Midnight At the Well of Souls

by Jack L. Chalker

  Bat stayed aloft as long as he could, but finally decided he had to land. He was just coming out of the fight, and the exhilaration and extra pep that had flowed through him had waned. Reluctantly, he made for the valley and flew along until he found a place with no Murnies in the immediate vicinity. He landed, breathing hard, thinking of what he could do.

  In a few minutes he had his wind back, and decided on a plan that the odds said was ridiculous.

  He had to try.

  No more running, he told himself. If I can do it, I'll do it.

  He took off and flew back to the camp, seeing that he was in luck. The stag was staked to a post in the ground, apparently asleep, away from Brazil, who was covered with the mud compounds and leafy stuff, still in the open.

  Brazil weighed around fifty kilos, he guessed. The litter? Five more? Ten? I can't do it, he thought suddenly, fear shooting through him. That much weight, for all that distance!

  Suddenly he thought of the Dillian girl. He had lost track of her while following Brazil, but he couldn't take the time now. Nothing he could do in her case regardless, he knew. But she had run all out, all that distance on the ground, never stopping, cut and speared—way beyond her limits, while hungry and weak.

  You've been eating well, Bat told himself sternly. You're as big and strong and healthy as you'll ever be. If she can do it . . .

  Without another thought he swooped down to Brazil, and took one side of the litter, folding it over so he held both branches in his feet with Brazil wrapped in the middle. He took a quick glance around. So far so good. Now—could he take off, no ledge, no running start, with this load?

  He started beating his great wings furiously, aided by a timely gust of wind that rustled the grass across the plain. He rose, and beat all the more furiously. Too low! he thought nervously. Got to get height!

  The furious flapping brought Murnies running from their tents, including the big one.

  "No! No! Come back!" the medicine man screamed, but the wind picked up and Bat was on his way, over the stream and down along its course, the unconscious Brazil hanging from the folded litter. Cousin Bat did not believe in gods or prayers, yet he prayed as he struggled to keep up speed, height, and balance. Prayed he would make it to Czill and to modern medicine without killing Brazil, himself, or both.

  * * *

  With shock and dismay the medicine man watched Bat fly into the darkness.

  "Ogenon!" he called in a deep, rough voice.

  "Yes, Your Holiness?" a smaller, weaker voice replied.

  "You saw?"

  "The body of the honored warrior has been taken by the one who flies," Ogenon responded in a tone that seemed to wonder why such a stupid question had been asked.

  "The flying one is ignorant of us and our ways, or he would not have done this," the medicine man said as much to himself as to his aide. "He flew east, so he's taking the body to Czill. I'll need a strong runner to get to the border. Now, don't look at me like that! I know how foul the air is over there, but this has to be done. The Czillians must realize when they see the warrior's body and hear the winged one's story what has happened, but, if the body survives—not likely—they will not know of the survival of the essence. Go!"

  Ogenon found a warrior willing to make the trip in short order, and the medicine man instructed him what to say and to whom, impressing on the runner the need for speed. "Do the message in relays," the old one said. "Just make sure it is continuous and that it is not garbled."

  Once the instructions were given and the runner was off into the darkness, the large Murnie turned again to his aide, who was looking extremely bleary-eyed and was yawning repeatedly.

  "Get awake, boy!" snapped the elder. "Now, locate the six-limbed creature and tell me where it is."

  "That's simple, Your Holiness," Ogenon responded sleepily. "The six-limbed one is under treatment at the Circle of Nine. I saw it being dragged there."

  "Good," the old one replied. "Now, you'll have to go to the Base Camp and bring an elder to me, Elder Grondel by name."

  "But that's—" Ogenon started to protest, yawning again.

  "I know how far it is!" the big one roared. "You can make it there and back before dawn!"

  "But suppose the Revered Elder won't come," the aide wailed, trying to get out of the assignment and to get back to sleep.

