01. When the Changewinds Blow (12 page)

"It all fits. Perfectly. I-we-got crazy wide feet. Always drove me nuts findin' shoes that I could get into. These fit. Perfect. All my stuff minimizes me just like they had my measurements. All that stuff you been try in' on fits you, too. Even the stuff with built-in cups are perfect."

"So? Old Greenie hoped he could get you here, right? You got to figure he prepared. Like, that burnin' of the clothes."

"Yeah, but there's one for each of us-and Zenchur said he only expected me. He was real surprised when you popped up-that wasn't faked."

Charley shrugged. "Maybe he thought of the boy disguise, too. He didn't know your name or nothin' 'bout you. So he fixed up this for a
real femme fatale
type and he fixed the other as a disguise just in case. No big mystery."

"Okay, I'll give ya that. He just sorta thought of everything. But, Charley-
how'd he know my size?
In everything, too. Far enough in advance-to age this shit so it don't look new and get even the shoe width and breast sizes right. He didn't know my name-or says he didn't. If he didn't know my name or nothin' at all about me, how come he knew my shape and size and all better than
I
did? Hell, better even than my mother?"

Charley shrugged. "Beats the hell outta me, but I still ain't sure I believe I'm
here
yet. We got a lot of answers to get, that's for sure. Let me just use the pullover here and slip on this skirt and sandals-they clash but I'm not goin' noplace-and we'll get something to eat and try'n make sense of all this. Maybe Zenchur can give some of the answers. I think he knows a lot more than he's lettin' on."

Charley let her go and set about choosing an outfit. It was all sort of fun, like a Flintstones makeup kit, but when she sat in
front of
the mirror it was not her face that stared back and it jolted her.
This isn't any game,
she thought, feeling suddenly chilled.
Somehow this is really happening!
Images suddenly arose, of her Mom and Dad, her home, her other friends at school. What would they think when she didn't show up again? When they finally found the cabin demolished and the bloodstains and the Subaru all smashed and crushed? And now, here, in this God-forsaken hole, she sat and it wasn't herself she saw in the mirror.

My God!
she thought, suddenly a frightened and nervous girl even younger than her years.
What have I done?
She wanted her Mom and Dad very badly then, and her own face and lousy figure back, too. God, how she just wanted to go home!

She started crying softly. She'd never been the crying sort, but she'd never been in a situation like this before or felt so completely helpless and alone. It didn't last very long, but she needed it. Finally, she wiped away the tears and took stock of herself. She was stuck, and she could either give up or just go along for the ride and make the best of it. The body wasn't half bad; if only Sam didn't have such a boyish-looking face-. Well-the long hair helped. Maybe she could use this and see just what she could make out of it all.

She had no idea what kind of a world they were in, but if there were men like Zenchur around there were certain universal things you could assume as well. If she was gonna see that world, then that world was gonna see her looking
right.

4

A Hard Wind's Caress

There was no day or night inside the cave, only a certain eternal quality that insulated you from the world. Sam felt a sense of safety here such as she hadn't known in a very long time. Even the storms did not seem able to penetrate this spot, where there was only the water and the rock and the flickering brightness of the torches. She wanted to know about this world, this place that had brought her to it against her will for reasons still unclear. She wanted to know, but she felt no impulse to leave.

"This world is not like your world," Zenchur told Sam as they sipped strong, black tea and nibbled on sweet rolls. "It is, in fact, like
all
the worlds."

"You said you never left this world," Sam responded. "So how can you know much about mine?"

"I know about many of them because so many like you fall from them here. Not like it used to be, but regularly enough to get some pictures. Yours is a stable world. The rules are known and are always the same. Nothing ever falls up, rain is always wet, snow is always cold-yes?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I'll grant you that. But you gotta have some rules here, too. I mean, we're stuck on the ground here, the fire's hot, and it all looks real normal."

"Here, yes, because we are on the lip of a hub. But when we move out it might not always be so. It is hard for me to explain and it will be harder for you to believe until you witness it. Tell me-if you had a map showing your world, its nations and peoples and mountains and seas, would that map not be true many years later?"

