03. Gods at the Well of Souls (24 page)

The clicking of her heels sounded for all the world like the ticking of a clock.  A clock counting down the window of opportunity ... 

She had a lot of calls to make. 

Lori had tried to keep track of how long the nightmare journey had taken, but  either exhaustion or the creeping dullness in his mind had made it impossible.  It certainly seemed like forever, particularly with that very heavy bastard on  his back urging him on and making him miss needed water and food stops. Still, the guy had to sleep and drink, too, so there'd been just enough of a  break to survive. How much did these ducklike things weigh, anyway? Still, once in the warehouse, he'd slept the sleep of the dead, and when he woke  up, still feeling pain in every joint, he was at least able to eat and drink. Still totally confused by what had happened and why he was back here instead of  there, he nonetheless started to get the idea that things weren't normal on this  end, either. There were lots of Cloptans around, including many he'd never seen  before. They were all frantically loading stuff into huge vans that pulled up  one after the other, and he realized that they were emptying the place. Maybe the good guys finally won one, he thought hopefully. Not that it would do  him much good. They were clearly just shifting operations for a while, and where  did mat leave him? Either they'd shoot him or they'd take him with them to put  on some other courier run. It wouldn't even matter if somebody found him. What  would they see? A nice little horse with a horn, that was all. Too small for  real horse work and, as a gelding, not handy for any other reason. How could he  even contact somebody else to tell them he was more than he seemed? More important, would it make any difference? It was getting harder and harder  to remember things. Not just little things, big things. Before he was a horse  he'd been a man, but a man who did what? He had memories of a desert and some  tent towns and a city by a big wall, and he remembered a woman of the same race,  but even she was kind of blurry. And before that there had been someone,  something else, but that was so distant and so confusing, he wasn't sure about  it. He tried frantically to think, to remember. I'm not a horse! I'm a ... But he was a horse. He couldn't get around that. No matter who or what he'd  been, he was now a horse. He was always going to be a horse. What was the use of  fighting it, of dredging up those old memories, of worrying about things that he  could not do anything about? 

Someone .. . somebody else ... had struggled with a big change, and it had  driven them nuts. The woman. And when they'd stopped fighting and accepted who  and what they were, they were finally able to find some happiness, to stop  torturing themselves. 

Maybe that was it. Maybe he should just stop trying to be anything else and  accept it. Stop the thinking, the remembering, the deep thoughts. Just . . .  live. If he was going to just be a horse, what would his wants be? Food, water,  sleep, and maybe a little care and grooming by somebody nice. What else could he  ever want or need? Nothing these men had. Nothing anybody had that he could  imagine. 

Then why did he feel such a sense of loss? That was why he'd been searching  around in those memories, but while he could come up with all sorts of memories,  episodes, and mental pictures, he couldn't come up with anything any of those  past lives had offered that seemed at all important or interesting to him now.  All it seemed like was an endless search to find things he hadn't had. But he'd  never really found them, he knew that, because he had never been sure what he  wanted. 

And now, here he was, and he knew exactly what he needed and wanted, and the  simple things on the list didn't go beyond the basics. Maybe what he'd lost were  all those problems and worries. His big problem now was that he hadn't been  thinking like a horse. 

With that idea in mind, he drifted back to sleep, but it was a lot easier to  decide on this course than to stop the dreams. 

The Quilst were a kind of cross between animals and plants, it seemed. The  pictures made them look like walking, talking turnips who ate dirt. They weren't  said to be particularly hostile, but they didn't really build roads and seemed  to spend most of their time training hordes of insects to do stuff. Maybe the  data was true, but the fact that the Quilst hadn't even put a Zone ambassador  down south in recent memory meant that if the information was out of date, she  was up the creek there. 

