02. Shadows of the Well of Souls (39 page)

The food and water were ample for the two of them for an indefinite time. The ship had gone down without a trace, and there was no real sign that they had ever made this or any other island. All their defenses were permanently on; any searchers or landing parties would not even notice their existence, and since they built nothing, created nothing outside of themselves, there were no signs of their existence for anyone to find.

It had not been the intention of the Glathrielian elders, but Nathan Brazil, for all appearances, had been taken out of the game. Terry had allowed for all external factors, it seemed.

All but one, and she could not know about that, even though it was everywhere, not many kilometers beneath their feet.

Kzuco

THREE DAY OUT FROM GEKIR, WHILE STILL INSIDE OGADON waters, the small ship its passengers discovered was called the
Star Runner
met up with its transfer ship.

Whatever illegal cargoes were involved in this mysterious underworld, they were both valuable and dangerous, and it was nearly impossible for those paid to find out about such shipments that were in fact taking place. Even deep beneath the ocean waters in Ogadon, where this particular trade originated, there were civilization, law, and effective agencies trying to stay on top of things. The one thing the authorities could not do was fully determine the when and the where across a hex that was, after all, almost four hundred kilometers wide, such activity took place, but it was always a battle of wits.

Even though it would be sheer luck to locate and stop a transfer in progress, once it had been passed off to a surface vessel, the fact became known. The
Star Runner's
job wasn't to pick up the cargo but rather to meet the pickup boat, which was a relatively local one well known as legitimate to the authorities, and then take aboard the contraband at sea. Ships like the
Runner
were built to all the latest specifications but were particularly intended for speed, speed, speed. As a vessel legally registered to handle charter and consignment jobs, it always had some specific legal mission of its own, although nobody was particularly fooled about its true purpose.

The smugglers' defense was a variation on the shell game; several ships like the
Runner
would take off from various ports on seemingly legitimate missions at roughly the same time. Each would head for a different place, but only one or possibly two would actually pick up transfer loads of contraband. Consistently stopping and boarding the wrong ones could prove embarrassing for the interhex authorities, who were in many ways privateers not much different from the crooks they chased except that they'd chosen a lesser return in exchange for doing things the legal way.

Several large waterproof containers had been taken aboard by the
Runner
from what appeared to be a small and seedy trawler, although it was hard to say just what the other ship really looked like in the nearly total darkness in which it was done. It was now the
Runner's
job to get those containers to another ordinary and familiar coastal vessel that would take a detour at some secluded part of the coast and transfer them once more to small boats to go into shore and from there to a distribution point.

Mavra Chang was fascinated by the process. Once they were under way under full steam, she went over to Zitz, the friendly mate who'd always liked to chat, and commented, "I don't see how you manage it."

"Eh? What?"

"Linking up with a specific small boat in open ocean, in either direction. I don't see how you can find her unless she sits there like a sitting duck waiting for you, and I'm sure she doesn't."

"You're right," the Zhonzhorpian admitted. "It's actually quite simple. No state secret except for the specifics of every operation. Before we set out, we get a very fine customized grid of the entire hex. Thousands of tiny little squares. The rendezvous ship is a scheduled carrier; we know its route in advance, and we know in which of a range of squares along its route the pickup will be made. She doesn't stop, not even, you'll notice, for the transfer. We just find her and match her course and speed."

"It was impressive—and quick," Mavra admitted. "Then we proceed to our destination hex, which has another hex map, another customized grid, and another series of scheduled local carriers. We plot them at all times. Once I'm there, I determine where the best one is located, head for it, and reverse the process. Unlike the pickup, I will always have a choice of two or three ships, and even they won't know which one of them will receive the goods from us, so there can't be any leaks ahead of time. Similarly, there were several ships similar to this one, any one of which might have picked up the cargo from the first vessel. They didn't know it would be us, and it might not have been. If anything went wrong, if someone else got there ahead of us, or if they were being shadowed, they would alter their course slightly from the grid and we wouldn't have seen her."

