Midnight at the Well of Souls

DILLIA—UPLAKE

Wu Julee groaned and opened her eyes. Her head was splitting and the room was spinning around.

“She’s comin’ around!” someone’s voice called out, and she was suddenly conscious of a number of people clustering around her.

She tried to focus, but everything was blurry for a few moments. Finally, vision cleared enough for her to see who each was, particularly the one non-Dillian in the crowd.

“Brazil!” she managed, then choked. Someone forced a little water down her throat. It tasted sour. She coughed.

“She knows you!” Yomax yelled, excited. “She remembers things agin!”

She shut her eyes tightly. She did remember—everything. A spasm shook her, and she vomited the water.

“Yomax! Jol!” she heard the Healer’s voice call. “You louts take her behind! Captain Brazil, you pull; I’ll push! Let’s try and get her on her feet as soon as possible!”

They fell to their tasks and managed to pull it off with several tries. No thanks to me, Brazil thought. Man! These people have muscles!

She was up, but unsteady. They put side panels padded with cloth under her arms and braced them so she could support herself. The room was still spinning, but it seemed to be slowing down. She still felt sick, and started trembling. Someone—probably Jol—started stroking her back and that seemed to calm her a little.

“Oh, my God!” she groaned.

“It’s all right, Wu Julee,” Brazil said softly. “The nightmares are past, now. They can’t hurt you anymore.”

“But how—” she started, then threw up again and kept gagging.

“All right, all of you outside now!” the Healer demanded. “Yes, you, too, Yomax! I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

They stepped out into the chill wind. Yomax shrugged, a helpless look on his face.

“Do you drink ale, stranger?” the aged centaur asked Brazil.

“I’ve been known to,” Brazil replied. “What do you make it out of?”

“Grains, water, and yeast!” said Yomax, surprised at the question. “What else would you make ale out of?”

“I dunno,” Brazil admitted, “but I’m awfully glad you don’t either. Where to?”

The three of them went down the main street, Brazil feeling like a pygmy among giants, and up to the bar, front on now.

The place was full of customers—about a dozen—and they had trouble squeezing in. Brazil suddenly became afraid that he would be crushed to death between equine rumps.

The conversation stopped when he entered, and everyone looked at him suspiciously.

“I just love being made to feel welcome,” Brazil said sarcastically. Then, to the other two, “Isn’t there a more, ah, private place to talk?”

Yomax nodded. “Gimme three, Zoder!” he called, and the bartender poured three enormous steins of ale and put them on the bar. He handed one to Jol and the other to Brazil, who almost dropped it when he found out how heavy the filled stein really was. Using two hands, he held on and followed Yomax down the street a few doors to the oldster’s office.

After Jol stoked the fire and threw some more wood in, the place seemed to warm and brighten spiritually as well as literally. Brazil let out a long sigh and sank to the floor, resting the stein on the floor beside him. As the place warmed up, he took off his fur cap and coat. Underneath he didn’t seem to be wearing anything.

The two centaurs also took off their coats, and both of them stared at him.

Brazil stared back. “Now, don’t you go starting that, or I’ll go back to the bar!” he warned. The Dillians laughed, and everybody relaxed. Brazil sipped the brew, and found it not bad at all, although close to two liters was a bit much at one time for him.

“Now, what’s all this about, mister?” Jol asked suspiciously.

“Suppose we swap information,” he offered, taking out his pipe and lighting it.

Yomax licked his lips. “Is that—is that tobacco?” he asked hesitatingly.

“It is,” Brazil replied. “Not very good, but good enough. Want some?”

Yomax’s expression, Brazil thought, was as eager and unbelieving as mine was when I saw that steak at Serge’s.

Was that only a few months ago? he asked himself. Or was it a lifetime?

Yomax dragged out an old and battered pipe that resembled a giant corncob and proceeded to fill it. Lighting it with a common safety match, he puffed away ecstatically.

“We don’t get much tobacco hereabouts,” the old man explained.

“I never would have guessed,” Brazil responded dryly. “I picked it up a fair distance from here, really—I’ve traveled nine hexes getting here, not counting a side trip to Zone from my home hex.”

“Them rodent fellas are the only ones in five thousand kilometers with tobacco these days,” Yomax said ruefully. “That where?”

Brazil nodded. “Next door to my home hex.”

“Don’t think I remember it,” the old official prodded curiously. “Except that you look like us, sort of, from the waist up, I don’t think I ever seen your like before.”

“Not surprising,” Brazil replied sadly. “My people came to a no-good end, I’m afraid.”

“Hey! Yomax!” Jol yelled suddenly. “Lookit his mouth! It don’t go with his talkin’!”

“He’s using a translator, idiot!” snapped Yomax.

“Right,” the small man confirmed. “I got it from the Ambreza—those ‘rodent fellas’ you mentioned. Nice people, once I could convince them that I was intelligent.”

“If you and they was neighbors, why was that a problem?” Jol asked.

The sadness crept back. “Well—a very long time ago, there was a war. My people were from a high-tech hex, and they built an extremely comfortable civilization, judging from the artifacts I saw. But the lifestyle was extremely wasteful—it required enormous natural resources to sustain—and they were running out, while the by-products curtailed good soil to the point where they were importing eight percent of their food. Unwilling to compromise their life-style, they looked to their neighbors to sustain their culture. Two hexes were ocean, one’s temperature was so cold it would kill us, two more weren’t worth taking for what they had or could be turned into. Only the Ambreza Hex was compatible, even though it was totally nontechnological. No steam engines, no machines of any kind not powered by muscle. The Ambreza were quiet, primitive farmers and fishermen, and they looked like easy prey.”

“Attacked ’em, eh?” Yomax put in.

“Well, they were about to,” Brazil replied. “They geared up with swords and spears, bows and catapults—whatever would work in Ambreza Hex—with computers from home telling them the best effective use. But my people made one mistake, so very old in the history of many races, and they paid the price for it.”

“What mistake was that?” asked Jol, fascinated.

“They confused ignorance with stupidity,” the man explained. “The Ambreza were what they appeared to be, but they were not dumb. They saw what was coming and saw what they had to lose. Their diplomats tried to negotiate a settlement, but at the same time they scoured other hexes for effective countermeasures—and they found one!”

“Yes? Yes? And that was…?” Yomax prompted.

“A gas,” Brazil said softly. “A Northern Hemisphere hex used it for refrigeration, but on my people it had a far different effect. They kidnapped a few people, and the gas worked on them just as the Northerners said it would. Meanwhile the only effect on the Ambreza was to make them itch and sneeze for a while.”

