Echoes of the Well of Souls

Armowak, Ambreza-Flotish Border

Nathan Brazil had to admit to himself that the Well World was probably the one place in all creation where a good-looking human woman could play Lady Godiva and not fear anything more than if she was overdressed.

He really wasn’t quite certain just what to do with the girl. Clearly she wanted to come along, but she wasn’t an asset on a long trip as she was. It was as if she’d been reborn as a water creature who couldn’t really communicate or travel any distance over land.

Still, he wasn’t sure how to ditch her, either. She certainly had a mind of her own.

She also had something of an appetite. Any time they stopped during their journey, she’d find something edible around and down it. Like nearly all the Glathrielians he’d seen, she was chubby but not fat and apparently in excellent condition. He wondered if she wouldn’t start putting on weight if she kept eating like that, but it was a moot point. Things she could eat that were so readily available would be few and far between in many of the hexes he’d have to travel, including Flotish itself, considering that the hex was part of the Gulf of Zinjin and was in fact salt water to near ocean depths.

He was nonetheless still fascinated by her and loath to cast her out. She should not have become a Glathrielian. And since she had, she shouldn’t have retained what was obviously her natural coloration and features. The Well had changed her in many ways, including taking who knew how many years off her age, but the one thing it clearly had not done was change her genetic code.

He wished he could just know her name. He wasn’t sure Glathrielians even used names anymore, but she had one, and no amount of blocking or rewiring of some brain functions would keep her from knowing it. The problem was in finding some way for her to tell it to him.

It was not a problem he could solve on the back of a horse, though, not with her on another horse.

That, too, was a wonder. He’d gotten the impression that the Glathrielians wouldn’t even use a live animal, yet she’d picked her horse, gotten on, and now rode quite comfortably. Another mystery. When they were making speed, she’d go forward and hang on somehow up against the horse’s neck, but she never kicked it to start, never seemed to guide it at all. The horse, though, did just what it was supposed to do every time. Sometimes he thought that the two moved so naturally and effortlessly together that it was as if somehow she and the horse were one.

Terry herself had no more answers beyond her old name, which indeed she did remember, although it was sometimes confusing because of the otherwise nonverbal processes now operating in her mind. Sometimes it seemed like it was Terry; other times, Teysi. She knew that there had been a lot more to the name than either of those once, but those were the defining words she retained.

As for the horse, she was discovering talents she didn’t know she had as she went along. She had gone out back, had realized he was going to ride, and had simply touched a number of horses until one of the animals “clicked” with her in a way she could not explain. When one had and she had mounted it, all she’d had to do was relax and put everything out of her mind except that horse. As Brazil had imagined without believing, she’d become one with it, so that the two bodies, while in physical contact with one another, actually did become as one, operating as easily as one operated one’s arms, legs, and head. Whenever she dismounted and contact was broken, it was as if she’d lost something of herself. The size and power of the animal were exhilarating. Still, she hadn’t the vaguest idea how she did it.

At a stop to get something to eat and drink and give the horses time to do the same, he decided to try another experiment. If that first Glathrielian girl had reacted to him as if he had the plague, how would this one react?

He walked over to her, and she watched him come and stand right in front of her. He smiled, and she returned the smile. They were both almost exactly the same height, his computer-designed leather boots raising him just a bit, but only to match the added height of her thick black hair. Then, casually, he reached out and took her hands in his.

The initial contact was a shock, and the tumble of information that came through was incredibly confusing to her. There was a kindness in him that she found true, almost noble, and still the element of a little boy inside somewhere, either deep down or up front in the bravado that masked his deeper self.

There was also a sadness there, an incredible, deep, painful emptiness that was almost too much to bear. She grieved for anyone who could have that much sorrow within him, yet she admired him, too, for the strength to be able to carry it. It masked, even overwhelmed, the tremendous contradictions she could sense but not grab hold of inside of him.

And yet, deep down, there was something else, something hidden very deep, yet something he was aware of. It was so concealed, so cleverly masked with layer upon layer of pure humanity that it could not be directly seen, only glimpsed ever so briefly, like something seen only in the extreme corner of the eye. That was the heart of the confusion about him. There seemed to be two of him, two totally different creatures so alien to one another that the other would not come in, would not focus. Yet the man she could see, the man of sorrows, was not a mask, not a facade, but one and the same with what was hidden. It made no sense at all.

They had warned her, warned her that something lurked there that she did not want to see and should not and that only the man should be considered. She backed away from it, sensing somehow that what lay hidden was no more dangerous than the man and no less, being one and the same, but that it was somehow beyond her comprehension or ability to cope.

