Ghost of the Well of Souls

Alkazar—Quislon Border

It was one of the largest elevators anyone had ever conceived to build, and it went up inside the great granite mountain from the near-sea-level jungles, not to the top of the great mountain peaks, but to a point where it was practical to bore in an exit tunnel.

The ride itself was surprisingly smooth, with just a little bit of vibration, although there was no question that they were moving, and that someone or something was actually driving the tractor-trailer-sized car, because you could feel it slow down and then speed up again. When it finally slowed for good, eardrums of those who had them had popped several times, but, more interesting, the pressure inside also seemed to be varied.

“As an old pilot, I’d say they slowly pressurized us to the exit pressure before they started,” Genghis O’Leary noted. “Or, at least, they did most of it then, and gradually lessened it still more as we rose. It’s pretty slick.”

“Makes you wonder why they didn’t build it at Kolznar, though, and save all the upriver shipping and jungle transit,” Har Shamish put in.

“They probably took advantage of some ancient caves and lengthy cracks or faults,” O’Leary surmised. “I think they put it where the engineers said they had to. More to the point is why they wouldn’t run a railroad or good automated shipping road from the port to here.” He sighed. “Well, I suppose they had good reasons. Anybody who can design this would have better reasons than I could come up with for doing most anything!”

That thought was disquieting to all three of them, for they didn’t like this hex one bit, and, bribes and favors or not, it didn’t like them much, either. It was a reminder that the whole society was very much like the appearance of the natives: it looked small, weak, insignificant, often comical, but it masked a very nasty reality.

Unlike below, where the passengers walked, there was enough distance above that some kind of transport was needed. What the Alkazarians had built was a kind of small train sized for Alkazarians. Still, by kneeling, Jaysu managed to get uncomfortably ensconced aboard one of the small, spartan, open-air cars all to herself, while the two Pyrons were able to share another. The crew in yellow were busy shepherding the containers off, then hooking up small motors of some sort to them so they floated along the grooved path paralleling the train, driven by just one of the creatures per container. The rest, apparently, awaited a new shipment to bring back down.

There had been an exit station, and, like the one down at the bottom, this one took another blood sample and comprehensive picture and apparently compared it to what it already had. At least they managed to pass through fairly quickly, although Har Shamish wondered how, if there were any hitches, he was going to bribe a machine.

Although the train was fairly fast, it was bouncy and things were not well-lit. More than once, Jaysu, in a miserable crouching position, felt as if she were going to be flung off. She would have screamed at the train driver except there didn’t seem to be one. It was all automated.

Just when she was so cramped and bruised she felt she couldn’t stay on the little train a moment longer, it burst into the open, revealing the interior of Alkazar spread out before them.

It was as ugly as sin itself. Vast regions were covered with industrial complexes belching all sorts of gases into the air; dreary buildings were covered in soot, and even the new ones were painted drab colors; and the whole thing reflected against the clouds like a vision of Hell from almost any religion.

At the small platform where the train ended, two Alkazarians in black with gold trim awaited, their sleeves sporting an emblem resembling crossed lightning bolts. They were clearly waiting for them.

She needed some help getting out and to her feet, and the waiting creatures moved not at all to help her. It was left to one of the Pyrons to offer a tentacle and a pull.

Har Shamish went up to the nearer of the two officials. “I am the Pyron vice-consul,” he said, “and this is Citizen O’Leary, in the service of the king, and Jaysu, an Amboran who is under our diplomatic umbrella. I assume there are no problems in clearing us to the border as quickly as possible?”

For a moment the Alkazarians said nothing, just standing there staring at them. Finally, the first one said, “You may follow us. We are going to put you on a night train as soon as possible. You will come with us and make no comments, nor stop, nor deviate from the route. If you need to ask anything, ask now.” It was not lost on any of them that he did not introduce himself, even by title.

“The lady has not eaten,” Har Shamish told him.

“Indeed? What does she eat?”

“Fruits, vegetables, anything not of flesh.”

“Then she will not find much here and we would waste time trying. You will be at the border in a few hours and you can find something there. We are not equipped for visitors, you see.” He seemed to think a minute, then added, “I might be able to find some water, nothing more.”

“No, let us go,” she responded, feeling the coldness of this pair. “I have fasted far longer than a mere day.” She also wasn’t sure whether the water in this loathsome, smelly place would be drinkable anyway.

“Do you have any recording or photographic equipment?” the official demanded. “Such things are forbidden here.”

“You’ve examined us all the way down to our gullets,” Shamish noted. “You should know better than we that we have nothing of the sort, nor weapons, nor anything else on the forbidden list. Our only interest is in expeditiously traveling to Quislon.”

“Everybody seems to want to go to Quislon all of a sudden. Once you’ve seen it, you will not want to go there again. Very well, come with us.”

