Exiles at the Well of Souls

Dasheen

Ben Yulin awoke with a start and opened his eyes.

His first thought was that the pain was gone, and he had feeling over his whole body again. That was a big relief in and of itself. But—where and what was he?

He sat up and looked around. Things were definitely different. He was slightly nearsighted and totally color-blind. But he could see well enough to tell he was in farm country; there was baled hay over there, nicely if crudely done, and fences and small roads stretched off for miles in squarish patterns. It was flat country, too; although his vision blurred beyond five hundred meters or so, he could tell where the land and horizon met.

He looked down at himself. Broad, muscular, hairy long legs that looked somewhat human, although the feet were strange—very wide and oval-shaped and made of a hard, tough substance. There were breaks in the front of each foot, but he had no toelike control of them. They were obviously just there to provide some flex when walking. He reached out and saw that his arms were wrestler’s arms—tremendous, bulging muscles overlaid with a thin covering of stiff brown hair. The fingers were short and thick and seemed to be made of that tougher material in the foot, but they were jointed in the right places and had an opposable thumb. He reached down to feel his feet and tapped them. They had a dull, thick, hard feel and sound to them. He had almost no feeling in his hands or feet, although the rest of his body felt normal.

His skin was brown and mostly covered in that short, wiry hair, although he perceived it as dark gray. One look at his crotch told him that he was not only a male but one of gigantic proportions. That pleased him, even if the thing was jet black. It was the biggest he’d ever seen.

His chest was covered with a milky-white coating of the same kind of hair; it was an even shape that followed his torso. The body, too, was thick-set and powerful-looking; he flexed a little and the muscles bulged.

This wasn’t going to be so bad, he told himself.

One reason for the nearsightedness, he realized, was that his eyes were set differently. He put a hand up to his face—and found more. He felt it carefully.

It was a huge head but perfect for his body. A thick, short neck, and a snout! Not a huge one, but it jutted out from his face. He tried to focus in on it and saw it, a white-furred oval with a flat top, jutting out maybe ten centimeters from his head. It contained a soft, moist, broad nose—incredibly broad, almost the width of the snout—which he thought was probably pink, and two huge nostrils with some kind of flaps. There were also whiskers flanking the nose—sharp, fairly long, like extremely long white pine needles.

His mouth, under the nose, went the whole length of the snout. He felt around it with a broad, flat, thick tongue. Lots of teeth, none of them sharp. He opened it, then closed it, then tried a chewing motion. He found he could only chew from side to side, which told him that he was a herbivore. He knew now why they raised hay and wheat and the like and who it was for.

The eyes were large, set back from the snout, and wide apart. Ears were sharply pointed, and could be turned at will, he found. On top of his head was an enormous pair of horns. They were part of his skull, no doubt about it, and they extended into wicked points from areas of the base bone a good five centimeters out from either side of his head.

He rose shakily to his feet and found that his head didn’t feel abnormally heavy or out of balance, although he couldn’t turn it in any direction quite as far as he remembered being able to do.

There was a last touch. He found he had a tail on some sort of ball joint, a tail he could wag and even whip to an extent. It was thick and emerged from his spine, was probably an extension of it. It was brown like the rest of him except his chest and snout, and it ended in a thick tuft of soft dark hair. It was long, although it didn’t quite reach the ground. He reached around, took hold of it, and looked at it curiously.

I wish I had a mirror, he thought.

He started walking, first over to the road and then down it. He wanted to find some civilization, somewhere.

It was a chilly day, although only the parts of him with no hair, his nose, inner ears, and genitals, told him so. There was some kind of natural insulation here.

He spied a large number of what looked like people working in a field, but they were too far away for his reduced vision to really see. He considered going over and introducing himself, but he decided that that sort of thing could cause trouble, too. This might be private property, and they might not like trespassers. He decided to press on until he came to a town or until he met someone on the road.

Despite the visual limitations, his other senses were tremendously heightened. Every little sound, from the rustle of an almost imperceptible wind to small insects off in a nearby field, were sharp and clear and could be localized with unerring accuracy. Smells, too, both pleasant and unpleasant, were much fuller and richer.

