Chalker, Jack L. - Well of Souls 02 (29 page)

Suddenly she looked over to her left, sure she detected movement. She did. She stared in new wonder as one of the large clumps of bush seemed to break away and now head toward them, a bright-blue light shining atop it. The light, she knew, was Barissa.

The bush proved to be a giant flower. It looked like a huge rose, closed, flanked by a great, thick green membranous platform.

Barissa smiled and said something. She turned to Vistaru.

"He say ol' Macham is sleepee and grumblee bot he know the pro-blem and he weel tak you and the othars."

Mavra looked again at the creature. It was a bright orange, or would be if it were fully opened. From the center of the closed flower rose two stalks, like giant stalks of wheat. Following the Lata's lead, she stepped up onto the green base of the creature. Nikki and Renard followed, and imitated her when she sat down, cross-legged, on the edge. Vistaru came over to her.

"We will balance and take a break too. You just sit and ride. I hope you not get easee dizzee."

Mavra barely had time to wonder about that remark when she discovered its full force. The creature spun around slowly, then started moving out across the quiet lake. It seemed to move by this circular motion, and while the movement wasn't tremendously fast, it was somewhat unsettling. Closing her eyes helped a little, but her inner-ear balance still conveyed the motion. She began feeling a little nauseated. After an hour or so she was simultaneously wishing she were dead and afraid she was dying. She was very seasick.

Dawn broke after what seemed like an eternity. She continued gagging occasionally and watched the two hypnoed people, whom by this time she envied, imitate her. Vistaru walked calmly around to her.

"You are steel sick?" she asked needlessly.

"You better believe it!" was all Mavra Chang could manage.

The Lata radiated concern. "Not worree much more. We are almos' t'ere."

By this point Mavra didn't care if they ever got "t'ere," wherever "t'ere" was, but she managed to look around her for the first time.

They were no longer alone.

All over, by the thousands, other flowers were moving, spinning, dancing in a great ballet on the waters. They created myriad colors and color combinations, graceful and particularly resplendent now that they opened to the brilliant rays of the sun. In other circumstances, Mavra might even have enjoyed the show.

The Krommian they rode was slowing now, to her considerable relief. It, too, had opened over them, forming a curtain of brilliant browns and oranges. The great stalks, she realized, were eyes— long, oval, curious brown eyes with black pupils that looked so strange it was as if a cartoonist had drawn them on. They were independent of one another and sometimes looked in different directions. Of the core, the "head" of the creature, little could be seen. A pulpy bright-yellow mass, it appeared, more like thick straight hair than the center of a flower. The spinning had slowed enough now that she actually managed to wonder if these creatures were really plants or some sort of exotic animal.

The creature finally stopped spinning entirely and drifted slowly toward something. This didn't stop the rest of the world from spinning, but it helped a great deal. They had traveled a great distance, that was for certain. Whatever means of locomotion these— people?— used, it shot them in the direction they wanted to go at many times their rate of spin.

Mavra crawled around slightly, making sure that her imitators wouldn't fall off doing the same, and looked in the direction they were drifting. She could see an island— a tall but not very large rock outcrop in the middle of the sea. There appeared to be an artificial cave of some sort in the face, jet-black and without perspective.

She suddenly realized it was a black hexagon.

Vistaru came around. "We dock up close to the Zone Gate," she said enigmatically. "You most tell the othars to go in the Gate." She pointed to the rapidly approaching blackness.

"Not me?" she asked.

The pixie shook her head. "No, not now. Latar. The Krommeen ambassadar say no to you for now."

Mavra nodded toward the huge cave or hole or whatever it was— it looked curiously two-dimensional. "That thing will help my friends?"

Vistaru nodded. "It is a gate. It weel tak' t'em to Zone. T'ey weel be put through the Well of Souls. T'ey will become people of t'is planet, like me."

Mavra considered this. "You mean— it'll change them into Lata?"

