back—at least wait for the rescue party.”
She didn’t really want to, but her head was throbbing and she felt very weak and tired. “All right, Asam. In the morning.”
Although the trail was firm and well-marked, it was not easy going for either of them. The wind cut into them, and even the reduced packs seemed to shift onto every cut and bruise. Asam, as befitted his character in more ways than one, grimaced occasionally but never complained, nor did she. Still, dark thoughts pervaded their climb, mostly her own self-doubts about what she was doing. Was she, in fact, on the right side? Not that she should be on the Well’s side, but why should she be on
She knew the answer to that, of course. Brazil had refused to fix the Well unless she was there, unless she specifically ordered it. She wondered who would give the order if she were killed in this crazy battle of wits. Maybe nobody. Maybe he would just go into the Well, put himself back in the regular universe in whatever place he liked, and sit back and wait for eventual destruction. The responsibility was hers, not his. He had as much as said so.
Well, she hadn’t asked for that responsibility, she told herself, and didn’t want it. It wasn’t fair. Nothing in her whole damned life had ever been fair, but at least she had been the mistress of it. Now they had even taken that away from her.
There were doubts, too, about her part in it all. She was to establish herself in her hex and wait for instructions. That had been all they had told her—that and the fact that the Entries would eventually rally around her, form up into a multiracial fighting force, one of several that would, on signal, converge on a single spot and combine into a mighty army, perhaps the greatest the Well World had ever seen: an army fed and supplied by other hexes as it marched, by other Entries and diplomatic friends who would, it was presumed, be there always with whatever was needed. It sounded pretty damned chancy.
And yet, if Asam were right, Dillia would follow her. Right now they would follow—not all, of course, but enough for a substantial force. That was all she had been asked to do. Why was she in Gedemondas? A hunch? Or was it, she wondered, her subconscious self’s desire to throw enough of a joker into the deck that she could, as usual, be more in command?
Another night, another cabin. They felt better, slept better, as the journey wore on, and out of the comradeship of the first day’s battle had grown a true affinity.
That, too, worried her. He was Asam, a great man and good friend, it was true. But he was Asam, a Dillian centaur born on the Well World who, because of that, would never leave it. She was Dillian only superficially; inside she was still the same Mavra Chang, still the same woman of a very different race and, beyond that, a very different time and culture. At the end of this was the unknown and unknowable. Perhaps Brazil knew, but where was he?
And so she rejected Asam’s affection, kindly but firmly. She saw that it hurt him and because of that it hurt her, too. But anything else just wasn’t fair, not to him, not to her.
On the fourth day out, they were close to exhaustion. The going had been very rough on the icy slopes where melt never happened, and the peaks had few and difficult passes. Neither of them, she knew, could take much more of this. They got into the cabin, a much smaller affair than the usual since this was a relay point to other valleys and not a base camp. As dark closed in, they settled down with a good fire going, and both were so damned tired they hardly said a word to each other. A stillness fell with the night, a stillness so absolute it seemed unnatural, unbroken even by word. There was nothing but the crackling fire and their own slow breathing as they slipped into sleep.
She dozed fitfully, for she was so tired she was having trouble sleeping, and so the crunching sound, as if some heavy, large animal were trudging through the snow, only half-registered on her. Was it truly something, or was it dream? Or was it, perhaps, an echo of her hopes? She didn’t know, and felt too far gone to give it much thought.
The door opened, creakily, noisily, but neither of them stirred. In Gedemondas, you stirred if they wanted you to stir.
The Gedemondan stood upright, like a human or ape, but at almost three meters it almost touched the ceiling. Its face was doglike, with a long, thin snout and a black button nose, but its eyes were very much like a human’s or Dillian’s eyes, large and a misty, pale blue. It was covered in snow-white, almost brilliant-white fur, fairly woolly, like a sheep’s, and two earflaps dangled down on either side of its head.
The Gedemondan gave the sleepers little attention at first, going over to the packs and looking casually through them. It came upon Asam’s cigars, pulled one out, and looked it over carefully, as if trying to figure out what it was. It ran a thin, pink tongue over the wrapper, cocked its head as if in contemplation, then shrugged slightly and stuck the cigar in an invisible marsupiallike pouch just above its crotch.
Finally it seemed satisfied, then noticed the map of Gedemondas. It unrolled the map and looked at it for a few moments, and from deep inside it came an odd sort of rapid clicking sound that might have been chuckling. Using its odd, flexible three-finger-and-thumb hands, it rolled the chart back up and replaced it. At rest, the hands formed an almost rounded pad that hardly looked like hands at all.
It turned now and went to the rear, where the stalls were, and looked briefly at Asam, slumbering peacefully. Then it moved to the next, where Mavra slept, deeply, now, as if drugged.
The two pads went first to her head, where they seemed to stroke it. A hand uncoiled and gently moved the long blond hair so that the ugly-looking bump on her head was clear and exposed. Hoping it would drain and subside on its own, Dillian Healers hadn’t bandaged it.
The hand formed again into a pad, and from the odd-looking hairy pinkish palm came a sticky-looking secretion. The Gedemondan, holding back the hair with its other hand, applied the pad with the secretion like a compress on the swelling.
Now, for the first time, it seemed to realize the bruises were bruises and the bandages covered other wounds. Carefully it removed the bandages and looked at the wounds. It had some difficulty getting to her hindquarters, and at one point actually pulled her gently out of the stall, but neither she nor Asam awakened.
A second Gedemondan entered now and looked at the two sleepers, then nodded to the first who was with Mavra. It seemed to sense immediately that the two were injured and went to work on Asam, whose injuries, deeper and nastier than he had led Mavra or the others to believe, were consequently much more painful.
In the course of their mysterious treatment, the second Gedemondan made a slight grumbling sound and pointed to Asam’s throat. The first nodded, then gestured back at Mavra and shook his own head negatively. The meaning was clear. Asam had a translator; they could talk to him, but not to Mavra, and not to these two. It was clearly Mavra they wished to speak with.
They had a problem, they understood. They needed a language specialist, and there was not one here. They needed to take these two elsewhere, but won-dred how far they could be moved. But they were in a public cabin on a public trail in hunting season. Neither wanted to wait it out here, risking discovery.
Both mulled it over. The debate had been entirely silent, not even telepathic. They had simply known the words that needed to be said, the facts that needed pointing out, and with an occasional gesture an entire conversation had been boiled down to almost nothing at all.
One made a decision and went over to Asam, still asleep, and started making noises at him, noises like the yipping of some small dog. Still held by whatever power these two used and therefore still hypnotically asleep, Asam spoke.
“Mavra Chang, hear us.”
“I hear you,” she replied as if drugged, eyes still closed, breathing evenly, and as she said it Asam repeated it.
The Gedemondan nodded to itself, seeming satisfied. The other understood intuitively its feelings: it wasn’t perfect, but you made do with what you had at the time.
“The Well is damaged,” the Gedemondan said through Asam. “We know it. We felt it as it happened. It is a machine, but it is also in many ways like a living organism. It is in agony. We gave you medical help, and this was easy to do. The Well, too, needs this help, but it cannot help itself. This, too, we understand. We will help you to do this, for our own vision is cloudy, our own minds affected, for we are attuned to the Well.” It paused. “Speak to us now.”
“Brazil seeks to fix the Well,” she told them. “The nations combine to stop him. There will be war. Any and
