03. Gods at the Well of Souls (28 page)

"It's a habit. We understand what you are getting at, but they didn't give us a  great deal of cash, just enough to get by, and we may have a long way to go.  We've spoken with other stationmasters here, and they have understood the  problem. What makes you think we can give you more?" 

"Got a new silo roof out of the last bunch." 

"The last bunch? You mean there's more than the Cloptan women?" Tony asked. "Sure. Was they women? Can't tell the difference myself. But first the one bunch  comes in, and they buy tickets for themselves and freight for their stuff. Then  this second bunch comes in, also Cloptans, but with a real strange character  like nothin' I ever saw before-as strange as all of you. And they seemed right  interested in pay in' whatever it took to find out where the first group went.  Guess I shoulda held out for more than a roof, huh?" 

Julian thought a moment. "What did this other one, with the second group, look  like?" 

"Didn't look like anything at all. No, I mean it. Just a giant ball of goo. Nice  manners, though." 

"The colonel! The colonel's after 'em!" Gus hissed. "Okay, look, we could give  you a paper that would authorize you to go to Clopta and place a prepaid order  for something if you want, but we can't give you cash." 

"I dunno. We don't work like that here." 

"Yeah, well, I'll tell you how we work. We try and be reasonable and hope for  cooperation," Gus told him, some menace creeping into his already intimidating  voice. "If we don't get any cooperation, we note who didn't give it to us. Then  we have to send a message to our people and to your government that we could not  do our jobs because we couldn't pay his bribe! Might not get us what we need,  but it sure brings us satisfaction." 

"Oh, goodness, yes!" Anne Marie put in, getting the drift of things. "I wonder  what happened to that last one who did this to us. We never did find out because  when we had to backtrack to check, they were marching out the whole population  of his town somewhere. It was most distressing!" 

The stationmaster's limbs twitched a bit, and the antennae atop her head seemed  to cross. 

"Give me a sheet of the official notepaper with the seal," Gus told Tony. "I'll  put it on the next train to the Mother Nest. Then all we'll need from you, sir,  is your name and title and the name of this lovely little town here." The twitching continued, and finally the stationmaster said, "First batch took  1544 eastbound. The second group followed 'em." 

"And when is the next train?" 

"Sixty-four minutes." 

"We thank you for your cooperation," Tony told her. "We will report our  satisfaction with the line to the authorities." 

"No, just leave me out," the stationmaster responded. "They'd just come and take  away the money I already got ..." 

"Amateurs," Gus hissed contemptuously. 

"Hawyr is out," Juana Campos muttered, looking at a map which she couldn't read  but which she'd marked up in Spanish. "High-tech and reported not very friendly  anyway. Karlbarx is nontech, but they're said to be some sort of giant rat thing  and they eat meat. I don't think they sound too great, and there's not much  trade there or a line going all the way to the border, anyway. Quilst I'd  already ruled out, so that leaves Leba. I don't like it, but that seems to be  the best choice." 

"Are they all full of flesh-eating monsters or what?" Audlay asked plaintively.  "I mean, gee, it sounds like a horror show." 

"Well, the Lebans are plants, and they supposedly don't need much except dirt  and water, so that's something," Campos commented. "They're also semitech, but  the only use they seem to make of it is that they've allowed the Mixtimites to  extend a few railroad lines through." 

"Phew! More smelly boxcars?" Kuzi said rather than asked. 

"Maybe. We'll have to see what it looks like. The trains are basically through  to the other borders and don't seem to have many stops in Leba. I doubt if a  plant that gets all its nourishment from the sun, rain, and soil needs much from  anywhere else. Trouble is, we go up there, we can get boxed in fairly easily.  There's only one more hex to the equator, which, I am told, cannot be crossed.  The Leban trains don't go there; they head for Bahaoid or something that sounds  like that, which is a high-tech hex to the west that they do trade with. So we  got this plant hex, and then a nontech hex up against a wall, and a high-tech on  both sides. Not great." 

