03. Gods at the Well of Souls (22 page)

The pretty beige pastel colors had been retained, and the hair, and much of the  elements of the original Erdomese, Julian noted. Only the body had thickened,  becoming less wiry and more equine overall, and the forearms and hands had  become traditional horselike legs with fixed hooves much like the Dillians'. The  head had been thickened, and the head and face reshaped into a rather cute  horse's head, but retaining the curved horn in the forehead that was the mark of  an Erdomese male. Compact, sturdy, cute. 

"Kind of like a cartoon Shetland pony," Gus commented. 

Kurdon cleared his throat. "The worst news, I fear, Madame Julian, is that the  specifications set down by Campos included that he be a gelding. It was actually  designed that way. There are no genitalia at all." 

Julian knew she should have felt shock and grief for Lori, but somehow she felt  relief. Still, she noted, "I wouldn't exactly be the proper mate for a pony,  anyway, would I, Inspector?" 

"Um, no. I hadn't thought of that. We also discovered why all the poor wretches  we found made only unintelligible sounds. It seems the practice was to install  within them a type of artificial translator that intercepts both incoming and  outgoing language. Only someone with an identical translator tuned to each  individual's code will be understood by the-pardon-creature, and vice versa.  That way, if something happened, if one of them escaped or fell into the hands  of the law, they could never reveal anything they knew. And the total  sexlessness made them docile, passive, easily trained, and nearly incapable of  rebellion. No aggression, no initiative. They may hate it, but they'll do  exactly what they're told to do." 

Poor Lori, Julian thought, and somehow that very sentiment, spontaneous as it  was, made her feel a little better about herself. "Where is he now? Do you  know?" 

"He was on the Liliblod route, and he was due in Agon either the day we hit the  place or today. So far no sign of him, and we can hardly go hunting in Liliblod  for him. not for quite a while." 

"They won't eat him, will they?" Tony asked worriedly. She'd already decided to  make a run in to see that stable area for herself when a soldier had given her a  pair of night vision glasses and shown her the denizens of Liliblod. That had  talked her out of any such foolishness. Giant furry spiders with glowing white  death's-heads dripping with venom ... 

'Tony!" Anne Marie scolded. 

"No, it's a fair question," Kurdon said. "My feeling is that they will not break  their own end of the bargain. They are a strange lot, but they have an odd sense  of honor and consistency. In all these years they never once touched anyone who  stuck to the agreed-upon routes, although frankly, I'd not like to test them too  much right now. There's some evidence that a number of higher-ups had emergency  escapes down to the stable area just in case, and since we didn't nab them, we  must assume they got away into Liliblod as well. Best case I suspect is that  he'll eventually turn up, possibly after getting over confusion over all the new  people there. Worst case is that he met up with some of these fleeing bigwigs  and was turned around and pointed back toward Clopta. If that is the case, he  should be snared when we move on the gang there. They can hardly send him back  again. To what purpose?" 

"They might kill him!" Julian said worriedly. 

Tony shook her head. "Not Campos. She's not the type. She's more likely to put  him in a horse stable, if they have such things in Clopta, and ride him around  the park on nice mornings." 

Kurdon nodded. "That is our assessment as well." 

"But what about Mavra Chang?" Tony asked him. "You said a bird?" "Yes." Again a hand went into the case and brought out a picture. "Probably  something like this. It's an even greater work of art than this Lori, in a way.  You see, that's a real creature, albeit a rare one from a hex far away from  here. A real bird. The only thing that's different is the size of the braincase,  which was accomplished with some clever bioengineering. Campos wanted her  mentally intact, to know." 

"Odd-looking thing," Gus noted. "Kinda like an owl, but with a long bill and  pretty colored feathers." 

"It's flightless," Kurdon told them. "The wings have completely vanished. It is  also quite large-about a meter high, and it can weigh upward of thirty-five  kilos. It spends basically all its time rooting with that long, curved bill and  sticky tongue, eating mostly insects. It needs to eat a great many of them, but  it can also eat raw meat and even a little grain if need be. It is nocturnal,  practically blind in daylight, which, aside from its size, is its only defense.  The legs are too short and stumpy for speed. I doubt if it can run at all. Sort  of like walking on your knees. They made certain she wasn't going to go  anywhere." 

