07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (21 page)

The spider seemed to think a moment, then approached her confidently. A creature of this size who still walked up walls and across ceilings did not have any problems getting around under these conditions. A leg reached under and into some natural pouch, then brought out a glistening strand of what seemed to be rope of smooth, translucent color. He put out the leg and offered the rope to her.

"Please—take this. It is a natural substance my people make, but it is strong as steel and it is, well, sticky without being wet. Take a seat in the center here, which is the point where you will sense the least movement, and just put this around your lap and secure it to the bottom of the seat. It will hold you, and the seats are bolted down. You can peel it off slowly from anywhere or anything, but if there is a sudden jerk, it will hold a boulder. Go ahead—take it. It won't hurt you."

She didn't trust the spider, but on the other hand, he seemed to be telling the truth and just being helpful. She took his offering, pulling it to her. Now, for the first time, she saw that the legs, all of them, ended in what looked like mittens.

She studied the ropelike substance. "This is your webbing?"

"In an evolutionary sense, yes," he admitted. "But we don't build webs. As far as I can tell, we never did. Still, it comes from the same source as a spider's web, and we use it very much like ropes, vines, whatever. A bunch of it gets made every day whether we need it or not, and we actually sell the stuff as a trade good for uses just like this. It keeps its properties for quite some time, although, of course, like everything else, you can use it too much. My gift. In fact, if you give me one end of the coil back, I'll go over to one of these backless chairs and hold it taut so you can make it."

The stuff had an odd feel, almost like it was trying to grab you, and using it hand over hand to go toward the great spider, it seemed she was climbing a web to her doom. But Wally, as usual, was as good as his word, even helping fasten her to the seat.

It helped. "I fear I'm still looking out at that scene," she told him. "I feel we'll go down every time I see the bow vanish." Even so, she felt more comfortable secured to the seat.

The noise was also unnerving. Not the storm outside— save for the thunder claps, which were dulled by the tight insulation and triple-thick bulletproof window materials—but rather the groans, shudders, and moans of the ship itself, punctuated now and then by the sound of things smashing against bulkheads.

"You seem to enjoy the storm, Mr. Wally," she commented to the spider. "Is your race one that swims?"

He chuckled. "No. If we go, I go, I'm afraid, but I'm not all that concerned. While it's not unheard of, these ships are built for this sort of thing, and this crew is highly experienced. And, while I must say I've never been on a ship through a storm like this before, I've been in much more dangerous and less comfortable spots in my long life. I rather enjoy viewing the wonders of nature, really, so long as I am warm and dry and looking out."

"It seems a
huge
storm," she noted. "I mean,
we
have thunderstorms, some of them quite fierce, but they are generally local affairs. They blow and roar like this, it is true, but they are soon gone. This one just seems to go on and on and on."

"It does," he agreed. "I believe this may be more than a mere storm. I heard one of the crew refer to it as a tropical storm, and another as a typhoon. These appear to be much larger and meaner storms than the ones you or I are used to. It is a wonder to me that they can sail in this, but apparently they have a way to do it. As I say, experience. Experience and thousands of years of clever engineering design."

It did seem to go on for a terrible length of time, but then, as suddenly as they had come upon it, it died down, even stopped, and for a brief moment there was even a bit of sun.

They could hear the shouts of crew all over, but they didn't sound happy.

The purser rushed in, saw her, and said, "Thought somebody might be up here. Yep yep. Everybody all right?"

"Yes, we're fine," she assured him.

"If you want to get to your cabin, go fast," the purser told them. "This is the middle of the storm. All quiet, still. But we'll hit the other storm wall in about ten minutes. After that, it's back to the wind and waves for another couple hours."

She thought it might be a good idea, tried to get up and found herself held tight.

"Oh, sorry, let me help," Wally commented, reaching over, putting a leg under the chair and pulling. "Here. Take this. You may find it useful. We will talk later, after we are through this mess."

