Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  The Diviner and The Rel might be looking at him in an equally odd and uneasy way, he realized, but he would never know. He would not like to be, would not ever be, in its world. But it was in his, and that gave him a small measure of comfort.

  "Will this Hain stay loyal to you?" The Rel asked, apparently using its chimes to form the words, which gave it a total lack of tone or coloration.

  "My technicians assure me so," replied Azkfru confidently. "Although I fail to see why she is necessary to us in any event. I feel uneasy trusting everything to someone so new and unknown."

  "Nevertheless," replied The Rel, "it is necessary. Remember that The Diviner predicted that you would receive one of the outworlders, and that the solution to our problems was not possible without an outworlder present."

  "I know, I know," Azkfru acknowledged, "and I am grateful that it was me who was contacted by your people. We have as much stake in this as you, you know." He fidgeted nervously. "But why are you sure that this one is the outworlder needed?"

  "We're not," The Rel admitted. "The Diviner only knows that one of the four who came in that party is needed to open the Well. One was destined for Czill, one for Adrigal, one for Dillia, and one for here. Of the four, yours was known to be psychologically the most receptive to our offer."

  "I see," Azkfru said, uncertainty mixed with resignation in his tone. "So twenty-five percent was better than zero percent. Well, why not just grab the others so we're sure?"

  "You know the answer to that one," The Rel responded patiently. "If we missed just one of these Entries, it would hide and we couldn't monitor it. This way, we will know where they are and what they are doing."

  "Um, yes, and there's the second prediction, too."

  "Quite so," The Rel affirmed. "When the Well is opened all shall pass through. Thus, if we keep one of them with us, we will stand the best chance of going through with them."

  "I still wish I were going with you," the baron said. "I feel uneasy that the only representative of my people will be a conditioned alien of known untrustworthiness."

  "One of you is going to be conspicuous enough," The Rel pointed out. "Two of you is an advertisement for hundreds of other uneasy governments. Right now, neither of us knows if our agreement is duplicated by others with any or all of the other three."

  That idea made Azkfru more uncomfortable than ever.

  "Well, damn it, you—or half of you, or whatever—is The Diviner. Don't you know?"

  "Of course not," replied The Rel. "The present is as closed to The Diviner as it is to you. Only random snatches of information are received, and that in rather uncontrolled fashion. Getting this much is more than we usually get on anything. Hopefully more pieces will fit together as we progress."

  Rather than disturbing him further, this news reassured him instead. So the damn thing wasn't omnipotent, anyway. Still, he wished he knew more about the creature that stood before him. What were its powers? What tricks did it have up its sleeve?

  The fear that most consumed him was of a double cross.

  The Diviner—or The Rel—seemed to sense this, and it said, "Our hexes are as alien as can be. We have no commonality of interest or activity. You are an incomprehensible people to us, and your actions are equally so. Never would we be here, in peril of our sanity, were it not for the urgent single commonality our races share: survival. We are satiated in the summing process, and active in the coefficient of structure. Our sole object is to keep everything just the way it is."

  The baron didn't understand any of it, but he did understand that mutual survival was a common bond, and the assurance that they wanted to preserve the status quo. The trouble was, he could say exactly the same thing and not mean a word of it.

  And now all of his future rested on Datham Hain.

  The baron gave the Akkafian equivalent of a sigh of resignation. He had no choice in the matter. That conditioning must hold!

  "How soon do you wish to begin?" he asked the Northerner.

  "A lot depends on your end," The Rel pointed out. "Without Skander the whole scheme falls apart, the sum clouds and changes to an infinite number."

  "And you can point him out, only you," the baron replied. "I'm ready when you are."

  "No more than a week, then," The Rel urged. "We have reason to suspect that Skander will move out of reach shortly after that."

  "Very well," the baron sighed, "I'll condition two of my best Markling warriors. You don't need Hain for this part, do you?"

  "No," responded The Rel. "That will do nicely. We'll have to work at night and hide out during the day, so it will take a good day to set us up once there. Another two days to get there, inconspicuously, if possible. Can you be ready within a day period from this moment?"

  "I think so," the baron replied confidently. "Anything else?"

  "Yes. While you prepare the two assistants I should like to talk to one who understands structures and electrical systems. Is that possible?"

  "Well, yes," the baron affirmed with some surprise. "But why?"

  "It will be necessary to perform some minor sabotage to ease our task," The Rel explained enigmatically. "Although we have studied it, we want to confirm our necessary actions to be doubly certain, hopefully with one who comprehends such things."

  "Done," Azkfru told the creatures. "Now I must attend to other matters. Go out the side there and an assistant will take you to a room that will be private. I will send the technicians to you."

  "We go to prepare," intoned The Rel, and floated out the designated exit.

  Azkfru waited several minutes until he was certain the Northerner was well away, then went over to the doorway to his main waiting room and pressed the opening stud with his right foreleg.

  "Enter, Mar Datham," he said imperiously, and quickly got back to the dais that served as his work area. He struck his most awesome pose.

