetation was luxuriant. Bright translucent feathers caught the sunlight, sending prismatic splays to the lower foliage. Each plant utilized a different wavelength; without the feather-separation, many would wither. Feather-strands overhung the transport-channel, so that rainbow bands of color illuminated it. Dust motes picked it up, making the view ahead and behind a marvel of visual sensation.

Melody had had only the vaguest notion of Andromedan life, but had somehow supposed it must be drab and disciplined, as behooved the militaristic nature of its governing Spheres. This was as lovely as anything she knew in Milky Way. How could a species that resided in beauty like this wish to destroy the beauty of a neighboring galaxy?

Now the channel descended to the swampy level. There was no sharp demarcation; the atmosphere merely thickened. At first this intensified the colors, but then its added refraction interfered, making the rays cross and blend, leaving the pattern vague. The plants thinned and changed. The first bog-floaters appeared, suspended in the viscosity.

The powerful legs of the £ forged on while the Dash furled his wings and dug his claws into the almost impervious hide of her back.

Soon they were into the full swamp. The atmosphere had become jelly, turning gray, then black as its substance denied the light. Melody closed her eyes, Cnom’s eyes; they were not needed here, and she had other senses. She had nictitating membranes she could use to protect the lenses from the jelly if she did need to look around below. But as the light became useless, sound improved. The jelly transmitted every type of vibration, and the £ skin was hypersensitive to this. Thus she knew the location and often the identity of other entities within the bog, and could communicate with any of them.

This was the true society of the £. Today there were few direct physical threats to these huge creatures, largely because of the efforts of the Dash, who had systematically routed out the nestholes of the major predators and organized efficient alarm procedures. This left the £ free to indulge in intellectual pursuits while performing undemanding menial labors. It was a wholly satisfactory situation, as thought was facilitated by physical exertion. Cnom tapped into vibrations from every side, warming to the camaraderie around her as she plowed on.

“Excellent salt-flavored wood here, enough for five loads,” one of her friends was emanating. No need to give coordinates; the vibrations were excellent locators, and the £ memory was precise.

“Gas bubble rising slowly, toxic,” another warned without alarm. Although entry into such a bubble would be extremely uncomfortable, even fatal, the £ could easily stay clear. Only if a £ were trapped on a narrow branch would there be a real threat. But thanks to this timely warning, the others would route themselves conveniently around the bubble.

“Rendezvous approaches,” another announced. To this there was a wide pattern of response. All knew of the periodic rendezvous, but reminders were constant because of the interest of the occasion. Cnom felt a special thrill, for she had only recently qualified for her first offspring.

“A riddle,” another vibrated. “Eye opens, sees more than three.”

Instantly Cnom’s alert mind pounced on the problem. Her mental paws batted it about, studying it from different angles. Three eyes always saw more than one, unless some special circumstance…

“Your top eye encounters a freak beam in the deeps!” a £ vibrated.

“No,” the riddle-giver answered happily.

Still, there was a clue, thought Cnom. No eyes were useful in the deep jelly. So one could see as much or as little as three. But how could one see more than three?

“A Dash machine-optic!” another guessed.

“No.” The riddle-giver was delighted; one more wrong guess and he would have a social victory.

Another clue, Cnom thought. Not necessarily a £ eye. Perhaps a Dash eye, in the deeps…

“Your Dash has fallen asleep!” Cnom vibrated exultantly. “One of his eyes has opened on a dream, and sees more than exists when he is awake.”

There was a massive general vibration of appreciative mirth: The Dash were the butts of many £ jokes, though there was no malice in this. The Dash pretensions and ambitions were foreign to the tolerant £ mind. What vast dreams a dull mahout might have as he rode along on a routine wood-fetching mission!

Cnom had answered the riddle, and scored a point. Her status had elevated a notch. She felt a pleasant, unaffected pride. She was, Melody realized, a nice entity.

“Spore of predator,” someone else announced.

Now Cnom’s pleasure was diminished by alarm. Few predators remained, but those that did were dangerous. They were jelly swimmers, capable of much faster progress than the £. Unless this one was located and driven off, it would be a constant source of nervousness.

“Inform the Dash,” someone vibrated.

“Done. They are now scanning the vicinity with their machines.” To the £, machines were useless oddities, except on occasions like this.

Cnom relaxed. The Dash machines were not infallible, but the predator would probably be routed before it did any damage.

The channel disappeared as the swamp got deeper. Now Cnom set foot on a large lattice-root. The thing bowed under her weight, but supported it; such growths were well anchored and very strong and were buoyed by the jelly. The root network was the principal highway of the bog, although only the £ knew how to use it for safe transport to the favored harvesting sections. One misstep would mean a fall and descent into unplanned depths, which could mean injury from too-sudden pressure increase. But the £ did not misstep, and their slow natural pace gave them time to accommodate to the changes of pressure. Thus this lattice was a unique and wonderful convenience.

The contour of the bog continued down, but now Cnom moved on the level, her paws finding firm lodgings on the wood despite the slippery surrounding jelly. The pads of her feet molded themselves to the living contours. Her body narrowed so that a smaller cross-section moved forward through the jelly despite her constant rotation. Since she had no rigid interior structure, she could maintain this attitude without difficulty. Her tentacles helped the jelly pass overhead. The trick was not to oppose the stuff, but to cooperate with it; properly encountered, it provided stability and pleasant skin abrasion, brushing off parasites.

The wood Cnom was headed for was especially deep, near the limit of the mahout’s endurance. The Dash were unable to move effectively below the surface of the bog, and their light bony structure could not withstand much pressure. So the £ were very careful.

Melody stepped from branch to branch, working her way down slants. It was an especially fine growth Cnom had located: wood with really compelling fragrance, suitable for the most sophisticated building. Scentwood grew slowly from the utter depths; only when it reached this height could it be harvested without unconscionable damage to the mother-tree. The depth tolerance of Dash and the height limitation of the wood was a fortunate coincidence. Perhaps, however, it was no coincidence at all, but rather a symbiotic adaptation, for the wood was vital to Dash civilization on this planet. It was the only sufficient available substance possessing the qualities of weight, insulation, strength, durability, esthetics, and workability necessary to modern architecture. Without it, Dash buildings would collapse. Rock was too heavy for the spongy ground; metal was reserved for space ventures; ceramics tended to fracture when the ground shifted and quivered. And the wood smelled so good! The odor repelled the borers that attacked other vegetative material, while attracting sapient entities.

Melody, from another galaxy, nevertheless found the concept of the wood most attractive. Much of this was because of Cnom’s enthusiasm, the source of Melody’s information. But it was still a value even when considered objectively, for it was a renewable resource whose natural situation prevented ruinous exploitation. It was a working civilization that was based on wood from the deeps and a firm foundation!

But the Dash had set out to destroy another galaxy merely to achieve more energy. Could it be that the Dash chafed under the natural limits of scentwood?

Cnom halted. In the total darkness of the middle bog, she had sniffed out her cache of lemoncurl scentwood. The latticewood stalks rose past the branch, not touching. Lattice was a vastly different species of wood, never harvested for construction. Access to the bog would be virtually impossible without the lattice. And the bog protected the lattice, which would deteriorate in the open air as it lacked the aroma to fend off infestation.

She reached out carefully with one tentacle, bracing her feet firmly and flattening her body to gain additional purchase against the jelly. This was the delicate part: to break off the top without losing any to the deeps and without overbalancing herself. The Dash mahout helped, tilting his little body to focus all three eyes on the dimly glowing target in a manner Cnom could not, and directing her by appropriate pressures of his claws. His depth perception, even through the jelly, was perfect; membranes shielded his eyes and filtered the lifeglow of the lemoncurl, and trifocal distance gauging was excellent. It was the lack of physical mobility, not lack of perception, that kept the Dash out of the bog when alone.

Cnom’s tentacle, unerringly guided by the mahout, touched the tree, curled around it, gripped. She shifted her mass, drawing back, exerting increasing pull, until the trunk began to tick. In a moment it would snap, throwing her off balance, but she was adept, knowing exactly when the breaking point approached, shifting as the tree cracked.

It snapped. She shifted, swung about, shoved hard against the jelly, and recovered her stability. She had the trunk, a fine big section of lemoncurl suitable for the most elegant construction. Another source of pride.

“You could do this pretty well without the mahout,” Melody observed. “It would have taken you longer to put your first tentacle on the tree, that’s all.”

“There would be no point in doing it without the mahout,” Cnom replied. “£ does not need scentwood.”

Unarguable logic! “Without the Dash, you would be free.”

“We are free now.”

“But you obey their directives.”

“We cooperate with them. We are better off with them than we were without them.”

So it was regarded as a symbiotic relationship, not servitude. The £ was sincere; she had no desire to rid herself of her mahout. She could readily have done so, but that would have restricted her freedom to wander through Dash premises (though she really had no desire to), while the Dash could not penetrate the jellybog alone. It was not the system of Mintaka, but it sufficed for the stellar empire of Dash in Andromeda.

Here in Sphere Dash, according to information gleaned from the hostages, lay the secret of hostage transfer. In fact, this was the very planet of discovery. Obviously the entities of this Sphere, not especially sophisticated otherwise, had stumbled across a functional Ancient site and discovered its secret. If Melody could find out what that secret was, and get the news back to Imperial Outworld before the Andromedans consolidated their victory there… if Captain Mnuhl had held them off long enough… well, it was a chance, perhaps the only one remaining for her galaxy.

Yet suppose she did learn the technology of hostage transfer? How could that help her galaxy? To all intents and purposes it had already lost. She needed much more than parity now!

“Something is occurring,” another £ vibrated. “Emergent couples are being halted at periphery of bog.”

Melody knew immediately that this had to concern her. The Dash command was aware of her escape from their net, and was now checking potential hosts. They knew she could not have drifted far from her assigned arrival point, so a saturation testing of the region would reveal her aura.

Still, they obviously had not had a specific tracer on her, or they would have spotted her instantly. There were thousands of potential hosts, all of which had to be checked.

“This is very interesting,” Cnom said. “You really are in demand by Dash.”

“Yes, I really am,” Melody agreed. “The very existence of my galaxy may be at stake. This is why I shall resort to desperate measures in order to preserve my freedom. I must seek and find the key to neutralize the hostage procedure.”

“You would probably find what you seek in the Dash Imperial capital annex,” Cnom said. “I do not have business there.”

“We may make an exception,” Melody said, “since I do have business there.” She had complete control over the host-body, but had not exerted it, preferring to keep the relationship amicable.

The immediate question was what to do about this search. If she broke ranks and left the route to the wood-mill, she would give herself away. So it was better to keep going, hoping she could somehow avoid detection. Mechanical aura analysis was a simple business when aural units were available, but such units were phenomenally complex, not trundled about needlessly. So the verification would be awkward and time-consuming. They might resort to some sort of trick questioning. She could try to thwart that by letting Cnom respond, but then the £ could betray her. Except that the £ did not talk with the Dash.

As the magnets did not talk with the Solarians?

“We do not concern ourselves with Spherical matters,” Cnom explained. “They are not of sufficient interest, and we cannot travel in space.”

Not physically, and not economically. The £ body was huge, massing many Solarian tons; in fact, they resembled Earth elephants, or the more placid herbivorous dinosaurs of Outworld. A sapient entity had to be small enough to be moved economically via mattermission. A hundred Dash could cross the galaxy with the energy expenditure of a single £.

Transfer, however, was quite different. It cost no more to transfer the aura of a monster than of a mite. Why hadn’t the £ gone to space in this fashion?

