I'm sure I can find something that'll do."
"Halagar is coming with us."
That news excited her, "Really? I hoped against hope he
would!"
"He is leaving the service of Covanti and coming over to
us. His fee for taking us all to Boolean is you."
"Huh? How can that be?"
"He wants me to delegate my authority over you to him for
the journey, which will still take several weeks. Once there,
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 57
he expects Boolean to give you to him permanently in ex-
change for his service in the defense of Masalur."
She was intrigued by that. but not as delighted as he'd
expected her to be. "I know this ring in my nose is kind of a
turn-on, but I'd kind'a hoped that once we got to the old boy
he'd at least neutralize it or something."
"You object to this arrangement?"
She thought it over. "No, not for a few weeks, I guess.
.But, you know, something funny happens to me every time
he's around. I go bye-bye and Shari takes over. 1 love Shari
when I can turn her on and off, but bein' her all the time
isn't my idea of a future. I don't like the idea of being out
there in the middle of nowhere without my brain in my head,
either."
"Well, I don't like what happens, either, and I can't
explain it, but I don't see we have any choice." Quickly, he
filled her in on the whole situation.
"I get the picture." she told him. "I also get a real feeling
that you don't like this arrangement much."
"I don't," he admitted, "but he's just the sort of person
we need to have a chance of making it."
"Well," she sighed, "it's got to be. I don't have much
choice these days anyway. At least it's kind'a flattering for
me to find a guy with that much experience wanting me so
much."
"Uh—Charley, he doesn't want to marry you, he wants to
own you. Or, rather, he wants to own Shari. I, uh, well, he
doesn't think you're the perfect woman; he thinks you're the
perfect slave."
"Yeah, I figured it was something like that. And, as Shari,
I am. I guess I should feel lucky. Very few people are ever
perfect as anything. Still, it's not exactly been a burning
ambition of mine to even discover that I'm the perfect slave.
It's sort of like dreaming you're gonna be a great genius or
something and discovering that you are really the world's
greatest toilet cleaner. Still, it's in other people's hands now,
really. If Boolean goes along with me, then I'll sure give
Halagar his chance and see if he wants me anyway, but if
Mister Green decides I'm no longer of any use then I guess
I'll spend eternity washing his socks and loving it."
"You've gotten so cynical and too fatalistic," he responded,
58 Jack L. Chalker
a bit angry at her. "That's not like you. You're sounding
more like the local women here."
"Yeah, well, show me where I've had a crack at anything
else. Seriously, though—you worked with Boolean. How do
you think he'll take me?"
'*It is hard to say," Dorion replied honestly. "Under nor-
mal conditions you would be free, liberated as much as he
could, and treated extremely well, but these are not normal
conditions. What's right and wrong under normal circum-
stances seems out the door now. Too much is at stake for
ones like him to think much about an individual's rights."
She nodded. "Yeah, sort'a like Bogart in Casablanca.
That's what I figured."
"All we can do is get there and see. Now, listen to me and
obey my commands. Until I say otherwise—and, I empha-
size, until / say otherwise—you will regard Halagar as your
lord and address him as Master or however he commands.
You will obey his every command as you would mine, as if
your commands were from me or from Boolean—with a few
exceptions. You will not obey any command that would
betray us or our mission but will instead immediately report it
to me. You will obey no command that would harm yourself
or Boday or me, or cause us to come to harm, and you will
report as soon as possible to me if any such command is
given you by Halagar. Further, if anything happens to me, or
we are separated, then you will be a free agent commanded
still to reach Boolean as quickly as possible thereafter by any
means you can find. And you will neither reveal nor repeat
these conditions and exceptions to Halagar and you will deny
to him that any such exceptions exist. Those are my com-
mands. Obey them exactly.''
She heard herself responding, "I hear and obey. Master."
At that moment, she felt a sudden, strange daysides
where travelers were not camped, and there was able to feed
and water them.
When he first did that, Dorion in particular was nervous,
although Halagar did not take Chariey, and it provided a
chance to have something of a normal conversation.
