Now they passed some very large chambers that they walked right past. These seemed to be offices, some larger than others, inhabited by the damnedest assortment of bizarre creatures he’d ever seen. He was used to alien races, of course, but some of these were more bizarre than anything he could imagine, while others were eerily familiar. Centaurs and Minotaurs, and tall creatures with great white wings, and tiny self-illuminated creations. Bipedal reptiles wearing opera capes, creatures that looked like giant bowling pins with big round eyes, giant hairy spiders writing in ledgers . . . It was amazing.
Each of the chambers had a number on it, no two numbers alike. So the numbers on the corridor indicated creatures; the symbols were either corridor names or referred to the type of creatures who might collectively be along it— hairy oxygen-breathing mammals, maybe. They didn’t see enough to have a definitive sample, but Beta registered every number that had a race attached and by now had enough to draw some conclusions. Okay, so type, then number-number. That was the key. The numbers ran serially but in base six.
Some chambers were deserted, and apparently had been for a very long time. They looked something like the inside of the houses of the Ancient Ones, and gave no clues other than a lonely number without anything to attach itself to.
“How many races are there?” he asked the Yaxa.
“There are 1,560 races in the world,” it told him. “As this is the South Zone, only those carbon-based life-forms who have a toleration zone compatibility are here. That is exactly half. Races one to 785 are in the south. Races 786 to 1,560 in the north. We are almost there. Soon all will be explained to you. No more talking, please.”
Fifteen hundred sixty races on one planet? How big was this place?
The mother of races. The Well World, the Yaxa had called it.
They soon walked into the Yaxan embassy, where the rest of the party, plus one surprise, were already waiting, all as stripped to nothing as they had been.
Ghengis O’Leary, at least, was as tall as the average Yaxa, and much bulkier. He also was as huge in the areas otherwise hidden.
Where is the Master? Beta queried Alpha.
They will only say that he is being treated. Impossible to verify. We need more data to act, however. I am absolutely certain that the Yaxan statement that they would kill us without a second thought is correct, so resistance is profitless at this point.
Well, that was a relief, Ari thought.
The Yaxan Marines were there, all right, and they were at the ready. They probably all looked very different to one another, but to anybody there in the chamber, they looked absolutely identical.
Ari looked around. “How did it miss grabbing the Kharkovs?”
“I think it provides an exit to those who require an exit,” Jeremiah Kincaid responded. “They didn’t need an exit.”
“I didn’t need an exit!” Tann Nakitt snapped. “I was ready to go home!”
“You weren’t going home with all that spy data locked in your head, Nakitt,” O’Leary told him. “That’s why your ship didn’t come. Somehow it knew this, even if you yourself didn’t. Maybe from my mind, or Kincaid’s. I’m surprised to be here, too, for all that. Maybe I wanted Josich, or at least closure, more than I realized.”
“You look a little odd, Martinez,” Kincaid noted. “Are you all right?”
“Um, yes, sure. I’m just cold, that’s all.”
“I can understand that. What about Wallinchky? He still alive?”
“When they took him away he was, or at least I think he was. After that, couldn’t say. We had rifles up our asses.”
“Well, you made the right decision to come here and not fight them for him,” Kincaid assured them. “The Yaxa are all females, all born warriors, and they’re quick, smart, and with something of a hive discipline. You better believe they would pull the trigger.”
Ari sighed. “Yeah.” He sat on the floor with the others, finding it no more comfortable. “So how long do we wait?”
“I suspect that’s up to our hosts,” Kincaid said. “At least we’ve been able to determine that the first batch, including Josich, came through here.”
“We were told that he’s still up to his old tricks, even here, only maybe not in charge of the mess,” Ari told him.
“He’s not one to like being the power behind the throne, but he’s had to start off new here. It’s a sad commentary that he’s already been able to cause real problems.”
“Your megalomaniac Emperor has caused some serious problems just in a month or so,” said a voice behind them. “It is not, however, war, not yet.”
