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.If I went to Galaxy Andromeda I would probably come to appreciate that reality too.I am not the same entity I was, either as an individual or a species.""Concurrence." The tune was hardly more than a wish.Then: "Was that the end of Orion?""No.He learned that he could recover his sight by traveling toward the sun -- ""By seeking a new source of energy!""Maybe.When he could see again, he went to Crete and went hunting with Artemis or Diana -- ""What name?""Artemis in Greek, Diana in Roman.Same girl.Diana was a beautiful, skilled, chaste huntress who loved no male.She -- ""You are making sport of me!" Andromeda clanged, and the notes of her voice were like lasers."Believe me, that's really the legend.I may have reason to kill you, but never to ridicule you.But don't be concerned; she killed him.""Oh," she played with a mixed background.Mintakan chords could convey so much meaning! "Sing me Diana.""She was a musician who liked singing and dancing, and was skilled in all things except love.When she and Orion went hunting together, he was struck by her beauty and competence, and he touched her -- ""As you touched me in Spica!" she played angrily."How lucky I was that it wasn't in Sol, or you would have rammed your defecation tube -- "Flint let the description pass."That's possible," he agreed."You're quite a female in your fashion.""My fashion is Sphere / of Andromeda!" But in a moment she muted."How did she kill him? With a laser?""Not as clean as that.She summoned a scorpion to sting him to death.That's a bug with a jointed tail containing venom, very potent.Now that scorpion is also in the sky.When it rises, Orion's constellation fades, hiding from it.""I wonder whether there are Mintakan scorpions?" she played musingly."Let's go out and see."She trilled her laughter."You are very clever, no matter what host you bear.We remain here.We shall be blinded together."Until the Mintakans traced the missing hosts, Flint thought."That could be very tedious," he played."I have aura to carry my identity at least sixty days, and probably you do too.What will we do to pass the time? Make love?""I suspected you would think of that," she played."It seems to be characteristic of males all over the universe.Even here, where there are no sexes, some entities are constantly eager to make music together.""Not physically, not by laser exchange, but by making music together?I'd really like to know how -- ""Don't be concerned.Death hastens the demise of the aura, and even transfer cannot extend it long.A living body suffers in the absence of its aura, and the aura suffers in the absence of its natural host.""So that's what happened to my body when I returned from Sphere Polaris!I was so sick -- ""Yes.The body must be reanimated periodically, exercised, or it gets rusty.You did not know?""Our species is new to transfer.""Then accept my information: Our Kirlian auras have faded considerably already, because the tie to the natural host is never completely severed, and death is the ultimate burden.In just a few hours we shall expire.""A few hours!" There went his hope.In sixty Earth-days discovery was almost certain; in six hours it was prohibitively unlikely, unless the Mintakans were a lot more sophisticated about such things than the average Sphere bureaucracy.So Andromeda had won after all.He believed her; now he could feel his own aura depletion, like the loss of blood, an insidious draining of his most vital resource."It is ironic but perhaps fitting that the two most intense Kirlian entities in our galactic cluster should terminate quietly together," she played hauntingly."It must have been foreordained.When I read the Tarot in Sphere Polaris-- " He paused in mid-chord."Tarotism hasn't spread to Andromeda yet, has it?""Not as a cult.I made a report on it as part of my mission, as it seems to relate indirectly to the powers of the Ancients.""Well, there's something about the cards, whatever their rationale.They informed me that I was crossed -- that is, opposed -- by the Queen of Energy, defined as the Devil, in turn crossed by the Four of Gas.They said I could not destroy her, only neutralize her.I did not know then that -- ""It might be that Diana had never encountered a male worthy of her,"Andromeda played, seemingly oblivious to his tones."Perhaps she had the most intense aura ever measured, and could not squander it on inferior entities.When she met her equal, crude and alien though he seemed at first, she felt the first stirrings of.of." Her melody faded out in confused dissonance [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]