Piers Anthony: Chaining the Lady

There was no question! “I will try to please Aposiopesis,” she vibrated. “If I succeed or if I fail, I will soon be gone from you.”

“Stand at the portal,” Dgab vibrated, and Melody rotated forward until she was in the center of the depression. Here the alien aura was stronger, with an especially focused column; in a living creature it would have approached her own intensity. But there was no living aspect about it, and it spread far wider than any she could imagine from mere flesh and nerves. To think that this remained after three million years! The Ancients, without doubt, had been the ultimate masters of aura!

“Who would breed with this entity?” the leader asked.

No one replied.

“Whom would you choose?” Dgab asked Melody.

“He with the strongest aura,” Melody said immediately. Aura was obviously the key to this site—if there really were a key—but this was also a personal preference. She had once scorned love based on aura, and had paid for that mistake with a lifetime’s celibacy. Now her body had been brutally freed of that state. Maybe her mating had been preserved for this: the climactic opening of the Ancient site.

Now several £ rotated forward. £ mating was not entirely voluntary; if a suitable partner was needed, he was impressed into service.

They trotted past Melody, each displaying his proboscis according to ritual. Because the £ were rotary—in the Tarot they would surely be represented by the Suit of Disks—their bodies had no fixed projections. But as they had to suck nutrient fluids from the plants, the proboscis unfolded when required.

The first had an aura of about fifty—good, but not at all in Melody’s category. The next was better, about seventy. The third was forty.

A dozen paraded by. The highest was just under one hundred. That was quite respectable. Whole planets of entities sometimes did not have any aura higher than that.

Still…

“Will you, Dgab, also offer yourself?” Melody asked as it occurred to her that a Kirlian-conscious species might elect a high-Kirlian leader.

Dgab emerged from the throng. He was old—as old as Melody herself in her original Mintakan body. He moved slowly, his three legs still strong, but his physical strength diminished. Yet his aura as he approached her was indeed powerful, in the range of 150. Here, perhaps, was a suitable mate!

A new £ whirled down from the outside. His legs were spindly, his body small, and one of his tentacles was missing. “Allow me,” he vibrated, speaking imperfectly.

“The dead has been animated,” Dgab observed. “What spirit occupies this body?”

“Dash,” the newcomer vibrated. Actually the designation differed, but this was the way Melody recognized it. “Alien to you, but mindful of the covenant, I come to settle alien business. By the standard set, I qualify. Perceive my aura.”

Melody found herself in another turmoil of indecision. His aura was 175, certainly the closest to her own she would encounter here. She had specified the highest aura. But this was the enemy! Was she to evoke for him the secrets of the Ancients?

“No! I do not accept him!” she vibrated angrily. “He seeks only to nullify me, to destroy my galaxy!”

“I meet the specifications,” Dash replied. “I come to save her galaxy from the destruction that otherwise is certain—but that is irrelevant to these proceedings. I qualify .”

“Agreed,” Dgab decided, stepping back toward his favored anonymity in the crowd.

“I don’t agree!” Melody vibrated. “Come near me, bird, and I kill you!”

“Let the aliens decide between themselves,” Dgab decided.

Dash approached. “I seek only the blessing of Aposiopesis,” he said, “for the good of the universe, your galaxy included.”

What amazing persistence! He had thrown himself into an unsuitable host and was risking his life by intruding among hostile £, when he could have simply destroyed her own £ host by some subterfuge and been done with it While he really did want the Ancient science—he wanted Melody, too. He retained all those admirable traits of intelligence, aura, and courage that had attracted her to him despite her knowledge of what he was. Yet— “I cannot trust you!”

“Why not merely knock off my foot?” he inquired, stepping nearer.

He knew! He had found out about her past, and now he taunted her with it.

She could feel his aura, the strongest she had encountered in the better part of her lifetime. She had been bemused by that aura once, and thought she loved him —until he had tried to kill her. Until he had sexually tortured her aged Mintakan body. Until—but it had never been possible!

She poised herself for combat, but had no effective weapons. The £ were huge, but not normally aggressive. They could only bang against each other, not really hurting. If only she had that trunk of scentwood!

Well, then, she would bang! She launched herself at him—but the water slowed her body. Dash met her with a lunge, his proboscis unfolding. It jabbed deeply into her torso, like the thrust of a lancer, plunging all the way into her liquid core.

She would have cried out—had she a mouth and air system. She had been caught by surprise, undone! But before she could reorient, she felt, instead of pain, a slow, warm, rich, growing pleasure.

Dash had not wounded her—he was mating with her! Mere puncture did not hurt the £; it was the loss of core substance. There were similarities to the way they had mated in their Solarian bodies, but also differences. In each case the male used an erectile member to penetrate the body of the female, and through this member the juices of copulation flowed. The difference was that here there was no prepared aperture in the female; the male made his own. And the flow through the proboscis was two-way.

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.

—the day of reckoning may be on the wing aposiopesis wakes—