Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [42]
The Agitar sighed and mentally kicked himself. "I'll get it out of Domaru's bags," he said resignedly.
"That's another thing," Tbisi added. "The horse is freight. One piece per kilo."
Wuckl
The chatter of a few birds flittered back and forth between the shady trees and sometimes, although rarely, back and forth between the hex border and the forest. There was something in the air of Ecundo the Changs didn't like and soon learned to avoid if possible.
The underbrush crackled as something inordinately large moved in this placid world of bird and leaf. Whatever it was, it was not in a hurry. It moved steadily and deliberately toward the electrified fence bordering Ecundo, a sentinel in response to a silent alarm.
The creature that reached the fence was a large biped. Its body, an almost perfect oval covered with thick, wiry black hair, was suspended on enormous birdlike feet, each with five long, clawed toes. The legs looked like long helixes, making the creature appear as if standing on springs; those thick meter-long legs could bend in any direction.
The Wuckl stopped and looked at the fence and at the two unconscious creatures with curiosity. Then it walked over to the fence and almost touched it. Its head swung this way and then that on its long, golden-ringed neck, as it studied every angle of fence wire and trapped creatures.
The Wuckl was plainly puzzled by them. From a distance they had looked like bundas, but close up they looked different from anything in its experience—bundalike, but distorted somehow.
It finally decided to leave its wonder for later. The fence was not loaded with enough charge to kill a bunda, Ecundan, Wuckl, or any other large creature likely to blunder into it. It was supposed to drive intruders away, not knock them out—but one of them had tried to crawl under the fence, got stuck, and became the focus of a series of jolts. The second had grabbed the first firmly and been subjected to the abnormal shocks too. By now, the cumulative effect had knocked them out.
Although the Wuckl wore no apparent clothes, a long, thin hand reached into the side of its body and pulled out of an invisible pocket a pair of insulated gloves. The right hand re-entered and came out with what looked like large wire cutters. Donning the gloves, it carefully cut the wire strands around the unconscious creatures so that there was clearance.
The first one was then easily dragged over to the Wuckl's side of the border. The second, however, caused more trouble, since the Wuckl didn't want to cut away the entire fence. For a while it considered leaving the other one behind. But clearly, beneath their bundalike garments, these were two of a kind and should not be separated—at least not until the mystery of their origin was solved.
Finally, by reaching over and then pulling from below, the Wuckl managed to drag the unconscious Joshi across as well. Then it removed the gloves and placed them, along with the cutters, in its invisible pockets and picked up one creature with each hand as if they were weightless. It walked back down the path with them.
Toug was a forester; injured animals were not its specialty, so it headed for the house of the gamekeeper, who had a graduate degree in Animal Skills. In the almost ten minutes it took Toug to make it to the gamekeeper's, the two beings it carried never stirred.
The gamekeeper, after some initial clicking of its beak and grouching about being disturbed at dinner, grew interested when it saw Toug's burden. Quickly, all thoughts of food gone, it bade the forester to bring the two into the surgery.
The room had an operating table more than three meters long that was almost infinitely adjustable and some vats, bins, refrigerators, and the like. Special lighting was brought into play, and while Joshi was placed carefully on the tiled floor, Mavra was placed on the table, which was then adjusted to the game-keeper's convenience. It was smaller than Toug and obviously