Shadow of the Well of Souls watw-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  “I thought you were immortal,” Lori noted a bit sarcastically.

  “I wouldn’t die, but I’d hate to waste months growing a new pair of legs.”

  The current rulers of the pool were two dozen small creatures whose appearance was unsettling. The largest male was only a meter high, and they all looked to be a sort of tailless ape, with thinly spread, soft, downlike hair covering their bodies except the chests, rear ends, and parts of the faces. They walked stooped over but were definitely bipeds, and for all their smallness and crudeness they looked very, very much like humans, even to the long hair on the heads. But there was just enough of the ape in their features to make them seem slightly more of an anthropological speculator’s exhibit than small humans.

  When the apes spotted the travelers, they didn’t immediately run. Instead, the females let out loud, humanlike screams that panicked all the flying things and many of the smaller land creatures as well; the males stared at them, bared their teeth, and growled menacingly.

  “Good heavens! They’re Lucy’s cousins!” Anne Marie exclaimed.

  “Lucy?” Mavra asked.

  “Doctor Leakey’s fossils from Kenya. The spitting image! Claimed they were some sort of ancestor of Earth humans or some such rot.”

  Lori, in spite of his feelings of alienation from the race of his birth, nonetheless had that primal feeling inside and didn’t much like it. “My lord! You don’t suppose…?”

  “Prototypes or more idea stealing by the makers,” Mavra reassured him, although she didn’t like how familiar they looked, either. “Odd, though. The mammals we’ve seen are all six-limbed. They’re bipeds. They don’t seem to fit in here at all.”

  “Well, I don’t care about mysteries, but some of those creatures best left sleeping are awake now. Whatever these tilings are, they don’t want to move away for us.”

  “Oh, pooh!” Anne Marie said, and with barely a glance, both she and Tony reared up on hind legs, then kicked off and charged right toward the little apelike creatures.

  They could see the panic in the creatures’ eyes. A couple of the males gave hysterical gasps, then they all ran back into the jungle and vanished as if they’d never been there.

  The centaurs pulled up, turned, and looked back at the other three.

  “Poor little things!” Anne Marie commented. “I do hope we didn’t scare them all that badly.” There was a trace of a smile on her lips, though, and she added, “That was rather fun, though, I do admit.”

  They moved in, Lori and Mavra well aware that the feathered snake with the hundreds of teeth was now awake and looking at them from the top of the balcony platform, although it showed no intention of moving from its spot.

  Even Julian was awake, looking weak and pale. Tony had forgotten that she was strapped down on her back when they’d reared and charged. Now the centauress’s look changed from playful triumph to embarrassment, and Anne Marie quickly rushed over and untied the Erdomese.

  “Oh, my dear! We’re so sorry! Are you all right?” Anne Marie asked in English.

  Julian stared back blankly, and Lori ran over to her. “Are you all right? Julian! Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, my husband,” she answered rather weakly and a bit uncertainly. “I—I think so. But I am so thirsty and weak…”

  She seemed as good as she’d been, anyway. “Come, we’ll get you down. When you didn’t answer Anne Marie, I got very worried.”

  “I am gladdened that you were concerned, but I did not answer because I did not understand the speech.”

  Tony frowned and looked up at Anne Marie. “You did ask in English, didn’t you? With the translator it’s hard to tell.”

  “Oh, of course. I’d never expect any of you to speak Dillian.”

  Lori steadied Julian and asked. “Do you understand her now?”

  Julian looked blank. “I know nothing but Erdoma. Why should I understand the speech of an alien?”

  Mavra looked up at Lori. “You better get her a fill-up. I think you bled her dry last night.”

  The water in the pool seemed remarkably clear and appeared safe. Mavra risked a left little finger and decided that it felt just like lukewarm water. Still, she got out a small test tube device from the pack, added some powder, then stooped and carefully let the tube fill with water. After she brought it up and looked at it, all the powder stayed on the bottom and the water remained clear.

