Chaining the Lady Read Free

dash, slash, quadpoint, percen–
    ::shall we dispense with the superfluities? we have a galaxy to conquer::
    â€“you certainly bore into the subject, quadpoint–
    ::your humor is flighty, as befits avian nature what is the state of reduction?::
    â€“infiltration of all ten major segments of galaxy milky way has been accomplished in each case concentration has been on war fleets and capital planets–
    %ratios?%
    â€“400 agents per segment fleet, 100 agents per capital planet total 500 transfer agents in galaxy all we can manage on present energy budget–
    /also present limitation on kirlian resources/
    â€“true effort should suffice, as subject galaxy remains unaware of infiltration no apparent reason to alter schedule of overt action–
    *seek concurrence for unrevised schedule*
    â€“/::%CONCURRENCE%::/–
    ::no other business?::
    â€“none at present–
    *POWER*
    â€“/::%CIVILISATION%::/–

    * * *

    Melody shuffled the deck by emitting dissonance at the mechanism. This could not be entirely random, but of course that was the point. While she controlled the arrangement of the cards, she was not supposed to be consciously aware of the details.
    She touched the finished deck with the tip of one whip, activating it. Its music sprang up, setting her instruments to playing sympathetically.
    It was the Queen of Energy that manifested, in an unfamiliar aspect. The Queen carried the familiar Wand, rendered as a Scepter for this royal impersonation, that denoted her suit. The established symbols of the Tarot deck were older than the organized concept that was the deck. The Queen was naked, standing on a waveswept ledge, her appendages manacled to a huge stone. She was Solarian—or more bluntly, human.
    Now of course every card had a theoretic potential of 144 aspects. The Queen of Energy had faces showing “Queens” of every sapient species in the Milky Way galaxy. But no physical deck contained all aspects of all faces; that would amount to 14,400 presentations in all, and unwieldy number. So the normal pack of the Cluster Tarot contained a representative sampling of each card. Melody had not been aware that a Solarian course had been included in this deck. Which meant only that she had not been paying proper attention when she recently obtained it. She was getting old.
    Well, this was her card for the day. She contemplated it, evoking the tapestry of tunes dictated by its impressed sybology. A human woman, wearing the rare-metal crown of royalty, with the luxuriant mane flowing from her head—Solarians were one of the species that had heads—and with the two great milk-mammaries of her kind. By human standards, a female on the verge of impregnation.
    This was a notable concept in itself, well worth consideration. Solarians did not bud, they birthed, and the female was always the birther. She remained female for life, no matter how many times she birthed. Surely, she was chained!
    In the distance of the scene was a ferocious sea monster, one of the subsapient creatures of Sphere Sol. It was obviously coming to devour the Queen, whose generous deposits of avoirdupois were surely delectable.
    But what relevance did this have to her, Melody, an old Mintakan neuter entity without head or mammaries or fat? What was the Tarot trying to says to her?
    The five suits of the standard Cluster deck represented five or more sapient species. Those that had figured most prominently in the local formation of the galactic coalition, who had been the nucleus of this segment some 120 years before, at the time of the hero Flint of Outworld, Melody's ancestor. A thousand Solarian years, since those were pitifully brief. The Suit of Energy, symbolized by the sprouting, flaming Wand, was generally identified with the massed species of Galaxy Andromeda. This was because of their attempted theft of the binding energies of the Milky Way galaxy that had precipitated the first crisis of civilization.