“Sometimes, maybe a lot of times, I think about that. The last time—the details are hazy, but I know I’d just gotten so damned sick of it, I was ready to at least start the process. See, I’m the safety valve, the one left around just in case there was something those Ancient Ones hadn’t thought of. Like my predecessor, I can’t quit until somebody else is groomed to take my place and has proved acceptable and competent to the Well.”
“This Mavra Chang. She was supposed to be your replacement?”
He nodded. “In a way, anyway. At least it was a start. I took her in, changed her so that she was part of the Well’s system, and made her do all the work. I remember that much. Then we had to go through a whole new cycle to see if she could and would be able to handle the burden. I really thought she could, but now I’m not so sure.”
“You were—together? For a long time?”
“Yeah, a long time. Oh, we split up on occasion, but we always arranged to meet at some place, some time. Then, one time, she just said she was going down to the bazaar for a few things, walked out of the place where we were staying, and I never saw or heard from her again. We had our fights, but we weren’t fighting then. There wasn’t anything I ever could put a finger on. She just vanished. I searched for her, of course, not just then but for many long years after. Occasionally I’d hear stories or tales or ninth-hand legends that sounded like her, but they never panned out. After a while I just stopped looking. I figured that if she really wanted to find me, my habits and preferences were an open book to her and she’d eventually at least get word to me. She never did.”
“Huh! How long ago was it when she split?”
He shrugged. “I’ve lost count. But the house was just inside the Ishtar Gate in Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Great. What would that be in current Earth terms? A few hundredb.c., I guess.”
“Jesus! That’s like twenty-five hundred years or so!”
Brazil shrugged again. “I said it had been a long time. You ever notice that the older you get, the faster time seems to run?”
“Yeah. It’s a cruel joke. I guess it’s because each day you live becomes a smaller fraction of your total life, or so I’ve been told.”
“That’s about it. Well, you can see how even that kind of time span might not seem so ancient to me. Funny, though. Some of that ancient stuff I can see like it was yesterday, while other stuff, maybe only a few months or years ago, I can’t remember at all. I guess we remember the highlights and the lowlights, and the rest gets caught in the cracks.”
Gus thought about it, but such a life over so much time made his head spin. “Sure would’ve liked to have had a camera and tape along back there, though. Man, I bet it was somethin’!”
“Yeah, well, it was. But it was also before any real medicine, before mass communication, before a lot of creature comforts. People died young, and they lived lives harder than you can imagine, most of them. Even the rich didn’t live all that great by modern standards. Smelled like a garbage dump, too. Folks just tossed it anywhere at all, and almost nobody took baths because the water had so many parasites in it, you could die slowly from a refreshing dip. No, on the whole I prefer things as high-tech as you can get, except, of course, on this particular trip.”
Gus wasn’t thinking of Brazil’s colorful past, though, but of what he’d said before. “This Mavra Chang—this Well computer or whatever it is considers her the same as you?”
“Pretty much, yes. Oh, I see what you’re driving at. You’re asking if she could do the kinds of things that are supposed to be my job if she got inside.”
“Right. Could she?”
“Yes, I’m pretty sure she could.”
“She’s nuts, Cap. You know that. I mean, livin’ as one of those naked savages in the middle of the jungle, all them women—she sure don’t have much liking for men. Maybe she did once, but not now. I remember enough of it to say that for sure. Maybe she just couldn’t handle it, Cap. Maybe all them years, what you got as memories she’s got as hurts. Some guy, or a lot of ’em, put her ’round the bend but good. I hate to point this out, Cap, but you’re the only equal she’s got, and you’re a man. You said she was groomed to take over. If she gets in there first, she could unplug you same as you plugged her in, couldn’t she?”
Nathan Brazil felt a numbing chill deep inside him in spite of the tropical warmth as he saw just what Gus was trying to point out. It was the one thought he had not wanted to think or dared consider, yet there it was.