"Sure. I guess some of the nations and people might change or move around, and the names seem to change a lot in places, but the maps I started out in elementary school with are still pretty good."

"Well, that is not possible here. The maps, and more than the maps, change. You see, long ago there was nothing but a single tiny block containing everything that ever was and ever will be. It grew heavier and heavier and heavier until it was too heavy to remain together and too-unstable I think the word is. It exploded and created everything else. Can you grasp that?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I wasn't too good in school but I seem to remember that the one thing the church and science agreed on was this big bang that started it all. It created the universe, whether by God or something else."

"Good, good! But it did not create the universe. It was far too powerful for that. It created the
universes,
in layers, like the layers in a fancy cake. One on top of the other." He picked up a charred stick and drew a funnel shape on the cave floor. "See-this little bottom point is where it all started." He drew a series of lines bisecting the funnel from top to bottom. "Each of these-thousands, millions, who knows how many?-is a universe. Yours is up towards the top someplace. Mine is down here, not at the bottom but as far down as you can get and still live and breathe and have our kind of life. Up near the top the distance between them is great and you are rarely aware of any others except perhaps in dreams, but down here we have a smaller universe and things are packed more closely together. Here many universes lie almost on top of each other-layers with no cake, as it were. Akahlar is not one world, it is many."

She stared and shook her head. This was getting too much like school. "But if you got all them universes on top of each other like this, then what keeps it all from gettin' to be a jumbled mess?"

"No two can occupy the same wedge at the same time. That would be chaos. But the forces still coming from the core, from the place where it all began, keep things in motion here. Whole sections of Akahlar drop out and are replaced by others." He drew a circle, then an inner hub, then drew spokes out from the hub to the sides. "There are forty-eight of these. They are not true circles but close enough. Each two spokes creates a wedge and that wedge is
someplace.
The forces that strike us from below, at the tiny point, cause the circles not to turn but to change. One land drops out of a wedge, another drops in. If you are there you do not notice it. If you are
not
there you do not notice it. But where a city by a sea was the last time you were through there might now be a mountain lair for dragons. Twelve wedges to a wheel, as it were. Hundreds of combinations. Such changes keep us in constant turmoil. The weather changes, there are always storms and changes in most everything."

"Jeez! How do you ever keep anything straight?"

He smiled. "Never underestimate intelligence, my young friend. The races who think and build and create are the ones who can adapt. Tell me-on your world, do not people live where it is freezing cold all year, and others where it is an eternal steaming jungle, and still others where it is a hot and near lifeless desert?"

"Uh-yeah, I guess so. Sure."

"That is why they survive. There are literally thousands of races, not all even close to our kind as are the ba'ahdon. All fell to this point in ancient times when the changewinds blew strong through the whole of creation, before everything stabilized and got built up and solidified. Each is a little slice of a real universe, and each universe has exacting rules-but they are not necessarily the same rules."

"Seems to me everybody'd get lost or all mixed up or somethin'. Couldn't tell nobody from nobody else."

"Well, most races cannot breed with most others. It is possible that even you and I are different enough that we could never produce offspring, although we appear close enough that it is possible that we could, too. It is rather-what is the word?-
insular.
Everyone sticks to their own kind and their own ways and defends their land against the others. There is some trade, of course, but how can you even have a lot of trade when you do not know if your trading partner will be there next week or next month? Many races believe themselves superior, higher than the others, and so would not consider the others human or worthy of respect. Some may even delight in
eating
other races. For thousands upon thousands of years there was just a lot of little worlds. That is, until the Akhbreed conquest."

She frowned. "How the hell could you conquer something like
that?"

