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do you expect to directly penetrate a criminal organization and pick out the
one correct Cloptan from the masses? You see? In the end we will require
Cloptan help, but that will have to be very carefully done. I don't believe
that they are even as honest as we are, and that is not going very far. I
would prefer we deal with the Cloptans after we strike here. Trust me on
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this. This is my territory and my profession. It will be difficult enough
having to somewhat involve Liliblod. Nobody can really deal with them, and
they will not like this at all."
"It seemed a nice, quiet peaceful place when we went through," Anne Marie
noted. "Yet we keep getting horrid warnings about it."
"Yes. By the terms of their agreements, the roads are kept absolutely safe for
travel. They are not without their own odd vices, and so some commerce is
permitted as a concession to their own needs. But they are not-rational-in the
sense that we are here. They have a rather egocentric view of the universe and
are quite unpredictable beyond certain bounds. The organization pays them well
for protection in a sort of currency that they could not legally acquire, and
they will not like to see that cut off."
"Another corrupt government?" Tony sighed.
"You misunderstand. The Liliblodians believe that all other races were put
here as their prey. By-consuming- others or, more accurately, the fluids of
others, they believe they gather in inferior souls and all the strengths of
the prey. The cartel pays them in two ways. It provides live prey for them of
the type they love-alien flesh, as it were-and the one other substance which
is their own drug weakness."
"Disgusting," Anne Marie commented. "Eating live beings for pleasure . . ."
"Yes, it is almost as bad as their own drug of choice. You cannot imagine
anything more bizarre than seeing a mass of Liliblodians literally rolling in
a chocolate stupor ..."
Dlubine
THE MASTER COMPUTER THAT WAS THE HEART OF THE ENTIRE planet called the Well
World was just a machine; its powers were far too vast to have ever trusted
making it self-aware in the sense that it could act outside its makers'
predetermined instructions. And while it was true that machines had infinite
patience, they could also have very little if something required was not
getting done. Now, as the Kraang continued its assaults and made tiny slivers
of inroads into the system, it calculated that the time to solve this problem
was no longer inconsequential. In that sense the Well could be said to have
become impatient with the progress of events, and when the Well wanted
something, it tended to be less than subtle about it.
To summon the two Watchers to see to repairs, it had sent huge meteors
crashing into the planet where the Watchers were living. Extricating Mavra
Chang so that she had any reasonable chance of success appeared to be very
difficult and would require a great deal of subtlety and patience. Going
after Nathan Brazil, on the other hand, would not. The fact that Brazil had
willingly taken himself out of worldly care was to the Well entirely
irrelevant.
Nathan Brazil had been on the Well World for over eleven months, having come
in with Tony and Anne Marie. It had been almost seven months since Theresa
"Terry" Perez had come through on her own, following Mavra, Lori, Gus, and
Juan Campos by a mere hour or so and quickly coming under the influence of
the bizarre Glathrielian Way that the race that shared common ancestry with
Terry's had followed. Prepared by the Glathrielians, she had attached herself
to Brazil within only a week, and they had been inseparable since. For four
months they had been deliberately held up, stalled, far from the goal of the
Well Avenue, and then for two weeks they had broken free and escaped across
the sea, been reunited with Gus, and then lost him again as they crashed on
an undersea reef in a storm.
But on their tiny tropical volcanic island in the middle of a fairy-tale sea,
Nathan Brazil and Terry had no concept of the passage of time or any cares or
thoughts beyond sheer childish fun. The tropical rain forest on the windward
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side of the island provided enough wild fruits and vegetables to feed them,
and the frequent but brief storms always provided a supply of fresh water.
Brazil had opened himself to the Glathrielian Way but not to the elders'
master plan of co-opting him as he entered the Well. There he had remained,
happy and carefree, unaware of that nonhuman part of him, that deep alien
nature that had thwarted the elders' control.
The tropical sun had browned him almost as dark as Terry's natural color, and
his hair and beard were long and unkempt, giving him almost a wild man's
appearance. His bare feet were hard and callused, toughened from months of
volcanic rock and soil; the day-to-day life of climbing for treetop delicacies
and over the craggy rocks had bulked out his muscles.
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