Echoes of the Well of Souls (25 page)

"But you said he couldn't be killed!" Lori pointed out.

"He can't, and neither can I, but almost everything else bad
can
happen to us. This is unlike anyplace else. It is like crossing dozens of little alien worlds, each a few hundred kilometers across. Many are friendly, but others are hostile to all outsiders, and even the weather and climate change. Some of the places, and races, have great power and can be downright ugly. It is almost a cosmic joke that we both start far away in Glathriel. Almost as if, perhaps unconsciously, he
wanted
it to be as hard as possible. And whichever of us gets there first will have great power—and great discretion. I don't know if I can beat him there, but if I waste little time and get to it, I might.
He
won't go alone, and if any of the natives here pick up on who he is, they will try and insure that they are there, too. I cannot beat him alone. That is why we are having this conference. I need your help. I won't do much selling. Come to save your family, friends, and world. Come to gain what rewards I can shower on you if I win. Come for the most unique adventure of your lives. But I need friends and allies."

"But what can we do?" Lori asked her. "We don't even know where or, if I can believe it,
what
we'll be!"

"No, you don't. But any hex gate—and there is one in each hex—will bring you back here. Leave a message telling me where you are. I will find you. Do
not
try and find me. I will have to avoid Brazil, and you will not be prepared for such a journey. But I need to know where and what you are. If you cannot do it yourself, send word. I will find you. I have already had the worst done to me on this world, and I am better suited for it. Understand?"

"Yes, I think so," Lori answered, and Juan Campos nodded thoughtfully.
If she can work this thing, then she has access to all that power . . .
"Gus?"

"Yeah, sure. Do they have cameras here? And news?"

"Some hexes do, of various kinds. Some do not. Depends on where you are. It even depends on where you are whether any sort of camera will work. As to news, that, too, varies. You will find something, Gus. The Well is random but not
completely
random. The important thing is that you will be hale, hearty, healthy, and ready to go no matter
what
you are, and soon."

"You can count on me," Juan Campos told her, and Lori looked over at him and frowned.

"I'll come," she said, "if only to make sure you don't get to like this slime ball before you get to know him." Campos looked pained.

"I don't believe a word of this, so why the hell not?" Gus told her.

Mavra smiled. "Good. You get that word to me, and I will get to you. Do it as soon as you can. I cannot wait in Ambreza for long, and I certainly will not want to return here again once I have set out. I will give you—let's see—a month. Four weeks. That will give you enough time and will allow me to find out what I need to know and secure what I will require for the journey. Four weeks."

There was a sudden loud series of grunts and roars from across the room. The translator said faintly, "That's enough! Let's go!"

"Good luck to you all," Mavra told them, and hugged Lori. Then she picked the translator up and returned it to the Kwynn.

"I thought you were saying good-bye, not giving speeches," he harrumphed. "All right, everyone! Outside that door and to your right!"

Lori bent down to pick up Gus, but he said, "I might make it. Help me to my feet."

She did, worried about his long captivity in bonds and his weak condition, and sure enough, he collapsed. She reached down and picked him up gently.

"Damn! This is
embarrassing
!"
Gus muttered.

They followed the ambassador down another long series of corridors, past rooms with strange-shaped entrances that contained a variety of horrific or mythical creatures and even worse smells and noises. Mavra could see Campos looking for a way out. Finally they reached the end of a dead-end corridor, and in front of them was a black hexagon as dark and nonreflective as the one atop the meteor.

"I still don't see how this is possible," Lori muttered aloud.

"Matter to energy conversion," the ambassador replied. "And energy to matter. Quite simple in principle, although of course none of us know how to do it. Who is first?"

"Ah, hell," Gus said with some disgust. "Does she have to carry me into that thing?"

"While there's nothing specific against it, it's not traditional to send two through at once," the Kwynn replied. "However, it is not exactly a transit point. You could literally be
thrown
in and it would not matter. You would still feel as if you'd fallen asleep, so they tell me, and then awaken on the ground wherever you are assigned."

"Well, if somebody'll stand me up and give me a little push, I'll go," Gus told them.

Mavra went over and helped Lori, and together they got the man, taller than Lori by almost a head and taller than Mavra by head
and
shoulders, on his wobbly feet. Then, together, they gave him a push forward, and he managed a step into the blackness, pitched forward, and was gone.

