The Cauldron by Jean Rabe, Gene DeWeese

adjust. Her talents had begun to behave almost normally—despite the watershadow that dominated this world for her as its otherspace halo did for the navigator. The fit between her mind and that of each new host would continue to grow closer, and soon, as her mind gained access to their deepest thoughts as well as the full measure of their senses, the dissonance that surrounded her would become an intelligible language, the “music” something that made sense, although not in any straightforward, logical way.
    Then, at last, she could—would have to—fully undertake the search for the legendary—and more than a little terrifying—Delphoros.
    Above her the augmentor stirred, its cloud of cilia expanding like the fur of a restless cat, and Melusine felt a timid response in the fringes of her own defenseless consciousness.
    She had found a city wrapped around this particular host she’d stumbled into—massive buildings of glass and metal and stone towered on all sides. An endless stream of other beings buffeted the female body she now inhabited, while a separate stream of beings in brightly-colored machines poured past her on the left. The sounds overwhelmed her—the screeches and blats that came from the moving machines, music that came from everywhere and nowhere blending in a haze of disharmony, so loud that the beings passing by her had to chatter in shouts so they could hear each other.
    “Concert,” was the word foremost in this host’s mind. She’d been going to something called a concert at something called Milwaukee Summerfest when Melusine intercepted her. This woman’s body was so easy to fold into as its senses were dulled by something she’d recently smoked. A bitter taste lingered on the back of her tongue. Thoughts of popular tunes danced in this host’s head, and Melusine picked her way through it. Something called “The Grateful Dead” last summer. This year her host intended to watch Charles Aznavor and Jane Olivor, though they weren’t her favorite fare; she intended to rock to the secondary acts. But Melusine didn’t understand the concepts and had other plans, and she pushed the woman’s useless thoughts away.
    The smells on the sidewalk were intense—the belch of acrid little clouds coming from the machines; the scent of sweat on some of the beings, a pong that clung to the dirtiest of them; sickly-sweet fragrances on a few that came close and then moved on. There was the odor of food, too, seeping out of windows overhead and coming from street corners where beings handed out steaming morsels she had no words for, but which made her host form’s mouth water.
    Overwhelming, all of it, but at the same time wildly amazing and interesting and unsettling.
    She struggled to take it all in, and in the end focused on ignoring as much as she could, relegating it to the back of her complex mind. Under control, her breathing became regular.
    The Bright One had been here, on this very spot—though how long ago she couldn’t say. The navigator had confirmed it, pinpointing energy surges and patterns and separating human signatures from those that were not. And so this was a starting place, and from here Melusine would narrow the search, and use this host or others to sort through layers of this world in an effort to confirm if the Bright One still lived. And, if so, where he could be found. The navigator was certain that Delphoros or someone with similar abilities was within their grasp.
    “Delphoros,” Melusine tried the word out on her borrowed bitter-tasting tongue. She hoped it was Delphoros and not another. She wanted it to be someone from Elthoran, and not a human, who would have a decidedly shorter lifespan.
    Delphoros was a legend among her people, born in otherspace to a shipkeeper who’d mated with a navigator before his final alterations and immersion in the tank. A fifth-generation traveler, navigation studies were effortless to him; Delphoros’s instructors believed that his