Chaining the Lady Read online

  She sat at a table she drew out of the wall, already getting acclimatized to this body and habitat. Her Mintakan body, of course, was unable to sit. She laid the cards faceup in even rows of ten. There were thirty Major Arcana or Trumps, twenty Courts, and fifty Minor Arcana or Pips. The last group consisted of five suits: Energy, Gas, Liquid, Solid, and Aura. The cards of each were numbered one through ten, with illustrations of their characteristic symbols: Wands, Swords, Cups, Disks, and Broken Atoms. Each card of the complete deck could be flexed into two alternate faces, and the Ghost Trump had fifteen flexes plus a Table of Equivalencies enabling the reader to adapt the deck to Spheres not directly represented, such as her own Mintaka. Yes, excellent!

  One face of the Queen of Energy was the same chained lady that had started this off. It was different in that this one was purely visual, rather than primarily sonic, but there was no question about the kinship. She picked it up and took it to the mirror, comparing her naked host-body to the figure on the card. The similarity was amazing. Had this host been specially selected to match? Or had the Tarot been aware of this host, and somehow—no, there was the route to insanity!

  She returned slowly to the table. One thing was sure: The model for the picture was sexually appealing, so as to create the necessary urge in the mind of Perseus. That suggested that her present host was an extraordinary beauty—which just might be useful.

  For perhaps an hour, Solarian time, Melody contemplated her hundred-face spread. She also flexed the Ghost through all fifteen alternates, dwelling about one minute on each. Apart from the necessary activity of her fingers, she did not move; in fact she had entered a light trance.

  At last she gathered up the cards, shuffled them until her host-fingers were proficient at this, then cut the deck several times and turned up one card randomly.

  It was a picture of another lovely young human female, with a long, light head-mane and slender firm body, nude. But this one was not chained. She half-kneeled on a green bank beside a pool, one foot resting forward on, not in, the water. She held two pitchers from which water poured; one into the pool, the other onto the ground, where it split into five blue rivulets. There were eight stars in the blue sky above her—seven white, one yellow— and a red bird perched in a tree.

  "The Star," she murmured, "in one of the pre-Sphere renditions. Key of great hope—or great loss—its five rivulets flowing into the five suits, its smaller stars signifying the seven planets of ancient Solarian astrology, the large star sometimes called the Star of the Magi. Now why does this particular Trump manifest now?" Whatever its original meaning, the largest star actually reminded her of mighty Mintaka, center of the universe she had known so long ago as a bud. The nostalgia was suddenly so intense she had to close her human eyes and suffer its ravages without resistance. It was not merely that she was more than four hundred parsecs from it now, and in alien guise; time more than distance separated her from that stellar hope. What she had sought there had been lost in the distant youth of her lifetime, and never recovered, but even now the pain and shame could emerge from its capsule to haunt her. Her effort to shield herself from that agony had brought her to Tarot, but remarkable as that study had been, it could not make up for it. It had shown her the folly of her past, not the folly of her future.

  She forced open her human eyes, staring at the card again. The Star-girl's hair flared from her head to the level of her knees, framing her body in a luxuriant cape. In fact, it was almost like an aura, that mark of distinction that made Melody herself remarkable. But what was the use of aura, when the essence of her life had been poured out like that of the two vases of this scene? Hope and loss—how well she understood!

  She dealt another card. This was a semihuman female with two pouring cups, but in this case she had a fish's tail rather than legs, and she was pouring the liquid from one cup into the other. In the background was a section of the Milky Way galaxy, with recognizable constellations as seen from System Sol. Naturally the Solarian deck was oriented to the Solarian view. This picture had strong points of similarity, notably the girl's full mammaries, but the symbolic meaning was quite different. "Temperance," Melody murmured.

  She dealt one more. This was yet another young woman fully clothed and holding a large disk or coin, an unit of Solarian monetary exchange. "Page of Solid, female," Melody remarked.

