Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

CHAPTER TEN Decision at the Pinnacles

It was, in some ways, an idyllic three weeks, and it bothered me a bit because I thought of it as such. The fact was, I really enjoyed Darva, person to person, and found within myself the stirrings of feelings I never even knew I had. It was a blow to my own self-image, really, that I should feel this way. The strong, solid, emotionless agent of the Confederacy, who needed nothing and no one—ever. Who was born, bred, and trained to be above such petty human feelings as loyalty, friendship… love? Hadn’t I been the one who couldn’t even phi down the meaning of the word to Zala only a few months ago? Was it possible, I found myself wondering, that loneliness was not something only inferior people suffered? Had I, in fact, been as much an alien and an outsider to my own culture as Darva had been to hers? That thought, I knew, was dangerous. It struck at the very value system of the Confederacy which I still told myself I believed in.

But had we, in our headlong rush to perfection, somehow left holes somewhere in the human psyche? Or was it rather just a new body, a new form, new hormones and whatever that created those boles where they’d never been before? For the moment, I preferred to think the latter—although, from a practical standpoint, it made no real difference when it was happening to me.

Several times during the three weeks we roamed the jungles of Charon, I was on the brink of telling her my real identity, my real mission, but I always held back. Nothing was to be gained from doing so now, and there was always time later on. I got to know her, though, as thoroughly as I knew anybody, and I liked what I found. She was a quick study, too, entranced by my tales of the civilized worlds and the frontier she would never see. She had less trouble than I would have thought with the alien/Four Lords backdrop, although I suspect that she thought of the aliens only as a new form of changeling. When you’re bright green, 215 centimeters tall, have a horn and a tail, the concepts of “alien” and “nonhuman” just don’t come across quite as well. But she understood that alien did not mean form as much as mind. If, as I suspected, Morah was an alien, she was all for saving a humanity she’d never see nor ever be a part of.

Some aspects of the new form were definitely affecting my mind, though. I found myself increasingly emotional, and increasingly aware of that emotion. I still retained all my training and its gimmicks, but I felt everything with an intensity I’d never known before, both positive and negative.

Our new form, which I shortened to darvas, wasn’t at all bad, either. We were enormously strong, and despite being large, we could indeed fade into any green underbrush, then sprint faster than any human could run. The talons were handy as weapons, although we hadn’t had to use them for that, and for cutting and slicing food of no matter what sort, and they made no difference to us, since our skin was extremely thick and tough—and it shed water like a waterproof coat.

There was no question they were out looking for us, though. We saw soarers on many occasions, some coming very close to the treetops or open spaces, occasionally with troopers spray-firing into clumps of growth just to panic anything and flush it out The roads were under constant patrol by more of those nasty-looking troopers as well as some locals. Still, as long as we didn’t run into a sore or an apt and betray ourselves, we found it little trouble to stay out of the way.

The only trouble, in fact, came near the end of our jungle exile. We had both become easily accustomed to the jungle, a fearsome place for most humans. Our hides were too tough for the insects to penetrate, and we were relatively immune to predators and strong enough to break free of vines and mud. It was, in fact, a wondrous sort of place, the kind of place where there was endless fascination, endless beauty. Although we didn’t really realize it, what we were doing in psych parlance was “going wild,” totally adapting to an environment for which we were, quite literally, designed.

What brought it home to us was when we ran into the bunhar. Now, we’d seen and encountered many of the large creatures of jungle and swamp, including hundreds I’d had no idea existed before, but mostly we’d managed to steer clear of them—and they seemed to accept us as well But this one was different I will never be sure just what we did wrong. Maybe he was just horny and smelled Darva. But, anyway, he didn’t avoid us; he challenged us with a great roar and snarling teeth. In fact, be looked to me like he was all nice, sharp, pointed teeth.

Despite some overlarge fanglike incisors, we had the omnivore’s complement in a human-type mouth and face. It was a no-win situation, but try as we might to avoid him he challenged all the more, and we realized we had a fight on our hands. Oddly, I felt a rush of adrenalin or something similar like I’d never known before. While the big saurian sat there, snarling, I found myself overcome with anger and rage—and heard similar, animalistic snarlings from Darva. Without even thinking, both of us charged the brute, who was about our size, heads down and horns straight.

The bunhar had teeth, all right, but no horn, and I don’t think he was quite prepared for our sudden charge. He reared back on his tail to protect his head, and both our horns penetrated his upper chest, while our talons ripped at him. Again and again we plunged and ripped into him, and he roared in pain and anger as his blood gushed all over his chest and us. Then Darva whirled around and kicked the creature behind his right leg with her own powerful leg, rearing back on her own tail for maximum effect, and the bunhar toppled.

In a moment we were both on him, plunging our horns into his vulnerable neck and ripping out flesh and limb. The poor creature never had a chance from the start, not only because of the horn but because, even in our animal rush, we had the advantage of human fighting tactics. The creature was killed outright, and neither of us received more than a slight scratch from the foot talons as we plunged in.