"We could turn around and go back," Audlay suggested. "Maybe they wouldn't  figure that." 

"The last thing we want to do is go back toward Clopta, believe me. We'd be in  jail or worse, and most of them in there with us would be part of the old  organization and maybe not too keen on seeing us, either. No, I don't think so.  Not now." She sighed. "Leba it is, then." 

"You say they're plants'?" Kuzi asked her. "I just can't imagine that. A flower  garden that talks back." 

"Somehow I don't think it's going to be like that," Campos responded. "We can  only go and see. And I hope we can arrange for some fresh food for our little  troublemaking prize here. As an insect eater, she's probably been going nuts  being unable to eat this whole population." 

Leba 

LOW HILLS BEGAN AS THEY TRAVELED NORTH TOWARD THE BORDER in Mixtim, and soon the  countryside began to be broken and interesting once more. Along the rivers there  was lush green vegetation, but beyond the hills were covered with grassland, too  arid to really farm effectively, considering that the water had to come uphill,  but sufficient to provide sustenance for a few small villages that seemed to  exist primarily for the railroad. 

There were no border controls as such there, but the station and small yard  right against the hex barrier were used to rewater the engines and give them a  checkout as well as to change engines and crews for the haul through Leba. The  steam engines used had a different look to them; they were much larger, with  long boilers, and had huge coal tenders just in back of the engine in place of  the wood carriers of Mixtim. While the engines were prepared and checked out,  there was a two-hour layover. 

"Figures," Gus commented. "You wouldn't want to burn wood in a land where the  people were the plants. They might take it personal." 

"They must mine the coal elsewhere," Tony noted. "There didn't seem to be any  signs of such mining or of coal, period, anywhere we passed." She sighed. "Well,  time to at least find out some information. Excuse me." 

Anne Marie stood looking at the ghostly border and what was beyond. "Looks  rather ominous," she commented. "And certainly wet." 

The skies within Mixtim were bright, with just a few clouds, while the skies on  the other side of the border were a low uniform gray. The place was certainly  green, though; it seemed like an endless forest, perhaps a rain forest from the  looks of the fog and mist curling through the tops of the trees beyond. Tony returned a few minutes later. "News good, not so good, and in between," she  told them. "First, no more switches. They went into Leba, all right, and so did  the colonel's bunch following them. The ladies went through many hours ago, the  second group only on the train before this one. We are certainly catching up,  but I fear to the wrong group. I am most worried about the colonel, Gus." "He's a slick meanie, all right," Gus agreed, "but I handled him." "Yes, once. I remember thinking when we spoke to one another of Brazil and  Carnivale and old times that I was glad he was on our side. Now that it seems he  is not, my fears are realized." 

"I still say he can be handled." 

"In a high-tech hex, yes. He is as vulnerable to the energy weapons as we are.  But the energy weapons do not work here, Gus, or in Leba, either. Regular guns,  crossbows, that sort of thing, they will work, but what would be the effect on a  creature like him of shooting him full of bullets and arrows? Not much. He can  drown, yes, but we are far from the ocean, and I doubt if we will be able to  entice him to jump into a deep lake. We need a way to counter him or we might  rue catching up to him." 

Gus considered it and nodded. "I think I see what you mean. In this kind of hex  you gotta think like you're in a western, and they didn't have Colt .45  disintegrators back then. There's gotta be something, though, that'll get him.  If those things weren't mortal, they'd have eaten this whole damned world by  now!" 

"That is a point," Tony admitted. "But what?" Her eyes looked around the rail  yard, not really knowing what she was looking for but hoping for some kind of  hint, something that would give them an edge. 

"What is that little beetle doing with the small tank up in front of the engine  there, dear?" Anne Marie asked. 

"Putting oil in the headlamps for the dark, I would say," Tony responded. All three of them suddenly said at exactly the same time, "Say! Why not?" "I wonder how much they can spare and how much we can safely carry?" Anne Marie  mused at last. 