"I see," she commented. "Very slick."

"There are so many spies and agencies out there that it's impossible to keep them from infiltrating one ship or another on the two ends," Zitz told her. "What
is
possible is, since not even the captain knows if he's the one until he passes the pickup point, we control access to the goods. They pick
up;
they transfer to one of a number of similar vessels. What does the spy report when he, she, or it finally makes port? And most of the next ports are nontech hexes, too, by design.
My
crew stays with me, so I know them all. Our rendezvous ship even now does not know it will be the one, so there's no rumors or leaks from its crew. When we do the transfer, same rules applying, they will take it on and proceed immediately to a point offshore in a nontech or semitech hex and transfer it again, being met by crews who pick the position themselves, then proceed into port on schedule. By the time anyone aboard can get the word out, the cargo and pickup people are long gone. As soon as I make the transfer, I destroy the grid maps. My counterparts will eventually intersect the pickup freighter back there, by the way, see that there is no coded sign that anything is to be picked up, and proceed on as if they had picked up something anyway."

"So this is your point of maximum vulnerability," she noted. "You have the cargo and maps aboard."

"True, but for all of that we have ways of dropping the cargo even under pursuit. The captain only needs to remember one grid position and the code number of the grid map no matter where along the route we might be forced to drop it.
We
would not then bring it in, but once he transferred the grid location and grid code upon making port, someone else eventually would."

"Sounds almost foolproof."

"It's very good," he admitted. "I think it might not be improved upon. It is, however, still a risky business, particularly in high-tech water hexes like Kzuco. We try and stay out of them as much as possible, but it's not possible on this run. That makes the money much better, but the risks are far greater. That's why we're running the short side of Kzuco along the Awbri coast. Awbri's nontech, not the best vantage point, and once we're across the border into Dlubine, we're back in semitech and safer. From that point we can remain in non- and semitech water hexes. I
do
worry about Dlubine, but not as much as here."

"Dlubine has local conditions that create problems?"

"Several. For one thing, it's crawling with patrols, sandwiched between a high-tech land and a high-tech water hex and with a lot of islands with small harbors and hidden coves. Also, in Dlubine it's easier to run by day than by night. You'll see what I mean the first night we're there. The water's lit up like a high-tech city, making it easy to spot you. Easier by day, yes, but murder on us."

"Huh?"

"You can almost make soup with the water, it's that warm, and the air temperature in the middle of the day is close to lethal for many life-forms. It averages more than half the point to boiling. Even the islands seem like water kettles. Still, it is a lot of sea to find us in, and we do it all the time. Each hex has its problems, so I don't want to minimize any dangers, but we are used to them. You are not."

She nodded. "We'll stay out of your way. If it comes to a flight, though, you well know I have no stake in being arrested and returned to Gekir."

"Yes. You understand, though, that none of you can be allowed to leave this vessel until after the transfer has taken place and we are well away."

"We understand," she assured him. She did not press him on the nature of the cargo; in truth, she already knew what at least some of it was just from overheard conversations among the crew. It was a drug, an extremely addictive drug, that worked on a large variety of warm-blooded creatures. Called by many names in many hexes, it was apparently some kind of deep underwater fungal growth. Alive, one could actually eat it without harm, although it supposedly had a terrible taste. Out of the water, though, it died in minutes and dried out quickly, causing its natural internal fluids to undergo a chemical change, crystallize, and become a very sweet and addicting drug that could be eaten, injected, or who knew what else? Tolerances varied, but apparently for some races one ingestion could be enough to hook a user.

Lori had come up to get some night air, finding it difficult to sleep below, and had been listening to the conversation. When it was over and Mavra had moved away toward the rail to stare out at the black sea, he went over and stood beside her.

He'd found this business with the
Runner
both disgusting and unpleasantly familiar. "It's the same here as back on Earth," he growled. "It's as if there's no way and nowhere to escape drugs and the predators who sell them."

