For the first time the creature showed emotion. Its voice was harsh, excited. “The head of the sponge syndicate? And you let it slip through you like that?”
Ortega turned all six palms up. “We didn’t know. They looked just like them. How was I to know?”
“It’s true,” Vardia put in. “They were so nice and gentle and civilized-particularly that one,” it gestured at Renard.
The Yaxa almost spit. “Agh! Fools! Anybody without sponge that long would have shown signs! You should have known!”
“Come on, Wooley!” Ortega chided. “You’re a fanatic, and with good reason. But, hell, we weren’t expecting this sort of thing. Everything’s been more than a little crazy around here lately.”
The great butterfly’s nostrils opened, and it actually snorted. “Oh, hell. Trust you to screw things up anyway.” It turned its great head, apparently on some kind of ball joint for a neck, and looked straight at him. “Give me the bastard’s name. He won’t always be so clever. One of these days I’ll get him. You know that.”
Serge Ortega nodded, knowing that nothing could stop Wooley except death. Sooner or later, if that man surfaced at all, it would nail him.
“Antor Trelig,” he told the Yaxa.
The creature nodded its great, strange head as if filing the information. Then it said, “I’ve got to get back home. A lot’s going on. You will hear from me, though.” And, with that, it turned, not easy in the clinic’s space with those great wings, and went out the door.
“Good heavens!” Vardia managed. “Who is that?”
Ortega smiled. “Somebody you used to know. I’ll tell you sometime. Now we have more urgent work to do. We have to get these two through the Well, and I have to talk to the Council.”
There was no Council chamber for the ambassadors. All communication was done through intercoms, both for diplomatic reasons and to make it easier on everybody. There wasn’t much room for everybody, anyway.
Ortega summarized the events to date, adding, “I’ve put out tracers on the first batch, and I hope that anyone will report their whereabouts if they appear in your hex. All Entries are to be checked out. These people are tricky as hell.”
The speaker cracked to life. “Ortega?” said a metallic, toneless voice. “This is Robert L. Finch of The Nation.”
Ortega couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “I didn’t know The Nation had names,” he remarked, remembering them as communal-minded robots.
“The Nation has its Entries, too,” Finch replied. “When it is matters concerning such, the appropriate persona is selected.”
Ortega let it go. “What’s your problem, Finch?”
“The woman, Mavra Chang. Why have you left her with the Lata? Not playing any little games again, are you, Ortega?”
Ortega took a deep breath. “I know she should be run through the Well, and she will be, sooner or later. Right now she is more useful in her original form-the only such Entry on the Well. I’ll explain all in due course.”
They didn’t like it, but they accepted it. Other questions followed, a torrent, mostly irrelevant. The tone of many was the usual, “it’s not my problem,” and Ortega got the impression that others were not being very straightforward. But, he’d done his duty, and that was that. The meeting ended.
Vardia, the Czillian plant-creature, had sat in in Ortega’s office. There wasn’t anything its people needed to know that they didn’t already.
Except one.
“What about that Chang woman, Ortega?” Vardia asked. “What’s the real reason you’re keeping her under wraps.”
He smiled. “Not under wraps, my dear Vardia. All six hundred thirty-seven races with Zone embassies know she’s with the Lata. She’s bait-a recognizable object that could smoke out our quarries.”
“And if they don’t take the bait?” Vardia prodded. “The fact that she’s a fully qualified space pilot still in a form that would be best for operating a spaceship wouldn’t have anything to do with your thinking, would it?”
Ortega leaned back comfortably on his long coiled body. “Now isn’t that an interesting idea!” he responded sarcastically. “Thanks for the suggestion!”
If there was a sincere, honest, or straightforward bone in Serge Onega’s massive body, nobody had found it yet.
Vardia decided to change the subject. “Do you think they’ll do it-report the Entries, that is?”
