“Well, even the Ancient Ones could not be expected to think of everything. Apparently you and she were both physically and mentally connected when you entered?”
“Yes, she basically was operating me like a puppet.”
“Apparently the Well couldn’t tell the two of you apart, or perceived three consciousnesses in two bodies, and yet was running on the knowledge of your old species. This leads me to the rather interesting question it all raises. Are you certain that you are Ari and not Ming?”
It was a disconcerting question. “But—I’m male, aren’t I?”
“Doesn’t follow at all, for two reasons. Number one, the Well has never let that stand in its way before, nor even in all cases in the recent past. And second, we Kalindans are a bisexual race, it is true, but we’re designed primarily as survivors under almost any circumstances. When you woke up above, you could breathe, couldn’t you?”
“Yes. I wondered about that.”
“You have a blowhole in the back of your head and some rudimentary lungs that are sufficient up top. We’re quite a rarity in races—we can exist in two of the four elements, and we are well-insulated along a lot of temperature extremes. We’re also omnivores and can eat most anything, although there’s much we would not enjoy eating. And we’re born as neuters. Our children have no sexual differentiation at all. Upon puberty, we tend toward one sex or the other, but this can change. If the population falls below healthy levels, males will change over a period of weeks to females. When the population tends to get a bit too large, then a large number of females become males. Everyone’s not changing gender all the time, but if one hasn’t had it happen to them, one knows others that have. One’s gender is basically irrelevant here, you see, but whatever is needed to keep our population in balance, we do. This is why we all look rather feminine and have these breasts. The young are born live and carried in sacs—your sac is along here, as you might notice. They are nursed like mammals, although we are a rather unique species outside of here, and if you live with someone who has a nursing baby, even if male, you’ll discover that hormones will be triggered and you can hold and nurse as well. We prize personal honor and relationships over gender. It is another adaptation that helps us thrive.”
He thought it over, and decided it was a neat concept. It might be fun to be both. “I assume that the sex act itself is as fun as it used to be?”
“It is certainly not something we shy away from,” Shissik admitted.
And then it hit him, just what the Inspector meant. “So I really could be Ming. Or Ari.”
“Or both. That suggests a fascinating duality I’ve never had to face. You might be both a police officer and a criminal. Please relax—you are a criminal no more, nor, of course, are you an officer. Whatever you become starts now. We like to use the knowledge and experience you might have if it’s handy, but it is traditional that no newcomer to a race here is held at all accountable for past deeds. Inner natures do tend to emerge over time, and that might be interesting in your case. One might expect you to commit a criminal act and then arrest yourself.”
He realized that Shissik was being funny, but he didn’t share the joke.
“So what happens now?” he asked the Interior Policeman.
“Now? Nothing immediately. We will get you a good meal and then I want to propose an experiment to my superiors. They now have a recording of this conversation, so we’ll see if they are satisfied from their point of view. We are in the city of Mahakor, a medium-sized city in the northeast of our nation. The other is in the capital of Jinkinar. I’d like to take you up there eventually and get you together with this other one. We simply cannot be totally trusting of newcomers for a while, you see, and we do have this nagging question about the other far more than about you.”
“Which is?”
“Well, if she doesn’t know who she is or what she was, then aren’t we merely assuming that she’s your Ming? Perhaps she’s the other one you were linked to, the onetime cultist or whatever it was. Or perhaps she is neither of them but someone else. Ari’s uncle was near death. If he survived and was processed, who is to say what his mind might have been like by that point? Suppose it’s Ari’s uncle Jules that we have? And even if his memories were turned to mush, as I said, inner natures have a tendency to begin coming out over time. I think we need to know for certain.”
Jesus H. Christ! he thought in panic. What if it is Jules Wallinchky? That would be just what I needed here! A whole new body, a whole new race, a whole new life, and they would be putting me right back where I started…
Ochoa
The creatures flew over the seas at an altitude of almost a kilometer, yet their bony heads were on the ocean and not each other, and their large eyes angled down as if they could see beneath the seas, which, in fact, they could. Not so precisely, of course, but they weren’t looking for a particular fish; they were looking for signs of lunch.
The wings were broad but leathery, the tail almost serpentine until it flattened out into a fan shape at its end. The heads were triangular, almost perfect right angles, except for a slight crest at the top rear behind the eyes, each of which had independent movement. Ears were mere cavities in the back of the head that seemed made of something very solid indeed. The lower jaw, which ran the length of the head, had a leathery sack beneath it which, in those whose sacks were empty, seemed to flap slowly back and forth. Those who had some prior catch appeared to have somewhat larger jaws.
The extremely long legs were up flat against the body now, their long talon-tipped fingers and opposable “thumb” locked up and out of the way to increase streamlining. Looked upon from above, they were quite colorful and distinctive, with patterns of randomness in reds, yellows, blues, grays, and browns; their underside, however, was a blue-white, and in either sunlight or clouds they were extremely difficult to see from the ground.
“Big school! Sandrums! Three o’clock, thirty-two-degree angle!” one of them called, its voice harsh, birdlike.
