03. Gods at the Well of Souls (38 page)

She, too, was getting pains and the weirdest feelings down there, where they  said the baby would come out. She couldn't imagine a baby coming out of that  little place, but if they said it did, then maybe somehow it did. After a day or two the pains got worse and more frequent, and those strange  feelings got even stronger. It was a kind of pain like no other she could  remember, and she got very worried about it. Anne Marie tried to reassure her,  telling her that it was all normal and that all women who had babies went  through this. But Anne Marie had never had a baby. She'd been too sick. Even she  couldn't know how awful an experience this was turning into and how it seemed to  keep dragging on and on. 

Early one morning, when she was walking from the pit toilet back to the tent for  the umpteenth time, she felt something different, and all of a sudden all sorts  of smelly, gushy, yucky watery stuff was flowing out and down her legs. She knew  that she hadn't peed again and that it hadn't come out of there, and it confused  and frightened her enough that she went to Gus, who was just lying there as  usual, and pointed. 

Gus hadn't much experience in this himself, but he knew something had happened,  and he called for Anne Marie and Tony. 

"Why, I believe her water's broken!" Anne Marie said happily. She turned and  looked straight into the concerned Terry's eyes. "That means the baby will come  very soon now. Not much longer. Hold on. girl! Hold on!" 

That was going to be really hard, because the pains were coming back now full  force, a lot stronger and a lot more often.  

"Shouldn't she be lyin' down?" a concerned Gus asked Anne Marie. "If she wants to," the centauress replied. "Otherwise, let her stand or sit or  whatever. In one sense she's better off than in some hospitals where those  stupid male doctors don't let women stand up or sit and treat this like it's  some kind of illness. It's not an illness, it's the miracle of birth, quite  natural, and about as amazing as anything that has happened to us." Over the next few hours the pains got even worse, and they just kept coming and  coming. She was getting to the point where she no longer cared about anything,  not even the baby. She just wanted it over with. 

"Get Campos in here," Anne Marie instructed. 

Tony looked at her oddly. "Campos?" 

"He claimed he could deliver a baby and had before. I haven't. You certainly  haven't. And I don't want that nasty colonel within a mile of this." "But-the way Campos thinks of her! She could kill the child!" 

"She won't. I've talked to her. She thinks the child is hers. Don't argue! Get  him! Now!" 

It was the most miserable, painful time of Terry's brief memory, worse than  anything, worse than dying. The pain, the exhaustion, the people yelling at  her-she began to hate them all. And it went on. and on, and on ... "Push! Now push!" someone was telling her, and she felt as if she didn't have  enough energy to do anything else at all, but she pushed .. . 

And then the girl who never said a word, never uttered much in the way of sounds  at all, screamed. Screamed with a length and depth that were almost unbelievable  and sent panicky nearby Verionite soldiers running for their weapons. It felt as if she had passed a stone the size of a watermelon, but now,  suddenly, it was over. Somewhere off in the distance she heard the incongruous  sound of a baby crying, but then she simply passed out. 

"Santa Maria! It's a boy! A big one, too!" Campos shouted with unrestrained  glee. She carefully clipped the umbilical cord with a small clamp she'd gotten  from the Verionites, then washed off and wrapped the baby, a rough and tumble  type who clearly didn't want to be out in this weird, cold new environment at  all. Anne Marie took care of the placenta and otherwise cleaned up the mess. "Poor dear! She's passed out, totally exhausted." 

"Shouldn't wonder," Campos commented. "Twelve hours. All But here is the result,  and not a blond hair or blue eye to be seen. These are Latin features on the  child! You see? No Mister Gus with his lily-white north in him!” She laughed.  "Even here, in this place and in this muddled mess, a new Campos is born!" "Well, don't kill him by taking him all over and showing him off!" Anne Marie  scolded. "Give him to me. He should be here when she comes to, and she will have  to nurse him, considering the conditions here. You can go brag all you want.  I'll take care of things at this end." 