Ortega’s expression grew grim. “A few might. Lata, Krommians, Dillians, Czillians, and the like. Most won’t. They’ll either try to bury them-which would be a mistake on their part they’ll live to regret, I suspect-or they’ll go along with them. Team up any of them with an ambitious, greedy government, and you’ve got the nucleus of that war I spoke about. An alliance and a pilot to fly the ship. Even a scientist who might be able to help put the pieces back together.” He shifted slightly, turned to face the Czillian square on, and said: “And as for Mavra Chang-if we’ve got her, we have some control. If we put her through the Well, they’ve got her. No fuel for the fire yet, my dear. It’s going to get hot as hell all by itself without the likes of you and me pouring oil on it.”
MAKIEM
He awoke and opened his eyes. for a moment, he was confused, disoriented. Things didn’t quite look right, and it took him half a minute to remember what had happened and what was supposed to happen.
He had walked into that blackness in the wall, and there had been an odd sensation, like being wrapped in someone’s embrace-warm, probing, emotional; a thing he had never felt before. A drifting, dreaming sleep, except that he couldn’t remember the dreams-only the fact that most, perhaps all, had been about himself.
I’m supposed to be something else, he remembered. Changed into one of those weird creatures, like the snake-man or the plant-thing. It didn’t bother him, really, that he was to become something else; what he had become, however, would shape his plans for the future.
There was something strange about his vision, but it took him a little thinking to realize what it was. For one thing, depth perception had increased dramatically; everything stood out in sharp relief, and he had the strong feeling that he knew to the tenth of a millimeter how far one thing was from him and from anything else. Colors also seemed brighter, sharper; contrasts, both between slightly different shades of the same color and between light and dark, were markedly improved. But, no, that really wasn’t what mattered, either.
Suddenly he had it. I’m seeing two images! he thought. There was almost an eighty-degree panorama on both sides; peripherally, he could almost see in back of him. But straight ahead there was a blank spot. Not a line or a divider; it was simply that what was absolutely dead ahead was barely out of his range of vision. His mind had to be forced to recognize the lapse, or he wasn’t conscious of it.
There was movement to his right, and reflexively his right eye shifted a little to catch what it was. A large insect of some kind-very large, the size of a man’s fist-buzzed overhead like some small bird. It took him a little more time to realize that he’d moved the right eye independent of the left.
He put both eyes as far forward as possible. He seemed to have a snout of some kind; his mouth was large and protrusive. He was conscious that he was resting comfortably, almost naturally, on all fours, and he raised his hand up to his right eye to see it.
It was an odd hand, both strangely human and yet not. Four very long webbed fingers and an opposable thumb, each terminating in what appeared to be a small suckerlike tip where the fingerprint would be. Looking carefully, he saw that there was a print pattern inside the sucker. His hand and arm were a deep pea-green in color, with brown and black spots here and there. The skin looked tough and leathery, like the skin of a snake or other reptile.
That’s what I must be, he decided. A reptile of some sort. The landscape was certainly right for it: jungle-like, with lush undergrowth and tall trees that almost hid the sun. What looked for all the world like a gravel-topped road cut through the dense vegetation. It was a road, and very well maintained, too. In thick brush like this, one would have to have road crews working constantly every hundred kilometers or so to keep the natural foliage back from the cleared area.
He had just decided to go over to the road and follow it to whatever passed for civilization when another of those large insects came by, perhaps two meters or more in front of him. Almost without thinking, his mouth opened and a tremendously long tongue, like a controllable ribbon, shot out, struck the insect, and wrapped itself around the thing. Then it was retracted into his mouth, and he chewed and swallowed it. It didn’t have much taste, but the insect felt solid and went down well, and it helped the hungry ache inside him. He reflected curiously on his own reactions, or lack of them. It was a natural, normal thing to do, and it had been done automatically. The concept of eating a live insect didn’t even bother him that much.
The Well World changes you, all right, in many ways, he thought. And yet-he was still Antor Trelig, inside. He remembered all that had transpired and regretted none of it-except flying too low over the Well World. Even that might be turned to ultimate advantage, he told himself confidently. If such power could be harnessed in the service of those best able to use it, ones like himself, it mattered not what form he was in or what he ate for breakfast. If the Well World had taught him nothing else, it taught him that everything was transitory.
I wonder how I walk? he mused, chuckling at the absurdity of the question. Well, the eating had taken care of itself, probably that would, too.
