03. Gods at the Well of Souls (34 page)

The journey had been an extremely rough one, and it wasn't over yet. The whole  place was mountainous and wet, much like the Olympic range of Washington state  but without the trails. The Lebans could be counted on to recommend a route or  keep them pointed in the right direction but not for much else. They were  certainly friendly, though, in their own way; as they'd gone on, the Lebans  would often shake fruit right off limbs when nothing obvious was available to  eat. 

Still, there had been no distinctive landmarks or anything to mark the progress  of their journey. After a while one stream valley looked like another, and all  the mountains looked pretty much alike as well. It was impossible for someone  with her build and hooves to walk bipedally and not lose her balance over and  over; still, she'd been walking on all fours so long by this point, she wasn't  sure she remembered how to use just two. Once she'd threatened, even prepared,  to go off and live in the wild alone. How stupid that seemed now! Thus, when sunrise neared to mark the probable end of yet another day, Julian,  like her companions, was just silently trudging along, coming over yet one more  rise. Suddenly she saw something she hadn't seen in so long, she'd almost  forgotten what it looked like. 

Sunlight. Sunlight just creeping over the landscape, a little bright on this  side, much duller beyond what seemed like a vast semitransparent curtain. The border! It had to be! And if the Lebans hadn't been playing an enormous  practical joke on them, beyond lay Verion. 

She shrieked with such delight that Lori stopped, and both he and Mavra looked  over, concerned that Julian might be in some trouble. Julian turned to them, put  out her forearm, and pointed. 

She felt like rushing to it, and the hell with the daylight, but she knew that  would be the worst thing to do. If there was sunlight in Verion, then perhaps  there were Verionites who were not as friendly as the Lebans. 

Best to remain on the same regimen, she knew, although it was hard, really hard,  not to push on. That boundary didn't just mean that they were passing into a new  climate, a new land, but the final land, the destination point. And even though  it would still take them a great deal of time to reach that destination, they  had been safe, almost protected in a way, in Leba, with the natives watching out  for them and with plenty of food and water and at least reliable help with the  directions. That, out there, was more than just another unknown land and people. Somewhere beyond that final curtain was the enemy. They had no illusions about  that, Mavra the least of all. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the  Verion Avenue was the only practical choice they could make, and so they'd be  waiting there, right near the end, waiting for them to walk into a trap. That was another reason Mavra had insisted they not go elsewhere, though. Verion  was a nontech hex; nothing but muscle, water, and wind worked there, as in  Erdom. That also meant no radios, no instant communications, no tracking scopes  and sophisticated monitoring systems. The enemy knew where they would wind up  but not when. They could pick the time and the opportunity. 

A lot, then, would depend on the Verionites, whatever they were. Would they be  searching for them with a reward for their capture? Would they be hostile to  everybody? There was no way to know in advance. 

In fact, Mavra had been almost insistent on finding out something about them. If  the Verionites were nocturnals, for example, they might do better moving by day  and remaining just this side of the border until they were close to the Avenue. The Lebans knew, but it was no use asking them directly. Simile wasn't always  effective in a translator conversation, particularly when one party didn't have  one. 

Still, she tried. "Are the Verionites animals?" 

"Yes." 

"Do they eat meat or grain?" 

"Anything." 

"Are they larger or smaller than we are?" 

"About the same." 

"Are they friendly to visitors or unfriendly?" 

"Unknown. They seem all right to us." 

Not exactly a great deal of help. 

"Will we be able to find food over there?" 

"Probably." 

"Are they day creatures like you or night creatures like us?" 

"Day mostly." 

"Is there anything else we should know?" 

"Yes. Remember to look up." 

She was startled. "They fly?" 

"Some do." 

She hadn't figured on that. Flying in a nontech hex meant some kind of bird or  other winged creature. That wasn't good at all. Definitely a night crossing, and  with extra attention given to concealing them from the air. 