They didn’t take them far, for which all were grateful. Not only was the air quite thin, affecting the two Pyrons more than Jaysu, but it was also paradoxically thick, not in density, but with odors most foul. It was getting near dark, but Jaysu swore she could see clouds of yellow, purple, pink, and much worse hanging over the miserable, densely packed region. She couldn’t comprehend how anyone could live in a place like this, let alone survive for long.

They were bundled into the back of a strange wheeled vehicle. Two armed guards with nasty-looking rifles hung off each side of the tailgate, and two more rode on the running boards on either side of the driver’s central cubicle. The truck itself was open, like the crawler’s had been below. Never had she felt so much like a prisoner.

The two Pyrons seemed lethargic, as if drained of much of their energy. She was sure it wasn’t the air, which was thinner than at the surface but not debilitatingly so, and she decided it must be the chill. It was cold up here, and the vast tablelands on the other side of the Wall were also of high elevation. There was no snow on the ground, but there were patches of white not far above them on the mountainsides and in the high passes, and there was a crispness to the air that she found at first bracing but, as the wind blew and the sun set, began to feel raw and numbing to her exposed face and body. This was definitely not fun.

Making things worse were the silent but menacing guards, ard the sights that they passed as well: groups of people, each with their own uniform combinations and armbands and funny hats and the like, all going here or there, all silently, without any sense of joy or relief that one would expect at the end of the day, nor even bantering bad jokes or light-hearted insults as coworkers often did. They were dull-eyed and had gray souls, without life or sparkle, without any sense of more than existence. They seemed like the road crews below; prison inmates, even if they had no evident guards.

Of course, the omnipresent stalks with their tiny pencil-thin cameras and all the rest were as good as any guards. She saw few females about, and, above or below, it struck her that she’d seen no children. The oppressiveness of the place almost overwhelmed her. What a sad little race this was, so bereft of joy or any other feeling that made life worth living. With all their ingenuity and technology, they hadn’t paused to enjoy what they had made, nor let their great machines take the heavy work away, but instead they’d become like the machines they used.

It wasn’t the frozen land that was so bad, but the frozen hearts within.

At least she didn’t sense that Har Shamish was worried about their situation. If she’d sensed that, she might have been close to figuring how to get out of this situation. As it was, she nervously allowed the little creatures to drive them to their train.

It was an even more unusual train than it had been a ride on the truck. It was fairly wide, but had no wheels or crawler treads or anything else that she could see in the well-lit station area. Instead it seemed to wrap itself around a single thick rail or post and just sit there.

Like everything else in this Heaven-forsaken place, it was painted a dull gunmetal-gray and had few markings on it. There was an engine, of sorts, then a passenger car in back, then what appeared to be several enclosed cars used for freight or animals, and, finally, a series of cars that were sealed tightly, contents or purpose unknown.

As soon as their truck stopped, the guards jumped down and took a protective stance around it and finally them, as if they expected an attempt on their life. It clearly didn’t seem directed at them, except perhaps to impress them with their importance.

The officer came around to the back and barked, “You will all get out now! The train cannot be held for you and it is due to depart in seven minutes!”

Slowly, groaning, the two Pyrons managed to get down. She jumped down, involuntarily flexing her wings to cushion the jump as she did so. This caused the guards to suddenly whirl about as one and point their rifles menacingly in her direction, but she folded the wings and stared at them and they backed off.

“Follow me!” the officer ordered, and they walked behind him toward the waiting train. As they did, another train from the other direction approached, and she marveled that it seemed to make no sound at all. That didn’t seem right. Even feet made noise when they were put to work.

Har Shamish, in the lead as always, started for the open, warm-looking and well-lit passenger car, but a rear guard snapped something and the officer held up a hand, stopping them. “No, not that car,” he said. “This car!” He pointed to the freight car behind the passenger one.

Shamish was still lethargic, but forced himself to alertness. “I protest! That car is clearly for hauling animals! Are you suggesting that we are animals to be treated as cargo?”

The little officer was ready for him. “No. I am suggesting that, first and foremost, you will not be able to fit in any seats in the passenger car, and we are not in a position to modify it for your onetime requirements, which are, you might recall, a courtesy we extended to your government although we had no profit in doing so save exhibiting our goodwill. Also, your short notice means that all of the passenger seats are taken by our people, who travel only when their duties require it. Your consulate said nothing about reimbursing us for a special train and extra crew. This is the best we can do. Take it, or leave it and we will take you back to the Eastern Lift and you can return to where you came from. And I would suggest you do not take much time in deciding this or arguing any further, since the train will leave in”—he looked at the big digital clock which displayed figures that looked more like animal scratching—“two minutes and twenty seconds regardless.”

Shamish knew they had him. “Very well, we will board, but your government will get a strong protest when I return!”

“You’ve already made it and are so recorded,” the officer noted, gesturing at one of the ubiquitous cameras.

With that, the Pyron vice-consul walked into the freight car, and she and O’Leary had no choice but to follow.