He liked her. That made her feel very good indeed, because she liked him and she wasn’t certain how she was coming across. He wasn’t a particularly handsome man, but he had a tough appearance, and his well-worn face echoed his inner strength and long experience. Even in her past life, she knew that if they’d met, she would have been attracted to him. The fact that she now could see so much of him yet not reach the central mystery of him fascinated her and made him all the more interesting. Sensing that he would never take advantage of her, she felt that at some point she might well be tempted to take advantage of him.

There was little or no sensation or information going in Brazil’s direction, but he did somehow sense both her trust and her attraction to him, whether by some sixth sense or perhaps just from long experience. He did not consider it unusual, since, after all, if he were stuck in her current situation and found just one other human being who knew who and what she was or had been and where she’d come from, he’d probably react the same way. He had no sense that she had learned so much about him, but he had noticed an odd, almost electrical tingling when he’d touched her that was as mysterious as the rest of her. If he didn’t know better, he told himself, he’d swear that she was somehow generating a weak force field of some kind from within herself.

There was still a lot of the old Terry in her, and she found herself getting turned on by the experience. That, right now, would never do, so she gave him a quick kiss and a big smile and broke the contact.

Well, at least she didn’t run away screaming,he thought, although, truth be told, that was the general idea. Whatever the first girl had seen, this one either hadn’t seen it or wasn’t upset about it.

The fact was, he had mixed emotions about the result. On the one hand, to have gotten rid of her would have been in both their best interests; on the other, he had to admit that he liked her spunk and liked having somebody around who, however silent, didn’t look or smell like a giant beaver.

Still, how could he take her along? Once she was on that ship and out to sea, there wouldn’t be any way out for her.

It was almost nightfall by the time they intersected the main road, but by that time the city lights were in view ahead. Coming over the last rise, Armowak was spread before them, and beyond lay the great blackness of the sea.

For Terry, the scene was both pretty and scary. Old reflexes, old inner tensions from her past life resurfaced at the sight of a modern city, and for the first time it really hit home that she was about to be plunged back into modern civilization as a naked savage. Still, there was a certain confidence in that thought, and the kinds of things she’d been raised to fear in such places now had no hold on her. If she had nothing, it could not be stolen, and she doubted that giant beavers and most of whatever else lived in this world had much interest in her body.

Although traffic wasn’t heavy, there were a number of the small personal cars going to and from the city at pretty good speeds, and their Ambrezan drivers seemed oblivious to anything on either side of them. A number of larger vehicles, including tandems and triples, passed as well, showing the importance of the port. She and Brazil kept to the side, well away from the road, and barely drew a glance from any passersby.

Armowak was Ambreza’s western gateway to the rest of the world. Into it came the imports from other hexes that allowed a measure of variety in Ambrezan markets, products of perhaps hundreds of races. From it went the principal export, tobacco, both processed and “raw,” as well as manufactured items for various trading partners from the computer-controlled and robot-driven factories of the interior. It was a busy, bustling place, a major seaport where great ships called constantly and where many of the races of the Well World mixed in a rare amalgam of shapes, forms, and languages. Here, too, one could buy almost anything with enough money, and here, too, one could lose everything if not careful.

The suburban areas were fairly quiet but well lit; the streets were mostly narrow, except the main highway, and made for pedestrian traffic only, since there was an extensive system of underground moving walkways and transit vehicles to move people quickly around the city. The layout and design of the city were exotic to Terry’s eyes and definitely had an alien cast, yet were basically familiar and logical.

The old city area was along the docks. The port itself ran for a couple of miles, or so it seemed, with large piers, massive warehouses, brick and cobblestone streets, and broad silver-gray strips that proved to be much the same as the railroad tracks used by futuristic vehicles moving freight and supplies to and from the port area.

The services area of the port ran from the opposite side of the main north-south docks for about three blocks before a row of older, seedier-looking office buildings drew a line of demarcation between the actual port and the rest of the city.

There were a few larger ships in, although most of what was there seemed to be coastal steamers, tuglike boats, and even a few of what looked like fishing trawlers. What was fascinating was the odd juxtaposition of technologies between the ships and the shore services: the latter were very modern with magnetic trains and robotic longshoremen, and the ships often had smokestacks and, on the larger ones, two or even three tall sailing masts as well. It was as if ships of the American Civil War era were tying up and being serviced at some twenty-first-century port.

Nathan Brazil was familiar with the design and the reasons behind it. He was impressed to see that some of the ships weren’t wood anymore but were metal-plated or, in a few cases, seemed to be made out of wholly artificial new plasticlike substances. Their odd nature, though, remained out of necessity; literally just a few meters outside the harbor entrance, visible by day but hidden in the night and city lights, was another hex boundary. Beyond it, where these ships had to sail, a different technology level was imposed. Flotish was a semitech hex; mere steam or sail power could be used but nothing electrical worked. Batteries would not hold charges, generators and alternators might truly give off energy, but it could not be controlled and dissipated just about as fast as it was made. Even powerful broadcast signals from a high-tech hex like Ambreza would fade quickly once they passed that boundary, no matter how strong the source. Running an internal combustion engine large enough to be useful would result in the most beautiful and rapid burning up of an engine anybody had ever seen.

