07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (25 page)

And, of course, she realized that this was exactly what she was seeing. The Alkazarians might own the place, but it wasn't theirs in spirit. It was, rather, a place that existed because the creatures of the hex realized what a profitable location they had.

She looked back and up to the bridge area and saw the little Alkazarian, probably standing on a box or something to see, on one of the outside "wings" next to the wheelhouse, barking orders in a high-pitched voice to the helmsman inside. Occasionally he'd jump down and vanish inside, then run back out again, and it was apparent that he was running the ship now.

She was glad somebody was. The harbor was so crowded with ships big and small, and more boats of all sizes than could be counted, that she didn't see how they were going to come in without hitting things.

Like the buildings and the fishing vessels offshore, it seemed there were a hundred races here, each in their unique vessels. To her surprise, there were even two other large steamers in the same class as the
Bay of Vessali
in port; the
Bay,
in fact, was heading for a long pier that would put her in back of another similar ship and on the other side of a third. The major differences were in the colors on the superstructures and smokestacks, and the flags that flew from the sterns.

They slid in smoothly, and more Alkazarians in dull blue uniforms with no particular adornment threw ropes up to places where
Bay
crewmen were perched to fix the big ship in place. The engines were cut; movement suddenly stopped, save for a small jerkiness as the ship struck the dock while straightening out. Then there was one long, deafening blast on the steam whistle that seemed to go on forever, and it was over.

She heard yells and the sounds of engines from the other side of the big ship. Curious, she went over there and saw several small, squat, ugly little boats with single stacks going away, back out into the harbor. It was only then that she realized how the big ships docked: they were guided in by the little boats.

The city and the mountain behind, which rose to impossible heights in the sky creating a virtual wall, were now all that she could see forward. She decided it might be time to get off the ship, but wasn't sure how to do it. She'd not gotten on in the usual way, and she'd never been in a port before, and it only now occurred to her that she didn't know where the door was.

One of the crewmen, an octopuslike creature, only it breathed air, was oozing down from the rigging nearby. She approached it and called out, "Excuse me, but how do I go off?"

The creature stopped, two eyes within the fluid mass seemed to float until they were looking at her, and it replied, from somewhere within, "One deck down, this side, madam. Don't worry—you will see it. Just use the center stairs."

She thanked it, walked back along the deck and went in amidships and down the central staircase one deck. The crewman was right. Most of the other passengers were already there, along with the purser and chief steward. She didn't see Algensor, but Wally was prominent.

"Attention, please!" the purser shouted, and after several attempts they did quiet down. "Please excuse this problem! If you need to go on immediately to another destination, or have no travel documents, then inform the company agent at the bottom of the gangplank and we will arrange to put you up until we can transfer you. If you have your documents, proceed to Tolls and Tariffs inside the terminal. From there, go to our office inside and we will arrange for your stay here and passage to your final destination. Thank you!"

All the affectations the little creature had in his speech and manner seemed to vanish. She doubted if that had been an act; rather, this was duty overriding habit.

She wasn't sure which category she was in, and looked through the small bag she wore. They had sent her some papers, but since she couldn't read them, she had no idea what they might be, other than the credit voucher that had been used for passage and might still be worth something here. Supposedly that's how they did things between hexes, with these vouchers.

One of the papers did look official, though, and even had a very bad and grainy black and white picture of her face she could hardly recognize. She suspected it was a travel document, but decided to ask.

None of the other passengers seemed surprised to see her, at least not from her scan. She wondered if Algensor had taken matters into her own hands without explicit orders. Certainly the Kehudan hadn't radiated a threat earlier in the voyage.

Wally seemed to radiate some odd pleasure at seeing her, as if he hadn't expected her to live but was, for some reason, glad she still did. It was curious. She still hadn't figured him out, at least in relation to herself.

The gangplank wasn't all that stable and seemed to move a bit up and down, but it wasn't far from the door in the ship's side to the dock, and she managed.