  “Unless I miss my guess, it’s plain fresh water,” she told them. “Actually, it’s cleaner than it should be, all things considered. I don’t think anybody should get in it, but we’ll fill the canteens and Julian can drink all she wants.”

  “Fair enough,” replied Lori, still concerned about Julian’s dazed mental state. They began filling canteens and handing them to the Erdomese woman, who drank them down as if she’d been in the desert for months without a drop. The amount of water she finally consumed, particularly considering her size, was nothing short of astonishing. Each canteen held a little over a liter, and she easily and quickly downed a dozen or more canteens full of water before pausing, and she wasn’t through. Even with the Dillians guarding, Mavra kept checking the surroundings for anything dangerous and soon lost count of just how much water Julian finally took in.

  When she was finally, truly done, she looked quite different. The color was slowly coming back into her, and as the sacs in front of and just below her rib cage filled, they actually stretched the skin, pushing out the breasts and making them appear inflated and giving her the appearance of being slightly overweight. She was, too, Mavra thought. At the very least, she’d taken in fifteen to twenty liters of water, enough to add quite a bit of weight. Idly, the lone Earth human wondered if the Erdomese would slosh when she walked.

  “I am much better, husband. Now you, too, should drink, for what you drew from me was not used in ordinary ways and the fever must have drained you.”

  Lori had passed a lot of particularly smelly and discolored urine already, but he knew what she meant. While by no means in the kind of shape Julian had been, he did feel a real thirst. On the other hand, he couldn’t down more than five canteens full, and that was about as much as he’d ever taken in or needed.

  While the others took turns, Julian asked him to sit so that she could clean off some of the muck still on him from falling in the muddy ditch when jumping from the train days earlier. Using her hands opened as fully as they could get, she began methodically rubbing and then brushing away the dried mud as if it were something she did all the time.

  Since she seemed so much better, Lori asked her, “Julian, can you understand any of what the Dillians say? Have you remembered English?”

  “I cannot understand their speech, my husband, if that is what you mean. I know only Erdoma. I do not know what the last word you spoke means, so I cannot answer that.”

  He lay down so she could work on his side and front, and this allowed him to see her face. “Have you lost all memory of the past?” This is crazy, he thought. If anything, it’s me who should be having memory problems after a fever like that.

  She shook her head. “I remember only that I was possessed of an evil spirit and that now that spirit has fled with your sickness. It would please me if you would give me another name, one of your choosing.”

  “But I like your name. I’m used to it.”

  “It is the name of the spirit, not me. It makes me feel bad, and I cannot even pronounce it as you do. Please, I beg you to use the name chosen at our wedding or any other that pleases you.”

  He didn’t like this change one bit. Not any of it. Even if, damn it, it was the fantasy he’d had since they’d left Aqomb. Now that he had it, he didn’t like it at all. She was too much like she’d been when they’d both been under the influence of that hypnotic drug. Too much like, well, all the other young Erdomese women. Still, it wasn’t something he could do much about right now.

  It was true that the “ju” sound was not in the Erdomese language, or anything else that might in
English be pronounced with the “J” sound. Her Erdomese name, Alowi, had been given by the priest at the wedding at least partly for that reason, but they’d never used it except during the post-therapy sessions while under the drug. Ironically, although it wasn’t a traditional Erdomese name, “Lori” had been just fine with the priests.

  “Very well. For now I will use Alowi,” he told her, and she seemed very pleased.

  Cleaned and combed, he did feel better and certainly looked better. By this time they were packing up, and he told Julian—Alowi—to help but got Mavra aside for a moment.

  “You know anything about this change in her?” he asked.

