02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (28 page)

"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."
I
hope,
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'llbet,
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.

Isle of Mahguul, Dlubine

NATHAN BRAZIL AWOKE FROM THE DEEPEST SLEEP HE COULD ever remember in his very long life feeling energized, exceptionally well, and alert. He sat up and opened his eyes and was instantly wide-awake, and he realized that it was daylight.

He sat up, got immediately to his feet, and looked around until it dawned on him how totally stupid that was. "Gus?" he called, then, getting no answer, he yelled
"Gus!"
at the top of his lungs so that the sound went around and around the volcanic bowl the ship was anchored inside.

There was no response.

There was too little sky for him to see the sun unless it was almost directly overhead, and considering that the anchorage was on the north side of the island, that was highly unlikely.

Save for the sound of water within the little inlet lapping gently against the sides of the ship and against the rock walls around and the rush of a small waterfall pouring from a rock fissure high above to the waters of the cove below, there was only silence in return.

He half expected Gus to suddenly pop up at his elbow any second, but when, after a minute or two, that didn't happen, he had to accept the fact that the Dahir had not yet returned. That was bad news; he should have had more than enough time to get around to the harbor, get inside, steal what he could, and get back to the boat.

In other circumstances Brazil thought he'd like this place, particularly this secluded cove, but for now he saw it less as a haven than as a trap.

In daylight the passage in seemed even more narrow than it had coming through it in the darkness, so narrow in fact that it would be nearly impossible for ships of even this size to pass each other once in it and even easier for a smaller ship to block the exit. Nonetheless, he felt as if he had to wait—all day if need be, if he was patient enough to manage it.

But before nightfall he'd have to move out, and he couldn't afford to go looking for the former Earthman. He'd cut him what breaks he could, but his own fate was quite literally more important than Gus's, and if Gus could stay alive, he could do more for the fellow once inside the Well than he could in some naval prison.

It was only after he'd run through all the possible options and decided which ones were valuable that he had time to reflect on himself.

He felt—odd. "Tingly" was the best word he could come up with.

Last night, with the girl, tired and tense as he was, he'd let himself go completely. He remembered it, even felt a shiver of pleasure at the thought, but the bottom line was that all his own defenses had been down.

In a sense he was relieved to be still thinking like himself and able to shout Gus's name. Hell, he'd been wide open last night. He tried to remember, but it was harder to remember emotion and sensation than, say, a conversation or a fight. Still, as he reconstructed it as best he could in his mind, he realized that something
had
happened. Whatever was inside her had taken the opening, had rushed to consume him at the very climax of passion—and for some reason hadn't been able to do the job completely.

In a sense that reassured him, but he was also aware that his body was subject to much of what all mortal flesh was heir to.

He suddenly realized that he hadn't once wondered where
she
was. He hadn't wondered because although she was forward and out of his sight, he
knew
where she was, knew exactly what she was doing, what she was feeling ...