For two reasons, Cnom’s memory informed her. First, the £ had little interest in extraplanetary cultures or desire to experience them, and less desire to vacate their own ideal bodies. Second, Dash controlled the transfer facilities. The £ lacked the incentive to make any effort to change the situation.

“Milk from contented cows,” Melody murmured to herself, drawing on an expression that had spread like Tarotism through the segment but had lost its meaning in the process. Informed scholarly opinion was that cows had been bovine pets connected with a fluid called milk, noted for their placidity. The meaning today was that it was a waste of effort to try to change anything that lacked the desire to be changed.

Melody shook her head, mentally. She had known intellectually that Sphere-level intelligence could exist without the drive toward dominion, but this was the first time she had experienced it personally. How many other sapient species existed in the universe, as deserving of Spherical status as their neighbors, but denied it owing to circumstance?

“We desire space no more than your kind desires the bog,” Cnom pointed out.

An apt parallel. “Very well,” Melody said. “I shall not wish for you a lifestyle foreign to your nature. But you should understand that not only my own lifestyle, but the very existence of my kind are being destroyed by Dash and its allies of Andromeda. They are attempting to deprive my galaxy of its energies. All of us will perish. In your terms, it is as though Dash found a way to dry up the entire bog, leaving only a blank hole.”

Horror swept through the £. “That would be wrong! The bog is vital to our existence!”

“A problem always becomes more serious when it affects your own demesnes,” Melody remarked.

But she got no further rise out of her host. “Were our bog threatened, we should have to act. But this is not the case.” And Cnom marched on up the channel toward the rarefied jelly that phased into atmosphere, bearing her precious burden of lemoncurl.

As they emerged onto solid land, a Dash mounted on a huge male £ hailed Cnom’s mahout. The challenger’s triple wings whirled, emitting the controlled vibrations of speech sound. “Pause, Dash, for inspection.” The £ skin picked up the vibrations and the £ mind comprehended their meaning, but Cnom paid little attention; Dash affairs were not of much interest.

Melody, however, listened closely. The moment she was exposed, she would have to act, destroying the inspector and mahout and retreating into the bog. But that could be only a temporary reprieve, and she hoped to escape detection entirely if possible.

—Dismount, enter the aural booth,— the officer said. Now that they were close, Melody was aware of the peculiar Dash speech intonation, a function of the wings. It was sound—but not the kind of sound she normally heard. Dash sound.

Then she realized: They had brought a portable Kirlian detector. This was a serious search, all right!

Cnom curled a free tentacle up so that the mahout could perch on it. She lifted the mahout across to the back of the other £, where the box was tied, without ever disturbing her load of lemoncurl. She did not communicate with the other £, because here in the rarefied air her skin could not create a suitable vibration. “Yes, a problem always becomes more serious when it affects your own demesnes,” Melody remarked. The £ were necessarily mute outside of the jelly, another reason their intelligence was ignored by the Dash.

The mahout emerged from the box. —What is this nuisance about?— he inquired. —My aura’s the same as it ever was, and it was verified only a while ago.—

—Imperial matter,— the officer said. Then, his wings whirring confidentially: —Some captive missed the host, and they think she’s in one of us.—

—A female? If she were in me, I’d know it!— And the two males whirred together in male humor, the same across the universe with minor variations.

The mahout remounted, —On— his claws said by their pressure in Cnom’s hide. There was no malice in this; the creature’s feet were not strong enough to cause pain to a £.

Cnom resumed her rotary progress.

“But they didn’t check us!” Melody exclaimed.

“Why should they check a £?”

And Melody realized what had been hidden in her host’s mind amid the myriad other facts. The Dash did not regard the £ as true participants in Sphere civilization, though the level of £ intelligence was known. Millennia of experience had demonstrated the £ disinterest in the artifacts of interstellar empire. Thus the £ were ignored, apart from their laboring capacities; they were beasts of burden who never gave away private matters. Male and female Dash routinely copulated upon the backs of their great steeds. Military consultations were held while riding; thus the £ were aware of Dash strategies, but the information never leaked to other Dash.

The hostages aboard the Segment Etamin flagship had treated the magnets in a similar fashion, regarding the magnets as intelligent beasts of burden. Melody had capitalized on this attitude in reviving the derelict ships. Yet she could not conclude that there was anything wrong in this. If some species liked it that way and were mutually satisfied, why not?

But more immediately, it meant that this ingrained cultural conditioning had caused the Dash command to overlook the obvious. It had not occurred to them that a £ could be a host.

20. Foiling the Lancer

—I said she escaped us, quadpoint—

:: must I do everything myself? is there no end to your incompetence? after winning the war for you must I chase after the high-kirlian prisoner I forwarded directly to you? how could you bungle such a simple thing as a transfer? ::

—inquire of your quadpoint command in etamin he transferred her using captured adapted milky way unit unreliable for an aura of that magnitude—

:: her? I had understood it was a male entity ::

—your quadpoint command neglected to inform our local technicians of that modification we provided a male host—

:: so that nemesis who extended the resistance in segment etamin far beyond what it should have been is now loose in andromeda! trace her and kill her! ::

—we cannot do that, quadpoint she is in a special situation not anticipated she occupies a £ host—

:: I have heard of your groundbeasts why should that make any difference? ::

—the covenant prevents direct damage to any £—

:: covenant! surely there are mechanisms! employ them! ::

—the mechanism of proper caution at the outset would have—

:: POWER! ::

—CIVILIZATION—

Cnom deposited her load of fine lemoncurl at the mill, and her mahout received congratulations on its quality and a note of credit on his record. No praise was wasted on the £, of course, and Cnom neither expected it nor desired it. It was her task to do the work; the intricacies of record-keeping were the responsibility of Dash.

They returned to the bog, following the routine. Melody had to protect her thoughts by clothing them in technical terminology of little interest to her host. She didn’t want to reveal her developing strategy. Whatever she decided to do, Cnom was unlikely to see it her way.

One thing was certain: She could not afford to settle into the scentwood-hauling operation indefinitely. Once the vital power started flowing from the Milky Way to Andromeda, this robber-galaxy would become so strong that effective resistance would become impossible. Now was the time to act, and Melody was the one to take the action.

The first problem was how to eliminate the mahout, while retaining the freedom to go into the Dash city.

As the jelly thickened, the £ vibrational interchanges resumed. This dialogue was ignored by the mahouts, if they were able to pick it up at all.

“Weak section of lattice,” someone announced. “Route around it until it strengthens.” And Cnom noted the location carefully, for she did not want the inconvenience of coming upon it accidentally.

“Alien intellect visiting, overlooked by Dash,” Cnom announced. Melody was startled. While she was shielding her own thoughts, she had not been monitoring those of her host. Well, perhaps no harm was done, since the Dash paid no attention to the £ net.

“This explains the search,” another responded. “Dash does not like alien visitors.”

There was a vibration of general mirth. The ways of the Dash were so quaint. They, who ranged the galaxies, objected to visitors!

“Spoor of predator,” another announced.

“Another?”

“Same one as before. Lancer, large.”

“Were not the Dash notified?”

“They aborted their chase, concentrating on the alien presence.”

“The alien among us.”

“Then let the alien disperse the lancer.”

Melody liked this less and less, but hesitated to speak on her own behalf. For one thing, she wasn’t sure the Dash weren’t listening; they surely could if they wanted to. The £ would not give her away directly—not intentionally —but she could give herself away. And what was this about fighting a predator?

The vibration of agreement had, it seemed, committed her. Already, by what means she lacked the time to verify, they were routing the predator to her vicinity. She was responsible for its menace, since she had distracted the Dash authorities, even though she was here in Andromeda at Dash instigation. Therefore she must abate the menace. Quite logical and immediate, to a culture that did not concern itself with things distant in place or time. Unexpressed but inherent, was the understanding that if they honored their part by not exposing her to the Dash, she must honor hers by dealing with the lancer.

“But how can I do anything about this predator?” Melody demanded of her host. “I don’t even know what it is!”

“It will be difficult,” Cnom agreed. “I could not do it myself. We depend on your alien knowledge.”

It seemed the £ had a stiff requirement for intruders who caused inconvenience! Yet it was fair in its fashion.

They were back near the lemoncurl stand. Abruptly Melody received the vibrations of an approaching creature, a large, smooth one whose passage was too fast and straight to be bound to the latticewood paths. A swimming entity.

Cnom went rigid with terror—and so did the Dash mahout. No help there! Melody took over the body totally, having no choice. She was on her own.

Balancing on the lattice, she oriented on the lancer. She did not face it because she had no face, no fixed aspect of body. She used the sonic vibrations to identify its size, shape, location, and motion. The echoes of its emanations identified the lemoncurl stalks to the side, the neighborhood lattice, and, fuzzily, the more distant branches of latticewood passing above and below this level. It was as good as seeing, better in a way, because she did not have to focus on it all.

The lancer was a sleek, long creature propelled by three threshing fins to the rear and guided by three more along its torso. It was superbly equipped to slide rapidly through the jelly; no other bog denizen could match it. Its front end tapered into a long, hard, deadly spike designed to pierce the globular body of its prey and to suck out the life-juices therein. While it was traveling, that spike sprayed out a thin mist of acid that dissolved the jelly in front, causing it to give way more readily to the thrust of the main torso.

In a flash, Melody’s £ memory filled her in on related details. Once the middle layers of the bog had been fraught with terror. The upper section was the domain of the land creatures; only the bottom deeps were secure, for the lancers could not move well there. But the £ could not live in the deeps continuously; their bodies required the release of the upper regions. So their population had been culled in the region of thickest jell, and few lived to old age.

Usually the victims survived the first attack, but an uncomfortable convalescence was required to restore the depleted juices. As most of the necessary food was on land, the £ had to walk up through the bog repeatedly, and be subject to repeated attacks by the lancer. The second puncture was more apt to be terminal, and a third almost invariably.

A convalescent £ could not work effectively; therefore the Dash had initiated their bog-safety program, which had been of immense mutual benefit. Far better to haul heavy wood than to suffer the ravages of the lancer!

Melody had thoughts of her own. If the £ were able to direct a lancer to a specific region of the bog, why couldn’t they have directed the creatures all the way out of the bog, and been free of the menace long ago? And it was strange that so large and fierce a predator should show up now, after a long period of relative quiet. Few dangerous predators were left in this region. They kept mainly to the park bogs elsewhere on the planet where they were not hunted.

But her immediate concern was how to deal with this particular thing. The creature was so large that even this huge body of Cnom’s would be severely depleted by the feeding. It would mean a great deal of pain and inconvenience for the host, and would eliminate Melody’s chance to go after the secret of hostage transfer. She simply could not afford that!

The lancer was not a sapient; it could not think in civilized terms or master stellar technology. It was merely an animal, a super-predator who had never needed more than its mobility and power. Melody had intelligence, information, and aura, yet what could these avail her against the direct simple thrust of that spike? The lancer could move much faster than she could, and if it happened to miss the first thrust, it would merely circle about and attack again. She could not flee it, and she could not even dodge it well, for she was limited to the narrow lattice branch.

There was no time to consider further. The lancer slid through the jelly, its rigid tubular spike centered on her body. Melody reacted automatically for her own kind: She jumped to the side.

Disaster! She was not in her Mintakan body, where a jump would have lifted her only fractionally amid a ferocious clatter of castanet-feet. She was not in her Solarian host, in which the same effort would have hurled her to the ground. In her present £ host, she went spinning to the side of the lattice branch over-balanced.

The lancer cruised past, one of its stabilizing fins almost brushing her body. She had avoided it, but now she was falling, unable to recover her balance. If only she had flippers to thrust at the jell and pull her through! But that was the mode of the Spican Impact.