He eyed the road and started forward. Much to his surprise, his legs gave a great kick and he was to it, unerringly, in two large hops-coming down after the first one in a smooth, fluid motion that already had him set for the next leap, and coming to rest in the loose gravel with no rolling, unbalance, or discomfort. It was fun, really-like flying, almost.
He tried just walking, and found that, if he used all fours, he could manage it with some effort, like a waddle. Jumping, or hopping, was the normal mode of locomotion for this race; walking was for the local stuff too short for a hop.
He looked both ways. One direction was as good as the other, he decided; both ends of the path disappeared into the thick growth. He picked one and started off. It didn’t take long to come upon some others. He saw them from a great distance off, once he realized that a lot of the rustling he’d heard in the upper trees wasn’t just birds and insects.
Ahead was a grove of giant trees almost set off from the rest of the forest, a small lake to one side. There were houses in those trees-intricate structures woven between the branches out of some straw or bamboolike material that almost certainly grew in the marshes.
One of the creatures appeared in the lower doorway of one of the houses, looked around for a moment, then stepped out and walked down the almost ninety-degree angle of the trunk to the ground! Trelig understood now what those suction cups were for. Very handy.
The creature resembled nothing so much as a great giant frog, its legs incredibly long when stretched out for walking, a light and smooth greenish-brown texture from the lower jaw down to the crotch, the same rough spotted green elsewhere.
The creature went up to a large wooden box set on a stake near the road, sat up on its powerful hind legs, lifted the lid, and looked inside. Nodding to itself, it reached in and picked out several large brown envelopes. Trelig realized with some surprise that the thing was a mailbox.
He approached slowly, not wanting either to alarm the creature or to seem out of place. It shifted an eye in his direction-its head was almost too integral a part of the body to allow flexible movement, but the eyes made up for it-and nodded politely to him. He sensed that there was anger in the creature’s expression, but not directed at him.
Trelig remembered that Ortega had said that the Well would provide the language. He decided just to talk normally.
“Good day, sir!” the new frog said to the long-tune resident. “A nice day, isn’t it?”
The other snorted contemptuously. “You must work for the government to say something like that,” he growled in a deep bass that was not unpleasant but that seemed to originate from deep in the chest cavity. The creature held up one of the envelopes. “Tax bills! Always tax bills!” he almost shouted. “I don’t know how the sons of bitches expect an honest man to make a living these days.” The phrase wasn’t really “sons of bitches,” but some local equivalent, but that’s how Trelig’s mind understood it.
He nodded slightly in sympathy. “No, I don’t work for the government,” he replied, “although I might some day. But I understand and sympathize with your problems.”
That statement seemed to satisfy the other, who opened another envelope, pulling out a long yellow sheet of paper. He glanced at it, then balled it up in disgust.
“Hmph! First they want your life’s blood, then they ask you to do them favors!” he snorted.
Trelig frowned. “Huh?” was all he could manage.
The frog-man tossed the rolled up paper slightly in his hand, like a ball. “Report any Entries that you might meet to the local police at once,” he spat. “What the hell do I pay all these taxes for, anyway? So I can do their jobs while they hunch on their fat asses eating imported sweetmeats bought with my money?”
Trelig took the opportunity to glance at the tax bill. He couldn’t read it, couldn’t make any sense at all out of the crazy and illogical nonpatterns there. Obviously reading was not considered a necessary skill by the Well computer.
“You ain’t seen no Entries, have you?” the man asked, not a little trace of sarcasm in his voice. “Maybe we’ll form a search party. Go out yelling, ‘Here, Entry! Nice Entry!’ “
Trelig liked him. If he were representative of this hex’s people, he would not find life unbearable.
“No,” he chuckled. “I haven’t seen any Entries. Have you? Ever. I mean?”
The grouch shook his head slightly as a negative. “Nope. And never will, either. Met one, once, a long time ago. Big, nasty-looking birdlike reptile from Cebu. Kind of a local celebrity for a while. Big deal.”
Trelig was relieved to hear that Entries weren’t boiled in oil or something, but the official notice that the man had received said that this was no ordinary case. Somehow, he decided, they were on to him. At least, he had to act that way. And he wanted to check out the lay of this new land before revealing himself, if he could. It might be easier than he’d thought, considering how automatically he was acting and how readily this man had accepted him. He hoped so.