Guards came up, slid the door shut, and they heard an ominous clunk as it closed completely. After a moment two small emergency lights went on, one on each end of the car, allowing minimal sight for her and just enough light for them, but also showing that there were no windows or peepholes. A small compressor whined someplace overhead, and they could feel some air circulation, so they wouldn’t suffocate, but otherwise they were as much in prison as if in a fortified jail.

Some sort of livestock had been transported in the car; it smelled gamey, although it had been as cleaned out as these sort of cars ever were. There was also a soft flooring covered with artificial grass, which gave Jaysu something of a foothold.

O’Leary went to the door and checked it. There was a panel with a series of lights set into the door, a master emergency open switch, but without the code it was impossible to use.

The two small lights blinked, as did the panel, and they started to move. It was so sudden that Jaysu barely had time to dig into the artificial turf and grab onto a reinforcing rod running along the length of the car for stability. The two Pyrons were bowled over by the motion, but landed softly, in serpentine fashion.

The train wasted no time at all once under way. They could feel the acceleration, and, if anything, it increased as it must have cleared the freight yards in the city.

It took her a while to compensate for it, and she didn’t think the two others ever would.

O’Leary flared his hood menacingly in frustration and anger at the treatment, but he got control back quickly. He was an old pro, and losing your temper when you had no way at all to change a situation profited nobody.

Instead the large serpentine head looked around, as if surveying every square millimeter of their prison. “At least we’re not alone as we travel,” he commented sourly.

The other two turned to see what he was looking at, and sure enough, there was a thin, pipelike camera next to the light at the far end. Almost as one they looked to the nearer end and the other light and, sure enough, there was another. Together, they had to cover the entire car.

“I wonder if the passengers are looking at the freaks on screens?” O’Leary mused.

“I doubt it,” Shamish responded. “It’s probably the men in the hidden security office in the engine. They wouldn’t trust ordinary folks.”

“What kind of insanity rules this place?” Jaysu almost wailed. “I mean, I think I have to pass some water. Where do I do it in this thing, and without being watched and recorded?”

“I’m afraid you don’t have any privacy,” Shamish replied. “And as for the where of it, I’d say the far corner of the car is about as much of a toilet as we’re going to get. Cheer up. If they are taking us where we want to go, it will only be a few hours, maybe less at the speed this thing is moving. And somebody, most likely one or more of them, is going to have to clean up any mess.”

It was impossible to tell how much time was passing as they rolled along, but if they were going almost anywhere within the hex, they certainly were not about to spend a long time cooped up, not at the evident speed the train was making.

“You don’t have a watch?” O’Leary asked Shamish, a bit surprised.

“I did, but the security agent at the Zadar docks took it. You mean you don’t have one?”

“I carried one of those self-winding things that supposedly works anywhere, but I lost it someplace weeks ago. Doesn’t much matter, unless we stop, of course.”

Jaysu looked over at them. “You think they might just leave us here? After all we’ve come through?”

“Well, probably not,” Shamish admitted. “I mean, my consulate knows I’m making this trip, and I’m expected back within a certain period. Still, they can trump up anything they want around here and stall for ages. They know as well as anybody that nobody’s going to declare war over one missing vice-consul. No, this is the risk we decided we had to take to cross Alkazar. We’re in their hands, and nobody else can help us or reach us. Still, I’m not too worried. They could have taken us or polished us off in a lot of places, and they are well-known for not showing foreigners who have to come up here any more of their dear inner homeland than they possibly can. You can see why just from the glimpse we had of it. They’ve raped it. Little grows there now, they are unlikely to have sufficient food stock to feed that kind of population, and they have to import almost anything in that area. In the end, they need us and the goodwill and trade we provide more than we need them. It’s just closer to buy the raw materials from them than elsewhere, but if we don’t ship them everything from fodder for their feed animals to often the animals themselves, well, it wouldn’t take long.”

She had been in this now long enough to begin thinking on a wider scale. “But does that not make them vulnerable to pressure far beyond what it should? You would not have to make war on such a place; a simple blockade would do it, would it not?”

“Easier said than done, a blockade,” Shamish told her. “Still, it wouldn’t take a lot of disruption of trade to cause real rumbles here, it’s true. It’s another reason why I think we’re going where we want to go. Chalidang can shake them, but Pyron is much, much closer. They were leaning more toward the Chalidang Alliance, until Ochoa anyway, because they’re kind of soulmates of those squid. Winning that battle has tipped things back our way. My sense is that they’re playing a balancing game, ready to tip to whoever seems likely to win. If they take us through, then they do something for them, and when a winner emerges, they pop up and say they were with you all along.”

She shook her head in wonder. “All this cynicism, dishonesty, double dealing. And for what? To preserve what we saw of places like this? It makes no sense!”

