A minute or two laterhe was down in the main sewer that serviced the city. He had beendown here on quite a few occasions while his Granddad had conductedillicit transactions. It was now his lifeline to the mansion, buthe would have to travel a considerable distance on foot, and thatwas hazardous considering he was naked and unarmed.
He checked his sourceand discovered it was more depleted than he would have liked. Hecould shape change to a newman form, but not for long enough toreach the mansion. However, in Logicon form his vision was toorestricted to find his way there, and he was too slow to escapevery far anyway. A further problem was that when the archonreturned and found him missing they would likely look here first.He had to move quickly.
The main sewer tunnelswere quite large, a least three paces across and four high. Thewalls were made from clay bricks held together with mortar. Hecould roughly tell the direction by the flow of effluent. Fromgeneral knowledge he knew that all the main channels flowed to acentral channel, which then flowed to the south of Panmagica wherethe waste was treated. He was quickly brought back to reality whenhe heard noises from the upstream tunnel, and even though it wasunlikely that they were onto him this quickly he used most of theremaining power in his source to change to his newman form, andsprinted down the tunnel.
As he expected, hisability to maintain his newman form didn’t last more than about tenminutes, but he had travelled a considerable distance and decidedit was time to hide. If he could remain undetected until after darkthen he had a chance to get home. He certainly didn’t like hischances in the sewer. It would be filled with newmans, Logicons andpossibly other creatures trying to track him down.
His best chance was toflow up the pipes into someone’s latrine pit and spend the timeallowing his source to replenish. He changed to his Logicon formand headed up a randomly chosen side junction then continuedonwards as the pipes grew progressively narrower. What would happenif his primary shape was human and his source ran out while he wasslithering though narrow pipes as a Logicon, didn’t bear thinkingabout. It would be a horrible death. Fortunately, that wouldn’thappen this time.
Panmagica was awonderfully progressive city to have a sewer system. Each house hada basement and in the corner of the basement was a latrine. Somehouses had seats whilst others had holes in the floor.
In all cases, belowfloor level was a pit usually about two paces wide and deep and outone side ran a pipe to carry the overflow down the sewer system. Ofcourse the system was ideal for dumping just about anything thatpeople wanted to get rid of, including dead animals and presumably,in rare cases, pieces of corpse.
It was into one ofthese stinking pits that Rob slithered and took refuge. For a humanit was the worst possible nightmare, but for a Logicon it was arestaurant. It smelled good and he couldn’t resist a taste, whichfor a Logicon meant using his body to envelop a chunk of thesludge, forming a bubble and ingesting it into his body. Had hebeen a newman imitating a Logicon it would have probably been toogross to think about, but his Logicon body coloured his thoughts.He was hungry so he might as well eat.
The wait was thehardest of his life. He suspected that they would be searching thesewers, and the Town Watch would be on the lookout for a nakednewman roaming the streets. His vivid imagination dreamt up a teamof Logicon hunters sliding around all the sewer pipes like a packof bloodhound leeches, trying to pick up his scent. However, logicsuggested that the immense task of searching the entire city’ssewer system made the likelihood of his discovery remote.
He waited until lateinto the evening, submerging every time somebody answered the callof nature. When all noise and the vibrations of movement died down,he slid out of the latrine hole to find himself in a relativelylarge basement at least ten paces wide and fifteen long. He shapechanged to his human form and found his own smell almostunbearable.
The room was lit byfour yellow light balls suspended on wires from a ceiling severalpaces high. Each of the balls was backed with a silver metalreflector that directed the light down, but left the ceiling darkwith shadow.
Rob looked around andsaw that there were two other latrines in the room beside the onethat he had escaped from. Across the room was a tiled areacontaining two large barrels filled with water. Next to one of themwas a large iron cauldron suspended from the ceiling by a strongiron chain, and on a shelf nearby were cakes of soap. Near the doorthere was a couch against the wall.
‘Someone’s watchingover me.’ he thought and quickly moved to the tiled area, filled abucket with water, grabbed a brush and some soap and set to work toclean off the stench. He scrubbed himself thoroughly, but thendecided he would need to do it again as he was still too putrid.Just as he was fetching another bucket of water he heard thefootsteps of several people descending the stairs to the room.
He quickly emptied thebucket, changed to his Logicon form, and slithered up the wall tothe darkness of the ceiling. Six young priests and a woman enteredthe room.
‘Ooow ... it smellshorrible in here,’ said the woman.
‘Damn,’ one of theyoung men remarked. ‘It was Fental’s turn to purify the air downhere. He’ll cop it tomorrow. Who can do it?’
‘I can.’ One of theothers began chanting.
Soon the room smelledas fresh as a country field, while Rob hugged the ceiling in thedark of the shadows. It didn’t take too much imagination to guesswhat the group were interested in. Even though his vision was poor,his hearing was acute and he could hear every heavy breath, thrustand grunt as each of the young priests took their turn with thewoman on the couch, except one who said