She reached out with all three tentacles and caught the adjacent lemoncurl trunk. Still acting on a confused amalgamation of instincts, she clung to that trunk, drawing her body into it.

No good! Her weight was too much. The trunk snapped off, and she resumed her tumble through the jell, clutching the aromatic wood.

Meanwhile the lancer turned smoothly and oriented its lance again. It did not care whether she was on the lattice or off it; it had no need for such support. It angled down, accelerating. Tiny thin bubbles streamed about it as the slipstream of thinned jelly parted.

Melody swung the lemoncurl trunk at it.

Another disaster. She was not anchored, but was slowly dropping through the jell. She had little proper leverage to move so massive an object quickly. Her tentacles were meant for reaching, grasping, drawing in, and holding, not for full-scale manipulation. And the surrounding jell made a rapid sidewise strike impossible. She wrenched a tentacle, and twisted body and trunk in a kind of semicircle that succeeded only in shifting the angle of the descent.

But again this surprised the lancer, who missed her narrowly. Melody suspected that that was about as far as her luck was likely to extend.

She was sliding down on a nether branch. She managed to tilt her log so that it formed a kind of plane. She flattened her torso, adjusting the angle of descent so that she landed on the branch instead of missing it. She had a serviceable tool!

The lancer looped about and down, and charged again. It could play this game as long as she could!

Melody caught her balance and braced herself, still clutching the log in two tentacles. Tool? Shield!

As the lancer struck at her with its devastating accuracy, she shoved the log between her body and the spike.

The impact shoved her back along the branch. But she was several times as massive as the predator, and retained her balance. In fact, she had the creature trapped: Its lance had pierced the trunk and stuck there.

But she had counted her victory too soon. The predator reversed its propeller fins and jerked back—and the spike drew free.

Afraid and angry, Melody turned the log endwise and rammed it at the retreating body. Now she had fair purchase for her feet again, and was getting the hang of her weapon. One tentacle hurt, but the spin of her body compensated for this. Like a rod attached to a camshaft, the log struck forward.

The lancer, amazed at this aggressive behavior by its prey, retreated further. Melody continued her advance, trying to jam the log on the spike, so as to nullify the point. Then she might be able to take hold of the creature’s slippery body in her tentacles and crush it…

But the lancer had had enough. This atypical behavior interfered with its set style of attack; it could not adapt. It curved its long body, revved up its fins, and shot away into the gloom.

“Come back and fight, you coward!” Melody vibrated after it, furious. She had not had the option of fleeing! But the creature paid no heed.

Now the vibrations came in from all around. “The alien has vanquished the lancer!”

“Using a load of scentwood!”

“Astonishing!”

“The lancer is fleeing the region!”

“A double victory for the alien.”

“Triple victory.”

Then a more tremulous vibration, as of an immature £: “Is that a riddle? What are these victories?”

Melody wondered herself about that, as she picked her way along the lattice route to her former elevation.

“First, she overcame the lancer,” the parent £ explained carefully. “Next, she concealed her identity from the Dash, who had sent the lancer to identify her. When it fled, it could no longer betray her location; its aural bleeper shows only where it is, alive or dead.”

Melody’s feet almost missed their placements. The Dash had sent the lancer!

“Third, she eliminated her mahout, so she is now free to range by herself,” the parent concluded.

Eliminated her mahout? She had been planning to do that, but the arrival of the lancer had distracted her. Now her store of host-knowledge provided the explanation. The Dash could not sustain as much pressure as the £ could; the mahout’s mind had been damaged by her descent to the lower lattice when she fell from her branch. The mahout lived, but was no longer sapient.

More significant than her personal success, however, was the underlying attitude of the £. They had not betrayed her—but they had not helped her either. They had directed the lancer to her because they considered it to be her responsibility, but they had not burdened her with its significance until the issue had been decided. They had in their fashion put her on trial, and now that she had vindicated herself, they let her have the information she needed.

Melody tried to understand the genesis of this philosophy, but it was, naturally, alien to her. She was left with the conclusion that the £ knew much more of the purposes and mechanisms of the Dash than they advertised, and that £ cooperation was not necessarily passive. She moved among them as a lancer did, not precisely an enemy, but certainly no friend. And the £ had ways to make her behave.

She decided she had better get her business done. It would be better to deal with the Dash, whom she knew to be her enemies, than with the £, whom she did not really understand.

She shifted the log to make it comfortable, taking the strain off her injured tentacle. She moved on to the channel, and out into the thin air. The mahout remained perched on her back, as his claws clenched when at rest; it looked as if he were directing her. That was exactly the way she wanted it. Mahouts often snoozed while their mounts carried on, so his condition hardly mattered, so long as he was there. No one would challenge her while she seemed to be under the direction of the mahout.

Her ruse could not be sustained long, but that hardly mattered, because she had to help her galaxy quickly or it would be too late anyway. So now she had a program of sorts: first, get the hostage secret; then get the information to an entity in authority in Segment Etamin. Then what happened to her didn’t matter. Like Flint of Outworld, she could give her life for her galaxy.

She knew the odds were still against her, but they were better odds than before. Her capture by Hammer of Quadpoint had turned out to be a break for her, because she was now much closer to the secret that controlled two galaxies.

She emerged into atmosphere. No mounted Dash challenged her this time; evidently that particular search had been called off. Perhaps they had spotted her aura in that prior check, but had chosen to deal with her indirectly. But why?

The question brought the answer: because of the covenant between the species of Dash and £. The one could not deliberately harm the other.

She proceeded to the mill, and the Dash in charge there marked off the load, glancing incuriously at the hole in the wood where the lancer had spiked it. Fortunately he did not try to converse with the mahout, who merely sat on her back. Let the loafer snooze!

Melody started dutifully back toward the bog. But when she was out of sight of the mill, she turned off at right angles and cut through the feather trees toward the path Cnom’s information said led to the Dash city. It was no coincidence that the capital was so close, since that was where her intended host was. She had missed her transfer recipient by only a few miles; pinpoint accuracy, considering that it had been an intergalactic effort. But this partial freedom could not last long. No doubt the Dash were even now zeroing in on her again, setting up a way to nab her without hurting her £ host. She had to act first.

She found a new channel and stepped down into it gratefully. The paws of the £ were not hoofs; they were adapted to maintaining lodging on the curved lattice of the bog rather than for tramping down the hard rocks of the dry land. The channels, though concavely curved, were smooth, and the dirt in them was no harder than wood. In addition, their narrow width and curving routes were familiar.

This was a toward-city channel, fortunately. All channels, like all lattice paths, had to be one-way, as there was no room for £ to pass one another. The channels could have been made wider, but that would have destroyed their compatible contours and decreased their similarity to the bog-lattice. This way, their natural contours led them through the refraction feathers with minimum disruption.

She emerged into a clearing. Ahead was the city; a towering mass of wooden spires, quite pretty in its fashion. Melody was reminded of the houses of cards Solarians built. She had entertained herself with some of these during waits aboard the Ace of Swords. Each individual card was flimsy, but the buttressed structure assumed a remarkable stability.

She spun closer, concerned lest she be challenged. But though she passed many mounted mahouts as the channels converged, none bothered her. Obviously it was assumed that her own mount was taking her somewhere on private business.

The splendor of the city did not diminish as she approached it. Trust a bird-species to have uplifting taste in architecture! The wood had been shaped into elegant configurations, with many small passages for Dash to haul themselves through. Though they could no longer actually fly, it was evident that given the proper footing they could propel themselves through the vertical lattice of the buildings with flight-like facility.

Now there was a problem. Obviously the most secret offices of the Dash transfer command would be high up, and it was manifestly impossible for a £ to go there. The merest brush of Cnom’s huge body against a lower structure would collapse a section of the city; ascending a tower was out of the question.

Could she locate the spot, then attack the base of the building and bring it down to her level? No, that would destroy her own pretense of anonymity and be pointless. She had to observe, not strike. It was knowledge she required, not physical victory. For now.

First she had to locate the Kirlian section of town. Her aura and her training had made her super-sensitive to Kirlian emanations; if she got within a reasonable distance of a strong Kirlian source, she would know it. Maybe she would have a chance to transfer to a Dash host and continue her investigation.

Of course her own aura would betray her identity similarly—if the Dash were alert. They should be, since she had twice escaped their net. But perhaps the inherent foolishness of their bureaucracy would help her again. The last thing they should anticipate would be her strike into the heart of the city.

It was a major gamble—but she had to take it.

She moved into the city, which now resembled the land-forest, with buildings in lieu of trees. Even the refraction of light was similar, though here it was done by glass lenses instead of living feathers. This was, her £ memory told her, to prevent the shaded lower passages from becoming musty.

Stalls for £ opened off to the sides. Healthy £ preferred to sleep in the bog, but ill or injured ones came here. This also made it convenient for the mahouts, who could indulge themselves in the comfort of the upper regions while their steeds were out of service. No Dash would volunteer to remain in the bog longer than necessary especially not aboard a sick £. For one thing a hurt £ sought the deeps, an area that the Dash could not enter.

Suddenly she picked up the fringe of a strong aura, and moved toward it. High-Kirlian entities were in the vicinity!

She came into an inner chamber. In its center, protected by a sturdy wooden barricade, was a Transfer unit. It was not a type she was familiar with. Therefore it must be—

A drape lifted, revealing the snout of a projectile cannon. —Halt, mahout!— a Dash voice commanded.

A trap! She had half known it, but had taken the risk for the sake of her mission. They had dangled the bait of hostage Transfer before her and lured her in, just as they had done back at the Ace of Swords so successfully. Yet what else could she have done?

Perhaps she could bluff an ill-informed Dash…

She looked around as if confused, tilting her body to make her addled mahout seem to be directing her.

—Please do not endanger yourself— the Dash said, coming into sight on an upper ledge so that his three eyes focused down on her. —There is no confusion. We have analyzed your aura, and know you for Melody of Mintaka, Etamin, Milky Way.—

Then she knew she was lost.

21. Budding the Mintakan

*report: all fleets secure in milky way galaxy last resistance in segment etamin overcome ready to move on planets*

:: initiate motion ::

*there will be some delay, as this involves physical propulsion and the distances are*

:: do not seek to educate me in elementary physics, ast! what of the local matter? ::

*etamin kirlian agent has just been immobilized*

:: immobilized? kill her! ::

*sphere dash assures us that this is not feasible negotiation is necessary*

:: dash shall shortly be charged with treason! if they do not neutralize her quickly I shall ::

*POWER*

:: just get the job done! ::

—You have been evasive, alien!— the Dash said, his wings whirring reprovingly. While he talked, a line dropped from a crane to remove the defunct mahout from her back. —All we want is the best for you, now that your galaxy is fallen. It would be a shame to sacrifice an aura like yours. Will you not now be realistic and join us?—

Melody of course did not answer. But suddenly she became aware of the specific aura of the Dash. It was a very strong one, with an intensity of about 175. This was the entity she had known as Captain Dash Boyd—her lover and archenemy!

