Midnight at the Well of Souls wos-1

by Jack L. Chalker

  No, dependence, he thought.

  I’ve never been dependent on anyone, but now I need somebody. For the first time in my long life, I need somebody.

  He was dependent on Wuju, almost as much as she had been dependent on him in the early stages of their relationship.

  He tried to think up logical reasons for that not being the case, to rationalize his feelings, but he could not.

  He traced in the dirt, “but i’m now bigger than you are.”

  Grondel laughed and read it to her. She laughed, too.

  Then he wrote: “tell her about deer part.” Grondel understood, and explained how Brazil was really two beings—one man, one animal—and how he had already lapsed into deer while thinking.

  She understood. When still, such as during the night, he would have to be staked like a common deer to keep him from wandering away. And he couldn’t even drive his own stake!

  Dependence. It grated on him as nothing ever had, but it had the feel of inevitability.

  He hoped fervently that his body was still alive.

  * * *

  Grondel had finally collapsed in sleep and was snoring loudly in a nearby tent.

  Brazil and Wuju were alone for the first time, he suffering the indignity of being staked so he couldn’t wander off.

  They had worked most of the day on his getting used to the body, adjusting to the vision and color blindness, the supersensitive senses of hearing and smell. The speed in his sprint amazed him and Wuju both. As fast as she had seemed when he was human, she now seemed terribly slow, ponderous, and exhausted while he was still feeling great. He also discovered that his hind-leg kick could shatter a small tree.

  A few things were simplified, of course. No packs needed now, he could eat what she ate. No drag on speed—he could run as fast as Cousin Bat could fly, maybe faster for short periods.

  If only he could talk! Make some sort of sound!

  Wuju looked at him admiringly. “You know, you’re really beautiful, Nathan. I hope they have mirrors in Czill.” She still talked mildly distorted, but Grondel had been forcing her to use the old language so much during the past day and a half that it was becoming easier, like a second language.

  She came and stood beside him, pressing her equine body against his sleek, supermuscled antelope body. She started to rub him, actually pet him gently.

  His mind rebelled, though he didn’t try to pull away or stop her.

  I’m getting excited as hell! he thought, surprised. And, from the feel of it, there was a lot of him to get excited.

  His first impulse was to stop her, but instead he moved his head over and started nuzzling her neck with his muzzle. She leaned forward, so his antlers wouldn’t get in the way.

  Is it the animal, or do I want to do this? a corner of his mind asked, but the thought slipped away as irrelevant, as was the thought that they were still two very, very different species.

  He stroked her equine back with the bottom of his snout and got to the bony hind end. She sighed and slipped off the leash that was attached to his hind leg. They continued.

  This was a crazy, insane way to have sex, but the deer in him showed him how.

  Wuju finally had what she wanted from Nathan Brazil.

  * * *

  Brazil awoke feeling really fine, the best in many long years. He glanced over at Wuju, still asleep, although the sun had been up for an hour.

  Isn’t it funny, he thought. The transformation, the commitment, the crisis, and the way those people had served me have all come together to do what nothing else had.

  He remembered.

  He remembered it all, all the way back.

  He understood, finally, what he had been doing before, what he was doing now, why he survived.

  He considered the vessel he wore. Not of his own choosing, of course, but it was serviceable if he could just get a voice.

  How great a change to know it all! His mind was absolutely clear, certain, now that everything was laid out before him. He was in total control now, he knew.

  Funny, he thought, that this doesn’t change anything. Knowledge, memory, wisdom aside, he was the culmination of all of the experiences in his incredibly long life.

  Nathan Brazil. He rolled the name around in his mind. He still liked it. Out of the—what?—thousand or more names he had had, it had the most comfortable and enigmatic ring.

  He let his mind go out across the land. Yes, definitely some sort of breakdown. Not major, but messy. Time dulls all mechanisms, and the infinite complexity of the master equation was bound to have flaws. One can represent infinity mathematically but not as something real, something you can see and understand.