Lori stood there looking nervously at the gate. "I really don't know," she sighed. "I never much liked the sight of myself in a mirror, but there's a lot worse things to be than me. Now's a hell of a time to find that out, though, isn't it?" She took a deep breath. "Well, here goes nothing." And with that, she leapt into the blackness.

Mavra looked at Campos, who bowed slightly and made a gesture that could only mean either "ladies first" or "after you." She shrugged, smiled at him, and jumped in.

"Now you, sir," the ambassador told him. "Go ahead."

"I think I want to consider this a little more carefully," Juan Campos replied. "Like a day or two. Maybe next year?"

The ambassador sighed and turned as if to lead the way back, and his huge tail came around, struck Campos a hard blow, and flung him into the blackness.

"Thank goodness for
that
!"
sighed the ambassador, and began the walk back to his offices.

It had taken Terry some time to catch up with the others. She made several false turns, and though she had barely avoided some terrifying creatures, the place had been pretty deserted. She'd finally found them just as they were being led away by a pink dragon.

Hearing nothing of the briefing and knowing nothing of where they were, she made the instant assumption that her companions had been captured by the creature. She followed at a distance, hoping at least to see where they would be taken. Maybe, just maybe, she could get them out.

They went through a winding maze of corridors with so many twists and turns that she was not sure if she could find her way back.
One problem at a time,
she told herself.

She found that the last corridor ended in another of those black hexes. It figured, somehow. They were being sent someplace else. There was nothing to do but follow, she thought, but at least she had not been captured, and that might still come in handy.

From the corridor's far corner she watched them disappear into the hex, too far away to distinguish what they were saying. She suppressed a giggle when she saw Campos being knocked in, though. When Campos, too, had gone, she backed off, found an empty room, and hid there until the pink dragon returned back up another corridor.

She wasn't sure what was going on, where she was, or what lay on the other side of that black hex, but if Gus and Lori and Alama were there, then she had to follow before she got caught as well. It was sure better than staying here with those creepy monsters.

Allowing a good fifteen or twenty minutes to pass, hoping that whoever or whatever waiting on the other side of the black hex would be gone, she got up and made her way down the dead-end corridor where her companions had disappeared.

She was tempted to sleep first—she felt unimaginably tired as well as hungry and thirsty—but she knew she couldn't let the trail grow too cold, and while sleep might be possible, she couldn't chance discovery by any of the weird creatures she had glimpsed earlier.

Summoning up her last bit of willpower, she stepped into the blackness.

SHE SENSED THE WRONGNESS LONG BEFORE SHE CAME TO FULL
consciousness, a sense that something was missing or had been taken away. And yet she knew who she was. All the "pictures" were there in her mind: her mother, her father, friends and acquaintances, going to school, working, all that.

But she couldn't
articulate
those mental snapshots or put labels on them. It was as if she had words, even in her mind, only for the things that could be expressed in the language of the People. No, not even that. It was even more primitive, more basic.

Even that thought had no words to it but was rather an assemblage of mental pictures and feelings. She was aware that her thought process was far different from what it had been before, as if all the rules for gathering, organizing, and interpreting information had been suddenly and radically changed. It was as bizarre and alien a way to think as anything she might have imagined, and it seemed slower and harder to assemble thoughts or ideas and, once assembled, impossible to express them. All of her old languages had gone from her mind; they just weren't there anymore. Not even the People's. She could call up a memory or scene in her mind and remember the gist of what was said, but could not recall saying it.

There
was
a language there, but it was a strange one, composed of a series of images and concepts that seemed to form as if by magic in her mind, conveying real messages, real thoughts and decisions, but with no words.

To even be able to think such complex concepts using such a method was amazing to her, but to be unable to express even the slightest sense of them was frustrating and likely to become more frustrating as time went on. And it was
hard
to think; she had to concentrate.

What was happening to her?

She sat up, opened her eyes, and looked down at herself and was shocked at what she saw—or, more accurately, what she
didn't
see.

Her body, in fact, looked perfectly normal, but the cemented bones in both her nose and her ears were gone. It felt odd not to have them there after so long, but also it was something of a relief. The tattoos, too, were gone, and her body didn't look all that different to her than it had before the People had done their stuff. Well, that wasn't
exactly
true. Her skin seemed, well, smoother and younger, and the scars were gone—even the appendix scar—and she seemed, well, maybe a little chubby, like she'd been when she was in her early teens. And she had long hair again, the same stringy jet black hair she'd always had, but it was down well below her shoulders, almost to her ass, and it seemed to have a slick, slightly wet feel to it although no residue came off on her hands. She knew that hair didn't grow
that
fast; either she'd been unconscious a long time or something beyond her understanding had happened to her.

