black like her own. Originally, the locals panicked themselves with tales that the Goddess of Animals lived in her compound and that they would be turned into animals if they so much as caught sight of her.
And, of course, for quite a while she wanted no one, preferring to sulk in self-pity. But, eventually she would leave the compound, sometimes for the beach where she would prop herself up so she could see the magnificent starfield. Eventually she also explored inland, but always by night to minimize possible problems. Except for the mosquitoes and other pests she no longer felt, there were no predators that could bother her, and the natives feared the dark.
But, of course, she had eventually run into a couple anyway, and the first encounter was a disaster. They knew immediately what they saw—the very animal described in their tales—and it so terrified them that one actually
The most powerful voodoo is the one one’s mind believes in, she found.
And so, at first, she was cautious. Having a translator meant she could understand them and they her— although the device added an eerie tone to her voice.
Just the right effect. Ambreza-like, but not Ambreza. Something else: The Goddess!
And, of course, finally she announced to the local natives that if they served her she would show herself once without their suffering any ill effects. When she eventually walked into the firelight, ghostly and eerie, they did what she had hoped. They fell on their faces and worshipped her.
But, she warned them, to tell the Ambreza was to risk her wrath. Even to tell other tribes would bring down upon them a fate worse than death. Her tribe had kept the faith. They were the People of the Goddess, and they reveled in that knowledge.
Mavra demanded offerings, and offerings she got. Hoards of food dumped at the door of the compound. Tobacco, too. Rare on the Well World, the substance was much prized; the Ambreza took most of the crop, of course—but now she had some to trade with the monthly supply ship for things she wanted more than the now largely unneeded provisions.
For tobacco, the ship’s crews would bring what she asked. Since Glathriel was a nontech hex, machines were out; but books, geographies, and grammars were useful. She learned to read several related languages and waded through everything in their published histories.
She was, by her eleventh escape attempt, probably the greatest living expert on Well World life, geography, and geology. And she reread the books frequently, turning pages with nose and tongue until the volumes were almost unreadable. Even after she changed she continued to read voraciously; it was one of the few activities that kept her properly stimulated.
She also gave native hunters advice on game traps, which increased their yields, and suggestions for the manufacture of new nontech weapons. The Glathriel, of course, worshipped her all the more. The Ambreza became suspicious, but there was little they could do. The situation had gone too far.
Then, one night just after she changed, she noticed a strange glow in the direction of the village. Positioning herself nearby, she watched as one of the huts burned and people screamed. They got only one out alive, a young boy with massive burns on hands and feet.
She ordered him brought to the compound and launched one of her little rockets to signal the Ambreza. More Goddess magic.
And the Ambreza doctor had come, and looked at the boy.
“There’s no hope,” he told her. “I can get him to a hospital, yes, but not in time to do any good. He’s horribly burned. I might save his life, but never his limbs, and he’ll bear those tremendous scars his whole life as a cripple. Best I put him out of his misery.”
Something rose in her, looking at the burnt and pitiful boy of ten or eleven. “That’s
She didn’t know why she’d said that, it just seemed
She accompanied the boy and the doctor to Ambreza and saw him later, still sedated in a high-tech hospital. He was a mass of scars, and both hands and feet had been amputated.
They argued with her. Ordinarily they wouldn’t have paid any attention, but the Ambreza felt a special guilt and a special responsibility for Mavra Chang.
“But what can he do?” they had asked. “The tribe would kill him.
And, suddenly, the solution had risen, unbidden, in her brain and come out. Such intuition was uncharacteristic of her; it was the change.
“He’s a male!” she’d shouted back. “If the Olbornians still have those yellow stones, take him there! Touch his shattered arms until they change, then his twisted legs until they change! Make him a Chang like me, and give him to me!”
They were stunned. They didn’t know what to do.
So they did what she had asked, with a little push from their psychiatric technicians and a lot of nudging from Serge Ortega.
They hypno-burned his tortured brain clear of memories and then adjusted him for his new existence, with Mavra doing the instructing. She was like a maniac as she went at it, but the Ambreza indulged her because they owed her something and because, for the first time, she had a passionate interest beyond escape.
Joshi was the first step in the project that had been forming in her mind, a project she was now frantic to live to see: the establishment of their own independent little world.
He wasn’t as bright as she by a long shot. That is not to say that he was stupid or retarded, merely average. She taught him to speak Confederation, in which she still thought, and to read Ambreza and the old Glathriel tongue, no longer used but still enshrined in prewar books maintained by the Ambreza. Most of his knowledge had to be force-fed; the studies didn’t really interest him, and he tended to forget things he didn’t use, as most people will.
Their relationship was an odd but close one; she was both wife and mother to him, he her husband and son. The Ambreza, who followed her activities off and on, believed that she had to play the dominant role, that she had to feel and actually be a little superior to one close to her.
Joshi stirred behind her. It was getting dark, their natural time to be active established by long routine. The helpless ten-year-old had grown and matured; he was larger than she, and almost coal black, although the pinkish scars of the fire marked him all over.
He came up to her. They had been careful in transforming him; too long an exposure to that Olbornian stone made one a docile mule in all respects.
In some ways, despite the scars and darker coloring, he resembled her—same type of legs, ears, and downward angle to the body. But he had no tail, of course, and his hair was quite different. Some of it had been burned away in the fire, but he still had a fairly full head and a manelike growth down the spine to the waist. He was also fat. The native diet was not the world’s best balanced. His scraggly beard was tinged with white, although he was still in his twenties.
They were used to each other. Finally, after drinking, he asked her, “Going down to the beach? Looks like a clear night.”
She nodded. “You know I will.”
They left the compound and cantered down the trail. The sound of the pounding surf grew very loud.
“Must’ve been a storm out there,” he remarked. “Listen to those breakers!”
But far-off storm or not, the sky was mostly clear, obscured here and there by isolated wispy clouds that lent an almost mystical atmosphere to the scene.
He lay down in the sand, and she settled more or less atop him, propping herself up enough so she could see the stars.
In many ways, she had changed less than she thought. She had genuine affection for Joshi, and he for her. But Joshi was, in the end, part of her project, one designed as a means to gain independence from others. Dependency she hated more than anything else. She had never been dependent for very long on anyone, and the
