Chaining the Lady (26 page)

Melody hesitated, and it was well that she did, for she discovered that
S
fe would not have obeyed the hostage's directive. She could have given herself away that readily! She remained where she was.

“Drone, tell her to obey me,” the hostage snapped. The snapping was literal: its mandibles clicked.

“Do,” the Drone said.

Now Melody stood and crossed the room to stand before the hostage. She was tempted to attack it, but still didn't know enough to free the Drone, so attack was pointless. Better to wait for a better opportunity, unless the hostage discovered her powerful aura and forced the issue.

“Go to the Master's galley and fetch food,” the hostage said melodiously. Canopians had excellent linguistic ability, and always spoke well. “Feed the Drone.”

Melody drew on her host's information and made her way down the corridor to the galley. This was a routine chore; she not only cleaned her Master, she fed him and carried away his wastes. With no personal distractions he was able to devote his full attention to his position as Captain. Even from the uncomprehended fragments in the uneducated Slave mind, Melody perceived the massive capacity of the Drone. He had, by any definition, a first-rate intellectual competence.

Slaves operated the galley. “Hey,
S
fe,” the server said. She recognized him as
O
to of A[
^th
]. “What's going on up front? The Masters have been acting strange.”

“The ship has been taken over by Galaxy Andromeda,” Melody said.

He laughed, not equipped to believe the truth. “Here's your order; go throw burl at Andromeda.”

Melody carried the cannister, pondering. Burl—a plant cultivated on several worlds of Sphere Canopus. The berries were solid, and could be thrown. They were also squeezed for their juice, which was made into food for the Masters. To throw burl, thus, would be an insulting waste. It was, of course, safe to insult Andromeda, though it was apparent to Melody (if not to
S
fe) that the identity stood in lieu of a more proximate if unnameable enemy. The humanoids of the / intonation
obeyed
, but did not necessarily
like
, their insectoid Masters.

Interesting double-culture, this. Melody had reviewed Sphere Canopus as part of segment geography, way back in her bud stage, and of course there were references to it in the Cluster Tarot. Canopus was represented by the Suit of Wands (called Scepters by the Canopians) and was one of the first and stoutest allies of Sphere Sol. The Suit of Energy stood for many things, as did all the suits; any suggestion that there was any affinity between Canopus and Andromeda would have been fiercely denied by both parties. Flint of Outworld had visited Sphere Canopus in the host of a Slave. But there were many spheres in the segment, and many segments in the galaxy, and many galaxies in the cluster, and it simply was not possible to know or remember the details of all the species in them all. In addition, Melody's personal aversion to sapient slavery had put a certain intellectual distance between her and this one. Now she wished she had choked off her own prejudice enough to give her a sufficient understanding of this culture. She did not have to
like
what she was finding here, but Canopus
was
a vital ally, and
S
fe's devotion to her Master was genuine. In fact it was so thorough it had to indicate that there were some redeeming features in the culture.

She entered the Drone's room. “You have one unit,” the arrogant hostage said. That was a measure of Canopian time equivalent to about a quarter of a Solarian hour. Feeding and grooming the Drone normally required three units, so this would force her to hurry. Possibly they were keeping him alive because they might need him as a figurehead in dealing with nonhostage ships, at least until the overt takeover occurred. The Slaves would obey the Drone without question, but might balk at running a Droneless ship; the familiar symbol of authority was important. The captain could be forced to perform to a certain extent with the discipline box so they kept him at least minimally healthy.

The hostage phased out the laser curtain so Melody could pass, then restored it behind her. Now she was in with the Drone, but still didn't know how to free him. This box-laser combination was a simple yet excruciatingly effective prison.

She opened the warm canister of burl-juice and set it under the Drone's proboscis. He dipped his imbibing tube into it and slowly drew the liquid in. Meanwhile, Melody picked up the set of brushes that were on the floor beside him, and brushed out the fur of his abdomen and legs. The wings needed attention too, but it was impossible to treat them in a hurry; she would only tear the gossamer membranes. Such a beautiful figure of an entity, this super-Master; how it hurt her
S
fe-mind to groom him so hastily.