Beyond were a few hexes that restricted all technology except direct mechanical devices. There great steam boilers would virtually explode, making it impossible to power any device, ships included. To travel those distances one had to use the most ancient of methods, the wind in the sail.

That also meant that each ship had to carry a highly trained crew expert in both steam and sail and willing to live for long periods aboard ship. Such crews were highly paid and highly prized, and they acted like it. Ship’s law was the only law they respected, and the companies tended to pay for or gloss over any excesses in port. They also tended to be from a great many races, and here, at this port, Terry began to get a sampling of just what other sorts of creatures this world contained.

Two large scorpionlike creatures moved down a side street to her left, startling her. They looked huge, mean, and menacing. Elsewhere were several man-sized bipeds wearing clothes that looked like they were out of some Renaissance movie epic, but they more resembled Sylvester the Cat, with their expressive, almost comical feline faces and fur and large fluffy tails. And there was a creature that looked half woman and half vulture, with a pretty face and mean killer’s eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. Like the Ambreza, most embodied some aspects of creatures she knew or at least knew about, but the association with familiar Earth creatures was merely a way of cataloging them so that her mind could deal with what she was seeing. The reference points were far from exact, but they were the only way she could cope with the many alien beings she encountered.

Some, however, were beyond easy mental cataloging. Creatures with mottled, leathery dark green skin that went along at a fast clip on what seemed to be hundreds of spindly legs and whose entire bodies seemed to open into rows of sharp, pointy teeth; wrinkled, slow-moving dark gray masses that could only be thought of as hippos without apparent bones; squidlike monstrosities whose tails seemed topped with giant sunflowers. There were so many, and they were so bizarre both individually and collectively that she could only look at one and then another and hope nobody noticed her staring.

But this was no freak show or chamber of horrors; these were people, people of ancient races, races as established as her own, from their own hex-shaped countries. She had to always remember that.

Brazil pulled up in front of a lighted office and dismounted, tying his horse loosely to what he knew was a fireplug. Terry wasn’t sure what to do. Her impulse was to remain outside, but she had no idea what this place was or how long Brazil might be. After a moment she got down and followed him into the office.

Almost immediately she felt a sense of claustrophobia, of being hemmed in, of the walls and ceiling maybe closing in on her. She repressed it as best she could and managed to stay with him, but she didn’t like the feeling.

The creature behind a counter was a large, irregular lump maybe only a bit taller than their own height that seemed to be an animated mass of tiny red and green feathers from behind which, much farther down than would be expected, two huge, round yellow eyes looked back at them.

“Yes?” the creature asked Brazil pleasantly, barely giving Terry a glance.

“Are there any ships in now outbound to Agon or Clopta or anywhere else semitech or above in the northwest?” Brazil asked it.

“Nothing direct,” the creature replied. “The Setting Sun down at Pier 69 may be your best bet. It stops at Kalibu, Hakazit, Tuirith, and Krysmilar. You might be able to change, particularly at Hakazit, since there’s a lot of cross-channel stuff out of there.”

“Nothing else coming in that might be more direct?”

“Sorry. Not until sometime next month, and that won’t give you any time advantage. The only other possibility for Agon is something like the Northern Winds leaving in two days for Parmiter, but your chances of a westbound connection from there are slim to none, and you’d have to walk overland.”

“Yeah, well, that would be a solution if Agon were my final destination, but it’s not. I’ll have enough overland without starting that early. When does Setting Sun sail?”

“Let me see…” The huge eyes dropped down to look at something below the counter. “They’re still finishing offloading, and they have a lot to get on. They’re scheduled for high tide… the day after tomorrow. About nine in the morning local time.”

“That sounds reasonable. I need to book passage on that sailing to Hakazit if it’s available, with a cabin if possible.”

“Yes, sir. For two?”

He turned and looked at Terry, who was showing her discomfort and staring around the office with a queasy look. Still, she was here.

“Yes,” he sighed. “Might as well. What’s the weather supposed to be en route?”

“Possible storms in west Ronbonz, otherwise choppy but not uncomfortable. The winds, however, are unpredictable in this crossing, particularly in storms.”

“I’ll still take it. You have anything on the basics of Hakazit or a general hex guide? I want to see if it’s feasible to book the horses on as well.”

“Animals are not guaranteed in shipment,” the strange clerk warned him. “There is a bookshop on Vremzy Street, two blocks in and one left. It’s closed by now, but it will be open all day tomorrow. You can get what you need there. Outfitters and suppliers are along that street as well. We can probably add two animals with no problem if you come back here by nine or ten tomorrow night with your prepaid ticket. In the meantime they can be quartered at the livestock area, Warehouse 29 just along this street. Now, I’ll need to know your native hex so that sufficient edible provisions can be laid on for you and the cabin prepared properly.”

