Yulin almost chuckled at Trelig's new appearance. Male sex organs on a very female-looking body. Trelig stepped off, nodded in satisfaction, and took the pistol from Yulin's hand. Ben had the uncomfortable idea suddenly that there was nothing to stop Trelig from shooting him, but he was helpless. Nervous both from anticipation of the process and from the sudden eerie feeling of impending death, he stepped up on the disk, watched the little arm swing out over him, and felt a warm, tingling glow course through his body. The lab, the watchers, seemed to flicker out, then flicker back in again. He knew that there had probably been several seconds between the flickers, but the sensation was not unpleasant.
The two watchers waited as an exact duplicate of Mavra Chang materialized where Ben Yulin had been. The new, tiny figure looked at Trelig's pistol a little anxiously, then saw that it was held casually, sighed, and stepped off the platform, which seemed much higher than it had getting on.
"Incredible!" Trelig breathed. "You even move like her—feminine, catlike, almost."
Yulin nodded. "Now let's go see about those guards," he suggested in Mavra's rich, exotic and slightly accented voice.
* * *
The guards had died in a brief moment of extreme agony, that much was clear from the expressions on their faces.
"Remember not to touch them or that packet!" Yulin cautioned. Trelig nodded as he gingerly reached out, took a pistol by the barrel from the holster of one, examined it, wiped it off on the clothing of another, and handed it to Yulin, who just nodded. Next they found the portacom, with its working linkage to Topside. It was on Standby and there was nothing but a hiss coming through it.
Yulin looked at Trelig. "Ready?" he asked.
The councillor, who now looked like one of his guards, nodded and picked it up, switched it to Receive.
There was still nothing for a minute or two, then a small voice came at them.
"Underside! Come in! What's happening down there?" came a tinny, nasal voice that belonged to one of the guards. Trelig sighed, and said softly to Yulin, "Well, may as well find out now if the bluff works." Punching the Send button, he said: "This is Renard. I was bringing the prisoners Mavra Chang and Nikki Zinder down for Trelig when all this chaos broke out. They got them—all of them, but the cost was heavy. Me and my prisoners are the only ones left down here, and the old scientist also got it. They lied about the sponge."
There was silence for quite some time, and for a moment Trelig thought they hadn't bought the story, but then the Topside voice came back with a tired and defeated tone. "All right, then. But if Chang and the girl are down there, who took off in that ship? Marta said—"
Trelig thought fast. "There were some New Harmony crew on that thing, remember. I guess they panicked and ran out on the boss."
There was no other logical explanation, so they accepted it.
"Okay," came the reply. "Come on up and bring your prisoners with you. We have to get together and think this out." That wasn't said with any enthusiasm; without sponge, they knew what was about to happen.
"Acknowledge and out," Trelig said, and switched to Standby. "I guess this calls for some cheering," he said to his partner.
Yulin still looked concerned. "This is only the start of it," he reminded the other. "We still have to get up there and somehow take over that ship." He had a sudden thought. "Is there enough food and water on that ship for a long stay?"
Trelig nodded. "Oh, yes. We'll probably kill some time taking a close look at that weird planet out there. When the spongies are gone, we can make a deal by radio with the surviving representatives."
And then what? Yulin wondered, considering their luck so far.
"Let's make sure Obie's safe from prying while were away," Trelig suggested, and they returned to the internal control room.
Yulin punched the codes. "Obie?"
"Yes, Ben?"
"First off, as soon as we are in the car to Topside you will file all transactions under my personal key. Understand?"
"Yes, Ben."
Trelig thought a moment. "Then how will we get back in? He'll only recognize us as Renard and Mavra Chang. And if Chang's survived, that will open Obie to her if she manages to get back here. We don't know if they might not have some sort of spacecraft on that world out there."
