through spells, chased by gunmen, undergo fire and flood— alt as a test?" "Not a test—an endurance contest. It wasn't totally ran- dom. either. The more you progressed, the more the destiny threads pointed to your friend. Boolean took something of a chance when he ordered the Demon of the Jewel of Omak to make certain she got pregnant. He had to know it would start a chain reaction that would lead to this point. However, there were indications KliUichom was attempting to find the proper mate for the Storm Princess—strictly for the one purpose, of course, but satisfying the rebel's own sense of propriety and quieting disturbing rumors about her having a stable of female slave lovers, which was true but politically inconvenient— and your friend, thanks to her weight and her unconventional mate and lifestyle, seemed safest at the time." "The demon . . . made her get pregnant?" Charley was appalled. "Well, it's not as bad as it sounds. It simply implanted in her mind a natural curiosity about the normal way of doing things and the fact that she could use the hypnotic powers to do it, so, at the point when she dropped an egg, as it were, at the exact prime moment, she did it with one of the wagon train crew. You remember that." In a way, it was a relief, even though it galled her to think how Sam had been so manipulated. At least the child wasn't a child of one of those gang-raping monsters. It was rape, of course—by Boolean, sort of—but so long as Sam didn't know it and thought it was her idea, Sam wouldn't think it so. That didn't really help Charley's own feelings, that Boolean had treated Sam as a thing, a piece of meat, the same way Halagar had treated Charley, but facts were facts, and now she had the kid inside her. So had she been sort of raped by this third hand? It was too complicated an issue for a night like this. "But almost immediately after we were all caught in the flood, most of the train was killed, there was the capture, the WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 289 tortures and rapes, and then we were split up in the Kudaan. Some help Boolean was there in our survival." "He didn't plan it that way, but who would have expected Sam to use her powers so soon? Or that the mercenaries under die Blue Witch would hit that particular train in their search for Mandan gold cloaks to sell to the rebels? The mess happened, and it took Boolean and Yobi to straighten it out, that's all. When the two of you surfaced at Yobi's without Sam, Crim was contacted to track her down. Until then he'd been tracking you, thinking you were all still together," "Yeah, but we were only found and rescued because Dorion happened to see us and saw my resemblance to the Storm Princess. Lucked out is what you mean." "Crim would have tracked you, most likely, in the end. Luck is simply an amateur's term for the threads of destiny that are woven at conception. It's why some people have 'miraculous' escapes and others die in freakish happenings. The threads can be aborted by conflict with others, but Bool- ean read Sam's and it was a long thread. He and Yobi intervened, got Sam out of Pasedo's, got her mind mostly back. and she'd learned a lot about herself during that period— and so had you." "So why didn't Boolean just order Crim to take us to Yobi so we'd be together again and then bring us to him, or him to us, right then?" "Because you weren't ready. You were by now hardened survivors, but you were not ready. Sam was still at war with herself; she was still spending almost all of her time trying to escape her destiny and her obligations rather than facing them willingly. The same went for you, really, so together you would just reinforce each other. You both had grown hard, pragmatic, questioning, but neither of you looked at anyone else, not even each other. You were still turned inward, without a sense of obligation or any willingness to sacrifice for the common cause. It took Halagar to make you see what you'd really become, to see what others perceived you to be. what you thought you wanted or could accept. For Sam, it was easier. She always felt an obligation to others, to her friends, but her lack of ego, of self-esteem, of self-acceptance. and self-worth was driving her mad. In desperation, we had a magician refer her here, to Etanalon. It made her accept 290 Jack L. Chalker herself and resign herself to her duty, but no more- We decided we had to go with what we had, but the unexpected diversion that allowed her to feel normal, turned out to be a blessing even though it panicked us and almost cost us the game." "Normal? Four husbands in a jungle house in the sticks?" "Normal to her. It gave her something besides a lifetime with Boday to fight for. It showed friends, people she was closed to, dying—and for her, basically. It put her in the position of seeing others do what was expected of her. It broke the last barrier. She's ready now. In many ways she has far more experience and toughness than her foe- And you were right there, also ready, to play your own part." Her eyebrows went up. "Me? What part? I was a decoy, maybe, but if it wasn't for my own thinking I'd have drank a potion back in Tubikosa and become permanently a mindless courtesan, I practically did, anyway." "Well, it was your body, not your mind, that was impor- tant in the plan. You were, after all, an add-in, a bonus, there to give Sam the body she needed when the time came, and take on hers and keep the child from harm. We needed only the receptacle, and with only the receptable the transfer would have been easily done. That you remained mentally alive as well actually complicated matters. Had we not been able to keep an eye on you, so to speak, we might well have had to make other arrangements." "An eye ... Dorion, you mean?" "Of course not. Shadowcat. Like me, your familiar existed both in this plane and in his native one. There distance and even duration are meaningless. He and I discussed every- thing. We agreed that you should not betray your true self to Halagar lest he beat or possibly kill you. You were far safer when you appeared to have no mind and presented therefore no threat. He truly liked you, which is rare for a familiiir- Perhaps too much. He was not supposed to kill Halagar. Boolean would have retrieved you upon his return from seeing what was done to poor Masalur. It caused much consternation that you had vanished, and we overstayed there seeing if we could pick you up on the impulse to come to him. Because of that, Zamofir got there first and all the bloodletting was made necessary. Again, it worked out, as those with true destiny 291 WAR OF THE MAELSTROM tend to do, but that was the way it was. Because we were late Sam learned duty and sacrifice. Because you finally reached a point where you would rather die, naked, blind, and alone, in a foreign wood than return to being a slave and object in the camp, you learned much, too." "You make it sound so cold, so calculating, so