Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  It was a weird dream, mixing living scenes from the discarded pottery and the race that lived here with scenes of the Amazon and of the university, and at one point she was saying to her department head, “Now that I’m a man, Dr. Avery, you can’t deny me the Holburn Chair and the professorship that goes with it.”

  The smell of odd spices and perfumes and the tinkling of bells brought her back to consciousness, but it wasn’t until the sudden thought that she was no longer alone that she stiffened, rolled over, and tensely peered out from the rocks and bushes toward the pool.

  It wasn’t a big caravan like those depicted on the shards but, rather, a small party, no more than eight or nine people from the look of it, and one of those sleighlike wagons. Most, maybe all, were females, except for one big fellow reclining on a cushion. He looked, well, old—not really old but well into middle age from the cast and lines in his face and the wear and tear on his skin. He wore a somewhat faded and threadbare scrape of faded red that had an even more faded yellow design too shopworn to matter and one of those codpieces that might at one time have been silvery but now just looked a dirty gray. His horn, either shorter than hers or worn down over time, was wrapped in a kind of turbanlike affair that made it appear that he was wearing a cream-colored pointed hat. Everything about him, from his overall look and manner to the faded remnants of once colorfully decorated skin, looked a bit old and a bit seedy.

  So did the sleigh. Clearly it had seen a lot of use in its time and hadn’t been cared for very well of late, but, like its owner, it was serviceable.

  Watching the females, seeing them in person for the first time, was an odd experience. All were considerably smaller than either the old man or Lori, and the double pair of breasts on them all seemed quite a bit larger than in the pictures. The hair and the tails were nicely done up so that they were pretty well mirror images of one another, and the effect was quite nice indeed to look at. They all seemed to have a naturally feminine, sexy manner to them, and they would talk or whisper to one another, ears turning and twitching, and occasionally giggle like schoolgirls. Most wore some sort of jewelry—bracelets, necklaces—but little else, although the one at the fire pit had on a thick scrape much longer than the male’s, apparently not a garment but rather protection against heat. There was also something odd about their hands, but she couldn’t make out what it might be.

  She wondered just what the hell she should do now. Here was contact, and on a scale she might handle, but damn it, it was scary to be in this situation. Finally realizing that there was nothing else to do, Lori hauled herself onto the top of the rock, assuming a sitting position, and coughed politely.

  The effect on the females was startling. They froze like deer in the meadow might have frozen at the first sense of danger. The male moved pretty quickly, though, whirling, grabbing a sword, and actually getting to his feet in a single series of motions.

  “Who be you?” the old man called out menacingly in a low voice.

  “Please, good sir, put down your sword,” Lori responded, startled at how very, very deep her voice sounded to her ears but also relieved that language, at least, wasn’t going to be a problem. “I sit here with nothing, not even clothes, let alone a weapon.”

  “Where’d ye come from?” the old man asked suspiciously, sword still in hand.

  “I was already here,” Lori explained. “I—I woke up in the sands near here as I am now.”

  “Yesss…? And who dumped ye there, and why?”

  “I—I don’t know if this is going to sound crazy to you or not, but I was a different sort of—creature—from another world. I came through what I was told is a hex gate to a place called Zone, and then they forced me through another gate, and I woke up as you see me.”

  The old man sniffed, frowned, then put his sword away. “Not another one!” he said in disbelief. “Not in my lifetime, or my father’s, or his father’s lifetime has anyone come though there and been dumped here. Now suddenly yer fallin’ from the skies!”

  Lori’s heart skipped a beat. “Another one, you say? You mean I’m not the first?”

  “Not if yer what you says you are, anyways. Other was a girl, over in the Hajeb, a couple months ago maybe. Least, that’s what I heard.”

  She shook her head. “That means nothing to me. I’m afraid I don’t even know where I am, or what I am, for that matter.” She was disappointed at the time frame. It meant that whoever the girl was, she was from one of the other parties—most likely the woman in the wheelchair, since that was the only female she recalled among the pictures shown to them back in Zone.