Nathan Brazil grinned. “Glathrielian.”

Those huge eyes seemed to double in size. “You are joking, of course.”

“No, I’m not. We came through the Well from offworld, and that’s what we are. It won’t be hard even if your guide doesn’t list us. I’ll give you a half dozen or more races we’re compatible with.”

“Very well. So you’re what Glathrielians look like.”

“You work here and you’ve never seen any?”

“I’m actually the purser on the Honza Queen. When we’re in port, we take the late shifts in the company offices. There isn’t much here to interest me, anyway.”

The fare was not cheap, but it was reasonable, and Brazil felt certain he could more than afford this leg. There would be other times when things would be a lot harder.

Besides, it might be interesting to see how hard the ship’s crew and other passengers might gamble.

Finally, Brazil asked, “Is there any outdoor area nearby where we might be able to camp? I suspect that any hotels in this area won’t be set up for us, and I have my own food.” There usually were such places around ports, particularly because most of them naturally provided only for the races that were the most common visitors. The Gulf of Zinjin was an arm of the Well World’s greatest ocean, and there were far too many possible visitors to economically provide for them all, and particularly not Glathrielians.

“Far northern end, past the last pier,” the clerk informed him. “Rather nice, although a bit chilly some nights for hairless types. A number of small merchants have local stalls up there from dawn to dusk, too, if you can tolerate the local food.”

“Some of it. Well, it sounds fine to me. Any permits required?”

“Not at the port one. All others, you’d need to report to the police first.”

The clerk made a series of entries with two huge, clawed hands that extended from under the feathers, and the computer spit out very neat-looking ticket books. Brazil thanked him, put the tickets away, and went back outside, with Terry following. Just walking back out in the air seemed to lift an enormous burden from her, but she still felt a little shaken and a little sick from the experience. Being enclosed was going to be very, very rough on her indeed, she knew. Brazil decided to take the horses with them rather than pay to have them quartered at the warehouse. The odds of their being in the way at the park were more than outweighed by the possibilities of selling them to the locals there if transporting them proved to be a problem, and it might. Hakazit and Agon were also high-tech hexes, and any layover in the former would just leave him with even more ravenous mouths to feed, not to mention the problem of horse droppings, which many places, and particularly high-tech places, tended to frown on.

The park wasn’t much, just a large area that apparently had been part of a much earlier port and settlement, long abandoned. They’d planted some trees, as much to keep erosion down as for shelter, and it fronted right on the Gulf, with a small jetty leading out to guide lights warning off any incoming ships.

If anyone else was using the park right now, he couldn’t see them, although with some clouds and only a few electric streetlights he might well have missed them. Still, there was a nice ocean smell coming in on the breeze and the quiet sound of waves lapping at the old pylons.

He picked a spot just inside the trees and set up the small tent and the camping outfit as he had in Glathriel. Thanks to the brevity of his trip, he still had a five-day supply of food and gas canisters, and there was a very nice if somewhat elaborate fountain in the middle of the park that, thankfully, had fresh water.

Terry used her new night sense to survey the area and found virtually nothing edible in and around the park. She knew she could wander farther afield, but this was a large and strange city and was unlikely to have any real groves close by. Here one didn’t pick one’s food, one bought it.

Thus, when Brazil opened up his food supplies and gestured an offer to share, she had no choice but to accept, although she made it clear with hand signals that it was not to be cooked. Something of an amateur gourmet who fancied herself a very good cook, she now found the thought of cooked food thoroughly repulsive.

Brazil did not compromise his own preferences for hers but did find a perverse fascination in watching her eat. Knowing that she must have been a civilized, modern woman, he was fascinated to see her take an open container of preserved fruit, for example, and just scoop it out with her fingers. He was even more surprised when she took and ate the beef he had, both ground and in small filets, also raw. He remembered then the Ambrezan foreman telling him that Glathrielians would eat meat, but only if it was already dead.

Terry, too, was surprised both at her appetite and at the fact that the meat tasted exceptionally good right out of the container. Until now she’d always liked her meat cooked through, and with sauces and all the trimmings if available. While he packed up and saw to the horses, she went to the fountain and then to relieve herself, and when she got back, he was getting ready to turn in. It had been a long, tiring day, and both keenly felt it.

A very chilly sea breeze was developing, and he was concerned for her. He offered her a spot in his tent, limited as it was, or his sleeping bag, but she declined both with a smile. Then she gave him a little hug and a kiss and went off.

Again he’d noticed that odd, almost static electricity feeling when they’d touched, but now he noticed another thing as well.

She’d been warm to the touch, with no sign at all of the chill he felt on his face and hands. As warm as summertime.