He knew how to be freed—if only he could tell her. Yet how could he do that, with the pain-box monitoring his reactions?

“Time,” the hostage said coldly.

So soon! She had hardly started. But she dared not dally; the hostage would act ruthlessly. She set aside the brush, picked up the empty canister—and found it half full.

Strange. The Drone always consumed a full ration; it was necessary for his health. He had typical Canopian Master nerve; his predicament would not have affected his appetite or performance. He was not sick. He must have slowed his consumption deliberately, an internal matter that would not activate the discipline box. Perhaps he was trying to commit suicide by starving himself. No, the box would stop that, too. So something else...

The hostage-insect touched the control, phasing out the curtain. And suddenly Melody caught on.

She hurled the cannister at the hostage. It struck it on the head, the juice spraying over it. It stumbled back, cursing in some Andromedan language. The blow alone would not have hurt it much, but the sticky juice coated its faceted eyes and filmy wings and distracted it.

Melody ran toward the shelf on which the discipline box sat. The curtain here had not been phased out; the hostages were too canny for that. She took a breath, closed her humanoid eyes tightly, and launched herself at the box.

The laser caught her in a ring of fire that singed off her hair and clothing. The agony was momentarily unbearable, but her flying inertia carried her into the wall. Her hand struck the box, caught it, and held it though her legs remained in the curtain of agony and were being inevitably cooked. She gritted her teeth and grabbed the setting knob, twisting it violently.

Immediately she realized it was the wrong knob, the wrong direction. The Drone steed stiffly, shuddering; she was inflicting nine- or ten-level pain on him, up near the fatal range! Quickly she turned it down to zero, then found the personal tuner and wrenched it around. He was free!

The Drone moved so quickly he seemed a magnificent blur, or maybe it was her burned eyes fading. He shot over to the hostage, picked it up in his two front legs, and stove its head in with one crunch of his deadly mandible pincers. Then he took the laser-control and turned it off.

In another moment the Drone was back with Melody. He lifted the box from her flaccid fingers and twiddled with it. At that time another hostage entered the room, but it froze as the Drone found his setting on the box. Stiffened by pain, the hostage could offer no resistance as the Drone calmly moved over and crunched its head.

Melody, satisfied the situation was under control, fainted.

* * *

She woke in pain. Another Slave was tending to her. But as soon as her eyes opened, the Drone came over. “Sfe of Y^љ, I am in your debt,” he said.

There was something strange about his intonation. In a moment it came to her: he had omitted the baton sinister! Not the
S
fe of Slave-status, but the Sfe of free-status. There was no finer reward for a Canopian humanoid.

But of course she was neither slave nor humanoid in her home-sphere. “I am Melody of Mintaka,” she said with difficulty, for her lips were burned. It was hard to look at him, because part of her eyelids were also gone and her eyeballs were drying. “Please return me to my ship—the
Ace of Swords—
so I can transfer to another body.”

“Immediately, alien ally,” the Drone said. “This host of yours is finished; we preserve animation at this moment only by application of strong drugs. You acted with extraordinary courage. How may I repay my debt to you?”

Courage?
Her
? She had acted before she had a chance to consider the personal consequence, and once she was in it there had been nothing to do but carry through. But evidently debt was not merely a Polarian or Mintakan concept. “Just use your ship well on behalf of our galaxy—and be kind to your next body-Slave.”

“Agreed,” the Drone said, not bothering to quibble with her implication that he had not treated his prior Slave properly.
S
fe had loved him; he had obviously treated her well. But Melody was already fading out; she knew this body was dying. Little of the skin remained, and the legs might as well have been amputated.

She woke in her Yael body. The Canopian shuttle had brought her home, and Skot had retransferred her. She must have given the code signal somewhere along the way. “What happened?” Skot demanded.

“Bit of trouble. Let's get on with the job.”