  The old man chuckled. “Well, sonny, this land be Erdom, in the bottom of the World, and we all be Erdomites first. I be Posiphar of the Makob, a traveling merchant by trade. I buy and sell things, services, whatever be needed between the families and tribes of the Hjolai. I be on me route from oasis to oasis right now, headin’ next fer the camp of Lord Aswab.”

  “The names mean nothing to me yet. I’m sorry,” she told him. Guessing that the man’s odd manner of speech was either a regional dialect or just the mark of a less than educated man, she made no attempt to duplicate it. “Uh, I’d like to come down, but I’m not really dressed fit for mixed company, I’m afraid.”

  Posiphar chuckled again. “Don’t worry none ‘bout the girls. Ye ain’t got nothin’ they ain’t seen many times afore, I promise ye. Come, come, let me get a look at ye!”

  She got down slowly and carefully. Although the body seemed easier to use, more familiar now, she wasn’t about to take any chances with it. She then walked over to him, trying to be as natural as possible.

  “Heh! Ye walk like some girl,” the old man commented. “Well, ain’t no nevermind of mine. Yer a big fella, though, I got to say.”

  Until now she really hadn’t had anything for comparison, but it was clear that things were pretty much of a human-sized scale, and now, standing in front of the merchant, she found that as he was a head taller than the tallest woman in his party, she was almost that much bigger and taller than he was. Although she’d been by no means short, it was a novel experience to be the biggest and tallest of a group, and she found she liked the sensation.

  “Well, son,” the merchant said at last, “maybe ye and me can make a deal here. Ye needs a bit of educatin’ on Erdom, I think.”

  “Not to mention food, clothes, and money,” she added.

  “Yeah, well, that goes without sayin’, I suppose. As ye might have figured, I ain’t exactly drippin’ with gold and silver and precious gems, but I makes do, I does. Been some banditry about of late—ain’t like the old times, I tell ye. I ain’t no slouch in a fight, but I be gettin’ on and slowed down in spite of meself, and with nobody coverin’ me back, I ain’t been feelin’ too safe of late. Don’t suppose ye be any good with a sword?”

  She looked at the sword he’d put down by his side. It wasn’t like a broadsword; in fact, it was more like a saber than anything else. She wasn’t great with a sword, but she’d almost made the fencing team her undergraduate senior year. “I can use one of those if I had to,” she told him. “I might be off balance with it, though. I’m still getting used to this body. But I’m even better with a spear,” she added.

  “Hmph! What were ye before? Some kinda hard-shelled twelve-armed insect or somethin’?”

  She laughed. “No, nothing like that. In some ways not an extremely different sort than this, but far enough. More— apelike. You know what an ape is?”

  “Sure I do! Seen some over in the port cities now and again. See most anything in this world at them docks. Where’d you think I seen them insect things?”

  She was startled. “You mean there actually are creatures like that here? Man-sized insects that—think?”

  “Sure. You got a whole lot t’ learn, sonny. Um, what is yer name, anyways? One of them impossible-to-say words?”

  “Uh, well, it’s Lori. It was, anyway.”

  “That’s a good enough nonsense word to serve,” Pos
iphar responded. “Here ye be linked with yer family and tribal place name. Since ye ain’t got no family or no tribe here, a place name’ll do. It’ll drive everybody else nuts tryin’ to figure out how ye got it, too. How’s Lori of Alkhaz sound as a name?”

  “Uh, all right, I guess, but who, what, or where is Alkhaz?”

  “Why, this is Alkhaz, of course! Just a transit oasis, not nobody’s in particular. That’s ‘cause the water’s decent here only part of the year. The rest of the time it’s either too muddy or too alkaline for most folks’ tastes. There’s always another that opens up, so it’s no big thing.”

  “I’ll accept it, then,” she told him. “And Erdom? Is all of it like this? Desert?”

