“I should think it would be obvious to you by now,” the Cloptan replied. “Because of this,” she said, gesturing down her body with her hands. “She made me like this!” she snapped, pointing to Mavra. “And you—you went along, Doctor Lori Sutton. And you—you became the man! The big macho hunter with his little devoted four-titted bitch! I do this for revenge! Venganza! Revenge for daring to drag into hell Juan Alfonso Campos de la Montoya!”
“Oh, God!” Lori sighed, feeling all hope vanish.
“So that’s why they wanted only the two of us,” Mavra said.
’The Dillians are nothing to me and too large to have handled in any case. What are they going to do? It will take them days just to find their way out of Lilblod. Then what? Report to the authorities? They are already looking for you and would find you now if they could. As for Sutton’s crazy little bitch, she, too, was nothing to me and just so much excess baggage. Do not worry, Doctor Sutton. The computers here are excellent. We know of the deficiency in your system, and we have the means to fix it. If I had wanted you dead, I would have just had them kill you.”
Lori shook his head in wonder, unable to understand this kind of thinking. “What is it with you? I didn’t pick this body any more than you picked that one. I’d trade you if I could. There are times I would have killed for a shape like that. But look at you! Is it so awful being a woman? You’re young, probably very pretty by the standards of your race, and in an incredibly short time you’ve managed to get this far up in the drug trade. Some new start, but I guess it’s what you know. I’m broke and helpless in a backward medieval desert, for god’s sake!”
“Being a woman is bad enough,” Campos responded angrily. “It is hell to me! And yes, I am very beautiful by Cloptan standards. Do you know how hard it was to adjust to that? To have every lecherous Cloptan man pawing you? Do you know what I had to lower myself to do to get to this? I do not own this lab, nor do I control it. Finding the Cloptan underworld was not difficult, and they were interested in me because I came from the same business but on a different world. No, getting inside was not difficult, but once there I was just another girl, just another piece of furniture to them! Me! The son of the greatest patriot of modern Peru, the man who could strike and corrupt and bring down the most evil and powerful oppressor of all Latin peoples with a weapon as simple and impossible to fight as common coca! I had to defile myself! To swallow all pride and self-respect and put myself in the gutter! I am nothing in this organization except a powerful man’s current favorite toy! But now, now, it is all worthwhile. Here you are. If I can get the others, too, it will be complete. Brazil and that other bitch. Even if fortune does not smile, however, it has smiled enough. For a while yet we will play games so that I may have the satisfaction to repay my humiliation! Then, when the time is right, you, ‘goddess of the trees,’ will willingly and cheerfully beg to let me let you put things right. It may take weeks or months yet, I hope not years, but one day you will put things right for me and repay all the suffering that you have caused! Once you are under the drug’s spell, you will willingly tell me anything and everything. If you are what some say you are, then one day we will take a trip, just us girls, and you will go inside this world and put me right!”
So that was it,Mavra thought. One more horror to endure, one more long torment, but the direction that damned Machiavellian Well was taking was now clear. It was sad that Lori yet again had been dragged into this. Mavra had mostly wanted to help them. Well, if he stayed alive, maybe someday she still could. There was certainly nothing to be done now. She just wished she’d listened to them and left Juan Campos back on Earth or finished him off. Damn her sense of fair play! One could totally change such as him, but he remained as evil as ever. He had already changed more than he knew or wanted to recognize, judging from what he’d done as a female and even how she now spoke and moved. But the Well did nothing to change that inner self, and Juan Campos had been an insane, evil, power-mad egomaniac in his former life, and the new persona had done nothing to change that but had reinforced it.
Sooner or later, though, no matter what was to come, she’d be taken to the Well. There was no question that such a sophisticated operation could get the truth out of her. It could only be hoped that Campos was so insane she believed that inside the Well, in a Markovian body, she could still dictate to Mavra Chang.
Campos stood back and looked at both of them with satisfaction. “Do the shackles hurt? Well, soon you will be free of them, I promise. And the medical teams here, freed of such stupidities as government oversight and ethical colleagues, can do absolute wonders. Even though you are one of the most wanted people on this planet, these people specialize in making wanted fugitives unrecognizable, although in most cases they do not have the level of freedom they have in your case. You, Sutton, might be quite useful as a courier once we give you some motivation for making appointments on time. But not you, ‘goddess.’ You are mine. From you they will carve a work of art. Then, as my dear boyfriend Giquazo, who I will definitely kill someday, promised, you will go home with me. You will be my pet, my toy. Oh, we will have a fun time, I promise you!”
Mavra’s heart sank as one of her bitterest Well World memories surfaced: living all those years with those donkeylike legs, always looking down…
But she had survived that and worse, and she would survive this for as long as it took, until opportunity knocked. And if Nathan was having the same kind of luck, she might yet be first to the Well.
“Some technicians will be in shortly to inaugurate you both into our widening family,” Campos told them. “I go first to speak with those who will see you next, and then I will see you once more before leaving. But do not worry, my little goddess. I shall be back for you.” With that, the Cloptan turned and left the room.
“I think I would rather die than go through this,” Lori told Mavra.
“Don’t! Never give up! She’s too insane to have them mutilate me so much that I won’t be able to speak to her and she to me. To that type, life is all about power. Everything else—drugs, money, you name it—is to gain power. That’s what she really hates about being female now. She’s lost power, and I’m the only way for her to get it back. There are only two more hexes after Clopta to the equator and an avenue in. So long as Brazil isn’t also caught and trapped, he’s as much a threat to Campos as to me. If I can just convince her, no matter what I look like, to get me to the Well before Brazil, we win. Stay alive. Even now, hope’s not gone.”
Lori very much wanted to believe that.
Juan Campos, or Wahna as her name was pronounced by the Cloptan tongue, made her way through the labyrinthine underground complex to the medical section. There she met with Nuoak, a giant creature resembling a huge brown-furred slug with countless long, tiny tendrils that in combination could perform the most delicate operations, and Drinh, an Agonite resembling a human-sized shellless turtle with long powerful hands and fingers.