“Yes, Gus,” he admitted. “Yes, I suppose she could.”
It was something he had long thought about and even occasionally desired, but always before it had been an abstract problem, something safe to think about because it was impossible.
It wasn’t impossible. Not this time. Gus was absolutely right.
I might actually die this time…
Gekir
Even in the nearly total darkness it was easy to know when they had crossed the border from Itus into Gekir.
The dense jungle ended abruptly, as if cut off, and in its place was a wide, flat expanse of grasslands punctuated with groves of trees. The nearly omnipresent clouds were gone as well; the sky blazed brightly from the dense stars in the Well World’s spectacular sky.
Walking through the hex barrier instantly lowered the humidity to a small percentage of what it had been, and instead of feeling heavy, tired, and dragged down by the earth underfoot, all of them felt a sudden sense of relief as if a very heavy pack had been lifted from each of their backs.
“Now, is this gravity back to normal, or is this place actually below normal as the last one was above it?” Julian asked quizzically, as much of herself as of the others.
“Impossible to say,” a weary Mavra replied. “It would make sense to have a fairly large disparity, though, simply because it would keep Ituns from being interested in spreading out over here and probably the other way around, too. To tell you the truth, it hadn’t been so dramatic in the places I was last time, at least so I could notice.”
“Now what?” one of the centauresses—Tony, from the accent—asked. “Is anybody around here we should worry about?”
“You worry about everything on this world,” Mavra warned. “Even the friendly places. There’s not much chance of diseases—all but a very few don’t even travel well between species on Earth, and they’re all much closer than the ones here—but meat eaters will eat the meat of carbon-based forms and many plants and animals are potentially poisonous. Even potentially friendly tribes tend sometimes to shoot first and ask questions later. Julian?”
The Erdomese shifted to the infrared spectrum and scanned the relatively flat grasslands. “There are whole herds of creatures out there, most bunched close together and showing little signs of activity. Asleep, probably.”
“You think they’re natives?” Anne Marie asked, suddenly feeling a little bit refreshed by the lowered gravity and humidity but still feeling sore from the burdens of Itus.
“Who can say? But I tend to doubt it. I’ve seen the same sort of patterns with cows out on the western ranges and such, and you’d figure that a race would have some kind of night watch and probably fires or the remains of fires that I could easily see. If Earth is any example, and it seems to be to at least some extent, then this is a savanna, much like east Africa. That means lots of herd-type animals, which is what the patterns here suggest. Like the antelope. There are probably a lot of other creatures who are also grass eaters here.”
Lori had slept for a while and had finally awakened just before the crossing when he’d shifted a bit and his horn had jabbed Tony in the back.
“Where there’s a lot of herbivores,” he noted, “there are also carnivores. Probably not all intelligent, either. You’ve got a finite space here, no matter how large a hex is, so something, usually a combination of things, has to keep the population managed. The gravity barrier and maybe incompatible vegetation would keep the animals on this side of the line, but what k
eeps them in balance?”
Mavra nodded. “We’ve got to make a camp. Tromping through this meter-high grass for any length of time at night, we’re likely to start a stampede, and that’s the last thing we want. Who knows what this stuff could conceal, too?”
“There is a large stand of trees just about two kilometers in,” Julian noted. “It would afford some shelter and protection.”
Mavra was dubious. “That’s your Erdomese instincts talking. In the desert you head for the trees and the oasis. Think more like the Africa you talked about. I remember a part of it much like this, going on almost forever. It was huge, with vast herds of game and great cities and civilizations, until the coastal folks chopped down all the trees and the rains were able to erode and undermine the soft rock and good soil and the whole thing turned into a desert. The last time I was there, it was desert wasteland from almost the Mediterranean shore as far in as I knew. When I saw what had happened and what greatness had been lost, I cried, and I don’t do that much.”
She paused a moment, remembering the devastation, the eternity of baking hot sand, then regained control.