Yulin thought a minute, realizing that Trelig had seen a nasty trap. The odds were against Chang surviving—he didn't worry about Nikki Zinder or Renard, the sponge would kill them anyway—but they had come so far now on long shots that the breaks would have to go the other way once in a while.
"How about a code word or sequence?" he suggested to the syndicate boss. "Then one of us would have to be here, no matter what form."
Trelig nodded. He didn't bother to ask why not both of them; he would not like to have to need Yulin in a pinch, and they weren't out of the woods yet. "But what code?" he asked.
Yulin smiled. "I think I know one. But what about Zinder? We don't want anyone else to know."
Trelig nodded, then set the pistol again for short stun. He looked at the duplicate of Nikki Zinder, who responded, pleadingly, "Not again!" Trelig fired, and the girl who was something else collapsed in a heap.
"The same five minutes," Antor Trelig cautioned. "Get moving!"
Yulin nodded, then turned back to the board. Both he and Gil Zinder had been fairly tall men, and the control boards were set for that. Now he was a much smaller individual, and had to almost lean over on the control board from the chair to reach some of the controls.
"Obie?"
"Yes, Ben?"
"This is on open-file storage, not keyed," he told the computer. "At the same time as you file the previous transactions, you will energize into the Defend mode. All systems will be locked and frozen, and you will kill anyone attempting to gain entry to this area from the point of the center of the bridge. Can you hear audibles from the center of the bridge?"
Obie considered a second. "Yes, Ben. You might have to yell."
Yulin accepted this. "All right, then, you will remain in Defend until someone comes to the center of the bridge with his arms raised high over his head, palms out. I will shoot a small mark on the bridge as we leave. At that mark, this individual must say, 'There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.' Got that?"
Trelig chuckled. "Old habits are hard to break, eh?" But it pleased him—easy to remember, but nobody was ever likely to say that one and include the appropriate gestures, unless they knew.
"I understand, Ben."
He switched off, and they waited for Zinder to come around. It took about six minutes, these things varying with the individual. Zinder was tingling, as though his whole body were asleep, but the effect wore off quickly enough.
"Let's go," Yulin said, and they walked out across the bridge. About halfway, Yulin set his pistol to Full and shot at the restraining wall over the pit. It was a hard, tough material, but the shot gouged a nasty scar that was visible, yet would be mistaken by others as perhaps a remainder of the gun battle.
They walked on, got into the car, and settled back. Trelig pressed the stud, the door closed, and the car started Topside.
Inside Obie, as this happened, circuits opened and closed, energy danced, and Obie went into the defense mode, but he could not remember how to break it. That disturbed him. The last thing he remembered was Yulin at the control panel and the guards dying of the poisoned sponge.
It was an impossible mystery. He returned quickly to his primary job of trying to disengage himself from the great Well World computer, or, failing that, to create some sort of partnership with it.
It would be long, tough work.
Teliagin, Southern Hemisphere,
the Well World
Mavra Chang had been dozing in spite of herself. When tension wears off, it produces a kind of worn-out lethargy that is almost impossible to shake. Suddenly, however, she came awake with a start and looked around, bleary-eyed. She understood what had happened and cursed herself for it, but she
was mostly concerned now with what had brought her to consciousness.
Nikki and Renard were still asleep, sprawled out on the grass, and appeared to be the better for it. Nervously, she looked around, eyes, ears, nose straining for the disturbance.
There was a warm breeze blowing fleecy white clouds across a blue sky, and she could hear the rustle of treetops in the wind and the chatter of strange birds and insects. Out across the meadow, came the distant sounds of animals in great agitation. She knew the signs; something was coming, something that the ordinary dwellers of the forest considered a danger or an intruder or both. She turned to the sleeping pair, shook Renard gently. At first he didn't stir, then, as she shook him harder, he moaned and said, "Huh? What?"
"Wake up!" she hissed. "Company coming!"
They both woke Nikki, an even harder task than with Renard, and Mavra thought about what to do.