  She studied the three cards side by side, noting their parallels, which were impressive. Three healthy, sexually appealing young women. The Tarot was certainly trying to tell her something of importance, and this time she intended to continue her meditation until she comprehended it without undue distraction by her personal feelings. Again she moved into a trance.

  Suddenly she snapped her fingers—an automatic Solarian gesture her Mintakan body could not have performed —in understanding. "Girl, stand forward," she said.

  And inside her brain the host-girl presented herself as directed. "Here," the child-human whispered voicelessly, with associations of guilt and fear.

  "I had supposed this body was vacant," Melody said disapprovingly, also voicelessly—for this was a dialogue of two minds within a single brain, and Melody did not want the listening recorders of the Imperium to eavesdrop on this very private matter. She had never been in transfer before, but her mind remained her last reservoir of individuality, and she was a private person. To share a brain, to have every thought monitored even in the process of formulation....

  "No—we are always present," the girl said. "We do not interfere, cannot interfere, but we must live. We must not forget."

  "I fear I have not kept up with the times," Melody said, making a mental twang of strings that translated into a figurative shake of the head. "Transfer is now to live hosts?"

  "Always. Was it ever otherwise?"

  A woman out of touch with the present, transferred to the body of a girl out of touch with the past! "Who are you?"

  "I am Yael. I remained hidden, as instructed. How did you find me?"

  A mental smile. "The Tarot found you, Yael. It reveals what is hidden in the mind. In this case—another mind. Tell me about yourself."

  "We're not supposed to intrude—"

  "So I gather. You are merely supposed to sit mute while an alien occupies your body. I understood slavery had been abolished in System Etamin." A system was the next unit below the sphere, the planets associated with a single star. There was a major slave-culture within Segment Etamin, but not System Etamin—for what the distinction was worth.

  "Slavery?" Emotion of confusion.

  "You don't even know what the concept means? That's sophisticated servitude indeed! Even the slavemasters of Sphere Canopus have not taken it this far. By what right can any society require an individual to give up her own body? I should have thought the Polarians, with their adoration of the individual before society, would at least have made some roundabout objection."

  "Oh, you mean hosting," Yael said. "Nobody made me. I wanted to do it. I get good pay, and the Society of Hosts watches out for me, and I get adventure that I could never have myself, and—"

  "Oh, I comprehend. It is a business." The expression Melody used had tones of prostitution, a human vice much ridiculed in Sphere Mintaka, but only the literal meaning translated into human thought. "Tell me about it —in your own concepts."

  Yael explained: She was the child of a poor farmer in the protected wilderness of Planet Outworld. Her parents had both been of subnormal intelligence, and had been allowed to beget offspring—limited to one—in return for voluntary commitment to the land. Few citizens wanted to reside in the vine forest or to preserve the ways of Outworld's Stone Age heritage, as this involved primitive hunting and planting, chewing of dinosaur hides, and much exposure to discomfort and danger. But this man and woman had so desired a family that they had undertaken this cruel life—and thrived on it.

  But one day a wounded predator dinosaur had charged their hut and wiped them out. Only Yael had survived, because she had been gathering wild j
uiceberries at the time. Still a child, she had been taken in by another forest family—but it had not been a happy mergeance. When it became apparent that this low-aura, low-intelligence waif was about to mature into an astonishingly lovely woman, her adoptive father had made plans to supplement the family income by engaging her in concubinage to the highest-bidding local landowner. This would have been a life of inferiority and disillusion as her youthful beauty faded, terminating in the drudgery of servant-status. Yael had aspired to more than this; she had the soul of an adventuress despite her circumstance.

  "How did you get the notion of adventure?" Melody inquired, not unkindly. "Wasn't mere survival among dinosaurs adventure enough?"

  "Not after my natural folk died," Yael said simply, and Melody knew immediate shame. But the girl continued, unaware of it. "The dinosaurs weren't so bad, really, when you got to know them. They just figured the territory was theirs, since they were there first."

  "How did you select your name?" Melody asked, changing the subject.

