where they killed him. Not touch that damned stone in Olborn that changed me into a half-donkey. Maybe not have been so damned complacent these last years. I still don’t understand why I stayed in Glathriel and accepted it so calmly.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you had little choice in that,” the Yaxa told her. “Every six months the Ambreza gave you a physical. One of the devices they used for checking you was also a hypno gadget. Bit by bit they carefully changed your attitudes—slowly this time, so you’d never even be conscious of it.”
Anger grew within her. “So that’s it,” she said in a tone devoid of emotion. “That explains a lot.”
“But in a crisis the old you returned in full,” Wooley pointed out. “They didn’t dare hypno too strongly or too deeply, or you’d have been no use to them later. And that brings up your stake in all this. Only that computer up there can restore you to humanity, you know—or the Well itself, which might make you something other than what you want to be. I guarantee that if you somehow escaped they’d find a way to keep you from the Well just so your knowledge wouldn’t fall into others’ hands. They’d do a full brain scan, maybe using a Yugash to keep you from Well processing. You’d
Mavra considered that. She wasn’t sure it was possible to return to the South without Well processing, but a lot more impossible things had happened. “I’m not sure I care,” she said softly.
Wooley was startled. “Huh? How’s that?”
“I keep going over and over my life,” Mavra responded, “and I keep wondering what I’m trying to get back to. Sometimes I feel like the Markovians—money, some power that money brings, skill, my own ship, although it’s probably been sold for salvage by now. But for what? Somewhere along the line I missed something, and I don’t know what it is.”
They were silent for a while, each locked in her own thoughts.
Mavra felt a little groggy, drained. At first she thought it fatigue, but the condition persisted, a numbness increasing like a lead weight on her brain. She shook her head to clear it, but the movement didn’t help. She felt herself drifting off.
She was a little girl, running across green fields toward a large farmhouse. An elderly man and woman stood on the porch, looking kindly and smiling as she ran to them.
“Gramma! Grampa!” she squealed in delight. Her grandfather picked her up and hugged and kissed her, laughing. Her grandmother was still a remarkably good-looking woman, and she seemed to have an infectious spark of life inside her. She tenderly brushed back the little girl’s long hair and kissed her.
And they sat on the porch and played and talked, and Grampa told tall tales of a magical world where everybody was a different kind of creature and you could have wondrous adventures. He was a marvelous storyteller, and she was enthralled. But though only four or five, she sensed that something was wrong, something was different about this visit.
It wasn’t anything they said or did, it was something else, something in the grim way they talked to her parents and older brothers and sisters, some seriousness they tried valiantly to hide from her but could not.
And she’d cried and wailed when they left; for some reason she was certain that they were leaving for good this time, that they would never come back.
And they didn’t. There was furious activity in the house, people coming and going, all kinds of serious people who spoke in whispers and pretended nothing was wrong whenever she approached.
She started playing games to eavesdrop on them. Once she hid behind a couch while her mother was arguing with two big men.
“No! We won’t desert this farm and this world!” her mother yelled angrily. “We’ll fight! We’ll fight as long as there is breath in us!”
“As you wish, Vahura,” one of the big men replied, “but you may regret it when it’s too late. That bastard Courile is in charge now, you know. He’ll seal this world off in a minute when he’s ready. Think of the children!”
Her mother sighed. “Yes, you’re right about that, I suppose. I’ll try and make some arrangement.”
“Time’s short,” the other man warned. “Already it might be too late.”
And it had been too late. Some of the political opponents had been allowed out, but not her parents, for they were the leaders of the opposition to the party takeover. Not them. Their children would be the example of the new conformist society, and they would be forced to watch. An example to the nation, to the world.
And, one night shortly after, the funny man had come. A small, skinny man who sneaked in a back window, her window. She’d started to scream, but he was such a funny little man and he had such a nice smile. He hdd a finger to his lips and winked at her, and went out her door.
Soon there was muffled conversation, and then her father came back with the funny little man.
“Mavra, you have to go with our friend here, now,” he whispered to her. She was confused, hesitant, but there was something in the little man that made her trust and like him, and Daddy had said it was okay.
And the little man smiled at her, then turned to her much taller father, smile gone. “You were fools to stay,” he whispered. “The Com is absolute once it wins.”
Her father swallowed hard and seemed to be fighting back tears. “You will take good care of her, won’t you?”
The smile was back. “I’m no father figure, but when she needs me, I’ll be there,” he assured the other.
They sneaked out the back, running from bush to bush, a game she was too sleepy to follow.
Woozily she managed to look up. Ben Yulin moved swiftly, grabbing the napalm rifle from Wooley’s stunned grasp, turning, and firing.
A tremendously bright, pencil-thin line of flame shot outward, striking some objects nearby. There was a flash. Suddenly it seemed as if the very atmosphere were on fire, burning white-hot, burning and illuminating the Pugeesh, great huge spindly creatures standing on ten incredibly thin legs, with monstrous claws front and rear and large eyestalks that shone like rubies in the center of their round tiny bodies.
The napalm was effective. It struck the leading trio of attackers and clung like glue. There was no sound, but the two forward legs melted like molten plastic and the claws deformed. They retreated hastily, dripping fire.
“To your left!” Joshi shouted. “Something like a cannon!”
Yulin saw it by the flickering light and adjusted a dial on the rifle. The Torshind meanwhile had assembled a second weapon from the pack and shot a random half-moon of burning gelatin behind them, lighting up the surroundings.
Yulin fired again, this time in broad intermittent bursts, at a huge device that did indeed look like a cannon. When it went up, the whole area seemed to be melting.
“My God! They’re all over the place!” Yulin screamed. “Get me a new cylinder!”
There was a report of some kind from the right, and a large stone landed near them with a crash and rolled, almost getting the Torshind on the bounce.
Wooley seemed to snap out of whatever trance she was in and grabbed a napalm cylinder, tossing it to Yulin.
Mavra looked around at the eerie scene, trying to see what she could with her poor vision. Napalm at least was the right weapon here; it seemed to set fire to anything it touched. Whenever it landed the stuff melted, burned, and bubbled—and it spread.
The Torshind covered the rear while Yulin zeroed in on a large and complex cannon device that shot huge rocks. He was good with the rifle; the third blob struck, disabling the machine before the Pugeesh manning it could fire again.
And suddenly they were gone. Moving so fast the eye had trouble following, they just faded back into the brush, leaving only the burning remains of eight of their number and the bubbling wreckage of two cannons.
The minotaur was furious and turned on Wooley. “Some guard! They damn near had us!” he snarled.
The Yaxa was slightly bewildered. “I—I don’t know what happened,” she stammered, the cool self-confident tone of the Yaxa breaking for the first time. “I just seemed to sink into dreaming without even realizing it. I just don’t understand it—I never dream, normally.”
“Me, too,” Mavra put in, furious not only at her own lapse but also because in a battle such as this she had been totally helpless. “It just sank on me like a heavy, irresistible weight.”