“It killed all your people?” asked Yomax, appalled.

“Not killed, no—not exactly,” the small man replied. “It made, well chemical changes in the brain. You see, just about every race is loosely based on, or related to, some animal past or present.”

“Yup,” Yomax agreed. “I once tried to talk to a horse in Hex Eighty-three.”

“Exactly!” Brazil exclaimed. “Well, we came from—were a refinement of, really—the great apes. You know about them?”

“Saw a few pictures once in a magazine,” Jol said. “Two or three hexes got kinds of ’em.”

“That’s right. Even the Ambreza are related to several animals in other hexes—including this one, if I recall,” Brazil continued. “Well, the gas simply mentally reverted everyone back to his ancestral animalism. They all lost their power to reason and became great apes.”

“Wow!” Jol exclaimed. “Didn’t they all die?”

“No,” Brazil replied. “The climate’s moderate, and while many of them—probably most of them—did perish, a few seemed to adapt. The Ambreza moved in and cleared out the area afterward. They let them run free in small packs. They even keep a few as pets.”

“I ain’t much on science,” the old man put in, “but I do remember that stuff like chemical changes can’t be passed on. Surely their children didn’t breed true as animals.”

“The Ambreza say that there has been slow improvement,” answered the small man. “But while the gas has to be extremely potent to affect anybody else, it appears that the stuff got absorbed by just about everything—rocks, dirt, and everything that grows in it or lived in it. For my people, the big dose caused initial reversion, but about one part per trillion keeps it alive. The effect is slowly wearing out. The Ambreza figure that they’ll be up to the level of basic primitive people in another six or seven generations, maybe even start a language within five hundred years. Their—the Ambreza’s, that is—master plan is to move the packs over into their old land when they start to improve. That way they’ll develop in a non-technological hex and will probably remain rather primitive.”

“I’m not sure I like that gas,” Yomax commented. “What worked on them might work on us.” He shivered.

“I don’t think so,” Brazil replied. “After the attack, the Well refused to transport the stuff anymore. I think our planetary brain’s had enough of such things.”

“I still don’t like the idea,” Yomax maintained. “If not that, then somethin’ else could get us.”

“Life’s a risk anyway, without worrying about everything that might happen,” Brazil pointed out. “After all, you could slip on the dock and fall in the lake and freeze to death before you got to shore. A tree could fall over on you. Lightning could strike. But if you let such things dominate your life, you’ll be as good as dead anyway. That’s what’s wrong with Wu Julee.”

“What do you mean?” Jol asked sharply.

“She’s had a horrible life,” Nathan Brazil replied evenly. “Born on a Comworld; bred to do farm labor, looking and thinking just like everybody else, no sex, no fun, no nothing. Then, suddenly, she was plucked up by the hierarchy, given shots to develop sexually, and used as a prostitute for minor visitors, one of whom was a foreign pig named Datham Hain.”

He was interrupted at this point and had to try to explain what a prostitute was to two members of a culture that didn’t have marriage, paternity suits, or money. It took some doing.

“Anyway,” he continued, “this Hain was a representative of a group of nasties who get important people on various worlds hooked on a particularly nasty kind of drug, the better to rule them. To demonstrate what it did if you didn’t get the treatment, he infected Wu Julee first and then let the stuff start to destroy her. There’s no cure, and on most worlds they just put such people to death. Most of those infected, finding their blood samples matching Wu Julee’s blood, played Hain’s game, taking orders from him and his masters.

“The stuff kind of does to you, but very painfully, what that gas did to my Hex Forty-one, only it also depresses the appetite to nonexistence. You eventually mindlessly starve to death.”

“And poor Wuju was already pretty far gone,” Jol interpolated. “In pain, practically an animal, with all that behind her. No wonder she blotted all memories out! And no wonder she had nightmares!”

“Life’s been a nightmare to her,” Brazil said quietly. “Her physical nightmare is over, but until she faces that fact, it still lives in her mind.”

They just stood there for several minutes, there seeming to be nothing left to say. Finally, Yomax said, “Captain, one thing bothers me about your gas story.”

“Fire away,” the man invited, sipping more of the ale.

“If that gas stuff was still active, why didn’t it affect you, at least slightly?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Brazil responded. “Everything says I should have been reduced to the level of the hex, including Ambreza chemistry. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t even physically changed to conform to the larger, darker version of humanity there. I couldn’t explain that—and neither can the Ambreza.”

The Healer stuck her head in the door, and they turned expectantly.

“She’s sleeping now,” she reported. “Really sleeping, for the first time in more than a month. I’ll stay with her and see her through.”

They nodded and settled back for a long wait.

Wu Julee slept for almost two days.

Brazil used the time to tour the village and look at some of the trails. He liked these people, he decided, and he liked this isolated place, cut off from everything civilized except for the one daily boat run. Standing on a ledge partway up a well-maintained cross-country trail, he was oblivious to the cold and the wind as he looked out at the mass of snow-covered mountains. He realized suddenly that almost the whole mountain range was in the next hex, and he speculated idly on what sort of denizens lived in that kind of terrain.

After spending most of a day out there, he made his way back to the village to check on Wu Julee’s progress.

“She came around,” the Healer informed him. “I got her to eat a little something and it stayed down. You can see her, if you want.”

Brazil did want, and went in.

She looked a little weak but managed a smile when she saw him.

She hasn’t really changed radically, he thought, at least not from the waist up. He would have known her anywhere—despite the different coloration and the lower body, the pointy ears, and all. She actually looked healthier than she had under the influence of that vicious drug, the product of eating better and of exercising.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, idly wondering why that stupid question was always the first asked of obviously sick people.

“Weak,” she replied, “but I’ll manage.” She let out a small giggle. “The last time we saw each other I had to look up to you.”

Brazil took on a pained expression. “It never fails!” he wailed. “Everybody always picks on a little man!”

She laughed and so did he. “It’s good to see you laugh,” he said.

“There’s never been much to laugh about, before,” she replied.

“I told you I’d find you.”

“I remember—that was the worst part of the sponge. You know, you are aware of all that’s happening to you.”

He nodded gravely. “Throughout the history of man there’s always been some kind of drug, and people stuck on it. The people who push the stuff are on a different kind of drug, one so powerful that they are not aware of its own, ravaging, animalistic effect on them.”

“What’s that?”

“Power and greed,” he told her. “The ugliest—no, the second ugliest ravager of people ever known.”

“What’s the ugliest, then?” she asked him.

