01. Midnight At the Well of Souls (40 page)

"Who the hell are you talking about, Nathan?" Wuju persisted.

"Look!" Brazil said. "There's Ghlmon, the last hex before the equator! See the burned-out reddish sand? It goes across two hexes in width, a half-hex tall."

"Who?"
Wuju persisted.

"Well," Brazil replied hesitantly, "unless I am wildly mistaken, somewhere out in the sunburned desert we'll meet up with him."

"Are we going to cross the border today?" Varnett asked, looking at the sun, barely above the horizon.

"Might as well," Brazil responded. "It's going to be pretty tough on all of us there, so we'd better get used to it. The heat's going to be terrible, I think, and my fur coat's going to be murder, while your naked skins will be roasted. So we'd better push on into the night as much as we can, following the shoreline as we have. Days may be unworkable there."

Wuju had an infuriated look on her face, but Brazil speeded up, forcing them into a jog to keep up, and within a few minutes they crossed the border.

The heat hit them like a giant blanket, and it was humid, too, this close to the ocean. Within minutes of crossing the border, they had slowed to almost a crawl, the three humans perspiring profusely, Brazil panting wildly, tongue hanging out of his mouth. Finally, they had to stop and rest. Dusk brought only slight relief.

Wuju looked again at Brazil with that I'd-like-to-kill-you expression. Hot, winded, the sand burning her feet and, when she sat down, her rear, she remained undeterred.

"Who, Nathan?" she persisted, gasping for breath.

Brazil's stag body looked as uncomfortable as anyone's, but that mechanical voice of his said evenly, "The one person who could know for certain that I would go after Skander, and that I would get to you in Dillia before going anywhere, was the only person who could tell Varnett where to find me and why. He was a pirate in the old days. You couldn't trust him with anything if he could make a shekel going against you, yet you could trust him with your life if there were no profit in it. That's what I forgot—the stakes are high here; there's a bigger profit potential than anyone could think of. He told me I could get help from everyone of all races, but trust none—including him, as it turned out. Although he figured I wouldn't think of him as an opponent since we'd been good friends and I owed him. He was almost right."

Understanding hit her at last, and she brightened.
"Ortega!"
she exclaimed. "Your friend we met when we first entered Zone!"

"The six-armed walrus-snake?" Vardia put in.
"He's
behind all this?"

"Not
all
this," came a voice behind them—a clipped, casual male voice that carried both dignity and authority. "But he still is happy everything has turned out right."

They all whirled. In the near-darkness, it was hard for any of them to see properly, but the creature looked for all the world like a meter-tall dinosaur, dark green skin and flat head, standing upright on large hind legs, while holding a curved pipe in a stubby hand. He also appeared to be wearing an old-fashioned formal jacket.

The creature puffed on the pipe, the coals glowing in the dark.

"I say," it said pleasantly, "do you mind if I finish my pipe before we travel? Terrible waste otherwise, y'know."

WEST GHLMON

The four of them looked curiously at the strange creature. Brazil could only think that he should have been in
Alice in Wonderland.
The others took the appearance of the new arrival more calmly, having grown used to strange creatures and strange ways by this time.

"You were sent by Serge Ortega?" Brazil asked evenly.

The creature took its pipe out of its mouth and assumed an insulted expression. "Sir, I am the Duke of Orgondo. This is Ghlmon. The Ulik have no authority here. They are merely our neighbors. We were approached only a few days ago by Mr. Ortega about this matter, and we are, of course, much concerned. The Ulik interest is—well, frankly, closer to ours. We know them and understand them. We've gotten along for thousands of years with them. With their help we managed to survive when the environment here changed and the soil turned to sand. But all of you—Mr. Ortega included—are here at our sufferance, and we will brook no intrusions into sovereignty."

"What's he saying?" Vardia asked, and the others added their confusion. For the first time, Brazil realized that now they could understand only people with translators and those speaking Confederacy. Their own translators had gone along with their former bodies.

"Pardon me, Your Grace," Brazil said politely. "I will have to translate, for, I fear, my companions have no translators."