The Betared were those horrid little bear things. They were well involved with  the cartel at the highest levels, but they all had the temperaments of Genny on  a bad day. The Mixtim looked like giant multicolored grasshoppers, but they  supposedly had taken steam energy to its highest levels. They were so totally  omnivorous that they could, and did, eat almost anything, but aside from often  disturbing visitors with their culinary tastes, they weren't threatening and  were very civilized, if specialized, like lots of insect cultures. She'd never  seen or heard of one with the cartel, though, and they certainly looked like the  best of a bad lot. Even if it proved less than inviting even for a getaway,  Mixtim was well located with a variety of other hexes available. They'd also take international credits there, which they used for trade, so at  least it would provide options. Mix tun it was, then. 

Now a haircut, and a dye job, some practical working clothes, and a bit of an  identity switch, and she'd be ready to reclaim her little living treasures. She  hoped the zoo wouldn't be too sticky about it, but if they were, then there were  other ways. 

First, though, she went down to the warehouse, which was getting pretty well  cleaned out. "Moving the stuff offshore mostly, to islands and to boats, until  this blows over," one of the supervisors told her. 

"I called earlier. They said you had a courier come in, looks like a pony?" "Yeah, he's in the back there. We have no instructions on what to do with him." "I'll take him," she told them. "Mister Taluud is looking for specific couriers  for some reason and doesn't want any harmed or lost until he finds what he's  looking for. I'll take full responsibility." 

The supervisor shrugged. "Fine with me. One more worry off my shoulders. But  what are you gonna do with him, lady? You can't put a horse up in downtown  Buckgrud, and you sure can't take him into an apartment." She laughed. "Let that  be my problem. Just show me to him." 

Lori was only half-asleep when Campos walked into the rear stall area, and when  his vision cleared and he saw who it was, he felt sudden fear and loathing. This  was not the kind and gentle groom of his needs! 

"Hello, Lori," Campos said, almost as if she were greeting an old friend. "Time  for us to go." 

It was so strange to hear words, whole sentences, that he could comprehend that  it shocked him out of his stupor for a bit. "Go where?" 

"Oh, you can still speak! Well, that will make things even easier." But he couldn't, not like before. He no longer had the physical equipment to  make the variety of sounds necessary for the translator to pick up. Still, the  device worked by direct implant into the brain, so as long as something came  out, however much it was like a whinny or a gurgle, the whole thought came  through. 

"We have to leave this place soon. Tonight, I hope. I have much to do myself,  but I have a place for you to stay until I am ready. I'm taking you to a nice  park where you'll be tied up but able to eat and drink and relax in the open  air. There's a nice old fellow there who'll see that you're all right until I  can come back for you. It's a very nice day to be outside, anyway. Later on  we're going to take a train ride, at least part of the way. Right now, just you,  me, and our old mutual friend." 

"Friend?" 

"Yes, indeed. I wouldn't dream of leaving without the pride of my little  collection!" 

Mavra Chang was not having a very pleasant existence, but she was in far more  command of herself than Lori had been. 

Then again, Lori had never been this low before. Mavra, as she was remembering,  had been so low sometimes that this seemed downright optimistic. And of course,  Lori might not have much of a future. Mavra knew she'd have that, or at least  she hoped so, depending on where the hell Nathan was. 

That was her greatest fear. If Nathan had made it inside the Well, maybe she was  stuck like this and doomed to die. Somehow, though, she didn't believe it. She  was still getting information, memories from the Well data base as she thought  of them, and going over bits and pieces of her past long forgotten. Nathan sure  as hell would have cut that if he'd already been there. 

Maybe he was having as much trouble as she was, she thought hopefully. Still, this was not a promising beginning. The Buckgrud Zoo was state of the  art, but that meant that she'd been placed in a large area with few places to  hide. A large, fake, hollowed-out tree was the only real place of escape, but it  had little in the way of maneuvering room inside it. Around it was an area about  ten meters square with a heavy glass or glasslike window on one side and very  dark walls on the other three. The lighting let people see inside but to her  looked like a cloudy night. 

