Twilight at the Well of Souls wos-5

by Jack L. Chalker

  They all turned and looked in the indicated direction, although there wasn’t much that could be seen. Finally Mavra asked, “You said he punched through, Marquoz. What about Asam?”

  The Hakazit paused a moment before answering. “He’s dead, Mavra,” he said flatly. “He went out like he’d have wanted to, though. In the midst of the battle, when Sangh’s forces bulged and broke the line, he left his command post with two submachine guns, one in each hand, trying to rally the troops to beat back the advance. He almost did it, too. Oh, he was a sight to see, all right! Galloping, cursing, yelling, and screaming as he fired both guns into the troops. His own just had to follow him in, and the carnage they wrought on the enemy was simply fantastic. But Sangh had better field generals than we, and there were simply too many at the breakthrough. He made them pay dearly for him, I’ll say that. They were piled up on all sides of him, mowed down like grains of wheat, but no matter how many he cut down, they just kept coming. And when his guns went dry, riddled with wounds himself, he pulled that old sword of his and waded on in, a magnificent madman. There’s never been anything like it before on this little world, nor many others, either, I’d say. The Dillians will make him their martyr and legend forever, and even his enemies will sing songs in praise of him.”

  She said nothing, but there were huge tears in her eyes at hearing this. She hoped it was true, that it wasn’t being embellished for her benefit. But, then, she told herself, it was exactly what he would do under the circumstances.

  “After the battle,” Marquoz continued, “I managed to get together with Gypsy, who’d changed form to avoid being captured, and we tried using Brazil’s old body as the final ploy. It looked like it worked—they cheered and celebrated, and the fighting stopped pretty well up and down the line. Still, the force that broke through didn’t stop and turn around; we figured Sangh wasn’t totally buying. We fooled him too many times before. He’s going to make sure this time. He’s coming all the way up the Avenue.”

  “I decided to scout up ahead of them and see if I could locate you,” Gypsy added. “It wasn’t long before I came on Ortega’s group settling in here, and I decided to find out what was what. When I learned that he wasn’t here to capture you, and that you hadn’t been seen, I got back to Marquoz, and with the aid of one of those trublaks he’s got, we were able to get him up here to assess the situation.”

  “You took a chance,” Brazil noted. “You couldn’t be sure of Serge’s intentions. He has a history of being devious.”

  Marquoz only shrugged. “It didn’t really matter any more. The end of the game was up here, not back there. I’d done all I could. And, if there were any tricks, maybe Gypsy and I could do something about them. It worked out, anyway.”

  “Yes, it worked out—somehow,” Brazil agreed. “It always seems to. It’s part of the system. The probabilities, no matter how impossible, always break for me when my survival is at stake.” He paused a moment, then continued.

  “Serge, how many people you got here? I mean all told, except for us?”

  “Sixty-four,” he replied. “We had to travel fast and light and I was cashing in I.O.U.s as I went on a target of opportunity basis. Got a lot of good equipment, but not much else. They’re all good people, though, Nate, and the position’s incredible.”

  “Sixty-four,” Brazil repeated. “Against Gunit Sangh’s battle-hardened two thousand.”

  Ortega grinned. “About even, I think. Oh, I don’t think we can hold forever, but we don’t have to. First we get you down to the bottom by crane or whatever it takes, get some food in your bellies, then you get the hell out of here. We did a sweep up and down the Avenue this morning—there won’t be any nasty surprises. We eliminated them for you.” His expression turned serious for a moment. “I had seventy-six when I started. Would have been worse if this high-tech hex didn’t abut the Avenue. You get on down there, now. We haven’t a lot of time to waste.”

  Nathan Brazil looked up at the huge Ulik and cursed his inability in this animal body to express what he was feeling inside now. It was odd; until a few minutes ago, he would have sworn such emotions had died within him thousands of years before. Finally he said, “You could come with us, you know, Serge.”

  “I thought about it,” he replied. “Thought about it a lot. But, now, standing here, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” He stared hard at Brazil’s huge animal’s eyes. “I think you understand. You, of all people, should be the one to understand.”

  Brazil gave an audible, long sigh. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I think I do.” He looked over at the crane. “Let’s get on the road, then.”

  Serge Ortega nodded. “Good-bye, Nate. For all of it, it was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “That it was,” Brazil responded a little wistfully. “That it was. So long, you old bastard. Give ’em hell.”

  Ortega grinned. “Haven’t I always?”

  High, towering cliffs rose from both sides of the Avenue as it made its way from the swampy lowlands up to the Equatorial Barrier. Wind whipped through the pass, creating an eerie, wavering whistle that also carried the subtle undertones of a crashing sea, although there was no sea nearby. The Avenue here was on two levels, a fairly deep center filled with crystal-blue water that allowed the summer melt to drain off, creating the Quilst swamp far to the south; the bank on either side was wide and smooth, although weather-worn and covered with a fine layer of silt and occasional rocks from the slides. It was quite a natural-looking valley except that the stream ran almost dead straight for the length of the border, more a canal than a river.