In fact, in spite of those differences, she felt
great.
She couldn't remember when she'd felt this good, in top condition, no aches or pains or
anything.
She felt like a kid again, although her fair-sized but firm breasts and the rest of her body assured her that she wasn't. If her mind were just working right, if she just had her language skills back, if it just weren't so hard to think complicated thoughts, she would have felt vast relief.

She sprang to her feet and looked warily around. The weight and swing of the hair felt very odd; she'd never had it this long before. Still, it was the least of her problems, and for some reason it felt
right
for the hair to be there.

She was in a stand of trees, but it was no jungle or rain forest; rather, it was almost parklike. The trees were not
quite
familiar but were far less strange than the ones of the Amazon. She felt thirsty and a little hungry, which was natural, but she also suddenly felt a sense of danger and tension, of being too exposed. All her brooding, her attempts to think complex thoughts and sort things out, suddenly vanished, replaced by something else, something that required no thought, no deliberation, but seemed in retrospect almost instinctual.

Almost before she knew it, she was climbing up a very tall tree that rationality would have said could not have been climbed. It was tall and had a long regular trunk with few opportunities for handholds or footholds, yet she went up it as if it were a stairway. Before she knew it, she was perched on a heavy limb seven or more meters above the ground below. The uncertain perch, the sheer drop, the smoothness of the trunk going back down did not bother her at all. Her sense of balance was absolutely perfect, and she didn't think the situation odd at all.

The upper parts of the tree bore a bananalike fruit; she walked over to a nearby bunch, picked one of them off, and began eating it, skin, stem, and all, all without conscious thought. The fruit had a banana's consistency but was green and brown on the outside and a bright orange color inside. It was moist and sweet and went down so well, she picked another. Somehow she just
knew
which ones were ripe and which ones to leave alone.

She did, however, shrug off the immediate feeling of contentment a full belly gave her, because the sense of tension and danger still remained. Before she could relax, something impelled her to assess her location and the lay of the land. She climbed farther up, to where she could see out in all directions with little effort.

The immediate area was a sort of park with well-manicured trees and grassy areas filled with both sun and shade. The land beyond seemed to be gently rolling, with a number of rivers or streams and a road that came from off the horizon, made its way lazily around various stands of tilled and grooved farmland and across small bridges of stone or wood, and continued off to her right through more of the same sort of country. There was something odd about where the road vanished from sight; just before the horizon there was a sort of shimmering, like heat distortion but extending along the horizon as far as she could see. But the shimmering was
too
steady and regular for it to be caused by rising heat—it seemed substantial, almost solid, and an image of a giant window came into her mind.

To her left a side road seemed to wander up to a huge, elaborate building with many more outbuildings beyond. The mind-picture that most matched was of a farm, but that was mostly because of the surrounding fields and the layout of the buildings; neither the house nor the outbuildings looked like anything she'd seen before. It was a picturesque, almost idyllic scene nonetheless, and she knew it; why, then, did she have such a strong emotional reaction to it, bordering not on fear but on repulsion? Had she been in the jungle so long that what once would have seemed a pleasant, peaceful, even charming scene now looked and felt so wrong? By contrast, that shimmering skyline in the opposite direction felt equally
right;
it had an emotional attraction she could feel, as if it were a magnet softly pulling at her.

Recent events had been so strange and had moved so fast of late that she felt frightened and confused by almost everything. She tried to put her thoughts in order and found that she couldn't. Putting the memory pictures together in some sort of context was hard. Worse, her experiences with the People felt more real, more understandable to her than anything she had experienced before. When she tried to recall her past life, all she got was confusion and conflicting feelings. It was all there, but it just wasn't much use. And if she couldn't think clearly and figure out what was happening to her, what was she going to do?

She went back down the tree partway until she found a thick branch that forked into two only slightly thinner ones. With a little shifting, she discovered it made a pretty solid and secure seat, shielded from the ground by branches. She was so
tired;
perhaps sleep would help. It never even occurred to her that even her second incarnation among the People would never have considered this sort of perch either safe or secure. She was too tired to mentally fight herself right now. It was best to clear the mind, relax, and sleep it off. Perhaps it would let her think more clearly.