But when it was dead, the anger, the rage, the sense of power without thought, continued in both of us for some time, and we drank of the dead creature’s blood and ripped off and ate chunks of raw flesh until we could eat no more and it was a bloody mess. Only when the eating was done and the feeling of satisfied lethargy overtook us, did we relax. The great emotions subsided, and rational thought returned.

For a while neither of us could say anything. Finally, Darva looked at me, as blood-spattered as she, then back at the carcass that was already drawing insects and would eventually draw carrion eaters. “My god, what have we done?” she gasped.

I looked at her, then at the carcass, then back at her again. I shook my head in tired wonder. “It looks like we’re more animal than even you thought”

She looked dazed, slightly horrified. “It—it wasn’t the bunhar. I mean, the damned thing asked for it. It was—after.” She dipped her hand in a small pool of bunhar blood, brought it up to her nose, then licked it off her fingers. “My god, Park—it felt good\ And it tasted…”

“I know,” I replied wearily. The whole experience was wearing off now, leaving me feeling very tired, muscles aching a bit, and aware now of my scratches. I knew she was feeling the same.

She was still in that shocked daze. “I—I’ve been this way for over two years, and I never felt like that before, never did anything like that before,”

I nodded wearily. “Your Isil was more creative than you thought I suspect that this was to be the next stage if you didn’t cave in, as you weren’t—if your Gneezer even remembered you anymore. It was probably a good idea at the time, long forgotten. If the change wouldn’t do it, they would put you off in the swamps, where your animal instincts would take over. You’d go wild, either winding up with a bunhar group or crawling back to them.” I paused for a moment. “Still, it’s not all bad.”

She looked at me strangely. “What in hell is good about it?”

“Consider. We—the two of us—killed that mass of muscle and teeth, and did it pretty easily. We instinctively used all our best biological weapons against him. He outweighs us by a couple of hundred kilos, probably, and he was born a predator. But we’re a more fearsome predator. That maneuver that toppled him probably saved us from serious injury. It’s something you did almost automatically, but it would never occur to such a pea-brain as him. We’re the bosses now. He is king and queen of Charon’s jungles, totally adapted to our element We have nothing whatsoever to fear while we’re in that element.”

“But—the blood. God! It was like a shock, an orgasm. It Was like a supercharge, the ultimate drug stimulant! Even now, repelled as I am, I crave the taste of it”

She was right So did I, and it was something that was going to be hard to ignore.

I sighed. “Well, I’d say well probably keep it under control, but maybe have to give into it every once in a while. We’re killers now, Darva. Natural predators. It’s the bill that goes with this form and we simply have to accept it.”

She looked dubious. “I—I don’t know. Park—what if it had been a man? One of those troopers?”

My training was coming to the fore, my mind sorting and placing the new facts and choosing inevitable courses of action. It would be far harder for Darva, I knew, far harder, but she would have to eventually accept one basic fact and live with it.

“We’re no longer human, Darva,” I told her flatly. “We’re something else entirely. Frankly, as long as the man is an enemy, I can see no difference between spearing him and shooting him.

“But—cannibalism!” She shivered.

“If I ate you, it would be cannibalism,” I said realistically. “But a human is just another smart animal.”

She shook her head. “I—I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to accept it, Darv, or go nuts,” I told her.

“But I wouldn’t worry about it. Back with our own, back in intelligent company with ready food supplies, I doubt if our condition will be any problem at all. Only out here, in the jungle.”

She said nothing for a while, and we more or less slept off the experience. When we awoke it was nearly dark, but we found a stream and washed the caked blood and remains from each other, feeling a little more like rational people and less like predators after we did.

Still, she could ask, “Park—those aliens you spoke of. Aren’t we aliens, too? Particularly now?”

I didn’t really have a ready answer for that one.

Despite the moralizing, we repeated our orgy the next day—deliberately. This time we found a small female uhar with a wounded leg who had been left by her herd to die because she could no longer hunt food. Such a target of opportunity was quite literally irresistible, incredibly easy, and also easy to defend to our consciences since the creature would have died more agonizingly anyway. Still, the ease and quickness of the decision and the high emotion—“anticipation” I guess would be the word—of the kill actually bothered me more than Darva. My whole life and self-image was based on my absolute confidence in my ability to be completely in control at all times, to be able to analyze and evaluate every situation with cold, dispassionate logic. To be able to give in to such base, animal—literally animal—instincts so easily was disturbing. To enjoy the experience so much was even more disturbing.

As for the hunting and killing, humans had been doing that to animals since the dawn of time. Though the civilized worlds knew meat only as a synthetic, those on the frontier certainly knew it in the same way ancient man on ancestral Earth had. Here on Charon people made their livings hunting game and fishing and eating their catch, and those who did this work enjoyed it. The fact that the people of Montlay and Bourget, among others, had their meat ground or cut and cooked and seasoned so they no longer really thought of their meal as an animal that had to be butchered only eased their minds a bit Darva and I were no different—we were simply eliminating the hypocrisy. Looking at it in that way we both found it much easier to move fully into our roles as predators.