Terry didn’t notice this because she really didn’t feel it. The field around her that she could see, generated somehow by her own body, acted as insulator and even life support system in some odd way. She felt warm and comfortable, and she picked a tree almost over Brazil’s tent and scampered up it, then found a comfortable notch and settled in for the night.

Terry awoke the next morning feeling nauseous, and for a moment she was afraid it was the food. Something inside her, though, told her that it wasn’t, that it would pass, and she trusted her instincts as usual and they proved correct. She still felt a little queasy when Brazil finally got up and found her there waiting for him, but she didn’t let on that anything was wrong, and after getting something to eat, the feeling gradually vanished.

Brazil bought breakfast from the promised local merchants, who set up small booths along the waterfront area of the park selling homegrown produce and other things. He discovered that Terry would eat bread, the first cooked item he had seen her accept, but not eggs. In point of fact, she ate two whole home-baked loaves of bread and two large melons, and Brazil began to wonder if he could literally afford to take her with that kind of appetite.

He walked back into the port district; he’d already made a decision that the horses would be far too much of a burden until they were needed to be worth the cost and had opened some discussions with a stall merchant who kept a couple of horses at his place outside the city. Terry followed him through the now-bustling area, and her head began to reel with the number of races and weird sounds and smells that made the whole place come alive. She had already figured, though, that he was leaving by ship, and she no longer felt compelled to enter the buildings he entered.

So many sounds, so many races… how did they understand each other? She found the whole thing bewildering. The Glathrielians whose lives she’d shared had not prepared her for this.

Occasionally one or another of the creatures would say something to her, but she was always able to convey by some gesture or expression that she did not understand them. Still, she did feel the irony of being naked and exposed in a strange city and yearned for a dark alleyway. Once a particularly smelly and repulsive-looking reptilian creature had actually touched her, and she’d reacted instantly with a nearly panicky mental push that said “Go away!” And the creature had frozen, looked puzzled for a moment, then seemed to lose all interest in her and actually had gone away!

Could she really do that, or was it a coincidence? One of these times she’d find out.

Brazil emerged from the bookshop with something of what he needed. He had been surprised to find, in the first few weeks after landing in Ambreza, that he was able to figure out the written language almost as if it were something he’d forgotten rather than something he’d never known. It was a little cumbersome and not all of it read just right, but what he needed to read he had little problem figuring out.

The map was the most important thing. When he had the time, he intended to annotate it in Latin, the “stock” Earth language he’d found the most useful over the long haul, so he wouldn’t have to keep looking up and remembering this term or that and figuring out things word by word and sentence by sentence. There was a sort of common written language here, one used for interhex trade and commerce—the ticket was in it—but he found it less familiar and less useful than Ambrezan.

Of course, he knew what had happened. He was remembering ancient Ambrezan, which had evolved greatly over the millennia since his last time here, and the common language he’d known had been entirely replaced, perhaps many times.

He then stopped at the ministry of commerce offices to call in to the capital, report something on his slight observations on Glathrielians—mostly to omit any of the oddities and report a very primitive life-style of no threat or consequence to the Ambrezans—and get what information he could on Mavra’s group.

There was some information, but it was incomplete and not guaranteed. Of the two men and two women who came in, one was reported in Erdom, as he’d surmised, another was in Zebede, which did surprise him, a third was in Dahir, and a fourth, clearly Mavra, had shown up in Glathriel, as he already knew.

“But who’s this other Glathrielian female I have with me?” he asked them. “If she didn’t come in with me, and she didn’t, since I know where mine are, and she didn’t come in with them, she must have come in either alone or with another group.”

“The only group we have other than yours and the larger party is two males about three weeks after you arrived. One of those is a Leeming, and the other—that’s odd—also an Erdomite.”

“Well, then, who is this girl?”

“You’re sure she’s not a native putting you on?”

He sighed. “Natives do not look like her. I know you might not be able to tell them apart, but I sure can. And natives don’t draw maps of televisions and cameras and North America on Earth.”

“Well, we have no reports of anybody coming through except those we told you about. Sorry. They are quite upset with this at Zone Security, you know. There’s an investigation to find out just how this happened. Right now the only plausible theory is that she came in just after one of your groups, probably the larger one, and somehow snuck by security and went directly through the gate without being noticed. How that’s possible nobody can say.”

Nathan Brazil sighed and muttered, “Television reporters,” in a disgusted tone. “All right, thank you. I’ll be off now, and it’s unlikely although not impossible that I’ll be back. I thank you for all your help.”

“Not a big problem,” the comm tech told him. “However, I was told to inform you if you were heard from again that if you do return, you must proceed immediately to Glathriel and remain there. If you are picked up here again, you will be immediately transported there. You must make somebody nervous.”

Damned paranoids,he thought, but he acknowledged the transmission and switched out.

