07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (11 page)

Well, yeah, but we're still old pros, let's face it. No, I been thinking that maybe we got this assignment all wrong.

Huh? You mean they sent us over here to get knocked up and stuck being Mommy?

Yeah, more or less. Core's bottled up in Zone but also isolated from the hex and what's going on there. We were the ones with the contacts in other hexes, the added agenda, and the ability to talk to folks outside Kalinda if somebody was pulling a fast one. Get us stuck over here hatching kids, and you pretty well neutralized us, didn't you?

Ming thought about that one for a while.
So what could we do,
really,
to spoil anybody s takeover? We're still the outsiders.

I don't know, but somebody thinks we're a danger to them. Be interesting to find out who and why.

Well, that answer's not here, it's back home. And do you want to stick around as a target for every guy on the make who hangs around here? Particularly when they'll all soon be waving papers from home and crying that romantic ballad, "Duty to the race!"

Ari found that idea both amusing and frightening.
No, I don't, but we have to consider that the other things we discussed earlier today with our diplomaniac was exactly what Core asked us to spot, look into, and report. The Yabbans aren't going to seriously piss us off if they can avoid it
—
we're next door, and will be next month and next year. They'd try and make deals with us. The fact that the consul felt they might be ready to take a hike means they already have set up alternate supplies or felt that they would still be able to get what they needed from Kalinda no matter what they said and did. And the only reason they would do
that
is if they thought we were already toast. Like it or not, here is where the first part of the job is for us. We're stuck, at least until we can get some answers.

Great,
she sighed.
Damned if we do and damned if we don't. Well, okay, let s get some sleep, then. We're gonna have to be in great shape to outrun the guys and still be in decent enough condition to snoop.

The Barrens—Pegiri

FIGURES ROSE OUT OF THE WATER LIKE ANCIENT GODS READY TO stalk the land. They moved silently and swiftly for such apparently massive creatures, oblivious to the air and the darkness, then through the gentle surf and onto the land in tight formation.

The region was called the Barrens by the natives, not because it was truly so, but because the thick growths and fetid shallows and mud made it useless for anything productive.

These newcomers from out of the sea were not natives, but they knew just where they were, and they were prepared for the grim land beyond.

Just a few steps onto the driftwood-strewn beach they fanned out and then stopped, and there was a great deal of hissing from them. Thick arms came up and pressed studs that broke seals. They stepped out of their suits, which had ceased to function when they crossed the true border from Baisatz into Pegiri, and thus had also passed from high-tech to the more restrictive semitech conditions.

The creatures still had a kind of artificial look to them even without any external wear; dark, blocky shapes with artistic designs for faces drawn in broad strokes of dull gold against black. The skin was actually leathery if touched, and the golden design was as much decorative as it seemed, although there was speculation that it had a role in courtship and mating back in the long-ago times of its creation. Now it served as misdirection, so that most observers would never notice the deeply set black eyes or slitlike ears, nor its black-lined mouth. Breathing was through a blowhole near the top of the head, although these creatures were of land, not of the sea.

Most striking about them was that they seemed to be made of squares and rectangles, their two arms terminating in mean-looking sharp pincers.

The leader wore a belt pack. He reached down into one of the packs with his claw and brought out a small notebook made for his requirements and thus easy to manipulate with just the claws. He consulted it, then looked at the junglelike rainforest beyond the beach, and finally up at the stars. Finally he said, in a voice that was extremely deep yet oddly distorted, as if he were speaking at least partially underwater, "To the right five degrees and in. There should be a track there that we can use."

Others in the squad moved forward, their gait oddly mechanical and plodding, yet sufficient for their needs. To a trained Well World biologist it would have instantly been clear that these creatures came from a biosphere with a significantly heavier gravitational pull than Pegiri's.

"Rifles at the ready, but you may shoot only if ordered to do so or if fired upon, and for no other reason. Clear?"

The others murmured assent. They had gone over this in drills so many times that the real thing seemed almost an anticlimax.

They were ten in number, a typical small squad with one officer, a noncom, and eight carefully chosen soldiers. The fact that they more properly lumbered forward than deployed in crisp fashion was more a result of the alien conditions in which they found themselves, rather than a commentary on their own efficiency or effectiveness.

The rifles weren't the tough, lightweight energy weapons they were used to, but the kind that shot explosive projectiles. The clips each held fifty rounds, and, depending on the setting of a side lever a claw top could easily manipulate, they could either fire single shot, as they were set to do right now, or fire all fifty in an effective twenty-five-degree arc in front of them in less than a second. These weren't the best weapons, but they were the ones that worked here, in semitech Pegiri.

Not that there was supposed to be any fighting or shooting. Not in this operation. They were there to pay for and retrieve a certain object that had been offered to them, and not to take it by force. There was little they could do to inflict harm should a large force oppose them; they were more like bank messengers than soldiers. The guns were there to protect against thieves and banditry and perhaps treason, but not against the Pegiri army.

It shouldn't come to that. This was supposed to be a nice, easy mission with no rough stuff anyway. Of course, those were the ones that always seemed to come up and bite you.

It was exactly that kind of pragmatic pessimism that kept them alert and nervous as they moved inland. They knew that most of the weapons that could be deployed against them here would have little effect on their thick hides and dense body mass, but no one could be sure until a soldier caught one in the body or head and lived to tell about it.

Much of the Barrens was water, which was one reason they had been sent on this job. Keeping the guns raised above the water, they could actually be submerged almost to the tops of their heads and still make solid progress, thanks to their blowholes. Their own hex had once been as impenetrable and swampy, but high-tech abilities and a very long time had transformed it into quite a different place, a place for which most of their evolutionary traits were, frankly, irrelevant.