The creature shrugged. "Maybee. If not Lata, sometheeng. No more sponge. Memory back, all bettar."

Mavra wasn't quite ready to accept that, but she had to act as if it were true. It was certain she couldn't help them.

Seeing Mavra's doubt, and realizing it came from ignorance of the Well World and its principles, Vistaru said, "Evereebodee who come from othar world t'ey go t'ru the Well. Come out all changed. Even me. I once as you. Went t'ru Well, woke up as a Lata."

Mavra almost believed her now. It explained why the creature knew her language. But that brought up another question.

"Why not me, too, then?" she asked.

Vistaru shrugged. "Ordars. T'ey say you are not Mavra Chang. T'ey say you some sort of bad person."

Mavra opened her mouth in surprise, then closed it again. "That's ridiculous!" she exclaimed. "Why would they— whoever they are— think something like that?"

Vistaru shrugged. "T'ey say t'ey already met Mavra Chang, and Reenard, and Neekee. T'ey say you are fakars."

Mavra started to respond, then thought better of it and sat down. She was mad as hell. It was the crowning touch to her being on this crazy world in the first place.

Somebody was going to pay for this.

South Zone

"They certainly look like the same people," Vardia said in some amazement.

Serge Ortega nodded, looking at the two nearly comatose people lying on the floor in front of him. "That they do. Doctor?"

They were in the Zone clinic, and Dr. Muhar, the Ambreza who looked like a giant beaver, was examining Renard and Nikki Zinder.

"I wish I knew what kind of drug they'd been administered," the doctor said. "I've never seen anything quite like it. But it's brain-localized; the other infection isn't."

Ortega's busy eyebrows went up. "Other infection?"

The Ambreza nodded. "Oh yes. It seems to have infested every cell of their bodies. Some sort of enzyme, it looks like, and quite parasitic. There is evidence of tissue breakdown everywhere, and it's continuing at a fairly steady rate. Would you recognize this sponge if you saw it?"

The other two both shook their heads in the negative. "We have both seen the effects of it, long ago," Vardia told the physician, "but the pure stuff, under a microscope, no."

Just then there was a commotion near the door. It opened, and a creature new to the group stood there.

It was about 150 centimeters tall, and stood on two thick but jointless tentacles. It had some to spare— three more pairs, going up its midsection. Each seemed to have a cleft at its end, capable of picking up something much as a mitten might— or coil around, with the full forward part of the tentacle. It stood on the rear pair, but needed at least four to walk toward them. Its face was broad, with close-set, broad nose and flaring nostrils and two rounded eyes that looked like large velvet pads of glowing amber. Its mouth had a dislocatable jaw, and inside it was coiled, Ortega knew, a long and ropelike tongue that could be used as a ninth prehensile organ. It had two areas on either side of its head like saucers, and they were slightly offset from the head, yet seemed able to open and close on joints.

But as the creature entered the room, all else paled before the great wings, like a giant butterfly's, along its entire back, the wings of brilliant orange and spotted with concentric brown rings.

Both Vardia and the Ambreza stepped back a bit at this entrance. Ortega had no such feelings, although its grim visage was frightening, almost menacing. Neither of the others had ever seen a Yaxa before, but Ortega had. He even knew this one. He slithered up to the newcomer.

"Wooley!" he boomed. "I'm very glad you could come."

The creature remained coldly distant, but it responded, "Hello, Ortega." It looked over at the comatose bodies of Renard and Nikki. "Are those the ones?"

Ortega nodded, all business suddenly. "Dr. Muhar has some cell tissue under the microscope. Can you look into it or should we project it?"

The Yaxa walked fluidly over to the microscope, peering at the sample with one of those impossible padlike eyes.

"It's sponge," the creature said. "No doubt about it." It turned its gaze back to the two people on the beds. "How far advanced are they?"

"Five days with no dose," Ortega told it. "What would you say?"