He was hungry and wondered what he was supposed to eat. The fields contained the fodder, of course, but they were also obviously private, and the high, thick barbed wire discouraged casual snacking.

He came to a small intersection; a minor road went off at a right angle to the main one. He could see it led up to a large complex of buildings, maybe several stories high with rounded roofs of straw or some other material over good hardwood frames. He wondered where they got the wood; certainly not from around here.

He decided to chance it. As a newcomer, he might be excused some indiscretions, if he were careful enough not to get shot first. Let’s see—what had Ortega called new people? Entries? Yes, that was it.

Most of the workers or family seemed to be out in the fields. There were obviously few seasons here; some of the fields had been harvested, some were about to be, and one on his left had just been plowed.

He was almost to the house or barn, or whatever it was, when he saw his first fellow creature close up.

She—there was no doubt it was a she—was using a plane to smooth down a plow handle. She was taller than he, with smaller head and longer, more flexible neck. Her horns were shorter and more rounded, even at the tips. Facially, she did resemble a cow, although the head was not right, more like a cartoonist’s humanized cow than a real one. Her arms were also strikingly different from his—tremendously long, with a double elbow that seemed to be able to bend in any direction. Not double in the same places, now; there was the elbow where the elbow should be, and then the arm continued, tremendously muscular, to a second elbow near the waist. Almost reflexively he looked again at his own elbow, and saw that he’d been right; although thick and muscle-bulging, his arm was definitely the one-elbow type he’d been born with.

The final incongruity was that she wore a tremendous, leatherlike apron tied just above her waist. It bulged a bit in front, and at first he thought she mightbe pregnant, but as she worked, side turned to him, he could see that it concealed what had to be a large, tough-looking pink udder attached just above the waist.

She still hadn’t seen him. He considered clearing his throat but wasn’t sure how to do that, so he just decided to try conversation and see if he would be understood. At least he would be noticed.

“Hello?” he said hopefully.

She jumped, turned, looked at him. There was no mistaking her mannerisms: shock and fear. She screamed, dropped her tool, and ran off into the big building through a large wooden door.

He could hear her still screaming and yelling inside and also the sounds of other voices. He decided that the better part of valor was to stand there and see what happened next.

What happened took exactly thirty seconds. The wooden door flew open with tremendous force, so violent and loud was the action that it shook the whole building. Standing there, a really nasty-looking iron crowbar in his hands, was the master of the house.

He was slightly shorter than Yulin, but not much. The horns were huge, slightly curved and pointed; the head was massive and seemed to sit atop the torso without a neck. He wore a cloth kilt of some soft material from his waist to just below his knees. His huge, wide eyes sparked fire.

“What the hell do you want here, he-cow?” he snarled derisively. “If it’s a cracked skull, just stay there another ten seconds!” He hefted the crowbar menacingly.

Yulin felt panic rising in him, but managed to control himself. “Wait a minute! I mean no harm!” he managed.

The crowbar didn’t move. “Then what are you doing just walking into here stark naked and panicking good women?” the other returned, that menacing tone growing. But, Yulin realized, he’d answered instead of attacking, and that meant reason could prevail.

“I’m an Entry!” he almost yelled. “I just woke up in a field back there and I haven’t the slightest idea whereor what I am or what to do next!” That was certainly the truth.

The big minotaur considered this. “Entry?” he snorted. “We have had only two Entries before that I know of, and they were both cows. Doesn’t make sense to have a bull Entry.” Still, there was something that made him hesitate. The crowbar lowered over so slightly.

“I’m Ben Yulin,” he tried, attempting to sound friendly and not scared to death. “I need help.”

There was something in the newcomer’s manner that didn’t seem right to the farmer. Yet he sensed, somehow, the genuineness of Yulin’s plea.

“All right,” growled the man with the crowbar. “I’ll accept your story for now. But try anything funny and I’ll kill you.” He didn’t let go of the crowbar. “Come on in and we’ll at least get some clothes on you so you don’t have half the herd coming after you.”

Yulin started toward the door, and the farmer hefted the bar again. “Not in there, you idiot! Holy shit! Maybe you really don’t know what’s what around here! Just walk around the house, here, and I’ll follow.”