They all turned and saw, standing in the entrance, a most bizarre creature. He appeared to be made out of balls; at least that was the first impression. Humanoid in shape, perhaps a meter and a half tall but fairly wide, its feet were thick rounded pads, and its legs, arms, and indeed its whole body seemed to be composed of a series of thick rings or pads that gave the impression of a mass built of bubbles or balloons. The hands were huge ovals, like mitts, but were segmented to form fingers, any of which apparently could be shifted to opposing the others. Its head was a true ball, with round eyes and pupils of deep purple. The bottom of the ball had a straight slit, and this formed the mouth, which actually was hinged only at the back of the head. It looked unreal, like some kind of puppet or robot character done for an industrial exhibition.
“I am Ambassador Doroch,” it told them, the precise and slightly amused voice not quite matching the jaw movements, nor in fact seeming the kind of voice such a creature might have. “If you will all accompany me to a briefing room, I believe I can explain the situation here, and I should like to get some information from you as well. I have some water and some fruit there that should be compatible with all of your digestive systems.” The round eyes looked at Kincaid. “Those of you who have digestive systems,” he added. “However, it is essential that we process you through as quickly as possible here. The system is designed for that. Please—come. I’ll answer what questions I can. I hope I have your word to try nothing foolish, since there is nowhere you can run anyway. I abhor having guns in here.”
He led them into a larger room, lit by some kind of built-in radiation in the very makeup of the walls and ceiling but providing full spectrum lighting. Some basic conventional chairs were set up, clearly for them, as neither the Yaxa— who, thankfully, hadn’t followed or interfered—nor this creature could use them.
On the far wall was a map unlike any they’d ever seen. It was a physical/political map showing great seas and high mountains, continents and islands, all the usual landforms. But superimposed over it was a hexagonal grid that varied only at the top and bottom, where thick, dark lines were drawn, and where the political straight lines still had six sides but were flattened into two halves rather than hexagonal. Ari and the two women examined it with more knowledge than their hosts suspected. Numbers one through 785. The reason for the different shapes north and south were obvious even to Ari; you couldn’t cover a sphere with hexagons. The difference would be the polar regions, and it was probable that they were in the south polar region now.
Ambassador Doroch took his place in front of the map. “This is the southern hemisphere of our world,” he told them. “The world itself is roughly forty thousand kilometers around at the equator or pole to pole. It is a perfect sphere, which should give you the clue that it is artificial. We believe from the evidence of those like yourselves who get here via the old gates that it may be the only remaining intact world of those you call the Ancient Ones. There are a lot of different terms for them; the term you just heard is how my own people’s name for them would be understood by you. As you might have guessed, none of us here are speaking your language. You are hearing us because we have implanted crystalline devices that serve as universal translators. They are organic, grown, and in very limited supply, so most people here do not have one and will never have one. This is important for you to know before you enter the Well World properly.”
“That is the second time I have heard that term used,” Ari commented. “Why is it called that?”
“Beneath us, perhaps a hundred kilometers or so, is a vast organic computer of a type no one has as yet duplicated. You probably have been on deserted worlds that might have similar cores, but this is the master computer, if we can still call it that, to which all others are linked. There are two levels—a very thin layer that governs this world, and the rest, which appears to govern all the remote units. The Ancient Ones built this world as a laboratory. Here they created independent ecosystems, each maintained by its own programs, and developed races that were evolutionarily consistent with the ecosystems. Or it may have been the other way around. In any event, 1,560 such little laboratories were created and populated. Where did the population come from? We don’t know. Perhaps it was created by modifying samples of real creatures from various parts of the universe. Perhaps they created them, a sobering thought. Ancient legends suggest that the people were actually Ancient Ones themselves, gods who chose to become mortal again because they felt bored, had nowhere else to go, and felt cheated that what appeared to be the end of evolution was such an empty life. One could imagine that after who knows how many thousands or millions of years of being a god, it would get pretty boring. One might find it more difficult to imagine a race of such gods committing mass suicide, as it were, starting their race over as many other races, just to find out if they had missed something and were at a dead end. Still, that is the legend.”
“With this ancient world-computer still functioning, could you not find out?” Alpha asked the ambassador.