The Warden organisms that governed everything inside us also seemed to take a more practical view. After only the third kill and feed I was aware of odd feelings, mostly numbness and a little discomfort in my mouth. I mentioned this to Darva, who had noted the same thing, and a quick examination showed that things were changing. Our teeth were becoming sharper, the front fangs growing longer and thicker. Without an additional magic spell or anything else, we were changing into true carnivores.

Such a modification could not have been in the long-range plans of an apt like Isil; the Wardens inside us, somehow, were sensing the change in our life-style and modifying us to adapt. But what exactly were they reacting to? I wondered. Was it the changed physical circumstances? That seemed unlikely—Darva had been this way for a long time, I a very short time, yet the transformation was taking place only now. It had to be the change in our mental attitude that triggered it, I decided. Korman said we all had the power. Maybe the process was more complex than even he thought.

But that brought up an even more mystifying question. How did the Wardens know! An apt like Isil, even a powerful sore like Korman, hardly had the kind of mind that could literally reprogram every cell, order speeded growth, put every cell and every molecule together in such a pattern as to create a biologically functioning changeling. The Confederacy’s computers could do the job easily, of course, although doing so was illegal. But a man or woman could just wave a magic wand here, mumble some words, and somehow, force the transmutation of a human being into something else—something that functioned.

I had here a lot of pieces of a truly great puzzle but, as yet, nothing with which to put them all together. For the first time in a long while I wondered about my counterpart, my old self, out there, somewhere, off the Warden Diamond. Was he still getting his information even though I’d been transformed? And, if he was getting information from all of us on the four Warden worlds, had he already been able to put those pieces together with the superior computer and Confederacy resources at his command?

I no longer hated him, certainly. Now, here, the way I was, I wasn’t even sure if I envied him.

Slowly, through it all in the final week, we moved cautiously closer to the rendezvous point Darva had selected as the main target for us, the least likely to be betrayed. It was about a kilometer off a main road, in a rock cleft near a waterfall, and we approached it cautiously and in a roundabout manner. Darva was still hesitant about going at all, particularly now.

“We’re happy here,” she argued. “You said it yourself—we were made for the jungle and for this life. If we return, there’ll only be more fighting and trouble.”

“What you say is true,” I admitted, “but I’m thinking of more than just you and me. For one thing, I have to know. I want to find out just what the hell is going on here, and I have a particular responsibility, since I know that all Charon might be destroyed, we and our precious jungle along with it. But there’s more. If we win, and if this Ko-ril’s a man of his word, we can strike a blow for changelings and end this stupid discrimination. Changelings need their own land and they need the Power. Otherwise, somebody will always control and threaten us. With the Power, we could build a new race here, or many races.”

I’m afraid she didn’t really share my vision or my curiosity, but she understood, at least, that I could not be denied—and she wasn’t going to be left out, alone, again.

We approached the rocks cautiously. I let her take the lead because she at least knew the lay of the land from the maps. She was very cautious. Fifty meters or more from the clearing, but within the sound of the roar of the falls, she froze into the immobility we both could achieve and still found hard to believe. Seeing her, I automatically froze as well.

The falls masked most sounds, so I started looking around, feeling a bit what she also felt—or sensed. It was, I knew, another one of those animal attributes we were either acquiring or discovering. There were others about. We couldn’t see them or hear them but we knew with absolute certainty they were there.

Concentration on this one aspect produced an interesting sensation, I was aware that I was sensing something entirely new, outside any previous experience. For the first time, consciously, we were sensing our own Wardens—our war, as the old woman had called it—and those Wardens were not isolated or alone. Somehow some threads of energy, incredibly minute, were sending and receiving signals in all directions. No, that wasn’t right, either—not signals; more like an open communications link, waveforms of the most basic and microscopic sort; open channels to the trees, grass, rocks, stuff in the air—everything around us. This, then, was what the sores felt, what Korman could not explain to me.

The jungle was alive, both with the forms of life we could see and with the Warden organism itself. It was alive, and we were a part of it What a glorious, heady feeling—unlike any I’d ever known.

Suddenly, I realized what exactly Darva and I were sensing. In us and most of the surroundings, the Wardens were usually passive, connected to all the other Wardens but sending and receiving nothing. But there were Wardens around through which things were now being transmitted. Not changelings—as far as Darva knew-there were few with any of the Power and much of it had been blocked off by the spell. These were apts then, very minor apts, but apts nonetheless, and that meant humans.

