Ghost of the Well of Souls

the funny little lizard thing was supposedly a flier, too. She couldn’t see how, without feathers, but she accepted it.

“Yep yep. Ochoans common ’round this part of the ocean, but we get lots. Yaxas, pretty big wings like butterflies, many more. Most races don’t fly, but a fair number do.”

“Most walk along the ground like you,” she surmised, finding memories of giant butterfly creatures somewhere in the back of her mind as well. From where? she wondered. She had no memory of actually seeing them, yet she felt she must have.

“Nope nope,” the Kuall replied. “Most swim. More water than land on this world, on most worlds where ones like us could live, so they say.”

She followed him up a broad metallic stairway to the next deck after staving off the temptation to fly up and meet him at the top. Too many ropes and stuff around, although from the deck she could easily get off the ship if she had to. It would be getting back on that would present problems.

The decks were wide, designed to accommodate the needs of a variety of physical forms. There were also lifeboats along both sides of the ship, set so they blocked no views from the decks but could be stepped into by even the bulkiest of creatures. The open ocean was still a dangerous place, particularly in the less than high-tech regions, when there was no visibility beyond the living lookouts perched on porches two-thirds of the way up the masts fore and aft.

She saw the forward lookout position being vacated by two creatures, both of whom looked insectlike and simply walked down the side of the broad mast, one after the other. She found such multiracial crews amazing; it seemed odd that races so different could live and work together in these close quarters, considering how alien they were from one another. She was still getting used to those she’d seen who were also thinking creatures like the Amborans, and now this ship showed an amazing degree of interdependence without, possibly, any of them even thinking about it. It was a revelation to her, far more than what she’d seen in Zone, where each race kept a little bit of itself in a separate compartment for convenience.

The purser led her to an area, just before the wide bridge, that housed the great ship’s control center. It spanned the forward area deck on both sides as well as creating a separate building of its own atop the upper deck roof. He stopped at a large, dull red door and, with the dramatically large bronze key, slipped it in the lock and turned until there was a click. Then he opened the door, which swung in rather than slid to one side, checked it, and gestured for her to approach.

“If you have no luggage or valuables, then you have no need to lock the door, nope nope,” the Kuall told her. “Just make sure the door is shut with a click or a clunk. If you want privacy or to keep it locked, get this key from me and use it, then lock up when you leave and bring it back to me or my assistants at the desk. No need to carry it around, maybe lose it, nope nope.”

The cabin was surprisingly roomy, but basically a rectangle containing no notable luxuries. The purser showed her how to open or close vents to the outside air so that cool breezes could get in and hot air inside could escape without the rest of the weather intruding, and how to raise and lower the oil lamp. Both were unnecessary, as a blower system cooled the room, and the molding along the ceiling was glowing quite adequately to light the whole room.

“Those only work in high-tech hexes,” the purser told her. “Otherwise it’s the oil and natural air venting. We find, though, that if you keep your doors and vents closed and don’t use the door much, it’ll keep a long time, even overnight, yep yep.”

There was a sink and basin, but no bath or shower, not that she would use them anyway. There was also a strange modular structure that turned out to be a kind of building block toilet. Each of the pieces fit together in a lot of different ways, and thus a large number of races could be accommodated by these shape adjustments. At the bottom, though, was a deep black hole and the sound of constant water going through. She was fascinated by the ingenuity. Apparently there was some kind of filtered intake that forced water through a network of pipes, the water moving constantly by some kind of gravity feed and the forward energy of the ship. No matter what sort of hex they were in, the toilets constantly flushed, or, perhaps, in deference to those living below, it all went to some place mysterious and unpleasant in the bottom of the ship to be emptied in port service.

She was also impressed when the purser showed her how to get water out of a pipe that hovered over the basin. “Comes from tanks up top,” he told her. “Always fresh, always pure.”

It was clear by the discolorations on the floor rug and on the walls that furniture had been moved out for her. Instead, against one wall was a sand pit with rough wooden logs crossing through it, an arrangement very much like the kind they had in Ambora. There was also a meter-high chest with drawers and a smooth top that could be used should she wish to stow anything. It was spartan, but exactly what she needed.

She thanked the purser, who bowed slightly and left, closing the door behind him. For the first time, she was alone, and she felt a bit better and safer. She liked the location. Opening the door, she was in an area where she could probably take off without killing herself, and if she could make it forward of the bridge, she could launch into the wind, which would be almost ideal. The cabin felt comfortable, the roll minimized just as the purser had promised, and with no compartments save the water closet, she felt reasonably secure.

That spider thing still gave her the creeps in spite of its manners, but she was beginning to feel that she could actually do this.

She wondered who aboard was her contact and what it would look like. There was certainly plenty of time to find out. Right now, though, she felt more of a need for prayer and meditation than social interaction. This was going to be a long voyage.

Yabbo

The only thing keeping them there was the black dome, and they knew it. Still, they couldn’t remain there much longer without things taking a decidedly inconvenient turn.

If Mitchuk comes around one more time with champagne and bonbons, I’m gonna puke, Ari commented sourly.

Oh, don’t be such a party pooper, Ming responded. Besides, I’m not sure what champagne or bonbons would do to our constitution these days. And, well, he is kind of cute, in a silly little way.

Can the romance, this is business, he reminded her. Besides, if that guy’s cute then fish are works of art.

Look in the mirror lately, doll? We are fish. Sort of, anyway.

Yeah, well, maybe you’ve adjusted to this better than me. I mean, back in the old days we’d have taken one look at a Kalindan and ran screaming from the monster from the deep. Now they seem like normal folks, and even my dreams of those days somehow have everybody looking like the Swamp Creature from Planet Hell.

You apparently saw too many bad cinemas, kid. But, in fact, Ari was right, and she knew it. From the old Terran perspective, Kalindans were holy horrors, yet now, Mitchuk did look like a cutie to her, damn it. It was perhaps the only thing mentally the Well did to adjust you to a new environment. You looked at it, and yourself, in wonder rather than in shock and horror, and quickly adjusted to it.

For that matter, Kalindans didn’t look all that distinctive. It was more a matter of attitude, of carriage, of the body language and actual language, than any specific physical differences. They all were humanoid, averaged about two meters in length, had wide, round, light-sensitive eyes with double lids—one of which was transparent —and they had rounded, fishlike heads on humanoid necks, skin like a crocodile’s, a rubbery dorsal fin and a shark’s tail, and they were dark green tinged with yellowish spots here and there. Not the popular idea of a mermaid, definitely. In fact, you couldn’t even point to a Kalindan on a sexual basis, since at least once in their lives, sometimes more than once, just about every Kalindan changed sex. The fact that within the hex just about all of them were changing to the same sex at the same time made them even less physically distinctive.

And yet either of them could spot and identify individual Kalindans at a good-sized distance with no problem at all. They just couldn’t explain, even to each other, how they did it.