—I perceive you remember me,— Dash observed. — Yes, what you and I began before can be completed now. Since my failure in Milky Way I have been recalled and restricted to local duty, with demotion. My aura makes me suitable for important Kirlian work. This was perhaps fortunate, for the regular authorities were bungling the job of locating you. In fact, it is no secret that most of our top leaders are idiots who obtained their positions by factors other than competence; a typical Council Meeting resembles an argument among immature birds. Your own Ministers of Etamin are similar. However, in time of stress competence has a way of manifesting itself, and the Council representative of Sphere :: has been more than adequate in this regard. So we have won the war, and are now merely wrapping up the occupation prior to initiating the energy project. I do not wish to kill you, but capturing you gently was proving difficult, and Leader Quadpoint is becoming obstreperous. But I have given our esteemed leader to understand that once you understand the situation, you will cooperate. You spared my life, and so I attempt to spare yours. Now all you have to do is draw in your aura so that our directional field can encompass it for retransfer to a Dash host. Your present host will not fit within one of our units, so this special arrangement is necessary. All that is necessary is for you to stand astride the unit before you and contract your aura.—

Melody made no move. At least she seemed to have some leverage: They could not remove her from this host without her cooperation, and they did not want to kill her. Probably they could stun her—but then her host would collapse and hurt herself, and it would be a violation of the covenant.

—I realize that I am not especially appealing to you in this body,— Dash continued persuasively. —But it is my own, and you are aware of the qualities of my mind and aura. In this lovely female host here— he pointed his wings momentarily at another Dash entity that appeared beside him —you would find me handsome enough. You yourself would be beautiful, as you were in Solarian guise. There would then be no further barrier to our love.—

He was right. His present form was unappealing to her, quite apart from her resolution not to mate. But she did retain a guilty fascination for him. He had such an attractive aura, and his interest in her seemed sincere. He put a political, practical face on it, but underneath he wanted her for herself. Their auras were nearly equal, they shared an interest in Tarot, and had similar levels of intelligence. Perhaps Flint of Outworld had found a better match, but that was a once-in-a-millennia situation. No male in her lifetime had paid her that compliment (with one exception) and it did move her. She tried to deny that she was still so vulnerable to that kind of flattery, but found she could not.

Then she thought of Skot of Kade, and Gary and March, brave Solarians dying honorably with their fleet And of Captains Llono the Undulant and Mnuhl of Knyfh and the Drone of the Deuce of Scepters sacrificing themselves for their galaxy. And of Yael and Llume and Slammer the magnet and Beanball—yes, even the infant magnet had fought for her!—and she knew she loved them all with a love that was greater than anything available in Sphere Dash. She could not participate in their destruction, no matter what. She was of Galaxy Milky Way, and no personal convenience or lure of aura could alter that. What Andromeda was doing was fundamentally wrong, and she could not support it even tacitly.

—I feared you would require more convincing,— Dash whirred. —Perhaps I can do it yet.—

Another curtain lifted. A strange creature was unveiled. It was composed of strings and tubes and taut diaphragms, as ungainly a thing as Melody could imagine.

Then with a special shock she identified it. “A Mintakan!” she cried internally. “My own kind!”

Cnom was surprised and disgusted. “You look like that in your natural form? No wonder you transferred out!”

“It is worse than the Dash,” Melody agreed ruefully. “A species never recognizes how odd it looks to others until it gets a glance back through transfer. I understand my ancestor Flint was appalled at the sight of naked Solarians when he was in a Polarian host. But every species in the universe has a right to its own existence. That’s what I’m fighting to protect.”

Cnom subsided, indifferent to the fate of distant Spheres or peculiar creatures.

Melody studied the Mintakan figure more closely. It was an old one, she saw now, with discolored drums, warped strings, and sagging tubing. Hardly a bargain; in fact it seemed near expiration from sheer degeneration. It was female, a spinster, apparently never attractive enough or amenable enough to find a companion for reproduction. It had no Kirlian aura.

—This, in case you did not recognize it,— Dash said,—is not merely a Mintakan host. It is your original body.—

Startled, Melody considered the body a third time. Her aura touched it, and sensed the familiarity. This was, indeed, her original shell. She did not know what to feel.

—We have gone to a great deal of energy-expense to arrange things for you,— Dash said. —If you do not wish to occupy a Dash host, you may return to your own. And to ensure your satisfaction, we have also imported a handsome young male of your kind.— And another Mintakan appeared. His strings were taut, his tubing firm.

During all this adventure, Melody had wanted to return to her own body, to retire in peace, contemplating her Tarot cards so as to wrest a few more precious insights from the deck before she expired. She could live for a long time in transfer, over five Solarian years, but eventually she would have to return to her own body to recharge her aura. And if her Mintakan body should die while she was in transfer, her aura would fade out at a hundred times its normal rate. So by capturing her body, the Andromedans had in a very real sense captured her. The chains, though subtle, were horribly strong.

The projectile cannon disappeared. —I believe you understand the situation now,— Dash said. —We do not need to threaten your present host, who is of course innocent, being both £ and hostage.—

Another score! Melody had indeed taken the £ hostage, overwhelming her with the immensity of her aura. Cnom did not seem to object, but the principle was the same. Melody was guilty of the offense she fought against.

—But you must appreciate now that you have no reasonable escape,— Dash continued inexorably. —If you leave and hide from us again, we shall have to dispatch your body, and you will shortly fade out, wherever you are hiding. That would be an unfortunate waste of the finest aura ever known.—

Was there any way to free her Mintakan body from their clutches? Could she charge to the ledge, knock the body down, grab it and carry it away? No, the risk was too great. The Mintakan body was old and frail; such activity could kill it. And where would she take it? Into the jellybog to drown? In addition, she now perceived that the body was not in the open air, but within a protective shield; obviously the atmosphere of this planet was not suitable. Without the life-support system the Dash were providing, it would die regardless.

On the other foot, if she agreed to reanimate her own body, what then? Could she carry through her campaign to save her galaxy while trapped in an atmosphere bubble, unable to move freely even if she had the physical strength to? Hardly!

—There is an alternative,— Dash said, having allowed her thoughts time to coagulate. —We have chained the lady, but we do not wish to cause her unnecessary discomfort. You can transfer instead to this fine Dash and live in perfect comfort each day, returning to your natural body only during sleep. Thus you will hardly feel your age and infirmity, and can endure so long as your Mintakan body survives. That can be a long time, with the kind of medical care we can provide. We are in effect offering you a greatly extended youth.—

At the expense of her galaxy? Melody knew she could not do it. She remained standing, unable to cooperate, yet also unable to resist. It was an impasse, with the negative power of decision lying with the enemy. They could always kill her, if they so choose.

—I regret the need to force the issue,— Dash said, —but we are under extreme pressure ourselves, and we very much want you with us.—

To help them in their conquest? Hardly! They were accomplishing that nicely without her.

—You see, we can’t force you out of your present host,— Dash explained, —and we can’t do anything to that host, because of the covenant. Should we kill a £, the other £ might stampede. We can’t hurt a £ or even detain one unreasonably; our threat with the cannon was a bluff against you, not Cnom. So we must convince you to leave that host voluntarily.

—To accomplish this, I shall explain why we need you. This planet is a leading source of Ancient information; sites abound more thickly here than anywhere else in the known universe. From these sites we have rediscovered Kirlian science that has propelled us to the forefront of our Galaxy, and soon the Galactic Cluster too. But more sites remain that are inaccessible to us. They are of the self-destruct variety, a type unknown in your own galaxy, that cannot be penetrated by any entity whose aura is of the wrong type or strength. We need the information locked within these sites, for there are many other galaxies in the universe, with many other sapient species. If one of those species should achieve complete Ancient science before we do, they will have the capacity to eliminate us. We cannot afford that risk.

—You have an aura of the family keyed to this generation of sites. The Slash entity you knew as Llume was of this family, but her aura was not strong enough. Your own exceeds two hundred, which we believe more than meets the necessary level. Therefore you and you alone are able to penetrate the ultimate secrets of the Ancients.—

That explained Dash’s interest in her from the start. Just as the Andromedans were robbing the Milky Way galaxy of its vital energy, they were taking its best animate potentials. Good, hard business sense.

Many years ago an Andromedan agent had tempted the Milky Way Solarian hero, Flint of Outworld, with similar logic. She had told him that his own species would have acted much the same as hers had it possessed the opportunity, and she had been right. Yet in the end it was he who convinced her, though he was the barbarian and she the sophisticated issue of a leading civilization. She had defected to the Milky Way, and parity had returned to the galaxies.

But whatever had happened in the past, she was sure that Mintaka would not have sacrificed any galaxies for its own advantage. This ambition of Sphere Dash was wrong, and she could not support any part of it, regardless what happened to her or her Sphere. Better to kill herself, thus depriving the enemy of any possible use of her unique aura.

So she remained silent, though now she knew Dash would not shoot her. Should she try to bargain with him for whatever she could salvage, be it only half or a quarter of the Milky Way? Could she trust him or his Sphere that far?

—I cannot read your mind, precisely,— Dash said. —But I am responsive to the fluxes of your beautiful aura. I believe you are concerned primarily for your galaxy. Tap one foot if I am correct.—

No harm in that. Melody tapped one foot.

—I cannot promise you anything in that regard. But I can say this: If you evoke the secret science of the Ancients for us, we may no longer need the energy of your galaxy to sustain our civilization. Then it would be spared. However, since we do not know what is available in the Ancient sites, this is a gamble.—

A gamble whose terms were all in favor of Sphere Dash. If they won, they had the universe; if they lost, they still had the Milky Way. Yet did she have any better alternative? She could not decide.

Dash took her hesitation for negation, which it probably was. —I dislike coercive measures, but the matter is urgent.—

Melody, perhaps on the verge of acquiescence (and perhaps not), now hesitated for another reason. If he could not do anything to her £ host, how could he do anything to her? He could only kill her Mintakan body, which would defeat his stated purpose.

—I did some research on Sphere Mintaka,— Dash said.—It was not thorough, for I only recently managed to signal my fleet and get picked up. Marooned in a prison host! Fortunately Hammer of Quadpoint was alert, and caught our crude broadcast.—

So the hostages had adapted the missing transfer unit for regular intergalactic transfer and used it to send Dash Boyd and the others home. Later, it had been used to send her here.

—Forgive me if I overlook the nuances of your culture. But as I understand it, Mintakans are born neuter, turn female at maturity, and male after the first mating. You never mated in your natural body, so spent your life as a female.—

That was close enough. A permanently sexed entity would hardly comprehend the intricacies of triensent sex.

—The sex of your Mintakan body determines the sex of your aura,— Dash continued after a pause. —What do you suppose would happen if the sex of that body should change?—

So that was it! Melody felt peculiar horror. They had a male Mintakan here, who would take the initiative. They could do it.

She might kill the male, but that would finish her own body too. And killing them all would not salvage her galaxy. The question she had to answer was whether she could help her galaxy better as a captive female or a free male. She knew the answer.

—You are way ahead of me, I know,— Dash said. —But to be certain we understand each other I will state it openly. There would seem to be two possible consequences of a change in sex in your Mintakan body. One is that your aura would change sex with it. In that case you would be unable to remain in your female £ host, and would have to vacate. Then I believe we would have you, for we control the transfer apparatus and alternate hosts.—

Melody had not thought of that. What would happen to a male aura in a female host? It was impossible to transfer into a host of the opposite sex; only neuter-sexed entities had any option, and even that was uncertain. Would her aura be bounced into the nearest available male host, which was exactly what Dash was ready for? Or would her aura simply be destroyed by the incompatibility of the host? Either way, she was lost.

—Or,— Dash continued, —would your aura fail to change, in which case you would be unable to return to you own body? That seems paradoxical, so I am prepared to gamble on the first prospect. Unless, of course, you elect to cooperate; that would solve all problems.—

No doubt. But Melody still had a galaxy to protect. She would have to gamble. And one part of her mind wondered about the anomaly: What would happen? Horrible that it should happen to her, but the scientific curiosity…

—Well, we proceed,— Dash said. He made a whirring signal with his wings. Music played abruptly. It was a strange harmony, vibrant but incomplete, unlike anything Cnom had ever heard. It was bud music.

