Piers Anthony: Chaining the Lady

“No,” Melody said honestly enough. How could the segment be at war without the Ministers knowing it? How could a Solarian officer—and not one of the highest ones, if she comprehended military rankings at all—keep secrets from his own superiors? It was nonsensical.

“Well, we’ll return to that later,” the Colonel said. “We never would have required the service of a person your age if we were not desperate. But we are doing all we can to protect your identity. Once the enemy gets at our Population files—” He shook his head. “The point is, you have the highest Kirlian aura ever measured. Do you comprehend the significance of that?”

“My ice cream is coming,” Melody said promptly.

The officer rolled his human eyeballs expressively upward. “Er, yes. Momentarily. Uh, Melody, the Society of Hosts forbids the exploitation of children, so they have no child-hosts. And it is essential that we work through the Society. That’s why we had to transfer you to the body of a young woman. This body is larger and more, er, mature than you are accustomed to, quite apart from the change in species. When we get a dispensation through the Society, we’ll retransfer you to a more appropriate host. I apologize for the uh, awkwardness.” His eyes strayed to her legs, which had fallen apart again.

Melody snapped them shut. “I want to go home,” she said, screwing up her human face in its version of misery. She was beginning to enjoy this.

“I wish you’d stay,” Yael said wistfully. “You’re putting that officer through hoops! I’d never have the nerve.”

But the Colonel was talking again. “We can’t send you home yet, Melody. We are at war. Secretly. It is a crisis. Now first you’ll have to join the Society of Hosts—”

Melody pouted. “No.”

Yael objected. “You have to join the Society! You’re a transferee!”

“Where’s my ice cream?” Melody demanded. And privately to Yael: “That ice cream had better be good. Exactly what is it?”

The Colonel sighed, expelling wind through his mouth in a manner impossible to a Mintakan. He made a gesture with his hand, and the orderly entered, bearing a covered tray.

“It’s fattening,” Yael said.

Melody worked that out rapidly. It seemed slenderness was a desirable physical quality, and what they fed children made the body grow. She didn’t want to degrade her host’s body.

“Here is your ice cream,” the Colonel said, forcing a smile.

Melody peered at it. It was a whitish mass of cold substance in a flat dish. Not at all like Mintakan food. “No.”

“What?” the Colonel asked, startled.

“Eat it yourself,” Melody said.

The man’s brow furrowed. “You wish me to eat your ice cream?”

“You can’t do that!” Yael protested. “He’s almost a general! ”

“Yes,” Melody said aloud. Childhood had its privileges.

“Then will you cooperate?” the Colonel inquired wearily.

“I want to go home!”

The Colonel took the dish and began spooning the noxious substance into his mouth. “Um, takes me back thirty years,” he remarked around melting cream. “Now about the Society of Hosts—”

“They can have some ice cream too,” Melody said brightly. It should not require much more of this to convince them to send her right back to Mintaka!

The Colonel grimaced. He leaned over and touched a button. “SOH rep to office,” he snapped.

“I think he just called your bluff,” Yael said nervously. “He’s just buzzed the Society of Hosts.”

Almost immediately a creature appeared in the doorway. “Circularity,” it said. It resembled a large blob with a tapering trunk above and large ball below.

“A Polarian!” Melody exclaimed internally.

“I am Fltosm,” it said, buzzing its trunk-ball against its own hide.

“Hello, Flotsam,” Melody greeted it.

“Have some ice cream, comrade,” the Colonel said. “If you will place a quantity on the floor…” the Polarian suggested, indicating with its speech-ball where the appropriate place for such a deposit would be.

The Colonel poured a little melted ice cream on the floor. The Polarian rolled over it several times. The cream adhered to its wheel and was drawn up inside its wheel-housing. “Very good,” it said.

The Colonel turned to Melody. “Now if you are satisfied…”

“I want to go home,” Melody repeated.

“You are very clever, Matriarch,” Fltosm said, glowing.

Melody grimaced. “You solved the conversion!”

“Circularity.”

The Colonel looked around. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” Melody said. “What are the advantages to membership in the Society of Hosts?”

“It is essential to our war effort!” the Colonel exclaimed. “We can’t trust any other—”

“In a moment,” the Polarian interposed neatly. “Matriarch, the home-body of the transferee must not be neglected. It must be occupied and exercised regularly, lest the synapses become detuned. Were an entity to remain in transfer for a period as long as a Sol-year without accommodation for its own body, that body would become unsalvageable, and the entity’s aura would accelerate decay. The two are linked, always—aura and body —in fact they are one, mere aspects of the wheel of life. Separation is deleterious.”

“The wheel of life!” Melody repeated, thinking of the Tarot Trump titled the Wheel of Fortune. That was naturally the way a Polarian would think. “Flotsam, you make unholy sense. The Society of Hosts takes care of hosts—and of transferees too. But I’m not going to be in transfer long, so I am ill-behooved to join.”

“Circularity.”

The human officer puffed up. “See here, are you agreeing with her?” he demanded of the Polarian. “You know the vital importance to our galaxy of—”

“The interest of the individual is paramount,” Fltosm replied, vibrating its ball apologetically against the bulging expanse of its lower torso.

“But we need her!” the Colonel said. “She has an aural intensity of two hundred twenty-three, the highest ever measured. With our own government infiltrated by hostages—”

Yael was amazed. “Two hundred and twenty-three times normal? It’s impossible!”

“The aura is possible,” Melody informed her. “My cooperation may not be.” Then, aloud: “Flotsam, I like your Polarian logic. Will you assist me in returning to my natural state?”

“With pleasure. It is merely a matter of—”

“Never!” the Colonel roared. “We made a pact, the five of us, to save our galaxy. Do you want me to summon the Canopian? She stays here!”

So Sphere Canopus was involved in this, too. But not Segment Etamin’s own government?

The Polarian was undaunted. “This is not circular. Neither my culture nor the Society of Hosts permit involuntary transfer.”

“Well, Andromeda does!” the Colonel said. “If we don’t stop them, we’ll all be hostages. Then where will your precious individual rights be? That’s what this war is all about.”

Fltosm addressed Melody: “I regret I cannot assist you without exchange of debt. In matters of interhuman protocol I cannot interfere.”

“I’m not human; I’m Mintakan,” Melody said. But the Colonel’s remarks about the galactic situation alarmed her. If another Energy War were really upon them, there was no security in Sphere Mintaka! “I will exchange debt.”

“Watch it,” Yael advised. “Debt is a mighty funny, mighty serious business with Poles. I don’t understand it, really, but—”

“I am roughly familiar with the concept; it is in the Polarian aspect of Tarot,” Melody told her.

“In accordance with the Compromise Convention of System Etamin,” the Polarian said formally, “I proffer a modified debt exchange, abatement inherent.”