"Well, Charley, what do you think so far?" Dorion asked,
hoping she was already a bit sick of being treated like one of
Halagar's possessions. His hopes were quickly dashed.
"It's not bad," she responded cheerfully. "I wish I could
see, but from your comments I gather I'm almost better off
keeping this place in my imagination. I kind'a hoped, though,
that he'd take me with him tonight. It must be a lonely and
dull job out there in the dark with just horses."
Dorion translated, rather glumly, for Boday.
"Boday just hopes he comes back at all," the artist grum-
bled. "There is something about that man that gives her
unease. She has seen his type too many times in the back
rooms and dark alleys of Tubikosa's entertainment district.
No man, or woman for that matter, remains so handsome and
so competent after all that experience without it costing some-
thing in the soul,"
"Well. he didn't sell it, anyway," Dorion commented.
"That's something I could pick up, and even Charley might
be able to see. He has a few magic charms and amulets for
various minor protections, but nothing else. They aren't much,
but he chose them well. No, he's always been like mat. A
charmed life, everything going his way. That's why 1 ac-
cepted his offer to take us the rest of the way."
"Bah! Sooner or later all that unnatural luck will be used
up, and he will be collecting the unpaid balance of disasters,"
Boday responded.
Dorion chuckled. "If there was justice in the world none of
us would be here now—or need to be," he pointed out
dolefully.
"I think he's just wonderful," Charley said, sighing. "If I
could only see, I'd go with him on my own in a minute. I
might anyway."
"As his personal slave?" Dorion was shocked.
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 119
She shrugged. "What the hell is better for somebody like
me? This world always seems to be trying to eat anybody
with ambitions alive. Let's say we get to Boolean, he restores
my sight and takes away the slave ring, then he and Sam go
off and beat the bad guys and have a real happy ending to all
this business. Then what? I can barely speak the language, I
can't read or write it, and probably never will. I have no
magical powers or knowledge or abilities, and only one sure
way of making money. The only independent women seem to
be ones with magic powers or who are educated in something
that's useful here. I'm stuck back in the Middle Ages, and
that means you find a strong and powerful guy to hitch on
to."
When Boday got the gist of it—Dorion had some problems
with the term "Middle Ages" since it meant nothing to
him—she spat and responded, "You have more potential than
you realize! That breast halter you created back in Tubikosa
should tell you that! Such ideas mean money, and a woman
with money in Akahlar is in many ways as powerful as a man
with money. Men may have the power, but most men are for
sale if you just find the right price."
Charley chuckled. "The bra, you mean. I didn't exactly
invent that, but, yeah, you're right. I probably could come up
with a lot of good ideas for the women of Akahlar, since
nobody else seems to be bothering, but it would mean going
back, building a stake, settling down, and, somehow, that's
not what I find appealing. It's pretty much what I set out to
do a million years ago back home, I guess, but it hasn't got
the same appeal here. No movies, no TV, no pink Mercedes
and Dior gowns and all the ways you show off your wealth or
realty enjoy it, and I couldn't even really run the thing. I'd
need somebody Just to write a letter or make a sale or sign a
contract or just write the instructions for whatever I came up
with. And for what? So I could live in a place that got the
cool breeze and maybe had inside plumbing and a couple of
erratic electric lamps and where—no matter how much money
I had or how many princes I could buy—I'd still be looked on
as a low-class common whore. Uh-uh. If I'm gonna be in a
place like this, it may as well be with a classy Conan out
seein' and conquering the world."
Dorion tried to translate, but when he got to "movies" and
220 Jack L. Chalker
"TV" he became exasperated. "You must stop using those
alien terms," he told her. "Where is Shadowcat? At least
with Shadowcat you can project your thoughts and save me
this mental torture!"
Charley frowned. Where was Shadowcat? She relaxed and
sent her mind out to find him, expecting to tune into some
night tableau she'd rather not see with the big tomcat stalking
or devouring some cute little desert creature, but she was
receiving nothing. Where was he? Why couldn't she summon
him or see with his eyes?