The glass was coated with some sort of nonreflective substance, and she could  not see herself in it or see much beyond, although if she went up very close,  she could barely make out a variety of overdressed giant ducks gawking at her.  She couldn't help wondering how many times, if any, Campos had been by just to  gloat. There was water in a simulated spring and small pool, and there was food. That was the worst part, the food. Live insects, mostly worms and crawlers, were  introduced several times a day, along with an occasional carcass of something  that might have been an unfortunate zoo accident or roadkill for all she knew.  The problem wasn't that she was going around gulping down the squirming critters  or picking at the festering dead meat. She'd long since passed the point of  being revolted at that aspect. 

The problem was, she really liked them. 

What she didn't like was how even the apartment and its window had offered more  attractions than this dump, which was so boring, it risked driving her into the  madness she'd been fighting all this time. The only entrance or exit was at the  top of the cage, a good four meters beyond her head. The occasional cage  attendant would come in now and then on a rope ladder, which was impossible for  her to manage, without arms to hold on to it with. The ladder was taken up when  they left, anyway. The glass was as thick and unbreakable as she'd ever seen,  and there wasn't a chance of getting through it. 

She was even more worried that they were going to breed her with a male, as  Campos had threatened. It was what zoos did, after all, but what would it do to  her? She still had her mind, she could think as a human even if the thoughts  were dulled by who knew how long in this incredible boredom, but if she just let  her mind wander into fantasy, the bird genes just took over. What if they  brought in a male whatever it was and she got knocked up? Would she start  building -a nest and sitting on eggs and thinking about little squawkers? The Well was notorious for not making it easy, but damn it, it shouldn't make it  impossible. But try as she might, she hadn't been able to see a single way out  of this mess. 

What was even more depressing, was that if there was a way for her to get free,  flat out she could make maybe a hundred meters an hour, and not for very long.  She would also need to spend a lot of time keeping the metabolism going with  food. No wonder this bird was rare. Figuring at maybe a kilometer a day if she  was lucky, she could make the Avenue and the equator in, oh, maybe three or four  years under absolutely perfect conditions. Yeah. 

And so she was quite startled when, in the early evening after the zoo had  closed for the day, she heard the cage door open and saw not the usual attendant  or the vet but the new model Campos climb down the ladder. 

"Hello, my pretty birdie," she said with mock concern. "You needn't play with  me. I know you don't need the drug anymore, and I'm not someone to trifle with  right now." 

"Are you here to taunt me?" Mavra asked her, despondent as ever. "Oh, my, no! In fact, I am here as your liberator, believe it or not. It seems  that you have become too popular for your own good and are far too valuable to  be left in a musty old zoo. We are going on a little trip, you and I, along with  my other pretty little treasure, and we will not be back for quite a while." "You're taking me out of here?" Mavra's heart soared, even though she didn't  expect to be going to a nicer place. 

"Yes, indeed. In fact, Algon, he's a nice attendant here, will help you up out  of the cage. He is a sucker for a pretty face and a few credits. Here. Get into  this netting, and then I will tell him to pull you up." 

Mavra suddenly felt a little contrary. "You can't lift me. What if I refuse?" "Refuse? You mean you like it in here?" 

"Not particularly, but they feed me regularly. You wouldn't go to all this  trouble if you just needed to skip town. Somebody's got a line on what you did  to me, haven't they?" 

"You are quite sophisticated for a jungle primitive, aren't you? Yes, my  precious, they are looking for you, but it will do you no good to hope. Even if  they found you, you would just be kept here in a cage much like this. They might  even keep you right here, although with a much better lock. I suspect, however,  they would take you south, perhaps very far south. I, on the other hand, am  going north, at least for now. Better the devil you know than the devil you do  not." Her tone grew suddenly lower, more menacing. "Besides, you little shit, if  you don't do it right now I will take one of these rocks, beat you into  unconsciousness, and roll you into it. Now, get in!"