  “Well, a whole lot of it is, anyways. All except right on the coast. A few nice little cities there get some rain and have some hills with trees that keep the rain there to use. Got a decent-sized seacoast, but we’re right smack up against that Zone wall, so the only place where everything piles up is in the southeast, where Erdom and the wall come together. Sand and stuff gets built up by the sea breezes there, and they get a decent amount of weather. Rest of the place, well, the rains just sink into the sands and get swallowed up, and these here underground rivers are the only water.”

  “And so it’s just the coast and the rest is like this?”

  “Well, there’s some towns around inside, where you got really good springs, of course. Otherwise you couldn’t do the Pilgrimage of the Seven Springs. Got some deep mines over in Jwoba. Them’s gold mines. And Awokabi has the diamonds and so on. Don’t like ‘em much, though. Dirty, smelly, sad little towns where most folks work for nothin’ but food and water and the lords live fat. I like the Hjolai better. Folks be friendly if ye don’t overstay yer welcome, and they knows ye won’t cheat ‘em much, and there still be some honor.”

  She looked out at the desert. “How many people live out here, though? What do they live on?”

  “Oh, the whole be divided into Holdings, we calls ‘em, each with a pretty fair-sized oasis able to support some number of herd animals and even some farmin’ of a limited type. Each is a hereditary family Holding headed by a lord, and the folks there pretty much work fer him. He in return gives ‘em protection and security. It ain’t a bad system. Hell, half the year the lord’s movin’ ‘round his Holding from oasis to oasis, listenin’ t’ gripes, fixin’ problems. They still think things go both ways out here. The people work for the lord, and the lord tries to help the people with their problems and make life better for ‘em. Most do all right. You gets a bad one now and again, o’ course—stands to reason—but he don’t last long. Most of ‘em, even the best, get knocked off sooner or later by one of their relatives anyways, and if you got the people cheerin’ for it, well, that lord lasts all the shorter, see?”

  Lori nodded, but she wasn’t all that thrilled by the system. It sounded like something out of Arabia and a past age of Earth—monarchical tribal families, inheritance by assassination, feudalism. She wasn’t all that sure how much she was going to like this.

  “But you’re not working for a lord,” she noted. “Or are you?”

  “Haw! Not likely! There be some of us around, kind of like a brotherhood. See, them lords need us, ‘cause they don’t get along with one another nohow, and we be the only ones can walk and talk between with nobody figurin’ we like one side better’n the other. So if one wants t’ send a message to the other, they use traders like me. If their breedin’ stock’s thin and needs freshening, they won’t sell to nobody they won’t even talk to, so they sell to me for a promise that I’ll bring ‘em back what they need. I takes the stock, trades it to another, then bring the trade back, and that settles that. Of course there’s a fee, but we haggles fer it. I been around so long ‘cause I always gives ‘em a good deal. ‘Course, you don’t live as well or as rich as if you try’n jerks ‘em around a bit, but ye keeps yer balls that way. Them lords got a real mean streak if they catch you!”

  “I’ll bet,” Lori said glumly, having no trouble imagining Erdomite desert justice. “Uh, you mentioned some deal between us?”

  “Sure. Kwaza! Bring me the serpent chest!” he called, and one of the women stopped what she was doing, went over to the sleigh, and started rummaging around. She finally found the chest and brought it over to them.

  When she did, Lori could see what had been mystifying her about the females’ hands. They were more hooflike, the three fingers fused together and bending as one, with just enough indentation for flexibility, while the opposing thumb was even wider and broader than the males’ thumbs. The effect reminded her more of claws, but they were too soft and supple for that description to be accurate. It must be more like doing everything wearing mittens, she thought.

  When the woman had gone back to her work, Lori asked in a low tone, “Are all females’ hands like that? No independent fingers?”

  “Huh? Oh, sure. That’s ‘cause, when they’re well along carryin’ a baby, they got to pretty much walk on all fours and use their arms like the forelegs of an animal unless they be leanin’ on somethin’. Otherwise they couldn’t get around at all for them last two months or so. If the fingers could spread like a man’s, you’d never be able t’ do it. It’d tear yer fingers right off after a while. Don’t believe me, try it sometimes.”