Yulin did as instructed, and entered a different door in what seemed to be a complex semidetached from the larger buildings. It was an apartment of sorts. There was a living room with small fireplace, a bull-sized rocking chair of a finely polished hardwood, windows looking out on the farm, and, to his surprise, artwork and reading material. A number of very large-sized books in a print he couldn’t read sat on two shelves, and there were pewter sculptures, not only of other minotaurs, both male and female, but of other, stranger subjects that implied surrealism. Some etchings on the wall, actually black-and-white line drawings, showed farm scenes, sunsets and other realistic subjects.

The female sculptures showed him what he’d suspected—the cow did have big udders, like bulges hanging down—and a couple of the sketches, or prints, or whatever they were were rather graphic pornography. On top of a table near the rocking chair was a weird-looking mechanical device he couldn’t figure out. It was a box with a horizontal round plate that obviously rotated by means of a spring-driven hand crank on one side. A complex brass device on a single pivot was mounted to one side, and out of the back rose a tremendous horn-shaped device. There seemed also to be a place for another horn to fit on the front. Yulin couldn’t imagine what it did.

The man went into another room and seemed to be trying to open some sort of cedar chest with one hand while at the same time keeping his eye on the newcomer through the doorway. Yulin decided to stay stock still in the center of the room and do nothing at all.

The other room was obviously a bedroom, though. There was a wood frame there filled with a strawlike material, and there were also some carelessly tossed blankets and an enormous stuffed object that might have been a pillow. Thinking about his horns, Yulin wondered what happened if you rolled over in your sleep.

The farmer threw him a large cloth, and he caught it. It appeared to be made of burlap, much rougher and coarser than what the other wore. There had been rope drawstrings placed in it, and Yulin got the idea pretty quickly of how to put it on.

There was a thin, plain rug on the floor. “You’ll have to sit there,” the farmer told him, pointing to a spot on the rug. “I don’t get much visitor traffic here.” He sat down comfortably in the rocker and started to rock gently.

“Now can you tell me what happens next?” Yulin prompted.

“First you tell me about yourself. Who you are, what you were, how you got here,” the other responded. “Then, if I like what I hear, I’ll help you solve your problems.”

Yulin complied, almost. He spared nothing, except his role in anything shady. He pictured himself as Gil Zinder’s assistant, nothing more, forced by the evil Antor Trelig to do what he did. He was convincing. When he got to the part about crashing in the North, the farmer’s eyes almost shone. “Been to the North, eh? That’s kind of a romantic thing for just about all the folks here in the South. Kind of exotic and mysterious.”

Yulin thought that the South was sufficiently exotic and mysterious for him, but he said nothing. His story, however, was accepted. It was far too detailed to have been created out of whole cloth as a diversion. The farmer relaxed.

“My name’s Cilbar,” he said, more friendly now. “This is my farm. You’re in Dasheen, which is both the country and the name of your new people. You’re a herbivore, so you’ll never starve to death—although, as a civilized man, you’ll find that while eating stuff in the raw will satisfy your hunger, prepared foods are better. The hex is nontechnological, so machines don’t work here unless they’re muscle-powered. We got the muscle, as you probably noticed.”

Yulin admitted he had.

“I been around in my youth,” Cilbar continued. “Things are different everyplace, of course, but our system here’s a little more different than most. It’s the biology that does it. We get criticized by some other hexes, but that’s the way things are.”

“What do you mean?” Yulin wondered.

Cilbar sighed. “Well, a lot of races, they have two, maybe more sexes. Your old one did. There’s some differences, but basically they’re variations of the same critter. Brain power’s the same, and take away the sex stuff and the bodies aren’t that far different, either. Right?”

“I’m following you,” Yulin replied.

“Well, you mighta noticed that we don’t look like the cows,” the farmer said. “Not just the udder. We’re smaller, squatter, got shorter single-elbow arms, bigger, different heads, like that.”

“I did notice it,” Ben Yulin acknowledged.

“Well, we are different. Don’t know why. First of all, there’s only an average of one male for every one hundred females. That’s why I was surprised not that you were an Entry but that you were a male. You see?”

Yulin did. All the more remarkable since he’d gone through the Well as a biological female. What was it Ortega said? The Well classified you according to unknown standards.