  "He'll come," the medicine man replied confidently. "Just describe to him the three alien creatures we've had here this night, and tell him particularly of the honored warrior and of what has happened. He'll beat you here, I'll wager, even though he's eighty years old! Now, off with you! Now!"

  Ogenon went, grumbling about how everybody kicked him around and he always had to do everything.

  Once out of sight, the elder couldn't hold back his own yawns anymore, yet he didn't return to his tent and mat but sat down in the, for him, very chilly night air.

  All he could do now was wait.

  * * *

  Wuju relived the nightmare run for hours, then, suddenly, woke up.

  I must still be dreaming, she thought. Everything was fuzzy and she was feeling quite high. She couldn't believe what she saw.

  She was in a Murnie camp, in the earliest light of dawn, and there were horribly loud and grotesque snores all around her. Sitting in front of her, arms around its knees, was the biggest Murnie she had ever seen—taller than she, and she stood over two meters. It was also oddly colored, on the whole a deeper brown than she, laced only here and there with spots of the light green that was the usual color of these strange creatures.

  From a distance they had looked like walking rectangular bushes. But here, up close, she saw that they had a rough skin that folded and sagged, like partially melted plastic, all over their body. They looked like a large trunk of a body with no head, she thought. The eyes, huge as dinner plates, were located where the breasts should be, and perhaps thirty centimeters below them was that enormous mouth, a huge slit that seemed almost to cleave the trunk in two. There was no sign of hair, genitals, or, for that matter, a nose and ears.

  The drug or whatever it was seemed to be wearing off more and more. This isn't a dream! she thought suddenly, as fear ran through her. She tried to move, but found her legs were all roped to stakes deep in the ground, and her hands were tied behind her. She struggled in panic to pull free, and the sound woke up the big brown Murnie. Its huge eyes opened, deep yellow with perfectly round, black irises that reflected the light almost like a cat's.

  "Do not struggle," the creature said to her. The words were mushy, as if they were uttered in the midst of a roar, but they were understandable. It was speaking a language it knew but its mouth was not suited to its use.

  "I said do not struggle!" the Murnie repeated, getting up and stretching in a very human fashion. "You are quite safe. No one will harm you. Can you understand me? Nod if you can."

  Wuju nodded fearfully, panic still all over her face.

  "All right, now listen well. It is difficult for me to speak this tongue, and I must concentrate carefully to get the words out. You can understand me, but I cannot understand you, I don't think. Say something."

  "What—what is all this?" she almost screamed.

  The Murnie scratched his behind with his huge, wide hand. The arms were almost to the ground when drooping by his side. "I thought so. I could not understand a word. You have no translator. You must concentrate hard, like me. Think, then answer. What language am I using?"

  She thought for a second, then suddenly realized the truth. "Confederacy!" she exclaimed, amazed. "You are an Entry!"

  "All right. I got Confederacy but nothing else. That is because all Entries continue to think in their original tongue. What they say is automatically transformed in the neural passages to the language of the native hex. You can understand me, therefore you can speak it as I do if you think hard, make your mouth form the word you think. Take it slowly, one word at a time. Tell me your name and the name of your companions. Then try a simple phrase, on
e word at a time."

  Wuju concentrated, the fear and panic evaporating. Once this one had been one of her own kind! A potential friend she would need most of all here. As she started to speak she saw what he meant, and adjusted.

  "I-ahm-Wuju," she managed, and it almost sounded right. Her mouth and tongue wanted to make a different set of words. "Moy frandiz ahar Nathan Brazil ind Cooseen Baht."

  "Nathan Brazil!" the big Murnie exclaimed excitedly, suddenly very wide awake. The rest of what he said was unintelligible.

  My god! she thought. Does everybody on this crazy planet know Nathan?

  The Murnie suddenly frowned, and scratched the side of his head thoughtfully. "But the other was an old-culture man by description," he mused, suddenly looking at her again with those huge yellow eyes. "You mean he still looked like his old self?" She nodded, and his great mouth opened in surprise. "I wonder why he wasn't changed in the Well?"