  “Hmph! Seems too bad, though. It sure limits what they can do.”

  “Not as much as ye think,” Posiphar replied. “There’s an old sayin’, of course, that if women had fingers they’d be dangerous, but actually they got a little over us. You’n me, we get a bad break in the leg, don’t heal, and we’re crippled and in pain fer life, hobblin’ around and no good to nobody. They lose a leg, they can still get around, do most of what they could before. No, the Creator put a lot of thought into us. I seen some races down at the port, they got these big boobs or udders, and fer what? To feed the young for a few months after havin’ kids. And how many kids do most women have, anyways? So they carry them things for life and use ‘em hardly a’tall. Erdomite women, now, when they ain’t sucklin’, they stores water in them. Ye, me, full of water here, couldn’t last more’n eight days without a drink. Women—up to three weeks, and it’s available not only to them from the inside but to anybody else what needs it from the outside. Now, that’s useful!”

  She didn’t bother to bring up the fact that there were other, purely pleasurable uses for breasts, but she conceded him his point. Each gender had its strengths and weaknesses for this harsh society and environment, but it was pretty clear that the men were, in every sense of the word, on top here.

  The chest, with an exotic winged serpentlike creature carved into it, proved to have various articles of male adornment. Only one of the dozens of codpieces was big enough to fit, and it was a plain, worn black color, but somehow, although it was decidedly uncomfortable and not at all useful for concealment or protection, it made her feel dressed for polite company. She passed on anything else, though, figuring, as it turned out correctly, that anything she might choose to use would be charged to her account. While she had no objection to providing the old trader with some extra protection, she also had no intention of getting so into debt to him that he’d virtually own her.

  The food was very spicy and very good, and Lori realized with a start that it had been a very long time since she’d eaten, let alone had a decently cooked meal. The meat seemed similar to lamb but was too salty to tell more, and it was cooked in a large woklike pan together with some kind of very long ricelike grain and a number of green and red vegetables at least one of which was some kind of hot pepper. Out here the drink was water, period.

  With more conversation both that night and the next day setting out across the desert, she learned much more about this strange place and its dominant race.

  Women were definitely at the very low end of the scale here, as she’d surmised, bound there by religion, tradition, and some definitely chauvinistic attitudes among the males.

  Because they were
smaller and therefore had smaller brains, Posiphar told her, women were not as intelligent as men and had shorter attention spans, so any education and position was reserved for the males. It was considered a logical as well as practical division, not the least of reasons for this being that females outnumbered males roughly three to one, not only in live births but because they tended to live longer. Because of this, too, polygamy was the norm, although many men had only one wife and some of the richer males had whole harems. The rule was that one could have as many wives as one could support. There was also a law that said if one could no longer support them, one had to find new husbands for them that could.

  She was relieved to learn that one of her fears, at least, was unfounded. They did not buy and sell women, or anybody else, either, although the women, without any practical rights at all, were pretty much at the mercy of the exclusively male-dominated system. “Love matches” were simply beyond their comprehension; one married for political reasons, for social reasons, for a dowry, or sometimes because one liked their features and thought that the combination would produce superior children.

  Infant mortality was horrendous in the cities and working towns but surprisingly low in the desert and oasis communities. Communicable diseases were rare; the way heat was handled and exchanged in the bodies produced regular temperatures for short periods almost every day that killed ninety-five percent of any viruses or bacteria that might lurk inside. In the cities and working towns it was often the living conditions and other environmental factors that killed the young.

  There was almost no chance at social mobility for either men or women, though. Maybe one step up or down, but no more than that. Certain physical features and colorations were unique to certain classes and made it difficult to pass as another in any event. Although it would be a while before she could recognize those differences, Posiphar told her that her body marked her as pretty well in the middle of the scale, suitable for a soldier or merchant or craftsman, but she had no characteristics of the nobility at all.