“That’s right,” O’Leary agreed. “It makes no sense. It doesn’t make any greater sense in the rest of the galaxy, or maybe in the rest of the universe, for that matter. It’s the way things work. It’s why folks like you have respect and the jobs you do, really. People are always looking for sense, and religion provides both sense and a feeling of comfort.”

“But you do not believe in the divine.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

“I have seen too much. Like I said down below, I believe in evil, in the opposite of your ‘divine,’ so to speak. I’ve seen it everywhere. I’ve not seen much of the good side, though.”

“You must have had a sad upbringing yourself,” she said.

He sighed. “My parents were both god-fearing sorts, but even though I was raised in my father’s faith, they were quite different in their religious backgrounds. So different, in fact, that they were killed by the followers of one side for intermarrying and seeming to be happy and successful in spite of it. They were ordered to take sides. But they were both sides, you see, and they had settled their own religious war in the best of ways. So they were killed.”

“How horrible! How old were you when this happened?”

“Old enough to track down the ringleaders and dispatch them the way they had my parents. And then I left my home and never returned, cursing it forever, and I finished my schooling on a world that had few of my kind there, and then I became a cop. It was only after that that I really saw what true evil could be. Spare me the prayers and the sermons—I had enough of nuns and priests in my youth. If there’s salvation, I’m too old for it. But there might still be a measure of justice. In a sense, I’ve pursued some very evil people all the way to this world. Two of us have, in fact, the other far more twisted inside than me. But if we can get them, we’ll get them.”

Shocked at what he said, she did not continue the conversation, yet she couldn’t help but reflect how little difference there was, deep down, between the policeman and the coldblooded criminals he hunted, almost as if you could have found him on the other side with just one slight added twist of fate. Was it, perhaps, the same for his quarry? Was the evil he fought as fanatic? Was he, in effect, hunting his darker self?

It was too weighty a question for these circumstances, but precisely the kind of moral questions she found most fascinating in study and meditation.

“We’re slowing down,” Shamish commented, and the other two immediately felt this as well.

“A scheduled stop, perhaps?” O’Leary wondered. “Or have we arrived at our destination, whatever that is?”

“It better be the freight yards at Borol,” Shamish replied. “If it isn’t, then we are betrayed.”

The train glided to a smooth stop, barely jerking the car at all.

“Magnetic levitation train,” Shamish told them. “No friction. When you stop, you just turn off the power and the thing’s a brick.”

The car was solid enough that outside sounds didn’t penetrate, so they had no way of knowing just who or what might be out there. It made them all nervous, and Jaysu closed her eyes and tried to project her senses outside and around the car now that it was stopped.

“Lots of people running about, apparently all Alkazarians,” she said. “No—wait. Not all. There are—others out there. At least three, maybe more. They are in back of us, concerned with another car.”

She suddenly had both their absolute attention.

“You can sense that?” O’Leary asked, amazed.

“I can see it, but the vision is very different,” she responded. “I cannot, for example, tell you anything physically about them, only that they are not natives and they are quite agitated, in some great hurry. They are, I believe, offloading some very large crates from one of the boxcars.”

“At least they can get the door unlocked,” Shamish mumbled.

“They’re done with their heavy lifting. There are five of them, or so it seems. The natives are ignoring them completely. Now they are talking among themselves. I cannot hear at this distance, nor would the translations come through anyway, so I have no idea what they are saying, only that it seems they are splitting into two groups. Three of them are going off with whatever goods they unloaded. Two more are— I believe they are headed this way! They are cold, businesslike but cold, and a bit nervous. One stops a native, says something, perhaps passes something to it, and the natives are now all walking away from us. I do not like this.”

O’Leary looked over at Shamish. “I think our Alkazarians just took sides.” He looked around. “Any chance of smashing those lights out?”

“Maybe, but what good does that do us? They control the exit, remember, and these little bastards refused to let us have any weapons.”

“You wish the lights to be out?” she asked them.

“Well, it would help when they open that door to have it dark in here. Dark and quiet,” O’Leary told her. “That way they can’t be positive we’re here, not without taking a chance.”

She looked up at the far light and it went out. Her head whipped around, birdlike, and the other light went out.

“Well I’ll be…” Har Shamish breathed.

“You are full of surprises, aren’t you?” O’Leary added.

Even to myself, she thought, surprised. Until that moment she had no idea she could do that, either.

“Can you break the bomb if they toss one in here?” Shamish asked her. “And maybe their weapons as well?”

“I will not permit their weapons to fire. Beyond that I can do nothing. I can act only in defense.”

“That should be enough,” hissed Genghis O’Leary. “To the side with the door. Make sure you can’t be seen by the light from outside when they open it!”

There was a series of rapid clicks across from them, which helped her orient where the door was and move as instructed.

It was just in time. The door opened and slid back, and light flooded into the center of the car, but revealed nothing.

