“Do you think you can use Tarot to mask your purpose?” Dash inquired. “It will require several hours, as I said, to set up. We’ve never done such a procedure aboard ship before. If she gets suspicious, the task may become impossible.”
“A necessary risk. I am a transferee myself; we shall thus have four auras interacting. This will be complex. I must have some clear notion of the personal situation, or failure is likely.”
Dash sighed. “I see your point. Well, I shall introduce you and ask Tiala to take charge of you. Have you any medical training?”
“No.” Anything she knew would be Mintakan, at best inapplicable here, at worst dangerous.
“Too bad. Then we can’t use that as a pretext for extended dialogue. Still, you are both attractive young women; perhaps that will be enough.”
They arrived at the life-support section. A female Solarian came forward to meet them. “Sir?”
“Tiala of Oceana, this is Yael of Dragon, daughter of the Minister of Segment Coordination. She is touring this vessel.” He gave a slight human shrug, as though implying that he was humoring a spoiled child for political reasons. Tiala smiled fetchingly; even Melody’s nonhuman nature recognized the appeal of that expression. Dash would not have had to force himself very much to make love to this female, hostage or no. So Melody smiled back, trusting that her expression was as winning.
“I wonder if you could show our distinguished visitor around,” Dash continued. He used just the right tonal emphasis to suggest that he had better things to do himself than squire around such intruders. The hostage had no reason to be suspicious of what was in fact an order. “I would be most grateful.” And the final, calculated hint: Humor this important nuisance, and perhaps I will make love to you again.
“If she doesn’t mind waiting for the end of my watch,” Tiala said. “Half an hour…”
“I don’t mind,” Melody said. “Unless my presence interferes with your job performance.”
Dash made a slight nod to Tiala.
Responsive to the directive, the hostage replied: “No, I’m only keeping an eye on the dials. Actually, it’s dull right now.”
“Very well,” Dash said, smiling again at Melody. Despite her awareness that it was a doubly insincere expression designed to deceive Tiala in the guise of deceiving the visitor, she found herself moved by it. That was something that didn’t exist on Mintaka: a smile. It was like a complex harmony of camaraderie, very pleasant to receive. It was amazing how much could be conveyed on the purely visual level.
The Captain left, followed by his deadly magnet. Now Melody was alone with the hostage. She had to be very careful, for if the sapience that invested this nice-seeming girl were to realize what Melody knew, it would probably kill. The first intergalactic war had made plain that Andromedan agents were pitilessly efficient, virtually without conscience except for their absolute loyalty to their galaxy.
Melody turned to find Tiala’s gaze upon her. Was the hostage assuming that Melody was to be the Captain’s next mistress? Better abate that immediately, or there would never be cooperation! “I’ll be here only a few hours; I really don’t understand space.”
Tiala relaxed. “Understanding space is nothing compared to understanding people.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.” Melody sat down at the little table anchored to the desk. She misjudged the action slightly, and Yael took over suddenly to prevent her from cracking her hip against the rounded corner. All corners were rounded, in space; one never could anticipate when maneuvers would send entities into collision with objects. “Do you play Tarot?” And Melody drew out a deck of cards.
“I have heard of the Temples,” Tiala said. “But I really haven’t had much interest in divination.”
“Oh, there is more to Tarot than divination,” Melody assured her brightly. “The cards can be used for serious study, or for games. Look, let me show you. I fool with these all the time when I have nothing to do.” Absolutely true, yet in this context it might as well have been a lie. For it implied that Tarot was not a serious matter with her. Melody sifted through the cards a bit clumsily with her human fingers and brought out the classical face of one of the Trumps. “For instance, what do you see?”
There was no hesitation. “Communication.”
Melody concealed her startlement. She had never before encountered this particular interpretation. “Now I see a lamp.”
Tiala’s brow wrinkled. “Are you sure?”
“This is the game. Each person sees a different thing. Then we try to reconcile them, and discover which has more validity. It’s an intellectual exercise.”
“I don’t see either one,” Yael remarked.
“It is something of a challenge,” Tiala said, becoming intrigued. “To me, communications beams are quite obvious.”
Communications beams. Of course! On one of the major spheres of Galaxy Andromeda, /, lived a species who communicated by organically generated laser beams. Melody’s own Kirlian ancestor had been an Andromedan transferee of that Sphere who had budded with the revered Flint of Outworld, both in Mintakan hosts, a thousand Solarian years before.
There were half a dozen light beams crisscrossing the face of this card. Because Melody thought and communicated in terms of music, not light, she had never interpreted the picture this way, but obviously there had been / influence in its design, regardless of its supposed origin on pre-Sphere Earth. Here was a direct confirmation of the status of the hostage!
“I see that now,” Melody said even as these thoughts phased through her human brain. “But look at my lamp: It is at the convergence of the beams, an enclosure with a star inside. In fact, it is from where the beams emanate. So is it not a more fundamental image?”
“But the beams do not emanate from it,” Tiala protested. “They are emitted from other eyes; see, they diffuse right past your lamp.”
Other eyes. The light-emitting lenses: eyes of the slash entity. Yes. “So they do. I must concede this round to you, then. But let’s look again. I see… a three-headed dog.” The image did not come naturally to her as it was a Solarian canine, nonexistent in Sphere Mintaka. But she was long familiar with the roots of these cards; even in this restricted vision-style, she was not playing fair. She could draw a hundred images from this single face of this one card, while the hostage had never seen it before.
Tiala concentrated. “Dog. Yes… there in the corner.” She had evidently made a quick delve into her host’s memory to acquaint herself with the image. “And I see… rolling disks.”
Again Melody was surprised. But spurred by necessity she searched… and spotted the figure in the opposite corner. And knew that it was another example of the Andromedan’s special perceptual bias. The figure was actually of a coiled snake—but the / entities moved on great sharp rolling disks. “Ah… I see them now. But they have nowhere to roll except out of the picture, while my dog is coming in toward the center.”
“That’s right,” Tiala agreed. “Yours is the more central image.” She studied the face of the card again. Now Melody was really curious. Would the Andromedan mind see the Solarian sperm cell? /s reproduced by exchanging mating-beams, eye-to-eye as it were. Melody was not clear on the details, but certainly no sperm cell was part of the process. Human entities might lock gazes as a preliminary to the physical interpenetration of copulation; /s might interpenetrate physically as a preliminary to visual copulation. Similar motive, different application.