Actually it was Tony, who had remained nearby through it all, who had the worst  reaction. She wasn't at all sure now that she wanted to have children, not one  bit. 

Gus was not one to be put off by the fact that it wasn't his child. In fact, it  had never once occurred to him that it might be. He'd almost injured himself all  over again when he'd heard that scream, but when he heard the baby's cry, he'd  sat back down again. 

He wasn't at all sure if it was or wasn't Campos's kid, either, but he was glad  that Campos thought so. It would keep Terry safe for quite a while longer. The fact that mother and baby were doing fine was enough for him.   

It took another three days for Mavra, Lori, and Julian to reach the camp at the  end of the Avenue, but they'd managed an epic cross-country trek without, they  felt, once being detected, and that was something of a victory in and of itself. By that time Julian had a very good idea of what Mavra had in mind, and she  wasn't at all sure that it was any crazier than simply rushing the place. In the wee hours of the morning Julian crept in and examined the soldiers'  little airport. It was dead quiet, the bigfoots asleep out in the field and  everything quite still. There wasn't even a guard on the place, because what  purpose would that serve here? 

There were several of the kites in a storage shed, and all of them looked like  they'd seen a lot of work. Still, they looked about as reasonable as one could  expect, and the belts and such would probably hold Mavra if, of course, she  could steer it by head movements. 

She brought Mavra in to examine them, and the bird woman looked at them long and  hard. Finally she nodded. 

They would not do it tonight, but they would certainly do it quickly. It was  much too dangerous around here to stay long. 

The other question was how to launch and how to get Lori and Julian in with her.  In that regard, there was nothing much she could do except use them to get her  aloft, and then, if she managed to gain altitude in the darkness and make the  proper turn, they would just have to rush full speed through the camp and down  the ramp as soon as Mavra vanished inside the Avenue walls. If Mavra was  through, they'd get through. If she wasn't, what difference would it make? The next morning they tried as best they could with the writing system they'd  developed to make whatever plans they could. 

"You are sure you can fly it?" Julian wrote. 

"I am sure I can. I understand the principle. If I can maneuver the front struts  with my head and beak, I can do it." 

"This is crazy," Julian told her. "We could do as well by just rushing them with  you on Lori. They are sloppy, not on guard." 

"No," Mavra scratched. 'Too risky. Bad guys will try anything to stop me, even  killing you. If I am not with you, they won't. They will be trying for me." "When do you want to do it? We do not even have a watch. How do we know when it  is time?" 

"Guard changes," Mavra told her. "Last night they had two after dark. Second was  at time the door opened. We go on second guard change." 

"The odds are very poor." 

"The Well will not let me fail. Watch out for yourselves, not me." She was so confident that this insane, harebrained scheme would work that Julian  almost believed it. 

Even so, it was hard as hell to get to sleep just thinking about it. All this  way, all this accomplishment, and for what? How much training and experience did  it take for those Verionites to fly those flimsy things? What did they know or  what might they see in the wind currents that was unknown to Mavra? Could she  and Lori even provide enough speed to get lift at all? 

And most important, what was she most afraid of? That she'd fail? That Mavra  would fail? Or that Mavra would succeed? 

What then? 

Would the wonderful wizard have a heart, a brain, and courage to give away? Or  would it just be a small woman behind the curtain pulling levers? At least Dorothy had had an idea of what she wanted, as had her companions. And  she'd never had to fly an unfamiliar aircraft just to get there. She'd even  missed the balloon, hadn't she? And all she'd had to do was click her heels  together three times ... 

This was gonna be a hell of a lot more complicated, and who knew what all the  assembled wicked witches would have ready to stop them? 

They'd seen the centaurs, of course, Campos and her bunch, and the colonel, as  well as the brutal-looking if rather sloppy soldiers. At least nobody seemed to  want to camp out down there at the bottom of the Avenue. It was just too lonely,  too spooky, and too bereft of water and other necessities. 