"We have to get away from here," she told them. "Now! I'd like to see who or what we're facing before they find us."
They stood up and followed her back into the woods a ways.
"If anybody knows what the module out there is, they'll be looking for us," she told them. "Still, I want to see what we're up against. Stay here and stay hidden in the undergrowth. I'm going to sneak back for a quick look."
"Be careful," Renard cautioned, needlessly but with real concern in his voice.
She nodded, appreciating the concern, and crept back to the clearing. Whoever or whatever was approaching was big—she could tell that. It was almost as if the ground was trembling slightly, and the clatter among the wildlife was intense.
Cautiously she peered out from behind a bush and gave a short gasp of surprise. She had expected almost anything but what she saw coming toward her.
It was huge—between three and four meters tall, with incredible shoulders and bulging muscles. Its chest and arms were vaguely reddish in color, and humanoid—that is, a human muscleman. The face was huge and ugly: almost an oval, with a broad, flat nose with flaring nostrils, and a mouth permanently set in anger, two long, sharp fangs protruding out of the corners. The ears were large and looked vaguely like great seashells, although they came to a point at the top. A mane of dark blue-black hair sat atop the head, coming to a point between two nasty-looking, sharp horns nearly a meter long.
But it was the eye that commanded attention. It looked like one huge humanlike eye right above the nose and dead center below the forehead. A closer look showed it to be segmented in some way, as if the eye were actually a collection of eyes with one great lid.
From the waist down the creature was covered in thick, wooly rust-red hair, the great muscled legs ending in elephantine hoofs. It wore a single garment, a dirty white wool brief around the crotch that did little to disguise the male sex organ that was proportionate to the figure's great size. It seemed to growl and grumble as it approached steadily, fearing nothing and looking as fierce as any wild thing Mavra had ever seen.
It stopped, seemed to sniff the air, looking first one way and then the other. She worried that it might catch her scent, and found herself almost unconsciously pressing back, crouched and wound up like a coiled spring, although she wondered if anyone could outrun such a monster.
And then she saw the strange thing. The creature had a band made of some sort of skin wrapped around its left arm; attached to it had to be what it appeared—a massive wind-up type wrist watch.
For the first time Mavra realized she was seeing one of the dominant races of this strange place.
The wind shifted slightly, and the creature seemed to lose the scent it had been trying to localize. It turned its attention back to the passenger module. For a moment it just stood there, looking the thing over as if wondering what to do, then it approached, not cautiously but with great confidence. Clearly this thing had nothing to fear in its own land.
The creature was almost as tall as the module, and it looked the alien thing over critically, as if puzzled by it. Then it seemed to spy the open hatch and tried to pull itself up to it. This proved a failure, and after several tries the thing gave a massive roar of rage and hit its right fist into its left palm in a very human gesture of frustration.
Just then a second cyclops came into view and roared to the first one. The sounds seemed brutish and animalistic to Mavra, but she knew it must be some form of speech. Animals don't use or need wrist watches.
The newcomer approached, and off in the distance Mavra thought she heard the roars of several more. They had obviously not landed in a densely-populated area—luckily!—but investigators were now steadily arriving, along with the curious, on the scene.
The second one came up to the first and started spewing a whole series of snarls and grunts, with appropriate gestures. The first, slightly taller and broader, responded in kind, pointing to the module, the open hatch, and making all sorts of circles with his hands.
After a while a third one appeared, and a fourth, and a fifth. Two of the newcomers were females, Mavra noted. They were almost a meter shorter than the males, making them only three meters tall, and, unlike the males, they didn't seem as muscular—perhaps capable of uprooting medium-sized trees, but not of tearing sheet metal like paper. They also seemed a bit bowlegged, squatter, and had small, rock-firm breasts. They had no horns, either, but they shared the male's permanently nasty expressions and seemed to have fangs that were a bit longer than their brothers'. There may have been a half-octave difference in their speech, but considering the grunts, groans, growls, and yowls these things made, nobody but they would ever know.
