Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  Tony sighed. “I don’t like it, but all right. Let us get packed up.”

  The captain helped, then, as they got settled in the van, he tried the radio again. One of the big stations at least had gotten back on the air, albeit with lower power than usual, and the details of what had happened in the city and beyond were soon clear.

  Possibly hundreds of pieces from the meteor had come down, ranging from fingernail-size to a few as large as soccer balls. A number of homes and buildings had been hit; there was a crater in the center of the financial district about ten meters wide that had, among other things, severed the main electrical and phone cables to and from the city center; and many other fragments had been large enough and hot enough to touch off fires. A few, in poorer and run-down areas, had quickly become conflagrations. Although only two people were known to be dead and perhaps a dozen others had injuries serious enough to need hospitalization, the massive fires in the densely populated poor areas gave an unspoken but implicit promise of a much higher toll.

  The swath cut by the shedding meteor was twenty to twenty-five kilometers wide, and reports of isolated rockfalls in other areas were still coming in. A large segment, larger than any that had struck the city, was seen to have fallen somewhere in the mountains beyond the city, but at the moment it wasn’t known where it had fallen or if it had caused any major damage.

  The main body had landed, perhaps only seconds later, in the remote upper Amazon basin, still within the country and inside of one of the new native reserve areas designed to protect the rain forest and the habitat of primitive tribes who lived there. Early reports said that there was massive damage at the main site, with the forest knocked down and ablaze, like the aftermath of an atomic bomb. The Archbishop of Rio had announced a special mass of thanks and salvation for tomorrow, noting that if the impact had come sooner, along the coast, there would have been massive loss of life.

  The announcer then paused to gather more information, and the station began playing Jobim’s Quiet Night and Quiet Stars…

  The captain switched off the radio and drove slowly over to the road.

  “Well, that big one in the mountain must have been the one that hit below,” Tony noted.

  The captain frowned. “Maybe. But I can’t understand—if it was that big, and much smaller pieces caused so much damage, why we didn’t have a minibomb effect here as well.”

  “That was quite a jolt when it hit,” Anne Marie pointed out.

  “Exactly. The jolt, yes, but something that hot, hitting with that kind of force, should have done far more if it’s anywhere close, and I think it is. I’m beginning to have a very bad feeling about this.”

  “What do you expect? Martian invaders?” Tony joked.

  “No. Nothing like that.” He took a deep breath. “Well, here we go.”

  Solomon was surprised at how far they managed to get before fallen rocks and other debris stopped them. They were actually at the lower turnout of the last switchback before the main road and could see down the steep kilometer or more to the paved road below even though they couldn’t reach it.

  Anne Marie gasped at the sight on that main road. “What is it?” Tony pressed her.

  “The meteor! Or at least the big piece of it! It’s huge! It’s stuck half in the road and half in the opposite hillside. It looks mostly buried in the hill and there’s a lot of bubbling and hissing around the edges, but you can see a big part of it! It’s glowing —a dull, almost golden yellow, and it looks like some huge gemstone, kind of like stained glass. Good heavens! I’d almost swear it was something artificial!”

  The captain stared at it. Just my imagination? he wondered. Or is that huge flat area facing outward the shape I’m afraid it is?

  He got out and surveyed the path, dully illuminated by the glow of the strange object. Surveying the scene, he went back to them and said, “I think I can angle the car so it’ll give us light from the headlights the first part of the way down, after which, if that thing keeps glowing, we won’t need any more light. It might be a tight fit, but I think we can get the wheelchair down, though we might have to lift it over at one or two places. Are you willing?”

  “I think better down than back up at this point,” Anne Marie replied.

  It was not an easy task, but it was manageable. At one point dirt and rock had covered much of the road, making it difficult to get the wheelchair around without going off the side, but the captain managed, then, bracing her on the other side, got Tony around as well. Several times the blind man stumbled, but he was game all the way, and in about thirty minutes they made it down to the road.

  The meteor had taken out much of the paved area, and between its own extrusion and the landslides the impact had caused, it would clearly be some time before any vehicle could get past. Still, there was more than enough room for them to manage, if no more slides occurred, and once on the other side, they would at least be well positioned when the first cars driven by the curious or investigators made it to the scene.

  “I’m surprised there aren’t a lot of people on both sides already here,” Anne Marie said. “I know we were hardly the only ones to come up this route.”

  “We don’t know how bad some of the slides are elsewhere, and perhaps other pieces fell as well, doing damage,” Tony pointed out. “It might well be a while, but at least I believe we have more of a chance down here than up there. What do you think, Captain? What should we do now?”

  Solomon was staring at the meteor. “Huh? Oh, sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.” He paused a moment, then said, “You two stay right here. I’ve got to get something off my mind one way or the other. I won’t be but a moment.”

  With that, he walked down toward the still-glowing object. As he approached, the thing seemed to change somehow; the glassy surface took on a duller sheen, and then other forms seemed to appear just underneath.

  Anne Marie gasped. “It looks like—something alive!” she said. “Like a network of arteries and veins or fluids going through pulsing tubes. I’ve seen this sort of thing under microscopes!”

