03. Quest for the Well of Souls (23 page)

The travelers were a bit awed by all this, and it took the Ghiskind to snap them out of it.

"Let's get the equipment onto the net!" it ordered, and after a few moments they started, first rolling the cart on, then the loose packs. Finally they spread a huge skin rug to the rear and another forward, with the freight between. Some experiments with balancing freight and people were needed, but after a few false starts they had it.

Vistaru was nervous about the spartan accommodations. "Shouldn't we all have seat belts or something?" she asked uncertainly.

"Just relax," the Ghiskind said. "You will see that this is not as bad as it looks. Just keep from the edges and maintain the balance."

Before any of them could reply, the assembly took off. It was an odd sensation—no jerk, no sense of acceleration, as if they had suddenly become weightless and floated off. Only the eight huge Masjenadans, whose wings overshadowed them all, and the dozens of smaller ones expended any energy, their wings moving slightly up and down in graceful unison.

They were over a thousand meters off the ground before they knew it, and the land opened up beneath them.

Masjenada from the air looked like a rough, rocky canvas on which millions of gallons of luminescent paint had been spilled. It was a stunning vista, particularly when contrasted with the drab darkness of Yugash behind them or the sickly yellow atmosphere and dark-blue carpet of the nontech Zidur to their right.

Although there was an uncanny lack of any sense of motion, the ground below had changed every time they looked.

Hours passed, vistas changed, a low mountain range was crossed effortlessly, and their only problem was arranging the slight shifts in load necessary when one or another of the passengers moved.

The sun dipped below the horizon and slowly faded, but their mysterious and enigmatic transporters carried on. By night the countryside was even more aglow in eerie beauty, and the swans added a ghostly radiance.

Renard looked around at them in wonder. "Don't they ever get tired?" he wondered.

"Or hungry?" Faal joined in, chomping on a thick material that oozed from a thick tube.

But there was no answer.

"What do they trade with the South?" Vistaru asked the Ghiskind, looking for a clue as to the mysterious swans' lives.

"Copper and coral, mostly," the Yugash answered. "What they do with it is anybody's guess. There is no oxygen here for combustion. Maybe they eat it."

The Masjenadans provided no information, so it was the best guess that could be made.

They slept, more from boredom than fatigue. Dawn broke again, flooding the landscape with new light.

* * *

Ahead was a hex border, that was clear. They had been paralleling it for some time, but now before them a three-point junction appeared.

"That should be Avigloa on our left." The Ghiskind pointed. "Oyakot ahead and to the right. We should be landing soon."

High mountains filled the skies in both hexes and even below them in Masjenada; indicators in the suits showed the temperature to be extremely low, as cold as eighty below, Celsius. Only the internal heaters of the suits kept the travelers comfortable.

They descended a little to land on a small plateau. Opposite, Oyakot presented a chilling vista: the snow was oddly colored and definitely not water of any sort, the rocks eroded into strange shapes.

The set-down was gentle, the unloading easy and quick. They watched them as a new ballet was performed; reversing the original dance the large Masjenadans produced smaller creatures, gathering up the net into their bodies.

All but two of the creatures immediately flew in the direction from which they had come.

The remaining swans floated near, and one turned its internal yellow light on again.

"We wish you good fortune. Oyakot borders the far edge of this small plateau. Someone should meet you there in a few hours."

The group thanked the strange creatures, and watched them take off and turn, flying back into the colorful glow to the east.

Suddenly they felt terribly alone.

Oyakot, Nearing the Pugeesh Border

The Oyakot continued the relatively swift and comfortable passage the group had thus far experienced. The creatures resembled olive-green canvas bags with small, sharp spikes all over. They had hundreds of tiny legs beneath and a central network of long tentacles atop. The location of their eyes, ears, nose, or mouth was not apparent, and the mountainous landscape with its strong cold winds didn't seem to faze them.

But they had roads, and vehicles that traveled swiftly along single lines of light. The hex was crisscrossed with a tremendous transportation network, and the journey took them over massive bridges and through tunnels many kilometers long. Speed was constant and control automated; drivers only monitored progress and took over in an emergency.