  "There are popular names here, after famous people in our history. Many boys are called Flint, after Outworld's first transferee, and many girls are Honeybloom, after his wife. When my family was lost, I could not keep the name they gave me, so I chose a new one. There was a poem they read to me as a child, and I always liked it, so I took the name of the ancient poetess who made it, Yael Dragon. It seemed to fit, because Etamin is the Eye of the Dragon in Solarian myth, and it was a dragon that—"

  She broke off, and Melody realized that she was crying. As well she might. A dinosaur, a virtual living dragon, had destroyed her family; a cruel identification, but perhaps a necessary one.

  "What is the poem?" Melody inquired, hoping again to take the girl's mind away from the tragedy.

  "Actually, she didn't write it," Yael said. "It was to her, really. Does that make a difference?"

  Melody thought again of her own uncapsulated past, the confusion and shifting of rationales. "No. Not if she was responsible for it."

  "I never really understood it, but it does something to me. I—well, it goes like this:"

  FOUR SWORDS

  You are the Witch of Tarot

  A woman not my wife

  I may not say: Key Six.

  In ways you resemble my daughter

  Bright, sensitive, emotional, unstable

  Perhaps I had to love you.

  But in ways you resemble the minionette

  Whose love means ruin

  And so I have to leave you.

  Child and minion: aspects of myself

  You cannot fit my script

  And I dare not fit yours.

  "Why that's a Tarot poem," Melody said. "The title means 'truce' in the archaic framework of that day. Key Six means 'The Lovers.' And the four qualities in the second stanza are like the four archaic suits. Bright as a disk or coin—"

  "As a penny," Yael supplied. "We still use metal money in the vine forest; it keeps better."

  "Yes," Melody agreed, delving for more interpretations. "Sensitive as a wand—the wand of a magician or musical conductor, and of course the second Tarot suit. Emotion refers to the Suit of Cups, the flow of water, of tears. And unstability—that's Swords, of course, that balance on the knife's edge, or the sword hanging by a thread. That refers back to the title, too, integrating the whole."

  "I never realized all that!" Yael exclaimed.

  "Well, perhaps I exaggerate. It is too easy to interpret in terms of the familiar, and I see Tarot everywhere I go. Notice how the four triplets deal respectively with frustration, love, ruin, and conclusion—like the suits of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Disks. And the poem stops just short of the thirteenth line. The thirteenth Key of the Tarot was traditionally nameless, or Death, which—but there I go again!"

  "No, it's interesting. Do you know what the minionette is?"

  "That would be a small, delicate, dainty woman, the diminutive of minion, which itself has special connotations of illicit charm."

  "I wonder who it was who made it for her?"

  "I could analyze it more thoroughly, if you really—"

  "No! I'd rather have the mystery. Then I can still dream that maybe it was meant for me, even though it was on another world over a thousand years ago. Is that crazy?"

  "Poems are meant for the ages," Melody assured her. "And often they are not intended to be completely understood."

  And so the girl had sought the realm of interstellar adventure. But she had no personal brilliance or education, and her Kirlian aura was barely normal. Her soul would never range across the galaxy in transfer. Her dreams of being a great lady of space, visiting far planets, dazzling strange powerful men, and interacting with alien creatures were vain. Sheer foolishness, this wish to be rich and intelligent and cultured and bold and fascinating. (Melody matched those concepts with suits as she listened: rich as in Coins, bold as in Swords—she had to stop doing that!) But what a dream, to be a truly free woman!

  "A dream we all share," Melody murmured to herself. "But so many of us are chained...."

  So Yael had been realistic. There was only one way she could be a Lady of Space, and she took it. She had run away from home and made application to the Society of Hosts.

  "The Society of Hosts," Melody murmured. "Whose symbol is the Temperance card of the Tarot, keyed into the Suit of Aura. Now the appearance of that card falls into place."

  "I don't know about that," Yael replied uncertainly. "But they do have a picture of a lady pouring two cups of water into each other—why, there it is!"

