Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  She waved a finger in the air, had it go to ground, had two fingers walk out, then made as if she were operating a very old-time camera, then mouthing into something she was holding. A helicopter! She ‘d been pan of a TV crew covering the impact! That had to be it and would easily explain her appearance.

  It still didn’t answer why she was here, why she wasn’t one of the other 779 races of the South, but it told him basically who she was and how she’d gotten here.

  He had an awful thought. He pointed to her foot and then to the drawing area. With his own foot he mocked putting it down on the drawing. She didn’t get it right away but eventually figured out what he wanted, although maybe not why, and stepped on the place, making a half footprint.

  It was, of course, a standing rather than walking print, but he’d been following enough of a certain set of prints for his experienced tracker’s eyes to relate the two.

  He hadn’t been following Mavra, after all. He’d been following this girl! And that meant that she, not Mavra, was the source of the pulse—and the source of the track the hounds had followed.

  Well, some of the mystery was at least explained, why she’d gone pretty much straight into Glathriel and why she hadn’t contacted the Ambreza. In one sense he was relieved, although he felt frustrated by still not finding who he was really looking for.

  Now all he had to do was try to figure out why this girl was here. Not only shouldn’t she have become a Glathrielian, she hadn’t—not totally. The Well had done some of its work but had left her original form pretty much intact. Oh, he suspected she was a good deal older than she looked now—that was a fairly simple procedure for the Well program—and any diseases or infirmities or other problems, right down to fillings in her teeth, would have been repaired, but it had left her genetic code mostly untouched. It shouldn’t have done that. As far as he knew, it couldn’t have done that.

  But it had.

  It had also done its adaptation work internally in a way he’d never intended. She couldn’t understand him because the program now specified that Type 41 ‘s could understand no language but their own. She couldn’t speak even in that language because, as far as he could see, they didn’t have a spoken language as such. She would have been given any attributes and abilities necessary to survive and integrate with the locals here, even ones developed independently, since that, too, was part of the program, but at the cost of being able to verbalize, and perhaps even use, what her education and training had prepared her to do. Hell, if she’d been some sort of TV personality, then she had to be going nuts with these limits!

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” he told her sincerely, although he knew she couldn’t understand and wouldn’t have understood the comment even if she had comprehended the words. “I honestly didn’t. It’s not supposed to work this way.” Maybe, just maybe, the Well was broken, after all.

  And, he thought, if she was a reporter, why not take the coffee? He knew few of them who could resist coffee, and it would have immediately established her as someone more than Glathrielian if she’d taken it. Hell, it’d only been what? Two, three days tops. She couldn’t have totally assimilated into their culture in that short a time, could she? Had, somehow, the Well imposed the culture upon her as well?

  It wasn’t designed to do that, either. Some stuff one had to learn.

  More interesting was what he wasn’t able to communicate to her. Some simple things, like “others” versus “alone,” as in “Did you come with others or alone?” he could not seem to put over. She, too, tried a few times to communicate, but her attempts seemed random and confused. It wasn’t an entirely new phenomenon to him; some of the other races of the Well World, most in the North but even a few in the South, simply did not fully follow the logical thought patterns that he and most of the southern races adhered to in one degree or another. A nonverbal society might develop along the same logic paths, and certainly in the case of the same race with the same brain structure, but even on Earth there were societies that saw things too differently to ever fully understand one another. This was a step further. In some ways it was like the card games at which he excelled. At one time, eons ago, he’d learned the basics of those games and played them so often that now he rarely thought about how or what to play and when; a part of his brain that he couldn’t even consciously touch, let alone access deliberately, processed all the information according to experience, and he simply played automatically—and won. Writers, painters, other creators had the same experience; they didn’t know where the words or visions had come from—they just were there and came from some unapproachable recess of the mind that they neither understood nor consciously used but that nonetheless they simply took for granted and used.

  None of them could ever explain the process. “God-given talent” was an oft-quoted phrase for it, but talent came from somewhere, and it was called up from a mystery region of consciousness in a manner they could neither comprehend nor control.

  Could a whole race operate entirely on that sort of processing? Could an entire culture somehow evolve that required no front-brained verbalizations? How could it work? Where was the shared experience, the teaching, the communication that would give such a people the tools with which to work? And to what end? To some animallike equilibrium in which survival was enough?

  It was a real puzzle, and he didn’t know the answer. There was only one place where he could get those answers, he knew, and that place was a long and hard journey from here.

  He could help this girl there, too. Get her out of the trap she’d fallen into.

  It never occurred to him to take her along, though. If she was so bound by the Glathrielian way, she’d never survive the trip, and she’d be more in the way than useful, anyway. Still, he wanted to try to tell her, to get through to her, that he could help her—and would.

  That, however, proved impossible to get over.

  After a while fatigue and frustration overcame him, and he managed to get her to understand that he had to sleep. She nodded but continued to sit as he went into the tent, zipped it shut, and, after a much longer time than he thought it would take, managed to get to sleep.