The pair outside stood there waiting a few moments, as if unsure what to do. Then one said, through a translator, “All right. Very clever, very impressive. Now you will either come out or we will close the door and scramble the combination. We can have this car put on a siding for the next six months if need be.”

Liars, she thought, but didn’t say it. Even without her empathic senses, sheer logic said they were issuing empty threats. If they could have done that, they would have, and not subjected themselves to any risk or potential international incident. It would just be an “unfortunate accident.” That also implied that not all the Alkazarians here were corrupt, only a few officials.

They waited a short while longer, then one of them said, “Okay, close it back up.”

At that point Jaysu decided this wasn’t a game worth playing. Thankful for the light from outside, she walked over and actually framed her form in the car doorway.

They were new sorts of creatures for her, like giant bipedal bugs with shiny chocolate-brown exoskeletons, feelers, and, as incongruously as the Alkazarians, some sort of uniform. Both also had nasty-looking rifles in their hands, and they were both pointed directly at her.

“Come down and tell your associates to come out as well,” the creature on the left instructed.

“I will come down, but I believe that if you wish the others, you will have to go up there and get them,” she told the pair. With that she began walking straight toward them.

“Halt! That is far enough!” the one on the right snapped, rifle up and primed.

She kept walking toward them.

They both fired at the same time, point-blank, at a range of two meters and using weapons that had a range of one kilometer.

Their claws kept clicking on the leverlike trigger but nothing happened. She walked right up to them, then between them and past them. Then she stopped, turned, and looked at them both along with the car.

“They can’t both be broken!” one of the creatures snapped. “Not at the same time!”

“If you will just walk away, this will be a closed incident,” she told them. “I have already forgiven you.”

“Like Hell I will!” one snapped, and whirled and ran right for her, close enough to touch her. Only it didn’t. It somehow veered to the left of her, stumbled and fell.

She looked down at the thing. “Such violence! 1 shall not permit it!”

The other one clung tightly to its malfunctioning weapon and stared at both her and its companion yet did not move. It was so confused that it didn’t realize there were now two Pyrons behind it, looking down on it, hoods flaring.

“Jirminins,” Har Shamish said disgustedly. “They won’t spook. They’ll just keep trying and trying until it kills them.”

As if to confirm this, the confused soldier still standing turned and with one motion tried to use the rifle as a club against the nearest Pyron.

Har Shamish’s huge mouth opened, came down on the hapless Jirminin and swallowed it whole. Jaysu was sickened by the sight, yet she knew that the diplomat had spoken the truth. She nodded and turned to the other, just now getting up.

“I am very sad when anything dies, particularly on my account,” she told her companions, “but better for food than for nothing.” In truth, it had been and might remain for a while a crisis of conscience for her, but it had all happened too fast for her to react.

While she was still in semi-shock, O’Leary was on the other soldier in a flash.

“Bleah!” Har Shamish said, making a strange and ugly face. It sounded as if he were going to throw up, but what he extracted with a tentacle to his mouth was the rifle he’d swallowed along with the creature.

He studied the rifle. “Tell me—is it broken, or will it work?”

“It will work, I suppose,” she answered. “But you know I have the same constraints on you as on them.”

“That’s all right. A weapon used in anger is one that failed its job. It’s the threat of it that counts.” He looked around and discovered they had been observed by a whole gallery of Alkazarians, both uniformed railway workers and some security personnel. He picked out the security officer with the highest evident rank and pointed with the rifle. “You!” he shouted menacingly. “Come here!”

The officer came, mumbling apologies and excuses with abandon.

“Oh, shut up!” Shamish snapped. “Nothing here goes on without the security police knowing and approving. And aliens with guns, too! Now, would you like to show your appreciation that you backed the wrong side in this matter, or would you rather I had dessert?”

The Alkazarian’s sharp intake of breath, and the eyes, which looked like somebody having a stroke, gave the answer.

Shamish used the rifle, whose panel said it was fully armed, as a pointer, much to the security officer’s terror. It was nice to put the little bastards on the other side of the fear barrier now and then!

“Now, some answers from you. How did those two Jirminins get here? Who allowed them here with weapons to engage in an act of war?”

“N-N-N-No, Your Excellency! You misunderstand! It was no act of war! They came across the border with their guns! Some took control of the station, then sent these others for you!”

“That’s crap and you know it!” O’Leary started in. “They couldn’t move around here without permission. The whole damned Alkazarian garrison in this area would have been on them with everything they had.” The serpent’s head came down to within centimeters of the security officer’s nose.

“Look, Excellencies! I’m not a high officer! I follow orders! My orders came from my commander, who received his orders from local governmental command! We do not question our orders! We didn’t even like this! Foreigners allowed to have weapons, to use them, within our country! But you must understand—if I am ordered, I must do it or it is I who will be eliminated and replaced by someone who will follow the orders!”

“He is telling the truth,” Jaysu told them. “He does not know anything else.”