callous," she said, shaking her head. "Like we were pieces of meat with no rights and no say. Just dolls to make over and play with and never mind the suffering and pain and degradation. Our lives, our minds, really meant nothing to your master except possible means to his end. And he got just what he wanted, which grates on me. 1 sit here, fat and ugly and miserable, surrogate mother to somebody else's baby. and Sam's going smiling Into maybe worst than death. Somehow, text really pisses me off." "That's how wars are fought these days. Maybe they have 4 always been fought that way, with the little folks being , ordered to charge into the enemy lines. If they don't they get shot as traitors. If they do, they get shot by the enemy, all so their body can be used as a shield and stepstone by the next guy to get another couple of yards. Yours is an interesting race, that climbed from the muck by little murders, and as you grew in power and experience they became bigger mur- ders. Now you have reached the point on many worlds where you can murder your whole species in a matter of a few - minutes and that makes you the zenith of human civilization. Here a madman—and there are always madmen in a society built on murders to scale—intends to install himself as master and then as god. My race has sat back and watched, occasion- ally intervening over the years to get a better view, in utter fascination at this, and some of us spend eternity arguing the a points you people raise. You object to being a tool, an object, pushed, shoved, and manipulated by powerful forces beyond your comprehension in the cause of stopping something horri- ble. Yet if those powers did not do so, would we not be guilty of allowing the greater crime to happen to the greater num- ber? It is a fascinating point. Even your gods reflect this. You are pawns of omnipotent beings. You pray for mercy, for forgiveness, for victory in battle, and the death of your enemies. You sacrifice to them, either really or symbolically, widi blood and ritual cannibalism. You are born pawns. It is 292 Jack L. Chalker in your nature. It is only when you notice that you are that you object," She looked over at the tiny figure in the darkness. "Just what are you, Cromil?" "An alternative reality. One from a universe so different that you could not even comprehend it, where the very laws of nature are so different as to be madness to you, as yours is to us. In the long distant past, we learned to use the weak points created by the out-rushing Changewind, and, being curious, we tagged along. We need form here, so we take form here; otherwise it is all incomprehensible madness to us. We deal with the powerful, the high priests or sorcerers or whatever. We give some service, they give some things we want. It's worked out pretty well over the years." "And what do creatures like you want from us?'' she asked it. "To satisfy curiosity? To explore? More knowledge? Blood? What?" Cromil's answer stunned her and stung her and she reeled from the impact of its words. "Amusement," it said. For a while she said nothing more to the creature because there was nothing more to say. Who was whose god, and who was whose plaything? Who pushed who, and for what mo- tives? Was anybody, even Boolean, even Klittichom, really free, really a master of fate, really in control? "You going to tell anybody any of this?" Cromil asked curiously. "Maybe. Maybe not. It's not exactly what Sam needs to know right now, and your own feelings I suspect are pretty well known to the sorcerers." "Oh, yes." "Tell me—does Klittichom have a familiar?" "Oh, they all do. It's kind of necessary to the higher functions of magic. We're very loyal to whichever side we happen to be on, you see, but we tend to stay out of the showdowns. We prefer to watch." *TH bet." She yawned in spite of herself. "Well, you've depressed the hell out of me, anyway. I guess, for every- body's good, I ought to try to sleep." "Your role in this, except for mother, is about to end," the WAR OF THE MAELSTROM 293 familiar told her. "The big show is about to begin now. We are actively wagering on the outcome." She picked up a rock and threw it at him, but it missed. To Charley's surprise, they flew next to Masalur, but only Boolean and Cromil went to me hub; me rest, under Etanalon's powers, went east, where she and Dorion had thought of going, and into a colony world that seemed peaceful and virgin. They flew out over a broad, sparkling blue, tropical ocean, landing eventually on a good-sized island, perhaps thirty miles across and twenty miles wide, the largest of a string of isolated volcanic islands. The place looked like those pictures in the magazines of tropical paradise; of coconut palms and virgin sandy beaches, with banana and mango and other tropical fruits—or reasonable cousins thereof—growing wild all over. It was a gorgeous place, the only inhabitants of which appeared to be birds and insects. There was one structure on the island; a small but comfortable- looking beach house overlooking a picture postcard tropical lagoon. Inside they were surprised to find two bedrooms with big, comfortable, modem beds with spring mattresses, plus a living room and dinette area and something of a den over- looking the lagoon itself, all comfortably furnished if not with me best, then with homey touches appropriate to die setting and decor. Rattan chairs, that sort of thing- The bathroom was an outhouse—somebody had even carved a half-moon in the door—showers were available at a pretty tropical waterfall about a hundred yards into the Jungle, in back of the house. There were oil lamps, storage places, and an outdoor covered grill. No electricity or immediate running water, but it looked like somebody's idea of a perfect tropical hideaway. Boolean arrived about six hours behind them; by then they'd already round the ponds that trapped the fish at low tide, and were feeling quite pleasant. The sorcerer, however, was not alone. The two creatures were both almost cartoons of extremely erotic girts, but they were not—at least not me way Charley and Sam and the Akhbreed thought of girls. For one thing, they were absolutely identical twins. For another, they had incredibly smooth pea-green skin that seemed almost to lack pores, and glistened a bit in the light, with lips of darkest green and 294 Jack L. Chalker emerald eyes in a sea of pale olive. What appeared to be thick if short dark green hair had the consistency and solidity of brambles, not hiding at all ears like delicate, tiny seashells; and their feet each had three wide, webbed, almost birdlike toes. They had four thin arms that seemed a bit more rigid than human arms and ended in three long identical fingers that closed on things almost clawlike, but were soft and as dexterous as human fingers, and the lower set appeared to be on ball joints, able to reach forward or back equally, and four small but firm breasts, the top pair looking normal but hang-