Twilight at the Well of Souls

“Sail ho!”

Feet rushed in all directions around the deck of the brigantine, everyone going to their alert post.

It was a large ship, and well put-together. Although it had only a small auxiliary engine for aid in emergencies, becalming, and the like, it was primarily wind-powered and well designed for that purpose.

The crew was the usual racial mix, but it had a disproportionate share of one race, a race never seen before in the memory of the Ocean of Shadows, and one which had no reason for being there now.

A young woman, Type 41 human, ran from the wheelhouse back to the crew’s cabin area behind, bare feet padding against the wooden planking. She reached the first door, hesitated a moment, then knocked.

There was a muffled response, and she called out. “Master, there is a ship out there, a big one!”

There was another muffled response, then the sound of someone moving around. After another half-minute or so, the door opened.

“What is it, Lena?” Nathan Brazil asked blearily, rubbing his eyes to get them fully awake.

“A ship! A ship!” she said excitedly, and pointed.

He sighed, went back in for a second and took some water from a bowl, splashing it in his face. “Damn! Just get to sleep and the phone always rings,” he grumbled, then rejoined the girl on the deck. Together they walked back to the wheelhouse.

At the wheel was an enormous, jellylike mass, seemingly engulfing the steering mechanism. It was mostly transparent, but veinlike strands ran all through it and in its middle was a pulsating pink mass.

“What have we got, Torry?” he asked the mate.

Two stalks oozed out of the top of the creature; eye-like nodules formed on the end and it put one on him and one on the sea in front of him. “Steamer,” the mate replied. “Looks like a regular merchantman, but you never can tell. The glasses are over there.” A tendril oozed out of the mass and pointed at a table.

Brazil went over, picked up the binoculars, and peered out. It was still too far to make much of the ship, but they were definitely closing from the looks of the smoke.

“Steady as you go,” he instructed. “Looks like we’ll pass her, so anything out of the ordinary would just arouse suspicion—and this is a high-tech hex, remember. Just the usual. I’ll let Henny do the fronting as usual.” He walked over to one of the speaking tubes, blew into it, then called, “Henny, get up here on the double! Company’s coming!”

By the time the full lines of the big freighter could be made out, Henny was topside and ready, although bitching more than a little. After a duty tour, she had just settled down in her pool below decks when the call had come.

She was an enormous creature, with rolls of fat hanging not only from her huge, brown body but also from her face, or what there was of it. Two tiny little black eyes peered out of the bulk, and it took some close inspection to find the equally tiny black button nose and see that one of the folds was actually an enormous mouth. Sharp dorsal fins protruded from her back, and she pulled herself along on two monstrous front flippers that turned out to be made of a number of long, prehensile flat fingers—two rows of them, in fact. She was the only creature he had ever seen that had six fingers and six opposing long, flat thumbs. Again he reflected that Henny gave new meaning to the term “ugly,” although she insisted that back in Achrin she was considered a real beauty. He had no way of checking the truthfulness of that statement.

She peered out, and he knew that her weak eyes were being augmented by some sort of inborn natural sonar that worked both in air and water.

“Seems routine,” she noted.

He nodded. “Routine, maybe, but any contacts are a danger at this point. You know that.”

“Signals, sir!” Tony called. “I make it as WHAT SHIP AND WHERE BOUND?”

Brazil turned to the woman, still waiting patiently. “Lena, get on the flasher,” he ordered, then sat down on the deck of the wheelhouse, an action that would put him out of sight of any curious onlookers on the approaching ship while still leaving him in a command position.

The woman went out and lit the lamp, waiting a moment until it reached sufficient intensity. She looked over at him then, expectantly.

“Make the following signal,” he ordered. “Windbreaker, Achrin registry, Betared- bound.”

She flipped the signal lever for a little more than a minute, sending out the required pulses, then stopped.

“Add WHO ARE YOU?” he instructed.

That was done quickly, being a standard signal.

“Queen of Chandur,” Torry relayed to Brazil. “Makiem-bound.” He froze for a moment. “I think it’s carrying troops!”

Brazil nodded. “It’s to be expected. Some specialist troops and a lot of war materiel. Wish we had something to sink her with, but it’s a gnat trying to kill a giant here.”

“I might be able to do something,” Henny suggested. “The Mowrey aren’t all that friendly, but they aren’t all that mobile, either. I could probably get a message through to our people to hit them, say, in Kzuco.”

He shook his head. “Uh uh. Too risky. All we need is one word of that and they’ll be out to sink us even if they don’t suspect I’m here. Let it ride. It really doesn’t make much difference anyway.”

She turned and looked at him. “Except that what that ship’s carrying could kill a few thousand people, perhaps ours.”

He shrugged. “Henny, they’re asking me to pull the plug on several quadrillion, maybe more.” He let it go at that.

“Well, they’ve got their glasses trained on us,” Torry commented. “I’m not really sure I like it, frankly. We got too many of your kind on board. They’re bound to report it.”

He shrugged again. “So what can they report? Let ’em, Torry. We’re pulling the switch in Jucapel anyway. I’ll be long gone.”

“Yeah, but we won’t,” Henny responded wryly.

They waited there until the ship passed to starboard and then was lost on the far horizon.

Finally he felt safe enough to get up and stretch. “Don’t worry so much,” he told them. “They want me, not you. The ship’s legitimately in your name, Henny, and the humans aboard are technically the property of the holding company, bought fair and square from the Ambreza. They’ll go batty but they won’t figure it out. Not now, anyway.”

He walked out of the wheelhouse and aft, then went down a ladder to the main deck. Several creatures lay there, sunning themselves. They were great, birdlike creatures distinguished not only by ugly, drooping beaks but also because each had three complete heads, each on a long, spindly neck.

“Either of you up to a long trip?” he asked them.

The center head of one of them rose and looked at him with two yellow eyes. “I guess I can,” it said.

He chuckled and shook his head in wonder. “I never can figure out which head to talk to,” he said dryly, knowing full well that the creatures had only one brain, that not anywhere near the heads.

“Awbri’s due northeast of us right now. Tell Yua to be prepared to move at any moment. Tell her we were spotted by an enemy steamer bound for Makiem, and while I was not spotted, you never know. Tell them, if they can, to get off a message to both the other forces to try to link in Makiem, which seems to be their supply depot. They’ll know what to do.”

The creature rose up, stretched its great wings, and asked, “What if they try to take you?”

He smiled enigmatically. “If they do, believe me, the others will know.” He looked over at the other identical three-headed creature. “Besides, I’ll still have Rupt, here, for emergencies.”

“All right, then, I’m off,” said the messenger. “You take care they don’t put a bomb on the hull or something.”

He laughed. “I’ve got a fair little protection force of our people under us. You know that. Besides, they wouldn’t blow the ship. They could never be sure I was aboard. Now git!”

With a rushing of wind from great wings that almost knocked Brazil over, the creature got.