Shadow of the Well of Souls

Gekir

The changes in Julian were both subtle and dramatic, but Lori, whose high fever had been the precipitator of those changes, wasn’t at all certain he liked it. One thing was clear: while she was as smart and capable as she ever had been, Julian seemed to have lost much of her past life, even though she knew that it had existed. It would probably take about ten seconds for an Earth psychiatrist to come up with a term to cover it, but to Lori it just didn’t seem normal. Not for Julian, anyway. It was as if something was missing from her, some fire or intellect that wasn’t really noticed and certainly not appreciated until it was no longer there.

Lori was feeling a great deal better. The inflammation in the wrist was down, although for a while it meant that the damned thing hurt more as it was no longer quite so rigidly bound, but his leg seemed completely normal. He tested it out, even ran on it for a short distance, and aside from a little stiffness it was fine. At least one thing was going his way, he decided.

Julian was in far worse shape. She was wan, worn out, and badly dehydrated. They put her, only half-awake, on Tony’s back, tied her with the strap that had held Lori, packed up the rest of the camp, and started off toward the thick grove of tall trees about one and a half kilometers away.

There was no sign of the flying monster that had carried off the young “jackalope,” as Lori had dubbed them, after a whimsical creature of the American Southwest. But it might well have a nest or den in the grove or be still feeding there, so Mavra broke out the crossbows, handing one to Tony and keeping one for herself. Anne Marie quickly but expertly assembled an obviously handmade, customized bow of great size and exotic design and removed a quiver of professionally manufactured but oversized steel-tipped arrows.

“Archery was one of the few varieties of sport a weak little woman could manage just for fun from a wheelchair,” she explained, “and of course the classical favorite of centaurs from time immemorial. It is, too, even though the authorities have guns for serious sorts of things. This is the hunter’s weapon of choice, though, even in Dillia. I’m afraid I’m still not very good at it, though. I have the eye and hold just fine, but I just can’t get used to having this much strength.”

Tony examined the crossbow. “Rather odd design, although I’m no expert on these things.”

“You aim it just like a rifle,” Mavra told him. “Align the rear notch with the front sight.”

“No, no. The use is obvious. I meant this chamber in the rear behind the bolt. I’d almost swear it was for bullets.”

Mavra chuckled. “Not bullets. Small compressed-gas canisters. When you pull the trigger, it works in the normal way, but if you have one of these little things in there, it gives a tremendous extra shove to the bolt, and a bit of a twist, at virtually no cost in weight or balance. Use it normally for defense; use the canister if you want to be sure you kill whatever you’re firing at. It’ll drill a hole through a tree thicker than your middle.”

“Not very sporting.”

“No, but it’s damned effective even against somebody who thinks crossbows are no real threat.”

Tony looked down at her. “I see that you are inserting one, but I have none.”

“Double insurance. You make the first shot. If need be, I’ll make the last one.”

“Fair enough,” the centauress agreed. “Still, it is almost disappointing somehow that even the crossbow should be turned into something so devastating.”

Anne Marie nodded. “Doesn’t seem sporting somehow,” she agreed.

“When it’s a sport, you’re playing a game,” Mavra responded. “On this sort of expedition I don’t play games.” She turned to Lori. “Can you scan that grove in the infrared?”

He nodded. “I’ve been doing it. Lots of little stuff, nothing major. It looks normal to me. I smell water, though. Possibly a big watering hole. If it is, that means we can expect most anything and everything around it.”

Mavra nodded back. “I know. I haven’t lost three hundred years of knowledge and experience in wild terrains,” she reminded him.

“Yeah.” The fact was, however, that the woman beside him was so different in so many ways from even the image of the savage jungle goddess of the Amazon that he had to remind himself that it was the same person. The conversation and the sophistication were large differences, of course, but it was also other factors not so easily nailed down. She had been so dominating, so commanding back on Earth, she’d seemed far larger than her size; now she was such a very tiny creature, he had to crane his neck just to see her. Even her form no longer seemed normal and familiar somehow but rather, well, alien. More alien than the Dillians, whose equine parts were more like the Erdomese and whose rears seemed, well, sexy.

Sexier than their torsos, in fact.

He began to wonder if what had changed in Julian was changing in him, too. Wouldn’t that please the priests! But he had no desire to forget his former life and hoped that he could remember some of the lessons from it, as distant as they now seemed to him. Still, it was Julian who looked normal and pretty and sexy to him, as did his own reflection. Maybe it was crazy, but he realized that somehow, at some point, his own definition of “human” had flipped. He and Julian were “human”; the twins were, well, not human but kind of distant relatives. Mavra was not human. She was something else.

