She sent a blast of despairing hate at the globe—and it puffed into vapor.
Amazed, she stared at the fading wisps of smoke. Beside her, Dash was umnoving, as surprised as she. Could the machine itself have been an illusion of animation?
The answer came: Yes! This was the nature of animation. Their thoughts not only animated the pictures of the globe, they were the globe. And the entire city. All that really existed here was the oubliette—and the animation transfer unit and bank of information that surrounded it. Which was worth more than any city.
Melody acted immediately. Under her guidance, the entire city exploded ferociously. The acrid odor of destruction was painful. The site seemed to be collapsing, burying them.
And while Dash stood confused by the sheer threat and fury of the falling buildings and leaping flames, not certain how much was real, not yet aware that it was merely the dissolution of the animation, Melody thrust forward her overwhelming thought-urge-prayer: reverse hostaging!
And her world dissolved.
24. Milk of Way
COUNCIL INITIATED PARTICIPATING * — / :: oo
—aposiopesis has spoken—
*andromeda is fallen*
/the lady is chained/
oo the monster strikes oo
:: shame! ::
CONCURRENCE
Melody opened his eyes and sat up. His body felt stiff, and he had a headache, but he could function.
He licked his lips. The flesh was raw, and one or two front teeth were missing. “Mush have veen some fight!” he muttered.
He was in a round room. He was clothed—a Solarian affectation. Next to him several other Solarian males and one female lay on pallets. Melody recognized them: They were the hostages that had taken over the Ace of Swords of the fleet of Segment Etamin. He knew them only by their hostage identities: Hath of Conquest, Tiala of Oceana, all of the entities he had unsuccessfully tried to salvage from Andromedan domination. All were there except Captain Dash Boyd.
For he was Captain Boyd! Melody had changed sex, and animated a male host. He must have had the subconscious desire to return here to the Segment Etamin fleet, and the Ancient unit had picked up that wish and transferred him here. What miracles of science the Ancients had!
But what of his main intent, to abolish hostaging? Now he governed another hostage body! Well, he might still be able to do something.
He drew upon his host-memory information and ascertained that this was a chamber within a Disk of Sador. The host-mind, unconscious at the time, had no memory of being brought here, but Melody was able to figure it out by reference to the older memories. Victorious Admiral Hammer of :: must have boarded the derelict Ace of Swords and salvaged all useful equipment, especially the serviceable hosts. He evidently knew enough about magnets and magnetism to handle Slammer and his companions, too.
Melody, in control of this body without Hammer’s knowledge, could do some damage, maybe even taking over the ship. Then…
He went to a water nozzle and activated it. A jet of cold, refreshing fluid spurted into his face, Sador didn’t worry about the inefficiency of such mechanisms; the surplus water was reclaimed, and an automatic cutoff prevented the device from operating in null-gravity conditions. Sador was a huge, degenerate Sphere; creature comforts had intruded on many of the military vessels. He was feeling better already.
He touched the door-button, and the round door opened. This ship was of course designed for globular, wheeled Sadorians; push-buttons were satisfactory, but not pull-levers. It was no problem for this bipedal, twin-handed host, however.
Melody emerged into a great central level, with ramps leading up and down. The wheeled creatures preferred the open range. But within the ordered physical system was chaos. The Sadors were hunched, unmoving; their wheels drawn in, as though in shock. He walked among them, unchallenged.
What had happened? This whole ship was nonfunctioning!
“Captain!” a Solarian voice called.
Melody turned, his human ear orienting on the sound —his two ears; they gave him an immediate sense of direction. He spied a screened cell containing two men. “Skot! March!” he exclaimed, concentrating so as to avoid slurring his words. Those teeth were a problem!
“Well, half right,” March said, satisfied. “But—who are you?”
Melody smiled. “You may have some trouble believing this, so I’ll come at it obliquely. I’m not the Andromedan. Remember the Service of Termination?”
March’s eyes widened. “Captain Boyd wouldn’t know about that! Only—”
“Only Melody of Mintaka could know,” Skot put in. “Feel that aura!”
How did Skot know about that? He hadn’t been there! Melody leaned closer, probing for the man’s aura—and it was not Skot of Kade. Yet it was familiar…
March glanced across at him. “Maybe such things aren’t significant to you, Slammer, but I can’t feel the aura, and Melody is a female. She can’t—”
“Slammer?” Melody demanded.
Skot’s head nodded. “Admiral Hammer didn’t trust me in my natural body, so he transferred me to this ungainly thing. Poor Beanball is locked into another cell with my body; he must think I’m dead.”
“But Skot—what—?”
“He is gone,” Slammer said. “His ship was blasted. This is an empty host.”
Add Skot of Kade to the growing list of entities to mourn! If only he hadn’t insisted on going on that mission…
“We’ve been getting to know each other,” March said. “Slammer’s a nice guy; I never realized how smart the magnets were. But just now all hell broke loose. The hostages keeled over, then you came out. Who are you, really?”
“The anti-hostage mechanism!” Melody exclaimed. “It worked!”
Quickly Melody explained about his effort at the Ancient site in Andromeda. “Transfer is instant,” he concluded. “And so is this, it seems. I animated this host because the original personality is gone, so there is no host-mind to preempt it, and I am male, now.” He explained about that as he activated the cell-release.
March shook his head in amazement. “I thought meeting a magnet in human form was the limit; now I have to get used to a beautiful girl in male-captain form.”
“I never was a beautiful girl,” Melody said. “That was merely my host, Yael of Dragon.”
March nodded thoughtfully. “I’d like to know—her.” Then he remembered something. “What was the Ancient secret? Why did they suicide, and why were you so horrified, even after three million years?”
“Aposiopesis,” Melody said succinctly.
“What does that mean?”
“I will never tell,” Melody said with absolute seriousness. “If the truth were known, much of the drive of our own contemporary civilization would dissipate. We might, like them, give up. I don’t think we would, but we might. I refuse to gamble on it—and I doubt Dash Boyd will gamble either.” Then he returned to the business at hand. “Admiral Hammer and all the other hostages must have been nullified; that’s why they collapsed. Their host-minds may have taken over, but it’s too soon to—you know how the hostages suppress their hosts, even destroying them…”
“Then we’d better get control of this ship fast,” March said. “Because pretty soon those hostages may be back on their wheels, if their hosts are really dead or dying.