Chaining the Lady (3 page)

Desperate to abate this menace from the sea, the Ethiopians consulted another intriguing artifact of Solarian culture: the Oracle. This was a fortune-telling entity; apparently no form of Tarot existed then. The Oracle informed them that only by sacrificing Andromeda to the monster could they achieve relief. Andromeda was even more beautiful than her mother, and did indeed rival the Nereids in appearance, which was perhaps why the monster desired her as a morsel.

Melody found the motives of Solarian monsters to be an opaque as those of Solarian sapients, but it was not her task to revise the myth. So they chained this innocent, beautiful lady to a great rock by the edge of the ocean, to be consumed by the monster.

As it happened, the hero Perseus happened to pass by at that time—coincidence was not a matter of much concern to myth makers—and when he viewed this naked girl he was overcome by the urge to impregnate her. This too was typical of Solarian males in such circumstances: the very sight of the body of a young healthy woman caused chemical and physical reactions. Her mind or personality did not seem to matter. But Perseus could not simply impregnate and leave her, despite the convenience her situation offered. Chained as she was, she could not readily have resisted him, had she been so inclined, but her offspring would not have survived her consumption by the monster, and therefore the reproduction would have been incomplete. In many other species the offspring formed immediately and became independent, but Solarians for some obscure reason suffered a delay in parturition after copulation. In this instance such delay would have been most inconvenient. So Perseus accepted the alternative course. He slew the monster and made Andromeda his formal mate.

There it was: Andromeda, the chained lady of the card, awaiting her fate. In moments the monster would be upon her. The hero Perseus was not visible in the picture, but presumably he was on his way. Andromeda did not at this moment know that her fate was to be impregnation rather than consumption. How would she have chosen, had she been given the choice in advance? Suppose things became confused, and the monster impregnated her before Perseus slew her? Or were the two actions merely aspects of the same theme? A most intriguing card.

But as this was her omen for the day, did it mean that some such difficulty awaited Melody herself? She did not consider the Tarot to be precognitive; it merely revealed what was in the hidden mind of the querist, the one for whom the cards were read. But sometimes the net effect was predictive. She did not relish the implication here. Would she be faced with the choice between death or impregnation, figuratively?

The door sounded. She broke off her reverie with another chord of annoyance and opened it.

Outside stood Imperial troops headed by a Mintakan officer. “One ignores the Eye of the Dragon at one's peril,” he played.

Melody's strings shook. That phone call had been genuine! The Dragon world of the segment had summoned her, and she had passed it off as a prank. Now she would pay the consequence.

In fact, she was about to be chained for the Dragon, which was of course merely an aspect of the sea monster. The Tarot had tried to warn her. But she, mired in the complexities of its symbolic ramifications, had missed the obvious.

Was there also a Perseus on the way?

Chapter 2:

Yael of Dragon

*notice transfer plus 200 level kirlian aura within target galaxy*

–specific location?–

*segment Etamin to imperial planet*

–probably in order agents there are on quest for leading enemy auras to be nullified or converted–

*this aura not handled by our agents*

–possible enemy action, then message the dash command of that segment to investigate–

*POWER*

–CIVILIZATION–

* * *

Melody emerged in alien form. At first she was alarmed and disgusted.
This body has no music
. But soon she adjusted. She would not remain in Transfer long; only long enough to find what the Imps wanted and tell them no. She could stand it for that little time.

This host did have certain compensations. Its vision was superior. In fact, she realized now that she had never before experienced true vision, only a kind of sound-augmentation. Touch was good, hearing fair. And it could do something she had no prior experience with: smell. Furthermore, it was young and bouncy, possessing quick reflexes and more sheer muscular power than she had imagined feasible. Why, it could ever
jump.

She was in an orientation cell, padded, silent, undistinctive. Just as well, for she took several tumbles getting adjusted to only two feet, and she preferred not doing this in public. This body was bilaterally symmetrical, instead of trilaterally, and it made a difference.