“Anyway,” Cilbar continued, “just from a social standpoint that makes males more important than females. There’s less of us, so we’re not expendable. On top of that, we’re a hell of a lot smarter.”

“How’s that?” was all Yulin could manage.

Cilbar nodded. “Some scientists from a couple of other hexes once came in to prove to us that it wasn’t so. All they did was bear out what we already knew. Their brains are less developed. Trying to teach one to read is like trying to teach this chair. Oh, teach ’em to do any basic job and they’ll happily do it for hours. Plowing, harvesting, simple carpentry, hauling and such, sure. Hell, tell ’em to dig fence holes and they’ll happily do it forever until you call ’em off. Ask ’em how many holes they dug and they couldn’t tell you.”

The green light of understanding went on in Ben Yulin’s head. “You mean,” he said, “that the women do all the labor and the men run things?”

Cilbar nodded again. “That’s about it. The women built this farm, but a man designed it. The women work it, but I run it. Same with the art, the books—all by men for men.”

Yulin was intrigued, and he thanked the Well even more that he’d come out as he did. This was the kind of place he was going to like.

“You speak very well, very cultured,” the Entry remarked. “You have a lot of education?”

The farmer chuckled. “Every male gets everything we can give him. I think we’re a group of spoiled brats, myself. I often wonder what we’d have to do in a pinch if things get tough. Yeah, a son is special. He gets it all. Then, if he’s got some particular aptitude, like art, or writing, or teaching, or trading, he takes it up. If not, like me, he takes over somebody’s farm when they get too old or too tired.”

“There’s a small population here, then,” Yulin surmised.

He nodded. “Very small. About ten thousand farms, more or less, with a bunch of small towns, rarely more than a few thousand in each, servicing them. A million and a quarter tops, no more.”

“That means only a hundred thousand or so males,” Yulin pointed out.

“Probably less,” agreed Cilbar. “I may be way overestimating the number. We don’t get around too much once we settle down. One time I remember somebody saying in some class that there were only seven hundred fifty thousand Dasheen and seventy-five thousand bulls. Could be.”

“And what happens if the new young bull has no useful aptitudes and no farm’s open?” Yulin wondered.

“Thinking about yourself, eh? A scientist in a non-tech hex! I can see the problems. Well, you can find a skill or job, do some traveling while you wait for an opening, like I did, or you can pick a farm, call out the owner, and fight him to the death, winner take all.”

Suddenly Yulin understood why the farmer had been so upset at his initial appearance: he thought a young bull was calling him out.

“What kind of government do you have, then?” he asked.

“A small and simple one,” Cilbar told him. “All the farmers in a district elect somebody to a council. The towns elect one for every ten males. There’s a small bureaucracy to keep things together, and we meet in emergencies or twice a year for a few days in a small town named Tahlur in the center of Dasheen, where the training schools and the Zone Gate are.”

“That’s where I should head, then,” the ex-scientist decided. “If I can get there without starving to death or getting run through by somebody less willing to listen to me than you.”

Cilbar laughed deeply. “Look, they’ve called a council meeting for some time next week. Our own representative, Hocal, will be going. I’ll feed you, put you up for the night, and get you introduced to him. That should solve that problem.”

Yulin thanked him. This was too easy, he thought, and too good. There had to be a fly in the ointment somewhere, and he waited for it.

Hocal wasn’t the fly but he was the instrument of it. He looked very surprised when Yulin was introduced to him.

“That’s what all this business is about!” he exclaimed. “You people really messed up some things! Never thought one of you’d show up here, though. Seems some folks want to talk to us about reclaiming some of those parts of that spaceship. War’s been rumored. War! I hope we can keep out of it, but we’ll see. We’re right in the middle of things here geographically.”

Yulin suddenly became interested. “How’s that? You mean the other ship, the one that came down in the South here?”

Hocal nodded, and got down a large map, spreading it out on the table in front of him. It was ingeniously printed for the benefit of a color-blind race; it contained all the details in amazing black, white and gray contrasts. Yulin could interpret it, but he could not read the key or names. He would have to cure that, he decided.