Fine-tuning that sense of the Wardens as much as I could, I tried to locate the sources of these emanations—and did. One was about ten meters from Darva, behind a large tree. There was another about fifteen meters in the other direction and ahead of her. A third, at least, was near the waterfall—and a fourth was on top of it. It seemed absurdly simple to pick them out now, with their very different Warden patterns. But did that mean that they had also picked us up in the same way? Almost immediately I decided that they hadn’t. Either they were totally unaware of us or they took us for bunhars. If they knew, we would have been jumped by now.

At that moment the one nearest Darva, the one behind the tree, came into view, but he wasn’t looking at us or even in our direction. We were against the best natural camouflage and remained incredibly still, so he might not have seen us anyway.

He turned out to be a trooper in one of those black and gold uniforms. Looking very relaxed and very bored, he settled down under the tree, weapon still bolstered. I could tell from its shape that it was a laser pistol. How I wanted one of those! Both Darva and I were efficient killing machines, it was true, but nothing could outrun a laser pistol. If I had one now, I could knock the trooper off without any personal risk at all.

I heard a short beeping sound, and the man reached to his belt and picked up a tiny transceiver. He spoke a few words into it, and I could make out that there was a reply, although not what the reply was. Checking in, that was all.

Unfortunately, we were not small, delicate creatures. The old Park Lacoch would have been better in this situation—tiny and catlike. We had to get away from here. I was in no danger, but Darva was too damned close. Slowly, carefully, I reached down and picked up a large rock, noting idly that even the rock radiated the Warden sense.

Darva turned her head very slowly and carefully, saw what I was doing, and gave me a careful nod; then she turned back to look at the trooper.

Quickly I heaved the rock with all my might in the opposite direction from where we stood. It was not a good throw—my hands were tough and nasty, but my arms were really very weak. Still, the rock made a clatter in back of the trooper, and he jumped to his feet and whirled around, pistol quickly drawn, then looked around suspiciously. The rock, as I said, was weakly thrown, and though it had landed beyond us the trooper began walking slowly toward Darva. I seemed to see the man’s Wardens almost “light up,” although that’s not really the right word for it I could sense those channels of communication between his own Wardens and those around him reverberating with a sense of suspicion, a message of inquiry, as it were, although I could only guess that was what it was.

Darva was crouching a bit, flattened against broad-leafed trees and bushes of the same green as she; and she would have been nearly impossible even for me to spot had I not known she was there. It was the Warden sense that was to be feared, not any physical ones.

For some reason he hadn’t yet picked her up—possibly we were involuntarily jamming in some way through our own apprehension—but I could see that he was soon going to be close enough to her that he couldn’t miss her no matter what. It also hadn’t escaped my notice that he had yet to call in on his communicator.

I made up my mind in a moment, only hoping that Darva would have the presence of mind to act correctly in the split second she would have.

The man stopped no more than two or three meters from her, turned slowly, and—I realized—saw her, first with Warden sense and then, knowing she was there, by sight. He grinned. “Well, well! A changeling with the Art,” he said, obviously enjoying himself.

At that moment I popped up. “Hey!” I called, then gave my huge rear legs the kick of my life.

Darva whirled as the man’s head and pistol turned toward me and struck him a blow that nearly cut off his head. Then his finger pushed the firing stud, and a beam of blue-white light shot out, burning a tree far over my head.

She didn’t wait, but started for me, but I ran at her and at the dead body. She looked puzzled as I reached the man and tore the pistol from his hand; then I pivoted on my tail and headed for the jungle. I could hear another man’s voice yelling behind us, and heard, rather than saw, the sound of laser pistol blasts.

Darva was still ahead of me dashing back into the jungle. When I saw she was safely out of the way I stopped, assumed my camoutlage stance at a good spot, and waited.

Two troopers—a man and a woman—came running into the jungle, pistols drawn. I suddenly realized how off my timing was going to be with my oversized, taloned hands, but the comfortable feel of the pistol was reassuring enough. I was the absolute best—and this was like shooting targets at ten meters. Picking my time, I squeezed off two easy, well-placed shots, putting neat little holes in both chests. Both fell backward and were quickly still. As fast as I could, I went to them, took both pistols and both utility belts with their precious chargers, then turned and followed Darva’s trail.

I handed her one of the belts and a pistol, power off, and we said nothing until we were deep into the jungle and felt safe. Finally we settled back on our tails, caught our breath, and relaxed a bit. “That was close!” she wheezed.

I nodded. “But worth it, anyway.”

She looked puzzled. “Worth it? Why’d you take such a chance to get those pistols?” She flexed her talons. “We don’t need them.”

“You’re wrong on that,” I told her. “Neither of us can outrun a communicator or a well-aimed shot” I grinned. “But neither can they.”

She shook her head in wonder. “He was so—weak. Puny.” She lifted up her right hand. “I caved in his skull with one quick blow.” 1

“That you did,” I agreed. “And our arms are the weakest things we have. But don’t get too cocky. Humans have always been the weakest and puniest creatures on any planet they’ve settled, and look who’s boss.”