"Yeah, and don't forget the matches," Gus added. 

Tony sighed. "That is still a worry. It looks awfully damp in there." "Look on the bright side," Anne Marie said with a smile. "If they are all  intelligent plants over there, at least we won't be executed for starting any  forest fires." 

"There is a sort of train service area and such right here, in the middle of the  hex, just before the line branches off to the east," Juana Campos noted. "That  is where we must get off." 

"What're we gonna do about all our bags and stuff?" Audlay- asked. "I mean, we  can't carry all that, and not even your cute little pony can take all that  much." 

"Yeah, we're gonna be in the middle of nowhere," Kuzi agreed. 

"I had hoped we could take more by hiring natives or animals when we needed  them," Campos told them both. "It seems like we can't count on anything being  what we think of as normal up here, though. We're just going to have to go  through the stuff, see what we have to take and what we can take. Anything else  will have to be left." 

"You can leave that bird for all I care," Audlay commented. "That thing's gonna  be what takes up a lot of room." 

"We can use some of the clothing to make a kind of brace, and she is light  enough to be able to be carried by our pack mule here. If she is truly charmed,  she won't starve. With all these plants there must be insects by the millions,  so if we just tie her to a stake at night with a very long rope, she can go find  her own food. The Mixtim say that the natives here are not hostile but demand  respect and that fruit and such are available if you do. We will have to depend  on that." 

When the train stopped for the servicing in a wooded glade near a rushing  waterfall, it was already very late in the day. They had spent a full day and  night going back and forth on the trains of Mixtim and now, at the end of a  second day, were in the middle of nowhere in Leba. The two companions were not  at all thrilled with this adventure anymore, and Campos was beginning to wonder  if she hadn't made a mistake herself. 

It was gray and depressing, there was a light rain falling-there always seemed  to be a light rain falling-and they were in a wilderness setting surrounded by  mountain-sized rolling hills. Where there wasn't grass or puddles there was mud. "You sure this is a good idea?" Kuzi asked her. "I mean, we're gonna go off in  this muck toward who knows what. And we don't even know if anybody's really  following us! If they just got an all-points out, hell, we oughta go on to that  high-tech place at the end of the railroad and be comfortable for a night or two  until we can figure out what to do next." 

"Sounds good to me," Audlay chimed in, looking at the mud as if it were acid  about to swallow her up. 

Campos shook her head. "No, I have been hunted before. You get a feeling for it.  Still, we cannot do much, starting this late in the day. Perhaps before we do  figure out anything, we ought to see just who we are up against. I propose that  we stop here and camp out, no matter how miserable that sounds, but not close to  here. Up there, overlooking these yards, might be far enough if we can fool  these Mixtim staff into thinking we went some other direction. Then we wait for  more trains and we see who gets off. There is one late-night train and then not  another until morning. There is also no question that we can hear them when they  come. If we look and no one gets off of either train, or no one gets off who  does not then climb back on, we can decide what to do, perhaps even take  something of a risk and catch the next train after that toward civilization." "But what if a bunch does get off?" Kuzi asked her. 

"Then we will be in back of them rather than ahead. Then, if they do not  discover that we remain near here, they will go off into this wilderness in  search of us. If they do figure out our plan, then we will have to deal with  them. Come. We are in for some very heavy lugging that will take all of us and  Lori to do and then a more miserable climb and a miserable dark, wet night. But  by tomorrow we may well be able at last to act." 

Kuzi looked around nervously. "I wish we'd seen some of these Lebans. I'd like  to know what we're dealin' with here." 

"Oh, yuck!" Audlay said with obvious disgust as she sank ankle-deep into thick  brown mud. "I don't think I'm gonna be able to take this!" 

"Just pretend you're back on the farm you ran away from," Campos told her. "You  weren't city born and bred." 

"Yeah, but that was comfortable!. I just didn't realize it till now." Campos grew alarmed. "Don't you cry on me, you silly wimp.' Give me a hand with  this-now!"