:: shall we dispense with the superfluities? we have a galaxy to conquer ::
—you certainly bore into the subject, quadpoint—
:: your humor is flighty, as befits avian nature what is the state of reduction? ::
—infiltration of all ten major segments of galaxy milky way has been accomplished in each case concentration has been on war fleets and capital planets—
oo ratios? oo
—400 agents per segment fleet, 100 agents per capital planet total 5000 transfer agents in galaxy all we can manage on present energy budget—
/also present limitation on kirlian resources/
—true effort should suffice, as subject galaxy remains unaware of infiltration no apparent reason to alter schedule of overt action—
*seek concurrence for unrevised schedule*
— / :: oo CONCURRENCE oo :: / —
:: no other business? ::
—none at present—
*POWER*
— / :: oo CIVILIZATION oo :: / —
Melody shuffled the deck by emitting dissonance at the mechanism. This could not be entirely random, but of course that was the point. While she controlled the arrangement of the cards, she was not supposed to be consciously aware of the details.
She touched the finished deck with the tip of one whip, activating it. Its music sprang up, setting her instruments to playing sympathetically.
It was the Queen of Energy that manifested—in an unfamiliar aspect. The Queen carried the familiar Wand, rendered as a scepter for this royal impersonation, that denoted her suit; the established symbols of the Tarot deck were older than the organized concept that was the deck. The Queen was naked, standing on a waveswept ledge, her appendages manacled to a huge stone. And she was Solarian—or more bluntly, human.
Now of course every card had a theoretic potential of 144 aspects. The Queen of Energy had faces showing ” Queens ” of every sapient species in the Milky Way galaxy. But no physical deck contained all aspects of all faces; that would amount to 14,400 presentations in all, an unwieldy number. So the normal pack of the Cluster Tarot contained a representative sampling of each card. Melody had not been aware that a Solarian course had been included in this deck. Which only meant she had not been paying proper attention when she obtained it recently. She was getting old.
Well, this was her card for the day. She contemplated it, evoking the tapestry of tunes dictated by its impressed symbology. A human woman, wearing the rare-metal crown of royalty, with the luxuriant mane flowing from her head—Solarians were one of the species that had heads—and with the two great milk-mammaries of her kind. By human standards, a female on the verge of impregnation.
This was a notable concept in itself, well worth consideration. Solarians did not bud, they birthed; and the female was always the birther. She remained female for life, no matter how many times she birthed. Surely, she was chained!
In the distance of the scene was a ferocious sea monster, one of the subsapient creatures of Sphere Sol. It was obviously coming to devour the Queen, whose generous deposits of avoirdupois were surely delectable.
But what relevance did this have to her, Melody, an old Mintakan neuter entity without head or mammaries or fat? What was the Tarot trying to say to her?
Well, the five suits of the standard cluster deck represented five or more sapient species—those that had figured most prominently in the local formation of the galactic coalition, who had been the nucleus of this segment some 120 years before, at the time of the hero Flint of Outworld, Melody’s ancestor. A thousand Solarian years, since those were pitifully brief. The Suit of Energy, symbolized by the sprouting, flaming Wand, was generally identified with the massed species of Galaxy Andromeda, because of their attempted theft of the binding energies of the Milky Way galaxy that had precipitated the first crisis of civilization. Yet no Andromedan species was represented in this card of Tarot. More locally, Sphere Canopus was a Scepter culture, but this card was not that, either. There was a humanoid species in that Sphere, but it was slave. The chains of the lady—indicative of slavery? Doubtful; normally this Queen was not chained. Rather she was arrogantly free, imperious, fiery. And this one was not humanoid, but human, definitely Solarian, itself a pretty arrogant species, by no means slave. A chained Solarian was doubly significant, surely.
The Solarians were the reputed originators of the Tarot. Versions of the Tarot had been extant on their home planet for several Solarian centuries before the human colonization of space and formation of Sphere Sol. The Cluster deck itself was thought to be the creation of one of their males, the scholar called Companion Paul, or Sibling Paul, or Brother Paul. There was obscurity about his status, rooted in the human mode of reproduction. Some said there could be several offspring of a single human reproductive unit, called siblings, while others said humans sometimes called each other “Brother” when in fact they were not closely related. Only the Solarians knew for sure! At any rate, the attribution of this deck to this Paul of Earth had to be a fond exaggeration; many of the significant aspects of that deck were unknown to Solarians at the time he had lived. The entire matter of the Energy War dated fifty Mintakan years after Paul, for example—that was four hundred Solarian years—she really ought to get used to thinking in those trifling units, because they had become the standard for Segment Etamin, but the habits of an old neuter changed slowly—still, the nucleus of Tarot concept had certainly been Solarian, and the Temple of Tarot had spread rapidly from Sol to the other Spheres. Melody had suffered an apprenticeship at the Tarot Temple nearest her once, but had not been satisfied with their doctrine and had gone her own way for most of her life.
Her phone sounded. Melody activated it with a single clap of one foot, her strings vibrating dissonantly because of the irritation caused by the interruption of her morning meditation.
“Imperial Outworld of Segment Etamin summons Melody of Planet Counterpoint, Sphere Mintaka, for immediate presentation via Transfer,” the instrument played.
Melody emitted a musical snort and broke the connection. “These practical jokers never give up,” she played. A female her age just had to be the subject of a certain amount of ridicule. Blat!
Then she remembered the card. A chained Solarian female—her key for the day. Could that relate to this call?
She considered the card again. A human woman, chained in the Andromedan suit. Who had chained that lady, and why? What could it have to do with herself, an entity of quite a different situation? The Tarot was always relevant, but at times she had a great deal of difficulty ascertaining that relevance.
Well, she would have to come at it the hard way, by going back to basics. She was a sapient entity of Sphere Mintaka, itself a unit of Segment Etamin of the Milky Way galaxy. Each Sphere was a number of parsecs in diameter, embracing a hundred or more inhabited worlds, the most advanced ones being near the center. Her own planet, Counterpoint, was in the midrange of a large Sphere; it possessed atomic science but not much more. It was a suburban world, where wealthy administrators liked to retire. Toward the Fringe things became progressively more primitive, until a hundred parsecs from Star Mintaka the worlds were essentially rural. This was Spherical regression, that occurred in all Spheres, and could be abated only by the infusion of energy. But there was not enough energy; the Ethic of Energy had already spawned one intergalactic war and might some century spawn another.
So the Tarot Suit of Energy related to her general situation, though she herself associated with the Suit of Aura. Since every sapient entity in the universe was similarly affected by the availability of energy, this was unlikely to have individual meaning. It had to be more specific.