03. Quest for the Well of Souls (15 page)

Mavra looked at her mate and gave a loud grunt that momentarily took his mind and eye off the food. As the Wuckl walked to the trough, she ran for the bridge, then crossed it with a clatter of tiny hooves. Joshi looked about, confused for an instant, then ran after her.

The feeder turned at the noise, shocked. "Hey!" it screamed, and started running after them. It was so upset that it tripped on the edge of the bridge and fell into the moat.

In the precious minute or two this mishap bought, Mavra was away. Her vision was limited, but she smelled the scents of numerous things like the feeder, and wherever the scent grew stronger she followed it.

The, preserve was closed; the staff on duty were busy at their tasks or eating, so they went on unimpeded. She'd guessed right; the stronger the scent, the more Wuckl had passed the more likely she would find the entrance or exit. There was a chain across it, but it was too high to block them, and they were soon out into a parking area. They ran to the left, toward some trees barely visible in the growing darkness. The scent was strong, and it seemed a natural place to go. Behind them, the feeder had by then pulled itself from the moat and raised the alarm. But the fugitives were away and running, even though Joshi hadn't the slightest idea why.

Even though she thought she was a pig, and for all intents and purposes
was
a pig, and still couldn't think clearly or remember why, Mavra Chang was heading to Gedemondas.

Oolakash

The city resembled a great reef of bright-colored coral stretching out in all directions. It was not wholly natural, though; it had been formed by the biological processes of the inhabitants and by an advanced technology.

Inside, vast halls were connected by long, narrow tunnels; living units, offices, everything was communal. One knew where everything was and who was in charge of what.

The inhabitants of this high-tech hex were themselves long and thin, with bony exoskeletons. One such, tall and still very young, emerged from a passage into the clear dark waters. Its head bore a slight resemblance to that of a horse, but was actually a bony shell in which two tiny, unblinking red eyes were set atop a long snout that was actually a tube. As a result, the facial expression seemed one of permanent surprise. Two small ears, hardly more than folds in the exoskeleton, and two tiny horns over the eyes instantly relayed data on the water through which the creature moved effortlessly. Below its head was a body like an elongated turnip, from which a series of armored tentacles covered with suction cups emerged. The body ended in a long, curved tail that coiled and uncoiled as it moved.

Dr. Gilgam Zinder, despite so many years as an Oolakash, still marveled at this life and these—now his—people. Movement was like floating at will in thick air, a slight flick of tail here or there taking you up, down, or wherever else you wanted to go. It was wonderful, a feeling of total freedom and command.

In many ways he was a totally different person from the middle-aged human who had cracked the Markovian code.

Unorthodox, dogmatic, egocentric, and eccentric, nonetheless he understood the mathematics of reality better than any before him, and he had landed in a high-tech hex—albeit a water world.

This took a lot of new education.

It was an incredible world, though, a world with every modern convenience, even high-speed tubes in which water pressure could propel one to the various points of the hex. Oolakash had somehow attained a limited but efficient atomic technology adapted to underwater use, having bypassed some of the intermediate stages.

When Zinder arrived, he thought he was isolated, forever cut off. He had no idea where the others had gone, or if they had even survived.

Culturally, Oolakash had taken some getting used to. There was little privacy, but the people were good, honest, and serious. They were organized into guilds, which trained and developed their own and were interdependent for services. Each guild elected one member to a governing guild, which in turn elected a leader, who held absolute power for a two-year term, after which that person could never hold any office again.

Essentially their society was a matriarchy. Women did the majority of the work, dominated the guilds and the leadership. Males, with the ability to control their body coloring, were prissy peacocks who spent a good deal of time trying to attract females.

But the Oolakash had recognized an exception in Zinder; they'd known who and what they had, and they had erected a wall of secrecy and silence around him. All who knew of his origin had such knowledge erased from their minds when their need to know no longer was necessary—even the leadership. To the others, he was just Tagadal, a scientist who was exceptionally bright even if he was a male.