“Well,” she continued, “the point is that when you had thick areas of trees like the ones you describe, it meant a water hole, maybe a spring at the surface, just as in the desert, but it also was where all the nastiest predators went and spent the night. Wouldn’t you? They sure don’t sleep out here in the grass. Otherwise the herds of prey would be somewhere else. You don’t see any signs of some kind of camp, some kind of civilization in that grove, do you?”
Both Julian and Lori looked hard, using magnification as well. “No,” Lori answered after a bit. “But you’re right; there are some pretty large creatures in those trees.”
Julian pointed to their left a bit. “The grass seems to get lower over there. It is possible that there is some surface rock. I do not see anything much right in that area, either. Lori?”
“No, I don’t, either. It’s a good bet, although it won’t give us a lot of cover.”
“Better than nothing,” Mavra said at last. “We’re not exactly inconspicuous anywhere in these parts, you know.”
“Or anywhere else, as a group,” Lori agreed.
“Well, I for one think we all look just splendid!” Anne Marie announced, missing the point.
The area was a rocky outcropping that wind and rain had worn clean of soil. It was a large tabular rock, cracked in a few places, that ran about twelve meters by nine. There were some raised sections of what looked like the same material along two sides, although nothing that would really conceal them from an interested onlooker. It was, however, barren of grass and didn’t seem to have been staked out by anything else alive, and that was good enough.
“It’s basically a form of sandstone,” Julian noted, “not unlike on Earth. It’s a common pattern. The stuff will eventually erode back to sand—and you can see some of that along the back side there—and probably underlies the whole plain. Basically, this isn’t much different than Erdom, except that this region gets an adequate rainfall that allows the grass to grow and stabilize the rock.”
Mavra nodded. “That’s right. You were a geologist, weren’t you? Okay, let’s get the bedrolls down for us three bipeds. Anne Marie, do you still have the firestarter? I want to check on something.”
“Yes, yes. I believe… Half a moment!” With that the centauress turned on her forward hips almost all the way around and fumbled in one of the large packs, then said, “Aha!” She pulled out a long, thin metallic rod and handed it to Mavra.
As the supplies were taken off and the three bedrolls were spread out in the middle of the slab, Mavra went over, picked a strand of the grass, and brought it back to the center of the rock, well away from anything else. She pressed a button on the end of the stick, and from the other end came a tiny jet of flame, which she applied to the grass.
It caught fire but went out as soon as she removed the source of the flame. She tried it two or three times, and each time the result was the same. Satisfied, she tossed the remains of the grass stalk away and put the lighter back in the pack.
“If you don’t mind, what was that about?” Tony asked her.
“Testing fire hazard. Either it’s not long after the rainy season or this soil really holds water well. Maybe both,” Mavra explained. “It also means that the grass is probably just grass. Plus, it shows that the reason for not seeing any sort of fires or fire remains isn’t because it’s too dangerous to build one. And that probably means there aren’t any Gekirs around at the moment, whatever they are.”
“Either that or they just don’t use fire,” Lori noted.
Mavra gave her a look she hoped the Erdomese could see in the darkness. “Don’t kill my optimism too quickly! I was enjoying this,” she said grumpily.
Lori looked around with his night vision from atop the centaur’s back. “I wonder what would be the most logical life-form for a place like this?”
“Either carnivores or omnivores,” Tony guessed. “Probably carnivores. They would have the most stake in managing such a place, and it would explain the lack of any sort of groves or cultivation in such a desirable spot. I would wager that they eat a lot of meat, anyway.”
Lori frowned. “Um, I hate to bring this up, but you Dillians are herbivores, aren’t you? And Erdomese are basically herbivores, too.” He decided not to mention that another staple of the Erdomese diet was almost any form of insect. He realized that that might well put the others off.
“That, I think, was the point,” Mavra commented dryly, deciding not to remind them that she was the only true omnivore there. She looked around. “We could risk a fire, though, either to ward off our theoretical predators or even to cook something. I’m not going hunting out there, though.”