Bud music: the compelling sound of a pair of Mintakans in the throes of love. In Sphere Mintaka, mating chambers were soundproofed, to prevent contagion. Otherwise the mating of one couple would trigger compulsive mating by many others within sonic range, and this was not desirable. The decision to mate was supposed to be based on intellectual preference, not sound, but it didn’t always happen that way.

The male Mintakan stirred, approaching the old female husk. He had no intellectual preference; the bud music governed him. The female shell, though void of aura, would function. Not even the atmosphere bubbles separated them; Melody saw those two enclosures merge, in their own kind of mating, and form into just one chamber.

No! No! This was the most insidiously hellish rape! Dash had worked out an appallingly effective physical and intellectual torture for her! She would rather suffer anything than this!

Anything except the betrayal of her galaxy—and that was the price. So she could not stop this gruesome exhibit, this ultimate obscenity. But she could not watch it either. She closed her side eye.

But she could not close off the sound, for it came at her sensitive skin (impervious to talons, but responsive to sound) on every side. She tried to turn her attention away from it, and succeeded only in dredging up her painful past.

She had been just two years old when Ariose came. He was a handsome, extremely high-Kirlian sonic male of four, seeming quite mature and cultured. In Solarian terms he would have been thirty-two, she sixteen, each somewhat younger than Dash Boyd and Yael of Dragon, but with a similar set of outlooks. Two was the age of Mintakan blooming, when the tubes first rounded out and the strings became taut, and the diaphragms resonated to every trifling vibration. The age of delight, experiment, ambition, and beauty—and naiveté.

She had all nine feet, by definition the state of female virginity (the concepts were synonymous), of greatest innocence, desirability, and availability. The great majority of adult Mintakans were to some degree male; only once in life was one fully female.

Despite his age, Ariose had eight feet. He had mated only once. She was curious about that, since a male of his talents and presentation should have had opportunity to bud himself all the way down to three feet, had he wanted to. Why had he saved himself for her? She let herself believe that it was her physical beauty and sonic vibrance in intellectual qualities.

Mature Mintakans came at the agreement to bud circumspectly. Often they remained together for life, though there was no legal or moral requirement to do this. It merely reflected the wisdom of their initial decision: truly compatible entities had no need to wander.

Budding was not a casual, multiple performance like the chronic sexual efforts of Solarians, who copulated tens or hundreds of times for every offspring they produced. In fact, it was said in other Spheres that Solarians indulged in sexual activity more for transient personal pleasure than for the extension of the species. Melody knew that was a gross exaggeration; still her impressionable postadolescent mind was intrigued by the amazing concept. How much pleasure was there in budding that made it worth the permanent loss of a foot?

So when Ariose intimated that he would like to lose one foot with her, she reacted with foolish enthusiasm. She went with him in a brushcar to a mating chamber, and after feeding each other several strands of vermiculate food and absorbing sprays of liquid, they settled down to serious music.

Melody, of course, had never done this before. That was one reason for the system, she theorized. Since a Mintakan did not turn male until completing first budding, and two females could not mate, it guaranteed one experienced partner to show the way. She had heard that Solarians (Sphere Sol was the butt of a wealth of segment humor, perhaps because of its irritating thrust-culture that forced itself into the awareness of dissimilar species) sometimes got together for copulation and didn’t know what to do. Or the reverse: They copulated without realizing what it was—until an infant Solarian manifested. Of course, such jokes would have been more effective had they had even the slightest credibility.

Ariose started the unique budding music, and Melody followed it without difficulty. As the sound intensified, they approached each other. He raised one clapper-foot invitingly, tapping with the other seven in intricate point and counterpoint. Melody raised one of her own fair feet, and now her eight tapping ones off-balanced his seven, creating a peculiar sensation of incompleteness. Discord and incompleteness were anathema to Mintakans; music had to be right.

“Your strings are as tight as steel wires,” Ariose played. “Your tubes are as round and full as great organ pipes. Your drums are loud and mellow. Your clappers are marvels of precision.”

Oh, such praise! Females, because of their inherent inexperience, were notoriously subject to flattery, and she was no exception. She drew closer, her raised foot seeking his.

“And your aura,” he played. “Like none ever known before.”

“My aura?” This struck an unmelodious note; females were not generally praised for their auras. It was akin to praising a Solarian female for her money.

“Did you not know,” he played, “you have the highest Kirlian aura ever measured—the only one in the Sphere that is higher than mine. I came to bud with you, hoping to produce a super-Kirlian entity…”

He wanted her only for her aural The whole thing had been arranged.

“How long I waited for you to mature, to emerge from drab neuterdom,” Ariose continued, oblivious to the effect his commentary was having. “The success of such a budding—”

Melody made a discordance so vehement it almost broke her own strings. She swept her foot sidewise, knocking his clapper away.

Ariose, caught by surprise and ready for the budding connection, lost his foot. It flew off and crashed into the wall. His music stopped abruptly.

Then Melody suffered chagrin—for she had castrated him. She had knocked off his bud, unmerged. She fled from the mating chamber.

But the compulsive bud music stayed with her, pressing in from all around, inescapable. Her £ eye opened.

Her youth-budding had been horribly aborted. But the age-budding of her auraless body continued, forced by the compulsion of the recorded music. The male had extended one foot, and the female met it with one of her own. The seven male feet clattered in the imperfect counterpoint to the eight female feet, making the music unfulfilled. The beats had to match. Yet there was no eighth foot on the male side free to complete the last pair.

Except for the conjoined foot. Driven by the music, the feet melted together, becoming a single unit. This was the bud. Soon it would flower into a complete immature entity.

Melody closed her £ eye again. She had not fled far from Ariose before some sense penetrated her two-year mentality. So he wanted her for her aura. What, really, was wrong with that? After all, she had wanted him for his aura; she merely hadn’t said so openly. She could have budded already with some lesser male, but only the high-Kirlian male had really excited her. Normal-level Kirlians were not even aware of aura; it was as though they were blind or deaf, not even able to appreciate what they were missing. Of course aura was important; it was the real key to modern civilization. She really had little else to distinguish her. Why let irrelevancies interfere with romance? Ariose had acted with perfect sense. He had formed a conception of his ideal female, based on Kirlian intensity, and had sought that female out. She should have appreciated the enormous honor for what it was.

She returned to the mating chamber, but Ariose was gone. What should she have expected? She had struck off his foot in as callously degrading a gesture as it was possible for one Mintakan to make to another. She had rendered him a male personality with a female number of feet; how could he mate now? Actually, once a Mintakan turned male, he remained so for life, unless he should use up all his feet—unlikely, since then he could not walk —in which case he would be honorably neuter again. But budding required that disparity of feet; two six-footed Mintakans could not mate, even though one were seven-footed in outlook.

She had never seen Ariose again, and never met another like him. His aura had been 190, and she never encountered another close to it. It was as though all high-Kirlian Mintakans avoided her now. Perhaps the music about her had spread. She could hardly blame them! She was lucky Ariose had not pressed a charge of mutilation against her.

She had retreated into her study of Tarot, after a brief apprenticeship with the local Temple of Tarot, and found some solace there. Never again had she been seriously tempted to bud.

There was an abrupt change in the music. Again her eye opened, though she tried to keep it closed. The bud formed from the merged feet had now disconnected from the female’s body. Attached to the male, it left him with eight feet; and she now had eight feet also. The beat had equalized. That changed the music.

Then the bud dropped off the male’s leg too. The music stopped. The bud had been formed as a separate entity, incorporating the heredity of each parent. It would, with proper care, grow into a small Mintakan neuter. The miracle of reproduction of the species!

But now Melody’s native body had budded. It had become, by the definition of its nature, male.

She, here in the £ host, what was she, now?

She dared not remain here to find out.

22. Crisis of Sex

—it is not merely a matter of the etamin agent, quadpoint it is aposiopesis if the agent can lead us to—

:: this is ridiculous! a simple matter of nullifying one captive agent of a defeated galaxy ::

—our own agent is working on the matter there are very great potential rewards—

:: assuming your ancient site can yield us anything we cannot already possess with present technology, to utilize a conscious, dedicated agent of a foreign power to explore it is an exercise in such folly as to make my chisels blunt! are you not aware you are placing our entire program in jeopardy? I absolutely forbid this! ::

—it is too late the quest has already been initiated—

:: there is something about you slavekeeping creatures, here and in the milky way, that is alien to my comprehension from certain victory you seek defeat ::

Melody whirled back out of the chamber. —You cannot escape! Your body is here!— Dash whirred.

But she crashed out of the doorway, knocking out a supporting post. Part of the upper floor sagged. She bounced to the other side of the hall, bashing in a wooden wall. The aroma of freshly ruptured scentwood surrounded her. Then, venting her inner frustration and uncertainty, she deliberately attacked more posts.

The wood was strong, but was not braced for horizontal impact from such a huge, solid body. The city began to collapse about her. The air was filled with whirrings of panic as thousands of Dash birds were disturbed.

Yet what was this accomplishing, this blind bashing against those who had conquered her galaxy? Like the shallow entity she had been in youth, she destroyed what affronted her—and maybe did herself the most damage.

She burst out of the city and thundered down a channel toward the bog. Now it seemed the hue and cry was out; other £ were charging after her. What did it matter? She had no body and no galaxy to return to!

Something was funny about the pursuing £. They had no mahouts! Without Dash direction, why should they be chasing her?

No time to wonder! She plunged into the bog. As the atmosphere thickened about her, as the jelly formed and exerted its drag, her first passion faded. What, actually, had happened?

“It is the Rendezvous,” Cnom informed her. “Your emotion triggered it.”

The Rendezvous: a periodic gathering of the £ in the depths of the bog, for the purpose of acquaintance, decision, and mating. It occurred irregularly, generally when some reason arose. This time Melody was that reason.

Could there be any help for her in the Rendezvous? She did not know. She felt much as she had when the Ace of Swords had been going derelict around her.

The £ continued down the channels, this time avoiding the wooden lattice. The jelly grew thicker, until it seemed impossible to push through it much farther. This was the depth at which the Dash failed. They had dismounted in a hurry when the Rendezvous began. Somehow all £ and Dash had known the moment it started; even the sick £ were hauling themselves along.

But with increasing depth, the jell began to thin, until at last it was the consistency of mere water. Like plasma, Melody thought; the pressure was too great for the jell to maintain its structure.

“Do the Dash know of this lessening of viscosity?” Melody asked Cnom. The question was rhetorical, for she knew Cnom didn’t have the answer. What difference did it make anyway? Sub-jelly pressure was fatal to Dash; £ logic pursued the matter no further.

No light penetrated here. She was aware of the terrain by its sonic vibrations, and the echoes of the vibrations of the multitude of tramping £. Nevertheless, there was plant life in this gloom. The huge trunks of the assorted deepwoods were rooted here, the scentwoods and the larger nether supports of the lattice. Feather leaves were also present, not as light refractors but as nets to collect edible debris sifting down from above. The jelly held and assimilated most of it—Melody suddenly realized that the jell itself was a form of life—but had wastes of its own that made excellent plant food. The ecology of a planet was always in balance.

Her host-body contracted as the intensifying pressure worked on it, much as the Spican bodies did. The £ were remarkable creatures, capable of adapting rapidly to extremes of environment. It was cold down here, but the sheer mass of her body insulated her.

In the deepest hollow of the bog the £ converged for the Rendezvous. There were thousands of them, but their vibrations became minimal; this was an almost silent meeting.