The island lay ahead. Below, it was festooned with marine life; above, it was a barren rock in a smooth sea; inside, it was a communications center of a very unique sort.

The hardest part had been placing the transmitter above the surface and disguising it. But they had managed it, with remote devices, partially of Zinder's own design. The communications system itself was an ingenious hybrid of Zinder and Oolakash design. The surface of the sea was used, making possible the reception of a strong signal at a distance, but one too diffuse, close up, for proper triangulation to locate the ultimate source. In effect, the signal was unintelligible to any except the one for whom it was intended.

Zinder nodded to the technical people as he floated into his office to check a few reports before swimming up to the transmission chamber. Devices had had to be constructed just to allow his voice to be used; the Oolakash used a series of very rapid high-frequency pulses for communication. Instead of placing a translator on him, the solution was to wire it into the transmission circuitry itself. He talked normally; in Zone, a device was used to slow the speech to other-race norms, although it was often frustrating for an Oolakash to hold a conversation with such slow-thinkers. He figured it was something like talking between planets in a large system with an enormous time-lag. There was no problem, however, with the party to whom he talked using the big transmitter above.

Tentacles laced through controls with lightning speed. Lights and dials spun, power built up, and it was time to begin.

"Obie?" he called.

There was a slight delay, a real-time lag this time, and then a reply, in his own language, at his own speed.

"Yes, Doctor? I am here," came a distant voice.

"Do you have any way of calculating the progress of the Northern expeditions?" he asked.

"No one has left yet, if that's what you mean," the computer responded carefully. "I have been monitoring the Yugash Zone Gate inputs. Only the norm so far, and nothing from the South that correlates. I have also managed to pick up some Yaxa transmissions as you requested."

Zinder nodded. Those he needed. Obie was a great computer, true, but it was a minor toy compared to the Well of Souls. The Well, of course, was not self-aware, but its contents were open to Obie—who, unfortunately, hadn't the capacity to interpret such a mountain of complex data. Over the years, however, Obie had learned how to utilize subsets of the data from the Well; the Yaxa transmissions were low-volume enough to be usable, but it had taken Obie weeks to isolate them.

"So how far along are they?" Zinder prodded.

The computer didn't hesitate. "Many problems have cropped up. For one, the poor initial suit tests; the rebreather apparatus didn't work well, and almost caused two deaths," he reported. "They've started over from the beginning. Their error is fundamental to the limitations of semitech hex requirements—I could solve it in an instant—but they are still stuck awhile."

That was good, Zinder thought with satisfaction.

The problem, of course, was that while Yugash was fairly close to Uchjin, where the downed ship had sat these many years, it was not next to it but several hexes away. In none of the Northern nations was there atmosphere a carbon-based life form could use. An ordinary spacesuit would not do; a Southern native would need a truckload of oxygen canisters just to travel the 355 kilometers of a nontech hex side. Electrical rebreathers wouldn't work in a semitech hex either; some solution had to be found or, even if the Yaxa and Ben Yulin could get to the North, they would be unable to live to reach Uchjin.

Ortega no longer had such a problem. Obie had long ago solved it, and the devices, now secreted in safe and ignorant hexes, had been manufactured according to Gil Zinder's specifications. Ortega could get to Uchjin, but he could not fly the ship. Nor could Zinder go along; the Oolakash were almost invulnerable in their own environment, but they could not leave it. Besides, the available types of power on the Well World could not develop sufficient thrust to overcome the Well's effects on the hex and adjoining nontech and semitech hexes to allow such a cart to get into space.

Gil Zinder was a participating bystander.

"What of this Chang woman and her companion?" he asked Obie.

The computer emitted a very human sigh. "You know that since she has never been through the Well she does not register at all," he reminded the scientist. "As for Joshi, her companion, well, you know the number of life forms on the Well World. If I had his type's pattern to begin with, yes, I could trace him—but, now, even if I were directly monitoring him, I would have no way of knowing it was the correct individual."