The sun was coming up on the horizon, but it meant little here. The vegetation was so dense that there was little chance of seeing the sky, even if it wasn't mostly cloudy, and there was a permanent feeling of gloom to the swamp below. They didn't mind; this was, after all, the kind of thing they were trained for, and they were not uncomfortable in this kind of region. Still, they were surrounded not only by plants and water and mud, but by countless tens of thousands of small, unknown creatures.

The sergeant dropped back and matched stride with the officer. "We are being observed," the noncom told him.

"To be expected," the officer replied. "They aren't any more trusting of us than we of them. And, after all, this isn't the government we're dealing with here. It's a pack of thieves."

From out of the dense foliage a rumbling, eerie voice sounded, bizarre even through an obvious translator. "That should be sufficient, Squad Officer. Please halt now and we will come to you."

The officer and his men had never been to Pegiri before, but they knew what sort of creatures lived in it, and it wasn't all
that
bizarre a life-form. These creatures—or, at least, the speaker—wasn't a native.

"Squad! Halt in place! Guard routine!" the officer snapped.

They looked around apprehensively, seeing nothing large enough to be a sentient life-form. The creatures covering them had also either stopped or melted into the bog. Even though they sensed that the others were still there, there was no sign of them.

And then, right ahead of them, a dull green mat of thick swamp grass seemed to rise out of the undergrowth until it stood exposed, standing in the mud.

It was a spider of some sort; an extremely hairy and dull green spider that happened to be almost two meters across, counting the long legs. Instinctively the troopers brought their rifles up, but the officer snapped, "Stand easy! No firing unless I give the order, but stand your ground."

"Very perceptive, Squad Officer," commented the voice, which was clearly coming from the huge green spider.

The officer felt vindicated by his instincts and became all business. "Do you have it?"

"Of
course
I have it. Otherwise there would be no purpose to this. There wasn't much doubt that I would have any problems, considering that my employer, the one who commissioned the theft, is the owner, the beloved and democratic government of Pegiri. It's quite clever, really. They can claim that it was stolen and that they had little to do with it, yet they avoid war over it. It's not the first time I've been asked to steal something from the owner of a valuable, but usually there's insurance involved."

"You will show it to us now!" the officer barked in a commanding voice.

"Easy, there, Squad Officer! I'm not in your little tinpot army, and I absolutely don't quake in fear at the mention of Josich and that gang. First things first. Do you have the fee?"

The blocky head of the officer turned slightly. "Trooper! Bring up the silver case!"

One of the soldiers came forward and handed his rifle to another to hold, then detached a small box from his uniform belt and handed it to the officer, who turned back to the green spider. "Here it is," he said, "although I do not see why
we
should have to pay you as well as the Pegiri."

"Because I asked for it and I have what you want," the spider responded. "Look, if you would rather go home without it, I will take it and make it disappear. Then you will find that it will be
extremely
expensive to recover, far more so than now. I might even auction it."

"You could have done that now."

The spider made a clicking sound. "No, no, no! There must
always
be honor between thieves and scoundrels, my friend! Otherwise we have no credibility. That is why you get the thing and I get the pay. I will certainly be doing more business as this goes along with your own leaders, so why spoil a good thing? Besides, I like to live and enjoy things."

The officer wondered what such a creature could or would buy with all this pay, but he said nothing about that. "Do you want to examine the contents?"

"Yes, if you please. But it's so damp and wet here, and I'd not like to think that we would open such a box and then drop it in the water. So, for the moment I trust you. You hand me the unopened box, and I hand you this piece of high-tech furniture. You turn and go back to the beach, and I will examine my pay. If it is there, we will not meet again. If it is not, then you and your men will not get off the beach. It's rather elegantly simple, don't you think?"

The idea of a horde of naturally camouflaged giant spiders surrounding and covering them was not a welcome thought.

You wouldn't get many chances to score a hit with these primitive projectile weapons, and they could drop from anywhere.

"Then I fervently hope that what you requested is in this box," the officer told the spider. "I, naturally, do not even have the combination that would open it."

The spider's rear legs came up behind its body and removed something apparently stuck to its fur. A foreleg came up and took the pass from the hind leg, extending a long wooden box to the officer.

"Sergeant," the officer called, and pointed. The sergeant went up to the spider and tentatively took the box. It appeared to be plain unfinished wood, and had some kind of mucus along one side. This was obviously how it was attached to the spider creature's body, and it looked and smelled ugly.

The officer then moved up and held out the small box. The spider creature reached out with both forelegs and took it. The legs were complex affairs, he saw, ending in two soft but extremely wide and supple opposing "fingers." They acted like hands, tentacles, claws, or whatever the creature needed, and, from the deposits in the fur on either side could exude the sticky mucus. The officer suspected that all eight legs were that way, judging from the manner and ease with which the spider had detached and handed over the box.

The officer stepped back as soon as the spider had
his
box, then went over to the sergeant, who held the box out to the officer.

There was a fairly basic clasp, and the officer undid it and slowly, carefully, raised the lid.

Inside was an odd-looking carved shape that seemed to make no sense at all, not even as "high-tech furniture." Neither the officer nor any of his men knew what it was or why it was so important, but they knew that securing it was so vital to their leaders that it was their lives and their families' lives if they botched getting it.

The officer carefully lowered the lid and redid the clasp. It would have to be transferred to a watertight case before they went back, but that could wait. "All right, Sir Thief, I suppose—" he began, then turned and froze.

There was no spider there, nor anyone or anything else, either.

"So be it," he said, and turned back to his men. "Squad! Remain on guard and at the ready! About face!" They turned, facing back toward the beach a kilometer or two away. "Let's get out of this place!" the officer added, and took the lead.