The grove was large and not at all like an Erdomese oasis, no matter what its geologic and ecological similarities. The foliage was far denser than it had looked from afar and heavy with life. There were hordes of brightly colored and cleverly camouflaged insects and insectlike creatures here, more, it seemed, than in the Itun jungle. Small animals were in the trees as well, some screeching or chattering at them and others just staring, often with huge eyes. There were things like birds, too, in that they had wings and flew, but they were more reptilian than avian, with often brightly colored but leathery skin and beaklike snouts. Even the small, pretty ones looked mean.

The group intersected a wide, well-worn trail that came in from the south, one that was adequate not just for the creatures they’d seen on the plains but for the two Dillians to walk side by side if they wanted to.

“Someone cut this wider,” Tony noted, pointing a long finger at a lopped-off tree branch and to other obviously cut limbs and bushes elsewhere.

“Yeah, but why this wide?” Lori wondered. “I’ve got too many weird scents here to decide what might be odd, but I’ve sure not seen anything this big so far.”

“Well, whatever it is, it’s very large indeed,” Anne Marie noted, gesturing toward the ground. “Those are not the droppings of a chipmunk, dog, horse, or anything else so tiny.”

“Holy shit!” Mavra exclaimed, not realizing she’d made something of a joke. “I haven’t seen turds that size since…”

Since where?

Lori stared at the droppings. “Since perhaps some sort of zoo or preserve? Or maybe a circus? Those look like elephant turds to me.”

Mavra nodded. “That’s it! But not a zoo or preserve or a circus, no. I saw them with soldiers on top of them in both military parades and in fierce battles.”

“They’re not that fresh—thank goodness,” Anne Marie commented.

“And the cuttings aren’t recent. Maybe a week or so old, maybe more,” Tony added.

Lori looked over and down at Mavra. “Could the locals here be elephantlike? I mean, like Dillians are horselike and so on?”

“There are a couple that I know of who might qualify in that area,” Mavra replied, “but none who’d mess up their own trail like that. You have to remember that we’re talking intelligent races here. Out in the wild, thinking beings crap off their roads, not all over them. On the other hand, intelligent races ride elephants and use them as work animals as well. And if you ride in on something like that, there’s nothing in this grove that’s gonna argue with you, is there?”

“We’re not atop elephants,” Tony reminded them. “And there is the watering hole. The watering hole and something very much more.”

It was indeed. The “hole” was a large pool or basin perhaps fifty meters across. It seemed natural, and the continuous rippling on the surface suggested that it was fed by an underground stream. Someone, however, had taken the natural pool and carved and shaped it until it was an egg-shaped oval with a two-meter-thick lip of mortared stones around it on all but its back side. That ended in a curved wall, with stairs of stone that went up on both sides to a flat stone platform above the pool. In back of it was a cone-shaped structure that seemed twisted, creating a spiral to its point.

The building, stairs, wall, and pool itself were partly overgrown with vines and creepers. A number of creatures from both the jungle grove and the vast plains were moving about the whole area. Still, it didn’t seem like a ruin but rather like a place that was only seldom used but was still carefully kept intact.

“Temple?” Tony guessed.

“Maybe. Who knows?” Mavra replied. “Considering that there’s something that looks a lot like a boa constrictor covered with peacock feathers and with a mouth showing more teeth than a shark snoozing on that platform, though, I don’t think I’m curious enough to find out.”

“I thought you were immortal,” Lori noted a bit sarcastically.

“I wouldn’t die, but I’d hate to waste months growing a new pair of legs.”

The current rulers of the pool were two dozen small creatures whose appearance was unsettling. The largest male was only a meter high, and they all looked to be a sort of tailless ape, with thinly spread, soft, downlike hair covering their bodies except the chests, rear ends, and parts of the faces. They walked stooped over but were definitely bipeds, and for all their smallness and crudeness they looked very, very much like humans, even to the long hair on the heads. But there was just enough of the ape in their features to make them seem slightly more of an anthropological speculator’s exhibit than small humans.

When the apes spotted the travelers, they didn’t immediately run. Instead, the females let out loud, humanlike screams that panicked all the flying things and many of the smaller land creatures as well; the males stared at them, bared their teeth, and growled menacingly.

“Good heavens! They’re Lucy’s cousins!” Anne Marie exclaimed.

“Lucy?” Mavra asked.

“Doctor Leakey’s fossils from Kenya. The spitting image! Claimed they were some sort of ancestor of Earth humans or some such rot.”

Lori, in spite of his feelings of alienation from the race of his birth, nonetheless had that primal feeling inside and didn’t much like it. “My lord! You don’t suppose…?”

“Prototypes or more idea stealing by the makers,” Mavra reassured him, although she didn’t like how familiar they looked, either. “Odd, though. The mammals we’ve seen are all six-limbed. They’re bipeds. They don’t seem to fit in here at all.”

“Well, I don’t care about mysteries, but some of those creatures best left sleeping are awake now. Whatever these tilings are, they don’t want to move away for us.”

