07. Ghost of the Well of Souls Read Online Free PDF Page B

"highways" were marked by varying colored strings of a naturally occurring substance that could be "tuned" to any depth. It stayed in place by means of treating it with certain magnetic properties. The combination of color and depth allowed anyone to travel almost anywhere in the hex without getting lost or disoriented once they had the code. Some were strictly for motorized traffic, others for swimmers. Although Kalindans were not dependent on sight and could be comfortable at depths of at least a thousand meters— depths that would crush many organisms not born and bred to those levels—they were a high-tech people, with the usual overdependence of such advanced races on their technology over their natural abilities. As such, vision was a commonly used sense, particularly at the levels at which the majority spent their lives.
    Much of Kalinda was a series of high plateaus and underwater tablelands; while the valleys went very deep, they weren't wide. The cities in which most people lived were, on average, no more than 350 meters down.
    Coming from an even higher technological society, Ari and Ming had felt fairly comfortable in the Kalindan cities. Out here there was only the crisscrossing colored lines to show the routings in three-dimensional space.
    There was some traffic. Most motorized transport was in the one to two hundred meter range, between towns, so it would be both out of the way of most swimming traffic and also fairly easy to maintain at a decent pressure. And, as in most technological civilizations, ancient roadways that were the underwater equivalent of long-range footpaths did not have very many people on them. Most took the trains or rented motorized scooters.
    They were not more than half a day out from the Kalindan capital of Jinkinar and already they were the only ones on the road. Not thatthey felt alone; out here, away from the noise of the city, it was louder than ever.
    The water was filled with sounds of all kinds. Loud sounds, soft sounds, clicks, whirs, whooshes, even the sounds of unknown beasts and the calls of bizarre creatures they weren't sure they wanted to meet. These, combined with the rumbles and motor noises and whines from the steady powered traffic a hundred meters above them, made it almost a cacophony of confused tones.
    This was where not being a native caused problems. Anyone who was born and raised a Kalindan would know what the sounds were, and which were worth attention. No quick course in Kalindan wildlife could possibly substitute for that experience.
    They did quickly learn about some minor noises. The windlike rushing of a school of colorful if exotic-looking fish, for example, was quite handy. Anyone who needed to could eat on the fly. Virtually all the fish in the region—except a few untouchables—were quite edible.
    When the Well World made someone into one of its own 1,560 races, it did so with a balance; certain things it gave as if one were native, so that he or she stood a good chance of surviving. Experience, however, it could not give.
    Ari decided to test out some Kalindan abilities while still in friendly territory. Closing his large, round eyes, which could convert the smallest light into usable views, he allowed the other senses of their shared body to take control. It was easy to use them, but much more difficult to interpret them.
    The sounds were part of it, of course—as much a distraction as a help—but they were peculiarly localized in time and space. Even if he didn't know what was making most of them, he found it relatively easy to estimate how far away they were and in what direction they were moving.
    And then there were the sounds he could make. They emanated from a small protruberance on the face, about where a conventional air breather's nose would be, and they were quite distinctive—or, more properly, it was quite distinctive. A long, pulsing, high-pitched sound well above the range of their old human hearing, it was caught not just by the