Shamish’s head bobbed a moment, then he asked, “All right, then. These two weren’t alone. Who were the others? What did they look like, and where did they go?”

“I— Oh, my! I have a family! I am being watched even now!”

O’Leary had a sudden thought. “Jaysu, could you do for all the cameras around here what you did for the lights in the car?”

“I can try. It may give me a headache. There are a lot of them.”

She closed her eyes again, and almost immediately there was the sound of small explosions all around, like large light-bulbs bursting one by one. As each sounded, one of the small mounted cameras seemed to explode and fly apart.

She was right. There were a lot of cameras. O’Leary sympathized with her headache problem.

“All right, now we can talk and nobody can ever prove it,” Har Shamish said to the official. “The others—what did they look like?”

“One was a spider!” the terrified little creature almost squeaked. “A big, huge spider. The others were normal size, but very unlike anything we know here. Bent over, hairy, but in some ways like her.”

Jaysu realized that “normal size” to the officer was his size. “They had wings? And were covered with fur?”

“Yes, yes! That’s it!”

“Wally. Wally and his companions.”

“Figures,” O’Leary muttered. “So, what did they unload from the car in back?”

The little man was so terrified that it never occurred to him to ask how they could have known about any of this.

“Big crates. I don’t know what was in them. They were consigned here, to be transshipped to Quislon. They loaded them on a motorized cart and went away, south. The border is only about ten kilometers due south of here.”

“You have no idea what was in them?”

“No! I swear! They did not open them!”

O’Leary looked around. “Anything powered and reasonably fast available that we can take to the border? And I mean now! Before the army shows up to find out why they can’t see us?”

“There’s a small maintenance vehicle over there! Simple electric, fast. Take it, please!”

O’Leary went over to the other side of the platform and looked at the thing. It wasn’t a familiar design but looked straightforward enough. Basically a flat bed, no stakes, about three meters square, and a driver’s seat up front that was too small to be comfortable. The thing seemed to work by hitting a forward or reverse button and then steering with an oversized joystick.

“If this runs out of fuel before we reach the border, then you will wish you were executed,” he warned the security man. “Because, no matter the risk to me, if you’re betraying us again, you will discover what it is like to be eaten alive and slowly dissolved.”

The security officer stiffened, then fainted dead away.

Shamish and Jaysu walked over to the little cart and managed to get onto the back. There wasn’t much to hold onto except the guardrail separating the driver from the flat bed, but it would do.

“Think you can handle it?” the vice-consul asked the agent.

“I don’t think it’s a problem. All set?”

“Yes, as much as we can be.”

“All right, here goes!”

The front panel lit up, and he pushed the top of the two buttons and eased the joystick forward. The thing moved, slowly, out of the loading dock area and into the warehouses beyond. They could see the street on the other side, and were to it in a moment. Then, abruptly, they stopped.

“Something wrong?” Shamish asked him.

“Yeah. Which way is south?”

There wasn’t much sky to get a solar fix, and they couldn’t read the local signs. Worse, all of them abruptly realized that they’d never asked the little creature if this in fact was where they were supposed to be.

Had to be, they finally decided. Otherwise why would Wally have been here?

Har Shamish said, “To your right! See the hex marker?”

“Yes! Oh—I see! International border sign. How thoughtful!”

And they were off into the night, feeling all right, but knowing there were enemies in front of them and, almost certainly, Alkazarians heading toward them from the rear who would be no pushovers.

“It’s time to get out of this rotten, stinking place,” Har Shamish muttered, as much to himself as to Jaysu. “Besides, on top of everything else, it’s too cold!”

The rail head wasn’t much of a town, and they were soon out on a smooth, paved, but narrow road. If the hex sign and arrow could be believed, it would bring them to the hoped-for Quislon border.

Jaysu could hardly see in this darkness, but she looked back and also up worriedly. “Do you think they are actually pursuing us?”

“Not vigorously,” Shamish replied. “If they really wanted to catch us, they’d have air units here now harassing us and blocking our progress. That makes me think that the little bastard—pardon—will be all right. They all put their necks out to lay this trap for us at this end, and I suspect our friend Wally paid handsomely to allow it to happen here. The Alkazarian government certainly has been helping them, but they’re too nationalistic and too paranoid to bring it to this deliberately from the national level. They didn’t have to do it at all. No, our buddies up front bribed some local big shot who will now be far more concerned with covering his rear end than in coming down hard on anybody, even us. By the way— that was a slick trick and a lifesaver, what you did. Do you have any more powers we don’t know about?”

“I do not think that I have these powers, since I have not known of them until I needed them,” she answered. “Rather, I believe the divine is working through me.”

He sighed. “Suit yourself. But I sure wish we knew what dear old Wally got shipped all the way up here, so big and so bulky that he needed to import some soldiers with him to do heavy lifting.”

