Quest for the Well of Souls - Jack L. Chalker [66]
Not only did the Yaxa have Mavra Chang, but they would have her for a day or more before that fact could be reported in by the only others who knew.
Cursing themselves for fools, they headed north toward Palim.
South Zone
Although this was in fact the Yaxa embassy, only two of the technicians clustered around the tables were Yaxa. A Wuckl was present, and with it were several other creatures who were at least neutral—in some cases friendly—to the Yaxa.
A tall minotaur paused before the door, looking curiously for a moment at the symbol embossed on everything. Unlike his native Dasheen, which used a standard hexagonal symbol, Yaxa used an ideogram which he mistook at first for a pair of stylized wings. After a moment he realized that it was not so. Yaxa was a state along the Equatorial Barrier. It was composed of one half of a hex split horizontally joined to one half of a hex split vertically. Only twenty-four such hexes were so split on either side of the Barrier. The "wings" were, in fact, two half-hexes joined.
A Yaxa approached him from outside as he peered quizzically into the room. "Mr. Yulin?" she asked.
The minotaur turned and nodded his massive head. "Yes. I got your message and got down as quickly as I could settle my own affairs on the farm. What's going on in there?"
"I am Ambassador Windsweep," the Yaxa replied, introducing herself, with her official nickname. "Those two creatures are Mavra Chang and her male consort. We are performing minor surgery to make things easier for all."
Yulin was puzzled. "Chang? Why bother? If you've got her, just get rid of her and we have the field all to ourselves."
The Yaxa gave what might have been taken for a sigh or impatience or both. "Mr. Yulin, I wish to remind you that we have a number of problems. First, we must reach the ship in the North. Second, we must depend on the Bozog to secure the ship in some way from the Uchjin and establish a proper launch platform. Third, once away, we must approach your planetoid of New Pompeii through Antor Trelig's robot sentinels. Mr. Yulin, what is today's codeword for the sentinels?"
He looked startled. "I—I'm not sure," he admitted. "We'd just planned to run through all of them on a fast tape."
"But what if the robots are programmed only for slow speech?" the ambassador asked him. "We have by your own account just thirty seconds to give the codeword. If the tape doesn't work, we are lost."
He didn't like that thought, particularly because it was true. "So?"
"Mavra Chang went to New Pompeii as a guest, is that not so? She had never been there before?"
"That's true," Ben Yulin admitted. "Get to the point."
"And yet Chang stole a spaceship—within the realm of possibility—but then she flew right through the robot sentinels without a problem! Tell me, Mr. Yulin—how did she do that?"
He had thought that one over a thousand times before. "I wish I knew for sure," he responded. "Best guess is the treacherous computer gave it to her when we ran her through it. But, hell, it probably only gave her the codeword for that particular day. They're changed daily, you know that."
The Yaxa bowed slightly on its four forelegs in acknowledgement. "But Trelig used the code when you took off, and that was a day later than Mavra Chang. You didn't hear it—you were too busy flying. Deep hypnosis proved that. So the only codewords we know for certain are for the exact day and time that Mavra Chang took off. Correct?"
"That's true," he acknowledged, beginning to see the point.
"So, we also know from you that there are fifty-one code phrases. But only one can be matched to a specific day. They are changed daily. Even over twenty-two years, we can start with the day of Mavra Chang's escape and project which day it will come up again this time. We know the standard Com calendar. Hence, by picking the time of entry we can be certain of getting through. Do