There were no trees here; a great hollow was clear of all obstructions. Had the £ trampled it out? No, Cnom’s memory showed that it had always been here. Yet it was far more than natural processes should account for.

Melody realized that this space was, indeed, artificial. The vibrations from deep below had the signature of dense metal. It seemed to predate Dash civilization. What could it mean?

Then she became aware of the aura, which was so even and unfeatured that she had not recognized it at first. It was not the pulsing, sparkling emanation of a living thing, but the uncanny precision of inanimate aura, such as was used for the transfer of energy. Only one thing could explain it.

It was science of the Ancients.

A thrill ran through her. This was an unspoiled Ancient site! There seemed to be no entry, but the aura identified it positively. Not since the great lusty adventurer Flint—how much he was in her mind, now!—had stumbled on the Hyades site, had a sapient of her galaxy discovered a site of this significance!

And this was in the enemy galaxy.

The Dash could not know about it, or they would have been into it already. They possessed the technology to handle the depth—no, that wasn’t it. They must know about it, for they had sophisticated Kirlian detectors. But this was in the £ demesnes, and the £ did not like aliens among them, even in transfer. The site must be one of the self-destruct variety; the effort to break into it could destroy it and have grievous effect on the contemporary society. So the Dash were balked, and only Melody herself had the aural key, perhaps, to the final secrets of the Ancients!

If she could get into that site…

But now the £ had gathered. From among them came the vibrations of their leader; in the crowd she could not identify which body it was, but that did not matter. He called himself Dgab.

“This Rendezvous was triggered by the alien among us, she who defended her right by repulsing the lancer,” he vibrated. “The Dash put her under pressure of aura, and she fled. We must deal with her first.”

It was uncanny how closely the £ society kept track of her! Melody realized she now had to speak for herself, or the £ would force her back to the Dash lest she disrupt the covenant between the species.

“I am of Galaxy Milky Way,” Melody vibrated. “The society of Dash is destroying that galaxy, and I must save it if I can. To do this I must enter the Ancient site beneath us.”

“Only Aposiopesis may grant that,” Dgab replied. “Only when a worthy mating occurs will the portal yield.” A worthy mating! Was there no way to get away from sex? Her host-memory filled in the background: all £ matings occurred publicly in the center of the Ancient declivity. The aura of the Ancients was the unknowable God, Aposiopesis. Legend had it that when a mating met the approval of the God, he would reveal his secrets to that worthy pair.

Melody seemed to have escaped the sex-change of her Mintakan body. Apparently it was her personal experience that defined her sex. But if she mated now, in this host, she surely would change—and have to leave the host. For she could not delegate this to Cnom; the £ knew her, and she herself had to be the one to try to gain access to the site.

What would happen if she were unable to do so? She would probably fade out at an accelerating rate and finally expire, freeing her host. That had happened to Flint of Outworld and his Andromedan mate. Could she afford the risk?

There was no question! “I will try to please Aposiopesis,” she vibrated. “If I succeed or if I fail, I will soon be gone from you.”

“Stand at the portal,” Dgab vibrated, and Melody rotated forward until she was in the center of the depression. Here the alien aura was stronger, with an especially focused column; in a living creature it would have approached her own intensity. But there was no living aspect about it, and it spread far wider than any she could imagine from mere flesh and nerves. To think that this remained after three million years! The Ancients, without doubt, had been the ultimate masters of aura!

“Who would breed with this entity?” the leader asked.

No one replied.

“Whom would you choose?” Dgab asked Melody.

“He with the strongest aura,” Melody said immediately. Aura was obviously the key to this site—if there really were a key—but this was also a personal preference. She had once scorned love based on aura, and had paid for that mistake with a lifetime’s celibacy. Now her body had been brutally freed of that state. Maybe her mating had been preserved for this: the climactic opening of the Ancient site.

Now several £ rotated forward. £ mating was not entirely voluntary; if a suitable partner was needed, he was impressed into service.

They trotted past Melody, each displaying his proboscis according to ritual. Because the £ were rotary—in the Tarot they would surely be represented by the Suit of Disks—their bodies had no fixed projections. But as they had to suck nutrient fluids from the plants, the proboscis unfolded when required.

The first had an aura of about fifty—good, but not at all in Melody’s category. The next was better, about seventy. The third was forty.

A dozen paraded by. The highest was just under one hundred. That was quite respectable. Whole planets of entities sometimes did not have any aura higher than that.

Still…

“Will you, Dgab, also offer yourself?” Melody asked as it occurred to her that a Kirlian-conscious species might elect a high-Kirlian leader.

Dgab emerged from the throng. He was old—as old as Melody herself in her original Mintakan body. He moved slowly, his three legs still strong, but his physical strength diminished. Yet his aura as he approached her was indeed powerful, in the range of 150. Here, perhaps, was a suitable mate!

A new £ whirled down from the outside. His legs were spindly, his body small, and one of his tentacles was missing. “Allow me,” he vibrated, speaking imperfectly.

“The dead has been animated,” Dgab observed. “What spirit occupies this body?”

“Dash,” the newcomer vibrated. Actually the designation differed, but this was the way Melody recognized it. “Alien to you, but mindful of the covenant, I come to settle alien business. By the standard set, I qualify. Perceive my aura.”

Melody found herself in another turmoil of indecision. His aura was 175, certainly the closest to her own she would encounter here. She had specified the highest aura. But this was the enemy! Was she to evoke for him the secrets of the Ancients?

“No! I do not accept him!” she vibrated angrily. “He seeks only to nullify me, to destroy my galaxy!”

“I meet the specifications,” Dash replied. “I come to save her galaxy from the destruction that otherwise is certain—but that is irrelevant to these proceedings. I qualify.”

“Agreed,” Dgab decided, stepping back toward his favored anonymity in the crowd.

“I don’t agree!” Melody vibrated. “Come near me, bird, and I kill you!”

“Let the aliens decide between themselves,” Dgab decided.

Dash approached. “I seek only the blessing of Aposiopesis,” he said, “for the good of the universe, your galaxy included.”

What amazing persistence! He had thrown himself into an unsuitable host and was risking his life by intruding among hostile £, when he could have simply destroyed her own £ host by some subterfuge and been done with it While he really did want the Ancient science—he wanted Melody, too. He retained all those admirable traits of intelligence, aura, and courage that had attracted her to him despite her knowledge of what he was. Yet— “I cannot trust you!”

“Why not merely knock off my foot?” he inquired, stepping nearer.

He knew! He had found out about her past, and now he taunted her with it.

She could feel his aura, the strongest she had encountered in the better part of her lifetime. She had been bemused by that aura once, and thought she loved him —until he had tried to kill her. Until he had sexually tortured her aged Mintakan body. Until—but it had never been possible!

She poised herself for combat, but had no effective weapons. The £ were huge, but not normally aggressive. They could only bang against each other, not really hurting. If only she had that trunk of scentwood!

Well, then, she would bang! She launched herself at him—but the water slowed her body. Dash met her with a lunge, his proboscis unfolding. It jabbed deeply into her torso, like the thrust of a lancer, plunging all the way into her liquid core.

She would have cried out—had she a mouth and air system. She had been caught by surprise, undone! But before she could reorient, she felt, instead of pain, a slow, warm, rich, growing pleasure.

Dash had not wounded her—he was mating with her! Mere puncture did not hurt the £; it was the loss of core substance. There were similarities to the way they had mated in their Solarian bodies, but also differences. In each case the male used an erectile member to penetrate the body of the female, and through this member the juices of copulation flowed. The difference was that here there was no prepared aperture in the female; the male made his own. And the flow through the proboscis was two-way.

She was caught up in the developing ecstasy of the exchange. Dash was her enemy, symbol of all that she fought—yet he was a fine configuration of an aura and a bold, smart, intriguing male. He pursued his objectives as rigorously as she pursued hers. He had animated a defunct £ body—an extraordinary step for a Dash to take!—merely to join her in this. It was hard to condemn that.

His tube inside her sucked out the liquid core, depleting her. But this was a gentle, wholly exhilarating release, not the brute rupture the lancer’s attack would have been. Then the flow reversed, and her fluid was pumped back through the conduit, mixed with his own, doubling the volume. The pleasure as she swelled was double what it had been.

Then he withdrew, and the puncture closed after him, bringing on the climax-completion—the most exquisite sensation yet. Now the dual fluids were within her—the pool for the formation of new life, possessed of the twin genetic patterns and of its nascent aura. Like the Solarian process, parturition was not immediate; it would take time for the new entity to take shape from that pool, to develop and finally break out.

So she had not yet completed procreation. Only the mating had been effected thus far, but she was—gravid. The process was inevitable. And with it, she would turn male, and have to leave her host. The commitment had been made at last.

And she was not sorry. All her long life she had waited for this, and now it was complete, though she die. The ghost of her past had been extirpated.

Suddenly the impersonal machine aura around them changed. The surface beneath their feet began to sink.

“Aposiopesis!” someone vibrated. “Our God accepts!”

For the Ancient site was opening… after three million years.

23. Ancient of Days

—the day of reckoning may be on the wing aposiopesis wakes—

“A-PO-SI-O-PE-SIS!” the massed vibration cried. “A-po-si-o-PE-sis! A-po-SI-O-PE-sis!”

“God of Hosts!” Melody cried to herself as she sank.

“And so we win,” Dash vibrated gently. Melody realized what sounded strange about him: In this host, he did not speak with the Dash inflection. “Because we are meant for each other, and the Ancients found us worthy.”

“The Ancients merely required sufficiently high aura,” Melody replied. “They make no moral judgments.”

“How can we be sure?” he asked. “To them, aura itself may be a state of morality.” And she could not answer.

The platform moved well below the floor of the bog, descending on a slant. Melody watched the feet of the standing £ rise out of sight. All knew this was a historic event, a three-million-year breakthrough. Aposiopesis had answered.

Below the opening, the well widened. Melody detected the vibrations of a counterweight rising. As their platform dropped lower, it spiraled outward, and the counterweight spiraled inward, rising to fill the hole above. It was a giant sophisticated airlock!

As the valve screwed closed in its fashion, the water drained away and gas filled the chamber. Melody, in a nonbreathing host, could not analyze its type, but she was certain it was an inert substance, probably to protect the intricate mechanisms of the Ancients. Three million years—and still operative! What greater wonder could there be?

Yet Melody was not so bemused by the mating and admittance as to forget her priorities. Dash was still her enemy, and in no case could she allow him to emerge with the secret science of the Ancients. Surely he would not permit her to use it to save her galaxy, either. Their battle had not yet been concluded.

Already she felt the stirrings of masculinity within her, of aggression. This host was becoming uncomfortable. She had to do what she had to do before she lost her identity.

But it was also possible that neither one of them would escape this site. The machinery had chosen whom to admit; why should it not choose whom to release? Melody doubted she could get out on her own.

Melody looked around her. Huge as her present host was, this site was large in proportion. It was as if it had been constructed to accommodate £ alone. And that was impossible, because—

Why was it impossible? The Ancients, according to the best modern research, had vanished approximately three million years before, from all across the galaxies. That was a long time ago, in terms of civilization, but a relatively short span geologically and paleontologically. There had been £ that long ago, and Mintakans, and Solarians, and all the rest. The fact was that the Ancients had been contemporaries of all the major modern sapients before these species developed highly organized technological cultures. It was almost as though the Ancients had to vacate before the modern cultures could rise, as the dinosaurs of Sphere Sol had passed (in most places) before the contemporary mammals, and the subsonic monsters of Mintaka before the sonics of Melody’s own species.