  In the morning she was still there.

  He wasn’t actually fooled into thinking that she’d sat there all night, but she and the others he hadn’t seen might think he was. Certainly there had been a lot of traffic through his camp during the night, all without disturbing him. The signs were quite clear that nothing short of a mob scene had occurred, yet none of his equipment had been touched, not even the now-cold cup of coffee still sitting there in the grass.

  Well, regardless of the games they might think they were playing, he’d wasted a couple of days coming here, and he’d probably waste another two or more getting back to anyplace useful. At least now it was time to move on, time to actually do something other than sit. He’d appreciatedthe rest, but he was out of place both here and in Ambreza, and he now had a better reason to enter the Well than he’d had before.

  After he had packed his gear, she got up, beckoned him, and started off back toward Ambreza with a surefootedness and confidence he certainly didn’t feel. He did not argue, however—what good would that have done, anyway? And hell, maybe she knew a shortcut.

  The paths she took were shorter, although it was still better than seven hours walking, not counting the breaks, until he once again saw the border. She stood there, letting him pass through, and then passed through herself. Now she was following him, but she seemed determined to stick with him.

  He stopped, turned, looked her in the eye, and shook his head “no,” but she had no reaction to that, although she must have understood it and continued to follow him.

  Well, as much as he’d have liked to take her along, it was impossible. What would she eat? How could she withstand the climatic extremes of the journey in the nude? What would happen when he got on a truck or some other automatic device her people wouldn’t touch?

  Still, she followed him right up to
the farm buildings and waited while he knocked.

  The old Ambrezan male was there, apparently doing accounts. He stared out at the girl in the front yard and gave a typical Ambrezan “Chi chi chi!” which was basically an expression of thoughtfulness. “So she’s the one you went in to get?”

  “No, she’s another. Somebody totally different.”

  “Yeah, I figured if you come back, it’d be empty-handed. I no sooner got back to the house than the wife called for me to go after you. Seems another female much like you showed up in the capital just about that time.”

  Brazil was delighted at the news. “Did they give a name?”

  “Dunno. Got the note here someplace.”

  “Well, more important, is she still there?”

  “Maybe, but I got the impression she was there to go to Zone. The gate’s right in the city center, you know. Wanted to find out about her friends, I think they said. Chi chi chi! Now where in—ah! Here!”

  “You’ll have to read it for me,” Brazil told him. “I’m all right with the translator at languages, but reading is something else again.”

  “Oh. All right. Let’s see… ‘Female Type 41 arrested near the city border at ten-fourteen this morning for being illegally out of a Glathrielian-allowed district. Proved to be alien of same origin as you. Received clothing, passage to Zone tomorrow for locating rest of her party.”

  “Hmmm… Wonder if she’s still in Zone or the city? She’d have to come back there through the gate, anyway. May I use your communicator and call in and see?”

  “Sure. No problem. What about the female there?”

  “She’ll wait.” He went inside and placed a call to the comm center.

  “Yes, her name was registered as a Mavra Chang,” the comm tech informed him. “Went down to Zone yesterday, returned in the evening. Got provisions and left this morning. The law prevents any Type 41 from being in the city for more than two days, anyway.”

  “That’s the one. How did she leave? And where did they take her?”

  “She left by air shuttle. She was going south to the border with Erdom. I assume one of her party is down there someplace or she’s going to try and make a boat connection of some sort. At any rate, she said she would probably not be back unless she needed to use a Zone gate as an escape route.”

  “Damn!” Brazil swore. “No chance I could get an airdrop to the same spot?”

  “Maybe in a couple of days or so. Not right now. We don’t run those for the convenience of aliens, you know.”

  The Ambreza had a small air fleet, operating, as it had to, totally within the hex, that basically consisted of a few dozen helicopterlike vehicles which were used for emergencies and for big shots to move around. How she’d talked herself into a ride down there was a mystery, but that she’d been able to do so sounded like the old Mavra.

  “Was she informed that I was here and looking for her?”

  There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, then the comm tech answered, “Yes, she was informed.”

  “And?”

  “She said that she’d have to move fast or you might catch up to her.”

  He sighed. “All right. Thank you,” and signed off.

  The old Ambrezan chuckled. “Ain’t it always the damnedest thing, son?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Well, you come up here lookin’ for her, and she’s down there and she don’t even want to see you. On the other hand, you pick up another one you didn’t know, didn’t want, and can’t seem to get rid of!”

  He nodded and sighed again. “Sure is. Well, thanks for your help. Any way to get some transportation out of this region?”

  “Might be able to help. Dunno what your girl out there’s gonna do, though. They don’t like machines, you know. They don’t like much of anything ‘cept maybe each other. Where you goin’? South to Erdom? That’s pretty mean country even if you know it. All desert ‘cept right along the coast.”

  “No, I don’t think so. In fact, while I’ll probably get in touch with the embassy just to see where she might be going, it’s not worth chasing her at this point, particularly if she has some reason for avoiding me. I think I’m best off heading east from here. Catch a ship and get on my way. I, too, have some people I promised to look up far from here.”

