03. Gods at the Well of Souls (2 page)

Her backbone had become increasingly limber, to the point where she could bend  backward and almost touch the floor with the top of her head while still  standing or lean forward so effortlessly and with such good balance that she  could touch the floor with her beak. 

From that vantage point she could see that her stubby, mutilated legs were  rapidly changing into huge, thick drumsticks; the rather stupid feet they had  fashioned for her now were solid, enlarged, and black and were gaining almost  the prehensility of long, thick fingers, with sharp needlelike nails developing  at the tips. Even the large, curved beak they had fashioned over her mouth was  no longer the crude but effective graft; her tongue, now thin and greatly  elongated, told her that beyond the beak was the gullet. Bright light blinded  her, and even normal daylight was pale, washed out, and difficult to see in, yet  the darkness glowed with sharpness and detail. Through the beak, countless  strange odors came to her, each somehow separate even when mixed, and it was a  bit of a game to try and identify and classify them. It was something to do. The same went for sounds, although she could understand nothing of speech. She  could understand only Campos, and then only when Campos directed something  specifically at her; only Campos's translator could accept the eerie clicks and  moans, some from deep in Mavra's chest, that passed for her speech. That little  gift of a dedicated translator remained, but she was glad of it somehow in spite  of her hatred of Campos. She knew that the sounds she could make were really  bird sounds, animal sounds, not any sort of intelligible language to any race. The animal urges disturbed her more. She could no longer physically tolerate any  vegetable matter. Campos had been feeding her raw, bloody meat strips, it being  a bit too civilized in the city to go pick up a carton of worms or grubs, even  if Campos would have entertained the idea of live creepy crawlies in her nice  apartment. Although Cloptans resembled giant humanoid ducks, they were omnivores  and even had tiny rows of teeth inside those remarkably elastic, oversized bills  of theirs. 

Campos had hardly failed to notice the metamorphosis: it was happening at a rate  that could not be seen by the naked eye but fast enough that something new would  be evident between the time she left in early evening and the time she returned  to sleep. 

Now she came in the door and turned on the light, washing out Mavra's vision.  The door slammed, and the Cloptan kicked off her shoes and threw a purse on the  chair. 

Campos looked over at the corner where Mavra stood, held there by a strong chain  fastened to an anklet and to a welded-on socket in the wall, allowing perhaps a  meter's movement one way or the other. 

"Ah, my pet! And how are you this evening?" 

"Food, master! Please! Food! Birdy begs you!" The worst part was, she no longer  even felt humiliated by begging. It said something about Campos's mind-set,  though, that she had insisted on being called "master," not "mistress." "In a minute, my sweet. I need to freshen up and get a drink. It is going to be  a long evening, I fear." 

"Please, master! Feed Birdy!" 

"Shut up! No more, you miserable little shit or I might just forget to feed you  at all!" 

It was not a threat to be taken lightly. The craving for food after sunset was  overwhelming, more even than the craving for the exotic Well World drug that  Mavra's made-over body no longer needed or even noticed. Mavra had not, however,  volunteered that fact. 

Campos went into the bathroom, and after an agonizing wait there was the sound  of a toilet flush and then water running. Finally the Cloptan emerged, now  naked. 

Although it was nothing unusual now, the first sight Mavra had had of Campos  naked had been something of an odd feeling. The shape was very human to a point,  but even the breasts were covered with countless tiny white feathers except at  the very tips. The shoulders were unnaturally squared off, it seemed, the arms  and thinly webbed hands oversized for the body. The neck was quite long and thin  to be supporting that oversized head. Below the waist it became more birdlike,  with a definite rounding, almost turnip-shaped, with the turnip top angled back  and slightly up, becoming short but large tail feathers. The legs extended  straight down, a golden yellow color, and ended in two wide, thickly webbed feet  that could still be consciously rolled up and fit into shoes. 

