The region hadn’t always been a swamp.
Sometime, in the times hidden by mists forever, it had been a far different sort of place. Not that its climate hadn’t always been hot and muggy, but once these were actually agricultural districts in which the Ambreza raised rice and other grains, controlling the influx of water with a grand complex of locks, channels, dams, and movable dikes so intricate and so ingeniously perfect that under most circumstances they operated themselves with almost clockwork precision, leaving the designers only to do maintenance and harvest the crops. The Ambreza were equally comfortable on land or water then and pushed the art of the purely mechanical almost to its limits.
Now, after countless thousands of years of pure neglect, one could not see a sign of that once-great race of builders and innovators. What might yet be preserved was far down, under layers of rock-hard sediment, volcanic ash, plant spores, and the decomposed remains of innumerable animals and insects.
It was a dismal place now, overrun with dirty water and fallen, moss-covered logs, hidden under a blanket of high trees reaching for the light under skies more gray than clear, leaving the areas below in a twilight of swirling mist that hovered below the branches like a living thing.
It was hard to believe that such a place could ever be tamed, yet the Ambreza had done it, and they were not alone; back on Earth the Kingdom of the Congo had conquered just such a hot, steamy junglelike swamp ten times this size and had built a thriving civilization until slavery, disease, and finally a harsh colonial hand had reduced the population to a point where the control of the land could not be maintained and it had fallen rapidly back to this sort of state. In ancient Cambodia they had tamed such a place so thoroughly that they’d built great temples to their gods in the midst of it, not knowing that they were actually building those temples to their own genius.
The last time Nathan Brazil had been anywhere near Glathriel, the inhabitants had been slowly embarking on just such a taming project, and they were the distant ancestors of the people who lived in this gunk now. What had happened to them? Certainly, this time he’d found nothing in the Ambrezan records or stories to indicate that the former natives had done anything. Nor had it been a quick change, even after his last intervention. All the evidence was that it had been slow, a turning inward, a rejection of what might be, a withdrawal into themselves that spread like some plague from border to border.
What had it been? What had changed them not only mentally and philosophically but physically, as was clear, reverting them to some animal base for reproduction, supplanting even the concept of family in their culture? What now clearly healed them so quickly, a necessity in such a harsh environment for survival, yet made them so passive that they would not even build permanent shelters for themselves or make much of anything with their own hands? What, in fact, had happened to their language, which, as was typical of Terran-evolved tongues, had been quite rich and colorful? He hadn’t taken that from them, just their ability to understand other tongues. Yet the Ambrezans were adamant that they barely had a language at all—a few dozen sounds, many imitative of native animals here, with very basic meaning, and rarely used even then?
Yet they held hands and silently prayed. To whom or what?
He refused to believe it. Something inside him told him that the impression was false. Terrans adapted. They were among the best adapters in the universe. Why, just starting from the plains of Africa and the Fertile Crescent they’d settled the Arctic and the jungles and vast deserts and every kind of climate and unlivable place in between.
As he trudged into the wet jungle, Brazil kept at the puzzle this place represented. Had they adapted too well? No, no, that was unheard of, ridiculous. But the last time at the Well he had done some design tinkering to make this hex their own, to become as if this, not the other place, were what they were originally designed to survive in.
That was what the Well World was, wasn’t it? A gigantic set of laboratories, each with a race designed for the place or a place for the race, set together and wound up and allowed to run their course to see just how viable race and setting really were?
She had held his hands…
Wait a minute! He’d put them here last time to adapt, and they’d done just what the damned Well World was supposed to let them do.
They held hands in a circle and prayed…
They’d adapted.
They’d become something different, gone off in a whole new direction. Whether it was a good direction for people, or bad, or stagnant wasn’t the point. But that was in fact what had happened; he was sure of it.
The human race had trotted off and become something else.
Now the job was to find out what the hell that “something else” was.
That, of course, and find the ever-elusive and apparently deliberately evasive Mavra Chang.
It wasn’t easy to find traces of her, but it could be done. The twin keys were in the eternally wet ground between the marshes that formed a set of complex trails. Some of those trails retained the impression of footprints for very long periods, and one set of prints, appearing infrequently but often enough, was a bit different from the rest. The way this one person walked was different; the prints of the others showed that they walked in a more confident manner, emphasizing the forward area of the foot, while hers showed the full foot coming down with a slight emphasis on the heel.
Clearly, she wasn’t at all unfamiliar with this sort of climate and terrain, but that, too, fit. Assuming that the meteor had finally struck where they’d said it would, it would have come down somewhere deep in the Amazon. What Mavra was doing there was a total mystery, but that was the way the master computer worked when it had to, and he knew that it had come for her as well as himself. The method had been a bit crude yet effective, but the meteor had come in only one way, and it had fragmented over Rio and then struck deep inside.
He wondered if she was doing smuggling or drugs or something or if she’d gone native. It didn’t matter. In fact, it explained why she had headed down here almost immediately if, as now seemed clear, she wanted to avoid quick discovery and, maybe, him. She had to know that he was here.