Chapter 13:

Ship of Knyfh

/I wish the support of quadpoint in this crisis/

::only proceed to action hour you will have support::

/and if there are complications of the nature feared?/

::then quadpoint will resolve them::

* * *

Melody transferred next to a ship of Segment Knyfh. She had no idea what she would encounter there—which was why she selected it. She now had a rough working knowledge of the Swords of Sol, the Cups of Spica, the Disks of Polaris, and the Scepters of Canopus. But the Atoms of Knyfh were a complete mystery to her, despite the fact that her own Sphere Mintaka used a roughly similar type of ship. She didn't understand her own sphere's ships either. A mystery in the power of the enemy was not good; she had to know its capabilities.

The Knyfh vessel was indeed like a giant atom, an almost perfect replica of the symbol for the Suit of Aura in the Cluster Tarot deck. Two spheres spun in close magnetic orbit about a common center, like a proton and a neutron. Farther out there were a number of rapidly orbiting spots, moving so fast they were virtual rings or globes: the electrons. These were the light-gathering units, but they also seemed to serve admirably as a kind of defensive shield. What would happen to any solid object that attempted to penetrate that glittering barrier?

Segment Knyfh was generally considered to be more advanced than Segment Etamin. A thousand years before, an emissary from the then Sphere Knyfh had brought the gift of transfer to the then Sphere Sol, initiating the explosive expansion of Sol's empire of influence. However, there had never been a close association between the two. Segment representatives met from time to time to determine galactic policy, but news of these contacts was not generally published widely in Sphere Mintaka.

So the nature of the other great segments of the Milky Way galaxy was almost as mysterious to Melody as those of Andromeda. She knew the names of the ten major segments, and that was about all.

“Freng, Qaval, Etamin,” she thought to herself in a kind of supportive litany. “Knyfh, Lodo, Weew, Bhyo, Fa¿, Novagleam, and Thousandstar.” In her youth she had dreamed of what life must be like in Thousandstar, most distant of the segments, and popular literature had many fanciful stories about such places. But genuine information was scant.

So now she went to the representative of the token contingent of the allied segment, and found herself in the incredible body of a sophisticated relative of the magnets. This was no physical ball, but a miniature of the ship, with a compact nucleus of five spheres and a scintillating outer energy shell that
rolled
across the deck. The magnets Melody had known were bound to the metal passages of a ship, but these atom-hosts used magnetism mainly internally. They could levitate in the vicinity of the right metal, but could also travel elsewhere, much as Polarians did, utilizing the principle of the wheel. Most—virtually all—of the mass was in the nucleus, so that there was plenty of leverage to control the orientation and motion of the shell.

It was a very nice body, though it was not precisely a body at all by her prior definition. But she could not concern herself about that; she had to deal with the Andromedan entity that had made it hostage. It was a savage one: Bluefield of %. Not the blue of a field of Solarian flowers, or of a mournful Mintakan tune. The hue of an intense magnetic field. Had this entity possessed an aura to match her electrical power, Melody would never have been able to transfer to it.

Bluefield fought in the fashion she knew best, sending jolt after jolt of magnetic energy through host and aura, disrupting both by associated currents. Melody was very nearly dislodged before she learned to parry the ferocious onslaught. As she had nowhere to go, loss of her hold would have meant extinction; contrary to spiritualistic folklore, no aura could exist in the absence of some type of host.

But again her overwhelming superiority of aura saved her. She simply had more intensity than any other entity could cope with. She closed in on the Andromedan sentience, tightening her hold. “Yield, Bluefield, so I won't have to destroy you.”

To her surprise, Bluefield yielded. Suddenly Melody was in her mind. The % entities were of the broad class of magnetic sapients, structurally between the solid magnets like Slammer, and the atomic Knyfhs. They had two charged spheres in orbit about each other, but no outer energy shells, and could move anywhere by “walking” the spheres. They were unique (in Melody's limited experience) in that their sapience was housed in two physically unconnected units; a single unit could not function intelligently. The magnetic interactions between the parts not only made motion possible, it made
thought
possible.