She looked over at me. “Well, I guess that’s it for anyplace else. If they were at that place I’m almost positive they know the alternates.”

I shook my head. “No, we’ve got to try them. One of them might still be good. If there’s a chance, we have to take it.”

“All right,” she sighed, sounding disappointed; then she brightened a bit “You know, I really did the right thing back there!”

“You sure did,” I agreed. “I’m proud of you. There was no way for me to tell you what to do and you came through magnificently.”

She beamed. “I guess maybe I’m cut out for this after all. You know—back there I was scared to death. And yet somehow I really enjoyed it.”

“That’s the way it is,” I told her. “I hate to admit it, but it’s fun to beat them like that. It really is.”

“You know, you talk like you’ve done this kind of thing before,” she observed. “A lot of times, just talking, you sounded like you did more than you told me about And those two shots with that pistol! Wow!”

I sighed. “All right, I guess you should know the facts. You more than anybody.” Briefly I told her about my real career, and why I had been sent to the Warden Diamond. She listened intently, nodding.

When I’d finished, she smiled. “Well, I guess that really explains a lot. And you’re still on the job, even after…” She let the obvious trail off.

“More or less,” I told her, “but not in the way you think. I wasn’t kidding about reforms on Charon or the potential of the changelings. And I’m here for the rest of my life, just like you. There’s very little they can do to me, although they could, as I said, destroy Charon. So you see why finding Koril is even more important to me. He’s against the aliens—and so am I, at least from what I can see. He’s my key to getting Aeolia Matuze, and also to our future here.” I suddenly had a thought, checked one of the utility belts and found a communicator there. I picked it up and flipped it on.

“…out of the bush, jumped Sormat—tore his throat out like some animal,” a tinny voice said. “God! Two of ’em. Had to be. Only caught sight of one, though. Kinda looked like a bunhar. Creepy.”

“What I want to know is how they managed to elude Sormie’s wa shield,” another voice came back. “Gives me the creeps. We should just get rid of these monsters.”

Then* signals were weakening—they were heading away from us, I could tell. The last comment made me a little mad. I looked at the communicator—a simple device, but not one I was familiar with. “Ever seen one of these before?” I asked Darva.

She came over and looked at it. “It’s pretty much the same as the ones used to keep the Companies’ headquarters in contact with the field workers,” she replied. “A little different, but not much.”

I nodded. “Military issue.” I turned it over. Embossed on the back was a little logo—Zemco, CB. Cerberus again. The manufacturing center of the Warden Diamond. I predicted that my counterpart there would probably do quite well. “What’s its range?”

“Huh?”

“About how far will it reach?”

“Oh. Well, the ones we used—maybe three, four kilometers.”

I nodded. “This one’s probably souped up just a little, but call it five at the top. If they’re in common use on the planet, there would have to be some limits on them or nobody could talk to one another.” I thought a moment “I wonder if they’re all using the same frequency?”

“You have something in mind?”

“Well, let’s head for the first alternate—whichever’s closest. It’s possible we might be able to hear if it’s occupied before we go in.”

Some work with both belts and I managed to wrap one big combo belt around my torso, with two pistols, the communicators, and the rest all there. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was handy.

Using some vines, we managed to rig a carrier for Darva to wear the other pistol, although without practice it was more a psychological weapon than anything else. They were tricky to use.

We had a “window” of only thirty hours to allow for shifts to alternates. Every thirty hours the places would be checked to see if anybody was there or if they were staked out for the next four days, then—forget it.

We traveled, therefore, most of the night. During rest and eating breaks, we discussed what both of us had felt about the Warden organism. Our experiences were almost identical—and even the trooper she’d killed had sensed she had the power. We compared notes. She was not totally ignorant of the Warden sense from the start, although her understanding of it was cloaked in the ignorant mysticism of the natives.

“My great-grandmother, as you know, has tremendous powers,” she reminded me, “and much of her knowledge was passed down. As a kid I used to do the little exercises with her and it was really a lot of fun, but I never got too far with it. It was Eke the torgo”—a Charonese flute—“that my brother was given at the same age. For a while it was a toy, but it soon became boring and he never kept up his studies and practice. It’s the same with the Art”

I nodded. “That doesn’t explain my own sensitivity, though,” I told her. 1 don’t think it came from the changeling spell, either. Korman said I had a natural aptitude for it and predicted I would sense the Wardens—the wa—as we did. That’s important for a couple of reasons. It means both of us can learn it, and it means that changelings are no more limited than humans, which makes sense. We’re built differently, but we’re made of the same stuff and out of the same stuff.” Since many of the changelings had been at least at the apt stage themselves, it was evident that what was needed was training. You could go only so far without that, after which it either wasn’t usable any further or it backfired.

It was clear that the basis of the power was the ability to concentrate while sensing the Wardens in your object. Most people just wouldn’t have the necessary self-control or self-confidence, but I was pretty sure I did, even now—and perhaps Darva did as well. An artistic bent and a mathematical aptitude would certainly help, of course, in doing elaborate things.