"You don't. What you conquer are
these."
he replied, pointing his stick at the hub of the wheel. "The loci-the hub. These do not change. They are constant always no matter what wedge you come from. They coexist in all our universes. They were mostly uninhabitable messes, however, until the Akhbreed came with their powerful sorcery the likes of which none had ever seen before. Many of the other races possess magic, some have great power within their own wedges, but this was different. These people could do
all
the magic, and they could do it anywhere. They created order in the hubs and established kingdoms for the Akhbreed. Because all hubs coexist in all universes that are down here, they could step away into any wedge they chose. They are brutal, ruthless, powerful, and they believe themselves the anointed superiors to all other races who exist for their benefit. They alone can trade. They alone have stability. They alone can force their will by sending armies against the wedges that resist them. The forty-eight kings and queens of Akhbreed rule Akahlar because of it and keep the rest down, their power based in their god-like sorcerers. That one whom you saw last night-he is an Akhbreed sorcerer. You have just a small taste of his power.";

Sam's head was spinning a bit at this. "I sure don't understand this and I ain't sure I believe what I do understand, but
him
I understand. And the one with the horns and the thunderstorms? He's another one?"

Zenchur stiffened. "Do not even speak of him so. Yes, he is of the same kind, but he is not in the service of the Akhbreed. He is what the Akhbreed call a rogue. He serves no Akhbreed kingdom. If they could locate him and gang up on him to destroy him-you do not kill Akhbreed sorcerers, you destroy them-they would. This one of whom we speak is very powerful but rebels at the Akhbreed dominance, as do I. He is their sworn enemy, and he plots to destroy the Akhbreed kingdoms and end their dominance. He offers liberation from Akhbreed tyranny to those who follow his cause, and as he is the first of that rank of sorcerer to offer his power to them he is a formidable foe, since the forty-eight Akhbreed kingdoms are bound together only by their common belief of racial superiority and their power. Otherwise, they hate each other, and the sorcerers of one are jealous and not at all cordial towards others of their kind from other kingdoms."

Sam shook her head. "Jeez! Lemme get this straight now. You got tons of races and they're all kinda bossed around and made to work for the ones who look like us 'cause the ones that look like us got the power. But our kind don't like each other, neither. They kick around all the others but they don't like the fact that all them other kings and sorcerers got the same kinda power they got. Is that about right?"

"Yes. Very good. But because they hate each other they are vulnerable-if a sorcerer of high enough power could combine with the magic of many other races as well as building a physical army that could outnumber and outfight the Akhbreed troopers, they might well fall one hub at a time. This one of whom we speak is the first of his class to offer such power to the other races. All hate the Akhbreed; some will be convinced to support him. He builds to strike at the heart of the tyranny. He has some command of a weapon that could even weaken or possibly destroy the Akhbreed hubs-if he could control it. Until he can he dares not risk it, for it is as dangerous to him and to his followers as to the Akhbreed. He is the master of the storms and can summon the changewind of old, the sort that can alter or destroy even the hubs. We get a few every now and then, randomly, in different parts of Akahlar, every year, but he can cause them. If he ever learns to control them he will smash all the tyrants of Akhbreed."

Sam frowned. "This is nuts. The way you're talkin', the guy who's tryin' to kill me is somebody doin' a good thing, and the guy who's tryin' to save me is defendin' a real evil system. This is nuts! Kinda like discoverin' that the Russians are your friends and protectors and the Americans wanna string you up when you're an American who likes the American way." She paused a moment. "I can see where some might be scared, but seems to me that this guy would have the support of everybody who ain't us. But he don't, right?"

Zenchur nodded. "Right. It is partly because he is Akhbreed, and the other races have learned through bitter experience never to trust one, and it is also that it is known that such tremendous power, like the gods, is impossible to have without corrupting your very soul. Every Akhbreed sorcerer is in some way insane. You can see the problem. Do you trade in a tyrant for a god? Which is worse-to be dominated, or to be owned? Every Akhbreed kingdom overthrown will make his domain greater and greatly increase his already unbelievable power. It is the ultimate dilemma. Without one such as him there is no hope of ever breaking the bonds that enslave countless millions of other races, but with one such as him one might long for the good old days of Akhbreed rule. It is dividing many races and many leaders. This last business will not win him many converts, either. Just to get at you he expended enormous power and that power has created a hole, a vacuum, in Akahlar. Such vacuums do not remain unfilled for long. He has of necessity created conditions that will bring a changewind to us. We must wait until it passes and hope it does not come this way."