Piers Anthony: Chaining the Lady

—You have an aura of the family keyed to this generation of sites. The Slash entity you knew as Llume was of this family, but her aura was not strong enough. Your own exceeds two hundred, which we believe more than meets the necessary level. Therefore you and you alone are able to penetrate the ultimate secrets of the Ancients.—

That explained Dash’s interest in her from the start. Just as the Andromedans were robbing the Milky Way galaxy of its vital energy, they were taking its best animate potentials. Good, hard business sense.

Many years ago an Andromedan agent had tempted the Milky Way Solarian hero, Flint of Outworld, with similar logic. She had told him that his own species would have acted much the same as hers had it possessed the opportunity, and she had been right. Yet in the end it was he who convinced her , though he was the barbarian and she the sophisticated issue of a leading civilization. She had defected to the Milky Way, and parity had returned to the galaxies.

But whatever had happened in the past, she was sure that Mintaka would not have sacrificed any galaxies for its own advantage. This ambition of Sphere Dash was wrong, and she could not support any part of it, regardless what happened to her or her Sphere. Better to kill herself, thus depriving the enemy of any possible use of her unique aura.

So she remained silent, though now she knew Dash would not shoot her. Should she try to bargain with him for whatever she could salvage, be it only half or a quarter of the Milky Way? Could she trust him or his Sphere that far?

—I cannot read your mind, precisely,— Dash said. —But I am responsive to the fluxes of your beautiful aura. I believe you are concerned primarily for your galaxy. Tap one foot if I am correct.—

No harm in that. Melody tapped one foot.

—I cannot promise you anything in that regard. But I can say this: If you evoke the secret science of the Ancients for us, we may no longer need the energy of your galaxy to sustain our civilization. Then it would be spared. However, since we do not know what is available in the Ancient sites, this is a gamble.—

A gamble whose terms were all in favor of Sphere Dash. If they won, they had the universe; if they lost, they still had the Milky Way. Yet did she have any better alternative? She could not decide.

Dash took her hesitation for negation, which it probably was. —I dislike coercive measures, but the matter is urgent.—

Melody, perhaps on the verge of acquiescence (and perhaps not ), now hesitated for another reason. If he could not do anything to her £ host, how could he do anything to her? He could only kill her Mintakan body, which would defeat his stated purpose.

—I did some research on Sphere Mintaka,— Dash said.—It was not thorough, for I only recently managed to signal my fleet and get picked up. Marooned in a prison host! Fortunately Hammer of Quadpoint was alert, and caught our crude broadcast.—

So the hostages had adapted the missing transfer unit for regular intergalactic transfer and used it to send Dash Boyd and the others home. Later, it had been used to send her here.

—Forgive me if I overlook the nuances of your culture. But as I understand it, Mintakans are born neuter, turn female at maturity, and male after the first mating. You never mated in your natural body, so spent your life as a female.—

That was close enough. A permanently sexed entity would hardly comprehend the intricacies of triensent sex.

—The sex of your Mintakan body determines the sex of your aura,— Dash continued after a pause. —What do you suppose would happen if the sex of that body should change?—

So that was it! Melody felt peculiar horror. They had a male Mintakan here, who would take the initiative. They could do it .

She might kill the male, but that would finish her own body too. And killing them all would not salvage her galaxy. The question she had to answer was whether she could help her galaxy better as a captive female or a free male. She knew the answer.

—You are way ahead of me, I know,— Dash said. —But to be certain we understand each other I will state it openly. There would seem to be two possible consequences of a change in sex in your Mintakan body. One is that your aura would change sex with it. In that case you would be unable to remain in your female £ host, and would have to vacate. Then I believe we would have you, for we control the transfer apparatus and alternate hosts.—

Melody had not thought of that. What would happen to a male aura in a female host? It was impossible to transfer into a host of the opposite sex; only neuter-sexed entities had any option, and even that was uncertain. Would her aura be bounced into the nearest available male host, which was exactly what Dash was ready for? Or would her aura simply be destroyed by the incompatibility of the host? Either way, she was lost.

—Or,— Dash continued, —would your aura fail to change, in which case you would be unable to return to you own body? That seems paradoxical, so I am prepared to gamble on the first prospect. Unless, of course, you elect to cooperate; that would solve all problems.—

No doubt. But Melody still had a galaxy to protect. She would have to gamble. And one part of her mind wondered about the anomaly: What would happen? Horrible that it should happen to her , but the scientific curiosity…

—Well, we proceed,— Dash said. He made a whirring signal with his wings. Music played abruptly. It was a strange harmony, vibrant but incomplete, unlike anything Cnom had ever heard. It was bud music.

Bud music: the compelling sound of a pair of Mintakans in the throes of love. In Sphere Mintaka, mating chambers were soundproofed, to prevent contagion. Otherwise the mating of one couple would trigger compulsive mating by many others within sonic range, and this was not desirable. The decision to mate was supposed to be based on intellectual preference, not sound, but it didn’t always happen that way.

The male Mintakan stirred, approaching the old female husk. He had no intellectual preference; the bud music governed him. The female shell, though void of aura, would function. Not even the atmosphere bubbles separated them; Melody saw those two enclosures merge, in their own kind of mating, and form into just one chamber.

No! No! This was the most insidiously hellish rape! Dash had worked out an appallingly effective physical and intellectual torture for her! She would rather suffer anything than this!

Anything except the betrayal of her galaxy—and that was the price. So she could not stop this gruesome exhibit, this ultimate obscenity. But she could not watch it either. She closed her side eye.

But she could not close off the sound, for it came at her sensitive skin (impervious to talons, but responsive to sound) on every side. She tried to turn her attention away from it, and succeeded only in dredging up her painful past.

She had been just two years old when Ariose came. He was a handsome, extremely high-Kirlian sonic male of four, seeming quite mature and cultured. In Solarian terms he would have been thirty-two, she sixteen, each somewhat younger than Dash Boyd and Yael of Dragon, but with a similar set of outlooks. Two was the age of Mintakan blooming, when the tubes first rounded out and the strings became taut, and the diaphragms resonated to every trifling vibration. The age of delight, experiment, ambition, and beauty—and naiveté.

She had all nine feet, by definition the state of female virginity (the concepts were synonymous), of greatest innocence, desirability, and availability. The great majority of adult Mintakans were to some degree male; only once in life was one fully female.