The place we were headed Darva called the Pinnacles, because of some odd rock formations. She’d never been near it, but had been shown a picture and assured me that, if she saw the real thing, she couldn’t mistake it. Initially, she had rejected the spot because it was almost astride a main road and fairly close to an inland town called Gehbrat, but it was the closest.

We approached it in the late afternoon of the next day. I checked with my little communicator and found that there was some intermittent traffic on it, but it was mostly road patrols. Nothing was said about the Pinnacles as a staked-out place, and there was every indication that the frequency the things were on was fixed. That didn’t mean somebody clever didn’t have the place staked out using different frequencies or communicators, but the information we could get was a little reassuring.

We were more than a little cautious in approaching this time. She was certainly right—you couldn’t miss the place. Four jagged spires of hard rock rose a kilometer or more over the surrounding jungle, like four great arrows pointing to the sky. Near the base of the second spire from the left would be the meeting place—if it were not already “spoiled.”

We approached slowly and cautiously from opposite directions, ready to take any action required, but there was no sign or sense of any stakeout If the location had been blown, the troopers were certainly far more professional than the ones back at the waterfall had been. It took a good two hours for me to satisfy myself that there were no dangerous troopers about, although when we linked up within sight of the rendezvous, we stayed just inside the woods. Having no timepieces, we could only settle back a little and wait, hoping for a pickup.

It grew dark quickly as night overtook us. Every once in a while I’d check the radio, but all signals were either faint or very intermittent; Pinnacles was never mentioned.

A bit after dark, we saw some movement in the area and froze. I drew one of the pistols and watched nervously. My night vision was extremely good—our eyes worked best in the murky twilight of the jungle, and were most sensitive to bright light—but it was by no means nocturnal vision. Therefore, I had difficulty seeing just who or what came into view. The Warden sense vaguely tracked the newcomer, but it was impossible to really tell much about its shape.

Whoever it was crept cautiously to the center of the clearing, seemed to stop and look around, then whispered nervously, “There is thunder in the south.” That was the identifying phrase Darva had been told, but while our hopes rose our caution did not let down. If Morah knew of one hideout from captives, he certainly knew many of the passwords.

I looked at Darva and gestured at the pistol. She nodded, moved away from me, then approached the dark shape. “The Destroyer builds,” she whispered, giving the response.

I heard a sharp sigh. “Thank the gods!” a female voice said in low but clear tones. “Who’s there?”

“Darva. Who are you?” She walked closer to the dark shape.

“I am Hemara,” the other responded, “from the Valley of Cloud.”

“I am from Thunderkor,” Darva told her. “Come closer, so we may see each other clearly.”

The other moved, and now I too could make out the shape. She was indeed a changeling, a large woman with a reddish yet very human face that differed only in that she appeared to have two large compound eyes of bright orange in place of the normal ones. She seemed to be carrying something smooth and round on her back.

Darva turned and whispered to me, “All right, you can come out I think it’s safe.”

I moved from my hideaway and approached them. Up close, I could see that far more in the woman was changed than I had first noticed. Her body was black, hard, and shiny, like an insect’s, and that round thing on her back was a huge black shell of some kind. She was standing on four of her eight legs—no arms—and these were also covered in a hard shell and had small pads at their tips ending in a single hard nail each. Still, she retained short-cropped humanoid black hair on her head.

The newcomer turned, looked at me, then back at Darva, then back at me again. “There are two of you?”

“Sort of,” I responded. “It’s a long story. Anyway, I’m Park and I’m the male.”

Her very human mouth showed delighted surprise. “A pair! How wonderful!” There was a wistful note in that last, that I couldn’t help but catch.

“Maybe,” I told her. “For now, what’s the plan to get out of here? I feel like a sitting duck.”

She looked suddenly crestfallen. “I’d hoped that you…”

Darva sighed. “Just another refugee. Well, join the party and we’ll wait some more.”

She wasn’t really constructed for the jungle, but down flat, or almost so, she could blend in pretty well with the rocks. Time passed as we talked,’ explaining where the pistols came from and telling her a little about ourselves—very little, really. As for Hemara, she’d been caught poaching by her Company—a very serious offense. As punishment, she was given to a Company apt as an experimental being on whom to practice. When not a plaything she was on public exhibition near the Company headquarters as a deterrent, and they had outdone themselves in providing a really nasty example. Without hands or claws she couldn’t really manipulate much. Settling an interesting point, she said that the compound eye’s multi-images resolved into a single image in her brain, but that she could focus on only one point She could either see very far, but nothing close, or vice versa, and if she fixed on an object she could see only that object and its surroundings. That meant almost constantly changing focus to get a clear picture. She was a sad example of how far the cruel and insane minds that ran Charon could go, and yet she said she had seen and met worse. I probably had too, but the scene in that square after the fight had been so much of an overload that I found it hard to remember the shapes clearly.