“Oh, pooh!” Anne Marie said, and with barely a glance, both she and Tony reared up on hind legs, then kicked off and charged right toward the little apelike creatures.

They could see the panic in the creatures’ eyes. A couple of the males gave hysterical gasps, then they all ran back into the jungle and vanished as if they’d never been there.

The centaurs pulled up, turned, and looked back at the other three.

“Poor little things!” Anne Marie commented. “I do hope we didn’t scare them all that badly.” There was a trace of a smile on her lips, though, and she added, “That was rather fun, though, I do admit.”

They moved in, Lori and Mavra well aware that the feathered snake with the hundreds of teeth was now awake and looking at them from the top of the balcony platform, although it showed no intention of moving from its spot.

Even Julian was awake, looking weak and pale. Tony had forgotten that she was strapped down on her back when they’d reared and charged. Now the centauress’s look changed from playful triumph to embarrassment, and Anne Marie quickly rushed over and untied the Erdomese.

“Oh, my dear! We’re so sorry! Are you all right?” Anne Marie asked in English.

Julian stared back blankly, and Lori ran over to her. “Are you all right? Julian! Can you hear me?”

“Yes, my husband,” she answered rather weakly and a bit uncertainly. “I—I think so. But I am so thirsty and weak…”

She seemed as good as she’d been, anyway. “Come, we’ll get you down. When you didn’t answer Anne Marie, I got very worried.”

“I am gladdened that you were concerned, but I did not answer because I did not understand the speech.”

Tony frowned and looked up at Anne Marie. “You did ask in English, didn’t you? With the translator it’s hard to tell.”

“Oh, of course. I’d never expect any of you to speak Dillian.”

Lori steadied Julian and asked. “Do you understand her now?”

Julian looked blank. “I know nothing but Erdoma. Why should I understand the speech of an alien?”

Mavra looked up at Lori. “You better get her a fill-up. I think you bled her dry last night.”

The water in the pool seemed remarkably clear and appeared safe. Mavra risked a left little finger and decided that it felt just like lukewarm water. Still, she got out a small test tube device from the pack, added some powder, then stooped and carefully let the tube fill with water. After she brought it up and looked at it, all the powder stayed on the bottom and the water remained clear.

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s plain fresh water,” she told them. “Actually, it’s cleaner than it should be, all things considered. I don’t think anybody should get in it, but we’ll fill the canteens and Julian can drink all she wants.”

“Fair enough,” replied Lori, still concerned about Julian’s dazed mental state. They began filling canteens and handing them to the Erdomese woman, who drank them down as if she’d been in the desert for months without a drop. The amount of water she finally consumed, particularly considering her size, was nothing short of astonishing. Each canteen held a little over a liter, and she easily and quickly downed a dozen or more canteens full of water before pausing, and she wasn’t through. Even with the Dillians guarding, Mavra kept checking the surroundings for anything dangerous and soon lost count of just how much water Julian finally took in.

When she was finally, truly done, she looked quite different. The color was slowly coming back into her, and as the sacs in front of and just below her rib cage filled, they actually stretched the skin, pushing out the breasts and making them appear inflated and giving her the appearance of being slightly overweight. She was, too, Mavra thought. At the very least, she’d taken in fifteen to twenty liters of water, enough to add quite a bit of weight. Idly, the lone Earth human wondered if the Erdomese would slosh when she walked.

“I am much better, husband. Now you, too, should drink, for what you drew from me was not used in ordinary ways and the fever must have drained you.”

Lori had passed a lot of particularly smelly and discolored urine already, but he knew what she meant. While by no means in the kind of shape Julian had been, he did feel a real thirst. On the other hand, he couldn’t down more than five canteens full, and that was about as much as he’d ever taken in or needed.

While the others took turns, Julian asked him to sit so that she could clean off some of the muck still on him from falling in the muddy ditch when jumping from the train days earlier. Using her hands opened as fully as they could get, she began methodically rubbing and then brushing away the dried mud as if it were something she did all the time.

Since she seemed so much better, Lori asked her, “Julian, can you understand any of what the Dillians say? Have you remembered English?”

“I cannot understand their speech, my husband, if that is what you mean. I know only Erdoma. I do not know what the last word you spoke means, so I cannot answer that.”

He lay down so she could work on his side and front, and this allowed him to see her face. “Have you lost all memory of the past?” This is crazy, he thought. If anything, it’s me who should be having memory problems after a fever like that.

She shook her head. “I remember only that I was possessed of an evil spirit and that now that spirit has fled with your sickness. It would please me if you would give me another name, one of your choosing.”

“But I like your name. I’m used to it.”

“It is the name of the spirit, not me. It makes me feel bad, and I cannot even pronounce it as you do. Please, I beg you to use the name chosen at our wedding or any other that pleases you.”

