Shadow of the Well of Souls watw-2

by Jack L. Chalker

“Eh? What?”

  “Linking up with a specific small boat in open ocean, in either direction. I don’t see how you can find her unless she sits there like a sitting duck waiting for you, and I’m sure she doesn’t.”

  “You’re right,” the Zhonzhorpian admitted. “It’s actually quite simple. No state secret except for the specifics of every operation. Before we set out, we get a very fine customized grid of the entire hex. Thousands of tiny little squares. The rendezvous ship is a scheduled carrier; we know its route in advance, and we know in which of a range of squares along its route the pickup will be made. She doesn’t stop, not even, you’ll notice, for the transfer. We just find her and match her course and speed.”

  “It was impressive—and quick,” Mavra admitted. “Then we proceed to our destination hex, which has another hex map, another customized grid, and another series of scheduled local carriers. We plot them at all times. Once I’m there, I determine where the best one is located, head for it, and reverse the process. Unlike the pickup, I will always have a choice of two or three ships, and even they won’t know which one of them will receive the goods from us, so there can’t be any leaks ahead of time. Similarly, there were several ships similar to this one, any one of which might have picked up the cargo from the first vessel. They didn’t know it would be us, and it might not have been. If anything went wrong, if someone else got there ahead of us, or if they were being shadowed, they would alter their course slightly from the grid and we wouldn’t have seen her.”

  “I see,” she commented. “Very slick.”

  “There are so many spies and agencies out there that it’s impossible to keep them from infiltrating one ship or another on the two ends,” Zitz told her. “What is possible is, since not even the captain knows if he’s the one until he passes the pickup point, we control access to the goods. They pick up; they transfer to one of a number of similar vessels. What does the spy report when he, she, or it finally makes port? And most of the next ports are nontech hexes, too, by design. My crew stays with me, so I know them all. Our rendezvous ship even now does not know it will be the one, so there’s no rumors or leaks from its crew. When we do the transfer, same rules applying, they will take it on and proceed immediately to a point offshore in a nontech or semitech hex and transfer it again, being met by crews who pick the position themselves, then proceed into port on schedule. By the time anyone aboard can get the word out, the cargo and pickup people are long gone. As soon as I make the transfer, I destroy the grid maps. My counterparts will eventually intersect the pickup freighter back there, by the way, see that there is no coded sign that anything is to be picked up, and proceed on as if they had picked up something anyway.”

  “So this is your point of maximum vulnerability,” she noted. “You have the cargo and maps aboard.”

  “True, but for all of that we have ways of dropping the cargo even under pursuit. The captain only needs to remember one grid position and the code number of the grid map no matter where along the route we might be forced to drop it. We would not then bring it in, but once he transferred the grid location and grid code upon making port, someone else eventually would.”

  “Sounds almost foolproof.”

  “It’s very good,” he admitted. “I think it might not be improved upon. It is, however, still a risky business, particularly in high-tech water hexes like Kzuco. We try and stay out of them as much as possible, but it’s not possible on this run. That makes the money much better, but the risks are far greater. That’s why we’re running the short side of Kzuco along the Awbri coast. Awbri’s nontech, not the best vantage point, and once we’re across the border into Dlubine, we’re back in semitech and safer. From that point we can remain in non- and semitech water hexes. I do worry about Dlubine, but not as much as here.”

  “Dlubine has local conditions that create problems?”

  “Several. For one thing, it’s crawling with patrols, sandwiched between a high-tech land and a high-tech water hex and with a lot of islands with small harbors and hidden coves. Also, in Dlubine it’s easier to run by day than by night. You’ll see what I mean the first night we’re there. The water’s lit up like a high-tech city, making it easy to spot you. Easier by day, yes, but murder on us.”

  “Huh?”

