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.