The truth was, he’d like to do that at some point. Move into Glathriel and live there, “go native,” as it were, if he could stand it, and uncover the real mysteries of the place. Now, however, wasn’t the time.

Still, after seeing what was wrong with the Well, he seriously considered remaining this time, at least for a while. He wasn’t really sure why he hadn’t done so before, although, of course, the last time had been pretty dicey and leaving had been the only practical choice.

Hell, he could change his looks in there, even his race and sex, if he wanted to. He couldn’t figure out why he’d never done it. Too much the uncomfortable god, he decided. Maybe this time would be different. Or maybe he should just try the current Glathrielian matrix and see just what the hell was going on inside those people. That was if this girl made it up there with him and couldn’t tell him what he needed to know after removing her speech and language block.

They headed back up to the park with a detour past the ship they were going to take. It was a big one, larger than any he’d remembered from his still admittedly spotty recollections. Three-masted, made of superior fitted wood covered with some kind of synthetic laminate that protected and sealed it, two stacks, three decks above the main deck. Yeah, it looked like it could take an ocean, all right, and keep everybody comfortable and dry while doing it. It even had all sorts of smaller, exotic-looking masts atop the wheelhouse, indicating that if the hex allowed, it could use almost any technology known to Well World science.

It flew the Suffok flag, which meant it was a long way from home. He wished it were going home; it would make things very easy indeed, since that hex was virtually on the equator, but he suspected that it rarely went up that far. Considering that such a ship could not lie idle for long, he suspected that its profits, more than its hull, went to its home port in any given year.

Terry stared at the ship with a mixture of awe, wonder, puzzlement, and a little fear. The puzzlement was of course because she had no idea how the Well World worked or that there were nontech, semitech, and high-tech hexes, and thus its combination of features from every type of ship she’d ever known, and some she’d never thought of, seemed bizarre. Fear because even in normal times she’d never been that great on ships, and she really didn’t know if her claustrophobia could stand it long on that thing. She knew, though, that something that big and that grand didn’t make small voyages.

They continued walking back up the street to the park. By now it was late in the day and the merchants were mostly packing up, but Brazil was able to spot the one he’d spoken to about the horses, and now he figured he’d close whatever deal he could get. He’d paid a lot; now the Ambrezan, sensing Brazil was in something of a time squeeze, offered only half.

They haggled and argued and finally settled on a hundred plus as much of the unsold produce as Brazil and Terry could carry back to their nearby campsite. Brazil made out a bill of sale on some glorified butcher paper and signed and dated it, and the merchant took it and nodded.

Brazil had to admit to himself that he took far more of the produce than he could possibly consume, but he felt a little gypped by the guy and wanted to cost him as much as possible. Terry, however, once she got the idea, did even better.

Both of them ate until they were stuffed, understanding that little of it would keep, but after he watched Terry put away so much of it, he wondered if there were going to be leftovers, after all.

Finally, they cleaned up as best they could and found themselves again virtually alone in the park after dark. The sky had cleared, and the glow from the massive stellar display was almost like a full moon on Earth. It was one sight that neither he nor Terry ever tired of; those who were born under it and took it for granted rarely even looked up.

Terry felt oddly nervous about the coming day. For one thing, she had no idea if she’d have to sneak or bully her way onto that big ship to stay with him or whether he’d added her to the fare. For another, cut off from Earth, from her friends, and from Glathriel, she felt particularly lonely and insecure, and Brazil was the only one around she had to lean on.

He’d considered turning in early to insure having enough time to get the gear packed and board the ship, but he felt too wide awake, and there was that wonderful sky and the water. He finally decided that he’d take a walk and appreciate the scene. Acutely aware of her insecurity, Terry went with him, taking his hand as they walked along the ancient seawall where once great ships had called in some distant age. After a while they sat together on the seawall and looked out at the sky, the inner harbor lights, and the darkness beyond. To Terry, this moment was wonderful; she wanted it to continue.

She closed her eyes and allowed the night sense to come in, the scene took on a far different look. It wasn’t dark anymore; instead, it was rippling, and within it she saw thousands of pale green shapes, many tiny, some very large.

and, here and there, large shapes of an indigo color she’d never seen before. What were they? Some monsters of the deep, like whales, swimming yet breathing air? Or did intelligent races live even in the water here? Were they more creatures of some kind, creatures who had some sort of different civilization out there in the sea?

The concept, combined with the sky, made her feel even tinier and more lost and insecure, and her fear that Brazil might leave her grew. How could she follow him through that?

Without even realizing that she was doing it, she squeezed his hand and sent, Love me! Don’t ever leave me! The white aura, particularly strong after all she had eaten, rushed from her and to him, and a bright white series of impulses traveled from her up his arm and into his head and seemed to explode there, then fade, although not entirely.