The news meant that it was increasingly likely that the Yaxa and Yulin would be the first to reach New Pompeii—Yulin, who had supervised the building of Obie and who, Zinder now deduced, had access to circuitry in the computer that would make Obie do his bidding regardless. Of them all, Yulin was best able to use Obie and best able to thwart attempts by the computer to free itself or foul its controller up.

Gil Zinder sighed. "I greatly fear, Obie, that we will have to do the unthinkable. If the Yaxa get on the right track, we
must
beat them to New Pompeii, even if we have to do it with the devil himself."

"Which is increasingly likely," the computer responded glumly.

Wuckl

After their escape, things didn't seem so simple. Mavra's mind continued to increase its working capabilities; there were gaps here and there, and how the present situation had come about was beyond her, but she continually found it easier to remember things about the past.

As she and Joshi hid out in the hills from the sun's revealing light, now just starting to flood the horizon, she took stock of what she knew and what she had to do. She wished she knew how much time had passed between first hitting the fence and this moment.

The last thing she remembered was that fence. Somehow it had knocked both of them out—and they'd awakened as odd pigs. Why and how was something to be discovered much later, if ever.

So she was a pig, she thought unemotionally. In some ways it was a distinct advantage. Her breed was obviously born to the wild; it was therefore equipped with survival mechanisms heretofore denied them.

Considering the swill they'd eaten in the zoo, food would not be a problem. The Wuckl, for all their strangeness, ate foods rather similar to that consumed by the humans of Glathriel; as such, they had garbage cans and garbage dumps. Mavra wasn't proud; if the stuff was something she could eat without ill effects, she would eat it. And, all the life forms of the South were carbon-based; some were herbivores, some carnivores, some omnivores, but in general the food of one would not kill a member of a different race, although it might not do much good.

Most important was the new head angle. For the first time in long memory she was looking straight ahead, not down. The tremendous sense of confidence in movement this brought was a fair tradeoff for the nearsightedness, which was still a better range than what she'd been able to manage in the old form. Finally, the sharp quills provided a defensive weapon that might come in handy.

All in all, it was better to be a pig, she reflected. In most ways, the Wuckl or whoever had done this to them had done them a favor. The only major problem was communication. She realized that their bodies had been highly modified, not changed, for she still had translator capability from the tiny crystal surgically imbedded in her brain. The implant allowed her to understand the Wuckl and others, but it didn't allow communication with them. Joshi, who had no translator, remained very much in the dark.

Either their larynxes were paralyzed or they had been removed; the pigs had only the classic grunt of the hog.

She wondered just how much Joshi remembered. Was he better off than she, mentally, or worse? Was there some way to communicate? She would have to try. They could hardly move about in broad daylight, and the appearance of the animal life in their vicinity convinced her that in this hex pigs belonged only in zoos. They would continue to be forced to move by night.

She considered what he knew. Universal code, yes—he'd learned that in order to help signal the supply ships in foul weather. If she could manage to regulate her grunting, and if he got the idea, and if he was mentally capable of understanding it, then it might suffice.

A lot of ifs.

She nudged him with her snout and he snorted, more in curiosity than annoyance. Time to begin.

She tried a simple phrase—"We are free"—to see if she could get something across. It was slow going, and she did it endlessly, hoping he'd catch the repetitive pattern.

Several minutes of this passed, and he seemed confused. She was afraid he hadn't gotten it when suddenly his ears twitched.

In truth, Joshi had received far less of a shock than she and so had recovered earlier. He simply did not have her drive or ambition. Now, though, he caught a word after first realizing that she was trying to talk to him. The group for "we" was brief and basic. He picked it up, repeating her grunt-pulses aloud. She became excited, tried it faster, and he followed again, excited himself now.

Now she stopped, and he did, too, a moment later. It was his turn.