The Umiau nodded in ecstasy.
The Slelcronian turned to The Diviner and The Rel, who stood there a few meters away, viewing the scene dispassionately.
“What are you going to do with me?” The Rel asked in the closest it could come to sarcasm. “Look me in the eye?”
For the first time the creature was hesitant, looking uncertain, puzzled, less confident. It reached out its mind to the Northern creature, and found nothing it could contact, understand, relate to. It was as if the creature was no longer there.
“If we cannot control you, you are at least irrelevant to us,” Vardia’s voice said evenly. The Diviner and The Rel didn’t move.
“I said the equation had changed,” The Rel said slowly. “I didn’t say which way. The Diviner is always right, it seems. Until this moment I had no idea whatsoever how we were to control Skander once in the Well, or why the addition of the Czillian tipped things more in our favor. It’s clear now.”
The Rel paused for a moment. “We have been in charge of this project from its inception,” The Rel continued. “We have used a judicious set of circumstances and The Diviner’s amazing skills to make our own situation. We lead. Now we lead without worry.”
“What power do you possess to command us?” scoffed the new Vardia. “We are at this moment summoning the largest of our Recorders to crush you. You are no longer necessary.”
“I have no power at all, save speech and movement,” The Rel admitted as eight huge insects hummed thunderously into view over the flowery fields. “The Diviner has the power,” The Rel added, and as it spoke the flashing lights of The Diviner grew in intensity and frequency. Suddenly visible bolts shot out from the blinking creature and struck the eight Recorders at the speed of light.
The Recorders’ outlines flashed an electrical white. There was a tiny roll of thunder as each of the creatures vanished, caused by air rushing in to take the place where it had been. It sounded like eight distant cannon shots.
“Hmmm…” The Rel said in its flat tone, “that’s a new one. The Diviner is full of surprises. Shall we go? I should not like to spend more than two nights in your charming land.”
The Slelcronian mind in Vardia’s body was staggered and crushed. Something seemed to deflate inside, and the confident glow in its eyes was replaced by respect mixed with something new to its experience—fear. “We—we didn’t know you had powers,” it almost gasped.
“A trifle, really,” The Rel replied. “Well? Do you want to join us or not? I hope you will—it’s so much simpler than what The Diviner would have to do to get Skander’s cooperation, and I’m certain that, in the interest of your people, both of them, you’d rather we made it before anyone else.”
The stunned creature turned to Skander and said, shakily, “Get back into your harness. We must go.”
“Yes, my darling,” Skander replied happily, and did so.
“Your lead, Northerner,” the Slelcronian said.
“As always,” The Rel replied confidently. “Do you know anything about Ekh’l?”
THE BEACH AT IVROM—MORNING
“Looks peaceful enough,” Vardia commented as they unloaded the raft onto the beach. “Very pleasant, really.”
“Reminds me of the Dillian valley area, upvalley in particular,” Wuju added, as they strapped the bulky saddlebags around her.
“Something in here doesn’t like people, though,” Brazil reminded them. “This hex has no embassy at Zone, and expeditions into it have always vanished, as Bat did last night. We have only this one facet of the hex to travel, but that’s still over one hundred kilometers, so I think we’ll stick to the beach as long as possible.”
“What about Bat, then?” Wuju asked in a concerned voice. “We can’t just abandon him, after all he’s done for us.”
“I don’t like doing so any more than you do, Wuju,” Brazil replied seriously, “but this is a big hex. He can fly at a good speed over obstacles, and by now he could be just about anywhere. We might as well be looking for a particular blade of grass. As much as I’d like to help him, I just can’t take the risk that whatever’s here will get one or all of us.”
“Well, I don’t like it,” Wuju said adamantly, but there was no assailing his logic on any grounds except emotion. “We survived the Murnies,” she reminded him. “How much worse can it be here?”
“Much,” he replied gravely. “I survived Murithel by luck, as did you—and we knew who the enemy was and the problems. This is even more chancy, because we don’t know what’s here. We’ve got to leave Bat to the Fates. It’s Bat or all of us.” And that settled that.
With Bat gone, Brazil regretted more and more his lack of arms or other appendages that could hold and use things. Although this was a nontechnological hex, several good and somewhat nasty items would be usable, and these were given to Wuju and Vardia. The centaur was given two automatic, gunpowder-powered projectile pistols, worn strapped to gunbelts worn in an X—and carrying extra ammunition clips—across her chest. Vardia had two pistols of a different kind. They squirted gas kept under pressure in attached plastic bottles. When the trigger was pulled hard, a flint would ignite the gas, which could be liberated at a controlled rate. The flamethrower was good for about ten meters, and needn’t be very directional to be effective. Wuju, of course, had never fired a pistol and had no luck with the little practice gotten in in the ocean. But these were still effective short-range weapons, psychologically if nothing else, and they made a lot of noise going off.
“We stick to the beach,” Brazil reminded them. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to get the whole way without going into the forest.”
As satisfied as they could be, they thanked the Umiau who had pulled them this far, and the mermaids left.
Brazil said “Let’s go,” in a voice more filled with tension than excitement.
The sand and huge quantities of driftwood slowed their progress, and they found on several occasions that they had to walk into the shallows to get around some points, but the journey went well.
They made good time. By sundown, Brazil estimated that they had traveled more than halfway. Since his vision was extremely poor after nightfall, and Vardia was better off rooting, they stopped for what they all hoped would be their only night in the mysterious hex.
The sandy soil was not particularly good for the Czillian, but she managed to find a hard, steady place near the beginning of the woods and was set for the night. He and Wuju relaxed nearby as the surf crashed on hidden rocks just beyond the shoreline, then gently ran up with a sizzling sound onto the beach.
Something was bothering Wuju and she brought it up. “Nathan,” she said, “if this is a nontechnological hex like Murithel, how come your voice works? It’s still basically a radio.”
The idea had never occurred to Brazil and he thought about it. “I can’t say,” he replied carefully, “but on all the maps and the like this is nontech, and the general logic of the hex layout dictates the same thing. It can’t work, though, unless it’s a byproduct of the translator. They work everywhere.”
“The translator!” she said sharply. “Feels like a lump in the back of my throat. Where do they come from, Nathan?”
“From the North,” he told her. “From a totally crystalline hex that grows them as we grow flowers. It’s slow work, and they don’t let many of them go.”
“But how does it work?” she persisted. “It’s not a machine.”
“No, not a machine in the sense we think of machines,” he replied. “I don’t think anyone knows how it works. It was, if I remember right, created in the same way as most great inventions—sheer accident. The best guess is that its vibrations cause some kind of link with the Markovian brain of the planet.”