She returned to the mating chamber, but Ariose was gone. What should she have expected? She had struck off his foot in as callously degrading a gesture as it was possible for one Mintakan to make to another. She had rendered him a male personality with a female number of feet; how could he mate now? Actually, once a Mintakan turned male, he remained so for life, unless he should use up all his feet—unlikely, since then he could not walk —in which case he would be honorably neuter again. But budding required that disparity of feet; two six-footed Mintakans could not mate, even though one were seven-footed in outlook.
She had never seen Ariose again, and never met another like him. His aura had been 190, and she never encountered another close to it. It was as though all high-Kirlian Mintakans avoided her now. Perhaps the music about her had spread. She could hardly blame them! She was lucky Ariose had not pressed a charge of mutilation against her.
She had retreated into her study of Tarot, after a brief apprenticeship with the local Temple of Tarot, and found some solace there. Never again had she been seriously tempted to bud.
There was an abrupt change in the music. Again her eye opened, though she tried to keep it closed. The bud formed from the merged feet had now disconnected from the female’s body. Attached to the male, it left him with eight feet; and she now had eight feet also. The beat had equalized. That changed the music.
Then the bud dropped off the male’s leg too. The music stopped. The bud had been formed as a separate entity, incorporating the heredity of each parent. It would, with proper care, grow into a small Mintakan neuter. The miracle of reproduction of the species!
But now Melody’s native body had budded. It had become, by the definition of its nature, male.
She, here in the £ host, what was she, now?
She dared not remain here to find out.
22. Crisis of Sex
—it is not merely a matter of the etamin agent, quadpoint it is aposiopesis if the agent can lead us to—
:: this is ridiculous! a simple matter of nullifying one captive agent of a defeated galaxy ::
—our own agent is working on the matter there are very great potential rewards—
:: assuming your ancient site can yield us anything we cannot already possess with present technology, to utilize a conscious, dedicated agent of a foreign power to explore it is an exercise in such folly as to make my chisels blunt! are you not aware you are placing our entire program in jeopardy? I absolutely forbid this! ::
—it is too late the quest has already been initiated—
:: there is something about you slavekeeping creatures, here and in the milky way, that is alien to my comprehension from certain victory you seek defeat ::
Melody whirled back out of the chamber. —You cannot escape! Your body is here!— Dash whirred.
But she crashed out of the doorway, knocking out a supporting post. Part of the upper floor sagged. She bounced to the other side of the hall, bashing in a wooden wall. The aroma of freshly ruptured scentwood surrounded her. Then, venting her inner frustration and uncertainty, she deliberately attacked more posts.
The wood was strong, but was not braced for horizontal impact from such a huge, solid body. The city began to collapse about her. The air was filled with whirrings of panic as thousands of Dash birds were disturbed.
Yet what was this accomplishing, this blind bashing against those who had conquered her galaxy? Like the shallow entity she had been in youth, she destroyed what affronted her—and maybe did herself the most damage.
She burst out of the city and thundered down a channel toward the bog. Now it seemed the hue and cry was out; other £ were charging after her. What did it matter? She had no body and no galaxy to return to!
Something was funny about the pursuing £. They had no mahouts! Without Dash direction, why should they be chasing her?
No time to wonder! She plunged into the bog. As the atmosphere thickened about her, as the jelly formed and exerted its drag, her first passion faded. What, actually, had happened?
“It is the Rendezvous,” Cnom informed her. “Your emotion triggered it.”
The Rendezvous: a periodic gathering of the £ in the depths of the bog, for the purpose of acquaintance, decision, and mating. It occurred irregularly, generally when some reason arose. This time Melody was that reason.
Could there be any help for her in the Rendezvous? She did not know. She felt much as she had when the Ace of Swords had been going derelict around her.
The £ continued down the channels, this time avoiding the wooden lattice. The jelly grew thicker, until it seemed impossible to push through it much farther. This was the depth at which the Dash failed. They had dismounted in a hurry when the Rendezvous began. Somehow all £ and Dash had known the moment it started; even the sick £ were hauling themselves along.
But with increasing depth, the jell began to thin, until at last it was the consistency of mere water. Like plasma, Melody thought; the pressure was too great for the jell to maintain its structure.
“Do the Dash know of this lessening of viscosity?” Melody asked Cnom. The question was rhetorical, for she knew Cnom didn’t have the answer. What difference did it make anyway? Sub-jelly pressure was fatal to Dash; £ logic pursued the matter no further.
No light penetrated here. She was aware of the terrain by its sonic vibrations, and the echoes of the vibrations of the multitude of tramping £. Nevertheless, there was plant life in this gloom. The huge trunks of the assorted deepwoods were rooted here, the scentwoods and the larger nether supports of the lattice. Feather leaves were also present, not as light refractors but as nets to collect edible debris sifting down from above. The jelly held and assimilated most of it—Melody suddenly realized that the jell itself was a form of life—but had wastes of its own that made excellent plant food. The ecology of a planet was always in balance.
Her host-body contracted as the intensifying pressure worked on it, much as the Spican bodies did. The £ were remarkable creatures, capable of adapting rapidly to extremes of environment. It was cold down here, but the sheer mass of her body insulated her.
In the deepest hollow of the bog the £ converged for the Rendezvous. There were thousands of them, but their vibrations became minimal; this was an almost silent meeting.
There were no trees here; a great hollow was clear of all obstructions. Had the £ trampled it out? No, Cnom’s memory showed that it had always been here. Yet it was far more than natural processes should account for.
Melody realized that this space was, indeed, artificial. The vibrations from deep below had the signature of dense metal. It seemed to predate Dash civilization. What could it mean?
Then she became aware of the aura, which was so even and unfeatured that she had not recognized it at first. It was not the pulsing, sparkling emanation of a living thing, but the uncanny precision of inanimate aura, such as was used for the transfer of energy. Only one thing could explain it.
It was science of the Ancients.
A thrill ran through her. This was an unspoiled Ancient site! There seemed to be no entry, but the aura identified it positively. Not since the great lusty adventurer Flint—how much he was in her mind, now!—had stumbled on the Hyades site, had a sapient of her galaxy discovered a site of this significance!
And this was in the enemy galaxy.
The Dash could not know about it, or they would have been into it already. They possessed the technology to handle the depth—no, that wasn’t it. They must know about it, for they had sophisticated Kirlian detectors. But this was in the £ demesnes, and the £ did not like aliens among them, even in transfer. The site must be one of the self-destruct variety; the effort to break into it could destroy it and have grievous effect on the contemporary society. So the Dash were balked, and only Melody herself had the aural key, perhaps, to the final secrets of the Ancients!