“Well, the answer is probably there, of course, but I’m afraid that the great machine—the Well of Souls, it is called, and always has been—doesn’t talk to us or give up its secrets. It is set up for the benefit of creatures who are no longer around, for whatever the reason.”
Tann Nakitt looked over the map. “You say 1,560 races? For the whole galaxy!”
“Well, technically, for the whole universe,” Doroch noted. “From some of your sorts of people we’ve had in the past, I’m pretty certain we’re not in your galaxy, nor anywhere near it. However, we know, of course, that there are more races than that, because we’ve had some come through here that match nothing we know. Remember, I said this was a laboratory, or rather, a scientific experimental complex with 1,560 laboratories. There is no reason why the current crop is all there ever was. The ones that worked out were then created, superimposed, whatever, on a world somewhere that either was prepared to develop them naturally or that already met the criteria. Once that was done, the large transport station you arrived in was used to send the people there, and then an entirely new ecosystem and race could be created where they’d been. We know we are not unique; what is most logical is that this world represents the last ones. Either something happened to prevent our ancestors from going out, or the Ancient Ones now lacked sufficient numbers to do it, or perhaps some just didn’t want to go. Whichever, we remain here. The Well regulates the population so that it is stable for each nation, or hex, as we call them. Under-population nets a baby boom, overpopulation a drop. The numbers tend to stay the same, plus or minus ten percent. And there is another artifice as well.”
“But surely there are corruptions!” Kincaid put in. “You’d have worldwide weather patterns, air and water would have to flow, that sort of thing.”
“It is true that some things do in fact pass between, but they tend to be processed. You’ll see. The first time you see billowing industrial smoke essentially vanish as it goes across a border, or watch a rainstorm with a flat side, well, you will see. The Well does not interfere with how we live our lives, but it does maintain discipline of a sort for the ecosystems, within reason. When literally anything can be converted to anything else as needed, and you are powered most likely by a singularity deep within the core, perhaps tapped from a parallel universe so as to not suck us in, well—godlike is a more than apt description. We believe that they deliberately limited the Well so that it is not self-aware in the sense we would think of it. Otherwise it could easily become God, and not only here.”
“It is of supreme power and intelligence but programmed to serve only its master,” Alpha commented. “This is easy to comprehend.”
The ambassador didn’t seem to know how to take that. He wasn’t quite sure what these two women were, and was even less sure about Kincaid. He decided it was best to just continue the stock lecture.
“As I was saying, as part of the experiments, certain shortcuts had to be taken to create what was required in such a small space. The hexes are roughly 420 kilometers across, any point to any point. Travel between is possible, as well as trade and commerce. To reduce cross-cultural pollution, and also to simulate conditions on the true worlds they were being designed for, restrictions were placed on some of the hexes in about equal proportions. Some are very like your own homes, with a good deal of inventiveness and technological comfort. Some are limited in the level of technology available, generally to the age of the steam engine and the percussive projectile-based weapon. A third category allows no true storage of energy for use nor its transmission. Oh, you can use a waterwheel, that sort of thing, but otherwise nothing not done by muscle is allowed. These tend to be agrarian societies, with direct subsistence farming and hunting by spear and arrow.”
“Who enforces that kind of thing? Is there some sort of global police?” Genghis O’Leary asked. “Or some kind of force that ensures conformity to those rules?”
“It is not necessary,” Doroch told him. “The Well sets it. You may take a portable fusion generator into a semitech or nontech hex, but it simply will not work. It will be an inert lump. You can take a gunpowder-type rifle into a nontech hex and shoot it, and it simply will not fire. Every round will be a dud. Needless to say, the reverse is not true. If you take that rifle into a high-tech hex you can shoot it, even if everyone who lives there carries particle beam pistols. An arrow will kill anywhere. In that sense, the nontech folk have an advantage. They can hide out in their element and use it well, while even the semitech civilizations are too dependent on their engines and gunpowder to be able to come in and bully their way around in a nontech hex. My own is a semi, and while I feel quite comfortable here in South Zone with all its high-tech amenities, I daresay I could survive in a reasonable environment given good soil and seed and some hand tools. Could any of you do it? Any of you?”