The Oyakot were also talkative; a friendly, practical people, they had made the most of a harsh land. That oxygen was a solid to the Oyakot didn't dim the mental kinship the travelers felt for these clever, industrious people.

Wooley was worried, though. Word had come through the dispatching network that Trelig and his party were also well into Oyakot, and only a few hours behind them. Too, her party was already approaching Pugeesh, and information was still sparse.

"Can't tell much on them," their Oyakot driver admitted. "Much too hot over there. Sure death just to cross the line. Ugly-lookin' place, though, all boilin' and hissin'. I'm told they don't have anybody at Zone, neither—so your guess is as good as anybody's. There—you can see it ahead. Gives me the creeps just to look at it."

It was a jungle, that was for sure. A solid wall of purple plants rose before them, and tremendous vapor veils drifted here and there, between the leaves of thick growths.

As they unloaded, Wooley warned them, "The Sea of Borgun is just to the north of Pugeesh, and it's primarily liquid chlorine, so that will give you an idea of the place. The Oyakot think of it as hot, but it's still extremely cold to any of us."

Mavra Chang and Joshi surveyed the scene uneasily. "No sign of roads, either," she pointed out. "How are we going to get through that crap?"

"There's flat land slightly to the north," the Yaxa replied, looking at a topographic map. We can get around the mountains that way. As to crossing the jungle, well, we might have to cut a pathway."

Ben Yulin was uneasy. "Suppose the plants are the Pugeesh?" he said worriedly. "We start chopping through them and
zap!
And we've got a long way to go to fight our way through."

"I am fairly certain that they are not plants," the Torshind put in. "Exactly what they are I do not know—but we'll find out. In the meantime, we have the means to be pretty effective through there." The tendrils of the crystal creature it inhabited fumbled in the heavy packs on Joshi's back, finally coming up with several odd-shaped metallic parts. Assembled, these made a rifle with a long stock and a huge low-slung cylinder.

Mavra looked at the curious weapon with wonder. "What's it shoot?"

"Napalm," the Torshind replied.

* * *

To Mavra and Joshi, they rigged long flats that balanced on a single broad, spiked roller. On these the supplies could be carried. The travois were perhaps two meters wide, but balanced properly, they worked very well.

Mavra in particular resented the hookup, especially the halter bit, but the others were sharp with her. "It's why you're along at all," Yulin snapped irritably. "If you don't pull your weight, you're no good to us."

She finally relented, although she was always conscious of the contraption. A beast she might be, but a beast of burden was almost too much.

There
were
wide spaces once they reached the plain, and the going was relatively easy for a while. The ground was hard and covered with long razor-sharp purple stalks that reacted much like grass when walked on and offered no resistance to the rollers.

Maintaining the proper heading was often difficult, and Wooley frequently had to consult a compass when they had to detour from a straight-line route. The needle always pointed to the Equator, which was sufficient.

As to what kind of being the Pugeesh were, there wasn't a clue. No visible trails, no evidence of moving things. This made them nervous; they would have preferred vicious predators to something they could neither see nor identify until, perhaps, it was too late.

They had traveled a good distance by sundown, and they had to stop and rest. Yulin and Wooley agreed that the inhabitants had to be nocturnal, which meant posting a guard at all times. It was decided to stand in twos: Wooley and Mavra the first shift, Yulin and Joshi the second, with the Torshind—who did not need sleep but could selectively turn off parts of its brain for rest—as a backup.

Wooley and Mavra switched their suit radios to a different frequency—the Yaxa had to do it for the handless horse—so as not to disturb the others.

For a while there was silence between them, and of course little noise penetrated the suits, either. Finally Wooley said, "Sure is still around here."

Mavra nodded. "It's completely dark now. You can see some stars up there—and nothing down here but the plants. Of course, I don't have much vision now, but I haven't seen anything. You?"