“Fear,” he replied seriously. “It destroys, rots, and touches everyone around.”

She was silent for a moment. “I’ve been afraid most of my life,” she said so softly he almost couldn’t make out the words.

“I know,” he replied gently. “But there’s nothing to fear now, you know. These are good people here, and this is a spot I could cheerfully spend the rest of my life in.”

She looked straight at him, and her youthful looks were betrayed by the eyes of someone incredibly old.

“They are wonderful,” she admitted, “but it’s their paradise. They were born here, and they know nothing of the horrors around them. It must be wonderful to be that way, but I’m not one of them. My scars seem huge and painful just because of their goodness and simplicity. Can you understand that?”

He nodded slowly. “I have scars, too, you know. And some of them are more than I can take at times. My memory’s coming back—slowly, but in extreme detail. And, like Serge said, they’re mostly things I don’t want to remember. Some good times, some wonderful things, certainly—but some horrors and a lot of pain, too. Like you, I blotted them out, more successfully it seems, but they’re coming back now—more and more each day.”

“Those rejuve treatments must have done a lot to your memory,” she suggested.

“No, nothing,” he said slowly. “I’ve never had a rejuve treatment, Wu Julee. Never. I knew that when I blamed them for such things.”

“Never—but that’s impossible! I remember Hain reading your license. It said you were over five hundred years old!”

“I am,” he replied slowly. “And a lot more. I’ve had a hundred names, a thousand lives, all the same. I’ve been around since Old Earth, and before.”

“But that was bombed out centuries ago! Why, that was back almost before history!”

His tone was casual, but there was no doubting his sincerity. “It’s been dropping like a series of veils, little by little. Just today, up in the mountains, I suddenly remembered a funny, little, Old Earth dictator who liked me because I wasn’t any taller than he was.

“Napoleon Bonaparte was his name…”

He slept on furs in Yomax’s office for several days, seeing Wu Julee gain some strength and confidence with every visit.

But those eyes—the scars in her eyes were still there.

One day the steamboat came in, and Klamath almost fell in the lake rushing out to meet him.

“Nate! Nate!” the ferry captain called. “Incredible news!” From his expression it was nothing good.

“Calm down, Klammy, and tell me about it.” He spied a block-printed newspaper in the waterman’s hand, but couldn’t read a word of the language.

“Somebody just busted into that university in Czill and kidnapped a couple of people!”

Brazil frowned, a funny feeling in his stomach. That was where Vardia was, where he was going next.

“Who’d they snatch?” he asked.

“One of yours, Vardia or something like that. And a Umiau—they’re sorta mermaids, Nate—named Cannot.”

The little man shifted uneasily, chewing on his lower lip.

“Anybody know who?”

“Got a good idea, though they deny it. Bunch o’ giant cockroaches with some unpronounceable name. Some of the Umiau spotted them in the dark when they shorted out the power at the Center.”

Slowly the story came out. Two large creatures resembling giant flying bugs blew the main power plant, causing the artificial sunlight to fail in one wing of the Center. Then they crashed through the windows of the lab, grabbed Vardia and Cannot, and took them away. The leaders of the culprit’s race were confronted at Zone, but pointed out that there were almost a hundred insectival races on the planet and denied they were the ones. Their tight monarchy, resembling a Comworld with fancy titles, was leakproof—so nobody was sure.

“But that’s not the most sensational part!” Klamath continued, his voice rising again. “These Umiau got superupset at all this, and one of them let slip the truth about Cannot.

“Seems they and the top dogs of the Center had a real secret to keep. Cannot was Elkinos Skander, Nate!”

Brazil just stood there, digesting the information. It made sense, of course. Skander would use the great computers of the Center to answer his big questions, getting everything he needed so that, when he was ready, he could mount an expedition under his direction to the interior of the Well World. Power and greed, Brazil thought sourly. Corrupting two of the more peaceful and productive races on the planet.

Well, they wanted it all, and now all they’ve got left is their fear, he reflected.

“I’ll have to go to Czill now,” he told the ferry captain. “It looks as if my job is starting.”

Klamath didn’t understand, but agreed to hold the boat until Nathan could say good-bye to Wu Julee.

She was standing unsupported and looking through a book of landscape paintings by local artists when he entered. His expression telegraphed his disquiet.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“They’ve broken into a place a couple of hexes over and kidnapped Vardia and Skander, the man who might be the killer of those seven people back on Dalgonia,” he told her gravely. “I have to go, I’m afraid.”

“Take me with you,” she said evenly.

The thought had never occurred to him. “But you’re still weak!” he protested. “And here is where you belong. These are your people, now. Out there is nothing but worse and worse. It’s no place for you!”

She walked over to him and looked down with those old, old eyes.

“I have to,” she told him. “I have to heal the scars.”

“But there’re only more scars out there,” he countered. “There’s fear out there, Wu Julee.”

“No, Nathan,” she replied sternly, using his first name for the first time. She tapped her forehead. “The fear is in here. Until I face it, I’ll die by inches here.”

He was silent for a while, and she thought he still wouldn’t take her.

“I’m easier to care for than you are,” she pointed out. “I’m tougher of skin, more tolerant of weather, and I need only some kind of grass and water.”

“All right,” he said slowly. “Come if you must. You can get back to Dillia through a gate from anywhere, anyway.”

“That’s what I’ve got to know, Nathan,” she explained. “I’m cured of sponge, but I’m still hooked on that ugliest drug, fear.”

“You sure you’re well enough?”

“I’m sure,” she replied firmly. “This will give me what I need.”

She put on a coat and they went outside. When they told Yomax and the others that she was going along, the same round of protests started all over again, but her mind was made up.

“I’ll tell Dal and Jol,” Yomax said, tears welling in his eyes. “But they won’t understand, neither.”

“I’ll be back, old man,” she replied, her voice breaking. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

Klamath sounded the steam whistle.

They stepped on board the first floor of the steamship and entered the partially closed cargo door that enclosed the lower deck from the colder weather.

Five hours later they landed in the much larger village of Donmin downlake. Compared to the uplake community, it was a bustling metropolis of fifteen or twenty thousand, stretching out across broad, cleared plains. The streets were lit with oil lamps, although Brazil had no idea what sort of unrefined, natural oil they used. It smelled like fish, anyway.

He reclaimed a well-made but crude backpack from the shipping office and said good-bye to Klamath, who wished them luck.

The packs, Wu Julee found, were largely filled with tobacco, a good trade commodity. One pouch had some clothing and toiletries.