  "Whahr est Nathan?" she managed.

  "Well, that's really the problem," the Murnie answered. "You see, he's sort of in two places at once."

  * * *

  He was a former freighter pilot like Brazil, the native told her, on the line for over two hundred years, facing his fourth rejuve and with all his family and friends dead, his world so changed he couldn't go home. He had decided to commit suicide, to end the loneliness, when he got a funny distress signal in the middle of nowhere. He had veered to investigate, when suddenly his ship had seemed to cease to exist around him, and he had fallen into the Zone Well and wound up a Murnie.

  "They are good people," he told her. "Just very different. They can use nothing not found in nature or made by hand. No machines at all. They are bisexual, like us—although an alien couldn't tell who was who. Strong families, communal, with a strong folk art and music—herdsmen who breed the antelope we eat. Very hostile to strangers, though—they would have killed you last night."

  "Den woi om I ailoif?" she managed.

  "You're alive," he replied, "because you killed about two dozen warriors, directly that is, plus the fire and the like."

  She didn't understand, and said so.

  "The Murnie nation accepts death naturally," he explained. "We don't fear it, nor dwell on it. We live for each day. It's far more enjoyable that way. What are respected most and valued most are honor and courage. You all displayed that last night! It took raw courage to run the plain, and great honor to keep going until you dropped rather than give in. If you had surrendered, they would still have killed you. But they found both you and Brazil, badly wounded, unconscious in different parts of the stream bed. It would have been cowardly and dishonorable to have killed you. You had gained respect—so they dragged each of you to the camp nearest where you were found, and your injuries were tended to. Our medicine is quite advanced—this is a rough hex."

  "Nathan!" she exclaimed. "Ist hay arriot?"

  "He was banged up much worse than you," the Murnie replied gravely. "You're going to hurt for a while when the herbal anesthetic wears off, but you have nothing more than four or five deep scratches on your back and a lot of bruises. We have treated them, but they will ache." He paused for a second. "But Brazil, he was much worse. I don't know how he kept going. It's not possible. He should be dead, or, at best, totally paralyzed, yet he walked almost a kilometer down that streambed before collapsing. What an incredible will he must have! The Murnies will sing stories of him and tell of his greatness for centuries! In addition to the hundreds of minor bone breaks, the enormous amount of blood he lost from gaping wounds, and a badly lacerated leg, he had a broken back and neck. He got a kilometer with a broken back and neck!"

  * * *

  She thought of poor Nathan, twisted and bleeding, paralyzed and comatose. The thought made her sick, and it was several minutes and several attempts before she could concentrate on speaking Confederacy again. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she couldn't stop crying for several minutes. The fierce-looking Murnie stood there feeling helpless and sympathetic.

  Finally she managed, "Ist—hay ist stull aliff?"

  "He is still alive," the Murnie replied gravely. "Sort of."

  "Hay Ist oncun—uncrunchus?"

  "Unconscious, yes," the Murnie replied. "I said, remember, that this was a rough hex that prized honor and courage, and had a lot of knowledge and wisdom within its limits. Because Murithel is totally nontechnological, the inhabitants have turned, aside from herbal compounds and muds, to the powers of the mind. Some of these doctors—and they are doctors—have enormous mental powers. I don't understand the powers, and I doubt if they do. These people study and concentrate over half their lives to develop the powers. By the time they're strong enough to be useful, the wise men—Holy Ones we call them—are elderly, sometimes with only a few years to live and to teach the next generation." He paused again, and started pacing nervously, trying to think of how to say it.

  "When Brazil was brought in so battered and close to death," he said carefully, "he was already, because of his tremendous courage, the most legendary character ever to be here. The Holy One who examined him did what he could, but saw that death was probable no matter what. He summoned five others—six is a magic number here, for obvious reasons—and they performed a Transference of Honor. It has only been done three or four times since I've been here—it shortens the life spans of the Holy Ones by a year or more. They reserve it for the greatest of honor and courage." He stopped again, his tone changing. "Look, I can see you don't understand. It is difficult to explain such things when I don't understand it, either. Umm. . . . Are you a follower of any religion?"