  “Your imagination is getting the best of you,” her husband responded. “You’ve been through a lot tonight.”

  “No, no! I’m serious! I swear it! And it seems to be getting more and more detailed as the captain goes nearer to it. Captain!” she called out worriedly. “Don’t go any closer! Watch out!”

  The captain gestured confidently with his right hand. He walked around to the left, where the shoulder of the road still allowed passage, and as he did, a single gemlike “face” in the center seemed to darken on its own, becoming in a moment jet black, while the rest of the object remained unchanged.

  “Son of a bitch! I knew it!” the captain grumbled. “A damned hexagon!”He stood there staring at it and said, louder, “You coulda been a little more subtle, damn it!”

  The object didn’t respond. He knew it wouldn’t. Although so advanced that it would be incomprehensible to Earth science, it was just a machine.

  “I don’t want to go through it all again!” he told it, knowing he was talking only to himself. “I didn’t even want to do it the last time, and you forced me. What do you want me to do? Wipe out everything again? Just when they’ve gotten to the start of the fun part? Before I’ve even completely forgotten who and what I am? Screw up thousands of civilizations because one damned thing went refreshingly wrong in history? Well, I won’t do it! Get her to do it! She knows how! I encoded her and linked her to the Well!”

  He stopped for a moment, trying to calm down. Maybe it had gone for her as well. It would be ironic if she, too, were in Brazil, although what she’d be doing in the Amazon basin was beyond him. Still, he knew the machine wouldn’t let him stay here while somebody else did the reset. He hadn’t taken himself out of the core matrix. If somehow it allowed him to get around the embedded fragment without taking him in, swallowing him up, it wouldn’t matter. It would send more of these, and more, until he would feel under constant bombardment. Eit
her that or it would figure some other way. When one had the power to manipulate probability, one could be staved off for a while, but eventually one would get one’s way. Besides, suppose he walked away and this gate stayed open? An invasion of people at this stage would not exactly be in anybody’s best interest.

  He sighed. Perhaps this time he could minimize the damage. Perhaps this time he could opt himself out. Still, it was pretty clear that he had no choice at this point, not until he was there, inside, at the controls. There simply weren’t any options left open to him.

  He had to go to the Well one more time.

  But he also had certain other, more immediate responsibilities. He turned and walked back to the waiting couple.

  “Don’t ask me questions,” he said to them, “but I know what this is. You remember that game we played up top? What would you like to become if you could?”

  “Yes,” Anne Marie responded nervously, suddenly not certain of the captain’s sanity.

  “Tony?”

  “Yes, but what’s the point of this?”

  “That thing’s a door. Now, you’ve got to trust me on this, and no, I’m not losing my mind. I once spent a lot of time and effort trying to avoid going through such a door before and failed. I’m not going to make that mistake again. The result is, I’m going to go through it. When I do, I think it will close behind me. If the two of you go with me, I can promise you that Anne Marie will walk again and that you, Tony, will see again. It’s no heaven where that door leads. Remember, even Oz had wicked witches and the land of Jason was filled with dangerous people and more dangerous creatures. But it’s not a bad place. It will heal you.”

  “You’re raving mad,” Tony responded, shaking his head.

  “Look, I’m offering you a single chance. If there’s no door there, then we go on by and we wait for help. If there is a door, you walk through it with me. Understand?”

  “This is ridiculous!” Tony fumed. “I won’t stand for any more of this! We’ll wait right here!”

  But Anne Marie, while more in tune with Tony’s viewpoint than the captain’s strange comments, nonetheless felt that something within the man was not lunacy but sincerity. “Just who are you that someone would send such a thing for you?” she asked him.

  “I’m not going to tell you that, for your own protection and mine,” he replied. “And if you decide to come with me, not a word that I knew anything about it to begin with. Not one word. We were just three people who went to see a meteor and found this curiosity and walked through. Understand?”

  “I’m not going to listen to any more of this rot,” Tony fumed.

  The captain stared at him. “I understand how you feel and what it sounds like. But when I leave, you’ll be stuck here alone, the two of you. I’m not certain when help will arrive. And the best way to reach the most likely source of help is around that thing over there. The door is that blackness that opened when I approached. You saw it, didn’t you, Anne Marie? I can see that you did. It’ll open again. What do you have to lose?”

  She almost believed him. She wanted to believe him. “If—just granting your point for argument’s sake—if what you say is true, would Tony and I still be together?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t promise that. I can only promise that he will see and you will walk and be strong again.” He looked at Tony. “I remember our conversation. Is it worth it to take a chance, considering the alternative? We don’t have much time. Sooner or later there will be hundreds, maybe thousands of people up here. Sightseers, rescuers, newspeople, scientists, road crews—you name it. I can’t have them accidentally going through. I’m going now. You can go with me and what I have said will come to pass, or you can go on past and wait and hope that rescue comes quickly for Anne Marie’s sake and enjoy your few weeks or months or whatever.”

  It was Tony’s turn to sigh. “Captain, I will allow you to lead us past that thing. Beyond that I will not go.”

