07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (9 page)

Traveling in the cars was like being packed into an aerated tin can and shot from point to point out of pressurized guns, and it was fast. Abudan, the capital city, was almost in the dead center of the hex, or roughly two hundred kilometers from the border. Under normal circumstances that was quite a swim. With all this murky soup they called water, it would have been several days of slow and miserable work. Now, here they were in only six hours, although the aches and pains were beginning to show.

Nor were they the only Kalindans to take this route. Possibly because of the slow going and low visibility, almost all the neighboring hexes seemed to use it. Since the Kalindans were fabricating and assembling a good deal of both the large and local systems, there were a lot of them around.

The city itself was huge, at least on the scale of Kalinda's own capital of Jinkivar. It seemed even larger because it was low to the ground. Few buildings rose more than four stories, yet the population was approaching a million of the lobsterlike Yabbans. They were by no means reclusive, either, going to and fro in such great numbers that they seemed a steady stream filling the streets. They tended to keep to the bottom. Rising only as required allowed fish and related creatures who preferred swimming—a
group that included Kalindans— the upper reaches.

Where are they going?
Ari wondered.

Maybe it s rush hour,
Ming responded, taken aback herself. The place seemed so damned
busy,
even by the most active and crowded of Terran standards, let alone Kalindan ones.

"First time in the city?" a voice asked them. They turned and saw a portly Kalindan with both a backpack and large travel case emerging from the station.

"Yes," Ming responded. "It's all so—overwhelming. What do they all
do
?"

The other laughed. "
That
is a question no one dares ask, not because it's any mysterious plot but because one of them might stop and try and explain it all to you. I assure you, after that you will be totally confused. I think our translators and certain common traits involving commerce and trade blind us to the fact that all of us are truly alien species to the others. Cheer up! They're friendly!"

She laughed. "I gathered that much."

"Where are you staying? Do you know your way around the city?"

Ming hesitated. They had no plans. "We hadn't really thought of it. The budget is tight, though."

"I see! You young people! I suppose the parents decided while you waited for some university slot you should see a bit of the world, eh?"

"Something like that." It was also hard getting used to having a teenager's body—albeit a very different body than the ones they'd grown up in. The Well World essentially reset newcomers, not to a child—that would have insulted their intelligence and been another hurdle to handle—but as a postpubescent young adult. The others had been similarly deaged, as it were, although with a few races it was hard to tell.

"Well, this is certainly the direction in spite of the problems. Come with me! There's a sort of Kalindan colony here under a filtered dome. I'll take you there. If worse comes to worse, you won't be the first or last to sleep at the top of the dome!"

They followed the Kalindan, wondering about the friendliness of their fellow country people.

I don't remember folks back in Kalinda being all this friendly and helpful,
Ari noted.

Me, neither. I have memories of being tossed around and locked up a lot. It might just be that we're all in a foreign land, or it might be something else.

You think we're being led?

Maybe. Or maybe both of us have just been in the undercover business too long. Either way, it gets us where we need to go.

"You lead and we'll follow, Citizen . . . er?"

"Mitchuk. I'm an engineering technician specializing in epoxies."

"Epoxies?"

"Glues. Cements. Sealants. Things that stick to one another forever. You just rode one of the trains. Can you imagine what would happen if any of those seals had come apart in transit?"

You mean they didn't?
"Uh, yeah. I suppose. I never really thought about it."

"Well, that's the part of my job that's both satisfying and a bit frustrating. I know if I did it right, lives are safe due to my work. Still, if I do it right, nobody ever notices the work, which is quite difficult and demanding. If you do it wrong, of course, you lose all that satisfaction and, well, you wind up heading the news in at least two hexes."

Like the other Kalindans who worked in the hex, Mitchuk swam much faster and more confidently than they did, but they managed to keep up, going perhaps ten meters over the roofs of the tallest structures in the city and avoiding much of the mob below. The site of those vast hordes packed in and going this way and that on unknown missions reminded them less of underwater denizens than, again, of an insect colony. It was also noisy, but the din was steady and at a reasonable level. They quickly learned to tune it out.

They went right through the center of the city and found the only point where Yabbans weren't densely packed. It was a large hexagonal building with a domelike roof. Even though they couldn't see inside, they knew what had to be there. Just as in all the other hexes, there was a single large hexagonal opening of impenetrable dull black, made of nothing and built into nothing. It simply—existed.

The Zone Gate.

Passing through it or any Zone Gate would take denizens of the Well World to an entry point in South Zone appropriate for the life-form in terms of atmosphere, pressure, and so on. It would take them nowhere else, and the other Gates within South Zone—save the one to North Zone that only the experts dared—would bring them back home to their own hex through its Zone Gate.

They headed due south now. In the distance they could see a series of dome-shaped structures, clear as glass, even through the murk. The fact that there were several surprised them more than their existence; it might be understandable that Kalindans would be housed apart from the alien mob they did business with, if only for their own sanity, but what were the others? Most of them they couldn't see through, and one was black as pitch.

"What are the other domes?" Ming called to Mitchuk.

"Oh, that's Embassy Row, as it were," their guide explained. "Most hexes don't maintain in-hex consulates, but the Yabbans do so much business with other hexes that it is often easier to deal with basic things locally rather than go back and forth to and from Zone. It's particularly expedient when some of the races are from far away, so that getting
back
here from Zone could present a real effort. In fact, we're the only more or less local one there, thanks to the large number of people we have living here."

It made sense, and also made them more curious about the ones they couldn't see through. "What's that blacked-out one over there?"

"Oh, that's Bliston. They're a kind of surly, paranoid bunch. I guess I would be, too, if my home were that close to Chalidang."