"Yes, perhaps we will," she replied, unnerved at just how well tied down she'd been without realizing it.

She made her way back to the doors, then out onto the deck. It was a strange feeling, this "middle" of the storm. She could see it, all around her, and certainly forward, yet it was almost as if they were becalmed, with the sun peeking through the strange, spiral cloud shapes above.

She also saw that the crew was busy hauling down some very torn-up sail and putting up some others. She knew that those sails were made of the kind of stuff you couldn't tear, and to see them now in this condition was more sobering than watching the bow sink and rise.

She hurried to her cabin, not wanting to be caught when they hit that storm again, and made it barely in time.

The embedded log in the box of sand provided sufficient grip and comfort for her when it started again. Alone, inside her cabin, for once she felt not claustrophobic, but safe.

She decided that the best way to spend the rest of the day was in prayer and meditation, if she could hear herself think over the racket that began again outside.

Yabbo

CORE WAS LESS THAN IMPRESSED BY THEIR HIGHLY FANCIFUL and imaginative report. Not, however, to the point of accepting a word of it, even if it was just the kind of plot Core might have come up with.

"Proof!" Core shot back in a memo sent via the Zone Gate courier system to Ari and Ming at the consular office in Yabbo. "Get proof, get knocked up, or proceed to Sanafe, or any combination of same, your choice."

She has a definite lack of personal charm,
Ming noted.
Do you suppose she's taking her own advice? After all, Core has exactly the same situation under those decrees that we do.

I hadn 't thought of that, but you're right,
Ari replied.
Hmmm . . . Makes you wonder what would happen if she
did
get "knocked up," as it is so quaintly put. Who would want to have sex with somebody who spent the last century as a computer?

I'm not so sure, considering your dear, departed uncle's perversions. They were all in those memory banks, take it from me. If Core's got any of
those
routines still in her memories, then I fear for the man who tries it, not for her.

That doesn 't help us here, though,
Ari pointed out.
So, we either have to produce a body in a case or get the hell out of here.

I vote for visiting Sanafe myself. We'll never get a chance to open one of those things, not with that kind of guard around, and I didn't see any way in. It was like they were sealed in by machine. If so, they probably will take some kind of gadget, a kind of frozen coffin can opener, to get them out. I, for one, am not anxious to tangle with that general, not yet.

Ari felt disappointed, but had to agree with her. Even though he was as convinced as she of the contents of those boxes, there was simply no way to prove anything to Core's satisfaction with just the two of them, and a good chance they'd be caught if they kept going back and forth.

Still, the whole concept of mailing an invasion army to the staging area had to be unique in the annals of warfare, and it sure was a warning that they were dealing with some diabolical minds on the other side.

Sanafe was due north of Yabbo, and thus roughly two hundred kilometers distant. Still, Core had been prescient enough to send along some international credit units with the note so they could buy their transportation some of the way, maybe all the way. The thing was, they hadn't any idea what Sanafe was like.

"Nontech, my dear. Strictly muscle power," Vice Consul Mitchuk told them. "They don't socialize much, and there are no consulates there, or much of anything else for that matter. They're large carnivores, organized into family-based clans as I understand it, and they don't even like each other very much, let alone foreigners. It is unlikely they would kill a Kalindan, since we're next door and could cause some ugliness for them if they did anything to one of ours, but they might frighten, threaten, or extort."

"What sort of weapons might we get around here that would work there, on those people, if need be?" Ming asked him.

Mitchuk shrugged. "Hard to say. Spring-loaded harpoons are effective in nontech environments, but I don't know where you'd buy them anywhere in this region. My advice to you would be to not go. Settle here, obey the decrees, and wait for things to happen."

She shook her head. "Sorry, sir. You've been a real dear, but we have our orders, so to speak. Something is going to happen there, and maybe soon, and we are supposed to be on hand. There are Chalidangers right here, and that can't be a coincidence."