He didn’t like this change one bit. Not any of it. Even if, damn it, it was the fantasy he’d had since they’d left Aqomb. Now that he had it, he didn’t like it at all. She was too much like she’d been when they’d both been under the influence of that hypnotic drug. Too much like, well, all the other young Erdomese women. Still, it wasn’t something he could do much about right now.

It was true that the “ju” sound was not in the Erdomese language, or anything else that might in English be pronounced with the “J” sound. Her Erdomese name, Alowi, had been given by the priest at the wedding at least partly for that reason, but they’d never used it except during the post-therapy sessions while under the drug. Ironically, although it wasn’t a traditional Erdomese name, “Lori” had been just fine with the priests.

“Very well. For now I will use Alowi,” he told her, and she seemed very pleased.

Cleaned and combed, he did feel better and certainly looked better. By this time they were packing up, and he told Julian—Alowi—to help but got Mavra aside for a moment.

“You know anything about this change in her?” he asked.

“A little,” Mavra replied. “It’s not something I can understand, and I never thought somebody with her background would succumb, but you can’t tell about people sometimes. Basically, Julian Beard’s been fighting with the Erdomese body, feelings, customs, and conditioning, and the old personality has been more or less dominant, even when the Erdomese self occasionally peeked through. Last night, in a place alien to both sides, the only person she cared about and really needed in this world was dying, and Julian Beard couldn’t save him with all the accumulated knowledge and skill of a lifetime. Beard had to face not only helplessness but repressed feelings and emotions toward you that the Alowi part, the native part supplied by the Well and conditioned by her new body and situation, wanted so much to express. Beard needed you for any chance of survival or reasonable happiness in this life, but only Alowi had both the knowledge and the additional motivation that could save you. Unlike Tony or you, who surrendered on your own terms, Beard could not. It just wasn’t in him not to fight. When the crisis came and he wasn’t able to deal with it, something gave, and that was Julian Beard.”

“But that’s crazy! They’re one and the same! Just as I am. It’s true that I’m different; I’ve changed radically since being here, sometimes in directions I don’t like, and I’m still trying for a balance, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“As a woman, did you ever find another woman sexually attractive? Did you ever fantasize about what it would be like to be a man?”

“Well, yeah, sure, but…”

“I will bet you that Julian never found another man sexually attractive, at least not consciously, and his fantasies were about women, not about being a woman. He could take tremendous stress, great pressure, and still accomplish anything he set out to do. But those same traits created an enormous ego, I think, that had a single and absolutist view of itself. What the Well did to him was, to him, so extreme that finding himself a female, she had to be locked up and drugged just to keep her from suicide. You said as much. When you came along, he tried to compromise with his female self, but all that did was shift her from one extreme to the other. On this trip the male side felt in charge again, but last night the crisis was just too much. To help you, she had to put everything out of her mind that was from her male half, both attitudes and experience, and let Alowi completely take over. When that happened, all that repressed emotion just gushed out, suddenly no longer under restraint. Alowi then saved you by doing something Julian could never do—by not thinking. By just letting that Erdomese instinct take control and never doubting if it was right or wrong. She didn’t work so fanatically because she needed you, not in the sense Julian had. She did it because she loves you, and being in love with a man wasn’t something that Julian Beard could handle. When you push something that can’t bend with a lot of force, it breaks.”

“You sound like a pop psychologist,” Lori noted, but wondered if she wasn’t pretty well on the mark.

“I don’t know exactly what a ‘pop’ psychologist is, but I think I understand your meaning. Yes, it’s guesswork based on very long experience rather than on being a professional specialist in the mind, and it may not be stated in proper scientific terms, but I’ve had to read and guess right on all types of people to get anywhere at all. And you will have to trust me that I know what rigid egos can do to people.”

“But—what do I do? Is Julian gone for good?”

“You live with it, that’s all. All that knowledge and experience is still there someplace; it’s just been sealed off in the same way the person she is now was pretty well sealed off. It might not come back at all, it might partly come back if absolutely needed, or it might creep back and merge with the current personality. Only time will tell. In the meantime it’s causing some trouble for all of us.”

“Huh? How is it a problem for you?”

“Since she doesn’t remember English, she can’t speak to or understand the Dillians. That could be a real pain in a tight situation. Damn! I knew Ishould have sprung for the translator!”

Lori felt a double pang of guilt at the comment but said, “Well, she can still get one somewhere, can’t she?”

“I think she’d fight having one now. It doesn’t fit with the new personality she’s trying to build and lock in.”

“I think she’d do it for me,” Lori told her.