  There it was, of course: the second card Melody had drawn from the deck and laid on the table. Yael did not recognize the significance, being unfamiliar with the Tarot deck and its related concepts. But Melody saw it: a soul being poured from one physical container into another. The starry background suggested galactic implications, as indeed there were. Transfer was the very essence of galactic civilization; without it modern society would collapse.

  "Get on with your story," Melody said.

  "The Society accepted me," Yael said. "Just like that. I could hardly believe it. But now I understand. I don't have much of an aura or much of a mind, but my body is good, and that's what they need. Transferees don't care about the host-mind, and they can't use a high host-aura at all, but they like the best bodies. So I'm the perfect host! After twenty years of host service, I can retire with a good pension, if I want to. Meanwhile, I get adventure. But I'm only supposed to watch, not bother you."

  "There may not be much adventure," Melody said. "I'm of Mintaka, the Music Sphere, and I'm going home again first opportunity. I do not crave intrigue or excitement."

  "Oh," Yael said, disappointed. "You're such a nice entity even if you are an alien, and you have such a fine mind, even I can feel it. You're everything I wanted to be. I wish you'd stay."

  Melody found herself feeling flattered. "You actually want to have your body controlled by an alien intellect?"

  "It is the only way I can be what I can never be," Yael said simply.

  "But suppose a transferee abused your body? Damaged it?"

  "The God of Hosts protects me."

  "The God of Hosts?" Melody inquired, amazed. "You believe in that?"

  "Of course. 'Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet—lest we forget, lest we forget.' That's the Society prayer. All hosts have to memorize it."

  Melody pondered. If a host forgot it would mean the loss of identity. It was the same for a transferee. Memory was all that distinguished one personality from another, when aura faded in an alien body.

  Melody returned to the cards. "The Star—that's your hope for glamour and adventure. To obtain it, you must suffer loss, the loss of your body. For twenty years. When you get it back, your prime will be gone. That's a terrible price."

  "It's no worse than what I would have had at home," Yael pointed out.

  Melody could not refute that "Well, I'll stay for a while," she decided. "I don't have much choice in the matter myself. But don
't go away; I want you handy, just in case.

  "I can't go away," Yael said.

  "You know what I mean. Don't play dumb. Don't hide in the woodwork. I don't like preempting your body, but I stop the music at preempting your mind."

  "You mean I can join in your adventure? Not just watch?" The girlish personality seemed incredulous.

  "It's your adventure too," Melody said. "Now let's brace the Imperium." She put away the cards, stood up, walked to the computer terminal, and pushed the contact button, her motions now sure and smooth. This wasn't a bad body at all, once she got acclimatized to it.

  "I'm ready to deal with the authorities," Melody announced out loud.

  "Select clothing," the computer voice said.

  Melody played a sour note that came out as an unfeminine snort. "You dress us," she said to Yael.

  "In what style?"

  "Any style you want. It's your body, and a good one." Then she reconsidered, remembering the potential of the female body among Solarians. "But cover the mammaries; I don't want to get impregnated right away."

  "The breasts are always covered. Why should there be any—any—?"

  "You mean it doesn't happen automatically?"

  "Only when a girl agrees, usually. There are laws—"

  "Very well. Dress it up pretty."

  Yael was glad to oblige. Melody relaxed and let the girl use her own notions, ordering flimsy underclothing followed by more substantial overclothing. There was a two thousand Solarian year spread in human clothing fashions, and any dress within that range was currently acceptable. So Yael chose apparel approximating the style of her namesake, who had resided in pre-Spherical times on Planet Earth. She wore a white blouse with images of flowers printed on it, and a short black skirt that showed the lower half of her legs. Light slippers covered her feet. Her hair flowed free, behind and to the sides.

  Melody really didn't understand the nuances of Solarian dress; Mintakans and most other sapients did not use clothing. But she was satisfied that this sufficed. As she kept reminding herself, it would not be for long.