  “You can almost make soup with the water, it’s that warm, and the air temperature in the middle of the day is close to lethal for many life-forms. It averages more than half the point to boiling. Even the islands seem like water kettles. Still, it is a lot of sea to find us in, and we do it all the time. Each hex has its problems, so I don’t want to minimize any dangers, but we are used to them. You are not.”

  She nodded. “We’ll stay out of your way. If it comes to a flight, though, you well know I have no stake in being arrested and returned to Gekir.”

  “Yes. You understand, though, that none of you can be allowed to leave this vessel until after the transfer has taken place and we are well away.”

  “We understand,” she assured him. She did not press him on the nature of the cargo; in truth, she already knew what at least some of it was just from overheard conversations among the crew. It was a drug, an extremely addictive drug, that worked on a large variety of warm-blooded creatures. Called by many names in many hexes, it was apparently some kind of deep underwater fungal growth. Alive, one could actually eat it without harm, although it supposedly had a terrible taste. Out of the water, though, it died in minutes and dried out quickly, causing its natural internal fluids to undergo a chemical change, crystallize, and become a very sweet and addicting drug that could be eaten, injected, or who knew what else? Tolerances varied, but apparently for some races one ingestion could be enough to hook a user.

  Lori had come up to get some night air, finding it difficult to sleep below, and had been listening to the conversation. When it was over and Mavra had moved away toward the rail to stare out at the black sea, he went over and stood beside her.

  He’d found this business with the Runner both disgusting and unpleasantly familiar. “It’s the same here as back on Earth,” he growled. “It’s as if there’s no way and nowhere to escape drugs and the predators who sell them.”

  “The universe is composed of predators and prey,” Mavra responded, not sounding cynical but rather as if she were reciting the obvious. “Everyone is one or the other, sometimes both in a lifetime.”

  Lori’s realization that this was a ship in that sort of business and that all the crew were the same sort of creatures as the ones who ran and guarded Don Francisco Campos’s jungle operation, which now seemed not merely a million light-years but also a million real years away. He couldn’t help but wonder if Juan Campos hadn’t already found his niche in this sort of operation here. It was a natural for him.

  He often wondered what had become of Campos. How he’d like to meet the little weasel now, not rat to woman but rat to man. They said that when a sexual change was done, nine out of ten times it was to a female, to which poor Alowi and Tony, too, attested. He’d often thought how he’d love to discover that Juan Campos had become an Erdomese female. It would be real justice, but while Mavra said that the Well was sometimes perceived to have a sense of humor even though it shouldn’t and theoretically couldn’t, both Julian and Tony were proof that there wasn’t a whole lot of justice as he would think of it built into the system. The bastard was probably nine feet tall with four arms and sharp teeth and more rotten than ever as befitted his personality.

  He still wondered about Campos, and not just him. Where was poor Gus, for example? Had he even survived the transfer and transformation? He’d been such a gentle, quiet soul, it was hard to see him outside his element, his cameras and video equipment and other high-tech toys.

  He also wondered about Terry quite often. What was she doing now? Still back there with the People in that rain forest? He knew when she’d decided to be the diversion that she would get the worst of it. Such a bright, educated career woman, highly competent, courageous… The
re were few superlatives for Terry that he didn’t think she deserved. To be shut off for good in the jungle would be intolerable to her, he was convinced. But to emerge, tattooed all over, with bone jewelry threaded through her ears and nose… She’d be a freak. A news story herself for a while, then just a freak. There was no way she could ever lead a normal life like that, and the amount of removal and the cosmetic surgery on her beautiful brown skin would give her a choice between being a painted freak or looking like a burn victim. What kind of a life could she have like that?

  In the end, she’d probably stay in the jungle, perhaps leaving the People and joining a true tribe but remaining anonymous otherwise, or she’d find a convent, become a nun, and remain cloistered for life. Damn it, it wasn’t fair! Terry would have loved this place no matter what she wound up as!