“She might,” Mavra agreed, “but the knowledge of English is still in her mind somewhere, too. These mental things are tricky. A translator is a neat little device that’s tuned to a part of the Well and translates speech, then feeds it back to the brain. Since the Well is everywhere, it seems instantaneous to us. But if her mental state won’t allow her to accept the translation, won’t transfer language except in Erdomese, the gadget is as useless as a computer would be to a Stone Age hunter. Data have to be processed, and if the mind refuses, well, it doesn’t matter whether you get the data or not.”

“Thanks a lot. One more thing to worry about.”

Mavra turned sharply toward the wide road leading to the pool and picked up her crossbow. “We have something more pressing to worry about all of a sudden.”

They could all hear it and even feel it. Something large—no, huge—was coming up that road with enough weight to shake the ground and once again panic all the surrounding wildlife.

“We could retreat into the jungle!” Tony called.

“All right! Move back and take cover if you can!” Mavra shouted, but Lori shook his head and said rather softly, “Too late.”

Into the area strode a monstrous creature, in many ways the largest elephant any of them had ever seen, yet not an elephant, either. For one thing, it was covered in thick reddish brown fur from its small tail to its massive head, hanging down like some impossible fur coat. It moved very slowly on six tree-trunk-sized feet; the creature was probably unable to run or move at all quickly, but something that huge was an irresistible force that never needed to move quickly. Even its trunk was hairy, and on either side of the mouth, which was small only in relative terms, grew two very large, cream white, and dangerous-looking ivory tusks.

And riding just behind the massive head was a large orange and black catlike creature with a large, fierce head sporting protruding fangs, and a lower jaw and a mouth that was remarkably expressive, almost humanlike. The cat creature, too, was six-limbed, but the forward pair of arms, while fur-covered like the legs, clearly ended in some sort of hands, one of which held an ornate batonlike object. It also wore a sash that was equally ornate, from which hung a scabbard with an ornately carved ivory hilt that obviously led to a very large sword.

The cat creature tapped gently on its mount’s head, and the beast trumpeted loudly enough to wake the dead. It was clear that the pair was leading at least a small procession, and the sight of the strangers at the pool had signaled a halt.

“Who be ye and why d’ ye bear arms against the Gekir in the shadow of Basquah?” the cat challenged, the translation faithfully reproducing the archaic speech pattern. The voice was deep and seemed to have an underlying menacing growl, but it was also unmistakably female.

“Don’t do anything!” Mavra cautioned Lori and particularly the Dillians, who were hearing only very threatening animal noises and had their arms at the ready. “She’s just asking who the hell we are and why we’re here!” It was, after all, a proper question.

They had finally encountered the Gekir.

Mavra lowered her crossbow but kept the bolt ready to go. With the gas propellant loaded, she was certain it would drill even through the mammoth, although whether that would do more than annoy it was impossible to know.

“The bipeds are called Lori of Alkhaz and his wife, Lori-Alowi, of far-off Erdom,” she announced. “The other two are from even more distant Dillia and are the sisters called Tony and Anne Marie Guzman. I am Mavra Chang of Glathriel. We mean neither harm nor disrespect and have not entered your building. We are travelers forced by circumstance, not plan, into your nation, and we are here only to replenish our water supplies and move on.”

The Gekir, whose feline face was so expressive and rubbery, frowned and cocked her head, looking them all over. “I be Shestah Quom Daahd, elected chief of the Quobok Knights. Put thy weapons away and stand ye all by the far side of yon pool that we may enter.”

It wasn’t a request; it was an order. Mavra turned and told the others to move where instructed. Right now it was better to try to make friends with these people than to start a fight.

As soon as they were away from the main area, the chief of the Quobok Knights moved her huge mount in and was quickly joined by four others, filling the area rather handily. The leader’s mount carried only the chief and an elaborate chest secured with straps. The next three, however, carried perhaps four or five Gekirs each, riding on top and in two basketlike carriers hanging down on either side of the animals. Another lone occupant sat atop the last beast, along with an enormous hutlike container that clearly carried all their supplies.

“Why does she sound like Long John Silver in drag?” Lori muttered.

Mavra frowned. “Who? Oh, you mean the archaic speech. You can get that and much worse when you’re translating a language that’s very different from yours. When you meet a race that clearly cannot form our sounds, particularly in a nontech hex, and it still sounds exactly right, watch out. That means the translator isn’t translating, it’s interpolating.”

The Gekir chief was off the high mount almost as the huge creature stopped near the pool and snaked its long, hairy trunk into the water. The Gekir’s motion was fluid, very feline, as if she hadn’t a bone in her body. The forward pair of big, thick, short-fingered hands were used in this instance as if they were forelegs. But once on the ground, the Gekir chief supported herself on her four rear legs and raised her short torso and long neck in something of a centauroid fashion, although even ripples of skin under the fur gave an impression not of Dillian rigidity but almost of liquidity. The hindquarters, however, were smooth, with no hint of a tail.

The other Gekirs dismounted in similar fashion but made no effort to draw weapons or approach. Instead they simply gathered by the large animals and allowed their chief to handle the business at hand.