  The valley ranged from twenty or more kilometers across to less than fifty here at the Borgo Pass. Large rock and mudslides had closed it in over the ages to such an extent that, from a practical standpoint, there was only two-or-three-meters clearance on the Ellerbanta side, even less on the Verion. The walls of the canyon, however, were not sheer and never less sheer than now, at the pass; craggy outcrops every ten or so meters on both sides of the narrow section made ideal emplacements and outposts.

  Serge Ortega surveyed the scene from almost ground level with some satisfaction. Things were getting set up pretty good; as darkness fell there was little left to do.

  Marquoz walked up to him and looked around, admiringly. “It’s damned good organization,” he told the Ulik. “I’m impressed.”

  Ortega turned and gave an odd half-smile. “I am always this way,” he told the Hakazit. “Even more, now, at what might be the climactic point of my life.” He settled back on his huge tail and smiled fully now, eyes looking beyond the other, toward places only he could see. “Consider the life I lived,” he reflected. “It’s been a damned full one, an important one, I think. Rebel, privateer, smuggler, soldier-of-fortune, star pilot—you name it, I’ve done or been it. Then I came here where, in a very short time, I became a politician, then ambassador, statesman, and, ah, world-coordinator. I’ve romanced thousands, drank, fought, generally had one hell of a good time doing it all, too. Now I’m tired and I’m bored. The only thing I haven’t done is die.”

  “You picked a hell of an exit,” the Hakazit noted good-naturedly.

  “Hah! Think I could end a life like mine rotting away in some retirement home? A nice, peaceful death propped up by some nurses so I could gaze lovingly at the stars? Bullshit on that! No, sir! Never! When I go out it’ll be like Asam. They’ll make up songs about me for generations. The bards will tell the tales by firelight and my enemies and their children and their children’s children shall drink toasts to my glorious memory!”

  “And use your memory to scare hundreds of races’ children into being good little kiddies,” Marquoz cracked. “Hell, man, you’ve been around so long they won’t believe you’re dead when they see your body.”

  Ortega considered it. “That would take the cake, wouldn’t it, now? Marquoz, I want you to pass the word. When I go, they’re to burn my body beyond recognition, beyond any hope of even identifying what sort of creature I was. I want n
othing of me left. That’ll scare the hell out of the bastards for two generations.”

  The Hakazit chuckled. “It’ll be done,” he assured the other. He looked out and down the dark pass. “How soon do you think we’ll have company?”

  “Advance scouts and patrols any time now,” Ortega told him. “No main force until dawn, though. A fly couldn’t get through this pass at night against those heat-ray generators up there. The cliff face and slides are in our favor, too. They can’t get a clear shot at any of them without exposing themselves.”

  “In fact, I would come now,” Marquoz came back. “A small force, one traveling light and with skill and silence, with a large part nocturnals and the rest with sniperscopes and computer-guided lasers. I’d do it between midnight and dawn, positioning them just so, knocking out emplacements one by one and quietly. Then I’d charge up here with everything I had at dawn.”

  “I’ve already considered that possibility,” the Ulik replied. “If there’s any hint of movement, we can hit floodlights throughout the fifty or so meters in front of us, radar controlled and tracker types, too. Some of my boys see just fine in the dark, too, and they’re up toward, on the watch. We’re cross-coding our emplacements, too. Every position fires a slightly changing code to its neighbors every ten minutes. No signal, we light up the place anyway and investigate. There’s challenge and reply codes, too, from one point to another. Now, Gunit Sangh probably assumes this, so he’ll try it anyway, not to expect anything but just to test out our defenses a little and keep us all awake until dawn when his well-rested troops will make the assault.”

  Marquoz, who was somewhat nocturnal himself, looked again at the pass. “Hell of a thing, though, asking t oops to march up that. If there’s another way, he’ll take it.”

  Ortega chuckled. “What are troops to him? He knows the score pretty well, too. Two thousand against sixty-six counting you and the Agitar.”

  “I know, I know. The terrain is a leveler, but it’s not that much of a leveler. Not thirty to one. Not when you’ve got nice, mobile high-tech weapons carried by creatures that can climb sheer cliffs and others that maybe could swim right up that deep current there in the middle.”

  Ortega shrugged. “The high-tech favors us,” he insisted. “They have only what the. brought with them and could drag through that gap. No armored vehicles, for example, that could really cause trouble. No aerials, not in this confined space. A full frontal attack through that little gap is what he can do best. He can’t even go over and around, as Nate found out.”

  “But thirty to one…” Marquoz said doggedly.

  “This is similar to a number of situations in my own peoples history,” Ortega told him. “My old people’s —and Mavra’s, and Nate’s, too, I think. Not the flabby, engineered idiots of the Com you knew. The ones who started with a flint in caves and carved out an intersellar empire before they’d run their course. The histories were full of stuff like that, although they probably don’t teach it any more. Six hundred, it was said, held a pass wider than this for days against an army of more than five thousand. Another group held a fortress with less than two hundred against a well-trained army of thousands for over ten days. We need only two. There are lots of stories like that; our history’s full of such things. I suspect the history of any race strong enough to carve civilization out of a hostile world has them.”