She'd taken him for granted up to now, hadn't really
thought much about him, but this was worrisome. "I can't
seem to make contact with him," she told Dorion.
"Huh? That means he's out of range. I hope he has enough
sense not to get lost in this territory. He's a familiar—he can't
survive indefinitely without you."
That worried her. "I never knew there was a range, or that
he could survive without me at all."
"Oh, the contact spell of that sort is basically line of sight.
He could still find you, though—the two of you are psychi-
cally linked—if he could catch up with you before his psychic
energy was depleted. If he could find someone of the same
blood type who was willing, he could probably survive for a
week on his own, maybe longer, but it wouldn't be the same
as if it were you, and he'd draw less and less each time until
he couldn't get enough to keep going. I'm afraid I don't
remember much about that course beyond that, but I do know
he'd have trouble finding anybody with any blood type in this
forsaken place. Don't wony—he'll be back at the last minute
tomorrow morning as usual."
"Yeah, maybe," she responded, still worried.
He decided to redirect the conversation back to its roots to
take her mind off the cat. "I'm still amazed that you'd
consider going with him, even if I admitted your points. I
don't know if you noticed it, but he has a rather odd effect on
you. You stop being yourself and just become that vacant-
eyed, empty-headed courtesan."
"Yeah, I know. 1 can remember all that when I'm me, but
I can't remember me when I'm her, if that makes any sense.
It's actually easier that way. It bothered me at first, but now I
find it, well, sort'a convenient. There's not much conversa-
WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 121
tion in this kind of riding, even if I could get into it, and I'm
not equipped for sightseeing, so I'd just be sitting there
getting bounced around and brooding and feelin' sorry for
myself and maybe going nuts. Maybe that's what triggers
Shari around him; I dunno. But Shari, now, she isn't a real
person, sort of, at all. She's got no ego of any kind; she exists
only in reaction to somebody else. Except in the courtesan
role, where she's still on a kind of automatic: she doesn't
brood, she doesn't wonder, she doesn't really think at all—
she just exists. She doesn't even have any sense of time or
place. I tell you I'm scared to death—I been scared to death
most of the time since I got here. Not thinking for all the
boring times just makes things more peaceful, that's all."
"But if you were with him all the time you'd be like that
all the time," he pointed out. "To me, you might as well be
dead."
She shrugged. "Maybe. He's not the type to be around all
the time, though. Maybe you're right, though. I'm just not
the type to kill myself—the old way I was raised still has hold
of me, I guess. Maybe just becoming Shari is a way out that
gets around that. There's a way that only Sam and me know
that forces me to become Shari and just Shari. There's been
lots of times when I was tempted to use it, to solve alt my
problems, and nobody could ever know how to get me back."
He was shocked. "Don't do that! In the name of all the
gods, don't even think of doing that' 1 don't think I ever saw
anyone so smart and capable as you, who had such a low
opinion of themself. Besides, what about your friend Sam?
What about all this impending conflict we're trying to avoid?''
"1 no longer care about Storm Princesses and Changewinds
and the like. It's not my fight, Dorion. It's never been my
fight. For a while I was a decoy, and all that did was almost
get me carried away by a monster and scared to show my face
in public. Now, well, I heard it being talked about back in
Covanti hub. They know I'm not Sam, so that's it. My one
remaining bit of usefulness to your cause and boss is over
already. I can't lift a sword, I can't see to shoot anybody, and
it would take a second and a half for a wizard to turn me into
a toad or something. It's like atomic bombs back home. I was
against them, and scared that one of two old guys could
destroy the world in a flash, but there wasn't anything I could
122
Jack L. Chalker
do about it. And I don't think protests and petitions would do
as much here as they did back there, which was nothing."
"And Sam?"
She sighed. "Don't translate this for Boday—since I don't
need shit fits right now by anybody, least of all her—but if I
hadn't been around Boday all the time I wouldn't think of
Sam at all any more, and I don't think of her much anyway.
We were teenagers together, yeah, a million years ago, but
my life got shorted out because I went beyond the call of duty
to help her and got sucked here with her, and since that time