Or did she? He’d been pretty far gone when he’d fallen into a hex gate on some far-off world so many lifetimes back. Hell, he’d been through it more than once, and even now he couldn’t remember her face. Until quite recently he hadn’t even remembered her name or anything about what she looked like.
Could it be that she no longer remembered who or what she was and had headed here because it was familiar?
If so, she was going to be in for a rude shock if what he now suspected had happened here actually had. This hex was really going to hell in a handbasket, that was for sure. His previous experiences here had been along the coast and once on the extreme southern savannas between the volcanic ranges, but this was a mess. The water had come in to great depths in some places but was shallow in most, and creatures either had managed to come in here or had evolved from more benign forms to some unpleasant types.
The big reptiles that floated in the water and sat along the banks, for example, were very close to alligators or crocodiles, but not quite. They had a leaner, smoother, more primitive look to them, and they seemed less like crocs than some dinosaur relative.
In fact, the whole area reminded him of the Age of the Reptiles before humans had developed. The trees, the giant ferns, the mean-looking fish all seemed from some ancient era. The insects looked pretty modern, the only difference being that some of them were pretty damned big. Mammals were around, but most were small, and it seemed like the smaller ones had tempers worse than the protocrocs while the bigger ones were constantly nervous.
There did seem to be several varieties of small monkeys, or maybe protomonkeys would be a better description, gathered in packs and hanging out in the trees, and there were other small tree dwellers that seemed squirrellike. There were birds of all shapes and sizes, many with very effective natural camouflage and others that would st
and out against anything. Some of the creatures weren’t birds or mammals or anything else, exactly. One of these looked like a medium-sized fish that had rows and rows of teeth and occasionally leapt from the water and flew on multiple wings.
Great. And unless I get lucky, I get to sleep with these critters tonight,Brazil thought glumly. He wasn’t worried about being killed— that was never a worry—but being attacked was always a possibility, and he didn’t like the thought of being savagely chewed up. It took up to two years to grow a new hand or arm or leg, even longer for scars to vanish, and he was not immune to pain.
The idea that this place might be home to thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people wearing nothing at all and living and sleeping in the open was difficult to accept. It was pretty easy to see why the Ambreza never saw any old Glathrielians.
He made good time in spite of his reservations about the wildlife and the thick mud that formed the only safe path.
He realized that the paths seemed to follow a roughly logical plan and wondered if they had somehow been built up or maintained based on those ancient Ambrezan canal systems, but it seemed unlikely. They’d be many meters down by now.
It bothered him that he saw no signs of humanity other than the prints. All those Glathrielians who came and worked the plantations on the other side of the border had to come from somewhere, and that “somewhere” couldn’t be all that far inside. He should see some signs of where they came from and where they went by now, he thought, but there was nothing.
He’d had a later start than he wanted, too, and he didn’t relish bedding down in the pitch darkness in this region. Still, what else could he do?
As he moved in, though, he began to hear various sounds in the bush around him that were unlike the sounds of the creatures he’d been seeing and avoiding all afternoon. Once or twice he was certain he caught a brief glimpse of some man-sized shapes off in the foliage, but when he turned, they seemed to vanish. He wasn’t really worried about the natives; hell, he wanted to find, or be found by, the natives. Rather, he was worried about far larger predators that might be around somewhere that had so far escaped his notice.
As the day wore on toward its end, though, he became more and more certain that he was being watched. There were too many such odd near encounters, and they were increasing—and, frankly, becoming more obvious. Through the swamp noises he occasionally heard what he was certain was a cough or perhaps a grunt. The third time he heard it, he knew that he was in the midst of a number of them and that they wanted him to know it.
What’s the matter, boys? Afraid I’ll touch you?
The worst concern he had was darkness at this point; there was simply no telling what they were waiting for, but darkness in their element would certainly make whatever it was much easier. He was deceptively dangerous for a little man in hand-to-hand combat, but even the biggest muscle man he’d ever seen wasn’t a match for a horde of attackers unless those attackers were total incompetents, and he just didn’t feel that these people were as dull or stupid as they wanted to appear to be to others. There was, after all, quite a good motive for cultivating just the sort of reputation they now had with the somewhat paranoid Ambreza. He couldn’t have imagined that the furry race would have ever allowed Glathrielians free reign in the hex with no monitoring.
He had, however, deliberately placed himself in his current predicament, and he was getting pretty damned tired of it. He stopped at a fairly wide clearing that had some decent grass to hold it, removed his pack, then sat on it and looked around at the apparently silent wilderness.
“All right,” he called out to them. “I don’t know if you can understand me or not, but you sure as hell know you’re being talked to. Now, I am tired and I am pissed off as all hell right now, and my purely mechanical watch here says that it’s about a half hour to sundown. Now, I’m gonna wait here maybe five or ten minutes, and if you want to come out and talk, or fight, or whatever, that’s fine. After that I’m gonna make camp, I’m gonna make a fire, I’m gonna eat something and have an Ambrezan beer with it and maybe then some coffee. If you want any, you’re welcome. If you just want to watch, then piss on you!” He took out a cigar, bit off the end, then lit it with a safety match. More things worked in a nontech hex than most people thought.
