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"No objection. I have no guilty secrets, unfortunately."
Herald had to smile again. "This is Whirl of Sador, the Earl of Dollar, here to witness my performance on Planet
Keep. In the other chair is the Lady Psyche of Kade, another client. They will respect your confidence."
"What is this parallel the Sador sees?"
"You may answer him, Witness," Herald said.
"It is that in each case the subject is not aware of the manifestation, or chooses not to believe in it. The Lady Kade is
ignorant of the actuality of our case against her, and the astronomer of Weew is not aware that he goes into shock at
the mere utterance of-"
"Hold!" Herald cried.
"A certain phrase," Whirl concluded without pause. Psyche tittered.
"Do I do this?" Hweeh inquired, interested. "What is this phrase?"
"If he told you, you'd zonk out again," Psyche said.
"This has happened in your presence?"
"Yesterday," she assured him.
"I remember yesterday. I thought it was but a moment ago, and wondered why the interruption. And you also suffer
a malady of this nature?"
"They say I am possessed," she said. "That an alien aura inhabits me irregularly. That is why the Healer came."
"Yes, I detect the parallel," Hweeh said. "I can appreciate your skepticism, since what is described is not the manner
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of hostaging. It cannot be intermittent, unless there is Transfer apparatus in the vicinity. May I touch you, Lady?"
She glanced inquiringly at Herald, who was intrigued by this developing interaction between his clients. There
seemed to be no harm in it, however. He nodded.
"Certainly," Psyche said. She rose gracefully and crossed to the Weew, extending her hand and resting it lightly on
his surface.
"Lady, you are not possessed," Hweeh assured her. "My aura is only half that of the Healer, but it is five times
yours. I question strongly whether you have ever been host to a foreign aura."
Herald maintained a discreet silence in the face of this confirmation of his diagnosis. It took an entity of high aura to
appreciate the certainty of such a conclusion. There was really scant chance of error. The Witness would have to
wheel on this!
Sure enough, Whirl rolled forward. "May I touch you each in turn?"
"Certainly." "Yes." Hweeh and Psyche said together.
The Sador extended a wheel to contact the Weew first. "You do have a very strong aura, much more intense than
mine. Then he touched Psyche. "But yours is less than mine. I agree that there is no Possession now, and regret that
my aural expertise is not sufficient to verify past status. But my belief, and that of those whose interests I represent,
is based on other criteria. I retain my position."
"Unfortunate that the Possession cannot be tested as readily as the shock-phase," Hweeh said. "There is much we
have yet to learn about each. May I converse with the Lady?"
"If the Lady accedes," Herald said. "I admit to being frustrated in both cases at the moment. If the two of you do not
feel your respective privacies are being infringed upon, speak of what you will. It should do no harm."
Psyche brought over her chair and sat beside Hweeh, resting her hand on him again. "This is very interesting," she
said. "I have not had so much diversion and good feeling in two years. I never met a physical Weew before."
"I have perhaps been too much absorbed in my work," Hweeh replied. "I had forgotten how pleasant the touch of an
innocent young entity could be. Tell me about yourself, if you will, and if you also will, incorporate in subtle
fashion reference to the phrase that allegedly sends me into shock. Perhaps we can assist each other."
Herald glanced at Whirl, and caught the glint of the vanes of his communication wheel angled at him. Could the two
subjects successfully interrogate each other?
"There is not much to say," Psyche said. "I have never left the planet of Keep, and seldom even Kastle Kade, since
the affliction of my mother. Much of my experience has been imaginative. Why even my name means 'Soul'-but
surely that would not interest an astronomer."
"Quite opposite, Lady. Your name unites you to my profession most directly, and tells me much about you."
Her eyes widened in one of her cute naive mannerisms. "Really? How so?"
"Modern astronomy is the study and theory of the manifestation of great space," Hweeh said. Again Herald glanced
at Whirl, and again met the angled glint of acknowledgement. The Weew had used the term "Space" himself without
suffering ill effect. "But research astronomy has a broader base. It also considers the reactions of sapient entities to
views of space in past times. Thus I review the mythology of space as well as its geology."
"The geology of space!" Psyche said. "What a nice concept!"
"Indeed yes; this is one of the many fascinations of my work," Hweeh agreed. "But the mythology is as important,
for it provides insights into the nature of the conceptualizations of many creatures. Your own kind, the Solarians,
have a very rich astronomical symbolism, for example. The brighter stars were in your prehistory considered to be
manifestations of divine entities, gods and goddesses, who lived and died in heroic scale. One of your Sol-system
planets, Venus, seemed like a bright star to your primitives, and was called the Goddess of Beauty. One of her
children was Cupid, the God of Love, and Cupid married Psyche, a mortal girl who must have been very like you.
So you see, I know you through my studies."
"I am to marry Cupid?" she asked in wonder. "The God of Love?"
"Your namesake did. For you, perhaps it will be an extremely lovable man. Yet the love of Cupid and Psyche was
not without peril."
"Oh, tell me!" she cried, clapping her hands girlishly.
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"With pleasure. Seldom do I discover so willing an audience for technical matters in my specialty. Psyche was the
daughter of a king, and so lovely that she outshone Venus herself. This made Venus jealous, for the emotions of the
gods reflected those of their creators. She sent her son, Cupid, to pierce the breast of Psyche with his arrow of love,
and make her love the most vile and miserable creature available. This was the goddess's way of punishing the
mortal girl whose only fault was beauty. But when Cupid saw Psyche, he was as it were scratched by his own arrow
and stricken by love himself.
"Psyche's mortal family knew nothing of this. But somehow no offers for her hand in marriage were made. When
the king consulted an oracle to determine whom his daughter should marry, he was told-"
"The Scion of Skot?" Psyche inquired with a twinkle.
But Hweeh was deep in his narrative and did not heed the interjection. "He was told to dress her in clothing of
mourning and leave her on a mountain, where a fierce winged serpent would claim her for his bride. So with much
regret the king did this. But Psyche was transported from the mountain to a pleasant valley where there was a
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