They hadn’t invented a number high enough to count the women Nathan Brazil had known in his life, and he’d spent millennia trying to never form an attachment or any real feeling for any short-lifer because of the inevitable heartbreak. It was always a battle, though, particularly because of his own intense loneliness. Somehow, though, right there, right then, with this mystery woman he could neither talk to nor understand, he lost the battle and the will to fight it at all. Suddenly, without even thinking, he drew her to him, and he kissed her, and suddenly the pent-up emotions held back for so many countless years overwhelmed him.

She had been both surprised and pleased when he’d embraced her and started to kiss her in a way far more than friendly, since that was just what she wanted and needed then, but with the kiss came a sudden massive surge of deep, blinding white from him into her. The closest she might have come to describing the feeling rushing inward, had she been capable of analyzing it or even cared to, was that it seemed as if her whole brain had been fried in a massive wave of pleasure and desire.

By the time they’d finished, under that magnificent sky, on the grass, near the ancient seawall, and were just lying there side by side, holding hands and looking up, she was incapable of even wondering if what she’d tried had backfired. She only knew that she’d never felt like this before, not ever, and that she could never bear to lose him or live without him. She was, even in the Glathrielian energy sense, linked to him now for life.

Brazil, too old, too wise, too strong, was unaware of the cause of what had happened but was nonetheless affected by it. Iswore when Mavra left that I would never allow myself to do this again, he thought. But I guess I made myself a little too human, after all. So, here I am, feeling totally illogical, in love with somebody whose name I don’t know, whose background I don’t know, and who I can’t even talk to. Maybe after all this time I really have gone nuts.

But he didn’t want to reject it, even though he knew deep down he could purge it if he truly worked at it. He’d felt the same intensity of feeling from her, and for now maybe that was enough. He felt the odd linkage, as if something tangible actually connected the two of them like some umbilical cord, but he dismissed it as just too many years of holding in his emotions.

Finally, he got up and pulled her to her feet, and they walked back toward the camp, still in an emotional high.

The fact that a feeling of impending danger cut through the high was all the more dramatic. They both sensed it at the same time and moved over away from the campsite toward the darkest area of trees. They separated, but the link established between them did not weaken or falter. It was as if they could read each other’s emotions, though not thoughts, and immediately accept and act on them. There was something out there, something not friendly, and it was waiting for them.

She separated from him and immediately tried her night sense. What had been invisible before now came in very, very clear. There were two creatures; one, larger than the other, holding some sort of instrument, was hiding behind a tree just down the path to the fountain, with a clear view of the tent; the other was in the trees, silent, still, waiting for them.

At the same moment Terry saw them with the night sight, Nathan Brazil suddenly knew exactly where both of the lurkers were. He didn’t wait to wonder how he knew; he sensed that the girl was going for the one in the trees, so his target was the bastard down the trail.

Great!he thought sourly. What the hell am I going to do? Hit him with my guidebook? Anything he could possibly use as a weapon was back in the camp. Or was it?

He suddenly realized that he was carrying his clothes, not wearing them, and he fumbled in the pants pockets to see what he had. The map and book, safety matches, and… one of the spare little gas canisters he used for the camp stove. He couldn’t remember putting it there and wondered if it was full or empty. There was no time to check; he’d have to trust to those little twists of fate that always got him out of nasty situations and hope this wasn’t one of those times when he was going to wake up in a hospital.

Dropping everything but the canister, which lit much like a common cigar lighter, he silently made his way around through the trees, giving the ambusher a wide berth. Thanking fate that these two hadn’t discovered them up by the seawall, he began to close in on his quarry from the fountain side.

He could see the lurker now. Humanoid, maybe a meter and a half tall, covered with brown fur or feathers, and, most important of all, holding a mean-looking rifle of no local manufacture with what must have been a sniper’s scope on it. With the experience of countless lifetimes, Brazil approached the creature in absolute silence, slowly, slowly closing in, ready to pounce if the sniper suddenly noticed him.

Now he was practically standing next to the sniper, at the same tree. Carefully, silently, he turned the little gas jet on and prayed that the flint and wheel wouldn’t screw him up.

The sniper suddenly straightened up a bit in puzzlement, then sniffed the air. Brazil lit the canister and shoved it at him. A huge sheet of flame roared out and caught the fur, and the creature roared in pain and turned, giving Brazil a look at one of the meanest-looking faces he’d ever seen.

As the creature straightened up, Brazil dropped the canister and leapt at it, grabbing the rifle and then dropping, rolling, and coming back up with it pointed back at the assassin in one fluid motion.

The creature banged its back against the tree and put out the fire but then glared down the barrel of his own rifle. There was no doubt from the way Brazil held it that the man knew just how to use it.

Over near the camp another creature had waited in the trees to pounce on whoever might have come to the tent. It clung, silent and still, to the side of the tree without any obvious means of support.