The Yaxa thought a moment. "Depends on how they started out. The cell deterioration isn't far along, but the mind goes first. If they were around average intelligence, they should be a lot brighter than the village idiot— for about another day or two. Then the animal-reversion stage sets in. They become great naked apes. I'd run them through the Well as soon as possible. Now."

"I agree," Ortega told it. "And I appreciate your coming all this way to do this."

"They're from the new moon?" the Yaxa asked, its voice, even through the translator, cold, sharp, emotionless.

Ortega nodded. "And if they're real we got big trouble. That means we got fooled by an earlier set of duplicates, at least one of which was the head of the sponge syndicate and the other two of whom know the principles of operating the Well."

For the first time the creature showed emotion. Its voice was harsh, excited. "The head of the sponge syndicate? And you let it slip through you like that?"

Ortega turned all six palms up. "We didn't know. They looked just like them. How was I to know?"

"It's true," Vardia put in. "They were so nice and gentle and civilized— particularly that one," it gestured at Renard.

The Yaxa almost spit. "Agh! Fools! Anybody without sponge that long would have shown signs! You should have known!"

"Come on, Wooley!" Ortega chided. "You're a fanatic, and with good reason. But, hell, we weren't expecting this sort of thing. Everything's been more than a little crazy around here lately."

The great butterfly's nostrils opened, and it actually snorted. "Oh, hell. Trust you to screw things up anyway." It turned its great head, apparently on some kind of ball joint for a neck, and looked straight at him. "Give me the bastard's name. He won't always be so clever. One of these days I'll get him. You know that."

Serge Ortega nodded, knowing that nothing could stop Wooley except death. Sooner or later, if that man surfaced at all, it would nail him.

"Antor Trelig," he told the Yaxa.

The creature nodded its great, strange head as if filing the information. Then it said, "I've got to get back home. A lot's going on. You will hear from me, though." And, with that, it turned, not easy in the clinic's space with those great wings, and went out the door.

"Good heavens!" Vardia managed. "Who is that?"

Ortega smiled. "Somebody you used to know. I'll tell you sometime. Now we have more urgent work to do. We have to get these two through the Well, and I have to talk to the Council."

* * *

There was no Council chamber for the ambassadors. All communication was done through intercoms, both for diplomatic reasons and to make it easier on everybody. There wasn't much room for everybody, anyway.

Ortega summarized the events to date, adding, "I've put out tracers on the first batch, and I hope that anyone will report their whereabouts if they appear in your hex. All Entries are to be checked out. These people are tricky as hell."

The speaker cracked to life. "Ortega?" said a metallic, toneless voice. "This is Robert L. Finch of The Nation."

Ortega couldn't suppress a chuckle. "I didn't know The Nation had names," he remarked, remembering them as communal-minded robots.

"The Nation has its Entries, too," Finch replied. "When it is matters concerning such, the appropriate persona is selected."

Ortega let it go. "What's your problem, Finch?"

"The woman, Mavra Chang. Why have you left her with the Lata? Not playing any little games again, are you, Ortega?"

Ortega took a deep breath. "I know she should be run through the Well, and she will be, sooner or later. Right now she is more useful in her original form— the only such Entry on the Well. I'll explain all in due course."

They didn't like it, but they accepted it. Other questions followed, a torrent, mostly irrelevant. The tone of many was the usual, "it's not my problem," and Ortega got the impression that others were not being very straightforward. But he'd done his duty, and that was that. The meeting ended.

Vardia, the Czillian plant-creature, had sat in in Ortega's office. There wasn't anything its people needed to know that they didn't already.

Except one.

"What about that Chang woman, Ortega?" Vardia asked. "What's the real reason you're keeping her under wraps."

He smiled. "Not under wraps, my dear Vardia. All six hundred thirty-seven races with Zone embassies know she's with the Lata. She's bait— a recognizable object that could smoke out our quarries."