  And yet, he thought, I’m still Nathan Brazil, still the same person I was, and I’m here in Murithel in the body of a great stag and I’ve still got to get to the Well before Skander or Varnett or anyone else does.

  Czill. If what he had heard was right, they had computers there. A high-technology hex, then. They could give him a voice—and news.

  Grondel emerged from a tent and came over to him. He strained at the rope on his left hind leg, and the Murnie understood and freed him. He went immediately to the big patch of bare dirt that was his writing pad. Grondel followed, grumping that he hadn’t had anything to eat yet, but Brazil was adamant and anxious.

  “What’s on your mind, Nate?” he asked.

  “how far here to czill center” Brazil traced.

  “Already, huh?” Grondel muttered. “Somehow I knew it. Well, about a hundred and fifty kilometers, maybe a little more, to the border, then about the same into the Czillian capital. I’m not sure, because I’ve never left this hex. We don’t get along well with our neighbors, which is fine with us.”

  “must go,” he scratched. “in control of self now. important.”

  “Ummm… Thought you weren’t going there across Murithel for a vacation. All right, then, if I can’t dissuade you. What about the girl?”

  “she comes too,” he scratched. “will work out easy code for basic stuff, stop, go, eat, sleep, etc.”

  And that was the way they worked it out, Brazil thinking of as many basic concepts as he could and using a right leg, left leg, stomping code for them. Twelve concepts were the most he could work on short notice without fear that she would mix them up. He also had to assure them several times that he would not wander away or stray again. She accepted it, but seemed dubious.

  They ate their fill of the grasses. Grondel would ride Wuju with them to the border. Though Nathan was safe as a branded, purebred stag, she was not. A Murnie accompanying them would ease her passage.

  They followed the stream, passing first the spot where his body had lain, the mud and bottom still disturbed from the action. They made exceptionally good time, and Brazil enjoyed the experience of being able to move quickly and effortlessly, so powerful that the mud couldn’t trap him, nor could the brisk pace tire him. He just wasn’t built for riding, though; and Wuju had to carry Grondel, which slowed her more than usual. It didn’t matter.

  They made the border shortly after dark on the second day. On the morning of the third, after Grondel had refreshed Wuju on the stomp code, they bade him good-bye and crossed into Czill. The air was extremely heavy with an almost oppressive humidity, the kind that wets you with a fine, invisible mist as you move through it. The air was also oppressive with carbon dioxide, which seemed to make up one or more percent of the atmosphere, although oxygen was so far above their previous norms that it made them feel a little light-headed. Were it not for the great humidity, Brazil thought, this would be a hell of a place for fires. As it was, he would be surprised if a match would burn.

  They ran into Czillians soon enough, strange-looking creatures that reminded him of smooth-skinned cactuses with two trunks and carved pumpkin heads. Neither he nor Wuju had a translator now, so communication was impossible, but at the first village center they reached, they managed a primitive sort of contact.

  The place looked like a g
reat, transparent geodesic dome, and was one of the hundred or more subsidiary research villages outside the Center. The Czillians were surprised to see a Dillian—they knew what Wuju was, but as far as any could remember none of her race had ever reached Czill before. They regarded Brazil as a curiosity, an obvious animal.

  About the only thing Wuju could get across to them were their names. She finally gave up in frustration and they continued on the well-maintained road. The Czillians sent the names and the information of their passage on to the Center, where it was much better understood.

  Brazil paid a lot of attention to Wuju, and their lovemaking continued nightly. She was happy now and didn’t even wonder how Brazil, who led, was picking the right direction at every junction as if he had been there before. In her mind the only question that mattered was about his human body. She felt a little guilty, but she hoped the body would not be there or would be dead.

  She had him now, and she didn’t want to lose him.