  “A little,” Mavra replied. “It’s not something I can understand, and I never thought somebody with her background would succumb, but you can’t tell about people sometimes. Basically, Julian Beard’s been fighting with the Erdomese body, feelings, customs, and conditioning, and the old personality has been more or less dominant, even when the Erdomese self occasionally peeked through. Last night, in a place alien to both sides, the only person she cared about and really needed in this world was dying, and Julian Beard couldn’t save him with all the accumulated knowledge and skill of a lifetime. Beard had to face not only helplessness but repressed feelings and emotions toward you that the Alowi part, the native part supplied by the Well and conditioned by her new body and situation, wanted so much to express. Beard needed you for any chance of survival or reasonable happiness in this life, but only Alowi had both the knowledge and the additional motivation that could save you. Unlike Tony or you, who surrendered on your own terms, Beard could not. It just wasn’t in him not to fight. When the crisis came and he wasn’t able to deal with it, something gave, and that was Julian Beard.”

  “But that’s crazy! They’re one and the same! Just as I am. It’s true that I’m different; I’ve changed radically since being here, sometimes in directions I don’t like, and I’m still trying for a balance, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  “As a woman, did you ever find another woman sexually attractive? Did you ever fantasize about what it would be like to be a man?”

  “Well, yeah, sure, but…”

  “I will bet you that Julian never found another man sexually attractive, at least not consciously, and his fantasies were about women, not about being a woman. He could take tremendous stress, great pressure, and still accomplish anything he set out to do. But those same traits created an enormous ego, I think, that had a single and absolutist view of itself. What the Well did to him was, to him, so extreme that finding himself a female, she had to be locked up and drugged just to keep her from suicide. You said as much. When you came along, he tried to compromise with his female self, but all that did was shift her from one extreme to the other. On this trip the male side felt in charge again, but last night the crisis was just too much. To help you, she had to put everything out of her mind that was from her male half, both attitudes and experience, and let Alowi completely take over. When that happened, all that repressed emotion just gushed out, suddenly no longer under restraint. Alowi then saved you by doing something Julian could never do—by not thinking. By just letting that Erdomese instinct take control and never doubting if it was right or wrong. She didn’t work so fanatically because she needed you, not in the sense Julian had. She did it because she loves you, and being in love with a man wasn’t something that Julian Beard could handle. When you push something that can’t bend with a lot of force, it breaks.”

  “You sound like a pop psychologist,” Lori noted, but wondered if she wasn’t pretty well on the mark.

  “I don’t know exactly what a ‘pop’ psychologist is, but I think I understand your meaning. Yes, it’s guesswork based on very long experience rather than on being a professional specialist in the mind, and it may not be stated in proper scientific terms, but I’ve had to read and guess right on all types of people to get anywhere at all. And you will have to trust me that I know what rigid egos can do to people.”

  “But—what do I do? Is Julian gone for good?”

  “You live with it, that’s all. All that knowledge and experience is still there someplace; it’s just been sealed off in the same way the person she is now was pretty well sealed off. It might not come back at all, it might partly come back if absolutely needed, or it might creep back and merge with the current personality. Only time will tell. In the meantime it’s causing some trouble for all of us.”

  “Huh? How is it a problem for you?”

  “Since she doesn’t remember English, she can’t speak to or understand the Dillians. That could be a real pain in a tight situation. Damn! I knew Ishould have sprung for the translator!”

  Lori felt a double pang of guilt at the comment but said, “Well, she can still get one somewhere, can’t she?”

  “I think she’d fight having one now. It doesn’t fit with the new personality she’s trying to build and lock in.”

  “I think she’d do it for me,” Lori told her.

  “She might,” Mavra agreed, “but the knowledge of English is still in her mind somewhere, too. These mental things are tricky. A translator is a neat little device that’s tuned to a part of the Well and translates speech, then feeds it back to the brain. Since the Well is everywhere, it seems instantaneous to us. But if her mental state won’t allow her to accept the translation, won’t transfer language except in Erdomese, the gadget is as useless as a computer would be to a Stone Age hunter. Data have to be processed, and if the mind refuses, well, it doesn’t matter whether you get the data or not.”

  “Thanks a lot. One more thing to worry about.”

