“Llume put you and Skot on the boxes? Why?”
“She came to talk with you, and found us with the transfer unit. She asked me questions I couldn’t answer, and felt my aura and knew you were gone. I tried to hide it—” Yael started crying.
“Dear, you could not hide your lack of a two hundred-plus aura from one possessed of a one hundred-plus aura, once she was suspicious. It was just bad luck she checked, not your fault.”
“She went away, but then she came back with the pain-boxes. We didn’t know what they were until—Skot tried to fight the one fixed on him, but—”
“You can’t fight one of those discipline-boxes. The Canopian Masters who make them are expert at handling humanoid slaves. Once the unit is oriented on a specific person, even his thought of trying to get away from the box triggers—” She broke off as the wave of pain swept through her host. “Yes, precisely,” she finished as it subsided. “It is turned to your bodily reactions, tensions, so just don’t think about—” The pain started rising again. “Anything,” she finished hurriedly.
“Skot wouldn’t answer her questions—”
“He wouldn’t.”
“So she turned up the—Melody, I just don’t understand! Why would a close friend do that?”
Melody had forgotten that Yael had not had the same insights she had; in fact, Melody had not really believed it until now. Better to get the painful truth out, though: “Because Llume is another Andromedan agent. A most sophisticated one. That was what Tiala would not tell me in the Lot of *.”
Yael was confused. “I knew there was something funny there, but you didn’t—why didn’t you take over her mind, if you thought that?”
“Because making certain of that fact would have killed me—and maybe you. Tiala knew that I should be told about Llume… but she also knew that Llume would kill me the moment I learned. Tiala must have known about the discipline-boxes, and that Llume would use them. Llume could not act against me directly because of the magnet, but Slammer doesn’t understand the discipline-box. He would not have known what was going on, and I would not have been able to tell him. So Tiala would have violated the Lot of * by answering accurately, because an answer that destroys the querent is not valid, by the definition of that code. Tiala had integrity.”
Yael mulled that over, not fully comprehending it. “But if you had taken over Tiala’s mind…”
“That would have been outside the Lot of *. She would no longer be bound to tell me anything responsively, or to protect me, once the Lot had been invalidated. So she had to submit in silence, lest she betray her honor or her galaxy.”
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Because Llume would have acted against me the moment I overwhelmed Tiala’s aura. Only by remaining ignorant could I save myself—if what I suspected was true. I didn’t want it to be true… but it seems it was.”
“Your mind is so complex! Why didn’t she use the box on you anyway; and why did you let her keep working? You could have told Slammer to bash her! By now she must’ve told the whole fleet how you got rid of the hostages here!”
“Worse than that. She broadcast the ‘Six of Scepters’—the Andromedan signal for the overt takeover. Now, all over the fleet, ships are running up the Andromedan flag, figuratively. The battle is on—and we aren’t ready for it.”
“But—”
Melody realized she hadn’t yet answered Yael’s question. “She had no reason to act against me, as long as I didn’t know what she was. And I—needed a hostage to reassure the other hostages of the fleet that things were under control despite the setback at the Ace of Swords. So we—tacitly—agreed to let each other alone. For a while.”
Yael was amazed. “I don’t understand that at all!”
“Well, I’m not sure I understand it either. It seemed the expedient thing to do at the time, since I wasn’t sure, and couldn’t afford to be sure. Her aura is so much like mine, I just couldn’t believe she was Andromedan, though of course aura is no respecter of galaxies, and one of my own ancestors was a / of Andromeda. I was pretty foolish.”
“And now we’re trapped,” Yael said bitterly. “Just when we thought we were winning. Llume used the box on me, and I—oh, I told her everything I knew. The pain—”
“I understand. I saw to it that you didn’t really know much. It was lucky that I wasn’t here, or she would have had it all.”
“But she’s watching for you now!” Yael said with sudden new alarm. “The moment you come back in a shuttle to retransfer, she’ll—” She stopped. “But you transferred back! She doesn’t know—”
“Precisely. So we may have a certain subtle advantage. I knew something was wrong when that ‘Six of Scepters’ signal was broadcast, so I didn’t take any chances.” Melody sighed. “But I am still helpless; I can’t fight the box either.”
Then Melody lifted her hand casually and set it on Skot’s hand on the table. She could do this without any reaction from the box because she had no intention of attacking Llume or turning off the device. She just wanted to put Skot’s mind somewhat at ease.
Skot looked up, startled at the contact. He felt the intense aura and looked at her, wide-eyed. Melody nodded slowly.
“Why didn’t you catch Llume the first time, with the Tarot cards, the way you did the others?” Yael persisted. “And why did she help you catch the others?”
“Because she is a very special agent,” Melody said. “She doesn’t work with the others. In fact, probably only Dash and Tiala knew she was a hostage. She was their backup. It was her job to protect her secret until the time came for her to act. She was extremely well trained, so that she really thought like the entity she represented—a Spican transferee. Any little slips she might have made would be covered by the confusion between her Spican/Polarian identities. She is an expert in cultural nuances, and knows more about them than I do. She well knew what I was doing with the cards. There was no way I could expose her. All her actions were consistent with her role; where a true Spican would have helped me, Llume helped me—even against other hostages. Of course Dash knew what I was doing all along, and he was expert in Tarot, too. They were just letting me play my game, keeping myself busy, while Dash tried to convert me to his cause.” She sighed again. “It was a beautiful setup, and it came closer to success than I like to admit. Had I not happened to be an old Mintakan neuter…”
She looked at Llume sadly. “It was a most sophisticated operation, ruthless yet effective. All the other hostages of this ship were not worth as much to Andromeda as Llume, which was why Dash accepted defeat and exile without betraying her. He put his duty first.”
“I liked Llume,” Yael said. “Is that wrong?”
“I liked her myself,” Melody said. “Very much. I suppose that was the main reason I didn’t want to believe what I suspected. We are undone by our foolish foibles.”
The ship’s large viewglobe showed a holographic image of the fleet with image enhancement to make the picture clear. Bright motes shone: little swords, cups, wands, disks, and atoms representing the ships of the segment. The flagship was marked in red in the very center, surrounded by the other Sphere command ships. Farther out, but still in the nucleus, were Sphere contingents, grouped like protons. Then, beyond the battleship cluster, the rings of smaller ships began. These were not so readily identifiable by shape; they depended on thrust instead of spin for their internal gravity, and did not collect light. A Polarian scout looked much like a Solarian scout, both being needleships.