Hocal pointed a stubby finger at one hex. “Here we are in Dasheen,” he said.

Yulin looked. They were close to the Equatorial Barrier, something Hocal translated as Cotyl occupying two half-hexes at the Barrier; then Voxmir to the northwest—unfriendly and inhuman, Hocal assured him; Jaq to the southeast—volcanic and hot as hell, too hot for a Dasheen to survive; Frick to the southeast—they had crazy, fat flying disks with steam jets; and Qasada to the southwest—from the description a highly advanced technological civilization of giant rats.

“This is where the problem is,” Hocal pointed again. Just below Qasada and to the southwest of Frick was Xoda, a land of great, fierce insects—and a module. “There’s another in Palim, below it, Olborn, to the southwest, and, most important, only four hexes south, Gedemondas, about which little is known. The engines of the downed craft landed there, and they are, as you will appreciate, the big prize. I suspect we’ll know a lot more about Gedemondas before this is finished.”

Yulin nodded. “I’d think that one of the others—the rats, for example—might make a better run for it,” he noted.

Hocal agreed. “They should, but that’s a funny area. The races in there aren’t that friendly, or, like the Palim, have been, like us, peaceful too long to think of conflict. No, the trouble comes from way over here.”

He pointed again far to the west, well beyond the far coast of the Sea of Storms.

“This is Makiem, and up here is Cebu, and to the east is Agitar. Makiem is run by some clever and ruthless politicians and is a nontech hex, as we are. Cebu is semitech, and its people have the power of flight, which is particularly useful. Agitar is high-tech, and while we’ve been able to learn very little about it, they seem to have flying animals—which means their range isn’t limited by their machines—and some natural abilities with electricity that transcend the Well limits. They have formed an alliance to get the ship parts.”

“But they couldn’t use them, even if they put them together, without a qualified pilot,” Yulin objected. “That’s not a simple rocket, you know.”

“We are well aware of that,” replied Hocal, looking directly at him. “The war was to be the topic, but, I suspect, with you on hand, the discussion will be even livelier.”

The trip was easy and made in less than two days. They went in a comfortable coach pulled by six Dasheen cows from Hocal’s herd, and they made better speed than Yulin would have believed.

Additionally, the tired pullers did everything for them, cooking delicious stews, rubbing them down, everything. Yulin loved being waited on; he saw how easy it would be to get spoiled here. The cows engaged mostly in small talk among themselves, occasionally playing childish games with one another, but they carried out their jobs without complaint, as if this was what they were born to do and they were happy doing it. In deference to his host, Ben Yulin kept at a distance from them.

They arrived at Tahlur at midday to find most of the other members already there. They were taking nothing lightly, and grave discussions were already underway in the town’s alehouses. As on the farm and road, the females did all the work—all the cooking, cleaning, serving, all the basic labors. Yulin couldn’t do anything for himself. A cow was always there to get him a chair, to bring food or drink, to take him to a comfortable room in an inn, to prepare and clean everything. They even ran to open doors for the males.

Even though the service was easy to take, he wondered about it, about whether it was truly mental inferiority or just a rigid social system. They weren’t automatons; they talked and laughed sometimes and sulked sometimes and generally acted like people.

And there were the rings and collars. All the cows wore them—large rings welded in their huge noses, and brass collars welded around their necks, with small hooks on the back. They were distinctive; they bore the marks of the herd the cow was from. The females were even branded on the right rump, he found, with the herd-mark.

Did they ever get fed up and run away, he wondered. Was that why there were so many ways to identify them as being out of place?

The towns had guild-herds. There were guilds for the different classes of workers, and they lived in dorms through the town.

He worried about this a little more when he found out that the great quantities of milk the men consumed, gotten from the cows, was more than supplement. The males like himself could not manufacture their own calcium. They required almost a gallon of the calcium-rich milk a day to stay healthy, ward off arthritis, bone diseases, rotting teeth, and the like.

Without cows, the men would die. Slowly, and in great agony.

That was why they and their system were so well known in other hexes. Young bulls waiting for an opening often traveled, sometimes widely. They could exist on almost any native carbon-based grasses, and their own systems purified natural water, so few provisions were needed. But the men were so used to being waited on, and their bodies so desperately dependent on the cow’s milk, that they had to take at least four cows with them. He could imagine the effect this would have on races that were unisexual, or where sexual discrimination was not present, or, worse, in a matrilineal society.