We were joined later that evening by three more changelings. One was a man whose face was a hideous devil’s mask and whose bent, winged body made him permanently bowlegged. His bat wings, however, were not functional. He was a good reminder of how volatile the Warden power could be. He’d been more or less stealing lessons, hiding himself and listening in while his local sore instructed his apts. Then he tried experimenting on his own and had been doing very well, but one night he’d had a horrible nightmare…

The second creature was part long, gray limbless worm and part human torso topped by a hairless man’s head. The body, perhaps five meters long, glistened and left a trail of ichor. He wouldn’t tell us how he’d gotten that way, but we discovered he ate dirt.

The last one was surprisingly human, and decidedly uncomfortable with us. She was small, quite attractive, and had a distinctive pair of devil’s horns. She appeared to be a nervous wreck and I’m afraid our all-changeling group didn’t help her mood. Her name was Emla Quoor. She’d been in the group in the square, and she’d been terrified from that point on. There was little we could do to comfort her, except to point out that she must have some real guts and intelligence to make it this far undetected and in one piece. She looked like she’d been through hell, though, and I wasn’t about to press her further. Others could do that—if we ever got picked up.

Suddenly a rumbling erupted all around us. “Oh, brother!” somebody swore. “You can’t go three hours out here without getting dumped on.” As the skies opened up for what promised to be the usual long deluge, everyone moved into the shelter of the trees. The way the wind whipped things up, though, there was no question but that everyone would be pretty well drenched.

Lightning swirled around the Pinnacles, lighting up the area intermittently in what, I had to admit, was an impressive scene. I looked out into the little clearing which was brightly lit by a lightning flash, then dark again. Then came a second bolt, but this tune there was somebody—or something—there, standing in the middle. “There’s somebody here!” I called to the others and drew my pistol.

All eyes peered nervously into the clearing—it was empty. They glared at me, but I stood firm. “Somebody was there,” I assured them. “I do not see things.” I flicked the power on the pistol to full.

Another lightning blast, and once again the figure appeared—a tall, thin human in a long black cloak and hood. Not a trooper, that was for sure. One of the others caught sight of it too, and mumbled confirmation of my sighting. All turned to look, nerves on edge.

The figure was certainly standing there now in the rain for all to see. Slowly it approached us. It came right into our midst and looked around. The impression was of a very dark human face inside the hood, but little else. Finally a woman’s voice announced: “There is thunder in the south.”

“The Destroyer builds,” returned the stranger in a very deep female voice. She turned and nodded. “Is this all of you?”

“Us and the human girl over there,” the worm-man responded.

“I am Frienta,” the newcomer introduced herself. “I’m sorry to have kept you all waiting, but there are heavy patrols on the road and I decided to wait and use the storm for cover.”

“You are from Koril’s organization?” I asked.

“Master Koril is certainly involved, although it is not entirely his organization, or anyone’s,” Frienta replied curtly. “However, we have to move you and hundreds more out of the region, and that is a massive logistical effort. More than half of our people have already been caught or killed in this region, and you are not out of danger yet yourself. We must now get you quickly to an assembly point.” She looked around. “Are you up to a long march in the-rain?”

The human woman and the devil-man both groaned. Frienta took notice of them, then looked at our worm-man. “What about you? How fast can you travel?”

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her. “The wetter it is, the better.”

“Well, then, our success depends on the two of you.” She looked at Darva and me. “You’re the biggest. Do you think you could each carry one of these?”

I looked at Darva, who shrugged. “Why not?” I replied. “But they’ll have to hang on tight.”

The devil-man gave a grotesque expression which I hoped was one of gratitude. The human woman seemed extremely nervous and uncertain. “Come on—climb up and get as comfortable as you can,” I said, trying to sound as friendly and reassuring as possible. “I’m not poison, I don’t bite—not people on my side anyway—and riding beats walking in this stuff.”

The devil-man had little problem getting on Darva’s back, but he apparently weighed more than he looked, given the expression on her face. Frienta went over to the human. “Come. I will help you.”

She looked over at me. “I—I don’t know. Maybe I can walk…”

“I have no time or patience for such prejudice,” the strange dark women said acidly. “You too are nonhuman, as those horns attest.”

The woman stepped back, obviously upset by the sudden attitude of the one whom she’d considered her only ally. Abruptly I was aware of a flaring of the Wardens within the dark woman’s body, and I sensed complex message information flow from her outstretched arm to the scared woman. It was as if there were now thousands, perhaps millions of tiny weblike cords of energy linking the two.

Then, somewhat jerkily, the human walked up to me, and with Frienta’s assistance, climbed on my back and clung tightly. Frienta nodded to herself, stepped back, and traced a few symbols in the air. “There!” she announced, satisfied. “You are bound there until I free you!” She turned to the rest of us. “Cornel Follow me quickly! This is not the time to stay in one place!”