"Chalidangers?
Here?
Are you certain?" The consul seemed surprised and upset by the news.

"Oh, yes. Take it from me. That black dome down there may
claim
it's part of the Panayan consulate, but it's not. It's Chalidang, and it's got some very high-ranking officers living in it. We've seen them."

"You—You've
seen
them? Where? And who is this 'we' you speak of?"

"Oh, just a figure of speech. But, yes, we've been down there and we've spotted them, as much as they try and keep out of sight and inside their bunker."

"Do you think this has anything to do with a move against Kalinda?" he asked, sounding concerned.

"I'm not sure. It doesn't seem nearly enough if they go against us. No, I really can't say. Core believes it has something to do with Sanafe, which is why I was directed to go there. You see now why I haven't been able to, well, consummate the directive. If I got pregnant now, well, it would really limit my movements after a while."

Mitchuk looked crestfallen at that. Still, he sighed and said, "Well, please, if you are bent upon leaving, then you must be my guest for one last dinner. Please!"

"Well, I—"
What do you think?

What the hell. Why not give him one last shot? At least we'll get a decent dinner before we have to go back to eating that crud outside.

The dinner was the best the consulate had to offer, and that was saying something for a Kalindan palate; the intoxicants were of the highest quality and age, the sweets delectable. By the time they finished, even Ari was feeling guilty that they hadn't given Mitchuk much encouragement for all that he'd done, or, in this case, overdone. They were tipsy at the end of it, and stuffed like a lobster, and they found coordination difficult. Mitchuk kindly offered them one of the smaller rooms in the consulate for the night so they wouldn't have to navigate, and they quickly took him up on it and accepted his assistance in getting there.

Ming's head was spinning, and since it was also Ari's head, she knew she had no advantage, but she did have some experience in this.
I
think we've been snoggered,
she managed, as they settled in for sleep.

Huh? What do you mean?

Mitty isn't even high, that's what. I got a bad feeling about
— But that was all either of them managed before passing out.

It was a mostly very deep, dreamless sleep, but there were moments when they dreamed that others were there, that things were being done to them, but as quickly as these sensations arose, they lapsed back into the near comatose blackness.

It was impossible to say how long they slept, but it was a big shock to see where they were when they woke up.

It was like emerging from a warm, totally dark tunnel into slowly increasing sound and light. It was not without its sudden but brief waves of nausea, each one of which jolted them more awake, but in a state that made them mostly want to go back to sleep.

They felt awful, and there was no need to convey this concept to the other. They tried to turn a bit and get more comfortable, but something was preventing it. Slowly the eyes opened to see nothing but a blur at first, but things slowly came into focus, broken now by sounds so loud and irritating that they pounded into their head like hammers.

"I do believe our guest is waking up," a silky smooth deep voice commented. "Or should I say 'guests'?"

They managed to focus on the speaker, and suddenly all the discomforts of the hangover became totally irrelevant.

They found they were on the bottom level of the dark dome, and were being eyed with some amusement by a very large and very menacing-looking Chalidanger.

"Please don't try and struggle too much," the Chalidanger said to them. "We had to put some restraints on you because we thought you might be reluctant to accept our sincere hospitality."

"Mitchuk," Ming almost spat back in disgust. "The horny little fink sold us out."

"On the contrary," their host responded. "Citizen Mitchuk sold
himself
a
very long time ago. Selling you out wasn't an option; he has long been one of us. Do you think we could have operated here so effectively for so long without ensuring that we had far more friends around than neutrals, and no enemies we couldn't control?"

"Some control. You drug us and kidnap us."

"Oh, come now! I'm assured that the food and intoxicants were of such a high quality that if you tried to order it all back home you couldn't possibly afford it. If you've got to be drugged and rolled, as it were, there are far worse ways to do it. Just a little extra juice in one of the stronger intoxicants was enough to put you under for almost thirty hours."