But there was little time for such speculation. He was too busy being passed around, introduced to the politicians, and discussing the crisis.

The council met the next day. In a communal society—money wasn’t even used here, everyone drew his share—such bodies on a small scale were normal. They elected a chairman without much problem and proceeded to the business at hand.

Using maps, charts, and diagrams, the central bureaucracy explained the problem. There was a general sentiment to stay clear of it; it was none of Dasheen’s business. Yulin they regarded as a complication; it was debated, much to his chagrin, whether or not to hide him away, imprison him for the war’s duration, or perhaps kill him! None of these alternatives were seriously considered by the council as a whole, much to his relief, but he was aware of danger here. Those who proposed them were deadly serious, and some of these hotheads might easily take such solutions into their own hands.

On the third day of the conference little had been resolved, and Ben had the feeling that they just loved to argue; they would never come to any agreement unless forced to.

But on the third day a newcomer arrived who changed things. Its entrance was such that it panicked people on the streets, and the creature did little to reassure them after coming to ground. In the air it was magnificent and beautiful; a great butterfly with a two-meter wingspread, brilliantly orange and brown against a black body that still stood 150 centimeters when it landed in the street and stood on the rearmost four of its eight long tentacles. Its face was a large, black painted death’s head, with great, eerie eyes that looked like pads recessed in the hard, dark skull.

The Yaxa, however, had been expected.

Its manner, its voice, was cold, hard, sharp, and cutting. It sent chills through those who heard it. Even Ben, who had to have a running translation, felt it. Unlike the others he’d met on the Well World—the Dasheen, Ortega, the Ambreza, even the plant-creature—this one was different. Not inhuman, un human, as alien as those paintwash creatures of the North.

The Yaxa had a proposition.

“First,” it said, “let me summarize what the situation is to date. I have been able to keep in touch on my journey here as new developments broke, and things are breaking fast.

“One—the Makiem have effectively allied and coordinated with the Cebu and the Agitar. It is the most formidable combination of brains, opportunism, and ability this world has ever seen. Boidol will give them their part of the ship to avoid the fight. There has been no talking them out of it. The Djukasis will fight, but we have been unsuccessful in getting the Lata to come in on their side or anybody else’s. The Djukasis will take their toll, but they cannot hope to defeat such an alliance. The Klusidians will neither yield nor fight, and you know what that means. The Zhonzorp would fight if they had a chance, but they’re very much like the Makiem, mentally. They may join the alliance instead, if they’re able. Their hatred of the Klusidians will keep them from giving the aid those people need.”

The creature paused, adjusting the giant maps it was using to illustrate its talk.

“Olborn is a mystery. You know its reputation: nobody who goes in ever comes out, and they never man their embassy at Zone. A question mark, but I don’t believe that any race, whatever its powers, can stop this march alone. If we’re lucky, the Olbornians will slow them, as certainly the Alestoli will. But think of what two flying races could do with even something as basic as boiling oil. No, a sufficiently large force of them will reach Gedemondas, a hex that talks to no one, has no embassy, and contains too hostile an environment for much else. Even the Dillians on the other side, who share some mountains, have been unsuccessful in talking to them. They don’t fight—they just vanish. And that leaves four mods and the engines in the hands of the Makiem-Cebu-Agitar alliance.”

“But how will they ever get such large pieces of machinery back to their home hexes?” asked one councillor.

“The Agitar know their business,” the Yaxa told him. “They will bring along a number of good engineers. They will disassemble things, put them through the Zone Gates if they can’t haul them home, and then reassemble them in their own hex.”

“They still couldn’t fly it,” another pointed out.

“Wrong again,” replied the Yaxa. “The Makiem have had the kind of good fortune that makes one doubt free will. One of the pilot-qualified Entries, Antor Trelig, is a Makiem. He can and will fly that ship—and further, he can enter the computer complex and use it up on the satellite. You see? Our very existence is in jeopardy!”

