This one, believe it or not, is for the National Park Service, for having such wonderful places as Stehekin, Washington, where the Well World was born, and such nice folks as those rangers at Chiricahua National Monument, without whom I might never have been seen or heard from again.

“A Morvath squad reports it definitely just killed Nathan Brazil,” the Czillian said wearily, limbs drooping and pumpkinlike head somehow conveying a note of exhaustion as well.

Serge Ortega sighed. “How many does that make today?”

“Twenty-seven,” the plant-creature responded. “And it’s early yet.”

Relaxing, Ortega sat back on his great serpentine tail and shook his head. “You have to admire the genius of it, though. He knew the Well World Council would never dare let him back in. So he gets surgeons back in the Com to remake a bunch of people roughly his size and build and sends them through. Got to admire it. Got to admire the guts of the people who let such a thing be done to them, too—unless they’re damned naive or just damned fools.”

The Czillian’s vineline tentacles formed a very human shrug. “No matter. What does it get him? We, just kill every one that comes through, anyway—and we know he has to come through looking pretty much the way our photos say he looks. Even if he should get by in some kind of disguise, we know he has to show up in Ambreza—and that hex is an armed camp with wall-to-wall watchers. How could one of known appearance, naked, shorn of disguise, ever hope to elude them?”

“You don’t know Brazil,” Ortega responded. “I do. Now, stop thinking like a computer for a moment and start thinking like a pirate. Nate’s a nasty, clever pirate—almost equal to me in the way he thinks.