Terry had moved around to the other side after separating from Brazil and had gone up a tree well distant from her own quarry. She moved with silent precision, using the night sense to see the links whereby she could get from one tree to the other and finally to the one next to the tent. The thing glowed brightly in her night sense, a sickly red like dried blood against the glowing tan of the tree. The outline was clear and now familiar to her: one of those scorpionlike creatures, its long, curved tail poised and practically screaming instant death to her.

She was right above it now, and for the first time she wasn’t sure what to do. She sensed that Nathan was about to pounce on the other one; whatever it was had to be done fast. If only she had a better angle… Nothing she could do would work unless she actually touched the loathsome thing!

At that moment Brazil moved, and from up the path there was a scream that she knew was not his. The creature was suddenly alert, then turned toward the direction of the sounds. At that moment, fidgeting, the deadly tail was pointed straight down, the curve right below her. Timing, of course, was everything, but there was no chance for anything else but direct force and a prayer that it would work.

She jumped feet first and struck the tail at its midcurve. The tail went forward and punctured the thick exoskeleton of the creature, who roared even as they both fell from the tree and onto the tent below.

She landed right next to the thing and gave a panicked cry as the poison-tipped tail flailed up and down in random directions. She rolled away just in time for it to miss her, but it was a near thing. She was entangled in the collapsed tent with the creature when it again struck within a hair’s breadth of her arm. She reached out reflexively and shoved it, at the same time sending her own fear and panic.

The creature managed to right itself but seemingly forgot about her. It leapt a good ten feet, landing on its feet, and began running on all six of its legs away toward the port, emitting an eerie, piercing sirenlike scream as it did so.

She had no idea where it went, and she didn’t care. She knew it was gone, and she felt that Nathan was all right as well.

Brazil was torn between his captive and his clear perception of her fright and panic. He turned slightly, distracted by the feelings he was receiving from her, and the would-be sniper took it as an opening, running into the man and knocking him down, sending the rifle into the grass. The creature didn’t look for it or go at Brazil, though; instead, it ran at top speed away into the darkness.

Brazil got up quickly and looked around, but the assassin was gone. “Damn!” he swore aloud. “Damn! Damn! Damn!” He looked around for the rifle, certain that the creature hadn’t retrieved it, and found it in about thirty seconds. The girl no longer worried him; he knew without even checking that she was safe and that the other assailant, too, had fled.

Instead, he walked back down to what remained of the camp, looking at the rifle, noting only now what had caused him to know that an ambush awaited.

The two embedded electric streetlights along the fountain path were out. Either put out or shot out, most likely.

He found Terry shaken but unharmed. She might have a bruise or two, and she had a couple of scratches where she’d fallen into the tent, but it didn’t appear to be anything serious.

He smiled, winked at her, and kissed her, then turned his attention to the rifle. It was a damned good one, too. Expensive. But the previous owner was no pro; a pro would never have taken up that exposed position or allowed anyone to get that close. Similarly, the Ecundo, for that was what the scorpionlike creature had been, had acted less like an assassin than like some ship’s crewman hard up for some spare cash and recruited on the spot for an “easy” job. Again, no matter what her own abilities, she shouldn’t have been able to get close enough to nail him without his hearing, and he certainly should have nailed her with that stinger when they fell. These were amateurs. Amateurs hired by somebody with money and sources of illegal weapons.

They’d just survived a crude attempt by amateurs at a paid “hit.”

“Now what the hell…?” he mused, staring at the rifle. Who would want him dead badly enough to hire toughs to do it? Who would be dumb enough to think they could kill him? Yet if they didn’t know who he really was and what that meant, why bother? The Ambreza? Hardly. They could have snared him a lot easier a thousand times and with far less mess. He’d been only in Ambreza and briefly in Glathriel, and certainly the latter was out as a suspect. The only one who knew both who he was and where he might be would be Mavra Chang.

But this wasn’t her style. Remote-control hits by amateurs? And she of all people would know that he couldn’t be taken out any more than she could. But who else could it be?

Damn it, Mavra was as much if not more of an enigma to him than the girl was. If it was Mavra, what might be the motive? To slow him up, perhaps, now that he was on the move? A real possibility. But the worst possibility was one he didn’t want to think about.

That somebody here, somewhere, knew who and what he was and was bent on stopping him at all cost, a third player whose very race and motives were unknown.

He looked at the ruins of the camp and sighed. Then he went over to find his clothes and get dressed again. She might not mind, but it was damned chilly for him.

There wouldn’t be much sleep tonight, after all, even with all that had happened. Tomorrow morning the ship would sail, and they would be on it. Plenty of time to sleep then. Or, at least, if there was another attacker aboard, they couldn’t run away like these two and he might get answers to some questions.

It was the story of his life, he decided. Every nice turn was met with an unexpected plunge into something nasty.