Still, she couldn't help but feel excited. Although there were many long,  dangerous days or weeks to come, it was the first measure of real progress since  she'd taken up with Mavra and Lori. 

"One last question. Do you know the way this world usually measures time?" "Yes. The railroad is quite punctual." 

"Do you know how long it has taken us to reach this border?" 

"Yes. Fifteen days." 

Fifteen days. "Sorry-one more and then I thank you for all your assistance. At  this rate, how long would it take us to reach the Avenue?" 

"Another twelve days to reach the equator, then ten. If you can go exactly  northwest, ten to twelve days for the whole journey." 

"I thank you. I will always hold the Lebans in my heart as true and trusted  friends. I have had very few since I came here." 

"We are pleased to know this." 

It was time to make some plans. 

Mavra was all for heading straight for the destination by the shortest route.  Lori wanted to take it slower and more cautiously, not feeling the same sense of  urgency. 

In the end it was up to Julian, of course. Their opponents might expect them to  take the shortest route, but then again, how would they know when she and the  other two would emerge from Leba and where? In a sense, straight to the goal was  the safest course; it meant the least distance to move, and that lessened their  chances of being spotted and reported. Mavra didn't like the idea of fliers,  though, any more than Julian did. Fliers could cover pretty good distances in  short periods of time, vital for reconnaissance in a no-tech hex. But if the  Lebans were right, and Julian interpreted their answer to mean that the  Verionites probably saw about as well at night as Earth-humans, then they had a  chance if they could conceal their day camps. 

It was an all or nothing roll of the dice at this point, but it seemed like the  only way to play it. 

Near sunset they moved out, down and through the final valley and to the Verion  border. Just looking across it, even though the hex boundary made it dark and  hazy, they could see a dramatic change. Many rivers and streams crossed  boundaries, as did landforms, but clearly Verion was a much drier place. The  hills continued, but the trees almost completely stopped, replaced with  grasslands and occasional bushes and other small shrubs. 

Not a lot of cover, Julian thought worriedly. Still, there was no other way to  get it done. She stepped through the border, feeling that now-familiar tingling  sensation, and into Verion. 

It was suddenly very hot and surprisingly humid for a place that far from an  ocean. There wasn't much transfer between hexes beyond the immediate area of the  border, where some convection was inevitable, so this was probably how it was  going to feel. 

They proceeded in, although intending only to find a reasonable place to camp  out of sight and wait until the next night to begin their real journey. The sky was clear, although there were some lazy-looking birds off in the  distance which Julian hoped weren't the local equivalent of vultures circling  over a kill. They traveled down the first hill, into a ravine, and then back up  the gentle slope of the next, slightly higher one, which revealed a whole new  vista. 

Beyond, the land flattened out considerably, although there were various  isolated landforms standing like bizarre sentinels as far as the eye could see.  The lowlands clearly had eroded away over great periods of time, leaving pockets  of harder rock, possibly volcanic. 

In the middle of this strange landscape of bizarre shapes and flat plains were  clearly developed areas. There were trees here, but they were far different from  the ones in Leba: tall, thick, but without branches and with leafy growth only  at the very tops. Julian thought they looked like palm trees that had fallen off  their diets. 

More important, they were clearly planted, both for ornamentation and in groves.  Nearby were large fields that showed definite signs of cultivation. A fair-sized  river cut through the middle of it, leaving a jagged canyon that looked pretty  formidable. There were, however, two clear suspension-type bridges over it,  showing a great deal of nontech sophistication. 

Well, none of us are tree climbers, Julian thought, and those trees aren't going  to conceal us too much, but the fronds will give us air cover. The real problem was going to be the canyon. The only practical way across was  over one of those bridges, and during that time they would be exposed with  absolutely nowhere to run or hide. 

She wished she knew more about the people here. She wished she knew a lot more  about everything having to do with this place. 

By the time they reached the first of the trees, it was clearly too close to  dawn to consider risking either of the bridges that night. Best to camp, get  some rest, and watch and see if any of the natives showed themselves. She wanted  to see them, but not all that closely. 