There had been no sign of Terry or Gus; they could only hope that nothing bad  had happened to either of them. 

Maybe that was enough reason for this crazy business, Julian thought. It's too  crazy to work, and it's too risky as well, but if it does ... 

At least they might be able to get even. 

For all the agony, Terry had delivered quite cleanly. Campos had been ready with  a borrowed and boiled scalpel, but it hadn't been needed. When the baby had  decided to come, it had come, with Terry sitting mostly in an oversized  Verionese chair, gravity doing much of the final work. There was also no real  sign of tearing, although there almost had to be some inside. 

The girl, they decided, was a hell of a quick healer. 

She awoke about an hour after the birth, feeling as if she'd just delivered  boulders. Then she was handed the baby and the baby was placed gently to a  breast, started to suck, and really gorged himself. 

By the next afternoon she'd slept off a lot of it and was feeling remarkably  better and a lot thinner and lighter to boot. She kept the baby with her at  almost all times, except when Campos wanted to see it or show it off, and,  wrapped in a soft blanket, the baby seemed quite content. 

The second day, as she grew more ambitious, walking with the baby along the  barrier, always accompanied by someone, she seemed to grow more and more  interested in the Avenue. That evening, after dinner and feeding the baby, she  went out accompanied by no less than Campos and Tony, the latter just because  she didn't trust anybody around the girl. Terry surprised both the guardians by  going through the barrier and partway down the ramp, holding the baby gently. Campos stared at her, wondering. "Sometimes I think she can see inside there,  see what we cannot," he remarked as much to himself as to Tony. "I wonder what  draws her to it. Does she see or hear something, perhaps?" 

"Hard to say," Tony responded, but she, too, had noticed it. The girl hadn't  shown the slightest interest in the wall or the Avenue in all the time they'd  been there, but now, after the baby had been bom, it was, next to the child, the  only thing that really fascinated her. 

Later on Campos discussed this with the colonel. "You would almost swear that  she saw inside," she told the Leeming. "That she thought that she could just  walk right through." 

"She is such a strange one," the colonel responded. 

Campos was not ready to let it go at that. She'd watched her face staring into  that blank wall too often now. 

"I wonder what would happen if we did take her there when the door opens," she  mused. "What if that 'rewiring' or whatever they did to her back in that  so-called human hex tuned her to the signals in there? What if it is some sort  of mental signal, some frequency that is denied those of us created by its  machinery?" 

"You are actually suggesting that she might be able to walk through?" The  colonel thought about it. "I find that highly dubious, but even if she could,  what good would that do us? She is such a simple sort now. She wouldn't know  what to do once she was in there, I shouldn't think. I often wonder if we would  or if even the controls would be so alien or so beyond our ability to  understand." 

"I grow very tired and very bored here," Campos told him. "I began to think that  our quarry is never going to appear or certainly that they are not going to  appear here. Perhaps they have more patience than we thought. Or perhaps they  weren't as good as we thought they were. There have been no signs, no signals,  no reports. It is as if this world swallowed them up." 

"I share your frustration, but what can we do? If we give up now, it has all  been for nothing." 

"Perhaps. Perhaps I am just playing mental games with myself to keep from going  insane with boredom. I just wonder, though, what would it hurt to take her down  there when the door opens up tonight? If she walks in, she walks in with us.  With all of us, perhaps. As you say, it is probably incomprehensible to us, but  what of that? If she could just walk through, and we with her, in front of the  amazed stares of the guards! Think of that! We would not need Mavra Chang at all  to work our will! Inside, then out. We two and the girl. That alone would be  enough to cause terror in the highest places, yes? And only we would know that  we did not do a thing!" 

"It is foolishness. You are simply letting a poor unfortunate girl throw you." "Still, think of it. If she could, and we did, I would be right, would I not?" "Well, yes, but ..."