Settling back, eyes closed, as relaxed as she could be, she felt a concept come to her by a process that was completely unfamiliar. It was hard not to have the words to use. It went against her entire cultural upbringing. Even the People were as linguistically sophisticated as they needed to be. This was completely different.

Words can obscure as well as clarify. With this way, there was never an error in understanding, if what she was trying to comprehend was understandable at all.

Was that it? Was there something she was missing here?

Was it better not to think, too?
She was here, hunger quelled and safe, because of unthinking action.

No. That would make me nothing more than an animal.

Then what?

Just as you speak when you
need
to speak, think when you
need
to think. Know when to speak and when not to. Know when to think and when not to.

But didn't she always need to think?

Learn to let go. Do not fight impulses, let it go. It is when nothing comes that thinking is required. Learn to trust yourself.

Her impulse just then was to go to sleep. She did not fight it.

It was almost dark when she awoke, but rather than feeling nervous about the setting sun, she felt less afraid, more confident. It was already becoming easier for her to not impose her own old mind-set on this weird situation and to embrace this new and different inner way of thought. It was as if thoughts and decisions were debated and assembled far away in her mind, out of consciousness, then the entire set of possibilities was almost magically laid before her as a series of picture-objects.

This place was not where she was supposed to be or she wouldn't feel its wrongness. The direction toward the odd farm buildings felt even more wrong; so it was toward that shimmering wall that she must go, for only that way felt right. There was also a feeling of undefined danger in this area, so the quicker she got out of it, the better.

First she surveyed the area once again. There was an odd noise from the direction of the farm, and what she saw in the rapidly waning light made her gasp and brought on an intense feeling of danger and irrational distaste that was like nothing she had ever experienced.

Two creatures were in some sort of vehicle that was making a whining noise. It seemed to sway from side to side as it turned into the small road up to the farm. The vehicle was basically an open cabin mounted to a thick oval slab, but while it bounced along, it seemed to be hovering an elbow's length above the road, with nothing touching the road itself. It was the sight of the two creatures that caused her overpowering sense of dislike.

They looked like two giant beavers, each the size of a man; one was dressed in some sort of waistcoat, and the other wore a flowered bib and a silly-looking hat with a big flower sticking out of it.

The hovercar pulled up finally in front of the house and settled to the ground, its whine now cut off. The driver with the waistcoat got out, stretched, and walked around to open the door for its companion with the hat.

Standing and walking, they looked less like beavers than like something entirely new. It was just the rodentlike head and prominent buckteeth that gave the initial impression. They were covered with thick brown hair, they walked upright on thick bowed legs extending from wide hips, and they were like nothing human.

She wanted to meet them even less than she had wanted to meet that purple polka-dotted dragon. Just as curious was her nearly instant reaction to the vehicle, the bright clothing the creatures wore, even the buildings. Somehow all of them were
wrong.
This was far more than the aversion the People had to things they did not make themselves; it was more general, as if anything artificial or manufactured by
anyone
was wrong. She did not even wish she had some sort of weapon; that would be wrong as well.

It was time to eat and run.

It was getting easier all the time to process information and think in this new way, which didn't
seem
like thinking at all but was in fact as complex a method of reasoning as the one she'd been raised on. The trick
wasn't
not to think, Jack L. Chalker

after all; it was not to fight doing things in your head in a whole new way.

She came down the tree almost as easily as she'd gone up it, jumping the last couple of meters and landing expertly on her feet. For someone who had no idea where she was, her sense of direction seemed absolute. She headed toward the edge of the trees, paused to take stock of all her wide-open senses, and, perceiving nothing nearby, darted out into the open and across the road to the rows of thick bushes beyond. The bushes bore some large pear-shaped, cream-colored fruits, but she never gave them a second glance. Something, more of that new inner knowledge, told her that none of the strange-looking fruits were ripe and ready to eat yet.

She began to make her way through the groves at a steady pace, pausing only now and again to check the smells, sounds, and other bits of information that the gentle breeze might bring. Darkness was falling quickly now, yet she proceeded on, drawn by some inner road map of the region. She had no idea where she was or where she was going, but somehow she knew how to get there.