Piers Anthony - Chaining the Lady

“Captain Boyd, I presume,” Melody murmured past half-lowered eyelashes. This sort of signal was not as good as a throbbing harmony, but in an amusical body she just had to make do. She took the proffered hand.

There was the electric thrill of intense auras interacting. This was the Captain, all right; he had the highest Kirlian rating in the fleet, 150, and that was much of the reason he was captain. With the hostage threat, the only real security of command was to have top officers with Kirlian auras too high to be taken over by the enemy technique. The Society of Hosts had circled delicately, as the Polarians would have put it, or pulled strings as the Solarians described it, to get this officer into place in this crucial location. This single ship was capable of destroying the civilization of a full planet—and of course the only civilized planet within range of this ship was that of Imperial Outworld.

Captain Boyd’s aura was even higher than she had been informed. It was on the order of 175, the most potent she had encountered apart from her own, and it was first cousin to hers in type. She wasn’t certain whether this was sloppy testing on the part of the Society of Hosts, or sloppy records, or variance in standards of notation between the Spheres. Probably the Colonel had simply misremembered it, being more concerned with the actual hostage than with the other personnel of the ship. A pleasant surprise, though!

“Dash,” the Captain said. “Call me Dash… Yael.”

Melody made a little motion that accentuated her host’s twin mammaries, and smiled. “Dash.” Now that she knew that sexual interaction was possible apart from reproduction in this species, it was fun to see how well the equipment worked. So long as she never let it go too far. It was obvious that her body could never match the sheer physical power of the males of this species, so sexual appeal was also a potential equalizer.

Melody glanced at the hovering magnet that so upset Yael. “Might I inquire about your companion?”

He smiled. “Oh. Sorry. We tend to forget that planetaries aren’t used to fleet ways. This is Slammer the Magnet, my bodyguard. Low Kirlian, low intelligence, but the most loyal friend an entity ever had. Say hello to the lady, Slammer.”

Slammer shot forward so quickly that Melody’s reflexes were caught short. The ball slammed into her chest —and bounced away without impact. A grossly powerful magnetic field impinged painfully on her aura as contact was made.

Yael screamed, and part of that scream escaped the host-lips. They could have been crushed, host and transferee together, had that thing not reversed itself.

“Impressive, isn’t it,” Dash remarked. “You can see I’m quite safe with Slammer around. He’s faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive—uh, that’s a cute expression from deep in human past, but quite applicable here. One word from me, and the living cannon-ball clears the way. If an entity tried to draw a weapon in my presence—boom, no entity. But don’t worry, Slammer is your friend too.” He turned his head to the hovering ball. “Protect Yael. Understand?”

The magnet dipped in an obvious acquiescence. Melody made a mental note to learn a lot more about magnets, soon. She didn’t like being around a living cannonball, and now understood Yael’s terror. This creature was dangerous!

The captain put his hand on the narrow section of her back and guided her gently forward. Again their auras overlapped delightfully. Instinctive attraction, Kirlian affinity—by any designation, it was a potent force.

“It’s such a pleasure to encounter a genuine Kirlian,” Dash said, echoing her thoughts by no coincidence. If his 175 had such impact on her, what did her 223 have on him? “Your beauty is more than physical; it surrounds you.”

“Naturally,” Melody agreed, making a little bounce to enhance the physical. In this fractional gravity, she bounced too high; only his hand on her kept her from rising to the ceiling. “That is the nature of the aura.”

“Hey, he’s on the make!” Yael warned.

“On make? Oh, I gather your thought now. He wishes to make an offspring, to impregnate this body. And we don’t want that.”

“Actually, it might not be so bad,” Yael mused. “I’ve never actually done it. My folks always kept me away from the boys, saving me for concubinage. But with a real space captain… I’ve had my antipreg shot, of course.”

So there was no risk of impregnation, regardless of sexual activity. That was good to know, but hard to adjust to, after Melody had so recently been forced to realize the close connection between the two, for Solarians.

Still, a good tool should not be used indiscriminately. “Let’s not rush it,” Melody said to Yael. “I’m a bit curious about this phenomenon myself, but I haven’t stayed female for eighty years for nothing. Actually it’s the aura that dazzles him.”

But privately she wondered. She was aware that Solarians were thoroughly sexual creatures, with the males constantly stimulated by the visible attributes of the females. Her experience in a Solarian host, combined with the pervasive sexual aspects of the Solarian Tarot, made that abundantly clear. But even so, there were conventions, such as the compulsive wearing of clothing, that modified it, lest humans degenerate into perpetual sexual orgies. Captain Boyd was coming on very strongly, near the permissible limit of social convention as she understood it. After allowing for the impact of their extraordinary auras, was there still too much sexual push? If so, why?

March had emerged from the shuttle. He exchanged salutes with the Captain, who directed him to the personnel sergeant. Then Boyd showed Melody through another airlock into the main ship, and they took a slow slide toward the outer rim. Gravity increased as they progressed down the chute, until it was Solarian-norm. They debouched in a narrow hall many levels down; space was not wasted in space. This was not because there was no room, but because of the value of building materials. A larger ship required great quantities of precious substances, and more fuel in order to maneuver. So economy was the keynote. But still this was a very large, elegant, powerful vessel.

There were handholds along the walls and ceiling, reminding Melody that ships of space were not always operating with convenient gravity. Up could become down , and complete freefall would make perambulation awkward. So one had to be able to grab and pull.

They entered a fair-sized room, well furnished with bolted-down couches and tables—the officer’s lounge. There was a quick round of introductions. Melody dutifully shook hands with each man and woman, mentally noting the names and aural intensity of each. They were all high-Kirlian entities—surprisingly high, in the fifty to one hundred range. Sphere Sol must have impressed every Kirlian available into service in the space fleet! Had the other Spheres done the same for their own ships?

“And here is your cabin—next to mine,” Dash said.

“Thank you. I will not be needing it, as I am returning to my home immediately after the completion of the mission,” Melody said briskly. “If you will show me the subject and set up the equipment…” She avoided the term “hostage”; surely the Captain knew her mission in detail, but the other officers would not.

“I assumed you would want to acclimatize,” Dash said. “A young girl like you, first visit to the fleet…”

“He’s on the make, all right,” Yael remarked. “Why don’t we go ahead and—”

But Melody still had the caution of age. “Let’s keep him guessing,” she told Yael. And to the Captain: “I appreciate your solicitude. You can express it most conveniently by facilitating my mission.”