The creature on the other side was another of the elephantine types, like the first mate, with the two-handed nose trunk and funny little uniform. She began to suspect that these creatures were in fact the owners of the ship and the line, although you could never be sure about such things. Still, this one towered over her.

"Excuse me, but I do not know if I have the proper papers or not," she told him, offering the one with her picture.

The split trunk twitched, one of the "hands" took the paper and brought it up to his eye level. He read it for a moment, then offered it back.

"This should be sufficient," he told her. "Most hexes don't even require this sort of nonsense, but this isn't most hexes. Proceed on down the pier and into the building at the end. Just be polite and show this to the Alkazarian at the entrance. When you clear, go to our office."

She thanked him, and, clutching the paper, walked down the pier, past not only her vessel but the one in front. Just when she wondered if she'd walked too far over hard ground, she was at the entrance.

This Alkazarian looked like the others, but he radiated suspicion and disdain. Still, he seemed taken aback by her. "And just
what
are
you
?"
he asked officiously.

"I am Jaysu, High Priestess of the Great Falcon, an Amboran," she responded.

"That right? Huh! That's some set of wings there." He looked at the paper and seemed to read every single word of it. Finally, he nodded to himself, took out a fancy printed rectangular sheet, stamped it, wrote something on it, then stapled it to the sheet and handed it back.

"Don't lose this," he warned her, "and show it on demand to anyone in authority, which means anyone of my race. You can do nothing here without it. When you leave the country, you must surrender this paper to the official on the way out along with any others you might get or they will arrest you. Please do not take this lightly.
Next
!"

And with that she was through. Still, the speech was a little scary; she carefully folded the paper with its attachment, put it in her travel case and sealed it tightly. The last thing she wanted was to be arrested in a place like this.

She looked for the steamer company office, but instead saw a Pyron standing not too far away, looking at her with those serpent's eyes.

They were such a strange and eerie race to look at. She thought of them as serpents who crawled on their bellies, but she saw that they did have legs, partially cloaked by the enormous hoods. Still, they looked like giant snakes rearing up and poised to strike, and she wasn't at all comfortable with their appearance, even though this one was radiating no threat at all. She was going to have to get used to looking only inside these different creatures. Cuddly little bears with the souls of mass murderers; fanged, giant serpentlike creatures who were, if not saints, at least ordinary people: she wondered how those who couldn't look beneath managed to cope.

The Pyron stepped forward, still moving as if slithering on its belly, even though it wasn't proportionately long enough to do that. "You are Jaysu? I am First Consul Auglack of Pyron. You received my message?"

"Yes, yes, sir, I did," she managed. "It was quite a surprise. In fact, it was a surprise to be here at all."

"Well, someone should have warned you. They do this all the time, in fact, when they don't have a cargo in mid-ocean. This is, quite frankly, a very pleasant city overall for a ship's crew to stay over in when they spend all that time at sea, and they look forward to putting in for minor repairs most times. The company doesn't mind unless it has business on the wider route. We weren't positive from the manifest that they were doing it this time, but we were ready if and when they did. Will you come with me, please?"

"Yes, sir. Certainly. But you must bear with me. My race is not built for long walks on this hard ground."

The consul chuckled. "Hard gr— Oh, you mean the floor! Yes, I can see where your feet aren't well-suited for that. Well, we will walk as little as we must, I promise. First things first. How do I address you?"

"Sir? I do not understand."

"You are a cleric of some kind, I know. Clerics tend to have titles beyond Citizen or Madam, just as politicians do. They call me Excellency in my official capacity, otherwise I am just 'sir' or 'mister.' I know religious leaders who are addressed as Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Reverend, Doctor, Holiness, Most High, and about a dozen other titles. How should you be addressed?"

"We do not go in much for that sort of thing," she told him. "Jaysu is fine. My title is important when I am introducing myself or acting in a religious capacity, but it is just a title, just as yours is, First Consul, if I hear right."

"Very well, then. It is simply important in my post that no one be insulted by those around me failing to use a title of respect. If Jaysu is what you like, then that is what we will use. How was the voyage?"