“I could,” Alpha told him firmly. “I have data from the experience of living on a subsistence world.”
“Indeed? I wonder if it’s quite the equivalent you think. At any rate, you may well be put to the test soon. You see, there is no way out of here to anyplace that will not kill you. There is no way to send any of you back. That command is reserved for the Ancient Ones, and I’m afraid we haven’t seen any of them here for, oh, a few tens of millions of years or so. There are two exits, however. One simply teleports you to North Zone, but that will not help you much. Beyond the small area where you’ll arrive that is set aside for carbon-based life, virtually anything up there would kill you in moments. Even you, mechanical man.” He was looking at Kincaid.
“And the other exit?” Tann Nakitt prompted, getting nervous.
“The other is a general gate that, for me, would take me home to my hex and nowhere else. For the Yaxa, which you’ve met, it would take them to Yaxa. A corresponding gate in each capital, essentially in the center of each hex, will take you here, but that’s it. I cannot use it to go to Yaxa if I wanted; I’d have to travel in a conventional manner from my own home. It is, however, something of a convenient shortcut back.”
“And it will transport us to where our races have hexes?” O’Leary asked.
“Um, no, not exactly. Oh, you have a one in 780 chance of it, but it’s unlikely. I don’t remember it happening. When you go through the first time, you will be processed by the Well, assigned a race and hex where an added one would be of no consequence to the balance, which is almost any one, and then you will be reconstituted as one of them. The process is not quite random; the Well does do some sort of analysis of your mind, your personality, and does some rather odd things on occasion. One almost suspects sometime that it has a sense of humor. All that can be predicted is that you will come out young but generally postpubescent, although we’ve had a child or two through and they remain children and with their parents, if those parents are here; that you will emerge in absolutely perfect health, and that, while your memories and personality will be basically untouched, that autonomic part of everyone’s brain will be suited to and comfortable with the new form. You’ll know how to use the body, in other words. That’s not the same as saying you will feel like a native, but it is sufficient to get you started.”
Kincaid picked up on this right away. “Now, hold it, sir. You are saying that Josich and the other Hadun who came through before us are no longer racially Ghomas? That they are now something else?”
“They are not what they were, certainly.”
“What are they, then? Where is Josich, and what does the monster breathe?”
The ambassador’s tone grew a bit dark. “Josich is a Chalidang. That is here, in the north-central region of the Overdark, one of our great oceans. A high-tech hex that adjoins a large island. Another of that race is in Jocir, yet another high-tech hex only two away from Chalidang and adjoining the continent, and another is down here, at Imtre. That was the curse, really. Two in high-tech hexes not far from one another, and a third in what was nontech but in a formidable form. The other two of their kind arrived on land, one on the far eastern edge of the Overdark, the other on an island to the south, Cromlin and Becuhl, one high-tech, the other a semitech. They were all quickly in the hands of ambitious and ruthless rulers open to their own brand of ambition. Beyond that, you had best learn once you have been processed. Still, sir, if you wish to kill the one called Josich, many would count you a hero, but you will have to go to Chalidang.”
“Still a water breather, though,” Kincaid said wistfully. “But two out of five weren’t reconstituted as water breathers. I’ll bet that has them unbalanced. But this means that I might well be reprocessed as a water breather?”
“You might. The odds are against it, but it happens.” The ambassador turned and looked them all over. “And now, you must proceed to processing. It is a standing rule of all the races here that anyone entering Zone must be processed by the end of the day they emerge, and preferably as soon as they are briefed. We have no way to take care of you as you are, and until you are processed you are in all ways aliens.”
“Wait! Where is our master that the flying ones took with them?” Alpha demanded to know.
“Oh—him. He was taken immediately to the Well Gate because, of course, all this would be of no use to him. The Yaxa state that he had some sort of seizure and that they were not at all certain if he was alive when they put him through. If he was, he is already somewhere, and something, else. I may find out in time, but nothing would be learned as yet. If he was dead, then he is gone. They followed the only course that might have saved him. Only time will tell if it did.”
“Then we will stay here until we know!” Alpha maintained adamantly.