He waited until the cigar was almost half-smoked. During that time he had the distinct impression that more and more natives were showing up and sitting out there staring at him. For a starkly lonely campsite in the middle of a jungle swamp, he had the oddest feeling that he was sitting alone on the field at Rio’s largest soccer stadium and that the stands were full. Or was he, rather sitting alone in the center of the Roman Colosseum, the crowd waiting until the lions were ready?
Well, he wouldn’t wait for them. He was as tired and hungry as he’d said he was, and he was going to be set up before dark.
Before too long he had his tent set up and his supplies organized and he’d started a fire. In a nontech hex it was impossible to manufacture a good compressed-gas system, but as long as the mechanism was totally mechanical, nothing stopped anyone from bringing premanufactured canisters in and having a clean fire. He knew how rough he might have to live if he started heading north to the equator, as he would have to do sooner or later. He was not about to sacrifice any comforts at this point if he could avoid it.
He had pre-prepared his own food and had it vacuum-sealed. The Arnbreza and he didn’t really agree on what constituted a hearty, tasty meal, so these were his own creations, and he managed to use three containers to make a fairly decent simmering stew. The Glathrielians were allegedly all vegetarians or worse, but he had enough faith in his recipes that it would have to smell awfully good to humans no matter whether they’d actually eat the stuff or not. The beer was in small plastic containers that held in a cold gas that surrounded the inner bottles. The cap was released with a simple pull, and this, too, worked in a nontech hex. It was a most satisfying meal considering the conditions.
By the time he’d finished, it was dark. Darkness fell rapidly over the Well World almost anywhere, since its axial tilt was virtually nil, and by the time he’d put on the coffee, his fire was the only light. It was enough—for now. When he was done, he’d bring out his lantern and light it, filled as it was with an ingenious combination of small cylinders that fed a small amount of oil to a pan and allowed for a decent all-night light. They might come at him, but they wouldn’t come in total darkness.
He poured the coffee and settled back comfortably, considering relighting the remaining half of his cigar, when he suddenly frowned and looked around by the glow of the fire.
She stood there, just at the edge of the fire, staring right at him. She looked to be maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, fully developed but very young, and she was stark naked and unblemished in any way.
He sat up and stared back at her big brown eyes and saw in them a great deal of intelligence and awareness. There was also something odd about her. She looked like a Glathrielian should look, and yet she didn’t. That all-race exotic cast all the ones he’d seen exhibited wasn’t there; this girl looked more like somebody on the beach at Ipanema. Her features were more classical—sort of an Afro-European mix found in the Caribbean or parts of Latin America—with none of the Asian about her, and she was a lighter, smoother brown.
“Hello,” he said pleasantly. “Want some coffee? I have some paper cups here if you do.”
She frowned, and he really got the feeling that she was honestly trying to make out his words but to no avail. That in itself was odd. It was as if she expected to be able to understand him and was puzzled that she could not.
He gestured for her to come closer and have a seat, and without any hesitancy she did just that, sitting cross-legged on the ground to his left but between him and the fire.
“Excuse me for not offering my hand, but as bad luck as I have with women, I don’t want you to suddenly start screaming and running away in terror or something.” He got up and
went to the fire instead, and holding an empty cup, poured some coffee into it and took it over to her and set it down near her. She watched him all the time like a hawk, but there was no fear in her. She didn’t touch the cup or look at it again, though, and he remembered that they rejected all such things.
She seemed to be thinking about something for a moment, then she leaned over, got on her knees, and cleared a place in the wet soil, making it free of grass. With her finger, she did something in the dirt, then backed away and resumed her seat.
Curious, he walked over and crouched down to look at what she’d scratched there. At first he couldn’t make it out. Some kind of drawing. A box, another box inside of it, and a kind of V mark under it. Shaking his head, he got up, walked around, and looked at it from another angle.
My God, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was a drawing of a television set, he thought, wondering. He suddenly had an awful thought.
Crouching down again, he wiped out her drawing as best he could and traced a different, more irregular design.
She came over, looked at it, then nodded and put a finger at a point on the left and a bit up from the center of the picture.
It was a crude map of Brazil.
He turned and looked at her, then put his right hand up in the air, made a fist, and brought it down with a whistling sound to a boom! in the dirt.
She smiled and nodded, then repeated his pantomime and sound effects, this time taking her own fist into the crude map just where she’d made the dot.
His jaw dropped just a bit. Maybe that was a television! If so, she’s not just some native girl with bad luck, either. He decided to get more ambitious and do a little signing. He’d been pretty good at signing once. It was the only thing that had saved his ass during the sack of Rome.
He traced a circle in the air, then slowly outlined a hex shape, then, with his hand, portrayed his arm going from the circle through the hex to here. She watched and nodded, smiling.
He shrugged to, he hoped, indicate total puzzlement as to how she’d wound up here. It wasn’t supposed to work this way. Nobody was supposed to become a Glathrielian unless the race was in danger of dying out, and at least it hardly looked like that.
Echoes of the Well of Souls watw-1 Page 23