"The poor dear!" Anne Marie exclaimed. 

"Will you be able to do anything for them, all things considered?" Julian asked  him. "I mean, you said this was genetic data here, and I went to those-those  doctors myself. They said doing it more than once could lead to instability,  deformity, death." 

"Hard to say, with our two most knowledgeable experts among the missing," Kurdon  noted. "Probably we can do very little. What we can do is outfit them with  translators that restore their communication with the outside world. At least  that will give them some voice again in how they want to cope and some help in  doing it." 

Julian thought about the pair. Another couple of one-of-a-kinds, she thought.  The population of her mythical dream island was growing. 

"Well, we should be able to get them when we get Campos," Kurdon assured them. "Shouldn't you send ahead and have them arrested now?" Julian asked him. 'Too risky. Clopta is not Agon, and without a bit more authority from that nice  big computer, it's not dependable. Remember, even the two maniacs who created  this managed to escape us, and that was here, in our own backyard." "Shouldn't we be off, then?" Tony asked him. "I mean, it's likely some of those  escapees are even now heading toward Clopta with the news of the raid. They may  go underground before we can get to them." 

"Liliblod is the same size as Agon, and they are on foot," Kurdon reminded them.  "We, on the other hand, will bypass Liliblod and sail directly into Buckgrud,  the Cloptan main port city, which is where our quarry happen to live. Besides,  even with what happened here, I am pretty sure they'll still feel safe in  Buckgrud, which the cartel more or less owns and operates, and under the  protection of their own bought politicians." 

"I hope you're right," Julian said, looking at the photo of the new Lori. "It  must still be awful for them now. I'd hate to get this close and lose them." "Don't worry about it," Gus said confidently. "I mean, hell, the hexes aren't  really huge, and outside of their native hex they'll be easy to spot. Hell, I  bet Juan Campos looks like Daisy Duck." 

Julian nodded. "A very dangerous Daisy Duck." 

Buckgrud, 

 Clopta 

Juana campos was made up and dressed to kill-if one was a Cloptan male. In fact,  it was the large eyes and pliant oversized bills that gave Cloptans a ducklike  appearance, but they were not related to ducks, nor were they exactly birds in  spite of the featherlike covering-rather, they were egg-laying mammals that  incubated the eggs in the marsupial-like pouches which both males and females  had. Aside from the oversized heads, the body shape was quite humanoid, the  female's particularly so, although the males tended to be more pear-shaped and  actually rather dull-looking. The females even had thick, lush hair growing from  their heads, while the males were universally feather-topped and rather bald.  The females even tended to be taller than the males, but while short, squat, and  fairly ugly as a rule, the males were built like tanks and abnormally strong for  their size. Much of their bodies was protected by invisible but quite effective  thick, bony plates right down to the genitalia.  

In Clopta, women were literally soft and men were literally hard.  Gen Taluud was built like a bank vault and had a face to match. Ugly, raw, with  a curl on one side of his bill that revealed the otherwise seldom visible sharp  teeth lining the inside. He looked like the kind of Cloptan who might walk right  through a wall, and he radiated that kind of toughness even when saying nothing.  He had spent twenty years doing all it took to become the top man in Buckgrud,  the man who owned the mayor and the provincial governor and whose very word was  law. But it hadn't been merely by strong-arm tactics, bribes, double crosses,  and murders that he'd risen to the top; he was anything but the stupid muscle he  appeared to be.  

