Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [50]
Gil Zinder was a participating bystander.
"What of this Chang woman and her companion?" he asked Obie.
The computer emitted a very human sigh. "You know that since she has never been through the Well she does not register at all," he reminded the scientist. "As for Joshi, her companion, well, you know the number of life forms on the Well World. If I had his type's pattern to begin with, yes, I could trace him—but, now, even if I were directly monitoring him, I would have no way of knowing it was the correct individual."
The news meant that it was increasingly likely that the Yaxa and Yulin would be the first to reach New Pompeii—Yulin, who had supervised the building of Obie and who, Zinder now deduced, had access to circuitry in the computer that would make Obie do his bidding regardless. Of them all, Yulin was best able to use Obie and best able to thwart attempts by the computer to free itself or foul its controller up.
Gil Zinder sighed. "I greatly fear, Obie, that we will have to do the unthinkable. If the Yaxa get on the right track, we must beat them to New Pompeii, even if we have to do it with the devil himself."
"Which is increasingly likely," the computer responded glumly.
Wuckl
After their escape, things didn't seem so simple. Mavra's mind continued to increase its working capabilities; there were gaps here and there, and how the present situation had come about was beyond her, but she continually found it easier to remember things about the past.
As she and Joshi hid out in the hills from the sun's revealing light, now just starting to flood the horizon, she took stock of what she knew and what she had to do. She wished she knew how much time had passed between first hitting the fence and this moment.
The last thing she remembered was that fence. Somehow it had knocked both of them out—and they'd awakened as odd pigs. Why and how was something to be discovered much later, if ever.
So she was a pig, she thought unemotionally. In some ways it was a distinct advantage. Her breed was obviously born to the wild; it was therefore equipped with survival mechanisms heretofore denied them.
Considering the swill they'd eaten in the zoo, food would not be a problem. The Wuckl, for all their strangeness, ate foods rather similar to that consumed by the humans of Glathriel; as such, they had garbage cans and garbage dumps. Mavra wasn't proud; if the stuff was something she could eat without ill effects, she would eat it. And, all the life forms of the South were carbon-based; some were herbivores, some carnivores, some omnivores, but in general the food of one would not kill a member of a different race, although it might not do much good.
Most important was the new head angle. For the first time in long memory she was looking straight ahead, not down. The tremendous sense of confidence in movement this brought was a fair tradeoff for the nearsightedness, which was still a better range than what she'd been able to manage in the old form. Finally, the sharp quills provided a defensive weapon that might come in handy.
All in all, it was better to be a pig, she reflected. In most ways, the Wuckl or whoever had done this to them had done them a favor. The only major problem was communication. She realized that their bodies had been highly modified, not changed, for she still had translator capability from the tiny crystal surgically imbedded in her brain. The implant allowed her to understand the Wuckl and others, but it didn't allow communication with them. Joshi, who had no translator, remained very much in the dark.
Either their larynxes were paralyzed or they had been removed; the pigs had only the classic grunt of the hog.
She wondered just how much Joshi remembered. Was he better off than she, mentally, or worse? Was there some way to communicate? She would have to try. They could hardly move about in broad daylight, and the appearance of the animal life in their vicinity convinced her that in this hex pigs belonged only in zoos. They would continue to be forced