Using the tobacco, Brazil managed to trade for some small items he thought they would need, then got a room for them at a waterfront inn, where they spent the night.

The next day they set out early across the trails of Dillia toward the northeast. She had trouble staying back with him, having to walk in almost uncomfortable slow motion. After several kilometers of particularly slow going, she suggested, “Why don’t you ride me?”

“But you’re already carrying the pack,” he protested.

“I’m stronger than you think,” she retorted. “I’ve hauled logs heavier than you and the pack put together. Come on, climb on and see if you can keep from falling off.”

“I haven’t been on a horse since I went to the first Wilson inauguration,” he muttered incomprehensibly. “Well, I’ll try.”

It took him three tries, even with her help, to mount her broad, stocky body that reminded him so much of a Shetland pony. And he fell off twice, to her derisive laughter, when she started to trot. She finally had to put her arms behind her to give him something to hold on to. When her circulation started going, he had to hold on to the much-less-reassuring pack. His own circulation was in no great shape. His legs discovered a hundred new muscles he had never known before, and the agony almost obliterated the soreness of his rump from bouncing.

But they made good time, the kilometers flying by. Near dusk they reached the Dillian border, through the last village and seeing here and there only an isolated farmhouse. It started to snow, but it was only a flurry at first and didn’t really bother either of them.

“We’re going to have to quit soon,” he called to her.

“Why?” she mocked. “Scared of the dark?”

“My body just won’t take much more of this,” he groaned. “And we’ll pass into the Slongorn Hex in a little while. I don’t know enough about it to want to chance it in the dark.”

She slowed, then stopped, and he got off. Pain shot through him but it was the aching sort, not the driving sharpness of riding. She was amused at his discomfort.

“So who couldn’t make the trip because they were too weak?” she teased. “Look at the brave superman now! And we’ve already stopped five times!”

“Yeah,” he grunted, stretching and finding that that only made it hurt in different places. “But that was only so you could eat. Lord! Do you people stuff yourselves!”

And they did, he thought, consume an enormous quantity to support their large bodies.

“Will we have to camp here?” she asked, looking at the darkening woods with no sign of lights nearby. “If we do, we’d better get some good shelter. It looks like the snow may pick up.”

“If that road we passed about a kil and a half ago was the turnoff to Sidecrater Village, there should be a roadhouse not too much farther on.” He checked a frayed and faded map he had in the pack.

“Why not go back to the village?” she suggested.

“Almost eight kils down a dead end?” he replied skeptically. “No, we’ll go on and hope the roadhouse is still in business. But I’ll walk for a while, no matter what!”

As darkness fell the snow did pick up, and started to stick. The wind whistled through the trees, keeping time with the subtle, quiet sound of the snow hitting against trees, bushes, and them.

Visibility dropped to almost zero.

“Are we still on the road?” she yelled to him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We should have come to that roadhouse by now. But we don’t have any choice. We’d never build a fire in this stuff now. Keep going!”

“I’m getting real cold, Nathan!” she complained. “Remember, more than half of me is exposed!”

He stopped, and brushed the snow off her backside. Insulating layer of fat or not, he realized she couldn’t continue too much longer.

“I’m going to climb on!” he yelled above the wind. “Then go on as fast as you can! We’ve got to come to something sooner or later!”

They pushed forward, he clinging to her back, but it was slow going against the wind. They continued on for what seemed like hours in the blowing cold and darkness.

“I don’t know how much longer I can go on!” she called to him at last. “My ass is frozen solid now.”

“Come on, girl!” he shouted. “Here’s that adventure you wanted! Don’t give up now!”

That spurred her on, but it seemed hopeless as the snow continued to pile up.

“I think I see something ahead!” she shouted. “I can’t be sure—I think my eyes are covered with icicles!”

“Maybe it’s the roadhouse!” he shouted. “Head for it!”

She pushed on.

Suddenly, as if they passed through an invisible curtain, the snow was gone—and so was the cold. She stopped suddenly.

He got off and brushed the snow from him. After a few moments to catch his breath, he walked back several steps.

And back into the blowing snow and cold.

He went back to her.

“What is it, Nathan?” she asked. “What happened?”

“We must have missed the roadhouse,” he told her. “We’ve crossed the border into Slongorn!”

Her body began to thaw rapidly, and painfully. Her eyes misted, then started to clear.

Looking back, she could see nothing but billowing, snowy fog.

In any other direction, the spectacular night sky of the Well World shone cloudlessly around them.

“We might as well camp right here,” he suggested. “Not only am I too tired to go any farther, but there’s no use chancing unfamiliar territory. Anything that might cause us problems is unlikely to be this close to the border, and we always have a convenient if chilly exit if we find any real problems.”

“It’s hard to believe,” she said as he unstrapped the pack and removed a couple of towels, wiping his face and hair, then starting to give her the much more difficult rubdown. “I mean—coming out of that awful storm and into this—winter to summer, just like that.”

“That’s the way it can be,” he replied. “Sometimes there’s no clear dividing line, sometimes it’s dramatic. But, remember, despite the fact that things interlock on this world—tides, rivers, oceans, and the like—each hex is a self-contained biological community.”

“All of a sudden I’m starting to sweat,” she noted. “I think I’ll take these heavy fur clothes off.”

“I’m ahead of you,” he responded, drying her rear and tail. She twisted around and saw that he had removed almost all of his clothing. He looks even punier naked, she thought. You can just about see every rib on his body, even through that carpet of black chest-hair.

He finished and came around to her front. Together they stood and looked at the landscape eerily illuminated in the bright starlight.

“Mountains, trees, maybe a small lake over there,” he pointed out. “Looks like a few lights off in the distance.”

“I don’t think we’re on the road,” she commented. They seemed to be on a field of short grasses. She reached down almost automatically and picked a clump.

“I’m not sure you ought to eat that right now,” he warned. “We don’t know all the ground rules here.”

She sniffed the grass suspiciously. Although Dillians were moderately nearsighted, their senses of smell and hearing were acute. “Smells like plain old grass,” she said. “Kind of short, though. See? It’s been cut!”

He looked at the stuff and saw that she was right. “Well, this is logically either a high-technology hex or a nontechnological one, judging from the pattern I’ve seen,” he noted. “From the looks of things, it’s high.”

“The grass has been cut in the last day or two,” she observed. “You can still smell it.”

He sniffed, but didn’t notice much, and shrugged. He never had much of a smeller despite the Roman nose, he thought.

