She was caught up in the developing ecstasy of the exchange. Dash was her enemy, symbol of all that she fought—yet he was a fine configuration of an aura and a bold, smart, intriguing male. He pursued his objectives as rigorously as she pursued hers. He had animated a defunct £ body—an extraordinary step for a Dash to take!—merely to join her in this. It was hard to condemn that.
His tube inside her sucked out the liquid core, depleting her. But this was a gentle, wholly exhilarating release, not the brute rupture the lancer’s attack would have been. Then the flow reversed, and her fluid was pumped back through the conduit, mixed with his own, doubling the volume. The pleasure as she swelled was double what it had been.
Then he withdrew, and the puncture closed after him, bringing on the climax-completion—the most exquisite sensation yet. Now the dual fluids were within her—the pool for the formation of new life, possessed of the twin genetic patterns and of its nascent aura. Like the Solarian process, parturition was not immediate; it would take time for the new entity to take shape from that pool, to develop and finally break out.
So she had not yet completed procreation. Only the mating had been effected thus far, but she was—gravid. The process was inevitable. And with it, she would turn male, and have to leave her host. The commitment had been made at last.
And she was not sorry. All her long life she had waited for this, and now it was complete, though she die. The ghost of her past had been extirpated.
Suddenly the impersonal machine aura around them changed. The surface beneath their feet began to sink.
“Aposiopesis!” someone vibrated. “Our God accepts!”
For the Ancient site was opening… after three million years.
23. Ancient of Days
—the day of reckoning may be on the wing aposiopesis wakes—
“A-PO-SI-O-PE-SIS!” the massed vibration cried. “A-po-si-o-PE-sis! A-po-SI-O-PE-sis!”
“God of Hosts!” Melody cried to herself as she sank.
“And so we win,” Dash vibrated gently. Melody realized what sounded strange about him: In this host, he did not speak with the Dash inflection. “Because we are meant for each other, and the Ancients found us worthy.”
“The Ancients merely required sufficiently high aura,” Melody replied. “They make no moral judgments.”
“How can we be sure?” he asked. “To them, aura itself may be a state of morality.” And she could not answer.
The platform moved well below the floor of the bog, descending on a slant. Melody watched the feet of the standing £ rise out of sight. All knew this was a historic event, a three-million-year breakthrough. Aposiopesis had answered.
Below the opening, the well widened. Melody detected the vibrations of a counterweight rising. As their platform dropped lower, it spiraled outward, and the counterweight spiraled inward, rising to fill the hole above. It was a giant sophisticated airlock!
As the valve screwed closed in its fashion, the water drained away and gas filled the chamber. Melody, in a nonbreathing host, could not analyze its type, but she was certain it was an inert substance, probably to protect the intricate mechanisms of the Ancients. Three million years—and still operative! What greater wonder could there be?
Yet Melody was not so bemused by the mating and admittance as to forget her priorities. Dash was still her enemy, and in no case could she allow him to emerge with the secret science of the Ancients. Surely he would not permit her to use it to save her galaxy, either. Their battle had not yet been concluded.
Already she felt the stirrings of masculinity within her, of aggression. This host was becoming uncomfortable. She had to do what she had to do before she lost her identity.
But it was also possible that neither one of them would escape this site. The machinery had chosen whom to admit; why should it not choose whom to release? Melody doubted she could get out on her own.
Melody looked around her. Huge as her present host was, this site was large in proportion. It was as if it had been constructed to accommodate £ alone. And that was impossible, because—
Why was it impossible? The Ancients, according to the best modern research, had vanished approximately three million years before, from all across the galaxies. That was a long time ago, in terms of civilization, but a relatively short span geologically and paleontologically. There had been £ that long ago, and Mintakans, and Solarians, and all the rest. The fact was that the Ancients had been contemporaries of all the major modern sapients before these species developed highly organized technological cultures. It was almost as though the Ancients had to vacate before the modern cultures could rise, as the dinosaurs of Sphere Sol had passed (in most places) before the contemporary mammals, and the subsonic monsters of Mintaka before the sonics of Melody’s own species.
But there the parallel broke down. The modern species were superior to the ancient ones. The small mammals had better brains and were physically better articulated than the large reptiles. The Ancients, on the other hand, had been superior to the moderns—so far ahead that even three million years later the gap had not been closed. No shift of galactic climate could have dislodged them. Their disappearance had not enabled more progressive cultures to arise; it had allowed inferior ones to take over the galactic cluster.
Had there been any doubt of that, the mere experience of this site would have dissipated it. What a mechanism!
She could not talk to Dash, for now they were in gas and the skin vibrations did not work. Had the £ been able to communicate linguistically in atmosphere, their relation with the Dash would have been entirely different.
Yet it was as though this site had been made with the £, not the Dash, in mind. It was at the bottom of the jelly-bog, where Dash could not readily go, and its gargantuan scale and mode of entry were suitable only for £. But when this was built, the £ had been primitive creatures. Only in the past hundred thousand Solarian years—twelve thousand real years—had their society ripened. Unless the Ancients had anticipated—but that was preposterous. Why should the Ancients have cared about the future of the £? Or about any of the modem cultures?
If by some chance of indecipherable logic the Ancients, like gods, had cared about the then-primitive species of the galaxies, they would have done better to dismantle their sophisticated outposts. For it was the occasional discoveries of functioning Ancient sites that had triggered the phenomenal intergalactic wars, wreaking havoc among Spheres and segments. Without transfer technology—which seemed to stem entirely from Ancient science, as far as technological archaeologists had been able to determine —the Spheres would have continued regressing at the Fringes, and therefore been unable to make effective war against their neighbors. There would have been continuing peace, instead of the monstrous uncertainties of contemporary war.
Why, then, had the Ancients left these sites so carefully preserved from degeneration? If not for the species to follow, for whom?
And she realized: for the return of the Ancients themselves!
She spun about, looking for an exit, but of course there was none. The plug had sealed the hole above, and now the platform had stopped its descent. They stood in a chamber like the bottom of a spiral oubliette, a deep well widest at the base. And the circular wall was fading out. It thinned into vapor, then vanished entirely, and they stood in a broad plaza. The vista extended on every side so far that her nonfocusing eyes could not see its end. This was no room; this was a city!