“Might they be some sort of terrible weapon? I do not think anything is beyond him if it is in his assignment. He is not evil in Mr. O’Leary’s sense, I do not think, but he is totally, absolutely, the most completely amoral individual I have ever encountered. Life to him is a game, and he plays it with great joy. He does not care who he works for, or who he hurts or helps, nor how many might be injured or killed, but he does not deliberately seek to do that, either. He lives life as a series of challenges, the more impossible the better. Right now, I believe he is having a great deal of fun.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be a weapon,” Har Shamish assured her. “At least not anything on the scale we’d think of if the challenge was in Alkazar, say. Quislon is a nontech hex, like your own. Nothing will work there that wouldn’t work in Ambora.” The great head shook slowly from side to side. “Big crates. What in the world would he be taking into a nontech hex that would be that huge or complex? And for what?”

“We know one thing, at least,” O’Leary called back from the driver’s seat. “We know he’s after the piece of the Gate, and we know the only time and place that he can reasonably get access to it. I’ve been there. Talk about impossible! If that spidery son of a bitch can pull this off there, with half the population of Quislon looking on, and us there expecting something at every turn, then maybe he deserves to get it!”

The road ended in a large circle with a great deal of room for parking. Inevitably, there was a substantial Customs station there as well, and it looked well-lit. O’Leary pulled over just short of getting into easy viewing range by the station and stopped the cart.

“Well, we might have known that,” he said. “So, what do we do from here? Walk?”

“They’re certain to have a major fence system along here, maybe with robotic sentinels,” Har Shamish said. “I think our best bet is just to ride up there, present our documents and demand to go through.”

O’Leary stared at him. “You’re kidding! They’ll have to know what we did back there, and these guys won’t be so loyal to the local government. You really think they’re just going to let us out?”

“I do. Or, at least, better we are trying as aliens to leave than to stay. I think they’ll be glad to be rid of us. If they know, if they’ve been notified, then we’ll have to deal with them some other way.”

“I say we just use the rifles and blast through,” the cop said, reaching down for his.

“I suspect they’d repel any weapons fire. No, I think we just go through and that’s that. These guns are no good once we cross the border anyway, so I say we just toss ’em.”

Jaysu looked out at the station only a half kilometer away. “I could fly over that thing,” she told them. “And over the border, too.”

“You probably could, but the question is, would their automated equipment target you and shoot you down if you tried? Or could it?” O’Leary was beginning to wonder about her powers.

“Possibly. Possibly not. I do not know. However, I agree with Har Shamish. Throw the rifles away. I do not believe that these ahead will be any different in kind or nature than the others. I simply will not permit them to act against us.”

O’Leary sighed. “I hate to do this, but…” He flung the rifle off into the night. After a moment, Har Shamish did the same. They were now effectively dependent on the priestess, but they had seen what she could do. O’Leary put the cart in drive and headed toward the station.

There was no point in driving through to Quislon, since the cart would be nothing more than a lump there. He parked it neatly in the parking area, and all three of them got out and walked toward the gate, which had all sorts of ominous-looking warnings none of them could read. It also had the universal hex symbol, though, and a twin cut through the bottom segment a bit to the west of center.

You are here, O’Leary thought. He hoped that it was indeed Quislon on the other side. With the hex boundary there and little starlight, what he could see through and across it could have been just about anywhere.

Neither of the Pyrons were too confident relying on Jaysu’s newfound powers, but they also didn’t think they had much choice. And if she was confident of them, then they had to go along, since she was the reason they were there.

She looked around at the complex before following them up to the passage through to the border, then caught up to the pair. “How does this power get out here?” she asked them.

Shamish looked around. “Broadcast is the most common method, but I don’t think these characters would use it. Too paranoid. Underground cable would be my best guess.”

She focused on it for a moment and saw it in her mind’s eye, coming down beside the road, a living snake of flame.

“Let us proceed,” she told them, keeping that flow in one corner of her mind.

The way was barred by a tall electrically operated gate. Beyond it was a tunnel of sorts, with fencing five meters high going down the suddenly primitive dirt road on both sides and even across a roof. A second gate was at the far end, thirty meters farther on, operated, it seemed, by the same set of controls.

The silver and black officer looked just like all the others, but more nervous. Still, he didn’t appear threatening, and Jaysu felt no direct danger to any of them from him. He did seem almost surprised to see them, though, as if he never would have thought they would try a legitimate exit.

“Papers?”

They handed them over, wondering just what his instructions were.

He looked at them, then at the papers, then back at them. “You are taking nothing with you that you did not bring into Alkazar?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” Har Shamish answered. “Our sole purpose was to reach Quislon.”

“Very well. You understand that these papers are not valid for reentry?”

“Mine most certainly is!” Shamish protested. “However, as it happens, I have decided to proceed home after this and so won’t be using them. Still, I am accredited as a diplomat to Alkazar.”