“Been traveling far?” the man asked him.
Trelig nodded. Farther than this creature could imagine.
“Headin’ for Druhon for the government tests, I’ll bet,” the frog-man guessed.
“Yes, you guessed it exactly,” Trelig replied. “I’ve thought of nothing else since”-he started to say “since I got here” but caught himself-“I was very small,” he finished. “At least it’ll give me a chance to see the government in action, no matter what.”
That started the other off again. “The government inaction is what you’ll see, but that’s the future for you. Shoulda done it myself when I was young. But, no, I had to get into farming. Free and independent, I said. No bosses.” He let out an angry, snakelike hiss. “So you wind up being run by the government, bossed by the government, taxes and regulations, regulations and taxes. Some freedom!”
Trelig clucked sympathetically. “I understand you perfectly.” He looked around, as if sensing time was pressing and he had an appointment. “Well, it was nice talking to you, and I wish you better luck and much prosperity in the future, but I must be getting on.”
The man seemed to appreciate the nice comments. “Been a pleasure, really. Sure you won’t come in for a drink of good beer? It’s only an hour or two more to Druhon.”
That was good news. His cup was running over today. “Thank you, no,” he replied. “I must be hi the city. But I’ll remember you, sir, when I’m rich and powerful.”
“You do that, sonny,” the other chuckled. Trelig went on.
He wondered as he continued what the old man had farmed; there was no sign of fields or cultivation of any kind. Best not to ask and appear too ignorant, particularly with a wanted poster out.
There was also the matter of money. He saw a number of the creatures as he went on, living together hi groups or singly, on the ground, in trees, and even some floating dwellings in the countless lakes and marshes. AH wore no clothing of any kind, and he wondered where you’d put money if you had it. He worried that there was some sort of identity system that would unmask him. But, no, he told himself, technology was obviously primitive here. There were torch stands all over, but not a sign of a powered light or device. Besides, if they had such a system they wouldn’t bother sending out all those wanted circulars on him.
More confident and proficient now, he stopped and talked to several others along the way. They were mostly plain, simple creatures, close to the soil. Females were slightly smaller and had smoother top skin than the males, their voices slightly higher and smoother, but they were otherwise identical. He was a male; their comments told him that, even without the skin-texture difference, he was a young one at that. That made the first few days easier. He was expected to be curious and not expected to know anything.
But he learned. A casual reference told him that the country, the hex, was called Makiem, as were the people. It was a common, although not universal, practice on the Well World to have the race name and place name coincide. He learned, too, that it was a hereditary monarchy-which was bad. But the hex was administered by a large corps of civil servants chosen by merit as the results of massive tests for their brilliance and aptitude from any class or walk of society-which was good. That meant that the king of Makiem would listen to and take seriously advice from anyone he considered qualified, thus decisions were almost certainly made not by the royal family but by an individual or council who would be the best, greediest, most ambitious and able people hi the country.
His kind of people.
Druhon, the capital city, was a surprise. First, it was huge-a great city, really, carved out of the jungle and sitting on a series of low hills that raised it slightly above the swamp. There was a broad, clear lake off to the west, and it was crowded with swimmers. Trelig had been feeling slightly itchy and uncomfortable; now he guessed the reason. Although these were land people, they stayed very close to the sea that gave them birth, and they had to return to it occasionally to wet down their skins. Once a day, probably, although in all likelihood a washdown with a hose would do as well.
Another surprise was the buildings themselves. Great castles and huge buildings of stone showing superior masonry skills, and homes and businesses built of good handmade brick mortared so well that nothing would get through them. Heavy wooden doors also showed great craftsmanship, and figures of brass and iron on gates, fences, and doors were evidence of a fine artistic skill. Considering that this was obviously a nontechnological hex, these people had developed a really surprising, modern culture. His estimation of them, and his optimism, went up accordingly.
