Chaining the Lady (39 page)

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 the 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 from the jelly if she did need to look around below.

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 obtained.

“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 vasty 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 depths 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 near-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. 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 gaging 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. She knew exactly when the breaking point approached, and shifted 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 though 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 on 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 just 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 of the woodmill, 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 aura units were available, but such units were phenomenally complicated, 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, these creatures 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.