  * * *

  Datham Hain entered on the words, a shiver going through her at their majesty. Almost hypnotically, she entered the office.

  She stopped as she saw him, and bent down automatically in a gesture of extreme subservience. Orgiastic spasms shook her, and she cowed in awe and fear.

  He is God, she thought with absolute conviction. He is the epitome of greatness.

  "My Lord and Master, I am your slave, Datham Hain. Command me!" she intoned and meant every word of it.

  The sincerity carried over to Azkfru, who received it with satisfaction. The conditioning had stuck.

  "Do you give yourself to me, Mar Datham, body and soul, to do with as I would, forever?" he intoned.

  "I do, Master, my Lord God, I do! Command me to die and I shall do so gladly."

  Great now. Forever, if she was around all the time. But she would have only a few interviews until he had to trust her with all he had. Well, here goes the kicker, Azkfru thought.

  "You are the lowest of the low, Mar Datham, lower than the fikhfs that breed to be eaten, lower than the defecations of the least of those fikhfs," he intoned.

  And it was so, she realized. She felt as low and as small as she could ever get. She felt so tiny and unimportant that she found it hard to think at all. Her mind was a complete blank, yet basking on pure emotion in the presence of Him who was All Glory.

  "You will remain lowly scum," the Master pronounced, "until I have other use for you. But as you are the lowest of the low, so can you be raised to the heights by my command." Now came the clincher. "A great task will be placed in your hands, and your love and devotion to me above all else will determine all that is in your future, whether it be the mindless cleaners of the defecation pits or," he paused for added emphasis, "perhaps even the chief concubine of a king."

  Hain groveled all the more at this thought suddenly placed in her witless head.

  "And your name shall now be Kokur, nor will you answer to any other but it, and so you will stay and so you will be until you have successfully carried out my tasks. Then only will you be restored to a name, and then that name will be g
reat. Go, now. My servant shall show you your duties until I shall call you for the task."

  She turned and left the office quickly, on quivering legs.

  When the door closed behind her, the baron relaxed.

  Well, he thought, it is done. For the next few days, if The Diviner and The Rel were successful, Datham Hain would truly be as low as one could get. Although consciously obedient and happy, that nasty subconscious would be helplessly humiliated by the job and the status, and that was perfect. After a few days, Hain would be willing to do anything to get out of there, and she would be offered a permanent return to that miserable state as opposed to elevation as high as she could possibly reach.

  Hain would serve him, he felt confidently.

  Kokur wasn't a name, it was a job description.

  Until The Diviner and The Rel returned, Datham Hain would work in the defecation pits, piling up the huge amounts of crap his barony produced—including her own—and then treating it with a series of chemicals and agents that would change its composition into a horrible but physically harmless mess. Hain would not only work there, she would sleep in it, walk in it, and, as her sole diet, eat it. And the only name she could respond to or think of herself as was Kokur, which meant dung-eater.

  When off with The Diviner and The Rel, it would be a constant and humiliating reminder of her lowly status and her lifelong fate for failure, a reminder that would even reach others through the translating devices used around the Well World.

  Datham Hain would be a most obedient slave.

  Actually kind of attractive, he thought. Too bad she's a breeder.

  DILLIA—MORNING

  (Enter Wu Julee, Asleep)

  Wu Julee awoke from a dreamless sleep and looked around. She felt strange and slightly dizzy.

  The overriding fact that hit her was that the pain was gone.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head briskly. The dizziness worsened for a moment, then things seemed to steady.

  She looked around.

  She was in a beautiful forest, the likes of which she had never seen before. Trees grew straight as poles fifty or more meters in the air, almost disappearing into a slight morning mist. The undergrowth was equally lush and a vivid green. Beautiful flowers grew wildly all around her. There was a trail nearby, a nicely maintained one made of deep sawdust lined with small, irregular stones. There was a slight but steady roaring sound in the distance, but it didn't seem threatening, only curious.

  The path seemed to lead toward the roar in one direction, and she decided to follow it. Walking felt strange to her, but she thought little of it. She felt strange all over. She walked slowly down the trail about a kilometer, and it led her to the source of the increasing roar.

  She came upon a waterfall, dropping majestically in three stages down the side of a mountain whose gray rocks were well worn by uncounted years of erosion. The falls fed a stream, or river, which flowed swiftly but rather shallowly over a rocky bottom seen clearly through the greenish tinge to the water's surface. Here and there, she saw logs and remnants of logs that had fallen due to weathering or age. Many were covered with mossy yellow-green growths and several were nurse trees, their dead and decaying limbs providing a haven from which newer trees of a different type were growing. Small insects hummed and buzzed all around, and she watched them curiously.

  A sudden crackle of underbrush made her turn with a start. She saw a small, brown-furred mammal with a rodent's face and a broad flat tail jump into the stream carrying a twig in its mouth. Her eyes followed it until it made the opposite shore and ran into the underbrush formed by swampy weeds and long grains of grassy plants diagonally opposite her.

  Still acting without conscious thought, like a newborn child seeing the world for the first time, she went up to the stream just far enough down that she wasn't caught in the spray from the great falls.

