Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  Erdom itself was, like all hexes, six-sided, but because it abutted the South Zone wall, an impenetrable barrier, its six sides formed a wing shape with a long flat along the ocean to the east rather than a hexagon.

  Initially, a newcomer would simply “appear” almost anywhere in a given hex, but once there, the gates were the only way to and from Zone. The gate for Erdom was located near the wall in the far southeast corner, outside the large port city-state of Aqomb, where sat the Sultan of Erdom. The Sultan, in fact, had little practical authority outside his city but was the titular ruler of the entire hex, and, as such, Aqomb was considered the temporal and spiritual capital of Erdom.

  Law in Erdom was entirely religious law, not only out of conviction but also out of necessity—the religion and its laws were the only true unifying elements in the primitive “nation” and served as a guarantee of uniformity of social rules and taboos across the hex. A priesthood of monks, all voluntarily castrated and living a totally religious and mostly cloistered life, ran the temples and spent most of the time praying to a series of cosmic gods that looked like some kind of giant six-armed octopuses out of a nightmare. The damper was put on social mobility and even male-female treatment by a strong belief in reincarnation, in which all Erdomites spent endless cycles of death and rebirth in attempts to raise themselves up to the level of their gods. Each soul was born as a lower-class female first, and only a perfect life would result in rebirth as a lower-class male. From that point a soul went up or down the social scale depending on how its life went, first female and then male until it reached the top of male nobility, after which came divination as a monk and, finally, godhood.

  The fact that the vast majority of the population were lower-class females was taken as a sign that not too many made it. It was also a rationalization for the whole sociopolitical structure and the treatment of both males and females within each level of the system. It also meant that complainers, chronic troublemakers, and potential enemies could be executed with a clear conscience, since they’d be reborn anyway.

  In fact, maiming was considered a far greater punishment, since it meant suffering with the result of transgression instead of having a new chance at a full life. About the only thing one so maimed could become would be a bandit if physically able or a crippled beggar if not. Only males faced maiming; females who ran afoul of religious law were always beheaded.

  It was not, however, a strict society overall if one just played the game. Punishment came from rocking the boat; so long as one paid lip service to the system and behaved, it was actually pretty relaxed. It was also pretty dull, which was why the men indulged in a lot of macho posturing, dangerous sports, and even duels.

  Lori did wonder about the women. They all looked strong and did much of the drudge work yet were seemingly always cheerful; the talk around the wells and camp site sounded pretty dumb and vapid, and there was never the slightest sign she could find of disobedience or rebellion. Almost without exception, they really did seem as dumb as a box of rocks.

  As the days passed, Lori no longer felt any physical strangeness either with her own body or in seeing other Erdomites. In fact, being a member of this race was now so natural for her that even in her dreams of Earth and her previous existence all the people looked like Erdomites. Still, there were problems.

  As an astronomer she’d been thrilled and awed by the night sky; the Well World seemed to be in the middle of a globular cluster. But there was nothing familiar to her up there, and even the names meant little. And of course there was the additional restriction of being in a highly limited nontech hex where science was on a rather low level, ignorance even among the educated was fairly high, and much of what she always had taken for granted—great telescopes, computers, and all the rest—simply wouldn’t work. Worse, one good solid look at the written language of Erdom showed that it was pictographic, like Chinese, and not the sort of thing learned easily or quickly. Even though she still could read and write in her Earth languages, they were of little use here except to make memos to herself. In this element she was stripped of her profession and lifelong passion, denied a chance at it again or anything like it, and essentially illiterate—just like much of the population. Education was in the hands of a few teaching monks, and even if she could get into that highest caste, which she could not, the price would be much too high for her even now.

  The other problem, though, was her sense of identity. She felt like an Erdomite, true, but she still felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body. Although she was tempted to try out the opposite sexual role, the females just didn’t really appeal to her. The men of her age, on the other hand, seemed powerful, strong, and very, very erotic.

  And it was tearing her up.

  She liked being around them, liked playing around with them, too. Either her fencing was improving dramatically or most of them weren’t very good at it, because she rarely lost and then usually by not fully concentrating on the mock duel. In fact, by betting on such competitions, she’d actually accumulated some cash—gold and silver coins that were accepted hexwide—and bought her own used sword, hilt, and belt as well as a decent bow and a quiver of bronze-tipped arrows. While she wasn’t a real champion at the latter, she was getting very good at hitting what she aimed at.

  The trouble was, she was enjoying being around the young men and sporting with them for all the wrong reasons, and she dared not let on what the real reasons were.

  Being on the road with the merchant helped, though. It was tough to form too many attachments when she was three or four days in one place, another few days journeying across the desert, then another three or four days in a new town or camp. She had given up all thought of contacting Mavra by this point; it was far too late, even though such an expedition away from this place would be much to her liking and Mavra could probably use somebody Lori’s size.