Although quite low to the ground, the Gekir projected a sense of bigness and strength. Certainly the creatures were large, and their hands, with the retractable claws, looked both powerful enough and sufficiently dangerous to rip one of the big mammothlike mounts to shreds. The chief came right over to them, showing no fear at all, and first the Erdomese, then the Dillians, and finally Mavra were inspected with large catlike eyes and an enormous twitching black nose. She looked at Mavra the closest, dwarfing the small woman. Mavra was close enough to touch the protruding fangs, and the creature’s breath was intense enough almost to cause her to pass out.

Finally the Gekir said to Mavra, “You be like a zumbaga. Where do ye say ye was from?”

“Glathriel, Excellency. Type 41.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Might I ask what a zumbaga is?”

“Tiny bipedal apes. Horrid little pests they be. Be a tribe of ’em here somewheres. Can’t be touched because they be royal property—protected, y’ know.”

She nodded. “We’ve seen them and noted the resemblance. They didn’t look like they fit in here.”

The Gekir gave a rumbling roar that the translator indicated was amusement. “They don’t! They be brought here long ago in ancient times, and the ruler of the time, whose soul should be ever cursed for it, took a likin’ to ’em and bred ’em. A royal pain in the arse, they be, but we keeps their numbers managed and limited to religious sites.”

“I thought this might be a temple. That is why we did not enter it. We had no wish for anything but water before going to the coast.”

“Indeed? And why be ye in Gekir at all, then, when there be all the stuff ye might like or need fifty leagues north in Bug Heaven?”

“We had no intention of coming here. Our business is far to the north and west of this whole area, and Gekir is out of our way.” Briefly she explained how their train had gone the wrong way without really giving her suspicions as to why.

The chief was neither stupid nor ignorant. Both Mavra and Lori couldn’t help noticing that she took the translator for granted and never once asked how it was they could be understood. “We hates all them things. They robs the soul from ye and make it impossible after a whiles t’ tell the people from their machines. But the Bug machines don’t go wrong, least not that we hear, and I can see the injury to that one’s hand, there.”

Mavra nodded, deciding to tell what she could without violating the whole detour’s purpose. “Someone has been following us. We don’t know who or why, but they have influence and money. They tried to kill me once, but now they seem satisfied to just keep me from going anywhere. We jumped off the train when we realized we were diverted and made for Gekir through the jungle. We spent the night on the rocks out there and hoped today to reach the coast and perhaps pay our way onto a coastal vessel or fishing boat and throw our pursuers off our scent.”

The chief nodded. “Aye, we smelled yer camp and tracked you here. Been curious to see what ye might look like. Where ye be headin’ to at the end of this business, and why?”

Mavra felt suddenly uncomfortable. “I—I’m sorry, your Excellency, but I cannot tell you that. The knowledge is of no great use to you, but if I told you, even in strict confidence, and you were later ordered by your government to report us or tell what we said and did, it would be your duty to do so. With all due respect, I cannot in good conscience place you in that position.”

The big cat froze for a moment and glared fixedly at her, looking for all the world like an enraged lion about to pounce on a crippled antelope. But instead she said. “That big, is it?”

“Upon my honor it is.”

Suddenly the chief gave an unmistakable grin, and again there was that growl of amusement. “Well, I think ye be full of shit, but I likes any little one with the gall to tell me to mind me own business and make it sound like they was doin’ me some favor! Come on! We’ll take ye all to a village on the seashore that might get ye out of me fur!”

The rest of the Gekirs, who’d watched all this not quite sure how their chief was going to react, now showed amusement and relaxed. The ice was broken.

Once the visitors were accepted, the Gekirs proved as pleasant and hospitable as their vague reputation to the north had them. Mavra, in fact, had a tougher time relaxing with the Dillians than she did with the Gekirs. To Tony and Anne Marie, it had been like listening to only one side of a phone call, with the Gekir growling and spitting and making, in Anne Marie’s term, ” horrid little noises.” She, for one, liked her cats to be much smaller.

The patrol was clearly out on business unrelated to them but also unrelated to the temple and watering hole. There was a certain tit for tat, though, in that Shestah volunteered neither why they were out there or particularly why someone whose position equated to provincial governor would be with them. Even so, the old girl was quite talkative about her opinions, and she had one on almost everything.

“It be too damned civilized,” she told Mavra. “Ain’t been a war, so much as a revolution, in so many lifetimes, the young ’uns know about it only from stories. Game’s all managed, been peace with the neighbors since forever. Only thing what saves us from slow death by boredom be the no-technology laws. Keeps families together, keeps the good values, makes ye earn yer keep. That’s why we still got huntin’ parties and all the rights and ranks. Afore ye gets rights here, ye got to come out t’ here or someplace like it, bare of all stuff, make yer own kill, and live the old style. Rest of it’s mock battles against the neighbor guv’s kids. Just last month a team of me girls got right into old Skisist’s office and poured glue on the High Seat.” Again the chuckle, but this time with pride. “Took ’em three days to unstick the old witch, and she’ll be ’arf a year growin’ back the fur it cost ’er!”