  He finally talked it out with Mavra. “I know it’s a hell of a thing she did for us. I owe her, that’s for sure. When we get into the Well, I’ll see what, if anything, can be done about her. There’s got to be some way to influence it, even though the only direct controls available that I know of from last time are on people here. Funny, though. You jogged a memory. When I got information on Brazil and his party from Zone, there was mention of someone coming in alone who appeared from the pictures to be of our race—or so they said; I never saw them. Somebody who came in after us, snuck by them all, and went through the hex gate before they even knew anyone was there. They said the other one resembled us.”

  Lori was excited at the idea. “You think maybe she—?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. She was diverting the guards, and I know just how they planned to do that. The Well Gate would have closed and self-destructed after I—we—came through because Nathan and the other two had arrived long before. I don’t think there’d be time. No, what I’ve wondered is whether one of the other women, one of the perimeter guards, might have watched us go through and decided to follow her goddess. It would be just like Utra or maybe Rhama to do just that. Poor darlings! What if one of them wound up in a high-tech hex? It’d be bad enough for them to turn into anything else, but a nontech hex they might handle with a lot of work. Still, there was no word of anybody else being reported, so it’s hard to say anything for sure. I do think that if Teysi had come through, she’d have gotten word to us somehow.” She sighed. “No, I’m sure she’s still back on Earth, and I’m pretty sure she’s still in the jungle. Unlike you, she found something in the jungle that she loved. I think she didn’t want to come because she’d already found her version of the Well World. I think she really wanted to stay just as she was.”

  “You didn’t know her. She’d go nuts living in there like that forever.”

  Mavra smiled. “Maybe you didn’t know her. I looked at you over a period of a week or two, and I saw somebody willing to play jungle Amazon and go along because that was better than death, but you were always playing at it. Once you got over your fear and your natural feeling that rescue was at hand, you got into it, but it was always a game with you. You didn’t ever belong there. I looked at her, though, and I saw somebody hiding one hell of a lot of inner pain. I don’t know what it came from, but it was there. And once she got over the same two hurdles you did, she didn’t accept things like you did, she embraced them. I’ve seen the same thing in countless girls who came to us over the years. Like some kind of horrible burden had been lifted, removed from inside them. You fell into a trap; she escaped one. I wouldn’t be surprised if she went totally, completely native.”

  “We saw totally different people,” Lori said, shaking his head. “I wonder which one of us saw the right one.”

  Mavra sighed. “Well, you’ve seen it happen with Alowi, and I would have bet you that Julian Beard would never have flipped out like that. We’ll probably never know for sure about her. At least I’ll try to find out once I’m inside. If I can, and she’s still alive, where and what she is back there will kind of settle it and what I do for her—if I can do much. That jungle was already disappearing at a horrendous rate. I wish I knew how long any of those tribes can continue to exist as they want to exist. It’s a real shame, but it’s the way that whole planet went. Right from ancient times they called it ‘progress.’ I guess it is—if you’re doing the chopping and not being chopped.”

  That brought Lori back to his original train of thought. “What about this drug trade right here? It makes me feel sleazy. Worse than that, it depresses me. Here, all this time, all this civilization, and they wind up like we were going in my old corner of civilization. The whole damned world seemed to be falling into the hands of the Camposes and their ilk.”

  “Well, having used drugs of a sort in the jungle, and earlier in other places, and having done a little smuggling in my time, I can’t be too judgmental about these people. In a sense, they’re the kind of people I was born and raised with. And I can’t really say I’m surprised that this exists here; rather, I’m surprised that it didn’t seem to exist when I was here last. At least not in anything that wasn’t species-specific and too localized to notice. The biggest problem you have if you’re born and raised on the Well World is that you have to face the fact that it’s meaningless. I mean, what can you hope to do? These are the descendants of the leftovers, the last races tested out here. They’re managed from on high—or, rather, from on low—and on the whole, things don’t change very much. That’s why they don’t keep a lot of the kind of history here that we do, on the whole. Even the Erdomese, on their own planet, might discover electricity, might discover radio and video and research biology, and might even figure out a way to get to the stars. They just have less to work with, and it might take them longer. They might not, but it’s possible. Not here.”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s not that bad, I don’t think.”