  Marquoz nodded. “There are a few such examples in the history of the Chugach,” he admitted. “But, tell me, what happened to those who held that pass after their time limit was reached? What happened to those people in that old fort after the ten days?”

  Ortega grinned. “The same thing that happened to the Chugach in your stories, I think.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Marquoz sighed. “So we’re all going to die at the end of this?”

  “Thirty to one, Marquoz,” the snake-man responded. “I think the terrain brings the odds down to, say, five to one. Only a few hundred of them will finally make it through, but they will make it. Too late to stop Nate, though, if we do our jobs right. But, tell me, Marquoz, why are you here? Why not with them? You could enter the Well with them, get immortality if you wanted it, or anything else you might wish. I think he’d do it for you—it’s a different situation than last time. He made you the offer, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Marquoz replied. “He made the offer.”

  “So why here, in a lonely pass on an alien planet? Why here and why now?”

  Marquoz sighed and shook his massive head. “I really don’t know. Call it stubbornness. Call it foolishness, perhaps, or maybe even a little fear of going with them and what I might find there. Maybe it would just be a shame not to put this body and brain to important use. I really can’t give you an answer that satisfies me, Ortega. How could I give one that would satisfy you?”

  Ortega looked around in the darkness. “Maybe I can help—a little, anyway,” he reflected. “I bet if we went around to every one of our people here, all volunteers, remember, we’d get the same sort of feeling I got now. A sense of doing something important, even pivotal. I think that in every age, in every race, a very few find themselves in positions like this. They believe in what they’re doing and the rightness of their cause. It’s important. It’s why they still tell the stories and honor the memory of such people and deeds even though their causes, in some cases their whole worlds, are long dead, their races dust. But you’re not stuck in the position, Marquoz. You put yourself directly into it when you could have sat back and made a nice profit.”

  “But that’s exactly what I’ve been doing my whole life,” the Hakazit responded. “I could never really belong to my own Chugach society. I was the outsider, the misfit. My family had wealth, position, and no real responsibilities so I never really had to do anything. I studied, I read, I immersed myself in non-Chugach things as well. I wanted to see the universe when the bulk of my race had no desire to see the next town. I was the ultimate hedonist, I suppose— anything I wanted and no price to pay, and I hated it. Just me, me, me—the position most people say they’d like to be in. I can’t say I’ve lost my faith, because I never had any to begin with. The way of the universe was that the people with power oppressed the people without it. And if the people without it suddenly got it, by revolution or reform, they turned around and oppressed still other people or fought among themselves to have it all. Religion was the sham that kept the people down. I never once saw a god do anything for anybody, and most religions of all the races I knew were good excuses for war, mass murder, and holding onto oppressive power. Politics was the same thing by another name. Ideology. The greatest social revolutionaries themselves turned into absolute monarchs as soon as they consolidated their power. Only technology improved anything, and even that was controlled by the power brokers who misused it for their own ends. And what if everybody got rich and nobody had to work? You’d have a bunch of fat, rich, stagnant slobs, that’s all.”

  Ortega grinned at the other’s cynicism, the first he had ever encountered that far exceeded his own. “No romances in your life?” he asked.

  The other sighed. “No, not really. I never felt much of a physical attraction for anyone else. The Chugach are romantics in a sense, yes; sitting around drinking and telling loud lies about their clans, singing songs and creating artistic dances about them. But, personally, no. I never liked my people much, really. A bunch of fat, rich, lazy slobs themselves. You know, there are stories on many worlds about people lost in the wilderness as babies and raised by animals that come out thinking and acting like animals. There’s more to that than to physical form. Externally I was Chugach, yes; internally I was… well, something else. Alien.”

  Ortega’s eyebrows rose. “Alien? How?”

  Marquoz considered his words. “I once met a couple of Com humans who were males but absolutely convinced that, inside, somehow, they were spiritually female. They were going to have the full treatment, become biologically functioning females. Maybe it was psychological, m
aybe it was pre-birth hormones, maybe it was anything—but it wasn’t really sexual in the usual sense. Those two males were in love with each other, yet both were going to be females. Crazy, huh? I identified with them, though, simply because I was an alien creature in the body of a Chugach. No operation for me, though—it wasn’t that simple. I was an alien inside the body of a Chugach, trapped there. I didn’t feel like a Chugach, didn’t act like one, didn’t even think like one. I felt totally alienated among my own people.”

  “I have to admit it’s a new one to me,” Ortega admitted. “But I can see how it might be inevitable.”

  “Not so new. I think all races have their share. Here, on the Well World, with 1,560 races all packed closely together, I’ve run into a lot of it. I suspect it’s a more common ailment than we’re led to believe. People just don’t talk about it because there’s no point. They’re just called mad, given some kind of phobia label, and told they must learn to adjust. And what can you do about it? You can’t go to the local doctor and say, ‘Make me over into something else.’ Consider how many of the humans regarded the Well World with longing. A romantic place, a place where you could be changed into some other creature totally different than you were. And for every one that was repulsed by the idea, there was at least one who fantasized what they wanted to be and were excited by it.”