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thing?
He went over to the huge fire pit and got his plate of slop. It smelled almost
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as bad as it looked, and was worse than he re-
membered it. He passed up the cheap ale; they put something in it that made
you steep like a log so you'd be fresh in the morning. Instead, he got a mug
of water. It was warm and had a slightly metallic taste, but it made the slop
digestible, more or less.
As he sat and tried to get his meal down, he kept looking over the incoming
mob and wondering which of them was part of a plot to screw this alt up, and
what had they found that would louse up not only humans but Julkis and Thions
and seventy-
odd more races who had so little in common that, as foul as this slop was, it
was gourmet cooking compared to what those others liked to eat.
Well, if Kalia was smart enough to take the water instead of the ale, maybe
she could figure it out.
That, he realized, was part of the problem. Cell pride, male pride, personal
pride. Deep down, he knew he was almost afraid that she would figure it out
first.
He sat there, seeing just how many would take that water instead of the ale.
Those would at least narrow down the likely suspects. These guys couldn't have
brought much equipment with them, if any, and they'd have to have cover
stories so they'd be part of some known clan, maybe using a hypno to convince
somebody she was really their old Cousin Zim. Whatever they were doing had to
be with available material and supplies and almost certainly would have to be
done at night.
Well, he'd remain awake for a while and see what he could see, but he couldn't
stay awake for the next seven days and keep up the act. Night was the Thions'
element and the Corithians', if they wanted it to be.
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The drols were beginning to group into small clans where they could settle in
for the night; tired as they were, there were a lot of mating noises going on
all over right now, and a few drols
THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE
229
wandering around who hadn't yet found anybody they felt like lying with for
the night.
'* 'Ey! Vronsky Shortlord! What be tune? Vronskyboy tumon from dem bones of
Pusabigiri?''
He looked up and saw a woman he'd had in his group when they'd flown in here.
She had big bones, big breasts, and a body like a stone hauler's and she
looked a lot like his mother prob-
ably looked at age fifteen or so. He barely remembered his mother and was
never sure which one of the clan women she was anyway, but they all looked
sort of the same.
"Yea, bitch try suckup in haulass boat. Want sting-tail, Vron-
skygiri?"
She turned her rear end to him suggestively. "Oooo! Dat be love, Shortlord?"
He gave her a playful swipe with the whip, without pain or force, and she
laughed it off.
He didn't see Kalia. Almost everyone had settled in and pre-
sumably she had, too. What the hell. he thought. If I don't take supervisor's
privilege I'm going to stand out anyway.
"C'mon, bitch! Show ol' Vronskyboy how best ones do it!"
The sunlight and the noise of the group getting ready to feed woke him up. The
big woman was still there, sleeping almost pressed into him, still snoring
lightly.
It wasn't unusual for supervisors to get propositioned for the obvious
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reasons; she'd probably stick near him from now on for that very reason. On
the other hand, she was kind of cute and as good, maybe better, than she
advertised, and she added to his cover. She also had a good wit and a talent
for wisecracks, which helped offset her somewhat unexpected masochistic
streak.
During the next few days there was little progress, but the effect of the drol
life was taking its toll on him. Immersed in it for the first time since he'd
been a small boy, he found himself beginning to think in the drol patois and,
as a result, found himself thinking and acting more like them than like
someone undercover. The ease with which the veneer of civilized freemen
society had stripped itself away depressed him even as it contin-
ued. He was aching, forever tired, getting calluses and sores all over, and to
no profit.
The temptation to use his hypno powers was also enormous, and he began to
think that maybe Kalia had been more correct than he wanted to admit about
hypnos not knowing what it was
230
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20at%20Ra.txt (181 of 236) [1/19/03 4:36:51 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20The%20Quintara%20
Marathon%201%20-%20The%20Demons%20at%20Ra.txt fack L Chaiker to be on the
bottom. In that sense, the experience was a real education for him.
He had also, almost inevitably, picked up a retinue of sorts.
The girl had stuck with him, of course, and she had clan sisters who used that
as an opening, and even though he knew in the back of his mind that it was his
position among the drols that was causing all the attention and not his native
charm and good looks, it still fed his ego. Hypnos tended to more or less
arrange what they wanted, almost as a matter-of-fact; to receive such
attention without intervention was something new to him.
The drols weren't much of a source of information, though.
Was there anyone strange or different mat they noticed? Welt, all Pusabi were
strange and different to them. Other than that, no, and they were basically
working the pavilion area, helping to install pipes and fitting chairs and the
like, following very cteariy drawn diagrams. Occasionally a master plumber or
car-
penter, freemen from the castle and almost never human, would come by to check
the work or correct this or that, always ex-
plaining the job or problem to the supervisors in clear, patient terms.
He had the suspicion that it was those types who posed a threat; they alone
went from cell pavilion to cell pavilion and could do the most damage over a
wide area, but the diagrams looked right and they would not only have been
thoroughly checked at the start but would be continually checked by security
hypnos.
Once in a while he would see Kalia, almost always with a different drol man,
but she never even exchanged glances with him. He began to worry that she had
fallen a bit loo easily into the drol life, and that she might no longer
really be on the job, but he knew better than to blow her cover to allay his
worries.
Tobrush continued to get occasional indications of telepathic activity, not
only in the pavilion area that Josef was working but also from a Quarg
pavilion area down a bit on the other side, but nothing that could be pinned
down. Robakuk had actually spent nights atop the pavilion roof, unseen but
seeing, watching for any signs of nocturnal mischief. So far, he had seen
nothing of consequence.
Time was ticking by. Clearly something was planned, some-
thing was up, but what? Why hadn't they been able to see any-
thing at all, discover at least some evidence of tampering?
He was acutely aware of how fast the time was going. If they
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THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE
231
couldn't unearth the plot, if they couldn't figure it out and then prevent it, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]