Set in one wall was a plate of highly reflective metal. Peering at it from an angle with her amazing twin focusing ball-shaped eyes she saw the image of part of the room. Now why would such a panel be so placed? She balanced herself on her stout legs—Solarians had to have superior balance, since in order to walk they had to hover on a single support while swinging the other about—and managed to get to the bright panel.

She saw the chained lady, lacking only the chains. The same flowing brown mane, the same huge mammaries, the same facial agony of sacrifice. The maiden Andromeda, alive!

No, it was herself. Her host-body, a Solarian female, in her natural state. Possessing all the stigmata of imminent impregnability. Since all human beings looked pretty much alike to her Mintakan mind, naturally she had taken it for the image fresh in her memory. But there did seem to be considerable resemblance.

Well, it should be possible to let the body do much of the work. She had been trying to make it operate with Mintakan reflexes; suppose she merely gave it orders and let the buried human reflexes perform?

“Across,” she murmured to herself, and was surprised to hear the host-voice speak in its own language, which she now understood. Animation of a host-body meant similar animation of the host-brain, so comprehension came readily. Transfer had solved the problem of inter-species communication. Now this body walked, smoothly, across the room.

A little practice of this sort would soon make perfect. But she didn't want it perfect yet, so she staged another fall. She knew the cushioned floor would protect her, and she had no doubt she was being monitored. When she had full control she would be removed for her interview with the Dragon, and she needed time for proper mental orientation first.

In another wall was a small computer terminal. Good; that suggested this confinement was at least partially voluntary. When she was ready, she could tell the computer to release her or to provide her with what she felt she needed. Such as human clothing, for she did know Solarians normally wore clothing. It would be reasonable to dress herself, so as to avoid early impregnation by Perseus or whatever other human male happened by. She did not intend to
be
reasonable, just to
look
reasonable. A tantrum would be insufficient if not futile. She would handle this outrage in her own time, her own way. She would not remain chained to this body long.

She crossed to the terminal, experimented until she was able to manage the finger-finesse required, and pressed a digit to the access button. A peremptory note would have been better, but when in a Sol-host, do as the Solarians do. Finger, not sound. “Bring me a good Cluster Tarot deck,” she said.

There was a pause. Would the machine deliver? If the Solarians were smart, they would have Tarot on the proscribed list. But this was not Sphere Sol, but Planet Outworld, where Tarot was not so well known. Few entities not conversant with the tool had any significant grasp of its potential. The average sapient thought it a mere game or harmless superstition, and the average Tarot adept was careful to cultivate this impression. It was the major protection afforded contemporary inter-sphere magick—was that the proper spelling for this concept? Yes, with the
ck
: the fact was that authoritative entities did not take it seriously, so felt no threat.

The wall-slot opened, and an object thunked down. Victory!

She reached in and picked it up. It was a sealed physical pack of cards, Solarian-style; she recognized it from her researches. She opened it and spread the cards in her two hands. It was a tri-channel, hundred-face collection. Not merely a good deck, but one of the best, will illustrated with correctly aspected symbols. It would do.

“Appreciation, Machine,” she said.

“Noted,” the computer voice replied. That struck her as funny, for reasons she could not immediately define, and she laughed. That struck her as funnier yet. What appalling sounds the human body made to express its mirth. What unholy quaking of flesh!

She sat at a table she drew out of the wall, already getting acclimatized to this body and habitat. Her Mintakan body, of course, was unable to sit. She laid the cards face-up in even rows of ten. There were thirty Major Arcana or Trumps, twenty Courts, and fifty Minor Arcana or Pips. The last group consisted of five suits: Energy, Gas, Liquid, Solid, and Aura. The cards of each were numbered one through ten, with illustrations of their characteristic symbols: Wands, Swords, Cups, Disks, and Broken Atoms. Each card of the complete deck could be flexed into two alternate faces, and the Ghost Trump had fifteen flexes plus a Table of Equivalences enabling the reader to adapt the deck to spheres not directly represented, such as her own Mintaka. Yes, excellent.