But there the parallel broke down. The modern species were superior to the ancient ones. The small mammals had better brains and were physically better articulated than the large reptiles. The Ancients, on the other hand, had been superior to the moderns—so far ahead that even three million years later the gap had not been closed. No shift of galactic climate could have dislodged them. Their disappearance had not enabled more progressive cultures to arise; it had allowed inferior ones to take over the galactic cluster.

Had there been any doubt of that, the mere experience of this site would have dissipated it. What a mechanism!

She could not talk to Dash, for now they were in gas and the skin vibrations did not work. Had the £ been able to communicate linguistically in atmosphere, their relation with the Dash would have been entirely different.

Yet it was as though this site had been made with the £, not the Dash, in mind. It was at the bottom of the jelly-bog, where Dash could not readily go, and its gargantuan scale and mode of entry were suitable only for £. But when this was built, the £ had been primitive creatures. Only in the past hundred thousand Solarian years—twelve thousand real years—had their society ripened. Unless the Ancients had anticipated—but that was preposterous. Why should the Ancients have cared about the future of the £? Or about any of the modem cultures?

If by some chance of indecipherable logic the Ancients, like gods, had cared about the then-primitive species of the galaxies, they would have done better to dismantle their sophisticated outposts. For it was the occasional discoveries of functioning Ancient sites that had triggered the phenomenal intergalactic wars, wreaking havoc among Spheres and segments. Without transfer technology—which seemed to stem entirely from Ancient science, as far as technological archaeologists had been able to determine —the Spheres would have continued regressing at the Fringes, and therefore been unable to make effective war against their neighbors. There would have been continuing peace, instead of the monstrous uncertainties of contemporary war.

Why, then, had the Ancients left these sites so carefully preserved from degeneration? If not for the species to follow, for whom?

And she realized: for the return of the Ancients themselves!

She spun about, looking for an exit, but of course there was none. The plug had sealed the hole above, and now the platform had stopped its descent. They stood in a chamber like the bottom of a spiral oubliette, a deep well widest at the base. And the circular wall was fading out. It thinned into vapor, then vanished entirely, and they stood in a broad plaza. The vista extended on every side so far that her nonfocusing eyes could not see its end. This was no room; this was a city!

Beside her, Dash had to be as bemused as she. Never in all known history of the two galaxies had such a thing been discovered. This planet had numerous Ancient sites, but they were broken-down relics, with few real artifacts. This—this was Aposiopesis Revealed!

This was surely the home base of the Ancient culture. It would take a planetary task force of specialists many years to explore the secrets of this amazing metropolis. Whoever came to comprehend it would control the universe!

Melody felt a chill. Who could investigate this—except Sphere Dash? She could not; she could hardly hold on to this female host.

Better that they both perish here, never emerging! They had not moved from their platform. Where would they go? There was so much here that they could get lost if they attempted to wander. There had to be some point of reference, some way to orient.

Suddenly from the distance came a machine. At first it seemed formless, but then she saw a large screen on it, like a spaceship viewer. Of course: a communication device!

Dash was paying close attention, she knew. The screen—actually a viewglobe—stopped a short distance away. Then an image appeared on it, shifting and chaotic. First it resembled a £, then a Dash. Disorganized sounds were manifested, and there was a peculiar medley of odors. A Solarian biped wavered and faded.

Suddenly Melody caught on. She concentrated—and the figure firmed into the Queen of Energy card of the Cluster Tarot. The lovely bare-mammaried Solarian female, chained to the rock by the restless sea, her hair blowing out in the ocean wind.

Dash’s body quivered. He saw it too! The chained lady resembled Yael of Dragon, whom he surely recognized.

This was an animation globe, similar to those used by the Temples of Tarot, whose images were defined by the imaginations of the viewers. Flint of Outworld had encountered such a device in the Hyades site, and used it to evoke the formulas that brought parity to the inter-galactic scene. Too bad that site had been destroyed; later expeditions had never been able to make sense of the rubble. But this time, this time…

Dash was already at work on it. A disciplined series of pictures appeared on the screen: Sphere Dash entities. No—these were merely his animations of the Ancients. Not knowing their actual nature, he rendered them in his own image. But the message was what counted. He was trying to fathom the ultimate secret of these mysterious people, and thus gain some hint of their technology. Otherwise he would not even know what questions to ask, just as a creature of a civilization of three Thousand years ago would not have known how to ask for Transfer. Had such knowledge been offered. As of course it had been, via these same sites.

Melody watched. It gave her time to wrestle with her own problems of host-rejection and Galaxy-salvation. Maybe there would be some key here.

Dash did an excellent job of zeroing in on the later stages of Ancient history. The network was extremely complex, because the Ancients had spanned the entire cluster—some twenty assorted galaxies and fragments. It had been the most extensive Empire ever known, with no Spherical regression. How had they managed that?

Expertly, Dash located the key lines. Slowly the mechanisms of the Ancient disappearance emerged. There had been no invasion from any other galactic cluster; the Ancients were supreme. No devastating pandemic, no holocaustic war, no precipitous decline in the reproduction rate. They simply… resigned. They shut down their myriad bases carefully, returned to their home, and… faded out. Trillions of sapients disappeared from the universe.

Why?

Dash swiveled his eye to meet her gaze. On this they were united: The rationale of the Ancients remained as confusing as ever.

He returned to the animation, questing for the reason, not the fact. This time he centered on it faster.

And as the rationale came clear, Dash and Melody stared and listened and experienced with mounting incredulity and horror.

Suddenly the animation cut off. Melody wasn’t certain which one of them had terminated it; it could have been either. Far better never to have known this terrible Ancient secret! Aposiopesis indeed!

Melody blanked it from her mind. She had no intention of letting her own culture die, no matter what the alien psychology of the Ancients had been. Through Ancient science she could certainly redeem her galaxy.

The problem was how to get what she needed without giving it first to Sphere Dash. No doubt she could learn from this globe how to build invincible spaceships that would conquer a galaxy, jumping from Sphere to Sphere by inanimate aural transfer—but Sphere Dash would build them first. She could discover how to mattermit whole planets across millions of light years, using minimal power—but Sphere Dash would do it first.

What possible secret could she learn that would save her galaxy—without being subject to prior nullification by the enemy?

She tried to concentrate. But the progression of pregnancy in her host was affecting her. She had mated; she was turning male. Her whole aura was reacting with the knowledge, suffering hostile incompatibility. It was a peculiar, awkward sensation; soon she would simply have to leave, no matter what.

If only she could arrange to put Dash in a similar situation, to force him to vacate any hostage he took. If it were only possible to make hostaging itself impossible, so that only voluntary hosting could occur. The Andromedan effort would collapse, and Milky Way would be forever secure.

More than that: She would have to do it retroactively, so that the damage already done could be undone. For Galaxy Milky Way had already fallen.

Then it came to her. There was one secret Dash could not counter even if he shared it.

This site was not merely informational. It was the key. Flint of Outworld had discovered that the Hyades site was one big transfer unit, controlled by thought. This £ site had to be another.

In moments Dash would catch on, for he was not stupid, and he was almost as fiercely motivated as she was. She had to act now.

“Oh Aposiopesis, God of the days of the Ancients,” she thought, couching it as a prayer because that was what, in essence, it was. The intensity of her need made it so. “Modify your transfer mechanism. Make every hostage entity dominate the invading aura—wherever transfer is used.” Her internal verbalizations were crude; the essence was her will. “Let the host-aura dominate, regardless.”

But Dash had now understood the situation. He emanated a blast of negation that fuzzed the image in the globe; Melody’s thought could not get through.

She fought him with her fading aura. Already it was down to his level; her own hostile discordance was phasing her out. She was 175 and declining; soon he would be stronger. Stop the hostaging! she willed.

The picture changed back and forth. Light and dark thrust against each other, symbolic of her aura and his, evenly matched, neither prevailing. But slowly, inevitably, the darkness gained, absorbing more of the globe.

Desperate, Melody cast about for some device, some insight that would help her. Her galaxy depended on her success! But the picture kept darkening. She hit him with aural :: blows, but he absorbed them; she set a ^o_o trap, but he avoided it. He was thoroughly experienced in aural combat, and she could not overcome him.

Better to destroy the whole site than to give him this victory. That was what Flint had done.

She sent a blast of despairing hate at the globe—and it puffed into vapor.

Amazed, she stared at the fading wisps of smoke. Beside her, Dash was umnoving, as surprised as she. Could the machine itself have been an illusion of animation?

The answer came: Yes! This was the nature of animation. Their thoughts not only animated the pictures of the globe, they were the globe. And the entire city. All that really existed here was the oubliette—and the animation transfer unit and bank of information that surrounded it. Which was worth more than any city.

Melody acted immediately. Under her guidance, the entire city exploded ferociously. The acrid odor of destruction was painful. The site seemed to be collapsing, burying them.

And while Dash stood confused by the sheer threat and fury of the falling buildings and leaping flames, not certain how much was real, not yet aware that it was merely the dissolution of the animation, Melody thrust forward her overwhelming thought-urge-prayer: reverse hostaging!

And her world dissolved.

24. Milk of Way

COUNCIL INITIATED PARTICIPATING * — / :: ^o_o

—aposiopesis has spoken—

*andromeda is fallen*

/the lady is chained/

^o_o the monster strikes ^o_o

:: shame! ::

CONCURRENCE

Melody opened his eyes and sat up. His body felt stiff, and he had a headache, but he could function.

He licked his lips. The flesh was raw, and one or two front teeth were missing. “Mush have veen some fight!” he muttered.

He was in a round room. He was clothed—a Solarian affectation. Next to him several other Solarian males and one female lay on pallets. Melody recognized them: They were the hostages that had taken over the Ace of Swords of the fleet of Segment Etamin. He knew them only by their hostage identities: Hath of Conquest, Tiala of Oceana, all of the entities he had unsuccessfully tried to salvage from Andromedan domination. All were there except Captain Dash Boyd.

For he was Captain Boyd! Melody had changed sex, and animated a male host. He must have had the subconscious desire to return here to the Segment Etamin fleet, and the Ancient unit had picked up that wish and transferred him here. What miracles of science the Ancients had!

But what of his main intent, to abolish hostaging? Now he governed another hostage body! Well, he might still be able to do something.

He drew upon his host-memory information and ascertained that this was a chamber within a Disk of Sador. The host-mind, unconscious at the time, had no memory of being brought here, but Melody was able to figure it out by reference to the older memories. Victorious Admiral Hammer of :: must have boarded the derelict Ace of Swords and salvaged all useful equipment, especially the serviceable hosts. He evidently knew enough about magnets and magnetism to handle Slammer and his companions, too.

Melody, in control of this body without Hammer’s knowledge, could do some damage, maybe even taking over the ship. Then…

He went to a water nozzle and activated it. A jet of cold, refreshing fluid spurted into his face, Sador didn’t worry about the inefficiency of such mechanisms; the surplus water was reclaimed, and an automatic cutoff prevented the device from operating in null-gravity conditions. Sador was a huge, degenerate Sphere; creature comforts had intruded on many of the military vessels. He was feeling better already.

He touched the door-button, and the round door opened. This ship was of course designed for globular, wheeled Sadorians; push-buttons were satisfactory, but not pull-levers. It was no problem for this bipedal, twin-handed host, however.

Melody emerged into a great central level, with ramps leading up and down. The wheeled creatures preferred the open range. But within the ordered physical system was chaos. The Sadors were hunched, unmoving; their wheels drawn in, as though in shock. He walked among them, unchallenged.

What had happened? This whole ship was nonfunctioning!