“I’m going to chance it,” she decided at last. “It’s here, and I need it, and we have two or three days before we’ll get through here.” She took about three steps, then stopped.

“Nathan?”

“Yes?”

“What kind of people live here? I mean, what—”

“I know what you mean. I couldn’t get a really good description out of anyone. It’s not the most traveled route, mostly a through route. The best I could get was that they were two-legged vegetarians.”

“That’s good enough for me,” she replied, and started picking clumps of grass and chewing them.

“Don’t get too far away!” he called. “It’s too damned hot to build a fire, and I don’t want to attract the wrong people. We might be—probably are—trespassing.”

Satisfied as long as he could still see her, he stretched out the furs to dry and stripped completely. After discovering that some of the grass was stiff and sharp, he spread the three wet towels out to form a mat, then got out a couple of large bricks of cooked confection he had bought back in Donmin. He sat on the towels and ate about half of one bar, which was hard and crunchy but filling, and then came down with a terrible candy-thirst.

He reached for the flagon containing water, but decided to leave its half-empty contents if he could. No telling what the water was like here.

He got up and went over to the border, only a few meters away. He could hear the howling winds and see the blowing snow. Some of the cold radiated out a few centimeters from the border. He got down on his knees, reached into the cold, and came up with a handful of snow.

That did the job.

He went back and stretched out on the towels. He still ached from the day’s ride, but not nearly as bad. He knew the pain would come back when he mounted the next day, though. Maybe in three or four days he would get used to riding. By his own estimates, they were still almost nine hundred kilometers from the Center.

She came back after a while and surveyed him lying there on the towels.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” she said.

“Too tired to sleep,” he responded lazily. “I’ll get off in a little while. Why don’t you get some? You’re doing all the work, and there’s a lot yet to do. In the next few days we’ll sure find out if they have pneumonia on this world.”

She laughed and the laugh developed into a major yawn.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “I’ll probably fall over in the night, though. Nothing to lean on here.”

“Ummm-humm,” he half-moaned. “Can you sleep lying down?”

“I have, once or twice, mostly on the end of drunks,” she replied. “It’s not normal, but if I don’t crush my arm, I can. Once we go to sleep we’re just about unconscious and unmoving for the night.”

She came up close to him and knelt down, then slowly rolled over on one side, very close to him and facing him.

“Ahhh…” she sighed. “I think this is going to work, tonight, at least.”

He looked at her, still half-awake, and thought, Isn’t it funny how human she looks like that? Some of her hair had fallen over in front of her face, and, on impulse, he reached over and put it in back of her gently. She smiled and opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered.

“That’s all right,” she replied softly. “I wasn’t really asleep. Still ache?”

“A little,” he admitted.

“Lie with your back to me,” she told him, “I’ll rub it out.”

He did as instructed and she twisted a little to free her left arm then started a massage that felt so good it hurt.

After a few minutes he asked her if there was something he could do in return, and she had him stroking and rubbing the humanoid part of her back and shoulders. Doing so was awkward, but she seemed satisfied. Finally, he finished and resumed his position on the towels.

“We really ought to get some sleep,” he said quietly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he leaned over and kissed her.

She reached out and pulled him to her, prolonging the embrace. He felt terribly uncomfortable, and, when she finally let him go, he rolled back onto the towels.

“Why did you really come with me?” he asked her seriously.

“What I said,” she replied in a half-whisper. “But, also, I told you I remember. I remember all of it. How you gambled to save my life. How you held me up in the Well. And—how you came out of your way to find me. I saw the map.”

“Oh, hell,” he said disgustedly. “This will never work. We’re two different kinds of creature, alien to each other.”

“You’ve been wanting me, though. I could feel it.”

“And you know damned well our bodies don’t match. Anything like sex just won’t work for us now. So get those ideas out of your head! If that’s why you’re here, you should go back in the morning!”

“You were the only clean thing I ever ran into in that dirty old world of ours,” she said seriously. “You’re the first person I ever met who cared, even though you didn’t know me.”

“But it’s like a fish falling in love with a cow,” he retorted in a strained, higher-than-normal tone. “The spirits are there but they happen to come from two different worlds.”

“Love isn’t sex,” she replied quietly. “I, of all people, know that better than anyone. Sex is just a physical act. Loving is caring as much or more about someone else than you do about yourself. Deep down inside you have the kind of feeling for others that I’ve never really seen before. I think some of it rubbed off. Maybe, through you, I’ll face down that fear inside of me and be able to give myself.”

“Oh, hell!” Brazil said sourly, turning his back to her.

In the quiet that followed, they both went to sleep.

The centaur was huge, like a statue of the god Zeus come to life, and it mated with the finest stallion. He came out of his cave at the sound of footsteps, then saw who it was and relaxed.

“You’re getting careless, Agorix,” the man said to him.

“Just tired,” the centaur replied. “Tired of running, tired of jumping at every little noise. I think soon I will go into the hills and end it. I’m the last, you know.”

The man nodded gravely. “I have destroyed the two stuffed ones in Sparta by setting the temple on fire.”

The centaur smiled approvingly. “When I go, there will be naught but legends to say that we were here. That is for the best.” Suddenly tears flowed from his great, wise eyes. “We tried to teach them so much! We had so much to offer!” he moaned.

“You were too good for this dirty little world,” the man replied with gentleness and sympathy.

“We came of our own choice,” the centaur replied. “We failed, but we tried. But it must be even harder on you!”

“I have to stay,” the man said evenly. “You know that.”

“Don’t pity me, then,” the centaur responded sharply. “Let me, instead, mourn for you.”

Nathan Brazil awoke.

The hot sun was beating down on him, and had he not already been tanned from earlier travels, he would have had a terrible sunburn.

What a crazy dream, he thought. Was it touched off by last night’s conversation? Or was it, like so much lately, a true memory? The latter scared him a little, not because the dream was obscure, but because it would explain a lot—and in a most unpleasant direction.

He put it out of his mind, or tried to.

Suddenly he realized that Wu Julee was gone.

He sat up with a start and looked around. There was a large indentation in the grass where she had been, and some divots kicked up where she had gotten up, but no sign of her.

He looked around, noting several things about the landscape.

For one thing, they had been fairly lucky. Although the area around was a grassy hill, it sloped down into dank, swampy wetlands not far away. There were odd buildings, like mushrooms, scattered about near the swamp and through it, but no sign of any real activity. He looked back at the border. It was a snowy forest scene that greeted him, but the storm had passed and the sky was quickly becoming as blue there as it was overhead. He walked over to the border, got some snow, and rubbed his face with the cold stuff.

Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he turned back to look for Wu Julee. He spotted her at last, coming back toward him at full gallop.

He turned and packed the towels away in the pack, removing from the clothing pouch a bundle of black cloth. He unfolded it and looked at it. He had had it made in another hex, awfully nonhuman, but it had seemed right when he had tried it on.

The pants fitted, and his feet slipped into shoe-shaped bottoms with fairly tough, leathery soles on the outside. The material was of the stretchy type, and it seemed to adhere to him like a second skin, as did the pullover shirt. He had two of the latter, and chose the one with no sleeves over the other, which had formfitting gloves.

It works, he thought to himself, and fairly comfortable, too. But it’s so form-fitting and so thin I still feel naked. Oh, well, at least it’ll keep the sun out.

He wished for sunglasses, not for the first time. But the first group he had hit who made them were the Dillians, and the smallest was a bit too large for him.

Wu Julee came up to him at that point, looking excited.

“Nathan!” she called, “I’ve been out exploring and you’ll never guess what’s over the next hill!”

“The Emerald City,” he retorted, even though he knew that expression would draw a blank look. In fact, it went right past her.

“No! It’s a road! A paved road! And it has cars on it!”

He looked puzzled. “Cars? This close to the border? What kind of cars?”

“Electric ones, I think,” she replied. “They don’t go all that fast, and there aren’t many of them, but there they are. There’s a little parking lot up by the border. The Dillian roadhouse is a hundred meters or so farther on!”

“So we did miss it in the storm and got off the track!” he said. “They must supply the roadhouse with various things, and use the roadhouse as a business base. Funny you never heard of them.”

“I’ve been uplake all my time here,” she reminded him. “The only others I ever heard about were the mountain people, and I never saw any of them.”

“Well, what do these people look like?” he asked curiously. “We’ll have to travel through most of their hex.”

“They’re the strangest—well, you’ll have to see. Let’s get going!”

He strapped the pack on her and climbed aboard. She seemed particularly happy and eager and, well, alive this morning, he thought.

They moved along at a fast clip, and the old pains came back almost immediately, although he was getting to the point where he was going up when she was and down when she did. It helped a little, but not much.

They cleared the top of the hill in about five minutes, and he saw immediately what she meant. A half dozen vehicles were parked in a little paved area near the border. They were mostly open, except for one with a roof of canvas or something like it. None of them had seats, and, from the looks of the one with the top, their drivers were very tall and drove by a two-lever combination. The road was wide enough for one car to pass another, and it had a white line painted down the center of the black surface.

She stopped near the lot. “Look!” she said. “Now you’ll see what I mean by weird people!”

And she was most definitely right, Brazil decided. The last time he had seen anything remotely resembling it was on a long-ago, month-long bender.

Imagine an elephant’s head, floppy ears and all, but no tusks, with not one but two trunks growing from its face, each about a meter long and ending in four stubby, jointless fingers grouped around the nostril opening. Mount the head on a body that looked too thin to support such a head, armless and terminating in two short, squat, legs and flat feet that made the walker look as if he were slightly turning from side to side as he walked. Now paint the whole creature a fiery red, and imagine it wearing green canvas dungarees.

Nathan Brazil and Wu Julee didn’t have to imagine it. That was exactly what was walking at a slow pace toward them.

“Oh, wow!” was all he could manage. “I see just what you mean.”

The creature spotted them and raised its trunks, which seemed to grow out of the same point between and just below the eyes, in a greeting. “Well, hello!” it boomed in Dillian in a voice that sounded like an injured foghorn. “Better weather on this side of the line, hey?”

“You can say that again,” Brazil responded. “We almost got caught in the storm and missed the roadhouse. Spent the night over in the field, there.”

“Heading out, then?” the Slongornian asked pleasantly. “Going to tour our lovely country? Good time of year for it. Always summer here.”

“Just passing through,” replied Brazil casually. “We’re on our way to Czill.”

The friendly creature frowned, which gave it an even more comical aspect that was hard to ignore. “Bad business, that. Read about it last night.”

“I know,” Nathan replied seriously. “One of the victims—the Czillian—was a friend of mine. Ours,” he quickly corrected, and Wu Julee smiled.

“Why don’t you go into the roadhouse, have breakfast, and try to bum a ride through?” the creature suggested helpfully. “All of these trucks’ll be going back empty, and you can probably hitchhike most of the way. Save time and sore feet.”

“Thanks, we’ll try it,” Brazil called after the Slongornian as that worthy climbed into the covered truck and started backing it out, controlling the steering with a trunk on each lever. The truck made a whirring noise but little else, and sped off down the road at a pretty good clip.

“You know, I bet he’s doing fifty flat out,” he said to Wu Julee as the truck disappeared from view. “Maybe we can move faster and easier than we figured.”

They walked over the border to the incongruously snow-clad roadhouse. The cold hit them at once, Wu Julee being unclad except for the pack, and his clothing not much more than protection from the sun. They ran to the roadhouse, and she was inside almost a minute ahead of him.

Five Slongornians stood at a counter shoving what appeared to be hay down their throats with their trunks. One drained a mug of warm liquid somewhat like tea and then squirted it into its mouth. The innkeeper was a middle-aged female Dillian who looked older than her years. Two young male centaurs were sorting boxes in the back, apparently arranging the deliveries the Slongornians had made.

And there was one other.

It’s a giant, man-sized bat! Brazil thought, and that is what it did look like. It was taller than he was by a little bit, and had a ratty head and body with blood-red eyes; its sharp teeth were chewing on a huge loaf of sweetbread. Its arms were slightly outstretched and they melded into the leathery wings, the bones extended to form the structural support for the wings. It had long, humanoid legs, though, with a standard knee covered in wiry black hair like gorillas’ legs, and ending in two feet that looked more like large human hands, the backs covered with fur. The thing was obviously double- or triple-jointed in the legs, since it was balanced on one with no apparent effort while holding the loaf in the other, the leg brought up level with the mouth.

The creature seemed to ignore them, and no one else in the place seemed to pay any attention. They turned and ordered breakfast, a thick porridge in a huge bowl served steaming hot with wooden spoons stuck in the stuff. Wu Julee just ordered water with it, while Nathan tried the pitch-black tea. It tasted incredibly strong and bitter, and had an odd aftertaste, but he had found from the days he had spent in Dillia that the tea woke him up and got his motor started.