She saw it, the slight pattern of silver just beneath the waves, and with a built-in sense of where any other of his kind was, she dove with them down on the unsuspecting school of fish.
The entry into the water was unhesitating and effortless. Eye lenses flattened, sensing the electricity and magnetism in sea life as by seeing, the group continued flying, underwater, in formation, as if they were still high in the air. The tail, so suited to flying and balance, split apart and turned opposite, providing two paddles that were as effective as tail flippers and gave them the same kind of control a sea mammal might have.
The poor fish, some up to sixty centimeters long, didn’t have a chance. The ravenous horde pounced on them, huge mouths open, and began scooping them in from the rear before the front of the school was even aware they were under relentless attack. She quickly had her jaw pouch filled with four lively fish, which quickly calmed down as juices in the pouch flowed around them, knocking them out and acting as a preservative. She gobbled a fifth and last one straight down for her own gratification, chopping it to bits with her impressive range of teeth, then angled up and leaped right out of the water and into the air. The tail reformed as an avian device, and the leathery wings began to move. Reforming above, all with full pouches, they circled and headed for home.
This is a hell of a way to make a living, she thought sourly, and not my ideal for a new way of life.
She looked down over the hex, which was composed of a vast network of islands, all apparently of ancient volcanic origin since none seemed active. They formed an amazing series of bays, harbors, and protected coves right in the middle of an ocean that had no other land, or so she’d been told, for a thousand or more kilometers in any direction.
It was a semitech hex that might have fooled anybody into thinking it a nontech one, and precisely because of its isolation, it was a well-visited one. The Ochoans were worldly and aware, and liked their little amenities, particularly cigars, some wild scents, and various drugs and brews,
little of which they could make themselves, even if they’d had the organization and urge to do so. The islands had tons of birds and insects and some reptiles and a few what-the-heck-are-they-anyways, but the Ochoan was the dominant and basically the only important creature on any of them. When you could walk, fly in the air, and fly underwater, not to mention seeing quite well in darkness or in daylight, you tended to dominate things. They even made some occasional delicacies out of fruits and grains, which they pretended were luxuries but actually needed to keep themselves. They mainly ate fish, all sorts of fish, alive, dead, or stored in their pouches until needed, and they did some harvesting of native fruits for commercial trade as well as their own brand of art, both drawing and carving, which on the whole was bizarre, but popular in some places. There were some small steam engines about, mostly commercial ones bought from other hexes and modified to Ochoan physiology for operation, but these were mostly used for pumping water from one point to another, as in irrigation on the dry side of some of the islands or in sanitation.
And, being the only land and shelter in all that distance, they traded. Ships from all over stopped there, took on fresh water, fruit, sometimes even salted fish if the Ochoans trawled for them.
Even in her short time here she’d seen more creatures than the old Realm ever had, and some pretty bizarre and scary ones as well. She wanted to leave this dull paradise for a number of reasons, but as a newcomer she had no funds to blow on a ship’s passage, which was the only way in or out. Although master of land, sea, and air, individual Ochoans could generally range no more than about hundred kilometers, and the denizens under the waves of the neighboring hexes would not ignore a nice, fat, juicy Ochoan floating on the surface or swimming a bit below it.
There was a government of sorts, both a loose hereditary nobility and a parliament elected by the local councils and set up as a kind of national assembly, but it met only rarely, and then to set quality standards and appoint inspectors for goods going out and coming in, and to appoint ambassadors to Zone. The councils, under chairmanship of a local noble, handled minor disputes, mounted rescues when needed, and saw to the education of the young, little more. If you needed something, somebody would lend it to you, and you might pay back the favor with some other favor sometime. About the only violent crimes were crimes of passion, and those were dealt with and hard and fast by the whole community.
There was also a method of ordering goods, and catalog sale was quite popular, particularly for manufactured goods of mostly no particular use except showing off.
Ochoan men had the real racket. They were big and egocentric, full of very bright colors, even on their heads, which they brought out even more with waxes and polishes. They had incredibly fancy crests and sexy deep calls using hollow parts of the crests as amplifiers, and spent most of their time primping, preening, showing off, and playing macho-type contests with each other. The duller-looking and more pragmatic women did almost all of the hunting and most other work as well, as well as bearing the young, though the men actually hatched the eggs. But even then, they mostly sat around, complaining about not getting enough to eat, how stuck they were, and so on. For them, it was a seller’s market—there were five females to every male, and other than hatching the eggs, they did one other thing well, or so she’d been told. She was trying to not wind up attached to a nesting, at least not until she had to.
Still, if she couldn’t get on one of those ships and see this whole weird world, it seemed to her unfair that she at least hadn’t been reincarnated as a male Ochoan. It suited her nature perfectly. Coming out female at all was a twist, but coming out female in a society where the women did all the work was adding insult to injury. She’d never much liked work in the first place. Next time I’ll hide down in the damned jewelry, she thought sourly.