The lizard looked at the three humans. "Hmmm. . . . Most curious. I had been told to expect a Dillian, Czillian, and a Creit. We heard that you would be an antelope, and that so far is the only correct information. You are Mr. Brazil, are you not?"

"I am," Brazil replied. "The male is Mr. Varnett, the female with breasts is Wuju, and the undeveloped female is Vardia. We did, after all, have to come through Ivrom. That, in itself, is an accomplishment, I should think—to have come through unaltered would have been a miracle."

"Quite," nodded the Ghlmonese. "But we had no doubt you would come through, although there's been hell to pay for the three days you disappeared. We figured you'd been bewitched, and started moving some diplomatic mountains to find who had you."

"Then that bewitching stuff wasn't part of Ortega's tricks?" Brazil responded. "He seemed awfully confident we'd get through."

"Oh, no, he figured that you would get stuck," the duke replied casually. "But we of Ghlmon are more adept at the arts than those filthy savages in Ivrom. It was only a matter of finding you. We already had the other party, so nothing was disturbed no matter how long it took."

"So what's the next move now?" Brazil asked calmly.

"Oh, you'll be my guests for the night, of course," the duke said warmly. "Tomorrow, we'll get you on a sandshark express and take you to the Capital at Oodlikm, where you will link up with Ortega and the other party. From that point it will be Ortega's show, although we'll be watching."

Brazil nodded. "This game is getting so crowded you need a scorecard." He provided a running translation of the conversation so that the others could follow what was going on. Finally the creature's pipe went out, and it tapped the bowl and shook out the last remains of whatever it had been smoking. It smelled like gunpowder.

"Places have been prepared for you," the duke told them. "Ready to go? It's not far."

"Do we have a choice?" Brazil retorted.

The little dinosaur got that hurt look again. "Of course! You may go back across the border, or jump in the ocean. But, if you plan to stay in Ghlmon, you will do what
we
wish."

"Fair enough," the stag replied. "Lead on."

They followed the little dinosaur along the beach in silence for a little over a kilometer. There, by the side of the sea, a huge tent of canvas or something very similar had been erected. A flag was flying from the tent's center mast. Several Ghlmonese stood around nearby, and tried not to look bored to death.

Two by the tent flap snapped to attention as the duke approached, and he nodded approvingly. "Everything ready?" he asked.

"The table is set, Your Grace," one replied. "Everything should be suitable."

The duke nodded and the sentry held back the flap so he could enter and kept it open for the others to pass through.

Inside, the place looked like something out of a medieval textbook. The floor was covered with thick carpeting like a handwoven mosaic. Actually made up of hundreds of small rugs, it looked like a colorful series of lumps.

In the center was a long, low wooden table with strange-smelling dishes on it. There were no chairs, but the human members of the party were quickly provided with rolls of blankets or rugs that propped them up enough to make things comfortable.

"Simple, but it will have to do," the duke said, almost apologetically. "You will find the food compatible—Ambassador Ortega was most helpful here. We didn't expect you in these forms, of course, but there should be no problem. Pity you couldn't be entertained in the castle, but that is impossible, I fear."

"Where
is
your castle?" Brazil asked. "I haven't seen any structures but this one."

"Down below, of course," the duke replied. "Ghlmon wasn't always like this. It changed, very slowly, over thousands of years. As the climate became progressively drier, we realized that we couldn't fight the sand, so we learned to live beneath it. Air pumps, constantly manned by skilled workmen, keep the air coming in from vents to the surface—which crews keep clear. Sort of like living under the ocean in domes, as I have heard is done elsewhere. The desert's our ocean—more than you think. We can swim in it, albeit slowly, and follow guide wires from one spot to another, coming up here only to travel long distances."

Brazil translated, and Vardia asked, "But where does the food come from? Surely nothing grows here."

"We are basically carnivores," the duke explained after the translation of the question. "Lots of creatures exist in the sand, and many are domesticated. Water is easy—the original streams still exist, only they now run underground, along the bedrock. The vegetable dishes here are for your benefit. We always keep some growing in greenhouses down under for guests."