  Late in the morning of the second day, they came to what was obviously the main highway of the hex, and followed it. It was another day and a half before they got to the Center, though, since it was not in the center of the hex as Grondel had thought, but was situated along the ocean coast.

  They arrived just as darkness was falling, and Brazil stomped that they would sleep first. No use going in when there was only minimum staff, he thought.

  As he made love to her that night, part of her mind was haunted. The rest of him is inside that building, she thought, and it upset her. This might be their last night.

  * * *

  Cousin Bat woke them up in the wee predawn hours.

  “Brazil! Wuju! Wake up!” he shouted excitedly, and they both stirred. Wuju saw who it was and greeted him warmly, all her past suspicions forgotten.

  Bat turned to Brazil unbelievingly. “Is that really you in there, Brazil?”

  Brazil nodded his antlered head affirmatively.

  “He can’t talk, Cousin Bat,” Wuju explained. “No vocal cords of any kind. I think that upsets him more than anything else.”

  The bat grew serious. “I’m sorry,” he said softly to Brazil. “I didn’t know.” He snorted. “Big hero, plucking the injured man from the jaws of certain death. All I did was make a mess of it.”

  “But you are a hero!” Wuju consoled him. “That was an incredibly brave and wonderful thing.” Well, there was no avoiding it. The question had to be asked.

  “Did he—is his body still alive?” she asked softly.

  “Yes, it is, somehow,” Bat replied seriously. “But—well, it’s a miracle that it’s alive at all, and there’s no medical reason for it. It’s pretty battered and broken, Wuju. These doctors are good here—unbelievable, in fact. But the only thing that body will ever be good for is cloning. If Brazil were returned to it, he’d be a living vegetable.”

  They both looked at Brazil expectantly, but the stag gave no indication whatsoever of emotion.

  Wuju tried to remain normal, but the fact that a great deal of tension had suddenly drained from her was obvious in the lighter, more casual tone she used. “Then he’s to stay a deer?”

  “Looks that way,” Bat responded slowly. “At least they told me that the injuries were already too severe for me to have caused the final damage. They can’t understand how he survived the Murnie blows that broke his neck and spinal column in two places. Nobody ever survived damage like that. It’s as good as blowing your brains out or getting stabbed through the heart.”

  They talked on until dawn, when the still landscape suddenly came alive with awakening Czillians. Bat led them into the Center, and took them to the medical wing, on the river side.

  The Czillians were fascinated by Brazil and insisted on checking him with electroencephalographs and all sorts of other equipment. He was impatient but submitted to the tests with growing confidence. If they were this far advanced, perhaps they could give him a voice.

  They took Nathan down to a lower level after a while and showed him his body. Wuju came along, but one quick glance was all she needed and she rushed from the room.

  They had him floating in a tank, attached to hundreds of instruments and life-sustaining devices. The monitors showed autonomic muscle action, but no cranial activity whatsoever. The body itself had been repaired as much as possible, but it looked as if it had been through a meat grinder. Right leg almost torn off, now sewn back securely but lifeless in the extreme. The giant, clawed hand that had ripped the leg had also castrated him.

  Brazil had seen enough. He turned and left the room, climbing the stairs back to the clinic carefully. They were not built to take something his size and weight, and the turns were difficult. He didn’t fit in the elevators, which were designed for Umiau in wheelchairs.

  Having a 250-plus-kilo giant stag walk into your office can be unsettling, but the Czillian doctor tried not to let it faze it. The doctor heard from Bat, who had heard it from Wuju, that Brazil could write. Since soft dirt was one thing that was very plentiful in Czill, it had obtained what appeared to be a large sandbox filled with dry, powdery gray sand from the ocean shore.

  “What do you want us to do?” the doctor asked.

  “can you build me voice box,” Brazil scratched.

