“Now how could—” Brazil started, then suddenly was silent for a moment, thinking. Suddenly the voice box between his antlers gave off a wry chuckle. “Of course! What an idiot I’ve been! I’ll bet that son of a bitch has bugged every embassy in Zone! I’d forgotten just what kind of a devious mind he had!”
“What are you talking about?” Wuju asked, annoyed.
“The third player—and a formidable one. The one who warned Skander against kidnap, got Varnett to link up with me. He knew all along where Varnett, here, and Skander were. He just wanted to be there for the payoff, as usual. I was his insurance policy, in case anything went wrong—and it did. Skander was kidnapped, and out of control or immediate surveillance. At least he has managed to delay one or another party on the way to the Well so that we’re supposed to get there at about the same time—where he’ll have a reception party waiting for us. He warned Skander so I’d have time to get to Czill, about even with them on the other side of the ocean. When we were trapped with the Murnies, he pulled strings to get the Czillians to put pressure on The Nation to bottle them up until we were even again! I don’t wonder that he might have some influence with the Faerie—maybe the Skander party somehow got bogged down, too!”
“Who the hell are you talking about, Nathan?” Wuju persisted.
“Look!” Brazil said. “There’s Ghlmon, the last hex before the equator! See the burned-out reddish sand? It goes across two hexes in width, a half-hex tall.”
“Who?” Wuju persisted.
“Well,” Brazil replied hesitantly, “unless I am wildly mistaken, somewhere out in the sunburned desert we’ll meet up with him.”
“Are we going to cross the border today?” Varnett asked, looking at the sun, barely above the horizon.
“Might as well,” Brazil responded. “It’s going to be pretty tough on all of us there, so we’d better get used to it. The heat’s going to be terrible, I think, and my fur coat’s going to be murder, while your naked skins will be roasted. So we’d better push on into the night as much as we can, following the shoreline as we have. Days may be unworkable there.”
Wuju had an infuriated look on her face, but Brazil speeded up, forcing them into a jog to keep up, and within a few minutes they crossed the border.
The heat hit them like a giant blanket, and it was humid, too, this close to the ocean. Within minutes of crossing the border, they had slowed to almost a crawl, the three humans perspiring profusely, Brazil panting wildly, tongue hanging out of his mouth. Finally, they had to stop and rest. Dusk brought only slight relief.
Wuju looked again at Brazil with that I’d-like-to-kill-you expression. Hot, winded, the sand burning her feet and, when she sat down, her rear, she remained undeterred.
“Who, Nathan?” she persisted, gasping for breath.
Brazil’s stag body looked as uncomfortable as anyone’s, but that mechanical voice of his said evenly, “The one person who could know for certain that I would go after Skander, and that I would get to you in Dillia before going anywhere, was the only person who could tell Varnett where to find me and why. He was a pirate in the old days. You couldn’t trust him with anything if he could make a shekel going against you, yet you could trust him with your life if there were no profit in it. That’s what I forgot—the stakes are high here; there’s a bigger profit potential than anyone could think of. He told me I could get help from everyone of all races, but trust none—including him, as it turned out. Although he figured I wouldn’t think of him as an opponent since we’d been good friends and I owed him. He was almost right.”
Understanding hit her at last, and she brightened. “Ortega!” she exclaimed. “Your friend we met when we first entered Zone!”
“The six-armed walrus-snake?” Vardia put in. “He’s behind all this?”
“Not all this,” came a voice behind them—a clipped, casual male voice that carried both dignity and authority. “But he still is happy everything has turned out right.”
They all whirled. In the near-darkness, it was hard for any of them to see properly, but the creature looked for all the world like a meter-tall dinosaur, dark green skin and flat head, standing upright on large hind legs, while holding a curved pipe in a stubby hand. He also appeared to be wearing an old-fashioned formal jacket.
The creature puffed on the pipe, the coals glowing in the dark.
“I say,” it said pleasantly, “do you mind if I finish my pipe before we travel? Terrible waste otherwise, y’know.”
WEST GHLMON
The four of them looked curiously at the strange creature. Brazil could only think that he should have been in Alice in Wonderland. The others took the appearance of the new arrival more calmly, having grown used to strange creatures and strange ways by this time.
“You were sent by Serge Ortega?” Brazil asked evenly.
The creature took its pipe out of its mouth and assumed an insulted expression. “Sir, I am the Duke of Orgondo. This is Ghlmon. The Ulik have no authority here. They are merely our neighbors. We were approached only a few days ago by Mr. Ortega about this matter, and we are, of course, much concerned. The Ulik interest is—well, frankly, closer to ours. We know them and understand them. We’ve gotten along for thousands of years with them. With their help we managed to survive when the environment here changed and the soil turned to sand. But all of you—Mr. Ortega included—are here at our sufferance, and we will brook no intrusions into sovereignty.”
“What’s he saying?” Vardia asked, and the others added their confusion. For the first time, Brazil realized that now they could understand only people with translators and those speaking Confederacy. Their own translators had gone along with their former bodies.
“Pardon me, Your Grace,” Brazil said politely. “I will have to translate, for, I fear, my companions have no translators.”
The lizard looked at the three humans. “Hmmm… Most curious. I had been told to expect a Dillian, Czillian, and a Creit. We heard that you would be an antelope, and that so far is the only correct information. You are Mr. Brazil, are you not?”
“I am,” Brazil replied. “The male is Mr. Varnett, the female with breasts is Wuju, and the undeveloped female is Vardia. We did, after all, have to come through Ivrom. That, in itself, is an accomplishment, I should think—to have come through unaltered would have been a miracle.”
“Quite,” nodded the Ghlmonese. “But we had no doubt you would come through, although there’s been hell to pay for the three days you disappeared. We figured you’d been bewitched, and started moving some diplomatic mountains to find who had you.”
“Then that bewitching stuff wasn’t part of Ortega’s tricks?” Brazil responded. “He seemed awfully confident we’d get through.”
“Oh, no, he figured that you would get stuck,” the duke replied casually. “But we of Ghlmon are more adept at the arts than those filthy savages in Ivrom. It was only a matter of finding you. We already had the other party, so nothing was disturbed no matter how long it took.”
“So what’s the next move now?” Brazil asked calmly.
“Oh, you’ll be my guests for the night, of course,” the duke said warmly. “Tomorrow, we’ll get you on a sandshark express and take you to the Capital at Oodlikm, where you will link up with Ortega and the other party. From that point it will be Ortega’s show, although we’ll be watching.”