  Mavra turned sharply toward the wide road leading to the pool and picked up her crossbow. “We have something more pressing to worry about all of a sudden.”

  They could all hear it and even feel it. Something large—no, huge—was coming up that road with enough weight to shake the ground and once again panic all the surrounding wildlife.

  “We could retreat into the jungle!” Tony called.

  “All right! Move back and take cover if you can!” Mavra shouted, but Lori shook his head and said rather softly, “Too late.”

  Into the area strode a monstrous creature, in many ways the largest elephant any of them had ever seen, yet not an elephant, either. For one thing, it was covered in thick reddish brown fur from its small tail to its massive head, hanging down like some impossible fur coat. It moved very slowly on six tree-trunk-sized feet; the creature was probably unable to run or move at all quickly, but something that huge was an irresistible force that never needed to move quickly. Even its trunk was hairy, and on either side of the mouth, which was small only in relative terms, grew two very large, cream white, and dangerous-looking ivory tusks.

  And riding just behind the massive head was a large orange and black catlike creature with a large, fierce head sporting protruding fangs, and a lower jaw and a mouth that was remarkably expressive, almost humanlike. The cat creature, too, was six-limbed, but the forward pair of arms, while fur-covered like the legs, clearly ended in some sort of hands, one of which held an ornate batonlike object. It also wore a sash that was equally ornate, from which hung a scabbard with an ornately carved ivory hilt that obviously led to a very large sword.

  The cat creature tapped gently on its mount’s head, and the beast trumpeted loudly enough to wake the dead. It was clear that the pair was leading at least a small procession, and the sight of the strangers at the pool had signaled a halt.

  “Who be ye and why d’ ye bear arms against the Gekir in the shadow of Basquah?” the cat challenged, the translation faithfully reproducing the archaic speech pattern. The voice was deep and seemed to have an underlying menacing growl, but it was also unmistakably female.

  “Don’t do anything!” Mavra cautioned Lori and particularly the Dillians, who were hearing only very threatening animal noises and had their arms at the ready. “She’s just asking who the hell we are and why we’re here!” It was, after all, a pr
oper question.

  They had finally encountered the Gekir.

  Mavra lowered her crossbow but kept the bolt ready to go. With the gas propellant loaded, she was certain it would drill even through the mammoth, although whether that would do more than annoy it was impossible to know.

  “The bipeds are called Lori of Alkhaz and his wife, Lori-Alowi, of far-off Erdom,” she announced. “The other two are from even more distant Dillia and are the sisters called Tony and Anne Marie Guzman. I am Mavra Chang of Glathriel. We mean neither harm nor disrespect and have not entered your building. We are travelers forced by circumstance, not plan, into your nation, and we are here only to replenish our water supplies and move on.”

  The Gekir, whose feline face was so expressive and rubbery, frowned and cocked her head, looking them all over. “I be Shestah Quom Daahd, elected chief of the Quobok Knights. Put thy weapons away and stand ye all by the far side of yon pool that we may enter.”

  It wasn’t a request; it was an order. Mavra turned and told the others to move where instructed. Right now it was better to try to make friends with these people than to start a fight.

  As soon as they were away from the main area, the chief of the Quobok Knights moved her huge mount in and was quickly joined by four others, filling the area rather handily. The leader’s mount carried only the chief and an elaborate chest secured with straps. The next three, however, carried perhaps four or five Gekirs each, riding on top and in two basketlike carriers hanging down on either side of the animals. Another lone occupant sat atop the last beast, along with an enormous hutlike container that clearly carried all their supplies.

  “Why does she sound like Long John Silver in drag?” Lori muttered.

  Mavra frowned. “Who? Oh, you mean the archaic speech. You can get that and much worse when you’re translating a language that’s very different from yours. When you meet a race that clearly cannot form our sounds, particularly in a nontech hex, and it still sounds exactly right, watch out. That means the translator isn’t translating, it’s interpolating.”