  Another thing was rubbing her wrong, too, although it was even harder to control. She was finding day by day that she was treating the females—both Posiphar’s two wives and four daughters and those she came in casual contact with—in the same callous manner as the other males. She was much too easily buying into that part of the system, one that went against her whole life and all her beliefs. She felt guilty as hell every time she did it—but always after she did it, and she didn’t stop because of it. It called her entire personal belief system into question. Deep down, had she really craved the absolute sexual equality she’d always thought she wanted, or had she instead subconsciously really just wanted a reversal of the system? If the latter, then she really hadn’t had any ideals, just rationalizations.

  Things changed a little when they pulled into a small oasis town in the south. They really didn’t have any business to do there, but it was on the way from Point A to Point B and was a convenient stopover.

  She wandered over to the ubiquitous social club all such places had, where the young men hung out between jobs and the transients could relax. It was much like an English pub in atmosphere, although Erdomite desert tribes considered alcohol and most stimulants and depressants stronger than coffee or tea to be evil and did not serve them.

  The name always started the questions.

  “Lori of Alkhaz. Odd name. Who are the Alkhaz, and where? Never heard of them.”

  She’d explain that she was not a native and had come through the Well, and that would elicit what was now becoming a somewhat boring and repetitive set of explanations that nonetheless made the newcomer the center of attention for a while. This time, however, there was a difference.

  “You ought to go over and see Aswam the Master Tent-maker, then,” one of the men commented.

  “Oh? I have no need for a tent.”

  “No, no. He’s the latest recipient of what’s rapidly being called ‘The Girl from All the Hells.’ She’s an emigrant from another world, just like you.”

  “Really? Yes, I very much want to speak with her! Where is this tentmaker’s place?”

  “I’ll show y
ou. I’m not certain that anybody can do much with her, though. She’s too smart, too aggressive, hates everybody and everything, and they keep her locked up like a prisoner since she won’t behave and nobody’s been able to break her. We think she’s mad. Would you believe that she claims she was once a man! She’s been passed around from family to family for some time, and by the time poor Aswam took a crack at her, there was nobody left to pass her on to when he gave up.”

  “My God! I’m surprised she wasn’t executed!”

  “I think that’s what she wants, but it would be immoral to punish someone who is mad for behaving like they are mad, you see.”

  She did see and quickly had the dwelling of the master tentmaker in sight. She wasn’t sure who or what she expected, but male or female, crazy or sane, it was somebody she could talk to. The fact that the other emigrant claimed to have been a man explained a lot of the behavior. She wouldn’t have much liked being a female in this society, but to have been a man and dropped female into it would be particularly awful.

  Although most of the buildings in these permanent settlements were made of dried mud, Aswam, of course, lived in what looked like a tent city. He proved to be a prosperous middle-aged man with many wives and more kids than could be easily counted.

  “Ack!”he exclaimed, looking disgusted. “That one! She is a demon!”

  “Perhaps, but if she’s from the same place I’m from, as I think she might be, maybe I can do something with her.”

  He led Lori to a small mud hut in back of the tents, not much bigger than the outhouse it sat next to. Unlike most buildings in Erdom, though, this one was not open or covered only with a blanket but had an actual lockable door of wood.

  “I used to store money and records in here,” the tentmaker grumbled. “Now I am saddled with this dead loss!”

  “Why did you take her, then?”

  “Ha! The dowry offered was fantastic, or so I thought. More than any pretty girl is worth. But I tell you, she is so much trouble that I now realize that I was taken!”

  “Why do you keep her locked up? Is she dangerous?”

  “Only to herself. She keeps trying to run off into the Hjolai.”

  “You have the keys”

  “Yes, here. Go ahead in.”

  “What is her name?”

  “She calls herself ‘Julian’ or some such foreign name.”

  She felt some relief that at least it wasn’t poor Gus. He’d had enough done to him up to now. She had to admit to herself that she was also somewhat disappointed that it wasn’t Juan Campos. Being a female in Erdom was just what that bastard deserved.

  “All right. You can leave us. I’ll be responsible.”

  Lori turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and went inside the small hut. It was quite dark, with only slits at the top for letting in light, and quite barren. The floor was covered with a local strawlike grass, and on it a female lay on her side, looking up at the newcomer.

  There was only one way to try to break the ice. She tried English first. “My name is Lori, and I’m from Earth.”

  The effect on the girl was dramatic. She pushed herself to a seated position and looked up at the newcomer. “You’re from Earth!” she responded in the same language and with an American accent. The almost whispery alto voice, however, seemed out of place. “This isn’t just some new trick, is it?”

  “No, it’s no trick.”

  “Well, where I come from, a guy named Lori would be a little suspect.”

  “That’s because the same thing happened to me that happened to you, only in reverse. It’s terrible and ironic, I know, but I was a woman just like you were a man.”

  She stared at Lori for a moment, frowning in the gloom, then shook her head sadly. “Crazy. They said when we got here that this Well was some kind of logical computer. So where’s the logic of making me this and you that!”

  “Yes, I know. I was also an assistant professor of astronomy, which does me precious little good in this place.”