Interesting. A blacked-out area controlled by somebody whose relatives were all near Chalidang could hardly be ignored. "What do they look like?" Ming asked their guide.

"Worms, sort of. Worms with hands on both ends. You'll see. Everybody meets everybody over here occasionally."

"What do they trade with the Yabbans?"

"I'm not quite sure. Some sort of unique chemicals that the Yabbans use for some of their agriculture, I believe. You can ask around, I suppose, if you're that curious."

They were, although it seemed an awful long way for Yabbo to go to get fertilizer.

Some of the other domes weren't as transparent when they got up close. All had buildings inside them, but a few had structures that literally filled the domes so that, even though you could see inside the outer shell, you still had no idea what was going on beyond that.

There were a number of different races moving in the consulate area, none of whom looked familiar. There were large, colorful sea-horse-like creatures whose lower part ended in a kind of fanlike hand; octopuslike creatures with periscope eyes that popped up from the center of their body mass and seemed to be able to look any which way at once; and jellyfish things with semitransparent umbras showing large, complex brains as if through an X ray, and with varicolored tentacles hanging down. Ari suspected that the brain wasn't nearly as exposed and vulnerable as it appeared, and that many of those hanging tentacles, so seemingly random, had specific purposes, from senses to defense.

Yeah, but a good bullet or spear in that brain would still do one of them in,
Ming noted.

Maybe. But that can also be said of us, you know.

She hadn't thought of that.
Good to remember, if we feel the inclination to go poking into worms' nests,
Ming commented nervously.

Well, if they're worms, they'll probably just swallow us whole.

With hands at both ends, they're probably master stranglers.

They now approached the largest and busiest of the domes—the Kalindan consulate—easily identified by both the home-style architecture and layout inside and the number of Kalindan shapes. The only unusual thing was the scarcity of garish multicolored electric lights; there were some, but they were muted, and powered by chemicals rather than electricity, which was not permitted here.

The fine series of mesh gates they went through served a number of purposes. The one that meant the most was that, quite startlingly, the water cleared, and much of the gunk and irritation that was in Yabbo's seas vanished.

"We can't do much about the infernal temperatures here," Mitchuk told them, "but at least in here we can breathe. We had one devil of a time figuring out how to keep the water cleaned and aerated, but the system's held up quite well. Most of our people come here as often as they can simply to get their heads cleared out."

It was as if a tremendous tension was suddenly lifted once they were completely inside the consular dome; from breathing in short gasps they were now suddenly free to take in the water in a constant stream without getting clogged. Even their eyes no longer stung.

Inside, it was something of a mini-Kalindan town, complete with hotel, a Kalindan-style saloon, and even a restaurant, which seemed redundant, considering the nutrient-rich waters just outside. Still, they understood. Just because you could have all the plain yogurt and tofu you wanted didn't mean you wouldn't pay a fortune for a filet mignon. The sea life of Yabbo was the yogurt and tofu analogy, and Kalinda had something of a cuisine that dealt not only with presentation, but with spices and preparation.

Too bad we probably can't eat in there,
Ari said wistfully.
I can just imagine what even a fillet of
sagu
on Mazurine grass costs in a place like this.

This wasn't the first time the lack of any significant expense account got in their way, nor, they both knew, would it be the last. Still, they had a little money, and the saloon looked inviting both as a place to get something decent and also to get the lay of this new land.

"Will you join us below?" they asked Mitchuk, knowing they owed her but, financially, hoping she'd turn them down, which she did.

"No, no. I have much to do. I'll need to be at the hotel for an appointment in less time than it will take me to do the other things. Go in, enjoy! Perhaps we'll see each other later on!"

They watched her swim off, the long purple mane waving in the small currents.

She was never born a man,
Ari commented.
Not with those moves.

Yeah, I know. Bad enough to feel horny around here. Even worse when everybody's suddenly the same sex. Frustrating.

There weren't any drinks in a Kalindan bar, of course; the idea of drinking would be ludicrous to a water-breathing race. Still, the solids—created both from organic substances and by artificial ones—served the same purpose as alcoholic drinks and mild recreational drugs in their old Terran culture. You ate some. Others were put in the mouth and allowed to slowly dissolve while the drugs moved through the system and out the gill-like structures. They both knew how to use them, but they weren't used to their particular effects, nor had they tried more than a fraction of them. More important, from their point of view, was knowing how to take one with minimal effect, or no effect at all. That was the real trick to getting information in a bar.

Day and night meant little in Kalinda, which was deep enough to find the change of light irrelevant. Yabbo was high, and the topside limit was close enough that there was a sense of the passage of time through the amount of available light. Even so, like all but a handful of underwater races, it was considered handy, not something one established a society around.

Still, like Kalinda, the Yabbans had fairly well-developed eyes, and thus they appreciated a reasonably well-lit area. With their semitech capabilities and rich volcanic sources of energy, they had a system of gas lights throughout the city that made it look exotic. Inside the Kalindan dome, though, these same gas jets, sealed in special ball lamps with only a source for the gas and a tiny bit of oxygenated air to enter, were used to illuminate the interiors. In the case of the bar, the large glowing orbs were all over the place, and yet gave it a dull, half-lit look and feel. It was good enough, particularly for a saloon.

It didn't take them twenty seconds after entering the place to sense that something very odd was there as well.

Ari, there are Kalindan
men
here!
Ming breathed. With a lot of sexual foolery going on, as there always was in places like this, the biochemistry of sex was easily smelled in the water.

So
that's
what that is! Hey! No fair! We were supposed to be guys, too, remember?

More important, it means that whatever did the change in Kalinda is limited to the hex.. The guys here didn't change.