The Ambassador looked at her, its big eyes then moving to the others, and then he said, quietly, “No, I’m afraid you won’t.”
The Yaxa and their nasty rifles were back, standing in the back of the room and aiming at the two women.
“If those two, or any of the others, make the slightest move to do anything but go to and through processing, you have my leave to shoot them,” the Ambassador told them. “If it’s around here, kill is authorized. If near the gate, simply stun them into unconscious oblivion if you can and throw them in.”
Their briefing, and their welcome, was over.
Ambora
it wasn’t supposed to hurt.
They said it would be no different than the teleportation to the Well World itself; a sense of darkness, unconsciousness, and then you’d wake up somewhere else in a new native habitat with the basics necessary to survive. From that point, you’d be on your own.
The pain had been enormous. She remembered the pain, as if her head were under horrible attack and all its blood vessels exploded. It was the kind of pain whose memory lasted a lifetime in nightmares, and for some time its echoes would cause nervous caution or even possible panic.
And then she’d come to with those echoes surrounding her, come to and find only questions.
Who had said that there would be no pain? Tele— The very term confused her. It was gibberish, meaningless, and even those fragments of memory faded as a dream fades upon awakening from the deepest of sleeps, leaving her with only the memory of that pain and total confusion.
She awoke high on a cliff overlooking a vast saltwater ocean that seemed to have no end. The cliffs were as sheer as might be imagined from nature, and they rose perhaps a kilometer above her and even more below her to a flat volcanic outcrop of rock and vegetation that jutted out into the sea.
She was on a small outcrop from that cliff barely large enough for her reclining body, with no ladder or trail or any other indication of how she’d gotten there, or, more to the point, how she’d get off.
Who was she? What was she? She wasn’t sure what frightened her more, the situation she found herself in or the fact that she had no memories of her past, not one single personal memory.
She got to her feet, nervous about the drop, then did a self-examination. The discovery that she was, in fact, female was a surprise, although had she found herself a male it would have made an equal impact. Whatever sense of self she had, it contained none of those rocks that others might take for granted. The breasts were large and firm, but something in her subconscious said that they weren’t quite right, although she had no idea why. If she leaned forward, they did not hang at all; it was as if they were attached all the way, which, in fact, they were, with some kind of connective tissue. This created an extremely streamlined figure that tapered down to an impossibly small waist flanked by long, muscular legs that provided sure balance and were attached at a hip that allowed her to not only bring her face down close to the ground if she wanted, but also to swivel the torso effortlessly almost sideways. Her natural sense of balance was startling to her; whatever fear she’d felt at the height or standing up had already fled.
The arms were thin and ended in hands with extremely long fingers, three of them, and an opposable thumb almost as long as the rest, all of which ended in sharp clawlike nails that retracted when the fingers were straight out and emerged when the fingers were curved. Her feet were almost mirror images of her hands, with the fingerlike toes perhaps longer, and the claws much longer when extended. The skin on both the inside of the hands and the bottom of her feet was abnormally tough, yet flexible, and the fingers and toes were webbed with a supple yet leathery connector that didn’t seem to limit movement. In fact, when the digits were closed in, it emerged at the bottom of the foot and seemed to stick to the rock, adding some stability.
And then there was the matter of the wings and the tail.
Not merely wings, but great wings, white, but tinged with brown at the edges and near the base where they met her back. She could feel the enormous muscles there that propelled them, and, as an experiment, she extended the wings and was startled to see just how enormous was the wingspan when they were fully extended. At the base of her spine emerged the tail, which she only became aware of when she stretched the wings, since it made the tail extend and open, almost fanlike. Bringing the wings back in caused the tail to retract, although it still extended beyond her rump. She had what seemed to be a head of hair but proved to be hairlike feathers, and quite oily at that; beyond it, though, her whole backside save the rump and legs was covered by the same sort of birdlike feathers as composed the wings and tail.
Out of curiosity, she picked up a small rock with her right-hand-like foot and brought it up to her face. The leg had no trouble with this at all, and the other leg kept her as solid and balanced as if she were standing on both.