That got to them. There was a rumble and roar, and it was several minutes before the chairman could calm them down. It was hard to tell, but the Yaxa seemed satisfied with his reception. It had come on a diplomatic mission; its object was to scare them to death.

“But what can we do?” asked one councillor. “Send our people into battle with swords and spears against the Qasada? They’d chew us to pieces!”

“They would indeed,” the Yaxa agreed. “But you will have some time and some advantages. Yaxa and Lamotien have united. The Lamotien are probably the best friends and deadliest enemies on the Well World. The planet for which they were designed must be a living hell. They are metamorphs—they can assume any shape that they can see, limited only by the fact that they cannot change their mass. Even that is not a true drawback because they are small. They combine with one another to create larger organisms. Twenty couldmake a Dasheen so convincing you would be unable to tell the difference. And there are ten million or more Lamotien, in a high-tech hex. With them we will shortly secure the highly important bridge module of the downed ship from Teliagin. Then the Lamotien will turn into flyers, and we will fly to Nodi Island in the Sea of Storms and secure a second module. Then we shall cross the East Neck to Qasada. With Lamotien infiltration and technology, Yaxa flight and trained warriors, aided, perhaps, by bases and personnel in Dasheen, we can take the Qasada and the Xoda, our two major problems. Palim is still in doubt; they might just allow us through. That puts us in Gedemondas, a hex in which we Yaxa will be hard-pressed to operate, but one in which a Lamotien-supplemented Dasheen force will be highly effective. Need I tell you that this will give us the bridge and engines?” It turned, looked over the bovine faces assembled there. “And you have Ben Yulin, another pilot who also has access to the satellite computer.”

There was more uproar. How could the Yaxa have known? They groaned. This changed everything!

The Yaxa had no ability to smile. Even if it could, Ben Yulin thought such a gesture would shatter its face and personality. But there was evident confidence and satisfaction inside it for its presentation.

Chalk one up for Well World intrigues, anyway, Yulin thought. This world bristled with spies, plots, moves, and countermoves. The heretofore impossibility of war had diverted men of such minds to more devious means.

The debate droned on and on, but it was evident that the outcome had been decided, and a late-night formal vote made it official. Even Yulin spoke, assuring them that he could indeed pilot the ship if it had so much as one module between bridge and engines, and that he could, in fact, get into Obie. His emotions were excitement mixed with apprehension. On one hand, here was a chance, although a long shot, to gain complete mastery of New Pompeii, Obie included, and perhaps a key to the Well. On the other, he saw the dark threat of Antor Trelig in that same position. He did not paint Trelig’s evil any too lightly; by the time he was through, the very mention of Trelig inspired dread.

On the brighter side, all personal animosities were off. He was one of their own now, suddenly. They would be the weakest member of the alliance militarily, but the other monstrous partners in this coalition would have to depend entirely on a Dasheen to get there and get into the computer.

He was taken around where former enemies who had suggested his imprisonment or death only a day before were now his blood brothers.

“He must have his own herd!” one big shot insisted, and they all agreed.

“Only a small one right now. Later—anything he wants!” another stipulated.

“How about one from each of the five service guilds in town?” a third suggested. “More practical than giving him farmhands!” So he got five daughters, one each from the Metalworkers, City Service, Cooks and Waiters, Builders, and Housekeeping guilds—a perfect practical balance of skills.

The Metalworkers also gave him his own brand, distinctive ring, and collar. His herd were all young, all virgins. He found that there was a lot of tradition and ceremony associated with unions.

For one thing, daughters had numbers instead of names until they were assigned to a herd, whether farm or guild. The male, who was always called Master, would name them in the ceremony, then consummate the union, which bound her to him. She would then be branded, ringed, and collared. The whole process took five days.

He loved every minute of it.

In the meantime, subcouncils met, Yaxa came and went, and a percentage of every herd in the country was conscripted for military training. This worried some of the men, who wondered what the effect would be when so many cows were taught the art of killing. But there was much at stake here. As for the Yaxa, they didn’t seem to find anything but amusement in that worry.

The Yaxa, Ben learned, were female. After they mated, they ate their male mate. It was almost the reverse of Dasheen, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Yaxa presence might give somebody ideas.