"The universe is composed of predators and prey," Mavra responded, not sounding cynical but rather as if she were reciting the obvious. "Everyone is one or the other, sometimes both in a lifetime."

Lori's realization that this was a ship in that sort of business and that all the crew were the same sort of creatures as the ones who ran and guarded Don Francisco Campos's jungle operation, which now seemed not merely a million light-years but also a million real years away. He couldn't help but wonder if Juan Campos hadn't already found his niche in this sort of operation here. It was a natural for him.

He often wondered what had become of Campos. How he'd like to meet the little weasel
now,
not rat to woman but rat to man. They said that when a sexual change was done, nine out of ten times it was to a female, to which poor Alowi and Tony, too, attested. He'd often thought how he'd love to discover that Juan Campos had become an Erdomese female. It would be real justice, but while Mavra said that the Well was sometimes perceived to have a sense of humor even though it shouldn't and theoretically couldn't, both Julian and Tony were proof that there wasn't a whole lot of justice as he would think of it built into the system. The bastard was probably nine feet tall with four arms and sharp teeth and more rotten than ever as befitted his personality.

He still wondered about Campos, and not just him. Where was poor Gus, for example? Had he even survived the transfer and transformation? He'd been such a gentle, quiet soul, it was hard to see him outside his element, his cameras and video equipment and other high-tech toys.

He also wondered about Terry quite often. What was she doing now? Still back there with the People in that rain forest? He
knew
when she'd decided to be the diversion that she would get the worst of it. Such a bright, educated career woman, highly competent, courageous . . . There were few superlatives for Terry that he didn't think she deserved. To be shut off for good in the jungle would be
intolerable
to her, he was convinced. But to emerge, tattooed all over, with bone jewelry threaded through her ears and nose . . . She'd be a freak. A news story herself for a while, then just a freak. There was no way she could ever lead a normal life like that, and the amount of removal and the cosmetic surgery on her beautiful brown skin would give her a choice between being a painted freak or looking like a burn victim. What kind of a life could she have like
that
?

In the end, she'd probably stay in the jungle, perhaps leaving the People and joining a true tribe but remaining anonymous otherwise, or she'd find a convent, become a nun, and remain cloistered for life. Damn it, it wasn't fair! Terry would have
loved
this place no matter
what
she wound up as!

He finally talked it out with Mavra. "I know it's a hell of a thing she did for us. I owe her, that's for sure. When we get into the Well, I'll see what, if anything, can be done about her. There's got to be
some
way to influence it, even though the only direct controls available that I know of from last time are on people here. Funny, though. You jogged a memory. When I got information on Brazil and his party from Zone, there was mention of someone coming in alone who appeared from the pictures to be of our race—or so they said; I never saw them. Somebody who came in after us, snuck by them all, and went through the hex gate before they even knew anyone was there. They said the other one resembled us."

Lori was excited at the idea. "You think maybe she—?"

"Don't get your hopes up. She was diverting the guards, and I know just how they planned to do that. The Well Gate would have closed and self-destructed after I—we— came through because Nathan and the other two had arrived long before. I don't think there'd be time. No, what I've wondered is whether one of the other women, one of the perimeter guards, might have watched us go through and decided to follow her goddess. It would be just like Utra or maybe Rhama to do just that. Poor darlings! What if one of
them
wound up in a high-tech hex? It'd be bad enough for them to turn into
anything
else, but a nontech hex they might handle with a lot of work. Still, there was no word of anybody else being reported, so it's hard to say anything for sure. I
do
think that if Teysi had come through, she'd have gotten word to us somehow." She sighed. "No, I'm sure she's still back on Earth, and I'm
pretty
sure she's still in the jungle. Unlike you, she found something in the jungle that she loved. I think she didn't want to come because she'd already found her version of the Well World. I think she really
wanted
to stay just as she was."