03. Gods at the Well of Souls by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online Page B

told him. 
     
    "I hope it works, too," he responded with a sincere smile. 
     
      
     
    Liliblod 
     
      
     
    LORI, TOO, COULD NOT HELP BUT NOTICE THAT JUAN CAMPOS'S well-planned and  fiendish revenge was not as complete as it had been intended to be. Overloaded  with the mind-numbing drug, sent through a training course over and over and  over again until all action was automatic, he had been beyond even caring what  had happened. Weeks of Pavlovian training and then the real thing, trips back  and forth by night without the slightest deviation along back trails laced with  an overpowering scent unique to him, all seemed to be one continuous blur,  without a sense of time, place, or event. 
     
    How long this had gone on, he could not know, but slowly, ever so slowly, he  began to come out of the stupor. Rational thought returned with the same  slowness, in fits and starts. He was unable to distinguish what was real from  what was dream, but eventually he came to understand that for some reason that  drug no longer affected him, that its power was fading with increasing  quickness. 
     
    There was some sense of denial about that fact. He didn't want to come out of  it, didn't want to think and perhaps face the pain and monotony of this life,  but his own inner strength denied him the oblivion he needed. 
     
    What did it matter that he was no longer addicted except to add to the torture?  If they found out, they might not trust him anymore, and that would mean his  finish. 
     
    But that, too, was an odd thought. Wouldn't death be preferable to a life of  this! 
     
    The answer, though, was no. 
     
    That left escape, even though he was a four-footed freak far from any home or  help, forever cut off from rational communication with the outside world. Even  if that weird new translator didn't encode everything in and out, it would  probably be useless. His mouth felt funny; it wasn't malleable as it always had  been. Even the limited communication he'd had with the handlers who had special  translators to make themselves understood was now one-way. The only sound he  seemed capable of anymore was from very deep inside and sounded more like a bray  and meant nothing. His handlers, usually none too bright underlings, had found  that amusing. 
     
    Still, it had been a shock to find out that indeed he had changed so radically  and that after all this time of staring down at the ground, his neck was somehow  now long enough and flexible enough to allow him to look straight ahead. In  fact, it became increasingly flexible as time wore on. 
     
    They had fused his hands to form hoofs and, after castration, had filled him  with female hormones that had produced grotesque travesties of Erdomese breasts.  Yet now the breasts seemed to have shrunk away while the legs and hooves seemed  to have solidified and changed. Through the fragmented and confused mental haze  he was in, he realized at some point that he was very, very different from what  Campos had intended or how he'd started out under the hands of those maniacal  butchers. 
     
    His vision was weak, distorted, and without color, but it had tremendous  contrast abilities. It was hard to imagine that there were this many scales of  gray. Vision was short-range but sharp straight on, but there was little if any  peripheral vision to speak of. To see something to the side, he had to move his  head rather than his eyes. It took some getting used to once he started to try  to use his vision again for more than spotting things to step over. Anything  outside a two- to seven-meter range was a gray blur. This was true day or night,  although night was more comfortable. Bright light, even reflected, blinded him  for a minute or more after he turned to avoid it. Hearing and smell were much  more trustworthy than sight. 
     
    I've become some kind of a horse, he realized after a while. Not any horse he  knew, but close enough.