Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [29]
And so the job and the new career. And, except for the lingering guilt about Mavra, so little and helpless and alone, he'd done just fine.
"Renard!" a female voice called to him from the office area. He turned and saw a junior clerk waving at him.
Female Agitar were upside-down males; they resembled a goat in the face and torso, and a more human type below. But that never bothered an Agitar, and it didn't bother him, either. He'd had a lot of kids by a lot of them.
He ran briskly up to the office. "What is it, Guda?" he called good-naturedly. "Did they raise everybody's pay?"
She shook her head. Like all Agitar females she was incapable of facial expression, but her eyes reflected something serious. She handed him a telegram just off the government wire. He read it, growing serious himself. He skipped the address and routing codes and read the message:
renard, mavra chang attacked, probably kidnapped. trelig suspected. signs show they may have botched job. can you fly south glathriel asap to help search? check at zone gates along way for further information. am also dispatching vistaru same location. good luck. ortega.
He was stunned. It was the last thing he expected. He hesitated a moment, thinking. Leaving the farm, perhaps for weeks—they weren't going to like that back in the capital. But, then, it was for Mavra . . .
"Guda, honey, will you saddle Domaru with at least a two-week field pack? I'm going on a trip," he said to her. "Tell Vili he's in charge until I get back."
He turned and trotted out, leaving Guda behind, her long mouth half-open.
Everod, off the Ecundo Coast
There had been fog through most of the night, and they had been drifting southward. They knew it, but decided to ride with the tide as long as there was deep water, at least until they could get a fix from the sun, which they hoped would burn through after dawn.
And the sun did cooperate a little—a barely visible splotch of light off to starboard and just ahead. After gently rubbing the tubular proboscis jutting from its middle, the captain decided to hoist sail and move a little westward, on the chance that the fog was hugging the coast of the Island. This was likely; land heats up and cools down faster than water, which caused early fogs over many seacoasts in warm weather.
Mavra was enjoying herself, was more animated than any of them could remember her. She spent a good deal of time pumping the crew for current information on Ecundo and Wuckl. Joshi, for his part, could not remember a time outside Glathriel and the compound. So after his initial misgivings, he welcomed the sea voyage as a great new adventure, and was all over the place, asking questions, examining the equipment, and enjoying the smell of the sea and the cool gentle caress of the fog.
The crew was especially helpful; the sailmaker had been working for two days on jackets that the Changs could use to carry with ease their most necessary supplies. Though the crew hadn't neglected to remove Mavra's valuables from their storehouse, they were really cooperating not because of the big bribe, but because they sympathized with the fugitives.
Tbisi worried constantly, not only about their impending overland journey but also about what would happen beyond that. He was a chronic pessimist, but Mavra endured his attitude because the concern was genuinely for them.
"All right, so suppose you make it through Ecundo, a remote possibility," he argued, "and you also get through Wuckl and manage to link up with us or with one of the other packets we'll alert. If we get you to Mucrol, you still have to cross that hex before you get to this Gedemondas. Then you have to climb into the cold mountains—for which you are not in any way prepared and for which, in any case, you have no provisions. Then what? What will it get you?"
She had thought about it often.