There was still the problem of money. He walked the streets filled with stalls outside the places of business, with great frog businessmen and women hawking their wares and calling and cajoling customers. And money they did have and did carry. Watching the Makiem buying at the stalls, he saw that they carried everything they needed or used in then: mouths-the lower jaw area was flexible, roomy, and, when he tested it with his own hand, had a thin, rigid flap controlled by a small muscle In the back of the throat. Evolution had obviously placed it there to store food for long periods. Civilization had given rise to more practical and cosmopolitan uses. The flap on the outside contained enough folded skin that one might not notice it, but occasionally people went by who looked like they had goiters. Trelig finally understood that it wasn’t because of physiological differences but because they had a lot to carry.
The sights and smells of the city also excited him. They were strange smells, odors that his former self perhaps would have found foul or offensive, but they smelled wondrous and sweet and new to him now.
And there were the tattoos, mysterious symbols drawn by some device on the underbelly. Not everybody had them-most of the farmers he had met didn’t-but a lot of people here did. They were symbols of authority, he surmised. Policemen, perhaps, and government officials. Somehow he’d have to find out what all those things meant.
The police, who were his first worry, were easiest to identify. He didn’t know just how many people lived in this city, but it was easily a quarter-million, most residing in four-storey brick apartments entered by walking up the walls. That created pedestrian traffie jams. He saw carts, lots of them, moving goods from one place to another, pulled by giant insects, larger than a Makiem, that looked a lot like walking grasshoppers. All this meant traffic control, and so there were traffic cops.
He checked out several, looking particularly at the big symbol on their chests-a sort of double wheel with two diagonal crossbars. To be safe, he decided to act as if a double wheel with any crossbars was a cop.
The city’s size and complexity gave him no small measure of anonymity; he was just one of the crowd. It suited him for a while, although shelter would have to be attended to, and sooner or later he’d have to face the problem of money and food-there were no big, fat insects or groves around here. He’d never stolen anything small, but it shouldn’t be all that hard.
He checked out the massive stone buildings with the towers and the flags. Government buildings without a doubt, the largest of which, with a tremendous amount of impressive brass grillwork and high iron spiked gates to snare the unwary intruder, was obviously the royal palace. At the gate there were guards armed with vicious-looking crossbows and pikes, and an impossibly complex symbol on their chests matched the ones wrought in kon at regular intervals in the fence.
The royal symbol, obviously. He was learning fast.
The itching was getting to him. His skin felt dry and uncomfortable, almost as if it was ready to peel off. He decided to head down to the big lake. It was a beautiful setting, particularly against the waning sun. A sparkling lake, fresh and surprisingly clean considering the nearby population, dotted with myriad islands and flanked by small but imposing granite mountains.
The lake was somewhat crowded, but not enough to cause real problems. He slipped into the water with ease, and found it surprisingly cold. The chill lasted for only a few moments, however, and then, somehow, the water temperature seemed to rise until it was just perfect. Coldblooded, he decided. It wasn’t the water temperature that had risen, but his body temperature that had lowered to match the water.
Swimming was as easy as leaping had been. His rear legs, large and thickly webbed, propelled him, and he floated naturally across the top of the lake. This, however, didn’t get rid of the itch on his back, and when he got out a ways he angled downward.
A strange thing happened suddenly. A membrane came down over his eyes, transparent as glass, yet totally protective. And too, his vision seemed to alter, becoming less depth-and color-sensitive but tremendously respondent to changes in light and dark. His nose also seemed to close off by internal flaps, but he experienced no discomfort from not breathing. He wondered how long he. could stay under; quite some time, he thought, and decided to test it.
The longer he stayed down, the less he seemed to mind it. He had the uncanny sensation that he was breathing, slightly and shallowly, although there were no bubbles. No gills, either. He finally decided that something in his skin could absorb a certain amount of oxygen from the water. It was not, as he found out with time, enough for him to live underwater, but it was sufficient for him to stay down at least half an hour, perhaps much longer, before coming up for air.
He came up near one of the islands and looked around. The water felt soothing and comfortable. Lazily, he turned and looked back at the hilly city. It was getting dark, and lights were coming on-and not just torchlights, either, although there were plenty of those. No, those strange glass streetlights he’d seen were what he guessed they might be-gas lamps. These people were at the peak of their technological limits.