Jack Chalker - Exiles at the Well of Souls

It was the engine pod.

“How did you get this?” he asked, amazed. “I thought nobody could fly that high.”

“One of the Cebu scouts pushed himself to the limit,” the general replied. “On his third try he managed to get over the second string of mountains and found a deep, U-shaped glacial valley there. His eyes are good; he saw the reflection, above him, but knew that it was beyond his reach and range, so he fitted his longest lens and snapped as many pictures as he could with the glare filter on. This was the best.”

He had a sudden thought. “What about the Yaxa? Can’t they or those little imitator bastards find this, too?”

“Not a chance,” the general assured him. “The Yaxa can’t possibly fly high enough to clear that second range. I would have said no Cebu could, either, and the scout is half-dead as it is. He’ll be a hero if he survives. As for the Lamotien, remember they can only simulate other forms, not become them. They have a flying mode, yes, based on the Yaxa, but it’s highly modified to their form and requirements, and the wings are as thick as our own mounts’, far too heavy to clear that altitude. No, I think we have the advantage here.”

Trelig nodded, satisfied. “But they will get to the plain first,” he noted. “And our reports say that the Lamotien can neutralize an Agitar shock, and the Yaxa can fly rings around any of us.”

“It’s about even, all told,” the general admitted. “They’ll be dug in by the time we get there, well fortified, and they have to play only for time, nothing more. I suggest we do it a little differently.”

Trelig’s huge eyes enlarged in surprise. “Something new?”

The general nodded, and spread out a commercial-looking map on the table in front of them. It was a relief map of both Gedemondas and Dillia next door to the east, and it showed great relief and, more important, it had a lot of little dotted lines all over it. Trelig couldn’t read a word on it, though.

“It’s a Dillian guide and trail map,” the Agitar explained. “They sell them to interested people. There are rodents and other animals in that wilderness, and they trap them. The Gedemondas don’t seem to mind or bother them, although our Dillian sources say they don’t know much more about the creatures than we do. They don’t overdo the hunting, and that’s been the balance.”

Trelig nodded, understanding. “So these little dotted lines are hunting trails?” he guessed.

“Exactly,” acknowledged the goat-woman. “And those little rectangles are Dillian shelters set up along the trails. The trails are mostly Gedemondan, not Dillian. I understand that too many Dillians get the locals upset, and they push a ton or two of snow down on them.”

That was an unpleasant prospect. He let it pass.

“Now, we’re here,” the Agitar continued, pointing to an area in the southwest corner. “The Yaxa will be here,” now pointing to the small plains area about two hundred kilometers north and slightly east, “and, if you look closely at the map, you’ll see something interesting.”

Trelig was ahead of her. At least three trails came within two kilometers of where they now sat, east of them a bit. One seemed fairly low.

“Twelve hundred sixty-three meters,” the Agitar told him. “Low enough for an unobtrusive air drop.”

“Then we might not have to fight at all!” he exclaimed, excited. “We can beat them by going in with a small force and heading straight for the engines, while they have to poke and hunt!”

The Agitar shook her head slowly in the negative. “No, there will have to be a battle, if only to cover you. They are not dumb. If we didn’t move as predicted they would smell a rat and they would have you. No, the battle goes on, everything as planned. The only difference will be that we will not have any rush to win it, or take needless risks. When you secure the engines, others can be sent to try and disassemble them, if that’s possible, or figure out how to move them, anyway. By the time whatever force the Yaxa sends gets there, we’ll have already won the objective, no matter how the battle goes.”

Trelig liked the plan. “Okay, so it’s me and some Agitar males. But what protects me from the cold? I shut down below freezing, you know. Can’t help it.”

The general got up and walked out of the tent, then came back in with a large carton. She opened the carton and pulled out a strange, silvery costume with a huge dark globe.

“You didn’t know we have had five Makiem Entries in the past century, then?” she said, satisfied. “And we don’t need the mechanical stuff, either. Air you’ve got.”

He grinned again. Things were going his way now, as they had always done. The Obie computer, New Pompeii, the Well World itself—all were within his grasp.

The general excused herself, and he sat there a minute or two, alone, looking at the map. Then he sighed, got up, and slow-hopped to a curtained-off passage between this tent and his portable living quarters. He pulled it aside. There was a flash of movement, and an object landed on the bed in the far corner.

She could hop quickly, she could, he thought admiringly.

It had been a marriage of convenience, of course. All Makiem marriages were marriages of convenience in a race that had no sex except one week a year, underwater, when they had nothing but. The convenience of the scoundrels that ran Makiem, the inconvenience of himself, naturally. She was the good minister’s daughter, and, if anything, she was slicker and nastier than her father.

What a team we’d make, he sighed once again, if only we could be on the same side!

“You needn’t pretend, my dear. You know everything and I know it, so what’s the difference? You can’t go this time.”

“I go where you go,” she responded. “It is law and custom. And you cannot stop me!”

He chuckled. “But it’s cold up there, baby! What good would you be as a sleeping beauty?”

She reached over, opened a wicker basket, and removed something. It was a slightly different design, but unmistakably a spacesuit.

He gaped. “How long have you had that thing?” he asked.

“Since Makiem,” she replied smugly.

The trails weren’t bad. Gedemondans, it was known, were large creatures, and limited but steady use by the horselike Dillians had made them even more comfortable, on the whole around two meters wide.

It was a strange party that set off from the chilly shack into the snow cover: Tael, the Dillian guide, was in the lead, then the two Lata, occasionally walking but more often riding on Tael’s back, then Renard leading the winged pegasus, Doma, with the strange figure of Mavra Chang tied between wings and neck. The air was becoming cold; there was little conversation between them, nor was much possible without yelling, for blowing wind howled through the rocky clefts as if it, too, were a strange and living creature of this strangest of worlds.

It was only on the occasional breaks, done mostly for Renard’s benefit, that they could say anything. The plain was far behind; the twists and turns that the switchbacked trail forced upon them had all but the confident Tael totally lost, and the bright snow reflecting the glare of the sun, even when cut with sun goggles, made distance impossible to judge. They were tiny figures moving in a sea of white.

The trail itself seemed often lost in the snow, yet Tael went on as if it were a paved and marked highway, never hesitating in the slightest—and the footing was always there.

After they had been climbing for what seemed like a full day, they rounded one more mountain curve and, suddenly, the plain was spread out below them once more.