It didn’t take long for one of the Slongornian truck drivers to strike up a conversation. They seemed to be an extraordinarily friendly and outgoing people, and when curious about this strange-looking one in their midst felt no hesitancy in starting things off. Between comments about the weather, the porridge, and the hard and thankless life of truck drivers, Brazil managed to explain where he was going and as much of his reason as he had told the one in the parking lot.

They sympathized and one offered to take them the nineteen kilometers to his base in the nearest Slongornian city, assuring them that they could probably hitch rides from terminal to terminal across the country.

“Well, Wu Julee, no exercise and no aches today,” Nathan beamed.

“That’s nice,” she approved. “But, Nathan—don’t call me by that name anymore. It’s somebody else’s name—somebody I’d rather not remember. Just call me Wuju. That’s Jol’s nickname, and it’s more my own.”

“All right,” he laughed. “Wuju it is.”

“I like the way you say it,” she said softly. He reflected to himself that he didn’t feel comfortable with the way she had said that.

“Excuse me,” said a sharp, nasal, but crystal-clear voice behind them, “but I couldn’t help overhearing you on your travel plans, and I wondered if I could tag along? I’m going in the same direction for a while.”

They both turned, and, as Brazil expected, it was the bat.

“Well, I don’t know…” he replied, glancing at the willing truck driver who cocked his head in an unmistakable why-the-hell-not attitude.

“Looks like it’s all right with the driver, so it’s all right with us, ah—what’s your name? You’ve already heard ours.”

The bat laughed. “My name is impossible. The translator won’t handle it, since it’s not only a sound only we can make but entirely in the frequencies beyond most hearing.” The creature wiggled his enormous bat ears. “My hearing has to be acute, since, though I have incredible night vision, I’m almost blind in any strong light. I depend on my hearing to get around in the day. As for a name, why not call me Cousin Bat? Everyone else does.”

Brazil smiled. “Well, Cousin Bat, it looks as if you’re along for the ride. But why not just fly it? Injured?”

“No,” Cousin Bat replied, “but this cold’s done me no good, and I’ve traveled quite a distance. Frankly, I’m extremely tired and sore and would just as soon let machines do the work instead of muscle.”

The bat went over to settle his bill, paying in some kind of currency that Brazil guessed was valid in Slongorn, which would be used to pay for the supplies.

He felt a sudden, hard pressure on his arm, and turned. It was Wu Julee—Wuju, he corrected himself.

“I don’t like that character at all,” she whispered in his ear. “I don’t think he can be trusted.”

“Don’t be prejudiced,” he chided her. “Maybe he feels uncomfortable around horses and elephants. Did you have bats on your home world?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “They were brought in years ago to help control some native bugs. They did, but they were worse than the bugs.”

Brazil shook his head knowingly. “I thought so. Well, we’ll meet some even more unpleasant characters along the way, and he seems straight enough. We’ll find out. If he’s honest, he’ll be a great night guard and navigator.”

She resigned herself, and the matter was settled for the moment.

Actually, Brazil had an ulterior motive. With Cousin Bat around, there was less likelihood of the emotions of the night before getting aired or strengthened, he thought.

The ride was uneventful. Cousin Bat took the floor next to the Slongornian driver and promptly went to sleep, while Wuju and Brazil sat in the rear bed, the only place she could fit.

The Slongornian city was modern enough to have traffic jams as well as signals and police. Had it not been for the mushroom-shaped buildings and the total incongruity of the inhabitants, it would have been very comfortable. They waited there for two hours before another truck going in their direction was sufficiently empty to fit Wuju in the back, and even then she was uncomfortably cramped. Still, it was faster than her own speed.

Shortly after nightfall, they were more than halfway across the hex. Cousin Bat was wide awake by this time. Since there were no inns that could accommodate someone of Wuju’s size and build, they made camp in the field of a friendly farmer.

The bat had looked like a cartoon version of a villain by day, but in the dark he took on a threatening aspect, his red eyes glowing menacingly, reflecting any light.

“You going to fly on now, Cousin Bat?” Brazil asked after they were settled.

“I will fly for a while,” the creature replied, “partly for the exercise, and partly because there are some small rodents and insects roaming about here. I am sick and tired of wheat cakes and the like. My constitution is not constructed for such fare. However, Murithel, which is the next hex, is a bit nasty I’m told. I’ll stick with you to Czill, if you’ll have me.”

Brazil assured him he would, and the bat leaped up into the evening sky with a flurry of leathery wings and vanished.

“I still don’t like him,” Wuju insisted. “He gives me the creeps.”

“You’ll have to get used to him,” he told her. “At least, until I find out what his game is.”

“What?” she yelped.

“Oh, he’s a phony, all right,” Brazil said. “Remember, in the old life I was nothing much but a truck driver like these folks here. I was even delivering grain. Truck drivers see a little of everybody and everything, know isolated facts about all sorts of things from the people they run into. They knew where our flying companion’s home hex was. It’s nine hexes north-northwest of here—almost exactly the opposite direction to the way we’re going, at least the wrong point on a V.”

“Now who’s getting nervous?” she retorted. “He could be going someplace on business. He certainly hasn’t told us much about what he does.”

“I know what he does,” Brazil replied evenly. “One of the other drivers saw him flying south, toward Dillia, two days ago.”

“So?”

“He was coming to meet us, Wuju. He stayed at that roadhouse knowing we’d have to come that way to get to Czill. He almost missed us in the storm, but we managed to blunder into him anyway.”

“Then let’s get away, Nathan. Now. He might—kill us, or kidnap us, or something.”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “Nobody goes that far out of his way to kill somebody. You just hire it done and that’s that. If it’s kidnap, it’s the same gang that got Vardia and Skander, and if we joined it would solve one of my problems. But I smell something different here—I don’t think he’s one of their side, whoever they are.”

“Then he’s on our side?” she asked, trusting his judgment.

Nathan Brazil turned over on his towels and yawned. “Baby, you better remember now that the only side anybody’s ever on is his own.”

He slept far better than she that night.

Cousin Bat, looking tired, woke them up in the morning, but it was hours before they got a ride, and they made poor time. Brazil was plainly worried.

“I’d hoped to get to the border before nightfall,” he told them, “so we could see what was what tomorrow. Now, we won’t get there until midday, and not really in until nightfall.”

“That suits me,” the bat replied. “And both of you can make do in the dark. I suggest we make the border, look over the terrain, but not enter until darkness falls. Better to keep to the dark for movements.”

Brazil nodded approval. “Yeah. At least that’ll put the Murnies on the same footing, and with your eyes we ought to be able to even out the odds.”