Although entering the Well World from an alien existence, she was considered by the Ochoans as basically an orphaned female, a status not high in the local pecking order. She’d found a couple of natives of about the same status, and at their invitation moved in with them in a makeshift rookery overlooking the harbor and provisioning station below. Haqua and Czua at least weren’t pushing her toward one of those preening idiots, she thought with relief, and while resigned to eventually winding up as part of a nesting, they, too, would rather delay it as long as possible.
She landed, stretched, folded her wings, then walked into the hut of bamboo and leaves they’d built as a shelter against the bad weather. “So, Nakitti! At least you never starve in this place, eh?” Czua greeted her. The added “tee” sound at the end of the name was required for the language to describe the feminine, although “feminine” was not exactly how one would describe the tough old scoundrel now suddenly different in an outward but not inward sense. Ochoan women did not have two names as such, though; they had basic titles like “Wife Ghua” or “Cook Chai.” Since “Tann” was meaningless, they ignored it. Nakitt kept it in her own mind, though, because it was a central part of her identity, a link back to the old.
“True, there’s always food and I love the flying and the swimming, but this is still getting old fast,” Tann Nakitt responded. “I was proud to be a Ghoma; I enjoyed sneaking in and stealing the most valuable of all things in a high civilization from under their noses—secrets, information of all sorts. This is kind of like the fun things I might have loved to be able to do on my days off or between assignments, but as a living, it lacks—well, it lacks.”
Both girls, neither much past puberty, were fascinated by this stranger who looked like them but talked like nobody they knew and came from an exotic place off in the stars that they could never have imagined and now couldn’t get enough of. Tann Nakitt suspected that if they ever got into the real Realm, they’d be frightened or bored or victimized at best, but so long as it remained a romantic vision, one that was easily and eagerly fed by their sophisticated roomie, well, that was fine with her.
“Good catch today?” Czua asked.
“It almost always is,” the newcomer grumbled. “Nothing much ever happens around here from the looks of it.” She looked down at the natural harbor below. “Hmm… Big ship coming in. Think I’ll go down and take a look at it.”
“You’re always looking at the ships. You just want ’em to take you away from here, that’s all.”
“You bet. In the meantime, I’m gonna see what I can see.” She went to the edge of the cliff and jumped off, gliding down to the dock and minor port town below.
She liked the town; it reminded her of a backwater in the Realm, with a variety of creatures there on long-term contracts to help service the various vessels that made port. It wasn’t easy work; as a semitech hex, maintaining a practical drydock for the size of vessels coming in just wasn’t practical, nor could any high-tech damage be reliably repaired.
They could replace some radar and navigation modules, but nobody would know if they worked until they crossed a border into a high-tech region. Sorry, no refunds.
The large commercial ships that plied the oceans of the Well World were unique hybrids since they had to regularly cross vast stretches where the technology was limited. Thus, they tended to be large three- or four-masted clippers, some with steel hulls, most with wooden hulls often clad in copper or similar alloys because of the weight an iron hull or frame added. They were ungainly but workable as pure sailing ships under the hands of experts, which ocean crews had to be. For that reason and the expense of the ships’ maintenance, interhex freight was expensive and passenger fares even more so.
The ships also tended to either have twin side paddles or large screws, and one or two central stacks for boilers that, in all but the nontech hexes, could propel the great ships forward regardless of the winds. Some had small and efficient high-tech engines, some on nuclear models, for high-tech hex sailing when you could make speed, but these were costly enough that most relied entirely on steam power even in the most advanced regions.
This one was an older vessel, with the great si
de paddles, two stacks in between three great, tall masts, wooden hull; but its high wheelhouse and instrumentation atop suggested that, when it could use them, the ship could sail confidently using radar through foggy seas and low visibility. Not here, though.
The ship, however, was threadbare. It needed a full scrape and paint, there were potential problem cracks on the decks, and some portholes appeared taped together or nailed shut. In fact, some heavy tape ran across more than one of the large windows out from the bridge, suggesting that the glass was by no means comfortable there.
It wasn’t until the pilot brought the ship around and eased it into the dock that Tann Nakitt saw the bullet holes. Maybe not high tech—you could do a gunpowder-based machine gun, she knew, that would work with just a hand crank—but definitely more than one shooter. Could some of those damaged windows and portholes have been shot to pieces?
She rose up into the air to take a closer look at this sad-looking ship and immediately saw the signs of some kind of battle. The aft upper cabin deck had a nasty gash in it that had clearly been hastily patched up at sea. Closer looks revealed others. Cannon fire. And on the decks, and peering from those portholes and windows, like a vacuum-packed can of sardines, were people from quite a number of races. They had scales and feathers and hair in all the wrong places, tentacles and claws and even flowers, but they were all people and they all radiated a hopelessness and terror you only saw in refugees from a horror.
What the hell could this be? Tann Nakitt asked herself. And if it was possible to have a war in this boring and most provincial of worlds, how the hell could she get into it?
She circled back and landed near the Port Authority Building—a kind of joke, since it was basically an overly large one-room thatched hut. It seemed that half the small town was there watching the sight, and possibly thinking some of the thoughts she’d been thinking. They were a grim and sober crew.
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