  “No? You were a scientist. I’ll bet you know enough to create a small renaissance in scientific knowledge in most hexes here, including Erdom. But it’s all useless knowledge, isn’t it? Useless because nothing except muscle and some water and wind power works there, and even then, if you generate a current, it’ll die before it reaches anything that might use it. That was Julian’s problem. Just about every bit of the knowledge she has and the talents she possesses are useless in Erdom. Permanently. She can’t even swagger around and be Senor or Senora Macha. Everything in Julian Beard’s life was denied him as an Erdomese by itself and by being an Erdomese woman in particular. Build things? Paint? With rock-hard mittens for hands? In a land and culture where anything she might do intellectually is considered deviant behavior and women are virtual property—forget it. On top of that he had a ton of guilt over being less than a wonderful human being by his own lights. And his mind-set was so much Mister Macho that he was finally faced with the ultimate problem and it tore him to bits.”

  “You mean he just couldn’t handle being a woman?”

  “No, he couldn’t handle falling in love with a man, you idiot! Even if it was with a man who used to be a woman and still has, I think, a woman’s soul.”

  “Julian? In love with me? I mean, really in love?”

  “Sure. Plain as day. But Julian couldn’t be in love with a guy, just couldn’t handle it, and Julian wasn’t useful in any meaningful way from this point on. So Julian goes, Alowi enters. Call it a split personality if you want, but one of them won. The one who could be in love with you and be of use to you and not go bonkers because of what she could no longer be or do.”

  Lori sighed. “Well, ain’t that a kick in the head. Mavra, I swear to you, even though I never thought it for real until just now, I really did fall in love myself! But with Julian, not Alowi. Not that I’m not still, but, well, it’s not the same.”

  Mavra shrugged. “Well, you have a problem maybe unique in romance, don’t you? I seem to attract the unique in that department. The thing is, though, you’ve got the Julian problem kind of the way he had it.”

  “What? Now you’ve lost me again.”

  “The Well World changes bodies around
. That’s not unique, you know. It’s technology. The same principle as the matter transmitter. I once knew somebody who’s a distant ghost to me now who discovered the same principle on his own. An Earth-human type. It’s not magic. It’s physics and mathematics, and enough of an energy source to do it and enough of a computer to manage all that information. It also does some physiological adjustment so you don’t fall over trying to walk on those legs of yours or upchuck when you wake up as a creature that eats live prey or the like. But the process doesn’t really change the mind, the personality, the soul, as it were. You can’t keep the memories and such and wipe out the rest. You lived too long as Lori Sutton. Somewhere here Juan Campos is still a slimy son of a bitch. Julian completed her own transformation. She became a woman to the soul. Tony—well, that’s a different personality. I think he was a tough guy but very gentle underneath. With all he’d gone through and his double suicide plans for himself and Anne Marie, I think he considered himself dead, anyway. He got an easier break in a better culture to be a woman, even though that one, too, has its sexual divisions and problems. Still, in spite of cultural hang-ups, I think he was one of those rare guys who really liked and respected women. At least he doesn’t see it as a negative. I think he feels he lived a full and decent life as a man and now he’s got a chance to live a second life as a woman. That’s the attitude to take. Like the Hindu belief that we’re reincarnated alternately male and female. To her it’s a whole new life. I’m afraid Anne Marie’s more a problem than a continuing love story for him.”

  “Makes sense.” Lori nodded. “But what about me? You said I still had a woman’s soul. I sure haven’t felt much like it; even my thoughts sometimes would have made the old me very mad.”

  “Oh, you’re obvious. You—just like in the jungle—never got to that point. You’re having a lot of guilty fun playing at being a man. But you’re not. Physically, yes, but not deep down. It’s always easier for women to adjust to other roles and accept them than it is for men.”