Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [124]
Another laughed. "I guess we got off lucky," she said cheerfully. "He hadn't thought of the tails until he got the people in from the forest."
Renard was confused. Except for slight differences in coloration, and the occasional tail, they all looked alike.
"Who's who?" he moaned.
One laughed. "I'm Wooley, Renard, so relax. This is Star—ah, Vistaru, that is. And these two over here are Nikki Zinder and her daughter, Mavra." She choked up, but recovered quickly.
He didn't. "Nikki Zinder . . ." he mumbled. "Her daughter . . ."
The girl stared at him unbelievingly. "Are you really my father?" she asked.
He shook his head slowly. "No, somebody else was, somebody human. I have his memories, and his personality, but I'm something else now."
That seemed to satisfy her, and Nikki, who'd tensed at the question, visibly relaxed.
Renard looked at the others, anxious to change the subject. "What about them?" he asked, looking at the seven other girls.
Wooley undid her straps and walked to him. She was taller than he and her tail trailed like a bird's plume.
"We've explained to them that they have all lost their memories for good," she whispered to him, "because of the machine. They'll be okay."
That relieved him, and his body reminded him of a different need. "We've got at least a couple of days on this tub," he pointed out, "and very little to eat."
She shrugged. "We can hold out if we have to. Actually, there's enough organic stuff in the padding and old packs. We can all have something, I think. You're the one that will probably have the most problem."
He chuckled and looked at his passengers. "Live on love, huh?" he cracked.
* * *
By the time contact was made two and a half days out, they had all practiced what was to be said—and what was not to be said—and their courses of action.
"This is the Com police," a stern male voice came over the radio. "Identify yourself by number and destination."
Renard sighed. "This is a refugee ship from New Pompeii, a planetoid formerly owned by New Harmony," he replied. "I am not a pilot and there is not one aboard."
That seemed to disturb the police a bit. There was some anxious checking against police computer files.
"Stand by, we will match you and board," the police ship stated.
"It's in your hands," he responded. "However, first I think I better warn you about a few things."
He proceeded to tell them of Antor Trelig's party, of Obie, the Well World, everything. The only details omitted concerned how to reach the Well World.
The police didn't believe, of course, but they recorded the information anyway; then they matched the ships, locked, and two armored cops boarded.
One look at the passengers and they had less reason to doubt.
Com police were an odd group: the wild ones, the undomesticated, the lovers of freedom and the restless. They were carefully recruited in midlife, usually after having been caught red-handed at something nasty.
In exchange for voluntarily undergoing some loyalty conditioning, they were paroled—to police the rest, to protect the Com and the frontier from others just like them.
They generally knew a hot potato when they grabbed it. The taped conversations were coded, sealed, and sent directly to the eleven-member Council Presidium, which made decisions when the full Council could not be summoned—or when it shouldn't be.
Three Council members were out to the ship in less than fourteen additional hours. They were Com, all right, yet each maintained his own strong character. One, a woman apparently approaching middle age, had an especially regal bearing.
"Some twenty-two years ago," Councillor Alaina said, "before I had this last rejuve, I hired Mavra Chang to attend Antor Trelig's little party as my agent. I never heard from her again, of course—but, since New Pompeii disappeared, taking dear Antor with it, I was satisfied." She looked around at the odd little group of human women and aliens. "And now I see she succeeded after all."
They