  “We love each other, Captain,” Anne Marie said simply. “I’m not at all certain I would wish to live without Tony, healthy or not.”

  The captain gave them a humorless smile. “However, that option’s not open to you, is it, Tony?”

  “Haven’t you understood, Captain?” the Brazilian asked him. “That is not the option you believe. We shall not wait for the inevitable, or survive each other.”

  The comment stunned Solomon. “Now there are two ways I envy you,” he told him. “The kind of love you show is rare, and the ability to end your lives by your own decision is something I have always wished to be able to do.”

  “What? Do you believe you are a vampire or some such, too?” Tony asked derisively.

  “No. But I told you all along that I am a lot older than I look. The same thing that sent that and knew just where and when to drop it insulates and protects me.” And controls me, he thought to himself. Walk this way in the early morning. Meet these two. Go up into the hills to a remote area…

  He sighed. “Well,” the captain added, “we might as well get on with it. You have a great choice at this moment that I wish I had but do not. You can choose life or death for the both of you. Anne Marie in particular hasn’t had that choice before, so it was an easy decision. Now your choice has a complication. Do you both want to die? Or are you merely reconciled to it? I’m giving you another choice.” He paused a moment. “Let’s go and get this over with.”

  He walked slowly forward, and Tony began pushing the wheelchair as Anne Marie gave short instructions that kept them going in the right direction. Still, beneath the automatic commands she was giving, she was also thinking, wondering if this strange little man was telling the truth and, in the impossible event that perhaps he was, whether the price was worth it.

  She saw the activity just beneath the surface of the fragment speed up as they approached, and as they moved to the right, she saw the big facet, more than two meters high even though slightly buried in the ground at its bottom edge, open to an impossible, impenetrable darkness.

  The captain stopped dead center of the opening. “Well, here is where we possibly part company,” he told them. “I have enjoyed meeting you, and I am happy that at least some of the good that is within this race of humankind shines so brightly in you. It knows you’re here. It won’t close until you go on past. In any event, spending this evening with you has made it somehow easier for me.” And with that, he walked straight into the blackness and vanished.

  Anne Marie’s heart leapt at the sight. The captain hadn’t gone into the darkness or been enveloped by it, he had simply touched it and vanished.

  “Captain?” Tony asked, frowning. “He’s gone, dear, just like he said,” Anne Marie told him. “He went into it, and that was that. Strange. I think we’ve just had a close encounter, as they call it.”

  “Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’? Is there an opening in the thing? Did he crawl inside? What?”

  “No, dear. He just walked into it and vanished. Poof! One moment he was there, the next he wasn’t.”

  “An illusion of some kind. Or he was burned up or this thing has some sort of radiation. What he said just can’t be true! It’s not possible!”

  “Perhaps. But it looked awfully quick and painless, you know, and there’s no trace of him. I am feeling very, very exhausted, my darling, and I am in a great deal of pain. I am not at all certain I can stand it at this altitude until someone comes.”

  He swallowed hard, his emotions in turmoil. He wasn’t ready for this! Not yet! It wasn’t anything like what they’d planned! “What do you want me to do?” he asked in anguish. “Go into that thing? Now?”

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. You know that.”

  “I go where you go!” he snapped. “But—”

  “But what? It’s quick, painless, no bodies, no traces, no one to grieve over and no mess left for others to deal with. They’ll find the car, the porter will remember us, and we’ll be listed as victims of the meteor. I know it’s not what we wanted,
but it is here, and there will not be a better time. I know Ishall not survive to get even to hospital, and I do not want to die in hospital or be kept alive on machines. Do it for me. You may make your own decision afterward.”

  He neither moved nor spoke to her. The blackness on the face of the object remained unchanged.

  “Come! Why do you fear the moment when it’s at hand? We’ve discussed this over and over. Do it for me.”

  He was almost in tears, but he knew he had to give her the truth of his deepest fears.

  “I—I am afraid that what the captain said might be true.”

  “Then we will be healed, isn’t that right?”

  “And separated in some strange, unknown place!”

  “If I am healed, I will find you. Come. My pain grows with each moment, and no matter what he said, this thing could close at any moment. Go right and just walk ahead.” She suddenly pushed the joystick. The wheelchair lunged forward and lurched to the right, and both chair and occupant vanished into the darkness, leaving only silence.

  “Anne Marie? Anne Marie!”His fear of losing her overcame all other thoughts. He turned right and walked straight ahead.

  And without warning, he felt a sensation of falling.

  Back on the paved mountain road above Rio, the dark hexagon winked out and the meteor began to undergo a dramatic transformation. The other facets, which had pulsed with an analog of a living circulatory system, began to fade; circulation failed, patches of decay began to appear, finally spreading over the surface of the object.

  Its purpose accomplished, the Watchman and all others evidencing a desire to do so having passed through, the device had no other reason to exist, and very quickly it died. By the time the first of the curious and investigators reached it, shortly after dawn, it resembled a huge, irregular lump of granite or gneiss laced with enormous veins of obsidian.

  Rockfall: Upper Amazon