“Captain!” a Solarian voice called.

Melody turned, his human ear orienting on the sound —his two ears; they gave him an immediate sense of direction. He spied a screened cell containing two men. “Skot! March!” he exclaimed, concentrating so as to avoid slurring his words. Those teeth were a problem!

“Well, half right,” March said, satisfied. “But—who are you?”

Melody smiled. “You may have some trouble believing this, so I’ll come at it obliquely. I’m not the Andromedan. Remember the Service of Termination?”

March’s eyes widened. “Captain Boyd wouldn’t know about that! Only—”

“Only Melody of Mintaka could know,” Skot put in. “Feel that aura!”

How did Skot know about that? He hadn’t been there! Melody leaned closer, probing for the man’s aura—and it was not Skot of Kade. Yet it was familiar…

March glanced across at him. “Maybe such things aren’t significant to you, Slammer, but I can’t feel the aura, and Melody is a female. She can’t—”

“Slammer?” Melody demanded.

Skot’s head nodded. “Admiral Hammer didn’t trust me in my natural body, so he transferred me to this ungainly thing. Poor Beanball is locked into another cell with my body; he must think I’m dead.”

“But Skot—what—?”

“He is gone,” Slammer said. “His ship was blasted. This is an empty host.”

Add Skot of Kade to the growing list of entities to mourn! If only he hadn’t insisted on going on that mission…

“We’ve been getting to know each other,” March said. “Slammer’s a nice guy; I never realized how smart the magnets were. But just now all hell broke loose. The hostages keeled over, then you came out. Who are you, really?”

“The anti-hostage mechanism!” Melody exclaimed. “It worked!”

Quickly Melody explained about his effort at the Ancient site in Andromeda. “Transfer is instant,” he concluded. “And so is this, it seems. I animated this host because the original personality is gone, so there is no host-mind to preempt it, and I am male, now.” He explained about that as he activated the cell-release.

March shook his head in amazement. “I thought meeting a magnet in human form was the limit; now I have to get used to a beautiful girl in male-captain form.”

“I never was a beautiful girl,” Melody said. “That was merely my host, Yael of Dragon.”

March nodded thoughtfully. “I’d like to know—her.” Then he remembered something. “What was the Ancient secret? Why did they suicide, and why were you so horrified, even after three million years?”

“Aposiopesis,” Melody said succinctly.

“What does that mean?”

“I will never tell,” Melody said with absolute seriousness. “If the truth were known, much of the drive of our own contemporary civilization would dissipate. We might, like them, give up. I don’t think we would, but we might. I refuse to gamble on it—and I doubt Dash Boyd will gamble either.” Then he returned to the business at hand. “Admiral Hammer and all the other hostages must have been nullified; that’s why they collapsed. Their host-minds may have taken over, but it’s too soon to—you know how the hostages suppress their hosts, even destroying them…”

“Then we’d better get control of this ship fast,” March said. “Because pretty soon those hostages may be back on their wheels, if their hosts are really dead or dying.

We’d better herd them into these cells until we’re sure.”

“Yes,” Melody agreed.

But already the Sador hosts were moving. A large one rolled up. Melody reached for a weapon, but found he had none, so waited alertly.

“I am Rollo of Sador,” he said formally. “Former Rotary Officer of this ship. I now control the aura of Hammer of ::, though I am very weak.”

Could he believe him? It might be that Hammer was pretending to have succumbed. But that would have been pointless. If he retained control, he should act to assert control of the ship. It was possible that the :: had not repressed his host-aura as viciously as some, so that Rollo remained sane. If so, Hammer was not only competent, but pretty decent for an Andromedan. Melody decided that the risk was worthwhile. Apparently the human auras had faded out only after the oppressive Andromedan auras had departed, as though beaten into such dependency they were helpless without alien support. But there was a difference between individuals, and there could, indeed, be native host-personalities to take over. Those who were mad would now plunge their erstwhile masters into hell; those who had been treated more kindly would respond in kind.

He did not know what a Rotary Officer was in Sadorian terms, but since Sador was a circular culture like Polaris it seemed appropriate. It was probably equivalent to Captain.

“I am Melody of Mintaka, temporary Admiral of the Etamin fleet,” he replied. “I believe we have won the war by recovering all hostages. But we shall have to take stock and reorganize.”

“My guest aura informs me that there is one you will wish to meet,” Rollo said. “A companion of the Milk of Way. Please wheel along this vector.”

Melody hesitated again, but decided to go along. “Free all prisoners and ascertain their identities,” he told March. “See if you can locate Slammer’s natural body. Be alert.”

March nodded. “Yes, sir.” He knew as well as Melody did that the situation remained highly flexible; some hostages might remain in power. But due care should suffice.

Melody was sure that a similar confusion existed all over the Milky Way galaxy as the counterhostage impulse took effect. But out of this chaos would emerge victory, the salvation of his galaxy. Again he marveled: What powers the Ancients had, yet how carefully guarded!

Melody accompanied the Sador to another level of the ship. Here, alone in a cell, sat a breathtakingly lovely woman in a simple, ragged dress. Her hair was long and brown, her features even, and her body lithe yet full-fleshed. There were some bruises on her, as if she had suffered a beating in the past few days, and one leg was bandaged. But these imperfections seemed only to enhance the general splendor of her person. Melody had never seen such beauty in a Solarian female before, and it did something to him. He experienced a nascent urgency.

Rollo’s wheel whirred. “The situation has changed,” he said. “Here is a friend.”

The girl looked up, her glance cold. “Forget it, Hammer,” she snapped. “Dash and I aren’t on the same side any more. You know that.”

Melody came close to the cell-screen. His aura interacted with that of the prisoner. The two auras were amazingly similar. “Llume!” he exclaimed. “In Yael’s body!”

Startled, the girl jumped to her feet, her breasts bouncing. God of Hosts! Melody thought. Every motion she makes—I wish I could take her and— “That aura! So like my own, but so strong—impossible!”

“I depart,” Rollo whirred discreetly. “The cell is open.”

“You can’t govern Yael’s body,” Melody said. “The hostage reversal—”

“Hammer transferred me,” Llume said. “He was very smart about neutralizing potential troublemakers without further killing. But I did not dominate the host. I have had enough of hostaging.” She paused, then spoke again, in a different manner. “That’s right. Llume refused to take over, but her aura was so like Melody’s—maybe not her aura, because I can’t feel aura, really, but anyway there was something about her—well, I told her to go ahead and use my body. It hardly made any difference, here in jail with all our friends dead.”

“Yael,” Melody said. “Don’t you know me?”

The girl squinted. “Something Llume’s thinking… you’re not Dash… someone else, like Flint of Outworld…”

Melody laughed explosively, male-fashion. “Yes, very like Flint of Outworld—now! I am Melody.”

The pretty mouth dropped open. “You couldn’t be!” Then: “Unless—”

“Yes. I mated in Andromeda, and then had the Ancients reverse the hostaging. Shall I remind you about the dinosaur you tried to tame as a child, or the Four Swords poem that—”

“Nobody knows that!” Yael exclaimed.

Melody smiled, opened the cell, and spread his arms. Yael hesitated, evidently listening to what Llume was telling her. Then her eyes teared. She stepped forward and fell into his embrace.

Melody became acutely aware of the formidable physical female charms Yael possessed, and began to comprehend what had never been quite clear before. He had, in his female aspect, employed those charms in a mercenary manner, not really understanding why they created the response they did. Now, with those full soft breasts touching him, that slender, exquisitely contoured torso against him—this was not a game! The response, the sheer need—he wanted to grasp, hold, squeeze, kiss, penetrate. Those smooth round legs, that shaped posterior…

But there was something else. More than the merely physical, compelling as that was. “Do you know why I never had much interest in mating, despite inhabiting a body so well designed for it?” he asked them. “I mean, apart from the Mintakan complication, and my age, and the war…”

“Do you know why I defected to your side?” Llume asked in return.

“For a pair of bright entities, you two are pretty dumb,” Yael said. “You always were in love with each other, but you couldn’t admit it because you were both female, and two different species at that.”

Melody and Llume looked at each other, realizing it was true. “I was also in love with you, Yael,” Melody said. “That was even more complicated.”

The lovely eyes returned her gaze. “Yes…”

“The situation has changed,” Melody said, bending to kiss them.

Epilogue

The counterhostage measure was effective. The Andromedan thrust collapsed. Because the governing Spheres of that galaxy depended heavily on hostaging, for a time there was anarchy. No transfer aura could dominate a host; it could only visit. If a voluntary host objected to any measure taken by its transfer entity, the will of the host prevailed.

Gradually a new philosophy of transfer evolved, in which hosts participated equally in all activities. Government in both galaxies became more responsive to the will of lesser auras. In fact, the archaic concept of “democracy” had to be revived and applied. The Spherical governments were replaced by responsive administrations who promised never again to practice or tolerate energy theft.

Melody of Mintaka never told the secret of the Ancients, and neither did his erstwhile lover of Dash. The fabulous site of Planet £ remained sealed. Melody, after some pleasant dalliance with his friends Llume and Yael, retired to his own aged body and his own Sphere. He contemplated his Tarot, finding new insights there, until he expired shortly thereafter. He seemed satisfied, and not much concerned with the fact that his name had already been entered in the annals of two galaxies, parallel to those of Flint of Outworld, Brother Paul of Tarot, and other historic figures in the folklore of cluster civilization.

In Galaxy Andromeda, Melody was honored in his female form, represented in the Queen of Energy or Thirteen of Wands card of Tarot. But it was mooted privately that the name of the lovely chained lady was Andromeda, as the Solarian mythology had said all along, and that the name of the sea monster was Melody.

The host-entity, Yael of Dragon, was retired with honor and granted a Society of Hosts pension. The young guard who had discovered the first hostage of Outworld, March (the name, originated as a code, but he elected to retain it), was feted regally and offered anything in the Segment he might desire. He chose Yael. They married and carved out a pleasant ranch in back-vine Outworld, and their children had a pet dinosaur.

Slammer the magnet recovered his body and son. The magnets were granted civilized status, and developed a considerable fleet of spaceships, as they were well suited to economical space travel, requiring neither atmosphere nor gravity on any regular basis. In due course Sphere Magnet joined Segment Etamin, and contributed its first representative to Segment government: an entity by the name of Beanball.

Galaxy Andromeda, having twice erred by casting lascivious desires on the energy of her neighbor, was now chained. For a thousand Solarian years she was contemptuously reviled by sapient species elsewhere in the galactic cluster. The cultures of Spheres * — / :: and ^o_o stagnated, and not merely at their regressive Fringes. Their need for massive new energy had been critical, and remained so; civilization could not be maintained at its prior level.

But the mystery of the Ancients remained hidden. Slowly, inevitably, the level of civilization in the cluster declined, for the available energy was being depleted. It seemed that modern sapients were doomed never to approach the technological level of the Ancients, let alone to comprehend the secret of the Ancients’ demise.

Suddenly, the greatest threat of all: the Space Amoeba. It threatened to engulf the entire cluster. There was only one possible way to oppose it: to achieve the immediate breakthrough of complete Ancient science. Under this imperative, a new figure appeared in Cluster history.

This was an entity of lowly, oppressed Sphere Slash of Andromeda, who sought to fulfill the plea of his ancestral kin Llume that Sphere slash redeem its honor. He possessed the third and greatest of the phenomenal auras.

His Kirlian rating was 236, and in certain respects his adventure was to be the most remarkable of the three. He was known colloquially by his twin professions: Herald the Healer.

His thrust into history was the Kirlian Quest.