Wuju looked alarmed. “What are the Murnies?” she asked.

“I see we’ve got the same information,” Cousin Bat said. “The Murnies are the folk of Murithel, of which we have over three hundred kilometers to traverse. They are a nasty bunch of carnivorous savages that seem to be half-plant and half-animal. They’ll try to eat anything that doesn’t eat them.”

“Can’t we go around them, then?” she asked, appalled at the idea of crossing such a land.

“No,” Cousin Bat replied. “Not from here. An arm of the ocean comes in to the east, and from what I’ve heard of the Pia we’ll take the Murnies on dry land. To go up the other way we’d go through Dunh’gran, a land of nicely civilized flightless birds, but then we’d have to cut through Tsfrin, where the giant, crablike inhabitants are quite antisocial—not to mention armor-plated—and down in through Alisst, about which I know nothing. Not to mention about fourteen hundred kilometers.”

“He’s right, Wuju,” Brazil said. “We’ll have to try to sneak through the Murnies.”

“Any weapons?” Cousin Bat asked.

“I’ve got a light-pistol,” Brazil told him. “In the pack, there.”

“No good,” the bat replied. “Nontecbnological hex. Those great weapons are never any use where you need them.”

Brazil rooted around in the pack and pulled out a gleaming short sword. Looking at Wu Julee, he asked, “Remember this?”

“It’s that Com girl’s!” she exclaimed. “So that’s what that damned thing was that kept hitting me on the side! How in the world did you wind up with it?”

“It was left in Serge’s office at Zone,” he reminded her. “I went back there a few days after arriving in my home hex. I found the Zone Gate, dodged Ambreza guards, and jumped in, managing to get word to Ortega before those giant beavers made me into a domesticated pet. Old Serge gave it to me. Said it might come in handy. Ever used one?”

She looked at it strangely. “I—I don’t think I’ve ever even killed a bug. I don’t know if I could.”

“Well, you’ll have to find out now,” he told her. “Your arm muscles and speed make it a better weapon for you than for me.”

“What will you use, then?” she asked.

“Five thousand safety matches and a can of flammable grease,” he replied cryptically. “You’ll see. What about you, Cousin Bat?”

“Carrying a weapon would keep me off-balance, but I can always pick up and drop rocks,” the creature replied. “Besides, my teeth and my airborne punch are extremely effective.”

“Okay, then,” Brazil nodded, reasonably satisfied. “We’re as good as we’re gonna get. Remember, our best hope is no fight at all—to sneak through and that’s that.”

Wuju took the sword and tried a few awkward thrusts. She didn’t look sure or confident. “What—what do I aim at if I have to use it?” she asked uncertainly.

“The head’s always the best,” Cousin Bat told her. “Even if it isn’t the brain, at least it’s the eyes, nose—things that matter. A second choice is the genitals, if any.”

No roads led to the Murithel border, and they had to walk the last several kilometers in the dark.

“We’ll stay on this side through tomorrow,” Brazil said tensely. “Then, near sundown, we’ll go.”

They spent the night talking, except for an hour or so when Cousin Bat left for his nightly feeding. Brazil tried to keep Wuju awake most of the night, so they would sleep the following day, but well before the night was half over she had succumbed.

He decided to let her sleep, and spent the earlier hours talking to the bat. The creature was easy to talk to, but gave little useful information and rather glib lies.

Brazil resisted the temptation several times to come right out and ask Cousin Bat who he really was and what he wanted, but never quite got to the point of doing so.

Both finally were asleep by morning.

Wuju was up first, of course, but she didn’t stray far from them. Brazil slept until almost midday, and Bat finally had to be awakened later on when he showed every sign of sleeping until dark.

Murithel was clearly visible from their camp. It didn’t look very menacing; in fact, it looked beautiful.

Brazil had one of those uneasy memories again. He remembered a place long vanished and forgotten. He’d been standing on a barren hill overlooking some rough but scenic landscape. A couple of thousand meters from that hill ran a line of trees lending color to the landscape. What he could see of Murithel reminded him of that long ago day, and gave him the same feelings, for the river that had fed those trees was something called the Little Bighorn, and a few years before he had seen it, others had as well. He bet that that landscape had looked as quiet and peaceful as this one did to that general who came into primitive territory.

How many Indians are behind those rocks and trees? he asked himself.

The landscape was formed of low, rocky mountains and rolling hills, some made up of bright orange rock eroded into strange and eerie patterns. Others were more a dull pink, with clumps of trees here and there and grass on the tougher portions. A line of trees betrayed a small river or stream off to their left. The sky was cloudy and the sun reflected strange shadows off the landscape.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Wuju said. “But it looks so strange. Even the sky seems to be a lighter blue, with yellows and greens in it. But it’s so rough and rugged—how will we know that we’re going the right way?”

“No problem on a clear night,” Brazil replied. “Just head toward the big, bluish-orange nebula. Looks as if it’s clouding up in there, though.”

“I agree,” the bat put in, concern in his voice. “We might have some rain. Bad for navigation, bad for flying if need be. It’ll slow us down.”

“But it’ll also keep the Murnies down,” Brazil pointed out. “If we get rain, we keep going as long as it’s possible. The Slongornians say that that low pinkish range of hills with the little bit of green goes pretty much northeast for almost half the distance. I’d say we get to it and follow it. Looks as if there may be caves and shelters there, too.”

The bat nodded approval. “I agree. If I were to live in such a place, I’d make my camps and villages along river and stream courses, on the flats but in defensible positions. If we stay away from such places unless absolutely necessary, we might just make it.”

“As close to sunset as possible, I want you to reconnoiter the area from the air,” Brazil told Cousin Bat. “I want to know as- much as possible about what’s in there, reasonable paths and the like, before we go.” He went over and pulled the sword out of the pack, and changed his shirt to the long-sleeved one with gloves. With Bat’s help, they tore the shirt he had been wearing, twisted and tied it to make a makeshift scabbard fixed around Wuju’s neck and draped to one side so all but the hilt was in the shirt.

“That ought to hold,” he said with satisfaction, “if the sword doesn’t tear through the material and if you remember to hold the cloth when taking out the sword.” Next he removed a small, battered tin and took out something that looked like oily grease.

“What’s that?” she asked, curious.

“Slongornian cooking fat,” he replied, applying the stuff to his face and neck. “Something in it is like a dye. Bat’s black and you’re brown, but my light skin will be a giveaway in close quarters. I want to be able to blend in.”

Satisfied, they settled back to wait for sundown.