I was aware of the rigidity of the woman on my back, and said to Frienta, “You are an apt.”

“A minor one,” she responded crisply. Then we were off into the rain-soaked jungle in the midst of the darkness.

It was a long and arduous journey, taken at a good pace. Frienta, whose face I never could see clearly and whose body was masked by her black robes, proved extremely quick and agile—and apparently tireless. The extra burdens Darva and I carried soon proved to be wearing, but we had no choice but to go on. Worm-man and Hemara proved capable of some speed under adverse conditions, but none of us were cut out for this sort of thing. Frienta seemed to sense when one or more of us was spent and absolutely had to rest, and the breaks were well timed although not as frequent as we would have wished.

We walked all night through a wilderness so complete that after a while none of us had any sense of where we were, how far we’d come, or in what direction we were going. We finally reached a small clearing in the jungle where Frienta proclaimed a complete stop. We would be allowed to forage for food, each according to our own needs, then get some sleep. It was not well, she told us, to travel much in daylight and we still had a long way to go—more than two nights’ march at the least.

Even relieved of our burdens, Darva and I felt exhausted, but we knew we needed strength now more than ever. We picked no fights, settling for catching and eating a number of small animals that were no real challenge and supplementing this with what wild fruits we could find. Then we slept through most of the day.

Frienta revealed no more of herself in light than in darkness—a fact that intrigued us all more and more. We felt certain she was some sort of changeling herself, but what sort we had no idea. We rotated guard positions while the others slept, but I kept the laser pistols. Most of the others didn’t know how to use them and a couple simply couldn’t. Besides, I didn’t really fully trust anybody except Darva, who certainly didn’t know how to shoot, and myself.

The next night was much like the first, although we got a break in the rain which certainly helped me a little. My human passenger said next to nothing during the entire journey, and I was glad for that. I was too tired to be conversational. During the middle of the third night we suddenly broke out onto a wide, sandy beach. We had reached the coast—the south coast again, as it turned out, but more than a hundred kilometers west of Bourget.

It was with relief that we realized that we were at the end of our journey. Our mysterious guide had taken us unerringly to the right spot through the jungle, avoiding all Companies and all but a very few roads—and also avoiding the worst of the jungle and swamps.

“We are safe now,” Frienta assured us. “The encampment here is protected from interlopers by high sorcery.”

I looked around. “Encampment?”

“Come,” she beckoned, and we walked down the beach a little to where it curved inland, forming a small bay. It looked desolate, totally deserted, until we turned slightly inland on the bay’s south side. Suddenly we found ourselves in a very large if primitive village, with tents, even fires and torchlight. It was so surprising that several of us uttered sounds of amazement; I, for one, stopped, then turned and stepped back a few meters and turned again. Desertion and silence. Walk a few steps forward, and there it was—a true camp with hundreds of beings, both changeling and human.

Frienta waved a ghostly arm. “Just find yourself a comfortable place and settle in,” she told us. “Ample food to your requirements will be provided, but we are out of tents and other shelters, I fear. If you can make no arrangements, you can use the jungle in the rear. The spell covers the entire south side of the bay but only to a depth of ninety meters from the beach—so if you go beyond, into the forest, take care.”

Our little group dispersed quickly as our fellow travelers found others they knew among the teeming throng of creatures on the beach. Our nervous human joined a small group of her own kind with evident relief.

Darva looked at me. “Well? What shall we do now?”

I shrugged. “Sleep, I think. Tomorrow we’ll find out_ what comes next.” I looked around at the various kinds of creatures on the beach, some of which were the stuff of real nightmares. Charon had taken criminal minds, insane minds, and given them great power. Much of that insanity could be seen reflected in its victims on the beach as well as in our former company, I reflected. Koril might prove more sympathetic, I knew; but he was still a politician, a king dethroned who wanted his position back and was willing to go to any lengths to get it. This system had been in effect when he was in charge before, and even before that, and he’d done nothing then to stop it. And that, of course, was something most of these people, the changelings in particular, would simply overlook; almost all were natives, and that alone accounted for a certain naivete to which was now added an exponential increase in trust borne of hope and desperation.

How were we different from the aliens, Darva had asked me—and I really wasn’t sure of an answer. If I wasn’t, then perhaps Koril saw few differences either. He would be unlikely to eliminate an external alien menace only to allow another to fester here homegrown. There was no question in my mind that these people were being used, as always. Sooner or later I knew, something would have to be done.

Darva had wandered off for a few minutes to see if anybody was around and awake whom she knew. When I saw her talking to a small group near a large tent, I decided to join her.

She looked over at me as I approached, smiled, nodded, and turned back to the trio by the fire—I saw one of them was frog-man, another the bird creature—and I strode right up to them. Before I could say anything, though, the flap of the tent behind me opened and I heard a familiar voice. “Why, hello, Darva! Hi, Park! My, you look stunning in your new suit!”

I whirled about in total surprise, and looked into the face of Tully Kokul.