“Disgusting,” Andromeda played, and Flint wasn’t certain to which aspect of his commentary she referred. “Continue.”
Flint avoided any musical chuckle. She was hooked, all right—and his tale had just begun. As an extragalactic sapient about to die, she wanted to assuage her curiosity while she could. And any sentient, sapient or not, was fascinated by the conventions of reproduction; it was an inherent function.
“Orion had a dog called Sirius—and that is also a star in our firmament, not far from the Belt. Or so it appears from Sol. Actually Sirius is within nine light-years of Sol, while Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka of the Belt are sixteen and fifteen hundred light-years distant. But to our primitives, it was Canis Major, the big dog standing by his master.”
“In our sky, at home in Sphere /,” Andromeda played reminiscently, “there is a great double-circle of bright stars: the two outer disks of our mightiest hunter. He was created from the collision of two supernovas—”
“Collision of novas!” Flint tootled.
“Our legends are no more ludicrous than yours! Better a birth by novas than by urinating into your female.”
“Could be,” Flint agreed, reminding himself that it was not his purpose to antagonize her. “You /s reproduce by means of light?”
“We lock together two lasers on the mating frequency and—but what business is it of yours?”
“I admit we two are as dissimilar physically as two species can be,” Flint said. “That was some fight, in the Hyades! But we seem to have similar personalities, and the aura—”
“We are enemies!”
“You never mated in Andromeda, did you?”
“I was too busy protecting my galaxy!”
Uh-huh. “Orion married a beautiful girl named Side, who I think was very like my Honeybloom. But she was vain—”
“You are married?” Andromeda queried sharply, so that he had to damp down the sympathetic vibration of the overnote in his own strings. She employed a combination of concepts: mating, permanency, and societal authentication. There was, it seemed, no marriage in Sphere Mintaka—but the Andromedan / pattern was similar to that of Flint’s own species. The slicing disk and the stabbing spear: aspects of the same urge. Could it be that she was jealous?
“I was married in my fashion. Posthumously, as it were. I, too, had my personal life preempted by the needs of my galaxy. It is a sad thing, isn’t it.”
As he played his comment, she accompanied him with a haunting tune of agreement. The sheer beauty of the impromptu duet startled him. When Mintakans communicated, they really did make beautiful music together! It was far superior to the human forms, both as dialogue and music. In that affinity of sound, he realized how lovely she could be when she chose. If he were not careful, he could fall into the same snare he was fashioning for her. The lure of a Kirlian aura matching his own…
“Side boasted of her beauty, and was sent to hell by the jealous queen of the gods,” Flint continued. As was Honeybloom, shamed, exiled by her tribe, deprived of her luster; existing in a living hell. How he missed her, now that he could never recover what had been.
“So was Starshine,” Andromeda played softly. “Her beams were the clearest, and so she was banished for life, and her star still glows near the indomitable disks of the Hero…”
A strikingly similar legend—or was she making it up, playing a variation of his tune, teasing him? It hardly mattered; the theme was still new. “Then Orion fell in love with Merope, and killed all the savage beasts on her father’s island kingdom,” Flint continued. He was enjoying these mythological memories. Myths were very important to Stone Age man, especially myths relating to the visible stars. The constellations had been different from Outworld, but the Earth myths, easier to relate to than modern Earth, remained. “This was to find favor with her father, Oenopion, so that he would permit them to marry. When Oenopion rejected him, Orion took Merope by force.”
“How is this possible?” she played. “Either party can interrupt the beam—”
“In other Spheres involuntary mating is possible, as in Spica.” Where Andromeda herself had been raped. “A Solarian’s urination tube can become very stiff: it can penetrate against resistance. And Merope may have been amenable; it was her father who objected.”
“As one’s galaxy may object, enforcing by powerful conditioning.” She played so softly he barely received it. But the meaning was startling: She had been conditioned against him? She must, then, have evinced some inclination, as had Merope.
And in his own life, was Merope the Polarian Tsopi? He could not marry her, for they were of different Spheres. Anyway, her culture and nature forbade permanent liaisons. But while it lasted, it was wonderful, once cultural misunderstandings were resolved. Call Sphere Polaris Oenopion, blinding him to its secrets… no, there was no good analogy here. And why should there be? This was only a game. Or was it?
“Illicit beam exchange!” Andromeda played, comprehending. “Yes, that happens, despite serious opposition. It is mooted as most intense. The stigma of his prior exchange made him an unsatisfactory liaison…”
“You’re catching on. So Oenopion drugged Orion into a deep sleep and put out his eyes. Lenses, to you.”
“He blinded the giant!” she played.
“That’s in your legend too?”
“That’s what you are doing to my galaxy. You are cutting off our ability to transfer into other galaxies, to investigate their sentient Spheres.”
“Because your are stealing our vital energy!” Flint played back fortissimo, his harmonics jarring against her melody.
She did not respond directly. “Did you mean it, about the morality of your species being no better than ours?”
Again, he forced himself to express the truth, rather than uttering human or Milky Way patriotism. “Yes. I may have been more cynical at the outset, but my experiences in other bodies and other cultures have changed me. In Canopus I learned that to be humanoid was not to be superior; in Spica I found three sides to any question; in Polaris I appreciated circularity. I have learned that there are many validities, and like the Tarotists I find myself concluding that they all are proper. If I went to Galaxy Andromeda I would probably come to appreciate that reality too. I am not the same entity I was, either as an individual or a species.”
“Concurrence.” The tune was hardly more than a wish. Then: “Was that the end of Orion?”
“No. He learned that he could recover his sight by traveling toward the sun—”
“By seeking a new source of energy!”
“Maybe. When he could see again, he went to Crete and went hunting with Artemis or Diana—”
“What name?”
“Artemis in Greek, Diana in Roman. Same girl. Diana was a beautiful, skilled, chaste huntress who loved no male. She—”
“You are making sport of me!” Andromeda clanged, and the notes of her voice were like lasers.
“Believe me, that’s really the legend. I may have reason to kill you, but never to ridicule you. But don’t be concerned; she killed him.”