  The doctor thought a minute. “Perhaps we can, in a way. You might know that the translator devices, which we import, sealed, from another hex far away, work by being implanted and attached to neural passages between the brain and the vocal equipment—whatever it is—of the creature. You had one in your old body. We now have nothing to attach the translator to in your case, and putting anything in there would interfere with eating or breathing. But if we could attach a small plastic diaphragm and match the electrical impulses from your brain to wires leading to it, we might have an external voice box. Not great, of course, but you could be understood—with full translator function. I’ll tell the labs. It’s a simple operation, and if they can come up with anything, we might be able to do it tomorrow or the next day.”

  “sooner the better,” he scratched, and started to leave to find Bat and Wuju.

  “Just a minute,” the doctor called. “As long as you’re here, alone with me, I’d like to take up something you might not know.”

  Brazil stopped, turned back to it, and waited expectantly.

  “Our tests show you to be—physically—about four and a half years old. The records show that the average life span of the Murithel antelope is between eight and twelve years, so you can expect to age much more rapidly. You have four to eight more years to live, no more. But that is at least that many years longer than you would have lived without the transfer.” It stopped, looking for a reaction. The stag cocked his head in a gesture that was unmistakably the equivalent of a shrug. He walked back to the sandbox.

  “thanks anyway,” he scratched. “not relevant,” he added cryptically, and left.

  The doctor stared after him, puzzled. It knew that everyone said Brazil might be the oldest person ever to live, and certainly he had shown incredible, superhuman life and stamina. Maybe he wants to die, it mused. Or maybe he doesn’t think he can, even now.

  * * *

  The operation was a simple one, performed with a local anesthetic. The only problem the surgeon had was in isolating the correct neural signals in an animal brain so undesigned for speech of any kind. The computers were fed all the neural information and some samples of him attempting speech. They finally isolated the needed signals in under an hour. The only remaining concern was for the drilling in the antlers, but when they found that the bony growths had no nerves to convey pain, it simplified everything. They used a small Umiau transistor radio—which meant it was rugged and totally waterproof. Connections were made inside the antler base, and the tiny radio, only about sixty square centimeters, was screwed into the antler base. A little cosmetic surgery and plastic made everything but the speaker grille blend into the antler complex.

  “Now say something,” the surgeon urged. “Do it
as if you were going to speak.”

  “How’s this?” he asked. “Can you hear and understand me?”

  “Excellent!” the surgeon said enthusiastically, rubbing its tentacles in glee. “A landmark! There’s even a suggestion of tone and emphasis!”

  Brazil was delighted, even though the voice was ever so slightly delayed from the thought, something he would have to get used to. His new voice sounded crazy to his ears, and did not have the internal resonance that came with vocal cords.

  It would do.

  “You’ll have a pretty big headache after the anesthetic wears off,” the surgeon warned. “Even though there are no pain centers in the antlers, we did have to get into the skull for the little wire contacts.”

  “That won’t bother me,” Brazil assured them. “I can will pain away.”

  He went out and found the bat and Wuju waiting anxiously in the outer office.

  “How do you like my new voice?” he asked them.

  “Thin, weak, and tinny, very mechanical-sounding,” Bat replied.

  “It doesn’t sound like you at all, Nathan,” Wuju said. “It sounds like a tiny pocket radio, one that a computer was using. Even so, there’s some of you in it—the way you pause, the way you pronounce things.”

  “Now I can get to work,” Brazil’s strange new voice said. “I’ll have to talk to the Czillian head of the Skander project, somebody high up in the Umiau, and I’ll need an atlas. In the meantime, Wuju, you get yourself a translator. It’s really a simple operation for you. I don’t want to be caught in the middle of nowhere with you unable to talk to anybody again.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said the bat. “I know the place fairly well now. You know, it’s weird, that voice. Not just the tiny sound from such a big character. It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. I’ll have a time getting used to it.”

  “The only part that’s important is your calling me a big character,” Brazil responded dryly. “You don’t know what it’s like to go through life being smaller than everybody else and suddenly wind up the largest person in a whole country.” Brazil felt good; he was in command again.