He'd initially gotten interested in Campos simply out of curiosity, someone who  had once been something entirely different. That made her exotic and  interesting, and the fact that she also had a hell of a figure didn't hurt.  Campos had initially been appalled at the circumstances the Well had forced upon  her but also realized that this was a golden opportunity, maybe a chance to rise  high and fast in spite of the changed circumstances and in a way overcome the  sexual change and get both power and protection. She'd learned, observed, and  played the part Gen Taluud expected of his mistresses. Campos recognized the  Taluud type immediately as the same sort of boss his father and other cartel  members had been back on Earth, and she also understood the business. The only  one who'd stood in her way once she'd accepted the situation and her own self as  permanent had been Taluud's longtime existing mistress, who wanted no rivals.  But when she'd tried a hit on Campos and failed, thanks to Campos's own  experience, she had become easy to handle. Campos had pulled the trigger on the  woman herself and disposed of the body in a time-honored way so that it would  never be found.  

If Taluud suspected or knew, he never said, but instead of being upset, even  forlorn about the loss of a longtime companion under mysterious circumstances,  he'd given Campos a free ticket to the top and treated her with a fair amount of  respect, in some cases giving her the authority usually reserved for his  lieutenants. Campos understood the bargain. So long as she was at his beck and  call, jumped when he snapped his fingers, and served him loyally, she otherwise  had nearly free rein within the organization. Still, service to him could be  unpleasant sometimes, as the big man was fond of rewarding certain underlings  and bigwigs with his girl's services for an evening or two. But with no assets  other than the body and a shared ruthlessness, she'd learned to use that, too,  to build a ring of powerful friends in the organization that might well outlast  even Taluud.  

But no matter what else she had planned or what she felt like or wanted to do,  when the big man called, which he could at any hour of any day, she was expected  to drop everything and show up, always looking her very best. This was just such  a time. The fact that it was three in the morning on a weekend did not mean  anything particular to her. Taluud was in his penthouse, clothed in a fancy  dressing gown, sitting in his big, overstaffed chair and puffing on an imported  cigar. The cigar was as much a badge as a habit; he went through a dozen a day,  and a box of them was close to the average annual wage of a Cloptan. Around him  were a half dozen fully dressed lieutenants, all of whom she'd known intimately  in the past, and one fellow in the chair opposite who was anything but properly  dressed and looked like he'd just crawled out of a sewer after battling angry  crocodiles. Other than Taluud, he was the only one seated, which was unusual  only in that usually nobody sat in Taluud's inner sanctum but he. She stood  there, taking in the scene and wondering what it was all about.  Taluud in turn looked straight at her and took his cigar from his mouth to use  as a pointer. "Glad you could get here so fast, doll. This guy here is Sluthor.  Up until a few days ago he was transport chief at the complex. He tells me a  goddamned army just blew it to shit."  

Campos's lower bill dropped a bit. "But Genny, that's impossible?'  A clenched hand came down so hard on the coffee table that the table almost  broke. "You bet it's impossible! Not only was that place a fortress, but we  owned the Agon military!" he shouted. "But it did happen! And only a few of our  people got away. They're struggling in now from Liliblod in ones and twos, all  looking at least as bad as Sluthor here. I been on the communicator the last two  hours to the capital, and you know what, nobody's in who knows nothin'! You hear  me, doll? Nobody's in! To me!" 

"I-I don't understand." Campos had a very bad feeling about this that had little  to do with the mere loss of even such a wonder as the complex. "Well, neither do I. I got one of our people in the capital to go into Zone and  get some face-to-face answers, but he ain't back yet. Too soon to get many  details, but we got some basic stuff from Sluthor and the others straggling in.  It ain't just the loss of the complex-we can always build more-and nobody there  was so important we couldn't afford to lose 'em, but how in the name of the six  hells of Dashli did they have the fuckin' guts to do this?" 

Slowly, through the big man's tirades, what little was known came out. They'd suspected for some time that something was up, something not at all good,  but they'd never expected anything on this scale. This kind of scale would take  approval by and the active support of the council, yet nobody on it had warned  them or tipped a hand. Instead, they'd given full authority and support to the  raiders under an overzealous cop who'd been neutralized, or so it had seemed. Campos thought it over. "Sounds like somebody very big and very powerful but not  on our side got the idea that some of the council was bent," she suggested. "And  the ones that were had to save their own tails by letting this go through. If  they'd tipped anybody, it would have been a sure sign they were bent, so they  had to let it go. It's the only thing that makes sense."