  She looked down at her reflection. She saw the face of a young woman barely in her teens, a face that looked back at her. Not beautiful, but pleasant, with long brown hair falling down over small but well-formed breasts.

  She reached up with one hand and brushed back the hair on one side. Her skin was a light brown, her palms a slightly lighter color but seemingly made of a tougher skin. I've got pointy ears, she thought, seeing them revealed by the brushed-back hair. And they were pointed, the insides a soft pink. Although not really large, she realized that they would probably protrude slightly if she stood perfectly erect. On some sort of impulse, she tried to wiggle her ears—and they moved noticeably!

  Then she looked down at her body. At the waist the very light down that began just below her breast thickened into hair of the same color as her skin. Her eyes moved down to two stocky legs that ended in large, flat hooves.

  That's strange, she thought. Hooves and pointed ears that wiggle.

  For no reason in particular she turned her body at the waist almost halfway around, and looked in back of her. A long, sturdy-looking equine body supported by two hind legs was clearly visible—and a tail! A big, brushy tail she found she could wiggle.

  What am I? she thought in sudden fear. Where is this?

  She tried to remember, but could not.

  It's as if I was just born, she thought. I can't remember anything. Not my name, not anything.

  The reflection and the body looked totally strange to her.

  I remember the words, she thought. I know that this is a stream and that is a waterfall and that that person in the water is a reflection of me, and I'm a young girl.

  She hadn't even realized she was a girl until then.

  There was a term for this, she thought, and she tried to remember it. Amnesia, that was it. People who couldn't remember their past. Somehow she felt that she had never been to this place before, and that something was different about her, but she couldn't think of what. She just stood there by the edge of the stream for several minutes in stunned silence, not knowing what else to do. Several insects buzzed around her rear, and with an automatic motion she brushed them away with her tail.

  Suddenly her ears picked up the sound of laughing—a girl and a boy, she thought. They were coming down the trail! Quickly, almost in panic, she looked around for a place to hide, but found none before the pair came trotting down the path. They look like the top half of people stuck onto the bodies of working ponies, her mind thought. Her face turned quizzically at the thought. What were people anyway, if not these? And what were ponies?

  The two beings were not really large, but the boy was almost a head taller and proportionately larger than the girl. The male was a golden color, with silver-white hair down to his shoulders and a full beard, neatly trimmed, of the same color. The girl, curiously, was a mottled gray mixed with large black spots, and this coloration extended to her upper torso. Her hair was a mixed gray and black, her gray breasts much fuller than the amnesiac onlooker's.

  No navels, she thought inanely. We don't have navels.

  The pair saw her and stopped almost in midlaugh. They surveyed her curiously, but without any trace of hostility or alarm. "Hello!" called the boy—he looked no more than fourteen or fifteen, the girl about the same. The voice was a pleasant tenor, with a slight, indefinable accent. "I don't think we've seen you here before."

  She hesitated a moment, then replied hesitantly, "I—I don't think I've ever been here before. I—I just don't know." Tears welled in her eyes.

  The two centaurs saw that she was in some distress and rushed up to her.

  "What's the matter?" the girl asked in a high-pitched adolescent voice.

  She started to cry. "I don't know, I can't remember anything," she sobbed.

  "There, there," the boy crooned, and began to stroke her back. "Get it all out, then tell us what's going on."

  The stroking had a calming effect, and she straightened up and wiped her eyes with her hand.

  "I don't know," she managed, coughing a little. "I—I just woke up down the trail and I can't remember anything—who I am, where I a
m, even what I am."

  The boy, who was even larger in comparison to her than he was to his companion, examined her face and head, and felt the skull.

  "Does it hurt anywhere when I do this?" he asked.

  "No," she told him. "Tickles a little all over, that's all."

  He lifted up her face and stared hard into her eyes.

  "No glaze," he commented, mostly to himself. "No sign of injury. Fascinating."

  "Aw, come on, Jol, what'd you expect to find?" his companion asked.

  "Some sign of injury or shock," he responded, almost in a clinical tone. "Here, girl, stick out your tongue. No, I mean it. Stick it out."

  She did, feeling somewhat foolish, and he examined it. It was a big tongue, flat and broad, and a gray-pink in color.

  "All right, you can stick it back in now," he told her. "No coating, either. If you'd have had some kind of shock or disease, it'd show."

  "Maybe she's been witched, Jol," the spotted gray centaur suggested, and drew back a little.

  "Maybe," he conceded, "but, if so, it's nothin' to concern us."

  "What d'you think we oughta do?" his girlfriend asked.

  Jol turned and for the first time Julee saw he had some kind of saddlebag strapped around his waist.

  "First we take our shower," he answered, removing an irregular bar of what must have been soap, some cloths, and towels from the bag, then unstrapping it and letting it fall to the ground. "Then we'll take our mystery girl here to the village and let somebody smarter than we are take over."

  And they proceeded to do just that. After some more hesitation, she joined them, following their actions and sharing a towel.