“Get me down first,” Lori asked. “I’m feeling a little better. Julian—help support me and I’ll see how the ankle is doing.”
She came over as Anne Marie lifted Lori off Tony’s back and gently to the ground, where Julian braced him.
He tried a few steps, and although he continued to put a hand on her shoulder, it was more as a stabilizer than as a full support. “Not too bad,” he said. “It’s still sore, but it feels a lot better. At least I know now that it’s not broken.” He took his hand away from Julian and tried an uncertain step, then reached out with his right hand and pushed on Tony’s side. ” Ow! Damn! I think the leg’s going to be fine, but my wrist feels terrible! Shit! And I’m right-handed!”
Julian looked first at his leg, then at his wrist. “There is very slight swelling in the leg, my husband, but as you say, it does not look like much. Perhaps one more day of riding and then you should be able to walk. The wrist, though, looks very bad. It should be in a splint and bandaged.”
Mavra came over to them. “Trouble?”
“His wrist,” Julian told her. “It is bad, and I do not know how bad.”
“Can’t you feel along it for a break?”
“No, she can’t,” Lori told her. “Because our females carry children to term on all fours, they need forelegs, and the way that’s done makes their hand basically a hard, fixed surface and a thick separate segment for grasping. But no fingers as such.”
It disturbed Mavra that she’d barely noticed. “Let me see. Give me your hand, Julian.” She took it and felt it. It was hard and resembled a hoof, but unlike a true hoof, the hand was segmented in two parts, one tapered and rounded and a bit softer inside so that it could be used as a giant thumb against the other, slightly flexible part. When closed, it made a nearly perfect hoof. “That’s awful!” she exclaimed, then immediately felt terrible because she’d said it.
“Oh, it’s not bad once you get used to it,” Julian replied sympathetically, remembering how she had felt when she’d first awakened and seen those strange hands. “You would be surprised what I can do with them. Not as much as true hands, but about as much as, say, mittens would allow. No, the real problem is, since I can use them as forelegs, I
have no feeling in them. Having no sense of touch in my hands, I have to be looking at them whenever I am using them. That’s all right for many things, but there is no way I can feel Lori’s wrists.”
“You’d be surprised how much she can do with them,” Lori assured Mavra. “But not this.”
“Well, then, big man, grit those teeth, because I sure can,” the tiny woman replied. She took his right hand, noting how squared off and hard his hands were, even with three distinct and bendable fingers and a fairly prehensile thumb, then felt back to the wrist.
“Augh!” Lori grunted in obvious pain.
Mavra let go and shook her head. “I think you might well have some kind of a fracture there. I didn’t feel any protrusions, though, so it’s not a clean break we can set. Probably some hairline thing or chip. That swelling is pretty bad, though. It’s hard to say how it would heal—I don’t know enough about Erdomese, obviously, to make a guess—but Julian’s right. We’re gonna have to bind it in some kind of splint so it’s immobile and then bandage it. Bandages we got in the pack, and tape, so if we can find something to use as a splint, we’ll be okay. I don’t know what I can give you to treat the inflammation, though. The stuff that would help me might kill you or burn a hole through your stomach.”
“Believe it or not, aspirin,” Lori told her. “It seems aspirin is the number one miracle drug of Erdom. We don’t make it, but I ran into a drug trader on the ship to Itus. One of our biggest imports.”
Mavra sighed. “Well, I have a small tube of aspirin tablets in the pack for my own use. I wish I’d known—or thought to ask. It sure explains why I was able to buy it in the dockside shops! I doubt if there’s more than sixty tablets, though, and you, with your large size and particularly with that break, will need all of it and more. Lie down on the bedroll and I’ll get them.”
With Julian’s help, he managed to get over to the bedroll and sink down on top of it. Mavra came back with the small vial of aspirin and a canteen. “I’d take four of them now if I were you. Damn it! We should have started this as soon as we started out!”
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