She was a woman, and a bird. No beak, though. Those were lips, and a nose that seemed “normal,” although she had no idea what was being used as the norm for comparative purposes. Birds had cavities for ears; she had ears, but they didn’t feel quite “right,” again not understanding what “right” would feel like, but they were close in and held to the side of the head in much the same way the breasts were held tight. Aerodynamic design. She had teeth, too, but again they didn’t quite compare to that mysterious norm. The front ones did, but it seemed for some reason that the back teeth should be wide and flat; these were needle sharp. The teeth of a carnivore.
This troubled that part of her that sat there, just out of sight and reach, coaching and reproaching, but she couldn’t understand why it did.
She looked out at the sea and was startled to see not just the scene, but differences in the moving air, like a transparent layer cake where the layers flowed and you could see them and how they flowed.
How did baby birds learn to fly?
Oh, God! she thought. There was only one way she could have gotten where she was, and barring some miraculous rescue, there was only one way to get somewhere else. There had to be others like her; she couldn’t be in this strange place totally alone. But she didn’t know what to do! Just launch herself off the cliff and trust to some instinct she didn’t feel at all?
Something large flew by a bit above her. For a moment she hoped it was another of her kind, but it wasn’t. Just focusing on it revealed it as if she were using a telescope with amazing detail, while somewhere in her mind she had instantly calculated just how far away it actually was and how fast it was going.
It was a big, ugly bird with a twisted beak and black wings and body. In addition to its dark orange feet, it also had two tiny, odd-looking forelimbs that were curled under and seemed to end in tingle-nasty claws, the better to tear into flesh. She watched it, noticing how effortlessly it was flying, how using the thermals it clearly could see and feel the same as she could. At this height, and with these winds, it was almost like gliding.
The sun was getting low; the shadows had been lengthening as she’d stood there. She had no idea if she could see at night, but it was clear that if she didn’t get up the nerve to try and fly, she’d spend the night there, hungry and thirsty and exposed.
It wasn’t fair, she reflected. Everybody else would be born and raised this way and taught the basics. She was going to have to try it cold turkey.
Turkey? What was a turkey? Where had that come from?
A mental picture of a big, fat, ugly flightless bird came to her. That was not encouraging.
Time was against her, she knew, and nobody remotely like her had shown up or flown by, and there were no sounds of talking or yelling or even squawking around, just the distant pounding surf and the sounds of two waterfalls emerging from the cliffs about a hundred meters to the left of her and two hundred or so to the right.
The devil with it! she thought, and jumped.
She fell faster than she’d thought, but then the wings and tail fully extended and the great things that emerged from her back began to beat as needed. Almost at the last moment she realized that all that was missing was a conscious will to direct her, and she pulled up just a few meters before the water and began a slow, steady climb as she went along the cliffs.
It was at once so easy, so natural, she felt that surely she must have been born and raised here and just could not remember, and it was also fun! This was really neat, arms slightly behind and flattened there, legs stretched out behind, the feet nearly perpendicular to the ground. Her head, too, was at an angle that allowed her to see in almost any direction, although too much head movement slowed her. It was as if the whole form automatically locked in place, with those things that weren’t necessary or would get in the way placed in positions that, if they couldn’t help, couldn’t hurt.
She was surprised at how few beats it took to remain aloft; you just grabbed a thermal and rode it up, kind of like sliding along stairs, while avoiding the downdrafts, which were apparent to her. Small, sudden ones that could get you weren’t so easy to see, but she could feel them across the underside of her skin and automatically compensate.
When she cleared the top of the cliffs and kept rising, she felt almost triumphant. Beyond, she could see the setting sun in the distance, feel its last warmth, and then look down over a rugged land of volcanic soil, frozen lava flows, and, where some time had been allowed, dense, lush forest, including some pretty tall trees. It was both stark and beautiful; in spots she could see steaming pools of water and more steam emerging from some fairly recent craters. The thermals were also nearly impossible to make out, changing rapidly over the hottest areas, and she felt the bumps and found herself working harder than she wanted to.