"Nothing," the Yaxa admitted. "Perhaps we'll get lucky and it'll stay this way. There seems to be nothing at all alive here except the plants. The only things moving are those wisps of gas—I think they're chlorine from their color, but I can't be sure."

Mavra strained and did manage to make out cloudy patches here and there. "You don't suppose . . . ?"

"The clouds? I've been thinking the same thing. They don't seem to drift in any particular direction, as with a wind. But they're just wispy puffs. Even if they
are
the Pugeesh, they can't harm us much. Even the worst of these suits could take a bath in pure sulfuric acid without harm."

Mavra considered it. "But napalm wouldn't be very effective against them, would it?"

There wasn't much to say.

"You're an Entry, aren't you?" Mavra asked the Yaxa. "I can tell by some of your expressions."

The Yaxa nodded slowly. "Oh, yes. Not from any place you've ever heard of, though. I've been a little of everything—farmer, politician, cop. Finally I just got old, and rejuves take something out of you mentally each time, so we—I—decided the hell with it, I'd done all I could, more than most people ever do. I went out with that frame of mind, and wound up getting suckered by a Markovian gate. They're triggered by that, you know—a desire to end it all, despondency, all the things the Markovians would feel when they used it to come here. But it's been a good life since, too. I don't regret much of my past or present. You?"

Mavra was surprised at the Yaxa's candor; some genuine emotion came through, at least in intent, despite the ice-cold monotone. It was
because
she was an Entry, Mavra decided.

The once human horse chuckled dryly. "Me? Nothing much to tell that you wouldn't already know. As for regret—I don't know, really. Some individual things I would like to do differently. Stop my husband from that meet where they killed him. Not touch that damned stone in Olborn that changed me into a half-donkey. Maybe not have been so damned complacent these last years. I still don't understand why I stayed in Glathriel and accepted it so calmly."

"If it makes you feel any better, you had little choice in that," the Yaxa told her. "Every six months the Ambreza gave you a physical. One of the devices they used for checking you was also a hypno gadget. Bit by bit they carefully changed your attitudes—slowly this time, so you'd never even be conscious of it."

Anger grew within her. "So that's it," she said in a tone devoid of emotion. "That explains a lot."

"But in a crisis the old you returned in full," Wooley pointed out. "They didn't dare hypno too strongly or too deeply, or you'd have been no use to them later. And that brings up your stake in all this. Only that computer up there can restore you to humanity, you know—or the Well itself, which might make you something other than what you want to be. I guarantee that if you somehow escaped they'd find a way to keep you from the Well just so your knowledge wouldn't fall into others' hands. They'd do a full brain scan, maybe using a Yugash to keep you from Well processing. You'd
be
a dumb horse."

Mavra considered that. She wasn't sure it was possible to return to the South without Well processing, but a lot more impossible things had happened. "I'm not sure I care," she said softly.

Wooley was startled. "Huh? How's that?"

"I keep going over and over my life," Mavra responded, "and I keep wondering what I'm trying to get back to. Sometimes I feel like the Markovians—money, some power that money brings, skill, my own ship, although it's probably been sold for salvage by now. But for what? Somewhere along the line I missed something, and I don't know what it is."

They were silent for a while, each locked in her own thoughts.

Mavra felt a little groggy, drained. At first she thought it fatigue, but the condition persisted, a numbness increasing like a lead weight on her brain. She shook her head to clear it, but the movement didn't help. She felt herself drifting off.

She was a little girl, running across green fields toward a large farmhouse. An elderly man and woman stood on the porch, looking kindly and smiling as she ran to them.

"Gramma! Grampa!" she squealed in delight. Her grandfather picked her up and hugged and kissed her, laughing. Her grandmother was still a remarkably good-looking woman, and she seemed to have an infectious spark of life inside her. She tenderly brushed back the little girl's long hair and kissed her.

And they sat on the porch and played and talked, and Grampa told tall tales of a magical world where everybody was a different kind of creature and you could have wondrous adventures. He was a marvelous storyteller, and she was enthralled. But though only four or five, she sensed that something was wrong, something was different about this visit.