She had a lot of stories, and it was clear that she loved telling them to someone, anyone, who hadn’t heard them so often they were known by heart. Still, it was time to move out if they were to reach the coast in any reasonable time.

Lori looked up at the chief’s elephantine mount and then back at Mavra. “You’re really going to ride up there with her?”

“Sure. It’d insult her if I didn’t, and she’ll get to tell me dozens more tales before we’re there. I know, I know, but it’s a small price to pay when you think of it. I’d sure rather have to listen to her than fight her.”

Lori nodded. “Amen to that. But—maybe, if you get the chance, you can find out what’s really puzzling me.”

“Yeah?”

“There are no males. None. They aren’t even mentioned.”

“Yeah, I did notice that,” Mavra admitted. “They might well be unisexual. Many races are. Or maybe here the men are home doing the dishes and minding the kids.” She shrugged. “We’re going to a village, anyway. We’ll know soon enough. I just want you to make sure that Alowi and the Dillians behave themselves and aren’t scared or panicked by anything they might see. This chief’s smart and sophisticated. A full report on us will be on its way to higher-ups as soon as she gets the chance. My only hope is that whoever’s screwing us up didn’t anticipate this move and enlist the locals here just in case. If not, then that report will be quickly headed southeast to the capital and from there to Zone. By then we should be long gone.” Ihope, she added to herself.

Lori still didn’t like Mavra’s way of thinking. “What if she is in on it?”

Mavra shrugged. “Then we’re really no worse off than we were, are we?”

The top of the woolly creature was a long way up, and it took Tony’s aid from below and the chief grabbing from above to get Mavra up. Once she was there, however, it proved a very wide and relatively secure platform, and the blanket spread out and secured on top was thick enough to kept the beast’s backbone from being much of a problem, particularly in the crease between the first and second pairs of the three sets of legs.

The Gekir chief looked down at Lori and grinned. “Ye be all better goin’ aside us ’stead of in the rear. Not unless ye want t’ be steppin’ in a huge load of the world’s greatest fertilizer!”

It was a good point, one the essentially city-bred and civilized foursome who would walk or run along with the party would not have thought of until it became very obvious.

“We should have one of each of us on both sides of the chief’s mount,” a still suspicious Tony suggested. “That way we’d have maximum speed and position if anything went wrong.”

“Yes, with Chang up there and trapped between us,” Lori noted. “No, it’s all right. It’s still her show, and she is not only unconcerned, she is in her glory right about now. She’s having a lot of fun. Can’t you tell?”

“Yes, the woman’s ego is unmatched,” Tony agreed, “but you will note that while so far we have been more trouble and expense than aid to her, she wants us along. Why do you think that is? Company? She is an easy one to talk to, but beyond the surface there is someone tough, nasty, and possibly ruthless inside there we aren’t permitted to see. If even a tenth of what she claims about herself is close to the truth, then inside her is one of the most dangerous people any of us have ever met. Did you see how confident she was in turning down that chief, for whom being refused is obviously a new experience? Could you have done it? Or me? And more important, could you have gotten away with it?”

“Well, I—” he stammered. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way. So why do you think she’s taking us along, then?”

“To remove obstacles for her if need be,” Tony replied. “Big obstacles she can’t talk her way or think her way out of. It might be an idea to remember that she thinks herself immortal, and, true or not, she believes it. We are here to keep her from being captured or badly injured, nothing more, but we are not immortal. She said an attempt was made on her life by two assassins before any of us were here. She never said what happened to the two assassins or who she might have been with then. We are… what is the term?”

“I believe the word you want is ‘expendable,’ dear,” Anne Marie put in cheerfully. “What Tony is saying is to worry only about yourself and your wife in the end. That woman can take care of herself.”

Lori looked back up at Mavra Chang thoughtfully. If that was true, and it certainly rang true, why didn’t she just hire tough natives rather than transformed Westerners? A Gekir, for example, would make a formidable bodyguard and would probably love the job just for its potential danger.

Anne Marie read his thoughts. “She’s short of funds, dear, and we’re much cheaper.”

Alowi was concerned about Lori running. “Are you certain that your leg is not going to go out again? That it is not too soon?”

“The leg is fine,” he assured her. “Running on it will actually help me get back into shape. What about you? You were weak as could be this morning.”

“I am fine now. I simply needed replenishment. I will not be a burden.”

He hugged her. “You are never a burden to me! Don’t think that!”