  The idea of religion was extremely funny to her, but she answered gently, "No."

  "Few of us are—or were, in my day, and I'm sure it's worse now. But here, against these hills and on these plains, you learn that you are ignorant of almost everything. Call it mechanical, if you will, a part of the Markovian brain's powers, like our own transformations and this world itself, but accept it: that which is us, our memories, our personality, whatever, can be not only transformed but transferred. Now I—stop looking at me like that! I am not insane. I've seen it!"

  "Arrh sou stelling moi daht Nathan ist naow e Murnie?" she asked, unwilling to believe but unwilling to disbelieve, either. Too much had already happened to her on this crazy world.

  "Not a Murnie," he replied evenly. "That would involve superimposing his—well, they call it his 'essence'—on somebody else. No, when someone's so respected that he rates a Transference of Honor, he is transferred to the best thoroughbred breeding stag or doe. Don't look so shocked—they are of such high quality that they are instantly recognized. No one would eat them, or even bother them.

  "If, then, the body can be successfully brought back to health—which is rare or the Holy Ones would never do the Transference in the first place—he is switched back. If not, he is revered, cared for, and has a happy and peaceful life on the plains."

  "Nathan est un ahntlupe?" she gasped. It was becoming easier to talk, although her pronunciation was still terrible.

  "A beautiful pure stag," the Murnie acknowledged. "I've seen him. He's still drugged. I didn't want him coming out of that state until you and I were both there to explain it to him."

  "Ist der—ist der unny chants dot hes boody wall liff?" she asked.

  "Will his body live?" the Murnie repeated. "I'm sure I don't know. I honestly doubt it, but I would have said that the Transference of Honor was more likely than going a kilometer with a game leg, a broken back, and busted neck. The outcome will depend on how much damage he receives beyond what's already done."

  Then he told her of Cousin Bat's rescue. "He obviously could not consider us civilized or Brazil anything more than the victim of primitive medicine. Would you? So he plucked Brazil's body up and is even now taking it to Czill where they have a modern hospital. If the body survives the trip—and from what was told me I doubt if it survived the night, let alone the trip—the Czillians will know what happened. One of our people is
getting the news to them sometime today just in case. They can sustain the body's functions indefinitely if it's still alive, though an empty vessel. Their computers know of the Transference of Honor. If they can heal the body, it can be returned here for retransference, but that is not something to pin your hopes on.

  "I said I experienced three Transferences in my eighty years. Of them all, none of the bodies lasted the night."

  Nathan Brazil awoke feeling strange. Everything looked strange, too.

  He was on the Murnie plain, he could see that—and it was daylight.

  So I've survived again, he thought.

  Things looked crazy, though, as if they were seen through a fish-eye camera lens—his field of vision was a little larger than he was used to, but it was a round picture vastly distorted. Things around the periphery looked close up; but as the view went toward the center of the field of view, everything seemed to move away as if he were looking down a tunnel. The picture was incredibly clear and detailed, but the distortion as things around the field of view bent toward the fixed center made it difficult to judge distances. And the whole world was brown—an incredible number of shades of brown and white.

  Brazil turned his head and looked around. The distortion and color blindness stayed constant.

  And he felt funny, crazy, sort of.

  He thought back. He remembered the mad dash, the fire, falling off Wuju—then everything was dark.

  This is crazy, he thought.

  His hearing was incredibly acute. He heard everything crystal-clear, even voices and movements far away. It took him several minutes to sort out the chatter, finally assigning about eighty percent of it to things he could see.

  There were Murnies moving around, and they all seemed to be light brown to him, although he remembered them as green. Suddenly he heard footsteps near him, and he turned to see a huge Murnie that was all very deep brown coming toward him.

  I must be drugged, he told himself. These are aftereffects of some drug they gave me.