It wasn't long after dawn, just as they settled in under the trees, when she got  her wish. 

The sound of what seemed to be a wagon drew her, and she crept over to the edge  of the grove, making certain to keep as well hidden behind a tree as possible,  and looked out. What she saw was one of the strangest sights yet on this bizarre  world. 

It was a wagon, all right, and it was huge, with two big solid wheels that had  to be two meters high holding it up. What got her was that it appeared to be  pulled by two oversized, very fat Earthwomen, and on top, on a tiny seat trying  to keep his balance, the one who held the reins looked for all the world like an  Earth-human-size pig in a very wide brimmed straw hat and wearing a pair of  overalls. 

A closer look with her ability to magnify things showed that her first  impression of the creatures pulling the wagon was wrong but that her notion of  the driver was pretty well dead on, although Porky Pig it wasn't. That was one  ugly hog up there. 

The creatures pulling the wagon did have a humanlike shape, were bipedal, had  enormous rear ends and thighs, and seemed to have breasts as well, but the faces  were very apelike. Their backs and sides were covered with brown fur, while  their fronts appeared a hairless purplish skin color. For such large creatures,  though, they had remarkably scrawny arms, and if those were hands, they weren't  much more useful than Julian's, if that. They looked to be at least seven or  eight feet tall and proportioned to that height save for the arms and huge hairy  feet. They weren't pulling the cart by walking or ambling but by a kind of slow  jogging canter that seemed almost horselike. 

The draft animals had been the startling things, but the driver was more  interesting because he didn't match what she expected at all. He certainly had  no wings, and if pigs could fly in this hex, it surely was by some means not  obvious to her. 

Were the Lebans wrong, or was there more here than she could see right now? She knew she should go back and stand a better guard as the first watch-Mavra  and Lori couldn't speak, but they could surely wake the others up in a hurry if  need be, and their judgment was the important factor in a watch-but she wanted  to see how that thing got across that bridge. 

The answer was that it didn't. Instead, several more pig creatures-hogs-emerged  from a lemon-drop-shaped hut near the bridge and began operating an oddball  system of pulleys and gears that revealed strong cables strung parallel to the  bridge. When the cart reached them, Verionites climbed up and began stringing  cable through slots along both sides while the driver unhitched his odd "team."  Another set of cables was then attached to another series of poles with gears  and pulleys, and the "team" was hitched to a circular master gear on these and  started going around and around slowly. 

Julian watched in amazement as the entire cart body was lifted off its carriage  and huge wheels and into the air, suspended by the cables. An operator at the  far end and another at the assembly right at the rim of the canyon threw a  series of giant wooden levers, changing the gearing, and the cart began actually  to move along the cables down to the second set of gears and poles and then out  over it, powered by the team on the far end. 

It's a cable car system! she realized. A very clever and elaborate cable car  system using the sheer muscle power of those beasts. More interestingly, it was  also a kind of basic container system; they didn't move the carriage and wheels,  only the container and its cargo. 

Once the container was across, the team was unhitched from the system and led  across by the driver, the bridge swaying a bit under the weight of the two  behemoths but hardly stressed. On the other side the process was reversed with a  new carriage. It was slow but efficient. 

The other, parallel bridge did not have such an assembly and was probably built  later for routine foot traffic, which would not have to be held up waiting for  teams to pass. With those draft animals and the rather imposing girth of the  Verionites, traffic was pretty well limited to one way at a time, anyway. The natives were clever, quite modern, and industrious; that much was sure. She  had the opportunity to take a magnified view of a couple of them while they were  setting up the cables, and while the faces were ugly and their figures matched  the sort bipedal hogs might be expected to have, their arms and hands seemed  quite muscular and flexible, and their feet, supporting that form and weight,  more resembled those of a hippo or an elephant than a hog's. Large, wide, and  flat, almost like tree trunks, they provided pretty good balance and  flexibility.