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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
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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.
Despite his age, Ariose had eight feet. He had mated only once. She was curious about that, since a
male of his talents and presentation should have had opportunity to bud himself all the way down to
three feet, had he wanted to. Why had he saved himself for her? She let herself believe that it was her
physical beauty and sonic vibrance in intellectual qualities.
Mature Mintakans came at the agreement to bud circumspectly. Often they remained together for life,
though there was no legal or moral requirement to do this. It merely reflected the wisdom of their
initial decision: truly compatible entities had no need to wander.
Budding was not a casual, multiple performance like the chronic sexual efforts of Solarians, who
copulated tens or hundreds of times for every offspring they produced. In fact, it was said in other
Spheres that Solarians indulged in sexual activity more for transient personal pleasure than for the
extension of the species. Melody knew that was a gross exaggeration; still her impressionable
postadolescent mind was intrigued by the amazing concept. How much pleasure was there in budding
that made it worth the permanent loss of a foot?
So when Ariose intimated that he would like to lose one foot with her, she reacted with foolish
enthusiasm. She went with him in a brushcar to a mating chamber, and after feeding each other several
strands of vermiculate food and absorbing sprays of liquid, they settled down to serious music.
Melody, of course, had never done this before. That was one reason for the system, she theorized.
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Since a Mintakan did not turn male until completing first budding, and two females could not mate, it
guaranteed one experienced partner to show the way. She had heard that Solarians (Sphere Sol was the
butt of a wealth of segment humor, perhaps because of its irritating thrust-culture that forced itself into
the awareness of dissimilar species) sometimes got together for copulation and didn't know what to do.
Or the reverse: They copulated without realizing what it was-until an infant Solarian manifested. Of
course, such jokes would have been more effective had they had even the slightest credibility.
Ariose started the unique budding music, and Melody followed it without difficulty. As the sound
intensified, they approached each other. He raised one clapper-foot invitingly, tapping with the other
seven in intricate point and counterpoint. Melody raised one of her own fair feet, and now her eight
tapping ones off-balanced his seven, creating a peculiar sensation of incompleteness. Discord and
incompleteness were anathema to Mintakans; music had to be right.
"Your strings are as tight as steel wires," Ariose played. "Your tubes are as round and full as great [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]