One face of the Queen of energy was the same chained lady that had started this off. It was different in that this one was purely visual, rather than primarily sonic, but there was no question about the kinship. She picked it up and took it to the mirror, comparing her naked host-body to the figure on the card. The similarity was amazing. Had this host been specially selected to match? Or had the Tarot been aware of this host, and somehow—no, there was the route to insanity.

She returned slowly to the table. One thing was sure: the model for the picture was sexually appealing, so as to create the necessary urge in the mind of Perseus. That suggested that her present host was an extraordinary beauty—which just might be useful.

For perhaps an hour, Solarian time, Melody contemplated her hundred-face spread. She also flexed the Ghost through all fifteen alternates, dwelling about one minute on each. Apart from the necessary activity of her fingers, she did not move; in fact she had entered a light trance.

At last she gathered up the cards, shuffled them until her host-fingers were proficient at this, then cut the deck several times and turned up one card randomly.

It was a picture of another lovely young human female, with a long, light head-mane and slender firm body, nude. But this one was not chained. She half-kneeled on a green bank beside a pool, one foot resting forward
on
, not
in
, the water. She held two pitchers from which water poured: one into the pool, the other onto the ground, where it split into five blue rivulets. There were eight stars in the blue sky above her—seven white, one yellow, and a red bird perched in a tree.

“The Star,” she murmured, “in one of the pre-sphere renditions. Key of great hope—or great loss—its five rivulets flowing into the five suits, its smaller stars signifying the seven planets of ancient Solarian astrology, the large star sometimes called the Star of the Magi. Now why does this particular Trump manifest now?”

Whatever its original meaning, the largest star actually reminded her of mighty Mintaka, center of the universe she had known so long ago as a bud. The nostalgia was suddenly so intense she had to close her human eyes and suffer its ravages without resistance. It was not merely that she was more than four hundred parsecs from it now, and in alien guise; time more than distance separated her from the stellar hope. What she had sought there had been lost in the distant youth of her lifetime, and never recovered, but even now the pain and shame could emerge from its capsule to haunt her. Her effort to shield herself from that agony had brought her to Tarot, but remarkable as that study had been, it could not make up for it. It had shown her the folly of her past, not the folly of her future.

She forced open her human eyes, staring at the card again. The Star-girl's hair flared from her head to the level of her knees, framing her body in a luxuriant cape. In fact it was almost like an aura, that mark of distinction that made Melody herself remarkable. But what was the use of aura, when the essence of her life had been poured out like that of the two vases of this scene? Hope and loss: how well she understood!

She dealt another card. This was a semihuman female with two pouring cups, but in this case she had a fish's tail rather than legs, and she was pouring the liquid from one cup into the other. In the background was a section of the Milky Way galaxy, with recognizable constellations as seen from System Sol. Naturally the Solarian deck was oriented on the Solarian view. This picture had strong points of similarity to the other, notably the girl's full mammaries, but the symbolic meaning was quite different. “Temperance,” Melody murmured.

She dealt one more. This was yet another your woman fully clothed and holding a large disk or coin, a unit of Solarian monetary exchange. “Page of Solid, female,” Melody remarked.

She studied the three cards side by side, noting their parallels, which were impressive. Three healthy, sexually appealing young women. The Tarot was certainly trying to tell her something of importance, and this time she intended to continue her meditation until she comprehended it without undue distraction by her personal feelings. Again she moved into a trance.

Suddenly she snapped her fingers, an automatic Solarian gesture her Mintakan body could not have performed, in understanding. “Girl, stand forward,” she said.

And inside her brain the host-girl presented herself as directed. “Here,” the child-human whispered voicelessly, with associations of guilt and fear.