She shared the huge apartment with two Cloptan females who were apparently  attached to other drug cartel kingpins, but they stayed away from the big bird's  area and Campos rarely referred to them or appeared to interact much with them.  They ignored their roommate's "pet" and gave it a wide berth and seemed  otherwise to be fairly typical of their type. 

There had been more than a few naked males in as well. If they were  representative of the race, they tended to be larger, chunkier, with almost  wrestler builds, bent a bit forward on the hips in a slightly more birdlike  fashion but without much in the way of tail feathers at all. Male genitalia  weren't visible at all; they were apparently hidden by a thick clump of feathers  growing forward between the widely spaced legs, which explained why they all  seemed to be bowlegged. 

Campos went to the cold storage compartment and took out a box of something,  then popped it in a fast defroster that might have been operated by microwaves  or some other means. 

"Ah! I should tell you that I got word today from those nice doctors who made  you so very pretty for me." the Cloptan said as the defroster whirred in the  background. "They said you were genetically reprogrammed using the actual  genetic code of a real bird in a hex very, very far away. I forget the name, but  what does it matter? They said not to worry, that you would still be able to  think and remember but that you'd also have all of the bird's instincts. They  even said that by three months or so you would be so physically like this bird  that you would even be fertile!" She laughed. "Just think! The zoo here doesn't  have any of your birdie kind, but you're on their wish list, and the other girls  here still seem a bit frightened of you and keep trying to talk me into getting  rid of you." 

Mavra said nothing. Anything she could say would only cause trouble. "Just think of it!" Campos went on, enjoying herself. "The nice zoo people say  that if they had you, they could secure at least the loan of a male of the  species. That might be quite the answer here. I won't have to worry about your  care or suffer your presence here, but you'll be secure and in a happy little  nest I can visit any time. That would be very amusing, seeing you sitting there  hatching eggs, knowing that all your children would be birdbrains. Would you  like that?" 

"Whatever master wishes Birdy will do," Mavra responded as if by rote, eyes on  the defroster. "You bet your sparkly feathered ass you will!" It was far from  hopeless, but how the hell she would get this stupid asshole to head for the  Well was something Mavra Chang was far from figuring out yet. The zoo wasn't a  very appetizing new destination, but maybe it would provide some way out. Zoos  didn't usually plan on animals being as smart as humans. 

Somehow, some way, she had to get to the Well. She was building up too long a  list of people to get even with to fail. 

Subar, 

a City in Northern Agon 

IT WAS A REGION OF THICK FORESTS AND ROLLING HILLS, WITH mild days and chilly  nights; if it hadn't smelled something like an overcooked egg, it might have  been very pleasant. 

Agon was a high-tech hex with just about everything one could expect of modern  life. Private cars were banned; there just wasn't enough room to tolerate them  or anywhere to dump the old ones. Still, public transport of just about every  kind was available for a very low fee, along with taxis and buses that seemed to  glide on air working not only every city and town but every rail and road  crossing as well. 

The Agonese were a strange lot, looking to Anne Marie like something out of a  children's fairy tale. In fact, they resembled nothing so much as squat turtles  without shells, but with very tough greenish-gray hides that might have been at  home on elephants or rhinos back on Earth. But unlike those animals they were  bipeds, walking on two short, thick trunks of legs that terminated in wildly  oversized feet out of the age of dinosaurs. The omnipresent if unpleasant odor  was nothing less than their collective body odors, to which they of course were  oblivious. 

"We are strangers very far even from our native Well World homes," Anne Marie  noted as they approached a medium-sized city, the first they'd seen since making  their way south from Liliblod. "We have no choice. We must contact the  authorities and ask for help." 

Tony, reluctantly along on this new quest and not liking it a bit, sighed. "You  are correct, of course. But it makes me uneasy to do so. Such an operation could  not go on in this kind of setting and with this technology without some  connivance from high local officials. We are far from the places where the foul  stuff is grown and into where it is distributed. This close to the business end,  the government official who comes to help us might well be in the pay of those  we seek. I would feel more at ease if we could contact our own government. They,  after all, sent us on this great expedition in the first place. If we vanish  outside their knowledge and contact, then we vanish forever." 