One of the females was also wearing a watch, and two of the newcomers, a male and a female, seemed to be wearing some jewelry—made of bones, Mavra noted—dangling from their ears and around their necks. Perhaps insignia of rank or tribe, she guessed.
The first male roared so loudly it panicked birds for a quarter-kilometer around; he gestured to the others. They first tried to boost him up on top of the module, but the surface was too slippery for him. Then they took another tack. They went around to the other side and started pushing, the big one counting cadence of sorts. The module rocked, rocked again, and, on the third try, rolled over on its side. One of the females picked up a rock almost the size of Mavra Chang and wedged it under the module while the others held it steady.
The big one then went back around and roared approval. The open hatch was now at about his eye level, and he peered in, curiously. A massive arm reached out, went into the hole, and there was a terrible crunching noise. The hand came out clasping a seat, ripped from its solid connections to the floor, and he looked at it. One of the females pointed a clawed finger at the seatrest, and the others nodded. One of the other males stooped down a little and held his hand just above his knee. Mavra could guess the conversation. They were estimating the size of the creatures who had ridden it in.
That did it, she decided, and slowly slunk back into the woods. No use getting caught by a wind change. Those folks were obviously bright even if primitive, and the assembly of giants was becoming a convention rather quickly. She didn't want any introductions until she knew what those giants would eat.
Nikki spotted her first. "Over here!" she called, and Mavra ran to them.
"Mavra! Thank god!" Renard exclaimed with real feeling, and hugged her. "We heard all that roaring and growling and we didn't know what had happened!"
Quickly she told them about the cyclops. They listened in growing awe and terror.
"We'll have to get away from here pretty quickly," she explained. "They already know we're around."
The other two nodded. "But—which way?" Nikki asked. "We could be going toward one of their cities or something and never know it."
Mavra thought for a moment. "Wait a minute. We know the whole world isn't like this—we even saw some of the nearby places before the visuals went out. There's an ocean and some mountains to the east of here, definitely not these folks' kind of turf. We saw such terrain on the way in, remember?"
"Bu
t which way's east?" Renard asked her.
"The planet's rotation was basically west-to-east," Mavra reminded him. "That means the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I'd say it's getting close to evening now, so that places the sun over there, and east is this way." She pointed, and said, "Let's go."
They had no choice. They followed her into the woods. Behind them, the roaring and bellowing continued.
"We should stick to the woods as long as possible," she told them as they went. "It'll be harder for those big babies to follow or track us."
They agreed with that and proceeded on for some time, saying little to one another because there seemed to be nothing to say. Nikki, because of her bulk, had the toughest problem, but she was bearing up well, all things considered. She had only one complaint.
"I'm starving," she moaned during every one of their frequent rest periods.
Renard was getting a little hungry himself. The sun was getting low, the shadows deepening into dusk. "Maybe I could stun one of those little animals we keep seeing," he suggested. "A short burst with the pistol, that's all."
Mavra thought it over. "All right. Try it. But—make sure you see something and make sure you're on stun. We don't want to set any forest fires here."
Almost as if cued by the conversation, one of the critters they'd been talking about rustled around in the underbrush. It was large—almost a meter long—but low, with a thin snout, some bushy whiskers, and beady little rodent's eyes.
Renard calculated from the noise where it would come out into a clear spot and set and aimed his pistol. The thing seemed oblivious to the risk, and finally appeared where it was supposed to. Renard pressed the trigger stud.
Nothing happened.
The little creature turned to them, chattered what might have been an insult, and scurried off into the darkness.
"What the hell?" Renard exclaimed, befuddled. He looked at the pistol, tapped it, looked at the charge meter. "No charge!" he said, amazed. "It should be three-quarters full!" He started to throw the pistol away, but Mavra reached out and took his arm, stopping him.
Exiles at the Well of Souls Page 13