“I look up at her and I feel a wrongness. I cannot say if the wrongness is me or her, but it is one of us. She rides the monster beast as if she has ridden one her whole life, and she treats the orange and black creatures as if they are old friends, yet she is weak and tiny and could be destroyed by one strike of those hands.”

“I know. I knew the first time I met her that she was different from anyone I ever knew, but I did not know how very different she was. Your concern is me. I will deal with Mavra Chang.”

“My lone concern is you,” she said sincerely, leaving no doubt that Mavra Chang’s interests were of absolutely no importance to her at all.

He wished he felt as confident as he sounded. Damn it! What had happened to the two assassins?

The village turned out to be of considerable size, spreading out on all sides of a spectacularly beautiful bay and climbing the sides of low rolling hills to the east and south.

The buildings were basically of stone or brick with thick thatched roofs for the individual one-story houses and red slate for the larger or taller structures. The market and business district was surprisingly well developed, with buildings up to a block square and rising up to six stories high. The port was on the northern side of the bay, set off a bit by itself, including docks, piers, and warehouses. It was about as modern-looking as a nontech civilization was capable of managing. But that wasn’t the startling part of the view eastward out toward the ocean; there was something else that commanded attention even more: a shimmering, odd effect, like a thin plastic wall, that seemed to go from north to south and intersected the two far points of land on either side of the bay.

“A sea hex boundary!” Lori exclaimed. “Right up to the town!”

“That be Ogadon,” one of the Gekirs called down. “Ogadon takes in part of Muca Bay. The town be Port Saar.”

Mavra, too, hadn’t expected quite this elaborate a town or this good a port. “Ships do stop here, then!”

The chief nodded. “Not like up north in Itus, but that be far away from here, that port. Easier for us to have this and get what services we need direct than to wait weeks to get anything from the big port down at the Point. The wormies, who don’t have much of a decent harbor down south, use it sometimes as well. That be why yer train thing be comin’ so far south. See, that point of land just outside the border at the edge of the port is really in Ogadon, so they don’t need no sail to come in, neither.”

“No ships in now, though.”

“Don’t look it. We’ll check the schedules when we gets down there. Don’t expect ye’ll want no big ships nohow, since they’d be goin’ on from here to the wormies most like or south. Ye might be better makin’ some deal with some smaller craft for crossin’ the Great Bay to Parmiter or Awbri.”

She nodded, not knowing if the gesture meant much here. “Do many smaller vessels actually come in here?”

The chief pointed. “Be a few of ’em down there now. The Ogadon, they be proper flesh eaters, so’s they don’t allow no fishin’ as such, but they grows and maybe mines some real strange things down there that some folk of some nations take a real likin’ to. Some of it’s medicinal to some races, some is used as spices by others, and some’s the kind of stuff what some folks like but other folks says is evil, if you take my meanin’. Don’t know which races like what, though.”

Mavra knew exactly what she meant. Somewhere, deep under the seemingly placid Ogadonian surface, was an entire underwater civilization probably as well developed as this one, and what they ate was some sort of fish or marine animal that was the equivalent of the Gekir’s jackalopes or the variety of edible animals on Earth. But deep down somebody had discovered long ago that many of the sea bottom plants and growths produced substances or were themselves substances that affected other races. Southern hemisphere races, after all, had the common bonds of carbon-based life on the whole. As with other Well races, the Ogadon had turned this knowledge to profitable trade, selling the minerals that others might want or need as well as the plant material and chemicals that might be of use elsewhere. Minerals, spices, and medicines, perhaps, but among the variety in such a landscape was bound to be at least one substance that translated to a pleasure drug to one or perhaps many races on the surface. All this would be traded for such things a semitech, undersea race might well find of use but could not make itself.

“Does the government of Ogadon officially approve, disapprove, or ignore the stuff some call evil?” she asked carefully.

“Oh, they got to go after it to save their legal trade,” the chief responded. “They even got agreements with some of the shippin’ hexes to allow surface policin’ of the smugglers. It be kinda hard, though, to put a real stop to it. We don’t need none of it, so we just keeps out of it all.”

I’ll bet, Mavra thought, a sour smile on her face. This bay was tailor-made for this kind of trade. If the Gekir, and particularly the local authorities, didn’t have any use for the products, smugglers would still have a great use for this area. In fact, it explained the apparent prosperity better than anything else. This was a safe haven for such ships and one that served as a convenient place to repack illegal cargo, swap it between vessels, and transfer it ashore so that it could go by Itun train all the way to the Sea of Turigen and from there to other markets. It was a place where trade deals could be consummated with little fear of fancy eavesdropping and where strangers would always stand out.

Such a ship would be absolutely perfect for them—with one hitch. There probably wouldn’t be much of a problem talking one of the captains into taking them aboard, but there might well be a problem in convincing captain and crew to maintain their silence and thus getting back off again.