She banked and turned toward the tall forest, and as she did, saw that the forest was not only alive with vegetation, it was alive with animals, too, a lot of very large animals that showed clearly in the infrared. And she heard singing, a kind of exotic chant that was being joined by more and more voices as the sun began to vanish.
She didn’t know if she was welcome at the party or not, but she was going to crash it anyway. She needed food, and shelter, and somebody to tell her just where and what she was. Maybe somebody down there among the singers to the coming night knew who she was.
It was clearly a colony, or perhaps more properly a town, but one designed for a race that flew. There was a series of lava tubes lit with the glow of fires, and inside the trees themselves were small houses made of wood and grass and bamboo, sometimes a large number of them at different levels, some on top of others, in a single tree all the way up to the top.
At first she wasn’t sure where to land, but then she saw a flat area in front of a very large lava cave with a huge pit in the center that had obviously been hollowed out. Two small waterfalls emerged on each side of the tube, then ran out in channels on the rock, flanking but not touching the pit, then dropping off again down to a series of small falls and pools below.
Carved into the black lava flanking the tube were strange, demonic-looking faces that were almost the reverse of the people there; creatures with the faces of mean-looking birds and the bodies of animals, looking somewhat like great bats with fanged beaks and angry eyes painted red. An elaborate series of colored patterns was carved and painted on the flat, and around the pit and standing on both sides of the riverlets were wooden statues carved with even more hideous shapes, one atop the other, creating totem poles over ten meters high and topped by the bird faces in the stone sculptures.
The singers were standing in a circle around the whole thing, looking inward, illuminated now by two flaming torches planted inside the pit. There were perhaps a dozen people there, all females, and their faces and bodies were painted with colorful patterns using some kind of eerily glowing phosphorescent paint. It made them look something like the strange creatures in the carvings.
This was clearly some kind of temple or cathedral.
She tried to land nearby without being on the actual “platform,” content to wait until whatever ritual they were performing was done and someone took notice of her.
It was now quite dark, but the torches and the reflected lights from the caves and tree houses gave off a decent glow. There wasn’t much danger of fire except from possible volcanic activity; the whole place was so humid you almost got wet flying through it.
Although none of the singers were clothed, something she oddly didn’t even think about, they did wear earrings, some small nose rings, and thin, tight bracelets and anklets. They also wore thin belts around their narrow waists and, attached to them, something that might be a utility case or a scabbard.
They were all beautiful, exotic-looking creatures. She hoped she looked like that; she’d find it easy to look like any one of them. The glowing designs made it difficult to tell if they had any more normal makeup on, but they looked like erotic statues, standing there, arms raised, wings folded back but still very visible, almost like great horns from this angle, rising from the back of their shoulders. They seemed to be in a trance, staring straight ahead, taking no notice of her. The feathery hair was short but styled; the ears, she discovered, were large and pointed, and while flush against the face in flight, they unfolded and were prominent on the ground. In fact, she was suddenly aware that her big ears were out, and that she could turn each independently.
Then, abruptly, the chantlike song was done, and as one their heads went back and they issued an eerie, bloodcurdling sound that came from somewhere deep in their chests. Then they pivoted, so fast it was hard to tell which way they all turned, the wings spread out, the tails extended, forming a continuous wall masking whatever was going on in front of them, in that pit.
The sounds of terrible, panicked squealing came from there, as if some huge pig or boar was being held down. The winged chanters took yet another step in, as if slaughtering it with sharp knives or swords. The sounds died, they closed in even more, and then the wings folded and they leaped into the pit in a frenzied orgy of gluttony, using nails and sharp teeth to shred the poor animal that had just been killed and tear off and eat strips of flesh and bone, their phosphorescent color dulling as it was covered with blood.
She had mixed reactions to the sight. One part of her, that hidden part, was repulsed, whispering that it was horrible, grotesque, wrong, sick. But the other part, the instinctive part that had gotten her off the cliff and here, felt an urge to join in and eat her fill.
“You are new here, sister,” a woman’s voice said behind her, startling her almost into flight. “From where do you come and what is your clan?”
She caught hold of the heart that was suddenly in her throat, turned and faced a woman very much like herself and the others up there at the feast.