Ghost of the Well of Souls

world just walking all over them. And petrified that, if they did not keep their own people even more cowed, such leaders might well be eaten by their citizens.

The walkways ended at junctions, and there was then a short platform from which other walkways going in different directions began. It was a very efficient system, if you knew where you were going.

Where they were going turned out to be a section that actually had a few trees and an angle that permitted sufficient sunlight to keep them from dying. In this small area the buildings were not huge, but businesslike in size, although each had a different design echoing the flavor of the high rises. The one that they got off at was an imposing structure, a cluster of buildings merging into one another, each shaped somewhat like a common beehive.

“This is the Consulate of Pyron,” her host informed her. “Once inside, you will not be photographed or recorded, and you’ll be legally on Pyron soil. You’ll stay here for the day and night, and then we’ll get you on your way early tomorrow morning, if that is all right.”

“Yes, of course,” she answered, knowing but not letting him know that she had detected the lies among the truth. She was no less under observation in there than out here; she was just switching observers from the Alkazarians to the Pyrons.

It had not occurred to her to ever ask anyone what sort of government these people had in their homeland. She supposed it was just more naivete—that the ones on her side weren’t the ones she had to worry about. She wondered if that was a true assessment of the situation. If this venerated object were assembled, would its power be any less tempting to those who wished to stop Josich from doing it?

“I only need to know,” she told him, “when I can fly again. I have physical as well as emotional needs to do so, having been unable to do it for so long now. I have no other way to work off the energy, and I am feeling out of sorts because of that.”

“I apologize for that,” the consul answered, apparently sincerely, “but it must remain a sacrifice until you are out of this country. They will kill anyone who flies over any of their land except their own vehicles. Once you are in Quislon, there should be no problems, and it is a nontech hex anyway. In fact, we are banking on you being able to fly to the capital, as it will get you there before anyone else from the ship might reach it.”

“From the ship? You think they are heading there?”

“I think insofar as your spider friend and his companions, you can wager money on it and be certain of winning.”

Yabbo

General Mochida happily demonstrated his unique method of ensuring that he now had two loyal traveling companions. It was, in fact, a small spiny sea creature that seemed to have too many eyes and not much else but which, by its markings, clearly showed that anyone or anything thinking of eating it should think twice or be poisoned. It was not, however, a creature that Ari and Ming had seen before.

“It’s a gunot,” the General explained cheerfully. “They freeze rather nicely and revive just as quickly—rather simple little things, really—and we have a lot of them here because they are so useful around Kalindans. It seems that the poison the little creature gives off, and, in fact, is just full of, is toxic to all the creatures in its own native hex but not to others. It was discovered, though, quite by accident, that instead of killing Kalindans, it gave them a marvelous boost. The chemistry is very near but not identical to a key enzyme in the Kalindan brain, and when it is introduced into the Kalindan bloodstream, it actually replaces that enzyme. Do not be alarmed. It does a better job than nature, and when it moves into the brain it makes everything feel very, very good. That was the key to its long-ago discovery, in fact. Kalindan medical personnel were looking for a drug that would aid in the cure of certain psychological illnesses. It worked, but was never introduced because, you see, in about twelve hours the body’s defense mechanisms expel the foreign substance. Unfortunately, it takes about three days for that same body to make more of the natural type, and I have had it described to me that those three days are as close as you can come to a descent into Hell. You see where this goes, of course. There was quite a black market in the stuff long ago, until the gunot were almost threatened with extinction, but then they developed an easy test for its presence and managed to stamp things out.”

Holy shit! He’s gonna addict us to a drug! Ming exclaimed to Ari.

Can’t work! Only a true designer drug from the best of labs can addict somebody in one shot!

Maybe for Terrans, but we ain’t Terrans, remember?

There wasn’t that much that could be done about it in any event.

The sergeant major approached with a gas-powered injector that would work in the semitech environment. It was already filled with a very unpleasant-looking yellow bile-colored liquid, and with no hesitancy whatsoever he injected it right into the tail at the hip.

There was a slight sting but nothing major, but they held their breath waiting to see what the stuff would do to them.

“It’s too bad, really, that there are so few of these little devils left, and they refuse to breed in captivity. We’ve tried cloning but the power’s diluted, and we’ve tried mixing the stuff in the lab but it can take dozens of shots before any addictive qualities appear. If we could just make it at will as we do other substances, we could have every single Kalindan under our complete control in a matter of months without a shot being fired. Still, it’s useful when you want to turn someone from enemy to ally, or to keep someone close.”

You can only tense up for so long before you relax after nothing apparently happens. This was what was going on with them, at least as far as they could tell. If it supposedly went to work quickly, then something was wrong.

In fact, all the tension, all the fear, seemed to be ebbing from them, and small sensations of pleasure and contentment, like small waves on a pond, came at them one after the other. It finally occurred to both of them that this indeed was the drug, but it felt so good, the ripples almost orgasmic, that they could not bring themselves to resist, nor did they want to.

“It’s working quite well,” the sergeant commented. “You can see how relaxed they are, sir.”

“I can’t tell one of those fish faces from another, Sergeant, let alone tell what constitutes a happy demeanor, but I will take your word for it. You may go back and assist the colonel in final inventory and preparations for executing Operation Grail. I have to get our friends to send a few dispatches home and then pick up our mail, but I have a very good feeling about this.”

“I’m not worried, sir,” the sergeant told the General. “These people, all these races, seem woefully naive when it comes to any sort of covert action, and they are disunited.”

“They gave our forces a pretty good whipping at Ochoa, Sergeant,” Mochida reminded him.

“Yes, sir, but there were no Chalidangers engaged there nor on site to provide competent generalship. Besides, they have to win every time. We only have to win once in each engagement. I’ve been in the service thirty years, sir, and I’ll always take conditions like that!”

They had a blissful semi-sleep for an hour or two, and then began to awaken and come out of it. Not that they didn’t still feel very good, but they were beginning to think on their own again.

It does work, doesn’t it? Ari sighed.

I’m afraid it does. I wonder how much willpower and pain threshold we have? That’s what he’s gonna find out, you know. My feeling is, if we can’t stand it the first time, with only one dose of the crud, then we’re stuck. You know it and I know it and so does Mochida.

Yeah, Ari responded, knowing just how little of a threshold he’d always had before for such things. If he’d been more tolerant of pain, he might well have risked not working for his dear, departed uncle and turned out to be a much better person, but he knew that for him pain avoidance took precedence over character building every time.

Ming was a lot stronger on that score, but she knew that she’d never experienced something like this