Anne Marie nodded. "Agreed. But there must be a way of getting a message to our  people in-what is that place called?-Zone? Where the embassies are. They have  telephones, radios, probably much more, here. I think our best course is not to  mention any more than we have to at the outset about why we're here and simply  ask as stranded travelers to call our embassy. That would be a reasonable and  natural request, wouldn't it?" 

Tony nodded. "We have to do it that way, but something makes me uneasy about it.  I still do not feel very clean about our role in this so far, even though we had  nothing to do with the current problem. And I was born and raised in a very  different society than you. I feel, unfortunately, far more at home with the  governments here than I ever did with the British government I very much  prefer." 

There were a great many stares as the two large, blond, twin centauresses came  into the city, one with an equally exotic if very different creature on her  broad equine back. Alowi, the former Julian Beard, had said virtually nothing  and seemed almost disinterested in the city or its inhabitants or anything else.  Without a translator, she was merely along for the ride in most of the alien  environments. That, both Tony and Marie agreed, would be a top priority. The  Erdomese would get a translator or give up any thoughts of tracking down her  kidnapped husband. There was no alternative. This was certainly a hex with the  technical abilities to install one, although it would take more money than any  of them had. 

In fact, money was going to be the first problem if they remained here in the  north. They hadn't been allowed to take much more than basic packs and  provisions when they'd been forced off the ship off the coast of Liliblod, and  Mavra had been the dispenser of funds for the group. 

They didn't need much to just survive; although all three preferred nicely  prepared and cooked dishes, their constitutions were such that they could  survive on grasses and leaves if need be. As for clothing, the Dillians in  particular could gallop forty or fifty kilometers a day without even sweating  hard, and they at least had been allowed to keep their coats for use in colder  climates. Still, they were well aware that they were very far away from anything  or anyone familiar, and while they could use the Well Gate in any capital city,  it would take them only to their home hexes, not to anywhere they wanted to be. "Not much hope of finding any work around here, either," Tony noted. "Everything  that we could do is automated. If the council won't stake us, we're through." "Yes, I keep worrying that they will thank us for our service and tell us to go  home, that they are sending the professionals in," Anne Marie responded. "Still,  their professionals haven't been any good up to now, have they?'' Aside from a small Liliblodian consulate, there was nothing in the way of  government offices in this fairly remote city, or much need for it, when cheap,  fast magnetic trains could take anyone to the centrally located capital in under  an hour and a half. While that also implied that the local cops could have  somebody who had some authority there in a matter of hours, it didn't prove to  be that easy. In fact, it almost seemed as if nobody were interested in doing  anything for them except telling them how to get home and suggesting that they  do so at the earliest opportunity. 

Unable to get any information on anything else, let alone help, they held a  conference to decide just what to do. 

"You should both go home through the big gate," Alowi told them. "It will take  you home, I know, in very quick time, as they say." 

"But dear! What will you do?" Anne Marie asked, worried. 

"I will do what I must. I will never return to Erdom. Never. With no husband or  family, I have no wants or needs. So far I have been able to eat the grasses,  leaves, berries, fruits, and such that grow in these lands. I cannot starve. My  body seems most adaptable. I have become accustomed to the chill nights here to  the point where the coat is now uncomfortable, so I need no clothing. I will  search as I can; if I find him, that is fine, and if I do not, nothing is lost." "But you cannot even speak to people! You have no translator!" Tony pointed out. "You do, and I do not see that it has helped you much. In truth, I do not expect  to find him. I expect to wander this world, or as much of it as can be wandered  through, taking little from it and seeing what is seeable. Sooner or later I  will find a place for myself or I will die. Either way, it is the most I can  expect."