“To Kolznar Colony, not to the country proper,” the official responded. “However, as you say, it is moot.” He wrote something on his electric pad, then proceeded to remove several of the sheets from their papers that had been added when they’d entered, and handed the papers back. There was a buzzing sound, and the nearest gate slid back, revealing that last thirty meter gauntlet.

“Proceed,” the little bearlike creature said, and they walked through. The buzzing sound came again, and the gate closed behind them.

It was claustrophobic in the cagelike tunnel, walking in the reflected light.

“I was right,” Shamish commented. “One high fence, passive, then a killer fence in the middle. One more passive will be over here at the other gate.”

They reached the second gate, and waited for it to open. And waited. And waited…

“I have a bad feeling about this,” O’Leary muttered.

Jaysu did not know where the danger was coming from, but she felt it, and knew it was time to act. She took hold of that current of living energy she’d identified and kept track of and mentally pushed against it.

There was a tremendous crackling sound, and sizzling, as if things were frying, and then all the lights went out and they were totally in the dark, including her. In fact, she was now completely blind in the conventional sense, but she could still “see” her companions in other ways, and the sudden panicking little creatures in the building behind them.

The two Pyron weren’t blind at all. “Quick! Can you force the gate?” Shamish called to O’Leary.

“I—I think so,” the agent grunted, pushing hard against it and rattling it.

Shamish came up and added his considerable weight and strength to it, and they started pounding against it.

The gate began to buckle, and then, with one mighty coordinated push, they got it partly bent outward.

“There’s enough room to squeeze through!” O’Leary cried. “Come on, ma’am! Try and get through!”

“I cannot see!” she protested. “I can only see the living!”

She felt around, using their tentacles for guidance, and managed to find the hole, but squeezing through it with her wings proved difficult. Finally, she felt herself being pushed to the ground, and while one of the Pyrons pushed against the gate, the other pushed against her feet.

There were a lot of feathers left around, but now O’Leary managed to squeeze through the bent corner of the gate and was able to help Shamish through. Getting up, they helped the Amboran to her feet and made for the border, just a meter or two away.

She felt a pain, like burning, on one wing, but only wanted out of that horrible place and she went forward.

The temperature immediately changed. It was warmer, yet the air was much dryer, a desertlike feeling to it, and overhead, quite suddenly, the sky was clear and well-lit.

“You can fly all you want to now, if you can,” Shamish told her. “You’re in Quislon.”

She looked back, shaken, at the blackness she’d caused beyond the border. “That is an evil place, if you wish to define evil, Citizen O’Leary,” she commented.

“I think it is, but it still can’t hold a candle to some. I wonder what the devil they were going to do with us once they had us trapped?”

“The energy—the power in the wires? Citizen Shamish called it a killer fence, the one in the middle? That same energy was also all around the cage. They were going to connect it so it would run through the cage as well. I could see them doing it.”

O’Leary burned with anger. “Those bastards were going to electrocute us?”

She sighed. “I could not, of course, permit that to happen. When the one inside threw the switch, and the power started toward us, I simply, well, threw it back…”

“Thus shorting out the security fencing, the station, and maybe if we’re lucky, the town and the train yard as well.” O’Leary sighed. “Well, at least that’s that. None of us will have to go back there again, and if you, Shamish, want to go back to Kolznar by ship, you can make them most uncomfortable.”

“I think my vice-consular days there are past,” the diplomat commented sourly. “I think I’ll pick a different assignment next. But come! This is a desert, and we have a very long way yet to go.”

Jaysu shook her head. “No, I must rest, and nearby,” she told them. “I cannot see properly to do much in this place, and I need to meditate and sleep and allow my body to repair itself.”

“It’s two hundred kilometers to Quislon Center,” O’Leary reminded her. “And the desert sun here is very, very hot.”

“Then why don’t you go on?” she suggested. “You can make your best time now, even this late. In the morning I shall catch up to you. It is basically south, then I will feel the tug of the Gate and head for it. They have a Gate in the middle of the hex, do they not?”

“Yes, that’s the system for all of them,” Shamish agreed. “But see here, it’s our job to accompany you!”

O’Leary sighed. “She’s got a point, you know. She can fly now, maybe even make the whole distance in a day, two at most. We’ll be six days reaching Quislon Center.”

“But we’re bodyguards as well!”

O’Leary chuckled. “Yeah? And who’s been saving who tonight? I think the little lady can take care of herself. Besides, I’d like to know just what the heck is in those crates, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

O’Leary looked out on the desolate landscape and pointed with a tentacle to marks in the hard ground. “Well, whatever it was went that way.”

There was no way around it. They had gotten her this far, but now their own purposes were different, even if both were in the interest of fulfilling the mission.

“But we’re going to make that ceremony,” Har Shamish said in resignation.

“If we can’t catch up to them or figure out what they’re hauling, you bet we are,” O’Leary responded. “I sure want to see how the hell he’s going to pull it off.”