  “You were? I was a shuttle astronaut. A mission specialist. A fancy engineer, really, not a pilot. I’m Julian Beard.”

  “Then you’re one of the two men who came through ahead of us! I knew you looked familiar when they showed us your picture. Your ‘before’ picture, that is. I did some work in Houston a few years back, and you were one of the instructors. Lori Ann Sutton.”

  The name didn’t register, but she didn’t expect it to. Many such scientists and other types had come through there, and she had only stayed a week. Still, Julian said, “Well, that’s a kick in the head and ass. This thing is really screwed up. Dropped us in the wrong bodies in a backward land where even if you were allowed to use what you know, what you know doesn’t work. Would you believe nothing but mechanical energy functions here? Or at least in any controllable way.”

  “I know. But, while I understand your problems being female in this society, how’d you get stuck in this fix?”

  Julian shook her head in disgust. “You just don’t know. First you wake up looking like an alternative evolution from a prehistoric horse, then you find you’re not only a girl but you’ve got four breasts and a big tail and hands like pincers. Then you wander into one of these Bedouinlike camps and you’re treated like a fresh piece of meat. They didn’t care about me. They weren’t even interested in me except as new flesh. Just trying to talk civilly to them gets you a rap in the mouth or worse. Then they decide you’re either high-spirited or too smart or both, and they start trying to break you, body and soul. They were just, well, unspeakable, barbaric, and while they didn’t break me, they pretty much took my soul. I didn’t even want to live anymore.”

  Lori sighed. “I think I can imagine. I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have just killed myself.”

  “That’s just the problem! You can’t. Not really. I tried to figure this out, and even though I’m no biologist, I have a theory. I think, well, in humans, most all males have some female in them. I mean, it’s half the chromosomes, right? And every female has some male hormones to one degree or another. Here the male chromosome seems to have all the male hormones. Either that or male hormones have no effect on females. All the male I am, all the maleness I ever had, is in my head, but the female hormones really take control of behavior. I can’t explain it. I can’t even tell you what it does to you exactly. It’s not like I suddenly woke up a human female. That would be a whole different thing, one you could certainly understand. This is Erdomese, and it’s like a hundred times anything in humans, I’m sure. You know the feeling of walking alone on a dark night in a place you don’t know well? The kind of nervousness or outright fear that’s there? Everything becomes like that. Everywhere. In sunlight as well as darkness. The insecurity is monstrous, overwhelming. You just can’t handle it no matter how hard you try. Like a permanent, unshakable paranoia. You want to be in a group with others, others you know. The urge for security dominates you and overrides anything else. Anything odd happens, you freeze solid or you have an irresistible impulse to run and hide. You only feel safe when you’re with a big group of women you know or there’s a related man around—husband, big brother, father, whatever. For that matter, ever see a wife or daughter talk back or argue with a husband or father here? Most of them just— can’t. They hate it, but they have to take it.”

  Lori nodded, having seen all this behavior in the females. “Maybe it’s vestigial. Not just a sexual division of responsibilities but a true herd mentality. I think this race evolved, or was made to evolve, from some more primitive herd animals. The whole society seems to rise from those primitive roots. The males were the hunters and guardians of the herd. The horn was a natural weapon. I think that’s why males here love this kind of swordplay. And that’s why you kept trying to run off into the desert. It fit the pattern and would still be almost certain suicide.”

  “Yes, that’s it. It was my only way out. That and the fact that I was maybe the only woman in this stinking place who could muster up the guts to sa
y ‘no’ and have enough self-control to mean it. But I couldn’t really fight it. All I could do was piss and moan and make the men’s lives a little miserable. It would be nothing back home—I wouldn’t have had anything to do with a woman who didn’t have that kind of spunk—but here it’s something the guys just can’t handle. So they swapped me off, family to family, and it started all over again. Finally this tentmaker took me to one of their weird priests. I think they’re smart and well educated, because he knew what an engineer was and what computers are and a lot more. We talked for quite a while about who I was and where I was from and what my problem was, and I thought maybe things would improve, but they didn’t. They got worse.”

  “He led you on and then pounced, huh?”

  “Pretty much. In the end their job is to keep everything just the way it is. Just knowing about the outside world isn’t the same as approving of it. It was his idea to lock me up like this. He said it might take a long time, but I was very young—this body’s about fourteen or so—and that eventually, with no stimuli, the biology—he actually called it ‘programming’—would take over completely. He’s right, too. Since I’ve been in here my dreams have gotten more and more mixed up and more and more erotic. My memories are becoming more and more confused, and I have trouble remembering what I was like—before. Even the math tables I used to stay sane when they were trying to break me more crudely fail me. Not that I’ve forgotten them, I just can’t keep my mind on them. I also kept trying to always think in English, or sometimes German, but I just can’t concentrate anymore, and the more my thoughts were Erdomese, the more Erdomese I became. I—I’ve lost so much already, I don’t know how much of me is really left. Here, see? I’m starting to cry, and I just can’t stop it. And I don’t even feel embarrassed about doing it anymore.”