"Not very good, overall. Boring for much of it, then frightening in stormy seas. And, of course, that doesn't even include the attempt to kill me this morning."

The consul stopped. "I beg your pardon?"

"A Kehudan, Algensor, tried to shoot me."

"Indeed? And it missed?"

"No, she did not miss. When it came time, she simply could not do it."

The consul let it go at that, not realizing how literal his guest might be.

"This was the only attempt on you? I mean, not that we expected even that, but there were no others aboard who appeared to have less than noble intentions toward you?"

"There was this one creature, a giant, hairy green spiderlike thing, that I knew from the start was not my friend, yet at no time did he act against me or even pump me for information. He had two hideous little winged henchmen, but they were kept back, or so I had the impression, by their master. Both of them flew off to this city last night."

"Indeed? That is most interesting. Normally anything that crossed into Alkazar, airborne or otherwise, would have been vaporized without question if detected. Either they landed on a boat just short of the border or they were expected. Most interesting. Oh, we received your photographs, by the way.
Most
useful. I'm sure your spider and little flying things are there, as is the Kehudan. The spider's the one to watch. He's been at the scene of other things such as this, and is absolutely in the service of Chalidang. We've been unable to get anything on his background, which is quite unusual and suggests that he might well be an import from outside the Well World whom, for whatever reasons, his new people are keeping well-hidden."

"Well, he called himself Wally,' if that is any clue. He said I could not pronounce his real one."

"Probably true. You probably couldn't pronounce mine, nor I yours, either, but that hasn't stopped us. Ah, here we are."

"Here" turned out to be a moving sidewalk just outside the shipping terminal. It appeared that the whole city was covered with these, moving along at a steady but not very fast clip. They were clearly designed as mass transportation; there were some hovering, flying vehicles, all looking very sinister, darting about overhead and going between the buildings and such, but ground transport was via these moving belts.

"I want to point out something to you, although you'll not be here long enough to
really
appreciate how paranoid you can get in this town," the consul said as he stepped on. After a moment's hesitation, she did likewise, and gripped the small handrail.

The city might have seemed majestic, even beautiful to some, but to her it felt unnatural, wrong, claustrophobic. She didn't like it one bit. It wasn't right to cram so many people into such a small space. It was filled with a thick atmosphere of the most awful odors, and a cacophony of sounds that made her head hurt.

"See those small posts every fifty meters or so alongside the walkways?" the Pyron asked.

She looked and nodded. There was so much filling every view that she'd barely noticed them.

"Well, on each are tiny little high-resolution cameras showing what's going on in all directions. At all times when you are anywhere in this city, and maybe in this whole godforsaken country, you are being watched. Inside every building, every corridor inside the buildings, same thing."

"Goodness!
Why?
And by who?"

"Alkazarian Security Police and their watch computers, which are programmed to alert them to anything suspicious. By their standards that means two people whispering who can't be picked up by their hidden sound monitors. We found them embedded in our offices and in our diplomatic quarters, which is highly improper and illegal, of course, but they deny it and it's their city. It's our belief that there isn't a single place you can go, or anything you can say or do here, that isn't monitored. Of course, we have our own ways of blocking the ones inside our diplomatic areas, but otherwise even going to the toilet, pardon, is a public act to them."

"How can anyone
live
like that?" she asked him.

"Because they have no choice. The foreigners here, like us, and many of those you see all over here, are here because it's their job and it's money. The pay is exceptional here because of the stress, but you can tune it out, take it for granted after a while, kind of build your own safeguards and go about your business. The services of a great city are here as well. Entertainment zones, any kind of goods or services one might desire, even if illicit, plus many of the comforts of home, major shopping with no tariffs, all that. And all completely safe. There are no murders here, no theft to speak of, not even much littering. Not when they're watching. In an odd way, it makes my job easier as well. If one of my people vanishes, I know immediately that the Alkazarian government has him or her because they are the only ones who could."