  “Well, it’s up to you, son. I’ll see what I can do about a call in to the foreign ministry, and then we’ll see about gettin’ you a ride east. From this distance it might do you best to go overland by horse rather than go through all that convoluted bunch of roads that’ll take you three hundred kilometers to go fifty.”

  He gave a small smile. “And I suppose you might have a horse for sale.”

  “Could be. Ain’t got no saddles that’d fit you, though.”

  “I can make do with a blanket and a bridle,” he assured the Ambrezan. “Let’s go see what you have.”

  They went out and walked back beyond the outbuildings to a large open pasture between the headquarters and the parklike glade where Terry had entered the Well World. Quite a number of good-looking horses were there, and he looked them over.

  He picked a strong-looking brown gelding after surveying the herd. “How much?”

  “Oh, I reckon a hundred and fifty’ll do it.”

  “A hundred and fifty! I’ll walk before I’ll pay a hundred and fifty for a gelding to get me fifty kilometers!”

  “No, no, son. I ain’t tryin’ to cheat you. That’s for the two of them.”

  Nathan Brazil looked around and saw the girl, now mounted atop a horse without blanket, bridle, or anything else but looking very much at home there. She smiled at him.

  He felt like a cross between a sucker and merely a damned fool, but he paid anyway. Hell, otherwise he wouldn’t have put it past her to just steal the damned horse or, worse, try to run along after him. At least he could get most of the money back at the port when he sold the two horses.

  Erdom

  At first there had been the dizzying sensation of falling nearly identical to that first hex gate that had brought them all to this strange new world, but then the sensation had abruptly ceased and she had fallen into the deepest sleep she had ever known.

  Doctor Lori Ann Sutton awoke feeling groggy, hung over, and a little sick to the stomach, lying on what felt like a bed of warm sand.

  She opened her eyes and looked around and saw that it was a bed of warm sand. At least it was sand, and there was an awful lot of it under a mean hot sun that was still low on the horizon. Or was it going down? Who could tell?

  She sat up, scratched where the sand had pressed against her side, and immediately felt a terrible sense of wrongness. The whole scene—sand, sky, sun—had all the colors she expected, but there seemed to be even more. She could actually see the heat, and there were darker areas as well.

  I’m seeing into the infrared spectrum!she thought won-deringly. And maybe beyond. Maybe, just maybe, in both directions. The entire spectrum?

  Suddenly she remembered everything. The gate, the lecture by the polka-dotted dragon, Alama’s—no, Mavra’s words—and something about becoming some different creature.

  She looked down at herself and saw that she was a very different creature, indeed. Her arms were long but very thin and ended in a huge pair of hands that were not human. They had only three fingers, long and thick, and an oppos-able thumb almost as long as the index finger and thicker than any of the others. The nails were huge and thick as well and seemed to run from halfway past the knuckle to beyond the tip. Put together in a relaxed way, they formed almost, well, a kind of supple, softer hoof, the palms fairly hard and thick and a pale brownish color.

  Her feet were the same, only the hoof was cloven and seemed oddly shaped on the bottom, something like a horse’s hoof crossed with the foot of a camel.

  She was covered in a thick, hidelike skin that was itself almost covered by very short, thick, pastel beige hair that flared out at the ankles and wrists. But that wasn’t the worst of it or the
biggest shock.

  Between her legs, emerging from a mass of thick, medium-brown pubic hair, was the biggest set of male genitalia she had ever seen, very dark brown in color and with a leatherlike texture.

  She touched it and gave a slight gasp and then just stared down at it for quite some time.

  My God! I’m a man!she thought, getting a queasy feeling in her stomach echoed by a strange but not altogether pleasant sensation in the genitals.

  It was an oddball fantasy come to life, one she had played with in the past, mostly out of the frustration of having to compete at the top levels of her profession with men and wanting the same power and position they took for granted. But it was only a fantasy, not a serious wish. The reality of the change shook her.

  And after all that time with the all-female tribe of the People, she felt an odd sense of aversion. I’m going to miss my breasts! she thought, trying to get a handle on things.

  Finally she managed to overcome the tremendous shock to consider the next question. She was male. But a male what! What was beige and hairy and had big hooves and arms apparently evolved from a set of more equinelike forelegs?

  The body was very slender and surprisingly supple. The body was a nearly perfect blend of equine and human, strange, yet somehow she thought of the term “erotic” to cover it. Hah! If only Jeff could see me now, with this body and this big a sausage! Of course, he wouldn’t exactly be turned on by the idea, but it would be awfully nice to use these hard hands to slug him.

  God! I’m a guy for all of three minutes and already I’m thinking like one! she admonished herself.

  The fact was, mentally, where it counted, she was still the same person. Nothing had been changed that she could tell, no knowledge or memories lost, no feelings all that different. But it was as if her mind were now in another’s body, someone whose differences went beyond just gender— way beyond.