They ate, continuing the conversation. Brazil, not knowing how much the Ghlmonese were actually in on the expedition, carefully avoided any information in that direction, and it was neither asked for nor brought up by his host.

After eating, the duke bade them farewell. "There's a good deal of straw over there for padding if you can't sleep on the rug," he told them. "I know you're tired and won't disturb you. You have a long journey starting tomorrow."

Vardia and Varnett found soft places near the side of the tent and were asleep in minutes. Wuju tried to join them, but lay there awake for what seemed like hours. Her insomnia upset her—she was tired, aching, and uncomfortable, yet she couldn't sleep.

The torches had been extinguished, but she could make out Brazil's large form in the gloom near the entrance. Painfully, she got up and walked over to him.

He wasn't asleep either, she saw. His head turned as she approached. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"I—I dunno," she replied hesitantly. "Can't sleep. You?"

"Just thinking," he said, an odd, almost sad tone in his electronic voice.

"About what?"

"This world. This expedition. Us—not just the two of us, all of us. It's ending, Wuju. No beginnings anymore, just endings."

She looked at him strangely in the darkness, not comprehending his meaning. Unable to pursue it, she changed the subject.

"What's going to happen to us, Nathan?" she asked.

"Nothing. Everything. Depends on who you are," he replied cryptically. "You'll see what I mean. You've had a particularly rough time, Wuju. But you're a survivor. Tough. You deserve to enjoy life a little." He shifted uncomfortably, then continued.

"Just out of curiosity, if you had a choice, if you could return to our sector of the universe as anything or anybody you wanted to be, what would you choose?"

She thought for a minute. "I've never considered going back," she replied in a soft, puzzled tone.

"But if you could, and you could be who and where you wanted—like the genie with the three wishes—what would you choose?"

She chuckled mirthlessly. "You know, when I was a farmer, I had no dreams. We were taught to be satisfied with everything. But when they made me a whore in the Party House, we'd sometimes sit and talk about that. They kept the males and females separate—we never saw any males except Party locals and favored workers. We were programmed to be supersexy and give them a hell of a time. I'm sure the male jocks were equally fantastic for the female bigwigs. They shot us full of hormones, thought we couldn't think of anything but sex—and, it's true, we craved it, constantly, so much so that during slack times we were in bed with each other.

"But the Party people," she continued, "they knew things, went places. Some of them liked to talk about it, and we got to know a lot about the outside world. We'd dream about getting out into it, out perhaps to other worlds, new experiences." She paused for a moment, then continued in that dreamy, yet thoughtful, somewhat wistful tone.

"Three wishes, you said. All right, if we're playing the game, I'd like to be rich, live as long as I wanted, and be young all that time, and fantastically good-looking, too. Not on a Comworld, of course—but that's four, isn't it?"

"Go on," he urged. "Never mind the three. Anything else?"

"I'd like to have you under those same conditions," she replied.

He laughed, genuinely pleased and flattered. "But," he said, serious again, "suppose I wasn't there? Suppose you were out on your own?"

"I don't even want to think about that."

"Come on," he prodded. "It's only a game."

Her head went up, and she thought some more. "If you weren't there, I think I'd like to be a man."

If Brazil had had a human face, it would have risen in surprise. "A man? Why?"

She shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. "I don't know, really. Remember I said young and good-looking. Men are bigger, stronger, they don't get raped, don't get pregnant. I'd like to have children, maybe, but—well, I don't think any man could turn me on except you, Nathan. Back in the Party House—those men who came. I was like a machine to them, a sex machine. The other girls—they were real people, my family. They
cared.
That's why the Party gave me to Hain, Nathan—I'd gotten to the point where I couldn't turn on to men at all, only women. They felt, they cared, they weren't—well, weren't
threatening.
All of the men I met were—except you. Can you understand that?"

"I think I can," he responded slowly. "It's natural, considering your background. On the other hand, there are many worlds where homosexuality is accepted, and you can get children by anything from cloning to artificial insemination. And, of course, men have just as many problems and hang-ups as women. The grass isn't greener, just different."